by F P Adriani
“I am sorry,” Kostas suddenly said in a rushed voice, her eyes locking onto her small device. “I must attend to something with the cube. We will meet here again in three hours and try again. Take a rest for now.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Wherever you want,” she replied. Her fingers reached for one of her red worksuit sleeves; then she was gone from the room.
Blinking at where she had been standing a moment before, I sighed hard. Then I looked around the room at my crew. “Well, you can all go wherever you want, but I’m going back to the Demeter.”
*
Everyone in the meeting room followed me, and, as far as I knew, so did every one of my crewmembers from in the other rooms; their “teachers” had taken off too. I probably should have done a head count of my crew as we moved toward my ship, but I was suddenly very tired. I needed a nap badly.
When I reached my ship, I went straight up to my cabin, collapsed back onto my bed, and fell asleep….
When I next woke, I glanced at the little clock readout on my belt beside me—I had slept for a little over two hours. I sighed as I got up and stretched my back; then I grabbed my belt and slipped it back on. When I picked up my worker-workbook from on my nightstand, I saw my reminder to ask Kostas about my ship’s fuel situation—
My wall intercom beeped. It was Steve.
“Yes, Steve…” I said, stifling a little yawn.
“Captain, I’m looking at the damaged Rodrum circuitry inside Nozzle 1. I can rig a makeshift repair, but I’m afraid it’s not gonna hold up for very long. We need a smoother replacement join in the wiring, and I don’t have the material on the ship for that.
“And the weapons-array on the nose—Karen and Gary have taken another look at the data there, and Cambridge and Sam were just over there on one of the platforms, running a close-up scan—it’s the same kind of problem. We don’t have the materials to fix it—I mean, you’re not gonna like this: Cambridge said he could work on re-welding where the front of the release cylinders got crushed, but, he can’t promise that the weapon would fire at the same maximum speed because release cylinders on arrays are made with a composite material that’s cast in one go. Any further melting and rehardening lowers the cylinders’ electromagnetic tolerance. It’s best to replace the whole damn cylinders, but we don’t have any replacements on board.”
“Dammit,” I said on a frown.
“So, what do we do about all this now?”
I thought for a moment, my still-tired brain finally completely waking up.
Then I said, “I’m going to see Kostas.” Then I walked across my room and out the door.
*
“Kostas?” I said as I moved across the hangar now. “I need to talk with you.”
“I’m in the viewer-room where you saw the cube-view,” Kostas’ voice said.
I walked to that viewer-room—ran really, my irritation fueling my feet.
When I reached the room, Kostas was alone inside it. The first time I’d seen this large space, it had looked quite bare, but there must have been equipment hidden in the walls then, because now there were what looked like computer monitors on long consoles against a side wall, as well as a few metal chairs with fat cushions on their seats and backs. Kostas was sitting on one of the chairs in front of a console, near the large front viewer-wall, which was closed now.
I didn’t waste any time: “Kostas, Steve just told me we can’t fix my frigging nozzle or my weapons-array. But I know you can easily fix them.”
Kostas turned to me, to slowly shake her head from side-to-side. “No, we cannot, actually. Repairing your ship last time took a lot out of those who did it. They’ve rested up since then and recharged of course. But, right now, all available Keepers are still working on dismantling the cube. You’re not going anywhere in your ship just yet anyway.”
My lips had fallen open. “That’s all you have to say? Did you even hear me? I’m stuck here now, and I frankly can’t stand that happening anywhere.”
“As I’ve said, we can’t do anything about your ship now.” She tossed a hand at her console, where several sets of red and orange lights arranged in arcs were blinking quite rapidly. “Unfortunately, the cube work is going slower than we thought it would, and we can’t—”
Groaning quite loudly now, I rushed away from her and out of the room before I could start yelling at her.
When I finally stepped into the hangar, I was still fuming inside—fuming hot enough for Gary to tell I was fuming simply by looking in my eyes when he walked off the Demeter’s ramp and up to me.
“They won’t help,” he said flatly.
“NO!” I exploded.
“Well, we don’t really need the Rodrum in space, provided we aren’t going into any nebulae, or, um, this here anomaly….”
“Yeah, that’s the problem!”
“You think we can’t leave, in other words.” He paused—to sigh. “It certainly does look like that at this point.”
“Gary, it’s one thing to choose to do this crazy mission; being stuck here is another. It’s feeling like Rintu all over again.”
“Was it so bad?” Gary said now, really surprising me. “I think we did a good thing—I was reticent at first—I mean you know how worried I was. But, we managed to come through it all right.”
“Aren’t you forgetting Chen’s arm? It’s worse than he says it is for him—psychologically, I mean. May told me he’s afraid to touch her with it, and he won’t let her sleep on his right side.”
Gary’s frown now was swift. “Well, that sounds bad. I didn’t know that.”
“Why would you? And don’t tell Chen I said it. May told me in confidence.”
Gary’s fingers whipped across his mouth, mimicking a zipper motion. “My lips are sealed. And now, how about you seal mine with a kiss?”
I couldn’t help laughing; then I quickly did as he’d asked.
*
No matter our affection at the end of our conversation, all the other subjects of that conversation were still problems that needed addressing. I knew Chen was in psychological pain; for all I knew, he would be in physical pain again at some point. And we were still somewhat forced to remain in this city-ship. It was an amazing place, like something out of a space-traveler’s dream; however, other things attached to the city-ship could wind up turning into nightmares….
Still, maybe I needed to lie back more, to not stress so much about what might happen in the future, as Kostas had said to me. Sometimes you can push so hard to get answers that you wind up pushing the answers away from you.
Gary had gone back into the Demeter to talk to Steve, and I was about to step onto the ramp when I heard Kostas’ voice coming from behind me, from inside the hangar.
“Lydia, you ran off before I could finish everything I had to say. You are welcome to use whatever materials we have here to fix your nozzle and any other problems. Or, we can take you wherever you want to go. If there were an emergency and you needed to fly a non-Keeper ship out of here, we have those, just as we had for Andrea and John.
“But, you are here now. And don’t you think that at this stage of your life you should start thinking beyond the Demeter?”
Kostas had once again hit on something my heart knew but my mind hadn’t wanted to see lately: my ship was getting old, and not in a good way. I would have some financial and logistical decisions to make within the next few years, and going off with the Keepers would at least put off my having to make those decisions.
And that was why I finally, right-then-and-there decided to go on this mission with them and do the worker training. If our new alliance ultimately wound up not working out, my ship would still have rested for a time, delaying its potential decommissioning to a point farther in the future….
Kostas continued now: “I can maybe arrange for one Keeper to help you with your ship later today. Unfortunately, as I’ve indicated, we are behind in dismantling the cube. We’ve never had to deal with a cube thi
s large, and the design of this one isn’t exactly the same as the others we’ve dismantled. It is like the designing stage’s evolution had worsened; the species who created it overcomplicated it, which has overcomplicated the dismantling of it.”
I was frowning and breathing too hard. “How long will it take to finish?”
“Another day. In the meantime, instead of focusing on fixing your ship, you and your crew should focus on your training. I’m sorry it got cut short before. But I’m almost ready to begin again. Are you? I mean, assuming you haven’t changed your mind about this mission. If your anger over your ship’s technical problems is an expression of that, tell me now, and we won’t waste anymore time dealing with each other. I will find a Keeper to help you fix your ship and you can leave. Your mind and heart need to be in this—not to mention everything else. Too much is at stake.”
My eyes shifted away from her a little, and I felt myself calming down inside. “Well, I’m still annoyed at the loss of control, but I haven’t changed my mind—no. I’m not sure about a permanent situation, though. We’ll see what develops around here.”
“All right then: let’s get back to work. In about half an hour, bring your workbook and your crew back to the meeting rooms.”
*
I was finally sitting in that same meeting room again, chewing on my stash of crackers from in my belt. I felt famished; I thought of that blue bread in the kitchen and suddenly wished I had tasted it earlier….
Kostas walked into the meeting room through a large doorway in one of the walls.
My crewmembers and I sat up straighter; I turned on my workbook—and immediately saw that note I’d made. “Oh—Kostas—I keep forgetting: there’s the fuel and power situation on my ship. We’ve got back-up batteries and we’ve been living on them in here, but, they won’t last forever without being recharged by the engines soon. We need to at least start running the zenite one on a land-setting, so we can power our internals. The exhaust in the hangar—”
“Don’t worry about that,” Kostas said. “Run whatever you need. The hangar field will remove and recycle any exhaust you give off. Nothing will be wasted and you won’t be poisoned. However, if you want, we can hook you up to our power-supply stream. It’s up to you.”
“But wouldn’t you need to make modifications to the science of my ship?”
“Yes.”
“Um, then forget about it. We’ll power ourselves.”
“Captain Zarro, do you have enough fuel to last over a month?”
One side of my mouth twisted up. “We’ll squeeze out enough to last as long as possible. Most of us will probably be in this city-ship a lot anyway, no? We won’t use much power then, so we’ll need much less energy to power the Demeter. We’ll find a way to manage.”
“As you wish—do it your way,” Kostas said, and in a very agreeable tone. But, it seemed clear to me that she knew I probably wouldn’t be able to do it my way. I wanted to, but I did doubt that I’d have enough fuel to adequately power my ship for more than three weeks…then I’d have to either take help from the Keepers, or come up with some other solution. Or, I’d have to spend even more time off my ship and in the city-ship. Time would tell what my choice would be.
Right now, the wall behind Kostas brightened, as if it would become a screen for images, or maybe Kostas would be writing something on it, using that same silver device she often had in her hands. She apparently would be doing both things: the words “The Interstitial Universe” and “A Map Of Dimensional Streams” appeared on the wall-screen, and then an image of the map, which was an extensive network of white, tube-like lines superimposed over a small part of normal space in this universe. The tubes vibrated and seemed to travel across the screen in a sinuous fashion, and as they traveled, they crossed over each other numerous times. When my eyes tried to follow the tube-lines now, my mind couldn’t determine which tube my eyes should flow to next. I couldn’t make out enough depth through the network. It seemed the image was depicting a cross-section of a 3D-space, to make the network’s structure easier to understand, but that just wasn’t working….
I was sighing when Kostas finally began her lesson in earnest: “It is time for a more complete picture of the truth: the Keepers are from what we call in your language The Interstitial Universe. Its boundaries are between other universes, which are universes of various kinds and sizes. This universe that humans are from is one of the most vast universes in existence.
“The Keepers evolved to bounce in and out of other universes—at least the ones who lived on or near the edges of The Interstitial Universe developed that ability. Other life forms farther inside The Interstitial Universe without that ability—they tend to distrust the Keepers. There is also disagreement among the various kinds of Keepers and their sects—some Keepers feel forced into solving the problems of the universes when they do not want to be involved. Others feel it’s the right of other species to know what the Keepers are doing. Rogue Keepers fail to see that what’s happening with people like Claudius is the usual result of other species knowing what we are and do. This is why we actively protect knowledge about us and prevent it from being known—and remembered—by too many life forms.
“The creators of the firestone, the creators of the cubes, the Keepers and various other very powerful species—they do not see all the ramifications of every creation and could not and cannot account for or predict the results of every creation, both organic and inorganic. Even extremely powerful entities are still limited.
“To compensate for this, the Keepers enlist different kinds of worker-helpers in the universes to help keep more order in the universes. There are many dangers, both intentional and unintentional—sometimes the dangers become outsized to what they should be naturally, because life is naturally never 100% safe.
“Now, let us consider the very basic simplistic equation: speed = distance over time.” Kostas’ fingers punched at her device, and the speed equation written out in blue words appeared on the wall. She continued making more notes as she continued speaking: “Multiply both sides of the equation by time and divide both sides by speed, and you get: time = distance over speed. Think of this purely as a relation rather than as an exact equation, and consider it as all three terms vary, and now look at the whole as time is dependent on distance and especially speed.”
A loud silence in the room now, except I could hear several of us breathing too hard. “Wait a minute,” I finally said to Kostas. “Are you saying motion generates time?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Even at the most ‘empty’ of matter, cold places in the universes, there is still a minute amount of gravitational force for example, as the lines of influence from matter can go on to infinitely far. And even at the smallest of interactions among quarks and even much smaller than that level, there will be motion, so then there will be time. As long as there is any fundamental vibration, there will be time. Essentially, wherever there is energy, force, temperature, there is time. Wherever those things are absent, there is no time.”
“But you can’t truly get down to exactly absolute zero, as far as is known to humans,” Gary said from on my right, his voice somewhat dry. “And even if you could, it’s expected that there would still be a minute amount of motion. But then I guess in the known, observable universe, looking at the fundamentals the way you’ve described is oddly consistent because there is always a nonzero temperature, and there is always time marching on, unfortunately.”
“But can you be sure there is always time marching on?” Kostas said. “There are some things in the universes that can actually add or subtract time because they are made of time—they don’t exist in any spatial dimensions. They are pockets composed of time; they are time-based life forms. And you can guess how their presence outside where they should be would affect the other aspects of the universes.”
My eyes dropped toward the floor; my heart pounded harder—nervously. I licked my bottom lip before speaking: “And what can w
e humans do about that? The more you tell us, the more it looks like the work you Keepers describe is far too dangerous and is above our intellectual pay-grade.”
A few laughs in the room now, shaky laughs.
And then Shirley said, “Kostas, you’ve said that if we continue to work on here that we’re supposed to help fix things—clean them up. But how the hell could you even contain something like those pockets of time?”
Kostas’ head turned to her, then to the rest of us. “The pockets-of-time danger is actually extremely remote and unlikely to happen. I’ve mostly been using their existence as an example of the importance of the work we Keepers do, and that you will now be involved in.
“But, we have been devising ways to better contain time to address any possible dangers. As humans and many other animals have correctly sensed, ‘the wheels of time’ do not normally stop. You cannot really destroy time. However, you can effectively stop and suspend it, as humans have learned, like with curon-bubble technology.
“All of this is ultimately a matter of perspective, too; remember that, from our perspective, time seems dependent on motion, and there are many seeming asymptotes in the universe as well as infinites. Just like you can keep adding 1 to get a bigger and bigger number for forever, you can also carve downward—you can keep subtracting down matter or any quantity of anything—you can keep making it smaller and smaller, into even more components for forever. There are ways to exist at an infinite number of levels. In fact, some species must exist at such high temperatures that they would freeze to death inside a star.”
“Christ,” Gary said.
And Kostas nodded fast. “Yes—it is sometimes hard for me as a human to digest this, too. But, as I think you know, at extremely cold and extremely hot temperatures, interactions can become peculiar and more unpredictable. So does time.