Skypunch (The Skypunch Chronicles Book 1)

by Logan Castle

  “The last thing I remember,” I started. I was thinking that if I replayed the events from my conscious mind, it could help wake me the fuck up. “Before being brought here, I was sound asleep next to…” my voice trailed off. I refused to mention Plum’s name. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I heard a voice screaming inside my head and cautioning me against it.

  The figure’s hands came up quickly to pull the hood back from his face. Staring at me now were a pair of weathered brown eyes. The same age spots that defined his hands were also all over his bald head. His face showed advanced age, furrowed lines around his mouth and his forehead along with deep crevices that intersected the corners of his eyes.

  “I warn you! I will make things very hard on you if you refuse to answer my questions.” His voice was soft but I heard him as if he were yelling. “How have you come to possess the Time Force?”

  I stared blankly at him, now fully lost. The Time Force?!

  Suddenly, the tense air was shattered by the momentary sounds of a giggle. It wasn’t a normal giggle, but one that sounded digital in nature as if it were coming through the speakers of a computer. My eyes shifted from the old man in front of me and settled on the source of the laughter, to the robot that was levitating just behind him. The old man, caught off-guard by it as well, turned from me to stare at it as well.

  “Is something the matter, KT-1?” He asked her, the clear irritation in his tone mixed in with surprise.

  “Sorry, sir,” the robot said, sheepishly. “It’s just…. his pants are funny.”

  My eyes widened in shock as the robot spoke…and then, realizing what it had said, brought my eyes down to my lower half. I was clothed only in pajama pants and on those ivy green pants were the visages of English bulldog heads, all containing a different facial expression. I felt the blood in my cheeks grow hot and fierce, blushing with embarrassment. That lasted for a second before staring back at the robot with disbelief. Was I really being critiqued on my pajamas by a robot in my own dream?!

  “Contain yourself, KT-1. There’s no time for that,” the old man disapprovingly said to the little robot. I watched the robot’s display dim slightly, a sign I took to symbolize its own awkwardness at its outburst before watching the old man wheel back to glare at me. “Don’t be mute now, boy,” the man said, frowning at me. “I know you possess the Time Force. I must know how you got it!”

  “I don’t even know what it is!” I yelled back.

  “Lies!” he roared accusingly at me.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I yelled back at him. “I’m telling you the truth!” Frustration seized me. “One second, I was sound asleep; and the next, I’m here. Maybe you could tell me why I can’t wake up from this goddamn nightmare!”

  Those eyes just stared right through me. For a long couple of seconds, he analyzed me, studying me and testing the sincerity of my words. Finally, he shook his head.

  “I didn’t want it to come to this, but you leave me with little choice,” he said, shaking his head almost apologetically.

  “Wait!” I pleaded with him. “I have no idea how I got here.” I glanced around myself. “I don’t even know where here is!”

  “You are in The Axis of Time,” the old man responded, his lips in a tight line.

  “The what?” I inquired.

  “KT-1,” he started as he turned toward the robot, which immediately floated toward him. “Run a truth screen on the subject, please.”

  “Yes, sir,” the robot answered in a woman’s soft voice.

  It floated in front of me, placing its face in line with mine.

  “What is your name?” the robot asked, and two blue lasers suddenly shone from its eyes into mine. Fearing that the robot was going to scramble my brain or something, I immediately strained to close my eyes but I couldn’t.

  “I already told you,” I started.

  “Well, tell us again,” the old man snapped.

  “Isaac Kent,” I replied.

  “And where did you come from?” the robot continued.

  “My bed! The same place where I was and am still sound asleep,” I answered with a frown.

  “How did you get here?” the robot asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “Through a dream, I guess.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “No.”

  The robot backed away from me and returned to the old man’s side. “The subject appears to be telling the truth, sir. Or, at the very least, he believes he is telling the truth.”

  The old man nodded but his eyes widened as if he were surprised to hear that news. “And yet, that voice…It’s unmistakable. KT-1. Scan samples of the voice on the recording and compare it with this one to verify it is truly his, just to be sure.”

  A second passed. “Sir, the voice on the recording and the one here are identical within a ninety-nine-point-nine percent accuracy rate.”

  “That’s good enough for me, KT-1. So, it is him! He is apparently a very, very good liar.”

  “I’m telling you the truth,” I cried out frantically. “I don’t know where I am!”

  “Enough. We have gone over that ad nauseam now. You are in The Axis of Time,” he said again.

  “I don’t know what that is!” I yelled at him. “How the hell did I end up here?! Who the hell are you anyway?!” As I shouted at him, the old man abruptly shuffled towards the console, where the robot was waiting. “I deserve some goddamn answers too!”

  The man audibly cleared his throat. “KT-1, deactivate life support systems within the stasis field.”

  “Yes, sir,” I heard the robot respond.

  The moisture in the air instantly dried up around me. Suddenly unable to move anything other than my mouth, I gasped and choked. I couldn’t breathe. The man just stood there, watching me. Just as my vision began to blur, he lifted a hand.

  “Okay, KT-1. Restore life support.” Once again, I heard the robot acknowledge him and just like that, oxygen filled the air. I sucked in several long, heaving breaths. The dizzy feeling receded quickly as I inhaled more oxygen. “Don’t make me do that again. I detest torture. It’s a crude tool to be sure but I must have answers, one way or another.” His stone-faced expression conveyed his conviction.

  I waited to respond until I had sufficient air back in my lungs. Thankfully, the man afforded me the opportunity to do so. “This. Is. A. Dream! How… why…” Taking several more breaths, I continued. “How… is it possible… that can I feel this?!”

  The old man, unfazed, kept his eyes fastened on mine. “We brought you here using a Skypunch, but to avoid causing any ripples in your own reality, we only transported your metaphysical form here while your physical body remains where it was. You are still connected to your body, so everything you experience here is very, very real. Even pain. If you stop resisting and give us the answers we seek, we may send you back. Or we might not. One thing’s for certain, however, you WON’T be leaving without answering my questions and supplying only honest answers.”

  “I have no… clue what you’re… talking about,” I breathed out, my voice hoarse and raspy. “I am… telling you… the truth.”

  “System confirms he believes he is telling the truth,” the robot announced.

  The old man answered with a sigh. “He believes his own lies.”

  One thing was for certain: it was getting nearly impossible to rationalize that this was just a dream. Everything prior to this moment felt real enough, but this? The sensation of suffocation was far too real and physical. The sheer pain that I just experienced should have been enough to wake me from any nightmare. Shouldn’t it have?!

  Solemnly, the man shook his head very slowly. “Regrettably, you are leaving me with no choice.” He faced the robot. “KT-1, again.”

  I had no time to protest as the oxygen evaporated once again. Panic overcame me and I felt my eyes bulging and my head swelling.

  Please just wake up!
I pleaded to myself. I would do anything to wake up from this nightmare! I began to see stars forming in my vision.

  Despite the pain in my lungs, I also felt a burning sensation in my forearms.

  “Sir?” the robot’s voice sounded. “I am receiving strange readings from within the stasis field. An energy spike of some kind.”

  The man took his eyes from me and I watched him motion to the robot. “Analyze, KT-1. What does it mean?”

  The robot began to blink and beep furiously before it answered in a panic-stricken voice. “Sir, he’s creating a Skypunch!”

  The old man’s eyes returned to mine and widened as they left my face, traveling down to where my arms lay limply at my sides. I couldn’t look down but I knew exactly what was happening. The sensation was all too hauntingly familiar. The clocks that emboldened my forearms were turning. “His tattoos! It’s not possible!” he exclaimed. “KT-1, strengthen the stasis field! We can’t allow him to escape!!”

  “Sir! I have diverted all power to the stasis field but the energy levels are continuing to rise. We cannot hold him much longer!”

  The man took several steps towards me. Barely hanging onto consciousness from the lack of oxygen, I somehow still heard the words that came from his mouth. “You can’t possibly understand the consequences of the power that you possess. I implore you. In your hands lies the fate of countless worlds and galaxies. Tread carefully. I will find you and, should you continue down this path of reckless abandon, I will stop you.”

  For just a second, I stared back at him. The plea on his lips contrasted with the expression on his face of obvious disdain. For me! That one brief moment was all I was allowed. Suddenly, I heard a shattering sound of glass breaking and I was once again weightless. Oxygen blew all around me and I inhaled as much as I could as fast as I could. My freedom, however, was not to last. As I struggled to suck in more air, my entire body was flung upwards into the sky. I angled my face around just in time to find myself shooting up and into the broad depths of space. I screamed.

  No! Not here again! Please make it stop!!

  The next thing I knew, I was back in my bed. My body had jolted up violently as if someone just threw a bucket of ice cold water on me.

  I was screaming at the top of my lungs. From the corner of my eye, I saw Plum suddenly spring up next to me. Over the sound of my own screaming, I registered another sound. It was coming from Plum. She was screaming too.

  Chapter 6.5

  Waypoint Station

  The Axis of Time

  Outside of Time

  “Track him!” Sirius yelled to KT-1 when the last glimpse of Isaac Kent faded from view. “We must prevent him from doing any further damage!”

  “But sir,” KT-1 protested. “The energy expenditures required to maintain the stasis field have depleted what little power we had remaining. Energy levels need more time to be replenished before we can access that information.”

  Sirius turned to the robot, frustration seething from his aged features. “How long before we have that information? Every moment wasted is a moment irrevocably lost.”

  “I… I don’t know, sir,” she responded, her displays lighting up chaotically. “Systems are currently running at only a fraction of the power that they would otherwise require. I need…the system needs more time to recover.”

  Unblinking, Sirius asked again. “How long, KT-1?”

  There was a moment of silence before KT-1 processed a response. Sirius knew she was speaking with the Axis computer system, desperately seeking an answer to his question. The display behind her pale white face suddenly illuminated and she shook in the air slightly. There was an audible groan from her mechanical mouth. She was straining, as if she had to fight a silent battle just to get the information.

  That’s strange, Sirius thought to himself.

  Sirius started to place a hand on the robot, but she quickly glided just outside his reach.

  “I… I’m fine. Forgive me, sir.”

  Sirius drew back his hand. “What is it, KT-1? Are the systems in such bad shape that even you are having communicating with them?”

  “T… the computer systems will be fine…given some time.” KT-1 said rather defensively. She took an extra moment before continuing. “As to the issue of Isaac Kent, sir, the systems are experiencing some…difficulty. We are trying to calculate his exact location. His bio-signature appears to be in constant flux at the present moment.”

  “The Time Force is responsible for that,” Sirius muttered, nodding slowly as he processed what KT-1 just said. So much was at stake. Having already been handicapped by the Axis system’s blindness, they were very quickly running out of options.

  “Sir?”

  His thoughts were abruptly halted by the sound of the robot’s feminine voice, and Sirius looked back up at KT-1. “Yes?”

  “What is the Time Force exactly? What little I gathered from the system databases seems awfully vague and shrouded in secrecy, as if the very mention of it is an anathema.”

  Sirius inhaled a deep breath at her question, not out of annoyance or anger but because without realizing it, the robot answered it herself. The Time Force was an anathema. Never, not even in his worst nightmares, had he ever envisioned a situation where he’d want to think about it or even so much as mention it to anyone ever again, much less a robot. That’s why, when he first brought her there, he carefully blocked KT-1’s access to the data files inside the system. More specifically, the ones that had anything to do with the Time Force. And yet, if she were to be of any help to him now, she would most certainly have to know the full truth of it. There was no escaping that now. To answer her question, however, involved wading through a litany of haunting memories. Because of that, he waited a good while before finally responding.

  “The Time Force is the very essence of Chronos himself,” he said, barely whispering as he struggled to explain.

  “Chronos? Who is Chronos, sir?” KT-1 asked as Sirius prepared to speak again.

  “Was,” Sirius corrected her. “Chronos was Time itself.”

  “Sir, I don’t understand,” KT-1 blared back. “Your usage of the word ‘was’ implies death. Yet, if Chronos was time, how could something like that be killed?”

  “Time by itself is a basic and fundamental principle. It is a force of nature, an unconquerable reality that everything and everyone everywhere must experience. It needs no physical form to validate its existence or to function. But once, there was a time when it did have physical form and that form was Chronos. Chronos was the physical manifestation of time,” Sirius replied evenly.

  “And what does that have to do with the Time Force, sir? What exactly is it?”

  “As I said, the Time Force is the last remnants of Chronos himself but it’s also the element that makes many of the functions we conduct in the Axis possible, such as the ability to teleport from world to world, or reality to reality with the sole purpose of witnessing pivotal events or even affecting them directly.” Sirius stopped and took a deep breath, “In essence KT-1, the Time Force gives us the power to affect all time.”

  “So why all the secrecy, sir? It seems odd that something so important receives no more than a brief footnote in the Axis system records.”

  “Such a simple question for an otherwise long and complicated answer, but I will do my best to explain,” Sirius lamented before starting again. “In the beginning, it was only Chronos and Celestia…”

  “Celestia? That name does not compute,” KT-1 interjected.

  Sirius ignored his annoyance at the robot’s understandable confusion. It was sometimes hard for him to remember that she was a product of man. The only phrases he could use with her came from the rather limited knowledge supplied by her programmers.

  “Celestia was what you refer to as the Universe. Celestia was her name,” Sirius explained. “As I was saying, in the beginning, it was only Chronos and Celestia, the physical embodiments of Time and the Univ
erse, respectively. At that point, there was nothing else, no worlds and no life of any kind. Absolutely nothing but two cosmic beings, supremely powerful and undeniably linked together. You would think that such a forced union would breed animosity between the two of them, but as fate would have it, they fell madly in love. From that love spawned their many children, the galaxies as you would know them.”

  “Yes.” KT-1 exclaimed. “I’ve read about the Galaxies. Unlike the Time Force, they are well-described in the system logs. They are referred to as the creators of the Axis of Time but I thought it just some strange metaphor. So, the galaxies…are the children of Chronos and Celestia? But there are so many!”

  “Billion upon billions,” Sirius acknowledged. “These sentient beings, of various shapes and sizes, created the framework of all we see now in the great beyond. Once barren and dark, the Galaxies imbued real meaning to the Universe as they became bastions of life. Each of them was the birthplace to countless suns, stars and other worlds. Worlds that in turn, spawned more life forms. Worlds like the ones you and I come from.” Sirius paused, expecting a volley of questions but was relieved when there were none.

  “As with any living thing, the Galaxies were victims of their own mortality. All the suns, stars and black matter – all life that had been created within them became the true barometer of their mortality. As vital as organs are to me or your circuitry is to you, the Galaxies survival was predicated on their own healthy anatomy. If any of the worlds fizzled and died, or the ability to sustain life within them was not nurtured, a galaxy would die.

  “And so, in a move motivated by pure necessity and a desire for continued survival, the Galaxies joined the realm of their parents. The children of Chronos and Celestia created the first Multiverse, an infinite collection of worlds where all potential outcomes become practically limitless. The bond between these celestial entities was based on an implied understanding and a promise. They agreed that the symbiotic nature of their union must benefit all and that every Architect would instantly come to the aid of another should that Architect’s ability to sustain life ever be compromised. Thus, it began. Within this original Multiverse, anything and everything that ever could happen, did.”