Chapter 18
Harister and Bliss entered the transporter alcove, dropped hands, and took separate pads. Harister seemed lost in thought. “You okay?” Bliss asked.
“What do we say if we meet ourselves?” Harister asked.
“Never happen,” Bliss assured him.
“Never, no exceptions?” Harister asked.
“If you go alone, you might run into my other self, but not going to happen while you’re with me,” Bliss said. “We’ll be alright. No confusion.” “I am confused now,” Harister said.
“Well, if, per some weird, cosmological quirk you do meet yourself…” “Kill me?” Harister asked, filling in before she finished. “No! Why would you say that?” Bliss said.
“Meet the Buddha on the road kind of thing?” Harister asked.
“No! Love the Buddha. Love yourself. Just say hello,” Bliss said. “It’s not that complicated, Sir.”
“Thank you,” Harister said.
“Anytime,” Bliss said.
They both looked to the tech. She was biting her lip. “We’re ready now,” Bliss said.
“Yeah,” Harister agreed. “Make it happen.”
They arrived in a living room, of a modern style home, provided that home was a futuristic, Frank Lloyd Wright home. A fire was in an open hearth fireplace, white bricks, large glass windows. Laughter and conversation came from the kitchen. They went there together and found friends sitting at the table. Fersia, once a human Furry, now more cat than human, provided the cats from the Broadway Musical Cats were real cats and not human, leaped and ran to them like a dog excited the master was now home. “You’re back!” Fersia said.
“They just left two minutes ago,” Lester pointed out. He was an elderly Chinese Wizard, with stereotypical white beard and mustache, dirty white hair tied into a tail, but wearing jeans, a pullover shirt, and a blazer with elbow patches. He wore shoes without socks and his cane was leaning against the table.
“So? Two minutes is an eternity in cat time,” Fersia said.
“You need to adjust your watch,” Leser said.
“Did you go to a convention?” Jane asked. She was over dressed for breakfast, in an Armani suit, skirt option.
“I want to go to a convention!” Fersia said.
“You wouldn’t blend in at that convention,” Lester said.
“She’d be fine,” Keera said. She was Japanese, dressed like Sailor Moon.
“See!” Fersia said, sticking out her tongue. “You always have an excuse for not taking me places.”
Alish, the avatar of a tree spirit got up and proceeded to make them a plate.
“That’s okay,” Harister said. “We’re not staying long. In fact, we’re here to collect you all for an adventure.”
“Yay!” Fersia said, running to the bench seat and her backpack. She opened up the bench seat and extracted a fishing pole with a feather weight, a bit of string, a ball with a hamster in it… “Oh, there you are. I have been looking everywhere for you, Jennifer.”
“You named the hamster Jennifer?” Jane asked.
“Yeah After Jennifer H Connelly,” Fersia said. She dropped the hamster ball into her pack. “Unpack. We’re not going anywhere,” Lester said.
“We need your help,” Bliss said.
“We don’t even know if you’re our people,” Lester said. “You could be imposters, clones, tulpas, shapeshifters, body snatchers, androids, temporally misplaced spectres…” “They smell and taste like Jon and Loxy,” Fersia said.
“You can’t tell anything by smell or taste,” Lester said.
“I can tell a lot by smell and taste,” Fersia corrected.
“We have an impossible mission,” Harister said. “We want your help sneaking onto the space world Orlandoria, rescue a kidnapped Space Force woman, and return her to her place and time, after divining what that place and time is, and whether or not she’s even the one to get returned, because she been spontaneously cloned through a split signal teleporter beam.” “That sounds like Jon,” Alish said.
“Can we go to Disney World while we’re there?” Fersia asked. “Not Orlando,” Keera said. “Orlandoria.”
“Oh,” Fersia said, pouting. “Can we still go to Disney World?”
“No,” Lester said.
“No we can’t go to Disney World?” Fersia asked, almost in tears.
“No, we’re not going to Orlandoria!” Lester said. “And no, we’re not taking you to Disney World, either. It is chalk full of capitalistic, evil magicians that are just waiting to catch a talking singing cat. They’d steal your voice and have you tap dancing and jumping through hoops before you got through the line of your first ride.”
“Flaming hoops?” Fersia asked, her eyes big.
“Yes, flaming hoops,” Lester said.
“I love jumping through flaming hoops,” Fersia said, clapping her hands “OMG, what is wrong with all of you people?” Lester demanded.
“Alright, Lester, we’ve had this part of the conversation before, and the script always goes down the same path. You ask what’s wrong with us, and then I ask what’s wrong with you for staying with people like us, and you get mad, and I ask you to move out, so either you’re moving out or getting on with the program. Prepare yourself for an adventure.”
“I have an extra ball of yarn if you like,” Fersia said. “It’s green. Your favorite color.”
“Going to Orlandoria is not like sneaking onto an Imperial space station, rescuing a princess, and escaping without consequences,” Lester said. “Who do you think you are? A Vrillian Knight?”
“It’s been done before,” Bliss pointed out.
“In the movies!” Lester said.
“Before the hostile takeover,” Jane pointed out. “Now that Disney’s in control, might be easier than in the before time.”
“Orlandoria is not Disney. Raptors are not stupid clones. They are not prone to keystone cop comedic overtures. We’re talking about an ancient, civilized, tech savvy, telepathic, super intelligent species of dinosaurs,” Lester said. “Orlandoria is not just a floating oasis, hidden somewhere deep in the heart of the galaxy. It’s a fortress, the last bastion of an Empire that almost conquered the entire galaxy, the very home of the Mother of All. Even if you managed to get onto the station, you’d be facing thousands of fringe bait that are just dying at a chance for a promotion or death, where death is itself a promotion!”
“Sounds like fun,” Harister said. “So, how would you go about getting there?”
“I am not telling you that,” Lester said. “You might do something stupid and go there, dragging me with you. I am not going there.”
“Hypothetically, if that happened, and I died, you’d inherit my house here,” Harister said. “You can’t go at directly. You got to go at it sideways,” Lester said. “Maybe, and I mean, maybe, if you had some Clouded Memory Rings, a technologically advanced, cybernetic ferret, and a Star Ship, maybe I could open you a portal straight to Orlandoria from one of their
Gateway Colonies.”
“Would a raccoon suffice?” Harister asked.
“Jon,” Bliss said.
“He owes me one,” Harister said. “Some doors shouldn’t be re-opened,” Bliss said.
“I know a guy, who knows a guy, that makes and sells Clouded Memory Rings,” Keera said.
“Aren’t they illegal?” Jane asked.
“Ish,” Alish says. “Apparently long term exposure could result in impaired speech patterns, such as tangential, pressured, flight of ideas.”
“Hypothetically, we’d need what, seven, eight rings?” Keera asked. “Make it twenty,” Harister said. “Just in case we need extra.”
“That’s pricey,” Keera said.
“Well, you never know when you might need one in the future and going back to the same shady, vendor, who is a friend of a friend, twice is risky,” Bliss said. “Make it twenty.”
“Okay,” Keera said. “Permission to enter the secret vault.” “Yeah, take whatever you need,” Harister said.
Lester laughed. “Too bad you don’t have a Starship. I would have so gone if you had a Starship,” he said.
“So, let me say, prematurely, welcome aboard,” Harister said, tapping his heart space and causing his signature to flare, light echoing through the outline of his entire uniform. “Harister to Enterprise, beam us up.”
“YES!” Fersia said, jumping.
She materialized in midair, landed on her feet, went to the floor, rolled on her back and scratched at the deck purring. Lester’s cane was standing within reach. He caught it. He tapped it hard on the floor.
“I’ll take her to our quarters,” Bliss said. “She’ll be fine after a good cat nap.”
“I was sitting,” Jane said. “Now I am standing.”
“We can manipulate your bodies in midstream,” the transporter tech said.
“Oh,” Alish said. “That explains that…”
“No,” Keera said. “That wasn’t due to the handling. The energy vibrated every cell in our being. That always results in…”
“Is that why everyone is always smiling on arriving after transport?” Alish asked.
“I need a change of clothes,” Lester said.
“Guest suites with adjoined living area for my friends, please,” Harister said to the transporter tech.
Jane went straight to the tech, offering her hand, smiling at her. “Bond. Jane Bond. What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Umm,” tech said, looking to the captain uncertainly.
“It’s okay. She’s harmless,” Harister said.
“I have a licensed to kill,” Jane said, not letting go of the tech’s hand.
“We don’t kill people,” the tech said.
“Really?” Jane asked, letting go of the hand. “What kind of place did you bring me to?” “A civilized space,” Harister said.
“Yeah? Where’s my change of clothes?” Lester said. “And if you think I am going to wear these fancy scrub type pajamas, you got a second think coming…”
“Right this way,” the tech said.
“Come on, Kitty,” Bliss said, trying to get Fersia to stand. “Jon, you may have to carry
her.”
♫♪►
Humming the theme from Raider’s, Eloah traced out the flight path, marking the predicted stops, etc, on her screens map. Linda came and sat with her.
“I like your uniform,” Linda said. “I am fond that era. Except for the war, of course.
People seemed more real back then.”
“I really like your era,” Eloah said. “Except for the loss of the big bands.”
“You’re from that era?” Linda asked. “How old are you?”
“Physically? Thirty,” Eloah said. “Mentally, 16. Emotionally, 130. Preston pulled me out of temporal speak easy.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Eloah said, looking out the window and orientating.
Eloah frowned and started to readjust the predicted path, redrawing the red line and
‘stops.’ She didn’t hide her confusion. The cities falling in her projected fuel range didn’t have the airport and sea ports that she was anticipating they would need. Linda erased her lines and drew a straight line from their home to the ‘X’ in the ocean. She also cut the ETA by a third.
“What?”
“This airplane may look like a Lockheed Martin, but it’s really a decommissioned Space Force troop carrier,” Linda said. “I was fringe bait. James was a four star general. We’ve held onto some assets.”
“Really?”
“You can’t tell?” Linda asked.
“I am not that kind of Knight,” Eloah said.
“Oh? What’s your story?”
“I started off ferrying airplanes,” Linda said. “Because of my ability to speak German and French, I was drafted into intrigue, infiltrated the Vrillian Order and became a sister. I spent a good deal of time off planet. I showed zero talent for Seeing. As a handler, I got ambiguous results. But I was able to channel. I channeled a Knight of the Ancient Order, did some good, did some bad, worked my way up the regime, stole a Nazi saucer and returned it to the Alliance. The rest, as they say...”
“They wiped your memory?”
“They tried,” Eloah asked. “I convinced them they were successful. I went back to ferrying airplanes and coordinating with the USO, soliciting for ‘fringe bait girls.’ Believe it or not, I am the inspiration for the movie, ‘A Guy Named Joe.’ Spencer Tracey, Irene Dunne, 1943.
They don’t make men or movies the way they did then.” “You became a madam?” Linda asked.
“Fortunately, history was much kinder to us than they were of the equivalent further back,” Eloah said.
“Do you have any regrets?” “Yeah,” Eloah said.
“Because of what you asked girls to do?”
“Not for that. It was never an order, and I never asked anyone to do anything I didn’t do myself,” Eloah said.
“You regret the killing?” Linda asked.
“Not my personal kills. The fact that we had to kill saddens me tremendously. Nobody today truly understands the magnitude of death and suffering that occurred,” Eloah said. “And not just here on Earth. We did some horrible things here on Earth. Worse things out there. To our own. To aliens. We made huge mistakes. We trusted beings that didn’t have our best interest at heart. We dismissed being who did. People don’t understand how fast things escalate, and it always blows up faster than it calms down. We were seriously lucky not to have been wiped off the face of the Earth. That’s still on the table, actually. People forgot what we were fighting for then. The things we fight for today, well, there is no rational for what we’re doing today. On any front. They still glorify the war with movies and references, but they forget the hard stuff, holding onto symbols that no longer mean what they use to mean. Hell, they even remade ‘A Guy Named Joe.’ People don’t have a clue.”
“‘Always,’” Linda said. “Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter 1989. It was a better remake than the ‘Poseidon Adventure’ remake.”
“Yeah. Without Gene Hackman’s character, there’s no moral compass to guide the survivors to the top of the boat which is the bottom of the boat,” Eloah agreed.
“You know movies,” Linda said.
She pulled a smart phone out of her pocket. It was too large for the pocket from which it was extracted. “Every movie ever made, from the first movie to the last. There were lonely times out in space when this helped me keep my sanity. The trick is not using movie references that are before their time. Fortunately for me, I have access to two brains, so temporal perspective is easier.” “Two brains?” Linda asked.
Eloah revealed her true form. Linda didn’t run away. Her eyes dilated. It wasn’t a fear response.
“You’re from that colony…”
“Yep,” Eloah said. “Both are species would have died if we didn’t cooperate. We are mates for life.”
She returned the illusion of being just one female, human. Linda eyes returned to normal and it was if she forgot the whole thing. Most people did. Eloah put her data device back into the her pocket.
“I used to have one of those,” Linda said. “I had a block to anything outside of my temporal reference.”
“Same here,” Eloah said. “I hacked it.”
“Do you regret that?”
“Oh, no. Again, saved my life,” Eloah said. Linda nodded. “What do you regret?”
“That I didn’t love more,” Eloah said.
♫♪►
Harister, Bliss, and Keera were teleported down to the Bazaar that was perhaps ten kilometers away from University of Safe Haven’s primary campus. The entire planet was technically the university campus: on the surface, in the oceans, in the planet, in the air, in orbit around the planet, branching out into multiple dimensions, and even extended into the astral plane. It was most easily accessible from the Imaginal Realm, but once you had a toe hold in the physical, you had opportunities to access it all. There were communities all over the planet that serviced the university. Communities that were samples from eras gone by, of alien civilizations, and if there were ever a convention that was host to all the possible conventions, you might have an inkling of oddity that was the Bazaar.
They made their way through crowd, through smells, pushing past vendors that were a little too insistent for you to sample their foods. There was no such thing as a free sample on Safe Haven. There was always a hook. One of the vendors caught Harister’s eyes and gave an inviting smile. Bliss and Keera took his arms and hurried him along. “She was a guy,” Bliss said.
“You’re just saying that to make me stop thinking about her?” Harister asked.
“Is it working?”
“No, just making me more curious,” Harister said.
“It was worth of try,” Keera said.
“You girls are never enticed here?” Harister asked.
“We’re graduates, Jon,” Bliss said. “We’re immune to that game.”
They arrived at a tent and going in took them to another planet. As long as they exited the way they came in, it was the same as being on Safe Haven. Any other exit, well, they’d be
subject to the laws and lays of the land. Here, in the between, there was a lot of gray about what was what and whose was whose. A large toad adjusted himself, stretching a broad grin.
“Awww,” it said. “Keera, my old friend of a friend. It is nice to finally meet you.” “Jeremiah,” Keera said.
“Really?” Harister asked.
“No,” the frog said. “It’s just my code name. Help yourself to some wine, my fabulously, famous new old friend of a friend of a friend.”
Harister went for a bottle but Keera slapped his hand.
“Sorry, we’re on duty,” Bliss said.
“You have the rings?” Keera said.
Jeremiah filled his cheeks with air and let out a squelch that might have been slightly more appropriate if he was hidden behind a stall in a bathroom. A humanoid, amphibian female entered. She was carrying a box. Her grin was too wide for a human, too thin of a nose, long limbs, and frog eyed to boot. Her skin shone with oily residue, and her simple cloth dress stuck to the oil as if she had just come off the beach after applying lots of lotion. She displayed the box like a model on a game show. She opened the box. Inside the box were four rows of five simple, gold bands, plus one. They shines as if someone was shining a light on them. There was a tiny glow stone in each. She sat the box down, took one of the rings out and showed the inside held writing, and etching that glowed the same color as the outer stone.
“Cloudy Memory Rings,” Jeremiah said, as his girl showed off the prize. “Perfect for those rare occasions you find yourself surrounded by telepaths. Each ring contains the memories of no less than one hundred beings, cycling at a leisurely rate guaranteed to bore any potentially eavesdropping telepath. Anyone listening is certain to get caught up in past dramas, chasing nonsense, and likely to be so disturbed by what sounds like flight of ideas that they simply stop trying to get a sense of you. I can assure you, my word as a fair market tradesman, no beings were harmed in recording these memories. These are only surface memories, nothing deep, only the humdrum noise of the daily scaffolding chatter that people think as they go about their day.” “We asked for twenty,” Keera said.
“They come in odd sets, what can I say,” Jeremiah said. Her nodded at the servant and she put the ring back in the box.
“We agreed to pay for twenty,” Keera said.
“You don’t want to buy the collection without the master ring,” Jeremiah said. “Do you really want me to quote Tolkien here?”
“Are there any dangers to the rings?” Harister asked.
“Not if you use them correctly,” Jeremiah said. “Never wear them for more than four hours a day. Never wear them when you sleep. Don’t meditate while wearing them. Don’t get them wet. Don’t operate heavy machinery….”
“Don’t get them wet?” Harister asked.
“Did I say that? Sorry, I was thinking of something else. My bad,” Jeremiah said.
“Perfectly fine to get them wet. To about twenty meters. Give or take.” “Whose memories are recorded?” Bliss asked. “20 rings, times 100…”
“Plus the one,” Harister added.
“No, the one directly accesses the twenty rings, and the person wearing a ring. It all gets jumbled together. Pretty hard to sort. Hence the name Cloudy.” Jeremiah said “Anyway, there are a lot of memories here, and each of these beings had lived a minimum of a fifty years of life at the time of the recordings. Do you really expect me to remember everyone I recorded?”
“Yes,” Bliss said.
“Seriously, Loxy, my newest old friend of a friend of a friend, I like you, you have a solid reputation of being ethically loving, but I have kissed a lot of frogs in my day. Way too many to bother remembering names,” Jeremiah said. “I wouldn’t have room for the good memories if I allotted space for all the names for all the frogs.” “I remember everyone,” Bliss said.
“Come back at me in a thousand years,” Jeremiah said. “We’ll see who remembers more.”
“Are these memories stolen?” Bliss asked.
“No, I would never do that,” Jeremiah said. “I wouldn’t even use the misplaced memories people sometimes forget and would likely never miss if I did. I don’t use suppressed memories. There are some dream memories, but again, it’s surface stuff. I definitely don’t dredge up stuff. Just surface scratching. Nothing broken or deleted in the capturing process. Memories are valuable, but only in the context of all the other memories. The rings contain the holographic imprinting of the entire person from their first memory to the last memory they held during the moment the recording was made. The recording is instantaneous. Feel free to sample the rings and hear for yourself. I can use the master ring to direct you to the truth of it. Every volunteer came from a willing, agreeable participant. No one was tricked, drugged, or under the influence. No one was coerced. They departed happy.”
“Did they know they were being recorded?” Bliss asked.
“They agreed to intimacy in a semi public setting,” Jeremiah said.
“So they didn’t…”
“If you want insight into history, you don’t ask people to pose for pictures,” Jeremiah said. “If you want believable background noise, you don’t tell people what to think. They agreed, they were distracted, we captured the memory. The subjects were not harmed.”
“And yet, you don’t have list for us to go verify that for ourselves,” Bliss said.
“Anonymity is also an ethical concern for those I deal with,” Jeremiah said. “Should you ever verifiably encounter anyone from any of the rings, I will compensate you. I assure you; that will never happen. The Universe is too big, too populated. These beings are not high commodities. And I suspect, that’s why you want these. You want to discourage onlookers, not invite more scrutiny. If you want proof, I can provide it. Do you want the rings or not?”
“It’s alright,” Harister said. “We’ll take them.”
“Not so fast,” Jeremia said, pushing the box lid shut. “I am offended by all these questions. I want something more.”
“The price was agreed upon in advance,” Keera said. “It was paid in advance.”
“My old friend of a friend who has friends,” Jeremiah said. “The price was for twenty. You’re ignorance of the one is not my fault. I am a reputable tradesman, and I am seriously offended by this one name Bliss. I want additional compensation, and that price will also include the proof that no being is harmed during a recording.”
Keera looked to Harister. He shrugged.
“Name the price,” Keera said.
Jeremiah pointed at Harister. “I want a recording of him.”
“Out of the question,” Bliss said.
“He is a starship captain! You know how much people will pay for that background noise?” Jeremiah said.