5: Revelations

Previously on We’re Not in Edison City Anymore, Candystriper is recovering in the hospital and John Cute is busting out of it! Meanwhile, in a nearby abandoned warehouse, Samuel Superlative the Third is meeting with the Director of the Department of Engagement with Risk-enhanced Persons, Special Agent Peter Hawkins, and the Wombat plus friends! We return to that now, but first a commercial word!

Having just introduced himself, Samuel Superlative the Third waited for the others to respond in kind.

“Hi there,” said the Wombat. “I’m the Wombat, that’s Gaseous Girl, the Green Moth, and Ron Raven. I hear you’ve got a time thing.”

Gaseous Girl and Ron Raven nodded cursorily, but the Green Moth abruptly stepped forward, taking even the Wombat by surprise. “Hi, Moth, Green, The, introductions accomplished, we have a problem. What year do you think it is?”

Samuel Superlative the Third looked confused. “Well, I’m not entirely certain, I did just arrive moments ago-”

“Let me rephrase,” the Green Moth said. “I gather you’re not the Sam Superlative we knew. How long has it been, for you, since he left?”

“Ah,” Samuel said, “That I do know. My father arrived thirty-seven years ago on Verin Prime. I was born-”

“For us it’s been a day,” the Green Moth interrupted.

A shocked silence fell as everyone took in the meaning of this. Hawkins, the D.E.R.P. special agent, wondered who was going to explain to Mr. Superlative that he had become a grandfather overnight.

“Your telomeric alignment was out of phase,” the Green Moth said, as if that explained everything. “I sensed it when you arrived.”

“Huh,” said Hawkins. “So I could go wherever he came from and, I don’t know, spend a few years exploring the place or whatever, and then come back here and it’ll still be today?”

“You don’t understand,” the Green Moth said, her shoulders slumping as if she were very tired. “Time runs at different speeds in his planet and ours, which means we’re not just talking about different planets, we’re dealing with different worlds. Which also means it works both ways.”

“I’m not certain I understand,” Samuel Superlative said. From what the Green Moth could tell, he really hadn’t thought it all the way through, and she now wished she hadn’t said anything at all. But she had, and she couldn’t undo it. Besides, he would’ve figured it out anyway.

She took a breath and went on. “If several decades pass on your world while only a day passes here, then while moments pass here..”

The Green Moth looked down as she spoke, not wanting to see the look of alarm dawning on Samuel Superlative’s face. “Wait,” he said. “Wait wait wait wait I have to go back!” He wheeled about and leapt towards the place in the air where the energy spike had been. He flew past it, caught himself up, and tried again. Nothing happened.

The Green Moth reached out with her own abilities. She sensed nothing but the ordinary air, the movements of gravity, and the chaotic dance of the tiniest subatomic particles of space and time as they moved along their several ways. What she did not sense was any sign of the whatever-it-was that had brought Samuel Superlative there. Whatever it had been, it was gone now.

“Oh, jeez,” said the Wombat, having just worked it out himself. “That’s rough, pal.”

---

Verin Prime, Thirty-Seven Years Ago [Give or Take]

Sam Superlative Jr. stared down at the planet below in no little wonder. He’d seen Earth from space, sure. When you were a cape with flying brick powers, making a trip up into the higher reaches of the atmosphere to get a God’s-eye view of the planet was as easy as stepping outside your front door. This was something else, however; this was a whole new planet: different continents, different oceans, different everything. Sam wasn’t even sure the window he was looking through was really glass; when he tapped on it, it made a sound he’d never heard glass make before. Even the medical shuttle he was riding in was unnervingly quiet; from the sci-fi shows he’d grown up watching, he’d expected beeps, hums, something. The computer had made a sort of boop sound when he’d given it the override code and asked it to fly directly to Veronii One; after that, it had been utter silence. Everything was so wildly different, and Sam didn’t like that at all.

Just then the computer made the boop noise. “Now approaching the landing area for Veronii One,” it said.

“Oh,” Sam said. “Do I need to, uh, do anything?”

“No,” the computer said blandly. “Landing procedure is automated. Please hold.”

“Oh,” Sam said again. “Thank you.”

To his relief the computer proved to be right: as he looked out the window the shuttle soared into the moon and onto some sort of landing pad. A dome had slid open to admit the shuttle then closed behind him. Now the shuttle doors opened and the computer booped again. “You may now disembark.”

“Sure,” Sam Superlative Jr. said. “Uh, yeah. Right.” Cautiously, he took his first step onto an alien moon.

He was immediately greeted by a group of humanoid beings with gun-like devices, and they did not look happy. “Okay,” said the tallest one, “Who are you and how come you have Melinda’s codes?”

“Melinda Lu Flirna-something?” Sam said. “She sent me! Said I was in danger!”

“Flirnalirxzaney,” the tallest one said. “Accent on the za. Sounds like something she’d do. New arrival, are you? Processed by med-bots and all?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “But look, I was just on Earth, I still don’t know where I’ve arrived at. Or from, or whatever; I mean, a couple hours ago I was on Earth and I got hit with the Kaboominator and now I’m here and-”

His stomach was starting to clench again. The tallest humanoid raised his hands. Sam was oddly comforted to see that they looked like normal hands. “Okay, okay, cool down, this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened, yeah? Don’t know about a Kaboominator, but there’s an interdimensional rift on the planet, and every now and then something comes through.”

“I hear they’re planning to seal it,” one of the other humanoids said.

The tallest one scoffed. “Yeah, that again. In my granddad’s time they tried with bombs. Took out a whole city in the process. Didn’t work either. Wonder what they’ll try this time, asking nicely?”

Sam raised his hand. “Before they try closing it, could I get back through?”

The group looked at him in disbelief. “Well, uh,” the tallest one said. “No one’s done it before-”

“I’d like to try,” Sam said.

The tallest humanoid shrugged in a fatalistic sort of way. “Well-”

Just then alarms went off in the landing bay. “Sorry,” the humanoid leader said. “We got bigger problems. They must’ve tracked you.”

“Who?” Sam asked, but the others were already running to what he guessed were battle stations. He looked up. Through the not-quite-glass windows of the landing bay, the little moon’s sky was filled with battleships fairly bristling with guns.

“Oh shoot,” Sam said, though no one was listening anymore. Then the guns opened up.

Read the Next Episode.