Winter's View, by Jacob Black

​This story is part of a 10,000 Dawns Christmas. You can read the other stories and fine more about this author by clicking HERE.

Winter's View
by Jacob Black

Winter’s View, by Jacob Black


Winter fell over the omniverse as a hushed shadow, creeping its chill down the quantum strands of creation. The clusters of multiverses raced and ricocheted down the laced web and realities shivered as their biospheres frosted over, their life inside huddling with loved ones. Roasting shades of sunset orange, the color of space and time merging over the void, shuddered into swathes of winter colors. The omniverse cooled into iced blues and freezing whites of solstices, harvests, and century-long curses of ice and slush.


From the View, the omniverse moved across the horizon fields as a slow shift towards infinity, and the cooling of reality was at once blinding and intoxicating. Even now, with the View filling to its brim with every delegate, celebrity, and socialite with an invitation, all eyes were to the dimensional aboves and belows. Temporal pathways and time corridors from all over the omniverse lead to the View’s portholes, all crowded with lifeforms and sentients, many from universes and multiverses that would never meet, much less communicate, and all looked at the shifting colors. Even the High Society, its energy ribbon wrapped tight around the Dreamscape, had to stop the flight of its Planet Freighters and Solar System Cruisers, the pilots too awed to pay attention to where they were going.


The View’s name hadn’t been chosen for nothing, after all.


“You know what I think is funny?” Max said, chewing the inside of his cheek as he fished for a cigarette. Jet DuBlanc looked at her partner, still trying to get used to his choice of body for the week. A transparent shimmer of something humanoid but animalistic, glossy fur and shifting fractals, his interior workings visible like the ticking innards of a living clock. His leather jacket clashed in a way he made work.


“Mm?” she responded, flicking her lighter and letting him breathe in the neon flame, bringing his cigarette to life with an nasty cloud of smoke. The grey pooled in his crystal lungs, a visible haze underneath the layers of twisting mathematics he called skin and fur.


“Right now, you have Solstices and Winter Celebrations happening everywhere. Around us, above us, below us. Everyone here, at the View, ready to rub shoulders and celebrate. Literally every example from every possible form of life in the entire span of creation, every possible reality. You couldn’t even count the number of religions and traditions on display here. All gathering just for the idea of a winter celebration. Every possible holiday.”


“And?”


“There’s still going to be someone who gets pissy if I try to say ‘Happy Holidays.’”


“Well of course. There’s a war on, y’know.”


He rolled his eyes and did his best impression of a long-dead orange and megalomaniac capitalist. “The war on Christmas!”


The View was an impossible sphere, built in seven dimensions, anchored into a fragment of an early universe. It embraced impossibility of itself, drifting safely in arm’s reach of the final strand of omniversal existence. From within, the scope of everything was on full display, a beautiful sight of each and every universe and dimensional tangent strung together by the web filaments of the omniverse’s pulsating heart.


No one knew who first constructed a restaurant and nightclub in the View, but no one could say it had been a bad idea.


“Hope the band’s nice tonight,” Max grumbled, finishing his cigarette as they entered the No Smoking Please energy field. He looked at Jet and smiled through his shimmering. “You look really pretty tonight. Trying to woo one of our clients?


She rolled her eyes. “Our clients don’t really understand or appreciate biological beauty. In my experience, it puts them on edge, makes them anxious.”


His grin turned naughty. “I think you could have shown up as anything biological and make them anxious. They’re only really comfortable around their computer terminals and loom plinths.”


She chuckled. “You know their looms don’t actually look like fabric looms, right?” She slid her jacket off, noting a few eyes catching the glint of her gown. Red satin, a touch of diamonds here and there, matching her lipstick. Her blue hair was striking against the dress, or at least it had been the last she checked.


“My hair’s still blue, right?”


Max tilted his head and squinted his eyes. “Yeah, but I think you’re going a bit aqua around the temples.”


“Shit. Doesn’t clash with the dress to much, does it?”


“As I said. You look beautiful.” He took her hand. “Meant professionally, of course.”


They had a table waiting for them, their two clients already seated and shiftily sipping their cocktails. Jet was honestly surprised the pair were so inconspicuous, both in rather dull and dark business suits. She knew their race tended to be a bit on the side of ostentatious, silk robes and ridiculous collars, often with bronzed servitors or drones rolling out a soft carpet for them to walk on.


One of the clients was a gaunt figure of tight skin and bone, most of his face dominated by a hawk-like nose. The other was shorter, doing his best to hide overt plumpness in his baggy suit, with enormous ears that seemed to twitch with each and every clack of Jet’s high-heels. She thought of them as the Nose and the Ears, respectively. They had given her their real names, but they were long and twisted things that she couldn’t pronounce.


The two claimed to be representatives of their people (though Jet believed they were operating to their own agenda and doubted the pair had any real power), a race of aristocratic “chronarchs” from a particularly infamous multiverse several dimension hops from the View. They were not a popular species, often accused of being temporal colonizers and time imperialists. According to the rumors, their own Architects had actually created the very concept of History for their home universe, a fractal-based perception of Time based on their own laws of physics. This “invention” murdered untold trillions of lives and was such a devastating blow that it actually affected their universe’s multiverse cluster, spreading like an impossible wave of imperious temporality.


Many of the multiverses outside the home of these entitled “Lords,” who had watched this ordered chaos with absolute horror, were now gathered at the View. They were considered Higher Evolutionaires of the omniverse, true masters of their home multiverse, and therefore invited to every View Holiday Party as part of polite and professional courtesy, but they were not exactly wanted.


“We trust your venture was a useful one,” the Ears said. “We trust you gleaned useful information.” Jet didn’t like his voice. Too shrill for such a rounded body.


“I think we did,” Jet said, setting a hologram display on the table. An image flickered above it, a simple solar system, orbiting a yellow star. “As you know, my partner and I investigated the universe designated as ‘10K Dawn,’ as per your instruction. Both of us integrated ourselves into the dimensional fabric from the start of your given timeframe to the year the system discovers the ability to traverse to other dimensions. We successfully investigated the entire scope of 10,000 Dawns.”


“We regrouped once finished, detached ourselves, and compiled our experiences and thoughts,” Max added, focusing his gaze on the space between the Nose and the Ears. He had trouble actually looking at them. They had safe and cozy three-dimensional bodies but existed on higher levels, at the very least possessing silver tendrils of quantum anchors in the fifth dimension. Looking at them too long gave him a headache.


The Nose sniffed. “Any thoughts you would like to share?” His voice poured like a cheap champagne.


“We’ve compiled all our information in this drive,” Jet said, gesturing to the hologram display. The system from which 10,000 Dawns was birthed shuddered, as if shy. “It is our professionally opinion, however, that 10,000 Dawns has more than earned its right to exist.”


The Ears grumbled something while the Nose merely raised an eyebrow.


Mas and Jet were transtemporal investigators. Two of the best in the entire business, famous through the entire omniverse. They investigated everything, stopping crimes occurring on multiversal levels, exposing scandals that had built entire dimensions, solving mysteries millennia old. They inserted themselves into universal narratives, building lives, bodies and even entire family histories to experience, observe, and investigate.


The Nose and the Ears had hired the two of them to investigate the universe of 10,000 Dawns officially in the name of cold scientific curiosity, but it was crystal clear the pair feared the rival universe. Not many of their people seemed to agree (Jet had once heard the phrase “backwater” used), but something important or dangerous existed in the universe of 10,000 Dawns that scared these two lesser bureaucrats. They condescending pair made their wishes clear. Jet and Max were to investigate for a reason why 10,000 Dawns deserved to continue existing. Their race knew how to summon terrible and powerful things that swam in the omniverse’s gaps and voids, things hungry for divergent timelines and independent universes. Jet knew that, if the Ear and Nose were scared enough, they’d find a means of drawing something awful and deadly into 10,000 Dawns’ existence.


The Nose set his cocktail down and sniffed again, a thick and wet sound. “You assert in the universe’s favor. Why?”


Max spoke this time, still very clearly not looking at the pair. “We both lived so many lives. Important lives, unimportant. Politicians, space pilots, soldiers, bankers, hell, even farmers. We scoped the entire history of 10,000 Dawns, from before it diverged from other Earth timelines, right up to when they make dimension jumps and ally themselves with the Empress of the Needle.”


The Ears choked on his drink at that, but said nothing. The Nose showed no reaction.


“The reason, gentlemen, that we think the universe should live,” Jet continued, “is because of what it represents.”


“Hope,” Max nodded.


The Nose huffed. “Hope?”


“Look around you,” Jet said. “Everyone here, from all corners of the omniverse, are here to celebrate their winter holidays. Every single one. Every single person here has their own version. Do you know why?”


No response.


“Winter holidays are a celebration of hope. A time of light and joy in the middle of the darkness. The cold, the freeze. A celebration that they’re surviving. They’re surviving together, they gather together. They party, they dance, they embrace what warmth they can find. They celebrate that they’re surviving the darkness and hardship.”


“10,000 Dawns does not have an easy start,” Max admitted. “It doesn’t have an easy life. It’s war, and it’s cruelty, and it’s shame and selfishness.”


“But it’s kind. It’s hopeful. It survives its failings and sins. It branches out beyond its own stars and finds a way to become something special. It escapes the empty cold of its own darkness.”


“This is positively ridiculous,” the Ears spluttered but the Nose silenced him with a glare.


“We have right to fear 10,000 Dawns just as much as we fear any enemy,” the Nose said. “The people of Earth and the possible civilizations that spring from her biosphere are a recurrent element in our home multiverse. But my colleague and I, we fear the potential enemy this version of humanity will become.”


“We know that,” Jet said. “My colleague and I find that potential beautiful. We find it hopeful.”


“Something of a Christmas miracle!” Max said with a smirk.


“I suppose that still scares me,” the Nose admitted, lips thin. “Our people don’t have hope. We have prediction. We have reliability, we have-”


“Stangnancy,” Max said.


Both Lords shot him a look that could kill. Max dutifully continued to look at the space between them.


“Stagnancy is just a dissenter’s word for a civilization that has given all is has to offer and is comfortable in its position,” the Nose growled.


Jet shrugged. “Then respectfully, sir, maybe 10K isn’t the narrative that needs to be overwritten. Sounds like yours has gone stale.”


The Ears’ ears burned scarlet and a vein pulsed in rage. The Nose said nothing.


“You can take our gathered notes,” Max said. “Our opinions are our own. We did our job.”


The Nose grabbed the data file and stood to leave. “We have already made up our own minds, as you can imagine. We would have the universe’s foundational threads plucked without a moment’s hesitation. But even in time of war, there is democracy. My colleague and I cannot make a decision Thank you for your service. We plan to use your experiences the next we have the council floor.” He slid a payment chip across the table towards them, and then he and the Ears bundled away from the table and vanished in the continuing growing crowd of the View.


The pair watched them leave, Max turning back to their empty drinks. “Those assholes left us with their bill.”


Jet picked up the payment chip with a sigh. “Not like we weren’t going to drink most of this away anyway.”


“I admittedly love that we both resigned ourselves to pissing them off even if it cost us our check,” Max said, flashing another naughty grin to Jet. She returned it. “Think they’ll actually get a case going on their world in the next epoch?”


“They’ve made dusted republic convention an artform. It will take them several relative centuries to even get their case discussed. And even then, it doesn’t matter. Sickly sweet optimism aside, I mean what I say. I think 10,000 Dawns is going to reach something really special. Maybe if they do manage to get a destruction plan going, 10K will be too powerful to just erase like they want.”


Max nodded and leaned back, waving at a waitress, before squinting at the sky of universes above them. “Huh. Jet, look. 10K.”


She looked up and sure enough, just visible through the freeze of time and space, through a violet fog, was a familiar yellow sun, its past and future circled tight and warm in bands of gold.


“A Christmas miracle, huh?” Jet teased.


“Happy Holidays to you too.”
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