Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  Cassandra turned to him, her eyes clearing, and smiled.

  Not a good sign.

  Whatever Cassandra did when showing just the whites of her eyes—the action completed before the eyes cleared. And one look out the port told Leon that absolutely nothing had happened—save perhaps for the fact that he’d driven Cassandra mad, piling on too much pressure too soon before she was ready for it. That smile on her face certainly qualified as a testament to madness.

  But in the next moment he felt the tsunami wave wash over the UFO as it expanded in all directions from Mirage. As the spherical expansion wave broadened, it devoured every Tinka ship. And then, even more remarkably, reached beyond the abyss separating that armada from the Klash, erasing the Klash ships as well.

  The effect was one of a string of fireworks all going off at the same time on the Fourth of July—each exploding ship in the armada of both the Tinka and the Klash playing the role of a firecracker in the string of explosives.

  “It is done,” Cassandra said.

  “How?” Leon asked when he could get his mouth working again.

  “A peaceful union of the Raj with the Godhead, without resistance, without recoil or fear from the unfathomable.”

  Leon gulped. No one, not even Cassandra, the Nun, and Solo—who alone could sustain even brief encounters with the Godhead—could describe that experience as anything but terrifying. And that was with perceiving it through the distorted filters of their false personalities, their egos, whatever foibles that made up their individual human characters. Whether there was indeed a God, or whether it was just an unfiltered communication with the “big supercomputer in the sky”, the universal consciousness, a creator that was as synthetic and as artificial as the Nautilus’s chief supersentience itself… It hardly mattered. No one, to his knowledge, had managed such an unfiltered connection, even for the brief time that Cassandra had. That, at least, would explain the mad look in her eyes, if she’d brokered such a union between the Raj and the Godhead—while staying on the line to monitor the exchange. But she had recovered far faster than the Nun, and Solo from such encounters.

  He couldn’t process any more of this right now. Just thank Techa it worked. There was still a war to be fought, one that was no longer being fought merely to buy time—its original purpose—but to halt a genocide in progress that Leon had triggered. Techa help him if that proved to be an even bigger blunder than the one he’d just nearly made coming out here solo with Cassandra to protect a planet from being wiped off the star charts.

  ONE HUNDRED THREE

  THE LUCKY STREAK

  The Blue pivoted away from her view out the wrap around window facing Galactic North to the view facing South, and hissed as her knees bent and her arms flared into battle position.

  “What is it?” Sonny was perplexed. Gerlari had just destroyed a cloaked Klash ship determined to get its hands on the Legacy Tech the Lucky Streak represented—for whatever reason—with a mere closing of her fist. It was a psychic action that resulted in the Klash ship collapsing about its occupants. Sonny could not see any new enemy in the direction she was looking. And his scanners on the Lucky Streak were not easily fooled by cloaked ships.

  “Cassandra!” The Blue, recognizing the nature of the threat now, reprised her hiss before smiling. “Very impressive.”

  “What?” Sonny nearly shouted at her.

  “She has just displayed the kind of power only evinced by my kind when in a pregnant state,” Gerlari replied.

  “Translate, please.”

  “She took out a Tinka armada surrounding the Raj planet, Mirage, in the same rippling wave of energy that she used to take out a Klash armada, preparing to put the planet under siege as well.”

  Sonny gulped. “By surround, do you mean like a ring surrounds Saturn?”

  “No, not in one dimension, the way a barrier field surrounds a planet.”

  Sonny gasped. “When can I impregnate you?”

  The Blue’s eyes, still focused on infinity, as if continuing to marvel at what she was seeing, said curtly, “Only Solo can issue such an order.”

  Sonny bit down on his jaw until he thought he’d pulled the muscles at the jaw line so hard that he’d ripped them from the bone.

  The Blue didn’t have time to take him on.

  Gerlari lurched yet again, as a series of craft were unmasked by Sonny’s scanners. This time the Tinka had them surrounded, on all sides, in the same spherical shape of envelopment the Blue had just described to him in regards to how they’d surrounded Mirage.

  The Blue hissed as before, putting her entire body into it, bending at the knees, her arms bending and her hands forming tiger’s claws. The hiss turned into a shriek, and the resulting concussion wave was so severe, it not only destroyed all surrounding ships, The Lucky Streak’s shields had to spike up to a hundred percent to keep them from being annihilated in the blow back alone. Even then, the needle was well into the red region after the climax of the explosion. He did not think the shields had held on their own. It was part of the Blue’s counterstrike, to boost their efficiency in time, when the computers and the devices they controlled sustaining the shields couldn’t give anymore.

  She destroyed every Tinka ship! By the heavens!

  “We’re teleporting to the next location,” the Blue informed him. “I will be jumping The Lucky Streak constantly from now on to protect the other Legacy Tech in your gambling empire spread throughout the Gypsy Galaxy. All of the casinos are under attack.”

  Instead of being grateful, all Sonny could think was, “But Cassandra could conceivably do it all from one spot, without having to teleport.” His superweapon, and one of the checks and balances in his game of wit and superpowers with Leon, had just been checked. Possibly several times over. He emitted a primal scream inside his head, while he held on to his poker face. He didn’t dare show his hand to the Blue, or to anyone who might be monitoring this exchange, letting his potential enemies and allies alike think his position of power had eroded in the slightest.

  Keeping her word, they were teleporting now, second by second. That’s how long it took Gerlari to destroy some other vessel putting the pincers on another of his Legacy Tech stations—which came with their own defenses, mind you. Not all of them had been activated, surely, and some stations had no defenses up and working yet, making the Blue’s job harder.

  How long could she keep this up without tiring?

  He wasn’t waiting to find out. He sent out an emergency transmission to his Shadow Warriors on each of the Legacy Tech stations under his control. “Get those Station defenses up now! Or see if you get a bioprinter to reincarnate you this time!”

  He assigned a task for himself too. He had to find out how readily Cassandra entered this state of near absolute empowerment. On what it relied. And how to stymie any further efforts on her part to enter such an altered state. He wasn’t taking this latest development without a counterstrike of his own. But he would have to do this on his own. Again, he couldn’t afford to let his own people know such a thing was possible. It would erode his sense of authority and control over his entire empire.

  ***

  SYNTHA TGC

  SOMA CITY

  Leon couldn’t believe his eyes. After dealing with the mess on Raj, he’d asked Cassandra to take them to the next fire most in need of putting out in the Gypsy Galaxy.

  Using her newfound abilities.

  He didn’t dare tax Mother further with all she and her Mars war god were handling. She was trying to buy them time as Leon had requested—against all out invasions from galaxies with armadas far greater than theirs. All the while he’d tied Mother’s hands by refusing to allow her to access Legacy Tech that could put it in harm’s way, losing them assets to rival factions before they could even determine all that they were capable of. Another potentially disastrous move on Leon’s part. He was beginning to lose count. The line was growing finer between war gaming genius and what were possibly growing suicidal tendencies o
n his part for having so much heaped on his shoulders. Was he sabotaging himself unconsciously just to escape these burdens over the long run, giving himself a strange kind of control over his fate? Better this be a problem of character, and not being strong enough to play his role, than his genius not being up to it. Was his ego that petty? Wasn’t every ego that petty?

  He brought his mind back into the present.

  Had Cassandra made a mistake? These abilities were new to her, after all.

  They’d materialized in Soma City, a planet-engulfing city that was part of the Syntha Transgalactic Civilization, as they once had in the early days of the Moving Earth adventure. He couldn’t even recall if it was him or his clone that had stepped through the portal on Earth, well protected and cordoned off, deemed one of Earth’s Forbidden Zones by NASA and the Peruvian military.

  The same old man that had greeted him on his arrival last time, did so again. In all likelihood he was an avatar, used by the city AI to help new arrivals find their way. The entire planet that comprised the city had been hollowed out to form the raw materials for the giant metropolis. “You led me to believe this world was in another timeline, in another universe, the last time we met,” Leon said.

  “I’m sorry we lied to you,” the modeled-on-Gandolf-movie-character wizard said. “We thought it best you didn’t know that we too were from Earth, emigrating here long before your civilization even arose, in a time before a meteor strike destroyed your dinosaurs.”

  Leon’s eyes went to the sky. The Klash ships were decloaking. It was unclear exactly what they were here for, but you could bet they were going to scoop up whatever futuristic tech would give them any advantage. When dealing with alien races, stealing what you needed was always preferable to the huge amounts of time needed to catch up with a superior civilization, which, technically couldn’t be done, if both had already entered Singularity State.

  “You will transmit all details of your earlier history on Earth,” Leon said, “to Mother by encoded transmission that cannot be hacked by the Klash. I cannot afford to have that intel in the hands of an enemy before I’ve had a chance to study it. The information may hold the keys not only to your continued survival, but to any other descendants of Earth that made it into the stars.”

  The old man bowed graciously. “But of course. It is already done.”

  Leon was glad he wasn’t going to give him a hard time, even if dealing with what was in the sky was Cassandra’s department.

  Leon turned to her. “Careful, Cassandra. I can’t have Soma City citizens seeing what you can do. It may affect their evolution in a way that isn’t positive.”

  “I can handle that,” the old man said. The sky overhead became devoid of ships. An inrush of weather to blame. The rolling bank of grey storm clouds blotted out everything. “I will erase the memories of anyone who will be traumatized by what they saw today. The others will believe simply that they are victims of The Mandela Effect.”

  Even before Leon took to the Nautilus, reports were coming in from masses of people who remembered history differently. Rumors as to why were rampant, from experiments at CERN causing a disturbance, a bleeding over between parallel universes, to a mind ray weapon Earth’s oligarchs were experimenting with to secure their reign forever by adjusting memories. Whatever was behind it, it had come to be referred to as the Mandela Effect, after Nelson Mandela, who many reported having died in prison, even as many others believed that he had been freed to go on to influence the end of Apartheid.

  The Soma City AI was showing off its capacity to control the weather on the planet, doctor its citizens, and suck everything out of Leon’s mind that made it easier to communicate with him—such as mention of the Mandela effect—all at once. Well, supersentiences were good that way, built for unrivaled parallel processing.

  Cassandra’s knees buckled. She caught herself on the railing. “It’s done,” she said, panting like a winded animal. She was sweating profusely; Leon wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen her sweat. “I had to destroy more than just the ships surrounding the planet,” she said. “All the intel they had already sucked out of this world and transmitted to ships back in their home galaxy had to be destroyed too, along with the ships on the receiving end.”

  Leon took a deep breath.

  The old man’s face, already pale, blanched further, before he disappeared. It was as if the city AI didn’t want an open link to it this close to someone of Cassandra’s abilities.

  Leon had to ask himself the obvious questions. Why hadn’t the avatar told them of their imprisonment within the Menagerie the first time one of Leon’s clones paid him a visit? Even this time, when the truth had become painfully apparent, the avatar had refused to broach the subject. All Leon could think of for now was that such an enlightened society had simply been removed from the gaming board before their “toxic ooze” could affect the more corrupt TGEs beyond the multiverse prison walls of the Menagerie. Much as with Mirage. And to ensure the citizens of the Syntha TGC remained happy and content with their fate, they were simply denied all knowledge of it—most likely by a hack of their AIs, such as the Soma City AI. They went about their business, as the Soma City archeologists did, going and coming from the past and future, and from this and that timeline, to conduct their investigations into the “true, underlying nature of reality”—without them ever knowing the truth—that for any timeline which mattered, any with the corrupt TGEs and TGCs looking to maintain sway over the cosmos—Syntha was never to be found.

  Their awakening to the truth was a project for another day. Leon had too much on his wooden Viking plate currently.

  “That’s it for now, Cassandra. Whatever other fires need to be put out will have to be put out by someone else. You’re weakening, and that makes you vulnerable, and I can’t have that.”

  “One more stop, I’m afraid. There’s no avoiding it. I presume you want as many genocides avoided as possible in the name of a simple stall tactic.”

  Leon nodded begrudgingly. Well, whatever progress she had made with isolating her calm center, it was, as always with her, two steps forward, one step back. He could taste the sarcasm in her remarks at the back of his tongue, a sign the old self was reasserting itself over this newer, more tenuous self, still wearing like a Band-Aid over a wound that hadn’t entirely healed.

  ONE HUNDRED FOUR

  THE GYPSY GALAXY

  MUTA, PLANET ON THE OUTERMOST SPIRAL OF THE GALAXY

  The rest of Omega Force was delighted to see Leon and Cassandra beaming in to join the team.

  “Leon!” DeWitt exclaimed.

  “And pretty lady!” Ajax remarked. “We’re both excited and terrified to see you, if not necessarily in that order.”

  “We thought you had outgrown us,” Crumley said.

  “Never,” Leon replied, and meant it. “Though, these days, whatever madness you’re up to, it’s a delightful vacation from my oppressive, big picture concerns.” He meant that too.

  “Glad we can be of help,” Cronos interjected. “But unless God intercedes on our behalf, I suspect the only vacation from your concerns you’ll get is a quick death.”

  Leon gazed at Cassandra, not sure whether he was ready to tip his hand about her ongoing maturation and the implications yet, and spook his soldiers unnecessarily. Cassandra appeared to have the same idea going through her mind. Leon turned back to the group and said, “Fill me in. The good, the bad, and the ugly.”

  “Something about the thinner atmosphere,” Ajax said, “and possibly the nature of the aerosols in the air… but my sniper bullets fly farther and truer than ever before.” He grimaced. “Though I’ve mostly been shooting down fruit for this clown.” He gestured with his head at Crumley.

  Crumley showed Leon a fruit, like a cross between a pineapple and a papaya. He took a bite out of it—rind and all—then held out his hand, which ballooned up in size.

  “Your nanites doing that?” Leon asked.

  “Nope. Entirely biochemical, enzymes.
The nanites in my body have organized an entirely new hive mind just to study the biochemistry involved.”

  Leon nodded. “So the Klash are here to harvest foods that facilitate their warriors’ transformations in the field.”

  “That’s only part of the picture.” DeWitt held a PDA out in front of Leon. He pointed to a device clearly not indigenous to this primitive world. “To be fair, Crumley, our locator of precious commodities, found this too. We call it The Emitter, for lack of a better word. We believe it is what is giving the edibles of this world their mutagenic abilities.”

  Leon’s eyes lost focus as he considered the implications. “So, the Klash haven’t been coming into the Gypsy Galaxy all along to harvest a precious commodity.”

  “No.” The voice, coming out of nowhere, startled Leon and the rest, who raised their arms and their rifles in a well-honed reflex.

  It was the White Indian from Earth’s Amazon that they’d met on the Sentient Serpents mission. None of his trained warriors, not even Cassandra had sensed his approach. He was wearing nothing but a loin cloth, per the usual, as if he were auditioning for a Tarzan movie—for a part he was likely to win.

  Leon smiled. “You get around.”

  “You have no idea.” The White Indian pointed to DeWitt’s PDA. “The Emitter was jettisoned to over two billion worlds in the Gypsy Galaxy. You will need this precious one,” he gestured with his head at Cassandra, “to eradicate them all, when she is at full power again. Not before!” He barked and snarled the order directly at Cassandra, sensing her responding to the request already before Leon even had time to contemplate the idea further.

  Speaking in a more accommodating tone, but with no less urgency, he added, “If so much as one of those things remain, you’ve lost your Gypsy Galaxy to the Klash. The fruits modified by the device don’t just allow them to morph and regenerate their bodies but…”