Memoirs of a Timelord

by Ralph Rotten

  Every week there were new songs, and the entire planet waited breathlessly for every note. It was as if they were starved for the new music. It took me a while to really understand their situation, but eventually it occurred to me that Voh music sucked. They are an industrial people, their mindset is expansion and manufacturing and conquest of new lands. So although they were technologically advanced compared to Earth, the Voh society had poorly developed arts and humanities. They just were not a creative people, artistically anyhow. When it came to bleeding a planet dry for its resources, they were super-savants. Intellectually they were amazed by Karaoke.

  So do you remember when you were a teenager and you discovered a new song you really liked? Y'know, that song you played over and over, and that feeling you got as you were compelled to sing along every time. You played that song until you knew every nuance, every inflection and note. Now imagine being the average Voh citizen, living in Shitsville with nothing to look forward to but death by toxic saturation, and suddenly you feel that sensation as the music permeates your very soul. It's a little like falling in love, finding a new favorite song. Then imagine that happening four times a week.

  Desperate for relief from the world they lived in, more and more viewers tuned in to the show. Mainly they were there to see Meexon. But Rex, Molly, and I all picked up our share of publicity. By the tenth week there were so many people pulling the show down off the Line that there were serious connectivity issues as portions of the network crashed. People demanded more bandwidth, including protests, threats, and a little bottle hurling. It took a few weeks but the masses prevailed in pressuring their masters for better conditions. It didn't sound like much, but for a people oppressed by their own industrial complex it was huge. We had their full and undivided attention. That's when Meexon made his first controversial move.

  "The proceeds of tonight's songs will be used to fund children's hospitals in the thirteenth district. The conflict in the area has killed and injured many people, but no group or demographic has been more heavily impacted than the youth of Tenyaa. The use of micromunitions has proven to be most effective against the children." His eyesbrows furrowed in concern, Meexon Prestar reached out to the entire viewership. While he spoke, I had taken over the audio-visual system and was running images of kids frightfully injured by the self-seeking projectiles that were known to linger for hours until being discovered by unwitting victims.

  "Please, we need every penny for this tragedy happening right here on our own planet. These are children...boys and girls and infants who need your help. Please purchase the songs off the Line knowing that your contribution will be doing God's work."

  Now, had anyone else done that it would have started a bigger fire than it did. But this was Meexon Prestar, adopted son of every district on the planet, and all he was asking them to do was help the innocent children, not the militants. How could anyone object to that? The Oligarchy did, but their efforts to rein us in were being seriously cock-blocked by the Boss and a whole other crew of cutouts. Really more of an army, DorLek had people working for him that didn't even know they were working for him. He had strings into everything, and every one of the operatives was stone-cold loyal. They had to be or the Boss'd put them back where he got them from, and you know how that works.

  Intended to run for 21 weeks, the season was in the seventeenth week when we made our biggest move yet. It was judgment night, when the voters decided who was going home. There were five of us on the stage as the host bantered with the judges. We all knew who was slotted to go home. With only one non-band member remaining, it was clear that Olav Ziegel was done for. He had no chance whatsoever against our numbers. Most people didn't even know who he was. Hell, people had started calling StarElite the Meexon show.

  So anyhow, the host is about to tell Olav the bad news, as if it weren't a foregone conclusion already, and Meexon stops him. Pulling an old-school document out of his pocket, he hands it to the host.

  "Read this first." He pointed a finger to the paper in the host's hands.

  Surprised at the interruption, the Host opened up the folded paper with a grin. With Meexon there had been many surprises, and up to now they had all been pleasant. But this bombshell left their plastic Master of Ceremonies frozen in shock. With a dozen cameras floating around the stage, it wasn't long before one of them was able to grab a snapshot of the document and rebroadcasted the image to every corner of the globe.

  "You're from the thirteenth...?" One of the judges stammered.

  "Meexon Prestar is a Dom?" The host was incredulous. His whole life he had been told that the people of Tenyaa were inferior to the Colbai. It simply did not add up that a musical genius like Meexon could really be one of them.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, Lords and Ladies, I Meexon Prestar was born in the thirteenth district. My parents were devout Domulites, and for this reason, by article seventeen of the network's code, I am ineligible to participate in this competition." With that he turned and left the stage.

  The turmoil was intense. The roar of the audience was beyond deafening, it shook the very foundations of the coliseum we were in. They had to go to commercial break twice, and the crowd was still not settled. Finally back on track they were about to give Olav the boot again when I stopped the host this time.

  "Read it." I said simply as I handed him my birth certificate. He knew right away what it was. Except for the very old, the Colbai had electronic birth certificates. With considerably less technology available after a hundred years of embargos, the Dom still relied on old-fashioned printed documents when it mattered.

  "I too was born a Domulite. Under the law I am defined as being less than a whole citizen. My vote only counts for one half of a Colbai vote. And now simply because of the church my parents attended, I am deemed legally unfit to participate in this competition." I turned to leave before pausing to look back. "These are your laws, not mine."

  Another two commercial breaks and the show was well into overtime, but there was no way they were pulling the plug. They had billions of viewers tuned in, comm lines were jammed, and in some parts of the world the news was going out on the emergency broadcast system. Really, they were that friggin crazy about this show. Viewers were foaming at the mouth when Rex stopped the host for a third time. Expecting another birth certificate, the Emcee was surprised when he was handed nothing.

  "I was born a citizen of the third district, I am Colbai, there is no doubt. But if Colbai law prevents my friends from competing as equals, then I want no part of the process." Rex was surprisingly firm in his tone, with Molly nodding her pretty little head right beside him.

  "Meexon, if you are listening, we are coming with you, wherever you're going." Molly's voice rang out clear as a bell. She really did have some pipes on her.

  Within seconds the only ones standing on stage was the host and Olav, the season's new champion by default. Not that anyone noticed. They actually ended the transmission before even bothering to crown the guy. He got his recording contract, but within three days no one even remembered the guy. T-shirts that said 'Olav who?' were more popular than the entertainer himself.

  So we started touring the planet, including the thirteenth. At one time we threw together a concert called Rock Against War. Basically the Colbai army was about to snatch some more territory with another invasion based on sketchy claims. Meexon gathered up a few dozen other celebs and got us a flight into the region where we set up a benefit concert right in the path of the army. With people flooding over the line to see this event (that turned out to be the Voh equivalent of Earth's Woodstock) the Oligarchy had no choice but to halt the invasion. They were pissed. The machine desperately needed more resources and we had just stopped them cold (and brought in almost a million Redbacks for charity.)

  We ended up in jail more than a few times. Always some federal agent sniffing around, looking to record enough audio to indict us on insurrection charges. Once we got locked up for performing in a bar that prohibited Dom. The
owner was okay with it, but the whole block was zoned as a clean-zone, free of those filthy Domulites. I have to say, the Oligarchy musta really been rattled because their handling of the situation was clumsy and crude. One time they arrested us in the middle of a concert. There were seventy thousand screaming fans going crazy when they found out we were being carted away for unlawful integration. Those people left that concert and burned down the network's headquarters during the riot that followed.

  We were throwing a concert to help the Brudda in the second district when the end came. I remember seeing the man with the bulky shirt approaching the stage. My enhanced eyes could easily make out the blocks of explosives beneath. Although I had known that this would be the inevitable end of our adventure, the Boss had kept the day of the event a secret. Like anyone who had died before, he knew that we might be a little apprehensive about doing it all over again. Like getting a shot with a big needle, or having a tooth pulled, we were sure to cringe if we knew it was coming. To this end, we had been kept in the dark until the very last moment.

  I just had time to reach out and take Meexon's hand before the blast ripped the world around us to shreds. The last images of the band had been a perfectly framed photo of us holding hands while being flanked by Rex and Molly. Within weeks the image became the rallying point for hundreds of grassroots efforts at government reform. Other groups protested apartheid, the Oligarchy's unrestrained control, and the industrial machine's right to control their employee's lives. I have to admit that I was surprised at just how much came to be from this simple talent contest. We didn't end apartheid, but we got the ball rolling in that direction. That was the DuNai way; to let the horse think it led itself to water. While an individual could learn quickly, a civilization took generations to change. In essence, you had to plant a seed then wait for all of the haters to die off. With humans it takes about sixty years, but when you get done your civilization will have doubled in size. At this point you are pouring so many enlightened souls into the Guf that it will dilute the previous generations of haters. For every bigot you add ten enlightened thinkers to balance the blend. That's how exponential population growth works in the Guf; it's like mixing up a perfect pitcher of lemonade.

  Flight School

  One of the first revelations you have as an apprentice is that only the primitive races travel in space ships. Any sufficiently advanced species will have moved on to teleportation methods like rapid displacement or molecular streaming. There are more than a dozen different ways to jump from one point to another across space, some better than others, a few downright hazardous.

  So with that in mind I had to stop and wonder why the hell there was so much focus on flight school. It's not like I needed to know the intricacies of piloting an interstellar craft, I had point-to-point abilities that made travel in a ship completely moot. I only flew my Hot Rod because it was sheer, unadulterated fun. But for longer voyages, I definitely prefer jumping. To hell with sub-lightspeed travel. Who has three generations to spend travelling to a bright dot in the sky? Not this girl. I got a date Tuesday night.

  "Becoming a spaceborne species is a critical step in the advancement of any civilization. It extends their genetic footprint over areas beyond their own planet. Expansion allows you grow your population to a point that they fill the Guf at an exponential rate." DorLek answered my question indirectly.

  "Agreed, it's an important part of their evolution, but so what?" I wasn't sold yet. I had a lot to absorb before beginning the next phase of my training.

  "If you are to guide other civilizations through this patch of their evolution, it would be helpful if you had some experience at it yourself. Something more than watching it on television at least. Do you agree?" he raised an eyebrow.

  "Boss, don't get me wrong. I am all for flying the space shuttle or yanking and banking in a Shiirek. No problems there. I'm just saying that I think there is way too much focus on the topic. I got like fifteen years of this stuff?" I flashed him an image of the full syllabus of the flight schools I faced.

  "While simultaneously continuing your other studies." He added with a smile. "Fear not, you will have the company of Aldoo and Veena for most of the coursework."

  I wanted to scream and ask him when I was supposed to take a breather, but I knew the answer already. I had the ability to halt time, and getting better at negative velocity. I could also do some lateral insertions that let me step out for as long as I needed. But the way it really worked was that I would be in flight school all day, and then when I did step out of the timeline it'd just be to work on my other studies. In the end I'd wind up never actually taking a break. Every time I get to sitting still I see my daughter's face, and that gets me remembering the Boss's promise that I could go home as soon as I figured out how to find it. It is for her that I do all of this. I just keep seeing her eyes in that last, scared moment. The curse of my DuNai upgrades was that the memory never faded.

  The first phase of school was essentially recreating the Human moon-shot, except our planet had no moon. We had to make it to the nearest planetoid; this peanut shaped rock on the fringes of the asteroid belt. We had to fabricate the ship and fuel from the native resources, and we had to do it while morphed as Horx.

  Horxelwian Magnus, or Horx for short, were a very successful species from Bara's galaxy. Think jumping spiders, but built with eyes on both sides, and articulated hands at the end of their ten feet. Double jointed, we could flip over on a dime, or leap from one tree to another. With forty fingers and the eyesight of a microscope, I found the physical form refreshing. I could do five things at once, all while scratching my ass.

  Although we could use fabbers, morphic technology was prohibited. It helped having Aldoo on the team. This was a tech heavy project and it was good to have a geek on the team. Not that we were dumb girls or anything, but Aldoo was just wired for this kind of shit. We are talking about assembling an interplanetary spaceship from parts built on a mid-sized Horx fabricator, so maximum size per piece was no bigger than a loveseat. Imagine building a Scud-sized rocket from parts and rough components. At least the local gravity was low compared to Earth. It'd take waaay less fuel to get off that the little yellow rock we had called home for a year.

  I have to admit that the whole grueling episode gave me an appreciation for the challenges of space travel that I never would have gotten from reading a book. Even with our greatly enhanced abilities and technology, it was some fracking hard work getting to that peanut-shaped rock! I can only imagine how much of a challenge it was for human Astronauts and Cosmonauts with antiquated metallurgy and slide rulers. My hat is off to those brave men and women.

  Along the way we studied stellar cartography, high-velocity ascensions, orbital dynamics, Horx literature, and more engineering. Study, study, study. You have no idea the kinda stuff you have to learn to be qualified to edit a timeline. Doctor, lawyer, engineer, astronaut, astrophysicist, temporal physicist, xeno-psychiatrist, warrior, and complete master of your Onkx. Oh, I forgot to mention one of the most time-consuming parts of training; communing with the Guf.

  Enroute, I spent hours a day sharpening my ability to hear what the Well of Souls in this galaxy was saying to me, there were so many voices. I had to learn to focus them into a singular stream of consciousness so I could get a feel for the true nature of the Guf in this galaxy. It had an odd tone to it, distant, like someone calling from far away. Every Guf is different. This one took a little getting used to. The Boss had told me he created this place out of the hull of a failed galactic cluster. Really more of an elongated protogalaxy, the place had been in use as a training center for thousands of years.

  Once we got our little rocket all the way to planet Peanut, we boarded an intergalactic freighter heading for the Badlands. Aboard the Vixen we learned how commercial opportunity drove expansion and research. Profit motive is behind everything in civilizations that have not yet acquired fabber technology. As much as any of us is conditioned to view big business as the v
illain in our everyday life, our most epic achievements as a society are only possible with massive industries and research. Spaceflight required tens of thousands of humans standing on the shoulders of countless inventors, and a booming infrastructure to support the cost of development. No single person could ever do it alone. It takes a village. A very big village.

  The Vixen was a generational freighter. Like a city afloat, the ship flew a curving path past dozens of star systems. Its massive Tsunami Drive inertial engines took her to the very edge of light speed while expending only minimal energy. This was a ship built for the long haul. She was so damned big that sometimes you forgot you were even on a ship, but dull as a hick town sometimes.

  I really shouldn't complain about those years. At least I could be human again, no more damned spiders or bugs. The Vixen was a human ship, so there was some scenery for Veena and I to choose from. Now that I had changed my skin to a blonde Zeva Zull, we looked like sisters. Twin Blonde bombshells on the prowl. Heh, we knew how to spend our free time; dear hunting.

  The time we spent on the Vixen was the closest we had been to a regular lifestyle in decades. We got up in the morning, worked all day, and went to bed at the end of the night. Aside from all of the advanced courses we took on the side, it was almost like being blue-collar schlubs in the 30th century. Honestly, I got to liking my humble existence aboard the floating city. It was like living in the suburbs; peaceful. I had a cat and a commission as a navigator first class. Being the two hottest chicks on the ship, our social calendars were always full. I coulda lived that way a few more years.

  After a nickel on the Vixon came my favorite phase of flight training; Fighter Weapons School. That was some serious Buck Rogers stuff right there. I remember that first day how they marched us in there in our uniforms, forming two neat little squads. Then out comes this General, my eyes identify him right away as Pelcor Fenn. He's four hundred pounds of mean-motherfucker. You get that impression right away. He looks like he eats children and puppies for a living.