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    Underway: Phantom Traveler, #2.5
    Underway: Phantom Traveler, #2.5
    Underway: Phantom Traveler, #2.5
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    Underway: Phantom Traveler, #2.5

    By R J Theodore

    ()

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    About this ebook

    "Dimspace, a realm shrouded in mystery and promise. Our ship's gate drive hurls us between star systems, careening between random pinpricks of light faster than light itself can travel. We journey steadily toward the region of the galaxy whence we came, one calculated leap at a time. Each waypoint system offers unique wonders, phenomena, and life to explore, observe, and chronicle.We are seeking our own people, our culture, and our history but it is my goal that, when we reach our destination, we will have our own history to share…"

     

    As the Harrow's Tusk carries them across a Galaxy toward a home world they've never seen, iscillian sisters Jayess and Sothree record the worlds they visit, through journaling and illustration. Each encounter brings them one step closer to discovering themselves and who they are meant to be.

     

    Each entry is paired with an original full color illustration.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRobot Dinosaur Press
    Release dateAug 24, 2021
    ISBN9781732525993
    Underway: Phantom Traveler, #2.5
    Author

    R J Theodore

    R J Theodore is hellbent on keeping herself busy. Seriously folks, if she has two spare minutes to rub together at the end of the day, she invents a new project with which to occupy them. She enjoys design, illustration, video games (mostly spectating, for she is not as adept at them as she would prefer), reading, binging on media, napping with her cats, and cooking. She is passionate about art and coffee. R J Theodore lives in New England with her family. She co-hosts The Hybrid Author Podcast and writes non-fiction as Rekka Jay.

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      Book preview

      Underway - R J Theodore

      1

      CONSTANTS AND VARIABLES

      A pink-suited alien whose black and pink head resembles the ruffles of a nudibranch stands before a cliff face crawling with parrot-like creatures. They are green with flesh-colored tendrils extending from their mouths.

      Not all planets support life. That is the way of the violent means by which they are created. Raw ingredients hurled vast distances, crashing into each other, collecting particles, clawing for purchase. They don’t all come to rest in ideal conditions for what we would consider life.

      But before we joined her aboard her ship, Ehli had already discovered life is a far broader term than defined by most spacefaring civilizations. Our traveling companions, Dimple and Crook, existed outside of reality, thriving in dimspace, feeding on other dimspace creatures, content and familiar to interact with the overlapping multiverse of realities as their ecosystem. Ehli has reminded me not to make any assumptions when we reach a planet. Look down, look within and, most important, look hard, she tells me.

      We have come to a system with a large sun, ancient on the scale of stars. It has three hundred bodies in orbit, most tiny, some gas giants, and just a handful of rock with mantle cores.

      Of these, long range scans indicate two planets upon which life took hold in multiple realities.

      I have chosen not to focus on those. There is one planet upon which, out of the entire perceivable multiverse, life took hold in exactly one reality. There are no branches; it is as if the variations of life were funneled into one existence. How does life not branch out of control after it appears? The cosmic coincidence for that is astounding, and I find myself humbled and overwhelmed with curiosity.

      Traveling within dimspace does not allow me to peer across the veil of time, however. I can’t see the exact circumstances that led to this single reality, the micro speck of dust that carried life and the conditions that created the perfect breeding ground for it to replicate. 

      I can only observe this moment and compare the one reality against the others to draw my theories.

      We will not be here long enough for me to analyze so much data. I have assigned a BEETL drone to gather the information. Perhaps we will have time for such things later.

      We must wear exosuits when we leave the Tusk’s protection. Inconsistencies in atmosphere across multiple realities mean we need to bring our own air to breathe. The suits are uncomfortable. Much like this mysterious funnel trapped life in one reality, the suits make me feel confined. Finite. Ehli assures me she has done everything she can to customize the suit to our physical needs, including developing cellular displays on the suit surface to repeat the pattern of our chromatophores and iridophores. She once had to spend days in a suit that was built for people with larger body and more limbs than iscillian. This helps to put things into perspective, though I hope my explorations are enjoyable enough to distract me from the feeling of creases and seams against my sensitive skin.

      I find a concentration of lifeforms and set my sensory equipment to record everything. Of all the multiverses, there being only one in which life exists means the appearance of that existence is as transparent as tinted glass. I see movement, but I would have to activate the alignment antenna that Ehli and BEETL developed to increase its opacity in my perception. I would have to step—at least partially—into that world. What would happen if I did? I redden in anxiety to consider it. Whatever caused it, this world’s natural state is one of pre-determined destiny. Fixed. If I were to interfere, what might happen? Any participation in that reality could fracture its path. It would be fascinating to behold, and to watch, fractals of reality spinning and growing like the vines of an invasive plant. But I am not here to change the world. I am here to observe.

      So I watch closely, the ghosts of a world appearing as much phantom to me as I must to them. There is vegetation where I have made planet contact. It is mostly mosses and low ferns. There are insects. I can see wind rustling the foliage of larger plant species: scrub brush, small trees, and sparsely leafed conifers. It is as if there is no randomness in nature. How do insects alight on only one surface? How does the wind move the trees and avian feathers and blades of grass and the surface of the water in a single, exact way?

      There is a version of me that is dead now. Ehli and Sothree could not convince me to come with them. I stayed with my sisters JS02 and JS04, and together we were recycled for organic material. Our DNA was sampled and studied to avoid the mistakes which created me as I am: imperfect, nervous, and prone to fits of

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