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There is a child. There is a child; and there is a burnt broken messed-up wreck, somewhere unimportant and therefore out-of-sight, a crash of bright scarlet and off-key blinking lights. It looks to be in horrendous condition, and nobody in their right mind, nobody from their egotistical planet, would ever give it a second glance.
The child, though egotistical in her turn, has been alienated for her whole (relatively short, of course, she's a child) life, on the grounds of her obnoxious unlikableness, her too-loud resolutely-disobedient never-serious nature.
And so, she runs along to check it out, excited and curious and not really knowing that she’s going against one of the most important principles of her people: condescension for the foreign. She thinks it to be interesting and maybe hopes to find solace in what the people scorning her scorn: enemy of her enemy, in a way, though she's too young to realise and put words to it. She never fully will. (And in a way she's the foreign they scorn too, so it's only natural – of her nature – that she’ll seek out others suchlike.)
Along the way, the child trips and stumbles a hundred times, not looking where she's going or what lies in her way, or even carefully at her destination. It's just that those stuck-up elders she sometimes listens in on all never mention that place. It's just that they disregard it with something deliberate, not like their indifference towards empty sands (which would’ve been normal), but their manufactured indifference (in reality hatred, in reality shunning, in reality perceived-insignificance) towards people like her.
So of-bloody-course she had to go and check it out, with all the excitement and anticipation she has.
She reaches, eventually, after the two suns had both come together and beat down upon the desert in all their stupid glory and then cycled apart, after her sweat had dried and cooled her, and only the one sun was still there, feebly lighting the sands, feebly lighting that pursued machine.
And how fuckin’ glorious it is (though she doesn't know shit about it), the once-smooth scarlet body now dusty and scratched and matte, orangeish light suffusing it and making it glow, the rectangular hollows, the visible naked machinery at the largest one, looking like a display case that everyone from her world’d call vulgar and primitive, which only hightens her already-bursting excitement.
She jumps in through it, struggling to propel herself through the high gateway beckoning her (look, she’d spied on some flying classes for the tiniest of time tots, but she wasn't one and wasn't young enough to grasp it well, so…) and eventually manages to haul herself up by the frame and drag her body through, flopping onto the floor of it, taking special care not the crash into the machinery… which, she did anyway, as she notes with a sinking feeling, but it's the thought that counts, right?
Once in, she’s surrounded by it all, just a tiny blot within the grey, surrounded by the flimsy devices, and something, something, something in her or maybe out, magnetises her to this wreck, to this dead beautiful thing, and it tells her, this is where your future lies. Or maybe she tells herself, maybe she's the one deciding and sticking to it, with utter conviction so typical and hated of her, sticking to her awe and enamourment with that fascinating somehow-preserved corpse, completely determined to interweave her life with it and never leave its side and let it lead her somewhere. Or maybe she'll be doing the leading?
She loves it, she decides, utterly and completely and forever (she doesn't know what's dangerous about forever, not yet; and she never really will, except in moments with other beings who don't go by her will or rules or anything, and even then she doesn't learn.) She loves it. And she won't let anything change her mind.
After all, it's the first kindred spirit she's met. It's the only other thing that, she feels, knows what it's like to be her, unlike every other unsympathetic uncaring bastard on her planet.
So almost every cycle, whenever she can manage or remember, sometimes twice or thrice and sometimes not at all for five at a stretch, however she can manage, she visits.
First, it's with cleaning things (or, things that can definitely be used as cleaning things, though they're more for, well, eradication and modification) tucked into trans-dimensional folds. When that's done, and the only casualties are the supposed doors and also the useless interior decoration, and maybe a few panels where she spilled some, ah, things, the same stuff that's used to melt down large-scale structures, see; but what matters – what she counts a success – is that the thing's mostly intact!
Next, she decides that she's going to need to have a door, to get anywhere without being tossed around by time winds and whatnot. Of course she's already decided that she's going to make this her ship, and that it will lead her to better more-fun places and times and universes, because it's her bloody wish.
She… needs to install the basic equipment to travel anyplace to get a door, though, which is what she spends the entirety of the next cycle doing, and though she gets screamed at for disappearing and not being there to fulfil her stupid useless duties, she glows with excitement and invigoration all the same.
Later, she sneaks out and takes her ship (hers, hers, her ship, she rescued it and she's making it and it her hers completely) somewhere she can get, say, a bright scarlet door: just set course for a sale of those things – it's really a wonder how many hyper-specific places there are – and grabs the first thing that steals her attention and runs off, alarms blaring loudly and framing her exit; a novel sharp thrill thrumming through her as she hears them, though only for a moment, as the next they’re off. But she's got a door, literally got it in her hands, now leaning on the side as she's piloting. She thinks she’ll get herself some help on that part next.
As her ship materialises in those bleak sands, outside civilisation (and she's so much happier for it), she fancies herself another thrill that people could hear it, could catch her, though that has such a low probability it's just impossible, as if they’d ever hang around anywhere near her ship’s place! She still enjoys the jump in her hearts as she imagines it. She supposes that's what counts, and she has all the right in the universe to enjoy herself.
Anyway, she installs the door after rummaging around her ship for anything useful, which she finds: laser-welder stuff and molecular-level tighteners for screws and nuts and whatnot, which’re charmingly low-quality, so different from her world’s, so of course she uses them.
Next, when she comes down from her, ha, periodic snooping-about at the Academies (a different one each time she does, which makes travel hard but she likes it; though since knowing her ship, she’s been gravitating towards the red one – Prydonian, they call it, named after some dead old fucker, as they all apparantly are – their robes sometimes deep and shiny as blood and sometimes glittering scarlet, the worst times dry and bland as their grass or their sky, all off-set by gold lining that sometimes wanes into copper and sometimes rises to the heights of something worth stealing; either way, she prefers Patrex for herself, and had even stolen a set of outer robes of theirs which’s now tucked into a corner of her ship were some of the counter of machinery’s, well, gone, the purples – she refuses to call it heliotrope, what the fuck even is that – of it dancing ‘round the colour wheel from pink-soaked magenta to near-blue violet, the yellows flickering in spots like some chameleon) to rest after the day, she finds herself sorely oppressed.
How’d she never think of this? Oh, hell, the dimensions of it were all- all constrictive, she couldn't even stretch out like she could outside! And she hates it out there, she thinks, horrified, she can't let her ship be less comfortable than that!
Relaxation forgotten for indignation and horror, she jumps up and starts running to the factories for her needs. Ten paces in she decides better, and turns back to her ship, materialising somewhere close enough to walk comfortably, but far enough to not get caught. The factories being sort of separated from everywhere else on account of their lowness worked in her favour, though she turned over what they would even do to her ship (and, hell, she's protective, she realises, feels it fierce enough to rip and tear down whoever messed with it, always a wild, feral thing, she was; or Change trying); would they scrap it for parts (unlikely because they wouldn't know, and wouldn't condescend to using the ones that showed), would they destroy it (more likely, she hates it, but why’d they even bother when they could just not give a damn like they always did), and while trying to come up with a third possible fate, she arrives at the back door.
Now, she's never actually been to the factories. She still believes that she’ll be successful, unearned confidence which she’d call willpower, and decides, like a child, to just barge in.
There's a couple of people about, but they just glance at her and continue working. She wonders why, and climbs the rackety stairs, which makes her wonder how people haven't fallen climbing them, then wonder how many have, her original musing lost; and she reaches the top to be assaulted by putrid fumes and almost fall back down.
She catches herself on a wall before she can, and thinks that she sure is lucky for not going like unfortunate factorymen, how she isn't one.
Her hand comes away covered with some condensation, and she wipes it on her stupid plain robes which fit right in, without a second thought.
She sneaks around, avoiding people (who’re concentrated around where the fumes are most, too, working on those things; so she's avoiding those too) and looking for her prize. Slight problem, though: she hasn't the first clue what to look for, much less how it looks. She could risk asking, but how’d that come off un-suspisciously? Well, she could say it was for her Housekeeper, for her ship…
Wrinkling her nose, she approaches the first group in sight. They're working on something she can't see for the fumes all around, in all the dimensions, including the ones she’s noticed others can't really see as well. So, that's that, and she thinks in a corner of her mind how funny (and convenient) it’d be if that was what she was looking for.
She asks one of them, citing what she’s thought up, and adding that the ship was back with the Housekeeper, so she really couldn't take it to them or them to it. Didn't hurt to be careful, of course, and it’s not like the lie hurt anyone. In fact, it's fun. She represses a smirk as they coo over her, a little helper, they say, even though she's a bit ticked off they're taking time to answer her (after all, it's not like anything gets done quick on this stupid world), and every moment (every microsecond) her patience gets chipped away and she's dangerously close to breaking the sweet-helpful-child thing she put up on a whim; but one of them takes to asking her what exactly she’d like to see.
Humouring herself (she doesn't believe in fate, see, though most of her people, the lower-classers, do), she asks after the one they're working on.
Disappointingly, predictably, it's not what she wants; it's a dimensional stabilizer, which she doubts can create dimensions. Still, when she heard that first word, her hearts leaped up (before plunging down to reality), and it was the best thing she’d ever felt; as they go on and on about it, she listens, taking in how it's meant to capacitate the change of the exterior and interior, making sure they don't affect each other, keeping them in peace, how the interior can be adjusted easy-as-hell with it, how it stops any lethal leakage if the exterior’s damaged. She stops listening about halfway, which’s to say that the person keeps rambling for double the time she's listened, which’s to say that she didn't register the next half and nor did she feel like it.
She’s come to the conclusion that the thing works sideways, assisting in stitching two dimensions already equipped with all the necessaries to fit; not inwards and outwards like she needs.
After all, as stands to reason, everything’s already pre-built with those. They wouldn't need any accessory for it.
Well. Big problem for her.
She waits till they're done with their rant, and says that she was delighted to hear, but she needs to be going now; and they all coo again which really gets on her nerves this time, so she turns on her heel and stalks out.
So much for that.
As she's doing the necessary work for materialising back right where her ship was, she idly thinks about what it’d take to be able to extend the dimensions.
They probably pre-infused all the stuff, right? That made sense, after all, she didn't think any material, wherever it came from, could have more than five or maybe six (at a stretch) dimensions, so there must be some way to ...add the others. According to reason.
Then, she decides, as the sands which were starting to look more and more familiar established themselves in her vision, that she’d find it out, somehow. And make her ship fully hers, and then nothing would be able to stop either of them.
Decades and decades pass, and the kid’s intentions don't stray. Determined, she is. Looks after her ship and everything, installing security systems scrapped from six different places (frequenting sad timeships, rifling through the remains of the dead, or beseeching or tricking the living), actually painting over the skin of hers with something she mixed herself (the result looks different, but not bad-different; it looks like how she thinks it was meant to be under all that dust), her people’re none the wiser. Her Aunts all think she's just in her rebellious 200’s, but it fades well into the next century, and by that time it's just characteristic her. She just disappears, and you won't get where she's gone or what she was doing out of her, but she's just a wild, free spirit (said, of course, with derision; but she doesn't care what they think of her when she has the universes almost-in-her-hands), and besides, they say, they think, it's not as if she has the potential to do anything harmful; she's just wasting her life, as everyone always knew she'd do, and she lets them believe it, feeling secretly superior because she knows and they don't.
She gets herself into the factories for real this time, pure force (and though she hates it, pity), and learns everything there is about working with crude material. The extraction processes, fetching it out of the crevices and cracks between the dimensions where they're lost by travellers or chipped off of pre-existing timeships, long trails of the stuff in ever-stagnant states which never want to follow, wrenched out by equally stubborn tools which fill all space and force everything else to vacate, all the way back to the workshops; the refinement, those materials, by force of all the torture done to them, once standing brick-solid and proud, now jittery and never-still, rendered unstable by the cruel necessity of her people, subject to more agonies still, the delicatest strings of higher dimensions which’d been eroded out of it scores and scores of milennia ago, now forced back in with no remorse, no preparation, mechanically as if the things had no life of their own, and that too done at least five times over, more if the things were from deeper in time and more eroded, until they were undeniably and inextricably changed into something that just didn't fit either their past or future – a transitory state, just waiting for more, and the only good thing about it was that by the time they were done with it, it was already lifeless with its old life gone and a blank where the new one would be inserted; then came the melting and molding, and most important of all the infusions, new stories and times and knowledge being sewn into it, or baked with an impossible ignition from every side, a new life, and it was the nicest thing that’d ever been done for these things, she thinks, the infusion of purpose or at least history of knowledge of tasks; till it was ready to use and be sent to other parts, places, and the process would start all over again. It’s a century-long internship and training period, and believe her, by the end of it she almost wants to off herself and rest.
But she can’t. She still has glorious lives and lives in front of her, and either way, her ship’s counting on her, isn’t she?
Not a child anymore, she decides to specialise in the infusions. She says it’s because she’d always had a knack for creations and the final step and purpose, but her knowledge of her truth buoys her with a feeling of superiority which keeps her from completely going off the rails. (And to be honest, she’s always been a bit better at realising other things’ lives, and turning a lifeless husk into an alive one was better than slowly bleeding it out.
It's fine, the life is; slave away at the factories, then run to the sands to collapse in her ship’s arms, it’s fine. But it can be better, she’s no fool.
She’d decided that she’d hone her skill or whatever, while away another century-and-a-half, before perfecting her ship – she cares for her, see, and wants what’s best for her, for both of them.
But she’s so tired.
She's tired of running around pretending to care about what she's doing, she's tired of being talked down to like a cruder form of life (and she’ll stick to her fashion sense, whatever anyone says, thank you), she's tired of wasting all that time, she's tired of having two lives, she's tired of it all. But mostly the belittlement, got it?
She's so unbearably worn-down, she decides, that there's nothing else to be done.
So, just after this amazing revelation of hers, tucked into a corner in her bus, she marches off to her workstation in the factories – actually marches, such’s her enthusiasm, and goes right up to her workstation and nicks all her tools, tucking them into folds in her robes, and goes right back off to her ship. Nobody pays her any mind, nowadays. And nobody cares. Which's better, speaking long-term, so she doesn't mind; she doesn't care a bit either – the only things she cares about are her ship and her self.
As a last test-run or trial-run or whatever, just for kicks, she plugs into her ship's telepathic circuits – ripped away from some poor defunct thing in the graveyards, it took her seven cycles to plan the whole thing and get it done; she buried the circuits deep inside the workings of her ship, just for fun, just ‘cause she wanted to preserve its charming atmosphere and appearance – and goes to some library some year, and gorges herself on the books, all forbidden by her home-world’s law. And then, when she gets bored of them and how long it takes to get through ‘em, she switches to television (which she’d read all about, and found so fascinating). Much better, hah! Then she whiles away her time (time, time, she has it,) watching informational and instructional videos on all sorts of topics taboo to her people, and soaking it all up; and then when she gets tired of those, she watches all kinds of shallowly entertaining (which, mind, ‘s still entertaining) serials, and generally just has a grand time.
And when that was over, when she’d finally noticed the ache in her body (how thrilling, to feel physiologically in the third dimension), she’d gotten up and headed back to that wretched place, her ship (her bus) still hidden half-buried in the sands; and she’d stretched out all-dimensionally on the dashboard (she knows things now, second-hand knowledge picked up from all the useless serials, she knows her ship!) and laughed and laughed and laughed, a mad never-ending cackle, she'd never had this much fun; and she twirls out the doors, subsided into just giggles which sound like a madwoman’s (and she doesn't deny this, after all, she is according to her people and that's enough to make her feel proud of it), and she falls face-first into the sand in her glee.
The unpleasant coarseness of it is enough to sober her up, and she trudges back the way she came; locking those memories where nobody can find them, and she can access and cherish them as she wishes. Or at least that's the plan.
But she's ready, now, she thinks, ready for the universe.
And, without saying goodbye to anybody (who’d she say it to, even? Her apathetic co-workers? Her uncaring relatives? Ha, right), at a time when the light’s the least and she’s almost freezing, she takes off.
It’s not that different from one of her normal, old excursions, but instead of a tamped-down wish to just leave, this time, leave and never look back, she’s actually doing it. She’s actually going, for good, for ever, and every desperate half-wish in her head for all these years is partying because of it, the spirit of it taking her away to all the wonderfully fun places she wants to be, to every joy in the universe previously left untouched, to mad life-risking adventure (no other kind’s fun) and mad in-swing parties, she’s seeing it all. And really, truly, she has never been more ecstatic in her life, and it’s the kind she wants to stay. Forever.
She knows her bus as it has grown to know her. She can't really separate her from herself anymore, but she doesn't want nor feel the need to. It's all her, anyway.