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Rite of Passage

"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams..." - Willy Wonka

Location: The demi-plane of Omphalos

Time: Mostly irrelevant; plane time axis currently detached from surrounding dimensions (rate depending on whim of rulers, and varying by region)

Karen looked out onto the field where her daughter was playing with several of the Invid children. Tinya, named for her tragic late aunt, had enjoyed a full normal childhood - well, as normal as one could be, as one of the first children born and raised in the realm. Unlike her mother and older siblings, her aging rate had been manipulated to where she had advanced rapidly to a toddler, then normal human speed from there onward. Invid children had taken a bit longer to come about, and even then tended to stay on one of the other worlds in the "pocket dimension" where time progressed much more rapidly, to allow the Invid to rebuild their culture as humans once more.

The Regis still came to visit, every so often, having pretty much chosen to be more the grandmother to her race, than the mother figure she once was. After all, she was no longer the sole means of reproduction for the race, previously creating Invid through a method as much a psychic manipulation of matter as it was a spawning process. When she did, she would bring some of her chosen favorites of her descendants to play with Karen's child. By this time, Tinya had probably been friends of some of her current playmates' grandparents at one point or another, given the time differential; and probably the aunt of some of them.

Karen had insisted that Zor help the Invid genome, horribly constricted as it was with just the Regis & Regent's DNA, by fathering some children with the Invid, including one son with the Regis that currently held the Regent title, and with his wife had assumed the day-to-day leadership of the people. The Invid were in the odd situation of being "cast INTO paradise", having to reestablish a culture and how individuals interact, with little to go on - but at least with their needs mostly attended to (and much of the rest handled by the still-present Invid drive to farm and craft). Still, they had to interact with the few humans back on the main Omphalan world, and learn aspects of society there.

Karen and Zor's own court was made up of a few dozen castaways they'd picked up on ventures out into other dimensions, as well as some people from the magical setting that Karen had ended up in after her first, instinctive, dimensional jaunt from Optera. That wasn't much, but it was more than what the Invid personally had to work with in rediscovering individuality. The Invid coming to play with a human child helped encourage that growth, though in time there would hopefully be more children to interact between the two cultures. But, that would have to wait until after she was done with her project to mold an Earth that did not have Tyroleans or Invid, into one that would be conducive to receiving diplomatic contact from her birth world; the last thing she needed for that project would be trying to do it pregnant, or with a child in tow.

Anyway, it was time for Tinya to get ready for a more active role in their little family operation. She was physically about sixteen, and should be doing things much more mature than the types of games she played with the Invid. Ironically, they were games that Karen never really got to play, having only a couple friends to play with in her very abbreviated childhood. "Noel got to have all the fun," Karen muttered to herself.

"Tinya, it's supper time. Come on in, I need to talk to you, as well."

"Coming, Mom."

***********

After the meal, Karen had Tinya sit down with her in their "viewing room". It was effectively a place where one could watch any manner of television or film, but it could also be used to view other worlds, usually those portrayed by said mediums, or even books. Better, one could take that process in reverse, viewing the worlds of those other realities, and saving the viewing as a video recording. Once her magical friends could come up with a device to convert those recordings into a technological medium, she planned on using long-term recordings, edited down, in her world-altering plans - not to force other worlds to conform, as Haydon did, but to give them the chance of avoiding the pitfalls of her own Earth, or other worlds.

"Daughter, the time has come for me to show you the end of that one series that I've had you studying for the last few months. I've decided to send you to try to resolve its situation, without the violence and betrayal that corrupted its original resolution."

"Won't messing around with a dimensional anomaly be dangerous? And, you've not shown me the last few episodes in the series."

"Yes, it will be very dangerous. Their plan to fix their world will work, but only so much as shattering a layer of ice on a pond, then letting it freeze back, 'fixes' the ice. Splinters will go everywhere, and what they get back won't necessarily be what they lose. They'll probably cause further duplication on the worlds, and if the sequel to the series is correct, cause echoes of themselves and their actions to resound through unrelated worlds, even after their fix, that will contribute to misery and violence for centuries."

"So, what is the fix?"

"I'll show you tonight what they do. In the morning, you must decide if you are ready to attempt to step in and attempt to prevent the events of those last episodes. What we will have to do, is no less than opening a conduit from here into that dimensional instability, and draw that gestalt world here. If we excise it from that node, anomaly and all, it will cause the source time lines to snap back to their original paths, then we can use the powers we have here to settle the conflicts between the factions on that world. We can't just wipe it - too many people have been born and lived productive lives in the merged world, to simply just end it - that's effectively what they chose, by their blunt-force-trauma means of attempting to undo the anomaly."

"So, how are we doing this?"

"Well, it's going to be less 'we', and more 'you' doing it; I have to be here, so that when the time comes to try to merge the world into this realm, I can manipulate the dimensional energies - in fact, that's what the Regis came here to discuss. It will take me, your father, and the Regis to control things from this end - but we have to have a conduit into that realm to start and control the process - that will be you. I warn you now - there's a good chance we will fail, and also a good chance that you might well be destroyed in the attempt, should it fail - and maybe even if we succeed. I will let you see how things will unfold without our interference first, before you make your decision."

Together, they watched the end of the series; the androids turning their backs on their society, and the female's sacrifice to save the life of the lover of the human man she had come to love. The attempts at betrayal and counter-betrayal by the two human races, and the battle for the beanstalk. The sacrifice of the male android, and the goodbyes between the two male leads, and the women who loved them, as they entered the focus of the anomaly, and confronted - themselves. In shooting their earlier counterparts, they removed the anomaly, by creating an even greater paradox. The de-merging of the worlds showed a mix of realities, where some of the wrongs were corrected, and yet bleedover remained, and one of the heroes both back with his original human lover, and also reborn as one of the near-humans, with his lover of that race, and their child.

Yet, these were hardly conclusive as to what really happened, and the episodes of what was purported to be a sequel showed a world where none of the desired effects were actually felt. That the being supposedly the parthenogenic descendant of that couple eventually made it to Valhalla did not counter the fact that the male did not make the transition despite the supposed happy resolution, leaving the woman to have a daughter, who in turn would have daughters that were clones of herself, for several centuries. Something really needed to be done.

"I'll do it, Mother. Someone has to."

*********

Tinya had gotten herself as ready as she thought she could be, and dressed up for the mission. The toys and frivolous things of childhood were set aside, exchanged for a suit of armor like that her Aunt Noel had once worn, and its matching motorcycle mecha. While she didn't anticipate going into combat, and would probably have to shed the equipment once the transfer started, it was better to be prepared and safe, than otherwise. Likewise, she had a video player that she could use to show those on the other side, what she was there to try to prevent. She chose a time frame within the show to make her move, had the viewing room switch to a universal mirror of that show, then stepped through the looking glass, into the internal hallways of the Glomarr. She opened the door to her side, wheeled in the Cyclone, then stepped over to the nearest intercom station, and called the bridge.

"Shaya, you've got an intruder on board - namely me. It's urgent I talk to you and the rest of the crew, NOW. I'm headed for the recreation room, and I suggest that your officers, and all your non-Emaan passengers meet me there - this is a matter of the life and death of your reality."

"Who are you?"

"My name is Tinya. What I am, is a bit harder to describe. Do you remember the discussion of the space-time collapse, and how the worlds came together, back in your city? It's best to think of me as being someone from one of the universes that was NOT brought into the merged world, and I've come here to help you solve this without resorting to the dangerous plan that the best Human and Emaan scientists could come up with. Frankly, their idea can work, but what it requires is more than what my family was willing to see you all pay."

Tinya stepped down the hall, and into the room where some of the crew were already present. Slowly, the rest of the crew and guests filed in.

"Let me start off with a more formal introduction. My name is Tinya; I am the heir to a world that sits outside of normal perceptions of reality, though my mother was born on an Earth very much like any other. Due to the special nature of that world, I have been able to watch your reality in great detail, and in some ways no each of you better than you do yourselves.

"For example; the little side-trip that the Colonel and Mome recently took back home to Mu, that they haven't told you about, Shaya - where they found the last vestiges of dissent against the war on biologic life being hunted down and slaughtered. They sabotaged the Mu's plans, and returned to help you defend against it. Oh, and Mome, if you can hold off wasting your power, if I get you to my homeworld, we can replace that dying power supply of yours. And, consider who really loves you in more than a 'little sister' type of love.

"As for the rest of you - Mimsy, you're pregnant; you'll start showing symptoms of it in the next day or two - and it will start giving you greater than normal issues, given the father is human. You'll be a combat liability, so don't even think of leaving the ship.

"The Humans are planning on betraying you, much as many of the Emaan military are conspiring to betray them; after all, both groups' leadership councils have that crazy idea that only one world will survive the restoration, when in reality all the restoration would do is create a 'grandfather paradox', from the two keys to the mess killing their earlier selves. The fact that it will be a paradox will make it a much messier restoration than any of you could ever believe, with echoes of each of you scattered to the winds across hundreds of dimensions, and the tools of war left behind from the split causing all kinds of chaos on worlds that were only marginally involved here. At least one world, from what I've seen, would end up with hundreds of the mecha from the war, and the only people who knew what they were being Mimsy, stranded pregnant and alone, and the Colonel, having to rebuild himself from near-total destruction from using his big weapon at point blank range on a company of heavy Mu forces in the beanstalk - and Mimsy was dead before the mecha were recovered, and used to terrorize a world even less developed than the France you have as an ally.

"If you really want to see how bad it gets, I brought a video player of an interpretation of the events of the next few days. How it exists, is simple. A man who had analogues on many of the Human Earths once came up with a theory that appears to hold true. Every reality, is a fictional story in some other reality. He called it the 'Universe as Myth' hypothesis. There's no way to disprove it, but what little exploration my parents have made into other realities so far indicates that the evidence found so far supports the theory. This is one universe's story of what happens here. You can watch it, if you don't believe me, but frankly I'd rather not waste the time we have. What we really need is to try to orchestrate my mother's plan to get this whole world to safety, without the convergence zone that is slowly killing the planet."

"What kind of plan is that," Shaya asked

"It will take a little work, in that I will need to use my abilities to manipulate dimensions to get someone here from Paris, while someone needs to go get an Atlantean. I need representatives of the major world components to start this. That gives two options - either I can try to teleport to those locations, and hope that the convergence zone and the world's temporal instability doesn't kill me, or someone's got to fly to those locations. Of course, if any of either are present in either the Human or Emaan fleets, that would simplify things."

"We can check; there's a good probability of Atlanteans being recruited into Human service being present - and we're not too far from Atlantean outposts. But, as for the French-"

"Do you still have that crated mech in the hold? The one too dangerous to fly underneath the zone, or to sell to someone that might trade the tech to the Humans? It's called a Valkyrie."

"Yes; but it hasn't been fueled," Lugh pointed out.

"The fuel for atmospheric use is simply fusion reactor fuel - a mix of the heavy hydrogen isotopes and the unstable helium isotope. Fuel it up, stick in a small seat behind the pilot's, and I'm sure Olsen can fly to Paris and back from here in under eight hours. Work on that, and we'll keep that as a last resort, if I can't make that jump.

"Once we get persons from each location here, then it's a matter of getting into position. Tomorrow, the orbital anomaly passes overhead. When it does, I will attempt to link into it, as well as to persons grounded in the original worlds - note that it means that it has to be people who are old enough to have been born before the merger. That will provide the anchor, to allow my parents and their friends to attempt to relocate this world from here, to their world. What happens after that, is up to diplomacy."

"The Mu won't negotiate," Mome pointed out, dejectedly.

"I know; I'm not sure what will happen to them, but it's likely to not be pretty. Hopefully there will still be enough surviving of your kind to help rebuild your people, like you did the Colonel. And, Shaya, you do not need to fear for the Emaan - my parents have such control over the dimension, that any hostile acts by any of the forces here, will not be allowed to impact the others, after the transference - if it succeeds. At worst, if they are so desperate to get back to an Earth with only humans on it, my mother's birthworld would probably welcome them, due to its low population after suffering three alien invasions from space in thirty years."

*******

The rest of the day was spent making arrangements to get everyone Tinya needed for the attempt. It was finally decided that it would be best just for her to teleport to Paris and back, using the group's memories, and taking one of the twins along to help explain the urgency. Amazingly, President Jeanne herself volunteered to be the representative, and they returned quickly. Lugh had gotten the Terran Human and Atlantean representatives from the project, promising the Terran some additional technology for the visit, but waiting until he was present to actually explain what the real purpose was.

The scientist was at first terrified to find out that the planned treachery was known, and that it was doomed to fail, then relieved to find he was being offered an alternative that could save them all. Vocal dissent against the Chiram Terran military government was severely punished, but it was obvious that most of the scientists were hardly fans of the plan. The only reasons that they went along with it were that they were afraid of being shot, and even more afraid of ceasing to exist, should the dimensional keys choose to save the Emaan.

For the actual attempt, everyone had to be on the surface of the planet. Tinya drew out the ritual circle onto bedrock, a variation of magicks her parents had found on another world that had more of a Lovecraftian bent, but was alterable into something to bridge between two known universes, not those of the original spell's design. Seated within different parts of the circle were the representatives of the Emaan, French, Atlanteans, Mu and Terrans. Seated face to face with Tinya at the center of the circle was Jabby, whose sensitivity to the energies would help her channel them. To their left and right, Kei and Olsen would sit, grasping each others' wrists, through the joined hands of Jabby & Tinya.

So much of this was at best conjecture on how to get this magic to function; many of the residents of Omphalos had inherent sorcerous potential, but only the barest of training. But it was all they had.

Tinya began the invocation, substituting the Regis and her parents' true names for the foul beasts that once were the ones intended to be contacted and unbound by the original version of the ritual. The sky seemed to darken, and the anomaly above flared as if a sun going nova. If not for her perfect memory, and ability to put up psychic blocks against pain, she'd never have gotten this far. Alarms were going off through the fleets, as sensors went wild. To make matters worse, the Mu started an attack with what forces they had nearby, as while they could not comprehend what was occurring, they new it was centered in the biologics' camp.

Twenty minutes into the ritual, and Tinya felt something wet on her face. She had started bleeding - not just from the nose, but from the eyes and ears. Pain too much for the blocks was starting to bleed through, but there was still nearly ten minutes of work to go. By this time, the sky had gone completely dark, save for the anomaly above, which had ceased its orbital motion, and was now fixed over their position, appearing almost as a solar eclipse. Jabby was scared, but hanging in there, while the two pilots were grimacing with pain. At worst, they were feeling only a fraction of what she would have, divided between the three.

Explosions from the battle were replaced by the howl of winds, as outside the circle, suddenly the entire area - the entire world, even - was enveloped with rushing energies that spawned hurricane force winds; yet the interior of the circle remained calm. The circle of the anomaly then seemed to invert, as Tinya reached the crescendo of the ritual, screaming out the last sentences through the pain, as the color changed, then expanded to be a rainbow sheen above the darkened planet. At the last sentence, each syllable seemed to double her pain, and Tinya struggled through, and as she finally, gutturally screamed out the last syllable, she collapsed.

********

Tinya seemed to be trapped in a dark, featureless void for hours, before she finally heard her mother's voice, and opened her eyes. With that return to consciousness, so too was she once again flooded with pain - more a dull hurt EVERYWHERE, than the piercing pains of the ritual.

"Welcome, back, daughter. I'm working on reducing the residual trauma to your pain centers, but it's a lot more difficult than I thought it would be."

"How are... the others?"

"Well, they are doing fine for now, given the hell you went through to get them here. Yes, we got you through - but we know better now than to try that method again, at least not without mounting a few hundred plinths across the target planet to help someone channel the energy. You actually died as the world made its transition, and world arrived above our own. I sensed what happened, and teleported to your side to drag you back from the brink. Once I got you back here, and stable, we put a temporal lock down onto that Earth, so we could make sure that the planet wouldn't come apart at the seams from the removal of the dimensional compression barrier."

"What are we going to do about the inhabitants?"

"Well, I've already managed to track down the Mu home universe as it existed at the time Kei and Olsen activated the device. While the gestalt world is in stasis, I'm having the Invid help gather up all the hostile Mu, and we're going to dump them back home - let's see how they handle there being two of each of their greatest assholes. At the same time, since the Mu have already eliminated all the humans of their world, we're going in and attempting to rescue all the bots of Mome's class from that world, as well as any others we can find. It will give the Invid something to do for a couple of years."

"And, what of Jabby's people? Were any left on the planet?"

"Some. We're going to experiment with the temporal aspects of our powers to try to rescue more of them from the past. We won't get many, since the world's split from the nexus it was in has probably warped the traces, but it should be enough to restart their civilization in South America, once we release the world back to normal space."

"And the others?"

"Before the release, we're going to have to work out some politics. The high technology in Mu and the Atlantean ruins are too dangerous to let just anyone try to explore them, and the Mu nurses will need assistance in restructuring their infrastructure to produce a civilian society. I'm going to move the world to one of the star systems in the LGSA, so that help will be relatively close if something nasty gets woken up that we miss on Mu. Research on the Atlantean ruins will be handled by off-world scientists, that will also work on the Mu rehabilitation. As for the other continents, that's going to get interesting.

"The Terrans have to pull back to North America and Siberia. The Europeans will have to come up with a coalition government, since they hail from a half-dozen different Earths. The Dragonoids will have South America, but with a sizable amount of humans from the other worlds, so that will be an issue. The Atlanteans have Atlantis, but have been an agrarian, non-centralized state for ten thousand years, as a reaction to their abandonment of their super-high technology. The Emaan will have southern Asia from China south, all the way over to the Med. Africa is a mess - it appears that no real government of consequence survived there, since most of the continent was devastated by altitude interactions with the barrier, constant shifting, and that horrific lensing effect that the anomaly caused. Australia is just as bad, but isn't centrally located, so it will be an Emaan territory. And, though no one has asked about it, Antarctica had half its ice sheared off into the barrier tempest. Africa and Antarctica will be open for colonization, but with the LGSA acting as the oversight for such work."

"Do you think that the separation of the Emaan & Terrans in Asia will work? I mean, there was a lot of bad blood between them, and frankly the Atlanteans and Euros aren't too fond of the Terrans either. I don't want to see any new war spring up."

"That's why I'm putting them where Uncle Scott and the others can play referee - and use the old carrot and stick approach. Anyone that tries to stir up trouble will get cut off from rebuilding assistance. After the fiascos leading up to this point, the rank and file will probably rise up against their leaders if they don't switch to a civilian reconstruction footing."

"And, what of Kei & Olsen's homeworld? How did we affect it?"

"I took care of that while you were asleep. I traced the path back to it, where it had effectively been disrupted by the event, stepped back a few minutes more, and smacked some sense into those boys. I gave them a copy of the series as it aired, teleported them back to their headquarters, and got rid of the device by dropping it into Jupiter. I then went back to where I left them, and told their leaders, and the enemy, through conference call, that any further attempts to make such devices would result in very bad things happening to the people that did so. For good measure, I had the device detonate after I dropped it in, and the light from the resultant new star reached Earth as I drove the point home. It's amazing what combining the mass of a couple hundred universes' Jupiters in a dimensional compression field will do. The resulting star has a diameter about the size of Earth, and the vast majority of the stellar effects are trapped within the barrier field, so the star's probably good for far longer than it will take humanity to spread to other star systems there, and is about perfect for making the three ice moons habitable. I was SO tempted to drop a monolith in their laps, just to pull their chain."

"You should have."

"And get thousands of Arthur C. Clarkes mad at me, let alone a few David Bowmans? I'll pass - the multiverse is a big place. Though, if I ever run into the aliens from the Mir stories of his, I plan on making them rue the day they chose immortality."

"So, any idea when I'll be able to get out of this bed under my own power. It just about hurts to blink."

"Probably in a couple days. Congratulations on passing my test for you. I had to see how much you'd risk to do the right thing. It actually surprised me that you went the extra mile to make sure the transfer succeeded - you probably could have pulled up a couple lines short, and the ritual still complete, as the last lines were just the seal we could have put on from this side."

"So, what do I get for such a superb grade?"

"I don't know if you'd consider it reward or punishment. Over the next few decades relative to my birth world, which could be a few years or thousands here, you get to be in charge whenever your father, grandparents and I go out to make our way in exploring the universe. We don't know if we'll even survive the attempt, as we're likely to go out there like a bunch of extra-dimensional problem-solvers, trying to fix what we feel has gone wrong."

"At least you should be able to eventually leap home, unlike that TV character you showed me."

"Speaking of which, that would be one of those places I'd like to visit and talk to the local supreme being about cutting the guy some slack, and let someone else - not me, mind you - take that job - after all, Sam can only do it for the equivalent of his natural lifespan."

"That's you all right, always thinking of others."

"Honey, that's what I was born for - just ask the husband who accidentally created me that way. Though, I like to think that I had some amount of free will in taking it as far as I did, since I managed to surprise even him with what I pulled off. Just, take it easy for a while. After the clean-up and relocation of the Orguss world, you'll get your first test as local ruler - I'll be starting that project to shape a normal world, and will be spending the better part of a century there, even if only a few months relative to here, plus setting up Uncle Scott's itinerary for his journey into the dimensions."

"Out of the frying pan..."

**********

November 2038, New Zarkopolis system

Breetai woke up to alarms going off, indicating that someone was urgently trying to contact him from the planetary government center.

"What is the situation?" he demanded. He couldn't think of anything short of a natural disaster or industrial accident that would result in him being woken in the middle of the night.

"Massive gravitational disturbance in the star system."

"A fold?"

"No, it's too large to be a fold - and it's not subsiding."

"Where does it appear to be located?"

"The exact opposite point of this planet's orbit from our current position, and it appears to be moving on that orbit."

"I assume you already have ships in route to investigate."

"Yes, under sublight power - it was considered too dangerous to attempt to fold part way, since there were gravitational anomalies, and of course a direct flight was impossible."

"How soon until we get a visual of the anomaly?"

"It should be any minute now, for a long-range view.... There it is - that's impossible!"

"What is it?"

"Lord Breetai, it seems that we have somehow gained a new planet in the star system."

"Inhabited?"

"We should assume that it is - it appears to be nearly identical to Earth, with the same continents, plus two additional ones in the major oceans. How that could be possible is beyond our concepts of science."

"Get your ships in orbit, and send alerts to our allies."

"Yes, my lord."

(end, chapter one)

***************

Author's note: This was one of the more tangental stories I've done, mostly to explain some of the things (and technology) found later on in the story. Originally titled "The Lesson", I wrote it originally to take place a bit later in the timeline (as the prelude to Tinya's parents and grandparents leaving Omphalos on a closer to permanent basis), but eventually had to shift it earlier to keep continuity. Tinya and her sister (not yet born, as of these events) will also play a small role in some of the later stories. A Prelude for Chapter Two will take place in 2052, before hopping back to the late 2030s and 2040s to tell the story of the characters. (I will alternate 2052 preludes, followed by chapters of events that brought those 2052 events into being). Eventually, there will be another set of stories that take place in the 4-6 months after the preludes, as the direct lead-into the Skygate and Nazgul stories.