Of Crimson Indigo: Points of Origin

Copyright © 2011 by Grant Fausey

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-9945-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-9946-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-9947-3 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011903068

iUniverse rev. date: 03/02/2011

Contents

THE FOURTH UNIVERSE

The Third Dimension

ONE: Aftermath

TWO: Traveling Companions

THREE: Tides that Bind

THE ALTERNATE FOURTH UNIVERSE

The Parallel Third Dimension

FOUR: Alternate Realities

FIVE: Breadcrumbs

SIX: Yellow Brick Road

SEVEN: Reflections in the Past

EIGHT: Steps in Time

NINE: Silhouette

TEN: Past Tense

ELEVEN: New Acquisitions

TWELVE: Rebound

THIRTEEN: Changing Tides

FIFTEEN: Turning Points

SIXTEEN: Islands in the Sky

SEVENTEEN: Tether Lines

EIGHTEEN: Diagnostics and Judgments

NINETEEN: A Meeting of Minds

TWENTY: Living Memoirs

TWENTY-ONE: Bancore and Creed

TWENTY-TWO: The Fact of the Matter

THE FOURTH UNIVERSE

The Third Dimension

TWENTY-THREE: Destination Sodin

TWENTY-FOUR: Tanis 489

TWENTY-FIVE: Rooka Rocks

TWENTY-SIX: Life Changes in Reality

TWENTY-SEVEN: Arachnid Fever

TWENTY-EIGHT: A Place like no Other

TWENTY-NINE: Remembering the Past

THIRTY: Rescue Mission

THIRTY-ONE: Phoenix Station

THIRTY-TWO: Throttle Up

THIRTY-THREE: Human Altercations

THIRTY-FOUR: Turning Tides

THIRTY-FIVE: Emergence

THIRTY-SIX: The Beast Within

THIRTY-SEVEN: Bounty and Bounty Hunters

THIRTY-EIGHT: Mop-up Operations

THIRTY-NINE: Grathamar’s Haven

FORTY: Nomad’s Choice

FORTY-ONE: Of Crimson Indigo

EPILOGUE

SPECIAL TERMINOLOGY

For my darling wife, Ramona, inspiration and love of my life.

And my children, Jason, Travis, Tatiana and Katrina, you

awe me with your wondrous achievements.

Mom, Dad, Eric, friends and family, thank you all for

believing in me … always. Thanks Be to God.

BOOK ONE

POINTS OF ORIGIN

_________________________

Following one’s own footsteps into the past can only lead to an altercation of the future. What came before will happen again so long as the course remains constant within the rendition of life from which it occurred. The outcome of the event cannot be erased, only revised. Therefore, the likelihood of altering the failure of one’s own venture is mere probability complicated by the reality of the endeavor.

Jake Indigo Ramious, Bounty Hunter

THE FOURTH UNIVERSE

_________________________

The Third Dimension

ONE: Aftermath

• • •

Krydal Starr awoke in a panic no longer the person she intended, but rather merged with the essence of another being; an entity of living light absorbed through the sphere of her body’s own aura. Life as she knew it ended, replaced by the awkward world of an old woman; one day blending into the next, as the prospect of continuing her occupation as a temporal assassin abruptly faded. Only the thought of her beloved Indigo remained. She longed for the warmth of his arms, the press of his lips, even the strength of his being. But he was duly departed; plucked from existence. His life renewed in the breath of creation when the sun touched the ground.

Less time passed for Crimson than her new host, Krydal Starr, the blending nothing short of miraculous. Yet, neither the symbiont, nor her host survived the event unscathed. The old woman was fragile; her body weathered; time catching up with itself. No sooner had she emerged from one universe into another than her instinct spawned an uncanny aptitude for self-preservation sending unwarranted entrepreneurs into retirement. There was something different about her. An impression of being a notorious old assassin feeling the unexpected resurgence of a lusty heart, over a man she had never met.

Who’s there? asked the host. The whisper of another toyed with her thoughts like a ripple of fog beneath her feet. The elder half expected the layers separating one universe from another to collapse, the air itself alluding to one future over the other. But it didn’t. It was as if the threshold had simply twitched, spitting her out whole instead of two parts.

Again there was a whisper. Hello–– mumbled the old woman. Is someone there? No one answered. Yet, the thought remained, the eerie feeling migrating into the tiny refuge of her personal space, growing smaller with each breath, less comfortable. Not that there was comfort before. Crimson shuddered, reliving the experience perceived through the thoughts of her host. She was trapped. Alone. A time traveler haunted by the memories of a very different future, where her host grew old in an instant. Her mission to investigate the temporal convergence was compromised. Her past erased. Why the ancients deposited her on the doorstep of her own private hell was anyone’s guess! The artificial barrier separating her from the rest of the cosmos was a simple mechanism designed to keep people in and things out. The Triad Abyss, however, was ancient. Lifeless. A dark patch on the eye of the universe that existed long before the heavens spiraled open to berth the world of Sodin, a planet left harbored in the hearth of hell itself. It was here that the abyss permeated the fabric of the space-time continuum, blending the thresholds of the past, the present and the future into a temporal convergence that rendered one insignificant backwater planet different, but indistinguishable from every other in the Eden Sector. Its existence remained hidden, shrouded in mystery, revealed only to a select few among the ITOL, the legendary soldiers of the Corporate Alliance. It was the legion that outlasted the myths.

Saddle up people, echoed the voice of Joseph Patton; his ghostly brow furrowed in concentration. Thirty seconds.

Krydal looked up at him, reliving a foggy memory of the last instant of her previous existence. She pondered the directive, remembering the event although it was cloudy and only vaguely familiar. The facts were jumbled up in her head and hard to decipher. She was a soldier––a warrior of an elite group. She fancied the flight officer, dancing around him like a schoolgirl in the wee hours of a December morning. She was anxious for the announcement of the day’s destination even though it was long in coming. A lifetime of loneliness had passed in the pulse of a heartbeat.

Crimson thrived on adrenalin; damned near consumed by it. Jumping with the squad into a hotspot was exhilarating. She had teleported far too many times for her tattered mind not to remember being in planetfall with her beloved Indigo, but the memory was nebulous, reminiscent of something out of a dream. There was every possibility her mind was being probed for memories. The thought of an intruder persisted, making life abstract and unmistakably frustrating. All she could think of was the gritty rat bastards squealing under her feet when she caught them. But this was different; the convergence was notorious for playing tricks on the weak-minded. A temporal incursion was usually nothing more than free-floating tumbleweeds, or a tripped sensor. Even a rubble rat could trigger the alert system, bouncing off one ecosystem into another. The idea of engaging an enemy in the heart of the Triad Abyss was enough to send a shiver up the old woman’s spine, and that was anything but heartwarming.

You’re on point. Patton told her. She remembered the commander as if out of a dream. He couldn’t be serious, not now … not like this! The old woman’s heart was pounding!

Another excursion to the Myatek Interface? Crimson asked Krydal. It should be lovely this time of year, don’t you think, Krydal? There was the voice of another in her head. That is your name, isn’t it?

What? The old woman turned around quickly, damned near lost her balance, not that she remembered doing it. The immediate surroundings were foggy, almost dream-like. Wherever she was it was ethereal, certainly not real, nothing like the little snatch-and-grab she expected.

You can’t be serious–– thought Crimson aloud. Getting out of bed in the morning was a chore for her host. Obviously, her mind was working overtime. She was in a state of shock.

Hello … repeated Krydal. An alarm went off in the old woman’s head like a Claxton warning her of a near collision. She was not alone; there was someone else on the deployment grid with her, in her head. The voice remained silent.

Krydal remembered swiping the vid-sheet out of Patton’s hand, even fumbling with the paperwork, but not the words. She didn’t recognize the writing. She had never actually seen a kill order before. Investigate temporal incursion and eliminate intruders, dictated Crimson.

What … who said that? asked the old woman. The voice was so vivid, the thought unfathomable. She was alone, in the middle of nowhere; the image of a stalker stuck in her head. Where are you?

If someone had implanted a memory hoping to initiate an altercation to the temporal design, they’d already succeeded. The old woman was frightened, even weary from the course of action. Someone needed to clean up the mess. A corporate runner had obviously overstepped his bounds allowing some shifty-eyed, self-proclaimed millionaire entrepreneur to take care of his daily business after managing to alter the outcome of an event in his favor. Third party contracts drawn by those interested in altering the course of history normally surfaced amidst the hierarchy hidden within a small fraction of Assembly members working secretly within the great houses of the Corporate Alliance to forge change. There was always someone looking to accomplish just such an endeavor.

Crimson didn’t know the particulars, only that Indigo was somehow involved. She could feel his presence. The incident that bound her to her new host was a deliberate altercation to history. Nothing less than sabotage, and that was something the ITOL couldn’t allow. Their mission was to preserve the timeline, not interact with it. Perhaps that was why she had hitched a ride with her new host. The ITOL were guardians of the future, not masters of alternate realities. A temporal incursion meant catastrophic failure. Someone had deliberately changed history; most likely killed a competitor in order to eliminate him, even if it meant altering an entire civilization. What came before simply ceased to exist. The past expired: one future blending with another, leaving only the memories of an ancestral few. It was Crimson’s job to set the record straight. Protect the future. She had no choice but to enter the temporal conjunction with Krydal and repair the damage. A lifetime passed in the blink of an eye. Neither the symbiont, nor her host knew why fate had chosen them, only that it had.

TWO: Traveling Companions

• • •

The roar of a double sonic boom rattled the old woman’s nerves, alerting Crimson to the truth of the matter. She was in planetfall, trapped in an alternate reality, faced with the prospect of her companion having a nervous breakdown. Her host had grown old in an instant; her body fading from the luster of its youth, while her skin wrinkled discoloring in the course of a moment. The beauty of her face withered into a pale, drawn shell capable of shattering a mirror. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, there was an incongruity about her existence, as if she was a disembodied spirit. She had no more control over her symbiotic companion than she had over her own body. They were simply traveling companions, drawn to one another like adversaries facing off in the middle of a dirty, mid-western street. Yet, her condition wasn’t permanent. She could feel it. Her host was in the prime of her life, a youthful spirit ripped from the grasp of reality, only to be placed in an alternate existence where she was an old woman. There was a dark genius behind her circumstance, an answer to her predicament hidden somewhere in the crevasses of her mind. She had to survive long enough to figure out what was happening to her, make adjustments for her host’s old age, and find a way to restore the past. Needless-to-say, the days quickly passed into months, and Crimson couldn’t help but placed the blame for her dilemma squarely on the shoulders of her beloved Indigo, holding him in contempt. She loathed the man with every breath, cursed him even in her sleep. Every time she imagined the past it was a miracle he existed in her thoughts at all.

The symbiont was determined to deliberate a solution, put an end to the bounty hunter the first contract she could. She fancied the thought of it; even envied her counterpart’s naiveté about the subject. There had to be some speck of information that eluded her on transcending universes; at least, something to reunite her with the past she remembered. Crimson knew it was only a matter of time before Krydal’s eyes would glaze over. There was nothing in her foreseeable future to stop the aging process, and there was only so much protection her exoskeleton armor could do to compensate for the loss of her motor skills. Krydal’s vision was fading through the range of blurry to cataract blindness. The symbiont had to do something to get them home and soon. Otherwise, her host would go blind, and eventually die.

Krydal loved the idea of sitting in the wreckage of an old ground hauler and staring out at the rain. It was the perfect ritual for an old woman, but the vehicle was showing signs of rust, disintegrating twice as fast as her exoskeleton combat armor. The temporal zone obviously moved in cycles, crossing the convergence in waves of distortion just beyond where Krydal propped her feet up on a hunk of twisted metal, sipping on the canister of terra-root tea, she had collected earlier in the day. The rainy season was a constant reminder of her predicament; she was outside the normal patterns of life, imprisoned in the body of a withering old woman.

The symbiont hated the idea of it, but she had no choice but to continue. Her survival depended on her companion. She needed to give her host a reason to exist; even appease her lifestyle with the germ of an idea that could blossom into a full-fledged obsession. Keeping the old woman active was just as important as keeping her elderly companion productive. She had to put some life back in her step.

The old lady’s trek across the temporal zone took her to the edge of the convergence each and every day. It was like a recurring memory, always complacent like a record skipping a beat, returning to the point of origin in order to start over again. She believed in God, even the reality of the universe being alive somehow. There were signs. Small hand-like foot prints in the sandy contours of the reddish-orange soil. Apparently, someone else had taken refuge in her little sanctuary, even attempted to plant the seeds of life on the barren streets of her uncultivated imagination. For some ungodly reason, Terra-root was the most abundant thing on the planet; at least, on her side of the boundary.

She often dedicated a few words in hope of finding a savior. Yet, the futures remained unobtainable, if not impossible to cross. She encouraged the wind, watching the long branches of the Terra-root bush float in the morning breeze. How they kept equal distance from the edges of the boundary, remaining visible between the layers was anyone’s guess. As far as Krydal was concerned, the universe had deliberately disposed of her. Displacing her to stand in the fury of an artificial future, manufactured out of the nightmares of some unseen generation of trespassers she could only feel the presence of.

The gray haired assassin had no recourse but to jot down her memoirs: a last will and testament to the absurd she kept hidden in a tattered journal made out of scraps of cloth and weathered bark pulled from a terra-root bush. The cosmos taunted her as if she existed in two places simultaneously. Understanding the consequences of her existence was a daunting task; even ridiculous. The thought of her facsimile on the other side of the boundary, managing to excavate tiny bits of treasure from the remains of her life with her beloved Indigo was more than the elderly corporate runner could fathom. Fifty-eight years had passed since the incident drove her to the brink of madness. The unbearable loneliness sent her into a pattern of reflection that quickly ended in a crazed mishmash of biotechnology and living matter, which kept her mind active and her human side alive. She wondered if the voice in her head was some safety mechanism meant to keep her mind occupied. It was possible her existence was manufactured in some unfathomable dream state. She believed Indigo’s life continued to resonate beyond the boundary, but she was wrong. The Firehawk was gone; her crew lost in an irreversible accident that blinded her to the truth. The future had reset itself; twisted her existence in an altercation of both time and space that deposited her on the most godforsaken rock in the universe––the planet Sodin.

Both Krydal and Crimson half-expected Indigo to step out of time and take them by the hand, but he didn’t. No one ever crossed the threshold. Not so much as a moisture-ridden leaf, or a flutter of wind crossed the perimeter. Nothing. The temporal conjunction was devoid of life; a barren wasteland of superheated sediment left to the smallest fire retardant microbes devised by man. Yet, the ancient enemy flourished like some benevolent evil stretched from one side of the abyss to the other. Crimson remembered the Genesis Wars. She had escaped the living death of the great experiment following the Industrials rise to power, only to see her civilization erased in a microsecond. Replaced by the idealist version of a new life form called humans. Crimson was the last of her kind, a relic in a new universe of genetically altered species. Systematically replaced by a biologically engineered life form placed in cohabitation with a new breed of mankind. What was left remained unattended on the fertile garden worlds of the Eden sector, in the arms of the Industrials. They were never really alone, and neither were Crimson or Krydal. The outline of an odd pair of footsteps, plainly visible in the sandy soil, trailed off into the distance to reveal a pair of bumbling Trod historians at the water’s edge. The two Trods stood side by side at the dry lakebed contemplating their next move.

Manufactured in the due diligence of mankind’s hasty departure, the two nonhuman historians had befriended the old woman, making her laugh on more than one occasion. Crimson considered the Trods among the best scavengers in the universe, but unlike Krydal, she kept her distance from the little turtle-shaped foragers, allowing her host to risk the encounter. She never spoke up, which was very unlike the assassin. She believed in hard evidence, especially when it came to Relix. The Trod kept to the facts, even scientific evidence had to be proven using plain and simple detective work. Tee, on the other hand, not so much. The biped kept lose records, little scrapings in sandstone that looked a lot like shorthand notes scribbled on a Terra root branch he kept open on his lap like a stenographer’s pad.

The bipeds were skeptical; each had a sense of misguided loyalty. Tee considered the wacky old woman’s faddish for fried Terra-root as important as his need for topsoil samples. Yet, he figured anyone in their right mind would run for the hills when they saw her coming. She was ragged, and in need of a good, hot bath. Nevertheless, the two little Trods couldn’t help but reach out and take the quirky old woman by the hand. They trusted her, and she needed them. They were traveling companions. Neither the universe, nor her host considered the Trods dangerous. So be it. The Trods were strong, reptilian-shaped creatures with big eyes, fat round bodies and hands where their feet should be. It was as if God had made them upside down and turned them inside out trying to right them. Sort of like a biomechanical, soft shell turtle. Hard on the inside, flesh on the exterior. Both tolerant of the old woman’s incessant whining about the past; her previous lives, and even considerate of her theory of coexisting worlds. The idea fascinated both the bipeds. Her previous existence on the other side of the boundary was a little hard to swallow though, but the concept intrigued them. Krydal knew any real threat to her would be dealt with swiftly and severely. Crimson wouldn’t allow any harm to come to her. Their survival depended on their cohabitation. Life was of the utmost importance. The future of both their universes depended on the success of her mission. Relix, however, considered the old woman a menace to society. Every time she opened her mouth, revealing her nearly toothless grin, he expected her to blow a fuse and run naked through the outback where the two Trods had set up their base camp. The area was perfect for such extravaganzas.

Come on you two, said the old woman, slipping her fingers between her companion’s scaly little foot-like digits. The biped groaned, holding on for dear life. He knew what was up; his feet scrambling in a whirlwind as he tried to keep up but couldn’t. The Trod wasn’t built for speed, or running at all for that matter. He was more of a research vessel: a self-contained explorer with a short temper and little interest in the ranting of an innocuous biped with a taste for the finer delicacies of Terra-root pie and the mechanics of the temporal convergence. His time was limited and he had a schedule to keep. The convergence was tricky, and it was becoming quite obvious someone was interfering with his investigation, altering his findings in an attempt to manipulate the outcome of an event. Such endeavors ran the gambit of making matters worse. It was evident the crew of the Firehawk knew the risks. The ITOL gambled with their lives everyday, but this was something he hadn’t anticipated. It was Krydal’s job to protect the timeline at any cost, and it was becoming painfully obvious the outcome of the event responsible for depositing her into his world also brought with it a variation on reality. She wasn’t supposed to be here, and neither was he. They were both displaced. Someone had manipulated existence, but why? What was so important that someone would chance creating two futures to the same universe?

Indigo–– said the symbiont. She could feel it in her bones. It was his handiwork. That much was evident. He was there to make sure the altercation took place as planned. Crimson knew she had to hunt him down and retire him, permanently. The universe wasn’t big enough for the two of them.

THREE: Tides that Bind

• • •

On the other side of the boundary separating the two futures, Krydal’s equivalent had yet to discover the truth of her alternate’s existence. The threshold permeated the singularity with undercurrents, hidden tides and microscopic rifts, merging one universe with the other in an oasis of dark, primordial ooze that formed the Triad Abyss. An unsuspecting traveler unfortunate enough to venture to its shores was instantly trapped, never-to-be-heard from again. The little Trods were living proof of just such an encounter. They had washed ashore during a long night, crossing the temporal zone where the threshold of the two universes coexisted.

No one knew where the Trods came from or why they existed, only that they did. They were creatures simply not of this universe. Yet, they existed in both futures. Relix and Tee were biologically different and technically superior in design too most living machines either Krydal Starr or Crimson had encountered. They were ageless and seemed to have no vested interest in manipulating realities, only finding the truth of something they never spoke of. They were obviously following a preprogrammed set of instructions they kept internalized, embedded someplace deep within their psyche. For Relix, the convergence represented a unique opportunity to bridge the futures. The antiquities on both sides of the convergence were nothing, if not earmarked with familiarity. The bipeds had a truly mysterious whodunit on their hands, regardless of which universe they occupied.

The Trods were priceless––a real moneymaking opportunity for the right entrepreneur. The ITOL had already considered the possibilities of their origins, but one thing had been inadvertently overlooked. It was possible the Trods were the vanguard of some other race; perhaps even the last surviving members of a completely undiscovered species of explorers from an alternate reality. It was highly unlikely the newcomers were abandoned, or left behind by the excavation team that originally settled Sodin and worked the planetary mining