Happy New Year everyone! This last year has been very rough for a lot of us, so we thought we'd send you into the next year with a new free 10kd story to kick it off. I know all of us here at the 10kd crew hope it will be a good year for you. There will be struggles, but hopefully we can all stick together through them. Here's to 2017. This story features a side character from the first big 10,000 Dawns Story, an alternate reality version of the protagonist Graelyn she met and rescued during her adventures. Since writing the story, James was curious about what happened to her, and now you get to find out! Story written by James Wylder. This story features art by the amazing Nozomi Neko! You can find more about her by following her on twitter at: @NozomiNeko And at Devient art at: http://nozomi-neko.deviantart.com/ You can buy the Novel 10,000 Dawns now, right at the link below: http://a.co/ghMfFoc Or try a short ebook of six 10,000 Dawns Short stories for 99 cents! http://a.co/9yXTpCf You can read this story in PDF or Epub formats below:
Auld Lang MoonThe cords shoved the fluid into her, her pupils expanding, the white disk dilating the same way and cutting the starlight out of her vision. The vast crystal moon below her was her, as far as her senses were concerned. How startling to be an orb.
“Tell her to bring us to Dawn 378.” “Not she, it. Its not a person anymore, its just the onboard computer for the Factory of Crystal. Don’t personify it, you’ll only get your thoughts twisted about it.” “Its literally a girl in a chair with wires and tubes jabbed into her, its hard to think otherwise.” “See, your thoughts are already getting twisted. Bring us to Dawn 378, FoC.” She complied, after all, it was her job. She felt the energy flowing through her body-- no wait, not her body, the moon below her. Or was it the same? The energy ran along the cracks in her blue crystal, till she pushed through the white disk in space she had built from it: a portal to another reality, or another time, or another place. She cleaved through, till she felt the familiar tingle of a coming through into a new universe. She’d done her job. “Excellent,” one of her two new handlers said (she didn’t like them as much as the first two), “its working perfectly. Now we just need to go down to the surface and clean the mess up down there.” “I can’t believe a planet this backwards figured out timetravel.” “I can believe they were dumb enough to write half their own universe out of existence though. Lets get it fixed.” She felt purpose. She was helping. She was useful. She was… What was her name? She felt the chair pumping more chemicals into her, felt the question fading from her mind. No, she wanted to know! She’d had one, she had a name it was-- “GRAELYN SCYTHES WAKE UP! You’re going to be late,” Graelyn bolted upright in bed. Her pajamas were sweat-logged, her sheets damp. “Coming Mom,” her voice said, cracking. She slid out of the sheets, and tried to find something to wear that would cover up the holes in her arms. The Crystal Orb rose up from her bed side and nuzzled her as she looked through her closet, like a dog seeing its owner distraught but unsure how to help. “Is okay, don’t worry about me, just another nightmare,” she consoled the Moon. She took some solace in the humor of a massive military transport capable of expanding or shrinking at will and cutting through reality and time was trying to make her feel better about a bad dream. Her whole life sometimes felt like a dream, if she let it. It had been six months since she’d been liberated from the Factory of Crystal, the glowing orb she’d been wired into by the Firmament. Six months since she’d met another version of herself who had freed her. Six months of fitting into a family she had seen die, and who didn’t know their real daughter here was dead. It was a lot to take in, confusing to explain, and she hoped never to have to. She covered the ports for wires and tubes on her body with long sleeves and pant-legs, and went downstairs to start the day. She needed these extra classes over the winter holiday to catch up, she hadn’t had a formal education before being dropped into this world, and she was having trouble adjusting. Luckily her school offered them, the teachers who gave the courses getting beyond overtime pay. Not that all of them seemed happy about it. “You know Grae, its new years tomorrow,” her mother said, handing her a roll and a glass of milk. “A time for new beginnings and all that? Its just another day. I’d rather be in class than have another day off.” Her mother smiled, a bit sweet and a bit patronizing, “I think we can often use a chance at a new beginning. Don’t you thi-- What is that?!” Graelyn turned, to see the Crystal Orb flying down the stairs to come hover over her left shoulder, glowing gently. “This? Oh, its uh, an electronic pet. I won it in a Trivia contest at the Library.” Her mother scrunched her nose up, “You never mentioned winning a contest.” “I didn’t really try, it was really easy. Anyways I forgot to charge it till last night.” The lies perhaps shouldn’t have come so easily to her, but hey, here she was. She scarfed down the rest of her breakfast, and headed out for school, the moon bobbing along behind her all the way. “Why are you following me?” she hissed at it, as several of her classmates who were also walking to school stared at it. The orb did a little swirl in the air and glowed slightly brighter. Graelyn of course, knew what that meant. “You’re tired of being separated from a part of yourself?” she wanted to argue her own independence, that she wasn’t actually physically part moon, but she knew deep down she didn’t actually believe that. “Okay fine, you can come. But you’ll need to shrink down to pocket size during lessons. My teachers don’t take kindly to electronic cheating devices. No. I know you’re not electronic, that’s not the point. Come on!” The two of them walked/floated down the street to the school, with no other students anywhere in sight, where Graelyn began her usual day of classes and study. That was, till she got called down to the office, which never happened. The moon rolled gently in her pocket as she walked through the empty halls. She slid through the ajar door into the office conference room, holding her school tablet close to her chest, even more confused why the secretary had directed her into this room. She was even more surprised to see who was in the room. “Hello, Graelyn 3777. What a surprise to see you again.” In the room with her principal, and the administrator for her year, were two figures in hooded cloaks, with the pointed tip of the hoods pulled down over their faces, a patterned stripe hemming the edges of the hoods and sleeves. She resisted the urge to bolt, but couldn’t work up the nerve to enter the room. She simply stayed halfway in the door with her eyes open like a sculpture. “Graelyn, these two people have come here about a special scholarship for you. We’re very excited about this for you,” Principal Totev said. One of the two robed figures turned a ring on their finger, and waved their hand in front of the faces of Principal Totev and the administrator. The two continued politely smiling as the figure began to speak. “Please sit down Graelyn, you know what this is about. If you don’t sit down we may have to take actions you wouldn’t like.” Graelyn slipped through the door, and took the farthest seat from the figures. “So, the firmament has finally come for me,” she said, trying not to sound as terrified as she was. “Oh, not for you. Your living situation has resolved itself in this timeline, altering it would only increase instability.” The same one said, the other had remained silent. “I suppose the Firmament would be most concerned about stability.” “It is in the name, you know. You helped us patch countless holes in time-space, you should know that better than most.” “I didn’t help you of my own free will,” Graelyn snarled. “Oh didn’t you? We saved you, carried you out of the burning world you lived on, that dying Earth, and in return you offered your services to us.” “Death or slavery.” “Don’t put it so harshly. You’re alive, and you should be happy, that won’t change unless you don’t give us what’s ours.” “We want the Factory of Crystal,” the other Firmament said. This one’s voice was harsh, gravelly, like it had been distorted through a sound system. “Quite right. The Authority of Reclamations here is anxious to get back what you stole from us. And I, being the Enforcer of Reclamations, am here to oblige them. You’re quite aware of how powerful that machine is, what its capable of. You know we can’t let that stay in the wrong hands.” Graelyn rolled up her sleeves, revealing the ports in her arms, “These hands look pretty capable actually. More suited to run the machine than yours, ironically.” “Don’t think being snarky will save you. You will give us back the Factory, or you will die. How does that sound to you?” Dawn 3777, ten years ago. She had been running all day. The great metal Striders that walked the surface were out in force, which had made her scavenging work extra difficult. She ducked behind an outcropping of rocks, and tried to keep her breaths shallow as the thick black metal leg stepped over her, the searchlights coming down from it illuminating the darkness. As soon as it had passed, she bolted. The parts jangled as she ran, and she hoped there weren’t any low-surface scouts. She found the manhole cover, and popped it open, jumping down into it, clinging to the ladder with one had while she used the other to pull down the lid-- “WAIT!” She heard the shout and popped her head up to the black rocky surface. A man was running towards her, hand on a satchel. He was lit up brilliantly by the Strider. She gestured for him to come, but knew it was hopeless. Something on the bottom of the Strider swiveled, and a claw shot down from it, grappling the man and with a lurch, pulling him up to the Strider. Graelyn shut the manhole, and began the climb down into the city. “President St. John orders all citizens to stay alert for saboteurs. Centro will defeat the Strider menace,” the familiar propaganda voice said as she made her way into the narrow streets. Her stomach hurt with hunger. Making her way to the junk-shop, she laid her find out on the counter, having to pull up a stool to get all the way up there. “Scythes, surprised to see you’re still alive,” Grandpa Joe said (not her actual grandpa, it was just his nickname, not that she knew where he’d gotten it). “How much?” she said, desperate to eat. He looked through the jumble of parts and shook his head. “Not much I’m afraid, with the new missiles the military has been bringing down more Striders than usual, so these aren’t worth what they used to be. Now if you brought me Oolong Cores...” “Those give you cancer. I’d know.” “Yea, heard about your parents. Shame that. Still, beats the firing squad your siblings got for desertion right?” Graelyn didn’t deign that with a response. “Right then…” he took out the money he owed her, and she took it eagerly. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for food. More food if she got it stale or expired, which she nearly always did. She ran to the markets, and soon went home to the less-cold spot under the pipes in the back alley on 4th street to begin her feast of moldy bread, spoiled milk, and a blemished apple, pulling the ragged pile of blankets and clothes around herself to try to keep herself from freezing. That was when the end of the alley got dark. Two figures in weird clothes, robes like out of an old fantasy film, blocked the alley. She’d seen their kind before, bad people who wanted to kidnap orphan kids for nefarious ends. Its why she slept by the pipes, even if they sometimes leaked: Graelyn leapt from her spot on the ground, up onto a horizontal section of pipe, and began to monkey up the side of it. Then, she felt herself pulled off of it, into the air, where she didn’t fall, but was instead slowly lowered. She saw nothing physical holding her, but one of the figures had its arm outstretched. “Graelyn Scythes. We’re familiar with your intellectual and problem solving capabilities from other iterations of you. We’d like to offer you a job.” Work? She’d be desperate for a job. A real job, but sketchy people in alleys weren’t exactly trustworthy, “What kind of job?” One of the figures made a swirling gesture with its arm, and a white disk appeared on the wall next to her. After a moment, it stabilized, and she looked through onto a room filled with pastries. Fresh pastries. She licked her lips. Her hunger was somehow stronger than the wonder she saw before her. “The kind where you’ll never go hungry again.” She could remember the holes being cut into her arms, her legs, torso, head. The nutrients being pumped into her bloodstream and stomach. All she could remember thinking over the pain was she’d been promised pastries. The present Graelyn nodded, and pulled the orb out of her pocket. The enforcer rose, and reached his hand out as it floated into the air, towards his outstretched palm, and then veered sharply slamming into his face and zipping back into Graelyn’s pocket as she sprung out of her chair and through the door. “After her!” The Authority shouted, while The Enforcer reshaped their broken and bloody nose into a fresh one, shoving him out of his chair after her. The principal and administrator smiled pleasantly as the Firmament members ran past them, opening the door with a wave of the ringed hand. Graelyn looked behind her as she ran, seeing the two following her. She had to find a way to escape. Reaching into her pocket, she felt the connection to the moon. It was part of herself, that orb. She’d been connected to it for nearly ten years. Her blood ran though its plains, its rivers ran through her veins. She pulled it out, and hoped that she could do what she was thinking. The orb grew to the size of a basketball, and she hugged it tight as she lifted off of the ground, floating up into the air, and onto the roof of a nearby house. Without missing a stride, The Authority and The Enforcer made a gesture with their ringed hands, and they floated up to meet her. She ran again, using the orb to float between rooftops, hoping to lose them, but the followed her from house to house, sometimes trying to flank her or cut her off. She doubled back, slipped their clutches, and kept running. This wasn’t going to work, this wasn’t a plan that could actually get her freedom. The Enforcer leapt to a roof to her right, and tried to wave at her with the ringed hand to lift her off her feet, but she jacked up the gravity with the orb, till her feet were smashing through the shingles on the house beneath her as she ran. Whoops. She lightened herself again, and sprung onto the next house, when it finally hit her what she needed to do. She focused hard on the orb, pressing her hands onto it, feeling the connection. Cords sprang out of the orb, as if hidden compartments had opened up, and latched themselves onto her arms. She could feel her blood flow into the orb, and the orb flow into her. Then the cords snapped back in, and the orb hung glowing between her outstretched arms. She glowed in wonder just as it did, and as the Enforcer came up behind her, she opened the portal. The white disk opened right under her feet, and she fell with the orb right down into it. She knew the Enforcer and the Authority of Reclamation would be right behind her. But she had a plan now, and even if this was the end, she’d go out on her own terms. She landed in the Labyrinth, the artificial space that lined different dimensions for the Firmament to travel in, and ran down its glowing bifrost. She channeled more energy into the orb, she knew where she had to go. They’d messed up, because unlike most beings who had ever existed, she knew where they lived. The Evaluator of Travel, of many Evaluators of Travel of course, it wasn’t a high ranking position, stared at the terminal. It looked like Reclamations had brought back that stray they’d been being chewed out about finally, coming in at dock 18. She got up out of her desk, and wandered over to the gate, watching as the portal formed, and readying the pedestal to receive the Factory of Crystal. The portal stabilized, and the Factory did shoot out of it, but so did an alien being. It’s features looked firm, like it couldn’t change them even if it focused very hard, and the Evaluator was pretty sure it was a human. Or one of the variants, she couldn’t be bothered to keep up with all of the literature on them. Still, she knew about a few important parts of human culture, like N’Sync and Beethoven. The orb landed onto its pedestal, just as they were supposed to, but the human got up, and pulled it off of it. The poor thing was clearly confused, after all it couldn’t even see properly without the transparent rectangles it had placed in front of its eyes. “No, that’s not for touching! Put that back. How did Reclamations get this careless--” Reclamations, as if on cue, dropped in through the portal, and pointed at the human, who was already running away like a startled deer. “Evaluator, stop her!” She blinked, “I’m not touching that, you brought a wild animal here you go touch it.” “Its a criminal who stole valuable Firmament property!” The Evaluator crossed her arms, “Did she really steal it? I mean, you don’t blame a cat for hunting prey. Maybe humans just like picking up shiny objects?” The Enforcer shoved past her, “By the forgotten gods, you’re no help.” “Should I call animal control?” “She’s one of the lesser species, not an artichoke.” The Authority said. The Evaluator of Travel threw up her arms as the Authority began chasing after the Enforcer, who was chasing after the human, turning her hair bright purple in exasperation. They always had to make everything so dramatic. Graelyn passed rows of pedestals, most of which held another Factory of Crystal. In each one, there was a pilot. We’re they all just like her? Unwanted people brought in just before they had been scheduled to die somewhere in order to run the Firmament’s inter-universal fleet of traveling vessels? She felt guilty passing them, but she couldn’t do anything. Not with those two on her tail. She finally reached a door, and pulled it open, stepping out into a square filled with robed people. In the center of the square was a giant marble statue of three figures, all of whom were featureless, their faces a blank slate. Their hands were open as though they were holding objects and performing tasks, but no objects rested in them. This seemed normal to everyone but her, but she couldn’t stand and stare, after all, they were already staring at her. Holding the orb under her arm, she kept running, pushing past startled Firmament people, but couldn’t lose herself in the crowd when she was clearly dressed differently than everyone else. She needed to blend in, and knew how to do it. Graelyn had learned how to scavenge, and she knew about trash. She didn’t mind things that other people discarded. Sure, the last six months she’d had fresh food, new clothes, and a warm bed, but she could tolerate the rest. And so she slipped down an alley, because all worlds have alleys if they have cities, and all cities have to have a way to get rid of trash. Maybe they’d just vaporize or burn it, but she got the sense they didn’t. They seemed old and hidebound, and her intuition paid off. This alley was behind a store filled with robes, she’d seen them in the windows, though she couldn’t tell what the differences in fashion were supposed to be. A pipe ran out the back, a thick one, down into a dumpster. She climbed up into it, and found some robes. They were clearly, even to her, unfashionable. The stuff that wouldn’t sell no matter what. She dug around, trying on a few hastily, till she emerged with a somewhat dirty but well fitting firmament robe on her. She came out of the alley, orb in her pocket, and walked right past the Enforcer and the Authority, still trying to find her in this huge city. She was lucky she could read their language, speak it as well, having been part of one of their machines. The signs told her she was just where she wanted to be. The City of Glory. The capitol of the First and Final Firmament. “The most stable and enduring Parliament of the Firmament recognizes the Authority of Reclamation.” The Arbiter of Arbitration said. The Authority rose, trying to not show his embarrassment as he stood before the Parliament. He was in the pit, while the Parliament sat in seats encircling him above a wall too high for him to climb. It was intimidating. It was meant to be. “Authority, you have let a member of a lesser species, an outsider to the Prime Reality no less onto the surface of the Firmament without permission. Are you aware of the severity of this infraction?” He raised his arms up, “I was instructed to bring her to the Firmament.” “In custody.” “Partial fulfillment is not an absence of attempt.” The Parliament muttered to themselves, “We accept your rules-mongering.” He breathed a sigh of relief, “For now. The intruder must be apprehended-” The Arbiter of Arbitration stopped, and raised an eyebrow, “it appears you have someone who has come to speak on your behalf. The… Minister of Scythes. Whoever that is. Let them in!” The Authority was about to protest, when the door in the pit slid open, and a robed person stepped into it with him, lowering their hood to reveal the face of Graelyn Scythes. “Hi everyone, did you miss me?” she waved. “Ah, well, I see the criminal has decided to turn herself in. Commendable, and fortunate for you, Authority.” “Sadly, afraid not,” Graelyn said, “because you promised me pastries.” The Parliament was silent for a moment, then awkward confused laugher filled it, “Pastries? Be serious. Guards, arrest her.” “Ah, I wouldn’t do that. See, I’m linked into a Factory of Crystal. My Factory of Crystal. A moon sized machine capable of contorting reality and space-time and its ready to tear a hole in the fabric of this city and let all sorts of terrible things through,” she rolled up her sleeve to reveal the orb, shrunk down small but littered in tiny cords that linked into her left arm. “I’ve been at the helm of one of these for ten years, I know my way around it. No wonder you were worried about me getting a hold of it, its insanely powerful now that I think about it. I’d never considered huring anyone with it.” The Parliament went into an uproar, the guards held back, the Authority looked terrified. The Arbiter of Arbitration made a gesture with their hand, and the room went quiet, “You expect us to mak a deal with you when you’re threatening us?” “Yes I do! Because you lied to me. You promised me I’d be safe, you showed me pastries, showed me a future full of plenty and hooked me up to this thing like I was a lab rat, or a CPU! You promised me pastries, and I never got them.” “The Acquisitions Bureau is supposed to be completely honest with their promises to the pilot program. If your accusations are true, we will of course owe you an apology. But we must take back what’s ours.” “Do you know why I came here to tell you this? Because I don’t believe people are inherantly good. They’re not, and we’re not. We’re not hardwired to be kind, or to do the right thing all the time. We also have selfishness, hatred, all sorts of bad impulses that fight for control. And sometimes the bad things win out. The bad things become what we are, or they become all that surrounds us. And that means we have to survive. Because if someone is trying to kill you or take your freedom, you can’t just ask them to stop. I would know. They just keep taking it until you give them consequences. So I’ve given you consequences. If you want that moon, that you made a part of me, that you made me feel was as much my own flesh as my hand, if you want that back, you can ruin your planet. But this is a new year. Its a time for new beginnings. And I’m tired of holding on to my own hate at your broken promises. There were no pastries, and you used me, and it was wrong. You should hate yourselves for that. You hurt me in ways I can’t even explain. But I’m willing to forgive you, and let bygones be bygones. You forgive me, and I’ll forgive you, and we both leave each other alone. If you respect my existence, all of it, then I’ll respect yours. Deal?” The Arbiter leaned back in their chair that was older than the planet Earth. “Deal.” Graelyn clinked the glass with her brother and they downed the sparkling grape juice heartily. “Happy New Year!” they shouted, a little belatedly, as the rest of the family began pouring out more champagne. “Got any new years resolutions, Graelie?” her brother asked. She laughed, “Not die, keep existing, eat good food.” “Cheers to that,” he replied, and they clinked glasses again, that were this time joined by a small crystal orb, which floated up to join in the fun. Someone started singing “Auld Lang Syne,” and two two joined in. “When old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind!” The doorbell rang. “When old acquaintance be forgot, and days of auld lang syne.” “Who could that be at midnight on New Years?” Graelyn’s dad murmured. “To auld lang syne, my dears to auld lang syne!” Graelyn shrugged, and went to get the door. When she opened it, she didn’t see anyone, but looking down there was a box, with a note on the top. “To Graelyn, To help with your bygones, and maybe with ours. Happy New Year. -The Arbiter of Arbitration” She opened the box, and it was filled to the brim with fine pastries from all over the world. From the distance, a cloaked figure on a rooftop raised a hand, then faded into the shadows. “We’ll raise a cup of kindness yet… To auld lang syne.” * * * * 10,000 Dawns will return next spring with our massive Anthology, "10,000 Dawns: Poor Man's Iliad", featuring great writers like Nathan P. Butler (Star Wars Tales, WARS), Tim Sutton (Marble Hornets, Slender the Arrival), Andrew Hickey (Faction Paradox), Kylie Leane (Key: Chronicles of the Children), and Eric Asher (Vesik, Steamborne) and many more! Keep watch on jameswylder.com for more information.
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The Finale.The End of the Adventure: Chapter 26: The Council Chapter 27: A Miracle of Malice and Mercy Chapter 28: The Girl Who Missed the Ocean Epilogue 10,000 Dawns Interviews: James Wylder (writer) Alex Rose (songwriter) Rachel Johnson (artist) Jordan Stout (writer) Josephine Smiley (writer) Taylor Elliott (writer) Other Bonus Features: Tribute to Annie Zhu Deleted Scene Essay: 10,000 Dawns: Using the Multiverse for Self-Discovery by Tyler Lipa Essay: Graelyn: The New Frontier by Amanda Irwin An Artist's Journey Preview of 10,000 Dawns: Anthology You can also download the entire Finale as a big (70+ page!) PDF ebook, or ePub ebook for free below:
Written by James Wylder
Art by Annie Zhu Our social media interns are Alex Rose, and Elijah Efsits. The audio version of 10,000 Dawns is produced by Rob Southgate and the Southgate Media Group. You can find the podcast here: http://www.southgatemediagroup.com/10000dawns The audio version's themesong is "Space Adventure" written and performed by Alex Rose. The 10,000 Dawns Universe is the creation of a group of talented creative individuals who have contributed ideas, art, and stories throughout the years. These individuals include: Josephine Smiley, Taylor Elliott, Jordan Stout, David Koon, James Wylder, Miguel Ramirez, Elizabeth Tock, Brandon Derk, Ellie Fairfield, Annie Zhu, EN Hempstead, Kegan Mixdorf, Meghin Shelton, Daniel Alejos, Patrick Russel Blaker, Colby McClung, Olivia Hinkel, Raen Ngu, Nozomi Neko, Chase Jones, Genevieve Clovis, Evan Forman, Rachel Johnson, and many more. The character of Graelyn Scythes is the creation of David Koon, the character of Alice MacLeod is the creation of Josephine Smiley. We would like to thank every single reader and listener who has made 10,000 Dawns a part of their week, and their life. Its now our honor to share with you the final chapters of this adventure... But adventure itself will go on forever in your life. -Love, the 10kd Crew This is the second half of a special two part bonus story! You can find the first part HERE: http://www.jameswylder.com/home/10000-dawns-bonus-story-10-part-1 Make sure to come back next week for the Grand Finale of Graelyn and Arch's adventure! -Jim If you missed it, check out our big announcement about the Finale of the serial 10,000 Dawns story! http://www.jameswylder.com/home/dawn-rises-march-3rd-the-10000-dawns-finale-is-coming If you're new to 10kd, you can read all of it for free below: http://www.jameswylder.com/read-every-chapter.html You can read this story in PDF or Epub formats below:
The Mask of Apollo, Part 2Ten Days Earlier
Kinan fiddled with the mask, and made a soft sound of annoyance. “It doesn't fit... Do I really have to wear this the whole time?” “Kinan, can I remind you whose plan this was? This plan you made up?” Kinan looked at her through the mask, and shrugged. “Get me some padding foam and some glue.” John and Miranda looked at Lametrius who was crossing her arms. “I'll fix it later, can we go ahead and get this done?” Kinan nodded, and casually threw a handfull of crystal dust into the air, steping into the swirling portal she created as though it was a living room door. The portal led right into a massive hall, the main hall of a temple from the looks of it, where a throng of worshipers was standing in line to make libations to a statue of Apollo. Everyone stared at her. In a few moments, a proud looking Lametrius entered, wearing a very nice Hermes costume that looked a bit more like a superhero outfit than a period costume, Jenny who had barely changed to make herself look like Artemis (she had a bow, and had put a crescent moon on her hairband), and John and Miranda who were both on their phones. A man pouring a libation stood holding the cup, his mouth agape. “Hi.” Kinan began. “I'm the god Apollo. The God of your city. Glorius as the morningtide.” She held her arms out wide. “Behold me mortals, and be afraid. Behold me and be glad.” “You're not Apollo!” A priest shouted from next to the libation area, pointing wildly with his finger. Kinan sighed, and pointed at a vase, which exploded. Then she pointed at the ceiling and a swirling disk of fire appeared in it. Then she pressed a button on her belt and the Disco Remix “A Fifth of Beethoven” began playing from a speaker in her bag. Then she blew up another vase, just in case. The priest lowered his finger. “Okay then... All hail Apollo! Welcome to our city! All hail his sister Artemis! All hail Hermes! All hail...” He looked at John and Miranda. “Their helpers!” John gave a thumbs up. * * * * Kinan entered back in through the walls, the sounds of the Greek army falling into confusion following loudly behind her. Jenny, or rather Artemis, hopped down from the wall and caught up with her. “Was it really necessary to be that dramatic?” Kinan didn't answer, just handed her the stool. Jenny chucked it to the side of the street where one of the adoring throng grabbed it, and held it above her head in triumph yelling about having the stool of a god. “Where's Hermes?” She finally said. “Consulting with King Priam.” Kinan just nodded, and they made their way to the royal palace. Troy was a magnificent city, but it was a much smaller one than most people would think. The world was much smaller then, its whole population dwarfed easily by colonies on other worlds considered tiny by the standards of Earth, which had tens of billions of people. Mars only had around 1 billion, and it still outdid the whole of this past. And yet, for its time it was grand. A time when single warriors could distinguish themselves so much in battle that armies trembled at the thought of them. Not because they were such incredible warriors compared to the present, but because every death was such a larger percent of humanity. Outside the walls, the Greek camp seemed to writhe in the wind, a mess of tarps and cloth fitted into the dirt and sand. King Priam was an old man, but a fit one. He had the kind of muscles that were built into his frame over too many years to really ever get rid of all of them. His son, Hector, had the kind of muscles you saw in a body building magazine. Lametrius sat talking to both of them as Jenny and Kinan entered into the chamber. “Ah, Apollo, Artemis. I was just telling the King about how we plan to relieve the food woes of his people.” Apollo nodded. “Have you informed him of why we're here?” Lametrius looked at Kinan like she was going off script during a stage play. “...No?” Apollo looked at Priam. “I'm going to fight Poseidon and Zeus. They should arrive to aid the Greeks soon.” Priam rose. “My Lord Apollo... I can't imagine a battle of the gods will leave much left for us Mortals.” Apollo stared at him. “Hermes.” “Yes my Lord?” “Let me know if you detect the arrival of other gods.” Lametrus frowned. “Yes my lord.” Kinan began to exist, and Lametrius followed her till they were out of earshot. “Kinan, what are you doing?” “Luring Zeus and Poseidon here, exactly what I said.” Lametrius grabbed her by the arm. “Don't give me that crap. What are you doing. This city is counting on us!” Apollo leaned down to stare into her eyes. “This city is as good as dead, and always has been.” They didn't look away from each other. “You might think its fine and dandy to walk into other people's lives and treat them like numbers on a spreadsheet, but people's lives are worth more than that Kinan. These people's to.” Kinan straightened her back. “They're a means to an end. Do you see the worn walls of this city? They'll crumble. The Greeks will massacre this city in ten thousand realitites, commit crimes unspeakable, and yet so easily spoken. Would you have me save them all?” Lametrius scoweled, and walked over to a window, where she pointed out at the rows of buildings. Some children were kicking around an inflated sheep's bladder. “I don't expect you to achieve miracles. I expect you to finish what you've started when you start it. These people expect us to save them. We can't just let them die.” Kinan cocked her head to the side, the weighty mask glimmering off the light from the window. “You don't expect me to fight for them?” “I expect you to be willing to sacrifice the city to meet your goals.” “Don't badger me with this Lametrius. This is a trolly problem. If a city dies to save a universe, would you be so averse?” She was about to respond, but Kinan cut her off. “Regardless, that isn't my plan anyways. I'm drawing out gods.” “And by gods you don't mean like, actual gods?” “Close enough.” * * * * Agamemnon had drunk a lot of wine tonight. His finest warrior had fled with his boyfriend, and many troops had followed them. The war was not going well, not at all. He downed another goblet of the stuff, and snapped for his wine boy to bring him more. He snapped again. Nothing. Turning around, and the first sound of a yell beginning to seep out of his lips Agamemnon saw a pair of figures in black robes, each with a colored stripe running up one side of their garment. He set the cup down, and fumbled for his blade. “Name yourselves. Where is my wine boy and how did you...” He didn't finish. They pulled down their hoods, and he dropped to his knees. “My gods.” He said. Poseidon and Zeus looked at each other. One rubbed their beard, having not shapeshifted from a clean shorn female form for the last few years, this thick beard was a stark change. “Agamemnon,” Zeus said, “Poseidon and I have instruction for you, which you must follow to the letter.” Agamemnon nodded. “Whatever you ask. Any sacrifice will be supplied.” Zeus waved a hand dismissively. “That won't be necessary.” When he described what would be, Agamemnon was certainly confused. * * * * Kinan had slept in Apollo's throne, and woke up to a temple priestess bringing her a breakfast of cheese and grapes. It wasn't bad eating at all, though Kinan doubted the hygiene of the kitchen staff. She was lounging in the throne, kicking her legs back and forth, when Hector came running into the temple completely out of breath. She stopped kicking her legs and got immediately erect and godlike. “What is it?” She asked. Hector bowed, and then fell to his knees. “My lord Apollo, the Greeks have given us a gift, a giant wooden horse, the symbol of their god Poseidon.” Kinan rose to her feet. They weren't supposed to be doing that yet, it was way too early in the war for that! Then again she had messed up history... But then her mind snapped into place. Of course. She'd gotten what she wanted. They'd noticed her. “Take me to it.” She ordered. Hector rose, bowed again, and led her to the horse, which Jenny and Lametrius were already inspecting. Helen was walking around the horse, imitating the voices of Greek soldier's wives to draw them out if they were inside it. “Why did you bring it inside the city walls?” Kinan asked Hector. “The King ordered it my lord, the Greeks have packed up their camp and--” She walked past him. She'd read the book. The horse was big, and looked just like you've seen in the movies. She approached it, and ran her hand along the wood. Jenny and Lametrius approached her. “There's no one inside it.” Jenny said. “Are you sure?” Kinan said. “Nearly positive.” Lametrius replied. “I'd have to crack it open to be sure.” Kinan nodded. “I'll take a look inside it myself. Is there an entry point?” Lametrius pointed to a spot on the horse's belly. Kinan walked below it, and testing her legs for a moment, jumped straight up to grab onto the spaces between the planks of the wood. Lifting her legs up, she kicked out the hatch, as the crowd around the horse gasped, then swung inside it with an acrobatic leap. Kinan stared around in the darkness, and pulled out a flashlight, which she shone around the empty center. There was only one thing in the darkness: a single metal capsule. Approaching it, Kinan examined the markings on it, bringing the flashlight close to read the words.... Then stepped back, dropped the flashlight, and scampered backwards nearly falling out of the hole. Composing herself, she elegantly dropped down out of the hole, and tried to look as calm as she could as she walked towards her comrades. “So what's in there?” Jenny said, throwing a rubber ball she'd somehow acquired up in the air over and over again. “We have a situation.” Kinan said softly. “What kind of situation?” “They put a nuclear bomb inside of the Trojan horse.” “What!?!” Jenny and Lametrius said in unison. “Not so loud.” Kinan whispered, “The crowd is still here.” “And why hasn't it gone off?” Lametrius asked. “Because they wanted to wait till we were right next to it in case we-- Oh.” Kinan reached into her bag, and began running, she started pouring crystal dust in a circle, and Jenny and Lametrius followed. John and Miranda, who had been lazily sipping wine over by a haberdashery, leapt into action as well. The five of them made a circle of crystal dust around the horse, which Kinan struck with her sword, and a white swirling portal appeared inside of. The horse fell through, as Kinan crossed her fingers it wouldn't go off. Not yet, at least. As the ears of the horse sunk through the ground, she let out a sigh of relief. “Hector, tell your father not to trust Greeks bearing gifts.” Apollo yelled as the swirling hole in reality closed. Zeus and Poseidon were enjoying the attention from the Greeks, but they also very much just wanted to get on with trying to fix the mess in chronology that Kinan had caused. “May we offer you more wine?” Menelaus asked. “No, we're fine.” Poseidon said. “Look, uh, my Lord. This whole war was stared because my property, you know, my wife Helen ran off with this guy named Paris because he 'treated me like a person' or something silly. Anyways, she's really really hot, and I know you're going to wreak vengeance on the city, but is there any chance you could get her back and make her into me again?” Poseidon and Zeus looked at each other, and each of them sighed internally. “Look....” Zeus began. “No.” Poseidon finished. “Okay, yeah, that's cool I mean...” Poseidon shoved him away and walked to the portcullus of the ship. There was something falling from the sky. “Arbiter.” She said, giving up on the beard, “We have a problem.” Zeus shoved her aside, and looked up at the falling nuclear horse. “Well that's not good.” * * * * The mushroom cloud could be seen for miles. It had taken all of their efforts to shield the city from radiation, mainly with a portable shield generator they'd rigged up, but the truth was that they were low on crystal dust as it was, and very short on time. The city would likely die of radiation poisoning, and their crops and the fish in the sea were all either dead or poisonous. They'd have to evacuate all of Troy somewhere else. The blinding white flash had stunned the city, and they watched the Greek fleet vaporized from afar, not entirely aware what they had even just witnessed. The streets of the city bowed before them, and Lametrius and John looked fairly uncomfortable with it. “Jesus Christ Kinan. You dropped the nuke on them. Jesus.” “Maybe I finally have their attention. I was hoping the harp would be enough.” Several minutes passed in silence, and then two black robed figures stepped out of a suddenly appearing swirling portal. Kinan looked into the crowd and saw a woman clutching a wooden stool to her chest. She gestured for her to come forward, and she did so. Kinan took the stool from her, sat down, and puled her harp out of her bag to begin playing it. The figured approached her, the city surrounded them. “You moron. You killed every Greek who went into this war. You've ruined the history here. The Nuclear fallout alone...” “You did that, actually.” The other figure cut in, “We wanted you to run away! End your pointless game. We had safeguards in place so it didn't extend outside the city... But you ruined that!” Kinan kept strumming the harp. “You seem to be at a complete loss as to what I want.” The two figures looked at each other, then crossed their arms in tandem. “Okay, then, what do you want?” The male figure said. “This.” Kinan replied. “What do you mean, 'this', an ecological and chronological disaster?” “No, for you to actually show up and listen to me. Do you even realize how hard it is to talk to you?” “Dawn is a criminal and illegal army not recognized by the Last Firmament.” The female figure said. “Yes, and thus, its very hard for me to get to speak to you.” The strumming continued. It sounded like 'Smoke on the Water.' “I called you, I sent ambassadors to you, I made friends with groups who you kicked out like the Knights of Sky. I tried over and over, yet you're willing to talk to a Council that burns whole worlds rather than me. So I did the only thing you couldn't resist: I burned history to the ground, and I did it dramatically. I played god, and got ontop of the high horse you reserved for yourself. Isn't it fun?” The Arbiter was becoming angrier. “No, its not fun. The damage to this reality is nearly irreparable!” A humored sigh escaped the mask of Apollo. “Now now gods, we all know that isn't true. Dawn is more than willing to help. As long as the resulting fix doesn't involve the casualties or war crimes that it would if it had run its course naturally.” The Arbiter gritted his teeth, then got himself new teeth and gritted those instead for a more satisfying sound. “Fine. We'll fake the Greek army's memories. But for you to change history, you yourself will now have to go back in time before you went back in time and stop your own actions.” “I'm not a newbie, I know how it works.” “Only you can-” “Yes. But for me to do that, you have to listen.” The Arbiter threw up his hands. “Fine, what exactly do you want to talk about?” Kinan set down the harp and stood up. Her blue eyes shone through the gaps in the mask. “You have a treaty with the Council. A Council who will burn whole worlds worse than the Greeks would burn this city. What if I told you I could make that treaty null and void, would you be willing to sign a new pact, one against their Empire? After all, they've basically made you into their tribute state. You're poor gods as it is.” The Arbiter crossed his arms. “We might.” “Good.” Kinan said, her face was the sun, and it reflected all things. The Firmament changed before her. “Then lets talk. An end to our war, if I bring you an end to your own subjugation.” “Fine, but could you take that mask off already?” Apollo cocked his head. “I'm not sure I understand, this is my face? Or perhaps you should go first. After all, I've always been the sun.” Our hiatus continues with yet another bonus story! This one has been broken up into two parts, look for the second half soon! -Jim If you missed it, check out our big announcement about the Finale of the serial 10,000 Dawns story! http://www.jameswylder.com/home/dawn-rises-march-3rd-the-10000-dawns-finale-is-coming If you're new to 10kd, you can read all of it for free below: http://www.jameswylder.com/read-every-chapter.html You can read this story in PDF or Epub formats below:
The Mask of Apollo (Part 1) by James WylderLametrius carefully brushed the dirt off of the golden mask. Behind her, J-14 continually scanned her excavation, while Kinan and Jenny played cards on a mostly-flat rock. John and Miranda Vice were watching something on a tablet, while a few other Dawn members bustled around the dig site.
“Is it all dug out yet?” Jenny said sullenly. “Hush.” Kinan said, playing a card that brought a scowl to Jenny's face. Lametrius had finally worked away the excess dirt, and pulled out her flashlight, sticking it inbetween her teeth. It was daytime, but she wanted to see it shine, and oh did it shine. Gently, she lifted the mask out of the soil, and ran her thumb across it. “Its in such good shape... I can't believe its so intact.” Jenny slapped a card down and swept a pile of cards up off the rock. “Its so intact cause we traveled back in time to get it.” “I thought it would be more, you know, melted.” Kinan folded, and walked over to the dig site. She hopped down into the hole, and looked at the shining mask. “Huh.” She said. Lametrius frowned. “You see one of the most beautiful pieces of goldworking in history, and you say 'huh'?” Kinan shrugged. “This is the mask of a God!” “This is the mask of a man who dressed up as a god. Not that there is much of a difference.” “Oh not this again.” Jenny cut in. Lametrius carried the mask out of the hole, and held it up to the sun. It was an important mask after all, and this was its counterpart. It was only right the mask of Apollo see the sun. It's features were perfect: some Trojan craftsman had put all their knowledge into this mask, and even a strong oponent of religon could see how someone could be taken in by its majesty. Without any pomp or grandeur, Kinan lightly took the mask out of her hands, and placed it upon her face. Turning to the group, she held her arms out as though telling the sun to continue its journey through the sky. “Well, how do I look?” She'd hate the truth, because she looked utterly like some sort of demi-god. With her binder on under her shirt, and the boyish features of the Apollo mask, Kinan took on an androgynous beauty out of myth. “I think,” Miranda said, “that you're going to play the part in your plan perfectly.” * * * * The halls of the Firmament's government were older than time. Not that that was a sentence that particularly made sense, but it was true, sort of, maybe. At the very least people liked to say it was. Today though, the Courier of Stagnation was wishing that perhaps someone could have updated the internal transportation system. Maybe they could at least key her soul to the elevator so she wouldn't have to run up the steps? She was here to see the Arbiter of Chronology, and that was never the most fun. At least the Arbiter of Causality or the Arbiter of Infinity had a sense of humor. The Arbiter of Chronology on the other hand may as well have written a book on not getting people's jokes. Actually, he might have actually done that. She wasn't particularly sure anymore. She got to his thick Oak doors, and knocked. Then she knocked again. Eventually a hooded figure cracked the door. “Yes?” “You know damn well why I'm here Lesser of Evils, and don't even try to pretend you're Greater of Good it still hasn't been funny since you started that last milenia.” The hooded figure awkwardly got out of her way as she barged into the Arbiter's office. “Hey, Arbiter.” She said boldly. The Arbiter looked up, annoyed. “You do realize Dawn number 624 is having a massive, massive temporal disturbance right now?” “I'm aware.” He droned. The room was coated in bookshelves-- and that wasn't an exaggeration. Bookshelves lined every wall, they were on the ceiling, somehow held in place from falling on their heads, and they sat below their feet. The Arbiter's desk was made of wood, but it too was stacked with books. “I'm very busy writing history you know. There is quite a lot of it, and the annoying thing about it is it keeps happening. I really have a lot to catch up on.” Stagnation rolled her eyes, and moved to sit down. Books flew up from the floor to make a chair for her. She straightened her black robes, and tried to make the single off-center yellow stripe on them straight. “If we don't fix this, we're going to have a serious problem on our hands. There are massive chronological repercussions to this, it seems very likely most people we were planning on having be born in that universe's future, indeed counting on, will not be.” He looked up from his book, and placed his quill in a holder. “Explain.” “Its Dawn. They're changing things.” “Dawn is always changing things. That's essentially their entire reason for existing. But usually they only manipulate later history, which is fairly innocuous.” She slammed her fist on a book on his desk dramatically, and he gave her a sour look. She pulled her hand back apologetically. “Look, Arbiter, this is early history.” “They wouldn’t dare. They know what happened why they tried to change the result at old Nojpeten…” She leaned in. “They dare. You want to know what they did?” He sighed. “Sure.” * * * * Achilles walked in front of the Greek line, yelling his speech. He was talking them up, but also talking himself up. He hoped Patroclus was listening, after all, he was basically the cutest thing alive. He banged on his breastplate dramatically. Agamemnon and Menelaus were watching from the back. They were dressed in the best armor money could buy, but they knew who should go first. Looking up at the walls, Achilles had a momentary sense of doubt. Could they break these walls? Take Troy? He knew hypothetically they could… But in practice? He shook his head and beat his chest. He was a gorilla, or a lion, or… He tried to tell himself he was a man and cast out the doubts of his young age. “Tonight, my Myrmidons, we will strike the heart of Troy, and they shall fear us for eternity!” The troops cheered, pounding the pommels of their spears into the dirt and yelling and chanting. Achilles soaked it all in, he was glorious, he was a-- “Fool.” A booming voice said from the walls of Troy. “Are you not aware this is my city?” The gates opened, and the Myrmidons formed a shield wall, as a single figure walked out of the gates. The figure wore a long brown coat, and their face shone like the sun, molded of gold. In one hand they held a simple stool carved from a log, and in the other they held a harp. The figure faced the army, threw its stool down, sat on it, and began to strum out a refined melody on the harp. Everyone expected something to change but it just... Kept playing. The soldiers looked at each other confused. Achilles was right there with them, but kept his calm. Looking back to Agamemnon, he hoped for an order. Agamemnon gestured to an archer, who notched his bow and carefully aimed an arrow at the harpist. With a downward chopping motion, he gave the signal, and the arrow let fly! The harpist's hand moved like a whiplash, and grabbed the arrow out of the air, lightly dropped it on the sandy soil, and returned to strumming their harp. That certainly hadn't been what Achilles or Agamemnon expected. Achilles ran back through the lines to consult with the Kings. Most of them looked shocked, Odysseus was laughing his head off, however. “That was downright impossible.” Agamemnon sputtered. “We'll just wait them out, he'll have to get tired sometime.” Menelaus muttered. Odysseus laughed again, rolling his eyes. “Meneleus, do you really think a creature from heaven or earth with the skill to grab an arrow on the air doesn't know exactly what they are doing in standing in front of us?” He chided. “He's goading us!” Agamemnon yelled. “How are we so sure its a man?” Achilles asked. All turned to him. Agamemnon raised his arms in greeting. “Ah, our finest soldier. What insights do you have?” Achilles thought for a moment, Odysseus watched him. They met eyes, and Odysseus nodded, as if very curious what the boy had to say. “They're trying to confuse us. It doesn't matter what action we take here, regardless of how we respond our men now know that the enemy can drop us to a standstill.” Odysseus smiled, and nodded to him. Agamemnon was a bit less calm, in that he began to throw a temper tantrum, yelling and kicking, and landing several blows on his cup bearer who crumpled over clutching his head, the wine he was carrying sinking into the ground. “There's no need for that...” Odysseus said, with exasperation. They waited it out. “Achilles!” He finally yelled, “Go kill that harpist.” Achilles nodded, and without another word began to walk through the lines to the harpist. He reached the golden masked figure, and drew his sword. The music stopped, and the figure slowly raised its golden face to him. Beneath the mask, he could see pale blue eyes. Neither of them moved for a moment, Achilles' chest rose and fell, and he pointed his sword at the harpist. “Arm yourself.” The harpist slowly tilted their head. “Arm myself? What if I'm an army.” Achilles spat on the dirt. “You're just a man with a boring sense of humor.” “Am I?” It said back. “Someone really should have told me that before, I had no idea.” It began to play the harp again, and he thrust the sword under the man's mask. “Fight me or die.” “You can't kill a god, mortal. Didn't you hear what I said? This is my city.” Achilles felt his sword wobbling in his hands, and then it was pulled free! It flew spinning through the air, up to the top of the city walls. “Its time for you Greeks to go home.” Achilles was stunned, the troops were stunned, the kings were stunned. The figure resumed playing its harp. “You can call me Apollo. I will go back in the city walls at sundown.” Achilles nodded, totally unsure of what he was suppose to say in reply to that. “Go, shoo. Tell your kings to go home.” “They brought us here. Paris kidnapped Helen, Menelaus' wife and--” The god laughed. “You really believe that? That the woman who taunts you every day from the city walls is here not of her own choice? You're being played for a fool Achilles. These men hold no love towards you aside from your skill with a sword. Do you really think they care for your life, or the life of your lover Patroclus?” Achilles blushed. “We uh... Aren't lovers...” “Achilles, don't lie to a god please its just embarrassing.” “...Okay fine we're lovers.” Apollo threw his hands out. “See? That wasn't so hard. Anyways everyone knows it. Well, aside from a few Historians who desperately want to ignore textual evidence who will say you're 'friends' but, they're the minority. You have a nice boyfriend. Don't die here with him.” Achilles took a step backwards, still facing Apollo, and then another, and then another. He made his way all they way back to the lines of his men, bumping into one of their breastplates. “Achilles, what did they say?” Agamemnon yelled, but Achilles didn't wait any longer. He pushed threw the soldiers, and made his way back to the camp. Finding his way to their tent, he pulled it open, and stepped inside, Patroclus sat up from the cot. “Achilles, what...” But Achilles didn't say anything, he simply ran to his lover and kissed him. “We're leaving.” He said, “This war is for fools.” * * * * “So do you see why we need to intervene?” Courier of Stagnation exclaimed. “They're ruining everything! That reality is going to be massively changed.” The Arbiter nodded, slowly. “Well then, I suppose its time to take drastic action.” Courier smiled, good. “Its time for Dawn to face the night.” Tune in soon for the dramatic conclusion! And make sure you visit jameswylder.com on March 3rd for the final chapters of the Serial 10,000 Dawns Adventure! Some important news before we start! If you're listening to our audio version (which is still a bit behind) this week you're going to notice we have a new theme song! The amazing Indianapolis musician Alex Rose has contributed our new theme song, "Space Adventure"! Its a wonderful song that really hits both the joy and sadness of 10,000 Dawns, and we really hope you enjoy it. Its going to be on her new album "Written All Over You" later this year, so keep a lookout for it! As a special treat you can download an MP3 of the song right here:
You can find Alex Rose on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/Alexroseandthemagicalacoustic And her Bandcamp (with another free download!) here: http://alexroseandthemagicalacoustic.bandcamp.com Second, check back here tomorrow for the results of our 10,000 Dawns Bonus Story and Art Contest. Voting was intense, and went right up to the wire, so you won't want to miss the results! Third off, yes, this is the last 10kd Chapter for a few weeks (but not story!). We'll be dropping the last few chapter all in one bundle in a few weeks, and we can promise you it will be worth the wait! Till then we will have bonus chapters filling in the gap, so you won't be going a week without 10kd in your life! Its been a joy bringing this story to you, and I can't wait to see it to the end... -Jim Art by Annie Zhu, Story by James Wylder All chapters are now available as a podcast from the Southgate Media Group! You can subscribe to the podcast version on iTunes and your RSS feed easily from libsyn: http://10thousanddawns.libsyn.com/ If you're new to 10kd, you can read the story from the start for free below: http://www.jameswylder.com/read-every-chapter.html You can download the latest chapter below in PDF or epub formats:
Chapter 25: Half-Millenia MonstersDave Barker wiped the sweat off his face. The bomber was diving too fast, and the controls weren't responding. After all the flack they had taken, he wasn't surprised, but he still tried` jerking the controls, flipping the switches. He knew he was dead, but he still tried. He looked at the picture of Katherine he had pinned up on the console. He sighed.
“Our lives are just, corporeal tangents you know.” He said, stirring the coffee a year and a half ago. She laughed, “What on earth does that even mean?” “It means that our souls are eternal, we live on in our spirits and the lives we touch. Bits of us live on in humanity, we keep around bits of our history just by the act of existing. Each of us is just a corporeal manifestation of a part of the larger story of humanity, a tangent that is going to end someday in a grave. But though the tangent stops, the writer always gets back on course, and takes us somewhere new, carrying on parts of the past, not the best or the most good parts, more important than that, the parts that mattered enough for us to make as corporeal in our own flesh.” “You are a pretentious snot Dave.” He smiled, “I am, but I honestly believe that.” She raised her cup of coffee in a sort of salute, “Then maybe sincerity is part of your tangent.” “Maybe I can be part of yours.” “Is that your pick up line? A giant rambling pseudo-philosophical rant? Seriously.” He shrugged, “I can't do anything better than a rambling rant, especially the pseudo-philosophical kind.” She smirked. “Then maybe sincerity is something I can get behind. At the very least, it will make an interesting tangent.” He'd made her that pin, and now she'd never see him-- THUD. He looked behind him, there was a woman there in a slightly baggy grey-white jumpsuit with a strange metal collar, she had a helmet in one of her hands, and glasses on her face. “How the-” “No time.” The woman pulled out something like a blow torch, and burned out a chunk of the floor in a split second. Jerry had come up from the back and was staring as well. She reached in, and placed a weird thing like a disk with metal spider legs in the hole, which began gyrating and whipping its limbs around. He felt the controls responding to his touch, and he jerked the plane back into the air. “Special agent Graelyn Scythes. Don't ask how I got on the plane, its classified or something. Oh and look, I have a pin that looks just like yours, remember that.” “Dave what's going on?” “Shut up Jerry. Now Dave, lets get this plane back home.” * * * * * They landed to some surprise, and there was a big bustle as people ran up to the airplane. “How did you make it out alive?” the usual banal banter you get when people survive an ambush. Graelyn rolled her eyes at the soldiers and officers who questioned why she was here, and flashed her forged identification, and then saw the base commander whom she showed her forged letter from FDR to. Knowing where she was going had its advantages. She didn't pay too much attention through all of it, She heard a big mix of “its an honor to have you here” and sexist 1940's garbage. She took the boat back to the country called the “United States” with all the enthusiasm of someone forced to go on a vacation they didn't want to. She tried to enjoy herself, to see the sights and taste the treats, but it all felt hollow. The boat rocked on the ocean as she sunned herself on the deck reading a book. The captain had protested, but she had a letter from FDR. She read a paperback copy of “the Great Gatsby”, a book about a man who tried to bring the past back by building his own private empire. But the past didn't come back and somebody shot him dead. “You can't bring back the past.” “Oh but you can, old sport. You can.” She rubbed her eyes from under her large sunglasses. Everyone wanted to go to the past it seemed but Graelyn, and she was the only one doing it. Life was often ironic and unfair. She thought about Arch, longing for his lost family. She could see him turning into Gatsby, rebuilding his home and trying to replicate his strange dead society... But it wouldn't work. She looked out at the ocean and it felt as far away to her as her own passions. She closed the paperback, finished, and turned over to sun her back. This tangent had no meaning to her, but at least she could get a tan. * * * * She was greeted at the docks by many men in military uniforms. She wished there had been some women in the gang sent to find her, and was sorely disappointed by the past. “Graelyn Scythes?” A man in a very starched uniform said. “Thats-a-me.” She replied. “By the order of the United States Government, you're under arrest for forging executive documents.” “Am I?” She replied. “You treasonous dog.” “I'm not a US Citizen you know, I'm actually Russian.” He scowled. “Pink commie.” “I literally celebrate Alexander Hamilton's birthday as a holiday, lets not get carried away here.” The man's scowl deepened. “I have orders to take your disrespectful self to meet with the President himself. Now I don't know why he wants to meet with you...” “Because I'm a hero, now get me in the car already.” She sighed, leaning on the rail of the gangplank. He narrowed his eyes. “Follow me.” The White House was a museum, in Graelyn's time, and she'd visited there when her Father in Annapolis had gotten some visitation time with her. He'd shown her through the building, telling her facts about the different rooms. She'd even gotten to sit in the President's chair. The museum didn't get that many visitors, but it got enough to keep itself funded. She had spun around in the chair a few times while the tour guide texted his boyfriend on his cellphone, and imagined ruling a nation from that spot. “I could get used to this.” She had thought to herself. “Come on Graelie, I'll show you the picture of your favorite.” Holding his hand, they walked to the painting of Alexander Hamilton. She stared. Slowly, they made their way through paintings of other important figures. “Who is that one dad?” “That,” her father said, “is Franklin Dellano Roosevelt. He, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin helped win World War II together. He also interred people from Japan in camps during the war.” “You mean Japanese spies?” “No, just everyday people.” She nodded, and they moved on. She wished, as she was led through the White House while it was actually used, that she had paid more attention then. She was wearing her dress clothes again, rather than the spacesuit, so at least she looked nice, even if she was still looking massively anachronistic. A man led her to the President's office, and opened the door. Stepping in, she saw the silhouette of a man at a desk, a think line of smoke rising from a cigarette in a holder in his mouth. “So,” FDR began, “you're our mysterious visitor.” “And you're the leader of the Former Uni- of the United States of America.” An eyebrow raised on the man's face, and he gestured for her to come closer. He didn't look as ominous up close. He looked tired, ill, old. “My name is Graelyn Scythes.” “So I've been told. You saved one of our airplanes, popping in out of nowhere on it, and then saved the pilot and the crew from certain death. Then you used a forged letter I never wrote in order to get through several layers of security.” Graelyn nodded, taking a seat in front of the desk. “Yep, that about sums it up actually.” “So then, I think you owe me an explanation.” Graelyn shrugged, reached into her pocket, pulled out her tablet, and switched it to hologram projection mode. She then pulled up a hologram of a man walking on the moon, not Neil Armstrong obviously, just a guy taking a casual stroll, with the Earth in the background. The cigarette fell out of FDR's mouth, smattering ash on the desk. “I'm from the future.” She said. He nodded dumbly. “I've been sent here by the... United Nations Time Policing force. I'm here to retrieve another member of our personel that...” She was lying now, and winging it, and hoping she sounded believable. “...felll into enemy hands. It could upset the United States winning the war.” “Good God, another one of you.” “What?” “I mean, another time traveler. You get briefed on this when you become president, but I assumed three was going to be my limit. And none of them showed off their...” He waved at the hologram. “Usually they just shoot something in the office dramatically so it vaporizes, or show me a picture of my funeral or something. “Ah.” Graelyn said. “So, one of your agents has fallen into Nazi hands?” Graelyn nodded. FDR rubbed his forehead. “Do you know where?” She shook her head. “What's he look like? What's his name?” “Well, he's entirely coated in armor that acts like TV screens-” a knowing look came into FDR's eyes, and she stopped. He picked up is phone. “Bring the file on the Machine-Man in here imediately.” “Ah.” She said again, maybe this would be easier than she thought. “We were already planning on sending a mission there, an airdrop.” “Could I request Dave Barker be a pilot on the mission.” FDR picked up the cigarette, and puffed it. The smoke was noxious, and clearly filled with carcinogins. Graelyn scrunched her nose up. “I suppose so. We'll simply add you to the mission roster. Let you take care of your buisiness.” She nodded. “I do have one more question, sir.” He gestured with the cigarette for her to continue. She noted he was mainly using that arm. “Why did you inter the Americans of Japanese heritage during this war?” He puffed, and his face lowered so his glasses were white ovals of light. “You have to do these things in times of war.” “I mean, do you?” Graelyn pondered. “If the people aren't secure, you can't have a people.” That had seemed true to her for so long. Her mother had weaned her on that. If she could be stronger than other people, she was free. If she could have something to ruin them, some security like Arch's offswitch code, no one could hurt her. Said the people who hurt her. She felt a bit dizzy, but she asked the next question. “But if you treat your own people like they are your enemy, if you hurt your friends to show your other friends you are strong and that people who like hurting the innocent won't hurt them while you're hurting the innocent, isn't that kind of messed up?” She decided that might be too coloquial, and added, “Doesn't that sink you from the moral high ground?” He looked up at her, “I take it that decision is not remembered well.” “Only by those who look for excuses to hurt the innocent while looking like saints.” He nodded, and they sat in silence. After a few minutes, he gestured for her to leave, and she did so. The next day, she was on a plane to Europe. Graelyn sat in the cockpit with Dave Barker. She was wearing her spacesuit, which kept her totally warm, everyone else was wearing thick jackets and breath masks. They'd be dropping by parachute just outside the compound, and working their way in. The Nazis were being pushed back towards Berlin, so she had no idea how many people would still be guarding this base, but hopefully not many. They flew through the clouds, and started to descend to the altitude they would drop from. Dave gestured to her, and she saluted, and made her way back, leaving a folder on her seat. She hadn't given him much info, but damn it, he deserved to know something. “Agent Scythes,” The ground commander Captain Noble said, “are you ready to jump?” Graelyn nodded, her parachute was already on her back. They waited till they were in position, and then a door in the side of the plane slid open. One by one they jumped into the darkness. “I'm coming Arch.” She thought. “I'm not leaving you behind.” * * * * “Ah, you're finally awake.” Said the man in the black uniform with the scarred face. “My name is Doctor Heisman, do you know who I am?” The machine man nodded. “You asked me that yesterday.” Archimedes said. “And the day before. “Just seeing how you are managing to cope without food and water.” He didn't tell them he had internal stores of both, and that he was operating in low-power mode anyways. They still worked at least, not like some of his systems. “And what, pray tell, is that?” Heisman said, gesturing to the deactivate orb. When they'd landed in that field in Germany, it had switched off. The impact maybe? Maybe it had lost its connection with its masters? Maybe he'd just pulled on the right thing in its insides. “Its a modern art piece I made, its fractures represent your fragile masculinity and constant need for affirmation.” The doctor's eye twitched, and picked up the crowbar. Angrily, he smacked Arch in the head with it. Once, twice, three times, ten times, twenty times... The cracks on his helmet where they had been focusing their blows grew. “Where do you come from?” “Space.” Smack. “Who sent you here?” “Your mother to tell you how disappointed in you she is.” Smack. “Someday I will just kill you, and figure out how you work.” “I'll just explode if you do that, so that will be fun for both of us.” He wasn't even lying. Arch had been trying to keep doctor Heisman busy. When he tried to get information out of Arch, who was shackled up against the wall with exceedingly thick chains and manacles, he forgot to experiment on the twins, and that was something Arch would take as much pain as possible to prevent. Luckily for Arch, he could turn his pain receptors off. He was fairly certain he had a skull fracture right now, but he didn't feel it. Occasionally, the doctor and his aides would try to look through the gashes in his sides the Orb had made. They didn't know what they were looking at, luckily. They also tried to look inside the Orb, and Arch secretly wished they'd accidentally activate the thing again. The twins were huddled together, or their equivalent of that when the Nazis were in the room, which was to sit together with their arms touching. Their heads were shaved, and they looked ill. From what the guards had said, these weren’t the first set of twins they'd had in the builing. From when he'd spoken to them when they were alone, he'd learned they were named Lala and Mirela, and were from a group of people called the Romani. He tried to give them a reasurring look, but wasn't sure he could in his curent state. His carapace flared with broken images. The doctor stepped back, in sudden awe. Then one of the side doors burst open. “Sir,” a Nazi guard said, running into the room, “We've been found.” “What do you mean we've been found? This base is buried inside a mountain.” The guard was sweating. “Sir, I mean there is a girl and a group of Allied soldiers. She has some device that is opening all of our doors.” The doctor gestured with his crowbar. “That's impossible!” * * * * Corporal Halsey took out the last of the guards in the room as Graelyn ran to the next door, tablet in hand. “I still can't believe what you're doing.” Captain Noble said. Graelyn shrugged. “Its just an app. I downloaded it for fun a few years ago.” Old mechanical locks like this were nothing when you could just move all the parts around the electro magnet in her tablet. She didn't even have to do anything, she just put her tablet up to the lock and pressed the button. “What's that on your.... Screen?” Noble asked. “Oh! That's a yogurt ad. Its a free app, so, you know, it gets supported by ads.” He nodded, clearly not entirely understanding. “Right.” “Ope, all done.” * * * * Doctor Heisman was nervous. This wasn't supposed to happen. He had security, damn it, and they were supposed to stop things like this from happening. The allies couldn't possibly be able to manipulate locks, dead bolt seals... They couldn't! But they were, so now was no time to question it. He looked at his experiments. The twins, the machine-man, the orb. He gritted his teeth. “We need to get rid of the evidence. Especially the other twins.” The remaining guards had entered the room. “We need to prepare for a stand sir!” Said the captain of the guard. “No, we need to-” They were cut off, as main doors to the chamber flew open, and a group of Allied troops including of all things a Russian teenager ran into the room. She held a black rectangle, they held rifles. The guards who raised their guns were picked off, swift shots to the head by trained marksmen. After this, the smart ones dropped their weapons. The teenager ran over to the machine man, and stroked his face. “Oh God Arch, look what they did to you...” There were holes in his sides, and electric shock devices had been stuck in there. She carefully began to unclip them and pull them off. Doctor Heisman tried to flee, but was tackled by an Allied soldier, who gave him a rifle butt to the face. “Jesus,” one of the soldiers said, kneeling by the twins, “sir, these are just kids over here.” The surviving Nazis were disarmed, and cordoned off in a corner of the room with armed guards, while the rest of the squad began to look through it. A medic began attending to the two children. “I'm alright, Grae.” Arch said, his voice was modulated and distorted. His carapace flickered as he spoke. “No, you really aren't.” She moved her hands along his injuries, “How bad do your damage sensors say it is?” “...Well a lot of those are broken.” Graelyn shook her head, doing her best to patch him together how little she could. “Why did you save me Arch? I should have been the one in chains. I tripped, I...” “You're my friend.” She wanted to argue, she really did, but she just nodded. The Captain tapped her on the shoulder. “Agent Scythes, when you have the time we found a locked door we can't open.” She nodded, and examining Arch's chains, pulled the blowtorch out of her bag. “Ma'am, I think those chains are too thick for a blowtorch.” She wanted to say, “Not one from the future.” But she just gave him a sly grin, and did them in. “Will you be okay Arch?” He tried to stand up, but couldn't. “I'll just rest for a bit.” She reached out to put her hand on his shoulder, but pulled it back. “I'll be right back.” The Captain led her to the door he'd spoken of, and she passed the twins who were slowly trying to eat some soup while a group of soldiers tended to them. “Are those kids okay?” Graelyn whispered to the Captain. He shook his head. “From what we've gathered their parents are dead, and the Nazis have been doing experiments on them.” Graelyn's eyes widened. “You can't be serious.” “I'm afraid I am, ma'am.” She looked at the kids. One of the soldiers was singing them a silly song. She looked at the marks on their bodies that weren’t even hidden. She thought of her mother, and how this made that look like a cakewalk. She felt fire rise inside her. She looked back at the Nazis in the corner. It had been 500 years since the Nazis when she was born. They were boogeymen, evil phantoms of the past. Now they were all too real to her. It was like the version of them in her mind was one of a cartoon, and here in front of her was the real effects of it: starving, beaten, tortured children. She was all too aware this was real now, and her skin quaked. She shook her head, and lowered her tablet to the door. She activated the app. The little loading icon appeared, and then a big red X appeared “Lock damaged internally! Can't unlock!” That's wasn't normal. She felt the door around the edges: it had been melted shut into its frame. What was so important they would bother doing that, hastily and shoddily even, instead of leaving? Graelyn pulled out her blowtorch, and began to work around the edges. When she finished, she waited for the door to cool down, and then tested it to see if it moved on its hinges. It did. She smiled at the captain. “You don't mind if I do the honors, Captain Noble?” He shook his head. “All yours, Agent Scythes.” She tugged the heavy door open a crack, and slipped through. There was a moment where no one could see Graelyn and the room was silent aside from the soldiers trying to cheer up the children. Then she walked back into the room, her tablet hanging loosely from her hand, then clattering to the floor. She shook gently, her eyes wide and full of lines of red. She nearly stumbled over and put her arm against the wall. “Agent Scythes what-” Agent Noble began, but she interrupted him. She thew up, keeling over to her knees, still shaking. Arch looked worried, and tried to get up, but couldn't. Noble hurried over and put a hand on her. “What's wrong?” She looked up, her eyes boiling over, tears running down her face, and her hand reaching for the Captain's sidearm. “Give me that.” “Ma'am, you said you didn't want a gun when-” “I know what I said. Give it to me.” She whispered. Hesitantly. He handed her the gun. She staggered over to the Nazi prisoners, the Allied guards eyed her warily as she approached. “What did you see in there, Scythes?” Noble called, but she just kept walking. “You. You did that.” She looked at the scientists, doctor Heisman in particular. “I.. How could you I...” She began gagging again, and threw up a second time. She staggered up and pointed the gun at them. Noble ran after her, holding his hands up and getting up along side her. “Hold up Graelyn, don't do anything hasty.” “No this isn't hasty. This—Captain, you don't want to see what's in there I promise you.” “There's nothing that could provoke you killing these people.” She looked at him like she had seen hell. “Okay then, tell me what you saw. Lets be reasonable about this.” “There is nothing reasonable in that room, reason is the opposite of what is in that room...” Her eyes welled up again with tears, “there are bodies in there sir. Children's bodies. Twins. Dozens of them...” She backed up, losing her breath, supporting herself on the wall again for a moment before raising the gun again and gesturing towards the prisoners. “And they weren't just dead they were... Desecrated. You can't even imagine. You don't want to see it. I want to unsee it. How could you do that? To other human beings? What kind of person would you have to be?” She saw the room where her other self had cut into Johnathan. “What kind of monster?” “We were just following Heisman's orders!” One of them yelled, pointing at the doctor, “Please!” “Just following orders?” Graelyn's voice was loud enough to echo through the building. “JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS? There is no order that could justify that.” Graelyn walked towards the doctor, and placed the gun against the doctor's head. “I should shoot you right now. You deserve it.” She waited for him to reply. “They aren't real people.” He finally said. Her finger tightened a little on the trigger. She imagined she pulled the trigger. His brains blowing out the back of his head. She needed to kill him. He deserved it. What kind of person doesn't fall? She thought of Arch, and how he didn't kill Manuel, even when he could have. She thought of herself, in Songbird's world, and her crimes against humanity. That wasn't the real her. She knew that, deep inside. She wasn't a monster. She had to not be a monster. She wouldn't descend to their level. She wouldn't meet this injustice with terrified bloodshed. She took a deep breath, and lowered the gun, stepping back. “Captain, please relieve me of this firearm.” He nodded, and took it from her palm. Graelyn slumped to her knees she looked doctor Heisman in the eyes. “After this war there will be a trial, and you will be hung.” He scoffed. “I'm not showing you mercy. I'm showing you justice, and the world will see what you did here. Its not my job to punish you. Your victims will get to speak out against you, and you will crumble under their voice.” She got up, feeling weak, and went back over to Arch, she slumped down on the wall next to him. “You did the right thing.” She rubbed her eyes. “I'm not sure I did.” “You're not a monster, Graelyn.” She nodded. They sat in silence. She reached over, and held his hand. “We can't dally here, we need to get you to a place you can be repaired, and get the orb to a place someone can use it to prepare.” Arch nodded, as much as he could. “What if that was the same place?” Graelyn raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?” “I mean, that Heirum J. Whitehead guy owned a tech company right? Maybe he can do what we need.” Graelyn mulled it over. It wasn’t a bad plan, really. “So there would be a big tech company working on a way to fight the Council for a few hundred years. That sounds like exactly what we're looking for.” “If that's so, how do we get there?” Graelyn looked over at the broken orb. “I'll just have to fiddle.” As Graelyn went over to the Orb, the twins came over to Arch. “Hey, how are you guys feeling?” He said, fuzzily. “How are you feeling?” Mirela replied. “I asked first.” “Terrible, but better.” Lala answered. “Same here. But you kids, you've got to stick together. You're family, that means something.” “Its just us though....” Mirela said softly. Arch nodded, and then gestured to the Captain. “What is it? You feeling alright?” Noble said squatting down. “I'm fine. But we're going to have to leave here and I need to know these kids will be taken care of after the war, whatever that means.” Noble nodded, and smiled at the girls. “I'll keep track of them. We'll make sure they're provided for.” Arch felt something shift inside him, and was glad he'd turned his pain of... But it was still terrifying even so, and if the system broke that turned off the pain... “I'm glad to hear that captain.” Graelyn fiddled. Cursing she reached in, pulled out two cords that resembled the tendrils on the Pantheon alien she'd met before, and with a disgruntled sigh pushed them onto her temples, closing her eyes and waiting for the inevitable mental battle. She scrunched her eyes up, and steeled herself. “Please input a command!” A voice in her head thought. “Oh thank God for once this is easy.” The orb roared to life, its carapace lighting up in crystalline cracks and swirls. Graelyn thought about the date she needed to go to, and the Orb lit up. “Warning: systems damaged.” “Can you manage one more trip?” “Systems will focus on procuring one more time-space jaunt. Further uses may result in complete atomic breakdown of the nearby area.” She sighed, one more hop it is. “Arch, are you ready to go?” He nodded, and with the help of the soldiers, moved him over to the orb. Captain Noble took off his hat, and rubbed his scalp. “So, what exactly are you going to be doing with... Whatever that is?” “Tear a hole in reality in order to hop over to the future to prevent a future invasion from an alternate dimension.” He opened his mouth, but kept his teeth closed. “You'll be fine, its over half a milenia in the future. Anyways we're trying to stop it.” She looked over at Arch. He really didn't look in good shape. “You holding together?” “My pain inhibitors are breaking down. “Ah.” She said, and picked up the neural link cords. “You might want to step back guys, we're about to do wonders.” They did. “Good knowing you guys, Captain, troops, twins.” She saluted. They all did to, well, the twins waved. Arch weakly waved back. Graelyn plugged herself into the orb, and its spiky limbs sprung to life, weaving a portal of blue light, and tearing a hole in the world that they dove through, leaving behind yet another past. * * * * Doctor Heisman was led to the gallows after his conviction. Captain Noble, and his unit, as well as a pair of Romani twins he was apparently looking after had given unflinching testimony. The conviction was unquestionable. He tried to keep his head up as they put the noose around his neck. Someday, he thought, white people will rule this world with the lesser races in their place, and I will be remembered as a hero. He dropped. It wasn't quick. His feet turned gently in the breeze. After some time, his left shoe fell off. * * * * “It’s not working right!” Graelyn screamed, banging on the side of the orb. Arch could only weakly nod. They shifted and jinked, falling this way and that, and then a white hole opened up below them, and they crashed and rolled onto the ground. Graelyn tumbled, her suit absorbing her impact, mostly, as she came to a stop next to a chunk of concrete. Arch fell like a rag doll, and stopped, unmoving. This was absolutely not what was supposed to happen. Graelyn rose to her feet, and looked at the sky: it was filled with strange vessels, some of them raining what looked like molten gold down on the city below. The city burned. She looked back at Arch, and seeing him unmoving ran to his side. “Come on Arch, don’t give up now, come on…” She shook him gently, and me moaned. “Oh thank God…” She inspected his form, but wasn’t sure what she needed to do. His anatomy was so different! “I’ll be right back Arch, I’m going to find some help.” Graelyn scampered up, her head was still dizzy from the landing, but she couldn’t wait. She ran across the scorched earth, and came up to the crest of the hill. A sign in Cyrillic said the date: “Come ring in the new year with Centro News! 2496 is right at your finger tips!” “Oh no.” Graelyn whispered, as she watched a skyscraper tumble onto the streets below. “This is Moscow. We’re too late. We’re too late.” Next week, we'll be back with a bonus story, as well as the week after. Then, in three weeks time be ready for the final dramatic chapters of 10,000 Dawns: Serial! Dropping all at once, with bonus features! Get ready, its going to be good... Wow, we have a lot to tell you before we start this week! First off, the 10,000 Dawns Bonus story Contest is now in its voting stage! You can vote on one of five stories to decide which we will write, as well as choosing the artist who will illustrate it! You can vote on it right: here: http://www.jameswylder.com/home/10kd-bonus-story-contest-vote-and-meet-the-artists Second off, Annie and I have decided we're going to release the last few chapters of 10,000 Dawns all at once! After Chapter 25, we'll take a short break (filled with bonus stories, naturally) and then give you the dramatic conclusion to the story in one big bite! This will not only let Annie focus on getting the art right, but let you experience the ending the way it really should be read. We can't wait for you to read it, and we're so glad you came with us on this journey so far! Thirdly, Annie and I did a great interview with Barebones Entertainment about our work on 10kd. Its a fun read, so go check it out at the link below!: http://www.barebonesent.com/q-and-a-with-jim-wylder/ Finally, 10,000 Dawns: Anthology is well underway, and after Graelyn and Arch's tale ends, you can expect some really amazing stories from other writers and me later this year. You're gunna have a good time! We're so lucky to have fans like you, and we can't wait for you to see whats coming next! -Jim Art by Annie Zhu, Story by James Wylder All chapters are now available as a podcast from the Southgate Media Group! You can subscribe to the podcast version on iTunes and your RSS feed easily from libsyn: http://10thousanddawns.libsyn.com/ If you're new to 10kd, you can read the story from the start for free below: http://www.jameswylder.com/read-every-chapter.html You can download the latest chapter below in PDF or epub formats:
Chapter 24: RiseGraelyn found herself in a supply closet, it was too small for the orb to fit in, so she must have landed somewhere away from it. Her face felt raw and ached, like someone had been rubbing it with a metal file. Her legs were sorer than they had ever been, her lungs were still short of breath. Her belly throbbed with pain, and she suspected she might have broken ribs. She sort of hoped the blast had disabled her uterus permanently so she could live easier every month, but she suspected this wouldn’t be case. Life was full of disappointments. She wanted to get up and run after Arch, but she couldn’t, and she didn’t even know where he was anyways. Not to mention this pile of cleaning supplies was really quite comfortable, she should stock up when she gets home. Yes, quite comfortable. Yes, quite. The ceiling was incredibly white. She sat up, and felt the blood shift in her body suddenly, felt the IV’s pull on her arm. She wasn’t wearing her spacesuit—she was wearing a hospital gown. She held back any panic, and sat calmly, flexing her joints to guess how long she’d been asleep. It wasn’t a hard science, but it had to at least have been a few days. “Miss Scythes?” A man entered her room wearing a period Doctor’s outfit- excuse me- it was probably totally at home in this era, she was the anachronism wasn’t she? He was holding a tablet pc, and scrolling through some things on it. “I’m glad to see you’re up. We kept you sedated to keep you from pulling out any of the stitches, you had quite a bit of internal bleeding. “Is everything… Fine?” She said, still groggy. “Yes, thanks to modern medicine,” ha, “everything is working properly now. There was some extensive damage to your Uterus, Bladder, and Liver but they’re all back to normal, nothing to worry about.” She let her jaw slip in disappointment—she wasn’t going to do it herself or anything, but not having periods would have been great. “Don’t worry,” he said, totally misreading her, “You can still have children.” “Fantastic.” She muttered, and looked around the room, “Where exactly am I Doctor…” ah, a nametag! “Miles.” “You’re in St. Andrew’s Hospital, connected to St. Andrew’s University in Maryland.” “Okay. Second query: you knew my name, but I don’t think I was carrying any sort of identification.” The Doctor scrolled through some files on his tablet. “It says here the estate of your great Uncle Heirum J. Whitehead took care of it.” Graelyn had no uncle named that, let alone a great one. “Did he leave me a message? He usually does when he does things like this.” She lied briskly. The Doctor scrolled and tapped a few times. “It should be on the tablet by your bedside.” She picked it up, and read the just transferred note. She’d never met Heirum, but the guy sure could get things done. * * * * * She slept, and awoke. The window was open, and instinctively Graelyn slid out of bed, trying to ignore the pain, and walked over to it. On the sill was a butterfly, slowly moving its wings up and down. Graelyn peered down at it, there was something odd about it. Reaching down, she felt like she should pull its wings off, but held back, and put a finger down next to the creature. To her surprise, it climbed on. Raising it to her face, she looked it it. The wings were an ethereal blue, and their patterns and shapes were like nothing from nature. It seemed to glow. Her eyes shifted from the mesmerizing creature, which seamed to unfurl a new mystery with each beat of its wings, to the window: hospital windows didn't open. The butterfly took off, and Graelyn turned to see the walls and ceiling were coated with them. On the bed was a cat, but not a nice cat. Its eyes were malicious. It hissed, and she felt a songbird die somewhere. As its tail swished, the butterflies moved their wings in unison. Graelyn raised her arms, and the first notes of Mozarts 5th symphony played, like she was conducting it. And as she did so, the butterflies fell off the walls and the ceiling, and splattered into rain on the ground. The cat squealed in terror. And Graelyn woke up, sheets crumpled, still unable to walk. * * * * * It was another month before Graelyn was ready to leave the hospital, which had been in the note, so she didn’t fight it. It was pretty clear what was going on anyways, and if she could time travel from here it didn’t matter how long she lollygagged. She passed the time by eating lots of snacks and watching the video screen in her hospital room, or trying out socialization. Across the barrier in the same room was a girl named Alondra who had broken her leg on a school Ski-trip, and liked keeping a constant stream of words coming from her mouth like she was afraid if she left part of a conversation silent something would slip into her soul. She didn’t talk to Graelyn at first though, “I’d thought you weren’t going to wake up.” She said when they finally got to talking. “You were really beat up, there were weird burns on your face in stripes like you’d been lashed by a Balrog or something.” She raised her eyebrow, “Balrog?” “You know, flaming whip, big leathery wings, fights Gandalf—‘YOU SHALL NOT PASS!’” she said, slamming her tray with one hand while she pulled her long black hair into a fake beard. “Lord of the Rings?” “Oh. I see. I’ve never read it.” Alondra’s eyes went wide, “You’ve never ever read the Lord of the Rings? The Hobbit, at least?” Graelyn shook her head, and Alondra made a point of making the nurse bring her all four books. Graelyn was a bit grateful, Arch was older than her after all, more mature and yet totally sheltered due to his isolated upbringing. Graelyn had lived a solitary life, she wasn’t a social butterfly, she wasn’t even social or a butterfly. She liked her cocoon. Alondra was almost the same age as her, a little younger and treated her like it. She hobbled over and did Graelyn’s hair, though she was rubbish at returning the favor. Graelyn read through the four books quickly, and took on the Silmarillion (“Oh that’s a tough read you might not want to-“) and easily sped through that to. They were good books. Tolkien’s attempt to create a new mythology for England was a noble one, and Graelyn was struck how long it was since she had been to Russia at this point, outside of fifteen minutes of her own childhood of course. Those fifteen minutes had been the only time she’d spoken Russian for more than a few moments in the last year as well. She felt something welling up inside her she couldn’t put a label on. She remembered how she’d seen Arch as an experiment when she’d found him, something to explore rather than a person. If the accident hadn’t happened that had sent them spiraling through time, would she have taken him apart piece by piece like the roadkill in the woods? She hadn’t ever killed an animal, just taken apart dead ones, not that many people would understand the difference. What if she had killed Arch? She felt her home beating in her chest, and the guilt at losing Arch and almost betraying him. No, I wouldn’t have betrayed him. Surely. I’m not that person. “Do you dream Graelyn?” “Most of the time, usually.” Alondra’s nimble fingers were trying something complex and slightly poofy she seemed delighted with, “why do you ask?” “You were unconscious so long, I always wondered; If I were asleep that long maybe I’d go to another place, like I slipped through a hole in the world and my mind fell through.” “I’m not sure I’d go that far in believing something.” “Just hear me out—I mean, when I’m skiing I sometimes feel like as I go down the slope I’m not actually on the slope, like I’m just driving my body, my skis as much my limbs as my arms or legs. I lose track of what is and isn’t me. Which makes me wonder if my body is me—if there was a version of me with the same number of cells, the same genome, the same voice, but who didn’t feel the same way I did, would it really be me, or would it just like a black and white copy of a color picture—it shows the same thing but you know its different.” “This is awful hypothetical.” “Sorry to unload it all on you, my girlfriend usually gets the brunt of it, but she’s off at this teen space camp.” “You have a girlfriend?” “I didn’t mention her? Oh my God I didn’t mention her! She wanted to come visit but I told her she sure as hell wasn’t ruining her chance at space just to cheer me up. I usually call her when you’re asleep, you sleep a lot no offense, so we have some privacy. I can’t believe that I forgot to mention her!” Graelyn shrugged, which surprised Alondra and she had to start over at whatever she was doing with her hair. “Its alright. I haven’t mentioned a lot of people.” “Well tell me, where does Graelyn Scythes come from? That’s an unusual name.” “Russia. I was born in Moscow, but I grew up in a small farming town where my parents owned a house for a few years, before we moved back. There's not much to tell about it.” Her fingers weaved the shiny black strands of her hair again into a new shape. “Siblings?' “Curious aren't we?” “That's a pretty normal question.” Graelyn felt like shrugging, but refrained for the sake of Alondra's work. “I'm a very private person, and not a particularly normal one. I do have siblings. More than you'd expect, actually. But I keep in touch with none of them, and even less with my parents.” There was silence for a bit as she braided. Graelyn could faintly see in the small reflection on a monitor that her lips were pursed. “Did I say something dis-pleasurable?” “No, no no no, I just can't imagine growing up like that, you know? Or I guess you don't.” “Tell me about your girlfriend.” “Well,” she said with an aire of wispy longing in her tone, “June is-” “June?!?” Graelyn ejaculated. “Er, yeah.” “June Barker?” “Do you know her?” Graelyn thought how best to answer that question. It wasn't an easy one to really start. “Yeah, sort of. I doubt she remembers me. I've met her though, just once. I'm surprised I remember her to be honest. I was just so surprised, it seems like an awful big co-incidence.” Graelyn reached into her pocket and pulled out the cat pin, looking on it fondly, “Its hard to forget, we had the same pin.” Alondra looked at her hand, “you can't have the same pin. That's impossible, it’s a family heirloom.” “Is it? I didn't ask I just noticed.” “Could I see it.” Graelyn saw no reason why not, so she placed it gently in Alondra's palm, and then felt the urge to push down on it slightly so she could feel the shape of its nature, so she followed her own urges and pushed. It was an insignificant action, but it didn't feel like it, it felt like she'd pressed the button on a payload of bombs. Alondra looked on the backside of the pin and nodded, “It says here, ' DB to KL, corporeal tangent' and then a little heart symbol. “Corporeal tangent?” “It’s something one of her ancestors made for their fiancé when they went off to fight in the second world war. It’s made of copper, that's why the metal part is green, it patinaed and they decided they liked the way it looked green better than copper colored so they placed a sealant over it so it wouldn't rub off. They've passed it on over and over to the oldest sibling. Its handmade. There's no way you'd have it unless you stole it from her or she gave it to you.” “Call her. Ask her if she still has the pin.” Alondra bit her lip, “If you took it you're giving it back or I'm taking it from you.” Graelyn shrugged, Alondra having forgotten about the hair appointment. “Maybe he made a prototype, I don't know. I got it in a thrift shop.” “You're lying.” “Ask June.” Alondra didn't talk to Graelyn till she made the call, and seemed to treat her as though she wasn't even present in the same room as her till that time came. June appeared on the Holoprojector, clearly tired, “Can we keep it short tonight? They ran us through this machine that simulated a ton of G's and we all puked. I'm totally spent.” “June, do you still have your pin? The green one, with the cat on it?” She adjusted her camera so you could see her breast, it was clearly there, and her face showed the puzzlement of someone who had just been asked if she still had her hand. “Yeah? I only take it off if I have to.” Alondra looked over at Graelyn, who was trying to not have an “I knew I was right” expression plastered all over her face. She did a very good job. “That's... Weird.” “Not.... Really?” “I mean, the girl I'm rooming with here, Graelyn?” “Yeah?” “She has a pin just like that. It even has the same inscription.” “The exact same one?” “Yeah.” June paused, she nodded. “You need to call my mom.” Mrs. Barker arrived at 4:30, right as Graelyn was hitting chapter 19. She came bearing an old photo album, one of the ones made of paper bound with metal rings. The thing was an antique, and had been coated with some sort of transparent layer that strengthened and preserved it, but made it look funny to the eye, like it was a bad computer graphic. She first greeted Alondra; she seemed to get along with her daughter’s girlfriend swimmingly, like she was already a favored daughter in law. “Hello Graelyn.” She said after a time, coming over to her bed. She looked at her, the gaze of someone looking at someone you’d heard of, or seen in photographs, but never seen before in person. She motioned towards the edge of the bed, and Graelyn gave a slight nod. Sitting down, her hips bumping Graelyn’s feet, she spread the photo album on her lap. The pages had already begun aging before it had been sealed, and it looked like the kind of old document you might see in drama, with yellow cracking pages that somehow held together perfectly. Thanks to the sealant, it also looked strangely inauthentic. The photographs were of a man in an army air core outfit, and a woman in a decidedly 1940’s haircut, and… Graelyn. The other two were smiling, Graelyn had the expression of a person who doesn’t want to be in a picture but is doing so for the sake and happiness of other people, possibly in this case herself. She felt like saying, “That’s me!” but held back as it was neither necessary or frugal, and would probably just make her look like an idiot. “That’s you!” Mrs. Barker said. “Yes it is. Well, that’s revealing.” Mrs. Baker got up and closed the door. She held the handle behind her back for a moment as though someone might try to barge their way in. “You have no idea how long our family has been waiting to meet you. Honestly, until I got my daughter’s message I thought you were just an insane person who saved my great great... well, a lot of greats grandfather’s life, I didn’t actually believe what you told them.” “What exactly did I tell them, because I haven’t told them anything yet?” Alondra’s eyes were wide, she was totally erect in bed, watching and listening as closely as she could manage.” “That you were from an alternate reality and the future.” “I was that upfront about that? Huh.” “Would you mind if I saw the pin?” Mrs. Barker asked. Graelyn nodded and slipped it into her palm. She ran her thumb along it, smiling faintly. “Its all true then.” “I suppose?” Mrs. Barker looked over at Alondra, placing her hand reassuringly on Graelyn's calf. “Alondra, you have to keep all of this secret. No one can know what we talked about in here today.” “Mrs. Barker...” “Sandy.” She cut in. “Sandy, uh, you don't really believe she is from an alternate reality in the future do you? I mean...” Sandy cut her off. “Alondra, when my many-greats-grandfather was fighting in the second World War II, this young woman stopped his plane from falling out of the air. She wore a cat pin, just like the one he had made for his fiance, only it was old.” “Wait I stopped a plane from crashing?!?! How!?!?” “He actually wrote you a guide, he said you'd need to study it.” She apparently would. “This is crazy.” Alondra said. “Honestly, its getting pretty normal for me.” Graelyn murmured. “Graelyn, sweetie, you're going to do great, and you can stay with us as long as you need.” “Stay with you? I mean, how will fit into society, I haven't been born yet.” “So weird....” Alondra whispered. “Actually,” the man at the door, who had quietly opened it, said, “Mr. Heirum J. Whitehead's estate has taken care of all of that.” * * * * * Graelyn was for some reason attending class at a High School. This wasn’t particularly how she’d seen jumping through a portal through time going. How old was she now even? She’d lost track. Was she even still a teenager? She tried to count the days but she had by all accounts lost track. There had been too many leaps and jumps and crossed time streams. She remembered the look on her own face—or was it her own face? Did another reality’s version of herself count as her? As Songbird Kicked her out the window. She had no idea who she was anymore. That Graelyn had broken the promise though—maybe she’d lost the right to the name. Is that all I am now—a promise of a little girl throwing herself out a window? She sat down at her desk and looked over at June and her girlfriend who were clearly flirting. In a few years June would be in the academy for space travel, in a few more she’d be with Graelyn on Triton starting the loop that got Graelyn here in the first place. It hardly seemed to make sense, it hardly seemed to fit together at all. But here she was, studying things in the past. “Good morning class” the teacher said, “now today we’re going to learning about—Ryan, sit down. Trinity you to! – okay, uh, we’re going to be learning about igneous rocks…” Graelyn already knew all about Igneous rocks. She could probably teach a class on Igneous rocks. But this, she supposed, was the downside of time traveling. You could get stuck in history taking a class that was hyper advanced for your own age group at the time but that you easily passed years ago.. .Still, it wasn’t a bad review. Graelyn didn’t usually study geology, so the lessons on Igneous rocks were really a handy refresher, and she didn’t feel like she was wasting that much of her time. English courses puzzled her a bit, she was enjoying them but the classes were really slow at reading, and since she had focused on the sciences she was actually learning an incredible amount in them. Math courses were however basically a rote action for her—she was in the school’s most advanced courses, and she was far beyond them in ways they couldn’t imagine. She had gotten her internship by being able to calculate the probable locations of other dimensions through a hypothetical time space rift at 16, or at least that was what she figured in hindsight now that she knew John Aril's real intentions. Advanced Calculus was essentially spelling “C-A-T” to her at this point in her life. Luckily the teacher had given them the whole syllabus so she’d been able to complete every single assignment for the year in the first week. She now spent her math classes being a student assistant and running errands, or doing her own math work. “So what is ‘456R-25K’?” “Well, if you're mapping dimensions, most of them are hypothetically going to be nearly identical. Many of them have differences so slight it’s impossible to tell where exactly they diverge. For example, there is a whole other reality for every different speed it takes to press a single key down on a keyboard, for every slight position it would hit, and that’s just for every reality you hit that same key.” Graelyn explained to the math teacher. “I’ve given each identical reality a designation, usually a number and letter to distinguish them. However, what’s notable is when there is a convergence- a link between two dimensions for whatever reason. Those are labeled with a two letter-number combinations. If you start to track dimensions, you can figure out where these holes are supposed to be, because they’re sort of… fixed points. Dimensions can continually branch off and make new ones to infinity, but there is something special about two that are linked, they begin to take on a certain… stability. Not in the sense that they are more socially stable or anything, the universe isn’t concerned with that, er, universes, but rather that they are more real than other universes, to put it in layman’s terms. They’re… anchored. As soon as a person moves from one universe to the other, it creates a bond between them.” She paused, “Hypothetically of course.” The teacher looked at her wide eyed. “Where did you say you transferred from?” “I was homeschooled.” She lied, “By the lead programmers of Talinata Softworks.” He nodded slowly, “The AI developers.” “Yes, though they’ve clearly moved beyond that.” “Clearly.” The truth was that Graelyn didn’t solve all of her troubles with an epiphany, and that even though she hit the ground she felt like she hadn’t stopped falling ever since. The epiphany, that moment of pure clarity that changed Graelyn Scythes from one person into another, didn’t do so by force. In reality, it simply opened up a question inside her: who is this woman I don’t want to fall? She didn’t know. She had no idea, and as time went on she settled on two versions of herself, standing on opposite sides of a scale. One was an altruist, but a pragmatic one. Every breath she took served a greater good, but she would be taken in by no one. She would be volcano, erupting to protect the weak, and stoking a fire in her heart. The other was a fortress. She would cut out the things that could cause her pain, build up walls, and freeze her blood to ice. She would be impervious, and impartial. The ultimate scientist, only using her facts and not her heart. But even these simple ideals proved elusive—try as she might she never ended up one or the other, and a third woman came to being—a woman who was a bulldozer. She could run over her enemies, she could harness the power of the volcano and the pragmatism of the scientist and crush anyone who could cut through her walls. She had no idea who she wanted to be, only that she didn’t want to fall. Graelyn had had a boyfriend, and a girlfriend. She hadn’t loved either of them, she’d simply wondered if she could get one. She succeeded, and when they left her or she left them she made sure to note their emotional reactions. She felt nothing, at least, she tried to convince herself she felt nothing, and she took copious notes. She felt the fortress inside her, and fire and ice at war in her heart. But not everything went according to plan. Of course it did at first—Graelyn got the job at project Atlantis, despite her parent’s protests, and felt a jolt of pleasure at their anger at her when they couldn’t control her. But then Arch came floating down, and she felt like she couldn’t have done anything different, as though from that moment as he fell there wasn’t a choice anymore. She wasn’t sure what was inside her now, it wasn’t fire, ice, or steel, she couldn’t name it, like a figure in a dark room of a stranger. June yelled, cheering on Alondra as she dribbled her way down the court. The crowd was fairly small, not many people showed up for a high school basketball game on the same Saturday as a big 7-Shuck match at the stadium, which was also being broadcast around the world. But June, now back from space camp, loved her girlfriend, and Graelyn was well practiced at keeping up appearances. The crowd yelled and jeered something, and Graelyn's text scrolled down automatically as it's camera sensed her eyes had finished reading the words at the bottom of the tablet's screen. Learning how to forge a letter was hard, but it would apparently be necessary. She was lucky people in the 1940's didn't know how to spot modern advances in replicating Franklin Dellano Roosevelt's signature. “I can't believe this Ref! Can you?” Graelyn shrugged. “I'm sure it was extremely unfair. They'll be doing an expose of it on the news tonight.” “Be serious.” June said. “I am wild.” Graelyn said drolly as she opened another book. “What is that supposed to mean?” “Its from a book, forget about it.” Alondra had made her way to the net, and with a rousing leap, dunked the ball into the hoop. Graelyn politely clapped as the small crowd erupted. “Now that was amazing!” June yelled. “It was pretty good, yeah.” “If you're so moderate about being here, why did you come.” Graelyn looked up at June. “An honest answer there would be something akin to a speech.” A whistle blew, and the fans cheered for their respective teams as they went to the locker rooms. “Well, its halftime, so I have time to listen.” The dance team came out, and Graelyn was actually interested in watching them intently and listening to what song they picked, so she tried to get her speech done quickly. “I'm here because you're people who aren't mean to me, and haven't left me yet. I don't even know if I like either of you, to be honest, but in my experience it matters more if a person treats you well than if you have anything in common. I'd take a friend who I can't have a conversation with but is there for me over one who is only there when the weather is fair and the sky is clear. I'd take a friend who I can't relate to but respects my existence over one who can joke with me but treats me as less than I'm worth any day.” And I'm not worth much, she left off. “What the hell kind of world is waiting for us in the future?” The dance team got in their positions. “One where they make girl's named Graelyn who like watching well done entwinements of music and dance, shh.” They watched the performance in silence. It was okay. * * * * Alondra and June were cuddling on the couch while Graelyn sat on the floor. They were eating pizza rolls, a dish that Graelyn had admittedly never tried before. They were okay. On the screen in front of them was the extended cut of “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” an ancient movie to be sure, but Graelyn was enjoying it. Alondra and June made some frantic flailing motions as one of June's other mom Emily walked in front of the screen. “She hasn't seen this yet mom!” June pleaded. “Did someone call for mom?” Sandy said from the other room. “The other one!” June yelled. Fred, one of June's dads, who had come in to bring them drinks, laughed. “Oh come on Fred, like they haven't done that with you and Devon.” He handed Graelyn a bubbly glass of ginger ale, and smiled at her. “Yeah, but we make bad joke about it.” Emily rolled her eyes. “Seriously, mom, dad, we're watching a movie.” “Did someone call for dad?” Devon yelled from the other room.” “Hi dad, I'm dad.” Fred yelled. The dad's laughed. “Jesus.” Alondra said, rewinding the movie. The Fellowship of the Ring fro the movie's title was approaching a bridge in an underground city that had been overrun by creatures called Orcs, and a wizard called Gandalf was facing off with a big winged demon called a Balrog. “You shall not pass!” The wizard said, and split the bridge with his staff. They both fell into the void. Graelyn dropped her pizza roll. Of course. Before Graelyn's eyes stood a map of the universes. They were anchored to each other through gashes, and the same gashes could slip you into different places in that univere's time, as well as a phyiscal location in it. There was a chasm between each of those spots, and they had latched onto the other side. The fellowship had crossed the chasm, and then broken the road. Here Graelyn was, trapped on one side of a divide in time, while Arch was somewhere else. And the more she thought about it, the more she knew it had to be in World War II. So she had to get to World War II. But she had no way to guide the journey. The bag Kinan had given her when she'd left had some of Kinan's dust, but there was no way she could use the Labyrinth to get around, even if there was a Labyrinth in this world it would be cut off to her since she had no one to take her through the locked gates. But she didn't have to just drop into the void. She had something she knew had to be on the otherside: Her ring of power. The cat pin. She had no idea if it would work: maybe she would just drown in the sea of murky nothing between the universes. Maybe she would go mad. But she would not condemn Arch to death by inaction. This was her best and only shot. She knew exactly what she had to do. The next morning, at breakfast, Graelyn had laid out a tablet for June with a document pre-loaded on it. June came downstairs, and didn't notice the tablet for fifteen minutes as she made herself toast, and then sat down, looking at it. “Whats this?” “That, is everything you need to know about how we meet in the future. I had to exclude a few things you didn't know, because well, you didn't know them, but it should be mostly complete.” June picked it up and began to read it, then bit her lip and set it down, looking Graelyn straight in the eyes. “You're leaving today, aren't you?” “Well, I'm going to try.” Graelyn had said goodbye so many times now. It seemed like every time she hopped through a portal she met someone she would never forget, who would be a universe away. Alice, Lizette, Manuel. Kinan, John, Miranda. Now, June, Alondra, and June's four parents. They hugged each other, and Graelyn listened to their platitudes. Their time together had meant something, surely, but Graelyn wanted to get it over with. She hated saying goodbye, but Arch needed her, and she couldn't stay comfortable for too long. If she was being honest, it didn't suit her. She took a cab to Saint Andrew's Hospital, and on the way dialed the number for Talinata Softworks. “Hello! Talinata Softworks. I'm our answering AI, WeN-D! How can I help you?” “Hi, WeN-D, my name is Graelyn Scythes. I need to talk to whoever paid my hospital bill.” WeN-D was silent for a moment, “I'll connect you right away.” She did. “Hello?” A gruff voice replied. “Hi, I'm Graelyn Scythes, and I need to get back into the supplies room I woke up in in Saint Andrew's Hospital.” “There is nothing there, we swept it clean.” “Nothing you can see.” More silence. The sound of something being moved across the floor. “We'll meet you there right away.” When she arrived at the hospital, an androgynous person met her at the door, wearing a suit sunglasses, and an earpiece. “Miss Scythes?” “Talinata Softworks representative?” “Yes. Follow me.” Without another word she was lead through the building, and up to the supplies room, which was empty. She looked at the person, “I need to change, and do what I came here to do. Close the door.” They nodded. “Mister Whitehead sends his regards.” “If I ever meet him, and he's not dead like he apparently is right now, I'll be sure to return them.” The person nodded, blankfaced, and shut the door. Graelyn quickly disrobed, and put on her spacesuit. She stuffed the rest of her belongings back into the bag, reserving some of the crystal dust, and the cat pin. Carefully, she put on the spacehelmet, and reached her hand out in front of her. She couldn't see anything, but she could feel it, like she had a new sense now that had opened up in her mind. There was a tear here in what was natural, sealed up to the human eye, but not healed. She could tear it open again, like a seam ripper. She pulled out the cat pin, and holding it up to where she felt the sensation in the air, used her other hand to throw the crystal dust at the same spot. At first, she thought it had been an idiotic idea, a foolish notion on her part, but then she was proven wrong. The air began to swirl around her hand. She reached down and grabbed her bag quickly, and the portal formed around the cat pin. She tried to focus on World War II, on the plane. She hoped she'd grabbed everything she would need from the store for it. She hoped the portal would work. She hoped it wouldn't tear her apart. It swirled, and her thoughts were cut off as she was sucked inside, spiraling down through the centuries, leaving only memories behind. * * * * Graelie Scythes woke up to find she had gotten mail. She never got mail, and with her first court ordered meeting with the therapist tomorrow, it was an odd time to start. Her mom read it first, confused, and threw it in the trash, but later that night she snuck out of her room and fished it out. “Dear Graelie, You don't know me, but maybe someday you will. I know that written mail is an oddity aside from packages, so I apologize if this freaks you out. I heard you are going through a hard time right now, and I wanted you to have this. If all had gone correctly, my descendants have sent you this cat pit as a token of our affection for you from afar. I can't tell you what your future holds, but I do know that when we meet, we will be friends. Until then, hold onto this pin as a reminder that someone remembers you, even from afar. Sincerely, June Barker” Graelyn slid the pin out of the envelope, and looked at it. It was old, but well taken care of. She slid the pin onto her pajama top as an experiment, and looked at herself in the mirror. The letter was clearly a prank, they'd probably write later asking for money or something, but for now having the pin on her breast felt comforting. As he looked at the image of a cat, she began to think about them, how nice it would be to have a companion like this imaginary letter writer. Maybe, she thought. She'd ask for a cat. Yes, that would do. That would do nicely. Come back next week to see where Graelyn ends up... As her journey nears its end! We're bringing back our beloved 10,000 Dawns Bonus Story Contest! Is there something in the universe of 10,000 Dawns you want to learn more about? A character we haven't explored you want to see more of? Now is your chance to make that a reality! Find out more at the link below. http://www.jameswylder.com/home/the-great-10000-dawns-bonus-story-contest-round-2 Art by Annie Zhu, Story by James Wylder All chapters are now available as a podcast from the Southgate Media Group! You can subscribe to the podcast version on iTunes and your RSS feed easily from libsyn: http://10thousanddawns.libsyn.com/ If you're new to 10kd, you can read the story from the start for free below: http://www.jameswylder.com/read-every-chapter.html You can download the latest chapter below in PDF or epub formats:
Chapter 23: Jump.WeN-D came down in front of them, boarding ramp extended. It didn’t take long to get all three of them aboard the VanWinkle, even with Graelyn’s ankle, and Heinrich was pleased to see the two communist dogs were on board as well (“I took the liberty of luring them through the airlocks with a ration pack, I hope you don’t mind.” “Not at all WeN-D!”) the ship took off, and in the distance the orb rose off the surface of the moon, a huge lump on its side wrapped in its tendrils.
Graelyn looked out at Arch, as he floated up into the sky, and towards a new blue glow in the sky. “It opened another tear.” June cursed as she slid into a seat in the cabin. “This isn’t good, its going to get away, with a whole bunch of data on us,” she then uttered a long string of curse words. “We’ve got to follow it.” “We can’t go through the tear! We’ve got no idea how its traveled through, and its only a little bigger than a person, this is a pretty large ship.” That was true. There wasn’t really any way she could logically argue against that. “We should still try to get all the data we can, do a fly by as close as you can to when it goes through the portal.” “Portal?” “Whatever, we’re inventing this jargon essentially.” “WeN-D can we chart a path to fly by its exit safely?” “Absolutely!” She said chipperly. Heinrich and June stripped off their gloves and helmets, but Graelyn kept hers on. They didn’t comment on it, she stared out the view pane absently, deep in thought, her spacesuit looking like a huge anachronism in the spaceship that had been an antique when it was sewn together by machine. The ship got closer to the light, and Graelyn slipped out of the cabin. As it pulled by, she opened up the airlock. “Graelyn what are you doing?” “Seal the airlock don’t let her do what she’s thinking of!” Graelyn pressed the emergency released button, flipped open the panel that emerged, and pulled the lever. “Graelyn do not do this!” Graelyn had only been able to count on herself, but arch has done what he had knowing full well he could die. Graelyn was about to inhale when the airlock door blew open, and she shot out with far more force than she’d been prepared for. The force of the air impacted her belly and she threw up into her helmet as she spun wildly, her arms flailing helplessly in the blackness of space. Then she was in a mess of blue and white, and then there was nothing. She woke up. Her face was in a smelly mess of her own puke, but she hadn’t suffocated. She couldn’t have—the suit could put oxygen straight into her bloodstream even if she was choking, that’s right. Instinctively she reached for the release catch on the neck of the suit—but realized that might not be a good idea. Shifting so that she could see her surroundings without getting vomit over even more of her, she saw she was in a grassy field. Wind blew gently through the blades, and she could see the field rolled down into a small grove of trees. She undid the helmet, and pulled it off, letting the sick slop out. She breathed in deeply, and rubbed her face into the grass- real grass not anything artificial. Black earth rubbed up against her nose. She spread her arms out and tried to sink into the soil, but without much luck. “Excuse me, are you a spacewoman?” Graelyn’s eyes shot up, and she pushed her aching body up from the soil. In front of her was a girl with short red hair, wearing glasses slightly too big for her head she’d slowly grow into. The knees on her dress were dirty, and she could probably do with blowing her nose, but the really apparent thing about her was the bloody scalpel in her left hand. Grae stared at it, the slightly dry blood dull against the sunlight. “Miss?” Grae looked back at the girl. “What’s your name?” “Graelie.” She said pleasantly, as though she wasn’t holding a bloody scalpel. “That’s funny.” Said Graelyn. She wasn’t stupid, the hair color threw her off, but she knew. She looked back up at herself. “And have you been dissecting roadkill again today?” “How did you know that?” “Like you guessed, I’m from space. You have to be smart to be in space.” The girl nodded. Graelyn remembered this conversation. She remembered the woman in the spacesuit, she’d thought she’d made it up at this point in her life, one of those playtimes as a child that just feels real though its make believe. But here she was. Strangely, or maybe with the utmost obligation, she knew what she had to say next. “Would you mind if I came and looked?” Graelie looked at her, and bit her lip, then seemed to make a decision and nod, She reached down to Graelyn, and pulled to “help” Graelyn up, though it was really more for show, as Graelyn still actually had to do all the work, and her body still felt like it had been hit by a missile of pressure. In her head she struggled to work out why she had been hit by the pressure like that—it must have been something to do with the tear changing the space around it, she knew the holes led to different times and places, sometimes different dimensions. Maybe laws from one reality seeped over into this one? Or the two sets of laws clashed? It was all hypothetical. Whatever happened, she was woozy, and her mouth still tasted like vomit. Graelie led her to a dead deer, its eyes were already getting eaten away and it smelled, but that hadn’t stopped the girl from already having made a few incisions. The flesh had been carefully cut away, and the ribcage opened. A few organs had been nearly removed and placed on individual piles of leaves. Graelyn was impressed with herself, but was also struck for the first time with how unnatural this would seem to anyone else. She had been such a lonely child. Unable to keep friends for very long, and spending most of her time by herself. That she spent her time slicing up animals in the woods could only have stuck people as creepy—as a sign she was a danger to the other kids. She didn’t like to think of herself that way, she didn’t like to imagine that there was something wrong with her, but as tiny Graelie began to remove the deer’s lungs, she knew that maybe the whispers she heard about herself were right. There was something wrong with her. Her parents should have sent her away somewhere else. Somewhere far away where she’d do no harm to anyone. What if she was capable of what they thought she was? What if she was broken? Graelie turned to her, and she didn’t realize she had shed a tear. “Are you…” “Listen to me Graelie, no matter what anyone says to you, you’re the one in control of your life. People are going to tell you things. They’re going to say that you’re…” She looked away from herself, from the scalpel still dripping deer blood. “That you’re a monster. But they don’t understand you. They don’t know that you’re just…. Different. You’ll want to be what they say you are. You’ll want to… Cross any line to get what you want. But I believe in you. And I…. Look I don’t say this, I never say this, but I love you. You’re the only person I do love. Maybe the only one I can. I don’t want to believe that, but it might be true. Don’t give up on yourself. You’re the only one who can manage that. You…” She trailed off. In the distance, she saw a whiteish metal orb perched perfectly on a hill. “I have to go. Don’t forget what I said.” She stumbled up. I fell. And as I fell I thought to myself, “Who am I going to be when I hit the ground?” Will I be a corpse? A victim? A cripple? Will I get up and rage against everything that threw me off of this? Then I realized, whoever I chose to be, I will be myself. I will still be Graelyn. Whoever she is. And I chose to be someone I wouldn’t want to fall again. She ran towards the orb. Her legs ached, her belly burned, her lungs felt like they were being cut out of her body. She heard a voice yell “Arch! Arch!” as she ran and she barely realized it was coming out of her own mouth. The orb shook, and she sprinted harder at it. A blue swirl began to form around it, and she cursed and screamed as it disappeared into it as her legs gave out beneath her, the ripples of the tear bludgeoning her exposed face. “Arch…” She muttered. She crawled, grabbing the grass and the dirt, ripping up the gentle earth she’d savored, and pulled herself into the tear. And I chose to be someone I wouldn’t want to fall again. Will Graelyn save Arch? Where are they off to next? Come back next week to find out! First off, did you see the exciting news yesterday? We're bringing back our beloved 10,000 Dawns Bonus Story Contest! Is there something in the universe of 10,000 Dawns you want to learn more about? A character we haven't explored you want to see more of? Now is your chance to make that a reality! Find out more at the link below. http://www.jameswylder.com/home/the-great-10000-dawns-bonus-story-contest-round-2 Art by Annie Zhu, Story by James Wylder All chapters are now available as a podcast from the Southgate Media Group! You can subscribe to the podcast version on iTunes and your RSS feed easily from libsyn: http://10thousanddawns.libsyn.com/ If you're new to 10kd, you can read the story from the start for free below: http://www.jameswylder.com/read-every-chapter.html You can download the latest chapter below in PDF or epub formats:
Chapter 22: The Pavements the Limit“Graelyn Scythes, what do you call this?” She couldn’t look her mother in the eye. “I didn’t have my eggs frozen so I could have a child who got a B-. Your siblings all did so much better than you when they were your age. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“It was boring” she wanted to say. She wanted to say that she had no interest in the book, and that she really couldn’t have cared less if Ivana had managed to win the great Horse Race that the Czar was throwing. The book didn’t tell her anything about the horse—it was supposedly so important, but they didn’t tell her anything she was wondering about it. What did it eat? What was it genetically predisposed to? Presumably it had been bred for racing, or at the very least was displaying desirable traits for horse races beyond her jockey’s spunky resolve to win the race. But none of it was in the book. Graelyn’s mind had drifted off reading it, and she’d found herself reading about horse biology rather than reading the book itself. Still, she finished it. It was just so hard to keep it in her brain. But that wasn’t what she said. “I’ll try better mom.” “You’d better, I don’t tolerate worthless people in this house. You’re either someone, or you’re nothing in this world and I’m not going to support you if you’re going to be a parasite on my back.” She curled up alone in her room that night like she always did, setting her glasses on the table beside her bed. She wished at that moment that she could be in another family, like the kind she heard about at school from her friends. She didn’t even have a stuffed animal anymore, she’d had a Giraffe she’d named Attenborough, but her Mom had said she was too old for it now. She was too old for everything maybe. Sitting up, she slid her skinny legs off the bed, and walked over to the window, which she popped open with a snap. It was a cold night in Moscow, and the air chilled her almost instantly, Goosebumps springing up on her arms and legs like hives. She didn’t flinch, and slid her legs out the window. She was eight years old, and she was already sick of this, sick of people, sick of her parents. Her head was throbbing with expectations, and she wondered if it would be worth it if she kept going. She’d seen someone jump out of a tall building before, her father had tried to shield her eyes as the man cracked on the pavement, but she saw through his fingers. The way he burst open was fascinating, she’d seen drawings of the insides of people, but never really seen the insides. It hadn’t really occurred to her that that much of a person’s mass was vital fluids before, and she felt silly for not comprehending that fact before that moment. Graelyn was high enough she would burst as well—the window in her room wasn’t even supposed to open the way she was doing it, one of the benefits of studying too much was she could already recode the simple drivers in the window machinery. Not child safe anymore. The wind was picking up, and she felt herself batted about by it, ready to pick her up and carry her away from here. She tried to remember the last time she’d been hugged, or been told she did a good job by her parents, and she couldn’t. “Not everyone gets a trophy,” she remembered her mother say, “that breeds weakness.” She imagined a trophy below her, and her body getting speared on it as she fell. “Got a trophy after all!” she’d tell her mother, though that would be impossible because the time it would take her mother to get down to the ground from where they lived in the skyscraper would be long enough she’d certainly be dead in that scenario. Graelyn felt the wind waft her, and felt her lip quiver. She felt like she was about to cry. Ironically, that was what did it, the fear of looking weak by crying was what made her finally let go and slide out of her window. She fell. She fell. She Fell. And it suddenly struck her that this was the worst decision she had ever made. She realized that all of her problems, everything with her family, were temporary. Sure, they’d have custody of her for years and years, but that would end, and then they wouldn’t have control of her anymore, she could cut them out of her life like a tumor. No one could tell her what to do, she would be alone, just the way she needed to be. No one to let her down, no one to fail her or demean her. She would be a lone standout against the mess of the world. She’d fix it. Or, she would, if she hadn’t jumped out of her window. She was going to die, and nothing she could do could change that, she was totally helpless. Falling. And then, she wasn’t. She felt an impact, but a light one, and she bounced up a bit, before falling back down into the net. It was hard to get her balance, but she sat up, trying to take in her blurry surroundings, as a light shone on her face. “It’s a girl Pavel, and a young one at that.” “I could have sworn the woman on floor 59 was going to call it quits any day now. Damn.” “You made the bet.” A security platform hovered over, and she reached out to them as they came by. A woman in black security armor lifted her up under the armpits, and set her down in the vehicle. “Jesus, what makes a girl like you jump out the window?” “She probably fell somehow, tried to get a better view or something.” “No, I jumped.” She confirmed. “Darn stupid thing to do, what do you think you’re doing? Your daddy beat you or something?” She shook her head no. “When did the nets get added?” “Not too long ago, some guy jumped and bust on the pavement a few months ago and we got them installed for insurance reasons.” Of course her inspiration was her undoing. “So come on kid, why’d you jump?” Graelyn shrugged, “I thought there was no one I could count on, no one worthwhile in the whole world.” “And now?” Graelyn smiled, “there is definitely someone worthwhile I can count on.” Well that happened. Gosh. Tune in next week, as we get out of Graelyn's memories, and back to the danger on Triton... Art by Annie Zhu, Story by James Wylder All chapters are also available as an audio podcast from the Southgate Media Group. http://www.southgatemediagroup.com/10000dawnspodcast You can also subscribe to the podcast version on iTunes and your RSS feed easily from libsyn: http://10thousanddawns.libsyn.com/ If you're new to 10kd, you can read the story from the start for free below: http://www.jameswylder.com/read-every-chapter.html You can download the latest chapter below in PDF or epub formats:
Chapter 21: The Burden of Solitude“What the hell is this?”
“Er, Atlantis base I just covered that, keep up.” “No, you’re on Titan. With Dogs that should have died literally centuries ago. How.” “How do you know they’re the same dogs?” Heinrich chimed in. “They’re the same dogs.” June and Graelyn said in unison, which seemed to piss both of them off slightly, “The dogs both had a distinctive mark on their left flank, its there.” Heinrich hadn’t been looking, but yes, yes there was. Some letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. “Is it really surprising they’re the same dogs? I mean, you know what’s going on here don’t you?” “I clearly don’t, miss…. Scythes. So I’d appreciate if you’d stop talking down to me.” Graeylin looked disappointed, and ran her hand along her tightly pony-tailed hair, her pin glinting off the bright lights. “Oh. Oh well.” She made a sort of dismissive gesture to no one in particular. “Its pretty obvious we’re not from here though at least? I’m sorry you didn’t figure out we were from the future.” “…What?” Heinrich said. “The future. You know, that time that’s not now but yet.” “I know what the future is.” “Are you sure? Regardless, you got here just in time.” She turned abruptly, and started walking down the silver, gray, and green hallway. “In time for what?” June called. “We’re going to be facing away from the solar system in a moment, and since it’s the year 2227, it should happen again.” “Stop teasing us. What?” “We should encounter another extra-solar object. Only not like any you’ve seen before. Follow me.” They obliged her, what else could they do, “and take off those bulky things this place is airtight with the best fake gravity money can buy, you just look ridiculous.” She pushed her glasses up into the bridge of her nose and kept walking. The man called Archimedes sighed, and squatted down to pet one of the dogs, “Sorry about that, she’s usually pretty snippy when people can’t keep up with her.” June nodded, and followed Graelyn down the hallway, she and Heinrich removing their helmets and gloves as they went. The facility varied between being gray silver and green, or gray silver and blue depending on the area they passed through though neither June nor Heinrich could particularly figure out why. Graelyn kept her eyes forward, with a supreme aura of confidence that moved beyond self esteem and into superiority. Parts of the place looked as though they had been ransacked, with knocked over tables and chairs, smashed computers, and broken mugs and glassware every which way. The walls were sometimes stained with what looked horribly like brown dried blood. Graelyn kept walking till she arrived at an open room with a big table in the middle displaying a very high quality hologram of Titan and the space surrounding it. Floating next to it in the air was a timer, that appeared to be ticking down. The rest of the room was lined with scientific equipment of all varieties, some recognizable (a seismograph, microscopes, flasks and Bunsen burners) and some that were utterly foreign (a strange device that appeared to be a floating silvery orb that shifted into geometric shapes while a panel under the floating orb displayed a seemingly random number with every shift) but the purpose of the room was fairly obvious: it was a lab and command center in one. It was also fairly messy, but in that way a room looks when someone is a clean freak but hasn’t had the time to clean up properly but still forced an effort at it. “You want an explanation to what’s going on? I’ll give you one.” “Aren’t you curious who we are?” Graelyn shook her head to June’s question. “Not in the slightest. I know who you are, because I knew you were going to arrive here. I’m from the future remember? You meet me and write all about it. Though dare I say, you kind of left out some of the awkward bits.” She waved her hand and pulled up a model of their ship. “If I’m correct, you have a WeN-D model AI on board correct?” June nodded, “that’s right.” “Could you patch her through your suit’s speakers? I know she’s already listening in.” Heinrich was surprised June followed the request without question; he really didn’t understand what June was doing. She clearly didn’t trust either of these people, but seemed to be willing to go along with them. Archimedes finally entered, carrying a dog under either arm in an unintentionally condescending show of strength. WeN-D’s voice then crackled in, “Hello?” “WeN-D, welcome to Triton.” “Thank you, Miss Scythes.” “Now WeN-D, you should find the list of codes to jack into this building’s mainframe in the Folder labeled F22 on your G drive, correct?” “That’s… How is that correct?” “Log in, this will make things easier.” Graelyn waved her hand through the hologram, and it shifted again, the colored light shimmering on her cat pin. The hologram showed a team of people in a clothing style that clearly hadn’t been created yet. Graelyn was there, though she looked younger, and more optimistic. “This is the team who worked on Project Atlantis. Officially, we were attempting to build underwater cities in the deep ocean. Unofficially, we were attempting to use the natural high pressure of the deep ocean on earth to facilitate experiments by our CEO, John Aril. He had a theory that there had been experiments in an alternate reality by another version of himself to create and manipulate tears in the fabric of reality in order to travel to or remove things from alternate realities.” June grimaced, “I’d say that’s impossible, but you’re here.” “Well, we’re from an alternate reality, so clearly it can happen. We’ve managed to get into your reality, just in the wrong time… But I’m getting ahead of myself.” Arch set the dogs down, and they walked over to the table and lay down in front of it. Graelyn didn’t pay particular attention. “Unfortunately, as it turned out not only was the experiment on our end not ready, but neither was the one being worked on in the other universe, which by the way did exist and Aril was totally right about. Also, we weren’t the first people to try hopping realities, and there seemed to be a sort of… Inter reality travel regulation group. An image appeared of a man in black robes wearing a ring with an arc emblem on it, or maybe it was just a sideways “C”. “They didn’t react kindly to our jaunting around, and the experiment went even worse than anticipated. We’ve been wandering around alternate realities for a while now, before ending up in our your time stream and… well, getting stuck there to. But this time is different, because in a way I’ve always known I’d meet you, June. I’ve been waiting a long time.” Graelyn pulled off her cat pin, holding it up to the light, and Heinrich noticed the obvious thing he’d been missing all this time: it was the same cat pin June was wearing, and the same one in the hologram. “That isn’t right though, you’re not supposed to have the pin are you?” “Am I? Sorry, its very hard to get the timing on these things right.” June paced around the table, stepping over the sleeping dog. “This has been all ready for so long, all these coincidences, all waiting for this year in this place for both of us to be here.” Graelyn nodded, “I’m afraid on that matter you know more than I do, I only know what was told to me.” Heinrich looked between the two women, they were staring each other down. “Okay, you two clearly are in cahoots somehow, and I want in. You’re keeping stuff from me, you’ve been keeping stuff from me this whole time apparently June, and I’m done with it. Tell me what on Earth is going on.” June sighed, “Heinrich, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen Graelyn.” “You’ve met before?” “No, she’s met me. I’ve never met her before.” Graelyn clarified. “But you knew you were going to meet her?” Graelyn nodded again. “God, okay, so…. Time travel is possible… Second question: this base has been here a long time if the dogs have survived, so how have you survived?” Graelyn ran her hand over her hair again, and closed her eyes. She looked like she was listening to a sound only she could hear. “Because for Arch and I we’ve only been here a few days, and this base isn’t always here… It comes and goes.” Arch spoke again, “Yeah, basically this building has been here for a few days a really long time ago, a few days in the 1970’s, and has been here for a few days now.” “That also isn’t possible…” Heinrich muttered. “You’ll see exactly how possible it is very soon. I’m afraid with your arrival, it means the 2227 cycle we’re on is about to reach the point where its going to happen.” Heinrich crossed his arms, “What’s going to happen?” Graelyn lowered her spectacles on her nose. She looked him right in the eyes. She leaned in slightly. The light of the hologram cut into her face, so her eye and cheek swirled with the seas of Neptune. “What’s going to happen,” she began, “is first contact.” There are some things you can say that people instantly know the power of, statements that hold a weight beyond the seeming face of their characters. These are things with implications, bold statements that open up profound weight beyond the echo of their waves of the flow of their ink. This was not only one of those statements, but it was one to which there was no way to immediately respond. The words took up the next few minutes, though there wasn’t anything else said. Anything Heinrich could think of saying didn’t seem appropriate, like slathering jam on a rock. As time ticked on though, the importance of the weight whittled till he could finally espouse something, even if it was totally unbefitting of the weight of it all. “So… Aliens?” “Yes. Well, sort of. More like a probe. I can’t tell you much about the future, but I can tell you that this won’t be the last contact with Extra-solar beings we’ll have. Of course, no one knows about this in the future. It’s all locked away in the files of Heirum J. Whitehead’s 'the Pilgrimage' group who you’ll be reporting back to. But what we do here is still going to be important, and its going to influence the future in huge ways.” “And you knew about this, June?” She shook her head, “I didn’t know all of that...” She looked at the hologram, “So what do we have to do?” “Keep your spacesuits on. I’ll be getting mine on in a second. Arch is fine as he is.” * * * * * They met Arch and Graelyn at the airlock. She looked kind of awkward in a spacesuit, the way people who weren’t used to space do, bumping into corners, and expecting their reflexes to be faster. Arch looked just as imposing as always. “I’m still not sure of a lot of this… They haven’t explained everything well, like why the building disappears and reappears as they claim it does.” “I know. And the only way we’re going to learn is if we stick by them. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Be patient. We’ll get our answers.” WeN-D piped into their comms, “Er, hello, hi. I’m sensing some really weird things from space. You’ve almost rotated into a full-darkside position from Neptune. I checked, you’re on the equator, so you’ll be on the furthest point on the farthest place in our solar system. Whatever that means. “Thank you WeN-D. Keep monitoring everything, we need someone who can analyze all the data we’re getting.” “I’m on the job.” “Great.” Graelyn pushed the button to open the airlock, and the four of them stepped in, leaving the two dogs whimpering behind them. The airlock shut, decompressed, and opened up into what was both the darkest and most brilliantly colored sky they had ever seen. With the light from the sun absent, it was darker than you can imagine, but the stars were bountiful in a way they had never seen. It wasn’t that much further out as the scale of the universe goes, but it was enough. Above them a cathedral ceiling of light lit their path, the dust they kicked up incense, the arbitrary point they walked towards their labyrinthian center. WeN-D said the readings were increasing, and as the moon turned, the darkness and lights grew more and more, till where they stood was it, the farthest place and the furthest. And they knew it was, somehow. In their bones and in their blood they felt so distant and so put away from anything they had known. It was then in that distance that the sky opened up in a tear of fantastic blue and white, literally. For a moment they felt it wash over them, felt that there was something wrong with reality, that it was wounded, and from that wound shot out a silvery white ball, rocketing downward like a meteor. It should have impacted the moon, and tore up the ground, sending the four humans flying like bowling pins, or crushed them under dirt, rock, and ice. But instead it stopped 1.23 meters off the ground and hovered there for a moment. Its skin was silvery blue and crystalline, with white and faint black designs on it. The ball began moving, slowly this way and that way, always maintaining its height of 1.23 meters. Any noises it made were intransible in the near vacuum. The ball was, according to the measurements WeN-D took from the visual data, also 1.23 meters in diameter, and according to the same visuals was moving in the shape of an asterisk. It moved, out in one direction, and back in towards its center landing point. It did this over and over again, while the four (or five, depending on who you count as living) watched it. “Should we attempt to communicate with it?”Heinrich asked. June shook her head, “How on Eart- how could we?” Graelyn was focused on it with a fixed stare. “Is it from the Council Incursion?” Archimedes asked. Graelyn nodded, “It’s some sort of probe. A scout.” “Council Incursion?”Heinrich didn’t take his eyes off of the orb. “Its in the future, don’t worry about it.” “You mean there are more of these things?” “No. There are it’s creators. That’s why this is important. This is the first shot, and whatever we do here is going to reverberate through history... A lot of histories, actually. Maybe we’ll capture it and gain a technical edge. Maybe it will report back on us and they’ll have plenty of tactical data in order to begin their assaults. Maybe it will just explode or something. I don’t know. But what I do know is its up to us, right at this moment to decide that with our actions.” The ball stopped moving in an asterisk. “This isn’t your first time seeing something like this then. Tell us what to do.” Graelyn tried to ignore the clammy feeling she had as the bead of sweat rolled down her face, and the suit’s automatic systems blasted cold air there and began to absorb the moisture. The ball suddenly and silently dropped to the ground. “Huh.” She muttered. “First step, lets start running.” Archimedes said. “I don’t see why Arch it hasn’t-“ Four legs popped out of the orb, right where some of the patterns on the shell had been. Its sharp feet pierced the icy ground as it barreled towards them. “Oh dear.” “Run- move move MOVE!” “Why is it running with legs when it could float?” “Don’t question the alien robot’s motivations Grae!” “WeN-D we might need a pick up or something.” “No! We need to trap it. It wants to learn from us, we have to sto-“ she tripped on a rock, and just as swiftly was pulled up by Archimedes large hand. “-p it from leaving here and we’re the best bait there is. Back to the base.” They ran from it at breakneck speak, bounding and leaping in the low gravity. The orb seemed like it should have caught up with them, and June looked at Graelyn across the dark plain with a look of indignation. Graelyn looked back, maybe her curiosity got the better of her, maybe despite her cool demeanor she was as terrified as she should have been. Whatever the reason her head turned, and her attention lifted up off the ground and floated to the charging orb kicking up moon dust. That was when she tripped a second time. It wasn’t a graceful trip, like you’d see in the cinema, she didn’t fall straight towards the dirt with a stunned expression on her face, arms ready for the fall: her ankle spun around more than it should have, and in the low gravity she not only fell but corkscrewed. As she spun her face came into view every other moment which gave her the effect of a cheap animation as her face became more and more shocked with every rotation. She hit the ground head first, and bounced. A hand reached out above her, and gently kept her from floating off. Instead she hovered there, face down, sinking slowly. The other hand attached to the person stabilizing her reached out the other direction, towards the charging orb. It stopped, inches away from him. A single leg lifted up, and seemed to gently poke him in the chest. It wasn’t so innocuous for very long, as from under the curved fore part of the leg, silvery white tendrils that looked wound like rope slithered out, and began feeling around his chest. Archimedes tensed (it was him, of course it was). June and Heinrich grabbed Graelyn and slid her into a standing position. The orb and Arch stared off, or something like starting each other off. If there had been sound, it probably would have been humming in an ominous pulsing way, but it was inappropriately silent instead. June pulled on Graelyn’s hand, but she remained rooted in place, her eyes fixed on Archimedes. “Arch?” She whimpered. She whimpered? She never whimpered. “Uh, Grae?” “Just hold still, you’ll be okay.” She said firmly, as though her resolve had never been shaken in her life. June took a hold of Graelyn’s shoulder, and shook her head. “How are you sure?” “Trust me. I have your pin right?” Graelyn looked back at Arch, the tendrils were wrapping around his chest. “They’re trying to get inside my carapace Grae.” “Damn it.” She tried to wipe her brow instinctively, but there was a helmet in between. “Cut it. Cut the probes.” “What if that sets it off and it goes berserk?” “Arch we’ll deal with that, get free.” “We need to get back to the building.” “I’m not leaving Arch. I told him to get in front of it.” “I’ll hold it off Graelyn, go.” “I’m not leaving you.” “Heinrich, grab her.” June and Heinrich took Graelyn by the arms and pulled her back. She tensed at first, letting them pull her with light resistance as Arch became enveloped by the cables. Then something clicked inside her like a watch mechanism, and she turned with them, and moved as quickly as she could, hiding the wince in her breath as her twisted ankle hit the ground. “WeN-D we need a pick up. Now.” June basically yelled it into her comlink. “Not the base?” “Not the base.” She told Heinrich. Graelyn tried not to look back at Arch. She had never been the greatest partner to him, and she knew that. Her concern was generally beyond people, beyond things. If there was a clock, she could try to work out the things inside it by how it moved and sounded. She visualized the insides of people to, made guesses about what was going on inside them by any outer clues she could get. Where some people undressed people with their eyes, she skinned them. Today though, she could imagine the cords wrapping around him, squeezing his outer shell till the squishy bits inside burst. This image though wasn’t fascinating, it made her stomach churn, and Graelyn tried to push back everything she’d been told as a child. ...Is Arch gunna be okay? What will Graelyn do... and what is she pushing back? Find out next week on 10,000 Dawns! Same Dawn time, same Dawn place! Audio version will be a little late this week as I've been sick. -Jim Art by Annie Zhu, Story by James Wylder All chapters are also available as an audio podcast from the Southgate Media Group. http://www.southgatemediagroup.com/10000dawnspodcast You can also subscribe to the podcast version on iTunes and your RSS feed easily from libsyn: http://10thousanddawns.libsyn.com/ If you're new to 10kd, you can read the story from the start for free below: http://www.jameswylder.com/read-every-chapter.html Chapter 17: Necessary DinosaursHer fingers ran through the blades of grass like they were on the back of a beloved pet, her eyes closed, her cheek against the same grass, glasses carelessly askew. She could fall asleep here, but it occurred to her she had in fact just woken up, and perhaps she should at least pretend she wanted to do something other than sleep today. Rolling over, she slowly pushed herself up and brushed the grass off her face. Arch was a few meters away, either asleep or staring at the liquid clouds above them.
“Good Morning.” Arch said, and Graelyn wondered exactly how long she had slept. She pushed her glasses up and rubbed her eyes. She ha that weird feeling you get when you sleep the night in your clothes, the feeling that you need to change them, like they've absorbed just too much of your sweat and they've settled somewhat wrong around your body. “Did I sleep the night on this hill?” She said, and Arch nodded. “Apparently a lot of people do that here. There were tons of those Dawn folks just sleeping out here under the stars last night. The ground here is really comfortable, whatever that means.” She looked up at the sky, and watched someone in swim trunks jump from a floating island into one of the liquid clouds. Their friends were already swimming in it. “How do they get down from the cloud-things without hurting themselves? How do the islands and clouds float like that?” She mused. “Always curious.” “Always skeptical as well. But clearly it works, I just don't know how.” “Don't think too hard about it.” John Vice said suddenly from behind her. “Bwah!?” Graelyn said as she bolted up in surprise and stumbled a few steps down the hill. “Er, sorry.” Johnathan said, holding out a plate of breakfast food and two milk packages. “I uh, thought you'd like breakfast.” “Breakfasts are not meant to make me fall down hills!” “Touche. Well, anyways here's some food. The plate was stacked up with enough food for the two of them, though Arch found it awkward to stuff it in his mouth under his mask. He seemed not entirely at ease with the concept of chewing either. “Why don't you just take your mask off?” Johnathan asked. “Its considered rude to show your face where I come from. Faces are private things. You don't share them with anyone but your closest loved ones.” He nodded, and reached for one of Graelyn's grapes, and she pushed his hand away. “Okay, my turn.” Graelyn said, “How do the cloud-swimming pools and islands float?” “The simplest way to explain it is the laws of reality are different here. There are different rules about how objects interact with each other. Gravity has different rules, for instance. What exactly those rules are is beyond me, but they're a thing.” “Okay, so if the laws of reality are so different here, are there some vastly different native species to it? Really alien things?” Vice looked a bit uncomfortable. “Er, did Kinan really not tell you how Spiral came about? Jesus that woman is either totally terse or giving you the longest speech...” Graelyn and Arch shook their heads. “Was she supposed to tell us something?” She asked. “Er, yes. Spiral isn't a natural plane of reality. Kinan made it.” Graelyn dropped her milk carton, and it spilled over her lap. She cursed and stood up, trying to wipe it up. “Ugh, damn it. Okay, I must have misheard you. I thought you said she made this place. Do you mean she ordered the construction of the buildings or...?” “No, I mean she made it. You'd have to ask her how she did it, but I know she doesn’t think she could do it again. Kinan has had a hard life, harder than she'll tell you. If I was her I'd have just retired here and let the rest of the Universe go about its business, but she isn't that kind of person.” Arch finished chewing a muffin, and joined in, “When you say she had a hard life, does that have something to do with the way she talks?” Johnathan nodded. “She got some sort of brain damage when she was much younger. Don't ask her about that though. She doesn't like remembering it. She lost a lot of the muscle control in her face, and it slowed her speech and slurred it... I never knew her before it happened, that's just how Kinan has always been, but she used to be a beautiful singer, or so I'm told.” In the distance, a group of hoodied figures moved towards a crystals circle in the ground. “Does she know you're telling us all this?” Arch asked, concerned. “Of course. I'm not into outing people's personal lives. Its my job to tell new recruits this stuff so they don't bother her with it. You'd be surprised how many people want to ask her dumb stuff like if she's fit to be the leader here because of that. Its good to clear it up.” “We wouldn't ask her something like that.” Arch said. Graelyn snapped in Arch's direction and nodded. “Glad to hear it. Still, now you know what you know.” The figures in the distance got close to the circle, and a blue swirl erupted from it. “What's going on down there?” Graelyn asked. Vice grabbed one of her grapes while she was distracted, and popped it in his mouth. “Looks like we have visitors.” “Returning people from missions or something?” He shook his head. “No, doesn't look like that.” Figures began to step out of the portal, and Graelyn saw that Kinan, Miranda, and Jenny the woman in the poodle skirt with the katana were all in the greeting party. The first people to step out were all dressed in what looked like coats from the American Revolution, but Green. They were even wearing the appropriate foot and leg wear, but also had some strange gauntlets covered in crystals on one arm, and eye wear that seemed to contain some needless gears and gizmos. The gauntlets were aesthetically similar, and it all gave the impression they had raided a clock shop on their way over. Following them were a group of people in black robes, similar to the robes that man who'd shown up in Atlantis base with Ares wore. Arch and Graelyn both got much more interested when they came through, but were also sort of confused. Without asking for any explanation, it was fairly obvious they were some sort of cultural branch off. Though what that meant was anyone's guess, really. They also were wearing the gauntlets, but theirs were aesthetically different, less cobbled together, more sleek, the crystals carefully cut to fit carefully shaped settings. The three groups walked to meet each other, and began a triangular conversion. “Who are they?” She asked John. “They're some of our rivals. Members of some of the less powerful groups trying to influence the universes.” “Are they here to ask you for help? Since you're more powerful?” He laughed, and pulled his knees up to his chest. “Powerful? We're definitely not that.” “You took down the government of Earth.” “We gave some people with an army the tools to take down the government of one Earth. We enabled some people who already would have been doing what we helped them to do, just shortened the time scale.” Graelyn looked over at Arch and frowned. She wished she could read his face for reassurance. “You talk so casually about this, like the power to do what you did on Songbird's world isn't... Massive. You changed the fate of a whole universe.” “Well yeah, but its just one universe.” Scale. Its a fairly important thing. The scale of how you perceive the world affects everything about you understand it, after all. Lets say you grew up in a small town, the kind of super tiny place where nearly everyone is the same ethnicity and no buildings are higher than two stories, then you go to a city, a big multicultural metropolis full of skyscrapers and more people in your sight passing randomly down the street than you'd seen before in your life. This would naturally change your view of the scale of the universe. In same way, if someone who had just helped violently overthrow the government of an entire planet, interfered in its history, and then extracted you from that planet by threatening its government told you that the group he worked for “wasn't powerful” and then told you it was “just one universe”, this might change your sense of scale. If you were Graelyn, you might sit there wide eyed, your jaw loose, staring. If you were Arch, you might shake your head, and say something like: “You can't be so cavalier about lives. Just because there are a lot of universes doesn't mean each person there isn't still a person.” If you were Graelyn, you might then awkwardly point at Arch as if to say “yeah, what he said!” and if you were Johnathan Vice, you might frown, and reply, “I'm not being Cavalier about it...” “Oh, but you are. Do you think people are replaceable?” Johnathan scratched his head, “Er, well, they are.” “No, they aren't.” “No, let me explain...” He took a breath, “They are literally replaceable. As in, we've replaced people before.” “...Go on.” Vice stood up, and looked down at the triangle of talkers. A man in robes seemed to be yelling at Kinan, a woman in robes behind him looked awkward. Both Kinan and a man in a colonial Green coat stood placidly. Jenny was being physically held back by Miranda. “We were trying to influence a world very similar to the one you were on. It was a bit different though, the Revolution wasn't communist it was... Socialist? Honestly I can't really remember. It all blurs together. But those people you met, Alice and her gang? They died in a vtol crash. The parts failed and the pilot wasn't paying attention. We checked forward in history, and saw with them dead the whole movement fell apart. We tried changing its history, but well, there actually is only so much you can do unless you're some sort of lord of time. We couldn't prevent their deaths. But Kinan realized that no one actually saw them die, the vtol crashed in an empty field somewhere. So... What if we cleaned up the bodies, made sure no one found them, and just... Popped in a different Alice MacLeod?” “You can't be serious.” “I'm serious. This is a war, and Kinan is an interdimenstional warlord. She has an army, and I'm in it. So Jenny, Miranda, Joseph, he's the Pottawatomie guy, and I all slipped into a reality where the revolution was losing, losing badly, but where all of them were still alive. We talked to the versions of them there, and convinced them to abandon their reality for a new one. There was no hope there, they couldn't do any good there but die an inglorious death. We dropped the charred bodies off of their doubles into their reality, and shipped them over to the new one. They took over where the others had left off, and liberated Earth for their cause.” “Didn't they miss their home? The people they'd abandoned?” Arch asked. Vice shrugged. “I never asked.” “You should have asked.” There was something off about this whole thing, something that didn't make sense to Graelyn, she tried to put the pieces together. The man in robes pointed at Kinan angrily, she said something back to him, and then to green coat, who nodded. They began to move back from each other. “We saved billions of people by what we did. I don't have any regrets.” “They were still different people, people thought they were the same, sure, but they weren't.” “They thought they were, isn't that all that matters.” Arch's coating reddened. “No.” “Hold up,” Graelyn cut in, “If you guys don't care about whether or not the Revolution wins, what exactly is your criteria for changing history?” “Kinan showed you a fallen world, didn't she?” Graelyn nodded. “Anytime a world develops the ability to link to other realities, two things happen: they begin to synch up with the prime reality they are attached to, and they open themselves up for invasion by the Council. If we break the chain of history, diverge the narrative of that universe enough, it stops... Synching up. It becomes harder to mount a large scale invasion. We chose who wins based on who is least likely to want to build inter reality travel.” Graelyn stood up to face him, she clenched a fist, she'd expected so much more, “That's it? That's it?!? You don't have any higher purpose, no ideal you're fighting for? Its just... A cold practical decision?” “Our principle is saving the 10,000 Dawns. Our principle is saving the most lives possible.” “Guys, I think you might want to watch this.” Arch said softly. They turned back to the grass field below where Kinan had her sword drawn, and was spinning it. Jenny and the woman in the robe, where standing to the side. The man in robes had his gauntleted arm extended, and energy was swirling around it. “What are they doing?” “They're going to duel.” Kinan moved into several positions, flexing and stretching, going through the motions. She made every movement look so fluid and natural, you'd think that it was second nature to every human till you tried to do it yourself. Then she stopped, and turned to Jenny. Her mouth moved, and then Jenny shook her head. The man in the black robes and the woman in black did the same. “What are they doing?” “Jenny is Kinan's second, just like in old duels you read about in school. She and Lawrencia were trying to negotiate a truce, clearly it didn't work. Now they're going to fight.” “Is she going to kill him?” Graelyn asked. “You don't wonder if he'll kill her?” Graelyn shuddered. “I don't really want to wonder either.” Kinan gave a final flourish of her sword, and stepped forward, as the man in the hood did. They began to circle each other. The man in green counted down, they could tell because he held up fingers. When they reached 0, they sprung. Kinan launched herself in the air as hoods held up his arm to unleash a streak of green lightning through the sky. Kinan twisted through the air and spun around it, pushing her foot out to land a kick on the man's shoulder, then as they both fell she drew her sword across his chest to sever him in two, but he put his gauntlet between the sword and his chest, causing a clang that could be heard from all the way up the hill. Kinan moved inhumanly quick, using the push back from the blocked blow she spun in the air to land on her feet and began charging at hoods, who began to shoot lighting at her, but she leapt to the left and right perfectly out of range of the electricity, never losing a step as she landed. The man began to back up as she encroached on him, and Kinan moved her sword into a thrusting position. Hoods dodged, barely, throwing his left arm up in the air and sidestepping the blow. Kinan didn't hesitate, she turned her wrists and brought the sword up into the man's armpit. The man looked shocked, as the blood started trickling down her sword. She didn't stop. She pulled the sword back, and put her foot forward, and around the back of his knee, while she brought the sword around, and down on the other arm in a carefully controlled blow that cut the straps holding the heavy gauntlet in place, and pushed it down off his arm, leaving a bloody scrape where the blade took of some of his skin on the way off. She pulled her foot back at the same time, while shoving the man. He dropped to the ground, bloody and dazed. A person in black robes began administering medical aid while Jenny yelled something and the woman in black robes made a clear and broad gesture: they yield. “Is this how you solve all your disputes? Bloodshed?” “He'll be fine. Greggor is a moron, this isn't the first time Kinan's had to kick his ass.” Kinan looked up like she'd heard them, and nodded, wiping the blood off her sword onto a cloth Jenny had handed her. “You didn't answer my question.” He sighed. “No, this isn't how we settle all our problems, but like I said, this is a war. Its better we solve some of these things in duels than waste time killing lots of each other.” “I suppose if she dies, you'd just get another Kinan then.” Vice smiled, and Graelyn felt a bit patronized. “There's only one Kinan. But now that she's finished down there, she'd like me to take you guys to her. She has something to show you.” Kinan was waiting for them on the top of a hill, watching a bubble of water filled with swimmers pass by. A few people on a floating island waved down to the swimmers from it, and a few leapt down to join in the fun, splashing into the floating bubble of water. Graelyn, Arch and John climbed the hill, and stood behind her, expecting her to say something, after a moment, Graelyn coughed loudly. Kinan didn't look behind her, just patted the grass next to her. Taking the hint, they took a seat. “So, your mission.” She began abruptly. “We've found a universe we're fairly certain has a back door cut into the labyrinth where you can access a special bifrost into the prime reality. It will be on the edge of the 10,000 Dawns, so expect things to be different there. Very different. I can't follow you, none of us can, for fear someone will notice. Part of the reason you'll be able to get in is no one is looking for you, but as I said before even if no one would notice me I couldn't enter that path. Its blocked from me.” Graelyn pushed her feet into the dirt gently so she left the impressions of her heels in it. “Kinan, if this is a war, then are people going to try to kill us? Duel us?” Kinan stared off at the sky. “Not duel you, no. In all likelihood attempts to stop you will be more subtle than that. But I can't predict what they'll be.” “I don't think you've been entirely honest with us.” Arch said, “About what you're doing.” Kinan sighed, and looked at Arch. “You're right. Because the truth is a bit odd.” “We can take it.” She held his gaze. “The truth is, Arch, that all reality is is a story. This war, the dawns, its all fiction.” Arch took in what she said, and laughed, his skin lighting up in yellow smiley faces laughing along with him. “We're flesh and blood, or flesh and oil and blood, we're not a story.” Kinan pulled out a a fist full of grass and threw it into the breeze. “What happens when you die, Arch?” “You go to the underworld.” Kinan's eye twitched, whatever that meant. “What do you think Graelyn?” She shrugged. Kinan continued: “When you die, people talk about you. You stop being who you were, you become just what people think about you. Your good intentions, your dreams, the things you did alone, they vanish. You become a two dimensional caricature of who you were. You become a story. We have the unfortunate case of becoming stories while we're still alive.” Kinan snapped her fingers, and a gentle rumble began from the distance, as a shape began moving towards them. “When the prime reality changes... It changes us. It rewrites us. My job is to make different worlds so different from the prime reality that... You can't reconcile them. The differences are too pronounced, the changes can't occur. If the changes are small enough, they can get smoothed over, and the story can form part of the prime reality's structure. I'm fighting a war for control of our own narrative, our own story. The prime reality is the biblical canon, we need to be its apocrypha.” “We need to be Tubol-Cain...” Arch said. “What?” “Its something Graelyn said.” “Yeah, its a story that's not in the Bible: this guy named Tubol-Cain hung out on Noah's ark, hidden on it. He survived the great flood by being extraneous.” “Then yes, we need to be Tubol-Cain.” The shape on the horizon grew closer. It had legs. “When you break into the Prime reality, it will change everything for us.” “If we do.” Graelyn pessimised. “Yes, if. But if you make it, we'll be influencing their story. If you can make a change in their narrative, they won't be able to overwrite us, because they'll need us to exist. Do you understand?” “Honestly?” Graelyn asked. “Honestly.” Kinan replied. “That sounds like pseudo scientific mambo-jumbo.” Kinan shrugged. “Hence why I didn't phrase it that way before. But I see our guest has arrived.” Kinan gestured toward what had once been the distant shape. It became clear now that it was a Tyrannosaurus Rex. “What.” Graelyn said. “Hello!” Said Arch. “What I need to learn now is what is different about your universe, every universe has some special power in it, whether you know it or not. It can be bold like fireballs, or subtle like the clegging in Songbird's world.” Graelyn raised her hand. Kinan blinked, and then called on her. “Yes, that is great, but why do you need a T-Rex.” “Well how else am I supposed to terrify you into manifesting whatever your skill is? It will be easier for you than Arch, because he's so modified. Here take this wristband.” She dropped a band in Graelyn's lap. “Uh, seriously?” “Seriously. This is part of your training. I'm going to chase you, and you're going to try to escape.” Graelyn took her glasses off, and rubbed them clean, then put them back on. “You can't be serious.” “You'll be totally safe.” Graelyn remembered how insanely quick she'd been in the duel. She could probably kill a T-Rex in a fair fight with that sword... Then it occurred to her. “Kinan, you said that you'd be chasing me, not the dinosaur...” But Kinan was already crossing her legs, and closing her eyes, she seemed to be meditating. The dinosaur began to sway gently. Graelyn quickly threw off her suit jacket, leaving the hoodie on, and slipped on the wrist band. Okay, training, this was just like gym class. Which she hadn't been particularly good at. But she could do this. Right? Kinan opened her eyes and mouth, and they all glowed golden. The T-Rex's eyes flashed the same color, and Arch looked at her “Okay we can do this together.” “No, if this is something she needs to know... Then I'll do this.” the T-Rex stomped towards her, and Graelyn ran. The big stompy footprints followed her, and she could smell its breath, rancid like rotten meat. She ran hard, and felt its jaws close behind her, nicking her hood. Was the dinosaur actually going to try to eat her? Kinan said she was going to chase her... So she was what, possessing the dinosaur? That was ridiculous, but it had to be the case. Huffing, running her arms back and forth, she tried to think of what she could do to outrun the dinosaur, her wristband hummed and beeped. There was nothing she could think of, no special power. So she just kept running, the dinosaur nipping at her heels. She ran and ran, till she couldn't run anymore. She collapsed, panting, and felt the warm jaws of the dino reach around her. It didn't bite down though, instead she found herself scooped up like a ball by a golden retriever. The T-Rex turned around, and headed back towards the hill, stomping all the way. The big lizard dropped her down gently, if a little smelly and moist, next to Kinan, and then stepped back politely. Kinan's eyes stopped glowing, and she took in a deep breath, looking down at her human hands as if checking she was in her own body. Arch put his hand on her shoulder and she nodded to note she was okay. “Okay, that was pretty crazy. Were you the dinosaur?” Kinan nodded. “I learned how to do that a long time ago. Its a difficult technique. But it didn't seem like any showed up in you.” She reached out and looked at the band on Graelyn's wrist, her eyes looked confused. “Something should have though, surely. The band can usually detect them when you get enough adrenaline...” Kinan removed the band, and scrolled through its options. “Was trying to eat me really necessary!?!?” “I wasn't going to eat you, don't be melodramatic.” Kinan looked back at Arch and Graelyn. “Its not reading anything.” “Okay, question about your pseudo-science here: what exactly is that detecting differences from?” “The prime universe. Its about as boring a generic place as you can get, till it started stealing things from more interesting universes. But your universe... There's nothing this can detect. You don't have any powers it can detect different from Prime... So why would you be linked to it at all?” “I don't know, I'm not the sorcerer.” “I'm not a sorcerer.” “Right, you're a warlord.” “Yes.” Kinan said seriously. “But that doesn't stop this being odd. If you'd had a special technique, we could have trained you in it, pushed the boundaries of it. But you don't.” “So we're not special.” “I never said that.” “But we're not.” Kinan rolled her eyes. “It just changes the mission perimeters. You'll have to be careful. The prime universe is a dangerous place. You'll be trying to get to the year 2227, on the moon of Neptune, Triton.” “There's nothing on Triton, other than made up monsters to scare children.” Graelyn said. “I'm afraid there is. That's where a probe from another universe will come through, checking it out. You need to capture it, and get it to someone who can analyze it in their universe. That will change their narrative, change it to one where the opening up of their world into other dimensions isn't something that passively happens to them.” Arch rose up, dusting himself off. “That's a pretty big change.” “It will change everything.” Kinan said. “If you do this, you'll create a whole new story.” “And you'll send us home.” “And I'll send you home.” “Then what are we waiting for, I just want to get this over with.” Graelyn said. Kinan stood up, and offered a hand to Graelyn, who ignored it and got up on her own. “Go eat, go sleep, I'll drop you off there in the morning.” Kinan began to walk off, “Try to enjoy your life for ten seconds.” Graelyn stared silently after her, Kinan's boots leaving a trail of footprints in the soft soil as she left, the grass giving gently underfoot. “We could go swimming.” Arch said, pointing at the bubbles. “I suppose we could have fun.” Said Graelyn dejectedly, “But just this once.” Kinan came to get them the next morning, followed by Johnathan and Miranda Vice. They'd spent the previous evening swimming in the floating bubbles, diving off of the floating islands into them. Graelyn swam through the bubble watching the dinosaurs walk below through through the bottom of the bubble. She tried to figure out the physics of this world, but gave up when she realized Arch could somehow swimming the bubble to without sinking, a fact that seemed to confuse him as well. She laughed, and took in a lung full of water on accident, which her body somehow processed into air. That was the real moment she gave up trying to figure out the laws of this world, and just enjoyed the feeling of being in the water. It was quiet in the bubble, her hair floating free in the water. She could have stayed there forever, but of course they eventually got hungry. Climbing out of the bubble onto a ladder that dipped down into it from a passing island, they looked for something to eat and settled on some sort of vat grown shrimp meat for dinner, cooked by a woman in a sari who put the meat on kebabs with pinnacle and green peppers, grilling them to add a smoky flavor. Each bite was juicy, but still firm to the teeth, and perfectly complimented the other flavors on the kebab. Graelyn drank some kind of fruit flavored tea, while Arch just had water. They'd slept under the stars a second time, the lights in the sky winking as if they knew that such nights were rare and to be enjoyed. “I see you found the swim suit dispensary.” Kinan said as she set down the tray of breakfast food. Graelyn picked up a plate with a Belgian waffle on it, then a jug of syrup which she drenched it in, and dug in. Arch ate paste. “It was cleverly disguised with a large sign that said 'Swimsuit dispensary.” Kinan nodded. “We're very good hiders here.” “So when do we leave?” Arch said. “Whenever you're ready. We've packed bags for you with what you might need. Swimsuits are apparently a part of that.” “What do you mean?” Graelyn said with her mouth full. “I mean we'll be dropping you off on a beach.” Graelyn and Arch exchanged looks: not the worst place to be left off, not at all. Kinan opened up a portal on the field, throwing a handful of the crystal dust into the breeze, and swirling her hand, as if she was (and she probably was) controlling the wind to spin the dust into a circle, and gestured toward it. Graelyn had her swimsuit on under her usual clothes, with the Dawn hoodie on beneath the jacket. A pack was slung over her shoulder. Arch had on a pair of swim trunks, which were of course entirely unnecessary for him, hidden under his usual long coat and his hat. “Good luck.” Kinan said, “I'm counting on you.” Graelyn smiled faintly, and walked toward the portal. Arch waved goodbye to everyone, and followed her. She looked into the swirling white of the portal, and took a deep breath. She just had to do this, and she could go home. She could get her cat back, and just fade away. No one would have to notice her again. But as she stepped into the swirl, it occurred to her that that was probably just denial. Tune in next week as Graelyn and Arch's mission begins... And not in the way they'd expect! |
James Wylder
Poet, Playwright, Game Designer, Writer, Freelancer for hire. Archives
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