The Argument of Constants

by Mikael Aizen

  * * * * *

  When he emerged on the other side, the first thing Taimu saw was Ji-nai. She no longer looked like the alien race Taimu had seen her as. Instead, she was a teenage girl wearing a t-shirt and jeans. She was unmistakably Janice, just younger and uncertain. Afraid. Why she was in the Gateway ship, he didn't know, but right now she was about to float through a portal. "No!" Taimu yelled at her.

  She hesitated, but her eyes locked on something behind Taimu.

  Taimu turned.

  Janice, his Janice, was stuck in the arms of Koalas. Both Janice and the Koalas flashed in and out of the portal in a desperate struggle. Limbs wrapped Janice's body as she struggled and fright warped her eyes as she fought to escape them, to get out of the portal. She screamed again, a painful scream, a terrifying scream.

  Taimu reached for her but each time his arms entered the portal, he began to stretch and he could not grab her or even feel her. He threw his boots into the portal, hoping to drive off the Koalas like before. But it didn't work and the Koalas held on to Janice like iron binds. Her fighting limbs flashed in and out with her struggles and soon they came out less frequently. She was losing.

  Her head lunged out and she gasped. He managed to grab her, holding her by the chin and hair. He tore at the limbs grabbing Janice. She screamed, "Don't let her...uommm!" Koala hands cupped Janice's mouth, silencing her and even though Taimu ripped at the fingers that held her, he could not get them off. Why couldn't he get them off? He was more Real.

  "Hold on!" he screamed at her.

  Her eyes. Frightened. Panicked. He pulled with every bit of his strength, willing everything in him to pull her free from the arms that held her. More of her emerged and he managed to grab ahold of the purple jumpsuit. "I've got you, I promise. I've got you!" He braced his body against the edges of the portal.

  She blinked and her eyes went behind him.

  Taimu glanced back at Ji-nai, and saw her moving again towards her portal.

  "Don't!" Taimu yelled again.

  Ji-nai paused.

  "Help me save her! Please!"

  Ji-nai withdrew from the portal, staring at them. He could see her shaking.

  "She'll die!" he screamed.

  Ji-nai's jaw tightened and a decision was made. She launched herself from her portal, throwing herself out towards them.

  But as soon as she did, Janice was pulled free from Taimu's grasp. He barely turned his head in time to catch the last flash of her eye and see the desperate hope in them disappear. She was gone.

  Taimu felt something in his hand and he looked down mutely. He saw torn fabric in his hand. Purple.

  Ji-nai was beside him. She had tears streaming down her face.

  Taimu stared at the cloth from Janice's jumpsuit. He felt the rough texture. He had cared for her, deeply. And now she was gone.

  "Janice," Taimu murmured. He looked up at Ji-nai. Saw pitying eyes, they meant nothing to him. "We should go," Taimu whispered. Janice died for him and Ji-nai to go to the True world. He would go for her. He put the purple cloth inside his uniform. "Will you trust me?"

  She stared at him, swallowed, suddenly nodded. "Yes," she said. It was Janice's voice. The same. But it was not at all Janice.

  "You are Real," he began slowly. "As am I. Janice died to save you and to bring you to a new world with me. This is our destiny," he said to her. He knew how it sounded, how hollow the words were on his own lips. But he said them because he meant them. There was nothing for him with Janice gone. Only Janice's goal. He could explain everything to Ji-nai, but what did it matter?

  "Who was she?" Ji-nai said.

  "A friend. A close friend."

  "I'm sorry," Ji-nai touched him on the arm. It felt Real.

  He pulled away. "Let's go."

  They floated towards the portal that would lead back towards the center of the universe, he was careful to use the edges of the portals to push themselves down the tunnel. He was not Janice who could will with her mind direction, or transport herself wherever she wished. He could get stuck if he didn't push hard enough off something. He would bet that Ji-nai wouldn't be able to teleport, either.

  Ji-nai had paused, she touched her mouth to her lips, looking out into space. "What are they doing?"

  Taimu floated beside her and looked through the window. He saw the creatures in huge numbers. They were swarming the ship. "I don't know," he said. They looked like massive dandelion seeds drifting and clustering around the Gateway ship.

  As Taimu and Ji-nai watched, the clustered seeds began glowing. Light spread brighter and brighter between them, linking rays connected the creatures, joining and merging until at once, the beams met.

  They formed a massive ray of light that shot out and cut off a part of the ship. There was no explosion, no sound, just a part of the ship that began to drift. The light from the creatures dimmed to zero but already Taimu could see them gathering again, the glow growing. The creatures shifted towards them.

  "Come on!" he yelled.

  They rushed to the next portal. He felt a sudden heat and the entire tunnel began to shimmer in white light.

  "What's happening?" Ji-nai cried.

  "I don't know!"

  He didn't want to wait and see. He pushed Ji-nai first through the portal and then he dashed through. As he made it through, he could feel flash of the heat of the tunnel's destruction right behind.

  This time they didn't wait, immediately moving towards the next portal. He took only a second to look behind him, and there was no portal left. Again, right as they were crossing the portal, the light consumed the tunnel.

  On the third portal, a seed of a question planted itself in his mind. Ji-nai crossed first, far earlier than he did. But he hesitated, waiting in the rising heat until he could not stand it anymore. Only then did he push himself through the tunnel. Again, right as he crossed, he felt the flash of heat cover him and the portal closed behind them.

  When they entered the Great Sphere, they entered a war zone.

  Koalas like the ones he'd seen here before swarmed the center of the Gateway ship. They spilled from the portals in endless numbers. They moved through the floating buildings, tearing and ripping the Real to pieces. Destroying the League's greatest treasures. The League of Real stood about the portal that Ji-nai and Taimu had emerged from. They let out a loud cheer when they saw Taimu.

  Jason teleported in front of them. He spoke to Ji-nai, winking at her. "Janice, I always knew it would be you." He smiled at Taimu. "And you, too, you bastard. Come on! Just focus on the center of the universe, and we'll make sure you get there."

  Taimu glanced at one of the great screens that mapped out the Gateway ship. A huge chunk of the ship had already been destroyed, it was maybe a quarter of what used to be there. Ji-nai gripped Taimu's arm. "I don't understand what's happening? Tell me what's happening!"

  "There, can you see it?" Taimu pointed at the center of the universe. "That's where we have to go. That's where we're going."

  "But why?" Ji-nai asked.

  "It's the True world through there. Until now you've been living in a fake world. Just focus on the light and we'll get there."

  The League began escorting Ji-nai and Taimu towards the center. The Koala's attacks grew more frantic. One of the men died. Another. As if in parallel with each death, the diagram of the Gateway ship lost branches as each man and women died. Light from several portals darkened. Ji-nai was crying. "I don't understand!" she cried.

  Taimu didn't either. But Janice had, and Janice had dreamed of a new race of humans living in a True world. A Real place. A gnawing thought persisted. What if Janice were wrong?

  Soon, there were only ten of the League left, then three, two, just Jason. With each death, another light shut out and the darkness closed in around them. Only the glow of the Gateway ship's diagram and one portal and the center of the universe still illuminated brightly.
Shadows of the army of Koalas swayed menacingly, silhouettes against the inside of the Great Sphere.

  Jason, a bigger man than most, teleported frantically. He was everywhere at once, and nowhere he was supposed to be. He killed hundreds of Koalas with a club in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other. But even he wasn't able to fend them off. The Koalas penetrated the protective shield that Jason offered, and Ji-nai and Taimu found themselves face to face with five Koalas at once. The ship fell to absolute silence. The last branch outside the Great Sphere dimmed and faded away, with it the last portal's light. Jason had died.

  Taimu and Ji-nai hovered directly in front of the center of the universe, the brightness of the center of the universe lit their entire bodies. The five Koalas were soon joined by the thousands of others, hanging menacingly near. But they did not approach. As if they could not.

  "What are we doing?" Ji-nai asked, her eyes wide.

  Taimu looked at her, seeing her as if for the first time. They'd had no chance to get to know each other, no chance to speak. But there was a deep connection with her, something from Janice he was sure, but something from himself too. "On the other side of this light is the True world. It is a place where we can be gods and where we could start a new race of Real humans." Taimu felt the light beckoning to him, reminding him of the power he'd felt, the use of his legs. He hadn't tried to fly, yet. The Koalas moved about anxiously, some threw themselves forward only to be pushed back as if the light of the center kept them at bay.

  "Why?" Ji-nai said.

  The question caught him unexpectedly. "Why?"

  "Why do we want to be gods? Why does Real even matter?"

  It was the first question he had asked Janice, too. He felt the flash of anger, the same anger he had seen in the League when he had asked. With so much sacrifice, with Janice's death, how could she treat the gift of living in the True world so casually? But her question rang true and deep, Real. It made him realize he had never truly answered his own question.

  He had seen the True world, lived in it. He had walked, run, commanded the clouds and the earth. But none of those answered the question of "why?"

  Slowly, a line of thought began to worm its way through his mind. First, the possibility, then the realization, the conclusion of what they'd been about to do crashed into him. "Oh my god," he whispered.

  "What is it?" Ji-nai asked. The Koalas had fallen silent, watching him and waiting.

  "They've been wrong this entire time. The League has been wrong." The details. "If the Argument of Constants, the Traveler's License says that all things Real are at all times constant...NOTHING is Real because everything must change."

  "Time travel," Ji-nai said. "You're saying the laws of time travel are wrong?"

  "The License is right, it is every reality's way of protecting itself from destruction. But the Argument is wrong because for anything to exist, they have to be dynamic and change. A single thought, a change of personality, a cell's existence all requires movement and change, which means..." When Taimu was about to leave his reality and the Koalas had attacked at the top of AIG, a man had died. Jason had mentioned when Taimu entered the Great Sphere that he missed the old Taimu. The man that had died, therefore, the man whose voice Taimu hadn't been able to place--was himself. An alternate reality of himself. That was how they'd known his name.

  As soon as Ji-nai's planned future had been altered by Taimu, not Janice because she couldn't change her own reality, Janice had died. It was Ji-nai's decision to help...no, it was because Taimu had convinced Ji-nai to change her original decision. Taimu was outside their reality and therefore the only one who could've changed things. He had caused Janice's death. When Taimu changed Janice's reality in any way, the Janice that he'd known couldn't exist. Thus, a new branch of the Gateway ship could be grown just as a branch of the Gateway ship could be destroyed. As each member of the League died, so also a branch of reality was removed.

  It meant that the Koalas were not so much aliens as much a part of nature, the enforcers of existence.

  And from the Koalas' reactions, if they were merely a part of the natural order of things, Taimu and Ji-nai had been about to destroy something on so massive a scale that the very bonds of realities were breaking.

  If they moved through the portal to the True world, something about the existence of Taimu and Ji-nai in the True would alter the True world's natural order like they'd altered Janice's reality. In result, the entire universe would cease to exist.

  "If the Argument is false because nothing is perfectly constant," Taimu said, "it means that either nothing is Real or EVERYTHING is Real. There's must be no such thing as Real or Unreal. Everything just is."

  Every reality, every person who had died or fought or been sacrificed. Even if they were mirrors of each other, they had been Real, then. Janice, a Real Janice, was dead.

  The boot had a consistently stronger effect on the different realities, like many of these items the League had considered "Real". The League, on the other hand, constantly changed between realities. That in itself was enough to prove the Argument false. But Taimu, he'd been static through the various realities. He didn't behave as Janice had expected because whatever the laws were governing him, they were simply different. Realness was a figment, a theory created by the League of Real. They were wrong, everything was Real and everything merely had different properties when they existed in realities not theirs.

  As soon as he realized it, the Gateway ship gave a great groan. The Koalas backed away further and a single portal's light began to glow like a candle's flickering. He looked at the ship's diagram, watching as a small branch emerged from one side like the sprouting of a tree. He wondered if at one time, there had only been one single branch, before the League.

  "What did you do?" Ji-nai asked.

  Taimu moved away from the center. "We've made a mistake. We've almost destroyed everything. If we enter into the True world, there won't be a True world left." He looked at the Koalas, finally understanding them. They weren't aliens, a jealous race of monkeys who didn't want mankind to take over their world. The Real humans had never been to the True world because humans couldn't exist there or because if they did, they would destroy the purity of the world. It was like the Christian heaven, where sin couldn't enter in.

  He didn't know why he had been allowed in. Maybe it was to realize this.

  "The Koalas are guardians," he said, "of time and reality. Each time we've broken into another reality, altering what has already been set--past, present, future, they've tried to stop us because of the damage we were creating. They're here to protect us." Every time something had been altered, the resistance that the Koalas offered changed. The stronger the impact of the change and the more damaging the change to reality was, the more the Koalas forces attacked. Just like the space creatures outside the Gateway ship.

  "What does that mean?" Ji-nai asked.

  "It means," I'm sorry Janice, "that if we return to our realities and our own times, we can live. If we don't and we enter that light, we'll cease to exist. Like you saw Janice in the last portal."

  "But everything is already destroyed," she said, pointing at the map.

  "No, not completely. Not our realities. See?" he gestured at the single branch that had grown from the ship's one side.

  "How do you know we'll destroy the universe?"

  "Because of the reactions of the Koalas, and the ship. When I changed my mind, the Koalas backed away and that branch of the Gateway grew back. You have to change your mind as well for your reality to return."

  Ji-nai gave him a guarded expression. "I asked to be part of the experiment."

  The statement threw him off. "What experiment?" Taimu asked.

  "I asked to be sent through time, even if I might be killed or thrown into some eternal limbo. We had no idea what could happen to me. I asked to be the first one."

  "Why?" Taimu asked.

/>   "Because I had no one. I had nothing. I felt like I had something more." She pointed at the portal to the True world. The Koalas leaned forward almost as one. "That is MORE. I didn't care about anyone or anything and I thought that by traveling through time, I might discover something wondrous. I have."

  More pieces fell into place. Janice's personality, her drive to find the True world. Her sacrifice. The words that she'd said to him.

  "You told me something, once," he said.

  Ji-nai looked oddly at him.

  "You didn't recognize her? The woman who we tried to save at the portal."

  Ji-nai shook her head. "Should I?"

  "She was you. Future you."

  Ji-nai gasped, floating closer to the center of the universe as she stared in panic at the Koalas. The Koalas hissed, moving in.

  "No!" Taimu said, holding out his hand. "No," he repeated, trying to calm her. "We changed reality, that is why it happened to her because she couldn't exist anymore after..." Because HE had changed things for Ji-nai.

  The League in their obsession to find what was Real changed things, breaking the Traveler's Hypocrisy. They manipulated the fifth dimension in a way that allowed them to bypass the laws of time.

  Janice had known this and she hadn't told Taimu. She'd known that with Ji-nai, she would cease to exist. But she'd believed so much that this was her mission even if she'd be replaced by Ji-nai.

  "After...?" Ji-nai prompted.

  "After I changed reality. I told you not to go through that portal like you originally would have. When you didn't, Janice would have never joined the League and never would have existed. If Janice never existed and the League never existed then we've altered THIS reality, even if it is between times. The Gateway has returned to the state it was before Janice, now."

  The True world's reality, if it was anything like the Gateway ship, should not be changed. There had to be some sensitive balance that would be broken if two people crossed into it. And it was just like human nature to enter a place and destroy it before even understanding the wonder and the sensitive balance that kept things in place.

  "Janice once told me, you once told me that if I wasn't happy it was because I chose to be unhappy. I told her that she was wrong."

  Ji-nai waited for him to continue.

  "But she was right. She told me that my will was just too weak, and that was why I was unhappy. What she didn't realize was that she was speaking for herself, too. If the League had only chosen to be content in their realities, this wouldn't have happened."

  Ji-nai nodded. "I think I understand. If we return to our realities right now, then our dimensions will continue to exist. We can preserve some humanity."

  "Yes," he said. She understood.

  She smiled, and glowed lightly. "Then should I return through the portal that I originally meant to? Or should I merely go back to my original time?"

  Her question made him laugh. By now the Koalas had backed away, melting through the two portal openings in the Great Sphere. "Well, if you go into the portal to travel into the future, we may end up on the same path as now, just with different 'Real' us. You'll find the League of Real and try to collect Real things, and once again, we'll be here ready to destroy the universe again. Or, you could just go back to your own time and pretend that the time machine didn't work, that the experiment failed, and make sure your scientist friend, Jason...Jo-sen, never discovers time travel again, thus securing the fate of the entire universe. Your choice."

  She nodded and there was a twinkle in her eye. "I understand and I'll choose to go home, no time traveling," she answered. "I'll choose to be content and happy."

  He hugged her. "Then let's be off, shall we?"

  They spent one last moment wandering the Great Sphere, sharing a friendship that they knew could never continue, split apart by different realities. He didn't know exactly why they spent the time talking, getting to know each other and asking one another questions. He guessed that they took the time to talk because the knowledge that there would be someone, even if in another reality, who understood them would carry them through after seeing all this. It meant that someone out there cared about what they'd done and the choice they'd made. They shared something unique and special that no one else could. They bonded because regardless of whatever happened in their lives, they knew in their hearts that their friendship was 'Real' across time and reality.

  They parted with another hug and went their separate ways. Him, through one portal. Her, through the opposite.

  At the end of the long, empty Gateway tunnel, there was only one portal. It was a portal with a single symbol over it. He knew it meant nothing. He looked at the white surface, touched the silver rim, and remembered Janice and her dream to find the Real. Who knew that it had been in front of them this whole time? That everything was Real in their own reality. Though the properties and the physics and the interactions across the realities were different, it was all Real. He focused on the single moment in time when the adventure had first begun and Taimu floated through the portal.

  * * * * *

  He stretched, and pulled, and tore. He was thrown through time, space, reality. He emerged on the other side...

  And hit the concrete sidewalk. You deserved that, Taimu thought to himself, looking at the sidewalk from an angle he hadn't seen in some time. Something purple obscured his vision. He reached up and took it out. It was the purple fabric of Janice's jumpsuit. He lifted his head an inch off the ground.

  He saw that he was nearby his house, without a wheelchair in sight. He was home.

  "God! Are you all right?" her voice.

  Taimu turned his head and looked up. He saw a woman, familiar, blond haired and beautiful. But she wasn't from another reality, she was from his. You can stand, if your will is strong enough, her voice came to his mind.

  He laughed at himself for listening to that part of himself. But why not? If certain people in their own realities had special physical properties, maybe he could stand.

  Taimu rolled over, fingered the fabric. If your will is strong enough...

  He slowly sat up. He told one leg to bend, and the other, and both to stand.

  Nothing happened. Well, he kind of tilted to one side. He smiled to himself and realized that he wouldn't have it any other way. It wasn't fair that he was paralyzed as a child for his father's bad driving, but it was what it was. And it was HIS reality.

  The woman, Janice, lifted him with her arm, supporting him. She was surprisingly strong. She noticed how light he was and how his legs hung limply. She lifted her eyebrows and Taimu noticed that he was still wearing the marshmallow uniform.

  "What happened? And..." she started, glancing at his legs.

  "How'd I get out here?" Taimu finished. He shrugged. "I have no idea. Sleepcrawling, maybe?" he joked.

  He probably looked injury prone wearing the padded uniform.

  She laughed. No glow, no glitter. Just normal, human, laughter. "Where do you live? I'll bring you back." She grunted and shrugged him closer to her body.

  "Thank you, I'd appreciate it," he said, holding out his free hand. "My name's Taimu."

  "I'm Eve."

  Taimu and Eve. "It's good to meet you, Eve."

  END

  About the Author:

  Mikael Aizen is the pseudonym of a professionally published writer who wishes to keep his self-published works separate from his traditionally published ones.

  He has also published:

  An Epic Fantasy Novella, "Guilt Corrupted" about the line between self-preservation and self-betrayal.

  A Slipstream novelette about the forbidden longings in all of us called "The Sway of Disaster."

  A Dystopian Death Games Thriller novel called "Murder Genes."

 
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