Memoirs of a Timelord (19 page)

       

       

       I was slotted for Medical School next, but the Boss switched it at the last minute.  Next thing I know I'm standing on the deck of this filthy, dirty, decrepit space station.  I mean this thing looked like it was built back in the Stone Age, wiped in shit, then parked in the anus of the galaxy for a thousand years.  

       However, it wasn't the condition of the station that held my attention, but the Guf screaming in my ears.  It was in pain.  I'd never heard anything like it before.  Once I got past the myriad of voices that were calling out danger, I became aware that there were several other apprentices there in the galaxy.  Two were there on the deck with me, another three afield.  The Guf told me they were healing the injuries, far away.  But the pain made me want to cry out.

       "My name is Cuda." I felt the voice clearly in my head, even before I spotted the old guy striding towards us. Tall and elegant, I had only ever seen his people in history books.  Drawing abreast of us, he spoke in an old DuNai dialect. 

       "Welcome to Clovis Mene." 

       I understood right away why the Guf was screaming.  Being educated in DuNai history I knew well the story behind the galaxy.  It was not a happy one.

       "During the fifth dynasty, the DuNai had expanded well beyond the confines of their own galaxy and began to occupy distant worlds.  It was during the occupation of Clovis Mene that Oscar Rastin began his earliest work on temporal manipulation.   Unaware of the dangers, and with full funding by the DuNai Science Ministry, he experimented for millennia before he achieved a safe and stable technology.  However, during the years of his failures he had caused extensive damage to the Clovis galaxy.  A fact that you apprentices have no doubt taken notice of." As he drew into the light I could not help but marvel.  Tall, maybe three meters, and with this long gangly form, he looked like he could jump over the moon in his younger day.  

       I was pretty shocked to see the Master of Clovis Mene.  In fact, he was the first true DuNai I had ever seen.  Sure, I was technically DuNai, and so was the Boss, and Bara, and Veena, but we were all naturalized citizens.  Wetbacks in space.  As for the actual DuNai race, according to the Boss they had all ascended with their Guf when it was time.  They had been the first to understand the path to ascension and thereby the first to punch out, but not until they had passed on their ways to others.  From where I was standing, it had been over a billion years since the DuNai ceased to exist as a species.  So you can imagine our surprise at finding ourselves chatting with one.

       "As you will remember from your studies, in the sixth dynasty we first became aware of the true nature of the damage we had caused to the galaxy.  It had taken thousands of years, but the DuNai finally understood that what we had done in Clovis Mene was not merely a navigational inconvenience, but that we had injured the very life force of the galaxy itself.  In our selfish floundering we had committed arguably the greatest sin imaginable.  And it is to this end that the DuNai believe they owe a great debt of honor, to right what they have wronged.  During the next cycle of your training you will pay your dues to the Guf we have injured by working to repair the damage." 

       As I felt his words in my head I could sense that there had been hundreds of thousands of apprentices here before me.  So many that the old Master saw us as faceless widgets.  But I could sense his absolute commitment to duty, as he had stood this post almost since the dawn of time.  Soooooo many years, I could feel the dust in his bones when he spoke thru the Guf.  

       After that we were introduced to our mounts.  Each of us was assigned a utility truck...I guess you'd call it.  A ship with Lateral-drive, DuNai instrument pack, and millions of watts of focused energy.  You didn't really climb into it like a regular space ship.  Nope, this was DuNai technology so the whole thing was just a big pile of very specialized morphic material that you melded into.  I didn't sit in a chair, I was the chair, and the morphic matter became my matter and an extension of my body.  I was free to modify the ship to fit whatever flight configuration I needed.  Fluidic technology is pretty cool stuff.

       Now the Clovis galaxy was in pain because Oscar and his successors had punched big gaping holes in the fabric of space.  They didn't know it, but the methods they were using to achieve 4th dimensional travel had actually been techniques you would use for a fifth or sixth dimensional tunnel.  He had essentially gut-shot the Guf thousands of times, and its precious life force leaked into neighboring dimensions.  It was bleeding to death.  In modern temporal movement we use a method known as Insertion which is more like non-invasive surgery.  We don't open up a tunnel, we just pass thru the barrier while fully phased, leaving no scar or injury.   But Rastin had basically hacked his way through the jungle, leaving jagged, unsealed wounds everywhere.

       So you had this whole unstable galaxy, with rifts opening up wherever we have not sealed yet.  Basically when I am not responding to an emergency call, I spent my days and nights toiling and making repairs to the fabric of space.  It was chaotic sometimes.  One rift would contract and cause three others to open up.  If we weren't fast enough, entire solar systems, even globular clusters could be sucked in and lost forever.  Trillions of souls stuck between dimensions without a Guf to join when they died, it was as if their very souls were being erased.  That's the worst thing you can do to a person, not kill them, but disincorporate their soul.  You don't just end them, you end them here and in heaven.  You end their very existence.  These rifts are bad stuff, even Ethereals and extracorporeal beings are afraid of these things.  

       It was filthy, mind-numbing work that never ended.  We were all mature enough apprentices that we could work without sleep for years at a time.  It really became sort of a mania for us.  You think a cop or a doctor take their profession seriously?  Imagine that your mistakes mean that a million people die, or a billion, or a trillion.  Not only did we run like crazy people when the fire bell rang, but we spent every waking minute of every day trying to stay ahead of the next rift or flash flood.  Many of these wounds were extensive, or covered swaths of space measured in light years.  There was so much work, and like every trainee before us, we made it our personal goal to fix every bit of it.  

       On the outside it looked like we were just driving dump trucks to a spot in the middle of nowhere and firing particle weapons.  But for an apprentice, sensitive to the Guf, it was more of a doctor-patient relationship.  As you healed the rift, you could feel the soothing ahhhh of relief from the voice nestled in your head.  We all developed this relationship with the Clovis Guf.  For me it was almost a Florence Nightingale effect.  In a way I guess I was really just compensating for the hole in my life where my daughter used to be.  It had sensed this I'm sure.  Just as I could hear the voices, the Guf could look into my mind as well.  

       I was halfway through my second tour in Clovis when I thought to take my first break. That's the kinda hours we kept; I'd been in at it for years without a break.  The days just melded into a long stream of consciousness.  Anyhow, I had just saved this cute little solar system from total annihilation from a subspace gash and I felt like swimming with the dolphins.  There was a gas giant with lower density than Saturn so I dove in.  It was amazing the variety of life that existed at each of the stratified chemical layers.  Just think of a gas giant as an ocean planet with a rocky core.  They are only gaseous on the outside, once you get in deep enough the gasses are compressed into liquids. Go deeper still and eventually you encountered a dense layer of metallic hydrogen.  Lemme tell you, some crazy stuff evolves on gas giants.  

       Once my body was properly modified, it was a pleasure to swim the depths.  It was all cool and chilly in the top layers (relatively speaking), then dark and warm down deeper.  I had a lotta fun exploring the ocean floor.  It's like the place where your socks go when they vanish from the laundry basket.  The gravity of these immense planets draws in a lot of trash and debris and sometimes ships.  Granted, the pressure of the depths combined with the acidic properties of the ambient chemicals left most of the ships completely unrecognizable.  But there were still a few cool wrecks to explore.  Also, some of the local lifeforms were truly fascinating.

       Then all of a sudden the Guf cries out in pain, but different than what I usually hear, like these were fresh wounds it was experiencing.  Instantly I see the location in my mind as the Onkx makes the jump seamlessly.  Before I even rematerialize at the other end, I am already reconfigured as the dump truck, ready to save the galaxy.  I have been doing this non-stop for years, I could patch a class IV rift while doing my nails.  Actually, that was a lie, when I was morphed with the truck I didn't really have nails.  I was a truck.  Anyhow, the point is that I was very experienced with this kind of work.  I was ready for anything, or so I thought.

       In front of me there were three DuthSing battleships standing guard while a series of clippers used focused particle weapons to cut temporal micro fissures into the landscape.  My eyes are going crazy with data.  The battleships have already noticed me and are launching thousands of fighters.  I can see their main weapons charging as they move on me aggressively.  I'm getting strange readings from my instruments and the Guf is screaming warnings into my head like a fire alarm.  I am also seeing that the life forms approaching me are all genetically identical, and the whispers tell me they are all of a singular consciousness.  The realization that I am facing a Class V morphic being with advanced technology chilled the oil in my veins.  When I saw that they were generating a massive inhibiting field I realized they were here for me.  In the words of Admiral Akbar; It's a trap!

       Prolly one of the most dangerous creatures you can ever run into is a Class V morphic being.  Think of John Carpenter's remake of The Thing.  Not only can it copy you down to the cellular level, but it can incorporate you into its being.   Even Timelords were scared of these guys because if one ever got his hands on an Editor while our shields were down, they would own a fully functional Onkx with temporal editing enabled.  With that power, they could erase entire galaxies.  The most powerful weapon in the universe was the one built into my body, and if they so much as touch my unprotected skin I could be hijacked.

       It was right then that everything started moving in slow motion.  It took me a minute to realize that I had willed it.  From what I could tell, slowing time was about the only option that was still working.  I couldn't reconfigure my body, and I couldn't jump outta there.  They had me bottled up in local space with that damned inhibiting field.

       In an instant my priorities became clear.  First stop the cutters that were making the incisions before the entire region collapsed.  Second, destroy the fleet of fighters, get rid of the battleships, and finally repair the damage to the galaxy.  Sure, I could do that.  Mebbe if I had backup, but the Guf told me there were no other apprentices in the galaxy.  Pushing a little harder, I slowed the passage of time even more.  But the inhibiting field was really sapping my energy reserves.  I could not keep this up forever; I needed to come up with a plan fast.

       The obvious choice was a concentrated blast of energy right in the middle of the fissure they had cut.  It would make the entire section collapse, and pull the bad guys in at the same time.  Once they were sucked out of this dimension I would be able to jump out of there and come back at a better angle to make repairs.  I could end it all in one shot, but to save my own ass I would be causing the Guf immeasurable pain and agony.  Then there was the loss of its already diminished life force.  It would be as bad as anything Oscar Rastin and his ilk had ever done.  No, this was inconceivable.  The Guf wasn't some random asshole, it was more than a close friend. To me the Guf was my child.  I cared for her and saw to her wounds while she absorbed enough souls to regain her strength and sanity.  I could no more hurt her than my own daughter.  There had to be another way, but how?

       Now, if I had been a testosterone-driven man, my mindset would have been to focus my emitters on the enemy and go down with guns ablaze.  But even a cursory calculation told me that was simply impossible.  There were thousands of them, like clouds of gnats filling the sky.  The battleships loomed with their guns clearly visible at this range.  It was only my retarded passage thru time that kept them from grabbing me.  I was just too fast at quarter speed.  

       It's odd the things that go through your mind at a moment like that.  I have the whole universe crashing down on me, minutes away from either being dead or hijacked, and in the back of my mind I'm thinking about work.

       More specifically, I'm thinking about a job I just did over in Alpha sector.  It was just a routine bit of road patching, the same kind of stuff we do every day.  Actually that's not entirely accurate; for me it's really all just one very long day.  I haven't slept in years.  

       See, I'd been over in Alpha sector where Rastin had tested the Durse Mons device.  It was an interesting piece of hardware, but based on a deeply flawed theory.  In his early days of research, Rastin had this belief that he had to cut a hole in the dimensional fabric to make an insertion.  The Durse Mons device was like a machinegun, and they used it recklessly in that sector.  All of these micro fissures, and pockmarks, and thousands of perforations.  Other apprentices have labored here for a thousand millennia.  I know because with my DuNai eyes I can see the work they've done everywhere I look.

       So anyhow, a lot of these injuries can't be fixed by conventional methods, so we poke a new hole, but we do it right.