Extremophile: Violet Rain

EXTREMOPHILE: VIOLET RAIN

The Unwinding Series Book 2

JULIANA REW

Cover Art by Keely Rew

Extremophile: Violet Rain

The Unwinding Series Book 2

By Juliana Rew

Copyright 2020 Sophont Press, an imprint of

Third Flatiron Publishing

ISBN 978-1-7339207-1-1

Discover other titles by Juliana Rew:

Erenarch Academy: Under the Dragon Banner

Miranda of Daris

Daris Moon

Mountain Ma'am

The Adventures of Mountain Ma'am

The Unwinding: Gin's Story

License Notes

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

Cover: Keely Rew

https://www.julianarew.com

Dedication

This story's dedicated to baby Cassandra Robin. May her life be full of wonderful adventures.

Contents

1. Slow Stepper

2. City of Fallen Angels

3. Never Speak to Strangers

4. Baby Blue Chasm

5. Grounded Fears

6. Native Cuisine

7. The Drive

8. Playground

9. Flight

10. The Search

11. The Devil's Circle

12. Competition Is Good for You (A Troubled Day)

13. Not Feeling Myself Today

14. An Orphan of the Storm

15. Lay Your Money Down

16. Regeneration

17. It's Just Us Now

18. If They're Hungry Enough

19. The Sinister Corridor

20. The Jeweled Cave

21. Artifacts

22. Be Yourself

23. Who'll Stop the Rain?

24. Memories Are Made of This

25. Coming to an Understanding

26. Planetfall and Eternal Refuge

27. The Return of the Watchmen

Art Credits and Acknowledgments

About Juliana Rew

1. Slow Stepper

The crossover is extremely dangerous, the leader of the Watchmen said. Bravery is required to undertake this test. Strong praise from Yverra, who normally seemed a rather cold fish. Yverra's reflective gold-rimmed eyes fixed her with an unblinking stare. Ready?

Violet Rain ran her fingers through her cropped purple fringe and pulled her long dark hair into a ponytail. At least she wouldn't have to take her clothes off, because she wasn't going into a wormhole this time. The Watchmen had ridden ten wormholes to get to their station this far out. She closed her eyes and nodded.

Violet felt herself leave her body. That was an illusion, of course; her body was still in the same spot, cradling her brain within its delicate cranium, as always. She'd left her personal projector in the lab, where it handled all the necessary computation for the illusion. But her human brain was pretty good at imagining all sorts of things she hadn't really experienced, even as a virtual reality expert back in 25th century Los Angeles. She'd held a position of rather high responsibility keeping life in the megalopolis on an even keel, but the reality there was just that—virtual.

She hovered near the Boundary. Microscopic particles of cosmic dust were the only detectable matter, along with a few infinitely remote stars.

Release the water, Yverra ordered, her voice becoming fainter. Probably Violet's hearing would be the first to go. No problem. She would still sense vibrations.

The truce between Violet's universe and its jealous brother remained in place. The two universes had warped around each other in a Yin Yang pattern and exchanged stable nexuses as hostages. Each now hid a nexus from the other deep within itself. Don't destroy my baby, and I won't destroy yours. That in itself should have been sufficient to keep the two siblings from constantly going at each others' throats—and it was—until yet another universe had popped out of the Hatchery. Now the Unwindings were beginning again on the universe's outer boundary, as both matter and some different form of matter annihilated themselves on contact. The Watchmen's safe vantage on the edge of the universe was no longer quite so safe. Application of copious amounts of dark matter from the Hatchery was a temporary fix, but basically they were in trouble again.

Violet merged her consciousness with one of the sleeping dust motes and could smell the water as it sprayed over her. Choi-oi, it was delicious. She couldn't actually taste it, but she could sense it reinvigorating her like a drink of her favorite brew from Echo Park. Soon she would absorb enough moisture to reproduce, and even to move. But that would take a little time. One by one, her eight legs began to unfurl and plump up like the Marshmallow Man. Arduously, she tried moving one of her newly swollen members. They didn't call these tiny Earth-bred creatures slow steppers for nothing.

***

Violet Rain was glad to have a job as an honorary Watchman. In fact, she was glad to be alive at all. Her particular timeline since the 25th century had been destroyed, but at least the Watchmen had diverted the Unwinding long enough to let Earth take another path. Their universe still existed, and Violet still had her ancestors. Yverra's Watchmen hadn't been so fortunate. Emperor Calaneris had destroyed their civilization with a dimensional mine.

The idea was to make a little reconnaissance trip for security purposes. No retaliation on a fellow universe, or anything like that, just a little harmless spying that might prove useful someday. The multiverse was a politically complicated place, and the Hatchery didn't favor one universe over another. The Hatchery could do just fine without their little universe. There would be plenty more where that came from.

The inner edges of the Yin Yang were considered impenetrable, unless you wanted to risk destroying both universes in a rather unpleasant conflagration. The two had understandably developed a real aversion to each other. Besides, that was the whole point of the truce. Nobody in or out.

If we could just beam your awareness across the boundary, we could teach you to use quantum entanglement to travel anywhere, anytime, Yverra had said. But, entanglement alone can't carry information, it takes something lightspeed or slower to do that.

That's when Violet had proposed using tardigrades as vehicles. Yverra initially dismissed the idea, because the creatures were microscopic. Scaled up to human size, they would be crushed by their own mass.

No, we need a solution that is scale-invariant, Yverra said.

Then what about the other direction? What if I was physically as small as a waterbear?

Hmm, I'll think about it.

Yverra was a capable leader, but sometimes she wasn't much of an idea person.

***

Violet summoned Yverra to the lab.

I think I've got something that might work, she said. "We had a huge biological databank back on Earth, which we used to create all sorts of virtual realities. For over 500 million years, Nature did a remarkable job engineering the phylum Tardigrada, but I've deconstructed the genome and generated a new intra-species hybrid small enough to do the job without setting off the burglar alarms. Here, take a look."

Through the scanning electron microscope, the projected cryptobiotic critter looked like nothing so much as a piece of dust.

It's virtually hollow, Violet said. A molecule of water will easily fit inside, activating it. But even fully distended, it's still so small that it's practically undetectable, unless you're looking for it.

It does sound promising, Yverra said. And it is hydrophilic. It reminds me a bit of the creatures where I come from. What will you call it? Isn't it an Earth custom to give new species a Latin name of some sort, usually in recognition of something or somebody important to the discoverer?

Violet could swear fluently in French, Vietnamese, and Korean, but her Latin was. . . sketchy. Surprised by Yverra's knowledge of her planet, but grateful for the reminder, her thoughts turned to her parents, her family, and the multicultural melting pot that had been her Los Angeles neighborhood as she grew up. God, she missed green grass and trees. After a moment, she said, "I guess I would want to name it Milnesium angelensis, in honor of my home town."

"Angelensis it is, Yverra said. This will be top secret, you understand. Everyone would probably be quite resentful if they knew they were being spied upon. If we ever need to do so, we can frame it as a fait accompli and convince the universes to behave diplomatically. It's in their interest as much as ours."

***

Call them what you like—moss pigs, waterbears, whatever. The Milnesium angelenses were tardigrades, or extremophiles, capable of living under the harshest possible conditions. Hard vacuum, temperatures near absolute zero, pressures six times as high as the deepest ocean, ionizing radiation, total lack of water. They could go into hibernation and reawaken years later when conditions improved. Violet hoped her disguise as a sentient waterbear might just be what was needed to get across the Y-Y Boundary.

Now feeling comfortable in her sea legs, Vi began to freestyle toward the Boundary. At less than a hundred Angstroms across, counting her skin, she was larger than a mycoplasma bacterium, but more usefully equipped with inflatable water wings. She pinched off her first tardigrade embryo. Backpedalling against the flow, she reeled out a filament of sticky silk from her central thorax and began attaching embryos along its length like beads on a rosary. It wasn't so easy to stay back of the Boundary. Sparse as the region was, literally everything in Creation was rushing that direction. She stopped at a hundred embryos.

Who's your mommy? she murmured. Or maybe that should that be, 'who's your daddy?' Ha, either way, it's me. Good old parthenogenesis. The Hatchery would be envious.

She'd convinced Yverra this was yet another reason this species could be useful—no need for sexual reproduction.

And I'm just the right parasite, Vi thought wryly. Still technically a virgin. Not that she couldn't handle the real thing if it came up. Being a waterbear was just another alter ego. It seemed like everybody in L.A. had at least two avatars, to help keep their public and private lives separate. She was accustomed to dealing with different forms of reality, and sexuality was just one aspect of it. With a PhD from UCLA in VR Engineering, she had even done postdoctoral work setting up the Mars Colony VR. That place was certainly a passion incubator, with its low gravity and close quarters...

Violet, are you paying attention? What's the status?

I'm here, Boss. Rainbear's brood's online, Violet replied.

All right, start pushing the rope.

A joke from Yverra? Unheard of. She'd been high priestess of her people, used to handing out orders with little evidence of a sense of humor. Violet emitted tiny bursts of hydrogen and steered the thread orthogonal to the best known location of the Boundary. She latched onto the end and pulled it taut as it approached oblivion.

Until recently, the universe had naturally expanded outward at an accelerating rate. But now it showed great restraint, not infringing on its neighbor, in return for the same favor. Nonetheless, Vi could feel an attraction, an urge, to get BIGGER.

With Yverra's help, Violet's little monsters were going to try to slip across the Y-Y Boundary into the Yin Universe without it noticing. The Watchmen had gained their nickname by their ability to hack and shift time. Hacking was an old Earth term referring to mechanical wristwatches. If you pulled out the winding stem, the second hand stopped; you could push it back in to set the time exactly. People first used hacking watches in wartime to synchronize battle plans. Bank robbers also were quite fond of hacking watches.

Number one coming, she announced. Hack away.

The stars winked off and back on.

Did it get through? After much looking, she saw it. Merde. Burnt to a cinder. And still on this side.

Umm, maybe you need to change the interval, Vi suggested to Yverra.

Sixty-eight waterbear cubs later, no luck.

Let me be the first to thank you for suggesting using decoys for the first tests, Violet said. She would have been well and truly fried by now, if it hadn't been for Yverra's caution.

I'm tapped out for ideas, Yverra said. I'm asking Benrus and Ralff if they have any further suggestions.

Hello, Violet? Benrus here. There's been a complication we hadn't expected.

Yes? Ben and Ralff were skilled time-displacing physicists who, like Violet, had been invited as honorary Watchmen by Yverra following the destruction of their timeline. Vi expected the problem to be something like an inability to perform quantum entanglement on the other side. But it wasn't that.

The extremophiles weren't time-oxidized; they were crushed. There's a wall.

Crushed? Out here in vacuumland?

Our universe's pent-up expansion is being walled against by the Yin Universe along the inner Y-Y Boundary, Ben explained. It's possible the Boundary's becoming unstable.

Then maybe we can find a chink in that wall, Violet said.

Yverra interrupted. Perhaps. Regardless, we're going to need something tougher than baby waterbears.

Violet thought about the Yin-Yang Boundary, first suggested by her twelve-generations-back grandmother Virginia Sun-Jones. It would be a shame if the truce wasn't going to work out after all. And with a third universe in the picture, things were already starting to get hairy. But the usual duality of yin and yang could also mean interconnectedness.

Come on in, Yverra said.

But—

That's an order.

Back to the drawing board. Violet arrived back in her body in the space station. The station was close, but not too close, to the Boundary. Yverra, Benrus, and Ralff were huddled together with their backs toward her, talking animatedly, but eventually Ben noticed she was back.

Water? the tall alien offered, holding out a cup. She still wasn't used to his lack of a mouth.

Yeah, right, Violet said, swinging her feet off the VR couch and standing. What's next?

Something more pressing, Yverra replied. It looks like we've had another incursion. We're putting the cross-universe reconnaissance on hold while we construct a stasis field.

You mean like the one we made as the hostage for the Yin Universe?

Yes. I think it's good insurance to have a lifeboat.

Violet knew Yverra was extra wary and highly loathe to repeat previous mistakes. But hiding in a stasis field didn't sound like a good idea to her. Once inside one, you couldn't tell what was happening outside. No light went in or out while it was operational. You'd just as likely step outside and find that the universe had ended billions of years ago. Better to hang out with the universe and watch it wind down slowly. Or blow up suddenly. Whichever.

I'm still not convinced a strategy using some sort of vaccination maneuver wouldn't get us across the boundary relatively safely, Violet persisted. It worked for the hostage exchange. There might be a little immune reaction at first, but then the Yin would have the right antibodies.

The three ignored her, already immersed in their next technical challenge.

Um, okay, then, I'll leave you guys alone to design the lifeboat, while I do a postmortem on the tardigrade project.

***

In her sleeping quarters aboard the station, Violet tossed and turned, going through the steps over and over in her mind. Bo-tay, Totally stuck. She felt like a college student who had crammed too much in at the last moment and then failed the final exam. Not that she'd ever had that experience, but she'd dreamed about it. Finally deciding that sleep was not forthcoming, she rose, threw on a mini hanfu, and padded down the hall toward Yverra's room. All the rooms on the space station were identical, like a budget hotel. Bed, bath, flat screen tv, lava lamp optional. She knocked on the door. A light turned on, spilling across her feet.

Come in. Yverra sat upright on her bed, still fully dressed in frogskin leather garb. Mystical symbols bio-fluoresced faintly on her sleeves. Violet suspected that Yverra never slept, simply keeping up the pretense by staying in her room at night. There was no telling with amphibians.

Can I talk with you, Yverra? Yverra patted the bed, and Violet sat beside her. I know I'm not a physicist like Ben and Ralff, but I wasn't very happy with how today's test went. I felt like you didn't trust my instincts, and that you bailed out before we had a chance to complete it.

I didn't think we were getting the desired results, so I called a temporary end to this experiment. It doesn't mean we can't try other things.

It's just that you don't seem to recognize that I spent two years managing Los Angeles Commercial VR, and I learned something along the way about thinking on your feet to save struggling projects, Vi said.

Yverra's unblinking metallic gaze was a little unsettling. Impassive, even cold.

I'm sorry your feelings were hurt, Yverra replied. Actually, it's just the opposite of what you suppose. I value your confidence and creativity more than you know, and I'd hate to lose you. I need you, Violet. If left to my own devices, I would have lived out my reign all alone and heartsick in another dimension and never been involved with traipsing the universe. And another thing: I probably appear much older than you, but I'm not your mother. I wouldn't even know how to be one. Nevertheless, I do know how to teach you to be a Watchman.

Violet was speechless at this unusual outpouring. Although she was still miffed that Yverra had ignored her, she also felt a little guilty that her idea hadn't worked out. This was her chance to prove herself useful, to become one of the team. She hadn't meant to turn this into a childish relationship squabble.

That sounds good, she finally said. But, may I suggest something?

Of course.

Could we be partners, instead of just teacher-pupil?

I'll think about it.

***

A burst of hard gamma radiation had wiped out the anchor span of the Rainbow wormhole, uncomfortably close to the station.

I don't want to move the station if possible, because it is so ideally located, Yverra said. It's only ten or twelve jumps to either the Boundary or through time to the Big Bang. Unfortunately, it's as if this new universe was purposely targeting us.

We got into trouble originally by infringing on the Yin Universe's territory, Violet pointed out. Maybe it's a misunderstanding.

Yverra demurred. No, in that case, we were just naively expanding without knowing the consequences. This time the new universe is the aggressor.

What do you think its beef with us is? Violet asked.

I don't know yet, but I'm going to visit the Hatchery to see if I can get a better idea. At the very least I can obtain more supplies of dark matter.

We seem to be everybody's misfit brother, don't we? Violet said. Well, good luck.

At least with Yverra preoccupied elsewhere, Violet reasoned, she could resume her tardigrade mods. She had a good start. Maybe a few additional tinkerings would do the trick.

Who was she kidding? No one but a ghost could pass through solid matter. For now, she'd have to concentrate on improving the creature's agility and mobility. She tried narrowing and lengthening the rear two pairs of legs to resemble those of waterstriders, then covering them with hairs constructed of carbon nanotubes. Conceivably, it could walk on the wall, instead of smashing against it with a splat.

Within a few hours Yverra returned.

I've got some bad news, she reported. The Hatchery says it is powerless to completely prevent damage from new incursions and suggests we take whatever measures we think appropriate. I'm going to finish working on the stasis lifeboat. Get ready to bring whatever supplies you need. We leave in an hour.

"Merde," Violet mumbled, as she headed for the lab. It would be impossible to pack up all the tardigrade equipment. She'd have to settle for a small sample. With an unsteady hand, she poured crystals into small vials and set them in a pile atop her carefully folded hanfu. No way was she leaving without the hand-embellished silk robe her mother had given her.

A cacophonous creaking rumbled overhead. The station was beginning to break up.

This is it! Yverra shouted. She began chanting, as the symbols on her sleeves glowed more brightly. An eye-watering bright spot appeared in front of her, which she enlarged with hand gestures. Everyone get in!

Ralff and Benrus leaped inside first, followed by Yverra.

I'll be right back, Violet said. I forgot something. She turned and ran to the VR projector pod to grab a travel eyepiece. As she reached in, the entire station imploded.

Violet felt herself leave her body. Did she still even have a body? She reached out—yes, she still had her senses, so her body must still exist. The station was gone, and she streaked through a vast desert of darkness, gathering momentum. She'd been flung clear, but why was she still alive? Somehow, she had piggybacked onto a waterbear. Some cryptobiotes must have spilled onto the VR table. But there was no Ben here to offer her a spritz of water. She wouldn't be moving or swimming anywhere, except to certain death at the wall. She cursed herself for delaying foolishly, being unprepared yet again. In a way, it was comforting. She wouldn't have very long to think about the error of her ways before she was ground into nothingness.

***

Violet didn't know how much time passed, but she knew it was growing short. She could feel the pull increasing.

The pressure mounted exponentially. If she had a head, it would have given her the universe's biggest migraine. A wave of what could only be called nausea shuddered through her, though she had no gut to empty. Gravitational forces beat against her like Godzilla stomping through Tokyo. She hadn't expected to go out as a Milnesium angelensis, though. She would miss Yverra and the Watchmen. They'd helped fill a void left by the people who had loved her, the family that had meant everything. Now no one would remember her.

Suddenly the turbulent pull ceased. She floated weightless, surrounded by abyss. Where had the wall gone?

To her shock, a rather reptilian-looking hand reached out and grabbed the anterior side of her upper segment. Yverra yanked Violet back into the space station, where her body stood beside Ben and Ralff. Violet blinked.

"Yverra! I saw the station destroyed! Then, I hit the Y-Y Boundary wall, and I didn't die! How did you find