The Omega Egg [A Fictionwise Round Robin Novel]

by Mike Resnick;Various Authors

  “Because my future self came back in time to tell me.”

  Spencer-2 laughed. “Yeah, well, think of this as the last surreal moment before reality reasserts itself. Because once you defeat him, the universe will hopefully return to normal. You'll remember everything you've been through, but you'll be back at home with your family, before this adventure takes place. And since the crisis on Leonardo won't have happened in the first place—”

  “—then Admiral Ktonga will have had no reason to summon me to Goldenmeadow in the first place.” Spencer pressed his hands against his temple. “My head hurts.”

  “Time travel will do that to you.”

  “It's not just the time travel. It's the multiple realities.”

  “Sorry about that. Just one other thing. When you do defeat the Anti-Spencer and return home, be sure to look up a scientist named Milton Pilevsky. He's the guy who invented—well, will invent—the time travel device that allows me—and by me, I mean you—to come back in time and warn yourself about the Anti-Spencer.”

  “Pilevsky, got it,” Spencer said. He jumped out of his seat. “Well, let's get on with it. Where is this villain?”

  Spencer-2 stood up and waved his arms. “Hold on! Be careful, or you might summon him too soon. You don't want to confront him here inside the bellflower.”

  “I don't?”

  “No. He's strongest when inside the bellflower. In here is the last place where you want to confront him.”

  “Well, where do I want to confront him, then?”

  “Inside his own universe. The antimatter universe. He's weakest when there, and you're strongest, because you can use the anti-Leonardoin quantum entanglement weapon, and he can't. He can only use the one in your universe.”

  “I don't know how to use that weapon.”

  “Sure you do,” Spencer-2 replied. “Here's all you need to know about it. Thought determines reality. At least, until you get the universe stabilized once again. That'll put an end to multiple realities and wanton time travel.” He paused. “Good luck. I hope you survive.”

  The words time travel echoed in the back of Spencer's mind, and a question occurred to him. “Wait a minute,” Spencer said to his future self. “If you came back in time to warn me, and you're me, that must mean I survive, right?”

  The future Spencer looked glum and shook his head, and Spencer felt a chill run through his body. “I'm afraid that the quantum entanglement doesn't guarantee that. It's possible for you to die, leaving me a potential echo of your future self. But I will tell you this much—if you do manage to get back to this time and place, you'd better remember exactly what I told you, because you're going to have to tell it to yourself. And don't forget to carry this on vacation for when you get summoned back here.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a tiny gun, and handed it over to Spencer.

  “What is this?” Spencer asked as he took the gun.

  “A matter/antimatter blaster. In case you don't get to the quantum entanglement weapon in time.”

  Spencer studied the blaster. “It looks like a toy.”

  “It's not. It's tied into the resonance between matter and antimatter. If you're nowhere near the anti-weapon, then the moment you spot the Anti-Spencer, fire this blaster. It's the one advantage you have over him, and he's not expecting it. If you fail to defeat him, you might fall into a stalemate and never get out of your quantum loops.”

  “Enough already,” Spencer said. “I got it. Face him in his home court, use the Leonardoin weapon, and if I can't do that, then fire. So now, future self, where do I find him?”

  Spencer-2 pointed. “Go through that portal to the anti-universe. It'll take you where you need to go.” He paused. “And Kendell? Please do your best to end this mess. Bring it to a conclusion as soon as you can. I'm counting on you.”

  Spencer and Spencer-2 waited in silence for a few seconds, and then Spencer-2 spoke again. “Um, Kendell? That was an exit line. I need you to send me back. Carol's waiting.”

  “Oh. Um. Sorry.” With a thought, Spencer sent his future self back to the future.

  “Well, that was surreal,” he said to himself. “I hope this works.” He holstered the weapon and took a step toward the portal, when a voice from behind froze him in his tracks.

  “Not so fast, Commander Spencer.”

  Spencer turned around slowly and found himself facing a familiar-looking man. In one hand, the man held a blue bellflower. In the other, he held a plasma pistol aimed straight at Spencer's heart.

  Damn, Spencer thought. He was too late.

  The Anti-Spencer had arrived.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Chapter 17: For Whom the Bellflower Tolls

  by Tobias S. Buckell

  Spencer faced the version of himself that had come from the anti-universe. Then he jumped to the left. The anti-Spencer fired his gun, but Spencer dodged behind a bush. It sizzled and went up in smoke, and Spencer ran behind a rock.

  “Seriously,” the anti-Spencer said. “This is ridiculous. Don't make this any harder than it has to be.”

  With another dash Spencer took cover behind a tree, but one that he'd conjured up.

  “I saw that,” the anti-Spencer said. “A whole tree just appearing out of nothing is a bit of a giveaway.”

  Spencer took off again. If he could just get an angle on the anti-Spencer and shoot him, this would all be over. But then the anti-Spencer stepped out in front of him. “Stop. We could do this all day, and I'll just get very tired of it.”

  The anti-Spencer had the drop on him. The strange-looking gun he held pointed unwaveringly at Spencer.

  But it didn't shoot.

  Spencer moved his hand towards the holster, where he could reach for the gun his future self had given him.

  “Uh uh,” the anti-Spencer said. “I'd rather you not shoot me right now.”

  Spencer paused. “Then we're at a bit of impasse, aren't we?”

  The anti-Spencer laughed. “Really? Because I'm pretty sure I could shoot you right now before you'd have a chance to draw on me.” He waved the gun.

  “Okay,” Spencer said. “Why don't you?”

  The anti-Spencer smiled. “You've been doing a lot of running around, a lot of moving from point to point, with people telling you what's happening, but little detective work of your own.”

  “You mean like you standing there waving a gun in my face, and telling me how things are now?”

  The anti-Spencer laughed. “Exactly. Look, I don't want to play twenty questions, but I will say this: when you were in the Special Forces, did you just stand there with a dumb look on your face and let people tell you wherever they wanted? Because you've been talked to an awful lot of late.” Spencer flashed back to what he'd done in those days. Memory trawls. They'd shoot the suspect, and once dead scan the brain. Of course you could only access memories in sequence, watching them as if living through them. Once you had the memories trawled and on a computer you could fast forward through, but the process was complicated. Spencer remembered spending days and days digging through memories of operatives and suspects.

  If he got the drop on this Spencer he looked forward to trawling the man's memories.

  Spencer already figured himself for dead, so he tossed an idea out. “Tell you what, I'll play your game if you holster that gun.”

  “So you can draw and shoot me?”

  “If we're both Spencer, we should draw at the same speed, it'll be a suicide attempt.”

  “Bull,” the anti-Spencer said. “I know you well enough to know that you'll draw on me.”

  “Fair enough. I had to try.” Spencer reached into the air and pulled his favorite barstool out of the air and sat on it.

  “Damn good thought,” the anti-Spencer said, and he drew the same barstool out of the air.

  That made Spencer pause. It was his favorite barstool. Carol had given it to him. Of course, the anti-Spencer supposedly never married Carol, right? He had a different
timeline since ... well.

  “So you're saying people have been giving me the run-around.”

  “I'm not going to lead you around, Spencer, you need to do some thinking. For example, when did all this weird stuff start happening to you?”

  Spencer thought about that. “Since just after that plasma bomb.” That's when the plate got put in his head, and when he'd started seeing space and time altered in the corridor of that spaceship, sleeping with Patsy who got shot by Patricia.

  “Exactly.”

  “So what's happening?” Spencer asked. “Are you saying there is no anti-universe, that I'm not the one who is going to save the entire universe from certain destruction.”

  The anti-Spencer laughed. “Just listen to that. Doesn't that sound arrogant? You, Kendall Spencer, are going to save the entire universe. You might be the best SIS agent out there, but get over yourself.”

  Slightly offended, Spencer stood up. “It could happen.”

  “You sound like a little kid. There really is a Santa Claus,” the anti-Spencer mimed in a high-pitched voice.

  That hurt. It had taken young Spence a long time to get over the realization that Santa hadn't existed. “Okay, you make your point.”

  Gun still trained on him, the anti-Spencer stood up as well. “Listen, Spence, if I'm anti-matter, then how come I'm not exploding right now?”

  “We're in the quantum foam,” Spencer said.

  “Right...” the anti-Spencer smirked. “Toss me an object from your pocket, let's see if I explode.”

  Spencer rooted around and found a crumb. He tossed it at his opposite and winced.

  Nothing happened.

  “That doesn't mean anything,” Spencer said. “It could have been changed by the quantum foam.”

  “Right, you keep saying that, but it doesn't mean its true. Come over here, I have a little experiment I want to try. Let's touch.”

  Spencer shook his head. “You're insane.”

  “Oh come on. If we blow up you kill me, right? Then you save the universe!”

  “And I kill myself,” Spencer protested.

  The anti-Spencer paused and sighed. “Look, I'm you, right?”

  “Right.” Kinda. Spencer wasn't sure. It had been a long day.

  “Do you think I look suicidal?” the anti-Spencer asked.

  “No...”

  “Tell you what, point your gun at me, I'll point mine at you, we'll reach out and touch. Trust me, nothing will happen.”

  “So you're not anti-matter?” Spencer asked.

  “Obviously not.”

  Very carefully the two men walked toward each other and touched index fingers. Nothing happened.

  At first.

  Then everything around them fell apart, cascading in shards and pieces until only Spencer and the anti-Spencer stood in a grey room.

  “Oh God!” Spencer groaned. “Don't tell me it has all been a dream!”

  “No,” laughed the other Spencer, as Spencer realized he could hardly call the other him the anti-Spencer. “Not a dream. You're in a simulation room, tied to your neural pattern. I had to get you to turn the damn thing off somehow.” Spencer decided to call his opposite number ‘Kendall.’ Kendall waved the gun at the door.

  Spencer walked through. Massive arched windows peered down on the planet of Goldmeadow. “What are we doing here?”

  “SIS headquarters. This is where it all began,” Kendall said. “Remember arriving?”

  Now Spencer frowned, because he didn't. Something was missing. “What's happening to me?”

  “The whole story?” Kendall asked. “Even if you really don't want to hear it?”

  “Please.”

  Kendall looked out of the window down at Goldmeadow. “There are pieces of you and me left all over this damn galaxy, aren't there?”

  Spencer nodded. “I know that all too well.”

  “And what for?” Kendall cocked his head. “What were we doing down on those planets?”

  “Stopping alien insurgents.”

  “Indeed,” Kendall said. “All those pesky odd-looking aliens with their blue and green skins that dared inhabit lush planets we wanted for ourselves. Do you really think a spear throw warrants an orbital bombardment? Why is that galactic empires get to just roll over everyone while we square-jawed heroes run around killing the natives for looking at us wrong and everyone just shuts up and cheers us on?”

  “You, we, I, went native?” Spencer stared.

  Kendall looked coolly at him. “What did you use to call them? ‘Nards?’ An intelligent species whose only offence was to inhabit real estate, bombed. It's a shame they had something to bomb back with, huh?”

  “A real shame,” Spencer said.

  “Oh, don't be sarcastic with me.” Kendall smiled. “Anyway, here is the missing puzzle piece: if I'm not the anti-Spencer, then who am I?”

  Spencer frowned. That was a good point. “A clone?”

  Kendall shook his head. “No buddy, you are the clone.”

  A long pause, and Spencer laughed nervously. “No. That can't be.”

  Kendall nodded. Then he picked something out of his pocket. A blue bellflower. “I'm going to tell you the secret. The bellflower, it's just an amazing thing. Do you know what string theory is?”

  Spencer shook his head.

  “Well,” Kendall said. “Some eggheads say that the universe's building blocks, on the very, very small scale, aren't atoms, but way deeper down that that, tiny vibrating strings that make up all matter. And the blue bellflower, played just so, can effect the very strings the universe is made of. The Leonardans used them to send us a message: stay off their planet.

  “Now they're hard to get to vibrate just so, and to get enough of them together. But the effect is just amazing.”

  “That's what could undermine the whole galaxy, isn't it?” Spencer said.

  “Yes,” Kendall said. “Exactly.”

  Spencer grinned. He'd found it, he'd solved the mystery.

  “You're thinking you found it,” Kendall said. “But you already did once. See, I'm not lying to you, you are my clone. I helped the Leonardans fire the bellflowers on the Navy positions. Spencer, the Navy is moving to help clear the way on lots of other worlds all throughout the galaxy. Who knows how many more will have to be wiped out or give up their planets to prevent being wiped out? Remember Plibix, and the fairy? You didn't think the last dragon-man of his species, one wiped out by the Navy, would work happily for us without some resentment? Plibix and I formed a group of humans and aliens working to perfect the bellflower weapon, and now we're going to ship them out all over the galaxy to every threatened race.”

  “Plibix too?”

  “Grow up, Spencer, he was the last. You came into this wanting nothing more to do with these bastards and suddenly you defend them?”

  “Admiral Ktonga will have your heads.”

  “Maybe,” Kendall said. “But I doubt it. After sending his best, including Plibix who already was on our side, they disappeared. But Ktonga couldn't leave well enough alone. He wanted me as well, and I could disappear and raise suspicion. I have to deliver the bellflowers over the next few days, in a ship leaving this space station. Now that we've perfected the bellflower holding stasis they can be moved all over the galaxy.”

  “Then why all this?” Spencer asked. “Me, the strange visions...”

  “Well that's the best part,” Kendall said. “I needed to know what Admiral Ktonga suspected during these last few critical days. So I sent you, a clone, to meet with him, find out what he knew. You were memory wiped, thought you were me, but without my recent change of heart. You did well, Spence, hunting the clues all the way back to where I needed you so we could trawl your mind.”

  “Is that what that room was?”

  “Exactly,” Kendall said.

  “But the weird stuff, what was all that?”

  “Admiral Ktonga is nervous. He's going to take your suggestion and destroy Leonardo, and if he hears I'm jetting a
ll over the galaxy with bellflowers, have the entire Navy shoot me down as well. I need a few days of confusion while I distribute the bellflowers. Even we can't destroy the entire Navy with the flowers, they'd take too long to arrange and play.

  “When Admiral Ktonga gets you back, he's going to have to trawl your memories. They're going to be bizarre and all messed up, because we've messed them up in our machine. You remember being seduced by Patsy, you remember following a lead at SIS headquarters where you found out about the resistance, only you remember it kind of wrongly, you remember sneaking in on an alien council, where I talked about the bellflowers. You did all that while tracking me back, but they're all muddled now, just to make Ktonga's life a long week while they try and unpack all that. And by that time, the bellflower will have crossed all over the galaxy.”

  “You'll unleash madness,” Spencer protested. “Everyone will destroy each other.”

  “Oh come,” Kendall said. “The empire has a second amendment, that goes back ages. An armed society is a polite society. When you take the guns away from the indigenes, then they have no way to let everyone know to screw off.”

  “They don't have the civilization to be able to handle such a weapon—they'll destroy their planets.”

  “That's so patronizing,” Kendall said. “Besides, it's their planets to screw up. It's not like we haven't blown up a few planets here or there. The bellflower is getting handed out to everyone, human, alien, or whatever. Ktonga was right, the galaxy has been turned upside down.”

  “But why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because when Ktonga gets to the end of the trawl,” Kendall said, “I want him to hear all this. It's no use having a force equalizer if no one knows about it. He'll trawl a long series of confusing memories, and then have this.”

  And then the other Spencer shot him. Spencer gasped, staring at himself in shock. The pain spread out as he slumped over.

  “Look, I'm very sorry about this, you were an incredible me,” his doppelganger said. “But we're not about to give up control of the galaxy to Ktonga and the SIS and empire at hand. It's time for a plurality in the galaxy, and as that old philosopher once said: sometimes that liberty tree needs some bloody water. Goodbye clone Spencer, hello Ktonga.”