Fiction: SPACOM 3

Colonel St. George rubbed his temples and sighed. “Let’s try this again. Two days ago, you interrupt my lunch to tell me things you shouldn’t have any way of knowing. Then, this morning, you somehow manage to break into one of the best-protected installations on the planet. And you’re telling me that you knew how to do that because of a television show. Have I got that right?”

Zeke laid his head on the table in frustration. He hadn’t expected this to be easy, but plowing on through blind faith wasn’t getting him anywhere. “I get that it sounds dumb,” he said. “But come on. Didn’t this already happen to you guys once?”

St. George shot a glance to Doctor Waller. “Any idea what he’s talking about?” Waller’s shoulders twitched in confusion.

Zeke sat up, processing. “That hasn’t happened yet, has it? Okay. That helps.”

“Now you’re saying you’re from the future?” Waller asked. He’d been playing the “good cop” role so far, but he sounded frustrated. Which was fair, given how long they’d been at this.

“No, definitely not the future,” Zeke said. “I told you. I’m from a parallel universe. Or whatever. I don’t know. I’m not a scientist. Well, I mean, I am, I guess. But not that kind of scientist. The normal kind who doesn’t study wormholes and aliens and parallel universes.”

Waller nodded and sighed. “And in your universe,” he said, almost, but not quite completely suppressing a skeptical tone, “We’re a TV show.”

“That’s creative,” St. George said.

“Ted, you have to admit, some of the things we’ve been through make a lot more sense as ratings stunts,” Waller said. “Like the time-”

St. George silenced him with a glare. “Not in front of the suspected alien agent.”

“See, this is what I mean,” Zeke said. “If I knew exactly where we were in your storyline, I could prove at least some of what I’m saying by predicting the future. But you won’t tell me anything. Do you still have the Klepton truth machine? You could plug me into that and it would tell you that I’m telling the truth.”

Waller shook his head with what looked like genuine sympathy. “There are some forms of mind control that give it false readings. Maybe you really do believe what you’re saying, but you’ve been brainwashed. Or, if you’re telling the truth, how can we know it will even work on someone from your universe? From your perspective, this is all fiction, isn’t it?”

“Again with revealing sensitive information to the weirdo,” St. George said, exasperated.

“Maybe at first, I guess,” Zeke said. “But I’ve been living in a teen drama for two years now. I am totally over any sort of prejudice toward the ontological nature of someone’s plane of existence. You should hear who we elected president.”

“Let’s pretend I’m humoring you,” St. George said. “How did you get here?”

“Car crash,” Zeke said. “Two years ago, I was driving up 40 in a bad storm, and I lost control and went into the guardrail, and when I woke up, I was in a hospital in a small town in Rhode Island surrounded by a cast of quirky, attractive, quick-witted characters that I recognized from the hit basic cable teen drama Sparrow’s Folly. I spent two years trying to figure out a way to get home. I tried interfering. I tried not interfering. I tried just driving back to my own house, and I do not want to talk about how that went. Then, six weeks ago, I tried going skiing. And the ski lift broke and I very nearly died, and now I’m here. Well, a few other places first, but here eventually. I’m simplifying. Fortunately, that whole incident where everyone in Columbus lost three hours was still in the papers, or else I’d never have figured out where we were.”

“And this doesn’t seem a little hard to believe to you?” Waller asked.

“Well sure,” Zeke said. “I realize that the most rational explanation is that none of you are real and this is all a coma dream. But that’s not an actionable hypothesis even if true; I can’t just will myself out of a traumatic brain injury, can I?

“So, assuming this is a real world and I am really doing the things I think I am, I wandered around town until I found that diner where you guys hang out, and when you blew me off, I wandered out into the woods and found the ventilation shaft you used when you needed to sneak the Jindro out of the base. And I was expecting you to catch me right away, but I was hoping I’d be able to dazzle you with my inside knowledge.”

“This was a bad plan,” St. George said, wryly.

“That’s fair,” Zeke said, depressed. “But you must know I’m human by now. You get those Precursor bio-scanners in season three. Can that detect that I’m from a parallel universe? I can’t remember if it ever came up.”

“There is something unusual in your scan,” Waller conceded. “But we don’t know what it means. We’d need to compare it to something that we could confirm was from a different universe.”

Zeke had an idea. “Ooh, what about a portal token? SPACOM 5 could send you one of those.”

St. George and Waller exchanged a long look, silently arguing something. St. George conceded. “SPACOM 5 was lost, presumed KIA. I’m not even going to ask how you know about them.”

Zeke lit up. “You don’t know!” he almost shouted. “That’s it. That’s the thing. I can help you. I need a piece of paper. I hope I remember this.”

Another silent conversation, and Waller slid his notepad across the table. Zeke started writing furiously. “SPACOM 5 is alive. Well, mostly. They’ve probably lost a couple people by now. They got out before the supernova. The Precursor device was a portal into luminous space.”

“Luminous space?” Waller asked.

Zeke kept writing. “It’s a parallel universe. But the usual kind, not a TV show universe. They call it that because the vacuum energy is different so empty space glows and the stars are black. And yes, I know that doesn’t make sense. There’s a running gag where any time someone tries to explain it, they get cut off. Here.”

He pushed the notepad back. Waller studied it. “This is the language of the Precursors,” he said. He pointed to the first line. “This is their name for Earth.”

Zeke nodded, excitedly. “And the second one is the dinosaur planet where you found the weather machine. I think that should be enough for you and Lieutenant French to work out the math. They’re not just names. They’re coordinates. The names tell you where the planet is.”

St. George gave Waller an expectant look. He nodded. “That’s possible. We have some fragments of other Precursor planet names. Samia should be able to work out an algorithm to translate.”

“I want to make a deal,” Zeke said.

“A deal for what?” St. George asked. “And what does this have to do with SPACOM 5?”

He pointed at the third line. “That’s the name of a Precursor outpost. That’s where you find the second portal. The one that lets you contact SPACOM 5. I am just giving that to you, no strings attached. Save you a couple of months, maybe save some lives. You scan a portal token, figure out how to tell if someone is from a parallel universe. Hopefully you start trusting me.”

“What about the deal,” Waller asked.

“I want your help. I want to go home. Or back to Sparrow’s Folly. Or ideally, back and forth to either one whenever I want. Occasional vacations to that kid’s show where everything’s made of candy.”

“Why?” Waller said. Simultaneously, St. George said, “I love that show.”

“Because I know another name. The big one. The Precursor home planet. Look, you guys give all the planets serial numbers and that’s great for you, but I can’t remember a single one of them, so I can’t help you with which ones are good and which ones are bad. But I can remember the ones with names. I can skip you all the way to the end of the series without you spending years wandering around hyperspace looking for clues and accidentally waking up Cthulhu or Space Godzilla. At least one of those happens. Depends on how literal you’re being.”