Proud Infinity
By
E. A. Szabelski
Copyright © 2017 E. A. Szabelski
All Rights Reserved
Proud Infinity is part of the VayneLine universe
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Proud Infinity
One of the more interesting theories that have come to gain more credibility is the theory that certain events can be so damaging to the framework of reality that time fractures backwards to prevent this event from occurring.
…‘Time’ as used in the dimensional sense had grown to be an increasingly complex subject as there is mounting evidence of both a preferential flow to it, and in some cases what could only loosely be termed as a ‘reroute’.
- Terran Intradex Ver. 4 Excerpts on ‘Time Theories’
See also: ‘Preferential pathing of time’; ‘Time Fractures’
I hardly even noticed her the first time I saw her…the woman who would ruin, but also save, my life. Looking back it seemed obvious, now that I was tuned to how things actually worked. At the time, she was just another girl that I crossed paths with during my growing desperation. I sometimes wonder if I knew then what would occur, and how painful it would be, if I would have made the same choice.
***
I didn’t usually go to a bar the first thing in the morning, but times had started to become desperate; besides, I felt drawn to it. I had no doubt I was among the smartest people on this planet who was unemployed since ReCorp came in. That fact pissed me off. This had been my situation for a while, but while the credits still lasted I wasn’t that worried or upset.
The cycles marched on as they do, and my reserve funds dwindled as I tried to get hired with the corporation that displaced my old job. Surely since I was so brilliant, they would have to hire me, right?
But they did not. They did not hire a single person from the prior team.
I was normally fairly calculating, but today I was spoiling for a fight, an outlet for my anger building. I really wanted someone, anyone, to question me, why someone of my caliber was not employed or doing something ‘meaningful’. ‘As if just existing does not have inherent meaning!’ I would answer to them before smashing their face. I was generally immune to nihilism and the lack of a job might not make me sad, but it certainly made me mad.
I caught my reflection in the dimaglass door of the bar, seeing my confident smirk framed by my shorter hair with the slight ‘fray’ in the middle I could never get to go away. Yeah, that was someone ready to beat down some evil, and should have a job while he’s at it.
I had not been to this one before, but I guess they were pretty much the same anywhere. The smoke slowly billowed out from the door I was holding open, wafting out from the dimly lit interior. Why they never had better lighting, I didn’t know. Maybe they might catch their pathetic reflection in their drinks; can’t have that! Nope, not at all.
I stepped inside and quickly surveyed the surroundings. It appeared to be a long shallow hall. I was on one side and to my right the bar and tables went further down. A few of the people lifted their heads, staring at me with a ‘what do you think you are doing here?’ look. I laughed to myself and continued scanning the bar. Alright, which one of you suckas wants to go?
I walked up to the empty set of chairs right by the door and waved the barkeep over.
“What will you be having?”
“Well, I’m here to find out if there are any jobs or contracts anyone has posted.”
He laughed dismissively, I looked back at him in surprise. “I don’t even know you. You think I’d tell you anything with these many deserving people here?”
There were a few grunts of ‘yeah’ or ‘who do you think you are’; I could feel the hostile aura grow a bit in this room. I took note of it, but I was here for answers or action.
“Isn’t it your job to simply state the facts—” I began saying before he cut me off.
“Don’t you get it? Ever since ReCorp came in, there haven’t been any jobs!”
Some people laughed, and a typical chorus of ‘yeahs!’ echoed at me.
I knew ReCorp had whacked all the jobs, but it didn’t mean there might not be new ones. Didn’t these fucks have any optimism in their life? My anger at him dissipated as the truth of his statement settled in. I frowned and I looked away from him. The room was entirely male, grinning and chuckling at me.
Except for the girl in the corner. My natural eyes locked onto her, and my nanites in my eyes interpreted correctly to focus on her. I felt my eyes tighten, and a network of nanites formed a lens over my eye as my vision zoomed in on her face.
Her bright pink bow on her right side of her dark green hair was strange enough for the two facts very few had that hair color naturally, and such a bright pink was deeply out of place in here, this wasteland of talent. She was clearly looking right at me, but was neither smiling nor frowning; her lips were straight, her light blue eyes locked onto mine. Other than her intense eyes, the final strange part was her Strive tattoo under her left eye: a single infinity sign.
What the hell was a girl like that doing here? Though the term ‘girl’ might be demeaning to her: she was clearly a developed woman wearing a tight black body suit. A prostitute? Haha, even I might have been tempted. Set a low enough price and I am sure she would clear house down here.
“What’s up with the girl over there?” I asked the bartender while nodding towards the girl.
“What are you talking about?”
I looked back at him angrily. “The girl over there, do you know her? Prostitute or what?” I asked so I could justify my curiosity in her.
He looked confused, and his little act was pissing me off. I shook my head, and looked away from him back at the girl who I think might have smiled slightly. Heh, so she thought this was funny?
Hmm, well she might be interesting to talk to; damn cryptic-looking though. I was not normally intimidated by anyone, but she might be the first, or at least real close to it. I pushed myself away from the bar I was standing at and took a step towards her when I felt a huge force into my shoulder pushing me down to the ground.
“Watch where you are going,” said the large man who had clearly ran into me with the intention of driving me to the ground. I heard some laughing around the room.
“Walo is going to fuck this guy up!” I heard someone say, more laughter.
I looked right up at ‘Walo’, smiling deeply. “Bad move, bitch.” Though this was going to be easy, I did not feel bad for him at all.
His first mistake, other than attacking me, was staying in range. I braced myself up on my hands and lashed out a straight kick right into his knee cap, driving my foot far past the point his was normally supposed to bend. I spun around, standing up and drawing my Liner pistol, smashing the handle down onto his head. His broke patella and concussion shocking his system left him on the floor.
I stepped backwards towards the door, my pistol leveled and cycling between the nearest people, the girl in the back had a wild smile on as my pistol danced over her. I wanted to fight, but having it actually happen sobered me up, and I did not need the whole bar coming after me. “I’m leaving,” I stated firmly to those nearest me, and did just that.
As soon as I was outside I ran. The only safety I had from anyone in there was raw distance. At the very least I was no longer angry, just a little shaken.
I ran a couple of blocks until I was sure I was out of there and no one was behind me. I doubted anyone actually would com
e after me after such domination, but I was just being safe. A bit further ahead was a fence that appeared to be next to a pit.
I walked over and realized it overlooked the ReCorp complex. Only a few steps in front of me was a steep cliff into a pit that surrounded the entire complex except for the single road in. The small community’s buildings rose ominously from the void of ground all around it. A few pillars of smoke or steam rose off the power plant that had been built strictly for this. Even during the day, I could see the black buildings with their endlessly burning lights from here. I switched my eye filters to pick up thermal, and the heat signatures radiating off of them disgusted me with the environmental damage they were probably doing.
“Some sight huh?” I blinked and turned towards the sound, my eyes returning to normal. It was an old man further down the fence looking at the eyesore, that cancer of the city, that tumor on our fair planet, that blight of aesthetics, a veritable citadel of pain on our hopes and dreams…
I waved the comment off. “Yeah, if you mean totally disrupting to the entire culture and planet that was already here.”
He started walking towards me, but I didn’t really feel like talking. He lifted a hand up towards me as if to include me. “Yeah, you are young enough that I am sure you were displaced by what occurred here.”
“ ‘Occurred here’ is right. Like it was some sort of disaster. Which is what it was.” Where was a portable nuke launcher when I needed one? I fantasized about sighting it up, then watching it all get blown away.
He turned back to overlook the pit and the city beyond. “I retired here. I was in the Solarian Space Force my whole life, and Center always intrigued me. I have an off-planet account, completely filled with gems. This depression has actually made me relatively more well off.”
I went to walk away once more. “Great for you, join the rest of us. Unless you are going to give me money I don’t want to hear how much you got.”
“Hey, wait, I guess I got carried away. Sorry about mentioning money. It’s just… Look at you. You clearly are not, or at least were not, in the dregs of society. Tickets off-planet are not the expensive. Why didn’t you get out?”
I laughed once. “I thought I was going to be hired.” I looked back at the place I hated now. Maybe I still wanted to go back.
He lifted his hands, trying to encompass the whole compound in his arms; it seemed he liked using his hands to communicate. “Ahhhhh.” His hands came back to his side, and he turned back to me, smiling a bit crazily. “That’s the mystery, isn’t it? Being near Center, there are a lot of phenomena that is still being researched and even new discoveries happening fairly regularly. Since this planet is within Center, naturally it makes sense that it was a beacon of research. Let me guess, you were a researcher?”
At this point, I was a bit cautious of his craziness, but also intrigued as he seemed to know what was going on. “Of course. Just about everyone here was.”
He leaned his face in a bit towards me. “See that’s what strange. What were you researching, if you don’t mind me asking? If it’s not classified.”
“It was, but I don’t care anymore. Everyone betrayed me so what’s the point of a misplaced loyalty? We were studying the fabric of reality, component particles, its intervention with time and all that.” I added the ‘all that’ because I am sure he had no idea what I was talking about. “Notably that reality seemed to be potentially constructed differently near Center, and scales away from there based on distance.”
The man nodded. “That’s what adds to the mystery. You clearly were in the know, but a large corporation comes in, buys out everything, and doesn’t even take any of the staff?”
I froze for a moment. How’d he know all the staff got whacked? I never mentioned it, which made me wary.
“Tell me about it,” I agreed, slightly suspicious.
He turned back to me. “Since you told me something, I’ll tell you something. I am a bit intrigued by this, and looked into it, used some of my old contacts. Guess what: ReCorp is not that big of a corporation.”
“Really?” I asked, intrigued quite a bit now by this guy I thought seemed crazy. I had assumed that due to ReCorp’s massive buying power it had to have been huge, near empire status itself. I couldn’t look up anything on it which was suspicious itself, so it always remained a mystery. I suspected the void of information was just a payoff somewhere.
“Ha, got you interested?” The old man’s eyes looked brighter than I gave him credit for; he still had a spark of life in him. “Well guess what? ReCorp does not even exist off planet.”
“What!?” My mouth dropped open.
“Yeah, ‘ReCorp’ is nothing more than a puppet organization propped up by probably nothing less than a full-on empire.”
I shook my head. “I could see that now that you mention it. Pisses me off.”
“It’s completely true.”
“Oh, I have no doubt of that. It makes perfect sense.” The info void and firing the old staff being the largest offenders.
I stood there for a few more moments, thinking about what he said before he told me, “Keep an eye out, reality has an…interesting aspect to it,” and left. Well that sure was a random but interesting encounter.
Maybe I should buy a ticket off this dump like that guy suggested. I figured I’d walk around the city like I usually do until something came to me for inspiration to get out of my plight or perhaps what to do for credits. As I passed people again and again out on the streets, not doing anything, and having nothing to do, my thoughts drifted back to that man’s question as to why I just didn’t get out. I had more than enough credits originally, but the thought had not crossed my mind. I had no loyalty to this place; it was an odd decision for me to have made now I thought about it.
I continued thinking as I mindlessly walked forward, nearly stepping on a slumped body on the sidewalk. I stepped around the stagnant figure, not even sparing it a second glance as I kept walking. I honestly had no idea if the person was dead or just sleeping, but I didn’t really care either way. I saw this quite often around here, so I suppose I became immune to it in a way. I ignored the still body as I went back to my contemplating.
Part of the problem about me leaving though was that I was not ‘technical’ minded. I had gotten my job because of a friend who indeed was good with the details and rote memorization of minute facts. My skills lay in assimilation of facts and creative solutions or ideas. I was actually lucky I had fallen into the position I had, but it was a very good relationship for both me and the research unit.
My big ‘breakout’ was when we were faced with some proof of time running differently within the same system. The data was checked, and experiments reran, but it appeared that on one planet in the system, time indeed did ‘run faster’.
My suggestion was simple in my mind, but everyone else found it really profound. I suggested we take a look at some of the old theories of time non-linearity and let’s assume it might not actually be linear everywhere. I suggested that the five dimensions of space perhaps exhibited preferential pathing for the three physical dimensions, along with time, and gravity. If we looked into the gravitational attraction constant we could see if it might be different, or at the very least gravity could be affecting the time dilation effects.
Ha, yeah. That was back when I was a hero among the researchers, not some chump with a gun cruising the streets. The fall from grace was pretty rapid, and in my own mind I still felt like I was ‘different’ from the rest of these fools.
‘I’m not just a chump, I’m a cut above. At least advanced chump,’ I thought wistfully to myself.
I heard a rumbling of a large truck that drew me out of my reverie. The grav plates must have been loose, because even though the truck was balanced as it floated down the street it was extremely noisy. No surprise: it was a ReCorp truck. I kind of just wanted to shoot the driver and drive the truck off the bridge. Me inside? I don’t know.
Anyway, my theory was
probably about a solar cycle ago, and indeed we did find some data that seemed to correlate with my thoughts. I was living on high for a while there, but then ReCorp came in, shut down all the research, bought out everything, and made their own compound isolated from anyone who was employed prior.
Maybe it was part of some big government cover up, like they didn’t like what we found out. Made sense why all of us would be out. What we had found was still in the early stages, so if that was true it’d be more to shut down the info rather than use it for themselves.
Oh, and my friend, the one good with the details and was actually pretty instrumental in getting our project to be so successful? Committed suicide. I found him in his room, took a tie and hung himself off the doorknob. It was pretty fucked up, I doubt he died quick. The claw marks at his neck suggested he thought twice about it after it was too late. All because he ran out of credits…or maybe hope first, I don’t know. For me, I still had credits, so I guess I still had hope.
In a lot of ways, what was once a vibrant city was rapidly falling apart. Though not everyone here was involved in the massive research complex as researchers, it was easily the primary employer from logistics to food service and so on. There were still a fair amount of people around, but I have noticed a decline in the amount still here. I didn’t know if they left the planet, were murdered, or pulled their own pin. In evidence of the later I found quite a few bodies just dumped in the streets. I didn’t really pay that much attention after a while. Really, you stop counting after about five.
I sat down for a moment, looking at the empty sky. It was really calm now, and I mean that in a bad way. There used to be a vibrant trade through here with ships coming and going through the sky; now only a single ship came once a cycle for supplies for ReCorp. I can’t think of the last time I saw an alien…probably an Aelisha a few planet cycles after ReCorp came in and shut everything down. I didn’t even see Aelishan patrols anymore; that was pretty odd itself.
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