Earth F?984
Earth F?983
Earth F?982
Earth F?981
Earth F?99
It went on for a while. There were a lot of different Earths (an infinite number, actually, since they were being destroyed and created every second, even without FrostNight roaming the Multiverse like a gleeful lawn mower), and it’s not like I was looking for one in specific. The problem with the Multiverse was that planets and dimensions existed all over the place; classifying and numbering them in a linear way was almost impossible. The basic idea was that the letters (mostly) ran up and down, while the numbers (mostly) ran side to side. Just knowing where FrostNight’s path of destruction started and where it ended wasn’t enough, since it could take any number of different roads to get there. My world was close enough to the end that I knew FrostNight would eventually wipe out that entire classification; I was just trying to figure out how it was getting there so I could have a chance at stopping it.
I was in the middle of figuring out how to find the most likely projected path when the numbers suddenly dimmed. I glanced over to J/O, trying to make sure he wasn’t losing power or something, but he looked as confused as I did.
“Joey, there’s a—”
More words flashed up on the wall.
OFFICER CLEARANCE GRANTED.
“J/O, how did you—”
“I’m not doing it,” he said. “It’s a programmed variable; it’s reacting to the search parameters from this location and some other factors.”
“What other factors?” I asked, but the words flashed and faded, and an image appeared on the wall.
It was faint and fuzzy, grainy, like old silent movies from the nineteen twenties. It took me a moment to even place what the image was supposed to be, but humans are trained to recognize faces first—and one face you’ll always recognize is your own, even if it is a few decades older and sporting an artificial eye.
It was the Old Man. Captain Joseph Harker, leader of InterWorld.
He was sitting behind his desk, looking seriously at whatever was recording this message. He started to speak, his mouth obviously moving, though the graininess of the video made it difficult to read his lips.
“J/O, the sound!”
“What am I, a speaker system?”
“J/O—”
“I’m trying, Joey. This file is really old.”
I glued my eyes to the image, trying to catch whatever I could of what he was saying. I almost jumped out of my skin as, a moment later, J/O started to talk in the Old Man’s voice.
“—to give you a few moments to sort out this file, since I don’t know exactly how old it will be by the time you see it. Once you have everything in order, give the voice command ‘proceed,’ or select ‘continue’ on whatever kiosk you’re at. I’ll wait.”
The way he said “I’ll wait” simultaneously made me smile and hurry the hell up; it was the same impatient tone he always used, the one that meant I’ll wait, but you’d better make this fast, before I lose my patience.
“Proceed?”
“Voice recognition’s broken, Joey, I told you that,” J/O said in his own voice. I glanced over to the kiosk, where the word “continue” was visible among the cracks in the screen. I tapped a finger to it, then two fingers. Then, when still nothing happened, I hit it with the side of my fist. The screen flashed.
“Very well,” said J/O in the Old Man’s voice, as the projection started speaking once again. “Joseph Harker of Earth F epsilon three to the fourteenth, I trust it is you receiving this message.”
“Yes,” I said automatically, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me. It was just a recording. A recording that the Old Man had programmed specifically for me, one that had been floating around in InterWorld’s database for thousands of years.
“Though I am unaware of your precise situation at the time of this recording, I am certain of two things. One, that you are currently on a future version of this ship, and two, that InterWorld Prime is doomed.” He looked straight at me, and I swear it was almost like we were locking gazes, like he knew exactly where I was standing in the room.
“The HEX ship Adraedan has a lock on us, and I’ve thrown the engines into overdrive. We can’t outrun them, and we can’t out-Walk them. They’re keeping pace with our dimensional shifts, and if we stop even for a moment, they’ll have us.
“That being said, your seeing this message means I have three things to tell you.” He held up one finger. “One. I had Jaroux set certain protocols in place to alert me when this message was received. I have the precise date; binary time stamp; and, thanks to the tracer I injected you with last week, your exact location.” Before I could react to that (that stupid tracer had come into play more times than a golygon has right angles), he dropped another bomb on me.