|
|
By StarbearerTM
Disclaimer: Dark
Horse Comics owns the most recent rights to publish the KISS comics, originally
published by Marvel. This is a work of
Fanfiction, and is not intended to harm or demean those involved. KISS owns themselves, and this is based on
real persons. All original characters
are property of their respective owners.
Strains of Milky Way seemed to stretch before him like a trail. Ace had mastered the winds of the solar system. It was a simple matter to get a gravity boost from Jupiter, and then hurl himself outside of its confines perhaps forever. The milk of stars was his food now, and it was easy to draw it into his very being.
The millions of photons and ionic energy from stellar clouds surged into him, and Ace fed. His physical body had changed so much in just a few short days, which were timeless minutes to him. In the light of the small sun he absorbed the stray photons, and readied himself as he absorbed his maximum.
"Are you there, Jenlynn…" he asked, as he waited in the vacuum between solar systems. "Where do I go now?"
"Ace… point yourself toward Alpha Centauri. This next step will show that you can escape the boundaries imposed by light speed…"
"I can change my body to energy… you taught me how…" he whispered. He knew she had fed him the information like milk, and he had soaked it up in the sponge of his brain. All the natural things such as nourishment and rest were as instinct. There were some things his body responded to automatically.
During that first few hours he'd cruised the solar system, only to find his body aching with hunger. He was so frightened at first. But Jenlynn's voice had reached out from Jendell, assuring him that he could drink starlight through his skin, and he needed no oxygen. His body automatically shifted to create a thin force field around his skin to keep out the ravages of space. Eyes that were once human had taken on a blue, and sometimes a silver sheen, adapting to be undamaged by ultraviolet rays. His mind could see the radio waves, and hone in on strange silver threads. Gravity pushed along his body, and tugged at him, giving him a sense of the mass of stellar bodies like planets and suns. It was much like swimming in a vast ocean. He had not bent space to teleport that first set of days, merely learning how to eat, sleep and travel.
Now that he was sated, he turned his eyes towards Alpha Centauri. Jenlynn's voice chimed in his head; "You are ready?"
"Yes," he nodded. "What next?"
"You can teleport. And there is an element of time travel. What is the furthest distance you've gone?"
"I can fly in space… but…" Ace stopped.
"What are distances to a teleporter? You can cross the Void with unimagined speeds, for short hops. But now you must fix the star's gravity well and mass in your mind. Feel its tug. Now leap. See how far you can go. It will be a series of jumps at first…"
"The distance of a thousand light years begins with one hop of a parsec," he said with amusement.
"Find your center. Good. Can you see the wells of gravity… and the strings of the universe around you?"
"I… wait… it's there…" Ace gasped as he glanced inwards with his inner senses, which told him the sources of electromagnetism. He could channel the electromagnetic weak and strong forces of atoms, to tease apart a hole in the quantum filaments of strings. That is what Jenlynn told him.
"Take the power you absorbed, and send it to the holes you see in the strings… vibrating with their own frequency…"
Ace lifted his hand, and slowly directed his beam of energy. Small holes bubbled and popped and he teased the recent one before him ever so slowly. He breathed out starlight, opening a channel. To an observer trapped in the third dimension, it was the bright flash of his teleportation, but this was far more of a distance. To find the natural wormholes and tease them open.
The superiors could bend space in a tesseract. The Jendellians used machines and energy to tease open wormholes that naturally occurred. But it had to wait till a wormhole opened that they could push open with their Kazamir devices. Now he saw the channel open, and Ace shoved himself through with the flick of his thumb. All around him the wormhole crushed. His teleportation used the power of his mind and the EM electricity he pulled from Earth's atmosphere to make tiny leaps. But this was FAR greater. Only the energy absorbed from Stars could help him now.
"I…" he gasped. "Must succeed…"
Then when the pressure grew great, he felt it spit him out. He spun through the void, gasping as he recovered his senses. When his eyes opened he saw he was drifting in the orbit of a large massive planet. Its gravity tug was 10 times greater then Jupiter. Sunlight and solar wind bathed him, and he saw Alpha Centari, only the distance that the Sun had been from him now. A few astronomical units.
"Success…" Ace gasped, and felt his body grow weary.
"Rest now," said Jenlynn. "You have done enough for this span. Rest… and sleep in your gravity well."
He lay there, adjusting his body to the height where he would safely orbit the giant. Putting himself just off the curve of a large moon, he let his body bask in the radiant light reflected form the giant planet. As he rotated, he would drink more and more. The vast magnetic field bathed him as he drifted into slumber, and smiled.
***
Dreams could come to the Space Ace's mind as he drifted in orbit around a gas giant circling Barnard's star. The jumps grew ever easier for him. So many planets he had seen, but had not encountered any alien craft. Somehow he wondered if this was a dry patch, free of any life above amoebae or plants. There was the chatter of civilizations beaming their radio waves. But he'd been directed to stay of the main thoroughfares the warp craft civilization held.
"Stay clear of the warpers. You are a time traveler. And they would love to capture you…"
"What is your role?"
"There is a Council of allied Time Traveler civilizations. To watch and observe as I've said before…."
"Yes, your federation," Ace smiled.
"You may soon be ready to come to Jendell," she said.
"I have seen so much…" Ace related.
"Time is short…" came Jenlynn's answer. "Sleep…"
Ace let himself drift into sleep, settling on the rocky surface of a moon covered in fine lakes of methane. A light snow of hydrocarbons fell in his face, but he could survive in any environment. If he could survive space….
Banard's Star's orange light bathed him. He drank as he had before. All the while his dreams roamed. His mind slipped from his body, and Ace saw himself sleeping on the moon of the planet. He smiled, knowing Star child had taught him how to travel astrally.
There was the possibility Ace could time travel. Holes in time were similar. It was less difficult to send both mind and body through. His astral self could venture back or forth, or sideways. Jenlynn said little about this, but cautioned him to keep the tether connected. Always keep a piece inside your physical body lest you leave it forever.
Where was Jendell, he asked himself. Tossing his astral self down the realms, he followed the direction of her thoughts. She was asleep as well. Ace found his soul buffeted in a sudden set of doldrums as he pondered Jendell, and was staggered with a realization.
A vast source of images suddenly bombarded him, and he let out an astral gasp. Someone was feeding him images through his psychic plane, and he realized he saw all the possibilities, past and present at once. He had been merely concentrating on Jenlynn….
He saw a planet, much like Earth. Perhaps twenty or more light years away, but in another spiral arm of the Milky Way. Bipeds much like his own going about their business under the light of two-G type stars, like the Sun of his native solar system. Vast cities sprawling near oceans, with weather controlled climates. Few animals existed. And he sensed Jenlynn. How could this be, for she said Jendell was a place of cybernetics and automated systems?
He tossed his mind towards her. She said she was a cyborg, but all he saw were humanoids, with no cybernetics. They were like those he had left behind. Disappointed, Ace was about to leave the large lab, when he felt the pulse of temporal energies. So much like those he had generated himself from his recent jumps.
Interested, he tossed his astral self there, and willed it to stay. The female who leaned over the complex device of crystals, gold, and other rods swirling together glanced at a younger male, who was similarly attired. Commands in another language were shouted, but Ace watched, entranced as their faces conveyed emotions that said they were working on a vigorous schedule.
"Anneryn, are we ready?" she asked.
"Yes Dr. Vitreum," he nodded, fitting a crystal into place, and jumping back as it glowed into life. The hum of the machine was hypnotic, bathing them in heat like a small sun.
"Then we will start… increasing field… bring the temporal flux into phase…"
"Compensating," Anneryn said as he glanced at her. Dr. Vitreum nodded, and ran her hands down a series of keys that lit up in sequence. Ace felt the waves rippling through, strings snapping and bending in quantum reality. Were they aware of what they were tampering with?
"Insert test object," she said.
Annerynn picked up a small fruit, golden shimmering wet, and shaped like a pomegranate. He raised it and set it into a tripod, at the center of two upright plates, both almost ten feet high. The network of bars and crystals were fused into it, and Ace saw an identical pair of upright plates if he glanced out the window.
"A Casmir device," he gasped. "They're trying to make a worm hole!"
Jenlynn had said her people were experienced travelers. But if this was Jendell, then why were they using such primitive equipment. As he glanced over Vitreum's shoulder he saw the joy and tension reflected in her features. She glanced to Annerynn, and said, "Casmir one is activated… activating two…"
"Two is active, Dr. Vitreum…"
"Tease it open… and then send in the probe and test sample," she ordered. Between the upright plates he saw something growing and flexing. The very air gleamed like a film of soap, and puckered in on itself. Annerynn pressed a control, and the tripod levitated, bearing its fruit cargo. It moved under a levitation field towards the shimmering hole they had teased apart. Simultaneously a second hole was appearing between the external Casmir device.
"Something's going wrong," Annerynn said as he glanced at a flashing light on his panel.
"Ignore it. I'll compensate by upping the sideric flux…"
Waves of time were suddenly bursting forth. This should not be, Ace figured. What were they doing wrong? It felt as if space was buckling, and a second shimmering was appearing right behind Vitreum. Ace realized it was another device, punching through space-time. Very dangerous, he reflected.
"You will create disaster if you proceed, Fiona Vitreum...." came a voice form the second rip.
"Doctor Vitreum! Behind you!" Annerynn cried. She turned to see someone standing before the rip that was not of her doing.
"Who are you!" she cried.
"Someone who tells you that you must stop this experiment. You're calculations are incorrect!"
"No, you are incorrect," Fiona snapped at the blonde woman who had appeared out of nowhere. Her blonde hair swirled over her face, in the gist of a time wind.
"Who are you?"
"I am from your future, Fiona. Should you continue in this course of action you will destroy your civilization!" she shouted. Fiona Vitreum shook blue streaked hair out of her face. The newcomer pinned her to the console with amazing strength.
"No I have worked too hard to stop now!" Vitreum screamed, wrestling against the newcomer. Her hand strained inches above the warmth button.
"Annerynn!" Fiona shouted. Her lab technician raced in, shock in his blue eyes at the sight of the two women wrestling over the console.
"Fiona! Who is this?"
"Activate... mechanism... temporal dampening!" Fiona gritted.
"Noo!" the woman cried, rushing towards Annerynn. Suddenly she vanished into oblivion.
As she was sucked away she cried, "I tried to stop you! But you have made me destroy everything!"
Within her mind, Fiona felt she was being drawn away to see outside and inside herself....
It was comparable to watching a fast paced film. People racing rapidly all about me, only to collapse to the ruinous street pavements. Towards me the boy staggered, strangely in motion matching the slowness of my own. What was the true nature of this disturbance? The quicker he approached, the slower he moved.
"Annerynn!" she cried, hands just touching his. Ace noticed the laboratory technician had failed to enter the protective sphere of the Casmir field. Machine! And there was nothing she could do to help him!
"Vitreum!" he croaked. To Ace's horror he, and the scientist saw that Anneryn's face was covered in fine prune wrinkles. Vitreum clutched his slim wrists, draped in folds of limp skin. His hair streaked white in seconds. "What's happening to us all?"
"It's all my fault," she admitted, swallowing hard. "Couldn't stop the time experiments..."
A curious yet familiar feeling hardened her throat. He now lay with his face to the side, a little old man. Time increased its amplitude. Before his eyes, Ace saw the flesh retreating from his chalk white bones as he rotted away. A few more seconds passing, they withered to dust. Ruinous buildings collapsed in the days and nights that flickered past in instants. The whole fabric of the Enlightening crumbled before his eyes, and those of Vitreum. Land spit up the contrived foundations, as the old technology vanished from the planetary surface. All round him time blurred.
But last came a moment where he saw Vitreum as she knelt by a small pile of dust. Everywhere there were heaps of fine flaky powder, grainy as volcanic ash. Far around Vitreum's circumference by her time immunity, was an area ten feet radius. Things had not aged as rapidly here.
Yet strong bit the bitter wind, lashing its lonely cry across barren rock spires. Under a stony sky, as far as Ace could see towards the horizon, the land cracked like the surface of a dry mud flat. Looking down, her vision blurred with strange moisture. Small wet drops dripped from Vitreum's eyes, dousing the dust that had been Annerynn.
"I bring death and misery, why must I get so involved?" Ace heard as she whispered. Her chest constricted like a thick rubber band. Each cry broke off as she ran out of breath to fuel it. Despair burned deeply into her whole being, aching so horridly, bitter. It radiated from her in waves, written on her face. Ace had never seen such anguish and it saddened him as well.
"Should have saved this world," said Vitreum. Ace knew he could say nothing, for she was taking full responsibility for this disaster. Although he was only an observer of times past, he knew something was horribly wrong.
"There now, is this any way to observe an experiment?" chided a voice gently.
"What?" asked Vitreum as she raised her head from her hands and stared up at a figure blocking the sunlight. The woman rested hands on her hips, and Ace wondered if she was a higher level scientist due to her long stately academic robes that were covered in gold threads.
"Rhanalda… my teacher," said Vitreum, brushing tears from her eyes.
"You succeeded beyond your wildest dreams," she placated Vitreum. "Why, you have done in a few short years what has taken many of our finest physicists decades to uncover..."
"But 500 people aged to death!" Vitreum despaired. "How can I justify the loss of life?"
"It was a necessary sacrifice," Rhanalda said. "For they were only servile..."
"I cannot believe you said that..." Vitreum gasped.
"The Androni council will approve of the loss. After all, death in the pursuit of knowledge is justified under our laws..."
"Oh my god," Ace gasped in horror. He saw the same expression on the scientist's face, and knew something was wrong. Especially when the look faded from Vitreum's face and was replaced by a totally blank expression, like a statue without emotion.
"Forgive my outburst," said Vitreum. "It will not happen again."
"You see, when those die in the line of duty, it is not wrong. Their lives were not wasted. Now we must return to the task at hand. I wish to reveal your findings to the Elite..."
"The Elite," she gasped. "I can scarcely believe my own science worthy of being brought before the Elite".
"They have kept an eye on you, Vitreum. You should feel honored. For our exobiology department has quite an interest in time travel..."
"How so?" she couldn't help but ask.
"Dimensional travel will help give us an edge in finding new life forms. Without having to use conventional spacecraft to reach nearby solar systems. Instead we can use such technology to bring specimens here, to our laboratories..."
"Hmm, but isn't' it better to study them in their indigenous environment?" Vitreum asked, and Ace couldn't believe the direction of this conversation. The callousness of it all reminded him of the Simmons Foundation's approach to using living animals. While Ace wasn't an animal rights activist, he was still horrified, because he had suddenly seen that sentience had nothing to do with bipedal motion. He had sensed intelligence and its hand in many of the civilizations that Jenlynn had introduced him to in their communications.
"Undoubtedly yes, but your time experiments would allow us to observe, then find specimens to bring back," said Rhanalda.
"Ah I see..." Vitreum muttered. "As always your logic prevails. But what of the stranger that interrupted?"
"She... was an intruder, from the future. Now more then ever you must succeed, Fiona Vitreum!"
An intruder from the future?" Ace asked himself. He was startled into reality when he heard a
loud scream across space and time.
***