The Reject’s Perspective
Yondakar, “Yon” to his one friend, was a rejected Time-Jockey, physically branded on the back of both hands with the future's version of an R, and cast aside to never slip again through time again. As if TC could stop him. More importantly, the forty-seven year old man wasn’t the typical bred TJ, designed and trained to observe and protect the balance in his quadrant of infinity. No, aside from his disregard for rules, Yon was born an Inhab of the original stream, AE2020-XXI42801 according to TC. He'd lived on the very station he now witnessed being completely destroyed in its fall to Earth within the new split stream.
After all these years, the split stream actually happened. Unfathomably, Yon was left with the realization it didn't happen the way he remembered it. He remembered infinite versions of himself dying an infinite number of ways in the split, but the way it split had never changed, it had always happened the same way, in slight variations, but the same way. Yon now watched the compartmental explosions on the space-side of the Station, sending the other side careening the atmosphere. More explosions! He felt as if his whole life had been ripped out from under him, folded into a paper plane and tossed into a rubbish bin. Where was Henri (his one friend and fellow reject) when he needed him? How was he supposed to make sense of this? Yon went back in his memory to see what was different:
He was walking down one of the corridors that connected two segments of the donuts shaped Station, it had windows and he'd stopped to stare out the window because he thought he saw something, squinting at objects he thought were approaching. He hadn't heard any announcements for new arrivals or special guests, nor anything mentioned about maintenance. As a lost-kid, he had no family, and he didn't like to be kept locked up so, he always escaped and he always wandered. He'd never seen anything like the objects that were definitely approaching.
Even as he had that thought, the seven year old was startled to find the lights went out down the hall behind him, racing toward him and rushing past him in a sudden blanket of darkness that was accompanied by the loss of gravity. He was floating! They never let the kids in areas without gravity, something about "bone density," but he'd been thrilled and forgot all about the objects and the darkness.
In the moment of his elation, he realized the "Real" him was still standing in a lit hall, with gravity, staring out the window. The parallel feelings were suddenly unnerving. He searched through the view out of the window and saw nothing but stars on one side and a perfectly sized Earth on the other. He had no idea what was happening. It was like being in two places at once!
"Real" Yon ran, while the other Yon was still giggling in the darkness, floating around like he was flying, making engine noises with his mouth as if he were a plane or ship. "Real" Yon ran into one of the teachers for a higher level than he'd reached yet, but he recognized her, tried to explain that he was experiencing two versions of himself right in those very moments! She did not believe him, not even when "Real" Yon was physically rocked by the sensation of the other Yon being thrown suddenly against the window mid-flight, scrambling to get his legs under him and look through the window to see why they were suddenly moving toward Earth.
Ships. The objects were spaceships with funny looking teeth on them, growling at the station so close- wait... he realized they were pushing the station into Earths Atmosphere deliberately! He looked out the opposite window to confirm, Earth was getting bigger, filling more of the window. "Real" Yon started screaming. He was convinced they were going to be under attack any minute! The teacher thought he went mad, and she'd had him committed to the mental ward.
Yon reminded himself he'd just been a kid, hadn't even known time wasn't a line reaching toward his eighth birthday just one month from now, circa 2020; but something much bigger, more incomprehensible, something he didn't even have a name for until his early twenties when he'd figured to call it the allwhen*, and only because he'd been trying to explain it to the other Reject he'd been trying to teach to do his version of a Time Swim. Back then, he'd called it Detached Omni-Positional Teleportation, but these days he just called it DOTing*.
It wasn't the same thing as a Time Swim, because he only retained that same sliver of consciousness that was "Real" Yon. So, he didn't so much manifest somewhere as he navigated the particles in any given space and time to jump from here to there. In stream-time*, it was often the same second of relative time -maybe just in another time-stream or another time forward or backward. In between-time* it was... well, it varies and it's complicated. Back then, "Real" Yon hadn't even known what he was experiencing wasn't actually happening, and now, he realized it never did!
What was he supposed to do with that? Considering the station was still going to hit the atmosphere, and there was still a (dead) seven year old version of himself on it, crushed in the stampede toward the pods. He knew because he saw it, not like his ICIM episodes (as he learned they were called by TC), but with his own eyes as he was both trying to get to another part of the Station to escape on his ship, and to avoid his other self.
Now, of course, he wished he'd risked the unknown and snatched his alternate seven year old self when he went by. Seeing his child-self crushed to death by a running mob of desperate people was the absolute worst thing he'd ever seen, and he'd seen a lot of bad shit in forty years of infinite versions of himself that didn't exist. Knowing those other versions of himself he'd grown up experiencing didn't actually exist, didn't help him come to terms with the fact that one did, and he'd died senselessly. Carelessly. Right in front of "Real" Yon's eyes. He could have done something.
Yon knew the other him's didn't exist because he'd went looking for them. He'd eventually DOT'd every stream he could sense, before going mad, and he'd never found them. He could wake through the possible-streams, return to any of them in an observing state, but he only "lived" each of them once, for as long as that version of him lived. Right now, there was a version of him already in Cincinnati, already hunting for Gunter, but he was doubting that was actually happening any more than the rest of his ICIM episodes. What was the point in giving him the experiences of possible streams that didn't exist? For that matter, if the split didn't happen the way he remembered, was Gunter still to blame?
Sitting in the cockpit of his ship, Jenuva (Yen-oo-vah), in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Yon didn't know what to do next. He felt his body get twitchy in his stillness, reacting like muscle memories to this never-ending ICIM episodes of alter Yon's, still unfolding while he sat indecisive.As far as he knew, he was the only Inhab who lived with ICIM as a permanent state of conscious being.
At least he wasn't the only Yon who didn't know what to do; the other forty-seven year old Yon was choosing between a small bottle of vodka and a big bottle of vodka, and hadn't even thought of where he'd find a peaceful place to drink it in one of the non-existent versions of the war-torn split-stream circa 2080. He shook his head and sighed, wondering if he should DOT back to his poor excuse for a home in his original stream circa 2080, or head down to Cincinnati to see if Gunter was really there setting off an EMP to blackout the world in this split-stream of 2020... Forty years of searching for this stream, and now that he's in it, how could he go back?
Yon flipped a red switch to an off position to wake up his ship, and wanted to blame TC for rejecting him, not teaching him properly or giving him backup, but apparently they’d had a TJ on board the Station with the same, failed, mission to stop the devastating split. She certainly hadn’t been there for him! Yon thought the stunning, mocha-skinned red-headed woman was a goner now, as in dead; she’d been going away from the escape pods. If she wasn’t going to Time Swim, why didn’t she go for the escape pods?
As he was having the thought in his moment of reverie, he jerked upright in his pilot’s seat and nearly bonked his head on an instrument panel. At five-eleven (though he often said six foot), he wasn’t a giant, but he hadn’t been thinking about excited-movement-clearance when he built this baby to fight the ships that apparently didn't exist. Yon made a mental note for the second bird which wasn’t finished yet, much to Henri’s disappointment.
Re-checking his screen, Yon confirmed had one Time-Swimmer and a waking passenger in a pod, which… came out of the ass-end of the station about to shit on the Earth’s atmosphere. It was a solid green blip and a transparent blue blip inside a solid white blip on his one-of-a-kind radar.
He had no idea there was a pod on that side of the station, watched to see if any more were launched, and though he knew not all of the pods launched from the Station would make it through the atmosphere, or landing, he was suddenly very fixed on this one pod.
Yon might have written off the whole station to their fates when he’d boarded Jenuva to fight of a squadron of ships that weren’t there…but knowing the likelihood of the TJ in that pod being the red-head made his little head think it could make decisions for him. At the very least, it did make him start to take action for the possibility he would go after her. He was still alive after-all, he had to do something, and the idea of going back to AE2020-XXI42801 felt like surrender to the Inhabs taunts of his mental instability. I see the non-existent streams for a reason! ... Even if I don't know what that is yet.
Yon’s abnormal six fingered hands, for an Inhab of a five-fingered time-stream, danced along specific buttons and switches to get Jenuva ready to leave Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and descent to ten thousand feet above the Karman Line*.
The idea that space is empty is an illusion he along ago learned, and the word atmosphere didn’t actually cover the fact that space, even around the “atmosphere lacking” moon, had a particles in it. Yon had a sense of those particles, in their specific space in time, and his years of experience using them (no thanks to TC) had lead him to build his ship not just to be a space worthy ship, or an air worthy bird, but a time worthy swimmer of the allwhen. A true AST vehicle. Never mind her weapons... he'd thought he'd be fighting a small armada.
Jenuva wasn’t powered by any energy-cell or fuel he had to stop to get, it was in the very nature of the universe, and the mechanics he'd invented to harness it. He was grateful with the bounty it provided him. Theoretically, he’d mused more than once, the ship would still be powered and waiting for a worthy pilot long after he died; him-him, the "Real" Yon. It was a marvelous thought, but he had to focus on the now. The pod. The future of this new time-stream. The time-stream he left behind in search of the imbalance. At least HE knew he wasn’t crazy.
If each particle in space were a dot on a Battleship game grid of his chosen time-stream, Yon had a sense of them like an omni-directional net that extended out from him nearly infinitely, and if he wished it, into and beyond this quadrant of infinity. The ship was a mechanical extension of him and his ability to move across the board, into and within any stream he wished to DOT in.
He was preparing to employ that method to jump-time by imputing his target point at ten thousand feet above the Karman Line. He intended to exit the time-stream reality there and to re-enter at the relative same time, wherever he wanted to be. Before he could input his re-entry, Yon had to decide where he needed to be. Cincinnati, or the Pod to question the red-head…? Well, where is the red-head going?
The pod he had on radar wasn’t just in a descent, or knocked into a spiral from the impact of the station with the atmosphere he noted as Jenuva began her own descent, but by his calculations, was going to fall into Gunter’s possible EM-Bubble. Not just that, she was headed for the garage he intended to land on. His ship was shielded, he did not know if the pod he hadn't known existed was. That complicated his decision, and made it simpler.
If he continued down to stop Gunter’s blackout (if it's actually happening, Yon reminded himself), he would risk not doing it in time to save the red-head. He couldn’t save his other self on the space station; Yon asked himself, why do you care about a TJ he’d never actually met? He heard himself answer just as quickly; You’re a sucker for red-heads, Yon and she might have answers. He knew it was his little head talking and countered more logically, if today has taught you anything, Yon, you can know the possible future and still know jack shit.
The reject put in a course for the pod. If Gunter set off, and Yon couldn’t stop the EM-pulse that would start the global blackout, he could at least knock the pod to a safer landing trajectory before it reached her. If he did it right, they’d never even know he was there, a yacht sized particle on the wind -and he could still go after Gunter.
Multi-tasking with a purpose now, Yon didn’t really have to think about what he was doing to do it, and he caught himself looking at his reflection against the forward view-port. His once inky black hair was completely grey, and it didn’t stop its silvery invasion there either, he noted a little self-deprecatingly. He hadn’t looked at himself in a long time he realized; too busy chasing the time-stream that hadn’t even existed yet, trying to catch a man he’d only seen in waking and ICIM episodes.
His full lips were framed by his slightly darker grey beard, and just the sight of it made him pause and scratch under his chin. Both his hair and his beard were long enough to make him come to terms with the fact he hadn’t been taking care of himself. He couldn’t even see his ears, or his neck! How had he not noticed the mop on his head? Why hadn't Henri said something?
Yon consoled himself with the fact the red-head hadn’t noticed him on the ship as she shouldered past him, and she wouldn’t even see him when he DOT’d on by so, he had nothing to worry about. He wasn’t doing this for his little head, he reminded himself, he was doing it because it was the right thing to do.
Easing Jenuva down toward his target exit point, Yon rode the soft humming vibration and mused that at least he could remember he’d showered before the catastrophe today. So, he wasn’t stinking up his cockpit with anything more than fresh adrenaline, failure, determination, and a healthy fear that this was a war he was ill equipped to fight.
“That-a-girl,” Yon coo’d Jenuva. She looked like a patch-scrap fighter jet in the shape of a dart with a heavy ass, the size of a small luxury boat, but Jenuva was more capable than she looked; like her builder.
“Nice and steady…” he cautioned himself, more than the bird, flipping two green switches on his left hand control panel. He felt like he was floating down, but he also knew he was moving incredibly fast on a scale most people will never comprehend.
In Inhab space-time perspective, or stream-time, this stream contained whole galaxies that looked like distant stars from the alternate-station he was born on. He could feel the placement of the earth around the hurtling star they called the Sun, and its pull from the force of the galactic spiral, which got its force from the infinite expansion of the Universe. Don't forget black holes and dark-matter! It’s a lot to take in, let alone live with! Yon giving himself a pep-talk before DOTing from one point to another, without missing his mark while everything is moving at such cosmic speeds, should be excused by any reasonably sane person.
In his chosen maneuver, he wasn’t just DOTing, but in an effect, physically waking through the DOT, as if his ship were a surf board pushing against space and time to distort the very nature of its natural wave. With his experienced precision doing it in person, the TJ reject Yondakar with-no-family-name could move a specific object without being physically present to “touch” it. As if he were a Poltergeist.
In this case, it was simply a matter of moving enough but not too much space-time matter to “bump” the pod to a better trajectory and not obliterate the both of them. Matter can’t occupy the same space, not just because of physical properties, but because energy that makes matter possible can’t be destroyed, it only changes. Yon didn’t want to become an implosion. “You can do this Yon.”
The older man had preformed a physical wake while DOTing in Jenuva only once before, and it was a narrow success. There was a small chance he would get his path wrong, or the pods path wrong, but Yon didn't want a repeat of knowing he could have done something but didn't. It was simple. He was risking it and doing his damnedest not to be wrong. His fight with Gunter would have to wait a few seconds.
“E-ah* looks good, reaching optimal speed…” Yon was talking to himself again as he went through a short checklist, watching the descent of the pod, knowing it had to reach it’s optimal point in space and time at the same time he DOT’d or he’d miss it when he re-entered the stream in his physical waking maneuver. Or crash right through it, some part of himself was quick to remind. “Wish us luck, Red.” Yon concluded absently to the red-head he hadn’t officially met, before checking his straps, fitting on his helmet, strapping the oxygen mask over his face, and taking in a calming breath he could exhale while he made the jump. It just made it feel more natural.
Jenuva didn’t have any foot pedals, or a joy stick, she had a specialized gel platform on the end of both arm-rests where he placed his hands to feed the impulses of his mind through his body and into his ship. All the switches he’d flipped, pressed, or turned helped to calibrate the subtleties of his intent in terms the machine could understand.
So, when he reached his Exit point, the ship already knew what he was going to do, and merely had to process his commands in the order he commanded them, allowing Yon to handle the variations as he went. Exiting's the easy part, gave him a rush of adrenaline in the distortion of time as he went from ten thousand feet above the Karma Line, to the between place he’d be spat out from, three feet off the tumbling pod’s frame in the same second of stream-time; after he bumped it:
To Yon in B-T, it felt like five full minutes of struggling with the natural current of space-time to ease against it with just enough intent and physical presence for it to naturally give in to the experience he was experiencing. It was the best rush he’d ever felt, like being in the middle of imagination becoming reality in the very moments that reality gives in to imagination. He had no other way to describe it, but he felt invigorated in the process. The pressure of surfing against space-and time was like riding turbulence, but it had less to do with anything pushing against the ship, and more to do with the fact it didn’t belong there to begin with. Yon had mad respect for the between place.
As he pushed the space-mater of the stream in the strange stretch of time that was longer for him than it really was, Yon felt how the movement created a tangible wave of air-matter that knocked into the pod. He verified it altered the pods course exactly as he’d planned. Triumph! Of course, he had to remind himself that was only half his battle today, there was still Cincinnati and the possible black-out. Gunter.
Saving time by doing the work in the between space, Yon activated the auto-correct for his course to Cincinnati, from where he’d make next DOT exit after his full re-entry. It was, of course, a 180 twist*.
After what he’d accomplished in the wake of his own failure to stop the stream split in the first place, Yon felt not just empowered to push on, but thrilled for the challenge. The reject didn’t know what was ahead of him, but he knew Gunter had to be stopped even if it wasn't in this stream, with or without the help of the red-headed TJ backed by TC.
Flipping a few more switches, pressing a couple more buttons, he had the engines ready when he re-entered the present and imbalanced offshoot of AE2020-XXI42801. Not stopping to consider what TC would code this stream, he maneuvered his dart-shaped bird into a somersault dive as he re-entered. He had to turn a knob and flip another switch before he eased her into a barrel roll as she made the curve, putting himself upright and at the optimal speed when he hit his target exit point in the next moment.
Pilot and bird DOT’d right through time to end up approaching the parking garage, the red-head was now safely away from, with enough distance to slow before he found a spot to park on the roof next to the catwalk to the building next door. He would remotely move the plane while he wasn’t in it, to avoid someone else getting their hands on his tech, but before he could will himself to do anything more than verify Jenuva was cloaked* and find said parking, he found himself verifying again the red-head’s safe landing trajectory.
It still wasn’t enough. Yon visually confirmed the pod was still falling a safe distance from station debris.
Only then did his mind return to Gunter. Knowing that Gunter was the man behind the stream-split in the streams that didn't exit, didn’t help Yon know how to stop him. Gunter was either not here at all and Yon had it all wrong, or somehow one step-ahead of him. The reject had spent his life knowing every nuance of the streams that didn’t exist yet, and now existed differently. That it hadn’t happened how he remembered it had him off his game, and once more, chasing the rabbit that was Gunter without knowing what he was getting into.
In his ICIM episodes, Cincinnati was the common epicenter for the global blackout, and it was as good a place to start as any, especially since he had a Time Swimmer on radar right where he remembered them, one building over and seven floors up. Yon didn’t know it was Gunter, but the chances were high since Henri had stayed behind. The idea of going into an entirely new stream had been too much for the other rejected TJ.
Yon’s little head wanted to be done in the few minutes it would take the red-head to land, but he wasn’t sure that would (or should) actually make his itinerary. He’s still just one man, and this wasn’t likely to go down the way he remembered it even if there was a Time-Swimmer here. The rejected TJ reserved himself to figure out how to fight the small army (larger than he remembered) of Inhabs it seemed the Time-Swimmer had with them, but only while Yon was gearing up to leave Jenuva.
He had to unclip his mask, take off and lock-in his helmet (which he only really wore just encase there was a haul breech mid-flight through the between-place), and unstrapped himself from the pilot’s chair that doubled as every other command console for his one-man show. Unlike the TJs, Yon hadn’t entirely mastered the art of not dragging his feet, and remained there a moment longer than he intended just out of sheer dread. With a shake of his head, he palmed the arm-rests and eased out and around the chair at the same time.
It was only three strides down a grated path that led down two short steps and he was in his Ready Room. It was more a hallway with supplies on both sides and a monitor in the middle of the port wall for plans and schematics. He was memorizing his route into the building (not that he didn't already know it), and considering the movements of the Inhabs plus the blip he was assuming was Gunter. While his mind processed the map, his hands were strapping on his guns, knives, and back-up devices. Still, Yon smirked to himself, realizing he was also still thinking of the red-headed TJ.
Sensing he couldn't stall any longer, not if the EMP was going to go off, Yon grunted at himself and strapped what looked like a watch to his wrist; it was really Jenuva's remote. "You've done this infinite times..." He tried to remind himself, but it didn't make him any less nervous to step off his ship and into a world that could very well turn into a series of civil wars, globally, and without power. Desperate people do desperate things, Yon reminded himself, not remembering where he'd heard or read it.
While he had a cool ramp for cargo in the back, he took the less showy exit off the side, just beyond his ready room in the tiny space for a hall to the cargo bay. He hadn't included a bunk, or a toilet in order to accommodate the weapons, computers and cargo bay. Palm to the starboard door, it opened down to offer him steps to the ground, but the air was so dry he thought dust came out of his lungs. It hit him like a mac truck and he realized he'd gotten so used to the other Yon's, he'd tuned out their sensations like white-noise that occasionally made him tick or tremble. This was real, and against his will, he was thrown into a flashback of an alternate seven year old Yon:
He couldn't believe he'd made it! People were walking over the dead bodies who hadn't had anything to strap into but climbed in the pod anyway. They were fighting to get out, no one had stopped to check on the man across from him, limp in his belts, hit repeatedly by the tumbling people; probably dead. A lot of people were dead. Yon had felt himself die, crushed to death by running people on his way to the pods. He felt sick, but he wasn't dead, just strapped in still. He fumbled his small fingers on the button, using his whole arms to push hard enough, and it popped free, but it wasn't comforting. There was still a sea of dead people between him and the hatch emptying of live people.
Yon was a lost-kid, no one looked back at him. He didn't want to walk on the dead people, the thought made him loose his lunch on them, and that made him feel guilty enough! Stepping on the empty seats, he rounded the pod toward the hatch, ready to jump out of the increasing heat. Hell must be on his heels. He didn't want Hell to get him, but someone outside screamed and he couldn't stop himself from jumping back against the pod wall. He heard more screaming, words he didn't know, maybe adult words; what was a holy fucking shit?
Ouch, owie, oooowwee! He was burning! Ow! Ow! His skin was burning but there was no fire! Why were they screaming? Where was the darkness? Hell had him but there was no darkness! Yon looked out the hatch and only saw that not all the screaming was people, some of it was the station he'd just left behind, and the fire was in it as much as on it. There was a moment of silence, the wreckage hit the pod and he was flung back in awe of it's might with a sickening crack, he lost his bowls and all feeling; then darkness.
Yon blinked, and realized he was on his hands and knees at the foot of Jenuva's steps. He'd fallen. The concrete was wet beneath him, and was surprised that he was crying, that what he'd felt wasn't a flashback of a former ICIM episode, it was a brand new ICIM episode. A new stream shooting off this split stream the moment his other self died in the stampede, and another alternate Yon lived on to die just after making it to the ground.
He was sending his ship home for safe keeping, walking toward the catwalk to the building before he even realized he'd gotten up. There would be more seven year old Yon's dying, and eight year old Yon's dying, and so on if he didn't stop it. The Imbalance was happening, and Yon wasn't the only kid dying.