Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  He pointed to the big screen illustrating his thinking for him, “And see that? Connect up enough wormholes to your black hole slingshot, perhaps wrapped in the same containment shields, and you can slingshot numerous fleets to numerous locations at once. That would explain why Mother is showing us this particular highlight reel from her ongoing intergalactic war.”

  Natty slapped his forehead. “Techa! At this rate the Rippa, just by themselves, will overrun us. We’re not prepared to fight a war of attrition like this.” He was rambling now, talking more to himself than Laney. “Maybe it’s more than one black hole they have trained, a whole solar system full of them, but no ordinary solar system, oh, no. This thing would be the size of half a galaxy or more. Maybe they gobbled up half their worlds and suns to fabricate the containment fields and the droid ships for their black hole launch cannons.”

  He gestured toward the big screen. “You can tell those are droid ships, right? They’re out-maneuvering our space fleets, not just maneuvering faster, but shooting faster. Our humanoids aren’t wired with those kinds of reflexes. Leon has got to bring those ships’ AIs online now, before this goes any further.”

  “He won’t,” she said.

  “The madman! I don’t even know how Mother managed to field this many fleets. She must have sensed herself being drawn into the Menagerie before we did, or anticipated being cut off from her sister ships in other timelines, and had the other Nautili dump a sizable percentage of their war birds before departing. In the other timelines she could take her sweet time replacing them. Even so…”

  “Mother says Farsi is handling this problem. She will contain the Rippa.”

  He glared at Laney and engaged his best condescending voice. “You’re looking at the same screen I’m looking at, right? We’re well beyond politics here.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  Natty’s feeds to the goings on of the Rippa in the Gypsy Galaxy were suddenly and dramatically cut. “Did that bitch just sever my intel feeds? The nerve!”

  “We’re up against it according to Leon, and we don’t have time for you to waste your mental energies on problems that others are confident they can handle. Mother has taken over focusing your attention where it belongs.”

  “She’s kidding, right? She can’t possibly think her logic circuits are any match for my intuition? I’m Captain Kirk in this scenario, and she’s Spock! Albeit both of us upgraded according to Singularity standards.”

  He fell silent and collapsed into his chair at the footage he was now being streamed of the Klash ground forces aggressively attacking a Gypsy Galaxy world. “Whoa! Will you look at these guys?” More staring in silence at the Klash ground forces in action led to the subsequent revelation: “These are the coolest action figure dolls ever!”

  His wife grimaced at him in the background, his face visible in partial reflection on her monitor. “You’re not twelve and we’re not at home on Earth playing with your plastic soldier collection.”

  “Says you, and don’t defame the highpoint of my life like that.” He continued gawking at the Klash in action, and returned to biting his nails.

  The Klash fought fearlessly, each with their own fighting styles, each able to regenerate their bodies on a dime and even morph them according to what they needed to best trump their adversary.

  “They’re what Theta Team is supposed to be, only better. They accommodate to new worlds instantly, with the ability to fight off any attackers…” Natty jumped out of his chair and paced. “That does beg the question of how and why Mother dropped the ball like that.”

  “Maybe her imagination fell short. You said it yourself, she’s the Spock to your Kirk. There are limits to what her logic circuits can do, even working at light speed.”

  “No, this is something else. She couldn’t have missed the mark by this much.”

  “Theta Team are soldier scientists, you have to expect tradeoffs.” Laney was having this argument with him absently. One thing she mastered around Natty quickly, the ability to sound passionately engaged with him and as if she was giving him all of her energy, while only giving him a part of it; it was the only way to cope with his emotional neediness. She had her own calculations to power through in response to what she was seeing.

  “Nope. Still not buying it. We’ve been snookered I tell you. Mother designed Theta Team for something else, let us assume what we wanted. Think of what we saw of the few planets she’s seeded with her one-of-a-kind Theta Team operatives so far.”

  Laney thought back to Curtis dealing with the Orchlids on Progenitor, one of the Andarean worlds, and Ballarius dealing with the gas giant world of Goliath; both were Theta Team members.

  “You think they’re all designed so she can disseminate her consciousness throughout the heavens—without sacrificing her clock speeds and her supersentience?” This time Natty had a lot more of Laney’s attention.

  “Hell, she can grow it and multiply it so many times over,” he said. “Those Klash might be a wet dream for humanoid expansion through the heavens, able to morph on the spot to thrive on any alien world, but still fall far short of the ideal by her standards.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Laney said, “Leon has already decided he wants them as part of the Gypsy Galaxy Grouping. They will man the front lines for us from now on, allowing him to hold back, watch the nature of their adversaries’ style of playing wargames, so he can decide which legacy tech if any is necessary to neutralize them.”

  Natty whirled toward her. “Don’t tease!”

  “Scout’s honor,” she said holding up the scout salute.

  “So what, my job is to get them not to take over our galaxy, and turn around and await their marching orders from Leon?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Natty collapsed back into his swivel chair at his work station and cracked his knuckles. “If I get to add the best toy soldiers ever to my Nautilus toy chest, even if we have to park them in their own galaxy… well, that’s sort of like the favorite dolls spilling over into the bedroom, isn’t it? Left out because they get played with more than the others.”

  Laney rolled her eyes and shook her head in tandem. She worried that both groups of muscles might be bulking up at the expense of her other relatively underutilized muscles.

  “I will do whatever it takes,” he said, “even if I don’t have the foggiest idea where to begin.” He swiveled sharply on his chair toward her. “You’re the queen of bioengineering! Help me to steer Klash adaptability to new worlds to Gypsy Galaxy ends, instead of their own.”

  “We better get Corin in on this. She specializes in making superheroes out of regular heroes with her genetic tweaks. I’m better at accommodating them to new worlds.”

  “Excellent! Between the three of us we can get my new favorite action figure dolls into their proper place in the bedroom.”

  One of the monitors in the room flashed with Corin’s face. “Mother looped me in already, guys, and the need to work with the two of you. I’m not ashamed to accept help on this one. I’ve never seen or even imagined anything like the Klash.”

  “Are the Klash the coolest or what?!” Natty blurted.

  Corin painted a plastic smile across her face. “You sound like my eleven-year-old son—only slightly less mature.” She raised her eyes to Laney in the background. “Sorry,” she said.

  “If you’re sorry for me, I appreciate it. I’ll take all the empathy I can get with regard to enduring another day with my man-child husband.”

  “Ladies, can we just get to it? Before the Klash take over the entire Gypsy Galaxy. Though, come to think of it, maybe we should let them.”

  “Natty!” both women barked.

  He held up his hand placatingly. “I was thinking of just the uninhabited planets. We can put those psychic amplifier worlds in our collection around each of the worlds until we inculcate them with values a bit more in keeping with our overall peacekeeping vibe.”

  Both women were shaking their heads at him
slowly, their mouths agape.

  “Think about it. If every one of those worlds is occupied by the Klash, none of them can be used as outposts from which to wage war with us from within our own galaxy. If the only alternative is posting ships and probes there, we’re tying up limited resources that could be better used elsewhere doing what they were designed to do, and not staring at lifeless rocks in space where essentially nothing is happening.”

  “He’s got a point,” Corin said.

  “Don’t be charmed. He’s brilliant that way. He’s always got a point,” Laney said.

  “It doesn’t matter. We can’t approve a move like this,” Corin said. “Only Leon can. If we do it, he’ll likely feed us to the Kang.”

  “You’re cleared to proceed along this vector.” It was Mother talking, not Leon. Why hadn’t she looped him in, come to think of it? Laney thought.

  “I’m still not comfortable moving forward without Leon’s approval,” Corin said. She was working her gene manipulation of the Klash on her monitors the entire time.

  “Think!” Natty shouted, sounding more and more infuriated. “Now that we know what Theta Team is really designed for, we can’t think they can occupy these niches for us. With more than eighty percent of our worlds, hell, it could be 99% for all we know that are uninhabited with higher order sentient life…We’ll never be able to fully protect the Gypsy Galaxy worlds. And we sure as hell can’t turn our entire fleet inwards to defending our turf when under attack from one or more galaxies as we are now. The cell membrane is too porous,” he said putting it in terms he was sure Laney and Corin would appreciate better, “with just the ships we have to protect the borders. And the legacy tech can’t be allowed anywhere near the front lines, when and if it can be brought on line. Sure, those artificial habitats can be made to defend themselves easily enough, but… Leon can’t be fighting a war on numerous fronts and sheltering the Gypsy Galaxy and its legacy tech at the same time.”

  He could tell from their faces they were caving.

  “We’ll need some of those worlds as petri dishes,” Laney said, “to run our own genesis experiments, like Mother is doing. The Klash may well not be the be-all-end-all in adaptability and soldiering, even if they seem so from our current state of ignorance.”

  “Now that I have my hands on their Emitter technology, I can see the Klash are distributed on enough worlds,” Mother said, “that I’m still free to continue my own experiments, and you and Corin, yours.”

  “Keep in mind the Klash is a space-fleet generating species,” Natty said, piling on. “So they can protect a number of worlds for every one they’re seeded on—allowing Leon to keep his attention where it’s needed most.”

  “The younger worlds still at stage zero,” Laney said, “will need their own worlds to expand outward to, room to grow into stage 1 and 2 civilizations themselves. It’s not fair to preempt them with such a dramatic move.”

  “I’ve already factored this into the equation,” Mother said. “Your human minds have trouble appreciating things at this scale, just how much room there is to accommodate so many species and solar system empires at once that wish to stretch their legs further.”

  “You know what,” Corin said finally, “if Natty, our field general with a twelve-year-old warring mentality, has employed the worst of all possible strategies, we’ll leave Leon to fix it. If the numbers on my screen are correct, we have to project an image of a galaxy not worth conquering because it’s too much damn trouble to do so. It’s the only thing that will get the more recalcitrant galactic-scale invaders to back off, the ones that Farsi can’t talk down.”

  Laney sighed, looking at the same numbers piling up in the corners of her screen, battle wins on one side, losses on another. “And with the legacy tech out of the equation, and not enough time to produce more war ships, our humanoid bioprinters down…Fine, I’m in.” She collapsed at her workstation and started working alongside Corin tweaking Klash genes right alongside Corin.

  “Mother,” Natty said, keeping an eye on the work Laney and Corin were doing, looking for an in, “we’re going to need you to help the invading Klash space fleet commanders to realize that the very worlds they’ve seeded in the Gypsy Galaxy have been turned against them, and this process will only accelerate the longer they stay.”

  “I’ve already hacked their COMMS,” she said, “and I’m projecting the work you three are doing on their genome. Your actual tweaks have been redacted, but their supersentiences will see from the placement and amount of black ink that we’re not bluffing about hacking their entire genome.”

  Natty cackled. “And so long as they perceive that as their primary advantage, above and beyond their materials sciences and the scope of their fleets, they’ll withdraw before we have time to identify their recipe entirely.”

  “They will try to get the ones left behind to suicide before their genomes can be used against them,” Corin said.

  “If they didn’t come with a suicide pill,” Laney chimed in, “they likely have someone like me that can tweak the cocktail in time…”

  “The psychic magnifying moons are already in place around our Klash worlds,” Mother said. “I’ve had the planet eaters spitting them out and teleporting them to the necessary locations for a time now.”

  Natty nodded. “They can both project images of success into the minds of the Klash space fleet high command, as we neutralize any sabotage efforts on our end. The Klash will never know they’ve been had, even as their ships vacate the premises. And we can continue to use the same psychic amplifiers to evolve the Klash on the planets’ surfaces as we like. Who knows, they may become the future negotiators that will truthfully maintain the peace between our two galaxies.”

  Natty looked up at his monitors a short while later as the threesome had finished their work, with the help of Mother who had synced their minds with her so they could think in Singularity Time and accomplish months of work inside of minutes.

  Natty laughed. “The Klash have left the building!” He hammered the air overhead with his fists and he jumped out of his swivel seat and cheered louder, following his outburst up with whistles.

  Corin signed off the connection and the monitor looking heavy-hearted, as if part of her regretted what she had just done. Natty turned around to find the same look on Laney’s face.

  “I swear you two are complete buzz vampires,” he said.

  “We just sealed the fate of an entire galaxy in the blink of an eye, Natty. This is a solemn moment meant to be met with reflection, and thoughts of the hundred and one possible things we got wrong for everything we got right…that will affect the destiny of the Gypsy Galaxy peoples forever.”

  Natty collapsed into his seat and sighed. “I swear, it’s like I can’t have any fun anymore.”

  ONE HUNDRED NINE

  ABOARD THE NAUTILUS

  Solo circumambulated the hologram of the Lagrange point of sorts The Collectors were using, the nodal point holding the slices from each universe together in a fake multiverse. The starships were parked inside the node as if in a space museum, shut down, yet holding their position without drifting.

  His mind wasn’t exactly alive with ideas. If there was any ship in The Collectors’ Menagerie that could do the nexus point any harm, they’d have destroyed it long ago; that much was certain. Even the awe-inspiring Space-Time-Alchemist vessels, which Leon’s Theta Team were a long way from hacking their way into, posed only a threat to anything existing within space-time. Not without.

  Solo sighed.

  He had designed a 10-dimensional super-sentience in the crystal dome of his cane to help get the Nautilus out of trouble on The Star Gate mission. But this nodal point did not appear to exist in another dimension either. Or Shifter, the name he’d given the multifaceted dome, would have spoken up by now.

  “Mother, I notice you haven’t linked me with your supersentience.”

  “It wouldn’t help. This artificially constructed Lagrange point defies logic and I a
m remiss to unleash algorithms that defy logic into my matrix, risking my sanity. So, unless you have an idea for me to run with, there is no point mating your mind to my own.”

  Solo groaned. In his species it sounded more like a speedboat engine trying to turn over. “And your access to alternative timelines has been compromised by The Collectors themselves?”

  “In none do I see you thinking your way into the nodal region. So, yes, I believe that’s a good guess.”

  Solo smiled the slightly menacing smile that was the only smile his species could manage. “I appreciate the compliment.”

  “It’s time to mind link with the Creams,” Mother said. “I understand your hesitance but…”

  “It will drive them into heat, threatening their marriage unions, and indirectly sending a shock wave through the Gypsy Galaxy Grouping, which is fragile enough. We’ll never get out of here because we’ll be too busy tearing one another apart; just what The Collectors want.”

  “You forget that the Creams can control the genetic mix of their progeny. They are never limited to the sperm of the male they’re mated to. They can see the genes of any humanoid they look into, scanning for snippets of interest to them to splice together how they want. It is how they truly secure their bloodlines and uplift history from one generation to the next. And by now, they will have gotten a lock on Leon’s genome.”

  Solo, pacing, stopped dead in his tracks and did an about face, gripping the crystal geodesic dome handle of his cane so hard he thought he might shatter it.

  “Leon would never forgive me for replacing him with the next generation on line.”

  “The ultimate in diplomacy mixed with the ultimate in war gaming, standing forever by their mothers’ sides… Think of it, Solo. If our allies are to be oligarchs in charge of galaxies specializing in warmongering, it’s just as important those oligarchs be shut down before they can become a menace to Leon’s war efforts. The child will be able to see into regions of the Creams’ mates’ minds that not even they can reach. They are not military strategists, after all.”