Temporal Pests - transit to trouble

TRANSIT TO TROUBLE

Things get worse for our mischievous duo.

Sassy was still trying to figure out what her doppelganger had meant as she and Goldie moved through a quantum tunnel back into the summery meadow on another world in which they had parked Lady Zen Shipper. The Lady’s external imaging currently had her looking like a statute of a pagan goddess sleeping on a large plinth.

The Dachshund and Dragonoid Duo trotted and flumped over to the outer door, pushed a carved symbol together, and entered their travel device. Goldie squealed with glee and leaped into a pool of water suspended midair from a cup shaped force field mounted from what was usually the roof as Sassy climbed onto the control cushion and pulled down the panel covering the interface board by using a handle designed to fit a canid mouth. She placed her front paws onto it and waited for the cognitive interface to lower onto her head and activate.

A richly modulated female voice responded,

 “Testing Pilot authorization. DNA print acknowledged.
C. von Teckel please indicate the program of your choice.”

“Single pilot control. Start navigation plan for return to Teckelstein.” barked Sassy.

If you had been outside and watching you would have seen the plinth and goddess disappear to be replaced by a large shimmering ovoid that begun to revolve and vibrate faster and faster until it seemed to lift off the ground and blink out at near light speed.

Inside the ship you would have heard a voice saying.

“Transit begins. Scanning for Primary Teckelstein Quantum Resonance Patterns. Secondary resonance detected. Scanning for Primary patterns. Scanning for Temporal Lock Beacon. Navigation Locking Error. Unable to Initiate Temporal Shift. Secondary patterns are fluctuating. Warning massive temporal shift! Warning use safety devices! Warning Timestorm detected. Warning massive temporal flux.”

Goldie shut down her antigravity swimming pool and dove down into a pile of cushions that re-arrranged themselves into padded straps.

Sassy voice-activated her own safety straps and asked their ship,

 “Lady Zen please try to scan for point of origin of Temporal disturbance. Try to scan for Teckelstein at a different timespace co-ordinate, Earth in the Middle Ages, or the future when part of Teckelstein was a space colony. We can always move back or forward once we have a spatial lock.”

“Scanning. Secondary resonances only. No co-ordinates matching recorded primary pattern. Secondary resonances fluctuating. Visual display Activating.”

Part of the wall of the control room became a large high definition flat screen showing one of many possible future Teckelsteins. All that could seen was a valley full of dying trees and ruined buildings, a wasteland, with a war machine lumbering through the ruins. The scan shifted to a possible past. A dragon with scales of a dark coppery and paws and muzzle reddened with blood was feasting on dead humans. Half melted medieval weaponry was scattered around the bodies. A smaller dragon was visible who seemed to have been ravaged by something’s claws and flame. It was struggling in vain to take flight with wings that looked like the same cruel something had maliciously tried to chew them off. In the distance a stone castle burnt with green flames.

Sassy whimpered as more and more scenes showing ever worsening scenarios presented themselves until there was only one left. A young European Bronze Age hunter had discovered the mountain-side cave of one of the last descendants of the hominoid people now known as Neanderthals and then as the Wild Folk of the Forest. The Neanderthaloid had a pack of canids with puppies, who were strange shaggy dwarvish things, like the hominid they shared a den with, not exactly hounds with short legs, or terriers, but something ancestral to both types of canids. The elderly hominid beckoned in a friendly manner to the younger human and presented a squirming tail-wagging pup, holding it up to him in one large hand as a gift of friendship. The young human looked at the strange creature who seemed to be half giant with his large deepset eyes, massive projecting nose, round chinless face, and equally massive shoulders and arms, and yet dwarvish and stunted below the waist line with shorter legs beginning to become withered from the effects of osteo-arthritis and other ailments.
"
“ … yes … ,” whispered Sassy anxiously, remembering her history classes, “You take the pup and offer your protection to the Spirit Walker of the Old Ones and he shows you how to align your fields and settlement to the local geoforces, the ley lines to create a Holy Earth Covering place."

 (*Teg is an ancient and honorable Indoeuropean Radical!)

Sassy yelped in horror as the human’s face darkened in a moment of fear and rage. She shuddered, watching as the Old One turned his back to him, bending over to offer him a cup of fresh spring water, and yelped in dismay as the human threw the pup at the cave wall, and attacked the Old One stabbing him in the back then spinning him around to slice his neck open.

Goldie squawked seeing the screen and Sassy’s reaction.

“That wasn’t suppose to happen was it?
Sassy you said he took the pup and made friends and that was the start of Teckelstein? Not that! Not …”

Lady Zen Shipper made an announcement.

“Secondary resonances stabilizing. We have a weak signal from the Primary Source. Timestream fluctuations are lessening. The Primary Source is … fading again. Temporal flux increasing. Probability of external temporal manipulation 89.4% and rising. Probability of deliberate attempt to alter Teckelstein’s Timeline 95.7% rising! Probability of Teckelstein stabilizing … still fluctuating!”

“There’s hope,” muttered Sassy.

Elsewhere there was laughter as a bunch of definitely evil and intentionally malicious beings capered around a large crystal and gleefully watched the image of a valley walled by snow capped mountains waver and flicker as the edges of its reality literally unravelled.

“See what did I tell you!” boasted one of them, “Teckelstein’s the ideal test object to see if we can use the node to alter histories across the multi-verse. It’s a small pocket universe currently anchored between several timelines and universes with regular links to them. No more annoying sentient dachshunds! Next we’ll remove their less sentient ancestors from the Prime Time Line and then we change the odds so we’re the Powers That Be and change things for our pleasure without having to worry about flash back syndrome. So whose lives do we ruin next?”

 A chorus of malicious suggestions commenced.

to be continued soon ... howsa bout some comments  readers?