/- As you may have noticed, there was no chapter uploaded last night, which was because I was doing a bit of... research. However, I have today off, so if you're lucky, I'll put up two chapters...

What can I say, I have a dedication to my readers (yes, all two of you. =P ).

In any case, I spent last night playing through both Genesis games, and learned a couple of interesting facts.

First, the comment the Asterite makes about sending Ecco back 55 million years is accurate. The logic that Ecco comes from the past stems from the fact that the last prehistoric time period, the Cretaceous, ended 65 million years ago, so this means that Ecco must be at least 10 million years old, right? Right?

Also, in Tides of Time, the Asterite DOES say that the time machine cannot be used to go into the future, although I didn't write down the exact wording. HOWEVER, this is in fact a good thing, as it meshes with a plot point I had been saving, as you'll see below.

Of course, I'm going to have to reveal this point sooner than I'd intended, but what the hell, I've got dozens of ideas. =P

Now, prepare for the most backstory-intensive chapter yet...

Happy Reading! -- Icebreaker -/

There was silence on the pier, so complete you could hear the rustling of the wind through the palm fronds down the beach.

"Rescii, just what, exactly, are these Indestructibles?"

Donovan reached up with his hand to brush the back of his head. "Well, there's a good possibility that they're what Ecco here just described..."

"So you know where to find the Asterite, then?" asked Ecco.

The young astrophysicist shrugged. "Well, maybe. There's a story behind this, but you probably won't understand it much, Ecco... though hopefully Nicholas will," he said, glancing at the old man.

Ecco nodded and glanced at Trellia. "They're probably going to talk in machine-terms," he whispered towards her. "Are you adept at understanding this?"

Trellia threw back her head and gulped down the fish that was in her mouth. "Sometimes, Nicholas will mumble to himself in some strange language when he's working with the insides of those boxes," she whispered, pointing a fin at the one in front of them. "My advice, you just wait till it's over. I've tried to gain insight into the terminology, with no success."

Ecco nodded and turned toward the box again. "Let them talk in their weird, human languages then. As long as they can take me to the Asterite, I don't care what their topic of conversation is."

Above the surface of the water, Nicholas took off his glasses and rubbed them against his sleeve. "Allright, Rescii, just what is all this nonsense about?"

Donovan sighed and leaned forward, propping his elbows against his thighs. "Well, as you may already know, after finishing my graduate studies I was hired by the Department of Defense..."

Nicholas raised an eyebrow. "That's news to me. So what'd they hire you for, your research or something different?"

"Well, there was that, and I had taken out a few patents on some exotic devices... anyway, doesn't matter," Donovan said, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture. "What DOES matter is that, in my line of work, I've learned of several... artifacts that the government has, one group of which is called the Indestructibles."

Nicholas nodded. "I see... and how did you come to find these artifacts?"

"Let's see if I can remember... I think, back in the seventies, there was a Navy destroyer that was doing routine patrol in the northern Pacific, and all of its electronics suddenly sputtered and died. They brought in some technicians to see what the problem was, but any diagnostic equipment that was brought onto the ship died as well. Eventually, one of the sailors noticed that the magnetic compasses on the ship were going haywire, pointing in erratically different directions than they should've."

"The conclusion was that there was severe electro-magnetic interference in the area, although no one could figure out a natural cause for this. So they brought in some divers armed with EM-radiation detection equipment, of which the sensitivity had to be turned down so far that an EMP would look like a small walkie-talkie in comparison."

"They dove down and eventually found a large globe on the seafloor, that pretty much looked like Ecco described it, except it was a light grey in color. They then proceeded to bring it back to Los Alamos for study, and had it encased in a lead box with walls three feet thick so it wouldn't disturb the sensitive electronics there."

"The globe had two interesting characteristics, the first of which was the fact that it resisted any probing whatsoever. They tried probing with x-rays, gamma rays, you name it, they probably tried it. They eventually decided to drill the globe to see what was inside, but the bit broke. A diamond-lattice reinforced drill bit, that had been known to make a hole in the hardest materials known to man, broke when trying to use it against this globe."

"And no matter what you try, you can't make a dent in the damn thing. You can try melting it, freezing it, cutting it, drilling it, they tried lasers, hydraulic presses, rail guns... nothing worked. The climax of the whole thing was when they dropped a tactical nuke on it out on our testing site on Macross Island, and after the smoke cleared, the globe was still sitting there, as shiny as ever. Didn't even pick up any radiation from the blast."

"That's why they're called the Indestructibles, because the globe, as near as we can tell, is probably going to last forever. Our best materials engineers can't make heads or tails of the thing, try as they might."

"The second interesting characteristic was the fact that, upon inspection of the electro-magnetic field it generated, it was mostly concentrated into lines. I mean, sure, it threw out strong interference in all directions, but the bulk of it was contained in lines of force that appeared to continue for quite some distance... you following me, here?"

Nicholas was staring out towards the horizon, and he nodded slightly. "I think so, I've done my share of study into field equations back in the day. The rest of it is a little harder to swallow, but... go on."

Donovan nodded in turn and continued. "Well, the head of the committee on this thing had the bright idea to follow the force lines and see where they led to. The first one they followed went out into the Mediterranean Sea somewhere... they loaded up in a helicopter with civilian markings and tracking equipment, and dove down to find... another globe."

"This pretty much shocked the subsection of Los Alamos that was working on that topic, and they petitioned the Department of Defense for a special ops team to go out and retrieve the rest of the globes, as some were apparently located in foreign-legislated seas. The DoD thought it would be worthwhile, they had the idea of keeping one globe on earth and sending another into space, using the electro-magnetic line between the two globes in order to fry Russian satellites. The Russians wouldn't know that we had an EM generator of that magnitude, and so we'd be able to hit their satellites with plausible deniability, claiming solar flares or some other such nonsense."

"In any case, the DoD agreed and sent out teams to follow the rest of the lines... all forty-six of them."

"In the meantime, the boys back at the labs decided to do some experiments to see how the two globes they had behaved in relation to one another. They found that when one came into a certain distance of the other, the EM fields started fluctuating oddly... as if the two globes were communicating with each other. It was really weird, and so they decided to see what would happen if the globes were actually to come into contact with each other..."

"One fateful day, they actually did put the globes into contact. The field strength went off the charts, and the globes started to move of their own volition... they spun around each other and hovered about three feet off the floor, and the collective jaw of Los Alamos dropped to the ground."

"When they reviewed the video feed later, they found that the globes actually changed color to a half-grey, half-green state for about a tenth of a second, before cycling through four different colors as Ecco described, and finally settling on red and blue. The field strength eventually decreased to a manageable level, although it was twice as strong as a single globe."

"In addition, the field started to reach outward in random directions, and started to pulse regularly. The techs ran it through an algorithm, and discovered the direction in which the field was strongest at any given time was TRULY random. It's impossible to get true randomness with machinery, as it's always based on a seed, like time, capacitance charges, etcetera. So, they came to think of the pair of globes as sort of a living being, and an extraterrestrial one at that."

"The whole set of globes wasn't assembled until sometime in the late eighties, but the Alamos guys didn't want to put all of them together as they were afraid of what the completed creature might do. One of the committee members suggested pulling apart the two globes that were currently spinning, but he was outvoted because they weren't sure what would happen to the potential energy between them. An explosion, perhaps? No one knew."

"Last I knew, they were moved to a secure warehouse up in Atlanta, I think... the DoD eventually gave up on their satellite idea after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as it was decided the risks outweighed the benefits... and that, good sirs, is all I know about the Indestructibles."

"And it's classified by the way, Dr. Card," he added, scowling at Nicholas.

The old man chuckled slightly. "I wouldn't worry, Rescii... after all, who would I have it to share with?"

Donovan nodded and looked back towards the water, seeing Ecco against the contours of the sea-floor.

"While I wasn't able to understand a good portion of that," Ecco said after a slight pause, "I was able to glean the fact that you have all of the Asterite's globes, and that one pair has already started spinning?"

"As near as I can tell, Ecco, that's the guy you're looking for," said Donovan.

"This would explain why the Asterite seemed so weak when he spoke to me," thought Ecco. "If only one pair is together... I must reunite him with his other pairs, if we are to seek his help."

"Well, now, I haven't had a day like this for a while," said Nicholas, as he popped out a crick in his back. "Aliens, indestructible globes, and a time-traveling dolphin from the past. It's the kind of day that you wish you wouldn't have skipped your morning coffee on, eh, Rescii?"

"You could say that," chuckled Donovan.

Something in Nicholas's sentence caught at Ecco's memory. "I'm a time-traveling dolphin from the past," he thought, "... so that means I traveled into the future... and I used the time machine to get here..."

"Wait," said Ecco. "Something isn't right."

"Well, I think we can all agree on that, Ecco," said Nicholas, staring down at the dolphin. "But did you have something specific in mind?"

"Yes," said Ecco. "The Asterite once told me that the time machine cannot be used to go into the future, and yet, somehow, I used it to travel here... and the Asterite has never been wrong before..."

"Impossible," said Donovan, with a look of contempt on his face. "The laws of temporal mechanics state that it's just as easy to travel into the future as it is into the past, perhaps even more so."

"But the Asterite has never steered me wrong before! Are you absolutely sure that I'm in the future, from my timeline?"

"Positive, if what you've told us is all true. That time machine you used should be able to travel into the future just fine... unless..." Donovan's eyes got slightly wider as he continued. "Unless... Schvolenberg was right..."

"Damnit Rescii, you've gotta learn to quit muttering to yourself. Why don't you share what's going on with the rest of the kids in the class, eh?" Nicholas asked, crossing his arms as he did so.

"Well, there was a scientist named Schvolenberg who wrote some theories on the nature of time... his most famous hypothesis was the theory of 'Dual-Time,' or the thought that multiple timelines could exist simultaneously. If this were to happen, it would be impossible to travel into the future using normal methods, since the 'real' timeline hadn't been decided yet.... Now, Schvolenberg did lay out schematics of a device that would allow travel into a timeline of the operator's choosing, but it's quite possible that the machine you used wasn't equipped with one."

"Ecco," intoned Nicholas, "was there any evidence of multiple timelines from your standpoint, or is Donovan just rambling on?"

"Well, now that you mention it, there was in fact," replied Ecco. "There were two possible futures, one in which dolphins evolved into fliers and reigned supreme, and another in which the Vortex ruled."

"Now, the way I see it," Donovan said, "is that your Asterite decided not to give you the full details on the MECHANICS of why you couldn't travel into the future, he just told you you couldn't use the time machine to do it. Makes sense if you were on a schedule for some reason. From your descriptions, it sounds like you didn't mean to travel to this specific point in time, you probably just told the time machine to take you as far in the future as it possibly could... and since the only thing that prevents travel into the future is multiple timelines..."

"Then that means that we're experiencing multiple timelines now," Ecco finished. "The only question I have is, are we in the dark future, or the bright future?"

A silence once again settled upon the group, as each member sorted through their own thoughts.

"Well, I guess that settles it, then," said Nicholas finally, setting the translator box on the pier and standing up slowly.

"Settles what?" Donovan asked.

"Well, you say that this Asterite fellow is most likely in Atlanta, right?"

"Yeah..." said Donovan.

"And you, Ecco, said that the Asterite would be the only one able to answer our questions, right?"

"Yes, that's correct," said the dolphin.

"Well, then..." said Nicholas, and grinned.

Donovan's eyes widened, and his face grew a shade whiter. "No... you don't mean..."

"Oh, I think I do," said the old doctor, balancing on his walking stick. "It's time for a... ROAD TRIP!"

Ecco was confused as he turned to Trellia. "I don't suppose you'd know what a 'road trip' is?" he asked, hopefully.

Trellia giggled. "No, but I'm excited already!"