Metamorphosis Read online

  “That’s my guess. Whatever else is happening to me undid the lock, now I’m catching up rapidly…and it hurts because of the speed of change.”

  “Can you sleep before you black out?”

  “Not gonna try. The more I’m aware the more my head defrags. It’s my body that needs the blackouts.”

  “And the more you process the less you have remaining in queue?”

  “If I’m right, these bouts will get shorter and shorter until they end. After that I may need to sleep a lot, maybe not. But I think the worst is passed.”

  “But your pain is increasing.”

  “Cumulative effect. I can handle it, but for the others it will be worse. A lot worse.”

  “Yet these other changes may be ramping up.”

  “One thing at a time,” Paul said, feeling his head start to go loopy again. “I’m fading out, but I’ve got a foothold now to work from. And once processed…these upgrades aren’t going backwards again. There is…no going back,” he said, with a hint of a smile as his new green eyes closed and Cal-com’s readings indicated that he was on the boundary of unconsciousness…but lingering there for the moment rather than the rapid crashes Paul had had earlier. Perhaps he was doing something to smooth the transition…that wouldn’t surprise Cal-com, but regardless, a few minutes later he was out again, leaving Cal-com as his bodyguard out in the middle of the Sand Sea with nobody around save for the occasional speeder in the far distance getting across the wasteland as fast as possible.

  They had their privacy here to figure this out, and a few weeks of supplies to do it. But while Paul was more content, Cal-com still knew the root issue eluded them. What was causing his initial changes? Where was it coming from? And what did this vision connection have to do with it?

  Cal-com wondered if they weren’t alone here, but despite his constant checks he could find no trace of anyone or anything.

  “Rest, my friend. A partial answer is victory enough for now,” he said, withdrawing the Regenerator tendrils and sitting down next to the prone Human as he began inventorying their supplies and telekinetically bringing the new packs in one at a time through the open door flap that gave just a hint of a breeze in the otherwise tranquil, yet blistering conditions outside.

  Fortunately Paul’s body didn’t seem to be bothered by it, nor did Cal-com’s so long as they stayed in the shade. Other than the fact they were losing water faster in this environment…but he’d accounted for that, and most of the weight he’d carried out here had been water…plus a moisture vaporator that he pulled out of one of the packs and set just outside the door to collect some of the moisture coming out of the tent so they could use it again later.

  It would give them some additional time out here, and right now Cal-com had no idea how much Paul would need, but he was going to insure he could stay put as long as necessary to go through this metamorphosis and survive it, which wasn’t assured at this point, so Paul needed every advantage…or more truthfully, he needed everyone and everything out of his way while he dealt with this internally. The real story was going on inside him, and Cal-com was going to make sure nothing on the outside interfered with it...

  2

  April 24, 154930

  Poolion System (Home Two Kingdom)

  Turron

  Paul had spent the next 3 days continuing to black out periodically, but the length of the blackouts decreased to only a few minutes before ending entirely. The past 2 days he’d been sleeping heavily, but at a time of his choosing. He could feel the life draining out of him and the incessant need to sleep, but it was no longer overloading him to the point he’d collapse.

  The changes to his body were continuing, but slowing. He still didn’t have any answers, but the Archon was gaining a better sense of himself. His mind was continuing to clear up more with each cycle, and the great darkness of the past was diminishing in his memory, to the point it was almost a fiction that he couldn’t believe he had ever fallen for.

  Paul stood outside their tent on the sands, his lengthening hair blowing in the gentle wind as another storm was approaching in the distance, with him punching the air in front of him three times so fast it looked like one blurred attack. He alternated between arm attacks and leg kicks on no enemy or object. He was just shadow boxing, loosening up after so much stagnant time and testing his new body to see what the differences were…but even these limited movements were draining his energy fast, and he knew he’d need another nap in a few minutes else he’d risk pushing himself to the point of blacking out again, and that was something he didn’t feel like playing with now that he’d gotten limited control of it.

  That said, every phantom attack he threw made him feel better. His movements were smooth and clumsy at the same time, for his natural speed had increased. Not up to Saiyan level, but about halfway there. Previously he’d transformed into the hyper mode just to make sure it was still there…and it was…but he couldn’t stay in it more than a few seconds before getting so tired he could barely make it back to the tent. Since then he’d chosen not to touch it again, and was instead exploring his normal ‘base’ form, and somehow part of his Saiyan speed had been incorporated into it.

  Yet a large part of the Saiyan speed was the mental processing, and he wasn’t having trouble keeping up with his own body. In fact the reverse was true, as if his mind had been sped up even more than his muscle cells, making his increased speed seem easily trackable. Each punch he threw he could see with his eyes clearly, as well as feel the position of his arm…

  Paul stopped, then began posing in various positions with the transitions between them shortening. It looked like he was dancing at first, but then the air around him began to churn as he twisted and turned too fast for it to remain stable. His body began to object with a wave of fatigue, but Paul kept at it, trying to accomplish the same speed with less force, as well as seeing what his sensitivity was, bringing his arms and legs closer and closer together, almost touching as they brushed past one another at dizzying speed.

  “Ka!” a voice shouted, shocking Paul into a twirl away from the sound as he took an extra step of distance as he spun down and focused on the source…seeing a Zen’zat in full armor standing before him. “Jo negga af keev.”

  Before Paul could say anything the image fizzled out, disappearing as if a mirage, leaving the Archon standing there with a weird tingle running down his spine…along with a wave of fatigue that would have grounded him if his combat instincts weren’t blaring louder.

  He stood there in silence for what felt like forever, checking his senses and blinking his eyes trying to figure out if that was real or a hallucination. His Pefbar had never connected, but his senses were so well refined that a hallucination would have been vague and patchwork, given the fact that it wasn’t real and had to be produced by the imagination. This Zen’zat had been in crystal clarity, so unless his imagination had also undergone an upgrade…which it might have…then it wasn’t a hallucination.

  “Paul, is something wrong?” Cal-com asked as he ran across the sand from the other side of the tent where he had been doing his own calisthenics, but the sight of Paul suddenly going as still as a statue had caught his eye.

  “It happened again,” Paul said, blinking his eyes to keep the sleep away. “I saw a Zen’zat, briefly.”

  Cal-com did a quick check of the area with his senses and sensors. “There is no one here but you and I.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Paul said, suddenly taking a knee but refusing to go down completely. “Now I’m drained again. Not just from the training.”

  “Did this Zen’zat say anything?” Cal-com said as he lifted Paul up and began dragging him back to the tent in an upright position with his friend as limp as a rag doll.

  “It spoke in V’kit’no’sat…and warned…me to stop…pushing.”

  “Your body is depleted of resources again,” the Voku said, hacking into him with his armored shoulder plates melting into tendrils that connected to Paul’s body.
“The original vision parameters are a close match. You need foodstuffs before you sleep again.”

  “I’ll try,” Paul said as Cal-com laid him down inside the tent with his back resting on a stack of packs in what had passed as a lounge chair the past few days, but with the Human’s butt still sitting on the tent floor.

  “Good,” Cal-com said as Paul chewed up one of the cubes, despite seeing his eyes roll multiple times as he fought to stay awake. “Keep eating. I will review your memories and discuss this when you wake. Get as much down as you can,” he said, handing him some water as well.

  Paul sipped at it, then crunched another food cube before drifting off seeing the side of the Voku’s hand on his head. Only a moment seemed to pass, then the fatigue faded partly, enough for him to eat some more at least.

  But the tray of foodstuffs was no longer sitting next to his right leg…nor was the bottle of water. Cal-com wasn’t here either, and Paul wondered if this wasn’t another vision taking place.

  He looked around, then pulsed his telepathy and found Cal-com’s mind nearby. A moment later the larger biped came back into the tent with an apologetic look on his otherwise stoic face.

  “I’m sorry. I did not expect you to wake yet. Your mind was deep in sleep a moment ago. What woke you?”

  “How long was I out?”

  “8 hours.”

  Paul frowned. “I blinked a few times. I don’t remember sleeping at all.”

  “Well you did, but very few upgrades this time. I think the drain came from somewhere else, but I can’t physically locate a source. The choice of a Zen’zat is curious. Why not impersonate me again?”

  “You think it is someone?”

  “Either someone else, or a part of you manifesting in this way. You were over pushing…as typical for Archons. Especially trailblazers.”

  “Then it wasn’t a part of me,” Paul said, sitting up and feeling a different type of sore this time. “Because I was going easy compared to what I wanted to do. You said some changes were made?”

  “Nothing noticeable, but some subtle recoding was done. Far less than your current trend.”

  “This all began with me taking a break, so maybe it is linked to resting rather than training.”

  “I’m worried too,” Cal-com admitted. “Perhaps you should let it play out before you attempt to harness whatever changes have been made.”

  “I’m sorer than before. The same way I was the first vision. It’s like a power drain.”

  “A mental hallucination would not affect the body.”

  “True. I think we’re dealing with something new.”

  “That is obvious.”

  “No, I mean something beyond our current senses, and beyond Essence, because I can’t detect anything.”

  “Nor can I. Do you have any new insights?”

  Paul sighed, searching his mind and ‘looking’ with his newfound clarity to see what had been uncovered that was previously foggy.

  “More of the same. My purpose is right here, though I can’t articulate it. I’m on the path. I can feel that. I just can’t identify it. But these changes are part of it.”

  “A necessary part or an optional upgrade?”

  “It feels like I was lost, but this transformation is a choke point on the path and I was drawn back to it because of it. I have to figure it out before I lose the scent of it again, but for the moment I’m where I need to be.”

  “No combat. No lives to be saved. No universe to carry on your shoulders,” Cal-com ticked off from previous conversations. “What about now fits your path?”

  Paul looked at the ground oddly, as if his mind suddenly took a journey to somewhere unseen. “The path is within.”

  “Your personal advancement?”

  “No…not totally. It’s…” he said, looking up at Cal-com suddenly. “I have a piece of it.”

  “Explain, if you can.”

  “The circle of life,” Paul said, standing up and cringing with each muscle movement. “Birth, youth, adulthood, reproduction, then downward cycle into death as the next generation rises to replace you. It was called the circle of life in a movie…not an important one, but one from long ago. It was stated that it was meant to be that way. Continuous cycling. My path is to break free of it. Break the circle.”

  “You’ve obtained self-sufficiency. Is that not breaking the cycle?”

  Paul huffed. “You’re right. I said that wrong. I broke free of it long ago, but the point is the answers…the path…cannot exist on the circle. It’s the training wheels that keep everything functioning on a base level. To find the path you have to rise above it. Break free of it. Then you have a path that doesn’t boomerang back to the beginning and start all over again.”

  “The first vision spoke of this, did it not?”

  “Yeah…” Paul said, nodding and immediately regretting it as he rubbed his jaw. “How does my face hurt? This makes no sense.”

  “Does anything not hurt?”

  “It is kind of body-wide, but spiking in odd places with movement. Don’t get me off topic. I need to nail this before it leaves me.”

  “Continue.”

  “Growth…must occur away from the newbs. The more you grow the further distant you get. Circling back around to train them pulls you away from the path, unless there is a cross connection that leads you to something new. New. The path will always be new, Cal-com. I sensed this before but I didn’t understand. New things aren’t a luxury. They’re a sign that you’re on your path. If everything is familiar then you’ve stopped moving or circled back. We can use automated training like bread crumbs for others following similar paths, that way we can help them without hindering ourselves.”

  “That has already been implemented in Star Force,” Cal-com pointed out.

  Paul waved him off with a hand. “I know, I know. I just didn’t see the reasons for it. We’ve been doing stuff accidentally right for other reasons. I can see it better now.”

  “And your path?”

  “Is not in naval combat on a regular basis,” he said with finality as that bit of his search ended. “From time to time, when there is a need. But sitting in a ship is not moving me along the path. I must pursue it where it goes, which means I have to be untethered,” he said, huffing a bit of a laugh that Cal-com could see was also painful. “A Jedi must have no attachments.”

  “Something else accidentally right?”

  “It seems so.”

  “Are you going back outside?”

  Paul looked down at his feet and where he was standing. “No. You’re right. I do need to let this play out, then train to master it latter. So how do I rest without going completely nuts?”

  “Sleep as much as you can. The balance you need to explore.”

  “I just woke up, so let’s go exploring.”

  “The storm is nearly here.”

  Paul then noticed the tent quivering slightly, something he should have picked up on as soon as he woke if he hadn’t been distracted. He walked past Cal-com to the door and poked his head out, seeing squalls of sand in the distance.

  “That looks bigger.”

  “It is. I was in the process of digging us some terrain to hide behind when you woke.”

  Paul looked around and saw the trenches to his left that were feeding a large mound behind their tent on the opposite side of the approaching storm. “What’s the plan?”

  “A ring around the perimeter to force the air up and over us, and a trench beyond to catch the blowing sands so they don’t pile on top and bury us. If our tent could handle that I would do so myself, but it cannot handle the weight no matter how I augment it. We’ve been getting an automated recall warning from the nearest beacon.”

  “They want everyone to come in?”

  “The storm predictions are beyond what the equipment they sell can handle.”

  Paul smirked. “Challenge accepted.”

  “How can we augment the tent to survive this? Or should we deconstruct it and ride
it out in our armor?”

  “Neither,” he said, pulling the door open enough for him to step out into the wind. He walked a few steps to clear the way for Cal-com to follow, then he knelt down and placed his bare palm against the thin, soft sand beneath him.

  Paul held still, but the sand did not, blowing every which way until the bits around his fingers began to pull in as if being sucked into a black hole. They almost disappeared beneath his hand, but his palm rose ever so slightly as the material built up beneath, eventually forming into a brick a few inches wide and as along as Paul’s forearm. When he was finished he grabbed it with his other hand and tossed it up to Cal-com, who caught the remarkably heavy construct in both hands as the weight surprised him into a short-lived fumble.

  “What did you do?”

  “Alchemy combined with Essence. The composition of the sand makes it easy. I shouldn’t know that without testing, but I can feel it. The molecules are almost beckoning to be remade.”

  Cal-com used his armor to analyze the brick, with his total shock evident on his face when the results came in.

  “This is a corovon alloy. How can you do that with no Corovon in the sand?”

  “The building blocks are there for it. I can’t explain how, but I can feel them.”

  “That’s subatomic, Paul. And something even our Mastertechs haven’t figured out how to do. Are you fatigued?”

  “No. I didn’t have to deposit energy, just set up a natural chain reaction. Barely a touch of Essence was required, and my psionic use was moderate. I just gave it the necessary push and it realigned because it wanted to. It’s pathetically simple, but if I had to draw it out I’m not sure I could. The sense is fleeting, and if I try to think of it academically I’m afraid I’ll lose it.”

  “Can you do more?”

  “Many more, and it will allow my body to rest. Two problems solved with one task.”

  “Can you do enough in time?” Cal-com asked, glancing at the approaching dust swirls that were eating up the horizon.