Jump Starting the Universe Book Bundle

by John David Buchanan

  Wayne peeled out of the driver’s seat to have a look for himself. Wayne noticed Blackie staring upward and followed his gaze to the sky.

  “That’s not good. Amelia, Joules, you need to see this,” said Wayne, who couldn’t divert his eyes from the sky.

  They got out of the car and joined Blackie and Wayne, gazing up into the sky.

  “What is that?” asked Joules.

  “Wayne, Blackie, what is that?” asked Amelia.

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” replied Blackie as all four of them stood next to the Nomad staring at the sky.

  A jagged gash in the sky stretched from one horizon to another. It looked like a blackened lightning bolt hanging in the air, but it didn’t disappear, it just hung there. And it didn’t appear two dimensional, like something painted on a canvas, it had depth, like you could slide your hand into it if you were close enough.

  In the hills to the left, another gigantic rockslide raced down the side of a cliff causing the ground beneath their feet to tremble violently. A billowing dust cloud rose up from the rubble and into the air like a mushroom cloud after a small nuclear blast. Amelia was transfixed by the dust cloud then she shook violently and slumped against the car.

  “Amelia,” yelled Wayne as he rushed to her side, “are you okay?”

  “It’s a tear,” whispered Amelia.

  “It’s what?

  “It’s a tear and it’s sucking up those dust clouds.”

  Blackie and Joules had joined Wayne to help Amelia, and now all of them stared at the gray cloud hanging in the air near the cliffs. Thin threads of it were being pulled upward; it was being siphoned off the planet and into that blackened tear. In the distance, between them and the hills, the ground swelled upward and chunks of soil and rock were breaking away, shooting upward into the dusty threads that disappeared into the blackness above them. They stood motionless, mesmerized by what was happening.

  Drawing up all her strength Amelia pushed herself away from the car, “We have to leave, right now, before we’re sucked into that,” and she pointed toward the long black gash across the sky.

  Her proclamation jolted them to their senses and they scrambled to get in the Nomad. Just as the last door closed, Amelia frantically grabbed her bag and pulled out the Jump Starter.

  “Amelia wait,” yelled Blackie. While she was retrieving the Jump Starter, Anonoi had appeared on the hood of the car.

  “We leave now,” he communicated, and the area around the car twitched violently as he thickened, condensing his normally wispy gray corpus into a dense, black mass.

  Amelia closed her eyes, then felt for her backpack and stowed the Jump Starter. With her eyes still closed, she laid it under the seat beneath her feet, and then covered her face with her hands. She didn’t want to see the shift. Joules watched as she stowed the Jump Starter, then followed Amelia’s lead. She leaned forward a bit, and covered her face with her hands. Wayne and Blackie will watch, she thought, they can tell us about it later.

  Their jump from Arton’s stealth fighter over Numaria had taken them far away, and that meant Anonoi would have to execute a long series of shifts to transport them safely to Centoria. Even so, it would not be a direct path, not now, not under present circumstances. Anonoi had indicated in no uncertain terms there would be times when he would have to leave them to scout the way ahead, and some planets would be more hospitable than others.

  He cautioned them against using the Jump Starter in his absence. “It should only be used in a life-and-death situation,” he had said. They might jump to a planet like the one they had left, one that was being processed. And if they were pulled through the gateway, into that dark abyss in the sky, they were beyond his help. Shades were not allowed to meddle in the affairs of other dimensions.

  Amelia still had her eyes closed when Anonoi’s shift deposited the Nomad on Horsh Gorbrey. The twitching motion associated with a time and space shift made her nauseated, and the less of it she witnessed the better.

  While they were still sitting in the car Anonoi suggested they rest and not wander off while he checked their path forward, explaining he couldn’t assume conditions ahead weren’t unacceptably risky and he wished to conduct a brief assessment. Exposure to any more of what they just escaped was asking for trouble. As soon as he finished his explanation he vanished.

  “You don’t think he is playing us, do you?” asked Wayne.

  “How do you mean?” asked Blackie.

  “You don’t think he’s taking us to Gafcon-49 instead of Centoria?”

  “I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes if he is,” said Joules. Her hands began to glow a little brighter.

  Blackie thought for a moment. “I doubt he would do that. He’s been upfront with us so far. If he was going to do that, for the sake of eluding danger, he would have done it before he took us to Numaria to raid the Zin Charr’s warehouse. I think he’s playing straight with us. But I am a little annoyed he didn’t give us time to ask what the blazes happened back there. Amelia, do you have any idea what that was.”

  “How long have we been shifting, I feel like my joints have frozen up,” said Amelia who hadn’t opened her eyes until she was sure their conversation meant the shift was finished. Theoretically maybe; for certain, no. I’ve studied the theory of dimensional distortions – a means of tearing the dimensional barrier so two dimensions can be conjoined. I can’t be certain, that’s advanced astrophysics and it would take more than a visual observation to figure it out.”

  “Maybe when Anonoi gets back he can tell us. I want to hear what he knows about that black tear in the sky. And I wouldn’t mind knowing how our timeline has changed relative to Centoria,” said Joules. Then she added, “I’m stiff too Amelia, let’s get out and stretch.”

  They all got out of the car, and Blackie pulled his diary out of a backpack to review where they had been and make a new entry. After Prenetian explained they had been swept up in a mixing zone on Earth, he started keeping a log of events. When the mixing zone pulled apart, they ended up on Alphus Nebulum, a planet in a different universe.

  Wayne reminded Blackie the idea still hurt his head every time he thought about it. Blackie assumed Prenetian knew what he was talking about, and giving them a Jump Starter certainly gave his explanation credibility. Before Prenetian was led away by two burly guards he had advised them to escape from the jail, before the guards returned.

  But who would ever believe it? After they finished their set at The Getaway Bar and Grill, two universes had budged-up and the resulting mixing zone bathed the parking lot in an odd greenish light. Buster, the band’s lead singer didn’t normally notice things – hardly anything actually — ever! So, when he looked out the window of the bar (something else he rarely did) and commented on the odd color of the sky, the rest of the band took notice.

  Thinking a hail storm was imminent Mark, Wayne, Blackie, and Amelia (who had met Wayne after the gig) quickly began loading their equipment in Wayne’s 1957 Nomad station wagon. The same wagon had transported them to numerous other gigs; the difference in this one was they got paid. Blackie felt sure that should be in his diary. Buster was busy trying to sign them to another booking, and as usual didn’t help load the band equipment. Blackie felt that should be in the diary too.

  When the budging up ended, the mixing zone and the greenish light disappeared and so did Mark, Blackie, Wayne, Amelia and the Nomad full of equipment. They didn’t know where they were, but they did know where they weren’t – Earth. Although they didn’t realize it at the time of their cross-over, they were smack dab in the middle of a high plain on Alphus Nebulum.

  Getting arrested as soon as they arrived wasn’t part of their plan. In fact, they didn’t have a plan — how could they? According to Blackie’s diary entries it most likely worked to their advantage – probability puts it at 95% positive. Why? Well it was in jail they met Prenetian, the inmate who gave them his used Jump Starter.

  Generally speaking, incarceration isn
’t a recommended means of meeting new friends, but in this case, it seems to have worked out. On Prenetian’s advice they escaped from jail. It sounds so suspenseful, but it wasn’t very impressive. The doors weren’t locked, except for the carbon fiber door at the end of the hallway with a voice activated lock. At different times, all of them had asked themselves why they had taken advice from a total stranger; who also happened to be an inmate in the cell next to theirs?

  Not long after leaving the jail they met Nita, and after some impromptu spelunking, where they met the Lactropodectepoi, they used the Jump Starter to evade a contingent of stern-looking soldiers brandishing automatic weapons. The Jump Starter had come in handy on several occasions, like the one that took them to Gafcon-49 where Blackie met Joules.

  But none of those previous circumstances had been as harrowing as the one that led to their jump from Volcanon. Prenetian had predicted they were likely to find themselves in another mixing zone, and indeed they did. But he failed to mention the consequences could sometimes be very unpleasant.

  They survived, but barely. And if they hadn’t had Prenetian’s used Jump Starter, the outcome of being in that second mixing zone would have been far worse. Of course, if they hadn’t had the Jump Starter in the first place maybe they wouldn’t have been in that situation. Blackie rolled this idea around in his mind until his head throbbed.

  On one hand, not ever going to Gafcon-49 meant the group would never have been seconds from certain death. On the other hand, had they not gone to Gafcon-49, he would never have met Joules, an option he didn’t want to entertain.

  The bottom line was they were okay, and thanks to the Jump Starter’s 'Safety First Programming Protocol' Mark, Blackie, Wayne, Amelia, Nita and Joules, and a 1957 Chevy Nomad station wagon full of equipment were snatched from Volcanon, where they were free falling into a gigantic gorge. The jump deposited them on one of Lindone’s sandy plains, where two enormous purple moons were visible on the horizon in front of them.

  It was on Lindone they discovered the truth about Nita’s dad and brother, and it was then they decided their next destination was Numeria, instead of returning to Gafcon-49. It took some heavy-handed negotiating to convince Anonoi, but in the end, he agreed. Joules didn’t leave him much choice when she said they would use black-market transportation if he wouldn’t help them.

  Blackie reviewed his journal notes and made little additions about their jump to Tristian and their scary interaction with the Fire Hounds of Borreama, and how they had jumped to the Belkie Preserve on Questian and witnessed the Picosaurs and Sifters. The thought of a charging Belkie and thirty Picosaurs clawing their way onto its back made him shiver. A few more notes were hastily added to his log before Amelia interrupted his thoughts.

  “Hey Shakespeare, you want a snack,” she asked. Blackie was deep in thought and shook his head.

  Wayne sniggered, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks, said the Queen.”

  “Wayne, I didn’t know you studied Shakespeare,” said Amelia.

  “I looked through his works once.”

  “One time?” responded Amelia.

  “Don’t be too impressed. Some people were born with big noses. I was born with fairly good recall.”

  “Be careful about making bets with him,” said Blackie, who had decided to take a break from his journaling, “Wayne’s 'fairly good' recall is a photographic memory. He remembers every scrap he sees. If he offers to make a bet with you, odds are there is a high probability he is right, and he always collects his winnings.”

  “Good to know,” said Amelia, who blushed bright red at her own thoughts.

  Joules and Wayne finished laying out food on the hood of the Nomad. As they ate, Amelia described William Shakespeare’s writings to Joules.

  “He is among the most famous writers on Earth,” said Amelia, “although some people find it a bit hard to read.”

  Wayne couldn’t resist the temptation to comment on Shakespeare, and did so for the next three minutes – in old English nevertheless – and ended with a quote from Act II, Scene II of Hamlet

  “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.”

  “That’s good Wayne, maybe we should start our next gig with some quotes from Shakespeare.”

  “In truth, methinks the scallywags attending our musical contrivances are sadly dull of hearing and full of cheap drink, and lofty words of high intention would be utterly spent upon them to no avail.”

  Amelia laughed wildly and Blackie chuckled at Wayne’s response. Joules, who knew nothing of Shakespeare, let alone old English, thought it was humorous and was caught up in Amelia’s laughter.

  Blackie had once speculated the Jump Starter included a language immersion function, so they could speak the native languages of their jump destination. Later, when they reminisced about Wayne’s “Shakespeare readings” they wondered if the language they were speaking came close to doing Shakespeare justice. Clearly, they all understood Wayne’s ramblings (Joules not so much, although she thought it was comical) but they had no idea what language they were speaking at the time.

  When they were finished eating, Blackie scraped a few bits of leftover cheese and crackers on the ground at the base of a rock, and went to find something he could use to shovel soil over them. By the time he returned with a putty knife from Wayne’s tool kit, a small slimy organism had left its hiding place beneath the rock’s edge and was absorbing bits of cracker into its jelly-like mass. Blackie watched it flow forward to ingest more and more crumbs.

  Curious little guy, he thought.

  They didn’t know it, but Anonoi had left them on the planet Horsh Gorbrey; an exceedingly small orb considered to be unique in many respects and deserving of much more attention for its rare ecology and species than for the impassioned arguments over its categorization as a planet.

  Due to its diminutive size, astronomers argued against categorizing it as a planet, since Horsh Gorbrey has a diameter of only 2003 kilometers, if you round up. However, Barnes Kraling insisted Horsh Gorbrey met the definition of a planet while he shouted down the naysayers at yet another symposium on planets and solar systems. He stated emphatically, “it is a body that orbits a sun, is massive enough for its own gravity to make it round (owing to the occurrence of actinite deposits in its core and mantle), and has swept its surroundings of smaller objects around its orbit.”

  “Shouldn’t we dispense with the idiocy of this old dispute and move on to more important scientific endeavors, like an extensive study of Horsh Gorbrey’s flora and fauna perhaps, which sadly, has had little more attention than a fledgling attempt at listing its species, let alone a full taxonomic evaluation?”

  How the inhabitants of the neighboring planet Smotheria wished someone had heeded Barnes’s advice sooner rather than later. The magnitude of the scientific community’s neglect resulted in two interesting things, one of which was extremely important. First, and least important, Horsh Gorbrey became known as 'The Fish Bowl', a nickname that alluded to a serious biological consequence.

  Secondly, (and if you suspect this is the important point, Barnes Kraling would say, bully for you) Horsh Gorbrey was the singular home of an epiphytic, symbiotic organism that wasn’t thought to be overly extraordinary in any way - until it escaped Horsh Gorbrey.

  When it did, Barnes Kraling assigned it the scientific name Biospheria devouroides and spent much of the remainder of his working years studying and battling what came to be known commonly as – The Devouring Plasma. It looks like slime, like the dictyostelid slime molds on Earth, the ones that flow across forest floors ingesting bits of organic matter like leaves and wood, or crawl out of their petri dish at night onto a lab table in search of a cozier spot.

  There are “norms” in biology, but they are violated commonly. We think animals eat plants, plants don�
��t eat animals. But pitcher plants and Venus fly traps gobble insects like college students eat pizza. Plants aren’t typically thought to be aggressive, but some plants use allelopathy, the chemical warfare of one species of plant against another, by releasing toxins that affect the development and growth of neighboring plants.

  Allelopathy gives the aggressor an advantage, so it can grow faster than its competitors and overshadow them. Thirdly, unicellular organisms are just that; until they collude to be more. The curious little fellow on the ground near Blackie’s feet was Devouring Plasma, one of Horsh Gorbrey’s slime molds. It had a tendency considered by some to be problematic.

  Outside of its natural ecological niche, it would just as soon eat living animals and plants as it would organic debris it finds while creeping along the ground. After it was accidentally transported to Smotheria, and worlds beyond, the creature exhibited its capability of mutating and adapting to new environments quickly, and it became a ravenous omnivore.

  It ate everything including the most advanced species on infested planets, including a significant number of Smotheria’s sentient beings. Outside of the 'fish bowl' the Devouring Plasma was capable of reaching enormous proportions, and its cytoplasmically soluble anesthetic was concentrated enough to affect the largest of animals when it touched them.

  Their narcotic was strong, strong enough to render animals completely helpless, but unfortunately not strong enough to render them unconscious; the Devouring Plasma’s prey are fully awake, and aware they are being absorbed. Within a year of reaching Smotheria, Devouring Plasmas had reached the size of full grown bulls, and were capable of eating one with no problem.

  One woman described the death of her husband to law enforcement officials, and afterward to Smotheria’s Commission on Environmental Assessment and news reporters. During their camping trip, her husband went in the tent for a nap, and she decided to go for a short hike along the river. When she returned, she found her husband had been attacked during his sleep. She still had nightmares of the panic written on his face as the Devouring Plasma absorbed his remains.