Locks and Loops

A small red being was plummeting through the time vortex or the multiverse or the source wall or the borders of time and space. Whatever. It hurt. Her fur was starting smoulder. She was starting to forget where or when she was going.

That was when she landed.

A corridor. She was in a corridor leading to ... herself.

She could see herself and Goldie in a holding cell.

Aaaargh was this a temporal loop or lock.

What if she's done this before?  Several times before?

That note with the list  had changed a couple of times!

Would it alter again?

To be continued until Sassy and Goldilock break the temporal loop or paypal donations arrive. Yes that means next week back to chapter one again!

Bwabahahah evil laughter etc ......

Toil and Trouble and Time Machines.

Sassy and Goldie were trotting across through a section of the Node called the Gallifrey Memorial Garden when Sassy's future self appeared again.

"You're going the wrong way!" she snarled.

Sassy instinctively if impolitely barked back and Goldie coiled backwards and hissed.

The future self whined in exasperation sat down and used one back paw to pull out a note tucked in her collar.

"I got someone to write me a note. Here's a checklist of things I've done since I know how short some people's attention spans are!"

"Yes Sassy when chocolate's nearby your ..." interrupted Goldie.

"I was being VERY polite when I used an indefinite pronoun instead the word two!" grumbled future self Sassy, pointing her muzzle at a certain Goullawk.

"Number One obtain strap on time travel device."

"But we have Lady Zen Shipper!  ... has something happened to her?" asked Sassy.

"Number Two contact ALL the people listed on the back of this note.

Number Three release prisoners! by the way they have Jonahexed!

Number Four

 One wish is all it takes but apparently I willnt be the one making it according to the person who told me that

Number Five Watch out for people who look like  two middle aged hikers with English accents and a teenaged girl who isn't called Tara."

The paper with the list fell to the ground as Future Self Sassy either disappeared or imploded with a loud POP.

Sassy and Goldie sat there puzzled until Reg came out of sleath mode and descended to land next to them.

Reg came out of his taxi saw the list and started to read it and turned over and read the list on the other side.

"Well you two have work to do don't you?

There's an awful lot of dragons on this list Goldie?"

"WHY do I have to do the dragons!?" complained the the Goullawk swashing her tail and imperiously rising her head and spreading her crest.

Reg retorted with a list.

"Dragonoid being with scales. Who speaks several darkish lingos.
 Domineering personality. Dates other dragons. Dates outside her species.
Has one reluctant boyfriend who's a dragon mage.
Goes shopping with someone even more obsessed with bling with her for gold plated prosthetics for poor whassa his Gra ... "

"Gold is good!" hissed the Goullawk, " . . . so I helped Iski pick up out a commissioned piece of art work over in Ankh and Morpor ..."

"I thought you were banned from most of the dwarvish jewellers there?" asked Reg in a tone of almost malevolent innocence.

"I really don't need a trip to Longshan at the moment," hissed Goldie.

"It's Luau night there! You always try to get barbecue nights unless ... oh you haven't been banned again have you? OH Goldie what was it this time?" cried Sassy.

"er mmm er uh well I might have to apologize for both of us to a few people for pamphleteeering again on P.#.$.N." stated Goldie trying too obviously to be cool and nonchalant.

"OOOOH" sniggered Reg," You two been handing out copies of Workers of P.#.$.N UNITE AGAIN!"

Scribal note For some curious reason this song has NOT been widely distributed throughout Fandom.

 "Tunnel Hounds of P.#.$.N Unite
to regain your hearth Rights.

Who keeps the watch wherriess warm at Night
under the cold dread starlight?

who turns the spit for your steaks
who chases off tunnelsnakes ?

Who gets all the darn glory
who hogs most of the story?

who does the work down in the gloom
while dragonkin thru the skies zoom

workers of P.#.$. N. Unite
Regain your ancient right

tunnel hounds no longer ignore
or we'll gnash and smash and gnaw!

oops theres the sound oh so distinct
wonder why lizardies nearly went extinct?

Tunnel Hounds of P.#. $. N. Unite
Regain your ancient Hearth rights!"


"But its for the good of Teckelstein!" barked Sassy

"Er I forget to trim off Proudly Printed by Teckelsteins' Radicals and Rebels Workshop off the bottom" answered Goldie.

The dachshund groaned and slumped to the ground.

"Well ladies I need to get home for supper. You two better come with. Perhaps some of my friends and neighbours might have ideas?"

Wimbly Time

Ever wondered why a certain subset of linked universes and timelines has been beset by continual reality resets over the last few decades? READ THIS!?


Timelines wimble and Wobble and why!

Reg and company had an easy journey back to the Node apart from having to steer

around some cosmozooans and stopping to give a star whale directions.

The parking area at the node was curiously empty expect for one small figure, a

cylindrically orientated canid with short legs and red scorched fur on one side

that had been burnt very recently.

"Oh dear that's me again!" yelped Sassy.

"Look here I told you NOT to come back for three days well two and a bit or is

that one and a half now?
Honestly if you cant trust meself who can you?" retorted herself.

Reg made a strange wheezing noise suspicously like suppressed laughter.

JonaHexed studiously avoided eye contact with either Sassy, and Goldie blurted

out in a huff,

"Well I say, surely you can trust me ... most of the time ... if I'm not near

temptation and bling ... and then there  was that time I went shopping with

Selina ... but of course you can trust me!"

"I have to go get some rest before the climactic scene or resolution or whatever

happens next," sighed future Sassy,"Don't forget to come back and warn you and

oh temporal loop timeline tip! Grab a Vortex manipulator if you have a chance

to!"

She faded out like a Chesire Cat with one limb at a time disconcertingly slowly

dissolving.

"So what were we looking for again?" asked Goldie.

JonaHexed assumed a rhetorical position.

"Girls and gentleborg logic dictates .."

"or tyrannizes?" remarked Goldie flicking her tail flukes in a disrespectful

manner.

" a logical analysis suggests..." resumed JonaheXed glaring at the Goullawk, who

unable to resist the temptation of making a pun responded by asking him, "You

have a girl friend called Ana Lousis?"

(Scribal TIP consider theoriginal pronounciation of analysis in Greek)

JonaHexed glared at her again and continued,

 "that somehow Villians United! and gained access to the Wishing Jewel!"

"Er that is a Buddhist myth isn't it? The Cinatamani?" asked Sassy very

respectfully to soothe JonaHeXed.

"I don't speak Sanskrit..." muttered Reg, " but I take this is some kind of

crystalline based technology that converts energy to mass in response to a

psionic scan of users stationed within its receiving range?"

"Wow awesome technobabble Reg ... that .... that was a truly excellent

expository paragraph ... I think I'm just a bit jealous, " sighed JonaHexed.

"so there's this Wishing Jewel around here somewhere and the Villians probably

snuck one person in and then used it to open all the gates at once or shut down

the defences or some such thing and since they're  ..."

"still here and waiting for it to reset" stated a certain future version of

Sassy re-appearing once again with a sulphurous bamf of displaced air, "cos the

wish they made was for it to be highly improbable that anyone could help stop

them."

"oh well that's easy then," burbled Goldie, "we do stuff other people find

atonishingly improbable, or nearly impossible.."

"... and extremely annoying ..." muttered Jonahexed,

"all the time and with grace and style!

So where's this Cintamani wishy thing?" finished Goldie.

"You forgot to ask me why I need to travel back to learn you!" grumbled Future

Sassy.

Everyone shut up to politely allow for a more dramatic pause, even Goldie.

"You can only reset the Cintamani every three days and you have to offer it

something a sacrifice a soul a destiny something big and reality altering!"

Reg groaned. "One of those! Mkranky Crystals, Cosmic Cuboids, Crystal Skulls,

Grail Cups, honestly you humanoids!"

"I wonder who offered their soul?" said Jonahexed.

Flashback The Cintamani A day and a half ago.

A mysterious figure who's bald and thinks green and prple look good on power

armor ... er not so mysterious for some readers is reciting these words.

"I A@#$^&*@( L56789 of Continuum %@ offer up my soul in return for denying

access to this node and wishing jewel for three days Earth Greenwich Time

twentieth century to any being or power who can stop me re-inserting my cloneson

back into my reality on the understanding that a) whatever happens after the

three day period my clone son remains real and gets to live to a healthy old age

dying a heroic death and b) related and linked condition the first person to

make a wish after that three day period can not undo this one whatever happens

to me so may it be!"

Ah the capacity of English for recursivity!

However it didnt occur to the speaker that that meant some one who had no

interest whatsoever in whether his offspring was dead or alive could have access

or make another wish the very moment the three day period ended.

He walked off to join his villians to rounding up and confining anyone being

currnetly at the Node capable of making a better wish.

To quote a certain Gallifrey History can be rewritten


There was a sound of something grinding to a stop and then stiffly painfully

altering its course. A sound like a river flowing backwards forced into a new

course. Then a sound like a strawberry jelly wobbler quivering.

Time is wimbly!

"So why are we here if we cant change things for another day and a half and bit

?" asked Sassy.

"Cos you are going to need a lot of help to make sure one of you is first in

line to make a wish that brings Teceklstein back and fixes the mess here,

hopefully a wish that stops or limits all these annoying reality resets!"
stated Future Sassy who then disappeared again.

Jonahexed groaned quietly.

Then the giant robots appeared.

to be continued ...

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?