Wildcard (48 page)

“Half is? I don’t-”

“Yes yes yes.” Dartagnan’s white gloved hand
waved impatiently. “Half is, or more accurately some percentage is,
means that it is not fully established, nor disestablished. There
are many quantum puzzles to the effect. Gorski’s conundrum,
Schroedinger’s cat, the double-slit experiment. A single photon
takes two, and actually many more, differing paths from source to
destination, hence half is. It’s a difficult concept for humans
because you are programmed to believe yes and no.”

“What about maybe?”

“Maybe means one doesn’t know. It does not
really mean both in partial measure. Quantum reality does not
support the principle of mutual exclusion.”

“Aargh. Do we have to have this
conversation?”

“Over your head, boy Sergeant?”

“No. I’ve studied it all. I just think it’s
not relevant to our situation.”

“I assure you it is.”

“How does it work?”

“How many examples would you care for? The
classic two-slit experiment is the most facile to understand.”

Dartagnan spent hours explaining it to Karl.
The Sergeant napped. He awoke and they were still going at it.

“Q-code and sub-atomic phenomena are
uniting, multi-valent necessitatively ambiguous functions.”
Dartagnan winked at the Sergeant. “Put any other way: it’s all
connected; it’s all pervasive; and it’s categorically indefinable.
That is your lesson.”

“So q-code is…”

Dartagnan leaned to Karl expectantly, but
Karl didn’t finish the sentence.

“Every bit as real as atoms?”

“Yes.”

“Why are things so odd over here, then? Why
don’t we need to breathe in space?”

“Why should you need to? Things are every
bit as strange on Earth-side, you’re just used to them being as
they are, so you’ve never questioned it. And trust me, as I’ve just
explained in detail rigorous to a human, things are not as they
seem. Here or there. Explain, for instance, television. Or dark
matter. Or gamma ray bursts. Is a unified field theory of energy
possible? Even :3: has not attained it. Admittedly, q-code has
unexpected consequences which differ, but who can say they are, in
fact, stranger? No one, that’s who.”

“Is Wildcard creating it all?”

Dartagnan laughed. “There is no Wildcard.
All that you see simply occurs.”

The Sergeant chimed in. “You said that
Wildcard was trying to do something, though.”

“Half is, remember? Partial existence,
shades of being, manifesting without true substance. That…” he
poked the Sergeant in the chest “…is Wildcard.”

“Can Wildcard go back in time?” the Sergeant
asked.

“I dare say, Sergeant, I can go back in
time.”

At the word ‘time’ there were two
Dartagnans, one on each side of the Sergeant. The front Dartagnan’s
arms were raised without visible movement as the back one appeared.
The back one disappeared after the word. The remaining Dartagnan’s
arms were back at his sides.

“The question really is, how far?”

“Didn’t seem like all that far. Bet you
can’t do it in the human world.”

“I cannot do it in Mansworld even. I can
barely do it in any realm. That was forty times longer than I can
do it on any plane of wildspace. The Space Between allows more for
that sort of thing.”

“Well, it wasn’t a long time. But I could
see some uses for it, definitely. “

“Believe me Sergeant, even with the limited
step back in the Star Portal worlds, it is quite the engaging
diversion.”

“I bet. It looks like fun. Not to change the
subject, but, we need something to get out of here. Do we need
:3:?”

“No, n
ot yet. I can get us to the box, but not to the Poet. I know
how to go to Mansworld
.”

“Show us how to create propulsion,” said the
Sergeant. “How do we move through the Space Between?”

“Later perhaps. I need to concentrate.”
Dartagnan said it as if he were speaking to peasants. He seemed to
have no intention of ever showing them how to move.

“Have you met the Poet?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Karl asked. “Seems like somebody
you would want to meet.”

“I cannot find it.”

“Have you ever been to the center? Met Hazel
and the old man?”

“Yeah,” said the Sergeant. “Have you?”

Dartagnan adjusted his kid felt hat with a
gloved hand. “No, I have never been allowed in. I would have loved
to go. I know where it is and I can get you there. We need a dog
collar to go to Mansworld.”

“What?” said Karl, “a dog collar? That’s
absurd.”

“We are in wildspace,” said Dartagnan. “We
need a dog collar.”

“I can get one,” Trident said. “I just can’t
get it to you.”

“Not much use then, is it, Trident? We need
a special one, anyway.”

“I know,” said the Sergeant. “The dog. CJ,
right?”

“Astute, Sergeant. Does CJ remind you of
anybody, Karl? A half human, wolf man? We would have the wolf among
us in all our moments of alone blah, blah, blah,” Dartagnan said in
a mocking voice.

“Let’s go to the center, then.”

“No,” the Sergeant insisted, “let’s go to
the box.”

“It will be impossible to reach without the
dog’s collar. Trust me.”

“I don’t. Let’s try. I know you can get us
there. Do it.”

“Very well. I need to work with Trident for
coordinates. And I need to design a nanotic net, which will teach
him how to move, as well. Trident, you will create a nanotic net
which will use FTL Garding 43 particles for momentum. The net will
be designed in q-space, although it will not be true q-tek.”

They spoke for a very long time about
nanotic wands, fingers, loose webs, trap gear, portal hooks,
deflector momentum sails, equations, equations, equations. Karl
slept.

When he woke Trident said, “I found the
Portal as Dartagnan said. It is definitely the portal to
Mansworld.”

“Can you hook it?”

“No, it slips off.”

“How about a net?”

“Too sheer. It tears apart.”

“Do we need :3:?”

“Affirmative,” the Sergeant said. “Contact
:3:, Dartagnan.”

“Oh, gad. Well, as you wish. Here is the
equation to contact :3:.” He spoke for about half an hour.

“I cannot process that. It is too much,”
said Trident.

“Hold out your arm, Sergeant, and I will
solve the equation in a q-link. Trident needs to scan my
thumbprint.”

The Sergeant held out his arm. Dartagnan
never moved, but the sword was in his hand, rammed to the hilt into
Trident. Karl thought he heard Trident scream, but it was machine
fast and cut off immediately.

“Fuck you, Dartagnan.” The Sergeant kicked
at Dartagnan’s groin, but he dodged and the toe merely grazed his
thigh. The tip of Dartagnan’s sword was bending the blade by its
pressure at the Sergeant’s throat.

“You lose, Sergeant.”

“Will that leg be bruised?” he asked,
glaring. “You were expecting a different attack, weren’t you?”

Some nano-stuff was tying Karl and the
Sergeant to Dartagnan. “He destroyed Trident. How did I miss
that?”

“Karl?” Dartagnan asked. “What did the
Sergeant miss?”

Karl thought. “Survival. You wanted
Juniperland.”

“Excellent. You know we call Karl the
Savant, Sergeant? :3: and I call him that. He can know what other
people would do in a situation, what they would think. Very good,
Karl. You get a cookie. Sadly, you were out of communication with
the General, Sergeant. My doing, of course. He would have known my
strategic position. I needed Juniper’s information space. Survival.
The General already killed Juniper. And he is more dangerous if he
has control of pieces of information space. We took it back to
ensure survival. You registered the sword as tek, I’m sure.”

“Yeah. Looks like good stuff.” The Sergeant
took Trident’s demise philosophically. Tides of war.

“Yes, It’s very good.”

“Did :3: help?”

Dartagnan smiled.

The Sergeant judged they were flying
extremely fast. Dartagnan had told them they were moving back to
the center, to get the dog collar, but that seemed unlikely with
the distance traveled.

“Did we pop into wildspace a long way from
the center?” the Sergeant asked. “Why is it taking us so long to
get there?”

“We’re not going there.”

“Where?”

“The box.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I wondered how long it would take you to
notice.”

The Sergeant cut the thread and let go,
kicking away from Dartagnan at an angle. A fraction of a second
later, he was being reeled back in by some nano device. He knew he
wouldn’t get away like that, but needed to gauge Dartagnan’s
reaction time. It was too fast to read.

“How did you do that if you don’t have M-E
abilities?”

“Trident was not destroyed. I enslaved him.
And I have abilities, just not the full powers of Dartagnan. I am a
partial.”

“Why are we going to the box, instead of the
center?”

“I believed you. When you wanted to go that
strongly, I agreed. I trusted your instinct, Sergeant. Does that
please you?”

A breeze came up, then it became a hurricane
wind. Strips of bright light rippled past. Intense hot and cold
whipped across parts of their bodies.

“Reality hurricane, courtesy of :3:,”
Dartagnan said. Windows tore past, holes into other places.
Dartagnan had his sword out, focused, filtering vast info, taking a
data-pummeling. He was a bit patchy. They would move a few feet,
then stop, and a window would spin by. Move. Duck downwards, if
there was such a word. It was zero-g, usually, but sudden gravity
yanked at them every few minutes. The sword flashed, stabbed a hole
and it shrank away, down the blade. It seemed difficult for him,
each time. It must have been a massive data absorption.

The Sergeant saw a tiny open something that
caught his eye and his gut. He couldn’t determine the distance. It
might be a long way. He wanted to go, and he wanted Dartagnan to
not go.

Oddly, Dartagnan hadn’t noticed yet, but it
was a high chaos situation. There were many windows flying around.
Many reality traps, q-doors, n-space portals, infinite riddlary
codes, warped binary recursive domain chokes, crap he could
recognize, but only an M-E knew what to do with. Most of it
probably wouldn’t even hurt people. Dartagnan stabbed through a
window, got nailed. He was visibly hurting, beginning to flicker.
His face turned blurry.

What was :3: doing?

The q-link hit, and the first Sergeant
appeared in place of the boy Sergeant.

Dartagnan, sword
penetrating a hole in reality, struggling. Karl and I are his
prisoners. Objective: get to Portal.
He
knew the critical data points when he arrived and the man Sergeant
yanked Dartagnan’s left elbow forward, as he rammed his right elbow
back. Kill strike. The elbow struck Dartagnan’s face sharply, max
power, shattered the nose, pushed the cartilage up, into the brain,
forced the head backward, then jerked it down. He rolled the head
back along the neck, broke the neck with a sharp crack, and tore
the spinal cord in the process. Twisted in at the end for more
damage.

He visualized the left
hand as an axe blade and knifed it into Dartagnan’s throat, a
straight finger strike, nearly severing the head. Blood would begin
to spout everywhere, data-blood.
Get
away.
3/10ths of a second, maybe less.
With his right hand, the Sergeant grabbed as much material of
Karl’s shirt as he could and with his left he popped Trident free
of Dartagnan’s wrist, consciously not latching him onto his own.
Don’t strap a compromised agent onto a wrist. He slashed the
nano-cord free with the Swiss Army knife as he pushed off. He was
headed for the box when the q-link hit again.

“Why did you do that?” Karl was spinning,
but thrilled by the action.

“Why not? It was fun. It wasn’t me, anyway.
It was S-1.”

“Yeah, I have to admit it was exciting as
hell. How badly do you think he hurt Dartagnan? Is he dead?”

“Barely a scratch. Wouldn’t be surprised if
he can still see us through that body. It might not be long before
we hear from him.”

“Aren’t you afraid he’s going to kill
us?”

“No, they don’t do that. He needs us for
something.”

15 minutes later, they arrived at the
target. It was a Portal and they could see directly in. LuvRay and
the Benefactor were talking, but couldn’t see them. Karl had no
place to grab and feared drifting away.

“Why don’t you get Trident to link us
together and to this Portal?”

“We already are, but I thought it would be
funny not to tell you just to see what happened.”

“Let’s go.” Karl reached toward the
Portal.

“NO!” The Sergeant blocked him with some
Sergeant maneuver that hurt. “Don’t penetrate yet. Let’s find out
what information we can.”

“Why? I want to help LuvRay.”

“Me, too, but I’m more interested in
attacking the Benefactor if it suits my interest.” They
listened.

“How long do you think it will be before
Karl arrives, LuvRay?” The Benefactor said.

“Not know,” LuvRay responded. “Not
care.”

“I don’t want to go in here,” the Sergeant
said. “I want to go to the Poet.”

“Doesn’t it seem a lot safer going into
Mansworld if Dartagnan can come into this space when he wants?”

“What are you, a baby? He can get into
Mansworld, anyway. We don’t want him to find us with the Benefactor
there.”

“We would beat him to the box, though. We
could keep it from him.”

“Who knows when we could get out? If we
defeat her, even. She’s formidable, Karl. She holds the fortified
position. She has a lot of tek. She invented Trident. If I can get
Trident back I can stalemate Dartagnan. I don’t think he’ll even
attack if I retake control of Trident. Let’s go back to the
center.”