The Space_Time Displacement Conundrum Read online

  "Captain, they're gaining on us," Wan said. She had yet to leave her post, monitoring the situation on her console. "If they fire on us at close range, we will not survive."

  "Torpedoes ready, sir," Davis said resolutely.

  Invisible to everyone else, Steve approached the captain, thumping toward him with the heavy staff. "You do realize, Captain, that if you die here, you'll cease to exist in the future. This isn't one of those convenient alternate universe scenarios where different versions of yourself live on different timelines. This is really happening—right here, right now." He paused. "You have a lot at stake, don't you think?"

  Episode 13: AUTO-DESTRUCT

  Captain Quasar wished he could step out of the moment, maybe put it on pause and take the time he needed to sort things out. He had to deal with the incensed Goobalobs hot on his tail, but he also had to wonder about something that had just occurred to him: While his conscious mind was here, in the past, what was going on in the future—his present? The Magnitude was on the run from those Amazonians, but what was he doing? Sitting in his chair with a vacant stare, in some sort of coma?

  "Captain, they're—!" Commander Wan was cut short by a pair of blinding red flares on the viewscreen, followed immediately by a cracking shudder that reverberated through the ship, as if something important had just been strained beyond the breaking point.

  "We've lost propulsion," Elliott reported, his voice hitting two octaves concurrently. "We're not going anywhere, sir." His narrow shoulders slumped forward.

  Quasar set his jaw. "Hail them."

  Wan nodded without question. The massive Goobalob face returned to the viewscreen. It wasn't difficult to read the expression in its dozens of eyes.

  "You will prepare to be boarded, Captain," the official oozed with satisfaction. "Believe me when I say you will pay for your crimes—with all that you have to give."

  Quasar narrowed his eyes. "We're not giving you anything." His fingers ran across his console without glancing down at them. "Wan, you should see something on your screen. It demands your immediate attention."

  She stared at her console and swallowed. "Captain—"

  "It's the only way, Commander."

  She leaned close to him so only he could hear. "But we can destroy them!"

  Not this time. "Trust me," he said.

  With a hesitant nod, she stepped back to her station, and her fingers tapped in the required code. AUTO-DESTRUCT in a large, bold font flashed across the viewscreen along with a countdown starting at five Earth minutes.

  "What is this?" The Goobalob's eyes twitched to focus on the phrase and numbers; apparently, it was visible on his side of the transmission as well. "What is tcurtsed-otua?"

  The captain frowned at that. But then he realized the characters were backwards on the Goobalobs' viewscreen. "An old Earth tradition, my gelatinous friend, saved for occasions such as this when enemy forces threaten to take a captain's ship. Basically, it boils down to this: if we can't have her, nobody will. You're free to come aboard whenever you like, but just know that there won't be much left in a few minutes." He strode toward the screen. "How fast can you move?"

  A few of the creature's eyes widened, aghast. "You would destroy your own ship?"

  "I wouldn't be the first. I don't know what it is with us Earth starship captains. Maybe we just think of our ships as expendable."

  Elliott half-turned to gape at the captain. Quasar signaled him to face forward, chin up.

  More of the Goobalob's eyes responded with dismay, blinking and twitching. "But such an act would be absurd, Captain. You would be committing mass suicide."

  Quasar shrugged. "I'm sure they've got a name for everything nowadays, but like I said, this is tradition. And it looks like we have less than three Earth minutes before everything goes boom over here, so you might want to make up your mind." The captain folded his muscular arms and rocked back on his heels. "Should we expect your boarding party, or are you going to move out of range of our blast radius?"

  Most of the creature's eyes blinked. "You are—" The Magnitude's translation program hesitated as it searched for the right word. "Bluffing. We do not believe you will do as you say."

  "Well, that's your gamble."

  "And what of your crew?"

  "They're prepared to go down with the ship." Quasar ignored Elliott's feeble whimper. "It's all part of the package we signed up for. Now granted, none of us probably expected it to come as a result of refusing to pay a toll. But regardless, we've died before, and we'll die again!"

  "Careful," Steve warned, appearing at the captain's side.

  Quasar jerked back from the wizened fellow.

  "Remember where you are, when you are." Steve clucked his tongue. "You haven't installed that cold-fusion near-lightspeed reactor yet, so you haven't had a chance to blow yourself up. Nobody on this ship has died or been brought back to life—conveniently, I might add—by some massive black hole at the other end of the galaxy."

  Captain Quasar silently cursed Steve and this whole cockeyed situation with all he had in him. More than anything, he wished he could return to the present/future where he at least had Hank to talk to about the bizarre nature of things.

  "We have dealt with your kind before, Captain." A slight tremor coursed through the Goobalob. All of its eyes had come to focus on Quasar. "But none has ever threatened to destroy a vessel to keep us from boarding her. You are a singular man."

  The captain inclined his head slightly. "You're not so bad yourself."

  "We will retreat to a safe distance to watch you explode." The viewscreen went dark as the Goobalobs ended their transmission.

  Quasar went straight to Elliott's console. "As soon as we're back online, you punch it. These are your coordinates." He tapped them in.

  Commander Wan's eyes hadn't left her own screen where the auto-destruct sequence continued. "Captain, we'll need to—"

  "Right." He leapt into his chair and hovered a finger over the ABORT option on the armrest console. Wan did the same over her screen. The program required both the captain and first officer to be in agreement. "Are they moving?"

  She nodded. "One hundred kilometers away—two hundred."

  Quasar gave her a wink. This was going to work.

  "Three hundred kilometers, sir."

  "Now." They tapped their screens.

  The countdown continued.

  Episode 14: Space Between Space

  No matter how many times or how hard Captain Quasar and his first officer tapped and pounded their consoles, the auto-destruct sequence would not abort.

  "We're gonna die!" Elliott shrieked, abandoning the helm to run in tight circles and slap himself in the face in a bizarre display of impending doom-driven angst.

  "Return to your post!" Quasar ordered.

  "Captain—" Wan stared at him in the moments between 3 and 2 on the countdown. There seemed to be so much she wanted to say; it was all trapped right behind her almond-colored eyes.

  Quasar knew what she would say if she could: she loved him. He didn't blame her, of course, even though shipboard romances between a senior officer and her captain were discouraged among Earth's starfaring crews. He'd had a feeling for a long while now that she was in some way attracted to him, but that she hadn't felt free to express herself to him in that way. It was inevitable that in a situation like this, with both of their lives at stake, not to mention the other 1,490 members of the crew, those strong feelings would rise to the surface.

  "I've never respected you," she blurted out at last.

  "What?" He stared back at her.

  "I'm sorry!"

  The number 1 glowed on the screen like a harbinger announcing their doom. Captain Quasar reached out a hand to his first officer, and she clasped it in a firm shake. In his last second of breathing and enjoying his pulse, he wanted to feel the warmth of another human being. Unfortunately for him, Wan's hand was cold. Regardless, he shut his eyes tightly and awaited the inevitable blast that would tear him
apart and scatter his remains across the frozen depths of Goobalob space, undoubtedly abandoned by the toll collectors for their lower-echelon clean-up crews to handle.

  Only the blast never came.

  Instead, when the captain opened his eyes—first one, cracked open just enough to see if the countdown had proceeded beyond 1, then the other, just to be sure the first one wasn't playing tricks on him—he found the bridge had gone from a glowing red to a pitch black, and all the blinking of the consoles and heavy breathing and plaintive cries of his crew at their last moment had abruptly hushed. The captain now stood in a void with only his own thoughts as company.

  And Steve, of course.

  "So," the old wizard said in the tone of someone uncomfortable with awkward silences. "What do you suppose happened there?"

  Quasar did his best not to start at the sudden voice beside him—which he instead decided to ignore. "Wan? Davis? Elliott?" His voice didn't echo off the walls of his octagonal bridge. Instead, the black seemed to suck his voice into itself and mute it as soon as the words left his lips. "A-N-Y-B-O-D-Y?" he emphasized each phoneme and syllable, but to no avail. The only voice that answered was Steve's, and it was inside his own head—or nasal cavity, apparently.

  "I'm starting to think you might have been on to something, Captain."

  Quasar clenched his jaw. He could feel the well-trained muscle twitch. "With regard to what exactly?"

  "It's relatively obvious that you are no longer in the same space-time where and when you were a few moments ago."

  "Glad we can agree on something."

  Steve paused. "You hear that?"

  The captain squinted into the dark, as if it would help his hearing. Steve's voice sounded as muffled as his own. "I don't hear anything."

  "Right. I pounded my oaken staff against the ground a couple of times. Plasteel floor plating should make a pretty good bang, shouldn't it? Like this." Nothing.

  "You're a hallucination," Quasar sighed impatiently. "Of course you wouldn't make any noise."

  "Maybe not to anyone else." Steve paused. "But you would hear it, just as you can hear me now. And the fact that you don't? It tells me we're no longer on the bridge of your ship."

  Where else would they be? It couldn't be the cold depths of space, untouched by starlight. For one thing, it wasn't cold here; for another, there was breathable air. The old phantom was off his proverbial rocker.

  "Where do you think we are, then?" Quasar turned toward the voice, but he didn't expect to see anything.

  "If I had to guess, I'd say we're in a space between space, in a time between time."

  The captain blinked into the dark. "Are these my thoughts or yours?" They couldn't possibly be his own. There was no chance in the galaxy he'd ever come up with such a stupid explanation for their present predicament.

  "How's that?"

  "You're in my head—"

  "Sinus cavity. Remember? When you inhaled some of that quartz dust from my planet—"

  "I remember." How could Quasar forget? He'd nearly jumped to his own death.

  At the time, the Effervescent Magnitude had been en route to Opsanus Tau Prime in search of the legendary If Only elixir, a magical potion created by the non-temporal natives on that far-flung planet of mystery. Rumor had it the stuff could undo mistakes from one's past, and the captain had seen the possibilities as endless, not only in restructuring his own timeline, but also in making the elixir available to the United World government to save Earth from any potentially catastrophic event in the future—a space-time fail-safe of sorts.

  Quasar and company—before his crew had begun to vanish following the installation of the cold fusion reactor on Carpethria—had passed the Epsilon Seven Star Cluster only to be halted by a massive gaseous entity which caused every system but life support aboard the Magnitude to power down. Captain Quasar had immediately taken a transport pod to the surface of the planet, only to find himself completely alone.

  Episode 15: Down to Business

  "Well, I'm here!" Bartholomew Quasar's deep tenor had echoed from the craggy rock formations all around him, pink in the reflected hues of the setting twin suns. "And I'm alone, as you can plainly see. Unarmed." His hands hovered at shoulder height. "Show yourself. Enough games. Face me like a man—or whatever you are!"

  Static hissed from the communication device sewn into the collar of his uniform. Without moving his hands, he activated it with a quick, coordinated jerk of his shoulder, neck, and chin—something akin to an awkward spasm.

  "Captain," came Hank's voice from the Magnitude in orbit. "What are you doing?"

  "I ordered radio silence—" the captain hissed.

  "Understood. But I don't see anybody else down there."

  "Have you regained control of the ship?"

  "Propulsion remains unresponsive."

  "Any further activity from the gaseous entity?"

  "Nope."

  Quasar signed off, glancing over his shoulder at the transport pod he'd taken down from the Magnitude. He approached the edge of the precipice before him, his boots scuffing through thin layers of quartz sand. Massive rock formations stretched out as far as the eye could see; but the air was breathable, so something here produced oxygen. No life signs, however—not carbon-based anyway.

  But that did not surprise Captain Quasar. Whatever had assaulted the Magnitude—cutting its propulsion systems in an instant—had appeared in the form of a large, multi-colored, nebular entity orbiting the planet. Protocol dictated in such situations that the captain go down to the surface to find out how he had—inadvertently, of course—managed to aggravate such an unclassifiable being. It was only polite, after all.

  Quasar now stood overlooking a gorge of at least thirty kilometers—so deep the vertigo was immediate, and he stumbled backward into a cloaked elderly man holding a large staff.

  "Oh, excuse me. I didn't see you standing there." Quasar froze. "Because you weren't standing there."

  "Astute observation, human." The stooped fellow didn't smile, but his eyes sparkled like the quartz at his feet.

  "And you're not, I presume."

  "Human? No, not even close."

  Quasar nodded. "Shall we get down to business then?"

  "Do we have any?"

  "Come now. I'm familiar with how this dance is choreographed. You freeze my ship in orbit. I visit you here on the surface. You make it clear that this planet is special and should not be violated by humankind—or any other corporeal life form, for that matter. I agree to leave and never return, and to post a buoy in orbit warning other ships to steer clear." He came up for air. "And we part company amiably. Is that about it?"

  The twinkle had not left the old man's eyes, but he said nothing.

  Quasar took a different tack: "Are you some sort of physical manifestation of an ancient civilization long extinct, tasked with sharing all of your knowledge with every passerby? Stalling us in our tracks until you've managed to upload every bit of data in your possession to our computer banks so that your species will live on in our collective memory?"

  The fellow chuckled at that.

  Quasar cleared his throat. "Then is it your plan to commandeer my ship and hold it ransom until I've met some peculiar set of demands?"

  "We don't want your ship, Captain."

  Quasar stepped forward. "Me, then. For some reason, I stand out amongst my kind, and you want to study me, torture me, test my mettle." Quasar closed his eyes for moment. "Very well. Do with me as you will. Just let my people go."

  The old timer cleared his throat. "Those are some fascinating scenarios you described. Have you experienced any of them before?"

  Quasar met his gaze and gave a slow nod. He clenched his jaw, and the muscle twitched on command. "All of them."

  "Sorry about that. And sorry we powered down your ship—wasn't our intention to be any trouble. It's just that we don't get too many visitors out this way." He shuffled a step closer. "What are you doing out here, anyway?"

 
; "It's a long story," the captain sighed. "But suffice it to say, we're on our way across the galaxy to Opsanus Tau Prime in search of their If Only elixir. You've heard of it, I'm sure." He paused. "Perhaps not. Have you mastered interstellar travel as of yet? Or do you simply hover above this planet in a gaseous state, freezing the propulsion systems of anyone passing through?"

  Another chuckle from the old timer.

  "Glad to amuse you." Quasar said. "But we must be on our way. And as there appears to be no reason for our detainment—"

  "We never said that." The twinkle had vanished. "You have trespassed. You must be punished."

  "Ha! I knew it!" The captain grinned, striking a heroic pose. "Very well. Do your worst."

  The fellow shrugged. "Already have."

  Quasar frowned. "Is that so?" He narrowed his gaze at the man's staff. It remained still. "I don't feel any different."

  "Unlikely that you would. Sublimation tends to be a particularly sublime experience."

  "Sublim—" Quasar gaped.

  "You're one of us now. The Noble Gases of the Epsilon Seven Star Cluster—that's how the carbon-based types refer to us."

  "But I still have my body—"

  "Merely a residual self-image."

  "You have a body!"

  "This? Just a mental construct—yours, by the way. You see, we probed your mind and found that you possess an inexplicable tendency to believe anything said by wise old sages with oaken staffs." He thumped his own against the rock. "And so I appeared. Think of me as an interface between you and the Noble Gases."

  "So you're not really here."

  "We've established that."

  "And neither am I—corporeally speaking."

  "Correct."

  "So if I were to contact my ship—"

  "You have no ship."

  Episode 16: Superman Complex

  Quasar scoffed. Of course he had a ship! He turned to gesture toward his transport pod…that was no longer there. "Wha—?"