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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 had more rights to the real
estate than Daniel and his compliment of operatives
did.
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 it look easy, but his realm of
responsibility was quite extraordinary.
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.
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 suggested, "... 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. What transpired at this table often
affected the entire Universe and those seated were at the top of the
corporeal food chain. Their eyes fixed upon the person who ranked
#2 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 react; a seemingly
arrogant non-response that was also an operational 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
could no longer sustain the new astral conditions -- they left.
The Light Race and Angels are not the same.
20.
"Where is he?" Agent Kamdeen asked
from the opposite end of the table. Were it not for the
tilting of his head -- the sound source would have been
undetectable. The hyper-dense reinfused rock lent a curious
quality to acoustics on Sunova.
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 galaxy and paradigm. In other words, 'we make the details -- we don't react to them.' Yes, they
were arrogant, but not with
malcontent.
22.
Unusually long pauses
inbetween lines
was not uncommon either since Corlos ran on Kolob Standard Time:
Everything was Relative; potential energy equals kinetic energy
squared.
23.
"Earth?" Agent Sham'a El repeated non
challantly.
24. The amusement was spread
evenly among all. Nobody died -- this waking-dream
state was completely innocuous by those affected.
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. They didn't mind a
periodic rotation through Corlos, but to deliberately suspend the aging
process was not what most mortals preceive it to be, at least not in a
corporeal condition. Daniel, on the other hand, had no
choice. His appointment was permanent until released.
26.
Secretary Wexli recapped their brief statements and turned toward
B'jhon, who nodded in reply.
27.
These round-ups weren't lively, but the Corlos-mind was clearly
on-mission. New recruits
learned the antics quickly before redeployment.
28.
"Does anyone have an objection
or see any reason why we should not proceed with the
investigation?" B'jhon asked, to oblige a necessary protocol.
29.
There were neither yeas nor
nays, which was normal. If someone wished to speak -- they were
free to do so.
30.
One final visual sweep of the
room
and the consensus was locked in: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
42. "We need
Onimex to
conduct an investigation of Kor's childhood on Vejhon for evidence at
his trial." She nodded her head.
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.
46.
Ireana did not indulge anything other than reality at that 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 had to be at
least past 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; divine intervention to validate or reverse her disfigurement...
it was not likely to happen.
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.
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.
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 unnecessary.
68.
The target coordinates were
approaching mid-morning on the day in question.
69.
Vejhon, index 19,363
dans around Kolob where 1 Vejhonian Dan equals 200 cycles around Kolob.
70. Moderate population. Lower mid-orbital strata contains an aqueous
layer that surrounds the entire planet.
71.
The watershell distributes heat evenly from three neighboring
suns.
72.
The first sun is 12 minutes
away as light travels.
73.
The other two suns are magnified from
inside the shell, but offer only a marginal kinetic contribution to the
planet.
74. Astronomical purists argue that
Vejhon has only one true sun but it's unwise to argue the
point locally.
75.
A predominant tropical climate
covers
most of the landmass, even at the poles.
76.
The mountains are topped
with dense forests and a thick Olympian mist.
77.
Oceans, seas, lakes and
watersheds compose one fourth of Vejhon's surface, and are distributed
for maximum utilization, most of it naturally occurring.
78.
An additional ocean's worth of
moisture saturates the air: Vaporized molecules return to the
shell while heavier droplets form cloud formations in the lower strata
as natural precipitation.
79.
The watershell contains an additional ocean's worth of
water, measuring one meter thick at 35 miles above the surface; a
perfect centrifugal stasis at that altitude and thickness.
80.
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 water would affect, if
not rearrange Vejhon's teutonic integrity.
81.
The shell had historically withstood meteor impacts and simply resealed
itself; anything large enough to collapse the shell
would likely extinguish life.
82. Vejhon developed
electro-magnetic propulsion and levitation systems that skipped the
aeronautical era completely. Aeronautics was taught as an
academic curiousity, but nothing more.
83. Onimex was satisfied with his preliminary findings.
84. "Everything lines up," he
logged, "I'm going in..." All of this serial description took him
less than two seconds to complete, if
that.
THE SURFACE
85.
He slipped beneath the
watershell and a stunning panorama of emerald forests, shimmering blue
lakes, oceans
and majestic mountains appeared below.
86.
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 color and light made
Vejhon look alive and magical.
87.
There was one well lit
metropolis that
served as the center of commerce and seat of Government:
Balipor, sometimes called Balitor. The city had already
fallen into night.
88.
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.
89.
The investigation plan
engaged.
90.
Onimex descended toward a thickly vegetated ravine wedged inbetween two
mountains. A wide range 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 observed, "Flight Log:
Vejhon did
not always have a watershell."
91.
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.
91.
He was there as an observer only, invisible to all except
God.
92.
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.
93.
The true meaning of rain
forest began to materialize as the sunlight barely streaked through a
misty green haze; otherworldly and humid.
94.
As Onimex slipped into the
grass, a
gentle mist seemed to rise from beneath the fauna. The whole
place was alive, more wet than humid now.
95.
He switched his A/V
sensors on and captured the sound of insects, mating calls and
tree dwelling species everywhere.
96.
As a precautionary measure, he
maintained his internal pressure for deep space flight. He
was not ordinarily so cautious, but as Dayton often said, "Sie konnen
zu nie achtgeben!" "You can never be too careful."
97.
He thought his egress protocol #5 was overkill, but it made Ireana
happy: Any threat to his core program
would send him straight home. That had never
happened.
98. His event notification cued him; the moment was now.
The dynamics were
alligned.
99.
He hovered quietly and
inconspicuously above a small stream; careful not to nudge
the tall blades
of grass or disturb anything. So far, no issues.
100.
The summits of the mountains seemed to reached into low orbit.
Perhaps if the water level was higher,
the mountains would be shorter and the atmosphere would be pushed
up.
101.
He read the dossier on both subjects; their lives were more monumental
than the mountains: "From one womb: Two apart." He knew El Sha's
history too.
102.
At this point, the future had not been written. For
photonically-infused biologicals, the innocuous act of observation can
affect a subject being observed: The biological mind is like a
omnidirectional transmitter that when focused, can influence
photons. Corlos sent a sentient machine to avoid that
possibility.
103. It was imperative that nothing
be altered, not even photons. Which is why advanced cultures
'look, but don't
touch...' and then things still
go wrong. When a species attempts to unnaturally manipulate time
-- Corlos gets involved.
THE BOYS
104.
Onimex switched his recorders to omniband: If such a wave
existed, whether seen or unseen, real or imagined, his recorders would
pick it up.
105.
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
would have come and gone several times undetected.
106. For Onimex, the moment had profound significance and sent shivers
down his artificial spine. "You've got more backbone than most,"
Ireana told him once.
107.
He fine tuned his
dimensional shift by bouncing a trace wave off the water surface.
The trace wave did
not disturb the water, but returned existential
information. Onimex was not in Vejhon's dimension. He
was invisible. Someone in the Theta Si system could see him, but
not Vejhon. They would need a pretty big telecsope.
108.
Kor froze and stuck
out his arm to halt Bri. Onimex froze too, "It's a biological
impossibility that he can see me," he reassured himself. The
trace wave did not disturb the water any more than several trillion
neutrinos did every second.
109.
Bri was accustomed to Kor's
predator instinct and halted. To do otherwise would have insulted
him.
110.
"What?" Bri whispered.
111.
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. Onimex knew Kor's future, and the
thought of being captured by him was not comforting.
112.
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 sense anything on his own. Kor was aptly more attuned
with nature and would interpret any comment from Bri as a
challenge. Bri was along for the adventure and Kor didn't
mind.
113.
Kor did not like 'unknowns' -- they were vexations to his soul.
"Unknowns don't exist," he said with contempt. Bri
sensed that Kor was getting irritated and it heightened his own
anxiety.
When
Kor became angry at something else; anything else for that matter, Bri
became the target.
114.
Using the future as a guide,
Onimex began to reverse engineer the sibling rivalry
immediately.
115.
Bri's future self provided the war tribunal with a list of time-indexes
that the tribunal gave to Conscious, who gave it to
Corlos.
116.
There was a polar dynamic in
this investigation 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? "If so... "Does Kor sense me
now?" It should be a mathematical impossibility, but in the
hyper-quantum view, "The
past is irretrievably ever-present." Over-quantification has been
the death of many machines.
117.
"There is
something
there Bri," Kor whispered, "It doesn't belong here." Onimex
stopped pontificating to access his 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 truly mind-boggling to Onimex, "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. "Is it my hovering?" Not likely, and he knew that.
118.
Bri's 15-year-old mind
playfully interpreted Kor's line to be self descriptive. Nobody's
thoughts are private in a psionic world.
119.
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.
120.
"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, but not afraid. Kor's
predatory senses felt it, and he admired Bri's lack of fear.
Guarding Mantra's name had been his #1
secret... not anymore.
121.
Kor released Bri from his stare
and crept forward with the
stealth of a panther; his eyes steadfast and deadly. Onimex began
to feel a certain dread. He didn't understand how "logical"
composed 7/10ths of the word "biological" in English "Sie sicher wie
hölle sind nicht logisch," he remembered
Dayton saying once, "When are they ever logical?" "Muss ich zustimmen" "I
have to agree," he replied to his imaginary proxy.
122.
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. This forest was Kor's greatest love and deepest passion.
123.
The most sophisticated machine in the
Universe did not have a chance to react.
124.
In one swift blur of motion,
Kor struck the anomaly five times before Bri even realized that
something had happened.
125.
This was Kor's way, being able
to maneuver faster than time, or so it seemed. He indulged Bri's
light-heartedness admiration, and his pity for the unfortunate object
-- whatever it is... if there's anything there at all. Sometimes
Bri's thoughts were entertaining, "I could have swore I heard a
splash?"
126.
"If it thought it was
camouflaged -- it can't be very smart," Bri thought. Onimex was
momentarily unconscious; still out of phase with Vejhon.
127.
There was a cylindrical
indentation in
the water in the shape of Onimex's hull but there was no object to be
seen. Indeed, it was a curiosity... nothing there, just an
outline in the water; metaphysically inexplicable and physically
void of definition.
128. Kor tapped on the anamoly with one of his 'heavy' arrows and
heard a stone-on-stone clacking sound. But there was nothing
there. He searched Bri for his theoretical postulates and
permitted Bri to search him too, another first. Nothing.
"Then what the hell is it?" Kor asked. He resumed his guarded
posture. "Frackin' Kor, Conqueror of the Universe," Bri guarded
his thought. He didn't mean it in a mean spirited way. Kor
knew that.
129.
Then Bri began to feel his
usual montage of emotions: Guilt, sadness, embarrassment, anger,
perplexity and defensiveness. It starts out small and works its
way into a monumentally complicated, unresolvable thought
process. Conquest has its place, but
we don't even know what it is... "You're making Mount Orbi out of
this," Kor vaguely leaked psionically.
130.
This is precisely when he wants to slug Bri the most, "You're pouring a
dribble of tea into a whole bag of sugar!" Bri heard, "There's no
need for
the overature!" "I didn't say anything!" Bri defended
himself. It was rhetorical if not redundant to say,
"Yeah,
but you were thinking it..." in a psionic
environment.
131.
That was normal on Vejhon: Everyone's private thoughts are part
of a larger strata,
unless one
knows how to protect his mind.
132.
Bri felt righteously
indignant. He didn't want to go there, but there was no way out;
they were at an impasse, again, as usual. It was precisely these
'impasses' that fired him
up: "Isn't there a way to examine... anything... and at least
'entertain' multiple
interpretations?" Evidently not. The last time he said
something to that effect, Kor scorned him.
133.
"It shouldn't be here," Kor
reiterated with restraint, "I don't think it's dead." It was an
awkward appeal to Bri,
who perceived himself as the Universal champion of all life and
existence -- since Kor didn't kill it, Bri should be happy.
Sometimes Bri-logic was as mysterious to him, as
Kor-logic was to Bri.
134.
Bri sighed with cool restraint, and asked as tactfully as possible, "Do
you think
it was really
threatening us?" They both knew where this was going. He
was asking a hungry shark to ignore the wounded tuna. Kor was not
in the mood to do this dance.
135.
Kor bared his teeth like an animal, "Frack you!" he rebuked
him, "Why don't you just go home and clean the damn
house!" The energy of an impact was felt, but didn't quite
happen. Yet.
136.
That emasculating jab was all it took to bring it on
and Kor knew that it would work -- it always did. Young shellans,
full of piss and vinegar, will defend their honor
unless the accusations are true. Within the shell-at-large, kids
excelled over adults in aggressive occupations. They enjoy
it.
137.
Bri glared at Kor -- it was the redundancy that
irritated him more than what he said. He wasn't about to give Kor
an easy fight.
138.
"I
can, and I will have an
opinion, Kor,"
Bri said menacingly while flexing his muscles in a Tai Chi move.
Kor mocked him, "I can
and will have an opinion... you're so full of shit," he
added. Kor rolled his eyes at Bri's defensive posture, "... and
that shit ain't gonna help you either."
139.
"You're pissed off because I'm
faster than you," Kor accused him. He stood there with his hands
on his hips in full command of the situation. They had already
forgotten about the mysterious indentation
in the water.
140.
"Does everything have to be so fracking focused?" Bri asked somewhat
seriously, "You're pissed because I wanna know what
it is?"
141.
A
quivering surge of hot energy shot through them like a gallon of
adrenaline being released in the blood. Words no longer mattered,
and didn't in the first place. "We're you wanting to take
it home? What was the plan?" Rationalizing was out -- there
is nothing new under the sun.
142.
Kor gripped his
phallus repeatedly when he was angry and Bri never understood
why. "Lose
something?" Bri asked, "Balls fall off or something?" Kor was
enraged. "Hey,
do I turn you on?" Bri mocked comically. Obscene X-rated gestures
led to shove and then into a fight. They almost seemed to enjoy
it at times. Onimex was in a different
reality with his recorders working just fine.
143.
He regained his levitation and decided to edit this embarrassment from
his report. "Flight Log:," he noted, "Shift less predictably or
allign to a
different datum." "That
should have never happened." He was a bit angry with
himself...
144.
"How is Kor able to 'sense' me
when nobody else can?" "Maybe he didn't
sense me... I just think he
did?" A form of cybernetic insanity.
145.
"Do I go back before this
happened and not be here? Do I go up, regroup and reengage?
What
would Ireana
say?" He recalled her words:
146.
"No, you can't just keep going
back and back, thinking that you're going to fix it..." She also
said, "Sometimes you've got to leave well enough alone."
147.
Good advice. "If I phase
too far out, I might as well not even be here." The boys never
saw
anything: "Once I'm out of sight, I'll be out of mind. To
them,
it will be a dream." Given the circumstance, Ireana would
probably agree.
148. 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. Once he was clear of the trees, he was
free to accelerate back up into low orbit. "What was that arrow
that
knocked me senseless five times in less than one second?" More
disturbingly: "How did he do that?" "Flight Log," he noted,
"Kor's motion through time
is a biological impossibility." He added more introspectively,
"Is he even shellan?" He replayed the moment of Kor's
attack. There was no explanation. It was instantaneous.
149.
"Uber-denken Sie nicht Sachen." "Don't over-think things;"
Dayton always said to Ireana. Onimex had never felt this
perplexed -- Kor was an unknown quantity, empirically.
150.
"He's not really
shellan?" "Anschlag!" he could hear Dayton order him
in German, "before you fry something." Onimex could not be
comforted.
151.
'Shell' is slang 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; such a condition would have existed before the first Dan. It was unwise to argue the
matter locally. Speaking of matter...
152.
Onimex ran the density of Kor's
arrowhead
through his atomizer. The result was an infusion of collapsed
matter
found only on former stars like Corlos. "Who shaped the
arrowheads
and how did he carry them like they were nothing?" A spoonful of
collapsed matter would weigh more than 500 pounds on most worlds.
Where did Kor find it? The intrigue was killing him. It
would require precision measurement equipment found only within machine
worlds to determine exactly which star the collapsed matter came from,
and a
detour to Cacci Dai was unauthorized.
153. "I still can't believe he sucker punched me like that,"
Onimex complained.
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