The Word Made Flesh

"We're being scanned," Peter noted.

Jinx reversed thrust, slowing the Black Watch to a standstill.

"Full stop. We've reached the frontier."

Peter watched bits of randomness drop out of the vacuum as an array of Reyll jump mines entangled their sensors with spots of space-time near the star-ship. The Black Watch was approaching an oblate spheroid of space that divided the cluster into two halves and encompassed the five colony worlds ruled by the Reyll Theocracy. That region was protected by tens of thousands of bombs attached to simple jump drives, managed by artificial intelligences programmed to lay down their run-time to protect the Reyll way of life.

The thinking machines spoke to pass the time. When they saw something interesting enough, they would speak to their creators.

"What do we do now?" Waiting made Peter nervous.

"There are two possibilities -- we wait for a patrol ship and try to negotiate passage, or we charge in and hope you can catch the bombs before we get blown up."

"Well? Let's--"

"Slow down there. If I'm right, the Reyll have a problem they are poorly equipped to handle. They may actually ask for help."

Peter was skeptical. "Really? I thought they were-- wait a minute, someone is transmitting. "

Carrier and protocol matched well-known signatures for Reyll military communication. Peter patched the payload's audio stream through an automated translation system.

"Intruder vessel -- violation of special forbidden zone. No restraint vast destruction imminent. Compliance now!"

Jinx scowled. "Needs more verb. Replay the original before they get impatient."

Peter fiddled, and a weary voice came over the audio.

"Ne masto mrll na da kozh bay goghyah naxhell. Ne pee masezh mai ma pagirla pa lo. Na elozh bay elozh ka brrllm."

"Foreign vessel -- you are approaching a quarantine zone. The situation in this area is uncontrollable and dangerous. Immediate cooperation is required," Jinx translated. "The machine translation is less than useless. Let me talk to them."

Reluctantly, Peter opened a channel for Jinx, and she spoke.

"Bay elozh ka brrllm an lo -- bay Rllmahimja pah masto Kahoprat mai pee na elozh. Ne masto lo pee kahrazh mahall. Na elozh mai ka lo nah hodam brrllm?"

The audio stream clearly recorded the remote peer's insulted grunt, followed shortly by an end-of-file indicator.

"Uh-huh. That seemed to have helped." Peter was worried.

"Stay slinky. We're going to need an escort, and they should show up shortly."

The Reyll warship materialized a few thousand kilometers from their position.

"They have weapons lock--" Peter warned.

"Yeah. Don't do anything unwise." Jinx left the helm and walked towards Peter. "Keep your eyes on the prize."

"What?"

Jinx flicked the back of Peter's head. He flinched with pain and reached to see if the back of his skull was still there.

"Ow. What the hell did you--"

"Foreign vessel -- we will escort you to the incident site. Please take all weapons systems offline." The transmission came from the Reyll warship. Peter had the odd sensation that the words he understood were not the words he had heard.

"I understood that. Why did I understand that?"

"A wizard did it, namely me. Now, let's play nice, and see what's happened."

Shortly after Peter took the Black Watch's weapons systems offline, the Reyll warship turned and took a course through normal space to a vector inside the forbidden zone. He ordered the ship's computer to follow.

After a short while, he saw the spur, and the ragged sail that hung absurdly in space, not flapping in a non-existent wind. It extended from an irregular structure that could only be described as a meatball, a rough spheroid mass of disorganized tissue.

Peter looked at the viewscreen slack-jawed and helpless. He was relieved when he heard Jinx breathe in sharply. He turned to her.

"What--"

"I don't know. Is it alive?"

This was a question he could answer. He felt the thing with his senses.

"No. It's dead inside. The portion of it with life support is decaying rapidly. It's like some kind of cyst."

Peter shuddered in the command chair. He leaned forward towards the view-screen and tensed up. A transmission came from the Reyll ship, and he looked sharply at the screen.
"This is the anomaly. A Hunter squad engaged the intruder, and it made this out of them. Our talents say it is dead, then they say there is something wrong, then they start screaming. Gravimetric scans indicate a massive spatial anomaly with enormous potential energy."

Jinx's own scans confirmed what the warship captain had said. She sent the results to the display in Peter's armrest.

He looked at the numbers and boggled. It was within an order of magnitude of the mass of the primordial singularity.

There was a long silence. Peter spoke. "Understood."

Whatever was inside the tumor in space was about to create a new universe.

He paused, looked at the monstrous thing on the view-screen. "We will investigate -- see what can be done. We will approach the cyst."

"All clear. Let us know if we can help."

As the Black Watch slowly pulled closer, Peter and Jinx spotted a vast sphincter on the leathery surface of the sphere.

"What an asshole."

Jinx wished her joke was funnier.

Peter tried to help.

"So, what do we do? Tickle it, buy it a drink..." Peter trailed off.

"We're gonna need a lot of lube to get the ship in there."

They both wished they could laugh.

"I think we're going to have to get off the ship. Are you ready?"

"No."

They went to the air-lock anyway.

Jinx wrapped her arms around Peter's shoulders and he carried her through space to the purplish-red orifice. Aiming for the middle of the fleshy circle, they both closed their eyes as they pushed through the fleshy ring and emerged into a hall filled with foul vapors, an atmosphere of decay.

What they saw before them defied comprehension. Shattered parts of Reyll warships, tendrils of flesh and sinew, tangled vascular trees filled with clotting blood, twisted into a tight knot of space-time that very obviously was a portion of a four-dimensional structure.

Peter recognized the topology. "Well, the good news is that we're already inside it. It only has an inside."

"We're going to have to get closer." Jinx did not sound happy with the idea.

They flew closer, following a curved surface of bruised pink flesh. After a following a bend, they lost sight of the outside.

"Peter - I... I see something." Jinx pointed to a black pool on the ground.

They landed, and Jinx reluctantly climbed down from Peter's arms. Peter looked at the rippling pool of black oil.

"What the hell is that?"

"It's an eversion point. It punches through to outside the universe."

Peter looked around.

"Everything here is dead and decaying. All the potential energy is behind that pool."

"Then that's where Nyqll is. This is the way to his lodge."

They both trembled a little. They had become inured to the overwhelming strangeness of their surroundings. Now, they were confronted with a gateway into the unknown.

They looked at each other. Jinx stretched out her hand towards Peter, and he took it.

Peter spoke first. "Do you think we'll be able to get back out again?"

"I don't know. Maybe not. It's probably a domain ruled by Nyqll's will. A prototype for his new universe."

They thought for a moment, holding hands.

"OK. We're going to do this anyway, right?"

"Of course." Jinx smiled, and looked at Peter sadly. "We're superheroes, right?"

They stepping into the pool together and fell into darkness. The hallucinogenic black oil dazed their senses, subjecting them to terrible visions as they plummeted. Somewhere along the way, Jinx's hand slipped out of Peter's.

Shortly afterward, they both hit the dusty, sandy ground hard.

Peter opened his eyes first, and looked up at a bone-white sky. "Jinx?"

"I'm over here." She rolled over in the dust. "My head-- owww...."

Peter went to her and examined her head for injuries. He couldn't find any. "I think you're all right."

He looked around the dusty plain. A road of trampled dirt led towards the gates of a large city surrounded by mud brick walls. Jinx got up and followed him down the road.

As the approached, a robed figure carrying a staff with bells on the end approached them. As the figure took notice of Peter and Jinx, he began mournfully wailing "Tamei, tamei".

"What?"

"He's a leper. He's unclean. I--"

"What? How do you know this place?"

"I-- I can't explain. Why aren't we flying over the walls?"

Peter thought for a moment.

"I don't know. It doesn't seem to make sense."

Jinx looked at the back of her hand and wiggled her fingers. "Ontological control. The presence can influence us by eliminating alternatives."

"The presence?"

Jinx looked horrified. "I can't say his name."

The leper approached. "Tamei, tamei."

He pulled down his hood. Jinx recognized him instantly, despite the lesions covering half his face. "Jack!"

"Nah. Jack's not here right now. Most of me is still inside him." The leper pointed upwards. "You're going to need an ass. It's part of the story."

"We're going to need a what?" asked Peter, perplexed.

"An ass."

Jinx peered at Peter's backside. "He has a perfectly serviceable ass. What do you mean by story?"

"No." The leper smiled as another man approached with a strange, grey-furred quadruped with a grotesquely long face, long tufted ears, and broad shoulders and hips. "An ass."

"Oh." Peter pointed at the creature. "That's... an ass. All right."

"Can we please stop talking about asses -- what's the deal with the story?" Jinx was irritated.

"Oh, you know this one. How do you know this one? It's not one of ours. It belongs to the humans." The leper smiled and gestured strangely as he said this. "Come on, don't lose the plot now. They call it the greatest story ever told."