[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I usually post a new chapter about every two weeks, and the next one is planned for around February 9th.]

Previous: Chapter 17

Flicker was working on something hard, and had been for a very long subjective time.

Not hard just for her, or hard for everyone else, but reasonable for her: fundamentally hard.

She hadn’t pushed her mind to its top possible speed–parts of her working memory lagged when she did that, and she needed it all and more. Even so, her visor was struggling to keep her work display updated in chalkboard and diagram mode.

She scrawled the last equation with a fingertip in the air and watched it appear, after a slight delay, glowing green at the bottom. She contemplated it for a moment.

So ‘probabilistic measure compression’ could be rigorous after all, no matter how counterintuitive she’d found what had looked like a mishmash of measure theory, topology, Bayesian inference, and quantum mechanics.

Which meant… She popped the display back to the start of this lengthy excursion, and tried to remember where she’d been.

Ah, yes… That last proof was valid, so trying to put bounds on quantum state suppression in the vicinity of a portal wasn’t necessarily futile, and could, at least theoretically, give you information on local spacetime, no matter where the portal went.

Which meant–she popped the display again–that although any given experimental result could be noise, if you kept repeating them with the correct protocol, you could push the probability down as far as you wanted. Even in the presence of constant, strong interference.

Which meant the Grs'thnk standard model, Xelian portal theory, Journeyman’s heuristics, and Flicker’s own intuition had been wrong, and the failure of Doc’s theory to rule certain things out was looking less like a failure and more like a clue.

And Ashil’s theory looked very much like it was on the right track.

It had certainly passed a significant test for a scientific theory. It made a prediction about experimental results that was different from that of other, competing theories. A prediction that could have disproved it. But it had been right, within the error bounds of all measurements so far.

Flicker started to slow back down, then remembered one last thing. She’d been working at understanding this small part of the theory for what felt like many hours of subjective time, but it had only been a second and a half. She checked her normal speed recorder to see where she’d left off.

Ashil had said “See?”, while pointing at a display showing the calculations leading up to her prediction, and the measured results.

Flicker slowed the rest of the way down and smiled, despite the rush of emotional lag, and the disorientation that came with her human brain trying to adjust to suddenly over-leveraged memory.

“Took me a bit, but yeah, I do. It works.”

Ashil beamed as Flicker pulled her visor and hood back to rub her eyes. They were in one of the small theoretical work labs, which mostly consisted of datalinks, plenty of displays of various types, some comfortable chairs, and a few side tables where you could leave your drink to equilibrate to room temperature after you forgot about it.

Ashil looked at home, and in a way she was. Her family face paint–which was actually a thin layer of smart cosmetics–was set to minimal hints of color, she wore a baggy “I heart Earth” retro-style tourist sweatshirt that some of Doc’s techs had fabbed for her, and her data interface visor didn’t look much different from the ones Doc used. Her appearance was more geeky scientist than alien.

“But I need to stop here,” Flicker continued, “because I’m already ahead of what I can nail down with one night’s sleep, and I don’t want to lose anything. I’m probably going to be going over my notes and coming back to ask you questions for a couple of days as is.”

“Is fine,” said Ashil. She was learning colloquialisms, and technical vocabulary wasn’t a problem, but she had tuned her translator to prioritize precision and emotional fidelity over proper grammar, and tended to lapse back into trade pidgin when she got excited. "Is wonderful. You took time and effort to figure out.“ She laughed. "Now just have to convince everyone else.”

“Yeah. This other universe stuff… Is that what fooled the Grs'thnk theorists?”

“Yes. Probe make transit, look around, come back. Everything look good, stars in right spots, tests work, so assume same universe. But if five thousand light years away, can’t know for sure–just that it look same as five thousand years ago on our side. And quantum parameters have to be very close, or probe not work, not come back.”

Ashil waved at a star chart display centered on Earth’s sun that also showed what everyone had thought was the Grs'thnk home star. "Probes expensive, many not come back even with best methods, and ship never go if probes not come back. So exploration optimize for universes that very close to same–too close to tell difference. And then they think same because look same.“

Flicker frowned. "But if Earth is different…”

“This universe not very different, out at portal zone–only when get close to planet. And is hard to recalibrate sensitive detectors after portal jump, so everyone think little differences just noise. Quantum computers not work right big clue, but so many other thing interfere with them, too, noise hard to rule out.

"Theorists worry. But merchants and explorers say 'Ship go same place every time, come back safe–that good enough.’ Not until portal zone to Earth shift, and no probe find new way, that they worry. All kinds of theories then. But they chase wrong bird, how you say–”

“They went on a wild goose chase?”

“Yes!” Ashil smiled again. "Like that. Theorists assume something natural–not crazy like your mother create new subspace, and so many others already around Earth that squeezing it in shift balance around, and have effect all the way out in portal zone. Ask too much for them to predict that.“

"Yeah,” said Flicker. "And no one could get through the way they had before, not you, not the Xelians, not whatever Blue Sentinel used for messages. Until Skybreaker got loose and I destroyed the Topaz Realm. Then there was more room again, so everything else started shifting back.“

"Sound likely,” said Ashil. "And time matches. But could be something else. Not going to assume–that what get everyone else in trouble.“

She yawned, stretched, and scratched the back of her neck. "Still lots more work to do. Can I take longer measurement sequences around the big tree? Got funny readings there before, but wasn’t sure detectors would keep working, so hurried. I can work on theory in between.”

“Sure. You might want to get some sleep first, though. Do you want the same einherjar guards as last time?”

“Yes! I like them.”

“Okay.” Flicker glided out the door. Ragnar and Heinrek relaxed nearby, talking in low voices. Ragnar was eating a sandwich–held in his off-hand, not his weapon hand. They were still alert, even though they didn’t need to be, here in Doc’s HQ.

When she had assigned them to watch over Ashil during her initial attempt to get her somewhat finicky quantum sensors to work in the Nine Worlds, Flicker had wondered whether they would consider it boring. Instead, they had been enthusiastic.

Ragnar had explained with a grin: "We understand 'Guard the Dragon Princess’.“

They turned to face her as she slowed down.

"Ragnar? Ashil wants to run some more tests by the Tree after she gets some rest, and I’d like you two to guard her again–if it goes longer than a day, I’ll have Lif bring two more einherjar to spell you, but you’ll stay in charge. Talk to DASI or Yiskah if you need anything else. Okay?”

Ragnar nodded. "At your command. We are honored to be chosen to protect the Dragon Princess again.“

Heinrek furrowed his brow. "She is more than–”

“Truth,” said Ragnar, smiling slightly. "She is more than a princess. But we know how to shield a wizard as well.“

"She’s not a magician,” said Flicker.

“That matters not. She is a seeker of secrets–she looks for things that you do not know, that DASI and the Maker do not know, that no one knows. Yet. One to disturb seers, and shift prophecies into new light. One who can find doors where there were no doorways before. She looks to other worlds, so intently she needs protecting in the world she walks, lest she stumble on rocks, fall in a stream, or simply forget to eat without reminding.”

“She is a wizard.” Ragnar crossed his free arm over his chest, in the manner of one swearing an oath. "We shall guard her.“

Flicker spent so much effort making sure her einherjar’s cheerful boldness and ignorance about Earth didn’t cause trouble that it was easy for her to forget how perceptive and competent they could be on familiar ground. She nodded acknowledgement, and popped back into the room to wish Ashil good luck.

Well, so much for the fun stuff. If Flicker hadn’t had any other responsibilities, she would have piled up caffeine and snacks, put on some music, worked with DASI to build an external structure in the Database to reduce the effects of memory overload, and then plowed right into the rest of Ashil’s theory–accepting, even reveling, in the fact that she’d be nearly useless for a couple of days because of the hangover from an epic physics bender.

But she had another task to do–and not one she could delay in good conscience. It was technically less difficult, but far more aversive. She headed back to meet the others.

*****

Yiskah, Eirik, Lif, and Journeyman were sitting around a table in the lounge of the main portal prep area when Flicker arrived. Osk had finally gone off to get some sleep. Eirik was telling a story–he was gesturing animatedly, and Lif looked amused. Yiskah was frowning slightly, and Journeyman appeared wary.

Flicker didn’t want to interrupt, so she carefully moved a chair just enough to let her sit, then slowed down and looked attentive.

”…through the shoulder joint and well into the ground,“ said Eirik, "so I couldn’t move even if I wished. And we were far from the hall, so no other help was coming. The first blow hadn’t broken anything, just loosened a few teeth, so I could still talk, but I considered it unwise, even after Lif arrived. She has little patience with my troublemaking.”

Lif snorted. "Truth, but I did not care for Gisila either. I wouldn’t have left without untangling the threads. Hello, Flicker.“

"Hi,” said Flicker. "Please go on, we have a little time, and this sounds like one of those stories that never gets started when I’m around.“

"Better if he doesn’t,” said Yiskah, “or we’ll be here all day.”

Flicker frowned. "But–“

"Drop it for now,” sent Yiskah telepathically. “Lif is very good at unraveling what has happened in the past, and very bad at knowing when to stop. Journeyman asked a discreet question, and Lif decided to give a public example of how her Sight works. Best not to embarrass either of them.”

“Um, okay.”

“I do have one question,” said Yiskah aloud. “Where was Greta when this happened?”

“Killing a frost giant who tried to steal apples from her orchard,” said Eirik.

“Greta has an apple orchard?” asked Flicker.

“Surely you’ve seen it? It’s right by the edge of the Wolf’s wood, surrounded by–”

“That’s an orchard? All the skulls on stakes around the perimeter made me think it was a graveyard for really dangerous things.”

“It has become that, too. Greta doesn’t believe in wasting fertilizer.”

“Why– Never mind, I’ll ask her later.” Another puzzle to file away.

The real difficulty Flicker had with her einherjar and Choosers was that they’d lived most of their long, eventful lives in the Nine Worlds–and Flicker knew very little about it that she hadn’t seen herself or been told. There were essentially no written records except for a few rumored Builder histories–no books, no papers, no conventional data at all. Stories, artifacts, and Lif’s following of threads were the only sources for history.

And there was no fast way to learn it. DASI was slowly collating oral histories, but data availability was still very hit or miss. So Flicker couldn’t fill in the gaps the way she normally would, by speeding up to consult the Database.

Which was a problem, because she was now the de facto ruler of the Nine Worlds, and she had nothing close to the level of knowledge she needed. It had taken her months to pick up a still woefully incomplete understanding, and even her friends were wary of her lack of context. But one more story probably wouldn’t help much, her mind was still filled with arcane physics, and she had other plans for the day.

“So were you able to make sense of Ashil’s Theory of Everything about Portals?” asked Journeyman, changing the subject.

“Some of it, yeah, and the rest looks good, I just had to stop because my brain was getting full.”

“Ah, good. She had DASI translate some technical questions for me, but a lot of my answers were 'No clue.’ Even with DASI’s help her physics is way beyond me.” He shook his head. "I think she was disappointed Earth’s expert on teleportation didn’t know more about it.“

Flicker snorted. "You did fine. Your data was good, most of your ideas weren’t actively wrong, and you didn’t try to bash your theory to fit, like the Grs'thnk theorists did–and they’ve had working starships for almost a century.”

“Nice to know. What was the surprise?”

“Surprise?” Flicker thought back, then remembered she’d briefly surfaced to send him an excited message when the theory had first started to come together in her mind, before she’d traced enough proofs to be satisfied. "Oh, yeah. There were a couple of cool things. The big one was that it’s impossible to port or portal to another spot in the same universe with a single jump. She proved it.“

"Uh, isn’t that what their starships do?”

“Nope–it’s just what they thought they did. The Grs'thnk home world isn’t in the same universe as our Earth, even though they look mostly the same.”

“Whoa. Just a minor little difference. Have you told Doc?”

“I sent him a summary. He’s been busy.”

“Like he’s ever not busy.” Journeyman frowned intently. "Wait a minute. When I do a regular port, I’m not–“

"The inside of your protective bubble counts.”

“What? As another universe?”

“It isn’t permanently connected to anywhere else, so it meets the requirements. And when we have time to sit down and go over your data, I’m sure Ashil’s theory will explain some of the patterns. Oh, and the clock jitter you see on your handcomp? That’s not a magical effect–it’s physics.

"Your model of instantaneous transit plus jitter was reasonable, but what really seems to be going on is that the local time when you reconnect is a free parameter as long as your arrival space-time point is outside the light cone of your origin, and vice versa. You should in principle be able to control it.”

“Damn, I should have done more long range tests with Doc–rematerialization time swamps everything else for short hops.” Journeyman squinted. "So, when I port to the other side of the Earth in one jump, I could arrive up to forty milliseconds early or late?“

"Yeah.”

“Huh. Early would mean time travel, which I thought the jitter prevented. I’ve never been able to manage a second long port that fast, but suppose I port to Mars to go rock collecting, then discover I’ve forgotten my sample bag and pop back to get it. What would keep me from arriving back 20 minutes before I left?”

“Theoretically, nothing.” Flicker grinned at him.

“That was not the answer I wanted to hear.”

“Well… It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to try. There’s an effect where potential paradoxes drive down the probability measure of a destination connection, which could conceivably keep you from connecting to the same Earth you left if you’re going to the past. But I don’t think there would be a real risk unless you had two separate past connections with partially overlapping intervals.”

“Great.” Journeyman rolled his eyes. “No problem. Unless I manage to finesse the conservation laws issue, start jumping around a lot and accidentally self-overlap because I’m busy trying to keep the world from blowing up or something. Her theory actually allows that?”

“She hasn’t worked out all the implications, yet–or had time to make any of it more understandable. She’s going to be busy for a while. But she’s really happy.”

“I’ll bet.” Journeyman chewed his upper lip and scowled. "Did the Grs'thnk ever test deliberate time travel using the difference in event ordering in relativistic frames?“

"They tried with probes. But none of them ever came back, so they stopped.”

Journeyman’s face went noticeably pale. "Yeah, that would be what I’d call a clue. I’ve always hated how much of a pain it is to compensate for momentum and energy balance for long jumps on Earth. But it sounds like that just might have saved me from a bad case of click, poof, gone. I take back what I said about about the long distance tests–I’m suddenly really glad I didn’t try any deep space ones.“

Journeyman took off his hat and studied it for a moment, then ran his hand through his hair and adjusted his hat on his head again. "Flicker?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for your interesting and thought-provoking summary. It has filled me with a desire to found the 'No, you really don’t want to time-travel’ club. Causal loops from future information are bad enough. Unfortunately, as you put it so well earlier, my brain is getting full. Maybe we should move on?”

“Oh! Sure, sorry.” She smiled, then sobered.

Yiskah, Lif, and Eirik had watched the exchange with interest, looking back and forth like they were following a ping-pong match.

“Okay,” said Flicker. "I know I’d planned to spend the rest of today in the Nine Worlds. But there’s something I’ve meant to do for quite a while, that has just become more urgent for unrelated reasons.“

Lif tilted her head. "Threads have twined together to pull the same direction?”

“Something like that.”

“Best not to ignore such a sign, then.”

“Right. I need help from you, Yiskah, and Journeyman.” She turned to Eirik. "I’d like you to spend the day with DASI on stuff you’ll probably find boring, but she needs to know to help me–like the ecology and economics of the Nine Worlds.“

"I am always ready to inform the Spirit of Wisdom as she wishes, in whatever small way I can,” said Eirik.

“Flatterer,” came DASI’s amused voice from the speaker of Eirik’s handcomp.

“How can the rest of us assist?” asked Lif.

“Well, for a long time I’ve wanted to see if I can convince Mechmaster to build more mechs for the einherjar. He won’t talk to me except in person, and he’s in a… special place. There’s someone Yiskah wants to visit there too, and DASI wants me to make sure everything is as expected, because she, Stella, and Journeyman uncovered some hints that it might not be.

"And Jumping Spider, who’s been working on something else for me for a while, sent me a message last night saying that she’s hit a dead end, and she thinks it’s worth checking for clues in the same place, but there are political reasons that would make it difficult for her.”

Lif frowned. “What is this place? You speak of it as somewhere unpleasant.”

Flicker took a deep breath. "I hate it. I don’t like how it works, most of the people who have to stay there, or the people who run it. But… it’s not something that I can change. And even I can see something like it is needed.

“It’s called the Box. It’s where they keep superhumans who’ve caused a lot of harm, after they are caught and defeated. And some human villains who are good enough at escaping. And a few beings who probably shouldn’t be there, but people are afraid to let out, or keep anywhere else.

"It’s a prison.”



Next: Chapter 19

