Chapter 41:
The trio walked down a busy street and ducked into an alleyway. Michael carefully inspected the timer.
"What are you doing?" Sam asked.
"Just checking the timer. It's been acting weird ever since it was knocked out of my hands back on Rebecca's world. I just want to make sure it's still working at full capacity." Michael replied.
"Yeah, good idea. I mean it did send us into a closet when we slid in here. A few inches to the left and we'd have shown up inside the wall." Rebecca said.
"Well it wouldn't have been that bad. The timer has a densitrometry failsafe." Michael said. "Quinn said that it's there to ensure that doesn't happen. He helped install it the last time we saw them. When we sent them home."
"Anyway, how much time do we have?" Sam asked.
"A few more seconds... and now!" Michael replied as he aimed the timer and the portal opened.
"Let's get out of here!" Rebecca exclaimed as she hopped into the portal. The portal began to fluctuate after she entered it.
"Is that safe?" Sam asked.
"I hope so. I really hope so." Michael replied as they jumped into the portal.
Michael and Sam fell out of the portal and into a dark room. They stood up and tried to use the timer as a light, when bright lights turned on, blinding them for a moment.
"Michael Josephson and Samuel Evans! You are on trial for your crimes against the multiverse! How do you plead?" a loud booming voice asked.
"Crimes against the multiverse?" Michael replied. "What crimes?"
Rebecca slid out of the portal and onto a dirt road. She looked around for the timer and saw it fly out of the portal. She caught it and started looking around, as she brushed the dirt off of her jeans.
"Michael! Sam!" Rebecca shouted. She saw the back of a familiar looking person wearing a green army uniform. "Michael!"
"Rebecca?" the person asked, with a British accent as he turned around.
"James?" Rebecca asked.
"What the devil are you doing here?" James replied.
"I don't know, I just ended up here. Have you seen Michael and Sam?"
"Not since we last saw each other."
"What's going on here?"
"Final days of the war with the Kromaggs. We've almost driven them off this world."
"That's great!"
"Come with me, we need to get somewhere safe."
James led Rebecca to a deserted area and took out a timer. He aimed it at the ground.
"Wait, if I go through, then I can't use my timer." Rebecca said.
"That's the beautiful thing, this doesn't send you to another Earth, it's for going to another location on this Earth." James said.
"Like a Portal gun?" Rebecca asked.
"A what?" James replied.
"It's from a video game."
"Ah, well if it's used in the same manner, I guess it's an apt analogy. Let's go."
James activated the timer and the portal opened, and they hopped through, landing in a room full of computers and other people.
"Troops, this is one of my allies. She's to have full clearance to do whatever she needs." James ordered.
"Yes, sir." a few people shouted at the same time.
"Anyway, Rebecca, what's the problem?" James asked.
"The timer must have glitched, cause Michael had it last I checked, and it slid out of the portal after I did, without him or Sam." Rebecca replied.
"Well, it is possible they landed somewhere else on this Earth. A lot of the home-made timers tend to be imprecise sometimes. But we have tech that tells us when a wormhole is opened on this Earth. It's how I found you. If they landed anywhere else, the computers would tell us."
He tapped a few keys and watched as the screen showed a list of coordinates, along with dates and times. James frowned.
"Nothing. Looks like you're the only one who landed here."
"What does that mean?"
"Well, perhaps Michael and Sam landed on another Earth. I saw things like that happen when I worked for the Kromaggs. Sometimes, due to an outside force, the wormhole's destination can be changed during the slide. And if someone were to do that while three people were inside, the three people could possibly end up on three different Earths."
"But I have the timer."
"During the tests I observed, in situations like that, the timer is quantum duplicated, and so three different timers are created. May I see yours?"
"Sure."
"You have about 24 hours to slide, and my best guess would be that Sam and Michael also have timers with the same time limit. So, hopefully when you slide, the timers will converge and the three of you will be reunited."
"And if we don't?"
"Well... I hope you can fend for yourself."
Michael and Sam looked around the room, seeing a courtroom. There was a judge's bench, a jury box, witness stand, an audience and two tables, one for the prosecution, which had a group of people sitting at it, and one for the defense, which had no one sitting at it.
"How do you plead?" the judge asked.
"I don't know what crimes you're talking about, so I can't plead!" Michael replied.
"Your crimes include, inciting riots on two worlds, altering the flow of the timeline on another, aiding and abetting known sliding criminals, aiding rebels against the Confederacy, causing a Kromagg invasion of your homeworld, then altering the timeline to prevent it, and obstruction justice on your companion's homeworld." the judge said. "Among other crimes."
"Okay, the riots and rebels I remember, and the Kromagg invasion, but the rest of those weren't really our fault." Michael said. "Because if Quinn and the others are criminals like you say, which I really doubt, how would we have known they were criminals? All we knew was that they disappeared from our world twenty years ago!"
"Yeah, and as for the changing the natural flow of time thing, that had to happen. I refuse to let my friend go through the same trauma when I had a chance to prevent it!" Sam said. "And the obstruction of justice on Rebecca's world was so we could leave!"
"Speaking of, where is Rebecca?" Michael asked. "What did you do with her?"
"We did nothing, she did not arrive with you." the judge replied. "How do you plead?"
"Not guilty! We did nothing wrong on those worlds!" Sam shouted.
"Sam, keep it down. We don't even know how the laws work for this yet." Michael said. "The biggest focus is if Rebecca didn't arrive here, where did she arrive?"
"She's probably fine. We have to focus on not going to sliding jail for the rest of our lives." Sam whispered. "We have 24 hours anyway, the trial can't go on for that long."
"Fine..." Michael sighed. "Not guilty!"
"The prosecution would like to call our first witness to the stand."
"Witness?" Michael asked.
A man was led to the witness stand and looked out over the courtroom.
"Allan?" Sam asked.
"You know, I always was curious if that prison break he was trying to do worked." Michael replied.
The prosecuting lawyer walked up to the witness stand. He turned to Allan as the bailiff held out a bible, which Allan placed his hand on.
"Do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" the prosecuting lawyer asked.
"Yes." Allan said, taking his hand off the bible.
"Please state your name for the record."
"Allan Rees."
"Now, for the first question, how do you know the accused?"
"I met them at the Center. You see, on my world, teenagers are kept in an institution, since the government deems us to be a danger to ourselves and others. They showed up one day, claiming they were from Canada."
"And what did they do on your world prior to leaving?"
"Well, they incited a prison break at the Center, tripped a guard and used that phone device thing to make a giant wormhole in the middle of the room. The rest of us were caught pretty quickly and disciplined pretty bad after that."
"Objection!" Michael shouted.
"To what?" the judge said.
"Allan is lying! He asked us to be a part of that prison break, it was his idea!" Sam shouted.
"Is that true?" the judge asked.
"No, it was them." Allan replied. "Said something about it being like internment camps in World War II, but I don't know what World War II is."
"Objection overruled." the judge said.
"Michael, this doesn't make sense." Sam whispered. "I did say that, but I told that to the cop who arrested us, not Allan."
"Are you sure, that was a while ago. Maybe you mentioned it while we were in there." Michael whispered back.
"I'm sure. Let's just see what other witnesses they have." Sam said.
Rebecca paced around the control room as James tapped buttons on his computer, checking wormhole graphs.
"What if we don't end up on the next world together?" Rebecca asked. "I don't want to do this without them. I mean, I just left my home to slide with them."
"It'll be fine, trust me. The universe has ways of making things work out. I mean, look at this, I was used by the Kromaggs and my world was razed, but we're getting back on track. I've almost replicated the Kromagg's sliding technology to use against them if need be, even after they took my knowledge of sliding away." James smiled. "Everything worked out."
"Wait... If the Kromaggs took your sliding knowledge away, how could you do this?" Rebecca asked. "Build all this sliding technology?"
"Oh, it's simple really. The removal of the knowledge was done in the same way that we removed your memories of meeting Tiberius the first time. I just replicated the memory restoration frequency. It helps that a lot of us are in the same boat."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, most of my allies here were used as pawns by the Mags too. I helped spring them once I got back here and got an army together."
"Has Tiberius came after you?"
"Not yet... I think he might have bigger fish to fry. Last I had heard through enemy chatter was that a lot of them were being recalled because the head of the Dynasty has a bigger mission for them."
"James... Is there any way I can slide early and end up where they are?"
"I can't guarantee it... But I may be able to rig something up."
"What is it?"
"Essentially, I would use your timer to track all wormholes created using it within the last, let's say 24 hours. Since it was duplicated, it should track two distinct wormholes. I get the coordinates for the wormhole whose exit wasn't on this Earth and plug it into the timer and send you on your way."
"That won't work."
"How could you possibly know that?"
"Our timer is broken, and we can't input new coordinates. It's on a randomized setting."
"Hm... That is a caveat. I have an idea, we'll just hook it up to my sliding machine. I'll keep the timer here and try to fix it."
"But doesn't it need to merge with the original timer?"
"I don't think so. In fact, it may be better to leave it here, I'm not sure what the presence of two duplicate timers in the vortex would lead to."
"Let's get to work."
Meanwhile, Michael and Sam sat defeated at the table as the final witness walked off the stand.
"How is that possible? They got all those people we've met on our journeys, Allan, Noah from that Utopia World, Conrad Bennish III, 90's Kid, Captain Fox, and they all made us out to be the bad guy!" Michael asked.
"This has to be some sort of show trial." Sam replied.
"Show trial?"
"It's like they're just waiting for something, either us to slip up and incriminate ourselves, or someone else to show up."
"Think... What could they be waiting for?"
Suddenly, the judge banged his gavel and the courtroom turned their attention to him.
"Based on the evidence and witness testimonies given... we find the defendants..." the judge started when a wormhole opened in the middle of the room.
Six figures emerged from the portal and landed on the ground. They stood up and Michael's and Sam's eyes widened when they recognized the figures.
"Quinn!" Michael shouted.
"Quinn Mallory, and associates, you are on trial for crimes against the multiverse!" the judge shouted.
"Crimes? What crimes?" Professor Arturo asked as he stood up and brushed himself off.
"And I think you're supposed to offer us an attorney before you put us on trial." Rembrandt shouted.
"Stand with the other defendants." the judge ordered.
The sliders walked over to Michael and Sam at the table.
"Where's Rebecca?" Quinn asked.
"Not sure, she didn't land with us." Michael said. "Timer got a little banged up a few worlds ago."
"You've been here longer than us, what's all this trial business about?" Maggie asked.
"We don't know. All we know is that they've gotten a bunch of people we've met and dragged them up onto the stand, where they tell the story of what happened to us on that world, except they tell it as if we're the bad guys." Sam replied.
"Well we've had a lot more experience than you, so let's see what they say about us." Wade said.
James readied the machine, as he entered in a set of coordinates from a computer screen. He quickly grabbed a piece of paper and copied down a set of numbers, folding it and handing it to Rebecca.
"What's this?" she asked.
"In case you need a safe place to slide, once you fix your timer, of course." James replied.
"Thank you."
"Anyway, you should land right where their wormhole opened."
"Got it. Good luck with your war."
"You too." James said as he turned on his machine. The machine shot a beam at the wall the turned into a familiar looking whirlpool. Rebecca ran into the whirlpool and slid through the vortex.
A large Russian man walked up to the witness stand and said the oath as the other witnesses had.
"State your name." the prosecutor ordered.
"Pavel Kurlienko." the man said.
"And do you know these people?" the prosecutor asked.
"Yes, Rembrandt Brown. He got into my cab, and handed me a counterfeit ruble." Pavel replied.
"And what happened after that?" the prosecutor asked.
Suddenly, a vortex opened up in the middle of the room and a lone figure dropped out of it. She stood up and looked at the defendant's desk, smiling when she saw the group standing there.
"Rebecca!" Michael shouted.
"Rebecca Collins, you are on trial for crimes against the-" the judge started.
"We know, we know!" Sam shouted.
The judge remained silent and stood frozen in place.
"Judge, you okay?" Rembrandt asked.
"I don't think he's the only one..." Colin said, pointing to the rest of the courtroom.
"Everyone is frozen in time..." Wade said, as she waved her arm in front of the prosecutor.
"Even Pavel." Quinn said, as he did the same.
Suddenly, the other people in the room blinked out of existence, as the desks and chairs faded and the walls faded into white featureless walls.
"What the devil is going on here?" Arturo asked as a door opened and two Kromaggs walked in, holding rifles.
"Some sort of Star Trek holodeck, it must have used our memories to create the witnesses to stall until all of us converged here." Michael said. "It's remarkable.
Two more Kromaggs with rifles walked in, followed by a woman who smiled evilly when she saw her captives. Quinn made eye contact with the woman and stared at her in disbelief. He turned to Wade and Arturo, who shared a similar expression.
"Logan..." Quinn stammered.
"Quinn." Logan said.
"Professor, is that?" Wade asked.
"Logan St. Clair. I don't know how this is possible." Arturo replied.
"Nice to see you again too, Max." Logan said. "You're just in time for dinner."
The others shared confused glances, as the Kromaggs marched them out of the room.
To Be Continued...