Star of Fantasy

by Jacky Qian

  "You will be fine." said Ossien, "The turbulent current will bring you back to the WWII period, as Nazi Germany is about to suffer its defeat. However, I cannot predict whether you'll be captured by the Allied forces. Ha! Ha-ha-ha!"

  "You are garbage, Ossien! Fuck you!" shouted Liquor. A second later, he was sucked into the whirling maelstrom.

  The black hole took more than sixty people, all in the blink of an eye.

  "It might be a good thing," commented Darwin. "They'll be subject to fair judgment in the aftermath of the war."

  "It's quiet now," Bernhardt said as he rearranged his windblown hair. He made a low bow toward Ossien and said, "Chief, I admire your courage and intelligence!"

  "Ha!" laughed Ossien in reply. "Board the ship! We will soon launch our plan to attack the human world. It is almost time to . . ."

  "Shup your foul mouth!" Darwin shouted. "How could you say something like that!? As a human being, how could you do this?"

  "Let me show you something," Ossien replied casually. He reached into one of the pockets in his special garment. "Do you know what this is?" Upon the opening of his hand a string of diamonds fell, at the end of which was an object. It bounced once and then lay suspended in the air.

  Silverstar and Runt gasped. They could barely comprehend the magnificent beauty of the object.

  It was a shiny blue diamond free of any flaw. It was unique, transparent like glass without any impurity whatsoever. Its beauty was unmatched.

  "It's called the Heart of the Ocean," said Catherine to Silverstar. "I took it when the ship was about to be destroyed. I then gave it to Nicholas, who traded it to Bernhardt for an opportunity to help you at the arena. It makes sense that . . ."

  "Do you mean Heart of the Ocean from the movie ‘Titanic’?" Silverstar asked.

  "Yes!" said Ossien, "According to the time archives, there was indeed a blue diamond of hope on the Titanic! It was retrieved many years later and was to be displayed on Titanic II. Now, however, I have it. Hahaha!"

  "Then, what do you plan to do with it?" Hilton inquired.

  "Well, you don't know yet." answered Ossien, "Actually this diamond, made of blue gold, is a source of endless energy!"

  "What endless energy? Stop the nonsense!" said Darwin.

  "I didn't lie." said Ossien, "These endless energy rocks were buried underground. They were brought here by the meteoroids from the outer space. The heart of the sea was the only one remaining in this world. This gem will serve as good material for my new doomsday weapon. Now, Gioni, lock them up in the prison cells in the ship! Before they say goodbye to the world, I will show them the images of the doomsday!"

  "Screw you!" cursed Silverstar, "You will fail!"

  "Huh, stupid!" Ossien had a glimpse of him with contempt, "Guards, take them to…"

  Before he could finish, a bright and hot light hit him, causing a blood splash. Ossien fell backward immediately. Before Gioni and Bernhardt could react, Nina dropped the laser gun in her hand, took out two small guns with a pointy head from her waist and shot two electric currents to paralyze them on the ground.

  "I found you at last, Ossien!" said Nina stately, "Although the punishment is kind of rough, it is nothing compared with the crime you committed!"

  "What?" asked Jack puzzled, "What are you talking about, Nina? Where do you get the weapons?"

  "Sorry, guys. I've kept my identity a secret. I was compelled to do so because of my assignment. So, let me... reintroduce myself. Albert Sean Ossien has committed more crimes than what you have seen. Over the 300 million plus years that followed this date, he committed a massacre. My team leader and I escaped into hyperspace before our headquarters was destroyed. To avoid detection by Ossien, my team leader assigned me the task of reversing the past. In other words, I had to stop the bad guy before he could succeed in his time-and-space transfer. If I could stop him from boarding the ship, the changed future could disappear as a deleted timeline. Do you understand?

  "Do you mean," asked Darwin trying to clarify it for the baffled group, "Ossien succeeded with his plan and the future world was destroyed? To change all this, Nina has come to stop Ossien from boarding the ship."

  "Well! Forget about it!" said Runt with a roll of his eyes. "Everything about it is too complicated!"

  "I get it," said Silverstar. "Still, I'd like to know who sent her."

  "The Weltraam Polizei T.P. did, but that's all I can tell you." Nina picked up the laser gun and pointed it at Ossien. "Anyway, come on. Get up. I'll call my team leader to bring you..."

  Defying the laws of physics, Ossien pulled himself up, using only his feet without any use of his hands.

  "Oh, really?" answered Ossien, fully recovered from the gun wounds, "Am I that weak?" He continued with contempt, "Fairly soon, you'll see what Hell looks like!"

  Boom! As a bomb exploded violently, a shock wave hit Silverstar, throwing him to the ground.

  The Battle above the Crater

  Ossien gave a husky laugh. "Ha! That was a bit of magic I learned from N Shaba Nuka! How was it?"

  "Ouch! That hurts!" Silverstar cried. "My butt is going to get busted! Ouch!"

  "Whoa, whoa-whoa!" said Nicholas in panic, seeing that the glass on which he stood was beginning to tilt. Obviously, it was because of what Ossien had done. Just as Nicholas was about to fall off, Silverstar rushed in and grabbed him. A wave of heat shot up from below as the lava roiled. Bubbles grew and burst, one after another. "Ouch!" cried Nicholas amid the pain of it. He shouted, "I can't hold on anymore!" The lava was rising rapidly. Silverstar's arm was too tired to pull him up. He remembered the time in the huge tree, when he was saved by Mandis at the very last second. "Man! Where is he now!?" Silverstar pleaded to himself. Then he shouted, "Anyway, I won't give up! The earth is in grave danger, so it's up to us to save it! Hold on, buddy!"

  "You're right!" Nicholas said. He struggled to climb over the edge of the tilting glass and regain dominion over its surface.

  "Listen, creep!" Nina said. "Do you really think that we, the time police, could be put away so easily? No matter what, I will bring you to justice!" With a snort, Ossien fired another beam of light, leading to a hellish explosion. Nina, however, showed no fear. She shouted, "Reflection cloak." Instantly the shock wave from the explosion was deflected toward a stone wall, causing an avalanche of rubble.

  "We're running out of time!" shouted Darwin as he held the wounded Simons. "The volcano is about to erupt!"

  "Let's finish it with one last battle!" cried Ossien as he rushed toward Nina. His adversary drew a sword in response as if to welcome his advance. Then a thunderous explosion was heard.

  Nina then cried out and fell to the ground. Blood filled her mouth and, struggling, she said, "Hell! Mission failed!"

  "You're absolutely right!" said Ossien as he glared at the broken, burning sword on the ground.

  "How could you expect to beat the magic of N Shaba Nuka with that silly toy of yours, the pill of electric light? Looking at the group of people wounded by the explosion, Ossien said, "Well, I bid you adieu. You could have been able to view the arrival of Doomsday, but now I'm afraid you've missed that opportunity." Gioni and Bernhardt had just awakened, and to them Ossien said, "Let's move. Everything proceeds as planned."

  "Yes, sir!" replied Gioni with a bow. He shouted to Silverstar, "Cheerio." Before he entered the lift to ascend, he said, "It's one or the other: You'll be barbecued by the volcano or blasted to bit by the evil star! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

  Ossien gave another wrathful laugh. Then he gently pulled the Heart of the Ocean from his pocket and said, "Let us witness the power of infinite energy."

  "Darn it!" shouted Darwin. "These filthy bastards go about their plan, and all we can do is watch!"

  "No! It isn't over yet!" said Nina as Jack rushed over to help her get up. "Ossien won't get away with it. We still have a fighting chance!"

  "What do you mean?" asked Hilton, greatly intrigued.

  "The Heart of the Ocean isn't a stab
le source of energy. Although the time machine is powered by a secure energy source, it will use a lot of energy for time and space transfer" answered Nina with a confident smile. She believed that they would become the final winner. She went on to explain, "As we all know, the blue gold couldn't endure excessive energy impact, so . . ."

  "I get it!" said Darwin with a smile of realization. They gazed at the roaring time machine in the sky, expecting to see its changes.

  The command room of the time machine was a space approximately twenty meters in length, enclosed by tempered glass that offered a 360-degree view. The pilot's seat was situated at the head of the room, and the personnel of the Technical Department were seated around the perimeter. Technical officers sat at each side of Ossien, who was accompanied by Sellars and Gioni. Several rows of empty seats were reserved for investors and partners from different eras. Ossien strode through the corridor between the two columns of technical personnel, surveying all the equipment to ensure proper functioning.

  "Mobius-strip engine?" asked Ossien.

  "Ready!" answered the technical corporal whom Ossien was passing by.

  "Anti-material hole?" he asked the next corporal. "Ready," came the reply.

  He continued to inquire about the status of weapons such as the plasma gun, meteor gun and super nukes. For each he received the same reply: "Ready." Following the replies to inquiries about the gravity accelerators and system operations, Ossien placed the Heart of the Sea in a small box and returned to his seat. He ordered, "Start the space accelerator engine! Let us begin our march toward the future!"

  "Great!" exclaimed Sellars with a pat on Ossien's shoulder. "We're going to turn our dream into reality!"

  The crowd within the room cheered. Nearby was a culture solution containing an embryonic king of all gods, awaiting its moment to release havoc. It kept one eye open.

  "Mobius-strip engine 035. Time travel begins." said the corporal.

  Booming! The engine began to drink in the energy from the Heart of the Sea with its tail glowing dazzling blue light. Silverstar swallowed his anxiety painfully in a big gulp of his saliva. If the criminals succeeded, the future would be cataclysmic.

  A loud cracking sound issued from somewhere in the structure. The space ship shook abruptly, followed by a warning message announcing "Excessive Energy Output! Danger of Overloading!"

  "What's wrong?" Gioni asked.

  "Sorry, chief! The energy export can't be stopped!" reported the corporal. (Ossien had succeeded before, though. Didn't he use the Heart of the Ocean? Why was the energy overloaded?)

  The Heart of the Ocean began to emit powerful electricity and electromagnetic waves. The ship's system, in worship of that energy, was doomed to a fiery death.

  "What has happened!" Ossien shouted. "Shut down the energy output, now!"

  Although the energy output was shut down, the Heart of the Sea was still trembling with the release of electrical currents. It was going to explode.

  "Retreat!" ordered Ossien. He was the first one to escape. Seeing what was happening, Gioni followed him to the exit. Then the Heart of the Sea exploded.

  The blue explosion spread throughout the command room, shattering all the tempered glass.

  "We made it! Great!" cheered the crowd on ground together. More and more cracks developed in the time machine, and blue flames shot through the cracks. The ship began to fall, shuddering all the while.

  "Oh, the poor people inside it," said Catherine with a sigh. "They weren't the best people, but I still feel sorry for them."

  "But such a punishment was nothing compared with what they had done!" said Darwin.

  "You're right," said Mandis. "People like Ossien, who are willing to commit such terrible crimes, deserve the punishment they get."

  Just as they were talking, an object fell from the space ship with a bang. It turned out to be Ossien. Gasping for air, he looked horrible, badly burned all over his body with parts of his arms and legs missing and half of his face horribly disfigured.

  He said, "You were sure that I had died, but I did not. I am . . . immortal. I'm . . . a god!"

  "Well, you survived a temperature of nearly a hundred degrees Celsius. Certainly, this is another of your tricks," Nina said with assurance.

  "As the investee of Ambro, Albert Whisk gave me the company's top-notch T virus and G virus through Dr. Isaac. Through re-engineering, I've become immortal!"

  "With nobody to support you," said Darwin, "what can you do?"

  Ossien took out a small box and opened it to reveal a compass aglow in blue light. "This is a kind of time machine," he said. "With it, I could restart my plan. Huh-ha-ha-ha!" He laughed wildly, whereupon his partially dislocated jaw protruded, presenting a sight of extraordinary horror. It wasn't all, though. The ground began to shake violently, heralding the eruption of the volcano.

  Nina shot Ossien in the hand that bore the compass. The villain cried in pain and surprise, and the compass dropped.

  "Even now you're still trying to sabotage my plan!" roared Ossien as he unleashed energy waves toward them. At the same time, the space ship flew toward the slope of the volcano. In the command room, the all-enveloping plasma fire rendered the once-worshiped golden Nazi emblems into molten, liquid sin.

  The space ship smashed into the slope with a thunderous bang, causing a splash of rubble to rain upon the lava below. The ship's nose turned downward, causing Ossien to panic amid the impending contact. He rushed to pick up the time compass, but he and Jack seized it at the same moment. "Let it go!" cried Ossien as he tried to wrestle it out of Jack's hand. Blood began to flow from the bastard's mouth.

  "No way!" shouted Jack as he tightened his grip upon the device.

  With a cry, Ossien was shot by a laser beam. Jack used that instant to escape with the compass.

  "How could this happen to me? I haven't realized my dream!" roared Ossien. "You will all freeze!"

  The space ship crashed into a glazed passage and went straight to the crater, causing a splash of lava and a series of white-light explosions.

  Silverstar shouted as he watched the disintegration of Ossien's dream. "That's what you get for trying to rule the world with biological weapons!"

  "Greed has always led to self-destruction," Nina concluded.

  "Crap!" cried Ossien. As he made a few clicks on the holographic image beside him, he threatened the entire group: "You have no hope of leaving here!"

  The glass plate, on which Silverstar stood, suddenly tilted as a flow of lava oozed under it. Although Darwin caught Silverstar, the plate on which Darwin stood also began to tilt. The wave of heat from the lava rushed toward them, making it almost impossible to breathe. The glass plates on which they depended for their lives were about to overturn, and that would be the end. Then, in the knick of time, Nina shouted a magic word. The glass plates were becalmed. Silverstar and Darwin were then levitated and brought to the threshold of a lift. As Darwin shouted "Get in," they all rushed into the conveyance as the lava continued its deadly rise.

  Phase III: The End

  The Last Time Hole

  "We made it!" cried Silverstar in the lift, "The future is saved!"

  "Fantastic!" said Simons wiping the sweat off his forehead. "We did it!"

  "Nina," cooed Jack. What happened then made Jack blush.

  "Man, that's romantic," Silverstar said in admiration. He glanced at Catherine, and she could see that he was blushing.

  "What should we do now? Isn't the evil star coming?" asked Nicholas.

  "Aw, shoot! I forgot about that!" Clinson exclaimed.

  "Nina, do you have a plan?" asked Darwin.

  "That's a time compass. I have one, too," she said. "Look, here it is." She opened the lid of the instrument, and a colorful light came forth. The light formed a picture of a compass, and the needle pointed at a message.

  "What is it, a riddle?" asked the puzzled Hicks.

  "The needle of the compass indicates the current time." explained Nina, "As part of the f
un of time travel, the compass doesn't display time directly. It uses a mathematic formula to express time. It will activate the entrance to hyperspace according to our action time and speed."

  "Why doesn't it open an entrance directly in front of us?" asked Nicholas, puzzled.

  "Well." Replied Nina with a guilty conscience, "Actually, I bought it for a song at a flea market. Anyway, the entrance is located near the sea port where Ossien had a submarine stationed. Let's solve the riddle!"

  "There is a mathematical formula called trigonometric function on both sides, in which the three sides and three angles of a triangle are used for calculation," thought Darwin.

  "Uh," said Silverstar through an expressionless face. "Well, in any case it's plenty sophisticated. What's the result of the calculation using the formula?

  "The solution to O (2i + 2) is 8" explained Rhode, "if it's used to represent time, should be eight o'clock in the morning. The needle of the compass points at 9:72, three days before 300,000,400 years ago. The question is..."

  "How do we have seventy-two? After all, there are sixty minutes in an hour," said Ark.

  "SCSCII," Darwin replied. "The answer in this formula is nine, which means nine o'clock. But this indicates eighteen below, which is very strange."

  "Could it be riddle made up of 8:72 and 9:18?" Silverstar wondered. "There might be something fishy about it, and... Oh! I get it!"

  "Ah! So do I!" cried Nicholas.

  "The riddle is solved!" said Silverstar, "Sixty is subtracted from seventy-two for a sum of twelve. So, it's twelve plus eighteen!"

  "That's ten-thirty!" replied Catherine. "Right?"

  "Yeah, that's right!" said Hicks. "Darwin and I are scientists in time and space. We solved this riddle way earlier!"

  "Then the location should be at the 10:30 direction of the gulf!" said Hilton.