|
Reactivation --
Chapter 1
1. "When you think
about it," the Angel said, "your corporeal brain is hermetically sealed
-- there is no light inside. Your brain only registers
wavelengths that your sensory perception reports."
2. Daniel had this conversation before, and still felt obligated
to contemplate the matter, "We could live in any environment we chose,
then," Daniel surmised. The Angel nodded his head.
3. "Which begs the question," Daniel added, "Why would the
Creator of the Universe: The Maker of worlds without
end, who knows the number of stars in the sky and calls each one by
name... need a guardian?"
4. The Angel
laughed out loud and then alluded that their conversation would be
interrupted. "Daniel?"
B'jhon interrupted quietly.
5. B'jhon could have as easily invaded Daniel's dream as an
avatar to elicit a response, but dreamfasting was considered invasive without an
invitation.
6.
Daniel opened his eyes and saw the avatar standing dutifully over
him. He arose, politely acknowledged B'jhon and gazed out his
wall-length window as if his mind was still wandering somewhere in the
vastness of space.
7. Sunova was not designed by corporeal hands and defied most
architectural conventions. The Angel was more entitled to occupy
the real
estate than Daniel and his compliment of operatives.
8. B'jhon followed Daniel's line of sight to the celestial
orchestra outside. There was no question how such splendor could
captivate the imagination.
9. B'jhon knew Daniel's non-verbal gestures like a science.
"We have to send Onimex," Daniel answered. "We're the only ones
who know about him except for Ireana and Dayton." A much larger
saga had already unfolded... Daniel made his job look easy, but his
realm of
responsibility was quite extraordinary and required the entire Corlos
apparatus to manage properly.
10. "The order is given then." B'jhon nodded reverently and
turned to leave. In all the known Universe, no corporeal being
possessed more authority than Daniel, yet nobody in the Universe knew
who
Daniel was, except for Corlos operatives, and that was precisely how
Daniel insisted it remain.
11.
There was only One higher than
Daniel and it was rumored that Daniel knew The One personally.
12.
Sunova drifted into a
stellar cloud, attracting crystals that shattered like glitter on
impact. The impacts were as harmless as rain but more
musical as the ebb and flow increased and decreased like
waves, then
faded away. Daniel smiled thinly and accepted the music as a
gift. "There's no such thing as coinsidence," he reminded
himself.
13. Once again the gentle swrils of color emerged as
before while the stellar cloud shrank into a speck of dust.
14.
Somewhere 'out there' the Mind
of God was at work.
15. He returned to his couch
and
closed his eyes, "Now, where was I..." "Where were we?" the Angel corrected, "... we
were talking about the notorious 'guardian of God," he reminded
him. "Ahhh yes," Daniel remembered, "the anti-being..."
IN COUNSEL
16.
The council chamber was demurely
lit with built-in other-worldly appointments.
17. Those assembled
represented the
core of Corlos Intelligence and the top of the corporeal food
chain. What transpired at this table often
affected the entire Universe; their eyes fixed upon the #2 personage
among corporeal beings: B'jhon.
18. "Daniel has ordered the
reactivation of
Onimex to investigate Kor's background for his trial," he said.
19.
This particular crowd was entirely too composed to respond in haste; a
seemingly
arrogant non-response that was also a conversational norm. Where
traditions go, the chamber and all of
the caverns in Sunova had been hewn by an ancient 'light race' when the
orb traversed more hospitable space. When their energy-bodies
became uncomfortable under the changed astral condition -- they
left.
The Light Race and Angels are not the same.
20.
"Where is he?" Agent K asked
from the opposite end of the table. Were it not for the
tilting of his head -- the sound source would have been
untraceable. The hyper-dense reinfused rock lent a curious
quality to acoustics on Sunova. Without assistive technology,
sound would not reach the end of a hallway.
21.
"Earth," the vice-chair
answered, "Somewhere in 2012, their time," she said. The
irrelevancy of time on Sunova made refrences to time sound like turning
pages in a book: Page 2012, in some volume on some rock in
another Universe and paradigm. It was clear that this bunch did
not 'react' to detail -- they 'made' the details.
22.
Potential energy equals kinetic energy
squared. Corlos ran on Kolob Standard Time.
23.
"Earth?" Agent Sham'a El repeated non
challantly.
24. Nobody died -- Corlos had this affect on everyone.
25. Nobody aged
at Corlos -- the biological clock stopped with negligible means to
measure age. This state of perpetual inconsequence explained why
Daniel rotated his staff as often as was operationally sensible.
Nobody wanted to stay in cold storage forever. A periodic
rotation through Corlos was expected, but nobody wanted to be permanent
attached. Frequent was better than permanent. Suspending
the aging process in a corporeal condition is not what mortals preceive
it to be. Daniel, on the other hand, had no
choice, and was given extramortal abilities for his service. His
appointment was permanent until released. It was also his
prerogative to appoint an executive assistant and to use the assistant
as his proxy as needed.
26.
Secretary Wexli recapped their brief statements, including those of
prior meetings, and turned toward
B'jhon, who nodded in reply.
27.
For not looking very lively, this bunch had a razor sharp focus and
accuracy to match. Those two qualities were the threads that held
Corlos together, not to suggest that 'accuracy' and 'flawless' are
empirical synonyms.
28.
"Does anyone have an objection
or see any reason why we should not proceed with the
investigation?" B'jhon asked, as a necessary
protocol.
29.
Nobody said a word, which was normal. If someone wished to speak
-- they were
free to do so.
30.
He gave one final sweep of the
room
and locked in the consensus: For bareing the weight of so
much, they said so
little.
31. "Then Onimex is hereby
reactivated to conduct the investigation. Wexli, do it to
it. Meeting adjourned." Some agents still blinked their
eyes as if an invisible gavel had smacked the table.
ON
EARTH
32.
The first few lines blew by like
dust on an unmarked grave. 'Corlos-speak' had been abandoned 49 years
ago, yet the psionic signature felt like flies ambushing a slice of
fresh
watermelon. For having aged 49 years, she sure didn't look it.
33.
She had fallen asleep on her
couch at work with Dow's blessing. As Earth's only
biocybergenicist, she could write her own ticket and nap whenever she
damn well pleased.
34.
Fourty-nine years is a long
time.
"Corlos is attempting to contact you," Onimex interrupted.
"Are you in my dream again?" she asked. "Evidently," he
replied. "Can't you just relay a message?" she asked. The
flies in her subconscience were getting really irritating. Some
aspect of ancient truth was invading her reality, unconscious or
not.
35.
"Is this dream really so
wonderful that you can't speak to Daniel?" he asked somewhat
facetiously.
36.
She woke up, and he knew
that she would. If he had been biological, she might have
smacked him for being right.
37.
There was the round disc-shaped
body of Onimex hoovering right beside her. She studied the
ceiling vent and
contemplated thermal convection by Human standards. 'A 20,000
strand difference,' she reminded herself, between Vejhonian and Human
DNA. That's not very much. Almost negligible. "Enough
to prevent cellular division," Onimex said. She gave him a
shell-game glare and sighed. He had a license.
38. "I wonder how many times you've dreamfasted with me and never
said anything?" she asked him. "I'll never tell," he
answered.
39.
"OK, put him through," she said.
40.
"Ireana?" Daniel said
through Onimex's relay.
41.
"It's been a long time..." she
answered. "Yes, it has," he acknowledged and
continued. From his perspective, it had only been a week since he
spoke to her last, but it was polite to agree.
42. "We need
Onimex to
conduct an investigation of Kor's childhood on Vejhon for evidence at
his trial." She nodded her head, even though Daniel couldn't see
it.
43.
"Understood," she said.
Daniel was never one for excessive elocution -- she had survived
her share of Corlos meetings.
44.
"He'll return as soon as he's
done," Daniel assured her. She
understood why Onimex had to wake her up -- a formal dispatch was
necessary since it was a legal proceeding. A tribunal must have
been established, she presumed.
45.
As the guarantor of justice at
the proceeding, Corlos could
not send field operatives as a matter of jurisprudence.
Technically Corlos didn't exist anyway.
46.
Ireana's self discipline had responded. Now the rest of her was
merging into the moment. It had been a long time since she had an
audience with Daniel.
"You're
released for this
assignment,"
she instructed Onimex. Her intonation had 49 years worth of rust,
but Onimex understood the secret sorceress perfectly. "Quit
calling me that," she scolded him psionically... something that Dayton
had started.
47. "I'll
be back before you wake up," Onimex said. "I'm already awake,"
she assured him. "Are you sure?" he asked. She gave him
that look.
48. It was true --
Onimex could experience 1,000 years and return before he left.
The
law
of reversion was nature's failsafe designed to inhibit prolonged
trans-time adventures for biologicals. Reversion had no
effect
on machines, only on biologicals. Rust affected
machines. "Dayton doing OK?" Daniel asked sternly. "He's
doing very well, Sir," she answered. "Very good,"
Daniel said. Ireana could imagine Daniel nodding with his bunched
up frown. "It was good talking to you," he said as a farewell
gesture. "Yes, Sir," she replied, "the same here." The
connection severed. She knew they could not talk long.
49.
Onimex faded out of sight, so that he could slip outside of Earth's
resonance and sail past
Alpha Centuri on ribbons of
eternity. She was no longer picking him up, so he was somewhere
beyond the moon.
50. Ireana's lab had slatted windows that bordered a
traditional Hawaiian garden. In the center was an awkward
myrtle tree draped with vines, mauna lai and plumaria
flowers. "The ferns
look so lovely," she
conceded. Her eyes reached for a tiny cloud in the blue
sky.
The problem was closure -- this had been
a long and bloody war that needed to
end. She needed a psionic transfusion of
sorts; something to filter the injustice and reverse her disfigurement,
"Not going to happen," she answered herself.
51.
If
shellans only knew what really happens in this
Universe. "Have a safe flight," she said to the tiny cloud
against an azure sky. "Silly
droid." Resilient to the end.
ONIMEX
ENROUTE
52.
Onimex was the most low
maintenance droid ever assembled and he knew it. He could run his
own
diagnostics and repair his ailments long before they had a chance to
mestastasize. If necessary, he could revert to the moment before
a
critical fault transpired, and prevent the fault from happening.
He had enhanced his self-preservation protocols above and beyond his
initial programming.
53.
He had virtually no moving
parts; could transmute
ambient matter to synthesize tools as needed, and expended negligible
resources to maintain total in-flight integrity. He was
perpetually
powered by static energy amplifiers that never needed assisted
maintenance.
54.
He was the savant
among savants.
55.
His calculations of intra-time
velocities and stellar trajectories required layered quantum slip
dynamics that changed from point to point... and the points
fluctuated. Xanax told Dayton once, "Imagine trying to quantify a
specific molecule within a specific gallon of water in an ocean on some
other
planet."
56.
He had to add several chaos
streams to
cancel random deviations.
57.
The only quantity that Onimex
feared was absolute zero, and he had 1,000+ ways to avoid
such.
58.
He spun a transdimensional
reverse-wave to have him arrive at Vejhon, index 19,363 Dans around
Kolob, the nearest major star.
59. "Thought is faster than
time, and thought can be banked," he knew.
60.
Time is a thematic wavelength that makes
matter visible; a canvas upon which motion occurs. "Consciousness
requires time." Onimex habitually transposed objects into an
Elliptical view.
61.
The Ellipsis represents a 10-part construct in which the Universe
unfolds. The Ellipsis unifies time and purpose specifically among
sentient machines.
62.
Because perfectly
balanced
forces have a net movement of zero, time becomes the creative power
in which motion occurs. The consequence for violating stasis is
action.
63.
"No two worlds weigh the same, yet
the inhabitants project their weights and measures into the
entire Universe," Onimex was streaking past Cacci
Dai.
64.
"Some philosophies believe that life was created by thought; that God's
Name is, 'I AM;' ... that at the intersection of Tetragammaton and
The
Ellipsis is: HE." He had gleaned that from a Rabbi
somewhere, he just didn't remember which one.
65. "Earth has too many
teachers,
and too few students," Onimex thought. He was approaching Vejhon
and had to start slowing down. There was only one person who knew
him better than Ireana, and that person was already here, but in a
different time.
ABOVE VEJHON
66.
He paused in Vejhon's upper
orbit to authenticate his arrival. He was at the right place, but
needed to confirm 'when.'
67.
The first 1,000 checks of
10,000 options confirmed a 100% match. The remaining 9,000
options were discarded.
69.
Moderate population. Lower mid-orbital strata contains an aqueous
layer that surrounds the entire planet.
70.
An additional ocean's worth of
moisture saturates the air: Vaporized molecules return to the
shell while heavier droplets form expected precipitation in the lower
stratas.
71.
The watershell contains an additional ocean's worth of
water, measuring one meter thick at 35 miles above the surface; a
perfect centrifugal stasis that results in anamorphic memory: Any
type of penetration is automatically resealed.
72.
A total shell collapse would raise the planet's sea level's 428 feet
and reduce the landmass to one-third of
the planet's surface. The weight of the added water would grossly
adjust Vejhon's teutonic distribution.
73.
Electro-magnetic propulsion and levitation systems matched the target
time. Vejhon had skipped the
aeronautical era as many non-commercial civilizations do, although the
universities still taught aeronautics as an
academic curiousity.
74. "Everything lines up," he
logged, "I'm going in..." For it's brevity, he had also completed
100,000 calculations and incidental observations as
well.
THE SURFACE
75.
He slipped beneath the
watershell and a stunning panorama of emerald forests, shimmering blue
lakes, oceans
and majestic mountains appeared below.
76.
The sparkling shades of green
accented by crystal streams and tastefully dispersed population centers
had a celestial affect on the soul. This was everything that a
mystical paradise should look like. The air was crisp with color
and light that made
Vejhon look alive and magical.
77.
There was one well lit
metropolis that
served as the center of commerce and seat of Government:
Balipor. The city had already
fallen into night.
78.
A large portion of the
population chose to reside away from the major population
centers. With such beautiful surroundings, many prefered rural
living over city life.
79.
The investigation plan
cued.
80.
Onimex descended toward a thickly vegetated ravine wedged inbetween two
mountains. An eclectic sample of Vejhonian topography was nestled
in
this ravine; dense rain forest along the upper banks and sand dunes
beneath a cliff outcroping where a stream drained into a glacially
carved lake. "Glacial?" Onimex noted, "Flight Log:
Vejhon did
not always have a watershell."
81.
He re-synched with Theta Phi to slip out of Vejhon's natural timewave
to make himself invisible. It was not a cumbersome process -- he
merely needed to resonate with anything what was not in harmony with
Kolob. His intention was to observe only, invisible to
all except
God.
82.
He slowed his descent, increased his static envelope and sank beneath
the tree tops. The trek from the treetops to the ground was a
botanical education.
83.
The true meaning of rain
forest materialized as the sunlight barely streaked through a
misty green haze; otherworldly and humid. The change was intense.
84.
As Onimex slipped into the
grass, a
gentle mist rose from beneath the fauna and outlined his hull.
The whole
place was alive, more wet than humid.
85.
He switched his A/V
recorders on and captured the sound of insects, mating calls and
numerous tree dwelling species.
86.
Just in case, he
kept his internal pressure sealed for deep space flight. He
was not ordinarily so cautious, but as Dayton was fond of saying, "Sie
konnen
zu nie achtgeben!" "You can never be too careful."
87.
His event notification cued; the moment was now.
Dynamics alligned and variables crossed.
88.
He hovered quietly and
inconspicuously above a small stream; careful not to nudge
the tall blades
of grass or disturb anything.
89.
Recorders on.
90.
"The mere act of observation changes things," he said to himself.
"I'm a machine. But sentient," he added,
"and 'here' watching." Onimex talked to himself a lot, a habit he
picked up from Ireana and Dayton.
91.
He knew the dossier on both subjects whose lives would become more
monumental
than the mountains: "From one womb: Two apart." He knew El Sha's
story too; select tidbits that she willingly imparted.
92.
"The future has not been written," he told himself. Faith is a
bridge to exosensory information. "Guards! Am I
getting a precognitive hunch or what?" he asked. A biological
mind can influence photons when focused, which is why Corlos sent a
sentient machine to minimize timeline
contamination.
93. It was imperative that nothing
be altered, not even photons. Advanced cultures 'look but don't
touch' without quantifying the interaction of thought: Things still
go wrong. When an entity attempts to unnaturally manipulate time
-- Corlos gets involved.
THE BOYS
94.
Onimex expanded his recorders to omniband: If a wave
existed, seen or unseen, real or imagined, his recorders would
pick it up.
95.
Across the stream, two 15-year-old boys foraged through the underbrush
in virtual
stealth. Unless an observer knew exactly where to look, the boys
could have crossed back and forth several times unnoticed.
96. The profound significance of this moment sent shivers
down his nonexistant spine. "You've got more backbone than most,"
Ireana told him once.
97.
He confirmed his dimensional shift by bouncing a trace wave off the
water surface.
It did not disturb the water, but reported existential
information. He was not in Vejhon's dimension. "I'm
invisible." Someone in the Theta Si system could see him, but
not without a really big telecsope.
98.
Kor froze and stuck
out his arm to halt Bri. Onimex froze too. These kinds of
coincidences are always annoying. "It's a biological
impossibility that he can see me," he reassured himself. The
trace wave did not affect the trickling water any more than several
trillion
neutrinos did every second.
99.
Bri was accustomed to Kor's
predator instinct and halted.
100.
"What?" Bri whispered with caution.
101.
Kor studied the space in which
Onimex hovered. Onimex felt exposed. It was Kor's lack of
instant recognition that gave Onimex a sigh of relief. "He
doesn't see me," he repeated. The thought of being captured by
Kor, based on what Onimex knew about Kor's future, was not comforting.
102.
Kor was certain that
something abnormal was there -- something that didn't belong; something
unnatural. Bri only sensed what Kor was sensing, but made no
attempt to probe deeper. Kor was the esteemed know-it-all when it
came to hunting so Bri dared not to infringe -- he was simply
along for the ride.
103.
Kor did not like 'unknowns' -- they were vexations to his soul.
"Unknowns don't exist," he said with contempt. Bri
kept his sigh to himself because he knew that his brother was getting
agitated, and when Kor was agitated, Bri became the target.
"There's always that possibility..." Bri entertained, and then
stopped.
104.
Using the future as a guide,
Onimex began to reverse engineer the sibling rivalry
immediately. A quantum mind can deduce things quickly.
105.
Bri's future self had provided the war tribunal with a list of dates
that
the tribunal forwarded to Conscious, who submitted the list to
Corlos, who dispatched Onimex.
106.
There was a dynamic in
the equasion that perplexed Onimex paradoxically: Bri had
never met Onimex at any point in time. Did Bri pick this day
because it was symbolic to him? And if so... "Does Kor sense me
now?" It should be a mathematical impossibility -- in the
hyper-quantum view, "The
past is irretrievably ever-present," similar to the Judgement Bar of
God. "Stop," he ordered himself. Over-quantification had
been
the death of many machines.
107.
"There is
something
there Bri," Kor whispered, "It doesn't belong here." Onimex
stopped pontificating and focused on this new reality. There was
no
way that Kor could actually be seeing him. It was simply, and
flatly, impossible. "Even though I am not
in their native dimension -- Kor still 'senses' something." This
was mind-boggling to Onimex, enough to make his other co-located selves
pay attention, if only it worked that way. "What type of
exosensory information is he picking me up on?" he asked, "Not my relay
--
it's turned off! Everything is turned off," he knew for
certain. "There IS no information," he assured himself, "NOT
coming from me. Is it my hovering?" Not likely.
108.
Bri's 15-year-old mind
playfully interpreted Kor's line to be self descriptive. Nobody's
thoughts are private in a psionic world.
109.
By Kor's standard, Bri was
never serious about anything, so Bri was perpetually sarcastic.
That wasn't necessarily true, but whose to say that the objects in ones
private Universe are not really there? Bri was a good fighter, so
Kor liked having him around. Bri was a hopeless romantic who
admired Kor's inflexible focus, but otherwise, they were polar
opposites on virtually everything. The only thing they had in
common was El Sha, their mother, and that's where any similarity
stopped. A psychiatrist might have suggested that Kor liked Bri
because Bri was a walking encyclopedia of everything that Kor wasn't.
110.
"I wonder if this is one of Mantra's tests?" Kor asked himself.
Mantra was his secret mentor who trained him in
personal guardianship. Bri had never known
Kor to be genuinely uncertain about anything. "Who's Mantra?" Bri
asked. Kor stood up and stared squarely into Bri's
face with menacing eyes. "That's a damn scary look, Kor," Bri
whispered soberly; curious, and not afraid. Kor admired Bri's
lack of fear: Guarding Mantra's name had been his #1
secret... not anymore.
111.
Kor released Bri from his stare
and crept forward with the
stealth of a panther; his eyes steadfast and deadly. If Kor had
had hair on his back, it would have came to razor sharp
attention. Onimex began
to feel a certain dread. He didn't understand how "logical"
comprised seven-tenths of the word "biological." "I'm kidding
myself," he remanded his focus. "Sie sicher wie
hölle sind nicht logisch," Dayton
said
once, "When are they ever logical?" "Muss ich zustimmen" "I
have to agree," he was speaking to his imaginary proxy. "Maybe
Kor isn't really biological? Cancel that."
112.
Bri felt the burning focus of
Kor's eyes and pitied whatever had fallen in its path. Change was
imminent. His heart was as strong as a mountain, but it lay
elsewhere. The rain forest was Kor's
element; Bri's loved this rain forest too, but not in the same
way. Bri wanted to shield whatever it was from the full brunt of
Kor's attack.
113.
The most sophisticated machine in the
Universe did not have a chance to react.
114.
In one swift blur of motion,
Kor struck the anomaly five times before Bri even realized that
something had happened.
115.
This was Kor's way, appearing to maneuver faster than time, so it
seemed. He indulged Bri's
light-hearted admiration, and read his pity for the unfortunate object
-- whatever it is... if there's anything there at all. "I heard
five rapid-fire tinks and then a
splash?" They were in agreement on that point.
116.
"If it thought it was
camouflaged -- it can't be very smart," Bri thought. Onimex was
momentarily unconscious; his harmonic still synched with Theta Si.
117.
There was a cylindrical
indentation in
the water but no object to be
seen. Heavy but buoyant, anchored on a submerged rock.
Indeed, it was a curiosity... nothing there. "A military device?"
Bri wondered. It was void of any interior definition.
118. Kor tapped on the anamoly with one of his 'heavy' arrows and
heard a stone-on-stone clacking sound. Nothing. When he
tried
to nudge it, an invisible field prevented direct contact. He
tapped it with his arrow again, then let go of the arrow and the arrow
stood straight up with the tip resting on the invisible object, as if
levitating in mid air.
119. Bri set a smooth stone on it and the stone hovered, then
drifted off the object and splashed into the stream. "What's that
made of?" Bri asked and grabbed Kor's arrow. His muscles had to
flex unnaturally as if lifting a thick iron pry bar from its
end.
120. "WHAT the hell IS this?" he demanded. The arrowhead
weighed at least 100 times more than it should have. "How do you
cram that much mass into this tiny little area," he wondered. The
arrowhead was almost upstaging the invisible object as if 'out of
sight' was 'out of mind.'
121.
Kor felt that it was none of Bri's business, "Making Mount Orbi out of
this," he warned him psionically.
122.
Bri smirked at Kor's typical evasiveness, but it was also a dead
give-away.
123.
"Where did you GET this?" Bri demanded. Kor was annoyed.
They had seen this scenario a thousand times and the outcome was never
good.
124.
"I MADE it!" Kor answered, "What the FRACK is it to YOU?
Why don't you keep your damn hands off other shellans
stuff!"
125.
It's ingrained to secure sure footing when angry, so Kor stepped
ashore, "Why don't you just go home and clean the damn
house!" he jabbed.
126.
He knew that line would provoke Bri because it always did, so Bri
stepped out of the stream prepared to defend his honor. On
Vejhon, kids
excel in aggressive occupations because they enjoy the constant
hyperactivity.
127.
Bri glared at Kor -- it was the redundancy that
irritated him more than what he said. The adrenaline was
building.
128.
"If I want to know what this is made of -- what the
frack are YOU going to do about it? Did 'asking' really piss you
off THAT much?" Kor sneered while Bri
flexed his muscles in a comical Tai Chi posture. Kor snatched his
arrow back
and mocked him, "...did 'asking' really piss you off THAT much...
you're so full of
shit!" Kor alluded to Bri's defensive posture and rolled his eyes
to add insult to injury, "That shit ain't gonna help you either."
129.
"You're pissed because I'm
faster than you," Kor accused him. He slid the arrow back in
it's quiver with 3 other arrows from the stream; the 5th arrow's
whereabouts was unknown -- he would look for it later. Kor stood
with his hands on his hips in full command, as if
the entire scene had been staged for his amusement. The king in
his
own play. The antic was comical to Bri, so he calmed a
little.
130.
"Does everything have to be so fracking focused?"
Bri spread his hands bewildered, "You're pissed because I wanna know
what
the fracking thing is?"
131.
Whatever it was, they couldn't see anyway, so 'out of sight' truly
became 'out of mind.'
132.
Kor gripped his
manhood when he was angry and Bri never understood
why. "Lose
something?" Bri mocked, "Balls fall off?" Kor clenched his
fist. "Yeah, they turn you on, don't they?" Kor accused him, "at
least MINE are REAL!" This was a continuation of past heated
arguements, which lead to obscenity, then to shoving, and then the
fight was on.
133.
Onimex checked his recorders. They captured everything. He
checked his flight status, "What the hell did he hit me with?" He
regained his levitation and slipped out of the water while the boys
fought. "Flight Log:" he noted, "Shift less predictably.
That
should have never happened;" Onimex was incensed that he had fallen
prey to an archaic attack. "How does an advanced spacecraft
travel a hundred billion light years only to crash here?" a Human said
on Earth TV. "How the hell would I know?" he answered,
embarrassed.
134.
"How was Kor able to 'sense' me? ... or do I just think he
sensed me? Is this the cybernetic insanity that Dayton warned me
about?"
135.
He couldn't go back and fix it, as Ireana clarified once:
136.
"No, you can't just keep going
back and back, thinking that you're going to fix it..." Then she
added, "Sometimes you've got to leave well enough alone."
137.
"I can't believe I have to go over my collateral checklist," he huffed
in
disgust. It was sheer embarrassment, borderline shame.
"They never saw me -- it will just be a dream."
Ireana 'might' agree. "OK, I rationalized, schießen
Sie mich so!"
"So shoot me!" he
remembered Dayton saying to Ireana on more than one
occasion.
138. Onimex pushed up quietly -- he didn't want to blaze through
the foilage and leave a burning tunnel through the treetops to confirm
that he had been there, although the temptation was strong. Once
he cleared the trees, he rose into low orbit. "What was that
arrow
that
knocked me senseless five times in less than one second?" One
question led to a million more. "How?" "Flight Log," he
noted,
"Kor's motion through time
is a biological impossibility."
139. "Here we go again," he sighed, "I'm not supposed to ask if
Kor is shellan, yet NOBODY can explain how he does what he does."
He analyzed his recordings frame by frame a thousand different
ways.
140.
"Uber-denken Sie nicht Sachen." "Don't over-think things;"
Dayton always said to Ireana. Onimex had never felt this
perplexed, "Kor doesn't like unknown quantities?" a historical fact
regarding Kor, "and neither do I!"
141.
"He's not really
shellan?" "Anschlag!" he could hear Dayton order him
in German, "before you fry something." "Hell YES I'm angry!"
Onimex shot back in this imaginary scene.
142.
'Shell' is Vejhonian for 'world'
because the watershell on Vejhon has always existed. The people
are shellans. There was
no recorded history of Vejhon without the
shell, although topographic, geologic and glacial evidence suggests
otherwise; a no-shell-condition may have existed before the first Dan, but it was unwise to
argue the
matter locally. With regard to 'matter:'
143.
Onimex ran the density of Kor's
arrowhead
through his atomizer, "I hope he doesn't miss this ..." He
retrieved Kor's missing arrow and cited Cacci Dai code as
justification: An advanced species is obligated to recover stolen
technology from an inferior one. "Well, it is technology," he
rationalized. "Then why didn't I take all of them?"
"Alright, Corlos SOP then," he adjusted. Industrial espionage was
a normal part of social evolution; every species does it.
144. The result was an infusion of collapsed
matter
found only on former stars like Corlos.
145. "You've got to be fracking kidding me?" Onimex quoted
Kiles. "How did he GET this! Much less shape it?" He
had to debate whether or not to scrub the mission and report this
anomaly to Corlos. "No," he answered confidently, "this detail
would not make a time-altering difference at this point."
The past is irretrievably ever present, "What's done, is done," the
Humans say.
146. The video showed Kor carrying his quiver of arrows as if
they were nothing,
when a
spoonful of
collapsed matter should weigh at least 500 pounds on a shell like this
one.
147. The stolen arrowhead was razor thin and flawlessly machined;
a near-transparent slice was all that an honest archer needed. It
would require precision measurement equipment found only within machine
realms to determine exactly which star the collapsed matter came from,
and a
detour to Cacci Dai was not authorized. "Biologicals hate mundane
details like this," he reasoned, "Proceed to the next event."
|
