“But…” Patent was struggling to keep his jaw in place. Gravity was winning.
“I’ll need you to tweak two technologies. First, the barrier field that The Collectors use to keep those war dogs corralled in the same pen. From what we’ve seen, the walls inside this prison separating the cellmates are a lot more broachable than the ones surrounding the prison itself. And second, the ability to overlap galaxies, without all the fire and brimstones this time. I don’t want to waste any more worlds in unsightly planetary collisions.”
Patent’s jaw just got wider.
“We’re on the clock, so get what help from Dillon that you can. If you can mend the bruised egos of those Alpha Unit teens who like to think of themselves at the top of the food chain, you ought to be able to work wonders with him.”
Patent went from catching flies with that mouth to being certain he could dock a few jet liners in there, if only they came in one at a time. “Even if Dillon and I can pull that off… Expose the Gypsy Galaxy to The Kang… At the risk of sounding redundant, are you mad?”
Leon took his eyes off the smart screen, and his mind away from pondering the latest proof of their ruin and regarded Patent directly. “Oh, no, Patent, you misunderstand. We’re going to release the Kang on every one of those galaxies that would dare to sabotage my prison escape. If they’re that dedicated to living in a hell for all eternity, I say we accommodate them.”
Patent entertained a coughing fit. Leon’s only explanation for it was that this latest idea was somehow sticking in his craw even more than its predecessors building up to it. Though he didn’t have any rational explanation for that, other than having an ounce of decency with respect even to the worst kind of enemy; a sentiment by the way far more likely to come from Leon than him. “Leon…”
Leon held his arm up arrestingly. “We’re taking the Kang with us when we make our prison break. They’ll need new worlds to cannibalize and new tech to keep them busy with for a long time, which they’ll get by cannibalizing those pesky galactic civilizations. Who knows when I’ll need to unleash the hell hounds again? They’re a very specialized weapon that I can’t bloody well release on just anyone for fear of sacrificing my own humanity.”
“With you there.” Patent scratched the back of his bald head.
“But unlike these other mad war dogs which we can’t manage…” Leon said.
Patent sighed. “The Kang can.”
Leon saw the residual reticence in his eyes. “Think of it, Patent. Genius field generals, no two fighting styles the same, other than ‘take no prisoners.’ Each one getting smarter and evolving as they go along in ways most species can’t.”
“You might want to keep that in mind the next time they break out of their cage. They did it before, as you’ll recall.”
“Something for you and Dillon to be mindful of when doing those tweaks. But when coming up against superior enemies, I rather fancy field generals who can cover an insane amount of territory, who’s fighting styles aren’t at all predictable, and who will move rapidly to absorb the enemy’s tech and use it against them.”
Patent finally offered up a begrudging if stifled grin as he lowered his eyes and folded his arms defensively again. He glanced back at the smart screen port. “Fine. It’s not like we have until the end of time to debate this. I’d rather continue this conversation after we escape The Menagerie. You’re hoping the bulk of those forces will retreat to protect their home galaxies the minute Dillon and I manage to pull this off?”
“Yes, by which time it will be too late. They will have made themselves vulnerable then back in their home galaxies to our relatively weaker forces, and to the Kang’s essentially unstoppable queens and Tesla-types. We’ll ensure their civilizations live on, but they won’t be making war with anyone for quite some time.”
Patent gave Leon one last look. “Techa help anyone coming up against you with superior technologies and numbers alone.”
“I’m only as good as the people around me, Patent.” Leon patted him on the shoulder.
“And the Klash? Never were there more suitably named SOBs.”
The smart-glass panes gave visuals of the duels going on aboard the Klash ships, courtesy of Mother’s hacking. “They’re like alien ninjas, each with their own personally designed toys,” Patent said, “scientist-soldiers second to none. It would be a shame to exterminate such an exquisite Spartan culture.”
“You can bet Sonny plans to use them to maintain control of the Gypsy Galaxy Grouping once he’s eliminated all opposition.” Leon thought about it.
Patent, who could tell Leon was faltering, piled on. “They’re culturally programmed throughout their lives, starting when they’re still in the womb, to worship their leaders like gods. Ought to be easy enough to use the psychic amplifiers in our possession to recalibrate that reverence toward you.”
Leon snorted. “Sonny will have the same idea. So long as we can maneuver around him, I agree, they’re an asset, and one more galaxy for the Gypsy Galaxy Grouping. The same thinking applies to whatever other trump cards he plays that we can move over to our pile.”
“Not sure I can save them and us, but since it was my suggestion, I’ll do what I can,” Patent said.
Patent didn’t hesitate a moment longer with carrying out his assignment, beaming off the bridge of The Nautilus, no doubt to parlay with Dillon.
NINETY-ONE
THE HAUGHT GALAXY
PLANET BRAVAS
Patent took the space elevator down through the thick atmosphere, hiding Bravas’s armadas of spaceships, gawking out the metal-glass tube. “They must call this place The Christmas Planet.”
He could see the legions of specialized aliens forever practicing their war games on the planet’s surface even before the elevator landed. His mindchip alerted him to the fact that they were androids made to look like actual aliens within The Menagerie to make it harder to expose them in their capacity as either spy or warrior.
Hailey was waiting for him near the elevator, tapping her shoes with impatience, or was that irritation, or…
Patent stepped out of the elevator. He scrutinized the eleven-year-old Hailey, forever trying to get comfortable in her training bra. It seemed no one had told her about smart bras. That or her sensitivity on the issue had triggered the wrong nanites in her brain to respond to the wrong dictates, playing up her worst fears rather than playing them down.
She intimidated Patent for some reason, like one of those life-size voodoo dolls the Amazon jungle natives used on the Sentient Serpents mission to possess actual people.
“I’m here for Dillon,” he said.
“Yeah, well, good luck with that, he’s in basket-case mode right now.”
“Nevertheless…”
“Oh, I get the nevertheless part, trust me. It’s not like I’ve forgotten there’s a space war on to end all space wars.”
“I would have expected General Schopenhauer to greet me. It is protocol, after all…”
“You’re referring to my other patient. Even more of a basket case. But I hold out more hope for his recovery. He’s got early Alzheimer’s, so it’s just a matter of catching him on a good day. Today is not a good day. It wasn’t a good day when we ran into the Qas. The madder he gets, the better his military acumen becomes. The rest of us aren’t so fortunate.”
“Take me to him, Hailey, Dillon, I mean. Schopenhauer can indulge himself with his little vacation up inside his head all he likes. He’s done his part.”
Hailey sighed. “I like a man with no sense of the inevitable. Too bad the feeling isn’t contagious.”
She marched ahead of him, presumably in the direction he wanted to go—right back toward the space elevator. What, they were using one of the ships high up in the murky atmosphere as a psych hospital? Apparently not. The elevator was headed down.
For the second time in as many minutes, Leon’s latest revelations about how he planned to use the Kang being the first time, Patent’s mouth slipped into t
he shape of an O-ring. The planet’s core had been hollowed out to facilitate the presence of a Mars war god supersentience, which currently was powered down in the shape of a tropical jungle—right out of the Jurassic era. Patent took a deep breath. “I do like Schopenhauer’s style.” But the Mars war god should bloody well have been on line. Don’t tell me it’s bananas too, in deference to the general it serves?
The elevator finally descended to a control room that no doubt Schopenhauer used to confer with the Mars war god when both of them were back on line in their official war-making capacity.
To Patent’s surprise, they hadn’t hit bottom yet. The elevator descended further. “I had this latest floor built for the psych wing,” Hailey explained. “Considering the esteemed nature of our guests, I thought it best the Mars war god had direct oversight to anyone coming and going. Less likely for an android assistant to be hacked that way.
When the elevator finally stopped and they got out, the view was of an underworld of giant mushrooms. The cave walls were lit with bioluminescent algae. There were quacking geese that had clearly imprinted on Hailey that followed her about the instant they started hiking in the direction of the mushrooms. “The giant mushrooms, of course, are camouflage for the psych wards,” Hailey explained. “One more defense in case the unsuspecting make it down here. Their biomimetic makeup helps further with massaging the brainwaves of our psych patients, helping to guide them back to sanity without forcing things. The biomimetic capacities of the mushroom AIs is quite broad range, as you’ll soon see. And it goes without saying that the patients can’t see one another. The screens of their chambers will project whatever they want or need to see.”
She gestured to Patent to enter the stalk of the mushroom leading to Dillon.
“You don’t want to come?” Patent asked, surprised.
“I had my daily dose of madness already. I can tell by the look in your eyes, so have you. You might want to put off this meeting so you don’t overdose and end up like them.”
Patent smiled wearily. “Wish I could.”
She nodded as if she could relate all too well, fiddled with her training bra some more, and headed back toward the elevator that would take her back to the surface, or to wherever she was headed. Perhaps to the control room where she could keep a watchful eye on Patent, despite her begging off, to make sure he didn’t compromise Hailey’s ongoing stewardship of her own guardians. Maybe she’d weigh in on his talk with Dillon if she had any of her own ideas to throw in. Patent was well aware of Hailey’s genius. Patent hadn’t asked about the third mushroom, but it was a fair bet her mother was in there. He sighed. Strange how her sad family drama seemed to eclipse everything the rest of them were going through, but somehow it did.
Once inside the mushroom stalk, Patent took the elevator up.
The moving circular chamber gave shape to Patent’s worst fears about unleashing the Kang, projecting them on to the wraparound walls, forcing Patent to get his mind under control, as he massaged his temples and covered his eyes. That was most definitely not what he wanted to see or needed to see. Maybe Hailey’s best-laid plans had been for naught and her psych wards had already been hacked. Or she was already back in ops, taking a peek inside his head.
Patent popped into Dillon’s chamber—rising right up out of the floor. The elevator shaft and hole in the floor both disappearing upon his arrival.
Dillon’s hair had grown long, his beard, a bit past fashionably trim. Patent wondered if he’d always looked that way, or…
Patent eyed the equations scribbled on the glass walls, ceiling, and floor. Hailey had left Dillon with a little foot stool that he could just reach the ceiling on, and a dry-erasable marker that would never run out of ink. The human aquarium stood on a black pedestal. It was like some bizarre alien Venus fly trap that prided itself on devouring psychic energy instead of raw matter. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”
Dillon startled, and ogled Patent. “Aren’t you like king of the multiverse, now that Leon has been promoted to king of the multiverse of multiverses?”
“Big shoes to fill, I know. I’m sure you’re feeling the same way right now.”
Dillon snorted. “You have no idea.” He went back to his scribbling.
“I’m here to meld my genius with yours for the purpose of tweaking a couple pieces of tech. The barrier wall The Collectors use to keep the Kang Dynasty in their pen, well, to keep us all in our respective pens, I suppose. And the matter of how to transpose one galaxy on top of another within The Menagerie without losing a single world, sun, even asteroid in the process.”
Dillon stood up from the floor on which he was scribbling and stared at Patent hard. Then he came over and hugged him just as hard. Finally, he let go. “I can’t tell you what a relief it is to find someone madder than me.”
Patent chewed off his wary smile before it became a smug one. “Just ask Schopenhauer. Sometimes mad is not only all you got, it’s your best foot forward. Now, I hope you’ve had enough of feeling sorry for yourself, feeling overwhelmed, like a busted human being, and whatever the hell else this is all testament to. Because the freedom of the multiverse is at stake, and without Leon at the helm, who knows, perhaps the multiverse of multiverses as well. I hear the assholes out there that put these sorry bastards inside The Collectors’ Menagerie are the ones to be truly afraid of. I mean, they’re smart enough and evil enough to pass as normal, sane rulers of the heavens, so much so that no one has thought to overthrow them or even to take them on, or acknowledge that they even exist. The few who have questioned their authority are the ones I imagine ended up in The Collectors’ Menagerie. Now tell me, are the real people who need our help even in here?”
Dillon, who looked ready to crack all over again at Patent putting so much pressure on him, after a bit, surfaced from whatever deep well he’d fallen into that his eyes led to right now. “Of course. I can do what you ask—if it means putting a hurt on the bastards that actually deserve it.”
Despite him saying the words Patent wanted to hear, Patent wasn’t particularly relieved to see Dillon take up pacing and jabbing the pen into his forehead and mumbling. At least the equations-scribbling on the floor had the semblance of being productive.
As if that pen had managed to drill down to the font of all wisdom in the center of his forehead, Dillon started spewing as he stalked the empty space in front of him. “There was this scientist, a little before my time, who posited that all Einstein’s equations did was describe the veils of Maya, the illusion our senses take to be reality. That there was no need for a grand unified theory to reconcile the differences between Einsteinian space-time physics and quantum physics. Because, essentially, all there was was quantum physics with a whole slew of other bizarre properties yet to be documented, which had tricked Einstein.”
Dillon went back to stabbing his skull with the butt of the pen this time, instead of the tip. He had yet to arrest his pacing. “Some physicists have since hopped aboard the crazy train with this naysayer, saying that his theories do best at explaining quantum entanglement, not just at the sub-atomic and atomic levels, but at the macro level at which Einstein’s equations allegedly hold up.
“Thus…”
“What happens in one universe affects what happens in another,” Patent said, catching his train of thought.
Patent strained to find something in back of his head. “What about that physicist that alleged that Einstein’s equations were really just error-checking algorithms for a quantum universe?”
Pacing, Dillon pointed his pen at Patent and poked repeatedly. “Don’t think I haven’t been giving him a piece of my mind. He probably holds the key to what you’re asking me to do. Of course, fuck with that error checking, and things could get ugly real fast. It is likely, at least according to holographic universe theory, that any universe can be coaxed out of the void, but it’s those very error-checking algorithms that stabilize the physical universe, and keep Pandora’s box shut.”
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br /> “We have complete confidence in you to make sure the ugliness goes in our favor,” Patent said, wondering when along the way he’d become such a good actor.
Dillon had switched to a rat-tat-tat, pause, rat-tat-tat-tat with his forehead stabbing. He was gaining a sense of rhythm with the whole thing, and the stabbing force of the ink pen had diminished.
“It gets even crazier,” Dillon said, “when you think of warp drive engines, ships that use wormholes to get from one location to the next, and so on. Because technically as soon as you leave one location, even just to get to another galaxy within the same universe…”
“You’re arriving in another universe. And you can never go back to your own.”
“And that’s because we co-create reality with our thoughts. While in transit, the connection to the original field of consciousness that we all share is lost, our minds evolve along different tangents, as do the minds of everyone else you left behind, so the chances of actually finding yourselves back in the same reality ever again are virtually nil.” Dillon pulled at his hair with both hands and squeezed down on his head at the same time.
“Yes, and it goes without saying, that the universe you left, well, it receives another version of you that pops in from another universe. Because nature abhors a vacuum.” Patent tried to ponder the additional implications of his own thoughts, but stalled.
“Of course the same thing happens when you talk about teleporting entire galaxies, otherwise the stars in the sky would constantly be shifting about.”
“We’re talking about quantum entanglement at the macro level,” Patent said, his eyes wide, trying to see how well he was buying into all this.
“Conceivably, hundreds, thousands of these parallel universes could become entangled at any time. And you can bet there are other factors entangling them besides things like warp drive engines and teleporting galaxies.” Dillon looked like he might be ready to scribble some more equations, but, after hovering his pen above the wall, instead erased what he’d scribbled earlier, and returned to his pacing.
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