Stranger Things on Heaven and Earth

"I still don't get it," Tali said.

"Anyway!" Festina broke into the conversation. "Tell him why we -- why he -- exist, Tali."

"Right!" Tali nodded, then tapped at the controls. Now we were looking at the Earth, but shrouded with pale purple fog. It was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of silvery white orbs. "This is a rough map of the Chaosphere surrounding the Earth. For reasons we do not yet understand, the Strange has begun to get signals from human minds." She paused. "Basically...it's treating human imaginations as, um, travel destinations. Every time a human being writes down an idea, comes up with a story, starts a tabletop session, boots up a video game, it gets a little ping, which make these: Recursions, each one inspired by that momentary, fleeting impulse. Many are subsumed back into chaos, but some repeated destinations become stable enough to continue to exist as their own discrete worlds."

I blinked. "So..." I whispered, quietly. "This FTL network is making dimensions from our, out of their imaginations. And it's powerful enough to, um, make living beings? People?"

"More than that," Tali said, quietly. "The Chaosphere is more than just another level of reality. It's programmable reality. In this reality, anything is possible. Any technology, any magic, any monster humanity imagines can become real."

"Are there Reap-"

"Yes," Tali whispered.

"And Cth-"

"Yes," Festina said, shortly.

"And Godzi-"

"Oh that bastard!" Tracer said from the front.

I suddenly wanted to sit down. Festina put her hand on my shoulder, patting me gently. "There there, kid," she said. "Godzilla is more afraid of you than you are of him."

I rubbed my hands against my face. "And here I thought my biggest worry this summer was Mom's swim suit." I groaned and shook myself, trying to focus. "So, question. Why didn't you just fly the Normandy over my home town?" I asked, looking at Tali. "Just zap Skorzeny with the point defense lasers?"

Tali giggled. "Your recursion..." She tapped at her omnitool and brought up a hologram showing my home recursion. The silvery orb unwound, revealing my home town. There was the school, there were all the houses, there were the roads. It was so weird to think that my whole life, I had lived in a home town roughly ten miles wide. Tali continued to speak: "Your recursion is based on, um, well, other than some things-"

Incest, I thought. No wonder Mom was so fucking hot. No wonder so many sisters were best friends with their brothers. Oh god, that's why no girl would go out with me. They were busy fucking their siblings. Oh god.

"-Earth. Normal Earth physics," Tali said. "So, if we flew the Normandy into the recursion, it would be translated into something that makes sense in the context of the universe. There are ways to bring stuff from one universe to another, but the physical properties of anything that doesn't fit in another universe will start to decay."

"So, I drag a dragon into my home recursion," I said. "Five days later, it's just a big lizard."

"Basically," Tali said, smiling. "And if you brought a lightsaber, it'd eventually just become a...a..."

"Laser pointer," Festina said, smirking, with the tone of someone referencing something. Tali laughed and groaned.

"Bugger," Tracer hissed, cutting into our conversation as her fingers played across the holographic console -- tapping buttons and sweeping her fingers through the interface with casual ease. "The Harbinger's launched something."

"Something? What's something?" Festina asked.

"I dunno, something," Tracer said. "LIDAR and radar is getting zilch. It's like a black hole!"

"Okay, fuck-you-up black hole or figurative black hole?" Festina asked.

"It's coming right for us!" Tracer shouted as a response. We didn't need to be told to brace. My hands grabbed onto the holographic projector in the center of the bridge, while Festina locked her arms around the nearest wall support. Tali, showing the best sense and most ship combat experience, sat down as quickly as she could and grabbed onto the base of the console. I was about to wish that I had thought of that when the black hole hit the Normandy. The ship rocked and sparks flew from one of the weapon consoles along the wall. But it wasn't nearly as hard a hit as I had expected.

Festina grumbled under her breath. "Remember when people didn't shoot at spaceships? I do, I fucking remember..." she slapped the coms. "Bobbie, damage report."

"We have a hull breach in the cargo hold and a new life sign. No, wait, it's gone." Bobbie paused. "Back again. Shit."

Festina scowled. "Bobbie. Get Betsy. Verse, get your knives and join me, we're going in first."

I blinked. "How many fictional girls are on this ship?"

"Betsy's not a she," Tali said, sitting up, her faceplate almost bumping against the console. She muttered under her breath in Quarian, before standing. "It's an it."

Festina was already heading for the door. I started after her. She turned to face me, grabbing onto my arm. She scowled. "Listen, kid, I know you want to help, and someday, you might. But right now, you're just a civilian."

"I'm not just a civilian!" I snapped. "I'm just as fictional as the rest of you!" Saying it aloud still hurt. Festina flinched, then shook her head. She closed her eyes, then spoke her next words very carefully.

"Yes. But. I'm a fictional Explorer. Trained to go into dangerous situations and survive. Bobbie's a fictional Marine. Even Twilight Sparkle has gotten into more fights. Hell, she's taken on gods. You?" she opened her eyes, and they were hard and flinty. The kind of eyes that said: You are not arguing with me. And the truth floated in my mind. I was from some story spun off the Literotica incest sub-forum made up for a goddamn summer vacation contest, for fucks sake. Unless it was a weird ass incest story, I didn't know fucking kung-fu.

I jerked my arm from her grip.

"Stay here with Tracer and Tali and keep an eye on the Harbinger," Festina said, turning to the door.

The instant it shut, I slammed my fists onto the edge of the main console, my fingers clenched so tight that my knuckles were turning white. Tali put her three fingered hand on my shoulder and squeezed. I felt the sudden urge to roll my shoulder and get her hand off me. Instead, I looked at the shimmering map of the Strange and the dot that represented the Harbinger and her fighter escort. I licked my lips.

"Can we get a feed of the cargo hold?" I asked.

Tali nodded, then tapped at her omni-tool. The hologram changed to show the inside of the cargo hold. There was the Mako -- and I was one of the only people I had ever met who actually liked the Mako, floaty controls be damned. The real one looked far heavier and more weighty than the computerized version I had driven around who knows how many isolated planets in the comfort of my own home. The hole in the cargo hold was clear, but the object that had struck us was...less so. It looked like a needle made of a rippling black tear in reality. Like darkness had become physical and then got flung at us hard enough to pierce mass effect shielding and hardened armor plate.

The door opened and Festina and Verse entered. Festina was holding her hypersonic stunner and Verse walked next to her, casually tossing a glittering knife in the air, catching it casually. Something about the pale whiteness of the blade caught my eye.

"What knives are those?" I whispered.

"Uh, she got them from some place called Ar-ak-ass?" Tali said, pronouncing the name carefully.

"She stole a Fremen crysknife!?" I squeaked. Then Verse drew a second knife. "Two of them?"

"I don't think she stole them exactly," Tali muttered.

I bit my lip.

Something about that darkness felt uncomfortably familiar.

Vrr. Zzzt.

"Did you hear that?" I asked.

Tali shook her head a moment before the lightsaber roared to life. It illuminated a dark corner of the cargo hold in blood red. The wielder was shirtless, his skin gray and craggy, as if he had been let to desiccate. His face had a hideous scar that almost scooped one eye from his head, leaving the orb clouded and murky. His face was set and calm, despite his horrifying injuries. They looked as if they had never healed, and yet, he had never quite died. My eyes widened and my blood froze as I recognized him. I looked around the console and at the unfamiliar controls.

"Coms! Coms! Coms!" I said, desperately.

"Greetings!" Festina said, lifting her pistol. "I am a sentient citizen of the League of -- oh fuck it."

She pulled the trigger, and I could see she already knew it wasn't going to work. The cone of hypersonic noise that was supposed to jangle a human's nervous system so badly that they'd konk right out was invisible over the cameras. There wasn't even a nifty distortion effect, and the whirring sound was lost over the crackle of a real live, honest to god lightsaber. The Sith Lord, Darth Sion, walked forward without even breaking stride.

He lifted the lightsaber upwards.

Festina flung herself backwards in a roll. But even that wouldn't have saved her, considering the broad sweep of Sion's blade. Save that his saber met not open air...but the curved edge of Verse's knife. The teeth of Shai'Hulud, it was said, were sharper than any blade and tough enough to weather the skin-stripping sandstorms of the great deserts of Dune.

Turned out, they were roughly on par with cortosis.

Who knew?

Verse grinned at Darth Sion, and the cameras managed to catch the psychopathic light in her eyes as she purred: "Let's dance, scarboy."

Darth Sion looked less than amused. He brought his blade back, then swept it outwards, cutting at Verse's head. Verse ducked low, came up in his guard, and plunged both knives into his gut. She ripped upwards, then outwards, splashing the walls with black blood. The Sith Lord stepped backwards, blood rivulting along his chest. By that point, I had gotten my hands on the com and the PA to the cargo hold crackled on.

"Verse!" I said. "He's immortal! He can't die, the Dark Side of the Force sustains him."

Verse smirked as she stepped back to stand next to Festina, her knives dripping with blood.

"Goodie," she said, then threw a knife at Darth Sion's face. Sion lifted his palm, caught the blade in an invisible field of Force, then tossed it back at Verse's head. Verse jerked aside, rolled, and grabbed the knife from the air in a single fluid motion. She threw at Sion again, then charged forward. He swung his lightsaber at her and she met it with her other knife held in a reverse grip. Scion snarled, actual anger starting to show on his face as he brought his free hand around to grab at Verse's throat. Sparks flared from where crysknife met lightsaber, and Verse grabbed onto his wrist. "You're not the only one with magic, sorcerer."

Her palm flared with red light and flames exploded between her fingertips, scorching along Sion's wrist.

He didn't bellow. He simply flung his arms wide, releasing a concussive wave of Force that smashed Verse backwards and sent Festina -- who had been trying to find a good angle to fire another shot from -- rolling backwards. Festina hit the edge of the Mako and groaned, trying to get her feet under her, while Verse's feet slammed into the wall. She launched herself forward and drew a cylinder of pale metal from the small of her back. It unfolded with a clacking and snapping motion into a recurve bow, which she drew and loosed, all while flipping around to land on her feet.

Sion slashed the first arrow out of the air -- turning the wood to smoke and the metal broad-head arrow into a fine spray of red spots that glowed cherry-bright on the wall behind him. The second arrow he slashed in the same way as he walked towards Verse, his face twisted in a snarl of rage.

Then Verse fired her third arrow straight up. It hit the ceiling.

Bounced.

Then smashed into Sion's head. But rather than a broad-head, it's tip was a huge, bright red boxing glove. It crunched Sion's head into his neck like a serious overhanded haymaker and caused him to step backwards, looking wobbly.

I looked away from the screen at Tali.

"Okay," she said, her blush visible through her clouded faceplate. "She did steal the bow and arrows from Mr. Queen."

"Enough," the Sith Lord growled. He lashed out with his palm -- but rather than grabbing Verse, he yanked Festina out of cover. She gagged, clutching at her neck, her legs kicking as he lifted her into the air. "Throw down your weapons and give me the Trigger. Or I will crush her neck."

Verse snorted. "Read the room, buddy. I don't give a shit about the purple faced bitch."

Festina, despite being strangled, managed to lift her arm and flip Verse off.

"Hey, it's what you always said," Verse said -- not looking away from Scion as she drew another arrow. "That's what exp-"

The hail of fully automatic gunfire caught each of us off guard. I had been so horrified by watching the fight -- by being utterly unable to help in any way, shape or form -- that I hadn't noticed the elevator door opening again. I hadn't noticed the arrival of Bobbie Draper. In Betsy. Who wasn't a she. It was an it. And it, in this case, was a suit of Martian Congressional Republic Marine Corps power armor, with an arm mounted fully automatic Gatling gun loaded with an ungodly amount of high caliber, hollow point ammo. It caught Lord Sion in the chest and tore his arm and most of his torso off. Within a few seconds, his head was dangling from a thin strip of gray skin.

Sion thumped to the deck.

Festina dropped to her rump, coughing, gasping. She rubbed at her throat, her right cheek almost as purple as her left. She gasped once more, then rasped out: "F-Fucking...shoot him again!"

Bobbie, who had lowered her arm, lifted it up and hit the prone Sion with another burst. This one pulped his legs.

Verse laughed. "Fucking awesome. Do it again!"

"I think that's enough," Festina gasped, then coughed, and rubbed her neck. "Jesus. Add George Lucas to the fucking list."

"What list?" I asked, picking up the coms. Festina looked up at the security camera. Her face was wan.

"The list of writers whose ass I'm going to personally kick when I get to Earth Prime," Festina said. "He'll go right after Anthony Francis, right before Harlan Ellison."

"Uh, two things," I said, shaking my head as Bobbie stomped her power armor over to Sion and kicked the mangled -- mulched, really -- remains of his corpse. At least I hoped to god it was a corpse. But considering the powers of the Force were darn near limitless once you started to get into the Extended Universe, I wasn't going to feel comfortable until we dumped his body into a black hole. "Firstly, Harlan Ellison is like, eighty years old."

"Don't care," Festina said.

"Secondly, Sion's from Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords."

"Oh, he's one of mine," Tali said, sounding chagrined. "Festina added Bioware to the list after that time with the darkspawn."

I looked at her, then shook my head. "No! That's by Obsidian!"

"Oh!" Verse said, sounding cheery. "He's one of mine then." She looked down at Sion, then snorted. "Fucking pussy." She spat on his mangled chest.

***

Aboard the Harbinger, Mr. Morden watched the Normandy bank slightly to the left. At this rate, it'd reach the Orb of Worlds and the safety of its many recursions without the Harbinger drawing within range. He smiled slightly to himself.

"It did work out rather well, didn't it?" he murmured.

The door to the bridge opened and the most useful member of his network of allies stomped in. Otto Skorzeny had returned to his normal self, having translated out of the nameless recursion that the Reality Seed had been found in. He now looked like what he was: A burly, middle aged member of the Waffen S.S. Mr. Morden knew that his Associates found the SS laughable, and their end goals entirely misguided.

They sought to build order, after all. And the most tyrannical form of order there was.

But, like Sion, he was useful.

"Well, then," Skorzeny said, swaggering up to the bridge console. "It seems our scarred, hah, friend is not going to be helping us anymore. What is the plan now?"

Mr. Morden smiled.

***

The whole crew was on the bridge as we dove backwards towards the recursion. Well. All of us save one. I looked at the chair where Festina had been. "Okay, how did she teleport there?" I asked Tali. Tali sighed, then turned on her chair to face me. We were both at the engineering console, and she had been showing me how to operate some of the more simple controls.

"Festina is special," she said.

I looked at her blank faceplate, trying to read how I was supposed to take that. I mean, Festina was fucking gorgeous -- even if she had that birthmark. But, like, it was just an exotic splotch of color. It wasn't like it made her hideous or anything. My mind drifted to wondering about her -- there had been a scene in Hunted, the third book in the League of Peoples series. She had been made ultra horny by some pheromones (long story), and she had said the line: 'Right now, I just want to chew your clothes off and have you fuck me silly on the judo mat.'

I flushed as Tali slapped my shoulder. "Not like that!" she said -- her voice chiding. Had she read my mind? Then Tali continued and I breathed a faint sigh of relief. "It has nothing to do with her face. Okay..." She turned to the console, tapping her fingers. "Each recursion is populated by characters. But most characters are just shadows. Background characters. They're not even really sentient."

I nodded. "Like...stormtroopers?"

"Yeah," Tali said, cheerfully. "They're called shades. They can't really change or become aware of the universe outside of their recursion. So, even if you showed up as a...a...a..." She looked around the bridge. "Purple pony princess-"

"Huh?" Twilight Sparkle looked up from her book. "What?"

"-they'd still think you were part of whatever fiction they were originated from," Tali finished.

I nodded again. "That's why no one else thought that it was weird that two new students showed up on the last day of school?" I frowned. "So if they were shadows, that makes me a..."

"Spark!" Twilight said, standing up to walk over. She sat down next to me. I had Twilight Sparkle and Tali'Zorah sitting to either side of me. I'm pretty sure that this amount of sexy nerdity was so intense that I was about to drop dead from the surreal hotness of it. "I guessed the instant you noticed things were weird." She sighed. "I hoped to keep you in your home -- but..."

"It's okay." I smiled. "This is a bit up on my original plans for summer, after all. But...if I'm a Spark, then what's Festina? A super-Spark?" I asked.

Twilight shrugged. "The Chaosphere is broken, Malik. It was designed as an FTL network, but it has fallen to pieces over the million -- if not billions -- of years since it was constructed. Only a tiny fraction of sentient beings that it can interact with are given normal guest permissions." She smiled at me. "Basically, Festina has a train ticket, while the rest of us have to walk."

"So, she teleported to the recursion we're going to by asking!" I said, nodding.

"Not just teleported. She translated," Tali said.

"So, she appears in context," I said, grinning. "I'm beginning to get this!"