Chapter 2: Grow Up and Blow Away

May 10th, 2023, Templeton, California - Earth

The two had moved to a cafeteria, a space which had higher ceilings than the rest of the facility, and a table had been bolted to the ground with a large quilt covering it. Benjamin could try to sit on it like a bench.

Oliver was explaining the state of the multiverse. “A hundred thousand worlds are living in peace, and somewhere, way out of distribution, comes these plucky new guys, and they start stealing people and turning them into babies. Even if you just left yourselves to the nearest neighbors, the ones who are slightly below you in technology, they would eventually wise up and strike back. You giants, despite being horrible at the individual level, at a societal level are rather tame. Technically no death penalty, but I won't give you points for that. You have some armies, but for the most part we can't find any evidence of wars. It's not even clear your armies know the basics of actual fighting and logistics, or if they're just fancy security guys who swoop in when there's a flood or an earthquake.”

Benjamin had never really thought of what the point of their armies where, or what the taxes were going towards. It sounded like the man was hinting to some ecological niche that was invisible. This vestigial organ was kept around for an unknown reason, and Benjamin was uncomfortable imagining what an army should actually be doing.

“The technical term is a 'canon event', but I always thought that was a stupid name. Ninety percent of Earths for example will have something like a World War Two. It's not always the same players, or the same winners. It's not always at the same time or length. There's not even always a World War One. For some reason, you shrink the Earth enough with technology and communications, the arc of history says we gotta have a big ideological conflict right at the dawn of the atomic age. I've seen a lot of variations on this, they're all bad, and humans get past it.”

“But there are less common timelines. Like most worlds don't have The Beatles. Most worlds do have a Shakespeare or something close. It's an example of convergence, like a ball rolling in a valley it finds the lowest points, or like why everything is a crab in nature. About ... fifteen percent of worlds have something called Firefly. Are you aware of Firefly?”

Benjamin was sitting nicely, he had been given a water jug, and he was nursing it carefully between his thighs. “Like the insect?”

Oliver tried to answer, “Well, yes, that's another thing, most animals are similar, but some are different. Same niches, just with some randomness. Here though, Firefly refers to a specific science fiction show from the turn of the twenty first century. I looked into this, because I'm fascinated by convergences, such as in people or media. Firefly was, at the time at least, unique in that it was made like a television western, but just had that extra spice on top of science fiction. It should have been hugely successful because westerns are cheap, sci-fi is great, and it had a good spin.”

Benjamin disappointed him, “I actually don't watch a ton of television. In fact, not to be rude, but it's associated with something young children do, and adults actively go out of their way to avoid it. It's not a taboo, but it's seen as immature. Same for science fiction, us 'bigs' actually are not that interested in sci-fi.”

That stopped Oliver, “I hadn't thought of that. Why wouldn't you be interested in space travel or going under the ocean?”

“We can't go.” Benjamin did not sound upset; it was just stated as a matter of fact. He was not interested.

“Oh... right, your size, space travel is for smaller men.” Oliver let him think about that for a second before continuing.

“Anyway, I did a survey once and the math comes to about fifteen thousand Earths have this television show is all you need to know. On my world it was aired by a network that had no idea what to do with it, aired the shows out of order, gave no marketing support or consistent time slot, and the whole thing was canceled after one season. My planet at least got a movie out of it, which puts us in a fairly small and rare percentage. I liked watching it and wanted to imagine what could have been.”

Oliver starts pacing a bit moving his hands up and down, “So, we have fifteen thousand worlds, surely one of them has a Firefly season two. Just one! I've put out the word, some polite feelers, just asking if anyone has ever seen a sequel to this show. Occasionally we indulge in that. I've heard a version of Beethoven's tenth, I've seen a van Gogh from the twentieth century. Of a hundred thousand worlds, not one, not a single one, has Firefly season two.”

He then moves to a table, picks up a small DVD case, and goes over to Benjamin. He waves it up at the man like he wants him to help him open it. “What the hell is this?”

Benjamin cups the small case. He can barely make out the title, “Firefly, the complete second season. Contains (3) DVDs plus bonus material.”

“I have no idea what this is. I mean obviously it’s a Dee-Vee-Dee of a Tee-Vee show, but.” There was not anything else for Benjamin to say.

Oliver was almost yelling, “I got this from your world! I also checked! You do not have a Firefly season one. How do you have Firefly season two? Out of a hundred thousand worlds, yours is the one that has this. But that's not the part that scares me. Open it.”

Benjamin's large hands carefully flick the DVD case open. Carefully arranged tiny plastic discs reflected the ceiling lights into his face.

“Twelve Centimeters! Let's run this down in a few different ways. First, your planet does not have metric.”

Benjamin scoffed, “No, hold on. It exists, it's just only used in a couple places. We've tried to encourage them to adopt international standards, but they're reluctant to let go of what they like.”

“OK fair, I take that back. Two, why does a race of giants have a media preservation method that requires delicate control by tiny hands?”

Benjamin smiled; never ask a question in an interview you did not actually know the answer to. “That is easy. The videos aren't for the adults, they're for the little ones. The smallest babies like to just look at the disc and imagine they're watching it as the pretty colors swirl. Those a little older like to be helpers, take the disc out and put it in for the bigs.” He smiled at that. It is good for littles to help bigs.

“It's also a security precaution. If something goes wrong, we want the littles to go... watch some television and wait for instructions. There are actually some pretty fancy tools we put into the players to pick up unusual watching habits that may indicate a problem that needs social services or the police to investigate.” This was easier than dealing with some students he had advised on their papers. The small one was reaching pretty hard to say nothing made sense, when there were perfectly reasonable explanations.

Oliver shook his head, “Yep. That's kind of messed up, but I thought that was where you'd go. Final question. The size of a 'Dee Vee Dee', twelve centimeters, is chosen to match the 'Cee Dee-Rom' drive that preceded it, so 'Dee Vee Dee' drives are backwards compatible with 'Cee Dee-Roms'. Do you know why a 'Cee Dee-Rom' is twelve Centimeters? Not eleven point five. Not twelve point five.”

Benjamin absolutely did not know. He shrugged and shook his shoulder. Who cares?

“It's because the 'Cee Dee-Rom' is designed to store exactly seventy-four minutes of audio data, sufficient for the length of Beethoven's Ninth Sympathy from a recording of a specific nineteen fifty-one performance. Your world doesn't have Beethoven, and in most worlds that don't, the size of the disc is one hundred fifteen millimeters. Even if you had Beethoven, the odds of you also having that specific performance that led to the decision are extremely low. Nearly every single digital video disc in the multiverse, on the rare planets it does exist, is under twelve centimeters. Yours is the first I found that is the same size as ours! So, I ask you, what is going on here?”

Why was he being grilled here? Benjamin did not know these things. There were historians who specialized in entertainment, technology, and media, he just was not one of them. “Look I'm not an expert on this kind of thing. I mostly translate historical documents and write about the findings. And teach or advise or go to conferences. I might be a historian of 'media', but typically I deal with stuff much older and are book or letter based. You'd need a different person to figure this one out. I'm sure there is a sensible explanation.”

Oliver was in his groove, “Let me give my theory. I think your world is some sort of trap. The multi-verse right now is pretty stable, thanks to us by the way, but it's not always been good. We've had some mean enemies in the past, and we have some rules we like to follow. Your world is some kind of test, or a honey pot, trying to get us to become unbalanced. Make us make a move. Why? That's what I need to find out.”

Plus, he had to know, “Off hand, any idea what would happen if someone like me watched this?”

Benjamin sighed, “Most Tee Vee is watched by young people. If it were something we made, it probably would make you wet the bed. I would discourage you from watching it unless you want to end up in diapers.” He handed back the case to Oliver, who, like handling a weapon, carefully put it on another table.

The small person turned and addressed him, “Your world has almost no canon events, you're very weird, and yet you're curiously very close to some of the core worlds. There's something extremely artificial going on here, and I think it's to draw our attention, make us curious, and for that reason I'm hesitant. You're a historian right, like actual history. What was the most important event of the last century?”

Benjamin answered, “The arrival of the littles. Unification day.”

“Why did they come to you?”

“Something had gone wrong on their home island, some plague or volcano.” Benjamin seemed unsure.

That drew Oliver's attention, “Wait! Wait! Hold on, you're a historian, don't be vague about this. Why don't you know the exact details?”

Benjamin was concerned. Why did he not know the exact reason for their arrival? A three-year-old had just pointed out a contradiction. The DVD he could dismiss as an overactive imagination of a child, but this, his brain had a block. The knowledge should be there, but he could not get it. He knew he would have studied this, after all he was an expert on pre-contact Lilliputian society.

“I'm not very comfortable right now, something is wrong. Did you do something to me?”

Oliver's response was kind and soft, “Remember in the park, the hypnosis, does it feel a bit like that?”

“Stronger, much stronger. Like I'm...”

Oliver led him, “Like you're trying to undo a zipper but it's stuck. We know a bit about how to fight hypnosis. Here, let me try to help you, slowly move your thoughts one step at a time, you did a study on the island's population dynamics before and after contact. What was happening in the twenty years before?”

“Their population was growing rapidly. Too rapidly, they were bumping up against the limits of their agricultural and fishing potential. They had been for centuries, they always pushed through.” Ben started his explanation.

“So, you might say they were thriving?” Oliver offered another interpretation.

“Their civilization was incredible. Did you know they had a road network that covered the whole island, even tunnels that went through the mountains? They had invented not one but two forms of writing. One for the common class and one for the elite. We've only recently had some success with translating the big boy language.”

Oliver was not sure what that meant, “Big boy?”

Ben went further, “It's just a colloquial term in the department, the 'high' language is sophisticated. They used it for laws, and the deep understandings of medicine and nature, it's difficult to read. Even a boring court case or a legal matter is written like poetry. The littles sometimes pretend they are dumb, but I'm not so sure.”

“You're a historian, but your world's history is not normal, and you have nothing to compare with here. I'm going to cheat and let you know what happens on a hundred thousand other worlds. The invention of writing happens over and over among humans, but it is still extremely rare. Usually only happens about a half dozen times in a planet's history. Even when a new written language is created that is entirely dependent upon contact with another group, it's an impressive achievement.”

“Now, remote island nations can discover writing, it happened at least once on my world. But what would be more impressive is if it had been discovered by a group of humans that could only be adults for like twenty years before they reverted back to babies.”

The tall man did not like where this was going. He could see something was wrong. The world was falling apart. What if maturosis was not real? What if the littles had wanted them to be parents for some other reason? What if Collins had wanted him... no.

Oliver finished, “Two species evolve, independently, humanoids, and both invent writing, and civilization, and all that, and they never come into contact until the atomic age, and yet somehow they have intense biological attachments and dependency upon each other.”

“No that's. Wait,” Benjamin had never heard the term used that way, “evolve?”

“Evolution. Like the origin of your species. Where did the Amazons come from?”

“Well, the Bible says that there was a garden.” Oliver waived him to stop.

“The discovery of evolution is a canon event on ninety-nine percent of worlds before they reach the twenty first century. There is so much about biology that does not make sense without evolution. Wow!” He was so shocked he said it again, louder. “Wow... I'm sorry, that might actually be too much for you right now I'm not going to push it further. I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable; we're just trying to find truths and sometimes that means exploring things that are hard for people to deal with.”

Oliver held up the DVD case, flipped it open and looked at the shiny reflection, it was smoothing to look at the rainbows. He wanted to watch this. “Just give him enough to know how he can help you,” he thought, and closed the case, and put it on a table.

“OK, you're a historian, you'll like this. History is something that has a scientific process. It's like a dialect where the contradictions at one part are set up to be overcome by the next set of events. It's like”, Oliver felt fine using the analogy, “growing up? It's a process. The single most important event, the puberty of most worlds, is World War Two. Everything builds to it, and everything moves from it. Good guys versus bad guys. Sort of.”

He let it linger on the correction, then continued, “I'm not going to say there weren't shades of gray, or deals with devils, but often it's the most black and white thing a world will ever achieve. On my world the good guys won. In fact, on all of the council worlds, the good guys won. We have lots of disagreements on the best way to run our own slice of the universe, so we made a pact. We're gonna' let worlds build and be themselves and make it or break it, except for this one thing, this is the one thing we're allowed to interfere with.”

He started to pace a bit, just to add emphasis. “Look it's a big multiverse, the good guys don't always need the help, but we find subtle ways to help if we think they need it. If we find a world where the bad guys won, we try to do something to undo the damage.”

“Your world doesn't have the good guys or the bad guys, it's something worse. Of the council planets, some of us have the relevant historical background to understand what's happening. Your little corner of the multiverse reminds us of how the big nations here treated our Africa a few centuries ago. The good guys in our timeline tried to do something about that too. There's a lot of pressure on my world that we should do something, because we see your actions as just as bad.”

Oliver scratched his head, and explained, “The problem is it's … it's like game theory.”

Benjamin just shook his head.

“Really, that too?” Oliver takes a second then continues, “it's like, politics and trade, I'm not sure how to compare it. The important thing is that if we say it's OK to act here, then the others might feel it's OK for them to act on the issues they care about. Even ones who don't care might still think they need to build up arms in case we decide to look too closely at what's happening in their neck of the woods. We have a stable dynamic, and then you show up, and I don't think that's a coincidence.”

And now the reveal, “It's a very big multiverse, and not all planets develop at the same pace, and we don't always find the ones that needed our help before the bad guys win. This is where the timelines diverge, no more canon events. Instead, there's a new canon. Usually it is extremely unstable, the planet is highly prone to nuking itself, but sometimes all the balls fall in the right place, and jackpot.”

“We call those survivors the Nietzscheans. To be honest the name comes from a television show but there was a philosopher who talked about supermen, and we'll say it was from him. They've pushed human experimentation and augmentation and the science of societies to pure limits without morality. The Nietzscheans are the worst people in the multiverse, worse than you. I've met them, I've even fought them, and right now they're licking their wounds and hiding. We gave them a sound beating like any other schoolyard bully deserves.”

“It is eSs - eNn Risk, after steppe nomads like Genghis Khan or the Huns. These nomads of the multiverse are not a big deal, as they're isolated and prone to self-destruction. Every two hundred, three hundred years, they get their act together, form a big confederation and give us the fight our lives.”

Benjamin chided, “You'd think with all your technology and resources you'd be better prepared.”

Oliver corrected, “No, you don't understand, that just makes it worse. They're hiding and we don't know where they are. They're not going to take action until they're ready, and they have superhuman patience, planning, and intelligence. They're inherently evil, it's in their genes.”

The giant stood up and pointed down at Oliver, now he was ready to lecture. “Now, you listen here young man. No one is inherently evil. We are all products of our environment and our parenting and background. Only children believe in these good guys and evil guys stories. I thought you were an adult, but it sounds like you're a bunch of bullies who like to think it's OK to be mean if it's for the right reason.” As opposed to the wrong reason, like they need us to protect them from themselves.

The boy's response was soft, “We are bullies, and yes, we are doing it for the right reason. That's why we need to know, are you working with the Nietzscheans? Are they the ones giving you the technology to invade other worlds? You can tell me, uplifting a species is a crime and your actions would not be your fault, rather the fault of the people who raised you up.”

“That's absurd, I haven't even heard of any of this. Our advances are our...” Benjamin paused, thinking back to the discovery.

It was maybe a decade ago he was attending a cross-discipline symposium. This conference, which was just after he finished graduate school, was a privilege he was paid to attend. Being paid to do research was a sign he had made it, and he could consider himself fully an adult.

He was excited to see the latest discoveries in using computers to help translate linear B of the 'big boy' language. He was hoping there was proof of the lost city of Atlantis, a place where Amazons discovered the edges of science. He knew his ancestors had to be capable of great accomplishments, but some dark age had clouded the past when Atlantis had sunk into the ocean. Benjamin's mind was recalling a specific lecture, by one Dr. Bremer, and it went someplace else he was not expecting. Bremer had some unusual ideas and was an outsider to the field – all fields really - but she had quickly made a name for herself as the leading expert on all things not of this world.

“The ancient Lilliputians believed that the multiverse could be accessed by identifying coordinates of other Earths as a series of six points, that when combined with normal three-dimensional space creates a nine-point address. Given this, the carvings found in the burial chamber might be coordinates of a set of dimensions like our own that are near enough to visit. This would be another example of the lost technologies, and perhaps evidence that Amazons had lived on this island before the littles. They built a fantastic civilization, and for some reason, left. With the rediscovery of these coordinates, this fills in some practical problems with existing m-theory, and we may even be able to visit these worlds.”

Benjamin fell out of the memory, “Everything we achieved was through our own hard work, there's no outside interference.” Technically true. Digging up the past was arduous work.

Oliver shook his head, “Unfortunate. That would have made things easier. By the way, the normal sized people on your planet. We have not sequenced their genes, and it's not like that would tell us anything if we did. Are they Nietzscheans?”

Benjamin was now angry, “You!” He started again with righteous fury, “You think what we're doing is wrong. And yet if you found out that it's happening to people that deserved it then you would be comfortable just letting it happen. They're babies! They're all just babies. They're cute and fun and they will never grow up into anything bad or hurt themselves or others. We sure as hell are going to protect them from the likes of you if you are thinking of going after them.”

The small man actually felt bad about that, he had been telling himself a story that the littles deserved what happened to them. But no, the giant was right, he would not want that fate on his own worst enemies. He just never wanted to actually face the possibility it might have happened to his worst enemies. He walked over to another table and picked up a poster. He walked over to Benjamin and started shoving it into the giant's hands. “Can you read this for me?”

'My boy just wants me to read him a story, this is why he's being so talkative'. He could not be mad at him, “Sure thing son, here give me a second to ...” The text was linear C... strange request for a bedtime story, but he did his best voice.

“I tell you; man is something to be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves, and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood?”

Not really much of a story there, but he hoped the boy liked it, after all only daddies can learn to read linear C, he was just a silly baby interested in what his father was doing.

Oliver informed, “That text is not from your world. I wrote it.” Technically true. Translating was arduous work.

The paper dropped, it fell out of his hands and floated to the ground before sliding off under a table.

“You can read linear 'Cee'? It's the hardest of form of 'big boy’” Collins was the only little Ben knew who could translate the texts. Collins needed help with some of the longer words, and it took him an hour to do a page, but he could do it.

Oliver saw the giants face droop, “I've been around the block a bit, that doesn't mean they are Nietzscheans, but I think that's an odd coincidence. It could just be convergence. We'd need to find out where the littles and bigs came from, why they're here, and what's going on to know for sure.”

Oliver moved on, “Look, let's. I don't want you to have to stay at this facility. We have a special place nearby. The previous owner was in the eNn-Bee-Aye for a season. He was seven foot three, and a beast of a man. Many tall people find their way into the sport, and after a couple seasons of basketball he worked in charities. He made a good living, built himself a house here, custom built to his needs. He donated the house to be used for others like him who might need it, and we've used it in a few cases like yours.”

A betweener? There is some Amazon in these people after all, “Will I meet him?” Benjamin inquired.

“Being tall is a physical disadvantage in our world. Brings all sorts of bone problems. I think he had a heart attack and died at the age of forty-five. There's only about a hundred people in my country who are taller than seven feet, and even in great health they suffer for it.”

Their hearts are too big for the world.