Creasha Greenhut's chances of escaping Chelonian confinement were very long to say the least.
          Chelonians are experts at control.  They are a society of entrepreneurial zealots living in the bowels of their manufactured planet Chelon.  They were first called Chelonians by one Captain Cosmo M. Snow because of their turtle-like appearance.  They do not think of themselves as Chelonians, nor do they think of their planet as Chelon.  They have, however, come to accept these labels along with the rest of the galaxy's citizens.
          Captain Snow was the first human to captain a ship outside the limits of Earth's solar system.  By doing so, he became the first human to visit the manufactured planet of Chelon.  This planet named by Captain Snow was manufactured by Chelonians after having ruined their native planet by scrapping, defoliating, and polluting it into a poisonous sterility.  This was all justified in the name of profits which were justified in the name of jobs which were justified in the name of...  The end result was that they were forced to leave their planet after selling what remained of it to the Oniomanians; a race of compulsive shoppers.
          Creasha, a human who had served under Capt. Snow on that primary flight outside Earth's solar system, shared the commonly held view that Chelonians are amoral.  In all fairness, however, Chelonians do have a moral code.  A moral code that is so different to that of Creasha and her fellow humans as to make it appear nonexistent.
          This inability for one life form to appreciate, understand, or even recognize the moral standards of another has been the seed for many a space adventure.  It turned out so for Creasha.  She and her lover/partner, Jawper, had separated, taking opposite paths around Chelon in an attempt to maximize the chances that one would succeed in reaching the planet Boze.  They had both failed.
          Without a doubt, Creasha's reaction to captivity would not have been easily understood by Chelonians.  It was strange even by human standards.  Whenever arrested or detained, Creasha became extremely hungry for Bozer foods; foods native to the planet Boze.  To a Chelonian, being held captive was simply an inconvenient aspect to a cosmic condition; no reason for hunger, or resentment.  It was simply part of the big 'IS' as far as Chelonians were concerned; a natural condition of life.
          The fact that the chances of escaping from Chelon were somewhere between slim and nil merely served to amplify Creasha's un-Chelonian response to captivity by adding, as a condiment, extreme nervousness to her hunger.
          Hungry and nervous, Creasha was free to move about Chelon.  She was not free to leave, and it had been made very clear to her that she was to be at a particular location at a particular time.  It was now that particular time.  She was at that particular location.
          Slowly closing the door behind her, Creasha stepped to the side and began surveying the room.  She saw nothing to encourage her.  To her left was a single Chelonian official: naked, with ribs fused into a highly polished carapace, a hard and wordless beak for a mouth, pinhole nostrils, dry, leathery skin, and a telepathic mind.  Through Creasha's eyes, it looked like a cartoon caricature of a five-foot turtle; a ruthless and telepathic cartoon turtle.
          Fortunately, Creasha's mind had been shielded against the telepathic skills of Chelonians long before their patrol ship forced her to Chelon.  The shielding was accomplished by a small transponder placed between the base of her skull and the back of her neck.  It had been designed to ward off any attempt by the Chelonians, or any other telepathic creature, to pry into the privacy of her mind.  She had a telepathy firewall.  If the Chelonians were to amplify their telepathic attempts to breach Creasha's mind, the transponder was diabolically designed to fill their minds with the centuries-old songs of Neil Sadaca.  This, it turned out, guaranteed that there had never been a second attempt.  It also forced the Chelonians to use an interpreter in order to make verbal their exclusively telepathic communications.
          As she looked around that particular location she was ordered to be at, she noticed that to her right was a Molluscian; obviously the Chelonian's strong arm.   Molluscians are not good for much else.  They're shaped somewhat like humans.  They are the only communicative mollusk known to exist.  As you might expect, Molluscians have no skeletal structure.  Their small brain and primitive digestive track are buried deep within an extremely strong excess of octopus-like muscle.
          Creasha placed herself on a bench to the knob side of the door.  This placed her two roomies as far away from her as possible, yet well within her peripheral vision.
          Creasha knew what they were after; they did not.  All they knew was that Creasha's partner, Jawper, had disappeared when they tried to confiscate a small device the Bozer was carrying.  Creasha was carrying one of the same devices in the palm of her right hand.  Not knowing this, the Chelonians' plan was to hold Creasha for ransom.  They were sure that the Bozer would eventually turn up and then turn over its device in order to guarantee Creasha's safety.
          They were correct.  Jawper would never place a mere thing above Creasha's safety and freedom; or the safety and freedom of any creature.  As you can see, Chelonians were not blind to this aspect of the Bozer moral code, but they were completely incapable of understanding it.  Chelonians thought it disgusting to place another creature above profit and acquisition.
          Jawper was the first to make use of one of these devices.  A device that had not been tested at the time and had never been intended to be use on life forms of any kind.  It was simply to be used as a means of storing great-mass cargo for shipment.  Had Jawper had the opportunity to test the device before being forced to use it to escape a Chelonian trap, it would have included the activating of the device's timer in order to see if it were possible to recover the items effected by the device.  Jawper was forced to use the device without knowing whether returning was possible.
          Creasha's plans were more like hopes than plans.  If she could get through the interrogation that was about to begin, and then make her way to Boze, she would be meeting her beloved Jawper in orbit 24-DF.  That is if Jawper had managed to get to Boze after being forced to activate the device; too many 'ifs' to have any effect on her hunger and nervousness, or to make hopes seem like plans.
          Creasha realized that she might be the second to use one of these devices.  Oh well, she thought, if there is no way back after using the device, at least I might be there, where ever 'there' is, with Jawper.  I might.  It can't be worse than being here.  She hated Chelonians for placing profit above personal freedom.
          The two creatures flanking her suddenly stood.  Creasha prepared to engage the device if either one were to make the slightest move in her direction.  Particularly the Molluscian.  Creasha once witnessed a bar fight in which a human swung a baseball bat fully and squarely into the mid-section of an unsuspecting Molluscian.  It was as though the human had hit an over-inflated tire, the way the bat bounce off the unaffected Molluscian.  With one retaliatory blow, the Molluscian dispatched the human as though he were nothing more than a water-filled bag of bones.
          The door at the far side of the room opened and an additional Chelonian entered.  Creasha was shocked to see this Chelonian being accompanied by a male human.  Undoubtedly, he was to serve as the Chelonian's mouth piece.
          At first, Creasha felt relief at seeing another human.  She hadn't seen another human in three years.  Then her relief turned to an anxiety flavored disgust.  The only human that would be with a Chelonian by choice was one that shared its values.  With ever-tightening economic constraints upon them, Earthside psychiatric clinics had been shipping more and more of their 'sociopathic' patients to Chelon.  The Chelonians saw it as freeing birds to the breezes.  The psychiatrists saw it as an economic way of adding more peas to a putrid pod.
          "Hello, my name is Hancock.  I will be speaking for Gresso," said the human, nodding toward the mute Chelonian while extending his hand to Creasha.
          Creasha looked down at the human's hand while turning to the Chelonian.  "I insist on being released," she said.  "You have no right to be holding me against my will.  And it is most definitely my will to be out of this..."  she looked around with a sneer before finishing, "...this place."
          "Ah.  I'm sure I understand.  However, you violated Chelonian space.  This brings you under th..."
          "Violated, my ass.  Your ship forced me into your space in order to bring me here.  When my last transmission reaches Boze, the entire galaxy will know of YOUR violation of MY space.  How will that effect your all important business concerns?"
          "Now.  Now.  Let's not be ugly," said the Chelonian by way of interpreter Hancock.  Then, with as close to a smile as a turtle-faced Chelonian can come, its words were, "And by the way, your transmission was by carrier wave, was it not?  That would mean that your message will not be arriving anywhere near planet Boze for over eight years.  I'm confident that we will be able to clear this matter up to everyone's satisfaction by then.  Wouldn't you agree?"
          "What is it that you want of me?" asked Creasha.
          "My dear, the device, of course.  What else could it be?  What is it, by the way?  We know that your Bozer friend disappeared when using it.  We also know that the Bozer did not alter the fourth and fifth dimensional continua.  Bozers are incapable of self-termination, so we have to assume that you two have managed to penetrate a sixth dimension.  We know that a transdimensional fracture occurred when your Bozer friend vanished."  The Chelonian's final statement was a lie.
          Well, thought Creasha, believing the lie, they know more than I gave them credit for.  I'm surprised they thought to look in the right place.
          "Are you going to release me, or not?"  Creasha tried to stall.
          It was at this point that the Chelonians became aware of the small device in Creasha's hand.  The Molluscian began moving toward her.  Things were happening quickly.  She had no other choice but to engage the device.  She tried to steel herself for what was to come; the unknown.  The Molluscian was making its lunge.  Waiting until the very last second, blanketed by the dark shadow of this hideous creature, Creasha engaged the device and disappeared before the Molluscian could find its mark.
          The human, Hancock, began to laugh.  The Chelonians also laughed in their own telepathic way.  The Molluscian looked at the others and realized that something funny must have occurred.  It began to laugh with the biting sound of an air horn.
          "Did everything go according to plan?" Hancock asked of Gresso.  "QUIET!!!" he yelled at the Molluscian.
          Telepathically, the Chelonian answered, "What could have gone wrong?  We have an absorbent carapace surrounding this room.  Any transdimensional fracture has been captured and held by our own devices."
          For Creasha, while the Chelonians were celebrating their success, there was no seeing, no hearing, feeling, nor any of the other sensual aspects of being a part of the third dimension.  She was solely aware that her consciousness and the passage of time, no more.  As things and ways she could only label as 'newnesses' became apparent, Creasha waited for something familiar to grab onto.  She found nothing, until, until she realized that she was not alone.
          It was not clear, at first, who or what the other might be.  She had hoped to find Jawper.  The other was self-aware, but not in the way, or to the extent, that Jawper was.  About the time she realized that she still had control of the device, she began to feel her mind blending with that of the other.  Like clouds colliding, she felt two becoming one.
          With cocky confidence, the Chelonian continued,  "Harassim, what have we got?"
          The telepathic answer was not what Gresso had expected.  "Nothing, sir.  There has been no transdimensional fractures within the carapace."
          "That can not be.  We were guarding all known dimensions.  Check again."
          "It's no use, sir.  The fourth, fifth and sixth dimensions show no signs of activity at all.  Nothing!"
          "Could they have found a way into a seventh dimension?"
          "Impossible, sir.  The instruments would have shown activity if any dimension beyond the third had been fractured."
          In classic Chelonian fashion, with their prey no longer in sight, the two Chelonians, followed by their human interpreter, quietly left the room.  They had experienced this same loss once before; when Jawper had used the same type of device to escape their control.  Once again, their seemingly unemotional solution to failure was to immediately start hunting for another creature with one of these devices.  What they didn't realize was that there were no other devices.  Only Creasha and Jawper had them; the device being Jawper's invention.
          The room was left to the puzzled Molluscian.  For a while, the Molluscian searched the room for the missing female human.  After all, that was part of its job.  The human the Molluscian was searching for was very dark, so it searched for things that were very dark.  It wasn't long, however, before the Molluscian forgot what it had been looking for and left the room in search of food.
          Unknown to the Molluscian, as most things are, and to the human interpreter, the Chelonians, and their instruments, Creasha had in fact freed herself of the third dimension and escaped into another dimension altogether.  A dimension the Chelonians were not prepared to deal with, or even consider.  The Chelonian profiteers had been sure that the devices she and Jawper possessed were designed to move the user yet one more rung up the transdimensional ladder: through the fourth, into the fifth, sixth, or even the seventh dimension.  As far as they knew, all research had been in this direction.  Again, they were wrong.  Creasha had waited until the Molluscian and its shadow were upon her for a very good reason.  Her device was designed to transport her one rung down to one of only two known manifestation of the SECOND dimension:  The world of shadows.
          Safely resting within the Molluscian's shadow, a two dimensional Creasha involuntarily mimicked its movements; the very nervous movements of a Molluscian quickly becoming more and more obsessed by a hunger for home-cooked Bozer foods.  And if that nervous Molluscian wanted to go to, say, orbit 24-DF of planet Boze to satisfy its obsession for Bozer foods, well, who would be silly enough to get in the way of it, or its equally nervous shadow?
 
 

EMail

Home