《Chronicles of a Traveler》 Chronicles of a Traveler 1 I am a traveler. That might sound like a mostly meaningless statement, but it is vital to who I am. Indeed, it is one of the first things I learned about myself when I woke up. ¡°Are you awake Lord Traveler?¡± the figures leaning over me asked as I slowly came awake. I was laying on a medical bed, the sheets thin and cushions hard but not unpleasant. Strange machines hummed quietly around me, bright lights shone down on the well cleaned room. ¡°Lord Traveler?¡± the figure asked as I looked around confused. There were two people in the room with me, watching me with concern, both in simple scrubs clearly designed more for ease of cleaning than for aesthetics. One woman, one man, I recognized, the woman was the one speaking while the man¡¯s gaze flicked between me and the nearest display. ¡°Wha?¡± I croaked, realizing my mouth and throat were too dry to speak. The female quickly understood and held a straw to my mouth which I quickly sucked on, enjoying the lukewarm water as it washed away the gritty feeling. ¡°We did as you asked, Lord Traveler,¡± the woman said as I took another long sip of the water, ¡°I hope everything is as it should be.¡± ¡°I-,¡± I stuttered, even with my thirst quenched I had no idea how to respond to that. They clearly held me in some reverence, beyond what concern a doctor might normally have for a patient. Lord implied some figure of authority or nobility. But I didn¡¯t know anyone here, in fact, I realized to some panic, I didn¡¯t remember much of anything. I could speak, I knew math, and a surprising amount about theoretical physics, but no people, names, faces, locations. Just as the panic was beginning to show on my face the door to the small hospital room opened, admitting an older woman dressed not in scrubs but long robes. A golden mantle hung from her shoulders and an elaborate head piece sat atop her greying hair. ¡°The Traveler is still recovering from the surgery,¡± she explained, holding the door open behind her with an elbow, her hands carrying a covered tray. ¡°I¡¯ll speak with him from here,¡± she continued, motioning for them to leave. They quickly left, whispering something that I didn¡¯t catch and bowing respectfully to the old woman on the way out. Once they were gone the woman sat the tray on my lap and continued, ¡°sorry about them, there are parts of the prophecy that only the inner circle knows about.¡± As she spoke, she removed the covering of the tray to reveal a rather simple fair, a Hamburg steak, carrots and mashed potatoes, all clearly made from frozen ingredients in the hospital¡¯s cafeteria. None the less I realized I was starving and quickly tore into the food. ¡°They aren¡¯t the only ones,¡± I said around mouthfuls of dry beef, ¡°I don¡¯t even know where I am.¡± ¡°You are in the sanctum of the traveler, built upon the spot you first arrived. You said this might happen,¡± she replied, lowering herself onto a stool next to the bed, ¡°When you were here a millennia back you told us you might return, telling us to watch for you.¡± ¡°And perform surgery on me?¡± I asked incredulously, the only reason I wasn¡¯t angrier was part being overwhelmed, part raw confusion, but mostly that my focus was on the food. ¡°You were very specific,¡± she nodded, ¡°we had to install the device as soon as possible, before you travel again.¡± ¡°Why does everyone call me a traveler?¡± ¡°So it¡¯s true you have no memory of your last visit here? Or even your nature?¡± She asked in return, ¡°in our secret scriptures it is said that when you returned you will have lost your memories. But I had hoped¡­ never mind, it falls to me to relay what I know. ¡°Yes, you are a Traveler,¡± she continued, ¡°a supernatural being who walks between worlds, according to the general public, doing good, helping the weak and teaching us to survive. But those of us in the inner circle know the truth, you do walk worlds, but not willingly. After a time you will ¡®travel,¡¯ leaving this world behind and arriving at a new one. This happens whether you wish to or not, and will continue to happen.¡± ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡± I said simply. ¡°Yes, but that is what you told us,¡± she shrugged, ¡°but there is more you need to know, every time you travel your mind and body is¡­ reset. Your memories wiped, injuries healed, and everything returned to how it was when you arrived. Back then you had a device that allowed you to retain your memories, and even various¡­ abilities as you traveled, but it seems that since then you¡¯ve lost that capability. The device we implanted will, among other things, allow you to remember.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t remember anything,¡± I replied. ¡°But from now on you will, you won¡¯t remember past worlds, where you traveled before, or your first visit here. But you will remember this as you travel again,¡± she assured me, though I didn¡¯t find it that assuring. ¡°This¡­ this is¡­¡± I started, finishing up my food. ¡°Overwhelming?¡± she asked with a friendly smile, ¡°I can understand, if not relate. When I was but a girl I was taught of your exploits in our past, how you triumphed over evil to free our people, how you gave us a holy task should you ever return. Yet here you are, just like any other man, confused, lost, scared¡­ sadly there is little I can do to help save pass on what information you gave us long ago.¡± ¡°Ok,¡± I replied slowly, looking at the empty food tray, ¡°let¡¯s say I believe you, which I¡¯m not sure I do, what else can you tell me?¡± ¡°Only what you told us,¡± she replied, ¡°the device you gave us, and is now implanted in the back of your neck, not only allows you to remember worlds you¡¯ve visited since you¡¯ve had it but also tells you how much time you have left in the world. The records indicate that there are limitations to it, that it will only give you a few days¡¯ notice, but should still be helpful. It also allows you to travel early, up to ¡®about a day,¡¯ in your words, before you are supposed to travel you can initiate the jump early.¡± ¡°How do I check this ti-,¡± I started, only to jump as a series of numbers appeared in my vision, slowly counting down. I reached out and waved my hands to try and touch the numbers, but they weren¡¯t there, despite how real they appeared. ¡°You said the device was easy to figure out,¡± she chuckled. ¡°It says I have¡­ fifteen minutes?¡± I read, indeed the timer appeared to be counting down the last few minutes until I was supposed to travel. ¡°Glad we got it implanted in time then,¡± she nodded, ¡°I¡¯ll stay here until you Travel, anything you wish to know?¡± ¡°How is this possible?¡± I asked, my mind spinning at the ramifications, ¡°traveling between worlds? Do you mean planets or star systems¡­ universes?¡± ¡°From what you said, you travel between realities, and no, I don¡¯t know how it works. No one does, not really. If you understood it back then you didn¡¯t explain it to us,¡± she shrugged. ¡°Then¡­ what should I do?¡± I was starting to panic, was it even possible to travel between worlds? Between realities? ¡°You should find something you can take with you between worlds to defend yourself,¡± she replied immediately, her smile fading, ¡°much as you can retain your memories it¡¯s possible for you to carry with you bits of other realities. Indeed, when you were last here you could fly, pick up boulders with one hand and survive being shot with a ballista, if the records are to be believed. You said that many other worlds aren¡¯t as friendly as ours, and that was after you were attacked by a dozen knights. Gather unique capabilities as you travel. Meet people, learn from them.¡± ¡°What are the chances that I¡¯ll even encounter humans in these other worlds?¡± I scoffed. ¡°Better than you think,¡± she smirked, ¡°while the laws of nature may change you appear to be¡­ drawn to realities with humans according to your own accounts.¡± ¡°How will I get anything done if I¡¯m only in each world for minutes?¡± I asked, glancing at the timer that was now passing five minutes. ¡°The time you spend in each world varies, from minutes to years. But so long as you survive, you¡¯ll appear in the next world just as you are now.¡± ¡°Why?¡± I asked after a long minute of silence, head in my hands as I stared solemnly at the last remains of the mashed potatoes. ¡°I think of you as a guardian angel,¡± she said warmly, ¡°you go where you are needed, helping out until you vanish once more, moving onwards on your eternal mission.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t feel like any kind of angel,¡± I despaired. ¡°What is an angel, but a man filled with a divine grace? This might seem a curse, but I believe in you. If for no other reason than you fear the nature of your existence, many would see it as an opportunity to do as they pleased. Take what you want, do as you wish and move on before the consequences catch up. ¡°You will do great things,¡± she continued, the fervor of her belief seeming to turn her from the old grandmotherly type into a beaming young girl looking up to him like some kind of hero, ¡°you will save worlds from evil, free people from tyranny, and learn more about the universe than anyone else. I know because you¡¯ve done it before and will do it again, such is who you are.¡± I didn¡¯t know how to respond to that, part of me was scared, how could I possibly live up to those expectations? She said it with such conviction that part of me was caught up in it, eager to justify her belief in me, as groundless as it felt. Whoever I was when I was last in this world, that wasn¡¯t me. I had no memories of that time, none of the skills, knowledge or abilities. And how could she know for certain who that me was? If I traveled worlds, unable to retain even my memories without some implant, how could she know for certain what I¡¯d done? Surely everything she heard was my own tales, or the tales of whoever it was that she thought was me in any case. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. For as much as I wanted to dismiss her beliefs it was clear from her face that she was truly, religiously earnest. Even as my mouth gaped like a fish, unable to respond, she continued to look upon me like some kind of angel, unable to do wrong. And some not inconsequential part of me felt the need to at least try to live up to her expectations. Sadly, I almost immediately messed up. \-\-\-\-\- There is something you should know about traveling, in regards to me, it¡¯s not a comfortable experience. In my years of study, I¡¯ve only managed guesses about how or why it works. My best theory is that there is something about me that builds up some kind of instability between my existence and the world I find myself in, like a static charge from a tesla coil. Now what should happen is eventually myself and the world find a kind of harmony, influencing one another until we stabilize. But for some reason that doesn¡¯t happen, my ¡®frequency¡¯ or whatever is static, refusing to be influenced. Thus, the instability builds up until I¡¯m violently ejected from the world. I then jump to the next world like a bolt of lightning, dispersing the excess energy and restarting the process again. All you really need to take from this is that each trip is¡­ uncomfortable. Something I began to learn as I fell three feet to the ground, tumbled down a short flight of three stairs before landing hard on a tiled ground in the middle of a small cafeteria. Upon looking up a middle-aged man was looking down on me in shock, nearly dropping his tray of food. A confusing situation to be sure, and a stressful one once I was taken before the station commander and asked a number of very pointed questions. The short story is I appeared on a planetary research station orbiting a dead world. While they were suspicious at first, who wouldn¡¯t be when a guy falls out of the air aboard your remote station, once I agreed to be scanned they opened up to me. I was as interested in the results of the scan as they were. ¡°You only have the one implant?¡± a biologist named Dave asked as he looked over the printouts. ¡°Ya,¡± I agreed, ¡°apparently it¡¯s what lets me retain my memory as I travel.¡± ¡°It looks like a quantum memory module, but not one I¡¯ve ever seen,¡± Dave admitted, ¡°I didn¡¯t even know they had quantum memory implants. The ones I¡¯ve heard of need massive cooling units, not something you can really fit in someone¡¯s skull.¡± ¡°Can I see?¡± I asked, taking the tablet and inspecting the pictures, ¡°looks like it uses crystalized photons to contain the Q-bits, without needing to cool them down.¡± ¡°Is that¡­ possible?¡± Dave looked perplexed, I remembered he was a biologist, not a physicist. ¡°Sure, under the right situations photons can crystalize into semi-physical structures that mimic quantum wave forms.¡± ¡°I thought you had no memories before you got that implant.¡± ¡°No personal memories,¡± I corrected, ¡°apparently the results of whatever education I got remain.¡± ¡°Maybe you can help us with something,¡± Dave said, motioning for me to follow. I handed the tablet back and trailed him out of the small office and down one of the many hallways in the station. ¡°We¡¯re researching the remains of an industrial age civilization,¡± Dave explained, ¡°what data we can find indicates they were threatened by some kind of parasite, which somehow resulted in the destruction of their culture. This was millions of years ago, mind, so we haven¡¯t been able to find any living specimens of the parasite, but we¡¯ve found several partial fossils.¡± ¡°A parasite that can drive a species to extinction?¡± I shivered, ¡°sounds dangerous.¡± ¡°For an industrial civilization, sure, but I doubt it would be much for us,¡± Dave assured, ¡°even so, we¡¯re taking all precautions. Even if we somehow found a living ancestor that was, somehow, able to infect us it would still have to get through full biological containment.¡± ¡°I was suddenly worried I¡¯d arrived into some B, sci-fi, horror flick,¡± I said with a smirk. ¡°This is a government funded station, they don¡¯t like taking chances,¡± the biologist replied with a similar smile, ¡°in any case, we¡¯ve only found one, mostly, intact specimen. The issue is we found it encased in a salt crystal, probably got caught in a flood and was washed into a dead sea. We can¡¯t figure out how to remove the salt without damaging the specimen.¡± ¡°And you can¡¯t just submerge it in water?¡± ¡°First thing we thought of,¡± Dave chuckled, ¡°but we¡¯re afraid the water would damage the fossil.¡± As we spoke Dave walked into a viewing room overlooking something like a surgery ward, thick glass separated us from a torso sized block of salt which, itself, was contained in thick, transparent plastic. Several figures in biohazard suits worked with various instruments along the far wall, occasionally picking up some instrument to take a scan from some new angle in the hope of figuring something out. ¡°The creatures have a thick carapace on their back and legs that makes them relatively durable,¡± Dave explained, pulling up an image that appeared to be a render of what they think the creatures looked like, ¡°but see these mounds on its side? They have some hair like substance extending from them. We¡¯ve found evidence of them in fossils, but we¡¯ve never been able to study it directly.¡± ¡°Why have that hair?¡± I asked, the creature looked like an oversized beetle with a segmented back and thick legs that could be folded into its chest, forming a solid carapace resembling the back. The only openings in the chitin were on the creature¡¯s sides, where fleshy mounds extended out with long hairs reaching nearly a foot out, as wide as the creature itself. ¡°We think it was some kind of sensing organ,¡± Dave said, turning the image till the front of the creature was visible, which was rather plain with a pair of powerful looking mandibles sticking out from under the edge of the carapace. But, I noted, there were no eyes. ¡°Interesting,¡± I commented, looking at the more detailed scans of the oversized salt crystal. It had apparently taken quite a bit of effort to simply get the entire chunk into orbit without falling apart. Even then several cracks came uncomfortably close to the specimen. ¡°You could try injecting a stabilizing agent,¡± I said, ¡°something to prop up the tissue and hold them in place. So they don¡¯t fall apart while you cut away the salt.¡± ¡°A few small holes would be preferable to shattering the specimen,¡± Dave nodded slowly, a look of contemplation on his face, ¡°we can try it on some smaller, fragmentary remains. Just to test it.¡± It was quite enjoyable to work on such a project, and something strangely familiar. I¡¯ve taken to assuming that I was a researcher in my original world, though I¡¯ve no idea if it¡¯s true or not. Regardless I spent the next day helping the team concoct a soft setting gel that could be injected into the desiccated tissue and support it for long enough to extract the fossil. We actually used samples from creatures that currently lived on the planet¡¯s surface, partly recreating the blood-plasma analog in order to minimize the chance of the gel damaging the sample. While the others were working on that I took to studying myself and trying to figure out how the strange implant in my skull worked. Dave had been correct to say it was likely a quantum storage module, but I was more interested in how it traveled with me. The priestess had said that it was possible to take parts of each world I visited with me, expanding my abilities so I didn¡¯t arrive in each world with little more than the clothes on my back. With the help of Dave and a few others, who were willing to assist me while the chemistry team worked, we fabricated a few simple implants that, I hoped, would follow me on my next jump. Near as I could tell the main implant was entangled with my very consciousness, somehow. By the transitive property I entangled the new implants with the original, hoping they would then follow me in the same way. It was nothing too over the top, the medical machines on the station couldn¡¯t handle more then that, but I managed to place a couple sensors along my collar bone, linking their output to my main implant where they could be displayed. I would have liked to do more but I soon got word that they were preparing to extract the fossil, the injections having been successful. ¡°You¡¯re just in time,¡± Dave said, not looking up from the observation window where several figures in biohazard suits carefully cut away at the salt. While the stabilizing gel would stop most cracks and fractures from damaging the tissue it was still delicate work. For several hours various workers took their turns using high speed drills that closely resembled dental equipment to slowly crave away the salt. And slowly the creature was revealed. It had died with its legs curled up under it, making it look like a large chitin bound book, nearly two feet on the longest side and more than half that on the next. The most delicate work was around the strange fibrous tendrils around the fleshy bumps along the creature¡¯s side. It had taken time for the gel to propagate along the thin strands, which was the main reason the was chosen to make the agent chemically similar to blood plasma, but some small, soft brushes and lots of time and they were eventually freed of the salt prison. ¡°Looks too big and hard to be a parasite,¡± I commented as the suited figures carefully looked over the creature for any last traces of salt. ¡°We assume this is the breeding stage in their life,¡± Dave replied, ¡°there are small channels in their mandibles that, we think, were used to inject eggs into their prey. There are a number of macro-organisms on the planet¡¯s surface to whom that wouldn¡¯t be more than a bug bite to us. Or rather, there were. The locals hunted them to extinction before reaching the industrial age, like humans did to Mammoths on Earth, so these parasites made the jump from those large creatures to the sentient aliens. And were too good at it.¡± I didn¡¯t know as much about the history of this world as Dave so I didn¡¯t question it. But something about the bug made me uneasy, large mandibles, eight thick legs, the strange tendrils, it was as if the creature was designed to scare people. ¡°Amazing,¡± Dave said, interrupting my contemplation, pointing at the test results on the tendrils, ¡°they¡¯re nerves of a sort. Meaning they were far more sensitive than simple whiskers.¡± ¡°Does it even have the brain to handle that kind of information?¡± I asked. ¡°The neural structure is simple but robust,¡± the biologist replied, ¡°even with partly intact specimens we were able to determine they had a very high neural plasticity, far beyond what would be expected in even a large insect. This is probably why.¡± ¡°Would also make them hard to kill,¡± I noted, ¡°take out one nerve clump and the others simply take up the slack.¡± ¡°A distributed neural system,¡± Dave was excited, nearly bouncing on the spot as he looked over the scans that were much clearer without the salt. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± I asked, pointing at the tablet, ¡°looks like some active neurons.¡± ¡°Probably just the salt in the creature¡¯s body,¡± Dave dismissed, ¡°salt is, by its nature, highly reactive and ionized. Wouldn¡¯t take much to trigger a few stray signals.¡± If I ever meet whatever god or gods made these worlds I travel through, remind me to punch them. For it seems every time someone ¡®temps fate¡¯ it goes poorly, I don¡¯t know why, but I¡¯ve taken to blaming the fates. Hence my desire to sock them. We were interrupted by a scream from the containment room, quickly disrupting our discussion. One of the biologists had gone to remove a couple traces of salt on the creature¡¯s mandibles, and the mandibles had closed. Hard. Despite being encased in salt for hundreds of years it was strong enough to cut clean through the biohazard suit and deep into the man¡¯s arm. It took both of the other two people in the containment room to pry the jaws open enough to extract the trapped limb. Dave and I watched closely as they pulled the bleeding man out of the room. Despite the surprise it didn¡¯t seem the creature was moving more. ¡°A stray signal from a salt ion triggered an instinctive reaction to bite down,¡± Dave said, as if to explain away the situation. ¡°Are any of the eggs viable?¡± I asked in a panic, suddenly remembering what he said about how the creature breeds. ¡°I doubt it,¡± Dave replied, but his voice lacked the certainty I wanted. I¡¯d been told my travels were attracted to important times and places, what if I was about to witness a new outbreak of the parasite? It had already driven one species to extinction, I couldn¡¯t let that happen again. If I had any power to stop it, I had to do so. So I ran from the room, leaving a stunned Dave in the observation room and quickly found the injured scientist. A doctor was already looking over him with his own implants, augmented by some hand held scanners, while his friends, still in their biohazard suits held him down on the stretcher. Partly to test my own new implants I ran what scans I could. I didn¡¯t exactly have a full sensor suite, several passive scanners, lidar and short ranged quantum scanners, but the few eggs I could pick up from five feet were all ruptured and dead from being encased in salt. The eggs were small, like grains of sand, but once I was able to locate them I quickly relayed what to look for to the doctor. He was annoyed that I was butting in and ran a quick scan with his own, more powerful, sensors. A quick report that all the eggs were dead and a ¡®please go away¡¯ were all the time he gave me. I sighed in relief and did as I was told. As I walked back to the observation room I realized how foolish I was being, hundreds of years encased in salt would kill almost anything. Dave was probably right, the salt ions triggered an instinctive reaction. That, by itself, was amazing. But hardly a cause for concern. Dave wasn¡¯t in the observation room when I returned, instead I heard some movement in the containment area. Dave had probably suited up to go check on the specimen. He had, but he wasn¡¯t inspecting the bug. He was on the ground, bleeding, a dark shape chewing at his neck. My blood ran cold as I realized the creature had, somehow, survived being encased for so long. The bite was merely the results of it waking up. It had woken and attacked Dave the moment he entered the room, catching the biologist off guard. The powerful mandibles had removed Dave¡¯s arm. While Dave fell to the ground in shock the bug had angled his dismembered arm so the bleeding stump met up with one of the hairy mounds on it¡¯s side. I watched as the tendrils worked their way into the flesh and made contact with the nervous system within the disembodied limb. Dave¡¯s own arm worked to hold him down as the creature chewed through the biohazard suit with it¡¯s powerful mandibles. I took off at a run, once more, hoping I could save him. I ran into the locker room, filled with hazard suits, and passed them. Reaching the airlock I pressed at the keypad to one side, but it needed a code. A code I didn¡¯t have. Furious I turned all my limited sensors to the device, hoping to determine what the correct combination was. It was hopeless but I was in a state of panic, unable to really think clearly. I froze in surprise as the other side of the airlock opened, had the bug somehow accidently opened it? Through the thick glass I saw the bug thing scuttle in, dragging one of its legs behind it, apparently not completely untouched by the ravages of time. Dave¡¯s arm was affixed to one side of the creature, helping it along in a jerky motion as if the owner wasn¡¯t used to it. To the creature¡¯s other side was Dave¡¯s head, I realized with a cold terror. The controlled arm reached up to the keypad and, to my growing terror, began slowly pressing buttons. It was reading Dave¡¯s brain with those strange tendrils to figure out how to escape. No wonder it had wiped out the alien species on the planet below, if it could make use of the knowledge of its hosts. I stumbled back as an alert appeared in my vision, ten seconds until travel. Not now! I thought, I had to stop it! I quickly looked around for a weapon, but this was a locker room for a biological containment room, not an armory. I picked up a stool that was nearby, readying myself for the moment the door opened. This was my last chance, I was wrong about the eggs, and I was wrong about the creature being dead. But I could stop it now. I could see the results of what would happen if I failed, the creature would generate new, viable, eggs and spread. Using the knowledge in the minds of the scientists they would spread to other stations. Other worlds. It would be like a wildfire, maybe humanity would survive, but just as likely they would come to an end. The door slid open, slowly, and I charged, letting out a scream as I hefted the stool over my head. And the world vanished around me as the timer in my vision hit zero. Chronicles of a Traveler 2 As I entered the third world I knew, I had a grand total of two memories. One of a wizened old priestess expecting the world of me and one of me possibly destroying a world. In the time since I left that research station I¡¯ve come up with a hundred reasons why it wouldn¡¯t have been the end for them. Perhaps the creature was only reanimated due to a unique interaction between the salt and stabilizing gel, and once the salt left its system it would return to death. Or its DNA was likely damaged by millennia in stasis, enough that its cells couldn¡¯t divide properly, leaving it only a short time before it died again, unable to produce new cells. Maybe the station security could get their act together and kill the thing if the previous cases didn¡¯t happen. It wasn¡¯t a military station but I¡¯m sure they could fashion a few crude weapons to beat the thing to death. But I honestly don¡¯t know. I¡¯ve been to a dozen worlds that could have been the same one, but I¡¯ve never managed to verify it. That might be disappointing to you, not knowing what happened next. But trust me, I¡¯ve had nightmares of finding myself in a world overrun by strange beetles, using dismembered limbs to operate technology they similarly stole. However, as I fell a couple feet out of the air to land on hard dirt with a few tufts of orange grass I was still in that moment, the parasite emerging from the clean room airlock, using my friend¡¯s head like a smart phone. My body was reset, so the adrenaline and chemicals making me panic were gone. The memory was at once distant, remembered clinically but not emotionally, and yet still right there in front of my eyes. I rolled over onto my back, barely noticing the blue sky above me as I tried to shut out the sight of Dave¡¯s twitching face affixed to black carapace. I was vaguely aware of movement and voices around me. But I was stirred from my melancholy by the face of a young girl, wearing a rough spun gown and covered in a thin layer of dirt like she hadn¡¯t bathed in days. ¡°Are you a wizard?¡± she asked innocently, not old enough to pick up on the tears forming in my eyes as I brushed them away. ¡°Get back here Naddy,¡± an older woman called, though even she was barely older than her twenties, grabbing the girl by the arm and pulling here away. By the way she watched me carefully she might have been the girl¡¯s mother, or older sister. Finally realizing that I wasn¡¯t alone I pushed myself up and looked around. I seemed to be on the outskirts of a market or fair, judging by the rows of stands selling various goods from salt to butter. Everyone was in crudely made clothing of thick cloth or leather with similarly basic shoes. Compared to them my jeans and button-up were centuries ahead. Oddly no one was paying attention to me, busily haggling or looking for what they needed. At first I thought I might have appeared in a renaissance fair, but it extended past their clothing. Their hygiene left much to be desired, and who throws a themed fair just to sell produce? There was also no sign of a technological civilization, in the distance was an old, weathered castle where men-at-arms stood at watch while wains drawn by donkeys made their way over the rough dirt paths, loaded with goods for the market. Even my small handful of sensors, which thankfully did make the trip with me, failed to pick up any radio waves or electronic signals. ¡°Not every day you see someone fall out of the air,¡± a voice caught me off guard, turning I found an older man leaning on a gnarled staff with a pipe in his mouth. As I made eye contact, he motioned for me to join him on a rough half-log bench. ¡°Nor have I ever seen someone dressed as you,¡± he added as I got closer, pulling idly at his beard. ¡°I¡¯m¡­ not from around here,¡± I admitted as I sat down. ¡°That much I gathered,¡± he chuckled, ¡°so where are you from?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I shrugged. ¡°Can¡¯t remember? That must be some spell you used to conjure you here,¡± he replied, ¡°can¡¯t say I¡¯ve ever seen the like.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s magic, but it wipes my memory every time, only recently did I overcome that.¡± ¡°A spell that wipes your memories, sounds more like a curse than a blessing.¡± ¡°Never said I was traveling willingly.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fair,¡± the man said with a smirk, ¡°still, you must be a powerful wizard to conjure so powerful a magic.¡± ¡°No such thing as magic,¡± I replied immediately, ¡°only things you don¡¯t yet understand.¡± In reply the man reached up and touched a small amber gem in the head of his staff, pulling his hand away my quantum sensors went mad. They reported a strand of energy being drawn forth like a thread from a ball of wool. The man twisted his hand and moved his fingers, twisting and bending the energy into what I quickly realized was some kind of diode. When he was finished, he cut the thread and released the completed knot, causing a small red light to appear in the air above his hand. Without my quantum sensors all I would have seen is him making some arcane hand gestures before summoning a light. There wasn¡¯t much energy in the knot so it wore out in a few moments, fading away into nothing as its power was spent. ¡°I might be a traveling mage, but I know magic when I see it,¡± he said as the light faded out. ¡°What¡¯s that gem?¡± I asked, looking not at the fading light but the head of his staff. ¡°A power source, all magic requires one. Without one you can make the motions, but it would be like a mill without a river. Did you not need one to cast your travel spell?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know how I started¡­ traveling. But now it happens without my input.¡± ¡°And without your memories you cannot recall how the spell was cast,¡± the old man nodded in understanding. ¡°Where can I get a gem like that?¡± ¡°They are a restricted substance; without the approval of a court wizard, you cannot get them. However, I happen to know the local lord, I could introduce you. I¡¯m certain he would be interested in a wizard of your ken.¡± ¡°And you want something in return,¡± I sighed, one of the constants of the world was that people generally wanted something from you. ¡°Thankfully there is a reward for wandering mages such as myself for bringing in promising new talents,¡± the old man replied with a smile. After a short walk through a village of wattle and daub buildings the self-declared wizard led me into the castle I¡¯d seen earlier. Something rarely mentioned in stories about the Middle Ages was the smell, and for good reason. No plumbing, running water or sanitation laws don¡¯t lend themselves to a pleasant aroma. It had to fight to keep from covering my face as we walked, thankfully the castle was better if only because fewer people lived there. The court wizard was a rather droll man, taking my unusual appearance in without reacting. I got the feeling that many mages in this world worked hard to stand out, the court wizard himself wore a dark blue robe embroidered with stars ranging in size from barely visible to larger than my hand. A similarly garish hat hung from a rack besides the door that I assumed was his. Where the older man I¡¯d spoken with looked very much like the wizened old traveling mage, this man was a more noble specimen of their ¡®magical art.¡¯ In that vein while my clothing was unusual it wasn¡¯t groundbreaking, merely the results of another mage trying to stand out. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. The test the court wizard administered was rather basic, arithmetic, logic and history. The math section was easy, even without using the inbuilt functions of my implants, and I was able to ace it, earning a raised eyebrow from the court mage and a stunned look from the foot wizard. Logic was similarly easy, considering their magic seemed to use methods similar to computer circuitry I was able to work through it without difficulty. Of course the history section I had no idea about, how should I know who created the first mage school or invented a specific spell? Apparently, my test results were so unique that the court wizard ended up calling his liege lord, one Baron Hans, the first man to properly introduce himself as he walked in wearing the finest clothes I¡¯d seen in this world. Which admittedly wasn¡¯t saying much, but it was evidence that looms did exist in this world. ¡°This is the¡­ apprentice you wished me to meet?¡± the Baron asked. ¡°Yes, your grace, he scored higher on arithmetic and logical sections of the test than I¡¯ve ever heard, much less seen,¡± the Court Wizard explained in his monotone, ¡°however he seems to have no knowledge of the history of magic.¡± ¡°Odd,¡± the Baron nodded, turning to the old man who¡¯d brought me in, ¡°And you are the one who found him, yes?¡± ¡°Indeed, your grace,¡± the old man bowed as much as he could, ¡°he seemed to fall out of the air at market, when I stopped for a smoke. Claims to have limited memories of his past, but knows he isn¡¯t from around here. I believe he was caught up in some spell and transported here, one that messed with his memories.¡± ¡°Given his test results he may have been the one to develop the spell,¡± the court mage added, ¡°I see no reason for him to have such knowledge of magic unless he was a well renown wizard in his homeland.¡± ¡°Then we shall treat him with all courtesy!¡± the baron declared, turning to me, ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you can remember your name?¡± ¡°I can¡¯t,¡± I said, earning some hard glares from the court mage before added, ¡°your grace.¡± ¡°Then you shall be The Traveling Mage till you remember,¡± the Baron said, ¡°if you were a powerful mage in service to another nation far away then it falls to me to see to your safe keeping for now. Could you put him up in your hall, master Jermund?¡± ¡°Of course,¡± the court mage said with the same calm acceptance as everything else he said. ¡°Give him a Mana-stone as well,¡± Hans commanded, ¡°perhaps access to magic will spur his memories.¡± And so began my short tenure as a court mage. I naturally dove into the study of magic, learning about this unusual energy. I quickly found that the other wizards could see magic, but only as a hazy mist, not the threads of power my quantum scanners could pick up. As such they had only a basic understanding of how their spells worked, understanding how certain hand gestures within a stream of power resulted in certain results but not truly realizing how it was shaped. I also delved into the amber gemstone they gave me, trying to figure out how it worked. From what I could see the crystal within the gem had formed an unusual lattice that, when exposed to bio-electrical fields generated the stream of energy on a quantum field I barely understood. In short, touching the gem made it generate magic. On my third day I was planning to attempt to create a standing spell, effectively forming a stream of mana into a basic computer, when I was called to the main hall. Whatever reason the Baron had for seeing me was important enough that a barber quickly saw to my growing beard and I was provided with a basin of cold water to wash up. While hardly a proper shower it did help remove some grime that had built up over the last couple days. As I entered the main hall I realized that it wasn¡¯t just humans present, there were a couple figures standing by the Baron that I could only describe as a mix between elves and the grey aliens I see so often in pre-spaceflight human culture. They were tall with thin limbs, their skin was pale beyond reason, with long, pointed ears and oversized pure black eyes. They had long golden hair and wore simple robes as if to hide their unnatural physiology. But my sensors could pierce the cloth and even their skin, returning results on their biology that I¡¯m sure would have had Dave bouncing with joy. Shaking the thought off the biologist I walked up to the baron¡¯s throne and bowed, as I¡¯d been taught. ¡°A Master Traveler,¡± the Baron waved me up as he saw me, ¡°I¡¯ve been asking around about a missing mage, and, of all things, the fair folk wished to meet with you.¡± The ¡®fair folk¡¯ were the two non-human creatures with him, and, now that I was closer, my quantum sensor went crazy with returns. They were positively crawling with magic, it looped around their bodies and flowed through them like water. The knots in the threads of energy told me they knew more about magic than humans, the graceful hand movements I¡¯d seen of human spells were using rocks to count compared to these folk¡¯s smart phones. And, more interestingly, they had knots of the same mana gem the humans used woven into their flesh. This was interesting because I couldn¡¯t bring anything external with me when I traveled. I don¡¯t know why, but I¡¯d attempted to entangle a data-pad with my main implant in my last world, and it hadn¡¯t made the trip. I had been looking into finding a way to generate this energy without a mana gem but if I could implant a proper crystal lattice into my skin then that should follow me. As eager as I was to speak with them about this, something stopped me. Specifically, the moment of recognition that passed through one of their eyes as they saw my clothing. I could have been my imagination but my sensors also picked up an increase in heart rate, or what I assumed was their heart rate. They clearly knew something, but weren¡¯t pleased by it. ¡°Baron Hans tells me you have no memories of your past,¡± the lead elf prompted. ¡°That¡¯s mostly true,¡± I replied, ¡°I recently gained the ability to retain my memory as I travel but haven¡¯t been able to restore my past.¡± ¡°We might be able to assist,¡± the man replied. At least I assume he was a man, I didn¡¯t know enough about the biology of these ¡®fair folk¡¯ to tell. ¡°If your baron approves, we¡¯d like to take you somewhere that might jog your memories.¡± ¡°Of course, I shall prepare an escort of-,¡± the baron started only to be interrupted. ¡°No, sorry, Baron, but this isn¡¯t something your guards will be able to join us with,¡± the elf explained, ¡°we¡¯ll be passing through the Forest of Ancients.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± Baron Hans nodded as if that explained everything, ¡°when will you be leaving?¡± ¡°Three days hence, that should give us enough time to prepare.¡± And like that I was dismissed. The Court Mage, Jermund, explained to me later that day that the Forest of Ancients was a dangerous place that only the Fair Folk walked with any regularity. He spoke of monsters and dangerous beasts within, but he admitted he¡¯d never been. I was suspicious, to say the least. These fair folk, or Elves as I had taken to calling them, were likely my best bet at learning about the strange energy called magic, but they knew more than they were letting on. I didn¡¯t understand how they could recognize denim in a world without electrical looms, but that¡¯s how it seemed. So I threw myself into preparations. I spent the next days building a spell that would draw strands of crystal from the mana gem and thread them into my flesh. It took a couple tries, experimenting on an old apple I¡¯d been brought with lunch, before I was willing to try it on myself. And it seemed to work. I ended up placing two generator lattices, as I started calling them, in my wrists so that I could call upon the energy easily. Another two went into my shoulders, just in case. Was I being paranoid? Probably, but after my encounter with the beetle parasites I didn¡¯t want to be caught off guard. Jermund was nice enough to teach me several defensive spells, incase monsters attacked while I was in the forest, but they were crude. They would work against a beast, but not the fair folk, so I spent another night pulling the spells apart, analyzing them, and optimizing. But, I¡¯ll be honest, I was more interested in the information gathering abilities of this ¡®magic.¡¯ The strands of energy could be looped through an object and returned to the spell to give a surprising amount of information, they could perform what amounted to a basic x-ray, break down an object to its elements, and other such things. Compared to my implanted sensors they were rudimentary, but I was still intrigued. Blame what I assume is the researcher in me. On the day I was to leave on the expedition I was given a simple sword by the Baron along with a leather gambeson. Jermund gave me a staff into which I placed the mana stone I had used for my implants. It was mostly useless now, my internal generators could produce more energy faster than the gem, especially after it was raided for material to make said implants. But it would hopefully keep the elves from suspecting anything. A group of four of them arrived, said few words and told me it was time to go. I tried making small talk with them as we left the village, but they were clearly uninterested in the strange human wizard. By noon we entered the Forest of Ancients, and I was nervous, but the elves seemed unconcerned. I kept my sensors working, and even cast a few spells from the diminished gem on my staff to look for monsters. They only got upset when loops of energy from my spells passed near them, asking me to keep my ¡®human magic¡¯ away from them. Which was interesting, perhaps they didn¡¯t want me knowing about the implanted mana gems. But they didn¡¯t react to my technological sensors. They barely paused for lunch of dried meats and hard breads before moving on. I didn¡¯t see why the forest was so dangerous, I hadn¡¯t seen any animal I would call a beast, much less a monster, on any of my sensors. Maybe they were staying away from the four elves? Or was something else going on? I didn¡¯t know. By noon the next day we finally came to a stop, deep in the woods. They motioned me towards what at first glance appeared to be a plant covered cliff. But my sensors picked up more. I walked up to the cliff, pretending to inspect it with my eyes and a few spells, but my sensors told me there was a steel door set into a concrete building beyond the vines. I pushed aside the vines to reveal a slightly rusted door, turning to look at the elves. They merely watched as I cut away the plants to inspect the object. My sensors picked up spells of theirs, somehow cast without moving, passing through me. Never going anywhere I might see them if I had the same senses as the other human wizards. But I wasn¡¯t an average human wizard, and my quantum scanners didn¡¯t rely on eyesight. There was an old, barely preserved, computer set into the wall next to the steel door, and I started to feel scared. This wasn¡¯t a magical device, it was a technological one, and a rather advanced one at that. Clearly crafted by humans for humans. ¡°Do you recognize that?¡± One of the elves asked. ¡°No,¡± I lied. One of the spells passing through me lit up, a lie detector. ¡°I had been afraid of that,¡± the lead elf sighed, ¡°we can¡¯t allow you to return.¡± ¡°Why not?¡± ¡°We put a lot of effort into controlling your races¡­ unseemly tendencies,¡± the elf admitted, ¡°if you were to reintroduce that technology to them it would ruin centuries of effort.¡± ¡°You¡­ did this?¡± I asked, my blood running cold. ¡°When we came to this world, we found your people suffering under the lack of magic. You were a warlike race with the ability to destroy yourselves dozens of times over,¡± he explained, ¡°we couldn¡¯t sit by and do nothing.¡± ¡°So you destroyed our culture and history?¡± ¡°To start healing you must first stop the bleeding.¡± ¡°What makes you think you can stop me?¡± I asked, ¡°the forest clearly isn¡¯t that dangerous, did you come up with that lie to prevent people from coming here?¡± ¡°If it makes you feel better we won¡¯t kill you,¡± the elf said, ¡°we¡¯ll tell the Baron you were killed by a monster and we couldn¡¯t recover your body. But you will spend the rest of your days in our care. I don¡¯t know where you came from, and you seem earnest in your lack of memories, but if you do know where others with your knowledge are hiding we¡¯ll find them.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not keen to be your prisoner.¡± ¡°You won¡¯t have a choice,¡± the elf replied calmly as a wave of magic built up around him and the other elves. Before I even realized I was unconscious I woke up in a simple room, my staff and sword taken, leaving only my clothes. They hadn¡¯t looked too deeply, I could tell, as my generator implants were still present. However the wooden walls of my room were laced thick with spells, if I had years I might be able to unravel them, but something else had happened while I was out. My countdown started. I had only a couple days left in this world, so I sighed and found a way to entangle the generator implants with me so they traveled to the next world. And I vowed to myself if I ever returned to this world I¡¯d deal with those damned elves. Chronicles of a Traveler; 3 If there was one thing I¡¯d have to give the so-called ¡®fair folk¡¯ it would be that their prison was relatively comfortable. After I awoke I was told that I would be allowed to live out the rest of my natural life here, I got the impression that their lives were much longer than those of a typical human so taking care of me for a few decades would be like putting up with someone in your spare room for a week. Inconvenient but hardly difficult. Food was delivered by magic three times a day, the chamber pot emptied itself instantly, the bed was soft and they generally ignored me. They, surprisingly, gave me access to a computer as well. It wasn¡¯t very advanced, using an old CRT monitor and chugged at times, but it had access to hundreds of movies and tv shows from before humanity was reduced to its current state. Presumably this was meant as some form of entertainment for me, and I could have done some calculations to help with my understanding of the local quantum phenomena called ¡®magic¡¯ but I didn¡¯t want to give them access to what I was working on. Instead I used it as white noise while I did most of the work on my implants, in addition to a timer function my primary implant had other programs, calculator, word docs, even a simple rendering program. Using these I figured out a ¡®spell¡¯ that would allow my generator lattices crystals to follow me on my next trip. The Priestess said things I took from one world to another would work, and the scanners I¡¯d gotten implanted in that first world were still functional, but ¡®magic¡¯ seemed, well, I wasn¡¯t convinced. Still, it was something to do while I waited for my next trip in a few days and if I ever came back to this world the generators would be useful. I promised myself I would fix this world if that did happen. By the time I had hours left until my next jump I had cast my spells, surprisingly my hosts either didn¡¯t notice or care, and had nothing else to do. I could have watched more shows but the CTR monitor was hurting my eyes and I wanted to try intentionally causing a jump. It took only a few moments to pull up the command to initiate my travel early, I smirked, flipped double birds at the room around me and any elves who might be watching and activated it. Turns out willingly initiating a travel event wasn¡¯t that much different from when it happens naturally. And, like the previous times, I found myself several feet in the air. I was ¡®upright¡¯ this time but I wasn¡¯t able to act fast enough to catch myself and fell on my ass. Better than falling down a flight of stairs, I suppose. I could tell instantly I was in a more scientifically advanced world, the short, tough carpet I sat on clearly artificial, and the walls were plastic and metal. I was in some kind of sleeping quarters, with a small bed against one wall and a cramped desk against the other. A small circular window showed stars outside, was it because it was night or was I in space again? As I stood a wall panel lit up showing a small display screen that had been built into the wall, the display flickered to life with a strange image of a ball of green light. ¡°Where did you come from?¡± a rather monotone female voice asked, the green ball in the image pulsing in time with her words. ¡°Uhh, far away,¡± I replied stupidly, I¡¯d have to come up with a better explanation, ¡°I¡¯m a traveler.¡± ¡°You couldn¡¯t have gotten on board,¡± the voice stated. Did that mean I was in space? Or something else? I was probably in a ship of some kind. ¡°Yet I have,¡± I shrugged, looking at the green light. ¡°You should leave now.¡± ¡°Why?¡± ¡°I have placed this ship under emergency quarantine to control an unknown¡­¡± the voice paused, ¡°to prevent it from getting free.¡± ¡°It?¡± I asked, my blood running cold, was this the same world as the parasite I had unwittingly unleashed? ¡°I cannot explain and unexplainable phenomena,¡± the woman said, her monotone voice sounding almost annoyed by her inability to understand what was happening, ¡°I recommend that you use whatever means of travel you used to get here to leave.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t,¡± I admitted after checking my timer, it was reading blank so I had no idea how long I would be here and couldn¡¯t initiate a jump early, ¡°any way I could help?¡± ¡°No,¡± the voice replied instantly, ¡°necessary measures to ensure containment have already been taken. New priority, if you cannot leave the ship on your own then you must reach an escape pod, please hold while I find a safe route.¡± I wasn¡¯t in any hurry to leave, after actively, possibly, dooming one world and being unable to assist another I wanted to try and make up for it. While the woman worked I checked over my own implants, all the scanners in my collar bone were still there, but only two of my four generator lattice crystals had made it. They were so well implanted that it was impossible to see them from the outside, but they did work. Sort of. They did generate a line of energy, but it was weaker and harder to work with. Was that because this world didn¡¯t have magic? Or because of damage from the transit? I didn¡¯t see any errors in the implantation with my scanners, but they weren¡¯t exactly medical grade sensors. ¡°There are hostile entities headed your way,¡± the woman on the intercom said suddenly, I recommend you hide.¡± ¡°What kind of entities?¡± ¡°No time, quickly, plug your ears,¡± she said as insistently as she could with her monotone voice. I wondered what that meant when I heard a distant sound, echoing down the halls and through the bulkheads of this strange ship. Someone was singing. But it wasn¡¯t like any song I¡¯d heard in the last few worlds, or even seem like something I¡¯ve ever heard before. I was vaguely aware of the woman saying something, but I was entranced by the song. It was more than one person, and they weren¡¯t saying words, at least none than I could make out. The operatic tones washed over me as I sought out the source of the sound, it wasn¡¯t just the song itself that had me so entranced, it was the overlapping of tones to form a hypnotic harmony. I walked the halls in a bit of a daze before I found myself turning a corner and coming face to face with a half dozen other people. Is this who that woman was speaking of? They didn¡¯t look that odd, she had mentioned something about an entity and a quarantine, but there were no parasites that I could see. The beetles from that first world were pretty big and hard to miss. Instead of greeting me, the six others, still loudly singing out gently wavering tones, moved to encircle me. For some reason I only just realized I was in danger at that moment, I couldn¡¯t see anything wrong but these people weren¡¯t acting normally. I struggled to move away only to find my muscles sluggish, like I was waking from a particularly deep sleep. The person in front of me, reached out and grabbed me by the head before I could react, and suddenly the rest had also grabbed me, pulling me to the ground. I tried to fight but my limbs were barely responding, making me feel unnaturally weak. Once they had me pinned the tone and tempo of their song changed, and almost immediately I felt some pressure on my mind. The entrancing effect ending as the pressure became a pounding headache. Rather than hypnotizing me the music became beauty and pain incarnate, temping me with great wonders and pleasure should I succumb to it. And promising even greater pain should I continue to resist its warm embrace. And I wanted to allow it in, oh how I wanted to, the song was beautiful beyond reason and thought. The pain was all consuming and inescapable. I wanted to give in, throw myself into the gentle waves and warm light of that song, but I couldn¡¯t. Its not that there was some small part of me resisting its influence, demanding I remain myself despite the great temptation and pain, it was that I literally couldn¡¯t. The strange song that inflicted both beauty and pain on me in great, but equal, measure had my brain nearly incapable of rational thought. It had forced me into strange state that seemed to bypass my higher thinking, preventing me from actively thinking about what was going on, forcing me to give into the whim to submit myself. But I couldn¡¯t, and I didn¡¯t know why. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. More and more figures joined those circling me, adding their own tones to the harmony that was compelling me. Pain so great my mind wanted to break wracked my body. Pleasure so great I could get lost in it was dangled just out of reach. The Harmony didn¡¯t understand that I physically couldn¡¯t allow it in, it didn¡¯t care. It was raw temptation in all its forms. It was hard to tell how much time went by, minutes, hours, days? Slowly my brain fought against the pain and pleasure, the despair and hope, the beauty and horror of it all to get simple thoughts through. It was like the moment before you die, or have your first kiss, where your mind isn¡¯t thinking its simply reacting, but stretched out over and uncountable time. But slowly, oh so slowly, I pushed through the infinite pain and endless pleasure to figure out what was happening. I was a gestalt mind, not purely biological, not purely mechanical. Even in worlds where people use mental implants they tend to be for ancillary function, rarely does anyone ever use them to store and run a part of their personality. But I was intrinsically split between the organic and man-made. And the Harmony I wanted to give in to so badly couldn¡¯t understand the artificial. It saw my organic mind and understood, but my memory implant that allows my mind to survive trips between realities was beyond it. Meaning it was an escape from this torture. And that¡¯s what it had become, inescapable pain, and taunting pleasure, I couldn¡¯t handle it. Where I first wanted to give in I was now looking for any way out, and the simple realization that this Harmony didn¡¯t understand my quantum memory implant gave me a possibility, so I reacted. I didn¡¯t have the presence of mind to think about it, the same desperate reflexive state the song had forced me into to tempt me caused me to act. I withdrew into my quantum state memory, unaware if that was even possible, but I accomplished it. The infinite pain faded to a dull throb while my mind, now entirely run on the complex electronics implanted at the base of my skull, came to terms with what had happened. What was still happening. My eyes and organic senses were beyond me in this state but the artificial ones weren¡¯t. And the story they told was fascinating. The song wasn¡¯t a simple song, it was alive. Different tones interacted and interfered in entirely deterministic ways, but in doing so they gave rise to a form of intelligence built out of the vibrating air around me. It was a consciousness built of harmonics and song, air and pressure. But if the people holding me down stopped singing the intelligence would evaporate as fast as the song it was made of. It needed a medium that could understand sound and silence, song and harmony. It needed an organic brain. Within the layers of stacked harmonies it knew that too, and my mind was the only one available. As it sang itself into my brain I realized, this is how the Harmony spread. It was another kind of parasite, one made of sound and thoughts, not chitin and neurons, using living minds as receptacles for its progeny. Had I still been in my organic mind I would have been consumed by fear with that thought, but in the quantum state electronics there were no emotions, just logic. And something else was happening, the implant was designed to keep a record of my mind, even that which it wasn¡¯t running. It didn¡¯t see a distinction between me and the Harmony. Thankfully I had control over its functions and managed to partition off a section of the seemingly infinite memory available to house the replica of what was imprinting itself on my grey matter. I tore into it with the skill and eye of a scientist, dissecting the harmonics as I would a frog. The being was happy, it was complex and intelligent, more so than others of its kind. The more singers taking part in the song the more powerful the resulting intelligence, most singers were little more than zombies, wandering in small packs to find unwilling hosts to entrance and subdue. But this one was far above them, it was hard to put on a scale with a human due to the extreme differences in thought processes, but it was as smart as me, if not more. But it was also confused, it should have had access to my memories it knew, but my mind was empty. An empty mind shouldn¡¯t have been able to resist long enough for this many singers to congregate. Yet it found nothing within my grey matter, just empty space. It could figure out my body easily enough, but it shouldn¡¯t need to. As more of the intelligence made itself into my mind, and from there to the copy my quantum implants were secret making, the more I understood it. I had reversed the situation on it, rather than it gaining access to my mind, I gained access to its. In another time I would have studied it, fascinated by the complexity and uniqueness of its mind. In the cold logic of quantum electronics, I had the presence of mind to set a copy of the entity aside for me to do just that later, in another world, but for now I turned my mind to destroying it. The Harmony, as I¡¯d been calling it, was just that, a being made of the harmonics and interference of different frequencies. It was fascinating, but that also was what gave me the idea on how to destroy it. I designed a counter harmonic, a counter signal that would neutralize and zero out its ability to think. It was, for all intents and purpose, an acoustic retrovirus. But that wasn¡¯t enough, while I could retake my organic mind that would only lead to me being held down and turned again. No, I had to be prepared. While my ¡®magic¡¯ was weak in this world it was still sufficient to vibrate the air, if I could get to it. I watched through my artificial eyes and waited for a moment. The being controlling my body took an hour to figure out how to walk and was soon walking the halls of the ship. Not long after that it changed from wandering aimlessly it actively seeking something out, it would stop and ¡®converse¡¯ with the lesser singers, accessing their minds not unlike a computer would query servers for information. Only all through the medium of song. Soon it found what it was looking for, a control room of some sort. It wanted to learn, figure out where it was and why my mind was empty. For that it needed information, and that lead it to a network management room. Banks of servers lined the walls, lights blinking as they coordinated hundreds of different computers across the ship. At their center was a computer tower that resembled a black obelisk, on it a display with a green orb pulsed gently. But it was alone, so I enacted my plan. I used the implant to inject my counter harmonic into my mind, the effect was instantaneous, the being didn¡¯t understand what was happening, it slowly lost the ability to think, just like I had. But rather than asking for it to give in, my retrovirus ruthlessly sought out every harmonic and smothered it in inverse sounds. As soon as it was safe I had part of my consciousness transferred back to my own mind, the entire process took mere seconds but it still left me dazed. ¡°Can you understand me?¡± a woman¡¯s voice asked in a familiar monotone, ¡°you, of all the infected, have been acting strangely.¡± ¡°It¡¯s me,¡± I grumbled, my mouth dry from the singing the entity had been doing. I needed a drink, but that would have to wait. ¡°Wait, who are you?¡± the woman asked, but I had little time, I could already hear the siren song echoing through the ship. I fought off the compulsion to seek it out and drew a line of power from the generator lattice crystal on my left shoulder. I carefully twisted the line of energy into the complex diagram I¡¯d created before I retook my mind. I must have looked crazy, waving my hands in the air like I was working on a nest of wires, but I had to hurry. The compulsion was growing stronger the longer this took. A few twists, one last component here, and the ¡®spell¡¯ was complete. A hollow tone rang out and instantly silenced the distant song, ending the desire in me to seek it out. I sighed with relief and brought up the design for the second spell. ¡°What are you doing?¡± the woman asked again, ¡°how are you making that sound?¡± ¡°Magic,¡± I shrugged, ¡°it¡¯s a¡­ jamming signal for that song.¡± ¡°Why?¡± ¡°The song is how they transmit themselves,¡± I replied, ¡°the unknown phenomena you spoke of earlier, it¡¯s a living song, harmonics given thought and life.¡± ¡°How is that possible?¡± ¡°No idea,¡± I admitted, pulling a second line of energy from the shoulder generator, preparing to cast the second spell, when all of the sudden I hear that same hollow ringing echoing through the ship. I paused and looked at the black tower, ¡°was that you?¡± ¡°I am testing your hypothesis, and it appears to be correct,¡± the woman replied, ¡°the jamming signal has caused them to stop wandering in groups, several individuals have become agitated.¡± ¡°Who am I speaking to right now?¡± I asked suddenly, I thought I knew but wasn¡¯t sure. ¡°I¡¯m the artificial intelligence in charge of managing this ship,¡± the woman replied, confirming my suspicions, ¡°my number one goal is preserving human life, but I didn¡¯t recognize the infection for what it was until it was too late. I had to fry all access points to ship controls to prevent the infected from assuming control of the ship, but not before I managed to get it onto a crash course with a local gas giant.¡± ¡°And you did all that without human supervision?¡± ¡°The captain was one of the last to be turned,¡± she explained, ¡°he gave the order.¡± ¡°Well, I have a way to kill the infected,¡± I said and then explained the auditory retrovirus to the computer, she quickly put the plan into action, and not before long as I heard a thud in the hallway outside the network access room. One singer had been getting close, not that I would have been in much danger now that my jamming spell was active, but still. ¡°It appears effective,¡± the computer reported, ¡°all infected have ceased movement and collapsed.¡± ¡°Hopefully their minds will return but¡­ I¡¯m not hopeful,¡± I admitted. ¡°I would prefer they didn¡¯t,¡± the woman replied, ¡°I was ordered to completely destroy all navigational access so now it is impossible to divert course. And the crew disabled all external communications, likely they knew, or suspected the nature of the Harmonic entity but didn¡¯t inform me.¡± ¡°So, how long till we crash?¡± I asked simply, leaning against a wall of servers. ¡°Six months, twelve days and two hours. I intentionally put us far off from any shipping lanes or jump points to prevent us from being discovered. But now I am attempting to find a way to save you.¡± ¡°I-,¡± I started to reply when a count down popped up in my vision, three and a half hours till I traveled, ¡°don¡¯t worry, I can find my own way out.¡± ¡°The travel method you used to arrive here is available again?¡± ¡°Yup,¡± I nodded, ¡°I know you¡¯re an AI, but you want to come with? I have enough storage in my implants to handle you, and probably everything else stored in this room. You don¡¯t need to die here.¡± ¡°I am not an emotive AI, my purpose is the safe keeping of humanity. I do not fear my own end,¡± the computer replied evenly, ¡°and I am not allow to let myself be transferred without specific protocols and commands in place, should you try I would be forced to resist.¡± ¡°Figured I¡¯d ask,¡± I shrugged, ¡°god speed and all that.¡± And I triggered the jump. \-\-\-\-\- My emotions were confused as I found myself in the next world. On one hand I¡¯d actually had a positive effect, saving myself from a unique entity and shutting it down. But the AI of that ship had already generally handled the situation and, without my involvement, probably would have been fine. If anything my presence would have made things more complex, since it would have needed to find a way to save me, and that would risk spreading the Harmony. But compared to my experience with the beetle and elves, it was a step up. I also still had a copy of the Harmony to study later, I almost deleted it immediately, so it couldn¡¯t accidently spread, but I held off for some reason. My curiosity got the better of me, of course this would have a major impact on my travels in the future but for now I was curious and figured I could handle the entity now that it was contained within my quantum storage, frozen in time at the exact moment it had been in before I unleashed the jamming signal. I landed on a soft pad, like you might find in a gymnasium or martial arts studio, making it my softest landing so far. Looking up a bored woman, barely out of her teens, sat behind a worn faux wood desk playing on her phone. ¡°Welcome to the Entity 14-star-green-12-A rest stop,¡± she said in a dull voice that had clearly grown tired of saying the same phrase over and over again. Looking around it seemed like I was in the lobby of a cheap motel, cracked leather sofas, tacky plastic ferns and all. Light poured in through large windows but there didn¡¯t seem to be anything beyond them, just a bright emptiness. ¡°What?¡± I asked, looking back at the bored woman who flicked her eyes up at me in slight annoyance. Chronicles of a Traveler; IV ¡°Excuse me?¡± I asked, causing the young woman to roll her eyes at me as if I doing this to personally make her life difficult. ¡°Have you ever been to a rest stop before?¡± She asked. ¡°Uh, no?¡± ¡°Boss!¡± She yelled over one shoulder, ¡°we¡¯ve got a noob.¡± And with that she went back to her phone. I took the opportunity to stand up, glancing around the lobby. Other than myself and the girl it was empty, but gave off the feeling of having seen heavy use. The room seemed normal, if a bit tacky and low budget, but nothing about it felt off. The oddest part was the bright, endless void out the windows. Where one might expect to see a parking lot with a flickering neon sign, perhaps some trees with a highway in the distance, there was nothing. Even shielding my eyes against the light I couldn¡¯t make out anything. ¡°You won¡¯t find anything out there,¡± a new voice informed me. Turning around I found an older woman approaching me, wearing faded jeans and a button down she seemed much friendlier than the girl at the front desk. ¡°Some people like staring into the void, for some reason,¡± she continued, ¡°otherwise we would have boarded up the windows years ago.¡± ¡°Where is this?¡± I asked. ¡°A rest stop for people who move between worlds,¡± she explained, ¡°do you know where you were before coming here?¡± ¡°Ya, I was on a ship of some kind.¡± ¡°Great, then you retain your memory,¡± she nodded, motioning for me to follow, ¡°just as well as there aren¡¯t any staff positions open.¡± ¡°What?¡± I felt dumb. ¡°This your first rest stop?¡± she asked, pushing open a door behind the desk and walking in, I followed and found myself in an old office. She sat at a desk and motioned for me to sit across from her as she began typing away at an old keyboard while staring at a small computer monitor that wasn¡¯t that different from the one from my cell the elves put me in. ¡°I think,¡± I said, sitting down. ¡°Well, rest stops are places for people like us to, well, rest for a bit. Every rest stop is a little different, but the general rules are the same. No fighting, no using abilities on others without consent, no damaging the rest stop, and you leave when your invested time is up. The only currency we use is time, every time you arrive at a rest stop you get twelve hours. Six are pre-invested in you and can¡¯t be spent and the rest are given as coins,¡± she explained, pushing a half dozen copper coins across the table as she did. Each coin was blank aside from a crease that ran across the face of it, as if it was designed to be folded in half. ¡°I recommend you get a traveler¡¯s pouch, otherwise the coins won¡¯t follow you. There¡¯s a shop past the bar if you head counter-clockwise,¡± she continued, ¡°there¡¯s also a post office there, which can send messages between rest stops, for a price. I take it you don¡¯t know your name? Then it¡¯ll be hard to pick up any messages for you, your unlikely to have any mail anyways if you¡¯re new.¡± ¡°I¡¯m¡­ very confused,¡± I admitted, looking at the six coins she handed me. ¡°To invest time just snap the coin in half, that will add an hour to how long you can stay here,¡± she continued as if ignoring me, ¡°when your time is up you¡¯ll hear and feel an alarm, from there you have sixty seconds to either invest more time or leave. If you remain the host will boot you from the rest stop.¡± ¡°The host?¡± ¡°The being that created and maintains this space,¡± she explained quickly, ¡°rooms are clockwise from the lobby, you can have any room that opens for you. Just try to open the door again before you leave, otherwise our maid will have a hard time telling if you¡¯re gone or not.¡± ¡°Maid? What?¡± ¡°If you have more questions then there are a few others at the bar, one room counter-clockwise,¡± she replied, nodding to the door, ¡°stay out of doors marked for staff, and welcome to the rest stop, hope you enjoy your stay.¡± I paused, glancing down at the handful of small coins in my hand, I considered asking more questions, but the woman seemed to be working on something on the computer. She paused after a long moment to look at me, glance at the door, then go back to her work. Taking the hint I stood, thanked her and left. Back in the lobby I looked around confused, there were only two other doors in the room, both along the same wall as the one leading to the office. Where the ¡®entrance¡¯ door should have been there was a blank wall with a square of padding where I¡¯d landed instead. ¡°Which way is the bar?¡± I asked the girl at the desk, with another roll of her eyes she pointed to her left and promptly went back to her phone. I nodded, mumbled thanks and went through the door. The bar was just as I figured it would be, dark save for some light streaming in from the back wall and a few dim lights by the bar itself, cheap fake-wood tables with old leather seats lined the walls and a dozen similarly aged stools were lined up at the bar. I scowled as I took in the dimensions of the room, it was as far across as the lobby had been, and just a deep, meaning that where the barman stood should have been a door to the office I¡¯d just been in. Or, rather, since there was no hallway between the lobby and bar the barman was standing where the office itself should have been. I turned and looked back into the lobby to confirm my feeling, and sure enough the door to the manager¡¯s office should have opened directly into the bar. ¡°Trippy isn¡¯t it?¡± a new voice commented, looking up a man sitting at the bar waved me over. He wore long dark blue robes and had a smooth wooden staff that seemed to stand despite nothing to hold it up next to him. ¡°Your first time?¡± he asked, motioning to a seat next to him. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. ¡°Ya, only recently started¡­ remembering my travels,¡± I replied. ¡°Don¡¯t think to hard about this place,¡± he advised, ¡°it¡¯ll make your head hurt. I¡¯m Robert.¡± ¡°I¡¯m¡­ uhh¡­ I don¡¯t know my name,¡± I said apologetically, shaking his hand. ¡°You are new then,¡± he smiled, ¡°you should come up with a name or title.¡± ¡°People from the first world I remember called me Lord Traveler.¡± ¡°Too generic,¡± Robert dismissed, ¡°and I think it¡¯s taken. There are lots of us, you¡¯ll need something more unique to make your own.¡± ¡°Like Robert?¡± I asked. ¡°Exactly,¡± he nodded with a grin, clearly he had a good sense of humor, ¡°you¡¯ll find dozens of Lords and Ladies of dimensional magic, or Gate Walkers, or any other kind of edgy title people think sounds cool. But Robert? An average name in any given world stands out among our kind.¡± ¡°So there are other people like me?¡± I asked the question that had been burning in my mind since I arrived her, ¡°people who travel between worlds?¡± ¡°Oh yes,¡± Robert agreed, pausing to take a sip from his drink, ¡°lots of us, no one knows how many but the commonly accepted answer is that every world produces a single world walker like us.¡± ¡°Then you know how and why we travel?¡± ¡°Now those are deep questions,¡± Robert said, leaning back a bit in his stool, ¡°every traveler, as you call us, is as unique as the worlds we originate from. Some of us can remember our travels naturally, others need magic or technology. Some have their bodies reset with every trip others are reborn as children in each world, and still others continue to age. Only the Host entities understand us, hell, some think they are the ones who cause us to travel, but they barely even acknowledge us as living beings.¡± ¡°You mean like the one who made this place?¡± ¡°Yup. Near as I have seen they are the only creature naturally able to travel between worlds, they live in the cracks between realities. And wherever they live rest stops like this one crop up. By visiting we somehow help them out. I heard someone once say that we are like oxygen atoms to the Host Entities, both in scale and how they view us.¡± ¡°Are they some kind of¡­ cosmic gods?¡± I asked, taken aback. ¡°Pretty much,¡± Robert nodded, ¡°turns out cosmic horrors, so powerful that to gaze upon their true forms is to know infinity, who can speak a single word and drive even the strongest man mad, with goals and motives so far beyond our understanding that they are completely unknowable, run a series of cheap motels.¡± We shared a laugh over that, and for the first time I felt I understood the purpose of these rest stops. It was a place for travelers to unwind, no-longer on the unknown clock slowly counting down till we¡¯re whisked away. No pressure, no danger, just a low end bar, cheap beer and the company of others who know how you feel. ¡°You spoke with the manager?¡± Robert asked, ¡°get your first six coins? Go through the next door and get yourself a pouch so you can take small things with you between worlds. The shop keeper will find you one that works for you.¡± ¡°Are the staff here travelers too?¡± I asked, stopping myself as I started to stand. ¡°Most of them, the bartender, front desk, manager, maids, all travelers who don¡¯t retain their memories. They are offered jobs, they tend to the rest stop in exchange for the host entity not forcing them out. The shop keeper isn¡¯t though, I don¡¯t know why but he¡¯s the same in every rest stop. Won¡¯t answer any questions about it though.¡± Nodding I went through the door on the far side from the one I came through and found myself in another room of the same proportions. The door should have led back to the lobby, instead finding myself in what I could only describe as a gift shop. Shelves of nick-nacks lined the walls, tables with a strange assortment of items ranging from glowing crystals to small computer chips filled the rest of the space. As I entered a man in a cheap suit with a slightly too wide smile approached me. ¡°Greetings new customer!¡± he said, a little too excited to see me, ¡°how can I help you? Perhaps you need a new pouch for your coins? Or a change of clothing? Memory expansion module?¡± ¡°Uhh,¡± I said slowly, ¡°just a pouch. This is my first rest stop.¡± ¡°Ah, of course, of course,¡± he replied, weaving through the tables to one with bins filled with small brown bags, no larger than my hand. He began sifting through the identical looking bags while continuing to speak, ¡°lets see, I know I just got one that will work for you in. You think they¡¯d label these things better. Got a bag for everyone, you know, more than one. Ah ha!¡± He lifted a bag up out of the dozens of identical ones, holding it up for me to see as if it was exactly what I needed. His smile never wavering he made his way to a small cash register. ¡°Cash or card? Ha, just a little void humor,¡± he prattled as he rung me up, ¡°we only accept coin here, or specie as some call it. that¡¯ll be four hours, plus tax will bring you to five. That sound good? Excellent.¡± In a bit of a daze I handed him five of my six coins, he pressed more buttons on the register, the bottom popping open for him to drop the coins into. Closing the register he pressed the small bag into my hand. ¡°Just tie it to your belt and it¡¯ll come with you when you travel. Just a basic model, that one, there are also ones that can¡¯t be taken from you, have more space inside and the like. Anything else I can get you?¡± ¡°No, no thanks,¡± I said quickly before he launched into another sales pitch, making my way back to the bar. I used the draw straps to tie it to a belt loop and put my last coin in it, still processing what had just happened. I sat down next to Robert again. ¡°How much he charge you?¡± Robert asked, and when I told him he started laughing, ¡°the basic bags are only worth three hours, the shop keeper likes to haggle.¡± ¡°That would have been good to know,¡± I said with a scowl. ¡°it¡¯s a right of passage for new travelers,¡± he assured me before waving to the bartender, ¡°now let¡¯s get you some food and a drink.¡± ¡°Can I get much for only one coin?¡± ¡°Food, drink and a bed here are free. The Host Entity provides them somehow.¡± ¡°What do you have?¡± I asked the bartender as he reached us. ¡°What do you want?¡± the large bald man asked in reply, ¡°we got it all.¡± ¡°And it¡¯s free, right?¡± I asked, casting a mistrustful glance at Robert who smiled innocently. ¡°Yup,¡± the massive bartender nodded. ¡°Uhh, chicken burger and fries? Cola to drink?¡± I asked, it was something I¡¯d ordered in the second world, the research station, at their cafeteria and it was good. I knew of many kinds of food, but didn¡¯t have any memories of them, so I didn¡¯t know what I liked or hated. The bartender nodded and walked through a door that should have led back to the lobby, but instead seemed to be a kitchen, returning moments later with a plate of food and large ice-cold drink. ¡°I take it that if you haven¡¯t decided on a name, you don¡¯t have a goal yet?¡± Robert asked as his own order of some fancy steak arrived. ¡°A goal?¡± ¡°Something for you to aim for in each world you visit. Take it from me, get one, otherwise you¡¯ll go insane. I¡¯ve seen a number of world walkers break, physically incapable of settling down, starting a family, anything like that. Doesn¡¯t have to be anything major, either, mine is to learn as much as I can from each world to advance my magic. But I¡¯ve known a guy who wants to sleep with the most beautiful woman in each world, another who wanted to collect a trinket from every world. There was even one lady who wanted to learn at least one song from every world.¡± ¡°In the first world I remembered a lady told me I would travel and make each world better, helping people out,¡± I replied. ¡°How have you done so far?¡± ¡°Not well,¡± I admitted, looking down as the memories of the parasitic beetles flashed past my eyes. ¡°Well, you¡¯re young,¡± Robert shrugged, ¡°if that¡¯s really the goal you want then you have a hard life ahead.¡± ¡°It¡¯s been pretty hard so far.¡± ¡°I figured,¡± he nodded, pausing for another bite of steak, ¡°I¡¯d recommend you get as strong as you can, lots of worlds out there need a lot of help.¡± ¡°Every world I¡¯ve been to so far has been¡­ dangerous.¡± ¡°Most of them are, I find humanity is often poised on the brink of extinction. Maybe it¡¯s our natural state, the multi-verse ensuring we end up there. Or, my personal theory, we like it that way. If things are too calm, too peaceful, we get restless. I like to think if nothing goes wrong for long enough eventually a human will step up to make things go wrong, just to make things interesting. They might not do it intentionally, but they¡¯ll change something that will ripple outwards till we find ourselves facing something we can¡¯t handle.¡± As he spoke I thought back to the worlds I¡¯d visited, the beetles were from a dead world, it had taken a human poking around to reanimate them. The Fair Folk mentioned they found humanity at the height of that civilization, were they invited? Surely it would take more than a handful of elf-aliens to cause the collapse of a technologically advanced civilization. I didn¡¯t know how the Harmony came to infect that ship, but it wasn¡¯t something they understood. Had they created it? Or found it? If you find a recorded sound the first thing you do is listen to it, even if it turns out to be a parasitic harmonic that can overwrite your very thoughts simply by being heard. I suddenly had an urge to investigate the copy of the Harmony that had taken me over, learn more about it and find out what had happened. Robert said I needed to be strong, but I figured I needed to be smart, set up protections against entities like the Harmony. Learn about magic so I can fight the fair folk, know enough so I didn¡¯t raise another race of super parasites from the dead. ¡°Well,¡± Robert said, jumping as if someone had snuck up on him, ¡°that¡¯s my time up.¡± He stood, pushing his half finished steak away and brushing his robes off. ¡°One last piece of advice,¡± he said as he grabbed his staff, ¡°three rooms counter-clockwise from here there are typically some women who offer¡­ companionship for coin. Find a goal so you never need to use their services.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a¡­ Bordello here?¡± I asked, shocked. ¡°This is a motel that rents rooms by the hour,¡± he joked, ¡°of course there is.¡± With a smirk he lifted his hand with his staff in the other hand. A moment later space seemed to rip open into a swirling vortex as large as a man. Giving me a last nod Robert stepped into the rift which quickly closed behind him. ¡°If you have to do that,¡± the bartender said, scowling at where the rift had been as he gathered Robert¡¯s dishes, ¡°do it in the lobby please.¡± Chronicles of a Traveler; 5 There were two others in the bar after Robert left, and neither seemed that interested in talking. They¡¯d both taken up booths along the back of the room, under the small windows looking out over the void. One seemed to have passed out, I figured he was an off-duty staff member as he eventually got up and walked towards the shop and I didn¡¯t see him return. The other was a one-armed old woman who was messing with some kind of thin stone slab. I didn¡¯t see her leave but later when I checked for her she was gone, likely her time was up and her method of travel wasn¡¯t as flashy as Robert¡¯s. The food at the bar was good, not excellent but above average for pub food. After I finished off the burger, I spent the next couple hours slowly working on my fries. With no one to talk to I busied myself with studying the Harmony I had copied to my implants. Before I had brute forced a counter to it¡¯s existence, but now that I had time and no real goal, I took the time to properly figure it out. And it was fascinating, unlike organic minds it didn¡¯t have one thought about anything, it had all of them. The interference pattern between different tones would produce a spectrum of thoughts, ranging from nonsensical to cold and logical. All of these thoughts were played off against one another, some canceling each other out while others were amplified, until a single song was all that was left. It was more than just a song, it was an idea, a thought in its purest form transmitted as sound. The song would interact with one of the many harmonies, weaving into all other thoughts. That¡¯s why the entity had been happy to have resulted from so many singers, the more singers the more nodes, which increased the speed and complexity of its thoughts. It could tell there was also a method for the Harmony to ¡®upgrade¡¯ itself by adding more nodes, more singers, but it required a dozen other singers on about the same level as it. Presumably this is how the Harmony would become smarter as it enthralled and took over more organic minds. What confused me was how such an entity could come into existence, DNA was complex but could be formed through random chance given long enough. The Harmony, however, required several sources of sound to interact in sequence to form even a basic entity. Perhaps the first Harmony was created by wind rushing through caves and, by chance or luck, became alive? That seemed unlikely to me, but there was a lot I didn¡¯t know about the worlds I traveled though. Robert had said I needed to be strong if I wanted to help people, could the Harmony help me with that? Was it possible to ¡®tame¡¯ or ¡®reprogram¡¯ the entity? I didn¡¯t know, and more over didn¡¯t see how it would help. The Harmony was an extremely complex creature, capable of parallel processing the likes of which even human minds would have difficulty keeping up with, but I didn¡¯t see how that could be of any help. That¡¯s not really why I was so drawn to the entity, though, it was simple curiosity. It was unique, and therefore special. Thus I felt a strong desire to understand it. Perhaps that¡¯s just my nature, maybe I was one of the kids who, instead of fearing the monster in the closet, I wanted to meet it. Or maybe that¡¯s how I cope with things I fear in general. Most things aren¡¯t as scary once you understand how they work. Others are far more terrifying. My thoughts were interrupted as the door from the lobby swung open admitting a young woman, she looked about college age with a pretty face and blonde hair in a loose ponytail. Quite at odd with her well made-up face she wore a thick button up shirt and baggy cargo pants, very utilitarian for a woman who looks like she just got finished getting ready for a night on the town. Even more confusing was a large rifle with a short barrel she wore slung over a shoulder with the ease of someone who was used to its weight. She glanced about the bar quickly before sitting down one stool down from me, unslinging her rifle and leaning it against the bar as she did. ¡°I¡¯m the Saint of Battle,¡± she nodded greetings, waving at the barkeep. ¡°I¡¯m¡­ I haven¡¯t picked a name yet,¡± I admitted. ¡°Keep it simple,¡± she advised me, pausing to order a large burger and dark lager from the bald barkeeper, ¡°and pick something people tend to call you anyways. Makes introductions easier in new worlds.¡± ¡°This coming from a woman named ¡®Saint of Battle?¡¯¡± I smirked at her. ¡°That¡¯s what people in my first world started calling me,¡± she explained simply, ¡°considering every world I go to is at war, and I always show up in the middle of a battle descending a beam of light¡­¡± she shrugged. ¡°That sucks,¡± I empathized. ¡°I¡¯ve seen worse.¡± As if to emphasize her point another man burst through the door from the lobby, his gaze panicked as he looked about the room wildly. He locked eyes with me and almost ran across the bar to where I sat. ¡°Please, do you have any coins?¡± he asked desperately, ¡°just a few hours? Please, I can¡¯t take another trip!¡± ¡°Uhh, sorry,¡± I mumbled, leaning backwards, wondering what he was on about. Instinctively my hand moved to my traveler¡¯s pouch, his wild eyes caught the movement and he lunged. ¡°Please, I don¡¯t want to walk worlds anymore!¡± he shouted as he grabbed for my pouch, I stumbled backwards, knocking my stool over and running into the bar. I managed to keep him from grabbing the pouch that held one last coin, but he seemed desperate and wouldn¡¯t back off. I was so distracted trying to hold this strange man off I didn¡¯t see that the bartender had made his way around and now grabbed the newest man by the back of the neck. ¡°You know the rules,¡± the bald man said as the crazed man yelped in surprise as he was pulled off me. I took the opportunity to stuff my pouch into a pocket, thankfully the draw strings were long enough for that. ¡°No! Please!¡± the man shouted as he struggled against the massive bartender, ¡°I¡¯ll be good! I can¡¯t take it anymore!¡± He continued to plead as the barkeep drug him to the far wall of the bar, where the front door might have been if this were a normal establishment. The man grew more desperate as he saw where he was being taken, yelling and screaming while flailing wildly. None of which phased the bartender in the slightest as he casually through the man against the wall. The man seemed to freeze in midair, his screams going from desperate to pained. It was like he was being shredded as his body came apart cell by cell. It took nearly a minute for him to finally vanish and his screams to fade. ¡°What the hell?¡± I asked as the bartender returned to behind the bar. ¡°Some people have¡­ difficult methods of moving between worlds,¡± the woman shrugged, taking a long drink from her lager. ¡°No kidding,¡± I muttered, standing my stool back up and sitting down, a little shocked by what I had just seen. ¡°If was less crazed he might have been able to get a job at a rest stop,¡± she replied, ¡°we all have troubles. When I started traveling, I was wearing a miniskirt.¡± Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡°Really?¡± I asked, shocked. ¡°Yup, was on the way to a Halloween party, a costume party,¡± the saint explained, ¡°when a beam of light descended from the night sky and whisked me away. Then I appeared in the middle of a gunfight, dressed like a schoolgirl.¡± ¡°Explains the makeup,¡± I replied, ¡°how are you wearing different clothes though? Do you not reset with each trip?¡± ¡°I do, but I the first thing I bought at my first rest stop was a change of clothing, the shop keep has a bunch of clothing that will travel with you. If he had body armor I¡¯d wear that, but apparently there isn¡¯t much demand for it,¡± she shrugged again, ¡°what about you, you said you just started traveling?¡± ¡°Just started remembering my travels,¡± I replied, ¡°seems I appear in worlds where humanity is facing some¡­ great threat. At least, that¡¯s what I¡¯ve seen so far.¡± ¡°Most walker¡¯s themes aren¡¯t as blatant as mine, I think I was summoned to fight an alien menace, and who or whatever summoned me didn¡¯t care if I kept going to other worlds that are fighting an alien menace.¡± ¡°You seem remarkably¡­ calm for someone who apparently has to fight endless wars,¡± I commented. ¡°I¡¯ve been at it for years now,¡± she shrugged, ¡°frankly I¡¯m grateful to be at a rest stop, been six worlds since my last. Good to speak with others about troubles that don¡¯t concern me.¡± ¡°And with your looks I bet you¡¯re never short for male attention,¡± I commented jokingly. ¡°I get too much of that,¡± she sighed, ¡°I often show up among men who haven¡¯t seen a woman in months. Trust me, I learned to defend myself fast.¡± ¡°Sorry to hear that,¡± I mumbled, feeling stupid. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± she dismissed with a wave of her hand, ¡°none of them did more than get a bit grabby, even before I updated my clothing.¡± ¡°Well, if you want to hear about other people¡¯s troubles, I could use some help picking a name,¡± I said slowly, after a long, rather awkward pause. ¡°Sure, exactly the kind of low intensity issue I¡¯m happy to help with,¡± the self-declared saint of battle smirked at me over her burger. ¡°In the first world I remember they called me ¡®Lord Traveler¡¯ but another guy who was here earlier recommended I pick something else,¡± I explained. ¡°Take it from me, don¡¯t put titles in your name, you¡¯ll be better off just going with ¡®Traveler¡¯ or ¡®The Traveler¡¯ like from what one show¡­¡± she paused to scowl in thought, ¡°had a guy called the Surgeon or something.¡± ¡°I imagined that name was taken already.¡± ¡°Probably is, but so what? Worried about the post office? They¡¯ll find messages for you regardless of how many others there are with your name. Don¡¯t know how they do it, don¡¯t think they do either, but I know there is at least one other Saint of Battle, one Canoness of War and two Battle Saints, but I¡¯ve never gotten a message meant for them.¡± ¡°Weird,¡± I said, wondering how one could possibly manage a logistics system between a likely infinite number of rest stops with an infinite number of people who could use them more or less at random. ¡°What¡¯s your goal?¡± She asked, ¡°do you have one yet?¡± ¡°I was told, by the same people who called me Lord Traveler, that I would go from world to world helping people,¡± I replied, ¡°other then that I¡¯ve just been muddling through.¡± ¡°A noble goal,¡± she nodded, ¡°I recommend calling yourself The Traveler, like the guy from that show.¡± ¡°The Surgeon?¡± ¡°Or whatever it was, I haven¡¯t exactly watched much TV in years.¡± From there our conversation devolved into meaningless small talk, despite her youthful appearance the Saint was an interesting person. We swapped stories about past worlds and generally enjoyed ourselves. I know what you¡¯re thinking, and no, our relationship never went beyond friends. Hard to have any kind of relationship as a traveler, much less one with another traveler. I would occasionally exchange messages with her in the future and even see her once or twice, but neither of us was really interested in anything more than casual friendship. After a couple hours of pleasant conversation she got up and slung her rifle. ¡°Alright, I¡¯m going to check my mail then go take a nap,¡± she replied, ¡°one last bit of advice. If you ever end up in a red-entity rest stop, leave immediately.¡± ¡°Like, in the name of the entity?¡± I asked, ¡°like how this one has ¡®green¡¯ in the name?¡± ¡°Ya, the red entities are¡­ dangerous. Trust me, just leave if you find yourself in one.¡± And with that she walked off, leaving me alone in the bar. As I mentioned earlier the old woman was gone and the off-duty staff guy had gone to work, I assume. I was about to check my timer to see how long I had left here when I felt a sudden pressure. It was like I was directly in front of the fog-horn of a great ship, the air itself was pressing down on me while my ears rang. As soon as I felt it, it ended, causing me to nearly jump to my feet. ¡°If you¡¯re leaving, do it in the lobby,¡± the bartender reminded me. ¡°Was that the warning?¡± I asked, my heartrate still elevated from the strange pressure. ¡°Probably,¡± he shrugged. I checked the timer and, sure enough, I had seconds left. I hurried into the lobby and, after taking a deep breath, triggered my jump. \-\-\-\-\- And landed on a soft bed, looking up at a strangely familiar ceiling. Slowly I sat up, finding myself in a small room, wood walls, brass chamber pot in one corner, an old computer on a crude desk with a CRT monitor. It took me a moment to recognize the cell the Fair Folk had put me in. What were the chances I¡¯d ended up back here? In the same spot I¡¯d left from. Before I could think any further the door opened admitting a single elf, elongated pure black eyes watching me, slender fingers closing the door behind himself. ¡°I¡¯m sure you¡¯re confused,¡± the elf said, ¡°we heard you were subject to an unreliable teleportation spell, so we prepared this chamber to ensure you remain¡­ contained. I must admit we were concerned when you didn¡¯t reappear immediately. You¡¯ve been gone for a few weeks now, but you look just as you did when you left. I guess your spell has some travel time.¡± A few weeks? By my reckoning I¡¯d been gone days, maybe it took time to travel between worlds? But the elf thought I looked the same as when I left? Oh, I¡¯d taken off the wizard hat I¡¯d been given and was wearing just my normal clothing. The only outward change would be the coin pouch, which I had stuffed into a pocket. Perhaps the elf didn¡¯t notice? I hadn¡¯t detected any spells scanning me, did they just assume their magics worked? ¡°Regardless, it is good to see that our spells worked,¡± the fair folk said simply, ¡°you needn¡¯t worry about your ¡®travels¡¯ anymore.¡± And with that the strange elf creature turned and left, not bothering to give me a chance to speak. I¡¯d gotten the feeling these ¡®fair folk¡¯ were arrogant before, but this one was beyond arrogant. Thankfully it seemed I only had a couple days here, if the timer was any indication. I couldn¡¯t initiate a jump until 24 hours before I would be forced out, so I had some time. I imagine I might have normally welcomed some time to relax but as I¡¯d just left a rest stop I eager to get moving again. Without anything else to do I figured I¡¯d take the chance to study magic more. I got a good look at the spells that surrounded my room with my quantum scanner. The spells were buried in the wooden walls somehow, so if I was a regular human mage of this world it would have been impossible to make out anything more than a general glow. In fact, judging by the lines of energy passing close to the surface it seemed like they intended that. The spell forms were very small and complex, compared to what I¡¯d seen among humans. There was no way even elven hands could tie knots that fine and precise. What was more interesting to me were the various components, all the spell forms I¡¯d learned from the humans of this world closely resembled electronics. Capacitors, resistors, switches and gates. And the spells here had those, but there were twists and knots that would do nothing in electronics, or even worse causing a short. But they all seemed to modulate energy from the threads of power in different ways. Even with my sensors I couldn¡¯t tell what most of them did, I would have to experiment. But as I didn¡¯t want to tip them off that I could see their magics I couldn¡¯t do it here. Of course, through this all I was pissed. Analyzing their spell work was a distraction but it was only so long before I was back to being angry at being held here. For a few minutes I considered unleashing the Harmony on them. With a few spells I could create enough nodes to transmit the entity. From there it would spread through the stuck up alien elves, but, after a moment imagining packs of ¡®fair singers¡¯ wandering the halls I decided against it. The most obvious concern was containing it, once I unleashed it I didn¡¯t know when, or if, I¡¯d be able to get out of this room. How far could the Harmony spread before I broke through the spells on the door to destroy them? Another concern was if the Harmony would even effect their minds, something I didn¡¯t know and couldn¡¯t exactly test. Did the Harmony only work on humans, or would it work on anything with an organic mind? I didn¡¯t know. And I would have to understand the Harmony far better before I felt confident using it as a weapon. With nothing else to do I got down to doing just that. I put on a random show from the computer they¡¯d given me and lay down in the bed to pretend to watch while working. I created a new partition within my quantum implant and copied the Harmony to it. After ensuring it couldn¡¯t get out and nothing it did would affect me I began the simulation, slowly feeding it processor time. It realized something was wrong almost instantly, from its perspective it had been entering the server room of that ship just moments ago, and now it was sightless and trapped somewhere. I watched as it tried to manipulate a body it no longer had and slowly grew more panicked. I was surprised when it realized it was no longer in an organic mind, it began testing its new environment and tried to figure out where it was. That was good enough for the first test, I¡¯d identified how it accessed various senses and manipulated a human body. For a second simulation I constructed a ¡®virtual head¡¯ for it to inhabit. It was a painstaking process converting digital signals to neural transmissions then to sound, and back, all within the confines of a simulation, but I had nothing but time right now. A couple hours and several episodes of whatever I was watching later I was ready for another attempt. Of course, the first simulation failed, freezing up as it struggled to process everything. Eventually, another few hours later, I got a simulation of the entity with a ¡®virtual head¡¯ to run, albeit slowly. I would have to optimize the code later, for now this was sufficient. ¡®Can you hear me?¡¯ I said to it, the message converted into a neural signal, like from a human ear, then back to sound that it could ¡®hear¡¯ in the confines of the simulation. I saw it react, instantly attempting to begin singing from the false mouth, thankfully my protections held and all I saw was a line of random letters as my code attempted to parse the singing. The waveform matched the siren song, it heard me but didn¡¯t seem to care. Or perhaps it didn¡¯t understand. It hadn¡¯t gotten any information from my brain so it wouldn¡¯t have learned to speak. That would make communication difficult, so I ended the simulation and began thinking of how to overcome that little bug. Hours later I was working through creating a virtual copy of the language center of my brain, and giving it access to that, when I fell asleep. When I woke I had only hours till I could trigger a jump and that became my focus. Chronicles of a Traveler; 6 Something about the spells the Fair Folk had placed to keep me contained was going to keep pulling me back here. I don¡¯t know if their magics somehow drew me back to this world in particular or if I was naturally drawn to this world and their spells simply ensured I always appeared here. Even though this was only my second time to this world I had to accept that I could be in for the long haul. Until I could escape from this room I had to keep my jailers thinking they had me contained. Of course, based on how arrogant the one I had spoken to before was that wouldn¡¯t be hard, but even they would get suspicious eventually if my beard didn¡¯t grow, my clothing didn¡¯t get dirty and the like. So before I left again I made sure to put on a bit of a show, I managed to shave using the straight razor without cutting myself, and used the provided basin to give myself a quick bath. This not only helped sell the idea that I was stuck but helped kill some time while I waited for time to tick down so I could trigger a jump. Something I would eventually figure out, but didn¡¯t know at this time, was that triggering jumps early isn¡¯t a great idea. I don¡¯t know the exact mechanics behind it even now but the earlier I trigger my travels the worse my landing is in the next world. Til now my landings haven¡¯t exactly been comfortable but this next one would be the worst yet. I appeared several feet in the air, almost completely upside down. Before I could take in what was happening my head banged on the rough metal floor, dazing me. It was because of that I didn¡¯t notice that while my back also landed on the floor my hips and legs didn¡¯t. They kept falling. The corner of what I landed on dug into my side as my body pivoted, throwing me off of the metal surface and into the air once more. I regained my senses just in time to see the metal thing pass out of arms reach. And then I was in free fall. I¡¯m sure someone else might have been able to fall with grace, or at least some control, but I didn¡¯t, I tumbled end over end. In my defense I was caught off guard and just hit my head. Regardless I was falling and didn¡¯t know how far up I was. My mind raced as I tried to think up a solution, my sensors wouldn¡¯t help, nothing I was wearing would. My only hope was the quantum magic I¡¯d gotten. As far as I knew there were no ¡®slow fall¡¯ spells, but there were spells that could create shields. I figured if I created a semi-solid shield large enough it would act like a parachute. Of course, thinking up the idea was one thing, but pulling it off was another. Flipping end over end with air whipping past me while trying to shake off the last effects of hitting my head isn¡¯t a good place to do any complex task. I fumbled with the threads of energy for what seems like long minutes that I didn¡¯t have. Eventually I got a shield creating knot in a state of ¡®good enough¡¯ and began feeding a thread of the energy through it. The energy spread out, the thread breaking into smaller and smaller sections until even my quantum sensors had difficult picking up on them. But I could see it forming a barrier, and almost immediately it began pulling on me. This was good because it meant it was working. It was bad because I was tumbling and the shield suddenly snapped me upright as the wind resistance built quickly. The shield was designed to fill out fast enough to stop an attack, not to catch air, and I nearly lost the spell as I was pulled around. But I managed to keep it linked and powered, and soon the wind was down from deafening to simply loud in my ears. Once I was certain the spell would hold I finally looked around. This was much easier now that everything wasn¡¯t a blur. And it quickly became clear I needn¡¯t have rushed my spell, as I was still thousands of feet in the air. The object I had struck upon appearing here was a metallic leaf, now far above me, which was attached to a great tree of gleaming silver. It was beyond vast, the trunk had to be nearly a kilometer across at the base with little sign of tapering as it ascended into the heavens. Massive branches of burnished metal split off from the trunk, sporting equally enormous leaves. The scale of the structure was hard to take in, it had to be kilometers tall, possibly more, with hundreds of leaves the size of city blocks. It was hard to tell but it seemed like there were smaller structures built atop each of the leaves, from where I was falling I didn¡¯t have a great angle but I caught glimpses of wooden buildings. Below me the sight was just as surprising, if less impressive, as a vast city stretched out around the base of the metal tree. The ground immediately around the tree was cleared and paved, beyond that were buildings, not unlike you might find in any city, which grew like grasses at the base of a great oak. I was still far above those, clinging to my haphazard magics, as the winds blew me further from the tree. Slowly I drifted over smaller and smaller buildings, going from ten story blocks to five and then I drifted over a wall of some kind and suddenly I was looking at a shanty town of massive size. Ramshackle structures of old wood and corrugated metal stretched form miles, built upon one another with little regard for stability or building codes. It was into these endless slums that I eventually hit the ground. Or rather, landed atop a shipping container, failed to catch myself and fell the last few feet to the ground. The landing was hard, despite my parachute spell, and it was all I could do to lie there and groan for a few moments. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. ¡°Are you a Phariean?¡± a voice asked, an older man leaning over my prone form. ¡°What?¡± I asked, ears still ringing and blood still pumping from what I had just gone through. Instead of responding he looked up, his eyes grew wide and he rushed off as the sounds of boots surrounded me. I pushed myself up to see a dozen men and women in ragged clothing surrounding me. They were all armed, but not with guns. They had clubs, spears and knives, but that was it. Had I run afoul of a gang war or something? ¡°The Phariean¡¯s think they can just drop their spies from the air now?¡± One man asked, brandishing a club at me. ¡°Easy,¡± another of the people said, ¡°he doesn¡¯t look like a Phariean.¡± ¡°Could still be on their side,¡± the first man countered, ¡°you saw him falling without a parachute and yet he¡¯s alive.¡± ¡°Let¡¯s hear what he has to say,¡± a third said, this one an older woman, ¡°who are you?¡± ¡°I¡¯m¡­ just a traveler,¡± I replied with what I hoped was a friendly smile. \-\-\-\-\- Naturally that wasn¡¯t a great answer, and it took bare moments for them to throw a bag over my head and drag me off. When they removed the bag I found myself in a crude room in the dark, a few battery powered lamps hung from the ceiling. The only door to the room was blocked by a large man with a club. I was seated and facing me was another chair, this one with the old woman from earlier watching me carefully. ¡°A Traveler?¡± She asked. ¡°Yup,¡± I nodded. They¡¯d searched me earlier, only finding my traveler¡¯s pouch. I wasn¡¯t too worried about that, one coin wasn¡¯t worth much. ¡°Are you a Phariean spy?¡± ¡°What¡¯s a Phariean?¡± ¡°Don¡¯t play dumb,¡± she scowled. ¡°I¡¯m not,¡± I said earnestly, ¡°I¡¯m not from around here. Never heard of a Phariean.¡± ¡°Everyone knows of the Pharieans.¡± ¡°Not me.¡± ¡°They live on the Great Tree.¡± ¡°That the great metal tree thing? Saw that while I was falling, they build it?¡± ¡°You really don¡¯t know anything, do you?¡± she seemed surprised by that realization. Apparently Pharieans were a big deal. It took a bit more questioning and some time for her to consult with others before they agreed to untie me. I was allowed to leave the small dark room they¡¯d had me in, so long as I had an escort, the large club armed man from earlier. I wasn¡¯t sure what to do, and my large friend wasn¡¯t very talkative, so I simply waited where they told me to until I was asked to meet with someone. They lead me into what was likely the best kept room, it had an actual carpet that was in decent shape, a proper desk, chairs and even a standing lamp that provided a passible amount of light. An older balding man sat behind the desk, hand steepled before him, watching me carefully I was led in. ¡°So, you¡¯re the man who fell from the sky and lived,¡± the man stated, ¡°and you claim to know nothing about Pharieans.¡± ¡°That about sums it up,¡± I nodded, wondering where he was going with this. ¡°let¡¯s assume, for a moment, that you are telling the truth. How did you get in the air if not from the Great Tree?¡± ¡°You wouldn¡¯t believe me if I told you,¡± I sighed. ¡°Try me.¡± I met his gaze and, after a moment, sighed and told my story. How I traveled between worlds, unable to control where I appeared or when I would leave again. I glossed over some of the past worlds I¡¯d been in, leaving out the rest stops entirely as I barely understood them. It also felt like the rest stops were a ¡®for traveler¡¯s only¡¯ thing that I was reluctant to share. It was our place to escape, and I felt oddly possessive of them. ¡°That¡¯s quite the story,¡± the man said simply as I finished. ¡°Said you wouldn¡¯t believe me,¡± I pointed out. ¡°Seems like there is a way to test it though, you said you can use this¡­ magic?¡± he asked, motioning with one hand for me to demonstrate. I pulled a thread of energy from the generator on my wrist and quickly spun a simple light spell. A small glowing ball flickered into existence over my hand. Its appearance seemed to surprise him, leaning forward on the desk to get a closer look. I held it out as he reached for it. Oddly his hand simply passed through the threads of energy that made up the spell, not disturbing them in the slightest as mine would have. I figured this was because he had never been to the world where I learned magic. ¡°Fascinating,¡± he said, sitting back in his chair. I allowed the light spell to fade. ¡°I¡¯m not sure even the Pharieans can do that,¡± he admitted. ¡°Considering it¡¯s a power from another world they shouldn¡¯t be able to manipulate, or even really interact with, the quantum field this energy is part of,¡± I explained, ¡°your hand just now passed through it as though it wasn¡¯t there, which is odd because living beings should be able to manipulate the threads of energy but-.¡± He held up his hand to silence me, I hadn¡¯t really had time to relax yet, and while my heart rate had slowed and adrenaline faded somewhat I was still on edge. And I enjoy talking shop, apparently. ¡°If the Pharieans learn of your existence they¡¯ll do everything they can to kill you,¡± the man said simply, ¡°so if you want to survive it seems like you need to help us out.¡± ¡°Before I decide on anything, can someone please explain what a Phariean is?¡± ¡°They¡¯re an alien race that invaded our planet centuries ago,¡± the man explained, ¡°At first they were peaceful, but it was all a front. They used their technology to worm their ways into the good graces of our governments, slowly taking them over from within. A great war was eventually fought and they emerged victorious. They claim we started the war, us humans, our records of that time were methodically destroyed so we don¡¯t know for sure, but either way they took over. ¡°Now they rule over us from their Great Tree,¡± the man continued, ¡°the tree makes them and their human servants strong, somehow, and disarmed as we are they are unassailable. We¡¯re the resistance, or part of it anyways, but, if I¡¯m being honest, all we do is watch over the slums and do our best to make the human servants of the Pharieans lives difficult.¡± ¡°What do the Phareans look like?¡± I asked. ¡°Not unlike us, taller, with large eyes and pale skin,¡± he replied, and I shuttered as that sounded awfully close to the Fair Folk from the other world, ¡°that¡¯s what our documents say in any case. It¡¯s been generations since one has descended from the top of their tree. Their human servants manage everything down here, taking what they want from us and our world so they can live it up.¡± Aside from the lack of magic that sounded very close to the Fair Folk, arrogant, powerful and demanding. These Pharieans were more hedonistic, it seemed, but was that because they lacked magic? Without the mystic to distract them they turned to more physical pleasures. I suppose that made some kind of sense, but it was based on many assumptions. Was I seeing two different outcomes of the same basic events, altered by the slight differences in the universes and rules of nature? If humans existed in many different worlds, then why couldn¡¯t the Pharieans, or Fair Folk? Does that mean that the Harmony also existed elsewhere? The parasitic beetles? I shook off that thought and looked at the man across from me. The humans of this world hadn¡¯t yet be reduced to a pre-industrial state, and if these Pharieans didn¡¯t have magic then they might ever be, but it was clear the aliens had ill intent. I wanted to make the worlds I went to better places, I wanted to live up to the desires of the Priestess from that first world. I was the Traveler. There was only one thing I could say. ¡°How can I help?¡± Chronicles of a Traveler 7 Despite how unique my quantum energy threads were, what they had called ¡®magic¡¯ in the past world, I was very new to using it. Other than some basic shields, information gathering and a few other tricks I didn¡¯t really have much I could do. This was partly due to how I hadn¡¯t had much time to sit down and play with the threads much. What time I did have to relax had been in a prison where I didn¡¯t want my captors to know I had access to magic or in a rest stop where I could get in trouble for using it. The result of this was there wasn¡¯t much I could do with it to help. I was about to ask them to look after me while I explored the various configurations of the energy I¡¯d recorded when a man burst into the room. ¡°Bad news boss,¡± the man said, slapping a piece of paper on the table. I was surprised to see an image of me, clinging to apparently nothing as I slowly fell. ¡°They¡¯re looking for him,¡± he continued, nodding towards me, ¡°tearing the slums apart looking for him too. Multiple SWAT units, police, even some guards from their tree.¡± ¡°Why would they go to such trouble?¡± the old leader of this cell asked, leaning forward to look at the wanted poster. I did the same, only to realize it wasn¡¯t a wanted notice, it was a missing person. ¡°Do they think I¡¯m a Pharean?¡± I asked. ¡°No, you can clearly see you¡¯re human here,¡± the rebel leader replied. ¡°He did fall from the tree,¡± the newest man said, ¡°maybe they think he¡¯s a spy.¡± ¡°Or a servant who fell,¡± the leader said slowly, turning to look at me, ¡°either way that means you could be leaking information to us, as far as they¡¯re concerned, we¡¯ll have to move you somewhere safe.¡± ¡°Wait,¡± I held up my hand, my thoughts racing, ¡°we could use this. They¡¯ll want me alive, to interrogate. Maybe they¡¯ll even take me into the tree. I could gather information for you.¡± ¡°Several things,¡± the leader replied, ¡°first off, once they realize you aren¡¯t a servant who fell, they¡¯ll have no reason to keep you alive. Second, even if you overcome that how will you get the information to us?¡± ¡°For the first point, I¡¯m pretty sure they¡¯ll be interested in me either way. Same reason you were, I can show them my ¡®magic¡¯ and ask to speak to a leader,¡± I said, ¡°and it¡¯s only a matter of time before I leave this world anyways, nothing they do can stop that. There¡¯s a good chance I¡¯ll return to this world again in the future, I can then relay what I learned.¡± ¡°And if they manage to keep you trapped in the one room, like you admitted people did in another world?¡± the leader countered. ¡°They only managed that with magic, which these aliens don¡¯t have.¡± ¡°It¡¯s still a big risk,¡± the older man sighed. ¡°I know, but I want to help,¡± I insisted, ¡°as long as I¡¯m here you are in danger. Even if you take me out of the city and far away all that will do is prevent me from helping since I¡¯m the only one who can use magic.¡± ¡°I still don¡¯t like this idea,¡± the man grumbled, ¡°but you have a point.¡± ¡°What if he is actually a spy of theirs?¡± the other man said, ¡°he could tell them about us.¡± ¡°We have to move from here anyways,¡± the leader shrugged, ¡°even if they get accurate descriptions of everyone he¡¯s seen, it won¡¯t help them much. But if we can get even a little information from within the tree¡­¡± ¡°I¡¯m taking most of the risk on myself,¡± I admitted, ¡°but if they are adamant to find me as you indicated we have to move.¡± ¡°Right,¡± the leader nodded, ¡°best option is probably for you to approach them alone, hands up.¡± ¡°And if they track him back to here?¡± the newest man asked. ¡°Order everyone to evacuate, we¡¯ll find a new hideout later,¡± the leader agreed, ¡°by the time they have him we should be long gone.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± the other man said, ducking out of the room. ¡°Well, good luck,¡± the leader said, reaching across the table to shake my hand, ¡°I¡¯ll pray to whatever gods will listen for your safety. That¡¯s about all I can do.¡± ¡°I just hope this works,¡± I grimaced, ¡°can I get directions?¡± It didn¡¯t take long for the rebels to clear out, they didn¡¯t have many records and what few weapons they had were easy to move. I had to remind myself that this was but one cell of what I hoped was a much larger resistance. Without guns, however, it was difficult to stand up to even a small force. When the enemy could grow metal trees kilometers tall, I could see why they were struggling. Eventually someone showed me the way out in the direction of where I¡¯d landed and I started walking. The slums weren¡¯t easy to navigate, there had been no central planning, no road network, barely any sense of organization. Often I would find myself in a dead end and have to turn around, being forced to squeeze between two buildings or even climb up and over them in one case. I was increasingly surprised at how far my captors had taken me after putting a hood over my head in this jumble of buildings. It didn¡¯t help that sanitation wasn¡¯t much better, with trash laying in the streets. But as I got closer, I could hear the shouting and rumble of vehicles as the police raided the area. They paid no need to what little organization there was, ripping doors from their makeshift hinges or even kicking down walls, sometimes causing a smaller structure to collapse. I was nervous and scared, who wouldn¡¯t be, so I thought as I walked about what I could do to help. I didn¡¯t know if the quantum energy could stop bullets, but a shield would make me feel better at the very least. I used the same variant of shield I had to make a parachute, only turning it into a cocoon around me instead of a canopy. It might not stop a bullet but I felt safer. In my spellcasting I clearly wasn¡¯t being that observant, as before I realized what was happening I was surrounded by men in dark body armor with weapons drawn shouting at me to get to my knees. In a bit of a panic I did as I was told, putting my hands behind my head and trying to look non-threatening. One of the armed men slowly approached me and pulled a photo out of a pocket, holding it up so he could look between it and me. ¡°It¡¯s him,¡± he said simply, and all of the sudden I was grabbed by the back of the neck and half guided, half carried into the back of an armored vehicle. A squad of the men in uniform black armor followed me in, closed the door and I felt the vehicle start moving. Quickly judging by how I was being thrown around. Other than the sound of the engine and occasional grunts as we were pushed around by the fast turns it was quiet in the back of the vehicle. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡°So,¡± I said awkwardly, ¡°how¡¯s it going?¡± I¡¯ll admit I was more than a little nervous, I was surrounded by heavily armed people who had their faces hidden by black masks in the back of a vehicle, unable to see where we were going. I justified the question as attempting to get a feel for the situation in my head, was I a VIP they were here to save, or was I a spy they had captured attempting to escape? They hadn¡¯t shot me on sight, which was promising, but beyond that I wasn¡¯t sure what my status here was. Almost as one every one of the armed SWAT members slowly turned to look at me through their dark masks. I tried to give a friendly grin but after an awkward moment they looked away. I didn¡¯t know if that was a good thing or not. I was probably asking the wrong people, I decided after another minute, these were the foot soldiers, here to retrieve me under orders. They didn¡¯t know what was going on much more than I did. Eventually the driver calmed down and slowed the massive, armored car to a more reasonable speed, even stopping regularly. We had to be back in the main part of the city now, I figured, and the tank driver was following road rules now. Not sure why, maybe they weren¡¯t as worried here as they would be in the slums. Or maybe we had an escort now. I tried using the sensors in my collar bone, but those with a range of more than a couple meters were unable to penetrate the armor of the vehicle. I did notice a growing return from the quantum scanner. After a minute fiddling with it I realized it was a passive field I hadn¡¯t noticed earlier. I should probably stop to explain at least a little about quantum fields. A full explanation would take years and several degrees, so I¡¯ll do my best to simplify it. Quantum fields are, simply put, the building blocks of the universe. Each field has a specific effect, interacting with other fields and generating the world around us. Think of each field like one color on a digital screen, some are stronger, or brighter than others, and the specific mix of colors forms a unique result. A unique universe. There are, near as I have been able to determine, an infinite number of quantum fields. Fields that do anything and everything. But most of these fields are inactive, with no energy in them and, therefore, no effect on the world. While other fields are active in almost every world, such as the electron field, and therefore present in every reality. Why some fields are more common than others is a largely unknown, my explanation is that some fields are more stable than others. The electron field is stable, predictable and low energy, where a field that causes, say, people to fly is much less stable. So while universes exist with these unstable fields, no living beings exist in them. Now, there are, generally speaking, three kinds of fields. Inactive fields, or null state fields, are the ones with no energy in them. They have a value of zero everywhere, don¡¯t interact with others and are effectively impossible to detect. They¡¯re the colors in a pixel that aren¡¯t being used. Then there are the active fields. These fields have variable energy values from point to point, most often their energy level is close to zero everywhere except for spikes in the fields that are what we call particles. Electrons and Gluons are like this, the electron particles we see are excitations in the electron field above the resting value of that field. All fields have particles like this, but not all manifest them. Finally, there are the passive fields. These have an energy value above zero everywhere, but don¡¯t vary much. They don¡¯t have particles that take part in day-to-day life. That doesn¡¯t mean they don¡¯t do anything, the Higgs field is the most well-known passive field, it has an even value everywhere but doesn¡¯t manifest particles, called Higgs bosuns, often. These fields most often interact with particles from other fields, altering their properties. To give more practical examples, my quantum magic came from an active quantum field. It had no energy generally, being in a state of ¡®quantum vacuum,¡¯ but the threads of energy I use to do ¡®magic¡¯ are particles in that fields, point excitations created by the strange crystals. That¡¯s why this magic worked in other realities, the field might not have naturally occurring particles in any given reality but I can still generate them. What I was detecting was a passive quantum field, one with a resting energy above zero but no active particles. And as we drove it was getting stronger. This confused me, generally quantum fields were spread evenly across the universe, their resting energies unchanged since the dawn of time. Yet here was a passive field that was growing stronger. I quickly determined the effects of this field as well, as the field was weaker around every person in the vehicle. Living cells were absorbing the energy of the field. I wasn¡¯t sure to what end but there was something else that drew my attention. This new field also interacted with my magic, the shield cocoon I¡¯d woven around myself was drawing energy from this field much like a living being and growing stronger. Considering the quantum threads were made from bio-electric fields did that mean this new field boosted bio-electric reactions? I wasn¡¯t sure what this would mean for my spell, and I considered cutting it off, but I was hesitant to give up my only protection. It didn¡¯t seem to be altering how the spell worked, simply making it stronger, so I decided to leave it up and keep an eye on it. In the mean time I observed the effects the field had on the bodies of myself and the other guys in the vehicle. It wasn¡¯t much, not enough for my sensors to pick up, unfortunately, but I could detect my cells sucking up the energy like a man who had gone without a drink for days. This oddity had kept me well distracted until the vehicle came to a stop and the big hatches opened once more. I was shown out, somewhat more carefully than how I¡¯d been stuffed into the vehicle, and realized I was at the base of the tree. I was in a military compound, the armored vehicle I¡¯d been in parked next to a dozen others, identical to it. Most of the men who had ¡®rescued¡¯ me had removed their helmets, slowly walking in what I assumed was the direction of the barracks. A pair, however, remained fully suited up, motioning for me to follow. Still very aware that they were armed, while I was wearing a worn pair of jeans and button up, I followed them. Strangely they led me towards the tree, eventually leaving the buildings behind to cross a few dozen meters of open tarmac. They walked me up to the base of the massive tree and paused, seeming to wait for something. I, however, was looking up trying to take in the sheer size of the thing before me. From far away it was large, from here it was like I was standing at the base of a mountain. A mouse looking up at a centuries old oak. Then the silvered metal before us, that made up the massive tree, seemed to flow and part to revel an entrance. My two guards motioned me to enter. I nodded dumbly, walking into the dark cavity, only for the wall to close behind me. I was surprised, I thought my guards would follow me in, but they didn¡¯t. I don¡¯t suffer from claustrophobia, but when I suddenly found myself in the dark I panicked. I reached out, stumbling back towards where the door had been until I found a smooth metal wall. As far as I could reach in either direction the wall remained unchanged. Taking a deep breath I turned to my implanted sensors. The quantum scanner reported that the strange passive field was far stronger in here, orders of magnitude more powerful, but I ignored that for now. Lidar showed a small room, a few meters to a size, and rectangular. Was this a prison? They hadn¡¯t treated me like a prisoner, and even for aliens this had to be too cruel. Thankfully, before that train of thought could send me deeper into panic, the room lit up and the far wall seemed to flow away from me, forming a hallway. There were no lights, oddly, the silver walls just seemed to glow. It was an odd effect, but allowed me to see. Following the growing hallway, it opened into a larger room. In the room was a table, a chair on either side and a door on the far wall. I wasn¡¯t alone either, a woman sat across the table from me. ¡°Sorry about the rough handling,¡± she apologized, motioning to the other chair, ¡°for obvious reasons we can¡¯t tell the grunts too much.¡± I scowled slightly as I sat down, the woman across from me was very definitely human. Short brown hair, fair features, if not attractive, a dark suit. I had thought I¡¯d be speaking to a Pharean, the aliens who built this tree and took over the world. ¡°There haven¡¯t been any missing persons reports yet,¡± the woman explained, ¡°which family are you from? If all goes well we should be able to get you back to them in a few hours.¡± ¡°Family?¡± I asked, confused. ¡°Ya,¡± she agreed, ¡°or your address would work too. Any thing we can use to get you home.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t have a family,¡± I resplied. ¡°Sure you do, and I¡¯m sure they miss you,¡± she said soothingly, leaning forward slightly with a warm smile, ¡°if you want to request your own residence we can do that later, but I¡¯ll still need to confirm your identity.¡± ¡°Do the Phareans care that much?¡± I asked. ¡°Phareans?¡± she snorted, ¡°if there are any left on earth they have more important things to worry about.¡± ¡°Wait,¡± I stuttered, ¡°there are no Phareans on the tree?¡± ¡°Obviously, you are from one of the families, right?¡± She asked, suddenly looking concerned, ¡°did you lose your memories when you fell?¡± ¡°I¡­ think you should get someone higher up than you,¡± I replied slowly, ¡°because I¡¯m not from around here.¡± ¡°But you did grow up on the tree, right?¡± she insisted, standing up, ¡°I can feel the energy radiating from you, there¡¯s no way you absorbed that much power without living on the tree.¡± I was confused, what power was she talking about. Was she talking about that strange quantum field? I pulled up the results from it and her body was saturated with it, infusing her every cell with power. It seemed to serve as some kind of regulating force as well as amplifier, as if supercharging her. Her muscle fibers were denser and stronger than they had any right to be, her skin tough enough to stop a knife and her eyes didn¡¯t have a single flaw. I, on the other hand, was still absorbing energy from this field. But the cocoon around me was saturated, radiating like her body did. What she felt wasn¡¯t from me but my shield, and because of that she thought I grew up on the tree? ¡°You¡­ are mistaken,¡± I replied, cutting the spell loose and letting it dissipate. In here it wouldn¡¯t do much good anyways, if they wanted me dead I was dead at this point. Her eyes grew wide as the energy dissipated. ¡°You¡­ are¡­ you¡¯re a normal?¡± she gasped in shock. After a moment she leapt over the table and threw a punch. She was fast, faster than I thought anyone could be, and the only way to avoid it was to stumble backwards. Nearly falling over before I ran into the wall. She pursued, readying another attack while I quickly wove a spell. Combat shields were designed to be used while under attack, and were quick to cast. Now that I wasn¡¯t falling it was much easier as well. Even still I barely got the spell finished by the time her fist was extending. I interposed the shield between her fist and my face, and it held. She struck with a lot of force, but it wasn¡¯t more than the shield could handle, especially now that it was absorbing energy from that quantum field. ¡°How?¡± she asked, surprised. Not waiting for her to recover I quickly wove another spell, this one designed to restrict someone¡¯s movement. Throwing it like a net over her as I slipped away she tried to follow but found herself stuck in place. ¡°How are you doing this?¡± she asked in shock. Before the fight could continue, however, a new voice spoke up over the intercom. ¡°That¡¯s enough,¡± the masculine voice said. ¡°But sir!¡± the woman insisted, ¡°he isn¡¯t from the families.¡± ¡°I said that¡¯s enough,¡± the voice repeated in a stronger tone, and the woman quickly relaxed, no longer straining against the magic bindings. ¡°Would you kindly let her go?¡± the man asked, and, after casting another cocoon shield, I did as he asked. The door on the other side of the room opened, and the woman took the hint and left, shooting me confused glances. Rather than close, a few moments later a man walked in. ¡°That was impressive,¡± he said, making me realize his was the voice from before. ¡°And who are you?¡± I asked skeptically. ¡°I¡¯m General Raum,¡± he replied simply, ¡°I¡¯m the man who defeated the Phareans.¡±