Reality: The Struggle for Sternessence

by Daniel A. Liut

  With the tall grass looming above his head, Duncan was out of sight but not out of smell, and ossians have a keen sense of smell.

  “Enjoying a pleasant evening . . . I hope I don’t disrupt.”

  Duncan had already identified his friend by the characteristic sound of his stride. “No, not at all.”

  O’sihn sat down beside him, leaning on his hands, which he stretched backwards onto the grass. “This is our last night together, Dahncion. I would like to discuss a few things before you leave us.”

  “Sure, O’sihn.”

  “First of all, I want to emphasize that you don’t have to leave. Both the Realdom and the Royal Navy would be more than happy to have you among us. And you don’t have to stay in the Navy either. The royal couple has made it very clear to me182 that they would be very happy with your living among us outside the armed forces. You have already given a very valuable service to the Realdom, service that was very generous on your part.”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about these things,” Duncan answered. “I appreciate your words very much—and the kind offering from their royal majesties—but I think I do have to leave tomorrow. I have no words to describe my experience in this universe. I have had the privilege of doing something unique and so very special. You can bet it won’t be easy for me to step on that technon tomorrow, not at all.”

  O’sihn closed his eyes, showing respect for Duncan’s decision. “So, what are you planning to do back on Earth?”

  “Well, for one thing, I’ll resume my college studies, and then, well, I don’t know yet.”

  “You realize that, although you will remember all that happened here, you will not have a way to prove your ever having been here.”

  Duncan nodded. The particulars of the transreal reentry had already been explained to him. The transrealization would affect the bodies of those going through it and anything under their bodies’ vital influence. This would include elements like hair, body fluids and food being processed. However, other objects, including clothes, would stay in that universe.

  “I know, but Erina will be able to prove it. Her country sent her, and she will be back with her people. Even if she will have no way to take any evidence from here, her story, which will agree with mine, will carry enough weight.”

  “You both will be reinserted onto the space reality from where you departed. Therefore, you will be thousands of miles away from each other, probably entering your universe at different times,” O’sihn explained. “Besides, you two will be speaking different languages. Erina will not understand your native tongue, nor you hers.”

  “We both speak Realitian.”

  O’sihn shook his head. “I’m afraid Realitian will be completely gone from your brains.”

  “I will find a way to contact her.”

  “She belongs to a highly classified project of a country that, for you, will be a foreign nation. She might not be able to get in contact with you, even if she wanted.” O’sihn noticed the discomfort these comments caused Duncan. “I apologize for my frankness, Dahncion. I’m just trying to have you realize that things may just not work out the way you are thinking right now. We don’t even know the process through which Erina was sent here, to this universe. Although there are sufficient reasons to believe that her trip will be a safe one, her experiential life may not remain as crisp as yours for her.”

  “What do you mean, her experiential life?”

  “To put it in rough terms, she lacks some of the psychophysical conditions that the RIBA body-reconfiguration bestowed on you. After her body—and therefore her brain—goes through the Realitic reinsertion tomorrow, her life in this universe, although still real for her, may likely remain as an oniric experience—a dream-like experience. As a consequence, her feelings, her life-experiences, could remain in a weak and fuzzy form. If that were the case, she may not recognize you as Dahncion, a name that will be gone from your and her vocabulary, anyway.

  “The possibility that you will continue your life on Earth as if you had never been here is not at all unlikely. This is not necessarily wrong.” O’sihn stood up and straightened the back of his uniform, making ready to leave. “But I think it’s important that when you step in that technon tomorrow, you will be doing it having considered all factors.”

  Duncan fixed his eyes on the captain. “Before you leave, I have one question, O’sihn, a very personal question.”

  O’sihn nodded and motioned to Duncan to go ahead.

  “I know you believe my destiny lies here, that I am a key element to win this war,” Duncan stated.

  O’sihn looked at him, neither assenting nor dissenting.

  “Why do you believe that so strongly?” Duncan asked.

  O’sihn shook his head. “I don’t think we should discuss this.”

  “Why not? If you really want to help me make the right decision, wouldn’t your opinion—the opinion of a good friend who knows me quite well—be important to me?”

  O’sihn pressed his lips together and squatted in front of Duncan. “You are the one to build your own destiny. You must be the realizator of your own reality.”

  “My own reality . . . how could my reality be to fight and conquer a . . . galactic empire out there in a foreign universe, to stop its Equity, to confront someone like the First Equitarian—in short, to help the Realdom be real when I am not even from its reality?”

  O’sihn squinted. “In the same way that Ms. Paulina’s house was Mars for you, while still being your next-door neighbor’s house. In the same way that the enemies of those little animal action figures you played with and knew by their names—Oseén, Blankita, Teegrom, Rogelio . . . 183 you called us, if I remember well—had to fight their mortal enemies the Keerwians, who lived on planet Keer, which was also your other next-door house. In the same way that the playground close to your house was the Moon, while still being the playground. In the same way your living-room tile floor was the ocean on which your interlocking-block aircraft carriers sailed to the islands of your mats, while still being mats. In the same way your interlocking-block spaceships traveled to your distant Venus, which was still your grandpa’s house. In the same way O’sihn, Laida, and the rest would explore your universe as you took them in your secret little cases, which were actually spaceships, while still also being little cases. In them, they would travel to the house that your grandparents had by the sea, which of course was a distant planet, or to this hotel with a large sand playground, which was another distant planet. In the same way so many other great stories that you and I know so very well . . .”

  O’sihn stopped, and Duncan stepped back almost in fear. “How do you know all that?”

  “We saw those things in our dreams. We lived them in our dreams —many of us in Realitas: the same dreams, on the same nights, for quite some years—dreams of a growing child, for whom his games were both truly dreams and truly reality.”

  “Are you suggesting all this . . . reality has been but a dream?”

  “No, not at all. Reality, this universe, is no dream, no, sir. Its existence does not depend on yours. But your existence and ours, and that of many on your Earth, are intimately interwoven. The point of contact is our souls.”

  “I don’t understand. How does this whole thing work?”

  O’sihn shook his head. “Have you ever wondered why you, in this universe, look rilitian like I do, and all those from Realitas do?”

  “Yes, many times.”

  “That was the way you conceived us in your childhood games, which happened to be how we really are in this universe. Your perception and your conception are mutually inclusive. It’s a gift, an extremely rare and very subtle gift. What the RIBA device basically did was to capture the image of the reality of this universe in your mind and project your entire self into your own image of how you would be in this reality. Your body may look different, but its substance is the same.”

  “But I didn’t appear in this universe. I was miniaturized in my room, still in
my universe.”

  “Technically, you were already in our universe. The only thing our trans-universal ships did and could do was to project their reality into yours, by focusing into the mind of a child-quickener. Our ships—Laida and I, when we talked to you—were literally in a transuniversal bubble materialized in your room, and furthermore, we were communicating with you directly in your mind. It was your love for us, from your childhood games, that provided the link between your reality and ours, which made it possible for us to lock on onto your reality, while we were still in our own.

  “You didn’t notice that, but although you kept using your native language, you were communicating with us in your mind. When your body was reconfigured into a realitic form, your brain acquired a realitic morphology. At that point,184 our Realitarian language was infused as a surrogate language.185 To you, Realitarian seems like your native tongue, though they are completely different.”

  “Will I remember anything of this Realitian language, or at the very least, the name of Dahncion?” Duncan refused to accept what he had heard a moment before about this.

  O’sihn shook his head. “Once you go back to Earth, you will be part of its reality again. Your body will take back its earthly human traits, and your tongue will be the one you learned from your mother’s lips. Nothing will remain as evidence of your ever having been here, except for your experiences, which are already deeply imprinted within yourself. Even the images associated with those experiences will be different from the ones you have right now, reconfigured—translated so to speak—to the physical reality of your universe.”

  “But why hasn’t anybody told me about all this before, especially all these things regarding my childhood games . . . your awareness of them?”

  “To preserve your freedom,” O’sihn stressed.

  “My freedom?” Duncan sighed. “Knowing what you’ve just told me was much more important than my freedom.”

  “Reality is stronger, the stronger the freedom of those who make it real,” O’sihn replied. “And to defeat the enemy we are fighting against, we needed a strong reality, a very strong reality.”

  107.

  “Let me take a look,” Duncan said with anxiety.

  “Stop it.” Laida put down her binocular-looking visor, and the only visor they had brought along. “This is an operation like any other, Lieutenant.” The X.O. had a cast on her right arm.

  Through another opening in the wall, Erina was trying to gather more information from the target. Laida passed the visor to her.

  “I visualize a small tetrahedral construction right at the center of the triangles,” Erina said. “It has a close resemblance to the description of the trans-universal chamber.”

  “And it’s surrounded by heavily equipped military forces,” O’sihn put in, coming down from a flight of stairs.

  “We haven’t detected any activity from here,” Laida said.

  “From the roof of this building, you wouldn’t need any visor to see an entire Kervian army assembled inside the triangular grooves.”

  “Grooves?” Erina asked.

  “Yes. They may look like flat concentric triangles from here, but they are actually deep narrow grooves with thick walls that end up at the same level. Let’s go upstairs and take a better look.”

  They were in the twentieth level of the ancient construction, and they had to go up thirty more levels to reach its top. Once there, they tried to pick up more details of what was transpiring below, but except for a significant number of troopers, nothing else could be seen.

  “Quite an assembly,” Erina said, handing the visor to Duncan.

  Duncan adjusted the focal range to the maximum, but he could not pick up much else. “It looks like some kind of ritual.”

  “Not quite,” O’sihn said, as Laida took back the visor.

  “Not, indeed,” Laida concurred.

  Duncan glanced at them. “So?”

  O’sihn leaned on the back of the wide balcony-like area.

  “It looks like an invasion force,” Laida said, and passed the visor to O’sihn.

  “Those troops are loaded with full gear—including sophisticated equipment and supplies,” O’sihn added. “And the booth at the center of the emplacement closely matches the trans-universal chamber we are looking for.”

  “Even if they were to enter the chamber one at a time,” Duncan objected, “they could never get through most of their bulky equipment.”

  “Unless the whole triangular construction is part of the transuniversal complex,” Laida pointed out.

  Laida leaned forward. “Check for activity at three o’clock.”

  O’sihn aimed the visor to his right. Three individuals appeared in sight approaching the triangular constructions. From each corner of the outermost triangle, three ramps led to the center, where an elongated pyramidal structure, about nine feet tall, stood, shining with a crystal-blue hue

  “The one in the middle: he, or rather, she, isn’t wearing any military suit.” O’sihn passed the visor to Laida.

  It took her little effort to recognize the person. “It is Clara, all right.”

  Clara had a suit on that seemed to keep her arms immobilized. Her legs were restrained with some kind of a short cord around her ankles.

  The group soon reached the central structure—a tetrahedral chamber with crystal-clear stony walls, which resembled quartz. One of the walls opened up from the floor to a horizontal lintel located one third of the way down from the pyramidal apex. Clara was compelled to step inside. Immediately, a trapezoidal panel started rising up from the floor.

  “What’s going on?” Duncan said.

  Laida shook her head. “It’s as if they are planning to take Clara along with them.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Erina said.

  “They need a human being from my universe,” Duncan added.

  O’sihn stood up to get a better view over the rim of the walls that crowned the building. He remained silent for a moment. “Maybe they think they do have a human being from your universe,” he said, turning up the collar of his uniform. “Perhaps they have mistaken Clara for Erina.”

  Duncan grabbed his weapon. “We oughta stop ‘em.”

  O’sihn strained his eyes and stepped back, while Duncan and Laida began brainstorming about how to get to the chamber. But O’sihn was not paying attention. His thoughts were following a very different path.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Captain?” Erina looked up.

  “Rig your howitzer with plasma ammunition.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Laida and Duncan turned back at once. There was a moment of uncertainty.

  “What are you planning to do?” Laida whispered, stepping towards O’sihn.

  “Complete our mission and get us out of here.”

  Duncan stayed still, stunned by the captain’s decision.

  “O’sihn,” Laida said.

  “Yes, X.O.”

  “Maybe, if we waited till dark . . .” She put a hand on her husband’s forearm. “Evening is close.”

  “I don’t think this army will give us that much time, X.O.”

  “Plasma ammunition will not be enough to destroy the complex,” Duncan objected. “That’s why we brought this little baby along,” he added, patting his backpack with the T.A.T. device186 inside.

  “The T.A.T. is much more powerful, indeed,” O’sihn said. “But the plasma ammunition will destroy the enemy forces and will quite likely destroy the complex as well, sparing us from having to use the precautionary extra energy of the T.A.T.”

  “Aren’t we too close to the target for plasma ammunition?” Laida asked.

  O’sihn shook his head. “We are a mile away, and the lethal range of the ammunition is about a kilometer.”

  “We can’t just blow Clara up,” Duncan interjected. “There oughta be some other way!”

  “That’s enough, Lieutenant.” The captain’s tone sounded definitive.

  “Listen, O,”
Laida said, still thinking she could influence the decision.

  “No, you listen to me—both of you. Those guys are about to engage that technon any minute now. If they are wrong—as we think they are—and they are trying to use Clara to configure, somehow, the machine to get themselves to Earth, all of them will die—including Clara. But if we try to blow the complex up, at least Clara, being inside the chamber, will have some chance of survival—very slim, yes, but at least some chance.”

  The discussion appeared to be over, though not for Erina. “Excuse me, captain.”

  “Lieutenant?” O’sihn said, still staring at Laida.

  “Maybe they have found a way around the problem. Maybe they don’t need a human from my universe. If that were the case, they might be holding Clara in the chamber for some other purpose.”

  “If that’s the case, Erina, it becomes imperative that we destroy those installations at once in order to prevent an imminent invasion and control of your planet—and subsequent control of your universe.” “Not necessarily, Captain,” Erina said smoothly. “I don’t think this relatively small army—even with all its technology—has the necessary power to override Earth’s defenses. Its success may well rest on ensuring a constant connection between universes.” Erina glanced in the direction of the trans-universal complex. “Even if that force were able to succeed in its trip, we could still neutralize it by destroying its logistic chain. Blowing up the whole complex right after the army has left could both spare Clara’s life—on Earth—and alert the people of Earth of the potential threat from this universe.”

  O’sihn looked at Erina. As usual, her analysis was sharp. Laida was about to pick up that line of thought, but O’sihn immediately rejected the alternative. “I don’t think that’s an option. Besides the fact that there is no guarantee they would keep Clara alive if they reached their objective, Earth’s defenses could lack the power to stop this invasion. Even if the defending forces were to prevail, it could be at the expense of large amounts of casualties and resources from your people. And we don’t know what the Establishment could achieve if it managed to secure a position on your planet.” O’sihn shook his head. “I’m sorry, Erina. I’d certainly like to do more for Clara. And I am also aware that this course of action will deprive you and Dahncion of—”