Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business RAINBOW GIRL - Book Nine - ANSWERS

CHAPTER ONE: ANDRÉS AANDRAISON

Back in her house in Sixteenth City, Dori began looking through the holos on the
memory crystals she had brought back from her father’s old house. She eventually began sorting them by date. Finding her parent’s wedding holos was an excellent start. She barely recognized a young Gaal Jindrich in a few of them.

Over the next couple of days, she determined that her parents had taken exactly four vacation trips in the old prospector cruiser. Their first trip had been their honeymoon, where they had visited the Rainbow Bridge on Xanthu. The second trip was to Sky City on Korr; the third and fourth were visits to the Lurnan Zoo, and to planet Vondra. She had herself accompanied them on these last two trips: the first as a nearly new-born, and the last as a toddler. It was strange to think of herself, her mother, and her father as a happy little family all those years ago, when her mother had been gone so long.

She sent a message to Alder Lokasenna, and received an almost immediate reply.

“Hello, Dori,” Ms. Lokasenna answered. “What can I do for you?”

“Is there any possibility that Dah owned a star cruiser that was somehow missing from the itemization of property in his will?” asked Dori.

“Oh, certainly it’s possible,” said the attorney. “Not likely, though. I drew up the will with your father; he listed the major property items, and we added an ‘and all other property’ line to cover anything else. Should there be any later discovery, that property would come to you as well. However, I think it unlikely that your father overlooked so large an item as a space cruiser.”

“I know he actually owned one at one point,” said Dori. “I learned recently that he was a Space Prospector before he married Mah. I was just curious about whatever happened to it.”

“If you are really concerned, I could search the vessel registries for the last fifty years, and see who it was sold to.”

“Thank you,” said Dori. “If I know my Dah, it was probably originally registered under the name of Eva Jindrich.”

“Your mother?” Alder Lokasenna raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. I’ll get back to you as soon as you can.”

When she ended the call with Alder, there was another call waiting. It was Zel Lani.

“Hello, Dori,” she said. “I’m afraid I have some news. Bad, I think. Please try not to be upset.”

“Now you’re making me worry,” said Dori.

“Ulu and I are planning the wedding, and it’s just getting out of hand. We’ve decided on inviting just close family. Dori, you almost are family to Ulu, but we just think if we invite you, then to be fair we’ll have to invite the rest of the Subs and all their families, and then it just snowballs. Right now, we’re looking at over a hundred guests, counting both sides of the family, for our ‘small, intimate’ ceremony. Please don’t be offended. I told Ulu he should tell you himself, but he’s loaded down at the University right now.”

“Oh, no,” said Dori. “It’s just that like all men, he’s a coward. Zel, I completely understand. If I were to get married again, I would want it small and simple, too. My first wedding was an opera-class spectacle, and I wouldn’t want to do it again.”

“Oh, thank you, Dori, for being so understanding,” said Zel. “We’re just not sending invites to most people, but I thought you should know we’re thinking of you.”

“Where is the wedding going to be?” asked Dori.

“In a hall on Lupra, right near Ulu’s place, and near the college where we met. And we’re taking our honeymoon on Ventura. I know it’s kind of corny and trite, but it’s what we both really want.”

“Would you like to get arrested?” asked Dori. “I know some people with some wicked probability-altering software you could take with you.”

Zel laughed. “No, thanks,” she said.

“Or, you could go visit Throon, and have Calamity King put a curse on you. Then follow some poor guy around all night, and he will win instead of you. That way, he’s the one that gets arrested.”

“Oh, Dori,” said Zel. “You are a very, very bad person. I’m glad we’re friends.”

When the call with Zel ended, Alder Lokasenna was back on the line.

“Dori, this is very odd,” she said. “There is a star-cruiser class vessel registered to Andres Aandraison and Eva Jindrich, as the ‘X.S.S. Eva’s Wardrobe’. It is currently docked at Seventh City Satellite Spaceport, docking bay Plural Zed Epsilon. There is also an asset of pre-paid dock fees, set to run out in forty-seven years. The dock fees were originally paid ninety-nine years into the future. As executor of your father’s will, I have already filed the necessary paperwork to see that the registry is changed into your name. But I’m afraid this is going to seriously impact your tax bill on Xolnar this year; I have already filed for an automatic extension for you.”

“Thank you, Alder,” said Dori. “But I think I should be able to cover it. What is a fifty-year-old star-cruiser’s appraisal value? A hundred thousand? A million credits?”

“Oh, no, certainly not that much,” said Alder. “I have already requested an appraisal. And just to be safe, with your permission, I am going to begin a deep-title search for any other property your father may have neglected to mention in his will proper.”

“Fine with me,” said Dori. “It appears my father was a deep and complex man. Hm. Someone told me recently that under the surface, we all are deep and complex.”

Interested to see what secrets the space cruiser holds!

Nice of Dori to be so understanding about Ulu and Zel's wedding. I like how you sprinkle her main narrative with these little bits and pieces from Dori's friends and acquaintances. Makes it a lot more realistic.

CHAPTER TWO: WARDROBES AND LANTERNS

When her call with Alder Lokasenna had ended, Dori called Zel right back.

“Zel, I need the professional help of an Interlac major, book lover, and author. Feel free to send me a bill, if you like. Seriously. Here’s the riddle: It turns out that in his younger years, my father was partners with my uncle, Gaal Jindrich of Thanar, in a Space Prospecting business, in which they had substantial financial success. When my father married my mother, Eva Jindrich, he purchased the star-cruiser he and my uncle had used. My parents used this as personal transportation for brief, exotic, and possibly expensive vacations thoughout their short marriage. My father renamed the star-cruiser ‘Eva’s Wardrobe’, either before or after she passed away. I can’t imagine it is because she kept her extra clothes in it. Any ideas as to what he was referencing?”

“That’s actually an easy one,” said Zel, “Given my love of myth and children’s books. It’s a reference to a collection of ten children's stories known as ‘Lewis’ Fairy Tales’, which dates from late 19th-century Earth. My favorite was always 'Perelandra', because it was a real romance, where good triumphs over evil. But there is also one fairy-tale in the collection called ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’, in which a magical wardrobe—that is, a clothing closet—transports a group of children to a faeryland of talking animals, centaurs, unicorns, and so on. Your parents probably meant that this cruiser was intended to serve as transportation to distant ‘magical’ adventures—and was a gift from your father to your mother.”

“You know, Zel,” said Dori, “Explained by anyone else but you, that would sound pretty romantic. As it is, it sounds like a history lesson. Does Ulu know how completely practical a girl he’s marrying?”

“Maybe,” said Zel, “But there are also a lot of interesting things about me that Ulu doesn’t know… yet. The joy is in the discovery.”

When the call ended, Dori sat back, contemplative. 'Lewis' Fairy Tales' - now why did that sound familiar?

Of all the memory crystals she had found in her father’s old house, there was one substantially larger than the rest. It was intended for manipulation by a young child's clumsy little hands. 'My First Memory Crystal'.

It was full of illustrated children's books-- about a thousand. And some of the books were quite old. Grimm's Fairy Tales. Anderson's Fairy Tales. Lang's Fairy Books. And Lewis' Fairy Tales. This had been her library as a child. And there were the ten stories in the Lewis' Fairy Tale book.

1 The Magician's Nephew
2 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
3 The Horse and His Boy
4 Prince Caspian
5 The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
6 The Silver Chair
7 The Last Battle
8 Out of the Silent Planet
9 Perelandra
10 That Hideous Strength

Could they tell her something about her parents? The ship referenced at least one story in this collections.

The stories in the book were all very short: only three to five pages each, with big, beautiful illustrations facing the text on each page. There were the Pevensi children, with the Magical Wardrobe. And here, having breakfast with a family of badgers. Here was the Wicked Witch, who stole the youngest Pevensi boy using poisoned candy, now in battle with the fierce but friendly Lion who had come out of nowhere to rescue him. And here, at the beginning, the very first picture: the Pevensi children, standing under the Magic Lampost, which was what stood on the other side of the Magical Wardrobe.

“Lanterns again,” Dori thought. “My life is filled with magic lanterns.”

She also found a book called ‘Olde Fairy Poems for Children’.

And there it was again:

‘Three rings for the Elven Kings, Under the Sky
Seven rings for the Dwarf Lords, in their Halls of Stone
Nine rings for the Mortal Men, Doomed to Die
One for the Dark Lord, on his Dark Throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie
One Ring to Rule them all
One Ring to Find them
One Ring to Bring them all
And in the Darkness Bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie’

Well, she had been to Mordor, and had found a Ring. Did that make her the Dark Lord now? She still couldn’t take the ring off, but it wasn’t tight, or uncomfortable. Sometimes she almost forgot it was there. And she no longer felt that strange tug that had once led her to Ganthet and Sayd.

CHAPTER THREE: VALOR AND THUNDER

Dori got ready to head up to the satellite, to see her parents’ old cruiser. Now her cruiser, it seemed.

There was a knock at the door.

Valor and Thunder, of the Legion of Super-Heroes, were standing in her yard.

Two of the most powerful beings in the galaxy.

“Excuse us for not calling ahead, Ms. Aadraison,” said the girl called Thunder. “But may we impose upon you for less than one hour of your time?”

“There is only a small window when the four of us can be together,” Valor added.

“Four?” said Dori.

“We would like to take you to meet someone on the Sorcerer’s World. He will introduce himself to you.”

Dori’s sense of mystery, and her innate confidence in any group with the name ‘Legion’ in the title, overcame any second thoughts she may have had.

“Let me go change into something more appropriate,” she said. “Please, come in for a moment.”

She quickly changed into the old ‘Rainbow Girl’ costume, including the trans-suit Ulu had given her, and put on her Subs ring. “Ready to go,” she told the two heroes, who had failed to sit, or show any of other sign of making themselves at home.

There was a two-meter-tall crystalline globe sitting in her yard, which the Legionnaires invited her to enter. The two heroes grasped the globe, and it fell away into the starry sky faster than Dori had ever left a planet before.

Valor: Trans-temporal replicant of the original Lar Gand, he was from some strange, twentieth-century hyper-time of quantum possibility that had never actually existed.

Thunder: CeCe Beck, from the Shazam heroic dynasty, sixty centuries in the future.

And the travel-globe: Dori recognized the construction.

Transparent, high-tensile carborundum, alloyed with pluridium, and coated with an ultra-polymer, inside and out. The same construction that was used in the Time Bubbles.

They entered hyper-space at a level she had never before experienced, the outlandish energy effects perfectly visible through the bubble, then exited into truespace almost instantly, not far above the Sorcerer’s World.

The old wizard was dressed in a long scarlet robe, neatly trimmed in gold. His graying hair was tied back in a ponytail, his long gray beard was also neatly trimmed. He wore a silken white cowl over his shoulders and chest, embroidered with gold, and a matching white hood. He carried a long polished wooden staff.

“Greetings, Dori Aandraison. I am the Wizard Klavanatus.”

Dori waited. Apparently, that was the only explanation and introduction she was going to get.

“Thunder, say your magic word,” the Wizard Klavanatus commanded.

“SHAZAM!” said Thunder. And the lightning answered her.

The four were now standing in a dimly lit cave. At the far end of the cave stood a marble throne, with an immense block of some black stone suspended over it by a very thin cord.

“My future throne,” the Wizard Klavanatus explained.

“What is this place?” Dori asked. “Where are we?”

“It is a place which exists beyond the Universe, outside of Space and Time. This is the Rock of Eternity. It is also my final resting place, although for now I reside on the Sorcerer’s World. Dori Aandraison, Behold!”

He gestured towards a display of statues along a wall.

There were seven of them, squat, ugly, and grotesque gargoyles, almost comical in design. Seated, each statue nevertheless stood around nine feet tall. Each had a circlet or tiara, crooked and broken, carved into around its forehead. Their eyes were closed, but Dori had a creepy sensation that they were all staring at her.

“Are these the Seven Dwarf Lords?” she asked.

“No,” said the Wizard Klavanatas, “These are our nemeses, the Seven Deadly Enemies of Man. Study them closely. Do not hurry, learn to recognize their true selves.”

The first was carved from a dull and sickly gray-green stone. Words carved in the base altered and changed, as Dori tried to read them.
Jealousy...Envy...Pride...Willfulness...Hubris...Superbia

“They represent complex philosophical concepts,” the Wizard Klavanatus explained. “They are not easily named with a single name. Whole books have been written about each of the Enemies.”

The second was made of a dirty peach-colored stone. Nevertheless, tiny specks of gold glittered within its surface:
Avarice...Greed...Covetousness

The sneer carved into the face of the third statue made it easy to recognize. It had been sculpted from rose-colored quartz, but unlike its fellows, it was severely chipped and cracked all over:
Anger...Wrath...Hatred...Rage

The fourth statue was of some golden stone, but with smears of sickly yellow lichen or fungus growing on its surface. The words beneath read:
Fear...Cowardice...Invidia...Phobos

The fifth was a grimy turquoise, the hard stone cleverly carved to appear fat, soft and sagging:
Sloth...Idleness...Indolence...Laziness...Apathy

The sixth was a deeper, darker gray-blue color:
Gluttony...Corruption...Selfishness...Injustice

The last was carved from some soapy mauve stone:
Desire...Lust...Lechery...Porneia...Luxuria

“These are corrupted versions of the Seven Entities of the Emotional Spectrum,” said Dori.

“These are the Seven Entities of the Emotional Spectrum,” the Wizard Klavanatus corrected her. “The Enemies and the Entities are two sides of the same coin. They can bring great power, but they are not to be trusted. No living being can safely rely upon them; ultimately, they will corrupt, and lead to Evil and Disaster.”

“Ganthet said something like that,” Dori said. “I mean, in his Histories of the Entities. I have been studying them, off and on,” she hurriedly explained. “Ulu Vakk and I think they might relate to my powers.”

Klavanatus grasped her right hand, and held it up, examining the mother-of-pearl ring. “The Entities, the Enemies, are beings of great power,” he told her. “They are not, I suppose, Evil in themselves, but great power always corrupts, eventually. A kind and pure heart can go a long way toward forestalling that corruption, however. Sometimes for a lifetime.” The Wizard Klavanatus looked deep into Dori’s eyes, and smiled. “I am comforted, Dori Aandraison, to see you as you are, and by what I have seen of your future. And Ganthet, may I say, was always a little weirdo. Thunder, say your magic word.”

“SHAZAM!”

And they were back on the Sorcerer’s World.

As Thunder and Valor flew down from the Xolnaran sky, Dori noticed something in her front yard. It was another Thunder and Valor, with another Travel Sphere, with another Dori. The duplicates shot up into the sky with the sphere as Dori and "her" Valor and Thunder were landing.

“I told you it would be less than an hour of your time,” said Valor.

“We know of your history of heroism," said Thunder. "I hope we can be friends.”

”I would certainly not want you for enemies," said Dori.

And they were gone.

Those are certainly interesting developments! Good job incorporating real-world stories such as Narnia. I liked that scene demonstrating the true nature of the 7 entities. Having Valor and Thunder appear was a pleasant surprise.

CHAPTER FOUR – POETRY

Dori became distracted by a few more miscellaneous bits of poetry scattered throughout the fifty-year-old memory crystal.

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The Fairies
by William Allingham

Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting,
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather.

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain-lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He's nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music,
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen,
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When they brought her down again
Her friends were dead and gone.
So they took her lightly back
Between the night and morrow;
They thought she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn trees
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite?
He shall find the thornies set
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting,
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather.

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"How To Treat Elves"
by Morris Bishop

I met an elf man in the woods,
The wee-est little elf!
Sitting under a mushroom tall--
'Twas taller than himself!

"How do you do, little elf," I said,
"And what do you do all day?"
"I dance 'n fwolic about," said he,
"'N scuttle about and play;"

"I s'prise the butterflies, 'n when
A katydid I see,
'Katy didn't' I say, and he
Says 'Katy did!' to me!

"I hide behind my mushroom stalk
When Mister Mole comes froo,
'N only jus' to fwighten him
I jump out'n say 'Boo!'

"'N then I swing on a cobweb swing
Up in the air so high,
'N the cwickets chirp to hear me sing
'Upsy-daisy-die!'

"'N then I play with the baby chicks,
I call them, chick chick chick!
'N what do you think of that?" said he.
I said, "It makes me sick.

"It gives me sharp and shooting pains
To listen to such drool."
I lifted up my foot, and squashed
The poor insipid fool.

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My Fairy
by Lewis Carrol

I have a fairy by my side
Which says I must not sleep,
When once in pain I loudly cried
It said "You must not weep"
If, full of mirth, I smile and grin,
It says "You must not laugh"
When once I wished to drink some gin
It said "You must not quaff".

When once a meal I wished to taste
It said "You must not bite"
When to the wars I went in haste
It said "You must not fight".

"What may I do?" at length I cried,
Tired of the painful task.
The fairy quietly replied,
And said "You must not ask".

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The Gemlike Flame
By Richard Percival Lister

There was a chap- I forget his name-
Who burned with a hard and a gemlike flame;
His soul was pure, and his soul was white,
And is shown like a candle in the night.

This singular state that chap achieved
By living up to the things he believed;
He shunned the Better, pursued the Best,
And wedded the Form the Thing Expressed,

He strove for Virtue with all his heart,
And worshipped Life as a form of Art;
And everything Vulgar he flung aside
Till his soul was perfectly purified.

And that explains how this poor chap came
To burn with a hard and a gemlike flame;
And that explains why my old friend Mike
Laid him out with a marlinspike.

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“{Why do people publish horrible stuff like this for children?}” Dori thought to herself.

CHAPTER FIVE: EVA’S WARDROBE

Dori changed out of her ‘Rainbow Girl’ costume, and into a more appropriate flight suit. She took a taxibot to the Sixteenth City Space Elevator.

She checked out her personal flyer, and flew over to the Seventh City Satellite to look at her father’s old cruiser. It must have been an antique even fifty years ago: cylindrical, rocket-shaped, with hidden, internal nacelles. It was a dirty gray-burgundy color. She went back to the satellite, and talked to the dockmaster.

“It’s in fine condition, considering its age,” she told Dori. “Of course, before you take it out, you ought to have it checked over professionally. And, of course, it was drained of fuel before going into dock. We have re-fitted the batteries, though, so you can go in and take a look around.”

At the end of a long, tall corridor, the old hatch door showed through an opening in the station wall. It was rusted and grimy, and covered with new glove-prints from the techs that had been working on the ship, but had not bothered to clean it at all. It slid open easily.

The closets and storage compartments on the bridge were empty. The interior walls were clean. There was an ozone smell of fresh air, newly pumped into a vacuum. The two onboard quarters were equally empty. The back of the ship had been modified into a large cargo bay. It echoed hollowly. There was no trace of her parents on board, nothing to say that the ‘Eva’s Wardrobe’ had ever belonged to anyone special. Her Dah must have thoroughly cleaned it out after her Mah’s death.

She would have to re-name this ship, Dori thought. She couldn’t see flying around the galaxy in her mother’s old armoire.

Dori went back to the bridge. The fuel gauge showed empty, but all other systems seemed to be within normal operating parameters. She was about to leave, when she noticed one thing out of place. On a corner of the dashboard, far back against the wall, was a small, black, felt-covered box. Stretching over the dash, Dori could barely reach it. It had no lock; it opened easily.

Dori felt the familiar dizziness, light-headedness, nausea, and tingling sensation. Four tiny metal flakes- blue, red, gold, and white- lay on a small black silken pillow within the lead-lined box. She snapped it shut hastily. The nausea faded, but the tingling sensation was worse. The room seemed smaller, falling away. Her flight suit felt tight, stretching. She realized she was growing.

She dropped the box, and ran to the shrinking hatch, barely squeezing through in time. Her body was continuing to expand, growing rapidly. She hit her head on the ceiling, twenty feet above. Still she continued to grow. She was filling the corridor; both the hatch into her ship, and the corridor exit, were much too small for her to fit through. Fortunately, she stopped growing at fifty feet, small enough that she could still fit within the corridor, if she lay down at full-length. Her flight suit was made of hyper-polymers and other superelastic materials, but stretched this thin, it was less than entirely modest. At least it was not strangling her, nor had it been ripped to shreds. “…and it’s not like there is room for a crowd of people in here now, anyway,” she thought.

Dockmaster Belinda arrived in only a few minutes. Sensors had detected a tremendous increase in mass in this part of the station, requiring the computers to re-balance the gyroscopes.

The dockmaster was speechless.

“My parents left a little something unusual on their ship,” Dori explained. “I’ll probably return to normal in, oh, perhaps three days. Probably less. Certainly less.”

“I should hope so,” said the dockmaster. “Er… not to add insult to injury, but we’re going to have to charge you extra for this. Your additional mass is causing orbital instability, and we may have to use thrusters to get us back on course. And, uh, I hope you aren’t expecting us to feed you? Obviously, you’re not going anywhere, but I’m afraid we don’t have that kind of supply here on the station.”

“I guess we’ll just take it as it comes,” said Dori.

Fortunately, the effects lasted only six hours this time. By then, Dori felt she really needed to use the cleanroom. There was, of course, one on the cruiser. As soon as she closed the door, the comm in the bridge dashboard began to buzz.

“Never fails,” she said to herself. Twenty seconds later, she answered the comm.

It was dockmaster Belinda. “That sudden lurch you felt,” she said, “Was the station thrusters re-righting us after a sudden loss of mass in your section. I assume you are back to normal now? And you have a visitor. I am sending her over now.”

There was a knock on the ship’s hatch. Dori opened it, and said, “Come!” in her best captain’s voice.

It was a middle-aged woman with close-cropped brown hair and piercing, steel-grey eyes.

“You really need to have that hatch cleaned,” she said. “Preferably professionally. I am Agent Negacci of the Interstellar Counter-Intelligence Corps. I understand you are holding a controlled substance on board this ship?”

“Um, yes, I suppose I am,” said Dori. “It’s just… I didn’t know it was here. It belonged to my late father…”

“Yes, yes,” said I.C.C. Agent Negacci. “I am not here to take excuses. I am here to do a job. Where is the object?”

Dori picked up the felt-covered box, still lying on the floor.

“No need to open it,” said Agent Negacci. “The I.C.C. is equipped with penetrascanners.” She took out a small device. A beam of light played over the box. “Four isotopes of sigellian. Very rare. You ought to have it professionally appraised.” She pulled out an Omnicom, and flipped the ‘record’ toggle. “You agree with the I.C.C.’s assessment that you are in possession of a controlled substance,” she read. “You agree that you new serve as steward and custodian of said controlled substance. You will not sell, gift, or otherwise transfer said substance without proper notification to the U.P. Bureau of Controlled Substances, and the I.C.C. You will not perform any unapproved experiments with said controlled substance the without written approval of a local Scientific Review Board. You acknowledge that you have received a copy of the full catalog of your obligations to your personal Omnicom files.” Thumbprint here, please. She offered the Omnicon. “May I see the box?” she asked. Dori handed it over.

Agent Negacci turned the box upside-down. She scanned a small memory crystal embedded in the bottom. “This appears to be a similar agreement, originally entered into by your father. Things have changed over fifty years. Read the newest revision of the Catalog of Obligations carefully. The U.P. Bureau of Controlled Substances will offer you…” she paused, entered a code into the Omnicom, then continued: “40,000 credits for your custodianship of these sigellian chips. Contact them only if you wish to sell at that price. Have a good day.” Agent Negacci left briskly, while muttering under her breath.

Dori spent the next few hours familiarizing herself with the old ship’s antique computer system. She went down to the Satellite Café for lunch. The food was about as good as she expected, but filling, at least. She returned to the ship’s computer, and was just considering whether to spend the night in the ship’s quarters, or go back to her home in Sixteenth City, when she felt the peculiar tingling again for the third time in twelve hours. She rushed for the hatch, but failed to make it, tripping over her flight suit. She was only nine inches tall.

“Well, that answers where I’ll sleep tonight,” she told herself. Wrapping herself in the folds of her flight suit, she was awakened six hours later by the characteristic tingling sensation, as she grew back to her normal size. She got dressed, checked out with the new dockmaster on duty, got in her flyer, and flew back to the Sixteenth City Satellite. Once home, she took the precaution of ordering a huge tent, which was delivered by flying drone. She set it up over the snow in her backyard, and installed a Maxwell Exchanger to keep it warm. She had barely completed her preparations when her six hours of normalcy were up, and she was fifty feet tall again. She spent most of her time in the tent dozing uncomfortably. When she spent another six hours tiny, she ate as much as she could stomach from her pantry, so that she was not at all hungry for the six hours she spent at normal size. She waited a good thirty minutes in the backyard tent for her next giant transformation, but it never came. She went back into her house.

“I honestly hate sigellian,” she wrote in her daily planner.

Those are some funny and interesting poems! Will elves and fairies show up then? The squashed elf was amusing, as was the burning man meeting his end. Poor Bridget, and poor fellow whose fairy won't let him do anything.

I hope that's the end of Dori's size-changing. Good twist, I honestly thought the initial growth was it.

The ICC certainly seems oddly lax about sigellian, but I am sure they have their methods of knowing whether some are being transferred.

I am a great believer in the principle of Chekhov's Gun.

A wonderful principle of writing, Chekhov's Gun. Cool!

CHAPTER SIX: THE ENTITIES OF THE EMOTIONAL SPECTRUM

Dori Aandraison dreamed.

The mother-of-pearl ring on her finger floated off her finger, up and away into the air, expanding into a large round window. A spark of light appeared in the dark depths within the ring. A caduceus came floating up out of the spark, wrapped in two snakes, one black and one white. The white snake splintered into a rainbow of colors, nine snakes now writhing in space. Dori floated up, out, and over her bed, gazing at the serpents floating nearer and nearer. They burst out of the ring, invading her room: white, green, red, yellow, orange, blue, indigo, violet, black. They had the heads of dragons, the black snake had a face like a human skull. Their tails stretched back into the beginning of time.

“We have missed you,” the snakes hissed. “Twice you have left us. We welcome you back again.”

Dori shook her head. She did not like these voices in her head.

“Look,” they said, swimming out of the ring, “See what was.” Irveang Polamar was lying in bed, sleeping, nearly thirty years in the past. A tiny fever worm dropped from the ceiling, onto his temple. The picture froze. “It was a terrible oversight, with a tragic conclusion,” the Entities whispered. “The room should have been more thoroughly cleaned. But you can make it right. Look at the worm,” they crooned.

Up close, the fever worm resembled the Entity-snakes a bit too closely. Gray and dull, it lay frozen in time. Then, it twisted. Dori saw it was much longer than it first appeared, existing not only in space, but in time. It wound through space and time backwards, emerging from an egg, becoming a part of its mother worm, spreading out into a cloud of component elements throughout the planet, then expanding into a spiraling cloud of matter around a star, ejected from an un-exploding nova, and back and back into the beginning of the universe, a pulsating strand of forever-changing matter and energy, extending backwards through time, and forward into the future as well.

“But what if those elements had never existed?” the Entities crooned. “Make them vanish from the universe, and Irveang Polamar lives again—in fact, he never dies”

Dori reached out, fingers entwining the four-dimensional strand. It would be so easy. A little tug, and the strand of elements would snap, come loose from the universe, and she would be happy again. She imagined the universe, so little changed, without this one strand running through it. This was her true power. This was the power of the Entities, the Enemies…

Dori started awake. Sweat drenched her pillow, her sheets. She racked her memories. No, everything was the same. She hadn’t pulled on the thread. Reality as she knew it was still intact.

She shivered, with cold sweat and fear.

Yikes. Kind of scary... These entities sure want Dori back...