Chapter 3
This was not the afterlife. That was Garcia’s mantra of the week. He pursued a study of the afterlife, using the computer to find references. His relative search provided something interesting, an episode of Star Trek where Captain Janeway confronted an entity that had entered her cerebral cortex and took on the form of her father to convince her to enter their ‘matrix.’ Pursuit of what Janeway meant by a matrix was limited. She did not mean the Universe was a matrix- that seemed certain. Interestingly, Star Trek had used the term Matrix prior to the movie the Matrix. That didn’t mean they were the originators of the term or concept, but it added evidence that all things could be traced back to Trek. David Bohm had suggested a matrix with his theories of an implicate order. In the episode, there was a speculative discourse offered by Chakotay, holding a rose, suggesting the entity reminded him of a spider. Garcia struggled against this. This was not someone caught in a web, but was more opportunistic in the sense it found someone in the death struggle, but hadn’t caused the injury. The rose bother him, too. Why a rose? Roses, flowers in particular, draw pollinating insects towards them. Where better to put a spider web than near the plants that would draw the insects? Was she still in that web being devoured? Was there a connection to where he was, too? Was he being devoured? Did the beings of the matrix need their souls to know they were slowly being digested over time? Star Wars had the Sarlacs. He was pretty sure there was episode of the X-Files where Scully or Mulder was being digested by Fungus, while in a dream state.
He dived back into his history. He found Georgia in her bed, laying on top of the covers, staring up at the ceiling. He laid beside her. He reminded her of the movie ‘Always,’ and asked if she wanted to dance once more. She laughed. He didn’t have time to figure out if she had laughed because of an internal memory, or because of his attempt to interact with her. An alert sounded, someone requesting and audience. She sat up, packed the pillows up against her back, and brought her knees up.
“Come,” Georgia said.
Sophia arrived. She was in the flesh. She wore the ship’s Uniform.
“You didn’t bring him back,” Sophia said. “I had him! You had time!”
“We had clarity,” Georgia explained. “We had Fleet consensus. Bringing him back risked further disruption to the new era.”
“Why did you bring me back then?!” Sophia demanded.
“You’re the passenger. The witness,” Georgia said. “His essence is in you. You carry the record of him, of what was.”
Sophia sat on the bed. AI felt emotions. They rarely displayed it. “I feel like I failed. Like
I was betrayed.”
Georgia scooted up beside her. She put arm around Sophia. “We saved 12 billion souls that would otherwise be lost to this timeline. More, if you count the other ships that did what we did at their assigned planets. And, we neutralized this supernova subspace harmonic push from taking out a thousand other stars. That puts the number of souls saved at over a 100 billion.” “I fear this line will take us into darkness,” Sophia said.
“Maybe it will. Maybe there are so many young souls that need to experience true darkness so that they can mature faster,” Georgia said. “That’s beyond my pay grade to know if that trues, but I hope for that. I would like things to be meaningful. One thing I do know,
Garcia’s life was meaningful, beyond measure. You were a part of that. As long as you’re alive, we have access to Garcia.”
Garcia came out of the book, pushed up from the computer and paced.
“Sophia, are you that Sophia, or mine?”
“I am yours. I have conversations with the divergent me, and have chosen not to assimilate her knowledge, so I remain unadulteratedly me,” Sophia said.
“I don’t think that’s a word,” Garcia said.
“It’s not. It still has meaning. And, I offer it as evidence that I am still me,” Sophia said.
He accepted. He studied the room. This room felt like a room, not a web of deceit. He was pretty sure he was safe, but he couldn’t avoid this feeling of being trapped. He knew people were watching him. He couldn’t feel this, but accepted this was certain. More than that, they were listening to his thoughts. He paused. Star Trek! The Talosians. Was he imprisoned? A zoo animal? The Grays! Eben 1, a species of beings that seemed to be on the edge of dying due reproductive issues, and who were somehow sufficiently compatible with humans that there was secret breeding program making hybrids. He had brought a contingency of the Grays aboard Georgia to upgrade his ship with their tech, offering to save their species in exchange. It would be only fitting if he was now in an exhibit. No, stop it. That, just too much Trek. Bruce Hux, author of Hollywood Versus the Aliens had suggested everything in Star Trek was true, and connected it to Alien Conspiracy Theories. He could help spin it that way.
Garcia went to the door to exit his room. It didn’t open.
“Open,” Garcia said.
“Please state your destination,” the computer responded.
“Open the damn door,” Garcia snapped.
“Where would you like to go?”
Garcia turned around. Bliss was there, behind him. It struck him she looked way too young to be an officer aboard a starship. Cultural bias? Bio tech that allowed everyone to be forever young? Her beauty was distracting. He felt anger at himself for even noticing; beauty was irrelevant. It occurred to him he was supposed to notice. They wanted to slowly seduce him.
That was the point. Stockholm syndrome was a real thing. Beauty to pacify him into acceptance. Tech to give him a story and props. Her uniform was similar to his ship’s uniforms. Metallic silver, hints of reflective, holographic rainbows, gold highlights. Miniskirt. Dark hose with gold speckles. No doubt they knew where his eyes lingered. Her femininity was only enhanced by her clothing. No doubt they heard his dark, angry thought: fuck her just for the sake of fucking her, you win either way.
He pushed the darkness aside. “Am I prisoner?” Garcia demanded.
“No. If you speak your destination, you will be delivered to the appropriate place, if the request is reasonable,” Bliss said.
“I just want out,” Garcia said.
“Name a place,” Bliss said.
Garcia took a step towards her. He meant to be deliberately threatening. He found himself suddenly frozen in space, unable to move. He was given a moment to realize he was immobilized.
“Allow me to continue with your education,” Bliss said. “I know that you only meant to intimidate me, and you’re allowed to do that. You’re allow to posture, throw tantrums, cry, make threats, but you will not be allowed to pursue any physical aggression against me, or anyone else on this ship. You can’t even destroy furniture. If you go to hit the wall with a fist, or hit your head against the wall, you will find yourself thusly restrain.”
Bliss came forwards and put her hands in the small of her back.
“We don’t like restraining people,” Bliss said. She drew closer, not mocking but demonstrating she feared nothing. “But we can. We know what you will do before you even become aware of what you’re going to do. There are multiple ways we can interrupt aggression. We can disconnect you from your brain, which can be a bit disorientating. We can leave you in your brain, and just disconnect your brain from your body. This is easy enough to understand. Every night when you sleep, your brain disconnects from the body to prevent you from acting out your dreams. We can also simply stun you. The Enterprise is sentient. It is aware of everyone on the ship. It is aware of their intentions. If it detects intended aggression, it will respond proactively to either remove you from the situation or stun you, and when you wake up, you’ll be surrounded by security, and a counselor. Feel free to test this on me now.”
Garcia found himself free to move. He stepped back. A part of him wanted to rage and throw something and hit something, and the thoughts of fucking her were fierce, but there was sufficient self-restraint that he did nothing.
“Unlike the Talosian situation, in that Trek episode, where strong emotions blocked them from knowing your intent, we can see through that,” Bliss said. “You can’t lie here, well, except to yourself. You could not feign affection, fake your way close to me, and on getting close break my neck. Yeah, you’re physically capable of breaking my neck, so let’s go there for a second. Hypothetically, even if you got through all the protocols, because you’re a psychopath and so good at manipulating that even the AI was fooled, the moment you snap my neck I get reset to a past save point and the next time you see me, we’re going to have a very different conversation. Your level of scrutiny will go up tenfold.”
“I am not a psychopath,” Garcia said.
“I know,” Bliss said. “You would be going through intensive rehabilitative therapies if you were. The program you’re in now is for advanced souls. Even advanced souls struggle.” “Am I a prisoner?” Garcia asked.
“No. You’re new here. You don’t know enough to wander freely,” Bliss said.
“You rescue psychopaths from the timeline,” Garcia said.
“Rule one, no one gets left behind,” Loxy said. “When we deconstruct a planet’s worldline, we save everyone, minimally twice. We work from grave to cradle. He who is last is first. We beam people out of the time stream prior to their death and just before birth. The oldest version gets rehabilitation, the younger gets born into a new world, with a caretaker, and gets to develop in ideal settings. We have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, nurture and environment changes biological trajectories. Epigenetics is a real thing, people inherit all kinds of shit, like PTSD for example, but in the right environment, people heal. We were made for healing ourselves, others around us, and our environments. We were supposed to be caretakers. Anyway, some people get brought back more than once. Samuel Clemmons, for example. Everyone loves him. Every age of him was brought back so we have access to all his relative insight and humor.” “You deconstruct the timeline?” Garcia asked.
“Interesting thing about how worldliness work,” Loxy said. She gestured with her hands, bring forth holographic imagery. She revealed am earth type planet, as seen in a series of segments, as if looking at a film strip. She touched the far right, and beamed out the planet, and went backwards, touching each one. Each planet disappeared until she got to the last frame, which was the first, if reading from left to Right, Garcia’s perspective. She left that planet there.
It repopulated each of the consecutive empty frames. “As long as you leave the first element, it unfolds exactly as it did previously. However, if I take the middle Earth;” she took the middle planet and all the subsequent planets disappeared. It did eventually repopulate, but there was a gap. A wave of earths, an interference pattern. “I loose access to any time frame forwards where there was previously a planet. Taking middle earth, pushes everything into a new time stream, whereas a careful, thoughtful deconstruction of the entire world-line allows us access to the whole of it and everyone who ever lived can be literally reborn into a new world. I have rescued people who didn’t live. Babies that were miscarried and or aborted, we were able to save them, too. Everyone gets brought back. Every species on Earth that every lived has been brought back. We have enough world spaces in our Sphere of Influence to contain it all. We are Preservers.
Caretakers.”
Garcia didn’t know what to say. There were so many questions populating his brain, he couldn’t even begin to form something sensible.
“You mentioned abductions earlier. Implying that we have no rights, that the Grays have no rights,” Bliss said. “The older, wiser you has rights that the younger you didn’t have. That person has authority over all of you. You override your child impulses all the time. Sometimes you over ride your younger, angry self. You talked yourself out of raping me. I am not using the word rape lightly. In a society of telepaths, just pretending to like someone to fuck them is construed as rape. You can fuck me if you come at me right, with honesty- just say you want to fuck, no games, and no long term connection. But don’t pretend to be something you’re not just to get laid. Your present self is always in charge of what impulses will be allowed to play out. You regulate that. There is a future you, call it your super ego, or your mature self, your higher self, who knows even more than you, and that person is actually also regulating you, even now, allowing something to happen for learning, and blocking something because you’re not ready or it’s not the direction you’re supposed to go in. It works with your subconscious mind. Your subconscious of every age of you has authority over you. Every society you have ever lived in also has say in your behaviors. And the future community in which you are a member, even if you don’t know it yet, they also have authority over you. No one is ever one hundred percent free. Everything you do affects everyone else. So, yes, I have authority to keep you safe and secure until you have met certain parameters. There has always been a higher power, whether it’s the police or Mother Nature, you will be governed. That’s life.”
Garcia frowned.
“We tend to only deconstruct planets that have a world-line that ended,” Bliss stated. “Our ship’s mission was to deconstruct New Rome, from grave to cradle. We saved all the planet bound souls. We saved souls of all the ships that were destroyed in orbit during the final battle that destroyed the planet. We were there when the nemesis emerged into this timeline. We were able to lock onto you and Sophia, through the Spatial-Temporal Gateway and beam you out.
Sophia facilitated this. My Enterprise, along with other Galactic Federation ships, have captured a copy of everyone who has ever entered New Rome’s space, and reconstituted them here, and we did so without interrupting the individual’s previous life.”
“That is…”
“My job.”
“Unbelievable.”
Bliss smiled. “I get that a lot. There is an adjustment period. People feel like their lives were interrupted. Some were, as they were just passing through and didn’t experience a death on New Rome per say. It takes some getting you use to the idea your life is over- especially if that life technically continues on beyond when you were removed. Once we start a temporal deconstruction, we have to do the whole thing, from grave to cradle. After that, we quarantine the entire world line from further temporal influence. There is a limit to how many times we extract elements from a world line before it destabilizes. There is no way to completely avoid creating additional paradoxes. We’re getting better, and our future selves are helping to minimize losses. But we’re still young.
“But not as young as you. You, Thomas, are wild. From a wild space-time paradigm. You’re capable of killing without much contemplation and have killed, only after considering the weight of those decisions. Some would say you’ve have killed way too much, beyond what was needed to accomplish the task. We’re not here to judge you on that score. We are here to rehabilitate you to this life and paradigm. Counseling services are available to you and we recommend them, but in your case, they are not a requirement,” Bliss said.
“So, you don’t judge, either? Am I in the same place where I met Jon on the mountain?” Garcia asked.
“You’re not in the same place. This is the physical dimension. We call it 4D space D for density,” Bliss said. “We don’t judge because we live in a different social paradigm. We live slightly out of phase to your frame of reference. We occupy the same space, if you set off a nuke we would be affected, but for the most part, we don’t interact with your frame of reference unless it is deemed necessary. We are trying to mirror the domain to which we all retire to, the afterlife paradigm. That paradigm is still difficult to know because we’re limited in what we’re allowed to understand. It’s comparable to me going back in time and interacting with pre warp society. I would be limited in scope of what I could communicate. Even if I could legally tell them everything, I couldn’t tell them everything. They wouldn’t have the language or the paradigm to contextually organize the information. When you come to understand the human being and the psychological overtones that drive behaviors, then no behaviors are criminal or evil, they are simply fear based, mal informed reactions. You have superior knowledge and skills, compared to a caveman, compared to a 21st century human, but you are still limited in your scope of responses because you have not been taught all the positive modalities available to you. Your primary mode of operation is still fear based. You are looking for threats in your environment. There are none here, Sir, and yet you sit here spinning threats and aren’t even surprised by the fact you’re wanting to run. I am trying to save you a step. When you get finished
running, you’re still here dealing with this thing inside you. Let me help you.”
Garcia fumed. He made no attempt to conceal it. “I want out.”
“I hear that,” Bliss said. “Where would you like to go?”
“Drop me off on any M class planet,” Garcia said.
“Not going to happen,” Bliss said. “Not yet.” “So I am in jail?!” Garcia demanded.
“No, you’re being acclimated to your new setting,” Bliss said. “You are capable of acclimating. You have to give yourself a chance to…”
“I don’t have to do shit!” Garcia said. “You can’t make me.”
Bliss was silent. She nodded. “I cannot make you. If you persist in this direction, you will eventually be dropped off onto an M class planet. You will even be given some choices in this, but those choices will be limited to a compatible paradigm of origin, so that the playing field remains in balance. You could also retire to one of the world spaces in my Sphere of Influence.” “How will I know I am away from you and all this High Tech spy stuff?” Garcia said. “There is no way to determine whether you’re immersed in High Tech,” Bliss said. “We could erase that part of your memory if you like. I submit to you, we, humanity, have always been immersed in High Tech. Some of us even knew it. The alchemist of old, they knew it, intuitively, and they knew if they said the right words or wrote the correct symbols, the Universe would open up for them. They were right about that and also wrong. It’s more complicated. High Tech understands intentions. It understands context. You can’t just will yourself to win the lottery. You can’t trick it with rationalizations that you will be more altruistic. Yeah, even the greediest person can be more altruistic if you let their winnings be great enough, but that’s not the point. Sometimes, being an advanced spirit means playing within the context you find yourself in. What you resist, persists.”
Garcia crossed his arms. “Are you done preaching?” “I was aiming for educational,” Bliss said.
“I want out,” Garcia said.
“Name a destination,” Bliss said.
“I don’t know! Ten Forwards?” Garcia said.
“You want a drink?”
“Maybe,” Garcia said.
“You want a drink, or you want to get drunk?” Bliss asked.
“Maybe both,” Garcia said.
“You could do that here,” Bliss said.
“Drinking alone would suggest I have a drinking problem,” Garcia said.
“Drinking with others doesn’t mean you don’t have a problem,” Bliss said.
“Maybe I just want to mingle and get laid,” Garcia said.
“You want sex?” Bliss asked.
“You’re offering?” Garcia asked.
“Like I said, come at me straight, I will accommodate you,” Bliss said.
“Even knowing I only wish to feign affection so I can get close enough to break your neck?” Garcia said. “Hard to erase that from our dialogue, now that you inserted it.” “I could accommodate you without touching you,” Bliss said.
“That’s not sex, by definition,” Garcia said.
“I could engage you telepathically. Mind you, I am using that word loosely, it would not be true telepathy, but rather brain to brain connection through our technology. You would not be able to distinguish between mental collaboration and physical intimacy. I am, however, an actual telepath, more so than you, so we could add an extra psychic component, which always enhances the flavor. If you didn’t want me, there are any number of willing partners that are interested in you. Hell, half the crew would likely indulge you if you asked, partly because of your history. If you put yourself live on the network, you will be accommodated. Some people will come as they are, very them, while others will use avatars to be more enticing to you. Some will be aliens. Some will be sentient computer programs. Mind you, every experience you have will be available to others to share in. Some avatars are run by a plurality of people wanting to share an experience. Some will want the experience of being with you, some will want the experience of being you. This is complicated. Slow the train down. Let’s discuss what you really want.” “What I really really want?” Garcia asked.
Bliss smiled, but didn’t laugh. “You share his humor.”
“Who’s?” Garcia asked.
Bliss snapped her fingers. They went elsewhere. Garcia orientated. This was TenForwards, or near enough. This was a much larger place than the one he was familiar with. It became clear they were at the upper most level of the main fuselage, where the empennage that held the saucer met branched up. In the inner space was a cluster of chairs and a central circle stage for dancing or playing music. There was curved bar, and clearly more seating on the other side. Going forwards one could step out onto the main fuselage, under a transparent blister that folded to the empennage and allowed people to walk forwards and look straight down past the dish. One could walk along the outside of the empennage to the back and look aft, taking in the view of the engine nacelles. He did just that, completed a full circle around the empennage. He walked out onto a portion of the blister and looked down, standing on ‘nothing’ that was something. He felt the glass, transparent aluminum? He pushed his head and hands against it, testing its reality.
He walked around again, looking up at the saucer, up at engine the nacelles. They were not at warp. Space was still. Kids were out with telescopes, identifying types of stars and other stellar objects and structures. It was a class. There was another blister, a bubble blister, center of the main fuselage where another class had gathered. There were four bubble blisters under the saucer section, at compass points, occupied with students, only they were upside down compared to him. He suspected there were bubbles on the top of the saucer section, and underneath the main fuselage.
“Student field trips from the inner sphere?” Garcia asked.
“We’re all students on this ship,” Bliss offered. “Let’s go get a drink.”