"Do you believe in time travel, Sheena?"
"No." Sheena said, not even bothering to look up at Aria Cudjoists as she fed data into her Universal Pathfinding Lattice. The purple-skinned Teemer woman looked cross, knocking on the table with her three-fingered hand. "What? No, I don't. It's impossible."
"Right to impossible. Why are you so dull, Sheena?"
"I'm dull in imagination so I won't be dull in wits. It helps me know that time travel is just imagination." Sheena said. The alien adjusted her Pinpoints, special scanning glasses that were required whenever transport was being sent through the Subtle Folds. "And don't bring up lightspeed travel. That's not traveling through time, that's putting yourself in stasis, more or less. Backwards time travel is impossible."
"Why?"
"Well, for one, it violates every law of conventional physics."
"Said the woman standing next to the gateway to another dimension we use to transport cargo."
"We don't know WHAT the Folds are. I think if they were just another dimension, they wouldn't completely reject organic matter and we wouldn't have to spend so many Ours making sure anything we try and send through is free of it." Sheena said, using a slang term for 'man-hours' or as the politically correct business term was, 'organic hours', as not every species abided by the human concept of gender. "But I digress."
"You digress all the time. Your name is a slang term for rambling in the break room."
"Go figure." Sheena finished downloading the main data and began swapping in the programs she'd be using on this mission. "My point. We can't go faster than light, and traveling lightspeed means that if you want to get anywhere, by the time you get there everyone who wanted your stuff is long-dust. Sending people the long, slow way is even worse, if you've read our company's records."
"Yeah yeah."
"My point....again. The universe is DAMN BIG. We have so much trouble getting around it without building civilization ships, which, again, have some really big risks..."
"Yes, yes, Sheena. You are aware people overstate the risks and experiences of pandorum, right? People who feel safer are more likely to take risks, and our bosses hate risks."
"Overstatement or not, pandorum exists. And it's damn ugly. It's why we don't transport things the slow way any more. Eight times out of ten, the isolation of space got into their heads. And you can't just pull a Lightning Cage out of one's rectum, so going through the Folds is equally hard. Point being, the universe is BIG."
"What does that have to do with time travel?"
"Theories follow two rules about time travel. One's the paradox theory, negating your own actions. People have no idea what could happen if someone did that, some theories go all the way up to the universe completely being destroyed. We're not here, so either time travel is impossible or the theories are overstating things. And honestly, people understate the paradox theory. It's not just about large things like killing your own ancestors. You're still foreign matter inserting yourself into a time where you did not naturally exist. Just by going back you should cause a paradox, let alone trying to change the past. So that leaves the other theory. The multiverse theory. That going back in time and changing something just creates an alternate universe where your alteration played out."
"...And you think that's impossible."
"Look at the universe, Aria. How BIG it is, how much STUFF is in it, countless COUNTLESS processes over billions of years...and you're saying that if I went back in time and killed Be'Lunge, another universe that is almost an exact duplicate would just....spring into existence? All that matters and energy and STUFF, just...appearing? Grell...forget time travel. By the logic of that theory, everything that does anything with anything less than 100 percent success and devotion is creating new universes. I can't fathom ONE new universe just popping into existence, let alone TRILLIONS. It's too big, Aria. People just don't understand the SCALE. They don't understand until you're moving forward through the void to get somewhere and for day after day, week after week, month after month there's nothing but NOTHING...so no. Time travel is impossible. The basic laws of reality can't abide by it. Some things we figured out how to get around. Some things we never will. People don't understand impossible. They apply it to things like winning a Hensworth. That's not impossible, that's just HARD. Impossible is eating a star."
"Man, Sheena, if you'd been in charge your people would still be in caves eating bugs."
"I'm giving my opinion. Just because my ancestors thought fire was magic and lightning came from gods doesn't mean they could never understand the truth. Maybe there's still walls to push through. But from what I've learned to do our job, Aria...I think this is it. So speaking of, I have to actually DO my job." Sheena said, as she hauled a backpack out of her locker and began consulting the oval-shaped black carrying case she had been given by her unnamed employers.
"You really should tell the bosses what's in that."
"Why? So they can freak out and cancel the transport and muddy my name? Screw that. We got hired, they sent me, I'm using my best judgement and concluding I can transport it. Besides, I know what it is."
"The base scans came back with nothing."
"I checked what kind of nothing. Making an educated guess, it's antimatter."
"Antimatter's restricted."
"True, which would be a problem if I could CONFIRM it was antimatter. I can't, they wouldn't tell me what it was, just that it wasn't a weapon, a toxin, or a disease. The rest falls under our discretion guarantee. Beyond that is just me guessing and the fact I want the damn commission from this. Besides, why should I worry?"
"It's RESTRICTED. And antimatter can be used as a weapon."
"It's also forbidden for use as a weapon. EVERYONE follows the Cink Accords. Everyone. They might be twisting and breaking every other rule, but Cink's laws are damn near sacred. Anyone who steals it will be assumed to use it as a weapon, and hence they'll become an instant pariah even if they don't. This war won't last forever, and whatever the Psychopomps and Cornfeds think, they don't want to be the side that everyone hates when the war's over. I'm guessing some rich twit just wants a faster ship, or a Lightning Cage. What do I care if some idiot kid splats himself against the barrier of the Folds? I have a living to make."
"So ignorance is bliss."
"People who stick those noses into things end up with spited faces." Sheena said, finally settling on a side-bag. "We only get one trip around this life, and like I said, it's damn big. People who make up stories don't have the guts to go out and make the world into what they want. So I'll do my job so I can. I've followed procedure. You can pull up the reports and sign offs and check them if you want. I've got a green light and I have to go."
"Just go, boring girl." The alien said, turning her attention back to her work. "But don't come crying to me if you end up in trouble."
"Unlike some of our agents, I take our rules seriously. I don't even carry weapons on my person, because that's against the charter." Sheena said. "If I get in trouble, it's the universe being stupid, not me."
---
"It's amusing how the ones with a little knowledge and understanding always so greatly overreach."
"We didn't select her for her intelligence. She has sufficient talent and self-interest for this job and she doesn't want to know more details. All the same, we'd best provide some surreptitious assistance. The odds of this not having already leaked are non-existant."
"The shell?"
"Oblique Focus. She won't want the package to open, so even if the carrying case breaks, the shell will hold. Even if she dies, her desire will keep the Immutable sealed until we can retrieve it. Though it would be best if she DIDN'T die...the next carrier might actually want to ask questions."
"She was right, there. Asking questions brings nothing but grief."
"Unfortunately for her, grief is not so easily thwarted, I suspect."
---
Six Days Later.
If Sheena had had breath to spare, she would have run out of curse words by now. As it was, she had to focus her anger, and her breath, into flying.
She hadn't been too worried when she thought she was being followed. Even if she didn't expect trouble, anything in the life of a Twiddler that raised their hackles meant that they should treat it like incoming trouble, even if it just turned out to be paranoia. She'd invoked deceptive measures, and started popping Thousands to keep herself awake...
Then they'd come out of the star. Her transport ship was one of many generic space junks lugging more junk from here to there, her name wasn't on the transport listing for passengers, she'd crossed a few palms to ensure it...and they'd shown up anyway. Who was it? Reclaiments? Pirates? Stalkers? Maybe a Bulge or two? Whoever they were, they didn't give demands, they didn't try and board, they didn't say that their destructive acts were for one side or the other, or any of the score of sides in between. They'd just opened fire and turned the ship into outright junk. Bad enough...
But when Sheena had launched her escape pod, they'd ignored all the other pods that had made it and zeroed in on hers. Which pretty much said it all, even if Sheena had no idea at all what was going on. And who cared? They wanted her package, and she was stuck in a NS-900DI sphere-based vehicle. While the 'Nosedive' was technically a small spaceship and very much flyable in deep space and in atmosphere, it WAS designed to escape from disaster after all...disasters didn't chase you. For things that chased you, the Nosedive could have been a lot better.
Gods, the universe was so stupid.
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