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Arrival |
She is not what you expected. The other members of your research team envied you the opportunity to visit the station, to meet with the Continua yourself. They were envious, you were prepared to be awed; she was an immortal, an ageless being with access to the entirety of creation; she was a researcher like yourself, with files not just on nations or planets, but on star-systems, galaxies, dimensions beyond counting; more than an ally to the heroes of multiple universes, she was a heroine in her own right, having fought off incursions from whole other universes, rallying and leading the defenders of our existence in the Champions War of the early 80’s. You were prepared for an wise, ageless, serene being, or for the sketches of beings like her in comics, physically perfect (if not more so) in a flowing dress made of sliver and light.
So when the doors slid open and revealed a vaguely pretty, broad-boned thirty year old woman with a shock of chestnut hair in an unruly braid, wearing jeans, flannels and a pair of boots that looked like they had served a decade’s duty mucking out stables, you were just a little taken aback. At least her voice was resonant, and bespoke some authority, even if her words didn’t "Oh, Hi. You’re the new researcher." She smiled as you stammered out your now ridiculous formal court introduction and your credentials, which she took and flipped through casually while you spoke. "These look like they’re in order. No need to be so formal. You can call me Connie. I’ll show you to your terminal." She turned and walked down the long, metal corridor of the station, motioning for you to follow. As you exit the airlock, the decor radically changes, looking more like a gentleman’s club of the early 20th century than a space station - you can even smell the faint traces of pipe tobacco and old books lingering in the air. She catches your question without your having to voice it. "The Station looks like an orbital facility from the outside, but inside it’s well, everywhere. It touches on every timeframe and on ever version of Earth in the Multi-verse. It reaches a lot of other places besides, but I seldom have cause to go there. I just have to deal with humanity. I leave the rest to the others." There are others? "Sure. One for every major empowered species in the Multi-verse, each watching all the dimensions for their species. Technically, I’m all of them as well, but it gets convoluted enough being all of me." She sees the confusion on your face and laughs, "Don’t think about it too hard, it’s just make your brain itch." After the gentleman’s club is a stone corridor, with a complicated mosaic tile piece on the walls and floor, depicting the rise of Aztec civilization. "The representatives of the Ziggurat put that in five years ago as a gift - I kind of like it. The depiction later on of their first space shot is very nice." Continua (Please, ’Connie’.) points out a side corridor, no more than five feet long, ending in an unobtrusive Dutch door. "Behind that are the link portals - physical access to all the realms I monitor. You’re credentials say you’re cleared for it, but I still recommend being careful. It’s awfully easy to get lost out there, and things are more complicated than you’d think." A door is opened into an office-space, comfortable and well furnished, uncluttered but looking like it had been stocked with a Levinger’s catalogue and a credit card - fountain pens, barrister bookcases, oaken in and out boxes, and an ergonomically designed keyboard and mouse on the top of the large mahogany ’status desk’. The chair is ergonomically designed as well, but despite its looks it proves to be surprisingly comfortable. "Here’s your terminal - over twenty years old and still running like a charm." Twenty years old? But isn’t the station as old as everything? "Yes, and everything started in 1978. It’s just that once it stated, it had been there forever. "You’re not following me. Let me try again. You can only see this stuff if you’re looking at it from outside time and space, but before he mid 70’s absolute time there was only one over-universe. Then something happened there, and it began to spawn off complete multi-verses., and each of which having existed since the beginning of time, and some existing even further along their personal timelines than the over-universe. "We really don’t know what happened in the Over-Universe, but this is the result - dozens of multi-verses, each following their own timelines and sets of internal rules, each containing from a pair of a million individual universes. The jargon we’ve developed calls each of those universes Continuities, or Continuum." Reading the confused look on your face, she continues, answering the unspoken question, "Ours? Well, our multi-verse is a fairly old one, as these things go. We think it’s the fifth, but that’s partially a conceit, and partially a guess - the Icon used to indicate our Multi-verse in the Over Universe is, well, this," She extends a finger and brings it downward at an angle, then back up at the opposite angle. "It looks like the Roman numeral v, so that’s what we go with. We’re fifth. Like I said, that’s just a conceit, and age certainly doesn’t measure size or power. As things go, we’re not that large, and we barely survived the last major contact we had with another Multi-verse." "Oh. Sorry. You thought we Won the Champions War. I keep forgetting that. No - that Universe was much more aggressive, expansionist and, oddly enough, more mathematically adept than ours. We survived that, but we’re stable now, and we’re sure to last a good long time now." You shake your head, trying to realign your sense of reality. "I wouldn’t worry too much about it - our Multi-verse is really all I have access to, and that should be more than enough to keep you occupied for a long time. We’ve grown several more Continuum recently - enough to make up for the stagnating ones, and perhaps a little more. Anyway, this is your space. "The holographic monitor is voice activated, and or turns on when you touch the mouse of keyboard. According to your credentials you’ll be in and out a lot, so you can alter the room to suit your taste - when I found out you were coming I just filled another office with stuff from a catalogue." The Station gets mail order? "When it absolutely, positively has to be there a week before you sent it." She laughs, then continues, "I just wanted to thank all of you guys for putting this recording project together - tracking empowered individuals is both time consuming and important. You may run into the researchers from the other continuities here, but, given the size and scope of this place, those sorts of face to face meetings are unlikely. There’s an electronic messaging system that’s probably more useful for communication, and a general board down the hall where you can hang up open access notes, kind of a Town Hall board. Just be polite, and you should be fine." Just holler if you need anything. Continua, the guardian of all of the fifth multi-verse, closes the door and goes about her duties, smiling at you as she leaves. A finger-touch bring your holographic monitor to life, and you realize... It’s time to get to work. |