Olimpia was so excited and intrigued by Mateo’s apparent ability to make
physical contact with a hologram. Did it only work on people, or could he do
it with anything? Maybe this power was limited to holographic communication,
and not for computer generated images. Centuries ago, scientists in the real
world were inspired by the three-dimensional simulations from the Star Trek
franchise, The Orville, and other similar scifi stories. They tried
to design a real version of it using a combination of magnetic fields, wind,
nanobots, and even direct cerebral mind alteration to simply make the user
believe that they were touching the hologram. There was actually some
promise in the technology, but as fun as it was, it was nothing compared to
the kinds of worlds that people were building in immersive virtual
simulations. The laws of physics could be broken in such environments, and
they demanded a hell of a lot less power to make it work. Real life
holodecks continued to exist, but were only as available as demand allowed
them to be. Maybe the Vellani Ambassador secretly employed the technology,
and Mateo managed to figure out how to access it within the last few
minutes? Eh, that seemed unlikely. No, this was something else.
“Guys, something’s happening to me.” Olimpia suddenly felt so dizzy.
Everyone peeled their eyes off of Mateo and Oakset to watch her stumble
back. Ramses tried to help, but she pushed him away, and tottered away from
everyone. Her instincts were telling her to make room for herself.
“She’ll be fine,” Mateo assured them, clearly knowing something important.
Olimpia’s instincts started to make her spin around, erratically at first,
but then momentum magically increased, and pushed her around without her
having to move her feet anymore. What little she could make out of the room
around her faded away behind little dots of darkness, only to be replaced by
bright blue sky. She blinked, and teetered around some more, eventually
realizing that she was not alone. A few others were around her, wobbling
just as badly. She focused her eyes forward at one of them in particular.
Was that Mateo? Yes, it was. “Matt!”
“Olimpia?” Mateo questioned, trying to clarify his own eyesight too. “Are we
down on the planet?”
“We’re on a mountain.” A man had managed to stagger a few meters away, and
was looking over the edge. This did look like a mountain. Below them was the
ground, and beyond that, the open ocean.
“Careful, dude,” another guy said. “Wouldn’t want you tumblin’ over.”
“Wouldn’t you?” a woman asked accusatorily.
“Bhulan?”
“Do I know you?” she asked.
“It’s Mateo. Mateo Matic?”
“We haven’t met yet.”
“Well, maybe this is why you hate me in your future.”
“Maybe,” Bhulan acknowledged coldly.
“Do you remember me?” the other guy who Bhulan didn’t seem to like asked.
Mateo took a few deep breaths, and studied his face. “Tau-something. You
tried to kill my friends.”
“Bingo. Tauno Nyland...at your service.” He extended his arms, and took a
bow.
“Arqut Grieves,” the man who realized where they were announced, “in case
anyone wanted to know.”
“Utari Kiswana,” a woman introduced herself.
“Olimpia Sangster.”
A man appeared from the trailing leading down the side of the mountain. “And
I am Buddha Maestri!” He walked up to them with a big smile on his face.
“You look like you’re in charge,” Tauno assumed.
“Did you say Buddha?”
“Yes, I did, and I don’t want any complaints about it. The original Buddha
was enlightened and powerful; I’m enlightened and powerful. I don’t see the
problem, and I don’t care if it offends you. Ya know, that wasn’t
his real name either, right? He gave it to himself so everyone would
instantly know how important he was.”
“That is..not how that happened,” Olimpia argued.
“I’ve seen you before,” Bhulan said to him. “Not directly, but I’ve seen
your effect on the timeline. Honestly, I thought I had negated your
existence with a few moves.”
“Uh, uh, life...finds a way,” Buddha replied in the worst impression of Jeff
Goldblum anyone had ever heard.
She could not bring herself to accept Buddha as his name. They would
probably never learn what his real name was, but it was likely something
embarrassing, like Drumpf. She would just have to come up with an
alternative herself. She thought about it for entirely too long before it
hit her. “Whatever, Buddy.”
“Buddha,” he corrected in an unplaceable accent that was just as offensive
as the name he had co-opted.
“Why are we here?” Arqut asked impatiently.
“You don’t know this place?” Buddy asked, gesturing all around. “This is
Moku Hoku...Star Island.”
“I know this one,” Tauno jumped in. “Artificial paradise island. Yeah, they
pulled magma up from an underwater volcano, and built the whole thing on top
of it from scratch. Those narrow beach spokes down there give thousands of
people ocean views from their little minimalistic bungalows. Plus they have
apartments, resorts, and mountainside homes. It has all sorts of activities,
like rock climbing, surfing, hiking. Life’s good here, I hear. Not my style.
Not my time.”
“Thanks, Tauno,” Bhulan said sarcastically, even though it was pretty
helpful to know that. “Why are we here, Buddy?” Yay, the name was catching
on!
Buddy seethed at hearing it once more, but knew that his anger was what the
bullies were going for. “You’re here because I call you...The Reality
Makers.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Mateo admitted.
“You don’t? Think about it,” Buddy continued. “You killed a man, and a new
reality sprouted from it. They called it The Parallel?”
“Yeah, I remember, but I wouldn’t say that—wait,” Mateo interrupted himself.
He had never really thought of himself as having made a reality. It
was just a consequence of him trying to stop an event in the past that could
not be changed without causing a paradox. To prevent it, time generated a
parallel reality to sit next to the main sequence. “Well, okay, but...” He
trailed off, and looked around. “But that would mean...”
Bhulan exhaled dramatically. “I made the Third Rail. When I tried to destroy
the hundemarke, it created a world without time travel.”
“Exactly,” Buddy confirmed.
“Tauno, what did you do?” Mateo asked.
“I made the Fourth Quadrant. I did it on purpose. It remains my greatest
accomplishment to this day.”
Mateo looked over at Olimpia. “You made the Sixth Key.”
Olimpia shrunk into herself. She too had never thought of it like that. She
was there when it was created, but she didn’t realize that she had actually
created it herself. Was that true? It couldn’t be. She didn’t have that kind
of power. Right?
“You’ve been quiet. Uhh...Utari, was it?”
“I made the Fifth Division,” she acknowledged. “I wasn’t really trying too.
I was trying to fix the past, but it would have meant preventing The Gallery
Dimension from existing, and apparently, that wasn’t possible.”
Now everyone directed their attention to Arqut, who was the most confused of
all. “Unless something crazy happens in my future, and you took me from the
wrong point in time, I have never come close to ever creating
anything even somewhat resembling an entire reality. I’m just a guy
on a ship.”
“You’re the Superintendent, aren’t you?” Buddy suggested. “You created the
main sequence. You’re ultimately responsible for all of the
realities.”
Arqut slapped himself in the face, and slid his hand down, almost pulling
his eyes, nose, and mouth off. “I’m not The Superintendent. I served
as a superintendent for the Void Migration Ship Extremus. It was my
job to manage the personnel for both the crew, and the civilian government.
I don’t have time magic.”
Buddy was taken aback, but not upset. “Oh. I guess my intel’s a bit off.
Even gods are wrong sometimes, aren’t they, eh?” He gently elbowed Bhulan in
the arm.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Even if Mr. Grieves were one of us in this regard,” Mateo began, “why would
we all be here now? What do you want?”
Buddy started to pace around them with his hands behind his back to try to
give off this air of intelligence and self-confidence. “You six...” He
glared over at Arqut. “I mean, you five broke the rules. You forced
time itself to flow in a new direction. You challenged the status quo, and
you won!” he exclaimed in a breathy voice, like an overzealous sports team
coach. “I need your juice! So I can get the juice!” He stuck his hand up in
the air, activating a holographic image. It appeared to be a fruit, but it
was nothing like they had seen before. It was as if an octopus had made a
baby with a lemon.
Bhulan’s gaze darted back and forth between the hologram and Buddy’s face.
“Are we supposed to know what you’re talking about?”
“It’s called the Buddha’s hand citron. It went extinct over a hundred years
ago, and I would like to restore it to its glory. It is a symbol of my
power—of my divine right. I must have it back!”
“You’re obviously a time traveler of some kind,” Olimpia pointed out.
“Couldn’t you just go back and get it?”
“Citrus doesn’t travel through time, you idiot!”
“Watch your mouth when you’re talking to my girlfriend,” Mateo warned. “I
will hit you so hard, juicing will be the only way you’ll ever be able to
eat.”
“Girlfriend?” Olimpia asked, shocked.
“Yeah, hasn’t that happened to you yet?” Mateo asked in an awkward mutter.
“I guess I don’t know when exactly you came here...”
“No, it has, but we never defined the relationship—” she muttered back.
“Enough!” Buddy cried. “Let me explain. Yes, I could travel back in time,
and I could eat all the native citrus I want. But that’s not what I’m asking
of you. I’m asking for you to use your power to change the rules.” He
pointed at the ground. “I want it here. I want it now.”
“You seem like the kind of guy who wants everything, and is too impotent to
do anything about it himself.”
“What did you just say, bitch?” He bull-charged her, and no one else was
close enough to stop him.
Mateo instinctively reached out his hands, and something did happen. Buddy’s
fruit hologram stopped hovering over his hand, and bonked him right in the
face. He was too shocked to react with anything but paralysis and silence.
“Yeah, boiiiiiiiiiiiii!” Olimpia shouted. “I love it when you do that!”
“You’ve seen that before?” Mateo asked her. “What the hell just happened?”
“I’m from a few minutes in your future, depending on how long it takes you
to get back to the Ambassador. I still don’t know how it works, though.”
Buddy managed to break out of his trance. He started to stare Mateo down.
“You can throw as many holo-fruits at me you want. You will do what I
asked.” He started to charge again, but this time for Mateo.
“I don’t think so.” Tauno Nyland waved his arms, transporting them all to
some other dimension, or whatever.
They could still see Buddy there on the mountain, but based on how he was
looking around, he couldn’t see them. The normal humans were also having a
little trouble breathing. It wasn’t life threatening, but this realm wasn’t
perfectly suited for life. Mateo and Olimpia pulled their breathing straws
out of their suits, and started to share them between Arqut, Bhulan, and
Utari. Tauno would have to fend for himself. He could evidently take them
anywhere else whenever he wanted.
Meanwhile, back in the main dimension, they could see and hear Buddy
cackling like an evil witch. He raised both hands, and started revolving
them like he was holding invisible lassos. Dark particles danced away from
his skin. At the same time, they overcame the six of them just like they had
before, spun them around, and returned them to the mountain. “I’m sorry, did
you think that you could leave?”
Utari of the Fifth Division had been rather quiet this whole time, but now
she was ready to speak. She menacingly approached Buddy, who laughed at her
dismissively. “I don’t know what these people can do, but I assure you that
you don’t know what I can do. I am a metachooser. However your
time power works, I will turn it on you. You will spin for hours with no
respite, or if I so choose, for days until you succumb to thirst. What the
history books probably don’t tell you is that I didn’t technically send
anyone through time to create the Fifth Division. Someone else was trying to
go back home to the Gallery, and I couldn’t let that happen. So I pushed
back, and they didn’t survive the battle. If you want your special little
citron, we can discuss options, but you won’t be hurting anyone, and you’ll
be doing it on my terms. I’m in charge now. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Buddy was terrified.
“Oh, and by the way, Buddha’s hand contains no juice or pulp...you moron.”
He just nodded respectfully.
“Great!” Utari immediately flipped on a fake smile. “With the unpleasantries
over, I’m interested in a tour of this island, and maybe a meal. Is anyone
else hungry?”
