And Even More Giant Worms

Bright stars sit scattered across empty space. Nothing happens here and there is nothing here for it to happen to. Then, there is a distortion of light. The background stars seem to shift. It’s a wormhole and something is coming through. Suddenly, hundreds of straight, segmented rockets burst into the emptiness. Each is fifteen school busses long. For a time, they fly in all directions. Then, they regroup and point themselves in the direction of a bluish white star. This is the sun of the planet Xirl, a jungle world valued by many. In two days, it will be visited by the giant worms that eat trees.

The planet Xirl has a highly eccentric orbit that takes it around its star once every twenty-two Earth years. For four of those years, it is dominated by lush jungle. It is home to “tutu palms” that sport a second crown of leaves around their middles. These trees grow fruit resembling hanging chains of sausage links. They taste like sausages, too. It is also home to Xirlian lions, which resemble Earth lions, but without heads or tails. For the remaining eighteen of those years, it is winter. All life sleeps. The plants and animals alike freeze solid to protect them from the wind and glaciers. At this time, the first snow is already starting to fall, and the wind is picking up.

Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill are on the planet making preparations for the worm invasion. They are not going to let them ruin this world. However, they must be discrete; the time cops are also on the planet. “Happy evening, sentient beings. What is your purpose on planet Xirl?” a time cop asks, huddled in a thick jacket.

“Oh, we’re historians here to document the seasonal transition. This device here is a multiscanner. We’ll be collecting data from the whole planet,” Nathaniel says, slapping the large machine in front of him with gloved hand.

“Very good. We detected time travel technology on board your craft. Have you made any recent time trips?” the time cop asks.

“Well, that depends on whether three hundred forty years ago is recent,” Nathaniel says, then laughs. The time cop also laughs, a good sign. “Like I said, we’re historians. We were sent by the Documentary Society. We visit special events to observe for the official records.” Nathaniel hands him a card.

The cop looks over Nathaniel’s DS card and puts it in his pocket. “Good, good, we need more people like you to help us preserve the timeline.”

“Just doing our part,” Nathaniel says.

“That’s right,” Haticat agrees.

“So, which special event are you here to observe?” the time cop asks.

“Well, as you know, I can’t tell you the future or it might pollute the timeline,” Nathaniel answers.

“Okay, I think we’re both here for the same reason. Good luck with your observation,” the time cop responds and then walks away.

When the BTJ agent is finally out of earshot, Haticat whispers, “I don’t believe that worked.”

“It’s not like we’re lying. We’re going to join the DS once it exists,” Nathaniel says.

“We are?” Haticat says.

“Probably,” Nathaniel replies.

Doctor Bill walks around the device and scans it carefully. “The false image is holding. From the outside, scans will show this to be an ordinary multiscanner except for the size.” The real reason the machine is so large is to make room for the teleportation beamers and the salt. The device scans for worms, recording their exact position and timestamp. That way, at some future time, the same device can send teleportation beams back in time, injecting the worms with small amounts of salt, their greatest weakness. Since the salt will be materializing from the future, there will be nowhere to track it back to. The time cops won’t know what’s going on. In the meantime, Nathaniel takes a walk and explores the jungle.

When the worms finally land, two of them land barely four hundred meters away. They immediately soften as they transform from rocket mode to eating mode. They eat tree after tree, faster than the explorers have seen such worms eat trees before. Ash spews out their back ends. “There’s still seventy stragglers out of range,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Wait until they all land to take our snapshot scan. That will be the moment we send the salt to,” Nathaniel orders.

“With the time cops watching, we’ll probably only get one chance,” Haticat adds.

They wait for an hour while one of the nearby worms begins to munch in their direction. They don’t notice it until it knocks a tree over onto the ship. “Hey!” Fred shouts, attempting to deter it with laser blasts.

The worm reacts by thrashing and then races straight for the multiscanner. The four explorers barely jump out of the way in time as the worm knocks over the machine and then slides past it into the forest on the other side.

“Oh, no,” Nathaniel grumbles. In the time it takes to right the machine and repair it, the remaining worms land and the rest start spawning larvae. They begin a new scan. Finally, they are done, but the teleporter won’t engage. “Now what’s wrong?” When he opens the panel to the time crystal assembly, he is immediately concerned. Time crystals are supposed to be blue, but these are green.

“What does it mean?” Haticat asks.

“I don’t know,” Nathaniel answers.

Solving the mystery takes hours. Finally, Nathaniel announces, “The time cops have erected a chronometric barrier that disallows traveling back in time; we can only go forward.”

“If that’s the case, we won’t be able to teleport the salt back in time, either,” Doctor Bill responds.

“And we won’t be able to bring the teleporter back in time to aim the beams forward in time instead,” Nathaniel says.

“Can we send the salt forward in time from now and then entice the worms into the right places?” Doctor Bill suggests.

“No, there are already too many worms for the amount of salt we have now,” Nathaniel answers.

“Why don’t we just leave the planet and go back in time? What’s the range on this energy field?” Haticat asks.

“Unfortunately, the barrier not only disallows backwards time travel, but any influence from the future. It prevents paradoxes,” Nathaniel says.

“We need to shut down that barrier,” Fred declares.

The source of the energy field is one hundred kilometers away where three Bureau ships are parked. The four time criminals ride antigravity rods most of the way there, braving the wind and the snow. They see several giant worms in the frozen forest, munching away.

While Fred and Doctor Bill sneak into one of the ships to shut off the barrier, Nathaniel and Haticat approach the time cops to ask them to drop the barrier temporarily. “We missed part of the invasion because a worm knocked over the multiscanner, so we need to go back and start over in a safer location.”

“You want to change history?” the time cop says.

“We wouldn’t be changing anything, just scanning,” Nathaniel answers.

“You’d be undoing your failure to scan,” the time cop explains.

“Is it in the history books that we failed to scan?” Nathaniel asks.

“They don’t say that you succeeded,” the cop says. “In fact, there’s no record of you at all. The Documentary Society has never heard of you.”

“They haven’t heard of me yet. They don’t exist yet,” Nathaniel counters.

“Tell me, what kind of multiscanner contains two hundred fifty thousand kilograms of salt?” the cop asks.

Nathaniel opens and closes his mouth. He has no good answer for that. Just then, Fred and Doctor Bill are escorted out of the ship. “We caught them in the act, boss – just like you predicted.”

Nathaniel is dumbfounded. “How did you figure it out?”

“We waited for you to leave your ship. When you flew your rods here, my officers were able to look inside your device. We saw the time crystals and the teleporter assembly,” the head cop explains.

“Oh,” Nathaniel says. Soon, Nathaniel and crew are disarmed and placed in a cell on one of the other two ships. He gives up on saving Xirl and instead thinks up ways to escape.

Hours pass. Then they hear gunfire and shouting. Then there is silence. The guard watching them looks nervous. He unholsters his sidearm and approaches the doorway. Suddenly, there is a flash of light and he disappears. Around the corner walks Nathaniel, in sunglasses. He is followed by Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill. They stop and look at themselves through the cell door.

“Hi, you must be me from the future,” Nathaniel in the cell says.

“Nope,” the other Nathaniel says. “I’m you from the past.”

“Then why don’t I remember this?” Nathaniel in the cell asks.

“You will later,” past Nathaniel in sunglasses says. “A while back, I hacked into BTJ records to see what they had on me. I discovered events in both my past and future. With advance knowledge of these events, I was able to intervene and rescue myself – sometimes in person, sometimes from behind the scenes.” As he talks, Haticat opens the cell and lets Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill out.

“But then how did you get through the barrier if you are carrying future knowledge and influence?” present Nathaniel asks.

“Simple. The barrier wasn’t erected yet; that information was already in the past,” past Nathaniel answers.

“Oh,” present Nathaniel remarks. “So you aren’t me yet, but you will have already been me in the past at some time in the future.”

“Exactly,” past Nathaniel says. The two of them continue to talk about things that have been, will be, will have been, would have been, and had will will have been. There is a lot of information to cover.

“Well, I guess we need to shut that barrier off now so we can use the multiscanner,” present Nathaniel says.

“No, if you do that, the police will immediately be back. With the barrier up, they won’t be able to bother you and you can take all the time you want to defeat the worms.” Past Nathaniel holds up his rifle. “These are temporal teleporter guns. I zapped the time cops one century into the future.”

“Oh, great idea. I wish I had thought of it,” present Nathaniel says.

“You just did,” past Nathaniel answers.

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