THE STORY SO FAR: A course of action suggested by Staute works to get the crew closer to home-- sort of. They actually end up further into the future (2823 AD) than even the crew themselves hail from, but closer in relative chronological terms to the crew's original departure point than before. Staute and the crew apparently show up in realtime just prior to a major battle, and find themselves inadvertant recruits in the struggle. Their initial confidence is dashed when their futuristic superhuman hosts vanish in the face of an enemy attack, leaving Staute and crew stranded and alone against the unknown.

For an instant we all sat around stunned (well, we physicals sat, while the non-physicals stewed electronically). Arbitur broke the silence which had engulfed us.

*We are indeed under attack. All the Sol vessels have vanished. All external communications are jammed. The speed of the approaching danger makes our ion-based maneuvering useless. As our original position put us at the center of the Sol fleet, we enjoy a slight delay before direct engagement. I am open to suggestions.*

I could feel panic welling up on the net. I got flashes of individual reactions and thoughts. A couple hundred years of nearly uninterrupted peace had apparently taken their toll on the human race. The only references to violence I could see in their minds were all from rare experiences with various old time entertainment and educational media.

It seemed not a single crew member had ever been in so much as a fistfight, in their life(!).

*Shift out of Realtime!* Yamal near screamed over the net.

*Our drive is dismantled in order that we could perform Realtime shifts of set destinations. In addition, an inter-dimensional shift now could well strand us as before.

*Other suggestions please,* Arbitur requested calmly.

*Realtime shift to safe space!* Sasha injected.

*We require a destination station. The remote we were using for set destination purposes with the Sol fleet was left behind when they disappeared. So we may use realtime shifting at present for little more than docking-scale maneuvers.

*Other suggestions please,* Arbitur repeated.

*Use the ion drives?* Sota offered.

*I repeat, the ion drives are much too slow to be of service in this circumstance.*

*What is the nature of the threat we face, Arbitur?* It was Jorgon projecting on the net now.

*At this time it appears composed of simple nuclear detonation devices. They are however equipped with intelligent guidance mechanisms and reasonably fast propulsion systems.*

*Nuclear missiles, you mean?* I net-spoke.

*The gist of your label fits the devices, yes,* Arbitur replied.

*Projection of injury to us if we take no action,* Jorgon ordered.

*Severe damage, but not irreparable, if we suffer no further attacks. The brunt of the blasts would be taken by the exterior buffer field. We would lose that field, momentary hull integrity, and all organic crew would require extensive regeneration for radiation poisoning. Non-organic crew would require substantial circuit regeneration. I myself would likely be reduced to 42% of capacity for--*

*Hold it, hold it,* I stopped Arbitur, impatient with this calm listing of the destruction due to visit us in moments.

*Silence! You-- * Yamal tried to interrupt me.

*No! You silence!* I shot back viciously to the machine ghost, with a wave of emotional energy that would have tripped breakers on the net if it'd directed a command for services instead of being a message.

*We may not be able to run, but we don't have to sit here like idiots, either! The stuff we're facing is nothing more than ancient twentieth century weapons, for God's sakes! If we can't use some of the fancy gadgets we have on board to stop them, we're pretty sorry ass excuses for human beings!

*Now Arbitur, what weapons do we have on board?* I heard myself ask with a tone of authority. Which would astonish me when I recalled it later.

*None suitable for use against the oncoming mechanisms.* Suddenly I could see why everyone was afraid. But still, there had to be something we could make use of...

*Can you jury rig something?* I asked.

There was a slight hesitation in Arbitur's reply. I guessed he had to look up the meaning of 'jury-rig'.

*I am capable of a wide range of modifications to existing equipment,* Arbitur replied, just as I remembered something.

*Good. We'll figure out some better weapons for you to build later. For right now though, how many nuclear missiles are coming at us?*

*I detect sixty-three devices at present.*

Whoa! Sixty-three missiles, all headed right down our throats!

*How fast are our remotes, compared to the missiles? Could they intercept them before they get close enough to hurt us?*

*No. They are too slow.*

*Isn't there any way to speed them up-- to soup them up, somehow?*

*There are safeguards against operating Realtime thrusters beyond their recommended specifications-- *

Ahh! Governors! I knew about those things! They were like secret regulators installed on stuff at the factory to help insure that a car's drive train would outlast its warranty. At least in my century. Their removal or disabling was also often one of the cheapest and easiest hot rodding tricks you could pull. Some autos from my time had governors on their motors, some on transmissions...I'd found something like one which had prevented me from shifting from neutral into drive on my Mustang's auto trans, at certain high RPMs...

Anything could be hot rodded; I knew that from personal experience. I'd seen four cylinder VW bugs blow the doors off V-8s at the drag strip.

*But theoretically the remotes could intercept the enemy missiles, if pushed beyond recommended specs?* I asked Arbitur.

*Yes, but-- *

*Disable all the safeguards on the remotes, and set them for their theoretical maximum thrust-- *

*But their engines will self-destruct, rendering them unable to return-- *

*But they will intercept the missiles before they lose their engines?*

*Yes, but-- *

*Just do it. We don't want them to return.* I knew the Pagnew could build more.

*Even at maximum thrust, to get within transport range before the missiles reach their optimum points of detonation would require launch within the next 126 seconds-- *

*Then do it! Now! Now! Now!* There was total net silence for an instant, and I realized that I didn't have the authority to order such an action.

*I require authorization from-- *

Jorgon cut him off. *Do it, Arbitur! If it'll help us, do it!*

*-- in process-- * Arbitur continued his statement smoothly, as if he'd never been interrupted.

It must have been awful easy to turn off those governors.

*-- however, I am puzzled as to your strategy-- * Arbitur continued to nag at me.

*We're going to stop the missiles!* I said, exasperated by his stupidity.

*But the remotes are only transporters. Direct impacts with the missiles could destroy the devices, yes. But the missiles will likely evade such collisions. The second option for the remotes would simply be to transport the missiles directly to the immediate vicinity of the Pagnew, thereby enhancing the destructive effect of the weapons. I may still abort this process if this represents an error in your logic-- *

*No! We've got to do only half of the transportation job! Dematerialize the missiles, and then stop! Don't re-materialize them!*

Again there was an instant of net silence, as everyone pondered my words. And I felt a surge of panic, that someone would point out some crucial detail I'd forgotten-- or never known-- which would make my whole scheme futile. Then Arbitur rendered his judgment.

*Your plan is sound. Once dematerialized the devices will be effectively destroyed, as their matrices are dissipated rather than reconstituted,* Arbitur proclaimed, and tears of relief filled my eyes even as a huge smile split my face. I looked at Ling and she smiled a different kind of smile, one that I hadn't seen before.

The solution wasn't perfect of course. Arbitur had given us another scare by insisting he required yet another authorization from the crew to allow the preemption of normal re-materialization. The extra seconds this cost us may have come near to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Because it allowed four missiles to get through anyway, and detonate way too close for comfort. Our buffer fields were heavily damaged, and we sustained some minor hull damage too.

But those things we could fix.

How come those four missiles didn't hit us at point blank range? Arbitur had the Pagnew's outer buffer field spit portions of itself at the oncoming projectiles at high speed, once the missiles were too close to evade such a trick. The resulting impacts between the missiles and the densely packed field bugs stopped the weapons' runs short. And no, this last wasn't my idea; it was Arbitur's.

He was learning.

After all the missiles were destroyed and the danger seemed past-- at least for the moment-- the Sol returned. Both the fleet and Jerrera.

But they returned to a quite different Pagnew, than that they had abandoned.

We were no longer in awe of the supermen; supermen who turned tail and ran before the battle even began.

And Jerrera himself was at special disadvantage aboard the Pagnew. Because the little guy he'd picked on so unmercifully before the battle had won the day, while the mighty Sol leading man ran like a howling coward.

Even Ling's people, 500 years in the future from my time, recognized some of the same human values we in the twentieth century did.

I was no longer so afraid of losing Ling to Jerrera. Or of being useless to the crew.

Maybe I wasn't the famous G.W. Staute-- but I wasn't the worthless G.W. Staute, either.

My status on board had changed. No longer was I just a navigator pressed into service as a last resort. I was something...different.

Arbitur began closely examining the archives, looking for information about devices which might help our cause. He was under orders to build and test the most promising of them, as well as improve on the designs wherever it looked cost-effective in terms of the resources available.

Jorgon gave me some authority in helping Arbitur work out defensive and offensive modifications to the Pagnew, and contingency plans for using them.

The crew felt that my being a primitive from Earth's violent past gave me the edge in military thinking. What do you know? Suddenly it was advantageous to be an ancient savage among the groomed elite!

Jorgon also released Arbitur from a great encumbrance of safeguard-type software bureaucracy, which had previously clouded his logic with false limitations where the improvisation of defenses and related contingency plans were concerned.

Arbitur heavily beefed up the exterior buffer field by installing additional layers.

The exterior buffer field was pretty much the same as a personal third skin, except specialized to encompass an entire shifter vessel. During actual shifts the vast cloud of tiny floating or flying robots which made it up had to contract and cling to the hull, or we'd lose them. At most other times they would be expanded into what was essentially a great utility fog which completely engulfed us. Such clouds acted as extended sensor arrays, exterior manipulative tools, fast hull repair equipment, and buffers against harm or the unexpected in general.

There were two kinds of buffer bugs: passive and active.

The passive bugs had no motive power of their own, but instead depended upon the interplay of the Pagnew's massive electromagnetic fields and their own small projections, to distribute them as necessary about the ship. The active bugs too sometimes helped in the redeployment of the passive ones.

The remote transport units had their own buffer fields. But in the case of the remotes, their fields were mainly used to encompass and 'freeze' the motion of any life form which was being transported, in order to minimize the risks that random movement could create during such events.

When contracted to immobilize an organic for transport, the buffer field also became armorized protection for them during the brief instant prior to shift, and immediately after. This protection minimized the traveler's vulnerability to harm just before and after the shift, in a couple of ways. This protection was nowhere near being Sol-style invulnerability to harm, but it could shield travelers from things like animal attacks, or old fashioned small weapons fire.

Arbitur greatly expanded the size of the buffer fields on a selected group of remotes, configuring them to act as a layer of objects the size of grains of sand several grains thick, to form a disk shaped region with a quarter mile radius centered on the remote.

The idea was the remotes with their huge fields would sweep through space like giant brooms, their particles damaging whatever they contacted at speed.

To provide the remotes with the speed they required, Arbitur hot rodded their motors to their limits. He actually rigged them to run so hard they would burn out in only a few minutes of use. So they wouldn't last long. But during their short life they would be relatively fast. He also installed much more powerful field generators, so that the range of their object shifting capacities would be extended. Since we were planning to only dematerialize objects with them (and never re-materialize them), that enabled us to expand the range of the remote's effective fields even further. Because it didn't matter if the object patterns became scrambled or irrevocably damaged; that's what we wanted.

And that's how the Pagnew's super-safe remote shifting nodes became extremely destructive weapons of war.

Arbitur also found designs for powerful laser cannon in his search of the archives. He manufactured enough units to adequately cover the entire hull, but had insufficient time to mount them there. So we temporarily just provided exterior power feeds, and programmed the buffer fields to hold, aim, and shoot them as needed.

Arbitur created a system we could use to defeat the communications blackout the still unknown enemy could impose. The trick was to Realtime shift messages from station to station in a highly rapid and automated fashion. The messages consisted of tiny physical beads with an internal structure designed to convey information to the remote receiving its shift signature. The remotes were programmed to read these messages directly from the signature, with no need to re-materialize the bead itself. True, it was a pretty minimal and crude form of communications. But throw in the remotes' innate artificial intelligence for certain autonomous actions and it wasn't a bad arrangement for the current situation. Plus, whenever the jamming stopped we'd have normal high bandwidth comm again.

The Sol themselves wouldn't use our system though; told us it was too limited, and the blackouts too brief and inconsequential to require it anyway.

One note here: remotes possessed full matter and object replication/production capabilities. That is, they could manufacture a great many items from scratch, either of the man-made or natural-seeming variety. Toasters to stones. So long as there was sufficient raw mass in their onboard storage tanks, or else nearby. And provided the specs of such an object existed in their onboard database, or else could be downloaded or otherwise extrapolated. This power was wholly independent of their shift transport function, and would not manufacture complex living things such as people or animals. The replicator option alone would make such a remote a fabulous treasure in the 20th century, even if its shift transport didn't work at all.

This replicator aspect of the remotes would make them really handy for all sorts of things, from military expeditions to camping trips. And is what allowed them to concoct messages in the form of complex pebbles on-the-fly, to send through shifting means.

Oh yeah: the remotes could fly too. Both in space and in atmosphere. Via a mix of ion drives, and buffer fields respectively. With payloads equivalent to at least several much-heavier-than-humans androids.

We tried once again to directly contact the focal agent aboard the Sol ships, but were not allowed to do so.

We berated the Sol on their cowardice in the encounter, pointing out repeatedly how we'd solved the immediate problem and gathered further information, when they had only turned tail and ran.

We did manage to sting their pride. Enough so that they lowered the sensitivity of their defense mechanisms to prevent their total absence in the next attack. We'd surprised them by staying and fighting. They'd assumed we would flee too (forgetting the Pagnew was dependent on the remote we'd customized to accompany the Sol fleet to provide us with a destination point).

The Sol ships automatically shifted away from any danger. Turned out that was the secret of their invulnerability; any time potential harm above a particular degree was detected, they would shift far far away. Often before the Sol themselves were even consciously aware of the risk.

This in fact was the main thing which had saved them from sharing the destruction of the Earth, it turned out.

When pressed on the issue of what would happen if a Realtime event simply occurred too fast for their shifting to move them out of harm's way, they said such was impossible. Because their defensive devices did not use Realtime information for their most sensitive triggering mechanisms, but rather a clever variation on shifter technology itself. Their automatic escapes were triggered merely by substantial probabilities of harm or damage; not actual instances of such. Somehow the Sol protective devices tapped into the nature of probability stream event wells themselves, to measure the danger of any given moment.

So they always blinked out of trouble before it occurred. A pretty handy capability, I had to admit.

The Sol had been so full of themselves and their own immediate problems when we first met, they paid little attention to the data we'd given them about ourselves, and not really noticed that we were from the past, or upline from their Realtime. They had instead somehow gotten the impression we were just rag-tag renegade colonists, who were driving around in a very old ship, and had heeded the Sol assembly call primarily for purposes of trade. It apparently wasn't unusual for colonists to be using ships which were hundreds of years old. The nanotechnology-based designs were extremely reliable and durable, and could last practically forever under most conditions. It seemed quite a bit about spaceship design hadn't changed all that much over the centuries between the Pagnew's origin and this Sol time.

But after we surprised the Sol in the battle, our identity and capabilities came under closer scrutiny. At which point the Sol exhibited a certain measure of alarm and excitement.

For it turned out humanity had stopped using shifter ships like the Pagnew a long time ago. Because they were regarded as too dangerous.

The exploration of other universes had been determined to be of little value compared to the risks involved, as many devices and concepts depended upon the physical laws of their native reality for continued safety of operation.

These differences in the laws of physics contributed to the loss of some shifter craft; for they got stranded in places where their technology simply didn't work anymore. Some universes you could enter, but never leave.

There was also the problem of the lost Far Colonies, sprinkled far and wide across the universe.

For some reason all contact with those colonies was eventually lost. They could never be located or communicated with ever again.

The Far Colonies had been created via single-station shifting across the universe, which was basically a subset of the Pagnew's single-station superverse shifting capacities.

As one result of these problems (lost ships and colonies), the most ambitious form of shifting (inter-dimensional) was outlawed but for certain small, on-going government research efforts.

This revelation about the ultimate fate of their mission program was devastating to the morale of the Pagnew's crew.

Uni-dimensional or Realtime shifting however was essential to the exploitation of space, and had been kept and improved upon. The main improvement had been discovering a way to limit the distance covered in a single-station Realtime shift to some known maximum. However, the direction of travel itself remained random. So shifting Sol vessels basically set their drives not to exceed a certain range, then shifted at a terrifically rapid rate over and over again until they ended up making an acceptable amount of progress towards their desired destination in wholly random fashion. Extreme automation and optimization of the process had made it practical.

Yeah, it sounded weird that future folks jumped all over the place in a spherical region of space so many light years in diameter until they randomly ended up closer to their destination-- and then began the whole process anew (albeit with a smaller range to limit undesirable setbacks) to get closer still. Etc., etc.

So single station Sol Realtime shifts actually involved a lot more than it seemed. But fortunately, a simple, straightforward escape shift would usually reliably remove them from danger-- so long as the range was set to make their probable destination sufficiently far away.

This strange roundabout random transport method had also enabled the old ion drive designs to retain their usefulness over the centuries, as the ions became more cost-effective than the shifter drives once you were within a certain distance of your intended destination.

So the present Sol ships were improved Realtime shifters, rather than both Realtime and inter-dimensional shifters such as the Pagnew.

When the Sol realized who we really were relative to all this, they promptly informed us we were under arrest for reason of possession of outlaw technology, and that they would have to seize our vessel! It turned out they were also surreptitiously doing things aimed at making it more difficult for us to get our main shifting drive back online again, just in case we decided to make a run for it.

Fortunately for us, just as the supermen were about to rob us of our ship (with friends like these, who needs enemies?), the common foe attacked once again.

*We are under attack,* Jerrera said for the second time. And we all waited for him to disappear. He didn't. However, he did take on a somewhat shaken appearance. At that point we all got down to business. Arbitur and the rest of the crew had been heavily engaged in negotiations with the other Sol over our imminent arrest, just before the new attack was announced. Now, they immediately turned to full engagement with one another instead. None of them were very eager to speak further with the only Sol now onboard. My own preparations for battle had already been made with them and Arbitur. So I was momentarily free of any particular chores, unlike them. However, I was very suspicious of Jerrera, as well as furious with how the Sol had turned on us in regards to the arrest. So I was keeping a skeptical and angry eye on the Sol in person.

*What do you sense about the enemy now, Jerrera?* I asked. I knew he was plugged into all the super-duper sensor arrays of the Sol fleet, which were far more sensitive than our own.

*Now, nothing. All communications have been cut. But for a brief period I did receive some data. Organic life forms were detected within many of the enemy vessels. This is confusing and unexpected. Also, the vessels are maneuvering at accelerations too great for high biological proportion humanoid forms to withstand. Perhaps we were wrong in our initial conclusions.*

I noticed when he was sure of his information he took sole credit, saying 'I' or 'me'. But when he got caught in an error, it was 'we'. Also, with the normal comm lines down, Jerrera was now largely stuck with me as a conversational companion in the conference room, just as I was with him. Plus, the rest of the Pagnew crew seemed content for now to let me play the lead in our interaction with the lone Sol; especially with another battle imminent.

It was sort of like everyone felt my exotic origin-- and maybe my supposed Signposts doc credentials (of which the Sol still seemed unaware)-- somehow made me a more fitting adversary for Jerrera, than anyone else among us (including Arbitur!). And my previous success in fending off an attack from which the Sol themselves had fled, didn't hurt either.

*So we've finally met some Realtime aliens?* I asked.

*Possibly. They cannot be humanoid, but their DNA structure is not as far removed from our legacy genetics as would be expected. It is puzzling.*

The Sol had read the alien's DNA structure from such a distance? That had to be an impressive feat!

*Do you have anything else?* I asked.

*The new group facing us appears to have little in common with that which you previously met. Though they all possess nuclear self-destruct devices, these appear meant as last resorts in this case rather than as primary weapons. As for their main offensive systems, it depends upon which group you examine. Three different classifications were made before communications were severed. The most dangerous group is heavily armed and protected. But their maneuverability has been compromised for the benefit of their weapons and defensive systems. We are marginally faster than these on ion drives alone. Their primary weapons array includes high powered strobe lasers, molecular bond disruptors, and gravity distortion fields; there may be others.

*The next most dangerous group is composed of much smaller craft. They have few defenses other than great speed. They are superior to us in speed, if we do not utilize shifting. Their weapons include probability noise generators, electromagnetic pulse and microwave projection, and the blast of their propulsion exhaust, which is unshielded fission in nature.

[Unshielded fission? Is he talking some sort of nuclear propulsion here?]

*The third and least numerous group appear similar to the second group, except that we detected no weapons and only light defenses. These may be only data acquisition units.*

*What purpose would the third group serve the enemy?* I asked.

*They would provide a full record of the battle, highlighting the successes, failures, and tactics responsible for either on both sides. Analysis of such information would be very useful in preparation of subsequent attack groups.*

I didn't like the sound of that.

*How are the enemy vessels deployed?* Jorgon interjected over the net.

*The data acquisition units are randomly distributed throughout the entire bulk of the formation. The smaller, faster units are grouped towards the front, with the heavy units in the rear.*

*What are you getting on your sensors, Arbitur?* Jorgon enquired.

*There is much interference from the jamming of the enemy. But some sporadic verification of the initial Sol readings has been acquired. The enemy is only now coming into range of my own sensory capacities.*

*Have any of the Sol fleet engaged the enemy?* Jorgon asked Arbitur. Everyone was wondering the same thing: were the Sol going to fight, or run again? Even Jerrera looked uncertain about it.

*The foremost Sol vessels have engaged the first of the enemy ships. Though occasionally shifting to avoid damage, they are reappearing almost instantly again nearby, and returning fire.*

A feeling of pride and relief rippled through the net, joining with the already present apprehension: our far flung cousins had indeed joined the fray, and humanity was seemingly grappling at last with an alien enemy: something we had often fantasized about in the entertainment media of my own age.

But there was little time to spare for applause. We had things to do.

We allowed the Sol to spearhead the efforts this time around, as it seemed only appropriate, since we'd carried the ball alone in the previous engagement.

Even as we put the last touches on our own preparations, we paid careful attention to the intensifying battle.

As the Sol ships were blinking in and out of the immediate vicinity to avoid damage, they suffered little of it themselves, while getting in some pretty potent licks of their own.

The Sol managed to outright destroy several of the heavy cruisers before those could get within range to fire their own weapons. They also damaged several others.

The Sol weapons apparently had greater range than those of the enemy.

But the field of enemy light attack craft was all over the fleet now, doing their best to hamper and hurt us.

We'd gotten our own impression of the lightweight attack craft from Jerrera's description: over the net the Pagnew crew tended to think of them as 'stingers', since they had few defenses but speed, yet could deliver a nasty surprise once in range.

The Sol vessels turned out to be immune to the stinger electromagnetic pulse (E.M.P.) and microwave weapons. I learned E.M.P. was originally an effect mostly associated with nuclear detonations, but later became applicable without the explosions. E.M.P. was a burst of radiation which mainly just fried electronic circuitry for a wide radius around a blast. But what was Arbitur, Riki, the Pagnew, and everything else around us? Circuitry. The Sol invulnerability did not extend to the fission drives. The stingers were blasting fairly severe looking rents in the outer layers of the Sol vessels with their thrust: right through the buffer fields. But those stingers slowing enough to do such damage were quickly shot out of the sky by the Sol.

Jerrera casually mentioned that the E.M.P. and microwave weapons seemed designed to destroy normal Sol household equipment, as those types of devices were susceptible to such radiations. But the fleet had no such vulnerabilities.

This seemed to add further weight to the hypothesis that a solitary Sol had either created this threat, and/or been the first victim of its onslaught, according to Jerrera.

For several minutes we all watched as our work allowed, enthralled by the drama unfolding before us. Then, just as the first stingers began reaching our own position (having now saturated the front most hemisphere of the fleet's present deployment) one of the most impressive Sol vessels disappeared. Not in a shift this time, but in a massive, blinding explosion.

Jerrera was visibly shaken.

*It appears that the correct synchronization of enemy probability field charger and molecular disruptor-- is hazardous to our-- existence,* he told us, haltingly.

A second Sol vessel suddenly exploded, as if to punctuate his sentence. And Jerrera disappeared again.

The entire fleet didn't disappear along with Jerrera; but several ships did, not immediately returning. To their credit, most of the Sol vessels continued their fighting, though it seemed they had adjusted the tolerance of their escape devices a bit lower, as they seemed to blink in and out of nearby space at a faster clip than before. Or maybe it was just that the battle itself was moving harder and faster.

Whatever was going on with the Sol soon didn't matter much. Because it seemed the entire enemy fleet in that moment decided the Pagnew was the juiciest morsel on the plate. They were suddenly all over us.

The microwave beams didn't hurt us much, doing only minor damage to our exterior buffer fields. Ironically, the sorry state of our main shifter drive and lack of a Sol type defensive system made us basically immune to the probability noise weapons. But the E.M.P. really fried our outer buffer fields.

Not that it melted all those brave little robot bugs; instead, it fried only their brains: their circuits. And left the bodies pretty much as before. But without their brains, the little guys were just tiny, incredibly complicated metal pellets, floating in space, useless to everybody.

Luckily our outboard lasers were in a deeper layer, and firing like mad in all directions. Because that's where the enemy was-- everywhere!

Since the buffer bugs were dead shots, the lasers were doing significant damage. But too little and too slowly. Near continuous E.M.P. blasts were peeling our buffer buddies off our hull like we were some kind of fruit.

And we knew the fission fires weren't far behind. So far the lasers were keeping the stingers far enough away to protect us from their thrusters. But they could still sweep us with their E.M.P.

The lasers had been hastily assembled and mounted. So hastily that they weren't really attached to the hull, but rather just sort of floated amongst the buffer bugs. The bugs supported, aimed, and fired the guns-- with all the processing power Arbitur and the crew could contribute to the bugs' own capacities (all the minds of the entire Pagnew crew, both organic and not, were supplementing all of the normal automation onboard-- with the exception of me, who possessed not nearly a good enough handle on such deep net cooperation yet). This made the lasers incredibly responsive, but meant when we lost our bugs, we lost our lasers too. The only connection between the lasers and the hull were power cables.

Jorgon ordered Arbitur to take evasive action. But as this was limited to maneuvering with the ion drives, and the stingers were faster, this only slightly increased difficulties for the enemy.

We'd all been surprised by the sudden concentration of the enemy upon us. Even Arbitur. But we weren't without a few surprises of our own, for the opposition.

Though one of our new weapons systems had been designed for nuclear missiles like those we'd faced previously, it looked like they might do well against these stingers too.

We'd launched a group of heavily modified remote units before the battle, stationing them in a manner we hoped would hide them from enemy sensors. Being uncertain if that alone would work, we'd also had them position at sufficient distance from us so that the enemy wouldn't regard them as much threat in the timeframe of a brief battle, if they did detect them.

Another factor was their modification from before. Even if the enemy saw them, they might discount their effectiveness based on the original use of the devices. The enemy stingers could likely avoid the reach of simple shift dis-integrations by unaltered remotes. And their probability noise generators made such shifts less likely to work too.

We'd programmed the new remotes to wait until a significant enemy force had engaged us, and then close in.

The only flaw in the plan was the rapid focus the enemy had performed on us. We hadn't anticipated that. We now faced much more than a 'significant' share of the enemy fleet in our face-- like maybe over half of it!

True to their programming, the remotes had to be on their way. The question was, could we hold out long enough for them to arrive?

*The stingers are focusing on our laser positions--* (Arbitur had picked up on the crew's preferred term for the craft over the net; the net allowed everyone to assimilate new items into their vocabulary nearly instantly).

*-- multiple stingers are coordinating E.M.P beams onto single sites,* Arbitur informed us. This was truly bad news. So far the lasers had failed to completely destroy a single stinger. They were holding them off, but not ridding us of any yet. We saw many stingers get hit repeatedly and come back for more. Damage was visible on some, but it was not of the disabling kind.

*Two laser positions disabled,* Arbitur chirped again.

*Are they near one another?* I asked nervously. For we'd positioned them in an overlapping pattern over the hull. There was redundancy in the pattern so that every inch of the hull could be protected-- so long as no three neighboring positions were all knocked out.

*Defensive pattern integrity jeopardized, but not compromised,* was Arbitur's way of saying 'no'.

Where were the remotes? I was wondering, as was everyone else. Had the enemy somehow deduced our plan, found and destroyed them? Those remotes were a major element of our defense; if they didn't show up, we were dead meat.

Now we realized a possibly fatal flaw in our designs; for the remotes were modified such that they wouldn't last long in the battle, but they'd probably help clear the field of enemies, or at least do substantial damage. We had other forces to add to the fray, but we'd not planned to deploy them until after the remotes had done their thing. If we had to use them before the remotes, the remotes themselves would probably destroy as much of our own forces, as those of the enemy! Agh!

It appeared we'd have to change our plans. Fortunately, we'd rigged up a way to bypass the signal jamming by the enemy that we'd experienced before.

Unfortunately, we hadn't anticipated the enemy bringing probability noise generators to the second meeting. So our brilliant contingency comm method now proved to be a dud. Agh! As our contrived method utilized Realtime shifting, the probability noise disrupted its proper functioning, just as it did the Sol emergency escape mechanism based on the same technology.

So there was no way to change the plan, as far as the sweeper remotes were concerned. And yet, we were about to be forced into it.

*Any sign at all of the remotes, Arbitur?* I asked.

*Negative.*

It was then that the entire ship shook. It was like a quickie earthquake. I almost fell to the floor.

*What happened Arbitur?*

*One stinger was irreparably damaged by the lasers. Being that our defenses are less robust than that of the Sol vessels, the doomed stinger drew as near as it could and utilized its self destruct mechanism against us.*

*Did it hurt us?*

*Yes. Six laser positions were destroyed. Eleven others in a surrounding area are damaged. The three outer buffer layers are presently being cannibalized in order to shore up the inner two.

*Of the two inner buffers, the outermost has numerous openings, through which some damage has been done to the other--*

Another blast rocked the ship.

*--alert-- update-- a second stinger has self-destructed-- *

A third blast struck.

*-- but-- but-- but minimal damage inflicted as too far away-- alert-- update-- third stinger explosion has brought cumulative destruction of the last remaining functional outer buffer field to 45%, inner field 25%--*

Yet another blast shook us. This time more violently. Due to the net, I knew all we active organic crew members who'd been standing had been thrown off our feet everywhere onboard. If not for our protective clothing, we would have been hurt. Few of the androids lost their footing though.

*-- alert-- update-- laser defenses essentially destroyed. Though 32 lasers remain functional, the necessary buffer field operators have been disabled. Hull near 100% exposed. Some damage, but integrity-- *

The ship shuddered. This was different from the explosions.

*-- alert-- update-- hull integrity compromised by fission thrusters--*

*Launch an escape remote! Shift us to just behind the location of the remote attack wave!* Jorgon seemed to be practically yelling over the net.

We were lucky. Sort of. Jorgon's order apparently coincided with a weak moment in the probability noise of the enemy, allowing our shift to actually work.

We shifted, and the attacks stopped. But only for a moment. For the modified remotes had finally arrived in our vicinity. Therefore our new location wasn't all that far removed from the old one.

Though the attack stopped and then began again, the new violence fell off rather quickly. For the preset attack remotes were sweeping the stingers from the space around us.

Unfortunately, many stingers were still able to self destruct as they died. We were buffeted a few more times by their explosions before things quietened down again.

Arbitur reported the remotes were extremely effective against the stingers, as they often used the stingers' own speed against them (wherever the stingers met the sweep remotes' particulate disks head on, that more than doubled the kinetic force of impact).

The combination of evasive maneuvers, shift, and the repeated knocks of the nuclear blasts-- along with the movements of the Sol fleet-- had separated us significantly from the fleet itself.

As the battle around the fleet looked fairly furious from our present vantage point, we none of us relished the idea of returning.

Then we saw it. Or rather, Arbitur did, and alerted us to the new weirdness.

Apparently our destruction of all the enemy vessels in our immediate vicinity had bought us some relief from the local jamming. In bits and pieces we were now getting enough sensor information to put together a better visual representation of the whole battle theater.

A new ship was flying towards the Sol fleet. It wasn't a Sol vessel. It wasn't a stinger or heavy cruiser. In fact, it looked nothing at all like an enemy vessel.

It was us. But it wasn't us.

For the briefest of instants, Arbitur thought we'd stumbled across a sister shifter ship from his own time. But on closer examination he perceived that the new ship was the Pagnew itself.

Since all communications near the fleet were still hopelessly jammed we couldn't hail the strange new vessel, or contact the Sol.

We were all puzzled and confused by this.

Arbitur provided us a better view of the scene by extrapolating to fill in the blanks imposed by the now sporadic jamming around our position. We watched the other Pagnew rejoin the fleet. It showed damage, but not much. It was taking hits from the stingers in the area. The other Pagnew-- like us-- had apparently lost all its lasers, but surprisingly had most of its exterior buffer fields still intact. We were even more puzzled when we observed the way it was fighting. Instead of using its remotes as sweepers the way we were doing now, it was using them to-- less efficiently in terms of reach and energy expenditure-- dematerialize enemy craft, as we'd originally done to the missiles of the first battle.

*Arbitur, is it possible we created a double of ourselves during our last shift?* Jorgon broadcast over the net for everyone's benefit.

As usual, Arbitur took his cue from this act and replied in the same fashion.

*Though the possibility has been discussed in various shifter conferences, I believe it unlikely-- highly unlikely. I detected no unusual readings which could not be attributed to other phenomena present at the time.*

*Project then your own ideas concerning this,* Jorgon directed.

*I theorize that either the Sol or the enemy have created the simulacrum to suit their own purposes. It would be feasible for either.*

*I think I know why the enemy might do such a thing, but why the Sol?* Ling popped in.

*Perhaps in an attempt to draw fire away from us, if they detected our distress. Perhaps to disorient the enemy, if the Sol think us destroyed.*

*But the Sol would know we are not destroyed. Their sensor arrays are vastly superior to ours--* Ling replied.

*True, as to superiority. But not necessarily in tense. The Sol sensor range was indeed great previous to the battle. However, that range appears to have contracted substantially since then. Perhaps in order to shore up the probability field detectors on which their defenses depend. Also, all the fleet is inundated with enemy jamming efforts at the moment, where we are relatively clear of same.*

*Recommended course of action regarding the double, Arbitur?* Jorgon asked.

*Repair our ship and observe. And avoid rejoining the fleet at this time-- *

*But our surviving remotes have already headed to the fleet to attack the remaining enemy vessels-- *

*Yes, as they were programmed to do, once the space immediately surrounding us was secure. They will do no harm. And will soon expire with the safeguards of their drives disabled as they are.*

*Arbitur, please optimize all functions as you see fit to affect repairs and rebuild ship defenses as quickly as possible,* Jorgon ordered, though we all knew Arbitur was already doing that. It just made Jorgon feel better to actually say it. In fact, we were all glad he did.

*In process,* Arbitur replied, as efficient as ever.

While we tended to the Pagnew's most pressing concerns, our trusty remotes were now doing our fighting for us. They swept in around the Sol fleet, destroying the stingers left and right with their huge particle nets.

This action seemed to unleash the Sol like a giant broken out of chains. They carried the battle to the heavier enemy vessels, and made themselves look like berserkers. I mean, the big enemy ships were being pulverized in every way you could imagine. The Sol looked to have pulled out all the stops on their weapons.

The sight was awesome.

But during the entire spectacle, that disturbing and mysterious second Pagnew stayed close to the fleet, continuously launching remotes and occasionally catching a random stinger with them.

We still hadn't figured out whether it was an enemy creation, or Sol. Then Arbitur cracked the conundrum.

*I have performed a complete analysis of the unexplained second Pagnew, based on sensor scans. This has become feasible as more enemy vessels have been neutralized, thereby lessening the intensity of jamming. The second Pagnew is perfect.*

*Perfect? Explain, Arbitur,* requested Yamal.

*The second Pagnew is literally this vessel. It holds we the crew in our entirety, so far as external scans may detect-- *

*You mean there's a copy of each of us aboard that ship too?* Jorgon asked, incredulously.

*Affirmative. However, our duplicates do not appear to be self-determinate in their actions. And despite its perfect physical replication, the timing of the craft's existence appears to be off.*

*What does that mean? The 'not-self-determinate actions', and timing of existence being off, I mean,* I asked Arbitur.

*The second Pagnew is an exact replica of us, with the only exceptions being the crew apparently suffering puppet-like manipulation by other entities, and the entire vessel exhibiting a difference in Realtime existence.*

I still wasn't clear on what was happening-- though the puppet manipulation sure sounded bad.

*You mean we created a shift clone after all? One that stems from a time displacement?* Ling asked.

*No. I mean an outside agency duplicated us at a previous point in Realtime. It is not a shift clone.*

*How do you know?*

*The metabolic rate recordings of the crew, and operating cycles of various ship functions would all be displaced by an equal amount were it a shift clone; for the entire vessel would have been created instantaneously in such an event. The fact however is that slight discrepancies between these rate records exist, which point to various components being completed at slightly different times--*

*You've done it Arbitur!* Jorgon said with a decisive tone. *Now tell us who created it, and justify.*

*The enemy. For the Sol have not been sufficiently interested to record us in such detail. I am sure I would have been aware of such data gathering, as they would have gotten much of it through our own net and other communication links.*

*Then how did the enemy do so?*

*They apparently have developed their own form of cybernetic communication. They are able to detect and decipher the flow of information through inorganic circuits, and extrapolate decision branching from this.*

Everyone was momentarily silenced by Arbitur's revelation. I could feel over the net that the crew was stunned. Me, I was still too ignorant of what it meant to be much affected.

*So the enemy can effectively probe your internal logic, Arbitur?* Jorgon almost whispered from his node.

*Yes. And those of the Sol too, after a fashion. But not with the level of quality you may fear.*

*Recommended action concerning counterfeit Pagnew, Arbitur?* Jorgon asked grimly.

*Immediate obliteration. We can easily do so, as the enemy does not understand much of the technology they have duplicated,* Arbitur replied. Then, after a slight hesitation, he added *yet*.

I shook my head in disbelief. *You mean kill the crew too? But I thought you said they were duplicates of us! Wouldn't it be wrong to kill them? I mean, they can't help it if some evil being conjured them up from nowhere, and now has them enslaved,* I found myself pleading for the lives of a crew identical to ourselves, whom I'd never met. And yet again, my mind was being bent way, way out of shape by the course of events. How I avoided suffering massive headaches in this place each and every day, I'll never know.

[This does seem a bit much. From my perspective here, once(?) removed from the actual events (if they ever happened) even I am feeling overwhelmed and oppressed by the pace and complexity of the experience recalled. But if you think about it, events of 500 years and further into the future would likely be at least this complex and confusing for us present day folk. If all this turned out to be real events, I guess I'd have to say the real surprise would be that I could comprehend as much of it as I do. Think how screwed up some regular joe from the time of Columbus would be, by seeing 1990!]

*If the crew were shift clones they would indeed be virtually identical to ourselves, this near to their creation event. In which case any decision regarding their fate might present far more ethical implications to be considered. But that is not the case here. The duplicate crew were built molecule by molecule as part of a deception on our enemy's part. The blueprint for construction was a scan of sufficient resolution to capture gross functional potentialities, but not comprehensive personalities and memory stores of organic beings. The duplicate inorganics are closer to truly identical to our own beings than the organics, but even there there are differences enough to justify termination.*

*I still don't understand how we can just kill them-- * I protested.

Then Ling interjected her own gentle brand of explanation.

*Jerry, what Arbitur is saying is the crew onboard the duplicate ship is identical to us primarily in physical attributes, not personality or volition. They are permanent slaves to their creators, in possession only of those subsets of our own personalities which their creators deemed useful to their slaved existence. Destroying the creators and freeing the crew would leave our duplicates in much the same predicament as young children whose parents were killed. The other crew is...what's the word...very like severely autistic adults from your time-- *

*I'm sorry, but I don't know what that means,* I replied. I couldn't recall hearing the word 'autistic' used by anyone, by 1972.

*It means they would most likely require considerable institutionalization, or at least continuous guidance to make it on their own. Or else corrective therapies such as selective boosting and subordination of various mental capacities, in order to live a normal life. We do not possess onboard the Pagnew a comprehensive suite of the resources required to provide them such care, even if protocols allowed us to remove them from their Realtime to accompany us on our journey-- *

*But they're us, so this isn't really their native Realtime! And we could freeze them like the alternate crew, until we get somewhere they can be taken care of-- *

*No Jerry. According to protocol this is their native Realtime, as this is where their separate and unique existence began. It would require considerable time and other resources to prepare stasis units for another entire Pagnew crew. Time and resources we do not currently possess. We ourselves are also under threat from both the enemy and the Sol-- and by extension, the duplicates themselves. Believe me, there are more excellent arguments against attempting to rescue and salvage our duplicates in this situation beyond those already presented-- *

*Okay, okay, I get it,* I replied, quitting my efforts on the duplicate crew's behalf. Poor suckers, I thought. That could just as easily be us over there as them. I wondered if we could even tell if or when somebody in this crazy place up and cloned us, ship and all.

Heck: we might be clones ourselves and never know it, according to the shift clone explanations available in the archives. The only things which might give us clues to our plight included encountering or hearing of our own separate originals somewhere.

And as those poor dupes over there were cloned in some other way than shifting, there was apparently more than one way to clone a cat here. So you could find yourself to be a copy even if you never shifted anywhere at all. Yuck!

After getting the go ahead from the crew, Arbitur did something bad to the other Pagnew. Whatever it was, it vaporized the false vessel in a curiously non-violent fashion. Arbitur explained later that he hadn't wanted to alarm the Sol.

I felt sick at heart. We'd just killed another version of me, Ling, and Riki over there, among many others. Totally innocent folks, who hadn't been alive long enough to do anything wrong. And even if they had, it wasn't their fault because they were enslaved. But I tried to take comfort in the fact it seemed to be over quickly, and so hopefully they didn't suffer much.

It sure seemed like everything here was the grayest of gray areas, ethics-wise.

Later my guilt pangs got worse when I thought up some more and better arguments for having not killed our duplicates. But it was too late.

[I see my younger self here grappling with matters very like those I've encountered many times since 1972. Not clones, of course. But issues just as gray ethics-wise, and just as deadly for many involved. There's lots of jobs in this world where having a conscience is a terrible liability. But how the heck do you change this fact? That's a question for the ages.]

Immediately on the heels of the duplicate Pagnew's vaporization, Arbitur had parked us via shift in the precise position occupied by the now vanquished clone only nano-seconds before. We were able to do this Realtime maneuver due to the large numbers of our remotes which were now floating around the area (many with their motive engines burned out). The relevant gear for shifts still worked fine even in the remotes now floating helplessly about (at least so long as no probability noise gummed up the works).

Apparently the Sol never noticed the difference. And Arbitur came up with all kinds of reasons not to tell them, with which the crew agreed, and the whole subject was placed under the same social quarantine as the topic of our arrest.

Something smelled fishy to me though. Like there was something Arbitur was keeping from us.

Since no one else seemed to think this, I kept it to myself. At least for a little while. Then I surreptitiously spoke to Arbitur about it. And boy was I surprised!

The crew entered into a new conference concerning the inorganic circuitry reading-from-a-distance capability the enemy had exhibited, as the Sol and our remaining mobile sweeper remotes mopped up the last of the enemy strike force.

This subject too, Arbitur convinced us to keep from the Sol.

It turned out the enemy could indeed read inorganic minds. And in a way very similar to the interpersonal communication the Sol themselves possessed. But they didn't understand a whole lot of what they read, for some reason. They were sort of like third grade readers faced with eighth grade books; they could comprehend the basics, but ran into all kinds of new concepts they didn't yet understand, and so had trouble applying.

They learned much from the context around the concepts; but this exclusive reliance on context was as much a source of mistakes as progress.

The enemy needed a dictionary bad. Not just any dictionary, but one tailored to their own special perspective on the world. Of course, once they had such a dictionary, they'd be much more dangerous.

The enemy could only read fairly primitive inorganic minds very easily. For more advanced ones like the Sol worked so fast and furiously they couldn't get a handle on them-- sort of like my own early experiences with the shush net.

The enemy could only read the minds of the very simplest Sol devices, and anything based on Pagnew origin technology.

Arbitur was an open book to the enemy. And so a treasure trove. But it was still a book with lots of big words. And therein was our main defense against their cybernetic intrusion. But it wouldn't last long; the enemy was a fast learner.

To defend against excessive progress on the part of the enemy Arbitur manufactured a lot of false, illogical, and inconsistent information for them to examine, and encrypted much of his own real knowledge that was kept in 'live' storage. Such measures wouldn't hold them off forever. But we didn't plan on being here forever.

When the crew questioned Arbitur about how he'd gained this knowledge of the enemy, he'd seemed somewhat evasive. At least to me, if no one else. Everyone but me seemed to trust Arbitur completely. I sometimes wondered if I wasn't prejudiced because of my ancient historical background.

We'd been lucky in the battle. The heavy enemy warships had never gotten in range of us; the Sol had fought them off.

It turned out our mini-fleet of stinger-sweeping remotes had been a decisive factor, despite their short lives.

The enemy's combination of stingers overloading the Sol's probability field detectors while the heavy artillery fired on them, had proved deadly. The strategy rendered the detectors unable to properly distinguish the presence of danger, so that the automatic escape function wouldn't work when it should. Essentially, the result was the stingers made the Sol ships stand still so the big guns could score direct hits on them.

The Sol fleet had lost a total of six ships before our remotes had arrived and cleared the sky of the stingers. But another thirteen Sol vessels had apparently fled the battle entirely.

This left the Sol with a fleet of thirty-three ships. Many of these were damaged, but repairs would soon have them good as new. Or better. For both the Sol and the Pagnew possessed such advanced technology it was easy for them to do design changes on-the-fly, even as they made repairs. Trillions of intricately detailed computer simulations of a potential new component would test and debug the design practically instantaneously.

If I learned nothing else from this trip, I would at least get an idea of the tremendous potential that high powered computers held in store for the human race. And nano-technology too. Though I still didn't fully understand it.

So anyway, despite our own near disastrous encounter with the stingers, we'd played a major role in winning the battle.

Jerrera of course had returned to us, now that everything was safe again.

No one dared mention the arrest issue he'd raised just before the last attack. The crew had taken the precaution of having any broaching of the subject automatically filtered out at the individual crew node level, before it could ever reach the net (unless, of course, Jerrera brought it up himself; in which case we could all plead for our freedom at will).

The topic also made everyone afraid to ask Jerrera about our returning home, or contact with the focal agent. For the Sol themselves might easily stymie everything by seizing our ship.

Luckily, the soup kitchen indicated the focal agent and his vessel were still in the vicinity; so he hadn't been disintegrated in the battle, or fled.

It wasn't like the Pagnew had anywhere to run to. The Sol ships were specially designed for Realtime shifting, while we could only do so in awkward fashion with our remotes. And with our main single station shifting drive currently disabled by a combination of Sol shenanigans and the ongoing need for Realtime shifting for defensive maneuvering, we couldn't escape them in Realtime, or inter-dimensionally.

There was also the chance that if we did shift out of this Realtime without contacting the focal agent first, we'd have to start from scratch again. And the odds on our finding another Realtime as likely to lead us home as this one seemed pretty low.

What if the soup kitchen luck the first time had been a fluke, never to be repeated?

Keep in mind the Pagnew crew had spent close to nine agonizing years in limbo before picking me up. So they didn't want to give up their chance to milk this Realtime of all the return home opportunities they could, unless they absolutely had to. Plus, if we did get trapped here, the crew might get to return to something approaching a normal life again that way-- even if many or all of their former friends and family were dead, or had moved on to circumstances inimical to rekindled relationships. I mean, at least they'd no longer be marooned in time zones or universes where humanity didn't exist at all.

It had to be tough on people (who are social animals according to science) to live out their lives completely bereft of their society. Especially when their lives could be as long as folks from Ling's time.

Of course, resuming their respective careers where they'd left off might be a thornier matter for the crew here, as they were almost certainly hopelessly obsolete in many subjects now. And there was the little matter of inter-dimensional shifting being banned, and the crew having broken all sorts of laws by abducting me...

As for my own fate, that was a whole encyclopedia set in itself! I really, truly-- of world-turned-upside-down-consequences-- wasn't supposed to be here at all! It seemed to me that there was about a zillion different kinds of bad karma involved in my presence here for the Sol to discover and be horrified by. After they got past all the other illegal or questionable items on their Pagnew list, anyway. Whew!

Heck: it was a Gordian knot which would tempt just about anyone I knew (including myself) to just say the hell with it, and disintegrate me where I stood! Yikes!

Yeah, we were all in a quandary here, not really sure what in hell to do about anything. Even Arbitur displayed an amazing degree of uncertainty in his recommendations to the crew.

So we basically just sought to continue walking the tightrope between the Sol, the enemy, and our luck, in the hope that things would somehow work out okay.

But a few of us didn't like the odds, and looked for ways to cheat a bit, in our spare moments.

In working with Arbitur to concoct improvised defenses from the data in the archives, I'd realized that we did indeed have lots of material on hand which could help in battle. It was just that neither the crew or Arbitur had possessed the proper viewpoint to see things that way.

I'd discovered lots I didn't know, in those semi-secret sessions with Arbitur.

For one thing, I'd learned more about the 'second skin' installed onto my body immediately after my abduction (and which had been the cause of my itching before).

This was a practically invisible layer of those tiny robots which Arbitur had described to me previously as inhabiting or making up the very fabric the ship.

In a second skin they did all kinds of neat stuff, which included keeping you clean; hence, the explanation behind my never reaching the smelly stage anymore, despite the lack of showers.

This artificial skin monitored and managed many of your biological functions to keep you healthy (with a little help from those near invisible flying buffer fields, and careful tweaks to your diet). It regularly toned up your body with mild but focused muscle stimulation while you slept.

It could even supplement your own strength a small bit when needed, and when appropriate would change densities and thicknesses to protect you from harm in its own limited fashion. It was like an invisible suit of featherweight armor which could protect you somewhat from most all minor harm like infections, bumps, and bruises.

It also extended your natural senses somewhat, in ways which went beyond the eyeglasses replacement it'd performed for me early on-- though certain functions needed some experience on the part of the user to really make use of.

I recognized that-- though great for everyday life-- these second skins wouldn't be of much use in a pitched space battle. But then I discovered Ling's people had devices to augment these.

Naturally, these were called 'third' and 'fourth' skins, as they extended the functionality of the second. They were all designed to work together when needed.

The third skins weren't as passive as second skins. Or even like a skin at all, much of the time-- though technically they could form another synthetic skin layer for the wearer as one option. Usually third skins were actually clouds of tiny flying robotic bugs, which would surround you and move with you as you traveled. These clouds would expand or contract depending on what was required at the time. When completely contracted, they could cover you from head to toe in a tough shell that made you impervious to more stuff than a second skin alone could. This new level of protection was maybe equivalent to wearing a small caliber bullet proof suit, that covered you from head to toe, but still allowed great freedom of movement.

When expanded, third skins could also give you the power of atmospheric flight, or expanded perceptions through the interface of the second skin and shush net.

Third skins could shape themselves into a wide variety of hand tools and machine interfaces, or act as remote agents for your bidding.

These third skins were actually just smaller, more specialized versions of the Pagnew's exterior buffer fields.

Each shifter remote possessed such a field for added safety to personnel in shifting, and extra versatility in general.

The big surprise about these though was that the gravity inside the Pagnew was actually an illusion fostered by a huge invisible buffer field, within which we all moved about.

The ship's gravity mimicking field exerted a downward pressure on us to give the illusion of gravity. But since this worked best on the outside surface of our bodies, our guts inside still noticed the lack of real gravity at times.

This had been the source of my weird nausea when first brought onboard. The gravity onboard was artificial and imperfect compared to the natural mass-spawned gravity in which I'd grown up.

The data indicated there was more to this story: like how part of this tenuous field actually extended into our heads and ears, and down our throats, and into our guts to normalize our innards too; but this part was more delicate and more gradually implemented than the first.

And it was a fact that not long after my arrival, the sickening feeling in my guts had pretty much disappeared.

Fourth skins were about as different from third skins as could be. They were specially designed for harsh environments, such as extended survival in the hard vacuum of space, or for military and police functions.

These were much like substantially thicker and tougher second skins, rather than expanding and contracting clouds of micro-gnats.

Fourth skins greatly expanded the communications range of your net node, in two completely different ways. One as you might guess was in distance. The other though seemed quite surprising to me. For Ling claimed the skin gave you limited ability to communicate with non-sentient animals, and even plant life! Along with near universal, instant, and transparent translation of different human languages, too.

Of course, the plant and animal communication functions were some of the fourth skin's more subtle features, and so I never made much use of them during my time with the Pagnew.

Fourth skins were usually opaque and somewhat thick, but could be made transparent on command. They could absorb massive impacts, and even generated energy from such events. They could become entirely closed environments, capable of recycling wearer wastes indefinitely, and taking any extra input needed from whatever could be found in the outer environment.

The fourth skins had greatly expanded capacities over second skins to modify their densities and shape. They could protect you from great falls, or the pressures of the sea bottom. They gave you enormous physical strength. And their malleability could provide wearers with startling disguises, which could be changed at will.

They could also enclose a whole second person too in emergency rescues, though such dimensional expansion heavily penalized their other capacities.

Fourth skins supplemented the flight capabilities of third skins. A fourth skin wearer with no external aids or specialized configurations whatever could perform short range hops or jumps of a hundred yards horizontally, and fifty or sixty feet vertically. Wearers could also significantly slow their descent in falls, when within the medium of at least a good fraction of one atmospheric pressure of gases or fluids.

If you ordered your fourth skin to modify itself for optimal aerial performance it could-- depending upon the specific purpose in mind-- make you into a fast and robust short range guided missle, or a relatively slow, powered glider of indefinite range. Or third, basically a large, slow moving but still powered balloon or blimp.

In fluid mediums like seawater though, the entire outer surface of a fourth skin could change to various forms capable of different scales of speed or maneuvering, basically giving the wearer something like 20th century dolphin or better swimming abilities, along with almost inexhaustible energy stores to drive them.

The thick skin also provided comprehensive self-repair capabilities and full-fledged inorganic intelligence support for the wearer.

Learning all the above and more helped a lot in generating new ideas for our defenses. And Arbitur was becoming ever more adept at such things himself.

As I was the odd man out of the crew, plus being from the 20th century, a big believer in secrecy for some things (especially where defense matters were concerned), Arbitur and I decided we might make a great pair of co-conspirators in devising a few contingency measures to use against either the enemy-- or the Sol. Arbitur also indicated that certain things about my mind and origin made me better suited for such than anyone else on board. For instance, it could be tougher for either the Pagnew's own shush net-- or the Sol-- to reliably plumb my own thoughts, compared to those of anyone else aboard the Pagnew. And so we plotted...

What happened next? Putting a Genie Back in His Bottle

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