Skypunch (The Skypunch Chronicles Book 1)

by Logan Castle

  “Original Multiverse, sir? You mean there was a previous Multiverse before this one?” KT-1’s tone sounded skeptical.

  “Yes, KT-1,” Sirius replied. “Just like this but with one very striking difference. In the original Multiverse, there was no Axis of Time. There was no central way-station designed to safeguard the Multiverse and police all of its realities. No, in the original Multiverse, the Time Force was endowed to his children by Chronos himself and it was used to accomplish all the responsibilities of the Axis of Time.

  “The Time Force wasn’t only channeled by the Galaxies, but also by their mortal agents. These agents, beings which were hand-plucked from various worlds and realities by the Galaxies themselves, had to be deemed capable, both physically and mentally, of handling the enormous strain brought on using the Time Force. I once was one of them and together we comprised a coalition tasked with the safety, security and maintenance of the Multiverse. Under the Galaxies’ leadership, we became the pillars, a police force if you will, assigned to keep the Multiverse together and in harmony. We defended it against any threat that might have unbalanced it or plotted to destroy it.”

  “Excuse me sir, but that seems a bit odd. The idea that the Galaxies would entrust their existence to the hands of creatures that were born from them is a strange concept to me.”

  Sirius gave KT-1 a thin smile. “Well, everyone had a vested interest in making sure our own realities were maintained in order. However, since the Galaxies had such a volume of systems requiring their constant attention, they became notoriously distant entities. Safeguarding so many worlds and the life forms within them was a rather remedial task for creatures of such great stature. Rather than concerning themselves with such mundane matters, they chose to delegate some of the responsibilities. And that’s where we came in. After proving ourselves worthy of its use, we were granted the power of the Time Force in order to ensure that the sanctity of life created by the Galaxies was protected.”

  “But… certainly you couldn’t save all life, sir? All life must have an end…a death.”

  “Correct, KT-1. Allow me to explain. Our mission wasn’t to save all life forms, or even to save every world along with all its alternate realities. Worlds fail, just as civilizations fall, a harsh reality that we all must accept. The safeguard for that was addressed by a new law. We made it very clear that altering the past or future events in any reality in any way was expressly forbidden. We were only endowed with the power to visit realities to observe crucial events as they unfolded and affect them only as they transpired. In doing so, our primary objective was to ensure that, regardless of any individual world’s eventual outcome, that nothing would ever jeopardize the continued survival and success of the Multiverse.”

  KT-1’s voice sounded, momentarily halting Sirius. “The ability to alter time was forbidden? For everyone? If all of you were essentially playing god within these conflicting worlds and realities anyway, why would you outlaw a tool that could have been so instrumental in that task?”

  Sirius shook his head vehemently as the robot spoke. “Even back then, we followed the same prime directive that now governs the systems here in the Axis. No reality can affect or trespass on another reality. The fate of any reality remains its own. Changing time is directly in opposition to that decree. We agreed that such power, even if it were only used with the purest of intentions, could result in unforeseen consequences that far outreached the reality it originally came from. Some realities refer to this concept as the Butterfly Effect. It means that something as simple as the fluctuations of a butterfly’s wings could influence the how, when and where of a global event. Changing past or future events in any one reality would always have an impact on the entire Multiverse. And that is something that could never be allowed no matter how it may be rationalized or the perceived good intentions.”

  KT-1 took a moment to consider Sirius’s words. “I think I understand, sir. Please continue with your story.”

  Sirius frowned. “Where was I?”

  “You were telling me how the first Multiverse differed from the one we currently monitor, sir. That the Time Force was used in lieu of the Axis of Time.”

  Sirius back ached with the pain that comes with advanced age so he shifted his weight. “Ah, yes. And all of that worked beautifully, at least for a time. Then, as is so often the case with so many of the flourishing empires we observed, there was a struggle for power that instigated a cosmic war which spanned across all corners of Celestia, the Universe herself. This uprising forever altered the course of history for the first Multiverse.”

  “Was it the Galaxies, sir?” KT-1 probed.

  “Worse, KT-1,” Sirius said, shaking his head. “No, the head of that serpent was none other than Chronos himself.”

  “But I thought you said he was their father, sir,” KT-1 interrupted him, her tone sounding incredulous.

  Sirius chuckled at the robot’s naiveté. “History is littered with families that, regardless of their shared blood, have quarrels that last for lifetimes. Chronos, Celestia and their children, the Galaxies, were all beings of a cosmic nature and possessed other-worldly power, but each one suffered from their own flaws of character. Their capricious natures allowed the event that ultimately took place.”

  “How? Why? It doesn’t make any sense, sir.”

  “It will, I promise. Should you allow me the opportunity to explain it to you,” Sirius said, sharply.

  “Respectful apologies, sir. Please proceed,” KT-1 said contritely.

  Sirius nodded curtly and coughed to clear his throat. “Chronos held the position as the Master of Time. He stood at the helm of the Multiverse and his position was both unparalleled and unquestioned. However, he grew increasingly restless and somewhat disenfranchised at the growing perception that his children had become more important than he was. As I said earlier, time, as a principle, is a cold fact of life and requires no physical form to function. Chronos had become resentfully aware of that. Meanwhile, the Multiverse grew and continued to thrive. While Chronos had learned to deal with that, it was the sudden rebuke and isolation from his love Celestia that caused his subsequent madness and started the war. The very war that would bring about the end of the original Multiverse.”

  Sirius paused to gather his thoughts. KT-1 graciously allowed him the time to do that. “Chronos wanted to have more children but Celestia didn’t and the perception of having a diminished role in the Multiverse only compounded his frustration. His desire to mate and expand his family soon became the single most important thing to him, but Celestia already had billions of children to care for and nurtured all of them inside the expanse of her own body. This put quite a strain on her and she didn’t feel the same way as Chronos, so she rejected his affectionate overtures. Finally, after Chronos continued his unsolicited advances and held steadfast to his selfish, lustful desires, Celestia shut him out. In time, she hoped he might behave differently and in closer accordance to her own desires.

  “Tragically, that is not how it played out. Chronos remained angry. His anger soon turned to madness. He decided to punish Celestia for her cold rejection along with his ungrateful children, whom he blamed for their unwillingness to take sides in their parents’ quarrel. Using his practically infinite powers, he manipulated time with the intent to alter it, thus violating our greatest law. In doing so, he created massive chronological changes in every world and reality that his children, the Galaxies, governed. Of course, Chronos, being stubborn and wholly unforgiving, felt justified in his revenge. The changes he brought on caused the very fabric of billions of various worlds to break asunder, shattering all of their realities irreparably.”

  “Afflicted by their father’s cruel behavior, the Galaxies collectively grew ill. The changing of time set off a chain reaction and the countless, infinitesimal worlds of life that the Galaxies seeded and cultivated began to erode. An all-consuming cancer took root in each of them. Finally, Celestia saw what was happening and
in a last-ditch effort for a peaceful resolution, tried to reason with Chronos.”

  Sirius sighed for effect. “But Chronos was too far gone and hell-bent on his path of destruction. He intended to restore his former image as the most important, singular entity in all of creation. When Celestia realized the extent to which her former love had tumbled into madness, she knew there was only one thing that could be done.”

  Sirius went deathly silent, as if he were mentally reflecting on the rest of his story. KT-1 stood by until she could no longer tolerate the awkward silence. “Yes? Sir?”

  Sirius shook himself from his trance. “She had to save her children. Knowing Chronos was hopelessly insane, Celestia took the last option she had. She chose to die.”

  “Wait. What? I need clarification, sir. Celestia was the embodiment of the Universe! How can anything as vast as that die? Why was that her only option?” KT-1’s questions tumbled from her motionless mouth.

  “Because Celestia, like Chronos, was merely the living embodiment of a much larger concept. Even without her physical consciousness and her body, the great beyond itself was its own entity. It would continue to house and nourish her children even after her spirit died. It was her only option, and she understood that from the beginning. Everything started with just Chronos and her. They were inextricably linked together and neither one of their consciousness’s could survive without the other. Her final command to her children, along with those of us who still served them, was to begin the dreaded task of ending her existence.”

  “Sorry, sir,” KT-1 interjected, sounding sad. “But that must have been hard for her children. Certainly they refused to comply at first?”

  “Hard to say, KT-1,” Sirius replied, more resentment brewing in his voice. “Truthfully, I don’t know. Perhaps they were already so weakened by their father’s assault, or maybe they were such massive and emotionless beings to start with, maternal love was relegated to a lower priority. I’m not sure I can tell you that there was much of what you’d expect in that area. There were certainly a few that tried to talk her out of her intended course of action. Unfortunately, the vast majority seemed resigned to it, and rather too easily at that.”

  “How strange,” KT-1 noted, “and sad.”

  Sirius gave her a rueful eye. “When it comes to the Galaxies, I have learned nothing is too far-fetched. By and large, they are too much in love with themselves and concentrated on their own affairs to be bothered by anything else.”

  “They sound… almost human, sir.”

  Sirius’s eyes narrowed at the robot’s insinuation but he agreed; she was right. He decided not to respond to her remark. He simply nodded before continuing his story. “Killing Celestia was no small feat either. Naturally Chronos was aware Celestia’s death would result in his own, so he opposed us at every front. Many of us perished in the battles that ensued, yet we pressed on. Armed with the knowledge of how to bring about Celestia’s demise, we went about identifying a hundred massive stars within her being. Once we had done so, we detonated them in one final, fell swoop, creating explosions of such magnitude that collectively sent shock waves throughout all of creation. You might know of these types of fiery explosions of stars by another term.”

  “A supernova!” KT-1 exclaimed. “You’re talking about a supernova!”

  “Yes, yes,” Sirius replied, waving dismissively at her. “The violent death of a hundred massive stars all at once was what it took to kill Celestia and therefore end the threat of Chronos himself. However, the damage he’d caused had already been done. While her consciousness was no longer intact, Celestia’s body remained, giving the Multiverse a vessel to continue its existence. But due to Chronos’s recklessness, the Multiverse was suffering through a slow and painful death, every reality literally began folding in around itself. Because of the long and devastating conflict, we lacked both the knowledge and the manpower to even halt the destruction of all there was. So, we took the only option that was left to us. To ensure that a new Multiverse could be born and physically thrive, the original Multiverse had to be scrapped and tossed away.”

  Sirius paused for a moment. Guilt and shame overwhelmed him as he relived the memory.

  “Apologies, sir,” KT-1 interrupted, “but is that to say that you…killed everyone?”

  Sirius didn’t bat an eye as he glared back at KT-1. “We had NO choice, KT-1. As a direct result of Chronos’s actions, a slow and fatal disease had taken root within his children. Without the proper means to treat it, we were faced with the impossible choice to either let them die or salvage what we could. In the end, there was only one course of action. We had to act quickly and definitively to cut that which was afflicting the galaxies or there would have been nothing left to build on.”

  Sirius suddenly wished he had simply overridden the security protocols, giving KT-1 access to all this information and allowing her to assimilate it quickly, sparing him such a long-winded explanation. “With Chronos gone, only his pure essence, the Time Force, remained. In trying to avoid the mistakes of the past, the Galaxies decided that the Time Force was too dangerous to ever be under the control of any living creature again, including themselves. All knowledge and recorded history of it was promptly destroyed. The Galaxies were insistent and thorough in taking the proper steps to ensure that its power could never be exploited by anyone ever again. Once the Time Force was stripped from all those who could use it, including the Galaxies, it was encapsulated into a new form altogether.”

  “But you still have it, sir? The Galaxies let you keep the Time Force?” KT-1 asked, cautiously.

  Sirius eyed KT-1 warily. He had to remind himself how quick and clever she was sometimes. “You are correct, KT-1. Very good. They did allow me to keep it, although to this day, it has become more of a punishment than anything else. The Axis, as it turns out, is not just something you can switch on and off, or shut the door and leave. No, it requires someone to man it – someone who can still access the Time Force in the event of something unforeseen and catastrophic. I was chosen because of my reluctance to use that power. Although my position may, at some point, require it, the Galaxies trusted that I would do everything else before that. They felt sure I would make it my last option. To this day, I have never used it.”

  “And the Time Force, sir? You said they ‘encapsulated’ it. Please expound on that. Where did they put it?”

  “Oh.” Sirius crinkled his brow at the question. “I thought that was obvious, KT-1. It’s here. Right where we are standing,” he said as he watched her floating mid-air. “It’s in the Axis. The Time Force is what operates the whole place. Even the Galaxies are not infallible. They could be corrupted by the immense power of the Time Force. Computers, they reasoned, are cold, unfeeling, easily programmed and reasonably controllable. With that idea in mind, the Galaxies decided to create a central outpost for the entire Multiverse. It is powered by one supercomputer that utilizes the Time Force to monitor it. In doing so, they managed to continue the work they started with the original Multiverse.”

  “What work is that, sir?”

  Sirius just waved his hand in the air in a dismissive gesture. “We are but playthings, KT-1. The Galaxies consider the Multiverse their own personal experiment. You and I, well, we are nothing more than puppets enslaved by their fickle hands. Even we, however, aren’t the biggest puppets of them all.”

  “What about the others, sir? The other ones like you who also survived the conflict? The ones who also wielded the Time Force?”

  “Ah, good question KT-1. Those of us that survived the death of the original Multiverse were given a place in the new one. With the power of the Time Force essentially taken from them, they were now just like everyone else. The Galaxies, being cold and devoid of emotion as they are, were not without a sense of compassion. For their service and loyalty, their agents were allowed to select when and where they would live out the rest of their days in the new Multiverse. They earned their peace. I envy them,
as they were freed from all of this.”

  “I just have one last question, sir.”

  “One last question,” Sirius acknowledged.

  “If the Time Force is locked away here in the Axis and you are the only living creature that still possesses it, how does Isaac Kent also possess it?”

  Sirius nodded at KT-1. “And that, my old friend, is the question. One that we had better find out the answer to and very quickly.” Sirius’s eyes dropped yet again to the floor and his voice lowered as if he were talking to himself. “It’s strange, though. The tattoos on his arms were moving. I have never seen such a physical manifestation of the Time Force occurring in anyone like that before. Yet, there is something strangely familiar about those tattoos that I just can’t place now. In any case, there is something very different about this Isaac Kent. We must uncover the mystery behind this man, for I have a deep sense of foreboding that this may be the beginning of something much, much worse to come.”

  “Given what you have just explained to me, sir, I don’t think it is feasible to expect the computer to receive an accurate idea of his whereabouts. Armed with the Time Force, he can be in one place at one moment and somewhere else at the next.”

  Annoyance clouded Sirius’s features. “So, what are our options then? With so little power at our fingertips, surely the Axis isn’t so damaged that it’s rendered completely useless to us?”

  KT-1’s voice was audibly lower when she spoke, suggesting she was trying to tread very carefully with her words. “Sir, you also wield the Time Force. Your vow to never use it goes without saying. But you also said that should there ever be a situation that absolutely requires its usage…”

  Sirius shut her down before she could finish. “No, KT-1,” he said softly. The blatant conviction behind the words was evident.

  “But sir, with everything at stake and with your reluctance to involve the Galaxies, surely this is the time for its usage if ever there were one!”