(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 30

The destination was locked in. Kris slapped the lid over the slot where the small cartridge went, holding the tracer for the subatomic particles that would be the path to a carefully chosen spot, a good 200 years down the road. Or up the timeline, as the lingo seemed to be! Two large blocks of ice were added to the platform, and kneeling between them felt cold, like stepping outside in the depth of winter. Doing it naked did not make it any warmer!
"Amping up!" Kris called out, in his usual and oddly commanding voice. Sparks began to fly from the large finger-like towers around the platform, fingers that slowly disintegrated into a swirling cloud of tiny metal bits, the ones that kept the energies inside the platform from becoming unbalanced. Even before the machine was at full power, the blocks of ice were beginning to not only melt, but sizzle, the water on their surfaces boiling away before the ice beneath it had time to melt. Two seconds of a high-pitched hiss of things zipping through the air like hummingbirds on a dozen energy drinks. And then, the deafening clap, and the feeling of being punched simultaneously in every cell of the body. Pain. A pain that was so unique to this line of work.
The arrival was fairly soft, the destination picked in part for that. The softly lit white walls didn't show it, but outside was the ocean, everything inside having been built on an island around the Greenland mainland. A place that even in the 2210s had yet to be truly explored. To anyone outside, it was a piece of rock not far from the Arctic, nothing on it but a large wooden building and a small village of less than 50 people to service it. A perfect place for secrets.
"Marie?" came a voice out of somewhere, but the steam from the now evaporated ice made it hard to see anything. A hum kicked in and emptied the air from the sealed room, replacing it with dry, room temperature air, instead. A woman, with string Inuit features, stood outside the glass, holding a small palm terminal.
"Marie, the data says you are going through, are you okay for that?" she asked, her voice a bit worried. But even with the air swapped out, speaking to answer her was difficult. Everything was dry and tasted like rust. Everything buzzed and spun. A thumbs up luckily did all the talking needed, and someone went over to a console, took a quick look at it, and pushed some buttons. And once more, fingers broke into floating bits, and energy surged. The vents blew in ice cold air, making it feel as if it froze the blood in its veins, but the moment the clap came, it all vent from freezing to scolding.
This time, there was no change of air. A flickering of some lights instead somehow caused everything, from air to skin to every bone, to reach a balanced temperature in seconds. Pains eased, and the taste of metal lasted for only a little bit. There was no glass, no protective box. Large devices, their shapes not unlike the satelite dish on an average apartment complex in the early 2000s, would catch anyone and anything flung from the platform by a bad calculation, in some futuristic holding field. It was an open spot, by technologically, it was still a padded cell.
"Hello, Marie," said a voice that sounded just plain wrong, alien in a way that was more than just different. A machine, its features a deliberate mockery of human features, walked on legs that looked like a gothic jigsaw puzzle, over to the edge of the platform. "Did you arrive in good health?"
Nodding made the machine try to mimc a smile. It had issues with it, the movement of the fake lips being far too quick and jarring.
"2480?"
The machine nodded at the question.
"September 8th, 15.38 o'clock," it added. "Your command line states a continued trip, do you confirm?"
Again, a nod did the talking, backed up by a thumbs up.
"Would you like a quick reconstitution?" it asked, and a silent confirmation again did the trick. A set of machines started up, and every muscle suddenly felt stronger, lighter. There were no blocks of ice this time, and no flow of cold air. Everythign just changed its temperature from seemingly out of nothing, and then the fingers came to life again. There was a loud clap, and the machine, along with everything around it, was gone.
It hurt more, this time around. Kris had described the trip in great detail, every variable accounted for. This leg of the trip, this particular jump, was far greater than the first two, taking advantage of the health boost from future technologies installed at the relay platforms. It still hurt like hell, though!
The person at the arrival point was clearly human, or humanoid. Lines ran across its body as it stood, mostly naked, with glowing symbols hovering around its long-fingered hands.
"Welcome, Marie," it said in a slow and laughably misplaced deep voice for such a small creature. Piercing orange eyes looked up from the symbols, closed, and then soon after opened. "Your body is in need of..."
"Yeah, I know. Boost me and send me on."
The creature sent a look of... something, some feeling that made it briefly pause. Then it did what others had done and made machines do their work. The fingers began spinning again, and a loud clap rang out.
3262. Or at least, that was the intended year. It was hard to tell from the place, not just because it looked like the inside of an ad for stock computer graphics, ribbons of light moving in very clear patterns, signalling something to someone. The were people and walls and furniture, too, but they fell into the background as colorful shapes in mid air took center stage.
One of the persons came up quite calmly. It was hard to say the gender, if any, of the person, as machine parts covered most body parts, shifting and moving ever so slightly, lights beneath them hitting skin. A portable medical kit, performing some kind of operation on the person, all while he or she, or it, walked around. It looked like early matter replacement technology, replacing the person's body with a robotic alternative. The eyes had clearly been replaced already.
"Marie?" said the person, failing to blink while talking. It carried nothing, but at this point in technological evolution, it was probably seeing every bit of information imaginable inside the eyes, or even directly inside the brain. The ribbons of light seemed to form circular patterns around the person, too, as if they were part of the process, somehow.
"Yeah. Marie. I'm..."
The feeling came suddenly. The one with the orange eyes had done whatever he or she could to help, using the medical technology of that age, whatever they were, to fight back the effects of time travel. But everything had its limits.
The world spun. The floor felt solid, yet not painful to hit, not even face first.
"Marie, your body is taking too much strain from the travel. You need rest," the person said, in an unnaturally calm voice. It was hard to do anything other than mumble, with the floor pressed hard against the lips.
"Boof meh...."
"Sorry, I could not..."
"Boof..."
The voice hesitated, although there was an aura to the hesitation that made it seem productive, somehow. Even from down on the floor, staring with blurry eyes into the vaguely light blue floor that smelled oddly like mint and fersh morning dew, it was impossible not to notice that the colorful array of floating lights were becoming more active. It was a pretty show, but the meaning of it was impossible to figure out.
Then, one of the colored lights flooded everything. The sensation of it gently lifting first arms, then legs, then head and finally, body, was bizarre and slightly unnerving. It felt like floating in a tank of some heavy liquid, like heavily salted water, or, theoretically, mercury. It felt like being a beach ball rising through the water.
"You have widespread cell damage in the liver and kidneys. Nothing lethal, but the strain can cause microruptures, which will be both painful over an extended period and will lower your productive abilities."
The person said nothing more, as if expecting an answer to what honestly never sounded like a question in the first place.
"Fix..."
It was hard to speak without throwing up, and the one thing that helped the most, in this case, was an empty stomach. It was custom to fill up before a trip, making sure that the body had food from one's home time to work with. Food from another time didn't come back with the traveler, making it a health risk on return, not to mention an occassionally nasty experience for anyone placed near the time traveler as he or she disappeared. Counter to jokes and rumor, leaving with a stomach full of local food didn't mean the body went back and all that was left was poop. No, gastric processes, the way the body broke down food, were far more complex than that, and surprisingly, a lot more disgusting.
But there was no food to worry about, not this time. A nearly naked body, devoid of anything that might come out when stressed. And this particular trip was nothing if not stressful on that body.
"We can repair most damage, adding no foreign materials, but you will need a twenty hour full stasis to let it sink in. A full repair will..."
"Do that."
The ribbon of light shifted to another color, and everything became a little warmer, even on the inside. Then, relaxation filled every muscle, and darkness took over.
"You have completed your stasis," said the person. The place had changed. Or rather, there had been a change of place. This was not the arrival platform for time travel.
"Am I ready to go the last leg of the trip?"
"3618?"
"Yes."
"You will survive."
The way the last word was spoken made it sound dire, like survival was a consolation prize. Something that one might not exactly cherish.
"How much more can you fix me up?"
"Another fifty hours in stasis can enhance your body from 87% to 93%. More than that will take much longer."
Time. It was easy to just say to spend it all, since it wouldn't essentially matter once the trip continued. 3618 would be 3618 no matter what. But time spent in any Embassy relay station was time taken from other missions and projects. But that was just an excuse, of course. Time spent was also time waited. Stasis made the wait fly by, but the mind still saw it as waiting.
"Fifty hours more. That's it. Then we go the last bit."
Everything turned black.

The arrival was rough. The platform was surrounded by grapling fields, catching and dissipating the momentum of anything that arrived. But the calculations were always that bit more challenging when jumping to the orbital station, because of it physical disconnection from Earth itself. A lot of math. Even with future computers or whatever they used, arrivals were going to be rough.
"Holy rip, Marie, what the pit are you doing?"
Hearing Aldric try to curse was always an experience. He was used to communicating without words, and only needed to use them because of who came through this branch of The Embassy. Notions of many religions had gone and meant nothign to him or any of his contemporaries, so things that he could translate into something more meaningful slipped into his vocabulary.
"I'm worki.."
Somehow, the body trying desperately to throw up when there was nothing to throw up felt even worse than when there was. A deep, painful dry heave started as a cramp in the stomach, becoming a full spasm in the diaphragm within seconds. The lights seemed to dim.
"Did you... Tell me you didn't!" he hissed.
"I can...."
Standing up, or rather, trying to stand up, was a mistake. Every muscle suddenly just went numb, every nerve buzzing with static as the nervous system just called it quits. The grapling fields stepped in and prevented another floor faceplant.
"No, you can't," he stated with a dry certainty. "Your body is wearing out from getting every atom charged up again and again. I'll get a medic."
The place was a soothing blue and white. It had no floating ribbons of color, no glowing symbols swirling the few who were there. The walls appeared seemless, like the whole place was molded in one form. A few places, thin lines of dull silver color could be spotted, suggesting that something there had a function. But it was impossible to tell any more than that.
"Can you hook me up to a virtual body?"
Aldric had only just stepped back inside the room before he had to react to the question. He chose to say nothing, instead guiding a small group of floating drones inside. There was nothing outside but white, the doorway somehow blocking detailed light from entering the room, like a stained glass window that he and the drones could just pass through.
"I need to talk to the prisoner, Aldric. I have to..."
It became very clear that although he listened, he ignored everything that was said. With a few gestures and words whispered, he guided the drones to do their job. The whispering wasn't needed, per se, but he wasn't from the part of society that had grown up commanding machines. It was like someone mouthing the words while reading a book, something that others might take for granted not to need.
"I'll fit you with a stasis chamber, and add basic sense and motion displacement to a humanoid drone," he said in a dry, serious tone, like a bitter parent agreeing to the best possible deal with petulant children.
"Thanks. And get..."
"She's already there," he interrupted, knowing what was coming. "But tell me, why are you so obsessed with destroying yourself, Marie? I think there is a cultural divide, something I..."
"It's not a cultural thing, Aldric."
It was hard to say without sighing. He meant well, but he lived in an age with sanitized reason, where any damaging mindset could be repaired with no more difficulty than one might repair a broken arm. People were all different, and there were those who acted in ways that seemed to make no sense to the rest. But blatant self-destructive behaviour was foreign to him.
"I'm just.. tired. I want this to end. I have been hunting these answers for years, actual, living years, and I have no reason to think that I will even learn them this time around."
"Impatience," he simply replied, as drones made quick movements and sent beams of warm and cool into every organ. "a remnant from an age with short lives, perhaps."
He wasn't wrong.
It took only a few seconds more of the drones prodding before plates lifted out of the floor, forming a surrounding cocoon. The drones hovered back, and Aldric took a step back, too, as the plates connected. This was a cocoon for one, and only one. And as the plates shut out light, closing shut, that imposed loneliness became very real. Suddenly, there was only darkness. Then, a soft light.
"You in there, Marie?"
"Yes, I can..."
It felt weird. Unbalanced, misaligned. The metrics were no doubt spot on, height and the length of each limb. But it felt too light. For a moment, a flash of hovering in the intangible body with Ruben came and went, like a stray memory that entered the room at an awkward time. This was different. This was solid.
"First time in a substitute body, Marie?"
The sensation of feet meeting the floor felt alien, like stepping onto a floor for the first time ever.
"No. Just... it's been a while."
There were mirrors, liquid forms that tracked eye movement and flowed over the proper surface. In the mirror, the body stood. It was hard to see anything wrong. From the outside, a perfect copy.
"What's wrong?" asked Aldric, his voice sounding unusually engaged in the question. Seeing the mouth of the perfect copy in the mirror move was terrifiying.
"I've never.... It never looked like me before."
"What did it look like?" he asked, voice now gentle and seeming honestly concerned.
"Anything else. Machines, glowing mists, artistic forms, vector graphics, whatever. Never... me."
It moved the same, imitated every muscle, every slide of short strands of hair. Mirror image. Perfect copy.
The liquid mirror felt like a thin layer of rubber, bouncy to the touch, even when just for the split second of a fist going into it. The fist shattered, the shell of the perfect copy cracking and falling apart on the floor, leaving twisted digits of magentically connected pieces, like a skeleton made from faded brown wires.
"What did that accomplish?" he asked, never rasising his voice. It seemed that, to him, it was nothing more than some odd twitch.
"Give me another body. One that doesn't look like her. Like me."
"You want something that looks different?"
"Yes. Make it look like a machine. Not a human."
The change was instant. Everything just went black, and then the feel of being on the bed. Feet on the floor, balance. Mirror. What looked back was definitely not human, a minimalistic head of orange and beige parts looking back with dark blue eyes, delicate lenses adjusting to allow the function of sight.
"Better. Thanks."
Aldric, who looked a little different through these eyes, made a funny turn and nod with his head, a very archaic gesture in an age like this. He was still trying to speak the language of those who visited, even when not with words.
"The prisoner is, as you say, awake," he added, making no attempt to hide how strange the use of that word was to him. That was the flipside of Aldric making such an effort to use a language from a world that, to him, was long dead. He lacked appropriate words for the things that had never existed in that world.
Moving to the room with the prisoner was barely like moving at all. Walls shifted and grapling fields stepped in to make walking or anything like it unnecessary. Like giant hands moving toy figures around a dollhouse, except the dollhouse also moved to meet them.
She hung in the air, held up by the same kind of grapling fields. Invisible and intangible strings holding up another doll, except this one had no movement of its own, at all. She just hung there, a naked body, looking like a snapshot of someone in the midst of jumping off a diving board. Arms to the side, like wings. Eyes closed. She wasn't awake. But she wasn't the only one of her.
"Do you want visible trace?" asked Aldric. A silent nod made him wave to fingers in the air, and a myriad of tiny points came up, like colorful stars, the room lighting dimming to make them stand out better.
"Do you see them too? Or are they in my... in this shell's head?"
There was no need to even turn to see the sly smile on Aldric's lips, they could be heard just as clearly in his voice.
"In your head. Or the shell's, whichever way you prefer."
Aldric had no need to see the visual display of the prisoner's mind, he knew the procedure by heart at this point. Or, more correctly, the copy of the prisoner's mind.
"Ask," he said. The colored stars flared up, just a bit, in anticipation.
"Spirits."
The word did nothing. The dots glowed softly, a few flashes tracing their way through, but they found nothing to attach to. No memory.
"Fifth force energy."
The same. Each little star, each imitation of a living cell in the prisoner's brain, seemed to briefly twinkle, but there was nothing significant.
"First colonies."
That made more of them flare up! Not many, but for several seconds, a trace ran through the connected stars, drawing the abstract patterns of memories. The prisoner knew something about the first colonies, but not that much. Somehow, that was disappointing.
"Problem with powerful colony."
More flared up on that. Aldric was silently waiting for a sign to jump in, and at a look, he checked something that only he could see.
"Some memories of fighting with a colony, the details are a bit blurry. She seems to have been there, and not been too fond of it," he stated.
She still hung silently there, saying nothing. Like a toy, a magic eightball of memories across time.
"Dangerous colonist abilities."
Everything flared up in an instance, like the stars were exploding and sending a cascading wave of other explosions outwards! Tracing the paths was impossible, but that was not needed, either. One look at Aldric, and he checked what the devices that probed her copied mind had interpreted from it all.
"You're not gonna like his," he said, still in his trademark dry voice.