Memoirs of a Timelord (5 page)

       "Good morning." The Boss said with a strange smile.  "Did some exploring, did you?" Stooping over slightly, he eyed me closely.

       My head was throbbing as I opened a single eye to scowl at him.

       "Yeah, met Bara, had my entire religious belief system smashed on the rocks, turned off my auto-systems and got a little drunk." I grumbled as I tried to drag the blanket over my eyes. Okay, mebbe I got a lot drunk.

       "But now you seem at peace with what you learned." He said as if he were reading my mind.  

       It was true; I had somehow come to terms with the things my brother Bara had revealed.  Now if I could just visualize the command that would get rid of this hangover.  The Onkx took focus to control; something I didn't have in my current condition.  

       "So, no questions on that topic?" He raised an eyebrow.

       "Yeah," I agreed, sitting up on an elbow.  "Tell me about when you saw God." It had been something I had been dying to ask.  Bara had refused to elaborate, insisting that it was the Boss's story to tell.

       Sitting back with a little surprise, he gave a quick smile.  "Mere words fail to paint the image.  You cannot explain God, it can only be experienced." With that he silently touched me on the arm with a single finger.  

       What happened next, or really what I experienced next, was known as MoTi, the art of sharing experiences.  This wasn't some video clip, or a clever story he was telling.  With MoTi you don't just see the memory...you live it.  Everything he felt that day, I felt today.  Every sensation, every thought.  Think of it as walking a light-year in someone else's shoes. The DuNai used MoTi extensively as a training technique, and really it was a helluva way to impart a lesson.  Although I would take on thousands of memories in later years, this was my first time.  

       As I was pulled into his MoTi, I found myself diving backwards through time at an alarming rate.  Farther and farther back I went, travelling so damned fast.  I could feel so much of what he felt, of the hunger to find out what was at the bottom of the well, the struggle to go deeper towards the very origin of all creation.  Intently focused, I was on a collision course with day zero, the beginning of the universe.  There was so much happening all around me, it was as if I was diving deeper and deeper, fighting temporal waves and eddies as I fought my way closer to absolute zero.  It was unimaginably difficult, like swimming upstream thru a firehose.  To this day I have a lotta respect for the Boss because of the absolute fortitude I felt in that memory.  He only looked like a little guy on the outside, but inside he was Aslan.    

       We were so close to absolute zero.  I could feel the tremendous forces that repulsed us the closer we got.  It was as if the entire universe were exploding outwards while we were diving inwards against the tide.  Then finally, our Onkx hits a brick wall and we careen diagonally.  It takes every bit of energy left in our body to stabilize.  That's when I finally get the chance to look around at the absolute nothingness around me.  No galaxies, no matter, no universe, not even the vacuum of space.  The clock in my Onkx is stalled at -.000000000001ps, and I am getting alerts that I am outside of the temporal plane of existence.  I'm just realizing that without the very fabric of space, my Onkx was dead in the water.  I'm essentially stranded like a car in the ocean.  All I can do is hang there in nothingness hoping that my backup systems can keep me alive long enough to figure out how to get back where I came from.

       And that's when I see God.  Or more specifically; Gods.  Don't ask me how I know this; you just feel it, like you're programmed to recognize your manufacturers. I know it makes no sense...how do you see something when light hasn't even been invented yet?  Still, it was unmistakable; I was in the presence of the very beings who created our universe.   

       There they were; two newlyweds of cosmic proportions in a sea of nothingness.  Even at this distance I could feel the love between the entities, their energy bathing me like a thousand suns.  There was so much joy, so much happiness, that it wiped out all memory of the world I had come from.  No Pain, no indecision, no fear.  There was only love and desire without end.  It was like this thick, warm blanket that I wanted desperately to wrap myself up in for all eternity.  

       I don't know how long I was there, really I don't.  Coulda been a thousand years for all I knew, but there was no way to tell since time didn't exist yet.  I was stranded there without a temporal tide to carry me home, but I didn't care.  I would have gladly stayed there forever.

       Then they touch like a pair of great gaseous nebulas, and a single spark flies out.  There is such an intense feeling of love and affection for the little burning ember as it flitters about before finally igniting.  My eyes widened as I watched the flame growing bigger unimaginably fast.  As I watch the universe unfold like a tidal wave rushing towards me, I can't help but give a smile of wonderment as creation washed over me in an instant.

       The memory ended there, but its shock and awe left me stunned.  Taking a moment to run it all through my mind I was at a loss for words.  With MoTi the experience is so complete that you have few questions afterwards.  But for me there was just something about the beginning that I didn't understand.

       "Why were you so damned intent on getting back to zero?  It felt like you were rabid for this." I could still remember the almost maniacal feelings that drove him so hard against the temporal flow.

       "Think of it as a midlife crisis." He gave the barest hint of a smile.  "More than a few editors have felt the thirst for knowledge, to know with absolute certainty that there is purpose to our sacrifice.  When I collected that memory I had been a Timelord for twenty-nine of your millennia.  I had done a great many distasteful things in the course of my duties.  All necessary, but these things weigh on your conscience nonetheless.  I was beginning to have doubts; there were questions that even the DuNai could not answer.  And like many before me, I took the plunge.  When I reemerged, I was revitalized in my mission, ready to continue my life's work." Standing up, he gave me a serious look.  It took a minute to realize that while he was imparting the memory, he had cured my hangover too.

       "Come.  We have more students for you to play with."

       

       My first impression of the new students was a solid WOW!  At least when I saw the guy, anyhow.  Oh wow, oh wow, was he pretty.  Well built, but not like a bodybuilder.  More of a natural fitness, with broad shoulders and thick arms for holding a woman all night.  Oh yeah he was dreamy.

       Then I saw her, the other new student, and my hopes just crashed.  She was beautiful, and I don't just mean pretty.  She was movie-star beautiful, absolutely gorgeous.  It was like we weren't even the same species.  Even if McDreamy was gay, she could turn him back.  That kinda hot.  

       I musta just stopped there in the doorway like an idiot, my jaw hanging open as I realized I had no chance of scoring the hunk with her around.  Not that I'm ugly, or even unpleasant.  I was just terribly ordinary when compared to the she-goddess (whose name turned out to be Veena).  What guy would settle for me when he could have Christina Aguilera?  

       I don't mean to sound too school girl about this, but you gotta remember I'd been alone in my new life for a few years, and again, I was running around the universe in a brand-new nineteen year old body.  What can I say; I was lonely.  Back then Didra made lousy company, so I was totally starved for human interaction.  When you've been stranded on a desert island for as long as I'd been, even a one-night-stand looked good.  

       But as I found out later, the whole meeting was really one of DorLek's lessons.  He knew I would come to all the wrong conclusions.  It was like that old saying about judging a book by its cover; I had leapt to conclusions before taking the time to use my abilities to really assess the situation.

       Firstly, they were not really human; they were both Saik; native morphs.  Why the hell is that important? See, when your species can control its appearance with just a casual thought, being beautiful means nothing because everyone was pretty where they came from.  Although I didn't understand it at the time, my plainness made me the exotic one. Can you believe that? 

       The chick named Veena was training to become a Korpah.  Essentially a planetary manager, she would command an army of operators and cut-outs, all doing the Timelord's bidding as per the master plan.  It was a top management position.

       Pretty boy was a guy named Aldoo; Galactic Engineer.  He'd be the go-to-guy for all your hardware, special effects, and major construction projects.  Need a planet moved a little to the left?  Installing a stable trans-temporal wormhole for the employee entrance?  Aldoo would be your boy.  He could build anything, and I mean anything.

       Both of them were recently implanted with their Onkx, so they were in the same boat as me as far as using the damned thing.  Sure, we'd mastered the basics, but the Onkx is a vastly capable device.  There were features that I didn't even understand yet, let alone able to use them.  While my Onkx had the full Monty, namely every feature enabled, theirs were incapable of temporal relocation.  They could not travel dimensionally.  Only a Lord had those abilities.  The DuNai regarded time travel as the greatest potential weapon in the universe and limited its use severely.  Most galaxies were shielded to prevent the invention from ever occurring in the first place.  The effects of two people tampering with the timeline simultaneously could be devastating.   Like Highlander, there could be only one.

       "Has he introduced you to MoTi?" Veena asked with a smile on her pretty face.  We'd been hanging out in the library under Skylab.  The Boss had harvested the old space station as a trophy and kept it suspended above the room. The whole house was filled with stuff like that.

       "Yeah, once.  It was something else, that's for sure." I nodded enthusiastically, remembering that morning that I had witnessed the Big Bang.  "Did you have to go through Devices training?"

       She rolled her eyes at the memory.  "Don't get me started.  Me and Aldoo are from the same planet, but about a thousand years apart.  He got to skip to advanced courses while I had to take the ultra-beginner courses for hillbillies." The devious smile on her face told me it had been excruciating.

       "Me too." I held up a hand.  "Back where I come from we don't even have flying cars.  I didn't even know how to use a veule" I shook my head sadly.  

       "Me too." She opened her eyes wide, "I lost three fingers on the mazer.  Zzzzt!"

       "A finger on the mazer, a hand to the elcomb, and broke my neck on the skiff." I gave a nod of reassurance.  I understood her tech woes fully.

       "I wrecked the skiff three times just getting out of the bay." Veena jutted out her perfect breasts as she referred to the training vehicle we still struggled to master.  Students had to become proficient in the little craft before we could move on to stellar flight training.

       "So what's the deal with Aldoo?" I took the chance to change the subject.  "Are you two a couple?"

       "Oh, I wish.  You should see him without his shirt." She leaned forward to talk.  Veena had this infectious way about her, when she spoke everything was such a big, exciting deal.  It was hard not to feel her enthusiasm. 

       "Soooo, he's single?" I prodded further.

       "Sorry sister, there's no room for you with all the baggage he's carrying." Veena batted her eyelashes to emphasize the futility.  "He's seriously hung up on someone back home.  I've been walking around here, dumping pheromones by the liter and he hasn't noticed me yet."

       "I thought your people were only class three morphs, you could look human on the outside, but inside you're still Saik." I had read up on their species a little.  After all, I had the database right there in my head.

       "We are, but the Onkx allows us class four and above.  Right now, I am every bit as human as you." She smiled proudly as she showed off her very female body.  "Aldoo is supposed to be fully human as well.  This is our advanced species, level one course.  We have to be homo sapiens while we're here for this phase of training.  In a few solars we'll be another species, then another.  Maybe even a different gender.  You'll love it."

       "Whoah there," I sat up in surprise.  "Is that what advanced species training is all about?  I thought I just had to absorb a lotta literature from an encyclopedia, but you're saying that I gotta be other species?  Actually, physically be another species?"

       "Of course.  How can you truly understand an alien race without having walked a mile in their shoes?  Did you think it was all going to be MoTi? Don't get all freaked out, it's not that bad, really."  Veena reassured me as she stretched out on the couch before morphing into a big, hairy Vlordak, then back to human.

       "That was fast." I was surprised to see how quickly she could go from one to the other.  I knew from reading that it took several hours for her people to morph into a new form naturally.  The Onkx that flowed through her molecules seriously enhanced her morphic abilities.  It had prolly been easy for her to use the Onkx for shape shifting since she already knew how.  But me?  I hadn't even played with the feature yet.  Up to this point I had been so damned busy with my studies, and exploring the house, that I really had not done a good job of focusing my energies inward to the device that would one day get me home.  I knew a few of the preset commands to do things like change my clothes or convert waste to energy, but so many of the features had been left unexplored.  They were on my list, but it was a very long list.

       "What species have you been?" She asked, a sparkle in her devious eye.