The Space_Time Displacement Conundrum Read online

  CAPTAIN BARTHOLOMEW QUASAR

  and the

  SPACE-TIME

  DISPLACEMENT

  CONUNDRUM

  A Novel

  Milo James Fowler

  www.milojamesfowler.com

  Captain Bartholomew Quasar and the Space-Time Displacement Conundrum © 2015 Milo James Fowler

  Originally serialized by Every Day Novels

  All rights reserved.

  This eBook or any portion of it may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author—except for brief quotations in glowing, 4.5-star reviews. (Your reward will be waiting for you in Heaven.) The story contained within this eBook is a work of fiction. All material is either the product of the author's overactive imagination or is used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead) or to actual events is entirely coincidental—and worthy of further investigation.

  Dedication:

  To Sara,

  Beloved companion through space and time

  Contents:

  Episode 1: The 'If-Only' Elixir

  Episode 2: The Entity Known As Steve

  Episode 3: Where Few Dare to Travel

  Episode 4: In the Line of Fire

  Episode 5: Troublesome Interlopers

  Episode 6: Reactor Coils

  Episode 7: Smarty Barty

  Episode 8: An Amazonian's Scorn

  Episode 9: Cold Fusion Magic

  Episode 10: Head-Hopping

  Episode 11: Meet the Goobalobs

  Episode 12: Brace for Impact

  Episode 13: AUTO-DESTRUCT

  Episode 14: Space Between Space

  Episode 15: Down to Business

  Episode 16: Superman Complex

  Episode 17: Very Noble Gases

  Episode 18: Lost in Limbo

  Episode 19: Seen and Heard

  Episode 20: Trapped

  Episode 21: The Formidable Grace

  Episode 22: DNA Incompatibility

  Episode 23: A Real Knockout

  Episode 24: Dead or Alive

  Episode 25: Surge Blast

  Episode 26: Locked Up

  Episode 27: A Carpethrian Anthem

  Episode 28: Second Time Around

  Episode 29: Ready to Blow

  Episode 30: Self-Preservation Mode

  Episode 31: On Mission

  Episode 32: A Model Crew

  Episode 33: Lines of Communication

  Episode 34: Out of Control

  Episode 35: Blown to Smithereens

  Episode 36: An Unexpected Visit

  Episode 37: Soul Mates

  Episode 38: The Future Mrs. Quasar

  Episode 39: Home Sweet Home

  Episode 40: An Insurmountable Barrier

  Episode 41: Diabolical Bots

  Episode 42: Sea Nukembers

  Episode 43: Signals Through Space

  Episode 44: The Immutable Past

  Episode 45: Welcome to Carpethria

  Episode 46: The Arachnoid Encounter

  Episode 47: Time for Last Words

  Episode 48: Outmatched

  Episode 49: None the Worse for Wear

  Episode 50: First Contact

  Episode 51: Training for Battle

  Episode 52: First Blood

  Episode 53: Gruesome Intruders

  Episode 54: A Spider's Prey

  Episode 55: Fight to the Finish

  Episode 56: A Life for a Life

  Episode 57: Left Holding the Bag

  Episode 58: The Unwritten Past

  Episode 59: The Desolation of Zhan

  Episode 60: Electromagnetic Interference

  Episode 61: Back from the Dead

  Episode 62: Family Reunion

  Episode 63: The Grinning Ghoul

  Episode 64: A Common Enemy

  Episode 65: Servo the Honest

  Episode 66: Impending Battle

  Episode 67: Fire Fight

  Episode 68: Stunning Betrayal

  Episode 69: Officer Down

  Episode 70: Narvana 6

  Episode 71: Opsanus Tau Prime

  Episode 72: Two for the Price of One

  Episode 73: You Only Live Once

  Episode 74: Son of Quasar

  Episode 75: The Makings of a Fleet

  Episode 76: Business Worth Discussing

  Episode 77: Five Hundred Years Later

  Episode 78: Emperor Zhan

  Episode 79: Trouble with Drones

  Episode 80: The Gift of Now

  Episode 1: The 'If-Only' Elixir

  "If only. Have two words ever expressed more profound regret? Such magnificent loss?" Bartholomew Quasar reclined in his deluxe-model captain's chair and stared up at the starlight rushing past a porthole in brilliant streaks of frosty white.

  "Huh?" His navigator, the only crew member currently on the bridge, was a very hairy biped named Hank. Not one for conversation, Hank slumped in his swivel chair at the helm with all four loose-hinged arms hovering over various controls on the blinking console. He looked like an overweight sloth suffering through a mean hangover.

  "If only!" Captain Quasar repeated with feeling. He raised a clenched fist, striking a meaningful pose. Then he frowned at the back of Hank's hairy head. "Don't you have any regrets, man?"

  At first, it didn't appear that Hank would answer the captain. This was common. It's not that Hank couldn't speak, for he could and often did; he chose his speaking moments judiciously, and the rest of the time he utilized monosyllables to—

  "Humph." That was all. For now, anyway.

  The captain sighed and returned his gaze to the stars passing by at near-lightspeed. It was enough to take a body's breath away.

  "To right a single wrong, or to salvage a missed opportunity." He shook his head. "Not that I've missed many. With the ladies, I mean." He chuckled to himself, glancing briefly at Hank.

  "Humph."

  Captain Quasar narrowed his sapphire-blue eyes and clenched his solid jaw. The muscle twitched on command. "To have that kind of power, that sort of magical ability—"

  "Magical?" Hank sounded incredulous. But tones were often garbled by Hank's thick, phlegm-coated pair of throats.

  "Yes." The captain sat up straighter. "That's what I said."

  "Humph."

  "You don't believe there to be any such thing, is that it?"

  The superior pair of very hairy shoulders shrugged up and down, but otherwise, Hank didn't respond.

  "Yeah, well, that's what they all say. That's what they said about near-lightspeed travel, isn't it? 'It's not possible. It will never work. You'll tear yourself apart.' They always think it's some kind of unbelievable hocus-pocus until somebody actually figures out how to do it! But look at us, Hank. We're perfectly fine—still in one piece!"

  "Two."

  "Ah, yes." A sheepish grin stole across Captain Quasar's chiseled features. "There are two of us now."

  "There were more."

  A complete sentence from the hairy helmsman? The captain hid his surprise. "Your point being?"

  Hank shook his head. No point.

  But he was right. Once upon a time, and not long ago, this ship, the Effervescent Magnitude, held teeming within its bowels a complete complement of 1,492 crew members—including Captain Quasar and Hank the Carpethrian biped. However, in the past six months since the captain had insisted on installing a near-lightspeed cold fusion reactor ("far-fetched magic" to the less-enlightened) and embarking upon this current quest to the mysterious Opsanus Tau system, the Effervescent Magnitude's crew had strangely—yet steadily—diminished.

  Now there were only two souls
on board, and both of them sat on the bridge. All hands were on deck—all six of them, thanks to Hank's additional appendages.

  Did Captain Bartholomew Quasar ever think about his lost crew members? On occasion, yes. Did he have any idea what happened to them all? Not really, no.

  It probably had something to do with the cold fusion reactor. He didn't fully understand how it worked, only that for centuries all the eggheads back on Earth had said cold fusion was science fiction (and poor sci-fi at that). He was just glad to prove them wrong. It worked, obviously! So what if the reactor had somehow caused 1,490 members of his crew to disappear? If this current quest proved to be as fruitful as he hoped, he would be able to bring them all back anyway—as long as he made it to Opsanus Tau Prime and convinced the non-temporal natives to share their powerful elixir.

  "If only," he murmured.

  "Point zero-zero-zero-nine-two-five parsecs to destination."

  The captain broke from his reverie and frowned. "So, that's about—" He waited for Hank to fill in the blank, having never been particularly apt at unit conversions himself.

  "Two days." Hank cleared one of his throats, giving his tone an oddly harmonic quality as he added, "Give or take."

  The captain clenched both fists and gave his armrests a solid thump. "Not good enough, dammit, not good enough!" He paused to bite his lip. "I thought we were almost there!"

  "At lightspeed, we would be."

  Captain Quasar threw up his hands with a short cry. "Confounded cold-fusion near-lightspeed! How near are we, anyway? To actual lightspeed, I mean?"

  Hank's superior set of shoulders lifted, but they didn't fall. They didn't have the chance. For it was at that moment the very hairy helmsman of the Effervescent Magnitude vanished from space and time without so much as a blip of sound or a flash of light.

  "I was afraid that might happen," mused Captain Quasar.

  Then he realized he was now alone on the ship.

  With a yelp, the captain charged headlong from his chair and took the helm with both hands flying across the blinking display.

  Eventually, his nerves steadied, and he returned to his musings—now only an interior monologue:

  Two days more, and I shall have you, my potable elixir. Ah yes, magical potion manufactured in the depths of Opsanus Tau Prime, far-flung planet of mystery. My 'if only' cure-all, my 'do-over' panacea. With you, I'll never make another mistake!

  And even if he did, so what? He'd be able to undo any error.

  He laughed out loud. He couldn't stop; he was that gleeful.

  Until the cold fusion reactor went kaput, and the sudden downshift in velocity from near-lightspeed to no-speed-at-all tore the entire ship apart.

  Captain Bartholomew Quasar's last thoughts were, of course, only two words.

  Episode 2: The Entity Known As Steve

  Bartholomew Quasar was fairly certain he was dreaming, for he had experienced this same dream on more than one occasion: standing on a stage in the glorious United World Hall of Heroes, surrounded by adoring throngs who cheered and applauded his latest acts of valor. What had he done this time? Something spectacular, undoubtedly, something worthy of another medal or trophy or the key to some fabulous new space station or sparkling city on one of the galaxy's farthest planets.

  But no, that couldn't be right.

  For one thing, the faces smiling up at him were definitely human. There wasn't a single mottled alien to be found among them. And for another, he found that he recognized these faces. They were people he'd had dealings with in the past: United World admirals, ambassadors, and dignitaries along with their flunkies, not to mention a multitude of media personnel at the periphery, each with augmented eyes recording everything that occurred, later to be transmitted throughout the galaxy.

  This was an event he remembered well, the day his ship, the Effervescent Magnitude, first took to the stars with a complete crew complement of 1,492, including the indomitable Selene Wan, his first officer, who leaned in close to him now. Had she been standing beside him the whole time?

  Strange. In most of his other dreams, Quasar always stood onstage alone.

  "Aren't you going to say something, Captain?" Dressed in her fancy burgundy-and-black uniform with tasteful gold trim—the one she wore only to special events—she inclined her head toward the front of the stage as if it were waiting for him to step forward and take command.

  "Like a speech?" he murmured, and his voice didn't sound like he was in a dream. Usually, it came slow and groggy in dream-time, but no matter what foolish noises he made, the multitudes would always smile and applaud louder. That was usually when he'd start flying through the air over their heads, turning somersaults just because he could, and they'd stare up at him in rapturous wonder.

  "Perhaps a few words would suffice, sir. We're on a tight schedule."

  Since when had there ever been anything resembling a schedule in one of Quasar's dreams? Something wasn't quite right here.

  The last thing he knew for certain was that he'd been aboard the Magnitude. There had been some sort of problem with the near-lightspeed cold fusion reactor, and he'd seen Hank disappear—

  "Thank you," he heard someone say above the noise of the crowd, and then realized he'd been the one to say it. "Thank you!" He stepped forward onto the front section of the stage designed to project his voice out toward the audience, all five hundred of them. "You're too kind, really." He raised his hands in the universal stop-clapping-and-shut-up gesture as cordially as possible. "This is a momentous day, not only for the crew of the Effervescent Magnitude and her captain, but for humankind. For it is today that we venture into the void, which is space, that great unknown expanse beyond our small corner of the galaxy. And—"

  He broke off, catching sight of someone in the back of the assembly who had no business being there. Because in fact he hadn't been there at the launch party for the Effervescent Magnitude's maiden voyage. Captain Quasar and his intrepid crew hadn't even stumbled upon the fellow's planet until years later—if he could be considered a fellow. From what Quasar recalled, Steve was more of a noncorporeal gaseous entity who chose to manifest himself in the form of a wizened old man with an oaken staff. But there he stood in the back of the hall, staff and all, looking as wizardly as ever.

  The audience had been hanging on the captain's every word, and he'd been off to a great start, but now as he faltered, they squinted up their eyes and leaned forward as if to coax the words from him with their collective will.

  "And we'll do our best to make you proud!" Quasar started the applause himself as he descended the front steps of the stage and graced the throngs with high-fives, making his way with purpose to the back of the room.

  "Captain?" Commander Wan trailed behind, shouldering her way through the masses.

  Quasar bobbed and weaved, losing sight of Steve only to catch a glimpse and then lose him again. As in most dreams, the captain found that his legs couldn't move quite as fast as he wanted them to, and the swarms of adoring fans in his way kept multiplying, oblivious to the determined look on his face.

  "Excuse us, please," Wan said on her captain's behalf, even though it was evident she had no idea what was going on. Usually, he would bask for hours in the glow of the fawning United World populace. He was something of a hero on Earth, after all. It wasn't like him to shove past his fans with little more than a genial grunt, his gaze fixed on a point at the opposite end of the hall.

  Quasar realized this even as he knew he could do nothing to change his course, feeling as though he were seeing himself from the outside-in. As he relived this moment, he found himself perceiving everything as if for the first time, as though he hovered over his own shoulder.

  He knew one thing for certain: the entity known as Steve didn't belong here at this moment in the past—or in Quasar's dream, for that matter. Either way, Steve had some explaining to do.

  Episode 3: Where Few Dare to Travel

  "What's the meaning of this?" Captain Quasar sai
d, breaking through the throngs of adoring fans and leaving Commander Wan to keep them occupied while he approached the entity known as Steve, lurking in the only shadows to be found in the expansive hall. Odd, but true.

  "Good to see you too, Captain. You're looking well." Steve leaned on his oaken staff and smiled with grandfatherly twinkles in his grey eyes. "Though I must say, I'm as surprised to find myself here as you are."

  Quasar blinked. "Right. So why are you?"

  Steve shrugged his hunched shoulders. "If I had to guess, maybe you inhaled a little quartz dust when you visited my planet, and in so doing, you've managed to bring part of me with you wherever you go."

  "I haven't gone anywhere. I'm sound asleep in my quarters!"

  Steve chuckled at that. "No, you're standing here with me. I'm looking right at you!"

  The captain blew out a sigh. "Let me assure you, I am dreaming. It's elaborate, I must say—I mean, I haven't thought back on this day in years." He turned to take in the scene before him, the hundreds of officials and ambassadors who'd come to see him off. Quasar found his eyes smarting with nostalgia. "We had no idea what lay ahead of us, what the galaxy had in store. We were filled with wide-eyed wonder, like children staring into the sun."

  "You think you're dreaming?" Steve chortled into his beard as if he knew something he wasn't sharing.

  Quasar scowled at him. "I haven't thought about you in months. It makes no sense why you'd be here, of all people."

  "Believe me, Captain, I don't understand it any more than you do. But I'm here now, and so are you. And the sooner you come to grips with it, the sooner you'll be able to figure out what to do about it." Without warning, Steve whacked Quasar on the crown of his head with the oaken staff, causing the captain to cry out at the unexpected blow. "Still think you're dreaming?"

  Rubbing his sore head, where an unsightly bump would undoubtedly spring forth, Quasar raised a fist at the wizardly entity and shouted, "Who the hell do you think you are? Barging into my dream and—"