KeenEmpire
Vortininja
Posts: 42
(7/23/01 7:31 am)
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The Last Fall: Events leading up to the War of the Universes
I finished this ahead of any time that I thought it would be finished in.
Here is the story, from another point of view...
The two universes so far are not evil, and yet the inevitable tide gives them no choice.... (dam, no italic)
1
But something happened, down there.
Vorticon soldier Melan Redivalavak huddled those words with mystery and the brightness of a possible adventure to find out the truth. But, more than ever: dread.
His room had a window, and outside the window shone, like a torch in the darkness, a sun.
And, orbiting the sun, a single planet. Their destination.
It was a lonely planet, a lonely star. It was the only perminant Vorticon settlement ever created outside of the Milky Way galaxy. Well, it was meant to be perminant.
Those were the good times, easily thirty thousand years ago. It was a time when culture flourished; it was the height of technology and engineering in the galaxy, when there was no poverty, no starvation (and thanks to that, very little crime), only prosperity.
Then something had happened, and for approximately 12,000 years, everything fell into an utter chaos, a dystrophic ruin.
In the 18,000 years since order had been repaired, no empire had quite been as successful as the first one.
No records survived to tell of what happened.
Melan sat on his lonely armchair and kept his train of thought onto the planet. It had been finally decided that the Vorticons were plenty enough to attempt to resettle the base. But Melan (like maybe some others, though none, of course, had revealed it yet) knew the real reason. If any records were to survive, it would be here, on this long abandoned planet.
A sudden voice stated “Docking procedures ready.”
“Uh-huh”, Lenathos said. “Not only eddy currents, but a blockade of time itself, like the space-time continuum was fractured and then shut.”
This particular Vorticon was on the V.E.X. Ocririn, an average-sized Vorticon ship (well, nothing compared to the giant motherships). Constructed ten years ago, the Ocririn was the second of its class, which was meant for space exploration/tracking. It was sleek, and, more importantly, it looked sleek.
“What are the implications of this?” asked his Captain Jeeean Roonida. She kept a keen face in things, yet was just tough enough to rouse up people. It was not long ago that they had conquered the females’ need to breathe fire and such, killing everyone in sight. “Do you think someone left time and tried to plug it back in?” She asked after a short time of thought.
“Well, probably, but look. According to our multi-dimensional scanners this was one event, but it reached throughout several pieces of probability at once, meaning that, if something was snatched out of this universe, something happened to do it out of many probabilities, but during a single time. Um….yea, by time I mean, only once. And meanwhile the Probability Generator on this ship is going crazy.”
“Something wrong?”
“We don’t know yet.” He replied. “Its too risky to shut down, too.” He continued after a short while.
He thought for another minute. “Should we call Vorticon Command to deal with this?”
Roonida looked up, and had an expression on her face like someone on this ship was going crazy (and he didn’t want to know who), but she quickly relaxed her expression, and so thoroughly that in the end he wasn’t sure whether he had imagined it in his embarresment.
“It’s a shame,” she said, “To call them for such a simple task is really more extraordinary than the most extreme discovery we’ve made, but time is of the essense, and the resettlement of the forgotten outpost of Ulletia dominates our plans. I’ll make the arrangements.”
She stood there for what seemed like a long while, until Lenathos finally forced himself to look down and concentrate on his station, not giving the world above a single glance.
“Well, Dr. Alafjg”, Admiral Fen of the Vorticon Command said. “You must see, that to take your supplies on a starship would require more planning than you did this time. To schedule the next one—”
He was interrupted though, by a sudden beep.
“Aaah, message for me,” Fen said. It was Captain Roonida’s, and he opened the file with a few button presses.
After a short while of listening Alafjg said “Why, yes. It would either have to be that or…all those probabilities converging unto a single point…but that would have to do…”
He lost his thought in more mutterings, and when the recording finally ended, he said: “Hmm, space-time. We can plot how long ago this blockage, or whatever you call it, occurred. Then we run back the star models and see which system is in the vicinity at the time, and see what happened, since the fabric of space-time dosen’t move, only the planets and stars do. We can allow for drift, which can be as easily calculated.”
“Hmm, you can do that?” Fen asked.
Alafjg, not so much looking upon this, but with the need to accept to gain some positive influence upon this Admiral, said yes.
And even at this time, another such probability break was beginning to happen.
What no one knew was that it would have to do with the collapse of the earlier empire…and of this one.
2
There was something very screwy, Commander Keen thought. His suburb was quite quiet in the dead of night. The moon was unusually bright before the horizon. Then suddenly, swiftly and surely, two small black creatures seemed to appear and walk toward each other, meeting in the middle of the road.
They crouched.
Hisses seemed to be heard.
And they suddenly vanished. Not in a flash of light, but a blade of darkness.
“HA!” Keen said, standing up suddenly. “I thought you had a scarier movie than that, Spot. I get disappointed sometimes.”
It wasn’t the dead of night, but the living sun of noon (on a weekend, thankfully), and Billy Blaze, with nothing to do, sipped down his lemonade.
“There is very little that can be scarier than your perilous adventures,” said Spot. “But come now, to recreate a movie inside your own living area…if that is not scary, what can be?”
Keen laughed even louder, biting his straw.
Spot was so unpredictable sometimes.
But then, so were all aliens. A group of them even cried “RACISM!!!” at the earthlings.
And it probably was true, considering how many times the movies portrayed invading aliens…getting defeated by the humans.
Keen pondered all this with ave. To the Earthlings, the only trouble that came from the sky so far was in the form of Mortimer McMire, one of them, who had grown too smart to be contained, and who had devoted himself to unleash chaos on to the universe.
If Earthlings were racist, Mortimer was definitely IQist, so to speak.
So far, Billy Blaze (in his alias Commander Keen, Defender of the Universe) had been able to foil most of Mortimer McMire’s plans without problem. From Mortimer, he had freed the Vorticon race from mental enslavement, foiled his plan to destroy the galaxy, and eventually the universe, and rescued his babysitter from the clutches of the hired Bloogs.
There were other, not too known, adventures too, some involving Mortimer, and very few not. It took a little more imagination to visualize them.
Where had Mortimer, and his brilliance, come from, and where had Keen himself come from? There was probably a person who knew, somewhere in the universe, but, for all their IQ test scores, neither of them had been able to figure it out.
Were they just made to fight an endless war of stalemate, Mortimer creating the horrors, and Keen foiling them?
Was it meant to continue forever? So far, even though it seemed like an eternity since he first devised his Bean with Bacon Megarocket (and triggered his first adventure), he was still eight years old.
There were so many questions he had to ask, and so many more he promised himself to find the answer to before he died…if he ever died.
But he also knew that the universe held no rest for its defender.
He could sense a crisis, walking its way through the fabric of space-time, using Mortimer as its servant. Another battle with him was long overdue, Keen knew.
As he stared at the sun beginning its journey down the horizon, he wondered, for just a little, what it would be like if there ever would be a time when he no longer had to worry about it.
Mortimer McMire himself walked down the path where the Vorticons were heading.
“This is the last time I’m meeting with you, Sneako, before we probably shall never meet again.”
Mortimer knew. Here he was, on a small asteroid, barely 10 miles in diameter. Through the vacuum of space, the outpost Ulletia, and the Vorticon ships landing on it, almost visible to the unaided eye, though it was a few light minutes away.
He knew that the planet did not matter. Here, here on this lonely chunk of giant rock was the key.
It was not the history of the old Galactic Empire, but the reason for its fall. Something happened, right here, probably not too far from where he was standing. The event that triggered the destruction of organization itself!
They still had to find it, however, and the Vorticons were bound to detect their energy signature soon. It was a matter of time, and a race against it. This was a stealth mission, they could not withstand a full force attack from a fleet that large.
“Sneako,” Mortimer continued. “I want you to infiltrate their base if we are not done by 0920 hours tomorrow. My supercomputers predict an enemy discovery by 1540 tomorrow, plus or minus 4 hours, so that should be enough time, even dealing with chaos. I want you to tamper with their system, blow up a few generators, shock the Vorticons’ sensory devices, though not too hard so that they deduce that there’s something we don’t want to be found. As a Shikadi Master, and an unusually small one, at that, will you take the risks and remain loyal?”
A slight nod.
Though, of course, Mortimer knew, he would be reluctant. The Vorticons were making very elegant weapons against even Shikadi Masters, the strongest available yet being the Electron Beamer, which channeled electrons to drain energy (which the Shikadis were composed of), but even more were coming, and probably some prototypes were already made.
And the Shikadi Master, unlike the others, who had to open the door and walk out, teleported away.
This was sad, Mortimer thought. Sneako was a dwarf S.M., barely larger than the size of a Shockstund (the reason why hes called Sneako), and that sneaky size made him almost invaluable at many times. Nevertheless, however, he was not the only one, and was expendable. Well, at least there was a chance that he would survive.
What neither the Shikadi or the Vorticons, or for that matter, any other faction that would be involved later on (though there was, as always, probably one with the knowledge) knew that they were walking into an age old trap, older than eternity itself, where sociology between species played out into a scene of ruin.
And even though, tomorrow, Sneako would have to embark on his Kamikaze-like mission, the Shikadi would eventually discover the secret….
And they, like those long before them, would already be trapped in a great rage. A rage that encompassed their ancestors, that proved an end of order itself in more than one universe, and would prove it yet again.
3
“Uh huh…its confirmed all right.” Dr. Alafjg said cautiously to the angry face in front of him. “The drift is precisely correct, and the event only happened approximately 30 years ago, plus or minus 3 years. Its been even easier to check then…uh…”
“All roads lead to Mars.” Admiral Fen said in disgust.
“Probably not all,” said Alafjg, trying to cheer up the mood. “So far Ulletia has been a very successful road.”
“We haven’t waited long enough for problems.”
“Geez”, Alafjg replied. He seemed a lot more in the mood this time. “If one has to wait a hundred years for a problem before saying that—”
The comlink in the Admiral’s room beeped.
He pressed it. “Yes?”
“Sir.” The link muttered in slight static. “We’ve got problems on the new outpost.”
“There are always problems, Sergeant.”
“No, this is Colonel Deegks, and we’ve got big problems. You’ve better get down here.”
It was finally nighttime, and Billy Blaze hoped to get a wink on what would probably be his last day of not finding a desprate need waiting for him in the galaxy. For once, his bedtime had been reached without his mom shouting at him. His vegetables had been eaten without similar events. Better eat and sleep now, because you don’t know when your next meal or bedtime will be.
Was that actually fatigue he felt? Did he actually, for once in his life, feel sleepy?!!?
Probably not, he told himself. Though he knew this probably wasn’t true, he could easily believe it.
Sleep was sure to come easily…he would lie awake for just a few minutes, he thought, to drift his thoughts into the past and the future, before he fell asleep in an increasing static.
And, in Billy’s desk, there was a sudden squeak.
He was so immersed in thought that he only vaguely realized how familiar it was…and yet…funny…
The door creaked open with a loud, high-pitched noise.
Billy was suddenly alert. He realized where he had seen this before, the events in a storyline it had played. It could not be…but could it?
He stepped off the bed, and walked to the door to shut it.
Was this what its like to be a story? Knowing what would happen, yet thinking that you have free will?
The window was in sight now. He knew what had to be shown in it, and knew that it couldn’t be. He tried to force himself not to look, but the struggle proved in vain, as a powerful need revealed itself…
And out there, sure enough, two dark figures started walking toward each other.
Did Yorps have the power to manifest nightmares? It had to be, but—
The movie did not end.
When they vanished into darkness, the darkness did not just give away to a blank screen which signified the end, but it kept coming…coming at him and the universe as one.
Billy staggered, and backed away, and suddenly he was cluched in the arms of a being that had just walked through the door…it was a Vorticon Warrior Elite, but he was wearing gold, and not the usual blue-red.
“We must go now! We will defend you, but we must go!” His shouts dwindled into nothing in a growing sound of wind, and Billy was dragged backwards….
The sudden sound of engine awoke Billy, but he was standing there, just outside the doorway. The BwB Megarocket was hovering just outside his window. Within seconds, the engine noise tuned itself to a bare minimum, and Norp shouted: “We have to go now!!”
The universe, if seen in its workings, is very beautiful (at least, to all but the very many factions who believe that the universe should never had been created). Throughout it all, plasma and space dust twirled around and around, so did star systems, and galaxies (compliments to the theory of gravitation). All far reaches extended forever, making its beauty infinite (has to do with the 0=1? Argument), and the universe just was, is, and shall be until the big crunch, the infinite universe bomb explodes, or Mortimer apologizes to his parents about stealing 20 dollars.
And most of all, the universe was big!!! If all its beings worked for a single destiny, there would be no hope for any opposing factors (not that there would be any opposing factors, but this is more dogma).
However, very few of the universe actually believed in a single thing (or, for that matter, cooperated with others). It was a very big mess, here, it could seem, sometimes, that the creation of the universe was a very bad move.
But still, life itself could not do anything except sh!t. No matter how much its bellowings, life did not affect the beauty of planets, galaxies, and everything itself. The destruction of something only turned it into an even more brilliant emmision of energy, which soon joined up with the whole when the law of conservation of energy was put into it.
Nothing of life was larger than life: enough to be concentrated upon, enough so that even beauty itself would be affected; enough until that something as crude as this story would want to concentrate its view, from the wonders of the universe, to something this small.
And, meanwhile, a small spaceship was turtling its way out of the Earth’s atmosphere.
4
It was a great dome, Melan Redivalavak thought. It had to be, built in the wonder years of a culture long forgotten. It was not the usual crude steel domes of today’s empires, but a great glass one, shining with all the brilliance of the nearby sun.
Outside was an atmosphere of about a 4:1 nitrogen to oxygen ratio. The wonder years had also provided that, and the machines meant for the purpose, have had, after all, 30,000 years to complete their tasks.
He took this break to gaze in wonder at the trees that had sprouted up on the [artificial] soil. It was not to be underestimated, the suprises that filled this little tomb from the past.
And the secrets. Those that people would kill for.
Suddenly his comlink began to ring. Break was over.
“Yes, sir?”
“Melan, we have a problem.”
“Geez, stain at that. What?”
“Our communications device was blown to smitherines on board our ship.”
“A device? Can that not be replaced?”
“No, our communications computer array, that controls all of it.”
“We need to report back to the homeworld.” He continued.
Melan thought: this guy is just trying to burden me with problems, man. “Are there not other ships? It was of my opinion that there were two others orbiting the planet as we came down here, as well as three more that will arrive within a few days.”
“Yes, but, for some reason they aren’t responding to the ordinary non-radio signals that are according to protocol. We can only assume that they’re having some problems.”
“You’re our expert on this, we need your specialty: a machine that transmits I don’t care what code to up there, to see whats wrong.
“Get to the labs within 0730 hours. That will be all.”
Melan clicked off his communicator with disgust.
It was true that he was one of those who was an expert upon emergency incommunicando machines that flashed radiation of any kind of spectrum into the sky. These machines could then be turned on and off in intervals, to transmit information in a certain dot-dash code, kind of like Morse Code (the standard protocol was Ikabshi Code, though).
He had joined this mission, however, to labour, to get out of science for just a little bit before going back to research on these machines.
Oh well, it seemed that science was everything.
“HOLY SH!T!!!” The Captain of the Onnionus shouted. Just after the screen indicated “Power Generator Failure” the lights started flickering, then went out.
The screens briefly shut down, then were restarted as the aux power generator took it to itself.
“Sir,” Ensign Faxton Eeealy said. “Aux power’s also going down…I think its being tampered with!”
“Heeel…” The power storage would last them no more than a few hours, once both generators went down. A long range communication for help would cost them most of that, but then how would they live, without power to move the continuious life support?”
Out of the window, they could also see their sister ship Biggustario. The windows showed no light coming out.
“How long till our relief ships arrive?” The captain asked.
“The closest is the Ocririn, one day away, but I don’t think that it’ll have enough supplies to save both the ships.”
Meanwhile, on an asteroid a million miles away, flashes of white light could be seen, and was observed by at least one of them, outside of a window.
Shikadice XXI quickly walked across a platform and opened the door to Mortimer’s quarters. This was a very serious matter indeed. Of course, this was unknown and everyone was afraid of the unknown, but it certainly seemed serious, from what little had been made of it.
“Yes?” Mortimer said.
“Sir…we’ve finally found the information requested of us.”
“Cool,” he said before looking at the time. 22:40.
He held up 50 papers of words. “This is what the important info was.”
He stopped, and held up one single sheet of paper. “This is what we’ve been able to eliminate it to.”
Mortimer McMire stared at it. It didn’t contain a lot of information, though even more could be made out of it. The letters didn’t even fill the entire, or even a half of the page. There was but a single sentence on it:
Look in your ship logs, F00!!!
5
Admiral Fen stood up towering over his small audience. He was the biggest (or highest rank, anyway), but, knowing the most, he was also the most fearful. He scratched his head a little, then let loose a bunch of uncertainty.
“Gentlemen,” he said. There was a pause. “Its not looking good. First there’s this sealed rift in space-time, and now we’ve lost all communications with our new colony. Meanwhile that rift is acting up, as if it’ll blow the patchwork away, but it seems that the temporal energy involved isn’t enough.”
Among his small audience was Commander Keen and Norp.
“But,” he continued. “We do have an automatic probe recording all the data, and sending it to us. Ensign?”
The back wall of the conference room seemed to open up to a TV Screen. On it shown the galaxy, as well as a small dot outside of it, undoubtly Ulletia.
“Eddy currents, traveling faster than light, are coming from here,” he pointed a stick at a labled place, “to here.” The viewscreen magnified, focusing onto the lonely star. The effect of acceleration was almost overwhelming. Within five seconds, another labled point appeared next to a figure of a planet. He pointed there.
“Energy,” Admiral Fen continued, “is piling at that point, about 20 miles from the orbit of an asteroid. Its not only coming from the partially sealed rift, but also from what seems to be another rift right on top of it. We don’t know what the hell is happening, but we’ve gotta get there fast!”
“Do you have ships available?” Said Keen. It seemed to be a ridiculous question.
“Jump ships are getting prepared at this moment, but they’re all very small, and nothing they have can do sh!t to the energy if something happens to it. The closest big ship is 1 day away, and its not the biggest either.”
“But…if it explodes…isn’t it quite far from any settlement? I mean, its way outside the galaxy.”
The Vorticon sighed. “I don’t know. If the energy stops piling now and blows it probably won’t even cause too much damage to the planet, but I don’t know what its being used for. But meanwhile we have three ships that we’ve lost contact with, and that’s enough to stake.
“Keen, we need expert men on the scene, like you. Your ship is equipped with the hyperspacial jump, I assume. But, unfortunately, even though this mothership we’re on is headed there at full speed (which is quite fast compared to most of our others), it’ll take us two and a half days to whup our arses there. Until then you’re on your own.”
He continued suddenly, after a moment’s silence. “And I have a gut feeling that whatever’s out there isn’t gonna do nothing. And, though I never waste my time on intuition without facts, I’ve got another gut feeling to trust that gut.
“Dismissed!”
As Keen entered his Megarocket, he had to choice but to drift his thoughts onto the information, or, rather, lack of information, from the first empire. Had twelve-thousand years really dimmed all the perception and distorted the view of knowledge, so that no knowledge was allowed?
The world was in link again, and he could see all the universe…all of it, dying of the miserable secret, the pandora’s box that lay somewhere…sometime.
Something was created, a long time ago, that had the power to destroy all this.
And it did, that was the end of the civilization. What caused it…well, if no records were preserved since 30,000 years ago, what could you expect?
And yet, the pandora’s box had to be self sustaining. It kept opening, and dying out in a flash of hope, taking the empires with it. Where…
Keen suddenly rationalized himself to normal thought again.
How had he known, or rather, not known, all this?
This…
What was wrong? Were humans were about to make a transistion point into greatness…otherwise known as chaos? Were he and Mortimer the leads of a great tidal wave that would transform humanity forever…or revent something that was lost?
Bad conditioning in that case, but he had no doubt now, that the trap was about to be exposed to its element. That exactly the same thing was happening now that had happened 30,000 years ago, in the midst of terrible doom.
That it was all over.
6
Mortimer McMire ran across half the space outpost. Almost, in a few minutes he would be in the Getawayship.
The facts were not very obvious, but the pattern, carved a countless amount of years before, was stubbornly and inevitably there, with the pieces beginning to fall into place.
He did not know what was happening, and did not want to know, or, for that matter, have to know.
How stupid he had been, in sending himself here. A fake himself would have been safer, more sure—
Another piece in the puzzle.
And the shimmery glow orbiting the asteroid was getting brighter by the moment, as well as flashing in an even greater frequency.
No problem, there better not be any anyway.
There were a few hundred meters left until he would reach the getawayship, having opened the Pandora’s Box.
On the other side of the galaxy a giant ship slowed from faster-than-light speeds to almost a stop. Though one would think it had important, big, business to deal with, only a relatively very small craft came out of its cargo bay. It then reengaged FTL and resumed its journey.
In a light shimmer of temporal energy, the small ship accelerated in the paths of higher dimensions of the universe and prepared to make a jump into hyperspace.
The Getawayship started taking off the asteroid, having gotten its most precious cargo loaded. Its blast engines slightly moved the much larger asteroid out of its usual orbit, but the effect would only be noticeable within a year.
It fled. Fled the increasingly bright, increasingly flashing containment of energy orbiting the asteroid, but most of all, it fled itself.
Keen’s ship suddenly appeared out of apparently nowhere, increasing the amount of mess in the system.
The ship, newly refitted, was very comfortable, but Commander Keen nearly stood, neck up, as if searching for something outside of the window. He certainly did not relax in his unusually comfortable chair, and if his mom was here she would have ignored the scenery outside and start to shout about his back getting stressed.
“There it is.” Norp said. The view aligned itself a couple of degrees down and there it was, the asteroid, but what was more noticeable was the realm of…power near it. It now had swelled to almost three times of the asteroid, and illusion that the asteroid was a moon orbiting it prevailed. But illusion was not real life, of course, as E=mc^2, and the amount of energy had to be greater than the mass of the asteroid times the square of the speed of light before the asteroid would start orbiting it. Nevertheless, the thing was intimidating enough.
“Full sensor sweep,” Keen ordered the computer. He turned to look at Norp to say “What now?”
But he wasn’t fast enough, apparently, as, when he was trying to open his mouth, the computer said: “An anomaly is occurring within the anomaly. Even though, by the second, its magnitude of light is getting brighter, and its apparent flashing, caused by unknown reasons, getting more occurant, its rotation rate is slowing down. A few hours ago it was a rotation rate of once within ten seconds, now it is barely once every eight hours, and slowing at a linear rate. It will take two minutes until it stops totally.”
“Any clues to what is and will happening…happen…whatever?”
“None…but new sensory data…Shikadi Getawayship Class IV launching off the asteroid and approaching us….We are now receiving a message from them.”
“Put it through.”
A Shikadi speaker began talking through the radio. “Unidentified ship…” But through the radio there was also a cracket, and a background voice, unmistakingly Mortimer’s (who was too over-cautious), saying “…Its Keen’s ship, be very careful please…”
Keen started laughing, and in trying to hold it down started choking himself. He coughed like a fit onto the radio microphone. “Whats happening?” came the Shikadi’s voice.
Norp opened a spare microphone, shut down Keen’s, and started talking. “Shikadi Getawayship, you are trespassing into Vorticon space. Surrender and deactivate all your thrusters and weapons or you shall be blown to smithereens!”
But this time it was the Shikadi radioman who couldn’t control himself. “J00, BLOW US TO SMITHEREENS!?!?! HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!!” And through it there was cursing and another voice saying “That’s Keen’s ship, F00…Damn you %@#!@&%$!(#%@^#(%(!^@#%*$&%@$*@^&@.”
“SHUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS IMMEDIATELY!!!” Norp shouted into the microphone. Well, he didn’t shout, but he had the microphone put it on a 5x greater intensity, so it’s the same thing.
And there was still a lot of doggy laughing and a cursing voice from the other side. “Damn, this is ridiculous.” Norp muttered.
The fit continued, and the Getawayship was still drifting through empty space. Norp could imagine that the whole crew was on their bellies, exploding and laughing their @$$es off.
He suddenly thought of Keen and looked back at him. He was relaxing in the chair, barely opening his eyes. Well, no sleep for a day plus choking on laughter makes that, he thought.
The laughing still continued (though the cursing stopped, for some reason) and Norp was getting tired of this. He aimed an electromagnetic pulse weapon at the Getawayship and fired.
The Shikadi ship suddenly exploded in a great blaze of light, but it wasn’t the ship that blew, it was the electronics. After a few minutes all the lights went off as the electromagnetic pulse took its toll and scrambled all of the equipment.
We still have to deal with Mortimer he thought, but for now he was out of their way, his ship immobile. Chances were that his intelligence would get him out of this eventually, but for now some time was bought.
Norp prepared to accelerate the BwB Megarocket toward the energy realm, but he suddenly remembered something. He opened the appropriate timer.
000:00:10
Ten seconds, then he would see wtf was happening.
True, the rotation usually didn’t have much of a difference on the construction of a celestial body, except for maybe the angular momentum, but, in this case, he knew that it was different, if anything.
A countdown.
Oh well, five seconds left, only an eternity to wait.
7
An eternity passed.
And before he, or anyone knew it, the rotation of the containment of energy stopped.
And whatchaknow, nothing happened.
Sh!t! He had actually been looking forward to this!
But, even as the Bean with Bacon Megarocket’s scans of the anomaly continued, there was a change, though not necessary noticeable at first.
The flashing did not slow down, nor did it speed up.
For once, the rate was constant.
But not for long.
For the interval between flashes suddenly began to increase. The thing was slowing down. And as the anomaly slowed down, it started to contract. To become smaller and even brighter.
Keen abruptly woke up. No one would bother to look at why, for the time being. (Nor did anyone bother to realize that only one person would know that he had woken up.)
The flashes were not occurring once a minute, and the realm was now barely 400 meters in diameter. It would be barely a few more seconds now…
The energy was now compressing even faster now…it soon became unbearably bright…
Then so bright that the radiation of the universe could not contain the brightness anymore…
And finally the brightness became infinite, which, fortunately, is not tolerated by the basic fabric of the universe…and instead came what seemed like a lurch but what was not.
In front of them was a wormhole.
And a signal, traveling faster than light, brought itself to everyone in the whole universe. Norp and Keen thought the same thing at the same time, and were about to tell each other when they realized that the very thought was on their computer screen.
The War of the Universes has Finally Come.
And so did something that made Keen faint.
“Well”, Keen said when he was revived. “There goes a lot…and comes a lot.” Like something had been triggered, they seemed to be speaking philosophically now.
“Mortimer’s ship is still back there,” Norp warned.
“Yes, but we have no relief ships. There’s revenge in back of us and something new in front of us. We have to make a choice.”
“Not new. Billions of years old. This…is Pandora’s Element. Inevitable, and we have only hope. We must hope that that alone is enough. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mortimer abandons his plans and follows us.”
“Well then, did that happen?”
Norp stared out the distance into the other universe…the wormhole. “People are only predictable,” he began, “if they do not know. If they know where they are going to be in a certain time, they can take steps to prevent it. That is true sociology: blind, and yet effective. I do not know.”
“Hmm, we can argue that we, or people like us anyway, did not want to do the same thing, so refrained from going in. But then they would refrain too, not wanting to do the same thing.”
“The double double cross, yes.” It seemed hopeless, though.
“So…all that is left is the decision.”
There was helpless silence for some time.
“So, it dosen’t matter?” Keen said, already knowing what the answer would be…and Norp didn’t bother to reply.
“Well then,” he continued. “I will choose to go in whatever destiny takes us…there.”
The wormhole grew silently, as if it knew and was beckoning them.
“Very well.” Norp said. “We will fire another EMP weapon at Mortimer’s ship, to delay him further. Then…we shall meet our doom.”
They high fived each other.
A few minutes later, the BwB Megarocket shot through the wormhole, after sending a hyperspacial report to be sent to Vorticon Command.
And after their errand, which resulted in more cursing as Mortimer’s new radio exploded into electronic fudge.
And the march, meeting the end of ends as the three universes involved knew it, began.
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