For lack of better candidates, someone’s parents jokingly named the Norse God Loki as the child’s godfather. He decides to take this seriously.
The whole thing got started because my
dad was a professor of Norse Mythology.
When I was born he and mom had both just gotten jobs at a new
university, which meant moving to a new town where my parents didn’t
know anybody. That was my dad’s excuse for naming an ancient
Scandinavian trickster god as my godfather.
He claimed it made sense at the time; apparently I was something
of a trickstery child myself, always getting out of my playpen and
into strange places, or making rude noises at hilariously inopportune
times, or crying for no discernible reason and laughing for no better
one. Plus, it was pretty soon apparent that I had inherited my
grandmother’s bright red hair. So my dad liked to call me a child
of Loki, which amused my mom. It didn’t amuse her so much when he
told her dad, after he got a bit too pushy about me not having a
godparent yet, that in fact I did have someone looking after me and
his name was Loki Laufeyson.
Still, even my mom didn’t expect
anything more to come of that than a bit of a row when my grandfather
got home and looked a few things up, so they were both completely
stunned when Loki himself showed up on the doorstep a few hours
later.
I was much too young to remember that
particular meeting, but from what I found out later, I can imagine
something of how it went. Loki would have looked like a tall, lean
man with hair like fire. Not red hair like mine, which isn’t even
really red but orange-ish; this was hair in licks of red and orange
and yellow, really like fire. He would have had eyes like fire opals,
strange and glittering from one color to the next. And he would have
had scars running along the tops of and bottoms of his lips, little
rows of puncture marks, white and old but still clearly visible. But
the rest of him would have looked handsome and charming, like a movie
star, only better. He would have looked like what movie stars dreamed
of looking like, and he would have flashed my mom a brilliant
gleaming grin when she opened the door.
You are an unexceptional superhero, D-class at best, except for your tendency to get along with evil clones, robot duplicates and alternate and future/past versions of yourself. The rest of the supers are starting to get worried about your growing army.
Having an army of angry children would pretty much decimate any threat that came your way
Scientists invented a pill that enables dogs to fully speak and understand English. It lasts for ten minutes, and will only work one time. You give a pill to your 12 year-old Border Collie, whom you’ve had since they were a pup. Your dog immediately says “Alright, listen very carefully…”
“…you have always been the good boy. You get down on yourself but the good boy was you all a long.”
Congratulations, genius. You convinced your best friend, the Protagonist, not to marry the story’s Love Interest, and instead go off and have awesome adventures with you forever. But in doing so, you pissed off the Author.
After the third bandit ambush, the Unnecessary Character waits until the Protagonist falls asleep to turn an accusing look at the sky.
“Hey,” the Unnecessary Character says, jabbing a finger stupidly at the non-sentient array of stars, “you quit it. You quit it right now.”
The Unnecessary Character, henceforth known as TUC so as not to waste too many letters on them, looks rather rough. Their hair is a tangled mess from the swallows who’d mistaken the horrendous strands as nesting material.
“I know that was you,” TUC hisses. “Swallows use mud and spit to make their nests, not twigs.”
TUC is unaware that they actually look like dirt, just terrible, smelly dirt.
“This is a lot of unnecessary anger,” TUC says to the sky. “You’re the one who thought Ally needed a friend and now you’re mad that I’m being a friend to her? Josiah was a creep, you know. Maybe you think he was charming, but he’s borderline abusive. No, scratch that. He was straight up abusive.”
TUC’s main weakness has always been the inability to see the big picture. They don’t know that the Love Interest would do anything for the Protagonist, up to and including battling the dragon that would inevitable be coming to the castle.
TUC pales until they begin to resemble watery porridge. “The what?!”
Their voice is shrill and stupid. The pitch of it nearly wakes the poor, exhausted Protagonist who’s had it rough these past few nights with TUC waylaying her with their idiocy.
“Let’s…let’s swing back to the dragon later,” TUC says. They pinch the bridge of their nose, trying to ease the headache thinking so hard has given them. “Look, Josiah wanted to keep Ally in the castle, okay? Like, all the time. She’s an adventurer, dude, not a stay-at-home wife. And have you already forgotten how Josiah locked her in the dungeons when those rebel forces tried to break in? And then just forgot about her in the aftermath until she broke out?”
It’s not surprising that TUC has misinterpreted that lovely and gallant action. Ally is a lady, forced to work hard all her life to support her mean family. She needs someone to take care of her so she can finally be happy.
“Her mean–they were poor!” TUC says, missing the point completely. They direct a hideous look at the sky. “No, I’m not missing the point! Everyone in her family was worked to the bone, not just her! They all had to work insane hours just to pay taxes! Taxes, may I remind you, that Josiah and his father set!”
So, this is an idea I’ve been kicking around for awhile. It’s probably the start of something larger, so I thought I’d kick it out and see if it has any legs.
The old woman sat low before the flickering flames, her heavy robes hid her thin frame. Bright eyes wreathed in wrinkled flesh lined by long days of sun. Her voice was low and strong as she spoke, young eager ears open and listening close.
“In the days of old, the ancient times, the source of myth and wonder, it is said that magic came upon the primordial world and filled the life it found there. Magic reshaped it, sustained it, and nurtured it. Magic gave rise to the races, the elves and fey, the giants and the dwarves. All things lived in harmony and peace… Except for one. Isn’t there always one? This race, Magic did not affect in the same way it did the other creatures. No one knows why, but magic became twisted within mankind. They became dark and corrupt with power. Using magic to fight with not only their own kind, but seemingly with nature itself. The blasted lands, and great deserts, are still the scarred legacy mankind left behind. Yes, left behind. It took the united front of all the races to drive them away, sending them into exile beyond the veil. They were left to die, starved of life giving magic. To the magical realm, mankind was long dead. Mythical monsters used to scare their young into obedience.”
The fire popped at a dramatically appropriate time, sending a flurry of sparks into the air. She lowered her voice adding a serious knowing tone. “Mankind was not so easily disposed.”
“With magic drained from humanity, many did indeed wither and die. Some learned to feed upon the residual magic within their brethren and survive for a time, remembered as creatures and villans of human lore. A few, the ones considered weak or unskilled in the use of magical arts, outcasts that had once been shunned, did not find the loss of magic so tragic. They adapted. They survived. It was not as quick, nor was it as effortless, but the meek did indeed inherit the earth. They were not the largest, strongest, or the fastest creature in this world, but they were the most vicious and tenacious. First they found stones they could work through effort into honed edges. Fire could be called forth by chemical reactions instead of beseeching a spirt of flame. Countless generations passed, building upon the grimoire of learned ability. Science bloomed. They slowly picked apart the fabric of their new world, finding the reactions and interactions that held it together, creating their own form of magic available freely for all to wield.”
She stood, charms jingling loosely, “Neither world was ready for the day the barrier fell, and both realms were reunited.”
Clanking, roaring beasts of cold iron pushed their way through the forest. Heavy tracks crushing flora into the soft ground as it passed. A curious fairy, mere inches tall, flitted down close. She reached out a tiny hand, foolishly pressing it against the surface. A quick snapping hiss sounded, her desiccated body dropping to the ground. Every mote of magic that had once animated her had been drawn away instantly. Reaching a clearing, the transport stopped, and shut down the engine. The plume of dark exhaust ceased fouling the pure air. The soldiers disembarked from their vessel, and began making a camp there in the forest.
Wide terrified eyes watched them work. These creatures filled them with dread, and seemed to exude a miasma of death from every pore of their bodies.
“Wireless communications are practically useless here. There is something interfering.” He shook the small box in his hand. “We’ll probably have to set up repeaters every few hundred feet, or just lay a hardline.” He looked back at the path the APV had pressed through the woods. “Hardline might be faster…” He thought a moment, “Maybe bounce a laser around if the weather stays, and line of sight isn’t an issue. The canopy doesn’t look too tall.”
“Talking to yourself again Eiffel?” The larger man was carrying a heavy crate from their conveyance.
“The drones will have to be preprogrammed, there’s no way R.O. Is going to work.” Eiffel said, looking up from his handheld equipment. He continued to poke at its surface, making notes.
“So it’s going to be a bitch to work here is what you are saying?”
“Until we figure out how to compensate for the interference, there will be some issues Roberts. Maybe we can find a clearer bandwidth to use, or some active distortion filters… there’s some kind of pervasive radiation.”
“Did I hear the ‘R’ word?” Came the higher pitched feminine voice of their biologist, her arms filled with sample boxes and a portable microscope.
“Yes you did.” Eiffel responded, “But I don’t think it’s the cancer kind. So far its seems to only be interacting with our devices.”
“I’ll be the one that decides if its dangerous.” She said, considering if they needed dosimeter badges. She’d check with her equipment first, then decide. “The oxygen content here is high. 28%. So watch your flammables, it will take less to set them off. There’s no sign of any industrial contaminants, CO2 levels are also pre-industrial. I’ll need to take samples back to check for isotope levels.”
“So you’re sayin we have a clean new world here Roche?” Roberts said, stacking the last crate.
“Its at least not as fucked up as ours.” She said, approaching a tree.
“We’re probably not going to run into a big city, or catch anything on TV for sure.” Eiffel said.
“And try not to put anything in your mouth. The air near the gate was pathogen free, but we don’t know anything about the soil, or vegetation.” Roche said.
“Or the locals.” Roberts intoned, raising a weapon to the willowy figure which had emerged from the woods.
Her hands were open and empty, in what she hoped would be seen as a gesture of non threat. These beings were unlike any she had ever encountered. They were so like many races she did know, but were wrong somehow. Heavy like the dwarves, but almost as tall as her own elves. What frightened her the most however, was not their appearance. They were the only creatures she’d ever seen which had absolutely no light within them at all. She couldn’t even say they were filled with darkness, darkness would at least be something. They were like shells of living nothingness. There was only one thing she could think of they might have been.. She prayed to her Goddess that she was wrong, even as she uttered the words in common tongue.
The corners of Jake’s mouth are still pulled back into that dangerous smile. Their little andalite fighter is rushing toward the Blade ship, full steam ahead, already gathering too much momentum to pull back now. Marco’s gripping the console in front of him so hard his knuckles ache. The modified Blade ship rushes at them with shocking speed, closing, closing—
And then…
Lights. Noise! Too much to make sense of. They’re surrounded on all sides by cacophony. Flashing, screaming. Mayhem. Marco’s halfway through trying to morph in panic when he realizes he can’t. And then Jake grabs his arm. Jake, who is about a foot shorter than Marco remembers him being. Jake, who is baby-faced and wild-eyed. Before Marco can say anything someone bumps him from behind. He whips around, but Tobias is already shoving past him, heading deeper into the room. The arcade. The arcade at the mall that was destroyed over five years ago in the last days of the war. And Jake and Tobias both look about thirteen. Which means…
Jake calls out a warning, but Tobias ignores them, shoving through the crowd like he’s running for his life. He’s headed for the far door where two familiar figures have just emerged: one small and short-haired, the other tall and blonde.
Rachel runs forward two steps. She and Tobias slam into each other, babbling over one another with questions and exclamations and words on top of words. Their first pause for breath and they’re kissing, desperately breathing each other’s air, grasping at each other as if they are drowning—or eating each other alive. His hands drag themselves through her hair as if he wants to pull her even closer but cannot physically manage. She crosses her arms over his back, devouring his mouth until they are one being.
“What the hell?” Marco says loudly, looking from mini-Jake to mini-Cassie to the four-armed Rachelntobias creature. “Seriously. What the hell.”
“So we rammed the Blade ship.” Jake’s face is screwed up in thought. It looks painful. “And… and it created some kind of sario rip, and now…”
“Sario rips can’t bring people back from the dead,” Cassie says quietly.
Tobias extracts himself from Rachel and looks around as if only just remembering that there are other people present. “She’s right. And this has the Ellimist’s fingerprints all over it.”
Jake drags them all outside before they can say anything else weird within earshot of potential controllers (“hell of a battle, yeah?” Rachel’s saying. “We won, right?”) and they emerge into the quiet of the warm California evening.
“Whatever this is, we’ll figure it out,” Jake says. “We will. Let’s… let’s plant to meet at the Gardens tomorrow afternoon. Get some morphs, figure out what to do next.”
“What to do next is to go rescue Ax,” Rachel says. “Now. If we’re all here, that means he’s stuck twenty thousand leagues under. So let’s hit the Gardens now that it’s closed, get us some dolphin morphs, and have him back on land before midnight.”
“I think you’re forgetting.” Tobias turns toward the construction site, expression grim. “There’s something else we have to do first.”
When Elfangor’s ship lands, Cassie slips her hand into Jake’s. He glances over at her, startled, and she starts to pull away until he gently squeezes her fingers and she stops.
“We know why you’re here,” Marco calls. “We’re in, man. The morphing, the killing, the nightmares, all of it. God help us, we’re in.”
Elfangor stumbles—and Tobias catches him before he can fall. He looks around at them all. <How…?>
“Current working theory is that the Ellimist’s messing with us.” Tobias, with Rachel’s help, lowers him to the ground. “But you and Mom have used the Time Matrix before, yeah? So maybe we should just tell you that we’ve had this conversation before and hopefully you won’t think we’re nuts.”
Jake goes and finds the morphing cube as they continue talking. One by one they press their hands against its sides.
“Come with us,” Tobias blurts out, staring desperately into Elfangor’s main eyes. “Morph, escape. We can hide you, keep you safe. We did it with Ax—Aximili—for years—”
<Aximili survived the Dome ship crash?> Elfangor asks sharply. <He’s all right?>
“By any given definition of ‘all right,’ given this is Ax we’re talking about,” Marco says. “Retrieving his sorry butt from the bottom of the Pacific is our sad excuse for weekend plans.”
“I mean it,” Tobias says, as if neither of them spoke. “Morph. Come with us. You don’t have to die here.”
Elfangor smiles sadly, the expression never reaching his stalk eyes. <I can’t, Tobias. If Visser Three thinks I’m still alive and fighting somewhere on Earth, he’ll annihilate this entire continent before the Council of Thirteen even has time to disapprove. If he thinks that he’s eliminated the resistance, however, or that there are only a few unknown andalite warriors left on the planet… You’ll have time. He’ll underestimate you, and you can use that.>
“But…” Tobias gasps for air, tears thickening his voice. “But you can’t just…”
Elfangor presses the flat of his his tail blade against Tobias’s forehead. <I am so proud of you, and how I wish I could witness the warrior you will become. But you must go. Go, and don’t watch. The Blade ship is already approaching.>
He’s right. There’s no more time for words. Jake grabs Tobias’s left arm; Rachel grabs his right. They run. The five of them sprint (Tobias hesitating at first, but soon moving willingly) toward the far exit of the construction site.
They burst out the far side just as the Blade ship is descending upon the andalite fighter behind them. For a moment they all stare at each other in shock. Then they hug, and wipe tears off their faces, and go home.
When Tom opens the front door of their house, Jake has already grabbed him in a hug before he thinks through what he’s doing. Stupid, stupid, he tells himself as he feels Temrash 114 jerk back in surprise. It’s just… it’s been five years. No, it’s been eight. Jake pulls himself away with a force of will. “I, uh, I got cut from the basketball team,” he mumbles, by way of explanation.
Marco walks past his dad, not bothering to say a word, and goes for the computer sitting on the desk by the door. He forgot how much technology advanced since the war, he thinks, staring at the boot-up screen and drumming his fingers on the mousepad. Eventually when he manages to log on, he starts entering the code that will allow the crappy internet signal to intercept yeerk messages. It takes all night for him to hack the Sharing’s internal servers, but it’s not like he was going to sleep anyway.
Tobias goes home with Rachel, although he’s forced to scramble awkwardly up the tree outside her house in order to slide through her window. Once he’s inside she pulls him into her arms, and pulls them both onto the bed. They whisper to each other about the things she missed during five years apart, all through the night.
“Cassie?” her dad says over dinner. “What were you thinking just now?” She smiles, and comes out with a lie. Because there’s no telling them that she was watching her parents in awe, wondering if they were ever really this young.
The next day they assemble outside the Gardens. The dolphin exhibit isn’t open for visitors for another two hours, so they wander: Marco to where Big Jim is kept, Rachel to the elephant exhibit, Cassie to the horse stalls, Tobias to the aviary. Jake’s not actually stupid enough to wander into the tiger enclosure a second time, instead waiting until Cassie can create a diversion long enough for Rachel to morph and pick up the world’s angriest kitty in her trunk in order to carry it over for Jake to acquire. When all’s said and done they still have time to kill, which is why Jake takes them all to the reptile house, Rachel leads the way to the polar bears, Tobias reluctantly points out the duck pond, and Cassie lets them into the owlery. They never know what they might need—except that they kind of do know.
When they finally get the chance to acquire dolphin DNA (Jake asks about orcas, and wilts a little when Cassie points out that exhibit won’t be by for several more months), they all morph ducks and fly out to the shore right away. It’s a Saturday, and they don’t have much time to waste.
“Anyone actually remember where the Dome ship was located, last time we found it?” Marco asks, as they pull off their outer clothes.
“I mean, I know the general direction we should be headed.” Tobias shrugs. “Let’s keep going that way for as long as we can, and hopefully—”
“We’ll run into another helpful whale, I’ll almost get eaten by sharks, Ax-man will blare out a distress signal that summons Visser Three, and it’ll take me two hours to get the taxxon guts out of my hair tonight?” Marco suggests cheerfully.
“Great plan,” Rachel says. “Let’s do it.”
They’re all so much more adult now, Jake thinks with a touch of sadness, and it shows. None of them allow themselves to get distracted by the dolphins’ playful euphoria, instead forming quickly into a tight pod as they head directly out to sea. He catches at least two of the others—Cassie and Tobias, if he had to guess—watching the dolphin he knows to be Rachel as if expecting her to disappear at any time. Rachel and Marco aren’t teasing each other the way they were last time, instead discussing whether to search in a grid or to start yelling for Ax once they get close.
Demorphing and then re-morphing in the water is surprisingly efficient. It turns out that Marco remembers how to swim, even if his body is smaller and clumsier than he remembers, and of course Tobias being able to tread water as a human in between morphs makes the whole process much easier.
Further proof that they’ve grown up: they’re approaching what Cassie thinks she remembers might be the right area (although she’s already offered eight or nine apologetic explanations that her memory’s not perfect) when they all “see” a sharp-edged shape approaching in their echolocation. Jake doesn’t even have time to think a command before they’ve all already snapped into battle formation, fanning out behind Rachel at the head of their phalanx. And then—
<Prince Jake?> the shark says.
<Prince Ax?> Jake calls back. When there’s a collective burst of silent laughter, he says, <Only one of us actually earned that title, dudes. And it wasn’t me.>
Their little group slides together with shocking speed, complete now in a way it hasn’t been in five years. They continue teasing each other the whole way back to shore:
<However it may have happened, in this timeline I am only an aristh. So you really shouldn’t call me ‘prince,’ you know.>
<I know, Prince Ax.>
This time around the near-giddiness that infects the whole group, causing Rachel to try and knock Marco off course while Tobias dryly lists off all the things he’s not going to miss about being a bird and Cassie points out distant fish species with childlike awe, can’t be chalked up entirely to the dolphin morphs. Still, Jake thinks, if anyone asked, that would be the excuse they’d give.
Nonetheless, when they all meet up in Cassie’s barn the following afternoon, they’re all business. On the chalkboard where Cassie’s dad normally keeps track of his patients and their meds, the six of them start the most exhaustive list they can recall of everything they did in the war and whether or not it actually worked. One whole side of the board is devoted to a list of people they want to bring into the war as soon as possible—James is at the top of the list, but Jara and Ket are directly below, whereas Arbron and Erek both have question marks next to their names. There’s another section for people they want to keep out if at all possible, including their families but also celebrities like William Roger Tennant and Jeremy Jason McCole.
There’s one name none of them have mentioned so far, Rachel thinks. One person whose presence, or absence, has been a festering sore at the center of this team since he first crawled into their lives. She doesn’t have a solution for David. Not yet. But she will come up with one, she resolves. Because that’s what she does for this team: she takes out the trash.
They spend almost an entire afternoon arguing (at one point Cassie’s mom comes out to offer them lemonade, terrifying them all before they remember that Ax is currently human and Tobias doesn’t exactly look suspicious) but at the end of it they have something approaching a plan.
“We’re going to do it right this time,” Jake says, grimly looking over the rough battle plan doodled across the far wall. “No mistakes, no needless deaths—”
“Good luck with that,” Marco drawls. “The rest of us, who are only human, are going to screw up plenty. But hey, if we muck it up too badly, the Ellimist will probably just let us start over again, and again, and again…”
“We get the point,” Rachel says. She watches Marco startle for the fourth or fifth time as he remembers that yeah, she’s alive. (None of them have asked her what it was like being dead. Which is good, because she doesn’t remember anything. Maybe there’s nothing to remember.)
The following afternoon, Marco and Tobias and Ax work together to go through every inch of the construction site in a grid pattern, but they find no trace of the morphing cube. They suspected that might happen. David didn’t find that thing by accident. And it didn’t survive the destruction of Elfangor’s fighter by chance, no matter what the Ellimist might claim.
They have a busy week. Cassie and Tobias pull Mr. Tidwell aside, tell him outright that they know about Illim and the Yeerk Peace Movement, and set up a cautious line of communication. Marco takes Ax with him to talk to Erek and the rest of the chee, dodging any questions about the pemalite crystal as they stoke his need to fight back. Jake gives Rachel backup as she marches up to Mertil and Gafinilan’s front door, rings the bell, and (when Gafinilan answers) announces that she’s recruiting them both to fight and doesn’t care about any vecol nonsense when it’s all hands on deck on this planet.
Arbron is trickier. They all admit to one another, when pressed, that they probably couldn’t pick out one taxxon from another in a lineup. They’re also not sure how to get ahold of the rebellious taxxons without accidentally alerting the voluntary taxxon-controllers to their presence. Jake tells them to keep thinking about it, but to worry about other problems in the interim.
Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak are also out of reach for the moment. The problem there isn’t that the Animorphs don’t know how to find them; it’s that even all six of them aren’t necessarily enough to sit on two hork-bajir-controllers for three whole days as they wait for the yeerks to starve. Waiting around for the Ellimist to help seems like a bad idea, since they’ve never been able to count on him to do anything.
On top of that, if they try and recruit James and Erica and the others without being able to offer them the power to morph… “They’ll laugh at us,” Marco says flatly. “And then James will do that thing where he grabs you and throws you on the floor with, like, his pinky muscles, and then they’ll all laugh at us some more. And then Collette will call security.”
Lacking other options, they decide to wait. Wait for the Ellimist to make his move. Wait for Crayak to make his. Hope that, this time around, they get the chance to do it right. In the meantime, there’s plenty of work to keep them busy.
The day before the governor of California is due to arrive at the local hospital for an unspecified treatment, a small-scale bomb at just the right power station shuts down the entire grid for that section of the city. Rumors—which have no traceable origin, but seem to be all over—suggest that there’s going to be another attack, even bigger, on the governor when he arrives. He cancels the visit.
“Hey Mom, you think we’d be able to visit Grandpa G this weekend? We just haven’t seen him in a while, is all. Could we do that, just for a day or two?”
Jeremy Jason McCole shuts the door of his dressing room, and gets about half a second into a scream of terror before a thing grabs him from behind and puts a part-human paw over his mouth. “You will not join the Sharing,” the creature sitting at his dressing table (it looks like a horribly mutated grizzly bear, one with blond hair) growls at him. “You will cease all communication with them. If you don’t, we’ll know. And we will come for you.” Jeremy Jason McCole bobs his head in frantic agreement, and the werewolf (oh Jesus, that’s a werewolf, he’s never seen one before but he knows what one would look like) releases him. He collapses to the ground, gasping for air, and by the time he finally looks up both monsters are gone.
“Aunt Ellen?… Yeah, it’s Rachel. Look, I had a weird experience earlier… And anyway, I wanted to make sure… Could you make sure Saddler’s always wearing a helmet, like, every time he bikes anywhere? … Yeah, Brooke and Justin should probably do the same. I just don’t want… You’ll do that for me? You’ll make sure? … Oh, no reason… Thanks, you too.”
None of the other Animorphs ever find out about it, but Taylor’s parents receive an anonymous phone call telling them to check the wiring in their house. The voice on the other end claims that there have been over a dozen house fires in properties made by the same developer, and that he can’t give out any more information for fear his employers will find out he leaked this information. Tobias doesn’t know whether or not it works; he never bothers to find out.
“Ms. Robbinette, hi! Mind if I call you Nora?”
“Yes, Marco. Yes I do.”
“Sure thing. Mrs. Robbinette, then. That was a great class today, with those, uh, binomial quadratic functions and all.”
“I must say I had no idea you were paying so much attention. Judging by the expression on your face, you spent the entire class either daydreaming or dozing off.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve heard it all before.”
“What?”
“I just mean, uh, from my dad! Because he’s taught me a lot about the FOIL stuff. See, my dad’s a great guy. Really. All that stuff about him stealing prescription meds and getting high off pain pills he doesn’t need, it’s… Okay, fine, that’s all true, but he’s really a nice person. When he’s sober. Which isn’t that often.”
“Marco, honey, is there a reason you’re telling me all of this? If you’re having problems at home, then Mr. Chapman—”
“He’s thinking of asking you out! My dad, that is. Not sure why, since he’s already got two or three girlfriends he’s seeing. Well, not sure if they’re girlfriends, but a lot of them come by and spend the night. I don’t mind, not really, and I guess if you don’t mind him cheating on you all the time…”
“I’m not dating your father, Marco. And I have no intention of doing so.”
“And that’s awesome. Anyway, have a nice day!”
“But—”
“See you tomorrow. Can’t wait to get started on factoring those second-order polynomials!”
Joe Bob Fenestre’s house, after the grounds are soaked in accelerant by several birds of prey that are illogically each carrying their own gas can, catches on fire. It burns to the ground in less than an hour, although the fire is controlled enough that the entire household staff and even the guard dogs escape unharmed. Web Access America goes offline for three hours in the ensuing chaos, leading Marco to compose a fifteen-line lament about how they’re going back to the dark ages.
They’re all so much less careful this time around, Jake thinks with weary concern. It all just matters so little, even less than it did when they were first fighting. He’s twenty-two years old, not thirteen; it’s annoying rather than panic-inducing to realize that he’s already been out over an hour past his parents’ curfew. His mom’s attempts to ground him are somewhere between exasperating (because they’ll inconvenience him for an hour or two before he can sneak out again) and endearing (she’s just doing her best to be a responsible parent, he can see that now), but either way they don’t slow him down for long. Still, at this rate—none of them doing any homework, most of them lying only halfheartedly to their families—something’s going to crack. Much sooner than it did the first time.
Marco and Tobias are the ones who manage to get footage of William Roger Tennant grabbing one of his own cockatiels out of the air and throwing it at a wall, mostly by lurking in his bushes for several hours at a time with a long-range zoom camera that Ax helped them assemble from Radio Shack parts. However, Rachel’s the one who walks them through the process of mailing the tape off to her dad, and of ensuring it will make the six o’clock news. Contact Point gets cancelled (and good riddance, Marco insists) before the Sharing ever comes up in conversation.
“My parents would kill me if they knew about this,” Rachel mutters. Somehow the gun—yes, that’s a freaking gun in the brown paper bag she’s holding gingerly—seems so much more awful than the dracon beams or even claws and teeth she’s used before.
“My parents would probably be fine with it, especially given what’s at stake.” Marco lets out a high-pitched little laugh. He’s rubbing at his arms as if he’s cold, even though it’s a perfectly mild night.
“Fine, then.” Tobias smiles, although there’s no humor behind it. “You want to be the one to…?”
Marco holds up both hands, taking a step back from the bag in Rachel’s hands. “You know,” he says slyly, “If your parents knew about this, they’d probably give you a freaking medal.”
“Nuh-uh.” Tobias crosses his arms. “I went through all this trouble to steal some perfectly good ski masks. I’ve done my part.”
“December sixth, right?” Rachel cuts the boys off before they can bicker any more. She’ll be the one to use the gun. She’s done worse things before, and lived with herself afterwards. Tom’s alive, and so is David. An old man who would have had a heart attack in a TV studio is going to live another few boring years. All things considered, she’s fine.
“I’m sure.” Marco is now jumping up and down in place, jitters infecting his whole body. “He brought it to school on a Monday, said he found it the night before. I know it was the first Monday of December because we went on winter break just after…” He coughs, clears his throat. “It was December sixth. I’m sure.”
“Let’s do it.” Rachel pulls the mask over her own face, tosses the other one to Marco. Crumpling the paper bag in her pocket, she adjusts her grip on the pistol.
David is walking home alone, having unwisely cut through the construction site to get from the mall to the suburbs exactly the way they used to do. He freezes, putting up both hands, when Rachel steps out of the alleyway in front of him and points the gun at his head.
“Give us the backpack, asshole,” Marco growls, stepping up behind her. “Or we’ll blow your head off.”
David’s face is dead-white, but even Rachel can grudgingly admit that he shows an impressive amount of bravado when he says, “I’m a kid. I have a couple textbooks and maybe three dollars—”
“Don’t care.” Marco steps forward, arms crossed and stance squared in what is clearly an attempt to look bigger than he is. “Give it up.”
Rachel thumbs the safety off the gun. It’s not loaded, but she’s pretty sure even David isn’t stupid enough to test whether it is.
“Fine, fine.” He swings it off his shoulder and tosses it at their feet.
“You got any more money in your pockets?” Rachel wants nothing more than to grab the bag and run for it, but she also knows they have to make this look like a real mugging.
Rolling his eyes, David shrugs out of his light jacket and tosses that at them too. “Happy?”
“Get out of here,” Marco snaps.
Rachel’s heart is pounding so hard she feels the rush of blood throughout her entire body. It’s not until they retreat back into the alleyway and pull the morphing cube out of the bottom of David’s bag that she finally feels her heartbeat start to slow. “Yeah,” she breathes, “Jake’s not exactly going to be annoyed with us for long.”
That same week, the G7 summit scheduled for the conference center downtown gets cancelled after a bomb goes off in one of the hotel’s satellite buildings. At least, everyone assumes it must be a bomb, because even the Secret Service agents don’t know of anything else that could cause that much destruction in that little time while leaving the surrounding areas untouched. If they’d been from Sudan or the Central African Republic instead of California, they might have recognized the aftermath of a rhinoceros rampage when they saw one.
Two days later, a group of kids wanders into the long-term pediatric care ward of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. James takes almost as much convincing this time around as he did the first time—none of them have exactly become master persuaders in their old age—but once again he agrees after he sees what the morphing power can do. Jake gives him the morphing cube for safekeeping, with instructions to use it as he sees fit. Cassie, at least, suspects that James is going to have a couple hundred new Animorphs ready to go by the time they need his help again.
The EGS tower gets infiltrated by a large collection of cockroaches, and half an hour later the ground-based kandrona generator gets shut off. Erek King talks them through the process of hammering a hole in the side and then pouring salt water into the crack. The damage will look accidental, a product of wear and tear and improper maintenance, but it will also result in the core ceasing to put out its life-giving rays. This time around the secrecy is a must, because this time around the Yeerk Empire doesn’t even know there are morph-capable agents on Earth at all. At least, not yet. It’s only a matter of time, Jake knows. It’s only a matter of time. And they have to use their advantage while they have it.
“This is cruel,” Cassie says. “It’s cruel and it’s wrong and it’s inexcusable.”
“Do you have another way?” Marco demands. “Another way that won’t result in even more people dying?”
She hunches her shoulders, crossing her arms over her chest where she leans against a post of one of the horse stalls.
“Seriously, though.” Jake looks up at Cassie from where he’s sitting on a bale of hay on the floor. “Do you? Because I don’t know how to do this without killing so many of them that the rest don’t have the will to fight.”
It’s just the six of them, sitting around in a circle in Cassie’s barn. Almost like old times, except for all of the ways it’s not.
For instance, Rachel thinks, it never occurred to them last time. Because they never knew. But they know now: yeerks are like slugs in most of the important ways. Most importantly of all, if they dump salt in the yeerk pool…
Saddler did it one time when they were kids, mostly just because he thought it would gross her out since she was a girl. He’d waited until the little brown slug had slithered up onto the front porch, and then he’d taken his mom’s salt shaker and…
And the result was more horrible than Rachel could have imagined. She didn’t know in advance that it would stiffen like that, that the tiny body would convulse and shake. That despite not making a sound the slug could put out such a visible scream of pain and bewilderment as its very skin peeled back from the pale muscle underneath. That it would blister and deform as if it cooked alive from the inside. She never found out how it ended; she’d stomped down as hard as she could, ground the body into the wood of the porch, and then she’d punched Saddler in the face so hard she’d blackened his eye.
There are three 25-pound bags of road salt leaning against the door frame of the barn. Marco has already made four and a half jokes about how salt allegedly kills evil things in the old urban legends.
“We’ll warn the Yeerk Peace Movement in advance,” Jake says. As if that will make it okay.
“Let’s do it.” Rachel doesn’t know what else to say, if there even is anything else.
In the end it works. God help them, it works. They hit the yeerk pool during its peak hours—midafternoon on a Tuesday, when there are always Sharing full members’ meetings—and simply break down the door of the entrance in the closet of their school. There are no Gleet Biofilters, since Visser Three doesn’t know there are “andalites” on this planet, so it’s no problem at all for the six of them, along with the twenty-three members of James’s team, to burst through the door. They are mostly elephants or gorillas, creatures that can drag the huge bags of road salt with them, and they are in and out with vicious speed.
Over one hundred thirty-nine thousand yeerks die in the most horrible way imaginable in the span of about ten minutes. Cassie thinks, sick to her stomach, that even flushing them into space would have been kinder.
The seventeen thousand-odd yeerks on the Pool ship are lucky, though they don’t know it. They are the ones, along with the few surviving yeerks in the pool and the handful at known yeerk-owned locations like the community center, who see Jake’s message when it plays. Jake is the one speaking into the camera, but Cassie and Marco were the ones who wrote most of the message.
Jake offers the remainder of the empire peace. He holds up the morphing cube where the camcorder will pick it up, and explains that he is willing to offer its use to any yeerk who surrenders. He tells them that he is as weary of fighting as he is sure many of them are, and that if they do not comply then he will slaughter every single one of them. He lists names: hosts they know are infested, sub-vissers they can find and kill in an instant, plans from within the highest levels of the empire that prove he has insider knowledge.
The recording isn’t live. Jake’s not there to see it play. He, and the other Animorphs, are crowded into the Kings’ basement along with their terrified and confused families.
Well, not all the Animorphs, and not all their families. Because Visser One was overseeing the construction of the underwater base that would prepare their troops for Leeran, as they expected she would be. She also summoned the nearest Bug fighter and took off for command central the instant she got the news, as expected.
What Visser One couldn’t have expected is the second Bug fighter that rams into hers at top speed. She doesn’t have time to expect the explosion that comes, or the crash that follows. She certainly isn’t expecting the gorilla that comes wading through the wreckage toward her, or the young andalite who grabs the dracon beam off her belt before she can even think to reach for it.
Most surprising of all is the voice that says <Hang in there, Mom. Not much longer now,> as enormous arms lift her and toss her over one black-furred shoulder.
He’s right, as it turns out. Eva lives to see the end of the war a scant month after Visser One dies. She sees things she never could have imagined: her own son planning battles before he’s old enough for his voice to change. His best friend, no older, commanding armies hybridized from their own bandit force and the U.S. Military. Humans and rebellious yeerks and even a handful of taxxons and hork-bajir working together to turn back the andalite force when it finally arrives to “help” with the after-battle cleanup. Reconstruction. Something almost like peace.
<You think someday it’ll end?> Marco asks. He and Tobias and Ax are floating half a mile up from the area out in back of Cassie’s barn, blatantly spying as they watch her try and work up the gumption to ask Jake out. So far her first two attempts have petered off into awkward stammering while Jake remains as clueless as ever; any minute now Rachel’s going to get exasperated enough to drag them together by force if she has to. In the meantime, it’s better than daytime TV.
<You mean, are we going to wake up one of these days and be, what, back on board the Rachel?> Tobias asks. <About to die, with none of this ever having happened?>
<There are no records of a sario rip lasting more than one of your weeks without becoming permanent,> Ax says, but he doesn’t sound that certain.
<Yeah, well, maybe this is all a weirdly elaborate dream and any minute from now I’m going to wake up.> Marco tilts around to look at him. <You ever think of that?>
<And there she goes,> Tobias says. Rachel is now standing between Jake and Cassie, gesticulating wildly. <Marco, if you jinx us, then so help me…>
<Andalites simply exchange will flowers with one another,> Ax says. <Have you humans ever considered the merits of such a policy?> He doesn’t seem particularly interested in the drama below; Marco suspects he’s just looking for every excuse to spend as much time as he can with the others. The shuttle that will take Ax home to see his parents at long last will be leaving one week from now. He’s been trying to talk Tobias into coming along to meet his grandparents, and Tobias has already shown signs of wavering.
<Marco,> Tobias says, <You think too much. Ax, I’ll come with you, but only if we can be back within a month or two. It’s a brand new reality, and I’ve got plans.>
<Plans? When do you ever have plans?> Marco regrets the words as soon as he says them. <Does this mean you’re in on my idea about the World Series?> he adds quickly, trying to cover. <Yankees beat the Braves, four games to nothing, six whole months from now. If we put down just one or two liiiiittle bets…>
<You’ve decided, then, that we are still going to be here six months in the future?> Ax is doing that thing where he’s being a little bit sardonic and a lot bit literal.
I’ve been on a binge between Wikipedia and YouTube, looking up extremophiles, protists, and “intelligent” slime molds that have potential for biomechanical applications.
Imagine if you would, that this biotechnological trend is picked up as a norm for humanity as a whole. Biological material is not suited for every application, true. But graphene, being made purely of carbon, can be integrated into both biological and technological systems. Certain multicellular and monocellular organisms can metabolize heavy metals. Slime molds and human neurons can be surprisingly efficient computers.
Imagine sea sponges designed by humans to build skeletons out of iron, cadmium, or a gold-titanium alloy instead of calcium. Imagine stomatolites building shells for massive spaceships out of the “waste” materials from mining processes. Imagine spacesuits made out of chitin and a bioglass reminiscent of that which tardigrades produce. Instead of air tanks, whole miniature biomes that produce oxygen at a rapid rate when fed biomass.
Essentially, the Engineers from Prometheus. Or like, 99% of H.R. Giger’s work.
Now imagine throwing black hole reactors, Alcubierre/EM/Fold/Quantum drives, mass accelerators (for weapons or other uses) and quantum computing thrown in a big ol’ mixing bowl with biomechanical fuckery. And no horror show biomechanical stuff, but like sleek, fine lighting, no jagged edges, no skulls and pure horror, no wet and nasty slimy shite (aside from the slime molds and several production processes…), but like, upstanding and respectable stuff, beautiful sleek lines mixed in with angles that are a bit too perfect…
Then introduce this to aliens who adopted a purely technological path.
—————- —————- —————-
Xyrhum had seen nothing like it before. About [500 kilometers] away from the jump-entry point of this system, straight off the prow of his corvette, was a [10km] long construct. It was a sleek structure that conjoined its long, near perfectly-straight pair of “prongs” in a semicircle at one end. It bowed out near the semicircular end and was riddled with ridges and bumps and grooves all along its sleek and organic body lines. It emitted a rumble that could be felt more than heard, even inside a ship of this size this far away.
Xyrhum tapped his feelers on the armrest of his chair, the armor at the tips of his appendages making near-deafening clacks and taps in the utter silence of the bridge.
“Pilot, perform a wide maneuver around the structure. Advance no further than [350 kilometers] from it. Do not get too close. Operations, engage stealth.”
“Aye, commander,” replied both officers.
Xyrhum turned to his communications officer, who was staring at him in a mix of anticipation and apprehension. “Communications, perform a passive scan of the structure.”
He turned to the co-pilot. “Retract any hardpoints besides the scanner.”
The communications officer piped up.
“Sir, the construct… It knows we’re here. I’m picking up a tight-beamed signal emanating from the… whatever it is.”
“So, our stealth drives mean nothing,” quipped the commander. “Drop stealth.”
“Dropping stealth.”
“For all intents and purposes, this appears to be a First Contact situation. Prepare the data packet, and begin the ‘friendly contact’ signal. Start with the [Algebraic] equa-”
The ship lurched forward suddenly, cutting off the commander and accelerating at an uncomfortable speed towards the construct.
“Pilot, we have breached the [350km] mark and are accelerating at an unsafe speed toward the construct. Desist this instant!”
At that, the pilot raised his arms from the console. “This is not my doing, commander. The forward engines are at zero acceleration. Inertia dampeners are trying to fight but are overcome.”
“So, these aliens want a more face-to-face first contact.”
“It would seem so.”
“Communications, any changes on the construct? Has it deployed anything our active scanners can detect?”
“Several portions of its surface have shifted. There are numerous structures raising from its hull, but I detect no radiological spikes. If those are weapons, I’d imagine this to be more a threat display than anything else.”
“No chances. Raise shields to maximum.”
“Aye.”
Just as the shields arced to life and covered the ship in a shimmering protective shell, a flash pulsed from the side of the construct, and the ship went dark.
“Report!” Exclaimed the commander, as he began drifting out of his seat.
“Engines and main reactor have spun to zero,” reported the Ensign. “Weapons and scanners offline. We’re drifting without a gun, sir.”
“Damn. Life support?”
“Compromised, but active. Backup reactor coming online. We’ll have full life support, gravity, and lights in [30 seconds] and counting.”
A slow, purplish ghostly wave drifted through the bridge. It passed over every nook and cranny in the room, and tingled every atom in the commander’s body as it passed over him.
“What in the hundred hells was that?”
“Unsure, sir. Hazard a guess, I think we were scanned.”
The ship continued to move toward the construct without spin or deviation. A tractor beam…?
A smaller construct broke off of the hull of the larger ship. It drifted away for a good [minute], seemingly inactive. It suddenly pulsed to life, bright bluish-white lines dancing into activity along its fine and sleek oblong shape. Along its horizontal equator, a line of light traced from the aft end to the fore and culminated in a point of light at the nose. The point of light then moved as the new construct maneuvered to be edge- on with the commander’s craft. The point of light slid along an invisible tract and aligned itself with the craft.
“It’s looking at us,” piped up the communications officer.
At that, the smaller craft deployed long, thick arms from its bottom, unfolding them in what appeared to be a threat display. It swung its aft around with no visible propulsion as it dissapeared above the commander’s ship. Moments later, the ship shook and shuddered. Clanging sounds and depressurization alarms could be heard throughout the ship.
“What’s happening? Ensign, report!”
“Multiple depressurizations in non-critical areas. Crew quarters, medbay, and bridge are secure. We have been captured by the alien vessel… and we’re moving again.”
“Sir, scans for biological activity have… returned. This… ship… whatever it is… it’s hardly mechanical at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, that this structure is alive. I’m reading intense biological activity. The outside of the ship is a heavy-metal composite in a carbon-based organic lattice.”
“Living ships? Tractor beams? Emissionless propulsion? Gravitic signatures? What next?” the commander mumbled under his breath.
Everyone was silent as the smaller craft guided the commander’s ship through several [hundred meters] of white-lit oval-shaped corridor. From the port and starboard viewports, he could see a menagerie of other creatures fast at work in the corridors of the vessel. There were strange four-legged things scurrying about and hefting containers of sorts in the low gravity. There were tall bipedal hulks with bowed legs walking along the gangways of the corridor and staring at the ship intensely. They appeared to be aiming at the vessel. Protruding from the floor and ceiling of the corridor were circular domes with spindly appendages jutting out of one side. They tracked the ship’s every movement with a glaring red eye. Turrets?
The ship began to slow as it drifted toward a flat circular platform. Three figures stood in a room separated from the platform with a thick plate of glass, flanked by two of the large bipeds seen moments ago. The craft that had latched on to the commander’s vessel guided his ship forward into a cradle of armlike appendages. A blue field of arcing electricity shot out from the panels above and held the ship steady as the arms enclosed around it. The cradle that held the ship descended from the ceiling and brought the ship to rest on the floor of the platform. Several tendrils rose from the floor and embedded themselves in the ship’s hull.
Suddenly, the ship’s system sprang to life. The docking runtime ran through its paces and the docking hatch opened. A thick hollow tube, ringed with grasping appendages, extended from the wall and affixed itself to the docking hatch. With a thud and a hiss, pressure was restored in the ship.
“Welcome to Gilgamesh,” said the computer.
“How does the computer know the name of the vessel?”
“It was hacked,” said the Ensign. “None of the officers or myself can control the ship. We’re locked out.”
The emergency lights on the floor came to life and led to the airlock.
A voice crackled from the communications panel, causing the communications officer, who was already on edge, to leave the bridge in a nervous wreck.
The center of the five figures in the room adjacent to the ship stepped forward, and began to speak in fluent Union Standard.
“We apologize for the forceful… apprehension… of your vessel. We hope this transgression can be forgiven. However, you entered our space withojt consent and refused to answer any of our hails. The transgression aside, we have been eager to meet an alien race for some time, and did not want to lose out on such an enriching opportunity. We did not expect them to be so… rudimentary, however.”
The commander rise from his chair and stepped to the forward window of the bridge, and met gaze with the figure. “Who are you? How can you speak our language?”
I am a member of the human race. We utilized complex mathematical algorithms to decrypt your computer, and merely gutted a cantelope to get the berries of your language.“
“Gutted… A what?”
“Did that not make sense?”
“…not at all.”
“Ah. It is not a perfect system, mind you. We hope to resolve this.”
“Your peaceful intentions aside, while appreciated, do not excuse your actions. You realize that by seizing a military scouting vessel, hacking it, and taking information without consent, you have not only broken several rules of first contact etiquette, but have committed acts worthy of declaration of war?”
“Humanity does not seek war with anyone. We have outgrown such petty practices. However, and we remind you, you had entered our space, unannounced, in an armed vessel, which warranted a rather forceful response from us. We seem to have stepped on each other’s toes. I do not advise escalation.”
“Or?”
At that, an arm unfolded from the wall and aimed a spindly protrusion at the ship. The protrusion began to glow blue as the air began to ripple from heat.
The ship-board AI chirped to life; “Warning: radiological signature detected.”
“That,” the Human quipped.
“Very well.”
“Please, come aboard. We welcome you peacefully. We wish to discuss many things with you, as well as terms of reparation and harmonious relations.”
The crew departed the ship and crossed through the boarding tube. The air was surprisingly dry and warm.
They entered the room through an airlock of iris-style doors, unfolding with a slight cracking and the sound of sliding stone. The three figures, standing at a whopping [2.5m], stood in the center of the room, flanked by their [5m] behemoths.
The center figure departed the group, flowing robes rippling as it waltzed effortlessly toward him. It stopped at a close, yet respectful distance of [6m].
Suddenly, the plates that composed its cranium shifted and split, hissing out a steamy gust of air as it opened and neatly folded away. What it revealed was the true face of the human; a round head, with pinkish-gray soft skin, nearly hairless and featureless. On either side was a flesh protrusion, full of ridges and bumps, angled forward. Atop its head was a tuft of… hair? It had a rather flat face with a gentle ridge above its pair of forward-set predatory eyes and a protrusion in the center of it all with two holes. Beneath that was a horizontal slit composed of two fleshy lobes. The lobes peeled back to reveal a set of bony protrusions.
“I am Heyatha, the commander of this frigate. It is my honor to greet you, Commander Xyrhum, on behalf of humanity. There is so much for us both to learn from this meeting.”
just moving along like everyone else 