Subversion Ch 3

Subversion Chapter 3
The immersion center projection chamber was just as dull and as empty as Arro remembered it being as he limped down the stairs into the room. The dim light of the inactive holoprojectors giving the cold metal tilework of the room a sinister glow, bringing back memories of the nightmare simulations they fought through in here, however, the foreboding presence of the empress's consciousness made the empty room far more terrifying than anything he had seen it become before.

Although he couldn't see her he could feel the Empress in the room with him, almost like a stifling fog blocking out his extra senses even before she acknowledged his presence, casting him a sidelong glance which burned through his being for a moment before relenting as she turned her attention back to whatever it was she was doing. Arro stood there trying to shake off the residual feeling of her gaze even as a dull hum reverberated throughout the room, the sound of thousands of processors, field projectors, and holographic displays coming to life.

Before his eyes the ghostly image of a catwalk formed along the floor, leading to slightly taller dais at the end. Not wanting to get caught off the beaten track when the simulation gets up to speed he hobbled over to the insubstantial path and stepped up onto it. Wincing as his aching muscles strained to hoist the rest of him onto the warm facsimile of a platform.

No sooner had his trailing leg left the real floor of the room than the floor of the room disappeared. It's reinforced steel decking replaced with an infinite simulated void. A fate soon shared by the walls and ceiling of the chamber as the machines kicked into high gear. An instant later the translucent green projection beneath Arro's paws solidified, taking on the appearance and texture of case hardened steel as he continued making his way to the central dais. The machines easily outpacing him, generating hundreds of thousands of displays in the void surrounding the walkway.

His breath caught in his throat as he felt his back-leg pop painfully back into socket, forcing him to stop for a moment as feeling trickled back into the paralyzed limb. Trying to not think about the pain he looked over the display panels, he could make out crew profiles, security recordings, and schematics of a seventh dimensional figure with hundreds if not thousands of cross sections. His attention is broken in short order as he puts pressure back on his injured leg, causing him to wince at the crackling sensation that ran through his hip and the stabbing pain that ran up his spine for the briefest of moments before fading. He must've dislocated it in the fight and not noticed he thought, at least it wasn't broken.

Turning his attention back to the simulation he noticed the screens weren't pouring over their contents as quickly now, giving him a chance to get a better look at what exactly they were accessing. Most of them had switched to papers about psychology, nature vs nurture, fringe psychology, and the gestalt theory while others are working over equations Arro barely could place as being from quantum mechanics. He recognized most of the information, he had nosed through it on occasion when nobody was looking, added to it in certain places even. But he couldn't understand what it all meant, the topics were to diverse, too complicated, and too specialized to be a form of communication.

Tenderly trying more weight on his hind-leg and getting only a minor twinge of pain from it he made his way to the central platform, carefully stepping up onto the raised metal dais before taking a seat to contemplate the screens. He heard the catwalk behind him dematerialize, leaving him stranded on a tiny island of steel in an infinite void, but that didn't bother him. What bothered him was the fact that the data in front of him was starting to look more and more like research than anything else. Research centered on himself, Terek, Tereka, Deveroux, Quetza, All of them, from the moment they were born aboard this ship to the time they had to evacuate. Their entire lives, every action and reaction, was being put under a microscope.

He wondered if he had a concussion as he felt a headache coming on watching the various feeds and psych profile assessments for a while before deciding to speak "What are you trying to show me here big girl?" A loud beep from his left drew his attention to a screen flashing "Compiling Avatar. Stand clear." in bold red-orange print. It clicked in his mind a nanosecond before a dull roar shook the platform beneath his paws and a stiff breeze from nowhere ruffled his fur. Even without the sound of the empress's temporal engines cycling he knew the chamber was spawning in something far more complex than just a terminal.

Squinting through the generated wind he saw millions of bright lights just off the platform, flitting around like fireflies before they coalesced into a skeletal form, more quickly followed in droves adding translucent musculature, cybernetic components, skin, fur, and light power armor components. Combining into a terrifyingly lifelike glowing green statue of a leonine woman in a heavily armed and armored suit.

A brilliant flash blinded Arro as the roar grew louder and the wind blew harder, nearly knocking him off his paws as it did. He knew all too well what this meant, the ship wasn't just aiming for a lightshow this time. Squinting into the bright light he could see the rough form becoming more precise, more solid, and most importantly livelier as reality in this little room shook.

The blinding light, booming roar, and stream of gale force winds subsided moments later. Giving Arro some time for his eyes to adjust and see what they've left in their wake. Before him, exactly where the lights had been stood a female sphynx he'd almost mistake as an older version of Tereka, if it weren't for the blatant metal plating bolted to her face and arms, and the ineffable scintillation of color dancing through her eyes.

The differences grew more obvious as she stepped forward out of the void to stand on the platform with him. The inorganic components scattered throughout her body made her movements unnaturally smooth. Her fur patterns, while similar to Terek and Tereka's also showed hints influenced from one of Terek's "Sisters" Alena. The expression she wore bore the mark of Garragan's apathy, just as her armor bore features from the various alien technologies they had collected in their adventures. Even without seeing the ship's name emblazoned on her breastplate or the serial number engraved on her arm he knew that this thing in front of him was the empress personified!

He couldn't decide whether to be impressed in the attention to detail the empress put into her avatar here or be legitimately worried as to why she would construct a combat ready form to speak to him. As he wondered the implications, however, he realized the overbearing sense of the Empress's presence was gone... Replaced in its entirety by a more muted sensation he couldn't quite place.
The Faux Sphynx smiled down at him knowingly, either intentionally using a reflection of Terek's smuggest expression or extrapolating from Zaiden's usual facial range, he couldn't quite tell which. "Don't worry, I'm still here. I'm just not focusing as much attention on you now, since that was causing more harm than good." Her voice was chipper, almost bubbly as she spoke. "Now, we have a lot to discuss and not a lot of time to do it in so if you have any questions make sure they're relevant before asking or save them for after we get past the important points. Understood?"

Arro was taken aback by the ship's bluntness, and amazed that it commanded an authoritarian tone better than Terek ever did. Collecting himself correctly he nodded to the hologram

"Good... fixing a timeline is no trivial matter, but we'll manage... tell me, how much do you know about paradox physics?
Straitforward and to the point... Yet still so vague to leave him wondering... Arro couldn't help but think Kyo was blended into the mix somewhere even as he pieced together his answer. Paradoxes were a popular topic while they were traveling, something Terek had warned them about constantly, so it didn't take long. Shaking his head he told the avatar, "Only what Terek told us... Anything that goes back and alters its own timeline is doomed to an instant, permanent, and utterly irreversible death. Right?"

The empress sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in irritation "Leave it to my captain to focus only on the negative aspects of the matter." conjuring a viewscreen with a wave of her other hand she continued "paradox physics covers far more than the instant and irrevocable death of a timeline erasure" the screen flickered simplified diagrams of a timeline showing the life of a man from his birth to his death "While it does cover the specific mechanics of paradoxical timeline nullification" the screen changed following her explanation, creating a new diagram to show the man from the first example traveling from his adulthood back to his childhood to kill himself as a boy, causing the entire timeline to disappear "it also covers how small alterations to a timeline can cause stable temporal loops and branches."

Arro watched as the screen changed to show two new diagrams of the same man traveling back just like before, but instead of killing his younger self one has the man entrusting him with a small book to read as he grew older creating a fork on the timeline, and the other has the man mentoring his younger self creating a circle on the timeline which doesn't collapse, "AKA Permanent alterations to the timeline. The exact reason Me and my kind were built in the first place."

She was right, and he knew it. No sane race would build a time machine, let alone a time-traveling warship of the caliber of the empress, if merely going back in time would unwrite the entirety of their existence... It would be an absurd and futile effort... and yet here he is standing in the last surviving example of exactly that type of vessel. The Empress snapped him out of his contemplation and dispersed the screen between them with a clap of her hands.

Beaming down at Arro the empress clasped her hands together and dropped them to her waist before she continued "Now, with that out of the way... Here's what I need you to do. I can facilitate the connection between here and one other point in spacetime you choose and can even splice our current selves over to the new timeline we'll be creating so that it'll be like nothing bad ever happened, but you have to choose where to go yourself, and make the necessary alterations to get us back on track."

For a moment he thought she was joking, that she already knew where he'd choose and just open a bridge to it but as he looked at her he noticed she was making no move to do so and realized she wasn't mimicking Terek's smug Omniscience. She was displaying a more good-natured curiosity, she was genuinely asking him for direction. "Whoa, hang on... you want me to go back and change the timeline? How do you...? Wait, hold that thought. What makes you think I'm qualified to do that?"

The Avatar sighed unclasping her hands and crossing her arms defensively "Because I've observed you and ran calculations on what I saw..." A knowing smirk crept across her lips as she continued, "Which evidentially was much more than my dear captain did." Her voice on those last few words cut Arro like a razor, he had done a lot whilst onboard this ship, most of it unapproved and unknown by Terek but mostly harmless to the ship and her crew. She paused for only a moment to take in his startled reaction before continuing "Don't worry I've already deduced why you did all that you have, self-preservation is a strong motivator, I can respect that." With a snap of her fingers new viewscreens appeared around the two of them, Arro saw hundreds of thousands of hours' worth of footage flashing across each, his day-to-day activities, interactions with other crewmembers, aerial views of skirmishes he participated in, a full half of which he couldn't remember. "If you're willing to jeopardize our mission to try and bring your own species back from the brink of extinction, I daresay you're more than qualified than most to save yourself. As for your next question, 'how' that's simple. What went wrong?"

Shaking his head to keep his emotions in check while the memories of every failure flooded his mind, "For one we had our asses handed to us... repeatedly."

The empress smiled down at him as she stood back to her full height "Well then, we're going to have to change something to turn the tide of those skirmishes. Aren't we?"

Rhetorical questions... Arro couldn't help but think that she's pulling traits from Quetza now. Even as he stuttered over his only possible reply "Y-yeah... I guess."

He watched as her friendly smile broadened into a knowing grin "Alright, so how would you propose we do that?" He couldn't help but hear an unusual warmth suffusing her words making them sound almost... Matronly.

Her tone threw him off slightly, it was too warm for a machine, even one as complex as the empress... Still he couldn't help but wonder if it would be the same tone his mother...wherever she was... would have used on him. He only had a moment to ponder that before he heard her hum inquisitively, and her question came back to mind. The thought hit him as he let his eyes wander away from the empress and caught sight of her screens, still silently floating nearby displaying how stable temporal loops form... he couldn't tell what the feeling was that surged through him... Be it hope, Joy, Excitement, or a mix of all three but in that moment he felt that their goal may actually be possible "We have to warn them, prepare them for the fight!"

The empress was beaming as she watched Arro piece some semblance of a plan together, "Get a message though? That would be easy, when and where will we be sending it though?" her voice carrying the same optimistic tone her features conveyed.
Her optimism was dampened mere seconds later, and her expression soured as it seemed a thought crossed her mind. It took Arro a moment longer before it crossed his as well "Right... One portal... One place..." as those words sank in he thought over possibilities, this plan could work if he went back to the most influential point and altered it... Going back to the beginning and rewriting history the hard way would have roughly the same effect... However, a plan began to form as something he had heard a million times flicked across his mind. "That shouldn't be a problem, if you don't mind displaying the Quantum singularities we've encountered in our travels."

Looking up at the holographic projection of the ship's consciousness he saw her smile knowingly back at him before speaking "Done and..." Cracking her knuckles all the displays in the chamber around them disappeared, soon to be replaced by entirely new ones containing the information he requested, and more as data from the archives flood the screens. "Done."

There were fewer of them than he had expected. Arro could have sworn they had discovered hundreds of these things in their travels, and created at least a dozen more. Instead. he was looking at a mere two dozen. "Are these all of them?" he asked, fully expecting... and hoping the ship would explain that it had limited the list based on some esoteric prediction. Instead he felt an emotional twinge, as sorrow and guilt trickled in from outside "Save for one, these are all that are left... All the others have been lost to the Cascade." Her words stopped his thoughts cold, all the others? Lost? Just how much has this thing grown? How far out of hand has it gotten? Looking at the singularities on the displays he recognized all of them. The wreckage of the warship Caridos, who's space-fold engine had malfunctioned ripping a hole in space-time. Charybdis, a natural supermassive black hole just off of the Kevari trade route whose sheer mass connects it to virtually every one of its lesser kin in reality. The well of worlds, a number of artefacts which link hundreds of thousands of worlds together. The Mind's edge supercomputer, mankind's first and only successful application of quantum computing, capable of transmitting the mind of a subject into any other reality as a semi-physical mass. Scrolling through the remaining ones he knew all of them were dangerous... but he had to make one... or all of them work somehow to save everyone. Even at the risk of being crushed, rendered braindead, lethally irradiated, or worse. "What is the last one?"

It felt like there was a tangible pause throughout the chamber as Arro watched the screens stop in their scrolling through relevant data and the processors of the room groaned with the sound of the processors working overtime before the empress's voice reached his ears again. "Whom..."

That one word snapped him from his contemplation of the other screens, Sorting new possibilities through his head even as he said the words "Excuse me?" and got the reply he half expected almost immediately "The last singularity is a Who, not a What..." his worry subsided slightly, if the last singularity is a person he may be able to get them to help him. Then whoever it is could go back and deliver his warnings to every trouble point on the timeline! He was getting giddy just thinking about it, "Tell me! Who... is... it?" he caught himself mid-sentence as he caught sight of the concerned look on the empress's face and realized he still sensed emotions coming from her, mostly guilt, but also worry as she held out her hand and generated a new screen. Causing the simulation to flicker slightly as the processors filled the air with the hum of their working.

Arro was dumbfounded for a moment as the simulation caught back up with itself and a face he hadn't seen in a long time stared back at him from the viewscreen. The space hound, (AKA. "Heriam Vanter", "The living Glitch", "Hero of frozen skies") the same entity his... well, everyone's parents really... trusted with their safekeeping as children... He almost thought it was a mistake at first before more and more data from the archives poured in to fill out the page and the fur color on the screen adjusted to show its coloration without gamma shielding proving he was looking at the right entity. He had forgotten the old mutt was technically a singularity... He honestly figured their old babysitter would be dead by now with the energy signature he put off, he wasn't exactly subtle... He heard the ship saying "I imagine this comes as a bit of a shock."

The ship paused, awaiting a response but continued when she got none. "Listen, I know you probably imagined you'd be able to ask for help. The probability is slim but that is still an option we can try." Only one word out of her statement piqued Arro's interest "Help", Making him think. Heriam had helped them throughout most of their lives, forewarning trouble further along in time, teleporting them out of immediate danger, even arranging for an inconspicuous hideaway on remote planets with decoys elsewhere to keep them safe... The painful memory of his adoptive parents lying dead at the foot of the stairs, flicked across his mind. Realizing he had missed something the ship said, not wanting her to repeat herself and earn at the very least a thump between the eyes he went off the last word he actually heard and ran with it "He used to help us, until we had gone and mucked that all up."

Arro could hear something in the ship's voice, remorse maybe, as she spoke "Listen to me, he didn't leave because of anything any of you did." Her words hurt almost as much as the thoughts they dredged up. Heriam had told them that they were special among their alternates, the only set which were born exactly as they are, and the only ones who will be. How they were destined to succeed where countless others had failed. They were supposed to fix everything... Instead they just died. He tried his best to push those thoughts aside before locking eyes with the empress "Why then? Why did he leave?"

He heard an entirely foreign sound come from the ship's avatar as she quietly sputtered for a moment before answering "I-ah... I don't know Arro. Emotions are new to me, I still don't understand them on this scale." Feeling his anger building he glared at the simulation, which if he were Zaiden or Zorin would have burned a hole through her projected skull, "Then how do you know it wasn't us?" his voice came out a little harsher than he would have liked especially when he saw the look of surprise cross the avatar's face... and the laser cannons mounted on her back twitch...

A moment of quiet passed awkwardly, as they both knowingly stood well within range of one another. The servos on her lasers humming lightly as he nervously twitched his tails. The Empress broke the silence a moment later "He disappeared right before we traveled to Biphasia..." Arro was a little taken aback by this little fact... but couldn't find a single memory to refute it with The last time he remembered seeing the old hound was months before Biphasia... When he teleported in and gave a cryptic warning that there would be no more Champions, and that the "negatives" were coming…

He remembered the Champions were Glitch's troubleshooters, his go-to people for when a universe started to have problems, human mercenary immortals with several lifetimes of practice in evening out the status quo. Kyo, Deveroux, Zorin, Garan, and Tereka were all disguised as them at one time or another so that they could hide on earth... Which made sense. All of it made sense, except that they were gone... What could have killed the unkillable? Taking a moment to collect his thoughts and let his eyes refocus on the empress, he nodded to her and let his tails droop, his approximation to lowering his weapon "You're right... do you think he was running from the negatives?"

The Empress wasn't so quick to power down her shoulder mounted guns, but Arro had kind of expected that. He was thankful she never actually trained them on him, however, as she spoke "It's possible, but unlikely. My records and sensor readings indicate they ignore his presence." Snapping her fingers a viewscreen materialized, plotting interdimensional teleportation arrays following seven objects, even without the 3-d chart accompanying the raw data Arro could see the coordinates were close, mere miles apart at times, which is nothing for entities who can show up on starship sensors clearly from light-years away... Something was wrong.

He heard the Empress's guns power down while he was watching the screen before another screen appeared right in front of his nose in a flash displaying a three-dimensional explosion in the Centre of a two dimensional line and rough expansion and relativity algorithms calculated to the nth degree "My theory is that he could sense the temporal wake of my drive cores detonating, and fled to avoid the primary shockwave."

Arro tried to understand what she was displaying on her screens, but cross-field temporal mechanics were well out of his league. What she said on the other hand made all too much sense to him...placing his paw on the viewscreen in front of him to pause it. "You're saying he knew what was going to happen?..." His growl returning as he spoke.

"I know it's hard to believe, but you have to trust me on this one Arro" The empress was projecting a mottled emotion, he couldn't quite make out it's component parts but he could sense it distinctly. It's alien feeling tainting her words well before he heard them…

Flexing his claws against the simulated glass of the viewscreen subconsciously as he mulled over her words the cold surface buckling under his touch feeling as though it would break at any moment. His eyes glazing over as he asked "Why?"
" Arro... Please..." A new sensation reached his mind, sorrow, as he heard her talk, and he felt her next few words register before she spoke them... She thought he was asking why he should trust her which only made his fury boil over, digging his claws into the screen he slammed it down, splintering both it and the one behind it in one swift motion, clearing a line of sight to the empress's avatar. His words resonated through the holographic spaces as he deliberately picked his words "Why weren't we WARNED?"

The initial shock of him shattering a pair of viewscreens, quickly flowed into the shock of the question he asked. The expression on the empress's face and the blur of thoughts through her head were more than enough proof for that. But after the initial "Adrenaline" rush wore down he felt the entire room rumble with the effort of the processors as she tried to find an answer. Synthetic or not Arro could have sworn he heard almost human thoughts in the empress's head as she was thinking, but that passed shortly. "I don't know... There's only a limited number of logical reasons why you wouldn't, but most of those revolve around"

Arro finished her sentence before she could "Betrayal..." breaking eye contact as he did as he felt the telltale burn of tears. "Yes... but the only one who could confirm or deny that would be him." She continued. Arro, Half listening, nodded and got back on his feet. Mentally re-arranging his plan. "Then I have two questions I need to ask him... plot the coordinates."

"You're assuming his cooperation? Even with what we just discussed?" Her words were backed by surprise and concern, he could feel it. But they invoked a number of bittersweet imaginings that he toyed with as they flit across his mind. He couldn't help but smile through the tears, cooperative or not, traitor or not, It didn't matter, he will get what he set out for... even if the impossible has to be done to do it.
Relaxing the magic that keeps him small he allowed himself to grow until he could look the empress in the eyes, smiling at her as he spoke "No. I'll be Guaranteeing it."

Her expression was still uncertain, but he knew why a quiver ran through his hindlegs... he hadn't exactly had time to heal... but that wouldn't matter. "And if you find he did betray you?"

He couldn't help but chuckle at the question "Then I will end him. Simple as that... Now, Open that portal... and do me a favor... Make sure you give me the element of surprise."