"Time is not on our side today." Hector placed the thoughts directly into everyone's minds, getting their attention. "We have to step up the next phase of our plan. I thought we would have more time here to plan, but the window of opportunity to get us into the data banks in Digital Earth will soon open and will not be open for long."
"I thought we established time was a defunct construct," DigBee said sardonically.
"Time travel, or travel between matter, is not a foundational concept. Time itself, as we stand here, is still a solid concept within the multiverse." Hector smiled. "Let's discuss the theory of this a little later. I need to duplicate you, Jay; in fact, I need to duplicate all of you. I will leave a copy of myself behind to do this. Please don't be alarmed. The duplicate of you created will not be activated until we leave." And before they could argue, Hector had duplicated Jay in front of their very eyes, and they vanished. Hector pulled Jay with him in a Quantum slingshot the RTW had created for them back to the bridge.
Jay immediately recognized the purple haze of the meeting place; however, this time, it was just him and Hector with the purple mist, and then the mist spoke.
"Sally has been in touch. I have the coordinates for the quantum exit point. She expressed extreme caution in her message, Martin is extremely nervous." The mist seemed to start to thicken.
"Who is Martin?" Jay asked them both.
"The antagonist of most of the nightmares in the multiverse, he's the leader of digital earth." As Hector and Purple Haze seemed to dive into a conversation trance, Jay reviewed a file Chameleon pulled up an immersion file on the New Earth and Another Destiny History.
"I don't get it. If all matter is connected, and we can use quantum tunnels to traverse it, why can't we just move wherever we want whenever we want?" Jay asked again out loud.
"Matter still needs the energy to move it, and the more matter, the harder it is. You will recall when we moved Abby to Station X, that took a lot of energy." This time the purple mist replied. Sally had told him the mist or haze was the external manifestation of the AI RealTimeWaster, then dumped a colossal immersion file on up-to-date particle physics and quantum mechanics. He stumbled a little under the weight of the data.
"Are you ok?" Hector asked, rudely querying Chameleon directly for health status.
"Yes, thanks, catching up on a LOT of things in a short space of time." He said, shrugging off Hector's hand.
"I understand; I'm sorry. Look, Jay, we need to get the final Sally away from Martin. He has held her captive all this time. Because Sally had jumped so far into Matter Map, her jump caused a break in the map. Breaks are very rare. We know of only four breaks in the entire multiverse. The captured Sally moved the break her original had made while jumping inside the DE GOO banks before she was discovered for tampering and locked in her current prison. We will be able to land you into the break, and there you will be untraceable. How you get Sally free, we can't say, but without the other three in your head, you would never be able to liberate her. The flip side risk is that, if your captured and Martin unites all the Sally's himself, he will possess enough power to undo the multiverse as we know it." As Hector finished, Jay went to sit down on a chair that wasn't there, but his Android AI, Sally, who was part of his own Android body, sported an air chair to capture him.
"No pressure then." He said, looking down at the air supporting him, searching for what was holding him up.
"Ok, Hector, get the others; we don't have long." The haze formed into a lump almost human in shape now and gently extended an arm shape to help Jay stand, which he took. Jay looked over at Hector, who was busily bringing the others to the bridge of the RealTimeWaster.
"Jay, you were chosen for this a long time ago. The atom in your head remains the unsolved mystery for all of us. How did Sally get the atom in your head after she had jumped so far through the matter map? We know what she did isn't possible through any causal time violation or manipulation of physics. She claims not to know how she did it either." The RealTimeWaster paused a moment to look at Hector, who nodded and Vanished.
"That doesn't really help us, though." Jay protested.
"Maybe not. But people call me eccentric for many reasons. One of which is that, as an AI, I still believe in luck or even destiny. I have seen too many inexplicable things in my time of awareness to have any other view. Logic is not the only force alive in the multiverse." His face formed an odd smile.
"Well, thanks for the kind words if nothing else." Jay smiled back.
"Before we run out of time. The Android you were put into, it comes from this period in.. time." The word seemed to cause the RTW some pain." When you are in GOO as you just were before coming here, the Android's strength goes with you, so you will be quite a formidable force in the DE GOO banks. I am updating Sally the AI version, not one of the three originals, on how to use that to your advantage."
"Ok, that's great, thanks." he nodded.
Hector had returned now with a wild look on his face.
"Ok, I've flipped the switch on the planet; the copies there should cause some confusion once they get discovered. Maybe it will be enough to buy us some time as the word of the traveler's appearance gets back to Martin. Jay, are you ready? I am not going to bring everyone to full consciousness until your in the sling."
"Wait, you said there were two things?" He pressed the RTW. The RTW looked flustered, if that was possible, for a purple blob.
"Ah! Yes. This is a one-way sling. Hector nor I can break Martin's encryption from the outside, so once you have Sally, perhaps with their combined minds, they can force a break in the Digital Earth Encryption so we can rescue you. We will be waiting for it's all we can do now." And then, to Jay's Surprise, the purple blob came over and hugged him. Jay winced.
"It's a long story, one for another day," Hector said, grinning. "He likes to hug."
"Jay, go to your friends; it's time." RTW ushered him over to the inert group for his friends.
"Ok, here we go!" RTW shouted as a grey mist built around them. Jay felt the impending danger he had felt on his tower. The inert Charlie grabbed his hand and winked, and Jay, in turn, grabbed Abby's cold hand, then the mist seemed to scream and reach out around them. Jay braced for blackout, but instead, what emerged was a weird cave-like enclosure made of roughly hewn stone all around them. The floor was also made of the same stone. A faint glow seemed to be coming from the rock itself, creating the light source they could see by. Apart from that, all that was there were his friends blinking into the dull light.
YOU ARE READING
Encoded
Science FictionA thousand years after the Digital Reset, Digbee is about to ENCODE the last humans into GOO banks as the human race embarks on two divergent journeys to permanently split down the line it had been drawing in the sand for the last five hundred years...
