It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

[Maharg67]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time 63.1[87]

Hunting Down Conspiracies

Armstrong moved in power armor across a low gravity landscape of semi-arid nature. A light rain, of big slow falling rain drops, was making big mud puddles and was splashing off Power Infantry and Lunatyr warriors in their kevlar armor suits. Lunatyr were wary of using power armor but power armor was being designed for their use if they changed their minds. Havenlanders were in the power armor, most being omnihumans but some were metahumans or powerhumans. Superhumans found power armor too restrictive but wore special designed armor.

In the distance there were the explosions of artillery strikes and incoming rockets barrages from the SavaCompact enemies. Except that thousands of enhanced PanAxian Stormtroopers, in strange mechasuits like exotic power armor that made the Stormtroopers into 'small electromechanical giants', had joined the enemy forces. The PanAxis had also sent strange rotor-saucer aircraft that flew well in the low gravity of the Lunar Overworld, along with adapted older kinds of machines.

 

Armstrong had not gone there primarily to observe the enemy. He did, now and then, enhance a piece of equipment or doing some healing.

 

Ever since the spacestationships' appearance, he had been pressured to make other big gifts appear and it was hard to convince people that 'others' had done the work and they would choose if it happened or not; he would not choose, had no choice in such matters, though he could put forth requests or just ideas.

 

As an aspect, of the Eternal Seeker, he was searching for something to do with a deep old mystery. Then he saw it, jutting up out of the landscape being what looked like a small metallic stone pyramid with four sides. He knew better, knew it was just the tip of a massive buried pyramid structure as created by the AraAncients.

 

He stepped up to one side of the structure and promptly vanished with a sparkling shimmer. The others, with him, had been warned that something might happen like it but they were not pleased. Then about half of them vanished, also with a sparkling shimmer, being all those who could better survive what was waiting for them 'inside' the great transdimensional formation.

 

Armstrong stood, dwarfed, on a great metallic stone platform even as the chosen others materialized close to him, being both Havenlanders and Lunatyr. They were soon all staring at the perfect copies of various Terran human machines except they were not quite of known kinds.

 

Armstrong pointed to a massive multistage rocket sitting, on its tail, on a huge four tracked platform designed to carry such rockets. "Saturn V rocket that is the Apollo Eleven mission vehicle to start a trip to Luna but it belongs to an Alternate Earth. Close to it, very much smaller, is a very long stretched limousine luxury car. Then there is a massive rail-cannon from World War One of that other Earth that is able to launch a very big shell for a very long distance. There is a Chieftain main battletank that is quite advanced and powerful for a warmachine. There is a very long train being six powerful locomotives, three pulling and three pushing, along with 500 coal cars. Then there is a truly massively tall mobile crane stretching way above even the Saturn V rocket. Oh yes, a huge dish of a great big radio telescope."

 

Jandra, a Lunatyr warrior leader, stepped forward. "There must be a reason that they are here."

 

Armstrong sighed. "AraArtifacts were designed to interact with powerful psychic-spiritual mentalities of certain kinds such as the AraAncients themselves but it has been an amazingly long time since most of them were destroyed and the surviving ones were properly serviced. More than one mentalities have interacted with AraArtifacts but not in a fashion both stable and safe."

Edited October 4, 2014 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time 63.2[88]

Hunting Down Conspiracies

Armstrong went on. "Those objects must have had a powerful impact on at least one mentality that somehow interacted with AraArtifacts." He turned and indicated more great machines, or structures, that the others had not noted in their surprise at seeing the first ones. "In a special network of cradles is the International Spacestation in its final complete form with additions of two big CF=AG (centrifugal force = artificial gravity) wheels along with antimissile missile launchers. Then there is a big, largely autorobotic spaceplatform designed for multiple tasks. There was a minority of humans, of that world, who abandoned their Earth and most of their kind. There is a great big fusion rocket boosted arkshuttle of a kind that sent many people, other lifeforms and much else to Luna. Every time one of those launched, one way, into space they made the home world more toxic and even harsher to live on. Their version of Luna had no world-bubble and neither did their version of Earth but their Luna did have the atmosphere filled Lunar Labyrinth."

 

He shook his head ruefully. "The ISS had antimissile missile launchers because those left behind shot a nuclear missile at the spacestation. They almost succeeded in destroying it. As it was the ISS was damaged and was partly abandoned while much was sent to Luna to be adapted and reused; the abandoned sections fell into the Pacific Ocean and did no harm to any lifeforms."

 

Armstrong pointed to a massive tracked machine that was even bigger than the transporter that carried the multistage Saturn V rocket. It had a huge cab and was clearly multiple purpose in nature. It was armored-armed in a heavy manner. "The Spacers, as they came to call themselves, came to assume that the Earthers, as the Spacers called the people left behind, were not a threat. Five years after the last Spacer left Terra, the first nuclear missile struck the Lunar Surface and destroyed a major outpost colony. Over 500 Spacers were killed and many valuable assets were destroyed."

 

"Thus began the first space war with a nuclear missile being launched one way, or another, every few months. The Spacers were mostly in the ancient, safe, Lunar Labyrinth and learned to conceal their surface bases and moved their launchers after each shot but so did the Earthers. That machine is a Spacer constructor-deconstructor tractor designed to move across the Lunar Surface to carry out tasks before moving on at a surprisingly high speed. But that other machine is worse in its purpose. Notice it is much like the CDT but is a mobile nuclear missile launcher, often known as a big missile tractor, or BMT."

 

Francis, a Havenlander woman, spoke out. "One begins to understand why these machines made some kind of deep impact on a mentality. It is a dark history."

 

Jandra, the Lunatyr warrior man leader, spoke out again. "So what does this lead to?"

 

Armstrong shrugged. "My knowledge is emerging even as I stand here picking up psychic 'impressions'. It is near impossible for me to explain such things in words."

Edited October 4, 2014 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time 63.3[89]

Hunting Down Conspiracies

 

Francis had her armored helmet visor open, as did all of them now. She frowned softly. "You could push 'such things', could you not?"

 

"No!" Armstrong shook his head. "I have tried in the past but only gained a sharp headache for my troubles. I am Armstrong, a human avatar of the Eternal Seeker; I am not the Eternal Seeker in a 'primary sense'. This is both good and bad, allowing me more flexibility but less powerful abilities. As the Eternal Seeker my core strength is in finding things, in tracing paths, in discovering clues, but the process is not always straight forward."

 

There were some other 'smaller' vehicles, at least smaller than the massive ones. There were large armored-armed mooncrawlers, each with four, six or eight tracks and flexible linked bodies with airlock protected tubes going between the sections. The flexible tubes were also armored.

 

There were vacuum low gravity moonhoppers, armored-armed of course, that were used to move across the Lunar Surface; they came in relatively big, medium and large sizes but even the smallest was quite big.

 

Armstrong frowned. "Something does not add up! My impressions are not so clear now, are confused. The Spacers became increasingly frightened of something, hence all of the armoring and arming of their machines. The threat, the fear, was there even before the Grand Exodus began from Terra to Luna."

 

They turned more and there it was, a terrible clue to what had been happening to frighten the Spacers so much. It was a mighty warmachine, based on the same kind of tractor machine as the others, but it was very heavily armored and bristling with heavy, medium and light weapons.

 

Armstrong shook his head. "It was designed to crush, to burn, to slash...." Then he winced. "Zombies! It was a massive destroyer of the undead and not just zombies but ghouls, vampires, lichs and other things. It was also designed to destroy glimmermist while making its crew safe from the glimmermist. How is this linked to the glimmerpods being launched from the Lunar Overworld to Terra? Is it linked to Ayers Rock (Uluru) and the events in Ayers Rock City."

 

Yet it was the last great device that gave the strongest clue. It was a great tractor machine that was all very heavy armor, that seemed designed to move only slowly. Armstrong frowned. "The machine is full of special status pods. The machine is designed to go into the Lunar Labyrinth and hide away. The undead glimmering is drawn to life and these status escape tractors were built in large numbers to protect many Spacers while others tried other ways of survival, hoping to return to save their people. How is all of this linked to the Timespace Event that led to the Timespace Transformation?"

Edited October 4, 2014 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time 64.1[90]
It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Triguardians arrived at all of the known AraAncient AraArtifact Complexes in the Known Ordered World. All were Havenlanders but not all were human. All wore energy armor that hid their features. With them were armored smart-androids and smart-robots. The quickly, effortlessly, bloodlessly took control of the complexes but did not exclude people. Instead the Havenlander elite began to heavily regulate, or to forbid, the use of useable AraArtifacts. They announced they would operate some of the AraArtifacts because they were the only ones who could do so safely, efficiently. The AraAncient Complexes were 'transdimensional' in nature and thus not part of any surrounding territories and neither were they under the authority of the Havenlands.

While some nations were furious, most quietly accepted even if angered. They had much more to gain, by going along with the new arrangements, than they had to lose. The regulated use of Waygateway travel meant that people, and goods, were moving in steady streams across the Known Ordered World with amazing quickness.

It was becoming common information that everybody, everything, that went through a Waygateway was rejuvenated. This even meant people becoming more youthful. The same results could be gained from the Rejuvenators. There were the Duplicators that could materialize perfect copies of things but which worked better with the copying of less complicated items. There were other kinds of AraArtifacts, some of which were being used in a regulated fashion.

The demands, on the AraArtifacts, grew quickly far greater but the Triguardians refused to relax the careful use of the ancient devices.

From a Forbidden Zone, in Northern Siberia, began to emerge glimmermist and zombies. The extreme cold slowed the glimmermist and froze the zombies if they strayed too far to the edges of the horror mist. Zombies died if frozen for a certain length of time but endured it much longer than standard humans could. Soviet Special Forces, and mysterious exotic units, were soon dealing with the crisis. Fighting in such extreme conditions, they were always extreme in the area, made matters hard for both sides.

As for the Forbidden Zone, it was a ring of small domecities and a big crazy looking structure rising into the air like a malformed arrangement of bubbles, domes and cones. It was disturbing to look upon even from a distance. Elite UN Peacekeepers arrived, with advanced technologies, and began to assist. Nobody entered the Forbidden Zone and even those close to its edges felt 'uneasy' as if something just a few metres away was actually not of the 'world at all'.

Edited October 6, 2014 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time 65.1[91]

Before Everything Changed; As Things Changed

Bobbie lead 12 other netclone supersoldiers through the city of Perth, where the dome had been mysteriously fixed, and lighter rain was being allowed through to water public gardens, to fill the rainwater network, to give extra water to market gardens, farming co-ops and others. They were disguised as a group of collage students on their way to do community work, each in civil fatigues and workboots, having a duffelbag. In the dufflebags were light military weapons carried in case they got attacked before reaching a special supply point.

Bobbie noted how the netclones tended to act like smooth flowing, overly coordinated killers and he did his best to have the others disguise this. Yet as they moved through the secondary streets, and side-streets, of a slowly decaying suburb of once well off yuppies, he could 'sense' that many there were wary of them. They did not fit in and it was not the disguises for many locals were in civil service programs, were wearing civil fatigues.

People were eating the new cheaply bought, or freely dispensed, food rations along with other stuff. There were boxcanned mashes, breadbiscuits, broths and more solid foodbars along with fooddrinks and thick juices of moderately rich flavors. While governments tried to pretend they were responsible for it all, the public was generally skeptical of such claims. It was known that the new rations were being sent around the world by the Futures Foundation and that it was suspected that the same organization was creating the rations.

The striketeam were seeking to infiltrate a heavily secured, secret, research development complex hidden below an old barracks complex. The military centre had been decommissioned, turned into a museum, but was back to being used by the Australian Defense Forces of a slowly crumbling Australian Commonwealth. The Futures Foundation was suspected of being heavily linked to the dark researches being done in the place but so were various super power governments, large corporations and other factions.

The spread of new kinds of popular implants, for those who could afford them or who were funded for them, was linked to that hidden complex. The Maharg Foundation, that secretly service-supported the Special Strike Force, of the netclone supersoldiers, had a unofficial program of altering such implants once they were put into people. People generally did not know it but the cyberlink modules were also designed to control people though they had yet to be activated in that mode. The Maharg Foundation removed that mode and most people did not even know that such a change was made, they believing that they had only gained a good priced upgrade through the black market. It was not enough and the Maharg Corporation wanted the supply of such implant modules to be cut off except that it was not even known if the implants came from there.

Two other striketeams, along with two specialist support teams, joined in the effort. One specialist team had previously worked on helping to track down what mysterious microdrones were doing, apart from such as fixing hastily, badly, designed city domes used around the world. Graham Maharg had sent them because of their unique experiences and exotic technologies. The Maharg Foundation had been secretly mass producing nanobots, and nandrones, to assist in tracking down the microdrones but the task had proven to be surprisingly difficult. This was despite that the nanobots, and nanodrones, were in some ways more advanced than were the relatively bigger microdrones.

 

Bobbie's striketeam came to a halt at a boarded up old sporting fitness complex, long ago salvaged of most of its useful resources including window glass, plumbing and even floor tiles. They entered through a secret entrance, that was a fake boarded up window, and found service-support netclones waiting there with more equipment-supplies. Now the striketeam swapped their lighter military gear, in the dufflebags, for heavier stuff including full armor suits of super kevlar and heavy firepower battlerifles.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time 65.2[92]

Before Everything Changed; As Things Changed

 

The big old chamber was dimly lit, dusty, and very slowly crumbling. It showed hints of the smart, consumerist, capitalist past that it had once been a thriving part of. There were holes in the ground where spa pools and a swimming pool had once been and marks indicating curtain walls and even vanished saunas. Such places were to be found often through out out the world and in a few cases even whole cities had been salvaged and abandoned.

 

The netclones had no direct experience of older times but did have often vague 'inherited memories' of them.

 

The striketeam moved out even as the other team did, moving in another direction. They were not one of the teams constantly supporting the three striketeams.

 

Roboremotes had built tunnels beneath the city, in the last decades, for many reasons and some had been illegal, criminal, in nature. The netclones moved fast along such a tunnel that was damp and long deserted by the criminals who had smuggled illegal goods through it.

 

They found evidence that the criminals had abandoned the tunnel for good reasons. A whole lot of long dead bodies lay heaped up in a crude alcove to one side of the tunnel proper. They had been looted, which was normal in modern times, and yet such as IDs were left to be examined; it was not considered too important to disguise who the victims had been. Bobbie, himself, accessed datafiles after scanning fingerprints and soon learned they were vanished criminals linked with dark crimes of hard drug trading, sex slavery and the smuggling of restricted hitech.

 

What had killed the men was most telling for it had been a kind of projectile weapon not commonly known, let alone used, on that world. They had been drilled with zipneedles that had dissolved away soon after completing their task.

 

Bobbie had figured that there was some kind of link, familiarity, between those he served and those he was serving against. Zipneedle weapons were used by his people and their battlerifles could fire zipneedles. He had tried to find answers, from those the netclones served, but nothing had come from such efforts. The Special Strike Force (SSF) did not want to be sidetracked and the other troopers were getting restless to move on but Bobbie 'sensed' that the bodies indicated something important.

 

Graham Maharg was suddenly crouching next to the crouching Bobbie, almost as if he had always been there. "Yes, the bodies are important as clues. The tunnel was made for the criminals to smuggle goods to the very hidden complex that you are seeking to infiltrate, to a group known as Hydramax that is an ancient criminal organization with a hidden agenda other than that of making illegal profits; it was called 'Hydra' before it absorbed three other large criminal networks using evil methods to do so and earning many enemies in the process. I have found those surviving enemies to be a very useful source of information. Often the seemingly easiest, most brutal, ways of achieving means are not the most efficient in the long term. The zipneedle technologies, along with others, were stolen from the Maharg Corporation to both save research-development costs and to implicate us if they were found to be used in illegal activities."

 

Graham Maharg stood up. "I will come with you for there are some challenges ahead that I must confront, that you can not deal with Bobbie though you are far more than you assume that you are. All of you are special, of course, so no getting jealous, please."

Edited October 4, 2014 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time 65.3[93]

Before Everything Changed; As Things Changed

 

Bobbie stood and looked around at the other netclones who were in bodies that seemed to be about twenty years old but who were half that age. They were more naive than himself, less life experienced, younger, and he was more than a commander to them as they were more than just comrades to him. He smiled all around at them and then looked to Graham Maharg. "We have mind-networked and would have you be StarMarshal Maharg for us."

 

"It would be a deep honor." Graham Maharg reached out his hands and a wave of energies spread out, enhancing and augmenting the netclones and their equipment. "We will wait quietly here for some minutes until you have adjusted to the changes that are necessary for you to survive what is to come. Your new enhancements are inheritable by your descendents to come."

 

After fifteen minutes the netclones 'felt' more stable, felt normal. The striketeam set out knowing that they had gained general enhancements of mind-body-spirit but also some special tricks. They were not long into moving when they realized that StarMarshal Maharg was now in head to foot black armor like their own except that he carried a much larger, more exotic looking, device than any of their multiple modular battlerifles.

 

The first danger came from a 20mm calibre autocannon gun-turret that dropped down from the tunnel ceiling. It managed to unleash only a few shells before an electromagnetic pulse froze it and stopped the shooting. The striketeam kept moving fast but as they passed the gun-turret it shimmered and vanished as Maharg somehow claimed it.

 

Next came an altered, armor clad and gun-turret equipped roboremote but it moved slower, and more awkwardly, than it could do. The netclones knocked it out, with an EMP-gun, before Maharg claimed that as well.

 

They entered an outer chamber of the research development complex, through a set of two big armored doors that were both blown open, inwardly, as if from incredible force. Armor clad guards were scattered dead, and drying, across the big safety-security airlock chamber beyond that led to two different sets, each of two armored doors, going in different directions.

 

The very 'feel' of the chamber was all wrong. Bobbie realized that everything around them was strangely frozen, as if time had stopped or greatly slowed down. Yet the StarMarshal, and the netclones, moved normally through the chamber. They 'sensed' to be careful just where they went, not to get close to some objects. Dead, dying, bodies vanished.

 

Maharg spoke but his voice sounded distorted as if both partly sped up and partly slowed down. "Take care. Some force has interfered with local timespace for reasons unknown to me. Another, of my kind, 'sensed' what was happening here and hence I came to assist you, to enhance you. These security cyborg-clones died with amazing speed though they are also supersoldiers with enhancements and augmentations."

 

A netclone spoke with a distorted voice. "Slowmo is what they call it in 3Dcomputer games and virtual reality."

 

Maharg nodded. "Thank you, I must remember that." He did not mention that he was connected to the designing of computer programs of many kinds, including games, and had been in the team that had invented 'slowmo'.

Edited October 6, 2014 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time 65.4[94]

Before Everything Changed; As Things Changed

 

The chamber had lockers of equipment-supplies, some odd items, and these also vanished.

 

Maharg spoke. "I am taking everything from this place to pass it to where it is much needed. That is Sanctum, a form of sanctuary made up of lesser sanctuaries. There are netclones there and the dead cyborg-clones will be resurrected, the dying ones saved. They will be tested but I 'sense' all will pass to become good reliable Sanctum Citizens. This place will be gone soon and replaced somehow. I have senses that go beyond anything mortals have and yet I do not know how it will change; I just want to salvage what I can. Now, Bobbie, please tell me in what direction we need to go next; you have more abilities in such things than I do."

 

Bobbie was surprised but then had a bigger surprise in knowing that he did know where they had to go. He spoke with a distorted voice. "The entity crashed fast through the outer two doors so as to take the guards by surprise but used one of the two inner safety-security airlocks in a more normal fashion to hide where it went but it went through that set of doors."

 

Even as they went through the doors, the time distortion field was collapsing behind them and things were hitting the floor, were flying through the air and so forth. The attacking entity had caused chaos with its attack and now the momentum of that was being naturally completed. Bobbie 'sensed' that Graham Maharg had somehow broken the dangerous interference with time.

 

The fourteen of them were soon emerging into a lobby chamber that looked quite generally mundane in most ways. There was a big long counter, chairs for visitors to sit on while waiting to be met, desks behind the counter and bits of hitech. Some dead bodies were sprawled in front of, and behind, the counter. They were oddly preserved thanks to the contained, regulated, very cold air of the place. While a few were security, or working, cyborg-clones the majority were standard humans. Or at least they looked to be so.

 

Maharg made the cyborg-clones vanish, along with a few of the humans. He crouched beside a 'human' that made the netclones wary for reasons they did not understand. Bobbie was even more wary than his comrades were. Maharg touched the woman's forehead and scowled. "The remaining humans are fakes created using ancient alien power-artifacts that were never meant to duplicate humans or any lifeforms, at least not with out other processes being done both before and after; neither of which was done with these duplicated humans. One could call them androids but ones that are unstable of mind-body and which have no spirit to speak of. These were created at a place that is both in, and not in, Ayers Rock City."

 

Bobbie was obviously puzzled with his voice expressing his feelings. "Is there such a city? I have heard that there is a large tourist resort town near Ayers Rock that is also called Uluru."

 

Maharg frowned softly. "The ripples of change, moving back through time, are not traveling smoothly. Soon you will 'know' that there is no tourist resort but a small city called Ayers Rock City and that Ayers Rock is officially called Uluru. You will keep vague memories of there being no such city but instead a much smaller tourist resort. Most will not even have those memories as the very past is changed by the out spreading Timespace Transformation triggered by the Timespace Event to come."

 

A terrible shimmering went through everything except for the StarMarshal and the netclones. The fake humans climbed to their feet with surprising speed, their eyes glowing unnaturally red, and they attacked the others. Battlerifles blazed and they fell before they got even close to doing any harm. Now they were truly dead. Maharg frowned and made them vanish. "To a quarantined part of Sanctum they will go to be studied. I need to examine all of the computer network-systems and Bobbie, you can help in a special ways. While we focus on those tasks, I ask that you others keep careful guard for the entity is still out there and it is far from the only threat. That wave of transformation will have turned all duplicated lifeforms into dangerous creatures."

Edited October 4, 2014 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time 66.1[95]

Hunting Down Conspiracies

 

The Ancient Roman Temple was a twisted, dark, reflection of the more open Ancient Roman Religion that itself was noticeably influenced by the Havenlander version of the Faith of the Thirteen Divinities. That is the GodGoddess being the primary at the top of the pyramid and then the Three Secondary Goddesses and then Nine Gods. Except that the Romans had replaced GodGoddess with a God followed by three Gods and nine Goddesses, the Goddesses tending to be like overly sexualized seminaked young women. It had not been a change that the Havenlanders had appreciated.

 

Jane looked around at the temple, at the depraved lustfully naked Goddesses carrying out a range of hard sexual acts. "The official Roman Holy Orders would have smashed this place, and put its followers to death, if they had known of it. That is except for a few corrupted ones who might have known the truth. I suspect that this place was created as an attack against Havenlander faith."

 

A supersoldier spoke. "What of the older Roman Gods and Goddesses?"

 

Jane nodded. "They continued to have influence, though with some changes, being seen as more human expressions of the Thirteen Divinities. This place also had a more immediate, practical purpose and that was to hide something that was quite unlike the temple that was used to hide it."

 

She walked over to a statue of a Goddess doing something unseemly with a jungle beast and pushed part of her anatomy because the coloration was noticeably different from the rest of the statue. There was a series of clicking sounds, the grinding noise of mechanical devices that had too long been neglected, and a secret door opened in the wall back beside the statue. It did not open all the way before it ground to a halt. Then it shimmered, become good as new, and smoothly opened.

 

Grahen Maharg stood there almost as if she had always been there, in her black head to foot armor. She smiled through her open visor. "You have been diverted, Jane, and not by accident. The two that led you here are dark cult followers, are part of the Cult Conspiracy or at least one of its factional alliances now waging secret war to control the Cult Conspiracy."

 

Jane looked at the two, now frozen, guides. "We all suspected something wrong but I chose to see where they would lead us. Why here?"

 

Grahen Maharg smiled almost pleasantly. "It was an ambush but the ambushers have gone away, thanks to my influence. I have sent the fools to Sanctum, a sanctuary of sanctuaries, where they have already been tested. The survivors, of the test, have been transformed and are living much better lives than they once did. The fools could not have defeated these wonderful supersoldiers and yourself."

Edited October 4, 2014 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time 66.2[96]

Hunting Down Conspiracies

 

The supersoldiers automatically agreed that they were 'wonderful' and that they most likely would have won any fight. Jane nodded also in acceptance. "You came here to do more than deal with a not so dangerous ambush."

 

Grahen responded even as she began walking towards the doorway of the opened secret door. "The distortions continue, from the Timespace Event, as the Timspace Transformation, though they are both more subtle and yet more dangerous in form. Part of the explanation for, the cause of, the Timespace Event lies beyond that doorway. My people act when to act is most effective, safe and vital."

 

Beyond was a very long ramping tunnel, at a moderate degree of descent, that was extremely old. The door closed behind them as the group continued. There was no source of light except for small clumps of wild glowcrystal dotting the ceiling but it was more than enough for the group there.

 

The ramping tunnel ended and they walked into a great big domechamber. At its center was a great crazy mechanism that looked part Ancient Roman and part other influences. It was a series of metallic boxes, a brass console encased in hard wood, and a huge crystal sphere of a kind that the Romans could never have built. It was filled with a blue green watery liquid with streams of bubbles rising up from the middle of the bowl shaped floor. In it, all curled up, was a naked young woman who was beautiful in a strange hairless and slightly shiny fashion. Her eyes were firmly closed, as was her mouth.

 

Grahen shook her head in wonder. "It must have become too much for her and, as others of her kind did, she retreated into her own unique, private, sanctuary. She is one of the original Timespace Thirteen, later being part of the 13Genius13. Look more closely for she is not alone. As yet I have not become aware of any of her names though, like Graham Maharg, I am of the Eternal Guardian."

 

There were three very small chubby muscular baby figures that she was pressing firmly, gently, against her breasts.

 

Grahen spoke. "Stand guard while I focus on carefully detriggering all of the hidden safeguards, and defenses, she has placed with herself, her babies and her amazing mechanism. Yes, also other lifeforms that are there though not visible. A terrible threat is approaching, though delayed by powerful allies, and I need to free her and send her, along with her companions and stuff, to Sanctum."

Edited October 4, 2014 by Maharg67