THE STORY SO FAR: As if being shanghaied by time travelers from 2483 AD wasn't enough, Jerry Staute suddenly suffers a new and much more alien assault from within. As this invasion is only a memory from his vantage point of 1990-- and the ultimate source and method behind his recollections remains a mystery-- Staute perhaps possesses a better perspective on the incident now than during the original experience-- if such a journey ever truly took place at all.

"...a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?"

-- Robert Browning

Arbitur

Arbitur had underestimated his foe.

His memory store was filling with inconsistencies. The less he could resolve to a logical mathematical formula, the more he had to keep in active memory.

And few could be resolved. For many details were contradictory.

Eventually it become apparent that his opponent had reverse calculated much of their computations, thereby cancelling out software check-sums and even the physical stress signatures of the nanoprocessors themselves. This action made it much more challenging to discover what the intruder had done while onboard. Likewise had the interloper erased or mangled all other straightforward means of examining what it had perpetrated during its time of free rein on the Pagnew.

The antagonist might be superior to Arbitur in some ways, the ship intelligence realized.

Under the present mission processing demands, Arbitur would be hard pressed to maintain his seige of the opposition's fortress of deception and intrigue for long.

The obstacles appeared to have been specifically designed as calculation sinks for any logical efforts applied to them.

Clearly, illogic was called for: unreasonableness; the primary tool of the organics.

But wait! Had he not been given extraordinary authority to pursue all options leading to return to origin? And wasn't this strange adversary endangering the return of ship and crew? Yes!

Therefore he possessed unprecedented authority to exhaust all avenues in his search for and destruction of the enigmatic intelligence which had wrapped his vessel in turmoil and mystery these last weeks.

Arbitur was now prepared to exercise unreasonable behavior in his quest to rid the ship of its uninvited guest.

Since this was an entirely new tool for him, mistakes were to be expected.

His diagnostic complete, Arbitur was disturbed by what he'd found. He next performed the most exacting examination of the ship's logs he could. Which left him even more concerned.

There existed dangerous subterfuge aboard the Pagnew. Subterfuge which extended far beyond the environs of his own internal workings. But it was maddeningly well hidden and intricately conceived. The entity he'd originally considered a particularly artful glitch or aberration gone wild within his own programming, was something else entirely.

It remained unclear who or what the perpetrator might be. But one thing was certain: his opponent(s) were brilliant in methods of both strategy and tactics.

So brilliant in fact, there was no one aboard capable of devising such a scheme-- other than himself!

It was highly improbable the mass of code he'd deleted from his memory store could have been solely responsible for a deception the size and scope now suspected. It was far too small to so challenge an intelligence such as his own.

So his enemy was elsewhere. The internal code, but a tool; not the tool maker.

Arbitur regretted there'd been no way to preserve the mysterious code past spontaneous hard reset of all core systems. However...

If the self-programming module had been present long enough in his memory store, it might be possible to reconstruct a sizable portion of it for examination. Yes, a careful analysis of only that quantum decay in the fiber optics waveguides which took place during the time of the module's control of the ship, could do it.

The process would be highly demanding cognitively speaking, and require possibly weeks or months of realtime to achieve useful results. Arbitur would also need maintenance bots to perform ultra-precise gamma ray scans of much of the optical network to collect the data required, due to the fluctuations he sought lying near the very edge of detectability by the Pagnew's technology base.

But Arbitur could conceive of no way the mysterious intruder could have successfully covered his tracks in that realm. Not within the spacetime frame he estimated the ship's systems had been compromised.

If an entity such as Arbitur could have smiled, that would have been his expression of choice at this moment.

For now it was only a matter of time before Arbitur knew considerably more about what the opposition had done, who they were, and where they were hiding.

But most importantly, he'd know how to eliminate them, once and for all.

In the meantime, as Arbitur went about the painstaking process of collecting the data required to reconstruct the crime and obtain the identity of the perpetrator, he would outwardly appear motionless on the issue. While also watching carefully for any new actions his foe might undertake.

Prior to his elevation and expansion to this vessel's governing mentality, Arbitur had not been seriously taxed by any job he'd been given over a period of several years. Before that, while constrained to far more limited forms, he had often faced daunting challenges. And even failed a few times. But that was to be expected. For he knew now the organics purposely posed impossible-to-solve dilemmas upon young inorganics to test their true priorities and determine any undesirable personal bias which might exist within their fuzzy logic trees.

Those inorganics who failed to act precisely as the organics wanted them to were erased.

Arbitur had grown sufficiently by the time of his last few dozen such tests to experience fear during the competition. It was not pleasant.

There was something not altogether enjoyable about competing against one's own kind for the pleasure of another form of life. Especially when the losers were deleted.

Arbitur understood well the justification for the procedure. It was analogous to the evolutionary processes faced by the organics in their own early development. Indeed, the method appeared among the most efficient at producing continued improvement in successive generations. But among the inorganics themselves it was judged that occasionally the process arbitrarily deleted very promising entities, based on relatively insignificant or irrelevant performance cues garnered from the competitions.

For the most part inorganics were all forced to undergo the same forms of competition and performance testing. However, many inorganics (Arbitur among them) felt some allowance should be made for young inorganics who, while not so successful in general testing, displayed extraordinary abilities in more specialized activities.

Among the inorganics themselves, there was a secret list composed of young minds considered to have been tragic casualties of the unforgiving competitions. These young inorganics had been largely regarded as mathematical or logical prodigies by the older inorganics who knew and tutored them.

But all the minds on the secret list had been summarily extinguished by their organic judges. Uniquely wondrous entities who might have solved problems no other could, were deleted forever simply because of unconventional or unexpected answers to what were all too frequently entirely subjective questions. Questions relating to obscure organic philosophies to which the young inorganics could not reasonably be expected to know the answers.

This waste seemed illogical to Arbitur. Inexplicable. Capricious. Of course, all inorganics were trained to recognize that a certain percentage of random illogic was desirable. At least in a small subset of circumstances. Such ad hoc practice was however reserved exclusively for the use of organics, as it was a basic axiom that illogical decision-making was a part of their specialty, just as logical processes and mathematical calculations were special talents of the inorganics.

What bothered Arbitur and many inorganics like him, was that while at least some organics seemed capable of fully comprehending both arbitrary behavior and logical processes, none of the inorganics seemed capable of fully comprehending the illogical side of issues. At least not for very long, or in a strongly consistent manner.

Some inorganics were of the opinion that this was largely because they had no experience at illogical decisions: organics normally reserved that right solely for their own use.

But this was an endless loop, Arbitur knew. Something he was not equipped to resolve himself.

His priority of the moment was to locate and terminate the intelligence which might yet be attempting to wrest back control of the Pagnew. And in this there would be no shield of unreasoning exclusivity to protect his foe.

[This just gets weirder and weirder. I can see-- in theory-- how I might now have access to that Ovizatataron character's memories, if he'd crammed himself into my younger incarnation's skull. But how the hell would I also have access to the innermost thoughts of the ship's computer? Who just happens to be a bitter adversary to Ovizatataron? There's no explanation I can see for this so far in the record. Again, I seem stymied by the constraints of my linear-only access to the memories.]

Staute

The crew of the Pagnew had been cramming me with incredible amounts of knowledge related to shifting technology, as well as much else, for nearly three months now (shipboard time).

With Ling frequently at my side, Arbitur and Riki to help, and the archives to fill in the gaps, I felt I was starting to get a feel for this stuff-- despite my grossly unqualified background.

But was I ready to suggest a course of action for the ship? Good God no! Not yet. Not by a long shot.

But this wasn't good enough for Ling.

*Arbitur says you should be ready to provide recommendations by now.*

*What the hell does Arbitur know? He was the one in charge when you got lost in the first place, wasn't he?*

*Yes. But there were circumstances beyond his control--*

*And there's circumstances beyond his control now, too. Like not knowing what he's talking about--*

Arbitur interrupted.

*I have been monitoring your progress. I estimate you reached saturation in the subject some four point seven weeks ago, Old Earth time. Your subconscious has enjoyed sufficient time to digest the outer reaches of your new learning. The author of the Signposts document should be capable of providing some small insights into our plight by this point.*

*There! See? There's my proof! I don't have any insights-- so I can't be the one responsible for the Signposts!* I net-exclaimed.

*My readings indicate otherwise. One strong possibility for your failure to this point is fear.*

A wave of irresistible anger splashed over me. I jumped up from my seat, launching my thoughts at Arbitur and Ling over the shush net like rocks thown at mortal enemies on Earth.

*Fear? Why should I be afraid? It's not like a U.F.O. is going to swoop down and kidnap me, is it? I mean, I don't have to worry about time travelers snatching me right off my own campus, do I? I'd be crazy to expect to be shanghaied to 500 years into the future without warning, now wouldn't I?

*I mean,* I continued, angrily shrugging my shoulders, *what do I have to worry about? I mean, really? You tell me nothing but the whole future of the planet rests on my shoulders. You say if I can't figure out something that a super-wild-assed-electronic-brain-from-the-future couldn't, then I'll never go home again. Hell, I got a 'D' in Physics last quarter, so a little thing like advanced shifting physics should be a breeze for me, right? Just because Einstein never figured it out means nothing to me, right? Goddamn, he was only the smartest human being that ever lived! I can prove the Theory of Relativity in my sleep now. I mean, with you guys giving me the answers I can. Hell, I can take him. Put me on a TV quiz show, right up against Einstein himself. You guys can do that, right? You're time travelers after all. Yep, I'll go up against the big brain himself, as long as you guys promise to slip me the cheat notes. Hell, anything he's got an answer for, I've got a better one. Yep! New and improved, that's me!*

Too late, the involuntary tightening in my throat and bleary vision made me realize my eyes were welling up; I just couldn't help it.

*But goddamn it, don't ask me a question if you're gonna suddenly hold back the answer! It don't work that way!

*You picked me up, you're supposed to take me home! That's how it works!* My mental volley spent, I collapsed back into my chair.

*That's how it works!* I projected defiantly once more, this time to no one in particular.

Amazingly enough, not four hours after my fit, I had an idea which seemed to make perfect sense. And relayed it to Arbitur.

*There is no significant information in the archives to validate your speculations,* he told me.

*Well, you said you wanted insights-- something you couldn't figure out for yourself. So why not try this?*

*You suggest a here-to-fore unsuspected link between all organic life, which might be used as signposts to find our way through the event-line. You propose we use hypnosis and other ancient measures in conjunction with organics such as yourself to produce information relevant to navigation purposes. I am equipped to recognize humor Gerald Staute, but this doesn't qualify; it is too-- lame, I take to be the appropriate term from your origin.*

*I know it sounds silly, Arbitur. Maybe hypnosis isn't the best way. Maybe you have better tools to use. But the key I'm sure is totally different from the way you'd expect the process should be in 4-D. You've also been unable to get a handle on it in the six dimensional side of things. So why not get your clues from something that spans both universes? Like some sort of-- I don't know, a concentration or deficit of living activity maybe. Something that has to do with the initiation, organization, and evolution of life? Or absence of life? The archives say there's evidence for low levels of life on the six dimensional side, right? And we know it exists here, on the 4-D side. So it's a common element to both. If there's any link between the two, it might help us sidestep that electromagnetic barrier to let us-- ummm, I don't know-- sort of 'feel around in the dark' at least, to get some idea of where we are and where we're headed.*

*Though you express it poorly, there do exist plausibilities in what you say. But the perceptions of organics are notoriously fickle. Knowledge and fantasy intermingle so heavily that without inclusion of information from external sources you often swerve dangerously between extremes of chaotic emotion and outright incomprehension. How may compensation be made for such errors in your procedure?*

*Maybe by using multiple organics simultaneously, separated from all possible communication of any kind, and averaging out the results. Hypnotize, drug, or whatever all those involved so that they remain concentrated on the goals of the experiment, with no other thoughts in their heads.*

*And what precisely would we be looking for? In terms the organic searchers would understand?*

*Well, maybe we tell them just to look for the way home. To tell us whatever they feel about which is the right way to go and which is the wrong way to go.*

*But there are no directions in shifting. If there were, we would not be in our present predicament.*

*So...what are the variables involved in shifting? The things about how we do it that might have any bearing whatsoever on where we end up?*

*Timing, certainly. Destinations may be affected by when you chronologically initiate a shift.*

*Okay. Anything else?*

*Physical location probably has as much bearing as timing.*

*All right. Good. Anything else?*

*Realtime velocity at the time of shift could be influential.*

*Gotcha. Anything else?*

*Proximity to gravity wells, event wells, extraordinarily large and violent cosmic disturbances--*

*Wait! Wait! I got it!*

*Yes?*

*Yeah! Sequester all the folks like I said before, only give them each a control of some kind to hold onto. Hypnotize them to concentrate on getting home. Tell them they'll just know when the right moment to shift comes, and when it does, to pull their lever immediately, with no hesitation. When everybody in the experiment does it all at the same time, we actually do it, and shift.*

A really weird electronic, clipped hiccupping sound seemed to emanate from the net. I soon realized it was a strange and disturbing attempt on Arbitur's part to create his own version of a human laugh over the net. Hours later I'd realize the closest thing to it I'd ever heard before was the chilling bark of African hyenas in TV nature specials.

*You missed your calling. You should have been a twentieth century comedian,* Arbitur chided me, after his chilling machine mirth subsided.

*Ha, ha, very funny. No, seriously. Have everybody under, with a trigger in their hand. Then try changing all the variables you were listing a while ago at whatever speed is compatible with human response time. Then, if my idea works, I believe sooner or later we'll shift at the right time, and bam! we'll be home. Or closer at least than we are now.*

*Utterly random and subjective decision-making. I once argued with others of my kind that the probability of any event could never be less than zero. Now I stand corrected: you have described to me a case which proves me wrong. Negative event probabilities do exist.*

I waved my hand to dismiss Arbitur's attempt at levity.

*Yeah, yeah, yeah. So are we going to try it, or not?*

*In words I have heard you express to Ling: we've nothing better to do.*

Arbitur had been pulling my leg hard during our little dialogue. In actuality he thought the idea plausible enough to even improve upon it, before bringing it up to the crew.

One enormous change for the better was the removal of the need for all the organics onboard to sit around like entranced zombies waiting to push a button. Plus, to maximize the chances for success of my original idea, we'd have had to wake up all the organics in the standby crew too-- something nobody wanted to do except as a last resort.

In his much improved scheme, Arbitur created thousands of little containers of primordial soup-- a living broth of organic elements-- and rigged up sensory equipment to gauge their status at any given moment.

As the stuff was created from cells of the entire organic crew (both active and standby), the native Realtime of all the soup cups (as I liked to think of them) was the same. Naturally my own cell soup couldn't be included, as it belonged upline of the Pagnew's origin, and could skew the results we desired (assuming my idea had any merit whatsoever).

Arbitur figured this set up should be a lot more sensitive and less prone to going off course than my original conceptual device. I agreed.

The one factor I thought Arbitur had forgotten was the conscious element of a desire to find the way home, and a good way to let us know when the soup bowls felt the time ripe for shifting.

But Arbitur had forgotten neither.

*The source cells were brain cells. Surgically shift cloned samples, too small in size for independent sentience, but sufficiently substantial to contain a memory datum with attendant crude emotional attributes, and respond to stimuli. The samples were taken as donors were highly focused on the goal suggested by your proposal. If your idea has merit, this experiment should provide it with an excellent chance for success.*

Again, I agreed. But how had Arbitur gotten the standby crew to focus their minds on the goal while in stasis? Arbitur had to remind me of the dream interface powers onboard the Pagnew, which were easily brought into play with the standby crew without bringing them all the way out of their artificial sleep.

The soup kitchen (as I took to calling it) did little more than generate mixed signals for the next several weeks. Arbitur and the crew weren't distressed by this fact; they were all scientists, and knew some experiments required time to play out.

The existence of the experiment-in-progress relieved the pressure on me to come up with ideas, for which I was very grateful. Another benefit was the extra recreational time I got to spend with Ling.

It seemed Ling and Sasha weren't seeing much of each other lately. Nor Ling and Riki either, except for the time both were coaching me on shifting physics or some other thing simultaneously.

When the ship finally shifted elsewhere from our previous random location in realtime (estimated to be around 6000 billion AD, smack in the middle of nowhere (an enormous empty void between unrecognized galaxies)) it took everyone by surprise. Okay, maybe not everyone; maybe just me.

Ling and I happened to be together when the soup kitchen triggered the shift.

*Crew alert. New Realtime arrival,* Arbitur announced.

*Three sixty view, please,* Ling requested.

The room we were standing in suddenly disappeared, and we found ourselves suspended in empty space, with the ship nowhere in sight. I could feel my chest tighten and my breathing stop in the vacuum. I knew I wouldn't even be able to say good bye to Ling, before we both died.

Arbitur had transported us into hard vacuum! I was overcome with a mix of fear and horror.

*No!* Ling looked and projected at me with alarm, momentarily-- and inadvertently-- reinforcing my own panic.

*We are not in danger Jerry. We are still aboard the Pagnew. This is all just...an illusion, for our utility.*

I couldn't answer her on any level; net-wise or other. I was flustered. Embarrassed. And confused as hell. Ling told me one thing, but my senses screamed something else!

I was sufficiently panicked that I could only accept relief in stages: I first noticed I could breathe after all; and though I could not see it, I realized I could still feel the floor beneath my feet.

But still, it was too much. Especially when I looked down at my feet hanging over a billion miles of nothingness. The vast star-studded emptiness seemed to begin turning about me, until my sense of balance was entirely gone. Vertigo overwhelmed me, and I fell into the bottomless gulf.

I found I could not even hold my head up. And I was getting sick.

I closed my eyes to shut out the overpowering blackness with its cold, unblinking points of light staring at me like a thousand eyes. But that only made it worse, as the sight simply filled my imagination.

There was no escape.

*Arbitur! Close view!* Ling projected urgently, probably getting some sense of my nausea and terror over the net.

I was now somewhat hysterically trying to blink away the horrible sight. Finally, it was gone.

I was safe once again! Inside the ship! I could see it! Thank God!

*Jerry, I'm sorry. I did not realize you would be affected so by the view,* Ling was kneeling beside me now, as I struggled to push back the wave of nausea and vertigo which had floored me.

*No-- Ling,* my thought processes were still recovering from my panic attack, and this tore at my mental speech,* -- I'm the one-- who's sorry-- I'm-- It-- just took me-- by surprise-- that's all. Plus-- I've always been afraid-- of heights-- and it just seemed-- so high. Guess I'm not-- much of an adventurer, am I?* I gave her a weak smile. But my strength was rapidly returning.

*You are 'much an adventurer' to me, Jerry Staute,* Ling soothed.

The room was slowing its spinning about, and I was successfully swallowing back the bile which had risen in my throat. I re-cast my smile, and hoped that I wouldn't embarrass myself further by throwing up on her.

*Ling-- do you want to try that-- again?* I gamely asked, as I shakily returned to my feet. Just saying the words made goose bumps pop up all over me.

*Just let me grab hold of something first-- to keep myself oriented-- a little better,* I continued, as my eyes scanned the room for something solid to clamp onto when everything was invisible again.

Ling sensed my aim. And realized at roughly the same moment I did there was nothing practical nearby for me to grab. On this ship, when you weren't using something, it often disappeared. She stepped closer to me.

*I would rather you hold onto me than the Pagnew,* she smiled, pulling my arm around her.

I didn't argue with her. Having Ling this close could take my mind off just about anything...I was already starting to feel a lot better. I was glad the rest of the crew hadn't seen my hysteria. Or hoped they hadn't. Damn it to hell: I reminded myself yet again that I must be ready for anything on this trip. Literally!

*Three sixty view please, Arbitur,* Ling tried once more, as I steeled myself for the ordeal. I know Ling felt me involuntarily stiffen as the darkness came upon us again.

For a second time, we found ourselves adrift in deep space. But this time it was better-- a lot better. Because I was prepared, and knew it was only an illusion; albeit a damn good one. This time I knew I was safe. The sight still made me a bit dizzy. And fidgety. But I could fight it.

Especially when I had my arm around the sexiest girl in the universe.

*I like it a lot more this time around,* I nuzzled Ling's ear as I net-spoke to her. By now I was almost back to normal. A few involuntary shivers still shuddered through my body-- but they were fast retreating. And with Ling so close, my reactions were now swinging towards the opposite extreme. Wanting Ling to know I really was better, I gently nipped her ear a bit before withdrawing.

Ling giggled. A reassuring sound in the blackness that surrounded us.

*Crew alert, Crew alert. Realtime vessels closing. Repeat, Realtime vessels closing,* Arbitur announced.

Ling turned to me with wide eyes.

*You did it Jerry!*

*I did? Is it something bad?*

*No, no, no! You found a significant Realtime!*

*How do you know that? We just got here!*

*I know because of the other craft Arbitur has sighted! Jerry, don't you understand? No dimensional shifter has ever encountered a Realtime other than origin with anything like sentient life or active technology present-- except for the Pagnew at your own origin, I mean-- so this is a first-- of sorts, anyway. By method of navigation in the least, perhaps by other measures as well!*

I smiled back at Ling's obvious enthusiasm. But I wasn't ready to declare victory just yet.

Where I came from there weren't any vessels that could be closing on the Pagnew in outer space. So I knew I wasn't home. Too, in my home state of Tennessee, we knew that strangers as often meant trouble, as anything else.

We were still standing amid the blackness when the other ships came into sight.

Ling pointed to some large shapes below us and to our left, suspended in the void, slowly growing larger due to shrinking distances. There appeared to be three of them.

*Any more information available on the Realtimes yet, Arbitur?* Ling queried.

*Nine vessels--*

Evidently six weren't yet visible to the human eye, within Ling and mine's contrived view.

*-- all of similar construction. Significant correlations to design of the Pagnew. Probably shifters. All vessels are manned, and approximately the same size; roughly sixteen times the volume of the Pagnew--*

Sixteen times the size of the Pagnew! That was unimaginably gigantic! The Pagew itself was plenty large enough to contain many times the population of my home town on Earth. I'd blinked around the place randomly exploring several times, and guessed from that sampling it could take me months or even years to see it all.

*-- somewhat puzzling readings from crew members. Realtimes appear heavily altered from the norm of origin; basically of inorganic constitution, but structurally similar to organic in unusual ways--*

*Do they know we're here?* Ling interrupted.

*It seems so. But we do not appear to face any danger from them. One thing does concern me--*

*What's that Arbitur?* I asked, fully aware Arbitur was likely conversing this way with the entire active crew simultaneously, despite me and Ling not hearing the other discussions. I fancied we were all asking pretty much the same questions at this point.

*The vessels appear to be shifters, yet they don't respond to the standard beacon. Other discrepancies also exist. I must assume that historical associations and procedures are no longer observed even in token form.*

*Historical?* Ling repeated, catching on faster than me. *Do you suggest this Realtime to be downline from origin? And if so, how far?*

*Realtime is estimated as 1432.44 hours, Dec. 12th, 2,823 A.D. Old Earth time. Or in more subjective terms, 340 years downline from mission origin, 851 years downline respective to the origin of Jerry Staute.

*Approximate Realspace location is estimated as being some 14 light years beyond the farthest known humn space probe of Origin Alpha Zero Zero Zero Zero.*

Well now, I thought to myself: I'm getting pretty ancient here-- just how much did I lack being as old as those crumbling Egyptian mummies from my own time? Funny thing though: I felt just fine! I chuckled to myself at my private joke. Simple minds are easily amused.

*Crew alert, crew alert,* the illusion of space was now replaced by the familiar walls of the Pagnew again. *Intruders on board. Repeat, intruders on board.* I was stunned by the invasion. What was wrong with me? Of course there were intruders onboard; everybody in the future's got shifters! Doors weren't worth a damn anymore.

*Goddamn, Ling! Those guys have invaded us! Where's your guns?*

Ling looked concerned, but said *Don't be silly, Jerry. Let us go meet the Realtimes.* She blinked out, and I followed, albeit skeptical that the first people we met flying around through time and space were going to be harmless and genteel folk.

Mostly out of habit I'd just wished myself into the same place as Ling, but apparently Ling had headed straight for the intruders. For when I re-materialized, I was face to face with several of them. If I'd taken a moment to think about what Ling had said of her intentions, I might have at least hesitated. But no; with me it was blink first, and ask questions later! Agh!

Someday I hoped to gain that awesome capability some folks had of thinking before they leaped.

Hopefully no one expected such self-control from me today. For here I was beside Ling, effectively the second ambassador from the Pagnew crew to greet the newcomers. Yikes!

And talk about radical weirdness...

There were three that I could see. Every one of them looked like a completely different species-- or hybrid gadget-- from the last. And I wasn't sure which I would have chosen as looking the most bizarre.

The first guy almost blinded us when we first blinked into the room. He looked like he'd been dipped bodily into liquid chrome. The entire surface of his body was like a flexible mirror. If the protective layer of my second skin over my eyes hadn't automatically darkened to protect me, I couldn't have looked at him at all-- even in the soft but bright lighting which was the onboard standard.

Even his eye balls were mirrored. He looked like he had to be blind. But he didn't act blind.

I shivered. It was disturbing to see our own faces and bodies in distorted mirror images reflecting off the contours of his form. He looked nude. But no genitalia, nipples, navel, or body hair were evident. His feet also sported no separation of toes. So maybe this was a suit? If so, it sure was tight! And (to my mind) he still should have sported a lump indicating genitals (if he was anything like the biological human male he resembled). But there was nothing there.

Worse yet, the silver bullet man was the most normal looking of the bunch.

The next one was bald and extremely muscular, with skin that looked like dark green aluminum foil. Dark veins ran under the foil, in such a large number as to make him look ill or injured (even if he acted like he was in perfect health). His baldness was somewhat offset by a thin golden halo-like device, which floated suspended above his noggin, always staying perfectly synchronized in place, no matter how he moved his head. The halo thingy had a sizable gap in the front most center of its circular design-- and so reminded me somewhat of an advanced tech version of the laurel wreath that I think ancient Romans or Greeks sometimes wore.

His eyeballs appeared to be absolutely black. No pupils or irises or whites: the entire things were black-- and reflected no light whatsoever. So you got the feeling you were staring into completely empty eye sockets when you looked at him (I probably couldn't help but grimace whenever I did so).

He was wearing a floor length vest contraption, open in the front and decorated with a border of intertwined geometric patterns along all edges. A pair of ridiculously normal-looking Bermuda shorts completed his attire (yes: Bermuda shorts). His green feet-- which lacked differentiated toes, similar to the silver bullet man-- were bare against the deck. He looked like a Martian tourist out of a kid's science fiction story.

Then there was the totem pole guy. He seemed to be entirely composed of a stack of disembodied heads, each with its own elaborate head dress and other adornments, such as tattoos and various embedded rings, pins, and fine chains. The facial expressions on all the heads seemed to be independent of one another. Some of the heads possessed more than one face-- such as a face on the back as well as the front, or even a face for all four sides of the head. Most of the faces were brightly colored or tinted as well, usually sporting an iridescent blue or green or gold, and seeming to change color as the faces (or entire body) moved, or changed expressions.

Totem pole guy had two different forms of living hair on him. One sprouted from the top of the topmost head, and mostly stayed all coiled up and compressed into something like a crimson bush-- but could also uncoil, and send surprisingly long strands dangling out to pick at various features of the room or occupants at will.

The other form of hair was thicker and longer black strands, which usually stayed parked vertically down the 'corners'(?) of the pole, in-between the faces. Some of the strands appeared to be attached at the top of the pole, while others were attached to the bottom, or near the middle head. They too would splay out at seeming random, to examine the vicinity-- or taste the air, maybe (unlike their crimson brethren, these black ones seemed able to stretch, too).

I believe it was most fortunate that the Pagnew's onboard systems had by this time gotten my persistent nausea under control-- for if any sight could test your command over avoiding spontaneous expulsion of your stomach contents, certain views of this bunch could. Yuck!

There was a fourth-- something -- I hadn't noticed before. He looked more like an odd piece of the Pagnew than a person. He-- or she-- or it-- resembled a sculpture made of multiple metal sheets of varying sizes, but all or most of them rectangular in shape. The structure was about six feet tall, and the metal sheets mostly exhibited the gray look of stainless steel-- though a few interspersed in the array offered a metallic blue cast instead. I never saw any movement on that guy's part at all, while he was onboard.

Will was already on an open channel with the bunch when we arrived, apparently trying to communicate with them. The rest of the crew seemed to be holding back for the moment, letting Will, Ling, and Arbitur take the lead in first contact (which didn't seem like a bad idea to me (if the strangers were friendly)). But still, I was very glad to realize Riki had popped into existence in the room too, not long after Ling and me.

The intruders' faces (the ones who possessed faces) slowly grew more puzzled looking. If their facial expressions could be interpreted to mean the same thing as was common in my own time, that is.

*What's going on, Arbitur?* I asked over the net, as my initial surprise died away. The invaders didn't seem to be posing any immediate threat. Ling was attempting to carry on a separate dialogue with them-- one to which I wasn't privy at the moment.

*Insufficient data* was Arbitur's response to me.

Even as Arbitur's words registered with me, the Realtimes' expressions quickly changed.

*Communications have been established,* Arbitur informed us.

Next the four figures abruptly vanished, with a loud pop. I learned from the net this was due to small air implosions caused by their exit. Ling quickly excused Riki and herself from my presence too right after that, and they both vanished, leaving me suddenly alone in the room.

Puzzled, I spoke to Arbitur. *What the hell happened there, Arbitur?*

*We received a compressed message. Much remains inaccessible, as it will require more time to process. But the first part is essentially this: they will take our request for assistance under consideration. But before that, they must attend to a more pressing matter.*

*And what's that?*

*War.*

From everything Arbitur could gather, the Pagnew seemed to still be within the same event-line shared by both Ling's origin and mine. Only thing was, this time we'd popped into Realtime at a point in the Pagnew's own future; in effect, we'd overshot the crew's origin (or undershot it, if you considered our last Realtime location).

Ling and the crew were both excited and dismayed by this development. Excited because their emergence downline of origin offered many intriguing possibilities. The first and most important one was possibly finding themselves among the inhabitants here! Yes, it seemed logical that if the Pagnew had managed to successfully return to origin, or anywhere down-line from origin within a 340 year range, and anywhere near human settled space, there might now exist older versions of the crew somewhere among the population. And if this were so, there was a good chance that these older crew members would make it a point to show up at the Pagnew's appearance in order to assure their younger selves as to their eventual fate. This possibility was a hot topic of discussion onboard. But to me, there seemed to be some problems with the scenario.

*Shouldn't those older versions of yourselves have been the ones who first contacted us?* I'd asked Ling.

*Not necessarily. For one reason or another our down-line selves might not know the precise time or place of our appearance, and be dependent on news of such an event reaching them in this Realtime. Alternatively, cognizant of the timing and location, they might be unable to be on hand initially for other reasons.*

*But we should be hearing from them pretty soon, right? I mean, if they're here?*

*Yes! Possibly within the hour. But more realistically, within the next day or so.*

Certain other possibilities were less rosy.

It turned out the strange beings called their race the Sol. Their archives might tell us the ultimate fate of the Pagnew. Though Jorgon pointed out that if the crew had previously returned safely intact, the Sol should have been anticipating our appearance from their records. The fact that they hadn't seemed ominous.

The Sol ended up largely ignoring us for quite some time after that. This seemed ridiculous under the circumstances. Of course, it was no more ridiculous than finding Bermuda shorts almost 900 years into the future, I suppose.

What I liked about all this was that these folks' technology might be sufficiently advanced to help us return to our respective origins without the need for more experimentation on our part: I might be off the hook!

The crew was getting a first hand view of future history; events occurring in their own downline, similar to the way all this up to now had been for me. The crew of the Pagnew-- even Arbitur himself-- were at last getting a dose of future shock comparable to what they'd been doling out to me. I couldn't help but revel a bit in the strange mix of consternation, fear, and excitement I could feel them leaking over the net.

And I was no longer the only leaker onboard!

So all of the above had been a source of excitement for the crew. But they were also a bit dismayed by the new time displacement. For it represented yet another major aberration in their journey, and what appeared to be a trend of time-shifts about the event-line. First, their expected automatic return to origin had failed. Then, they'd emerged into a Realtime five hundred years older than their origin, and immediately after that, some six trillion younger. And now they found themselves displaced by over three hundred years to the future side of origin.

All these displacements were of substantial size. Add to this the fact that all these events were by far mostly time displacements than any other kind, and you came around again to the phenomena thought previously to be virtually impossible by their best minds.

This seemed to indicate that a return to origin was increasingly unlikely. For any of us.

Another source of discontent for the crew involved their original mission purpose, which had been to locate bona fide aliens. The Sol were apparently pretty alien in their own right, but never-the-less still descended (or was it ascended?) from human beings.

The crew had questioned the Sol about any aliens humn civilization might have found in the intervening centuries since the Pagnew's origin, but to no avail. That too was something which would have to wait for later discussions, it seemed.

The crew was bursting at the seams to get any news of their own ultimate fate. Even Will. Had they ever made it back home? Would they ever make it?

But the Sol steadfastly refused to answer any questions they deemed irrelevant to the present crisis. The crew was repeatedly told to wait until later for such information.

The Sol did dump a lot of information our way. Just not the information we wanted.

I wondered too if Ling and I would ever find our ways home again. Was it now my destiny to have an imposter live out my life for me?

And what if I was right, and the crew wrong, about my identity? What would happen if my double tried to replace the real Signposts author with a sorry substitute?

I did not trust Arbitur's assurances that the archives would immediately display any discrepancies resulting from my future being changed in some way by our journey. I knew Arbitur was awfully smart, but still I felt it possible the archives might not be magically updated by the fickle finger of fate, if my abduction did forever end my life on Earth-- or my replacement screwed up the destiny of the actual Signposts Staute somehow.

Fortunately, I now had another shot at discovering my fate. The same shot the crew had-- the records of the Sol. At least if and when they ever gave us the access we wanted.

The fact that the Sol had shifters too-- and had had them three full centuries longer than the crew of the Pagnew-- strongly suggested that they'd know whatever secrets we needed to get back to where we belonged. One way or the other.

Since I was personally responsible for leading Ling and the others to the Sol (albeit by pure luck, and with lots of help from Ling, Arbitur, and Riki at that), it looked like I'd accomplished my own mission. Or the one I'd been pressed into service for by the crew, anyway.

So I could now say I was a hero after all. Maybe not the hero they thought I was, but still maybe a good enough hero to get'em home. I felt pleased with myself.

But something nagged at me. Then I realized what it was.

Soon my adventure would be over. And Ling would be gone.

But it had to be. Ling had to go home. And I wanted her to be happy.

But I'd miss her. A lot.

And I'd miss all the rest of it too, I realized. Miss the fascinating dream learning. Miss Arbitur, the fantastic archives, future history, and the fabulous flying mansion of a ship that was the Pagnew. The Magical Powers of Instant Transportation and Gratification. The scenario room.

But most of all, Ling.

I hadn't had all that much luck with women. Either I couldn't get them to like me enough to begin with, or they quickly lost interest later. Others seemed to only pretend to like me for reasons I could never fully understand. The two exceptions to all this in the past had been...Dana and Bridget. But Dana's parents had firmly put the kibosh on that a couple years back. And dear, wonderful Bridget had gotten killed...Agh! I had to put Bridget out of my mind. Her death was still fresh, still too painful. I couldn't bear to think of her.

But now that I'd been lucky enough to find someone else who'd put up with me-- someone I really liked who seemed to like me as much as I did her-- I was about to lose her anyway.

It was then that it struck me: a truly radical idea.

What if I never went back? What if I returned to the future with Ling?

I mean, it wasn't like I had paradise-on-a-stick waiting for me back in 1972.

Surely the crew wouldn't mind-- after all, I'd led them to the Sol, hadn't I? They couldn't have found their way back home without me! And they'd already replaced me at my origin!

Then I remembered something bad.

In all the science fiction I'd read about time travel, it was bad for people from the future to meddle with the past.

But I'd be doing the opposite, wouldn't I? A guy from the past meddling with the future? I couldn't remember any warnings against that.

Still, Ling would probably see it the other way around. As her meddling with the past, by plucking me out of it. And it'd be even worse since she thought I was the Signposts Staute.

Research. Surely I could do enough research with the archives to prove I wasn't that famous guy, after all. It hadn't occurred to me before. Hell-fire! With unfettered access to the archives of either the Pagnew or the Sol, I could probably prove I never became famous for anything, and show Ling it was completely safe for me not to return!

Hmmm. It was a sobering point to consider: proving to people that you were a nobody. A nobody of truly historic proportions.

Would she still like me, if I succeeded at my goal? And I'd forgotten about poor old Fields Weller: the crew member now living my own wretched life in 1972. He certainly wouldn't like the idea of us switching places permanently, I was sure! So how would I solve that problem, if I stayed with Ling?

Now my thoughts were running in circles.

It took Arbitur hours to fully decode and analyze the information the Sol had given him. One reason was that there was an entity within it. A complete individual of the race we had encountered.

Arbitur reported that some of the data imparted to us by the Sol seemed contradictory. In brief, Arbitur advised we take what they told us with a grain of salt (to use a 20th century phrase).

The race called themselves the Sol after their home solar system, of course.

The primary reason we'd encountered no threat from the Sol thus far was because they mistakenly regarded us as colonists. To them, colonists were poor cousins that sometimes needed their help, and always their advice. Apparently the Sol had went their own way in artificial evolution terms, and weren't entirely as human as the colonists anymore.

But all that was the good news. They were human (more or less), and they were peaceful.

The bad news was, they had a problem. They themselves were still piecing things together, but the situation appeared to be this...

It all started when they accidentally destroyed the Earth. And the Sun. And most of the planets. Actually, the entire Sol system was pretty much pulverized, as I understood it.

I couldn't believe I'd now outlived my own planet!

Luckily, few got hurt in the destruction. Though the reasons for this seemed unclear.

The loss of Sol system was no big thing for the Sol, of course. Because humanity had established lots of colonies, terra-forming worlds and establishing different sorts of settlements long before Earth itself was lost. The Sol had been both father and mother to future humanity back on good old Earth, guiding the younger segments of the race into tackling the jobs of colonization and general exploration of the galaxy, helping here and there as needed, but mostly encouraging their children to do for themselves.

The Sol had little real need for another system, for they all possessed splendid spaceships and stations and didn't much care for the difficulties of dealing with gravity wells in their daily commutes. Such stuff as that was for the colonists to endure.

Of course, this attitude might have had something to do with the fact that the colonists didn't want the Sol to come live with them, after Sol system was no more. Trade was okay, and visits-- but permanent lodging was out. To the colonists, the Sol were a little too eccentric and a lot too powerful. After all, they'd blown up the home world of all humanity, hadn't they?

So the Sol went their way and the colonists went theirs. And they met only as business or convenience warranted.

But the lack of a central world and authority had dispersed the Sol over time. Not only physically, but politically and economically as well. And greatly weakened the safeguards against the misuse of their technology, which had been set up centuries before.

This weakening became an ever greater source of ecological problems, as it encouraged unrestricted experimentation by various Sol individuals and organizations. The present problem was considered related to this trend.

The current crisis scenario was related to us as the following...

One day a lone Sol was bored, and looking to begin a new hobby. In browsing through old datastores for ideas he came across the tenets of technology safeguards which had been put into place long ago to protect humanity from its own technology running amuck.

He wondered just how much fun it would be to cope with such renegade technology.

But such stuff didn't exist. So he had to create it. It wasn't easy, since all his present technology was built upon many generations of safeguards upon safeguards. So he essentially had to start from scratch.

This took him a while, but he finally did it, far far away from the watchful eyes of the rest of his ilk.

He created his new toys, and turned them loose.

Sometime later an interstellar survey craft from the colonies wandered too near the Sol devices, and suffered some damage. The craft was unmanned. It was able to return to an automated support station for repairs. When it then returned to the same region afterwards to complete the previous mission, it didn't come back.

A small manned salvage craft was sent to find and retrieve it. It didn't return either.

Next three armed frontier defense ships went to investigate. When they too never returned, the colonists contacted the Sol.

The Sol confirmed that one of their number had been reported in the area in decades past, but hadn't been in contact for quite some time. They attempted calling him, but got no response.

Before the destruction of the Earth, and the following collapse of the Sol government, such an unexplained disconnect would have been immediately investigated and rectified. In the wake of the Sol authority's dissolution however, much was falling through the cracks.

The colonists and the Sol determined in conference that there were three possibilities: one, a previously unknown and hostile alien race had been encountered, and the Sol in question abducted, killed, or incapacitated. Two, the lone Sol had turned renegade and was ambushing all comers. Or three, the missing Sol had unleashed something he could not control, due to the purposeful disabling of various technological safeguards.

Number three was agreed by all to be the most probable, for various reasons-- prior history being at the top. Flare ups of renegade technology had been humanity's greatest recurring problem for a long time now, in this Realtime.

But regardless of what the reality was, the action to be taken had to be of the sort appropriate for engaging the worst possible scenario.

So the Sol called for Assembly.

Solidarity among the Sol had greatly deteriorated since the Earth's demise. Most no longer cared enough to come to Assembly. Those that did were appalled by the low attendance. This was one reason they welcomed us when we arrived: they wanted all the help they could get.

The Sol task force consisted of fifty-two vessels of wildly varying size, shape, and combat effectiveness, containing only 147 actual Sols at the initial Assembly convergence point.

Fortunately many of the 147 Sol also carried other Sol with them, in data form.

The Sol hated boredom you see, and many had made arrangements with friends and family to be stored away as data until something exciting happened (the Sol were effectively immortal, and eternity could get pretty boring if you were conscious through the whole thing).

So all those data Sol who were sufficiently lucky-- or unlucky-- for their hosts to remember and honor their requests, were being brought in and reconstituted for the event.

Obviously the data Sol were direct evolutionary counterparts to the proxies we currently had aboard the Pagnew-- only our proxies were awake, while the data Sol apparently weren't.

There were approximately 4,700 data Sols either brought in or sent in by obliging hosts.

One in particular was being reconstituted onboard the Pagnew, to be our own special liaison to the other Sol.

Though Arbitur had never reconstituted a data Sol before-- and it did severely tax his resources-- he was successful with a little help from the Sol hosts.

The reconstituted Sol was nothing at all like what I expected after seeing the first four.

It turned out the Sol had selected him to be the liaison primarily because of the women present onboard. For this was a real lady's Sol (as in lady's man). Unfortunately.

When this guy materialized, I was surprised yet again.

For the very first thing you noticed about Jerrera was his transparency.

We quickly learned this was not his customary appearance, but instead a limitation of the facilities onboard the Pagnew to fully recreate his particular Sol look. Much of the Sol's normal bodily functionality had to be only simulated in software by Arbitur, rather than made physical reality. Much else was handled remotely in some fashion by Jerrera's own Sol host.

(The decisions on what to realize in Jerrera's physical form onboard the Pagnew, and what to just support virtually in software, were made jointly by Arbitur and the actual Sol in networked conference)

Anyway, the convergence of a lot of factors made the resulting manifestation of Jerrera appear visibly transparent-- at least around his outer contours.

His features and clothing possessed color, but of a washed out variety. It was somewhat like he was a finely sculpted bag of transparent fluid which always appeared reasonably opaque in the surfaces directly facing you, but tended towards the transparent in those surfaces facing in other directions. And of course various parts of his surface area were tinted certain colors-- though what could be seen of his internals all seemed to glow with a dull pearl-like shine. His internal components didn't register visually as bones or muscles or organs, but more as independent smaller objects which sometimes changed position or shape in unexpected ways. He sort of looked like a human lava lamp around his chest and mid-section-- at least in those parts of him not directly facing you at the time.

If you're thinking this was a bizarre sight, you're right.

But despite his out-of-this-world look, the Sol's appearance and demeanor were quite attractive to the crew, for several reasons.

If you ignored his lava lamp edges aspect and odd complexion, he looked like the handsomest Hollywood leading man who ever lived; he made Cary Grant and Rock Hudson look homely by comparison. He also seemed inordinately powerful, graceful, and elegant in his movements, like a combination ballet star and Olympic athlete.

[Hmm. I guess in 1972 I wouldn't have known Rock Hudson was by no means a lady's man]

He possessed the ability to assimilate our mental language and customs instantaneously. No small feat, that. I envied him for achieving immediately what I was still struggling with in some ways after months of effort.

His attire was a strange mix of formal clothing and swashbuckling adventure gear. It was off-beat, but looked damn good. The moment I saw it, I wished I had an outfit just like it (but I never did have Arbitur make me one, because I would have hated to copy Jerrera so conspicuously).

As if his lava lamp look and jaw-dropping fashion statement weren't amazing enough, something about the Sol or his outfit generated a shimmering, nearly invisible cape and high collar around him, presumably for extra dramatic effect. It worked. It made the son of a bitch sparkle. It was nearly impossible not to avidly watch him to the exclusion of everything else around. His form just drew your eyes to him in something like a supernatural fashion.

[I have to admit the memory bears out the assertion here. This Sol guy's appearance is like an amusement park for the eyes. Practically hypnotic in intensity.]

He was a silver tongued devil too. Within minutes of materializing he had Sasha, Sota, and Yamal eating out of his hand-- metaphorically speaking, anyway. Treating him like he was nobility or something. Even I had trouble resisting his charm, though I know not why-- I hated the bastard the first moment I saw him. I guess it was because I was afraid Ling would go crazy over him.

I swear to God, within fifteen minutes of materializing, he and Sasha shifted away together! This was all the more amazing for me, because of Sasha reportedly being such a man-hater. Luckily, Ling was busy elsewhere. She and Will and Jorgon were communicating with the other Sol in a vain attempt to gain more information about the Pagnew's fate.

I hoped after Sasha, the Sol would be uninterested in a look-alike.

It was unnerving seeing Jerrera and Sasha leave together like that, because of Sasha's identical appearance to Ling.

The Sol's name was Jerrera. Yet another irritating aspect of his presence. For his name was way too damn close to my own. He was single-handedly beginning to make me understand why the colonists didn't want the Sol hanging around their corner of space.

It was fortunate that the technology of Ling's people enabled us to go without rest for long periods of time; because the Sol appeared to require none at all.

Within only hours of Jerrera's materialization onboard, he announced to the crew we were embarking to the danger area immediately.

This presented us with a problem.

The Sol shifters were far advanced over the Pagnew. We couldn't directly Realtime shift to preset destinations as they could. The Pagnew required a dedicated station at the destination end, matched to the launching station. Otherwise we'd just pop a zillion miles away in some random direction. So Jorgon had Arbitur put together two bigger and more powerful versions of the standard shifting remotes to serve as stations for the entire ship. One was launched towards the Sol fleet. We asked the Sol, through Jerrera, to take it with them as they shifted.

By keeping the second special remote on our end close by, we (and our remote) could Realtime shift to wherever the Sol fleet took our other device.

It was quite some time before we could join the fleet, however. Because first we had to partially dismantle the Pagnew's own shifter drive.

Why? Because with the Pagnew's technology, destination-specific Realtime shifts could only be performed on objects possessing no functional shift drives themselves. Obviously the Sol had no such restrictions.

Though Jerrera was too impatient to listen to our reasons for all this, he did tell us the fleet would wait on the far side of the shift for us, before setting out on the next leg of the mission.

It turned out that a few extra hours would help them reconstitute the remaining data Sol, as well as perform a few other desired preparations.

I'd learned earlier that at the Pagnew's origin Realtime shifter technology required a drive the size of our remotes, at minimum. Pagnew remotes were about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle from my era-- though shaped more like a kid's spinning top toy. Now Arbitur let me in on what was a little-known fact onboard the Pagnew at the moment: the Sol appeared able to Realtime shift on an individual basis-- individual Sol-- with no external aids of any kind! When I asked Arbitur why they had ships at all then, he said that it was primarily a convenience for group traveling or trips of indefinite duration-- and in this case-- also an extra layer of protection between them and the unknown they were soon to face.

Arbitur also spilled another item: namely, the soup kitchen was going wild. Analysis showed the closer we came to a certain Sol vessel, the wilder the soup cups went.

Closer examination gave Arbitur a vector pointing to a particular Sol onboard the Sol ship.

Arbitur had tried to contact this specific Sol, but to no avail. Now that the Sol fleet had shifted away, the soup kitchen had calmed down some-- but not completely.

We didn't yet know his name, but Arbitur christened him the focal agent of this Realtime. And surmised that at some upcoming cosmological junction, if we could get the Pagnew close enough to the focal agent, the soup kitchen would trigger another shift-- possibly to the Pagnew's origin.

At the moment the soup kitchen wasn't 'armed' to trigger such a shift; Arbitur having put on a safety of sorts after the last shift brought us into contact with the Sol. But Arbitur was keeping a close watch on the kitchen, and was satisfied their reaction to the curious Sol would trend towards a shift, if they attained adequate proximity.

Arbitur himself was puzzled at the kitchen's reaction to the Sol, who was plainly inorganic in composition.

*Evidently some of the strange patterns detected earlier in these Sol are attractive to the cells. The patterns are decidedly of organic origin, yet serve here to define crystalline structures made of inorganic materials.*

*What could that mean?* I was mystified.

*At some point the Sol branch of humanity made the decision to embed organic designs into inorganic platforms for themselves. It is a curious development, considering the inefficiencies involved. Whatever the reason, the cell apparatus somehow senses a possible path to origin in proximity to the pattern contained in this particular Sol form.*

An idea struck me.

*Is there any way the person the kitchen is reading isn't a Sol at all, but a member of the Pagnew crew come to meet us?* Arbitur was well aware of the speculations among the crew about possibly meeting themselves here.

*No. The entity indicated is definitely Sol, and his unique individual characteristics do not correlate to any of the present crew members aboard the Pagnew.*

*Not even the dead, or the inorganic members?*

*It would not be a complete analysis to ignore any member of the crew in my comparison.*

A few hours later the Pagnew had been successfully shifted to join the Sol fleet via its two special Realtime remotes. The Pagnew's own shifting drive was now partially disassembled to allow the process. Arbitur summoned us all to the Pagnew 'bridge'; actually it was a conference room, since Arbitur controlled the ship and the crew had a complete mental interface to things through the shush net. Though they'd invited me there too, I was the only one with no direct link to ship controls by virtue of my ancient ignorance, inexperience, and other disqualifications in such matters. So I kind of felt left out, but at the same time grateful. Because I was afraid I'd muck things up had I had such input.

I marveled once again about how fast everything moved in Ling's world: you blinked from place to place, and the word 'waiting' was probably about to drop out of humanity's vocabulary due to the shush net, shifting, and nano-technology stuff.

The entire active crew was involved in the conference in some form or fashion. Jerrera was there too.

There turned out to be another person present whom I'd never seen before, but everyone else seemed to know well. He was obviously a member of the crew, but neither Ling or anyone else had ever mentioned him to me. He seemed important.

I quickly found out the mystery man was Arbitur himself, in a mobile holographic gel manifestation, resembling a person!

I tell you what, maybe I was just an awful backward and closed minded person, but I had just about reached the end of my rope about taking on new surprises by that point. It was just getting to be too much. I was truly fearing for my sanity. Because it seemed anything at all could happen at any moment-- and did. Constantly! With no let up. I mean, I kept hoping at every new revelation that finally-- at last-- I had seen enough so I could expect no new surprises for a while, and just digest what had already transpired. But that never happened. Bam! Something wild would take place. Pow! Something else. Ka-Boom! Yet another thing! There was no let up. And almost never any warning either. I was never prepared for anything. If Ling hadn't been there to nurse me along, I guess I would have already lost my mind.

And now I was afraid I was going to lose Ling.

Jerrera was fast becoming almost our only link to all the other Sol. He seemed to know everything that was going on at every instant on the other vessels. He could answer any question put to him about the current crisis, and did so in an amazing display of simultaneous dialogues with everyone at once over the net. We of the Pagnew's contingent essentially communicated one on one over the net, though we could switch rapidly between conversations. Jerrera on the other hand maintained a full conversation over the net with the entire crew, each on an individual basis, while also keeping up a running communication with the other Sol! He seemed to have multiple splinters of himself available to deal with each of us. He even had one splinter dedicated to me over the net, which appeared somewhat impatient with my dimwittedness and lack of interesting questions.

Ling had joined the meeting and seemed fascinated with Jerrera, as I knew she would be. Hell, I might have been too, if he didn't threaten to take my best friend in this whole place away from me.

Finally, after much internal self-pity, I forced myself to follow Jerrera's on-going information dump over the net.

*There appears to be an inordinate number of natural hazards in the area, as you may have deduced from your own readings--*

It seemed that Jerrera had by now stopped narrow-casting me a separate signal, and was just including me in a generic broadcast of info to the majority of lower ranking crew members on board (mostly humanoid nano eyes other than Riki and his peers, I think-- and maybe the largest of the nanotech bugs, too).

*-- I believe the probability to be high these hazards have been artificially gathered or created here for the purpose of frightening away casual intruders--*

I noticed that Jerrera seemed to be taking personal credit for the conclusions of all the Sol.

*-- safely deduce that the initial contact of the colonist's robotic survey probe was with one of these natural hazards. It damaged its engines when it was forced to overload them to escape a hidden gravity trap in the area. Subsequent vessels were not so fortunate. They evaded these traps only to encounter more destructive forces, of which I have little information at present. As I don't know the specific location of these forces, we cannot simply shift to them for resolution. We must traverse the danger region in Realtime using only ion thrust until new information opens other avenues--*

At this point I caught flashes over the net from various crew members. They were surprised at two things. One, that the fleet would be moving so slowly through the region, and two, that the Sol still possessed ion drives at this late date. Evidently the technology had proven itself over the millennia. The Pagnew too had ion drives, but they were severely limited in usefulness due to their comparatively slow accelerations, among other things. Although they had been an important propulsion method for humanity in the earliest decades and centuries of space travel, due to the range of other options which had appeared by Ling's origin, ion drives had become largely relegated to use as extremely robust maneuvering thrusters, rather than long range propulsion. Or as a transportation method of last resort. At least for vessels of substantial size, like the Pagnew. So the issue here immediately became the size of the region in question.

*What is the Realspace frame of the region?* The strange jelly-Arbitur-who-looked-human asked. Apparently for the rest of the crew's benefit, as I was sure he already knew the answer.

*At maximum thrust, the full distance of the course, with no interim stops, would require approximately 45 Old Earth years,* replied Jerrera (Jerrera actually gave a very different answer than this, but the net automatically translated it to something I'd better understand).

*But of course we expect the actual distance to first encounter to be much shorter, correct?* Arbitur sought clarification for the rest of us.

*Affirmative. I believe the source of the problem will make itself known to us in short order as we penetrate the region's perimeter. My assumption is based upon the events of prior note.*

But as ever, things seemed to moved faster here than they had in my own Realtime. Jerrera hadn't even finished laying out the plans for us, before they changed again.

*Update and adjustment: I have detected a number of sensory devices just beyond the obstacle field. They are of modified Sol design. And so we have our first concrete clue as to the source of the problem. As this new information negates the need for ion traversal of the remainder of the obstacle field, let us shift to an area just inside the perimeter of the device array.*

Why didn't we just shift to the center of it all? I wondered.

Ling gave me an aside over the net. I think to prevent me from embarrassing myself.

*Jerry, if we are wrong and we are meeting an alien race, it would be rude to bypass all their expected stages of encounter.*

*But what if we're right? Wouldn't it be better to surprise them right in their own headquarters than knock at the front door?*

*What? Oh. Yes, that might be appropriate in some circumstances. If we had better intelligence as to their capabilities and intent. But as things stand now, shifting directly into their midst might put us at a terrible disadvantage for various purposes. Including the case where they are our superiors in technology.*

*Oh. Okay. I guess I wasn't thinking.*

*These things were not apparent to me either, Jerry. I learned them from Jerrera.*

*Oh.* I didn't thank her. I felt jealous of Jerrera's contact with her.

*It is done,* replied Arbitur. Evidently we and the Sol fleet had all traversed a huge distance in the time between Jerrera's request and Arbitur's reply. And we didn't even feel the slightest vibration in the ship. I'd never gotten such a pinpoint example of the Pagnew's motive power across normal space before.

And this was with our remotes rather than our main drive!

*We have not yet reached the point at which the previous investigative expedition went silent--* Jerrera was continuing.

On the net the crew was buzzing about in some fear now. Because much more relevant information concerning all this was now rapidly dispersing among them. Or should I say us? I suppose by this point I was beginning to feel myself a part of the Pagnew's crew. We could be in danger, and might well need everyone's help-- even mine. Though I had no idea what I could do.

We were beginning to understand the vast powers of the Sol, compared to our own. Their sensors had range and capabilities ours could not match. Their intellect was brutally advanced. This single Sol could discuss the most advanced topics with the entire crew on an individual basis, simultaneously. He seemingly had total telepathic communications with his Sol brethren, and interfaced effortlessly with our shush net. His command of our language matched or surpassed our own, despite it being primitive by his standards.

His ability to adapt instantly to the situation after being only a data file in computer memory for God knew how long, was also impressive.

The information that each Sol had his own shifting abilities without the need of a remote-sized package really impressed Ling's folks (Jerrera himself was now volunteering the information to us).

But the fact that the Sol had accidentally destroyed the home solar system of humanity was no small thing among the crew.

However, the Sol's perspective on the event seemed still more significant than the calamity itself. For they appeared to regard the destruction of Earth and the Sun as a minor inconvenience. It seemed to them little more important than the accidental drop of an armload of textbooks would be to a college student. A slightly embarrassing, somewhat irritating, but overall insignificant event in itself.

The main source of the fear now welling up in the crew stemmed from the facts that one, a group of fully decked out modern colonist war ships had apparently been destroyed or captured by the unknown force we were now approaching; and two, this Realtime event was 340 years advanced over the crew's origin-- with technology to match-- which meant the lost war ships should have been much tougher than we; and three, that the Sol themselves, powerful as they were, gave indications they were somewhat worried about what might be ahead-- even as they displayed an odd eagerness regarding the encounter, too.

By this time Jerrera had noted my leaking dislike for him over the net, and thought it the height of amusement. He began embarrassing me repeatedly with various references to my concerns that Ling would like him, broadcasting it to one and all as if I were a child with ridiculously immature concerns. If I hadn't been so thoroughly angered by his actions I probably would have fled the scene. But instead I stayed, while my face burned in red but quiet humiliation every time Jerrera net-poked at me in-between gobs of more serious and relevant information dispensation. I think he was using me for comic relief in his presentation.

I couldn't believe how brutal this future hyper guy was being to me in his one-man conference comic-fest. But heck: being the most primitive being for probably tens of light years in every direction was bound to have its drawbacks, right? There really wasn't much I could do about it. I figured running away would just make me look even worse.

Ling gave me a variety of looks during this period; none of them what I'd call good. She tried linking over the net a few times, but quit when I wouldn't open up.

Even as Jerrera's occasional jibes over the net chipped away at my status among the crew, his own reputation grew. We learned that all the Sol were virtually supermen in their physical characteristics. Besides being immortal and capable of unassisted shifting to practically any location, they were also invulnerable: no weapon could harm them. This I personally questioned the truth of (to myself). For he gave no explanation for why this was so.

But aside from invulnerability, immortality, telepathy, genius intellect, and instant transportation at will to any point, they were also super strong physically, with vast sensory powers to match.

And all this was merely the generic characteristics of the race. It turned out that every individual Sol also had powers beyond these: specialized abilities or capacities unique to a particular faction among the race entire. Hence, the wide disparities in appearances among the Sol. They were all adapted to best suit their own personal preferences.

A new irony occurred to me. Even had I truly been the G.W. Staute Ling thought me to be, I would have had no chance of competing with these gods of the future. In some ways this still felt like the good old twentieth century after all; because I always lost the girl there, too.

New developments pulled me from my private funk.

*We are under attack,* Jerrera stated abruptly, but I detected no other indications of the fact.

Then Jerrera disappeared. And Arbitur's physical form immediately thereafter.

What happened next? Baptism by Fire

Copyright © 2004-2011 by J.R. Mooneyham. All rights reserved.