PAST PRESENCE
BOOK SEVEN OF DIMENSION OUT OF RANGE

09 SEPTEMBER 1997
BROUGHAM, ONTARIO, CANADA

 Brianna did a double-take as she steered the new Tonka Truck onto Highway 7.
"What's up?" she asked Jay, who was staring off into space, almost depressedly.
 "Ahhh.." he began, then stopped. "Nothing much. Just thinking."
 "Of what?" Bri' prodded. She drove into the firehall-entrance-turned-driveway.
 "Um.. I dunno if I wanna tell anyone quite yet."
 She kept staring at him long after the roll-up door had ascended, permitting
them to enter their complex. "What do you mean? Not even me?"
 He paused for a moment and then regained some personality as he went on.
"Sorry. It's just something we found when the government first came to us."
 "That cube, right?"
 Jason turned to look at his SO as she drove underground.
 "I saw you toying with it that night," she explained. "Looking at it longingly
like it was a lost friend--moreso than all the other parts and debris we found.
What is it?"
 "A lost friend," he told her. "Literally."
 She stopped the truck and shut it off, right on the ramp. "Okay, talk."
 And so he did. He told her, again, all about Mitch; she knew most of it, but
few outside of Jason, Brian, and some dead and/or missing people knew how MITCH
the CI had been maintained for thousands of years. "That cube is a storage
matrix slash computer system all in itself, holding almost 28,000 terabytes of
memory. But it's not RAM like the computers of today use. It's more like a
human brain. It was designed to hold a Constructed Intelligence in its
entirety. Actually, with Mitch's unique origin, it held an entire, real person
in there. She picked up a packrat.org image of her original brain scan early
on, and was whole again from then on."
 "And she's in there now?" They were still sitting in the truck.
 "Possibly," Jason answered after a long moment. "If it's been sitting there
for 215,000 years like the Robotech stuff was, I've got no way to know if there
was any degradation or scrambling. Granted, over 3300 years, nothing'd
happened, but.."
 "So you're afraid to hook it up in case she's all mixed up inside?"
 He nodded. "In so many words, yes. But there's another problem." They had
since climbed out of the truck, and Bri' had followed him over to the safe. He
extracted the cube, gesturing to the myriad of lines and paths all over its
surface. "There are only two people who can rig up an interface to make this
computer work with computers of the 20th century. One of them is in there." He
pointed at the cube. Then he pointed at himself. "The other is right here. I'm
not sure I can do it alone. If she's not already scrambled, she WILL be if I
fuck it up."
 "Well, if I help you, you won't be working alone, now, will you?" Brianna
said. She walked around him, inspecting the cube from as many angles as
possible. "Doesn't seem TOO hard.."
 He watched her watching MITCH's prison.

 Later that night, in bed, she abruptly said to him, "Okay, now tell me what's
REALLY bothering you."
 He sighed heavily. "I..I'm not sure how I'll respond to having Mitch around
again. Or vice versa."
 "Why don't you consult Brian about the whole thing?"
 "I'm not sure that he won't be just as upset as I am," he protested. "I mean,
this is a Pretty Big Thing, Bri'."
 "I know, I know," she said. "In any case, *I* still think you should at least
try, out of respect for your friend. And as for your past relationship with
her, I'M pretty confident that you'll be able to handle it, based upon what I
saw between you and Asrial."
 He sighed, then turned to look at her. "Promise you'll help me with it?"
 "Not just the programming and building," she reassured him with a smile, "but
the other stuff, too."
 After a long pause, he finally said it: "Okay, then."

 Two weeks rushed by, filled with frantic programming and constructing tasks.
Connecting a mainframe computer from the 30th century that's been buried
underground for 215,000 years, to a personal computer--no matter how big--that
was built in the late 20th century, was not a simple task. Two days out of the
fourteen were entirely wasted as far as Jason was concerned, because his mind
was entirely addled.
 Make that three days out of fourteen; on the fourteenth day, he couldn't take
the stress any more, and without saying a word to Brianna, he got in the new
truck, drove up to the 7th Concession, and drove westward, parking in a field
about halfway between Brougham and Markham. He shut the truck entirely down,
and just sat there, thinking.
 He thought of Mitch, of all the times he'd enjoyed with her, from the first
days in the Pickering of his youth, as his girlfriend, to the better times that
followed the Hundred Day War, as his CI and confidant, and beyond into the 5th
Millennium, as his wife. He then thought of Kylie briefly, remembering the good
times he'd had with her, and naturally his other SOs drifted by. Brianna was
now included in that group, and she lingered. <I really hope you and Mitch and
I WILL be able to exist together,> he told the vision in his mind. Some part of
him thought it just might work after all.
 He thought of Brian and Gina and wondered how he'd break the news about Mitch
to them, regardless of the outcome of the attempt to bring her back to life.
Then, in his usual convoluted way, he got to thinking about the new truck,
which Bri and Gina had not yet seen. Rather than attempt to rebuild the old
truck, they bought a new one; Bri' was able to salvage most of the stuff from
the older truck and use it in the new one. The fusion motor, drivetrain, and
HUD transferred without a flaw; Bri' had to modify the truck box, cap, and
force fields to suit the new machine, though. Insted of a super-extended crew-
cab dualie like before, this time they'd chosen a regular axle Quad-Cab. It
took some modifications to get things straightened out, but it eventually did
happen. And it did everything the older truck had been able to do (except get
its dualies stuck when off-roading).
 He realized he was being unproductive (moreso than usual), so he started up
the truck and headed back home, taking the long way.
 When he returned, Brianna greeted him, not asking where he'd been, but still
apparently concerned. She pointed out that she'd finished the interface.
 "Really?" he said. He went to PCzilla and checked it out. Sure enough, the
cube was hooked up and ready to go. He sat down. "Incredible."
 "Ready?" Brianna asked.
 "No," Jason sighed, "but there's no time like the present." He pushed the On
switch. On the screen of PCzilla came its usual message, reporting 512 megs of
RAM were checking out OK.
 Brianna sounded disappointed. "It's not working," she said, partly a statement
and partly a question.
 "No, hold on," Jason said, caught up in the moment. "Wait until it's booted."
They watched the OS/2 operating system boot up. The sound bite that Jay had
configured to play on startup emanated from the speakers. "DUE TO THE HIGHLY
INTENSE AND SINISTER NATURE OF THIS PROGRAM, THE PRODUCERS INSIST THAT EVERY
PERSON IN ATTENDANCE PERSONALLY SIGN A CERTIFICATE OF ASSURANCE CERTIFYING EACH
PATRON OF SOUND MIND AND BODY, AND THAT IN THE EVENT OF A CORONARY, INSANITY,
OR DEATH SUFFERED DUE TO THE PROGRAM, THE PRODUCERS OR THEATER CANNOT BE HELD
LIABLE IN ANY WAY."
 Brianna rolled her eyes and shook her head, as she always did.
 They waited as the remainder of the system booted up, and finally, it just sat
there. The Desktop was open, and the computer sat idle, apparently as Jason had
expected.
 He moused over to a drives icon and got a list of available drives. The two
floppy drives were there, A and B; the six hard drives, C through H, and then
the two 4-disc CD drives rounded out I through P.
 There was also a drive Q listed, with 28991029248 megabytes used, 0 free. Jay
looked over his shoulder at a surprised Bri', then double-clicked the Q icon.
The system bogged down and labored, then suddenly dumped unneccesary processes
on its own, without asking Jason permission. He blinked and made a sound caught
halfway between a cheer and a scream.

                  << Def Leppard "Heaven Is" _Adrenalize_ >>

 Suddenly, the screen refreshed itself, then a window popped up sans title. In
it, text scrolled by, with lines like "Auto-sensing system capabilities" and
"Adjusting to operating system" all throughout. After about a minute of this,
and several thousand lines of text, the window closed, and another one popped
up. This one was in the Digital Video format. In the small video window, some
text appeared:

 MODIFYING USER INTERFACE PROTOCOLS - AVI FILE FORMAT SELECTED

 After another few seconds, it blanked, and then a picture came on screen,
accompanied by a voice.
 "Jason?" MITCH called out hesitantly, 'looking around' from within the window.
 "Oh, shit," he blurted, backing away and falling out of his chair. Bri' knelt
down to help him off the floor as Mitch spoke again. "Jay? I can hear you, but
I can't see you."
 "You can hear me?" he said after a moment, directing his words to the mike
plugged into the sound card.
 "Yeah, I can, but it's a bit on the lossy side," she said. "I still can't see
you, though."
 "You won't be able to," he said, sitting down again and forgetting his fears
for now. "Are all your files intact and undamaged?"
 "Yes," she said after a half-second scan. "Although most of the sensory inputs
are gone, and those that I am getting are all weird."
 "Um.. I've got something to tell you. First, let me ask.. what's the date?"
 She was about to rattle it off. "Discrepancy," she said. "The onboard clock
thinks it's 23 September 1997. I KNOW it's 16 May 2977."
 "Oh, piss."
 "What?"
 "You came from the Revenge that Asrial built for us, right?"
 "Yeah. What do mean 'came from'? Where are we now?"
 "We're on Earth. It's been over 2200 years since it was 2977 for me. The date
the computer gave you is correct. I've jumped a few dimensions, and apparently,
so've you. I'm living in Brougham again, and you're currently connected to my
personal computer, a Pentium-400 desktop unit."
 "Where's Kylie?"
 "Um.."
 "C'mon, tell me," she said. She grew concerned. "What's happened?"
 "Well.. in 4373, Kylie and I were trying to stop a bank robbery on Earth, and
she got wounded. She, um,.. died, and I got together with.. you.. and we lived
together until the year 5215, when I was torn away from you by another delta-
Reality wave."
 "Oh my Goddess," she breathed.
 "And as for you, meaning the you I'm talking to now, as opposed to the you I
was previously talking about, you were found by a government agency a few weeks
ago when a construction crew hit the core cube with a digger. Estimates put the
core cube underground for something like 215,000 years."
 She was speechless for a moment. Then, without warning:
 "I guess I've joined you in your travels, huh?"
 Jason laughed, in spite of how he was feeling inside. "Yeah, I guess so."
 "Got any way to hook up a camera to this box so I can see things?"
 "Um.. not right now, but maybe later on."
 "I've got an idea," Brianna spoke up, mostly to Jason. "I'll go buy one of
those QuickCam things if you can tell me where there's a computer store."
 "Who's there?" Mitch said.
 Jason realized they hadn't been introduced. He felt a bit of a cold sweat
coming on. "Um.. Mitch, that's my current SO. Her name is Brianna Diggers.
She's also known as Bri'."
 "Hi, Mitch," Bri' said, waving (then realizing it was futile).
 "Hello," the CI said in a confused tone. "Tell me more about this camera."
 Bri' looked relieved to be in her natural habitat--computers and technology.
"The Connectix QuickCam is a device that can be hooked up, via an interface
card, to a PC like PCzilla here, and can transmit live or still color or black-
and-white pictures. It's really neat."
 There was a pause.
 Mitch blurted out, "I'm hooked up to a computer you call 'PCzilla'??"
 Jason roared with laughter briefly. "She's okay," he told Brianna.

 An hour or three later, he lay on his and Brianna's bed, smiling to himself,
staring at the ceiling. For once, things were going right. Mitch was okay, and
they'd succeeded in bringing her back to life. Now, the question was--what
would happen next?
 <I don't want to think about that right now,> he told himself. <I just want to
reminisce.>
 The intercom beeped. He looked at the panel by the door and saw the red light
for the lab was lit--but he knew Brianna had gone out with the truck. He didn't
have to wait to figure out who it was on the 'com. "Jay?" Mitch's voice called
out.
 "How the hell did you do that?" was his answer.
 "It was a simple hack," she said. "Could you come to the bridge?"
 "Bridge?" he grinned.
 "Oops."
 "Lab."
 "Lab, then. I have some questions."
 <Oh, boy. Here we go.> "Okay, be there in a minute."
 "Thanks."
 He got up and first went to the kitchen and grabbed a sandwich, then walked
down to the lab and sat down before the computer. "I'm here," he said through a
mouthful of peanut-butter sandwich.
 "Tell me what's happened since my core cube got lost, from your perspective."
 "Um. Okay," he said. "From my perspective, the core cube never got lost."
 "Tell me The History Of Jason Low And All Those Connected From 2977 Onward To
The Present, then."
 "Oh." He sighed. He dove in, telling her about the 4th Millennium, when the
WDF had all but abandoned MedTac--which was a good thing, because it let them
work for Asrial, in some of the best conditions and operations they'd ever
experienced. And then, in 4116, when the WDF had signed agreements with every
last member of MedTac, including Mitch, in the negotiations for the longest
labor dispute in history. MedTac would resume being an arm of the WDF, but
would work rather independently.
 Then, the traumatic events of January 4373, on what was supposed to be a
holiday, arranged through those same negotiations. As he told Mitch about all
of it, he realized that the seeds for Kylie's death had been sown as early as
the Hundred Day War--if he hadn't had that falling-out with the WDF then, they
wouldn't've been bargaining in the 42nd century, and they wouldn't've been
given a paid vacation in the 44th by the WDF, and they wouldn't've been on
Earth in 4373 at all. <Maybe our lives ARE predestined..>
 "Go on," an enraptured Mitch was saying.
 "Hm? Oh, sorry." He shifted in his seat, and began to explain Kylie's last
words, and the events between him and Mitch that followed. The Mitch that was
his captive audience showed some surprise as he told about their marriage in
late 4373, and the centuries of contentment that followed. He told her of
Coutts, and their time there, and she understood what he meant, although she'd
never seen the reterraformed world. He brought her up to speed on the newly-
commissioned Triumphant, and told her of the 'mission' they'd been sent on, and
again, she understood why he was so upset about it--babysitting fourteen
thousand students in the school of starship operations.
 "Quite a retirement package."
 "Uh-huh." He took a bite of his sandwich and cracked open a Coke, then carried
on. He spoke of the distortion in the Arm of Galileo that threw him out of the
so-called "WDF Universe". He talked of Amy and Jenna and the D Team's efforts
to seal up all the gaps in the multiverse. He had a lot of stories to tell,
adding to the already two-hour-long story. At full speed, he crossed from the D
Team universe to the present one, explaining his and Brian's arrival (with
Bell's help), and the subsequent meeting with the Diggers girls. Finally, he
told her all about the adventures they'd gone on with Gina and Britanny and
Brianna, and of Brian's attraction to Gina, and Jay's to Brianna.
 "So you and she are a couple now?" Mitch said.
 "..We are," he nodded tentatively.
 "She must be nice."
 "Don't say it like that."
 "Like what?" The look on Mitch's face was one of surprise.
 "I've been unable to sleep for two weeks, ever since we decided to try to
rescue you out of the cube, because I didn't know how you'd react to the fact
that I'm with someone else now." He ran his hands through his hair, then shook
his head vigorously and continued. "Bri' and I love each other, and we have for
quite some time now. Dammit, this's TWICE now--I thought I lost you back in
another mid-1990s, and you came back to me out of the blue. I'm not saying this
is a bad thing that you're here--I'm actually quite happy about it--but as far
as my mind was concerned, I left you on the bridge of the Triumphant in 5215.
Bell told me that you were going to carry on running the ship, with Keana, who
obviously lost Brian too. We were told we'd never see you two again, and we got
on with our lives. This deltaReality shit really fucked up our personal lives,
you know that?"
 She tried to get a word in edgewise a few times, but he plowed right through.
"I want you to know something. Even though I was afraid that you would be badly
damaged by the age and the condition of the cube, and even though I was afraid
that you might not be able to handle the time that's elapsed and the changes
that I've made in my life.. and its relationships, I knew, as soon as I was
shown the cube, that I'd make an attempt to bring you back. It would be unfair
to you for me not to try. I just hope that I was wrong in all my fears about
what might happen."
 Mitch gave him That Look, the soft, 'Oh Jay' look she always had for him. "You
were," she finally smiled.
 Jason heard a footstep and whirled around just in time to miss Brianna leaving
the doorway, where she'd been standing, watching, arms full of groceries.

THE NEXT DAY
07.16

 "Hey, you guys, you out there somewhere?"
 Brianna looked up. "When'd you hook her up to the intercoms?"
 Jason watched his SO to gauge her reaction as he said, "*I* didn't." To the
intercom, he said, "Yeah, we're in the gym."
 "Could you come down and talk to me for a bit? I have a.. proposition for
you."
 "Um. Okay, give us a few minutes to wrap up here."
 "No rush." The intercom went dead.

 After they showered and got into some non-sweaty clothes, they went to the
lab, and Mitch smiled as they entered the room. "Thanks for this, by the way,"
she said, her onscreen image pointing to the camera lying on the top of the
monitor.
 "No problem," Brianna answered as she and Jay sat down. "Does it do the job?"
 "For now," Mitch smiled, "but I have an idea on how to make things easier for
me."
 "Oh, really?" Brianna said. Jason had a bad feeling in his gut, like he knew
what Mitch was getting at.
 "Yeah. Let me tell you about a program that Jason picked up one time that
allowed him to create the CI version of me, and helped me to evolve back into a
human again."
 Jason got up and beat his head against the wall. Mitch ignored him as she told
Bri' all about CLULESS. Bri' was fully astonished as Mitch explained the power
of the compiler. "But.. if you don't have a holodeck-type peripheral, how are
you going to use it?"
 "USE it?" Jason erupted. He laughed nervously. "Easy. She's NOT gonna use it."
 Again, Mitch ignored him. "I've been exploring all night," she told Brianna.
"While I'm inside this cube, I need no sleep. Anyway, I found out about two
systems that maybe you can explain to me.. one's called, at least as far as I
can tell, an 'Anti-Frakes system', and the other's a 'Light-Gate Generator'."
 Jason paused to gape briefly, then resumed banging his head against the wall
as Bri' smiled and told Mitch all about the systems in question. Mitch's
expression grew more and more enthusiastic with each word.
 "Sounds perfect," she finally said. "I think I can use that."
 "To, um, 'rez yourself up'?" Bri' said.
 "Absolutely not!" he said, turning to face them again. "It's too dangerous!"
 "Jay--" Brianna and Mitch stereoed, but he ranted on.
 "A, the cube is 215,000 years old, and the files might be corrupted--"
 "I already TOLD you, 'the files' are 100% intact," Mitch shot back angrily.
 "2, the hardware wasn't BUILT to generate something out of thin air, which is
what CLULESS does. We're going to be fucking with some serious shit here!"
 "Thirdly, it's a time out for you," Bri' said, getting up and forcibly hauling
Jason out toward the garage. "We'll be back in a while, once I deal with him,"
she told Mitch.

 Brianna drove angrily to the Brougham Park and skidded to a stop in the gravel
parking lot. Jason was about to speak, but she beat him to it.
 "How DARE you behave that way!" she said, pointing at him, fire in her eyes.
"What do you think you're doing?!"
 "Only pointing out the obvious," he shot back. "It was enough of a risk to try
to hook up the cube. To use *CLULESS*, of all things, on hardware that was
designed 1000 years before the cube? Come on, now!"
 "It's worth a try," she spat back. "Think of how Mitch must feel, trapped in
there--"
 "I HAVE," he snapped. "Believe me, I fucking well HAVE. It's been one of my
overriding thoughts for the past few weeks. It tears me apart, but CLULESS is
singly the most dangerous computer program that existed. With it, you can
create anything--inanimate objects, life forms, anything. The Wedge Defense
Force and its subsequent centuries of battling was started by a guy who used
CLULESS to create the GENOM Corporation from BGC." He sucked in a breath. "It
doesn't care whether it's creating something that would be used for good or for
bad. It just does it. Anyway, it doesn't belong to me, it's someone else's
property. I've been trying to get rid of it for hundreds of years, but every
time I think it's out of my life, pop, it comes right back. I say we should
just turf it."
 "And *I* say we should do this: Hook it up to the Frakes and a Light-Gate.
HEAR ME OUT," she said as he protested. "We'll let her use it to rez herself up
and then if she promises to erase CLULESS right away, will you be okay with
that?"
 He was about to reject the idea altogether, but then the words sank in. He sat
there staring straight ahead for a while, then sighed forcefully. "Okay."
 Bri' started the truck and backed up out of the parking lot, heading back
home. "You won't regret this."
 He just shook his head.

 Back at the complex, Brianna explained the plan to Mitch while Jason pretended
not to sulk. Mitch agreed to the idea, and asked what she could do to help.
 "Um.. unfortunately, probably nothing much right now," Bri' said. "We've got
to hook up the two systems to the computer--something that we were supposed to
do anyway. That'll take all of today and probably part of tomorrow. Until then,
I'm afraid you'll have to just sit there and watch."
 "I'll find something to do," she smiled. "In the meantime, Jay, do you still
have your CD collection?"
 "'Still'?" he said. "Well, I've got a bit of what I used to have, considering
I had to rebuild it from scratch twice now."
 "Point taken. I'm aching for some music here."
 He finally smiled. "Understood." He turned and headed for the stereo.

 They worked until midnight, finishing off the building of the Frakes system--
which they'd chosen to build in both the garage and the lab, for a redundant
backup--and then took apart a Light-Gate controller to try to get it interfaced
with PCzilla. They elected to finish things off in the morning.
 So, after Brianna's run and Jason's exercise, and breakfast, they dove back
in, and had the modifications done by 09.11 am.
 "Well, that's got it," Jason said, closing up the back of the Light-Gate unit.
"If it's gonna work, that'll be it."
 "Okay," Bri' said. "Good luck, Dr. Venkman." She turned to the computer. "When
you're ready."
 "Okay. Powering up now."

                    << Metallica "King Nothing" _Load_ >>

 The building lights dimmed and then went out. Jason was certain that wasn't
supposed to happen. Neither were the horrendous noises coming from the now-
laboring power plant on the other side of the complex.
 Things seemed to fade away, in and out a few times. He looked to the screen
and saw that Mitch was no longer there. He turned to Brianna, but she was gone
as well.
 And then, so was he.

 The rumbling stopped and the power systems returned to normal. The computer
was spewing out a flurry of error messages and a bit of not-nice stuff.
Fortunately, there was someone there to take care of it.
 Mitch took a tentative step forward, realized her body had indeed rezzed up,
and then rushed to the computer. She watched the error messages fly up the
screen, talking about 'Anti-Frakes Overload' and 'Light-Gate System Failure'.
Also something about 'Temporal/Dimensional Distortion Levels Exceed Safety
Parameters'.
 Then she noticed the cube, sitting there smoldering. She yelped and snatched
it up, pulling it away from the interface cables hooked up to it, then yelped
again and dropped it, as it was searing hot. She blew on her burnt fingers for
a moment, then found something to pick it up with--a piece of printer paper--
and managed to toss it back on the desk before the paper caught fire from the
heat. She stamped the paper under her shoe, then managed to hook the cube back
up and reboot the computer.
 The computer seemed to be fine. The cube, however, not so much. It reported 0
megabytes used, 28990052683 megs bad, 976565 megs free.
 "Jay? Bri'? Where are you?" she called out. She opened a line to the intercom,
then remembered she was totally outside the computer once more. She ran to the
nearest intercom panel and nervously pushed the call button. "Jason? Brianna?"
 Her voice echoed throughout an empty complex.

AN HOUR LATER
ATLANTA, GA

 "Hey, look."
 Brian looked up to the security camera Gina was pointing at. On it, on the
street in front of the house, a light-gate distortion was happening. A Dodge
Ram truck emerged from it, but it wasn't the Tonka Truck. Not unless they'd
started over with a new truck; the one out on the road had no dual wheels on
the rear axle, and a conventional supercab.
 It did have the surge of power that Brian had come to attribute to a fusion
motor, though, and it did come from a light-gate. He watched as it drove a
short distance and stopped right in the middle of the road, the single occupant
apparently confused by the change of locale.
 Brian was convinced that it wasn't the Tonka Truck. "Great," he said. "Jay got
a civilian caught up in his light-gate generator. Let's go sort them out."
 They went upstairs. The truck in question had stopped a truck length or so
beyond their front door, so Brian got a look at the license plate: It was from
Ontario, and it read "TONKA 1". <Okay,> he shrugged, <it IS the Truck, heavily
redesigned. What's the story here?>
 The driver saw Brian and Gina emerge from the house and started to get out. As
the truck began to roll, she climbed back in and figured out how to put it in
park. However, Brian had already got a glimpse of her.
 "Whatdafuck?!" he breathed.
 She exited the truck again and <Holy SHIT it IS her!> "Mitch??.." he trailed
off.
 She was very upset. "Brian! Thank Goddess I found you! Something's happened."
 "No shit," he said, looking at her. Gina was also staring in shock. Brian
turned to her and said, "Gina, this is--"
 "No time!" Michele Scott blurted. She had an object in her hand, and Brian
realized with even more shock that it was a piece of core memory. She continued
to talk in a blur. "Jay and his friend called me back out of this and I think
at the same time something must've happened in the general area like a power
surge or something I don't know because they disappeared and I think they've
gone back through time somehow!"
 "How?" Brian said, meaning several things.
 "I--I don't know," Mitch said. A car passed them. "I came from just after the
Hundred Day War, I've been inside this since then, and Jay and his friend
managed to connect it up to their computer. I passed through a machine called
'PCzilla', started up CLULESS, which I have since lost, and I managed to pull
myself out of this entirely." She tapped the cube. "They're not trapped inside
this, but they might be here on this world, sent back in time."
 Another car went past. Brian had been about to answer, but he realized they
were still out on the street. "Let's go inside and sort all this out. Mitch,
you go with Gina. I'll put the Tonka Truck away."

 "What makes you think Jay and my sister've gone back in time?" Gina asked as
she led Mitch back to the house.
 "I don't know. I just have this feeling. I was still partly in the computer
when it happened." She was still a bit panicky, Gina decided, but calming down
well. "Bri' was telling me to try out CLULESS, and when I did, there was a
spike or a surge at the same time. I got three or four messages from PCzilla
before I pulled myself out. One of them was 'light-gate activated', another was
'frakes system overload', and the other two were telling me that CLULESS was
crashing. By the time I got myself to safety, PCzilla was cooking the cube, and
I was completely out of the system. I looked around, and Jay and your sister
were gone."
 By the time Gina and Mitch were downstairs in the garage, Brian had parked the
truck. He walked over to join them, and Gina had Mitch tell him all of what had
happened.
 "You don't think they screwed up building a new Frakes, do you?" Gina asked
Brian.
 "Anything's possible, I guess," he said. "I'm wondering why the light-gate
generator was powered up at the same time."
 "They were trying to make them work together so I could use CLULESS," Mitch
said quietly, and it got lost in the commotion.
 "Maybe they put both systems in their new complex," Gina proposed, "and
somehow screwed up the wiring. They both powered up when the Frakes system was
supposed to, and they were caught and saved by the Frakes, but light-gated to
some other place."
 "How can you two be so calm about this?!" Mitch blurted out, facing Brian.
"Are you the same Brian I knew? Is this another reality?"
 "Yes and yes, and also no," Brian explained. "Mitch, Jay and I are the same
people you knew. We came here via a few side-trips to other dimensions. We're
aging normally now and we're fully human again. We've been here for a few
years, adventuring with my SO, Gina Diggers, here, and her sister Brianna, who
is with Jay. Gina, this is--"
 "Michele Scott," Gina smiled, shaking her hand. "I figured it out. Welcome to
1990s Earth. We're calm because we're confident we can get them back."
 "How?" Mitch said. "We don't even know where they are!"
 "Aaah, pfft," Gina said dismissively, waving a hand. "That's part of the
challenge. For now, let's go calm down--I mean, sit down--and sort out a plan
of action."

SOMEWHERE ELSE
SOME OTHER TIME

 Jason picked himself up off the ground, retching and heaving a couple of times
before he could stomach the act of standing. When he finally did, he noticed
that his surroundings were quite unfamiliar.
 <Oh fuck, I've Jumped again,> he thought. His first thoughts after that were
of never seeing Brianna and Brian and Gina and Mitch again. He was certain that
he was now within another reality, never to return to what he'd considered
home. The timing was just about the same as it had always been--wait until he
gets comfortable, then BAM, off you go.
 As he turned, however, he realized he was seeing a place he'd visited before,
in his mind's eye. Stories he'd been told seemed to match the lay of the land.
A desert stretched out to the west, beyond some lakes and rivers and a hilly,
forested area. To the east, more forest, which seemed to thin out after a few
miles. To the north, an immense bay with one or two islands in it. To the
south, a dark mountain range.
 He chose to try his luck in the eastern part of the forest.

 Darkness came quickly, and not just because of the thick woods--apparently, it
was late afternoon when he arrived here. Or rather woke up. He could've been
lying in that clearing for days.
 <Even if I DO find something or someone, what the hell am I gonna DO?> he said
to himself. He knew he was in Jade, the magical land linked to Earth through a
parallel dimension. He had a sense that he was on the eastern continent of the
two halves of Jade. He even felt reasonably sure that he was on the north end
of the eastern continent, due to the shoreline to the north.
 He didn't, however, have any clue what time it was, in any sense of the term--
except night. He couldn't tell if it was what would equal 1997 on Earth, or
earlier, or later. There was literally nothing for him to base a decision upon.
 His IndiGlo watch lit up when he pushed the button, and told him it was just
after one in the afternoon. Big deal. It was still operating on the same time
it'd been using when he jumped. He was lucky it still worked at all. It did
explain why he was hungry, though.
 The just-a-couple-miles of forest seemed to stretch forever in the darkness.
The sun had long since set in the east, the direction he was facing, and even
the twilight was failing to reach him now.
 "God fucking dammit," he said aloud, thrashing through the dense underbrush.
He mimicked an old game. "'You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all
alike.'" He told his mind to go fuck itself.
 Twenty minutes later, he came upon a clearing--not the edge of the forest like
he'd hoped--but a distinct lack of trees nonetheless.
 It wasn't as positive a sign as he'd thought it'd be.
 A devastated village sat in the small clearing. He could hear children's
screams from one of the huts, and a ferocious animalistic noise. He crept up
slowly, not knowing why, to an empty hut closest to him. Empty except for the
blood and gore, that is; someone or something had been through this village and
killed everyone and plundered the villagers' goods.
 <Correction,> he told himself as he heard another scream. <Something is STILL
IN this village.> He looked around, searching three huts before he found what
he'd wanted: a sword. Julia's lessons would come in handy.
 Speaking of handy, he had the rather gory task of prying a dismembered hand
from his new weapon. He tried not to throw up, and instead snuck back out and
tried to find the source of the screaming.
 <Why the fuck are you doing this?> his rational side yelled at him.
 <Because it's the right thing to do,> came the answer in his head.
 <Yeah, sure, whatever. Listen, if you don't stop right this instant, I'm
leaving.>
 <Go. See if I care.>
 <Fine. This is me, all your common sense and rational thinking, taking a LONG
holiday. Seeya.>
 He crept around a corner and saw them, just barely; five humongous creatures,
ten-foot-tall black demon-like beings. The word 'nightstalker' popped into his
head, from tales Julia Diggers had told. Everything he knew about this world
came from things she'd said.
 <Let's hope she didn't leave out anything important.> He boldly stepped around
the corner.
 "Hey, you," he managed to get out. He wanted to say something snappy, like
maybe the intro to The Wall, but he didn't get a chance. Partly because his
rational side momentarily returned, made him think about what he was doing,
said <Told you!> and then left. Mostly, though, because the five beasts charged
him.
 He swung the sword in a great arc, knowing it wasn't what he'd been taught,
but it had the desired effect. Sort of. The blade dug through the side of the
lead creature and it dropped back, howling. The second and third raced at him
with claws extended.
 He looked up overhead quickly and saw the pitched, cone-shaped roof of the hut
he was backed up against. <What the hell, it's worth a try.> He propelled
himself into the air and somehow managed to get onto the roof.
 Surprise gripped him for just a second; he hacked away with the sword at the
two that were trying to climb up to get at him. The first one had recovered and
was crawling up the backs of the other two to reach the roof.
 Jay slashed one more time and looked to his left. Another hut was a few meters
away. He ran and leapt, and again defied fate and logic as he made it safely
onto the other hut's roof. The surviving three--what? three?--split up, two of
them chasing on the ground, while the other got up onto the roof of the first
hut and rushed to jump to the one Jay was on.
 He made three or four more jumps, leading the three nightstalkers around the
destroyed village, until he found himself cut off from any avenue of escape. He
slashed at one of the ones on the ground, managing to lop off a clawed hand,
and then stuck it again through the chest as it fell to the ground. He realized
the one on the roofs with him was almost on top of him--literally--and fell
onto his back, wielding the blade as the creature jumped to the hut he was on.
 The sword went all the way up to the hilt into the creature's chest. In its
dying moments, it reached out with its claws and scratched Jay's shoulders and
arms up pretty badly. He ignored the pain as best he could--it'd been a LONG
time since he'd been hurt that badly and had to worry about it--put a foot
against the monster's chest, and pushed it off his sword, dumping it over the
side toward its fallen comrade.
 Suddenly he realized there was one left. He flipped himself over to see it
reach over the top of the hut--
 --and then fall to the ground in two pieces, severed neatly at what would've
been its waist. The other two were nowhere to be seen, just the three dead ones
around him remained.
 And a voice. "That's an interesting style," it said. "Where'd you learn it?"
 He couldn't see the person for the darkness, but he could tell she was down by
the one she'd hacked in two. He stepped off the roof of the hut, holding the
sword away at a neutral but ready position, and said, "A friend's mother--"
 He stopped short and gaped. At her level, up close, he realized he was face-
to-face with a younger Julia Diggers, adventurer and swordswoman superior to
most of the entire realm of Jade.
 "..Um," he finished.
 She looked him over. "Strange garb there, warrior. Where are you from?"
 He sweated for a moment, regarding his clothes. He looked up. "Uh.. not here?"
he tried out on her.
 She smiled. "Okay, I get it. I won't ask. You okay?"
 He nodded, then looked at his arms. "Ow."
 "Come with me, we'll take care of those."
 "Um, actually, I--"
 "Nightstalkers' claws can do some pretty serious damage," she said to him as
she took him away. "You need to get those wounds taken care of. Understand?"
 "Okay," he agreed, seeing no way out.

 An hour later, he was resting as comfortably as possible in one of the huts.
Physically resting, that is; his mind was still reeling.
 "How do you feel now?" Julia said, coming in to check on him.
 "My arms and back ache," he said. "Haven't done this for a long time."
 She laughed. "You're out of shape, then. You need to practice. If you want,
that's what I'm going to be doing for the next few days, while I go to the
Tournament down near Tessa. You're welcome to accompany me for the practice,
but once I get to the Tournament, you're on your own."
 He smiled. "Maybe that's not such a bad idea."
 "Anyway, I brought you some water." She had a leather bladder with a stopper
in it. "You'll likely need it through the night. I'll be in one of the other
huts if you need me."
 He took the water, and without thinking, said, "Thanks, Julia."
 The next thing he knew, she'd whirled on him and the tip of her sword was
literally as close to his face as it could be without touching. "Who are you?"
she demanded. "You know my name. You're a sorcerer, aren't you?"
 His eyes crossed as he stared at the blade. "No.. no, um.. your reputation
precedes you.. I've heard so much about you. Finest swordswoman in all of Jade,
master adventurer, and all that."
 She paused, then hestitantly removed the sword. "Hmph. Very well. I apologize.
But since you know my name, isn't it fair that I know yours?"
 "Jason," he said after a moment. "Jason. I'm from.. the.. Unexplored East."
 "Really," she nodded, her eyebrows arching. "A pleasure to meet you, Jason."
 "Likewise."
 "As I said, I'm across the way." She gestured with the sword and then walked
out, in that direction.
 Jay's heart slowed to its normal rate momentarily, then sped up again as he
realized something.
 <Fuck. Idiot. If I were from there, I wouldn't call it the 'Unexplored East'.
It's only 'unexplored' to people here in Jade. Shit.>
 Still, he managed to fall asleep rather quickly.

 THE NEXT DAY

 <I know this place. I've been here before.>
 Bri' walked along the street, trying to be inconspicuous. So far, she'd tried
to move at night or when there were very few people around. Under cover of the
early morning darkness, she wandered down the dirt road that passed through the
center of the town.
 She was certain that she'd visited this place before. She couldn't figure out
where 'this place' was. She had had a night to search, but putting her finger
on it had been impossible so far. It was tugging at a corner of her mind, and
she was sure she'd eventually get it.
 Off in the distance, even in the early morning light, she could see a castle
perched atop a high pedestal of rock. It was across a fair-sized bay, and the
coastline ran toward her and along the edge of the town.
 <Blue Dragon Inn,> she read a sign. The flicker of a single lantern shone
through the main window. Everyone was asleep there, as they were everywhere
else.
 It finally came to her. Jade. She was on Jade. The city was known as Trinc,
and she realized that her father had teleported them to the city to meet her
mother and Gina, during the time when their grandfather had been after them.
 <That would make the castle up there the one belonging to that creep Rook,>
she said to herself, looking back up at it. Something made her believe that
Rook was alive and well, or undead and well, or whatever, rather than
teleported into a wall as Julia had left him.
 She looked at the Blue Dragon Inn again and the other buildings in the area,
and clued in to what had been nagging at her. <This looks newer than when I was
here before.>
 A lantern came on in a room at the Inn. She watched from her cover spot for a
few moments as it moved through the building unhurriedly. Ultimately, it and
the figure holding it exited the building and carried on down the street,
giving no indication that they'd seen her.
 She blinked in surprise as she realized that he was a were-cat. From a
cautious distance, she chose to follow him.

 Jay and Julia walked along through the forest. They were having a much better
time of it together as opposed to when Jason had been going it alone. That was
to be expected; Julia would know Jade like the back of her hand.
 Jay put his hand to his face and rubbed it. <Jesus. Too many J's.> Just then,
he noticed a glint of metal in front of him--
 --and threw his sword up just in time to block Julia's swing. He looked at her
with a panicked expression. "Wh--what the hell was THAT for?!"
 "You let your guard down," she said with a stern look, lowered her weapon, and
resumed walking. "Never again. Jade is full of surprises."
 "Tell me about it," he muttered, falling back into step. He spoke aloud again.
"My apologies. As you said, never again."
 "So tell me," she said later, "What brings you to Jade?"
 He had to force himself to not tell the truth. "Just visiting," he began, then
realized maybe the truth--or at least part of it--would help. "Actually, I'm
looking for someone. Maybe two someones."
 "Anyone in particular?"
 He smiled outwardly, inwardly trying to figure out how to phrase it. "One or
two young ladies. We were separated.. on the trip here, and I have reason to
believe one of them might be around here somewhere."
 "And the other?"
 "Might've never got out of the cube. Er, I mean, might have turned around and
went back home."
 "Right. So this one you think is here--does she have a name?"
 "Brianna."
 "What's she like?"
 "She's.. well, she's about a head and a half taller than me, and very fast and
smart. She's got, um.. predominantly brown hair, and green eyes. The other one,
if we happen to come across her, is named Mitch. She's got brownish-red hair,
brown eyes, and she's about my height, and she's just a normal human."
 "Two young ladies at once? My friend, you'd better have an explanation."
 He almost laughed, before he realized she was serious. "Mitch is.. a friend,"
he said, sadly coming to terms with the concept. "Bri' is my.. hm.."
 "Other friend?" Julia said, eyeing him.
 "No, no, um.. companion."
 "Mate?"
 "Mate," he said, trying it on.
 "Wife."
 "Wife," he agreed without thinking. He realized the slipup, but didn't want to
object lest he be forced to explain more to his past-tense 'mother-in-law'.
Instead, he said, "So tell me more about this competition."
 "Tournament."
 "Tournament, sorry."
 "It's for a position in the Red Guards. You know about them, don't you?"
 <Holy shit! I've jumped back to just before she and Theo meet!> "Yeah.. yeah,
I know of them."
 "The winner of the Tournament gets to join them," Julia told him. She eyed him
once more. "Let me guess--you're here to compete for the position, too, right?"
 He held up his hands in a defensive gesture. "Absolutely not. Honest truth,
I'm here to find my friends."
 "If they ARE here," she told him, "there's a good chance they were captured by
Rook or his minions."
 Jay smiled. "I don't know about that. My.. wife.. has quite a temper. Rook'd
be no match for her." He couldn't resist adding: "Her mother's got a fierce
constitution."
 "This wife of yours sounds like quite a formidable woman," Julia remarked. "I
wish I could meet her."
 "Oh, I'm certain you will, someday," Jay smiled.

 Bri' watched the were-cat go to a secluded area outside the town, on the edge
of the desert. He went to a crouch and uttered a word she couldn't hear, and
then vanished from sight.
 "He has some kind of teleportation technology.." she whispered, eyes wide.
Then it all came together for her. She was in the past. Rook was certainly
still a threat in this Jade. And the young were-cat she'd tracked was the
student her mother had often talked about, the jagwere known as Gar, protector
of the other-dimensional Retreat.
 She weighed the options. <Wait and see if he returns? Go see if I can find Jay
or Mitch? Do something else entirely?>
 Where would she start, IF she could find her friends?
 What made her think that Gar would return at any time in the near future?
 What else could she do?

 Gina and Brian and Mitch had gone to the lab in Brougham to try to sort out
the situation. They arrived and got right to work.
 "Whoo, is this ever toast," Brian said, looking at the burnt interface cables
the cube had been hooked up to. He produced the cube again and tried to figure
out the interface. "Look, Gina, this is what the NSA was keeping for him that
he wouldn't show to us."
 "Why'd he hide it?" she asked.
 "Because of me," Mitch provided. "I mean, I suppose. He and Brianna've been
arguing a fair bit since they decided to get me out of there. They're at odds
about the kind of changes it's going to bring with me being here. Relationships
and all that sort of thing."
 "Uh-huh," Brian nodded knowingly.
 "No, you've got it wrong," Mitch said, as if she read his thoughts. "Bri' was
the one who was urging Jay on."
 Bri looked at her, blinked, then shook his head. "Unreal. You learn something
new every day. Anyway, check this out."
 The two girls came to the computer to regard the screen.
 "We were right," he said. "Looks like you were using the Frakes and the Light-
Gate as an output source for CLULESS," Brian told Mitch. "Right?"
 "Exactly."
 "They were out of balance. When we built the Frakes system in Atlanta, we had
to make sure to calibrate it and align it properly. If the light-gate and the
Frakes powered up simultaneously, they'd cancel each other out. With them
calibrated, they wouldn't affect each other at all."
 "But to get her out of the computer.." Gina trailed off.
 "Both devices would have to feed off each other's emanations. If they'd been
calibrated, CLULESS wouldn't've worked." Brian typed for a moment. "Still
doesn't explain where Jay and Bri' went."
 "Why are you getting TWO readings on the Frakes diagnostic readout?" Gina
asked, pointing to the screen.
 "Hm. Good eye." He asked PCzilla for more information, then looked around at
the walls. "They've got TWO Frakes grids in this complex."
 "WHAT?" Gina said incredulously. "That won't work, will it?"
 "Well, it would, if it was calibrated. But we've been through that part
before." He was starting to get an idea. "If TWO Frakes fields were generated,
one trying to rescue them from the other, and vice versa.."
 "And the light-gate generator in action at the same time.." Gina added.
 "That's gotta be it."
 "What?" Mitch said, her head snapping back and forth between the two friends
as if she was at a tennis match.
 Brian pushed away from the keyboard and turned to face Mitch, his hands folded
on his lap. He leaned back in the chair. "These Anti-Frakes devices serve to
rescue us from unintentional transfer to another dimension, but they work by
pulling us out of harm's way and transporting us to a predetermined spot. They
need to be fine-tuned and calibrated in order to make that work. These two--
here in the lab and out in the garage--are only the second and third such
devices in existence. We didn't have any idea what would happen if two Frakes
devices in close proximity were started up at the same time. They seemed to
work against each other, pulling Jay and Bri' from one place to the other,
until the light-gate came up to full speed and overrode the Frakes somehow."
 "So where are they?"
 "That we still have to find out." He turned to the computer again and looked
for a list of saved locations for the Light-Gate controller. He'd found it, and
was trying to get data on the first one alphabetically, "A Nice Place To
Visit", when the phone rang.
 Gina answered it. "It's Seance," she told Brian after a moment. "He says that
Dad phoned the house just now. Seance told him what's going on, and Dad and Mom
think they know where Jay and Bri' are."

 "Well, this is it," Julia said, looking at the flag-dotted plain just ahead.
 "Good luck to you, Julia," Jay said.
 "And to you, Jason," she smiled in return. "I hope you find your friend and
your wife."
 "I will," he said. "And we WILL see you again. I guarantee it."
 "Oh, you do, do you?"
 "I have a sixth sense about these things." He looked at the tournament site.
"You'd best go, Julia."
 "Right." She turned away.
 "And keep in mind," he called after her, "No matter what happens today, you're
still the best damned warrior this land has and will ever see. Period."
 She had a puzzled grin on her face when she looked back at him. "Thanks," she
said.
 "And take care of your back!" he quickly added.
 He stood and watched the proceedings from a distance for some time, then at
last turned to go and find Brianna. Instead, he turned and collided full-force
with another man.
 "Oh! Sorry, sir," the young mage exclaimed. "My apologies. I was distracted.."
 "Quite all right," Jay said as he realized he'd crashed into Theodore Diggers.
"No harm done."
 "Thank you, sir," Theo said. He nodded toward the flags. "Do you happen to
know what's going on over there?"
 Jay looked that way. "A warriors' Tournament, I think." <And your destiny.>
 "Sounds interesting."
 "I'm sure it will be. Enjoy yourself."
 Jason started off walking at a normal pace, but by the time he was out of
sight, he was at a dead run, as fast as he could go.

 Brianna elected to try to find her friends. Feeling that she was either truly
brave or truly stupid, she chose to walk due east across the desert--the Seer's
Desert, if her mind remembered her mother's stories correctly. She chose to
travel at any time of the day that she could manage, because of the climate of
the sandy plain. Deserts were very cold at night, as equally cold as they were
hot in the day, she remembered. She could only run at half-speed, and only for
half the time. She had to stop several times in crossing the desert, and had a
real thirst built up by the time she reached a forested area on its other side.
 She found a creek nearby and submerged her face in it, literally sucking water
as fast as she could out of the stream. After a minute, she came back up for
air and sat on the bank, taking in great breaths.
 She looked at the evening sky, the sun setting directly ahead of her as she
faced her intended course. She wondered why she had chosen to head due east.
Maybe she should've stayed in Trinc, or headed toward Rook's castle, in case
Jay had been captured.
 <Jay wouldn't be captured. He's too good for that.>
 Something told her that Mitch wasn't here. <Maybe she never made it out of the
box.> In any case, she felt sure that Jay had been sent here as well--she could
almost FEEL his presence--and yet she'd not encountered a single person, with
the exception of Gar. She was well and truly alone.
 She wondered what had happened to send them to Jade. Something in the Frakes
system. <Let's see, the Frakes and the Gate were powered up simultaneously, and
then things went nuts.. and the computer called out a system overload..>
 "Doh!" she muttered, realizing the oversight. In all the excitement, they'd
forgotten to calibrate the Frakes systems--
 <Another Doh.> Two Frakes systems can't reside in the same general area.
They'd try to work against each other. Maybe two copies of them existed, now;
one copy here in Jade, and one at home.
 She shuddered. What if that WAS true, and nobody was coming to rescue them?
Would they have to wait over 20 years until they could hitch a ride back to
Earth with her family?
 What would happen if they waited that long, and both Briannas existed in Jade
at the same time?
 Why did they go back in time, anyway?
 She fell asleep with all these questions eating at her.

 Jay was officially lost. He had gone into the forest after bumping into Theo,
and that had been mistake number one. Or rather, mistake number one million, if
you considered all the events that got him into the current predicament.
 It was quite dark where he was, and he couldn't tell whether it was night or
day anymore; the thick forest could've been blotting out all of the midday sun,
for all he knew. His internal clock was sent all awry by the jump here, and he
just couldn't adjust.
 <Okay, let me gather up my thoughts here,> he said. <One--I'm in Jade. Two--in
the forest north of Tessa. Three--trying to keep as far away as possible from
Theo and Julia so I don't affect the future too much.>
 He had intended to continue taking stock of his situation, but that thought
had overpowered him. He thought about what 'the future' meant to him. What if
he DID inadvertently alter the future somehow? What would happen? He'd return
to a 1990s Earth that may or may not be the same one he left from. From the
current point of view, this was the present, not the past, and the future
wasn't yet in existence. <You never hear someone in the present wondering if
their actions might disrupt the future--at least, nobody rational thinks like
that. They're living in the present; they don't care about the future.>
 If he didn't get back to his own time, he might as well not care about it,
either; this would become his present. Or would it? Even if he were trapped in
his 'past', would he do something here that would ripple on down to his former
'present' and cause him not to jump back to the past and therefore not be here
to make the change in the first place?
 He screwed up his face and put his hand over it again, making a pact with
himself: no more thoughts of the past and the present. He WOULD get home, and
nothing would be different.
 He took some time to inspect the sword he was carrying. It was a fairly plain
one, with a nondescript hilt. The blade, though, had to be almost a meter long
in itself, and even though he'd not taken care of it over the past few days,
still shone as if it was cleaned and tended to every day. He felt embarrassed
slightly, in that he possessed a sword that had formerly belonged to someone
obviously very skilled and quite attached to their weapon.
 With that thought, he remembered having to remove their hand from the sword
before he could use it, and he almost felt sick. He forced himself to think of
other thoughts. He laughed to himself as he thought of the words he used to
repeat to himself to either calm himself down or break himself up: "Imagine a
quiet, gentle, babbling brook. You are there, and so is someone else. You're
holding him under the water. Holding, holding.."
 He could even hear the babbling brook--actually, he hacked his way through
another couple of meters of bush and almost fell into the creek. He stood there
for a moment and looked at the water flowing by.
 <The creek will flow to a stream, and the stream to a river, and the river to
either a lake or an ocean, and there's bound to be some kind of settlement
there,> he told himself. <And it's there that I'll try to regroup and find
Bri'.>

 Brianna was, at that point, seven miles upstream from where Jay's creek met up
with the river she was on. She'd awakened, and she started south, upstream,
trying to see if there was any civilization on this side of the continent.
She'd looked north, toward where the river emptied out into the ocean, but it
looked like there was very little--if anything at all--in the way of populated
areas in that direction. So she headed south.
 For a while, south didn't seem too promising, either. However, finally she did
come across a small lake, and looking across it, beyond the forest on the other
side of it, she saw a fair-sized town.
 She retraced her steps to a spot where the river was narrow enough to cross,
and she did just that and stepped into the forest.

 The midmorning light broke through all at once as Jason burst out of the
forest. It was unbelievable--in the dense undergrowth, he'd been hard-pressed
to tell if there was a world out there, period, the foliage was so thick. Once
he'd cleared it, though, it was a very bright, pleasant day.
 A mile or two away, he saw a large, long lake. There appeared to be a strong
and wide river feeding it from his left, to the south. He didn't see any built-
up areas, though.
 <Bingo,> he told himself, despite what he was seeing. <Somewhere along that
waterway has got to be a town.>

 Brianna was flailing her way through the woods, wishing she had a lightsaber
or chainsaw or anything that would help her cut a path. Not only could she not
run at top speed, she had to walk at a reduced pace, stopping every so often to
figure out a way to get around an obstacle.
 Finally, she arrived at a clearing, and dashed across it, searching the
opposite side for some easier starting point, rather than just wading into the
thick maze again.
 "Were-cat!"
 Brianna didn't catch on right away, because she wasn't used to being called
that. She did recognize the voice, though, and turned slowly..
 It was HER MOTHER there, waving at her from across the clearing. Who was with
her, though?
 As Brianna walked back into the clearing, she realized that the people there
were her parents, father and mother, but from before even Gina's time. She was
in the past, and if she remembered the story right, it was highly possible that
her parents-to-be had only met the day before.
 Then, Julia said something that shocked the person who would ultimately become
her daughter.
 "You are Brianna, aren't you?"
 Bri' was mostly floored. She stood there blinking, jaw agape. When her mind
finally worked again, she said "..What did you say?" and walked a bit closer.
 "Is your name Brianna?"
 "Yes," she told her mother's younger self hesitantly.
 "Would someone named Jason be looking for you?"
 "What?! Yes! You've seen him?"
 "Yes," Julia said. "Short, a bit stocky, impressive with a sword--"
 "Hold on--I saw him too," Theo spoke up, mostly to Julia. "We bumped into each
other just outside the tournament, before I started watching you."
 She turned to face him. "He and I travelled together for the week before the
tournament, and we taught each other a few things."
 Brianna reeled. "We've only been here a few days," she said absently, "but
he's already gotten into the thick of it."
 "Huh?" Theo said.
 "Oh--" she blinked and shook her head. "I mean, do you know where he was last
headed?"
 "He headed north after he ran into me," Theo gestured.
 "And that was yesterday?"
 "Two days ago," Julia said. "He might have an impressive head start on you."
 "Don't worry," Brianna grinned. "I can catch up, if I ever get out of this
forest."

 Jason headed northward again, his hunch paying off. On the far edge of the
lake was a small town called Tanmoor. It had an inn, a smith, and several
homes, and nothing else.
 He trudged wearily into the inn and tried to rent a room, but all he had to
offer the innkeeper was the clothes on his back, which were too weird for Jade,
and some 1990s Earth money, which the guy called worthless paper, tearing a
twenty-dollar bill to shreds.
 The innkeeper's eyes rested on Jason's sword, and at first Jason thought he
was going to have to give it up to get a room, but instead, the innkeeper came
around to the front of the counter and led Jason to another room. "You might
yet be able to work your way," he was told.
 Jay found himself being shoved into a large, dark place. He heard the keeper
shout into the darkness, "Got another one for ya," and then slam the door
behind him.
 Jason tried to see through the darkness, but it was no good. His eyes were
going to take far too long to adjust.
 Just then, he heard movement in front of him, and ducked just in time to avoid
having his head lopped off by a sword-wielding maniac. The attacker had to be
over seven feet tall, and weighed probably four hundred pounds without all his
gear. With the sword and minimal armor, and the myriad of knives and pugilistic
weapons, he was probably closer to six hundred pounds.
 That wasn't the primary concern at the moment, as Jason leapt up and tucked
his knees to his chin as the guy swung in a great arc at ankle level. He swung
again in a more conventional manner, and Jason reflexively threw the sword up
to block.
 Block and parry, block and parry. For what seemed like an eternity, Jason made
valiant attempts not to get sliced open like a can of beans. Finally, he saw an
opportunity and thrust forward, his blow glancing at the last moment and
nicking the giant on the shoulder.
 Instantly, the attacker stopped, moved his sword to a neutral postion, and
laughed. He turned to the darkness and said, "I like this one, Harlan."
 Jason watched in surprise as torches were lit all around the room to reveal
perhaps a dozen men in total, warriors all of them, sitting on benches around
the edges of the room, apparently watching the fight.
 One stood up and walked to Jason. "You are a fine warrior," he said. "Very few
manage to hold their own against Rico, let alone land a blow. Let your name be
heard."
 It took Jason a moment to realize he was being asked who he was. "Jay," he
finally said plainly.
 "Jay, I am Harlan," the second man said. He was about six feet tall, built
like the typical warrior, with somewhat long brown hair. He was their leader,
apparently. "We are forming a band of fighters to exterminate the beasts and
demons that assail the land of Jade. You are welcome to fight with us if you so
desire."
 "What the hey, I'm not doing anything special," Jason smiled, hoping he'd
adopted the attitude they were looking for.
 "Only one thing troubles me," Harlan said after welcoming Jay to the group.
"It may sound foolish and superstitious, but your arrival brings our number to
thirteen."
 Gears started turning in Jason's head. "Harlan, maybe I could help with that.
I came to Jade days ago with a friend, whom I've become separated from. If we
can find her, I'm sure she'd be willing to help out as well."
 A murmur rose through the group as they realized he was speaking of a woman.
Harlan silenced them with an upraised hand. "What does she look like?"
 More murmurs surfaced as Jason described Brianna's looks, and he thought it
was more of the same until he looked at Rico's face.
 "Harlan," the big man was saying, "that's probably the one we saw the other
day."
 "What?" Jason said.
 "We were reconning yesterday on our first targets--a pack of nightstalkers
that terrorize a nearby village nightly--and we saw her heading southward on
the other side of the river. But she looked unarmed," Rico pointed out.
 Jason smiled. "She won't need as many armaments as you think. She's quite a
formidable fighter."
 "And we need to first find her, correct?" Harlan said to Jason.
 Jay shrugged. "You know more about her whereabouts than I do."
 "Then we search," he declared. "First thing this afternoon, we'll head upriver
to try to find your friend."

 That afternoon, while the thirteen of them were hiking along the riverbank,
Harlan and Rico came up beside Jason.
 "Don't worry about the reaction of the others," Harlan reassured Jay. "I've
seen the lot of them get whipped soundly by more than one woman in their time.
I'm the leader, and my decisions--and superstitions--overrule all the others'
protests." He smiled.
 Jason smiled as well. "I'm glad to hear that. And I hear what you say about
strong female fighters. I hate to be a namedropper, but both myself and my
friend learned all we know about fighting from Julia Di.. um, Julia Brigand."
 Harlan's eyebrows arched, as did Rico's. "My, my," Rico said. "Maybe YOU
should be teaching US some things."
 Jason dismissed that. "I could be a lot better than I am. I've been out of
shape and out of action for a long time."
 Harlan was about to respond when he caught a glimpse of something and held the
others back. Nobody made any extraneous noises, to make the person hiding in
the brush think that the party was just passing through, but he crouched down
and hauled the branch aside--
 --and Brianna leapt up, ready to defend herself, but Harlan had already jumped
back out of harm's way. Brianna looked around with a ferocious look in her
eyes, and it took about three passes before she saw a familiar face in the
crowd.
 "J..Jay?" she stammered.
 "Bri'!" he hollered and ran forward, hugging her. She returned it, and then
they released each other and spoke in high-speed-dubbing mode at each other,
bringing one another up to speed.
 "Anyway," he told her as he finally caught her up on current events, "I
figured while I was waiting for you and trying to figure out how to get us back
home, I might get in a bit of exercise helping Harlan and his men stamp out a
few nightstalkers. Sound like fun?"
 "Sure does!" Brianna said. "Count me in, at least until we figure out a way to
get home."
 The sounds of protest rose again, and this time Harlan's hand didn't quell it
sufficiently. Jason leaned to Brianna and explained the prejudice of the men,
then shouted, "Harlan!"
 All eyes turned to regard Jay.
 "Let her go up against Rico," he said.

 "I want you to keep a couple things in mind," Jason said to his SO as she
faced off against the giant. "A, he's a friendly, and 2, he'll stop just short
of actually hurting you. He won't bring any harm to you, okay?"
 She grinned and nodded.
 Someone tossed a sword at her feet. She looked down, threw an 'oh, please'
look at the tosser, and kicked it back out of the way.
 "Let's get at 'er," she grinned barehandedly at Rico.

 The fight was unbelievable--at least to everyone except Bri' and Jay. Every
time Rico tried to strike, Brianna was suddenly somewhere else. More than once
she came up behind him, batted him on the head, and took off.
 Rico looked enraged, but Harlan continued to shout to him to keep his cool. It
was unreal. Rico had never, EVER been bested like this before. He wasn't even
laying a finger on this 'Brianna' woman. Even when he'd gone up against the
legendary Julia Brigand, the name that Jay had dropped, he'd been able to get
in a scratch or two. Not so with this Brianna. She was unbelievably fast.
 Five minutes later--two minutes shorter than Jason's fight with the giant--
Brianna laid a solid punch to Rico's back and knocked him to the ground, unhurt
but in a very poor position for both offense and defense. In other words, he
was at her mercy.
 A collective gasp rose up from the assembled group.
 Rico got up and faced Brianna. "You're outstanding," he told her. "Simply
incredible. How do you do that?"
 "It's a family secret," she grinned.
 "She's related to a clan of were-cats," Jason piped up as he came up beside
her. "That, and the training she got from Julia, made her a force to be
reckoned with."
 "That she is," Harland agreed. "Brianna, you're more than welcome to accompany
us on our mission."
 "I go where he goes," she said, pointing to Jason.

 Brian, Gina, and Mitch met up with Seance, Theodore, and Julia at the Atlanta
complex. They all went into the living room, where Theo and Julia began to
speak.
 "We've pretty much been waiting for this day since Jay and Bri first arrived,"
Julia said.
 Theo spoke up. "It was something of a shock to see you and Jason the first
time," he told Brian, "because of the fact that we'd both met Jason before."
 "What?" Brian and Gina sputtered.
 "Remember when we told you about the day we met?" Julia asked her daughter,
indicating Theo.
 "Um.. most of it," Gina said. "Something about a warriors' tournament, right?"
 "That's the one," Julia nodded. "In the days leading up to it, we encountered
Jason and Brianna. I found Jason one night battling a quintet of nightstalkers
in Rimo, and a few days later, after the tournament, we met Brianna. Jason had
told me he'd been separated from her for about a week, and was looking for her,
so we pointed her in the right direction. What with all the other stuff that'd
been going on at the same time, I almost forgot the part about Brianna, but
Jason stuck out in my mind because of his swordsmanship. I saw bits of my own
style in him and wondered how he'd learned it."
 "They're back in your past right now, altering it??" Mitch blurted out.
 "My parents don't remember it as having been altered," Gina pointed out. "For
them, it happened over twenty years ago. They lived through it then, not now.
Bri' and Jay can't even be considered to be doing it 'right now', because
'right now' they don't exist in this time."
 "Oh, Goddess," Mitch said, looking physically ill. She got up and left the
room, and Brian followed her.
 Theo and Julia pressed on. "Do you have any idea on how to get them back?"
Julia asked Gina.
 She shrugged. "I dunno. I was hoping you'd have some ideas. They really
screwed up the computers in Brougham when they got Mitch out."
 She then realized that her parents didn't know who Mitch was, and she
proceeded to tell them of her origins.

 At that same moment, in the kitchen, Brian was trying to comfort Mitch.
 "I caused all this," she blurted out, trying to gulp down a glass of water
he'd handed her.
 "How can you figure that?" he said. "You didn't do anything to them. They made
a simple mistake."
 "And they may never get home because of it." She paused to drink, a rivulet of
water dribbling down her chin. She gasped in some air and resumed. "And if they
hadn't been trying to get me free, they never would've made the mistake in the
first place."
 "I don't know why you're blaming yourself, but it's GOT to stop," Brian said,
a bit more forcefully. "They get into messes like this all the time, with or
without anyone else's help. If they'd left the system the way they'd built it,
this would've happened the first time they started up the light-gate generator.
They would've found a way to get into a jam, whether or not they were working
at getting you out. So relax. It's not your fault."

 Twenty-and-change years previous, in a clump of trees near a village by the
name of Ashley, fourteen people lay in wait, being as quiet as they could. The
gentle breeze served both to cool them off and to blow the branches they were
perched upon, making lots of unwanted noise.
 Jason and Brianna were together in one tree, naturally, and they talked softly
as they waited for the nightstalkers to show.
 "Got any suggestions on how to get home?" Jason whispered.
 Brianna winced. "I was just going to ask you the same thing."
 "Doh."
 "You said it. I haven't been able to think of much. I did see that jagwere Gar
a day or three ago, though. He used some kind of portal device, or spellbook,
or something, to make a gateway. Maybe we can find him and get him to send us
home."
 "If we go home NOW, we'll end up in 1970s Earth, not the 1990s. We've got to
figure out a way to jump through time as well."
 "Well, we can't get up to 88 miles an hour here. I can barely run at normal
human speeds through this underbrush."
 "And even if we could, we haven't got anything to use as a time machine, and
you probably can't find enough material to build one."
 "Agreed."
 "And I don't want to lie around in trees for twenty years."
 Brianna giggled. Momentarily, she got serious again. "What if we did have to
stay here for 20 years? I guess that'd be like what Mitch went through."
 Jason was quiet for a moment. Then, he said, "I'm not sure that she made it
out. I hope so, but there was nobody on-screen or in the room when I left. I
think we might've screwed up on that front, too."
 "Well, at least you tried. That's worth something."
 He was about to retort, but he caught himself and agreed instead. "Yeah, I
guess so."
 Her gaze landed on his acquired sword. "Mighty nice blade there, pardner."
 "Like it?" he said, holding it up to regard it. "Found it in a village where I
was, um.. helping your mom-to-be.. fight a bunch of beasts."
 "Yeah, I heard that you'd met her," Bri' smiled.
 "You did?"
 "I saw her and Dad after they'd met each other for the first time. They both
said they'd run into you before the tournament, and they gave me an idea of
where to start looking for you."
 "No shit? Wow."
 A warbling bird call came through the darkness. That was the signal that the
nightstalkers were approaching. Jason and Brianna prepared to drop down off the
branch to the forest floor some five meters below.

 "What is this device again?" Theodore said as he stood beside it.
 "It's a time-raft, Dad," Gina said from the lab console, then came around it
to face him directly. "I built it from parts I scavenged over the years, and
from plans I salvaged from one of my early adventures. It works by--"
 "A technical description won't be necessary, Gina," he told her. "You want me
to create a dimension door centered on the platform, while you turn it on and
direct its focus toward Jade, two decades in the past?"
 "That's the deal," she said. "It should work then." She turned to see Brian
entering the room. "Where's Mitch?" she asked.
 "Seance is going to stay with her in the ready room for now," he said. "She
feels that maybe her presence might affect the outcome, since she figures her
arrival is what caused all this in the first place."
 Gina shrugged. "Whatever. She knows that's not true, right?"
 "She's just afraid."
 Gina didn't want to let Brian know that that's how she felt, too.

 Fourteen warriors dropped out of the forest en masse, onto the disturbingly
large group of nightstalkers. Jason had counted 44 before they jumped. He saw
five of them go down for the count due to attacks from falling warriors, but
that still meant they were outnumbered almost three-to-one.
 Jason sliced through a bunch of nightstalkers, his practice with Julia showing
through. Brianna was impressed (as was he, to tell the truth). He was even more
impressed with her prowess, fighting unarmed as she was. She was excellent with
guns and other weapons, but she sure was showing great promise when fighting
barehanded as well.
 Perhaps Jay got a little too caught up in watching Brianna go at it. He found
himself picked entirely off the ground by a large black clawed hand, and tossed
through the air like unclaimed baggage, landing in a heap against the wall of a
hut.
 Bri' saw Jason lying motionless on the ground, and something in her expression
turned VERY bad. Without warning, she changed to her animal form, and charged
the nightstalker, howling.
 Several swordsmen, even though they'd witnessed the change, ran away. Another
one stared at Bri' long enough that a nightstalker picked up on his distraction
and tore him to shreds.
 Brianna, after she'd felled the one that'd tossed Jason, moved with amazing
speed to finish off a dozen or so more. The rest of them, seeing she was
unstoppable, fled into the darkness.
 She rushed to Jay. "Are you all right?" her voice rumbled to him.
 He came to in a moment. "I think so," he said. "I guess I owe you one again."
 She helped him to his feet; his only wounds seemed to be some cuts and
bruises. "Better believe it," she said as she shifted back to normal.
 "Now!" hissed a voice in the darkness, and the nightstalkers rushed in again.
They struck a couple of times, too fast for Jay and Bri' to go after, and the
two ended up back-to-back in a small clearing in the village, seeing dozens of
pairs of eyes surrounding them.
 "Change back," Jason urged in a whisper.
 "Can't," she panted. "Too tired."
 "Oh, shit," he responded.
 He was about to offer up a plan of attack when he felt something pulling at
the very fiber of his being, and he hoped it was friendly.

 "I think I've got them," Theodore said, and without any more words, a portal
opened. It brought a pair of figures into the center of the time-raft platform.
 It was Brianna and Jason, backed up against each other, looking as if they
were in the act of defending themselves. Both had tattered and torn clothes and
were dirty and grimy, with obvious cuts and scars. They also looked out of
breath and very on-edge.
 "Hey, lookee here, it's Jay and Bri'," Bri quipped. "So, did you guys have fun
on your little vacation?"
 Jay shot Brian a severe look. "Bri," he said, "You DID notice I'm holding what
amounts to a big, meter-long, double-edged steak knife with a hilt, right?"
 "Yeah, yeah. Impressive blade. You're Connor MacLeod, now, I take it?"
 Jay ignored the comment as he realized they were back home in their own time.
His expression turned to relief, then changed to a mixture of shock, surprise,
and worry as he realized that Theodore and Julia Diggers were there before him.
 "Um.."
 "Greetings," Theodore Diggers smiled. "Welcome home."
 "We, um, maybe have a lot to talk about," Bri' told her parents.
 "We know," Julia smiled. "We experienced it, 20 years ago."
 "I would surmise," Theo said, "that 'A Nice Place To Visit' on your computer
corresponds to Jade?"
 "Alphabetically, the first on the list," Jason realized, turning to Brianna.
He realized what was nagging at his mind, and turned back to Brian. "We were
trying to do something rather important when all this started.. did it.."
 As Jason trailed off, Brian walked close and produced the blackened, scorched
cube. Jason's expression fell several dozen notches.
 Jay stared at the burnt cube in his palm as Brian leaned close. "She's in the
ready room, Jay," he whispered.
 Jason snapped his head up, eyes wide.
 "She didn't want to be in the same room in case it affected her somehow. She's
over in the ready room with Seance, all okay."
 Bri' jerked abruptly as her wrist was taken by Jay as he ran out of the lab.
"What--"
 She stopped short just as he did, when Mitch stood up from a chair, smiling.
"Hi, guys," she said.
 "Hi," Jay finally managed. He looked at the cube, then at her. "You're--"
 "That's a piece of trash now," she nodded toward the cube. "I'm completely
here. I was going to throw it out, but Brian persuaded me to keep it so you
could have it for a memento if you want."
 Jason looked at the cube, then at Mitch again. "CLULESS..?"
 "Truly gone, this time. You might even email the real Gryphon here and let him
know."
 "Heh."
 Then, the girls and the other people who'd followed into the ready room jumped
back in surprise as he tossed the cube into the air and swung the sword in a
great arc. The cube fell to the floor in two pieces and shattered into a few
more when it struck the concrete.
 "That takes care of that."
 Nobody had anything to say for a moment, until Julia said, "We should talk,
Jason."
 "Okay," he said.
 Everyone walked toward the living room as Julia continued. "That was a good
swing. You've learned a lot."
 "I had an excellent teacher."
 "Flatterer." Julia broke into a wide grin. "You know, I always knew you'd be
around at least this long, because of our encounter with you and Brianna back
then."
 "Um.. yeah."
 "I appreciate your help in the days before the tournament."
 "As do I," he said, trying to lose his uneasiness. "Especially with the
nightstalkers in that village. That experience came to good use later."
 "I know; the Great Purge," Julia told him. "Harlan spent the next couple of
years raving about the two fighters who hung around for half of the first
battle and then left. Anyway, I saw a lot of my skill in you that first night.
I figured you must've been close to me in some way that I couldn't fathom."
 "Did you ever realize my slipup with the 'Unexplored East' crack?"
 "Right away," she smiled. "Didn't you notice my expression?"
 "That's what tipped me off to it."
 "You made another crack that I'm hoping you're going to make good on someday."
 He looked at her. "Oh?"
 "Yes. You wouldn't go back on a promise, would you?"
 "A promise?"
 "What did you guarantee to me just before I left you to go to the tournament?"
 Jason's face went white.
 "What?" Brianna said, looking at Jay, then her mother.
 Julia laughed. "Ask him how he described your relationship back then."

TWO DAYS LATER
ENROUTE TO BROUGHAM

 Mitch was jammed into the back seat of the supercab. Jason looked back as he
started the truck up. "Sorry. We're gonna have to figure out something here."
 "We should've rebuilt with a crew cab," Bri' said in an I-told-you-so tone.
 "I'm okay," Mitch told Bri'. "For now."
 Jason went to shut his door, but it stopped short of latching and a dull KLANG
emanated from its bottom edge. "Oh," he realized. He detached the sword and
scabbard from the left side of his belt. He handed it back to Mitch. "Find
someplace for this, will you?"
 "You're gonna keep it?" Brianna asked as Mitch shut off the force field long
enough to put it in the box, along with the two suits of armor lying there as
always.
 "Why not? The only problem," Jay said, "will be getting permission to carry. I
think I know some government people who owe me a favor."
 Bri' smiled as they started to drive. "We've got something else that they can
help out with," she said.
 "Yeah, I know."
 "What?" Mitch said.
 "Gotta get you some ID and stuff like that."
 She didn't know what to say; she hadn't thought of it.
 "They're okay, they won't ask questions," Jason told her. "They're using us
kind of like an X-Files team. They do indeed owe us bigtime."
 "Can they get me one of these?" Mitch said, gesturing with a thumb over her
shoulder to the powered armor in the back.
 "No," Jason said, smiling at Brianna, "but I know someone who can."

TO BE CONTINUED IN 'ALL THE MARBLES'
BOOK EIGHT OF DIMENSION OUT OF RANGE