by Al Macy
“What appearance did he have, reality-wise?”
“Like a big ladybug with long legs.”
She spun around on her perch. “Was his spacecraft triangular?”
“No, it was a sphere. Very advanced. It could fly as fast as a quarter of the speed of light, maybe faster.”
She turned her head away. “How do you know this?”
“He took me in his sphere. We traveled out to the orbit of Jupiter. It took only half a day. And inside, there were no g-forces from the acceleration.”
She did her “yeah, right” posture again, then her feathers ruffled and she clapped her wings. “Ah so! This is why you are the solitary human to surpass the orbit of the moon. In what fashion did he make you choose to follow him?”
“He didn’t. He tried to conquer us. First, he unleashed DNA-specific nanobots that killed seventy percent of our population. Later, he killed our president, President Hallstrom, and other world leaders. In a nutshell, it turned out Cronkite was an inmate of an insane asylum who had escaped and stolen an agricultural spacecraft.”
“He was in the shell of a nut? Ah, he was nutty. Crazy. Insane. Out of balance. Psychotic.”
“No. ‘In a nutshell’ means ‘in summary.’”
She turned her head away. “I hold the opinion a farming craft could not perform a traveling of seventy-five thousand kilometers per second.”
The dinobirds were good at math as well as language. Luckily I knew just enough values to get them started. For example, I happened to remember the speed of light was almost exactly three hundred thousand kilometers per second, there were .62 miles per kilometer, and Earth was ninety-three million miles from the sun. Once I explained how many of our seconds there were in a day, she had all the figures she needed.
It had taken a while to make her believe—“Surely you are making humor, Jake”—we had two different systems for measurement, imperial and metric.
“How did you dissuade him from becoming your leader?” she asked.
“Well, that’s a long story, but with the help of many scientists and a pair of prodigy twins—”
“‘Prodigy’ may not be used as an adjective, Jake. It is a noun only. Prodigious would be the expected adjectival form, but that means something else.”
“Whatever.” Sheesh! I shook my head. “But, long story short, we captured and imprisoned him. Once he was out of the way, we were able to access the probe, DJ1, and we learned of a galaxy-wide association of advanced beings. We have communicated with them. Have you met them in your universe?”
Marbecka stared at me, and by that, I mean she turned her head to the side and looked at me with one eye.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’”
* * *
Marbecka ignored my questions and requests. I was treated well but was required to work my butt off teaching her English, following her program. I worked fifteen hours per day with no time off for good behavior. Her system learned every word I used regularly, plus many that I seldom used.
And I continued to be amazed at Marbecka’s ability to absorb the language. I concluded that language acquisition was somehow hardwired into the celano species. “Celanos” was what they called themselves. I was a human, Marbecka was a celano.
But I got my revenge, and some childish amusement, by dropping in swear words now and then but not letting on that it was anything unusual. Yes, that was probably ill-advised, but there wasn’t much for me in the way of entertainment.
After a month of teaching English 101, I put my foot down.
I checked my watch. “I’ve been here thirty days, Marbecka, and you haven’t told me what’s going on.” I leaned forward as far as I could without falling. “You haven’t told me whether you can send me home. I’ve been helping you learn my language, but I’ve learned nothing of your world. You’ll get nothing more from me until you give me more information. I’m on strike.”
This concept was apparently foreign to her. Celanos avoided conflict.
Marbecka’s crest popped up and down. “On this day, I am filled with fucking difficulty with understanding of your actions, Jake.” She twitched her wings, something I’d come to associate with frustration.
“It is goddamned simple, Marbecka, I have worked hard with you, and you have refused to answer my questions. I think you understand what’s going on, and this is something I need to fathom.” I purposely used a word I’d never used.
“Please provide to me the definition of ‘fathom.’”
I shook my head and stretched my “wings” down, the dinobird equivalent of crossing one’s arms.
“Because you are engaged in the striking mode of behavior.”
“Yes. Because I am on strike.”
Marbecka stepped to the door and turned to me. “I will engage in discussion with my peer persons.”
“Good,” I called after her. “You go talk with your peer persons.”
After an hour of thumb twiddling, Marbecka returned, and I was led to a large room. By “led” I mean I followed flashing arrows projected onto the floor and avoided the advancing force field that bumped me in the butt.
I squinted at the arrow symbols. They were just like those we used at home. Did they know something of my world after all? No. Any culture that had gone through a bow-and-arrow phase was likely to use that symbol to indicate direction.
I entered a large room that resembled a my-world assembly hall, except instead of rows of seats, perches extended across the room. The height of the floor increased toward the back—an amphitheater.
Five blue dinobirds perched on the stage. When I entered, one fluttered off, then returned to his perch. The others, which included Marbecka, flattened their feathers, making themselves appear thin. I’d learned this meant they were frightened. It was an entire race of chickens, really.
When I sat down in a chair they’d built for me, in the front row of the auditorium, the largest bird, with a black beak, spoke.
“Jake Corby, we have become decisive that our understanding is of sufficiency that we may explain the catastrophe of events that will be overtaking our worlds and what we must be doing to ameliorate the disaster.”
Huh. Not only Marbecka spoke English. Perhaps my lessons were broadcast widely. Maybe all celanos were wizards when it came to language.
“Can you return me to my home world?”
“Yes. We—”
“When?”
His crest popped up. Dinobirds did not like being interrupted. “When we have reached the sufficientness of language acquisition to make communications of our mutual problem to your scientists.”
“When do you expect that will be?”
“Estimatedly three of our weeks.”
Marbecka clarified. “Days and years have equivalence here as compared with your home world, but our calendar has enhanced favorableness. Each year comprises forty-nine-day weeks plus five extra days at the termination, six on leap years. Thusly, each year begins on the same day of the week, as does each thirty-six-day month. Compared with this, your calendar sucks. This improvement was installed only twenty-three million years ago when the moon phases were judged to be of insignificance.”
“So recently?”
The head honcho ignored my sarcasm and rocked back and forth on his legs. “It is the time now for the explanation. We understand your physics scientists recognize the existence of parallel universes.”
Marbecka had spent more time on this than on other topics. I’d given her the sum total of my imperfect knowledge, taken mostly from a PBS documentary. That is, some quantum experiments were best explained by the existence of parallel universes. It sounded like bullshit to me, but there I sat, living proof.
Big Bird continued. “Several among this accumulation of universes are …”
“Colliding.” Marbecka looked at me. That is, she tilted her head so one of her eyes was pointed in my direction.
Big bird’s wings twitched. “That is an indeed authentic and just way of expressin
g it. We must communicate with your cocksucking physicists concerning a joint effort which will frustrate this destruction of all our worlds.”
I burst out laughing. It was hard to keep a straight face when the curse words I’d planted popped up. I’d led Marbecka to believe “cocksucking” was a synonym for “hardworking.” Why do I have such trouble being serious?
I rubbed the smile off my face. “Why am I here?”
“As our worlds approached convergence along the dimension of the eleventh degree,” Marbecka said, “we were able to transport you to our world. Due to a miscalculation on my dime, we lost trail of you. We thought you maybe were transported into the outer space. On this day, we know you were transported into one of our wildlife reserves.”
“Why me?”
“I am not understanding your question at this time of day.”
“Why did you decide to transport me rather than someone else?”
She talked about my trip with Cronkite, and the puzzle pieces fell into place.
“And my transportation to this universe. Did it essentially involve making a copy of me and destroying the original?”
Marbecka waved a wing side to side, the dinobird equivalent of waggling the hand. “It is at the simultaneous time more complicated than that, and more simple.”
I’d thought about this when watching Star Trek but never thought it would be of practical importance to me. “So, in reality, you killed me but made a copy.”
“Yes. As happens to all every day.”
I frowned. “Every day?”
“Every night you become asleep. You are at that time unconscious. When you wake in the succeeding day, your experience is subjectively no different than had you been killed and replaced with an exact copy. Does that not have correctness to it? Philosophically, it is equivalent. By extension, you needn’t even transition to unconsciousness. From one instant to the next, your body is replaced.”
“But the soul?”
The creatures looked at one another. Marbecka said, “Your foot and a minor amount of the surface upon which you stood accompanied.”
“Not S-O-L-E … never mind.” I wasn’t sure I believed in the soul, anyway. “When will this collision occur?”
“We do not know.” Marbecka’s crest popped up and back down.
“You do not know? In a few minutes, weeks, years?”
The head bird’s wing lashed down against the perch. “The main collision we suspect within several months. In your July or August 2021. Other precursor event performances will transpire aforetime.”
“What will happen in these precursors, and what will happen—”
A strident whistle pierced the air. I ducked. All five birds popped up and flew off in different directions then gathered into a tight formation and landed on perches in the balcony. I twisted around in my chair and looked up as dinobird speech erupted from speakers around the room. Four of the members of the head council, or whatever it was, flew out a balcony door, and Marbecka flew down and alighted ten feet from me. It was the closest she’d ever come.
“Jake, I have performed a requisition that the protection force field around you be obliterated at this time. We are going out now. Can you provide me your covenant that you will not make sudden movements and not try to enact an encroachment to any of our citizens?”
“What’s going on?”
“A collision event is upon our world at this exact moment in time.”
Speak of the devil.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I followed a fluttering Marbecka along an empty hall. She turned back occasionally. Yes, I’m right behind you.
She led me to an elevator. Birds needed elevators? Ah, it was a freight elevator.
We rose to the top floor and exited onto a wide roof. When I appeared, all the forty or so dinobirds present flew off as one. They circled the building and settled back down, bunched together at a far corner. I understood. Humans are scary.
The building sat near the summit of Mount Diablo, and the sky was clear enough to see the fog rolling in over San Francisco Bay.
“What’s going on?” This was the closest I’d ever been to Marbecka or any other dinobird. I looked her over. As with normal birds, the leading edge of her wings curved forward and then back. It was at this curve that the hand was present, folded under the feathers when not in use. When manipulating objects, the tightly folded wings didn’t interfere. Those arms would be useless in a fight, though. Perhaps that explained their scaredy-cat nature.
She pointed to the sky. “Are you noticing that line over the Pacific Sea?”
I squinted and shielded my eyes from the sun. “Not really.” Puffy clouds, a fog bank near the horizon. Nothing unusual. Their vision was probably better than mine. Ah, there it was. A thin black line across the sky.
“A quantum confluence rift may be beginning. I know you cannot understand that fully, but it is a precursor event of the type we mentioned. Two universes are so close that parts of them are interleaved. Understand? You might have one stripe of Universe A and then a stripe of Universe B. Et cetera.”
“Is that a stripe of my world?” I pointed out to sea.
“Impossible to know, as yet.”
“So, if these two stripes were to occur on land, I could just walk from one universe to the other?”
She bobbed her head. “That is true. But know also that the rifts are unstable. They can collapse. Revert. You could walk into the other world, and if the rift collapsed, you could not walk back. You would be stuck there.”
Three of the triangular airships whizzed by overhead, and everyone on the roof ducked. The ships headed toward the ocean.
“Our ships will investigate, and we will hold more knowledge soon. We are far enough—”
A thunderclap slammed into my belly. A new line streaked across the sky like a crack opening in the ice. This one was close, less than a mile away.
As one, all the dinobirds flew off the building’s roof and dropped out of sight. I was alone. I started toward the door, looking up. The line now went from horizon to horizon. It widened, revealing the blackness of space.
Marbecka flew back up over the lip of the building and toward me like a shot. I dropped to the ground, thinking she would hit me. She yelled—more like a squawk, really—“Fly to the elevator! Follow me. Fly!”
No can do, sorry. I guess she forgot that. But, infected by her fear, I sprinted after her, my heart racing. Marbecka flew in the door and along the hall to the elevator. I couldn’t keep up and arrived to find her tapping a button with her beak. Her crest popped up and down as if on steroids.
When the door opened, she nudged me in—the first time she’d touched me—and tapped the lowest button. Then she was gone, flying away down the hallway. But she stopped midway and flew back, folding her wings and diving in through the closing doors at the last second. Perhaps her fear overrode rational thought, making her indecisive, like a squirrel crossing the road.
She flapped hard to stop herself but still hit the far side of the chamber. Hard.
I helped her off the floor. Although her feathers looked soft, they felt spindly. “Are you okay?”
She stood frozen, blinking her eyelids.
I squinted. “Marbecka?”
She jerked and blinked some more then turned to me. “The others swooped to the shelters. I accompanied at first. It is impossible for me to overcome the flocking instinct. Have you reached a state of comprehension on that score?”
I nodded. “Yes, I understand.”
“But I must protect you. You are the animal holding the most importance who is on this planet on this day. Perhaps in the multiverse. We’ve chosen guards of your body but had not expected to need them on this day.”
They were all so timid. How good could bodyguards be? I leaned back against the wall and put my foot on one of the perches in the elevator. The fear that radiated off her made me calmer somehow.
“Jake, we possess neither braveness nor courage like humans. Are
you in comprehension of this disparity?” She shifted from claw to claw on her perch, staring at the descending lights on the control board.
I nodded. “Got it. And we’re going to the shelter because …?”
“In this quantum confluence, matter will undergo exchangement between different worlds. It could be a small exchange, or it could be enough that these two universe loci are destroyed.”
“And we would die.”
She bobbed her head and flared out feathers around her midsection. “Correct. Unless there are scientists more advanced from us in other universes, the destruction could transpire.”
The freight elevator stopped at the lowest level, and we stepped out and hurried down the hall. Marbecka pecked a lighted button and a heavy-duty door slid open. Dinobirds sat on perches, chattering away. Maybe fifty. Most flew away from me.
No sooner had the doors closed than the room rocked to one side. The movement knocked me off my feet, and I fell hard against a perch. All the birds stayed put, their claws gripping the perches, but a painfully loud communal squawking filled the room. I lay on the ground and with one arm around a perch support, covered my ears.
The shaking continued, like a never-ending earthquake. I slid back and forth on the ground, twice knocking my head against the perch support. Was this the end? I gritted my teeth—so much for my calmness in the elevator. Would all my struggles to get back to my world, and back to Charli, end in an underground chamber filled with overgrown parakeets? Would she live out her life wondering where her husband, grandmother, and dog had gone? Maybe her world would also be destroyed.
The lights went out and all squawking ceased, as if someone had thrown a switch. The shaking gradually subsided. The lights came back on.
I stood up and dusted myself off. Would they know what my trembling meant? “Shall we go outside and see what happened?”
Marbecka tilted and then shook her head. She was trying to adopt the human gesture for “no.”
A holographic display sprang to life near the ceiling, apparently in the midst of a newscast. A breaking story. Just like newscasts following tornadoes in my world, views of a narrow path of destruction appeared on the screen while symbols scrolled down the right side.