Officer Xor WindBorneJune 21, 2121 Roman Standard

Yr 59 Survival Era

He was thinking of his mother, the warmth that radiated from her hazel eyes, the peace he felt when she pressed him to her bosom. He didn't have allot of memories of her. There weren't many to be had.

There was a small tear in Xor's eye when the permission to enter request signaled. He sniffled, and wiped away the emotions with the corner of a powder blue blanket. The blanket his mother swaddled him in seemed a fitting place to collect his tears.

At the thought Xor's Hyperbolic Chamber slid open and he settled his feet onto the cool tile that covered the floor in interlocking hexagrams. Then by the same method as he had opened his chambers the portal to his room slid swiftly aside with a delicate whoosh of air.

The man waiting at the other end of the portal was named Omen. He was tall, for a nature born, dark of hair, and his deep set pale grey eyes were both shockingly handsome and full of deep sorrows. Just above the elbow on his right arm the jagged line of distinctly different skin marked the portion that had been salvaged from the Dragon's Plum blast that had taken more than an arm alone. Omen was more than 40% regrowth, though most was hidden beneath his cloak and garment.

"Good Day Officer Windborne," his tone was stern, direct yet consoling. "I trust you slept well?"

"As well as I sleep, Father," young Xor responded with a wry grin.

Omen was not, in any biological sense, Xor's father, only the closest thing to one he knew.

"You enjoyed your Milk I hope…"

"I haven't felt hungry for days…"

"It's just nerves. It will pass,"

Xor knew it was something very different from "just nerves" . Omen knew it too. In fact Omen knew quite well that little could be hidden from the perceptions of Xor. To Omen's mind these quaint exchanges were pleasantries that Xor passed along so that those around him would feel less threatened by what he was created to be...and to do. And Xor understood these things too, for people were as planes of glass to his mind's eye. And Xor knew that he could go on forever without another dose of Milk. Still the pleasant exchanges with the man he called Father brought a very human comfort to the boy born of No Man. And when he was inclined he quite enjoyed a dose of Milk.

"…Happy Birthday Officer Windborne" Omen snuck in after a brief pause.

Xor smiled wryly back.

"Are you ready for the jump?" Omen continued.

" Is readiness even possible?" Officer Windborne queried rhetorically still grinning. It was his 8th birthday.

Spacial BoilsDecember 2062 Roman Standard

Spacial Boils, that is the term that the media went with when events first made headlines. Areas of very localized swelling zero point mass. Science hadn't any clue what was happening, nor had they long to define it before the Incursion would come vomiting in from compound dimensions. An acute localized event in Old Hollywood brought the world into focus.

The first recorded victim of the incursion was Roger Dowry, a homeless man of 58 that collapsed on the corner of Sunset and Palm while stumbling through an intersection sometime between the hours of 3 and 5 am December 8, 2062 Roman Standard. The street Intel systems failed locally at 2:58.

A dead homeless man in Old Hollywood was hardly newsworthy but the radiating circle of stalled out cars and failing appliances, followed by reports of strange spacial and time conundrums had news mongers flocking towards the scene.

Around 6:02, a man in a blue jogging suit emerged from thin air, mid stride between concentric rows of automobiles. He was vomiting and babbling incoherently. He fell with a crackling thud and seemed to stop breathing. On-looking Samaritans struggled to get him out of the radius of the event. They reported time flux, gravity and spacial shifts.

"It was like the street kept getting' longer and longer and time got slower and slower and I just got heavier and heavier and everyone around me was screaming gibberish from some far place right in my ear. And all the time we're trying to drag this guy in a jogging suit out of what is like a big pit or well and it looks and feels like he's is made outta some kinda lead based silly putty and all through my head the, weirdest thing, a voice is screaming 'Carol Anne, Carol Anne!' and Im wondering if we are gonna make it out alive. and I'm wondering how long it will take for this guy to unstretch and pretty soon I can't even make sense of what I'm wonderin' anymore. Then there is this bright light and Im pukin' my guts and there are all these people cheering and slowly I'm getting lighter and lighter and the lights keep getting brighter till everything around me is white and sounds like ocean mist then I'm here in this Med House"

Jimmy Encenita - Good Samaritan

The Guy In The Jogging Suit

& An anonymous conglomorate

"Carol Anne! Carol Anne!" a twisting scream bellowed through the ICU. After 48 hrs the man the database identified as Don Herald Scott's first words were gut wrenched with terror. The man was a maze of wires and electrodes. He had been under close scrutiny since his arrival. Not only by the Med House Staff but by scientist and agents from all corners of Corporate Government and Intelligentsia.

Patient Scott had, for the last 2 days, when the equipment didn't utterly fail, been filling the records with all manner of abnormal brainwave patterns. Temporal abnormalities, nausea and spontaneous weight gain were almost unilaterally reported by those attending him.

His identifying information said he was 42 years old, 186 cm, 95 Kg, athletic build. All which would seem verdant at a glance. But, an anonymous conglomerate had him under the observation of an instrument not yet known to main stream science. The apparatus was the size of a small fly and moved about the environment in the same odd wobble as a bumble bee. When every other instrument went schizoid the little bee seemed immune. The information the little bug gathered, or at least that small portion that the conglomerate revealed, was incredible. The space around the man was in constant flux, the relative Euclidean space oscillated +-20% without bending anything outside an impact radius of about 330cm. The Identified Mr. Scott had a Gravitational Normative Weight of over 140 Kilos and a Tonne of Euclidian Inert Suspended Mass. And the strange anonymous conglomerate was giving main stream science 40 years of manifolds, poly-mass equations, hyper -dimensional derivatives, new nomenclature and secrets. There was no time for keeping secrets anymore, if you can take the word of a secret anonymous conglomerate that has been secreting needful science for at least 40 years.

The Ante-ChamberXor's Present

The heavy blast doors screamed and strained and slowly rolled back revealing a long hall that lead to the room were the Merqavah hung suspended by a sub temporal field.

"This is where we part," Omen tried to suppress the apprehension in his voice. Xor's previous jump had been a success that came at great cost. And though he tried with his might to suppress the thoughts (indeed he had volunteered to undergo a handful of dangerous mind wipe operations to forcibly forget), Omen couldn't hide the flashing images of the grotesqueries that were made of those Xenoform Primate Test Subjects (Z PeTS) which had been engineered for early Prototype Jumps. He had witnessed the archival regressions. He had been thrust to the fringes of sanity after a partial neural regression of subject 22A's Jump. Still the experience did leave Omen with a strange imprint. When Subject 226 returned alive, intact, with Nurse Bees and data returning all the values prerequisite for success after a Minimal Euclidian Jump in (or through) Omen's 'imprinted' Prototype , he was the only soul on the Hyperband that felt anything other than elation. He felt fear, grave fear…

Why were the Adumi always so far away?

If the Adumi love us so, Why do they allow us to suffer?

If the Adumi are our protectors, our benevolent fathers, then why do they give us so little in our hour of desperation?

Once the first blast door rolled back the temperature in the ante chamber dropped rapidly. Omen had to leave the room and seal the chamber before Xor could begin his icy precession down the long hall. Xor smiled down at the man he called father, " It’s a great success you know, " Xor paused to wait for Omen's quizzical affect," The Jump is a great success! When you close the seal just turn up the prefeed on the Hyperband. I played with the sigmoid matrix. Central Process understands it better now. Your heart will jump the moment you seal the chamber," though he was saddened by it, Officer Windborne paused to let Omen complete his thought. Xor reflected sadness " I don't have the heart to deceive, even if it would save you a moments grief. The Live Wire will reaffirm the prefeed before I enter Merqabah. Give me a hug, father, then seal the chamber before you catch a cold!" Xor smiled the warmest smile with a trace of the tight wry expression that almost never left. Omen wrapped his arms around the boys waist and buried his tears in the boys chest.

"I love you my boy! You are perfect in every way!" Omen put away all pretense. Acute shame, joy, fear, hope and all manner of subtle feeling radiated from him in unabashed simultaneity.

" I will save us father. The day will come and with it all the answers to your sorrows. Have a little faith in the purpose of my creation. Let your sorrows be mine. And find hope in me!" Xor's face was a light, the fibers of his head sparkled and the stones in his crown radiated a song in resplendency. Omen felt the overwhelming awe he ever felt when his boy lit up. The great creature shining down on him with a radiation of love shooshed omen from the chamber with a gentle thought. Omen sealed the chamber behind him and no sooner did the Hyperband Prefeed Audio begin crackling to life.

Before Xor entered the long hall he removed his stones from his cloak and eyed them with the affection of old friends. He slid the soft linen from his shoulders and wrapped it around the dark orb. "Rest easy my friend, I will not need my sword today!" He left the cloak and stone in the corner of the ante-chamber and strode into the long icy corridor bare-chested, cradling only a white lucent sphere.

Grey PingersDecember 9, 2062 Roman Standard

"I've never been in a Pinger. Remember the first time I ever saw one. It was at a fair when I was 12." The man in the ill fitted hat was restless, excited, nervous and afraid. The events of the past 36 hours had the world in panic and now he was being pulled from his beat to 'help out' this thin pale IBI agent that closely resembled an albino newt of 2 meters in height. The man in the ill fitted hat wondered what he would find staring back at him should he pull the dark glasses from the agents face.

The men ascended the few steps that seemed to melt from the matte grey body of the Pinger. This wasn't street technology. This wasn't just a rich man's toy. The man in the ill fitted hat had studied reports of this type of Vehicle. He was even sure he had seen one, silent as still water, hovering leisurely over the melee during the Kidney Riots of 2058. The conspiracists called them Grey Pingers.

Pingers, or iG-drive Skyway Vehicles as the craft were called by their owners, were the first professedly alien technology released for public consumption. Element 115 Sustained Reaction Engines were released simultaneously by Bavarian Machine and The Greater American Industrial Network in 2039 as clumsy toys for the affluent. It was technology back engineered from Extra Terrestrial wreckage in Co-operation with several species from the Zeta-Reticuli star system. The wobbly 'iG-drive' was promoted as "the safe and sane way to connect with primitive man's instinct (dramatic pause) for flight. " But in reality it was an effort to ease the public distrust in an increasingly open correspondence with EBEs under suspicion for abductions and invasion for at least a century and a half prior.

It levitated, dashed about changing directions at acute angles without the occupants even noticing much shift in momentum. But it did feel a bit like being in a raft in choppy conditions. And it made a constant irritating high pitch hammer on a bell noise 'ping,ping,ping,ping-ping,ping,ping,ping' that annoyed all the poor people below while the affluent snots frolicked inside the contraption, enveloped in Smart Shield Technology which assured they wouldn't be bothered by their own noise pollution.

Grey Pingers weren't really Pingers at all. They were silent. They were subtle and still. They were not the gaudy vehicles of the rich designed to look like sleek automobiles with magic powers. Grey Pingers were cloaked, and rarely visible at all. They were a more refined machine and the transportation of choice for the clandestine intelligence communities. A Grey Pinger, allegedly, could make Misner jumps to the moon almost instantaneously were it was also speculated that the IBI kept a clandestine base on the dark side secreted from the anything looking up from Earth.

As the man in the ill fit hat climbed into the bed of the craft he turned to his pale friend and queried, "Why me?"

"Why not you?" the agent responded, "It seems you have a very special skill set, and your treatise 'Clandestine Agencies Effects on Crime Syndicate Behaviors' was a work of genius. Now you tell me why

a man with a master's in Game Theory and Hyper-Dimensional Topology is working a beat in Old Hollywood."

"A man has bills to pay," he pulled his snug fit hat back down to his brow.

"I think you know why you were chosen!" the agents tone was flat and direct.

"The thing I am sure of…" the man in the ill fitted hat smirked and looked across his brim into the agents dark shades, "you aren't completely human!"

"No," the agent returned a long thin smile, " not entirely… then again neither are you Lt. Dunmar!"

The man in the ill fitted hat fell into a seat noticing the interior space in the craft was significantly larger than the external volume. There were 3 other tall pale agents seated within the craft. How had they gone unnoticed until this point, 'Damn Salamanders' he thought to himself.

"Salamanders… yes that is what the conspiracy speculators call us!" said an agent with a Star of David pinned to his lapel, removing his dark shades and revealing lustrous pink eyes in response to the Hat's unspoken words,"… but what and who you are is something else entirely."

Life on Top

The silent machine settled itself discretely down upon the complex 53 guest parking terrace, on a level marble slab surrounded by blue and purple grasses that seemed to Lt. Dunmar to emanate a pale localized light, a resplendent field for floating status symbols to graze. He could see by the vacant marble plots that there were no significant happenings in this humble corner of New Spring Heights.

The Terraces of 23, 800 or so meters closer to terra firma were brimming with flashy pingers being flaunted by young socialites. Spring 23 was a hedonistic wallow for the larva of the global elite and lugubrious youths from all over wandered in to lament the tortures of affluence and balm their sorrows with all manner of exotic substances and amoral behaviors.

It was the thing amongst the fashionable opulent to streak dried tears in salty sparkles down their cheeks and round the eyes. Blue Corpse Base Tones against popping Neon and Techno-Paints covered their faces and bodies in irony. Fangs were the norm but only the uber-hip had Tru-Growth.

The thing about the 'rich kids these days' that really made Lt. Dunmar cringe was the horns. Tru-Growth horns were the Uber-Hippest thing last fall but by the time most kids were sprouting their second point a seemingly small enterprise, Xenocouno, introduced their patented Techno-Bio Weave which is a cybernetic fractal growth system that integrates and grows into and alongside the natural cell structures without mutating the local genetics.

'Now in 3 years when it's not uber anymore those pampered dolts that couldn't wait a year are going through acute gene therapy to ungrow that stupid horn and they will be shaking their fists in apathetic rage because they used to be uber uber but now they are only quasi-uber because a better horn was the door prize for being fashionably late.' The man in the ill fitting hat tugged down at his brim with both hands and chuckled heartily to himself. He always found his inner dialogue quite hilarious. Though, often when he expressed that dialogue outwardly he was met with awkward expressions, snorts and courtesy chortle.

Things were quieter up here in 53. The air was sweet, so thick with fruit and floral essences that it was pleasingly palatable. The Lt had to stifle a tear at an odd onset of emotion. The brickwork arches that separated the Parking terrace from 53 octet B proper were actual brick and immaculately antiqued adobo hung with suckling vines and ripening fruit. The air sparkled with the sounds of tumbling waters.

There was no security. Possessing a pinger without the 800 meter Vertical Constraint was clearance enough. Still before he passed under the arches Lt Dunmar took an apprehensive look back. Beyond the Smart Seal, 1200 meters beneath him and all around him the sprawl of the o old city was blinking awake for its nightly vigil. The deep setting sun sputtered its drowning purple and orange hues across the reflective tops of only the highest buildings, the hills were dark blue silhouettes and the noise of the city was more subtle than fiddling crickets.

'Seeing it from up here, you might even think its beautiful…' the Lt tugged down his ill fitting hat and pulsed a short jaded sigh , turned and stepped beneath the arches and into the brick corridor.

Ghost EffectYr 59 Survival era

The long hall was sufficiently chill that the small amount of ambient moisture spun odd spiraling crystal formations along the outer steal walls. When the second great blast door rolled back even Xor's bare skin went taut with goose pimples. It was never any warmer than -20 centigrade in the chamber that held the Merqavah and the temperatures would soon drop to fractions above sub zero during the Jump.

The icy Ghost Effect was a by-product of the extreme manipulation of the Cruciform Field- which is an extension (one might say) of the Electromagnetic Field topologically projected to 12/13 dimensions - named for the symbol Omen chose to represent the complex Dodecaternion number set that was the mathematic key to stable Poly-Space portals. The Dodecaternion Set was also know as Omen's Number though Omen himself hated it, and reacted with more than petty irritation when it was so addressed in his presence. It wasn't Omen's number anymore than 'phi' belonged to the Greeks or 'e' belonged to Euler. He wasn't even sure he discovered it. More so, it seemed to have been revealed to him during a neural regression. It had taken him 3 years to decipher the visions and construct the theorem that proofed the new Dodecaternion and the Neural regression had almost cost Omen his mind.

The Adumi work in mysterious ways.

"All space is Sub-Space," that is what the Adumi whispered to Xor during his last jump. The visions of the seedling sprouting- simultaneously pushing up into a tree while burying its roots deep into the fertile soil of temporal space- flooded his senses. There weren't such colors to be found here in Euclidean Earth. The simulators couldn't be taught to feign them. The exulting emotions were almost more than he could endure. There were parts of his vision so beautiful his mortal mind had to suppress them, visions of his mother in 5/6 dimensions.

Returning from the first jump had left him living in a black and white world, knowing only sorrows, feeling only pain. For mortality was not but suffering ,turmoil and pain after having ventured but a brief moment within the sanctuaries of Eden.

Omen feared Xor was dying or worse. Omen could never forget what became of ZPet 226. Though he had endured dangerous procedures to erase the memories he had only suppressed the night terrors and sweating fits. The monster that became of 226 had been Omen's friend. As Xenoform Primate Test Subject 22-6 advanced through jumps of increasing temporal depth and spacial complexity he, for lack of a better term, mutated. What became of 226 is burried, in

a cell designed by Omen to bind the meta-stable monster, deep beneath the desert surface in some remote wasteland. Omen still loved 226 and 226 still loves Omen.

Before Xor, it was 226 that called Omen 'Father'.

Truncated icosahedron

It was a big silvery soccer ball. Xor looked up at the Merqaba and sighed. In the room beyond the anterior chamber they were already celebrating his successful jump. He hadn't even climbed into the vessel yet and already he had arrived at Beta Point. The anxiety to commence the jump compelled him. The experience of Temporal Bifurcation always made him uneasy. Until he was in-jump he would struggle with the sensation of being 2 distinct entities. The Xor now heralded in triumph at Beta was also feeling that rift of being that would not subside until the bifurcated being was reunited in time which couldn't happen until he jumped.

Xor entered the hallow of the Merqaba. There were not doors nor windows. He simply moved through what appeared to be matte metal plating. It only tingled a bit and whispered a gentle white static noise. His stone sprang to life in his hand as they glided effortlessly and weightlessly into the node.

It was only he, his stone and the conundrum of time and hyper dimensional space there now.. He choked back an image of his mother. An image his mortal mind had to suppress. For weeks Xor had wondered what the Adumi might reveal to him this jump… or rather tried to wonder, even hope. But his premonition was that this jump would not be shared with the Adumi. It wasn't even premonition now. His other self was still twisting with the memories. No, he would not need his sword today…for fear he would use it.

Xor thought again of the soccer ball. His truncated Icosahedron was a 1 man hyper dimensional implosive weapon- such as humanity had never known. To most children it was just a soccer ball- a toy that you kicked for fun and sport. He thought of his mission. Not just this imposing jump, but his End Mission. He thought of the simple lives of other children. The other children in the compound could be heard laughing through the common areas all day. Xor Laughed but never with such innocence. Did they ever even wonder what it would be like to be one being in 2 distinct bodies? When they saw a truncated icosahedron they thought of sport, playtime and fun, not terror and sacrifice.

Their ease was his yolk.

He wondered what would happen if he refused to jump. He wondered how long he could tolerate the bifurcation. What would happen if he left the chambers and ran to console his other self. Such questions were met with the pleading reactions of the bifurcated self.

Just relax and jump, that is all we can do.

Xor tried to relax. The terrible thing he would soon confront could not kill him. It would be for his good and experience. His stone began to pulse. It was a needful thing. The blue white ambient interiors began to radiate increasingly bright light. Xor focused his communications with his stone until time and Euclidian space began to dither and fold.

Today was his 8th birthday.

Life on TOP?

survival era yr59

There were over 20 thousand elementary aged children living in Xor's subterranean community, secured behind millions of tons of lead and Cruciform Field Shielding from the Incursion still boiling out waves of screaming Plume Demons around population centers above. But, unlike Xor, even the top-sider children played soccer, pasted macaroni and sang silly songs together.

Most towns and rural areas hadn't yet been hit. The luckier top-siders had abandoned their sprawling amebic Metropolises. Agricultural communities, with biodiversity, low human population density and minimal technology were almost invisible to the Boils of the Incursion. The lucky ones almost lived normal lives.

The children of affluence still inhabited their great Vertical Cities, shielded by the same technologies that protected Xor's subterranean community. However, the 7 Great Cities and 17 Capita Diminutio (lesser states) suffered from numerous Time Gulps, Spacial Wells, and Temporal Vacuums along with the Doppelgangers and Altered History Scenarios that were natural consequences of the phenomenon. The proximity of the Vertical Cities to the desolations of Metropolis and V Cities conspicuous technologies, not to mention 10's of millions inhabiting a 15 kilometer radius made them impossible to shield entirely. Still the wealthy could not leave their trappings and technology, couture and accoutrement, apathy and idolatry. So the occasional missing yesterday or slight twist on your mirror image suddenly popping into time space, claiming to be someone quite exactly like you, was a small exchange for maintaining your room with a view. Life on top is a difficult thing from which to step down.

But Big City Life was a dice roll. LA , Denver, New York City, Tokyo, Mexico City, Rio, Shanghai, and Hong Kong were warzones. People still lived and worked in those places. The Conglomerate still yoked and milked the antiquated power structure.

Militarized Industry Zones were like concentration camps where the guards were the prisoners. Manufacture and commerce, even speculative trading continued while the echoes of horrific battles wailed above and outside. Generals sought fortune and entertained fantasies of retirement in V City. The infantry were slaves that hoped to blow every earned MIZ Credit on the harlots of Spring 23. The intercedent ranks formed the hierarchal structures of metropolitan society.

Everyone sought fame. Fame paid.

Everyone was equipped with some new technology, lethal in 5 dimensions.

Eventually humanity had realized that a Spacial Boil is a living entity inhabiting extra-dimensional space. The phantasmagoric golems known as Plume Demons would pour out in waves unless the Boil could be driven back into dimensions that didn't share our Euclidian Perpendiculars. Hitting a spacial boil with conventional arms did little. A demon waylaid was a clipped nail to the extra dimensional beast. But if a demon was hit towards the center of mass with a Warp Gun Burst it would implode. A well placed Warp Gun Burst was like cutting under the nail verses clipping it. If enough Plume Demons were so executed a wave might be thwarted, a Boil might retreat but so long as its Zero Point Signature remained the locus would likely fester again.

Still the metropolises pulsed with the life that now inhabited. Sirens rang when a boil burst. Women and children took refuge in small subterranean shielded habitations until the men pushed the enemy back. Production never ceased and the scientific data collected by Nurse Bees in the conflict zones was bringing in wealth from somewhere. Those that hadn't been lucky enough to escape Metropolis were now under the protections of The Conglomerate.

The other side of the corridor

It was dusk when he entered the short 20 meter corridor from the parking terrace. What opened up on the other side left Lt Dunmar's jaw slack as a corpse. Here over 1600 meters above the surface of the earth within this megalithic carbon fiber Vertical structure there were rolling hills, some topped with majestic mansions like something from Victorian prose. Field's of flowers and blue sky. There were still 47 Complexes, almost 2 kilometers in tiers of increasing opulence that ought to be looming above but all the officer could see was blue partially cloudy skies with a 5:00 sun peaking through a seam in the pillows.

His eyes and heart swelled for an instant but the Lt. tugged the brim of his hat and suppressed another strange spontaneous emotional episode. 'What is this place?' sputtered his internal dialogue, ' I could live under skies like this, real or contrive!'

The man in the ill fit hat must have been looking up, his Jaw agape when the little old man arrived jangling the little bell on his rickshaw, "Sorry for the start," the little old man began. Lt. Dunmar had jumped at the small jangle. The smiling wrinkles at the pedals of the rickshaw continued, "That is the actual sky, not some cheap hologram. The long days are however a technological phenomenon…if you will. Mostly advanced optics, a twist on the Smart Shield. The City does tower over 2400 meters over the plane of the earth. Its vantage on the sun lasts quite a bit longer. There is also, as you might have guessed Lieutenant, other technologies at play here… that aren't available to the surface."

"HMPH!" the lieutenant grunted pulling on his hat," I see someone was tipped we were on our way." Lt Dunmar, twisting rather than tugging at his brim, auto-piloted that response. While inwardly the banter said, 'More sh*# from the Zeta-Reticuleez' the inner voice took pride in the xenophobic slur it believed to have coined on the fly,' to suckle the elites into another 200 years of abductions and weird hybrid freaks with strange agenda's!' and then just to drive it home, 'U tuned in Agent Pale Face?'

The looming pale agent interjected with a subtle grin and condescending gesture, "This isn't your typical investigation Lieutenant. We aren't going to interrogate." The Agent was smooth, subtle affirming the order of things for all present, simultaneously asserting authority over Lt Beat Cop in the eyes and minds of the man in the ill fit hat and the wrinkles at the rickshaw. The serpentine agent continued, "The man on the hologram…the man in the Med House, the man identified by Database as Don Herald Scott is the man we are questioning…"

The later statement said little to the overtly happy old man but came with a severe blast of information that almost melted the Beat Cop, information ripe with a Severity of Strangeness, ripe enough to bring All Reality into question for a man with a Masters in Game Theory and an ill fit hat.

'You thought I could only listen?' came a voice not his own from within a place he previously believed only he had a pulpit.

The man in the ill fit hat now stared out into the great plains of sky were there had ought to be carbon fiber penthouses, befuddled, confounded and generally struggling to organize his thoughts. He wasn't sure at all what he was doing here. He wasn't particularly sure he wasn't in some deeply lucent dream state any second to wake up to the comforts of another day working the beat in the slums of Old Hollywood. Then Lt Dunmar looked right into the agents black shades, tipped his brim and gave him a telesthetic…

' Touche!'

Beta Pointsurvival era yr59

'Pain' isnt the right term to describe it. No string of exacerbating adjectives could give it the proper severity. Returning from a jump felt like waking into a body obliterated into the coldest fractal corners of the universe now being torn back from the fringes, with a great ripping, rippling implosion, falling in all directions, focusing into an abysmally small point, losing its mind, watching itself from a point (not a plain, or a space) surrounding itself on all sides.

When the points were again behind the eyes Xor was watching the blast door roll back and looking up at a great matte silver soccer ball, feeling his skin prickle with goose flesh. His thoughts and behaviors predictably constrained by an foreordained time continuum. Across a gap of bifurcation 1000 nurse bees tended to the hypothermic body shivering back into its confines within our Euclidean Space.

"What a doozy!" Xor looked up to the attending bees, the wry smile slowly cracking across his face for the live hyperband feed.

THE WORLD REJOICED IN UNISON!!

Xor's heterochromatic eyes shone. The people's joy warmed him. His empathy resounded his reward. Their joy was his purpose, his task, his destiny.

Yet, infinitely hidden from the view of mankind was a child upon the wrack, his mind torn between a set temporal reality and a concurrent continuum of perceived choice, his soul weighed and yoked like a great ox whom everyday has his burden increased, his entire body throbbing and stinging like an arm after a sound crack to the funny bone.

The jump had been a doozy! And as beautiful and mystical and painful to return to the mundane as had been the previous jump, this jump was horrific and phantasmagoric, defiling and tempting. No he did not need his sword today, for he surely would have struck at the beast he confronted. And, unlike the previous jump, and despite the terrible returns, Xor was quite relieved to be back within the comforts of the mundane.

Still he found himself contending with his bifurcated self contending with memories of a future present. He was filled with compassion towards his bifurcated self still hesitating to let the stone pulse and his light to radiate.

Xor thought again of the soccer ball and the lives of other children. It was a beautiful thing to think about. Their joy was his yolk. His heart extended to his bifurcated self…

'Just relax and jump, that is all we can do.'

The terrible thing he had confronted could not kill him. It had been be for his good and experience. Unarmed, he had confronted the enemy (or some great portion of it) and returned intact. His heart began to fill with purpose. His sacrifice was a needful thing. He was the only one.

He put off the thermal blanket the in which the bees had him enclosed, picked up his stone and strode past the opened blast door into the anterior long hall. The moisture in the air spun odd crystal formation in his hair and across the surface of his skin.

The wry grin broke into a wide smile as he was greeted by the crowds shivering to celebrate the moment the door rolled back to the antechamber. A wide smile that rocketed across the hyperband and again… THE WORLD REJOICED IN UNISON!!

Xor was beginning to feel like his oneself again.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY XOR WINDBORNE!" the crowd cheered.

The entire world was celebrating. A petite, ambitious, young investigator for Global Hyperband with exotic features that denoted Japanese-American heritage with just a smidge of Zeta-Reticulian querried the child, "Global Hyperband wants to know what the Boy Bred to Save the World wants for his Birthday?"

"I would quite enjoy a dose of Milk!" Xor said grinning wryly.

It was his 8th birthday.