Memoirs of a Timelord (31 page)

       

       I had been to Lucinda many thousands of times during its development.  All of DorLek's apprentices drew assignments there; anything from a walk-on part, to global manipulation.  I'd been all over that place during school and residency.    

       I remember being awed by Lucinda.  By the time I knew her, she was extremely advanced in her development.  Not at all like the rough and coarse galaxies I had been in before.  Lucinda was a mature Guf, cultured and proper.  She was so incredibly fascinating once you really got to know her.  Remember that a Guf holds the combined experiences of every life form to have lived and died within its influence.  She had seen so much in her time that it boggled the imagination every time you talked to her.

       To say that Lucinda inspired me to be a better Editor would be somewhat of an understatement.  She was just such a sparkling personality that it was easy to get lost in her.  Most Guf I had been in were simple bovine intellects compared to her.  With lesser developed galaxies it was like talking to a kid with poor social skills.  But Lucinda was like meeting the most interesting person in the universe; you just couldn't get enough of her.  Oh, and the stories.  Like ten billion years of Star Wars trilogies in there, but with better dialogue.  Hell, I even went to her for dating advice from time to time.  She was so wise, and witty too.  

       I have to admit that I felt a huge sense of respect towards Master DorLek for the work he had done with his domain.  She was truly a masterpiece of cultural engineering.  Even more amazing was that the Boss had successfully integrated the cumulative energy of 37 dwarf galaxies, 64 proto galaxies, and 14 emission nebulas into Lucinda.  These stellar bodies would have each brought their own consciousness to the table as the intense gravity of the dominant galaxy pulled them in, mixing them like soup in a kettle.  DorLek had to specifically engineer each of these micro-galaxies to ensure they fit properly once they combined.

       But never before today had I felt a Guf like Lucinda at her ascension.  There was just something so attractive about her allure.  So magnetic was her energy that you just wanted to dive in and swim in her eternal tide.  Even from the very fringes of her galactic halo it felt like I was being pulled by an irresistible force.

       "Keep your post, do not give in or you will be swept into her wake." The voice in my head was AgnoLek, one of the Boss's most accomplished students.  Himself over thirty thousand Terrans, his own galaxy was nearing ascension also.

       In my head it was like angels singing.  The rush of pure energy was soooo perfect as Lucinda swirled in anticipation of what would come next.  Like a massive flock of birds, her collective consciousness swarmed around the galactic whirlpool before me.  Something flittered thru my mind, and I realized it was DorLek, he was in the Guf.  I felt like crying as I bade him farewell.  It was okay though, I knew with absolute certainty that we would meet again as siblings in the next plane of existence.  He would be waiting for me on the other side, just inside of Heaven's gates.  

       There were thousands of former students, arrayed in a honeycomb pattern on the fringes of Lucinda.  Hanging there motionless in space, we were there to witness the ascension of a brother.  In simplest terms, the whole event was really just galactic midwifery as we collectively guided the Well of Souls towards its own birth.  Slowly, steadily, Lucinda began to coalesce into a single force at our urgings.  I could see the ocean of souls surge as they grew ever more powerful.  Expanding outwards, I could feel as her energy finally shattered the barriers that held her to this plane of existence.  Then with a blip, she was gone, leaving nothing more than the rubble of a red galaxy in her wake.  When she had left, Lucinda took every last trace of life, every soul, and every glimmer of creation.  Nothing would ever grow there again.  My eyes were mesmerized by the dim red glow of the rubble as it would cool for eons.  After that it would simply appear to be a void in space to distant observers.

       It was strange; those first minutes afterwards were so silent.  At first I couldn't put a finger on just what it was, but finally it hit me: there were no voices in my head.  I was floating in the intergalactic Tween so there were no vibrations from stars or cosmic anomalies, no gravitational pull from distant bodies, and no Guf.  Nothing, nada, zip.  I actually felt a jolt of terror there for a second.  I couldn't remember the last time it had been quiet in my head.  There was just something so refreshing about the silence. 

       The other Editors began jumping back to their domains.  Like little points of light, they'd blink out of sight as they headed home.  Finally it was down to just Bara and me, hanging there in the void watching the rubble that had once been home to more than a centillion life forms.  It had been awe inspiring, my first ascension.  I'd never been one of those bible thumping people, but seeing Lucinda evolve made me a true believer.  I think it's got a lot to do with why these guys are so committed.  We aren't preaching something based entirely on faith; we have been out there and felt it with our hands and minds.  We know beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is a purpose to all of this.  

       Bara put a hairy hand on my shoulder before jumping back to his cave.  I stayed there by myself for hours, just listening to absolute silence.  No EM fields, no chatter, just tranquil silence.  I thought about the brave Ethereals who had died when Lucinda ascended.  After billions of years, they were ready for their release.  It had shocked me to think that they had lived so long that they could be okay with being blotted out forever.  The very idea frightened me.  Dying was bad, but being erased was permanent.  But mebbe when you're twenty billion years old you're ready for something new, even if it's extinction.

       I kept getting this feeling like something was behind me.  I glanced back and didn't see anything.  I had scanners on full so I'd see anyone trying to sneak up on me.  Bara was known to be a practical joker.  He was not above sticking a 'kick me' sign on my back when I wasn't looking.  I keep checking, but no sign of my hairy brother.

       Still, I just felt like I should be looking the other way.  Like I wanted to shout out "Will someone answer that damned phone!"  It was this incessant tugging that made me finally spin about 180°.  

       It was a nice view, a field of galaxies that extended as far as the eye could see.  Not like the graveyard behind me.  It was beautiful, especially with enhanced eyes.

       Then I saw it, a section of the sky seemed to pulse slightly, like a heartbeat.  Running the phenomenon thru the database, I searched for a possible cause.  I was still mulling it over an hour later when it pulsed again.  That time I was expecting it so I got a better taste of it.  There was a flavor to it that was so familiar.  I just could not put my finger on it...you ever have that happen?  Get a scent of something and just not be able to place it?  As faint as it was, I felt tantalized by it all.  I knew it could be a trap, but then I considered that it may be something else altogether.

       In my entire quest for home, I had always jumped from the interior of one galaxy to the next, querying the Guf from within.  I couldn't remember the last time I spent any time in the intergalactic void, outside of the influence of a Guf.  Without the background noise, I was more sensitive to faint signals.  Intrigued, I jumped long and far towards that patch of pulsing sky.  Once I got there I waited in the deepest, darkest space and watched.  It was a long time before I saw it again, just the faintest glow.  I jumped towards that spot at least a thousand times, each hop taking me past hundreds of galaxies at a time.  I just kept jumping and jumping, trying to get a whiff of that scent again.

       I was far outside of any space charted by the DuNai, or any of the other great intergalactic travelers, when my internal sensors alerted me to a problem.  See, the dead space between galaxies is harsh survival.  Although I can do a lot of things, even get very cold, absolute zero brings all atomic matter to a halt.  So I was expending a significant amount of energy staying at 1°K or higher.  Add to that the fact that I was taking such long jumps, and staying in areas where solar energy was nonexistent or extremely faint.  These areas were almost completely devoid of physical matter to consume or convert, so essentially I was getting low on gas.  Normally I take energy here and there.  I can absorb it, I can convert matter, I can plug into a wall outlet if I have to.  But out here there is nothing.  The distances between most galaxies are immense beyond comprehension.  Not a lotta gas stations in the Tween.

       I don't know why, but I just pushed on. Mebbe I didn't want to ruin my night vision by going into one of the galaxies, whatever, I just kept jumping after whatever it was that was calling me.  I came across some pre-organic matter during one hop, and molecularized it for every drop of energy it held.  Then back to jumping.  I couldn't see the pulsing anymore, but I could hear it.  There was something about the rhythm that I just could not put my finger on.  Like notes from a mystery song.  

       Horns were blaring in my head as I stayed in the jump.  It was just ahead, I could feel it.  Keeping the hammer down, I plunged on until my emergency override system finally shut me down.  The next thing I know, I'm dropping out of transit over the corona of a dwarf galaxy.  I was almost dead in the water as my body began soaking up whatever photonic energy it could.  The Onkx had shut me down with enough power for life support and maybe a short lateral insertion.  My needle was all the way over to E.

       As I hung there in space recharging, I could not help but notice the beautiful spiral galaxy, with its twin arms  dominating the vista above me.  I could tell that the dwarf galaxy I was in now would eventually be pulled into the spinning galactic mass.  As it did so, the dwarf would be pulled into a long strand, forming a new spiral arm to the galactic disk.  But that wouldn't be for 350 million years.  Looking around I could see a bevy of other dwarves, open clusters, and nebulas ringing the spiral galaxy, all waiting their turn to be dragged into the hungry beast.    

       And that's when it hit me what I was looking at.  This unassuming little stellar disc before me was the source of all that I desired.  It was my favorite candybar and home, all wrapped up in one.  Still low on energy, I had no choice but to hang there watching it with hands outstretched as I charged my batteries.  If I coulda, I woulda cried.  But I didn't have any tear ducts, and the drops would have frozen solid anyhow.  

       I was certain of it; I was looking at the Milky Way galaxy.

       

       Have you ever known someone for years, then seen their baby picture and tried to reconcile that cherub's face with the present image?  That's the feeling I had when I first jumped into the Milky Way.  The tone of the Guf was so familiar, yet missing so much.  I could tell I was waaaay back on the timeline.  The voice was mostly plants and fish and bugs and various minor species.  Nothing smarter than a dolphin in there.  My Guf was a simpleton at this point on the timeline, but I could tell I was in the right neighborhood.  

       But that left me in a new predicament; finding Earth.  See, in my new life I have become expert at steller navigation throughout the known universe.  But back on Earth I knew bupkis about the galaxy around me.  So essentially I was expert on every galaxy but my own.  I really knew very little about it before I died, and Earth was completely redacted from all DuNai records whenever I tried to search.  Here I am, home sweet home, and I have no idea what neighborhood I used to live in.  All I know is that Earth was on the end of one of the galactic arms, way out in the sticks, past the Clampett's old place.  I remembered that scientists said the galaxy was thirteen billion years old, but that was puny human scientists from the 21st century.  They hadn't even invented phasers or flying cars.  I had no way of knowing if they had been off by a few million or a billion.  What did humans know?  They're just a buncha monkeys who have yet to escape their own solar system.  

       See, this created a problem.  Our solar system is a relatively recent addition to this galaxy.  Sol is only about five billion years old when I come from.  So how do you find Earth if it may not even exist yet?  Hell, home could still be out there in one of those dwarf galaxies waiting to be sucked in.  While the Milky Way was diminutive compared to the elipticals, it still contained some 100,000,000,000 stars, each with a bevy of planets, gas giants, and asteroids, some of which still had yet to even be created.  In a way it felt like I was starting over again.  There were billions of possible stars over a span of ten billion years that could one day harbor my homeworld.  Fuckity-fuck!  There has to be a better way than checking them all, and I wasn't going back to the damned grid system again either.

       So I took a leap of faith and went with the human scientists estimate; 13.2 billion years.  At that point in time I started running up and down the radial arms, listening for a particular resonance.  Every star has its own oscillation patterns.  You never realize it, but you can feel it in your bones.  It was why no other place was like home, because the sun in the sky pulsed to a different beat. 

       I hung there in the space above what looked like the beginnings of a solar system.  In the debris ring below I could make out fifteen planets forming already.  But it was the star at the center that held my fascination.  I knew that sunshine, I had spent my entire first life in that amber glow.  Everything about the rhythm of the photonic energy told me I was home.  A little early, but this was it, this was my home.  

       I played with the timeline for a little while before my Onkx hit a roadblock.  I'd never seen it do this, but there was a couple of billion years where I was flat-out prohibited from accesising that solar system.  If I even tried, it'd throw me so hard I'd land out past Theia.  That's when I knew for sure I was home.  The barricade was for my own good.  An Editor can never edit their own ancestors.  I had expected to be locked out from the creation of the planet until my death.