Chapter 15: If you're not alright, now c'mon baby, I'll pick you up and take you where you want.

May 10th, 2023, Creston, California - Earth

“I'm sorry Benjamin. I'm not from your world, I don't know where the lines are.” Oliver had earnestly apologized approximately twenty-five times to him so far today. Benjamin was starting to get sick of it, like the words had lost their meaning.

“No, don't apologize for that. I'm a professional academic, I have to deal with uncomfortable truths every day, and it is my job to face them.” How do you dance around this, how do you explain something like this to a child? He tried to think back to how his dad had told him, but dad and he were both Amazons. This was different, Oliver was a little. Just keep it simple.

Benjamin created an excuse on the fly, “I work with littles, I respect them, I am certified to teach them, which isn't easy to get, but we aren't their servants. Teaching them in that way would be exhausting on me, on us, and it's already hard enough to fight the urge.”

“You save the good teaching methods for your Amazon students then?” Oliver was disappointed, his response carried a mix of sarcasm and bitterness.

“What are you talking about? That doesn't work on Amazons.”

Oliver had practiced. It was like telling a dad joke, but without the punchline. He had watched hours of movies and television to get the timing right. Now, Benjamin had finally lowered his guard. To tell the lie convincingly he would have needed to believe it, even if just for a moment. Ben needed to pretend he was invulnerable. This is why you should not lie to children, because sometimes the kids know more than you do.

“Benjamin, I want you to always feel you can talk to me about anything, that there are not going to be any truths that are too difficult for you to speak about. It is your job to deal with uncomfortable truths and you will tell me anything I want or need to hear about, no matter how inappropriate or secret.”

Benjamin blinked. Then blinked again. At once the bathroom lights got brighter, and then began to flicker before smoothing again into solid color. The room felt hot, and he could smell the moist warm air from the bath Oliver had just had. He was aware of his physicality, but not his ego or memories. He was not asleep, there just was not a pilot. Like Benjamin had left the room with the computer running. Then he came back.

Of course he could talk to Oliver! He was a serious researcher, like Collins or Charles. Oliver was prepared to handle anything. He was a man who had lived, he had seen a dozen worlds, fought in a war, knew how history worked, read philosophy, and spoke multiple languages. Plus, he was his friend, who else did he have to talk about things like this with?

Sure, this was a sensitive topic, one of those things you never brought up around the small ones, but Oliver was from another planet. He was practically an Amazon on Earth with how he lived. He already could do the voice, and only big people could do that. The dimensions of space were just different here – it's all relative. There was probably an entire group of tinier people Oliver hadn't shown him yet. Like those hobbits from the stories the littles liked. Someone three feet tall just waiting to be adopted by a grown-up like Oliver.

Benjamin was aware these were new thoughts, but he did not know how to fight against this. He never had to before and now he no longer wanted to. He wanted Oliver to be his friend, and he liked that Oliver wanted to hear what he had to say. He knew Oliver had done something to mess with his head, just like Collins had done to him, but this was different even from that. Where Collins had jammed the zipper of his mind closed, here Oliver had just ripped it open. It might never zip up again.

Maybe there was another reason they were not supposed to use the voice this much. Like saying a naughty word around a little, there was a chance they might pick it up and use it too.

The voice ripped through Oliver like a blade with two edges. To him it was as though he had been forced to smoke an entire pack of cigarettes, and his throat hurt after just two sentences. His head buzzed like he had drunk an entire pot of coffee.

Oliver looked up at Benjamin, taking in his confused face that was still processing what had happened. Oliver saw him as a fawn taking his first steps away from his mother. Exposing a new employee to something like this was not desirable, but they had all signed up for it. It was important to know on the first day how dangerous the multiverse could be before exploring the other worlds. Plus, Ben was on the small side, and always acted a bit like a mamma's boy. Oliver had even seen his boy cry over a tiny bit of bullying. From now on, no more coddling. His boy would need to learn to be tough …

Oliver shook his head hard to clear the psychic backlash. Maybe there was another reason one was not supposed to use the voice.

Benjamin closed his eyes and smacked his mouth. It was like he was going to explain, the mouth hung open a second. He put a finger to his forehead and pulled the hand away. Oliver was big enough for this.

“It's related to a weird sex thing.” Anything uncomfortable. “Sex for bigs is not as fun as it is for you guys. It helps the ladies. Copulation is measured in seconds, maybe a minute or two at most.”

Oliver did not expect the answer to be anything like that. He was not even sure if he should or could respond.

Despite Benjamin's overwhelming presence, he was on the short side. The biggest Amazon males were over twelve feet tall and could weigh over half a ton. There was only so much evolution could do once that much mass was entering the picture. And if it was a 'sex thing', then it made sense why the bigs did not feel comfortable using it. There were things Earthlings did with similar routine, such as lactation and periods, which were hidden away and never openly talked about, and it was partly because they were too close to sex.

For a dimension built on every diaper story that's ever been told, there was one type of story, the ones showing the quiet humiliation of being regressed and being forced to watch your former wife and her new husband from your crib, that has not been told in the diaper dimension. An Amazon was never going to steal your wife or your husband in the way Grace had done to her mom. The diaper dimension wasn't sexy.

For Oliver, the answer didn't seem correct, but it was at least an honest one that Ben had settled on. The voice was aesthetically unpleasant and relying on it was not a good way to live. He also wasn't wrong that it wasn't as useful with the Amazons. It had taken over twelve hours before Oliver had caught Benjamin off balance.

The voice was not like radiation, it was something you needed to directly hear, and often when littles spoke to Amazons the bigs just let it go in one ear and out the other. Using this power in a school on a class of Amazons likely would not work any better than normal teaching techniques. It was as though it was a power given to the Amazons intended to only be used on the littles.

If what Oliver proposed was to be the voice's purpose, it would still feel wrong to Benjamin, but he could not explain why. It would flip the balance of things. Potentially make the littles bigger in some ways than the bigs. Using it to benefit littles would have inverted who was supposed to be the master. Why would the Amazons ever do anything to help the littles be more than what they were? Why would they want to lift the littles up on their shoulders so the small ones could see past the horizon, see further than even the Amazons?

“Oliver, while you're my friend, and I'm willing to talk to you about anything, there is a time and a place for conversations like this. The rest of the planet is not ready for intellectual honesty. That is just a privilege and responsibility of my job and training. When you go out into the world, I need you to promise me you'll be, tactful, and um... read the room?” Benjamin looked around as he said that they were still in the bathroom. “Don't let anyone find out you can do that; just promise me you'll only use it in an emergency.”

Oliver was quiet, he really did have no context of what this was to the Amazons, but Ben did, and it was an important lesson. Perhaps when Ben was young, he was taught the same thing.

“I know you're big where it matters, I'll work with you in teaching you where the lines are, but you have to promise me you'll not do something inappropriate; I don't want to see you get hurt.” If they spanked a little for talking back and put soap in their mouths for saying a naughty word, he could not imagine the punishment for someone seeing what Oliver did. There were no laws, but there would not need to be laws.

“Ben, you know you're still on Earth, right?” Oliver challenged.

“Well, when we get back.” Oliver's eyes narrowed and shook his head.

“I live on Earth. I have a job and a life here.”

Benjamin's heart fell in disappointment. It was like earlier when Oliver had tried to talk about Collins. Whatever he thought he had with Oliver, it was going to end. Tomorrow, a week from now, Oliver would move on and be out of his life. He would not be his baby forever; he was not even going to be his baby. Oliver was right, he should not feel this way, and he shouldn't want to feel this way.

“Benjamin, I promise if you don't try to mess with my head then I won't try to mess with yours.” Oliver gave a smirk, a half-smile on the right side of his face.

Then his eyes grew big, and he snapped a finger and waggled it up towards the giant. “That's it! Game theory! This is going to be great; this is like the whole point of dimensional travel. It's to unlock the secrets of the other Earths. When we go back you can invent it. You're an academic so everyone will have to take you seriously. I'll get you some books and... hey!”

Benjamin reached out with both arms, Oliver's maneuver had finally given him just enough space to get under the armpit and lift him up. Ben wasn't used to picking up something this heavy, the speed of lifting hurt his knees and lower back, but with a small wince through the pain he carried through.

“When we go back?” He pushed the two of them up to his full ten-foot posture, keeping his spine level as he rose back up.

Oliver realized what he said thirty seconds too late, but now he was eight feet off the ground. He didn't feel secure, one slip and he could fall, even break a bone. Out of desperation he reached his right arm and grasped towards Benjamin's neck. His arm barely tugged around Ben's back and his tiny fingers tried pulling at Benjamin's shirt. He turned his head and was now inches from Benjamin's nose.

“Well, when you're better.” Oliver's breath went over Benjamin's glasses, a small fog easily formed on the glass in the moist air of the bathroom. One mistake was all it had taken, and he had pushed Benjamin back over the edge.

Collins had said the same thing, that he wanted Benjamin to just take credit for the discovery. Collins had seen something that all the other historians had missed, as those bigger men were too busy looking for gate addresses or lost technologies. Collins cared about the stories, he wanted to know the littles as they had lived. Littles like Collins wanted to be better, and they even wanted the Amazons to be better too. Which in their imaginations meant Amazons wanted to make the littles better. That was still selfish, but littles wanted to believe there was something more, that there was a point to this. The Amazons were supposed to help them.

They were not the parasites of the multiverse. It was symbiosis. Not a shark and a remora, not an ant and an aphid, not a clownfish and an anemone. Not equals working together towards some goal. A silkworm, where one life was completely dependent and had his every need met. Collins had been a caterpillar dreaming he could be a butterfly, but Ben did not want a butterfly. The silkmoth is a pathetic and hopeless creature. Silkworms just eat and produce nothing. It is the thing in between that is desired, the cocoon, when the worm returns to the form of a baby and is transformed. Benjamin wanted something more valuable than gold, and only a little could give it to him, and that meant the little buggers could never grow up to be big old mean moths.

Benjamin used his other hand to slowly move Oliver's head towards the bathroom mirror. Oliver's hair was unkempt and still wet. Ben began patting and combing it gently with his fingers, he parted and smoothed it such that Oliver's hair matched his own. This close Oliver could tell both he and the giant had blue eyes. Ben's were tired, old, heavy, and large behind thin glasses focused only on the boy in the mirror, and Oliver's were rapid, fresh, and darted around the room with fright.

“I am better.” It was soft, just above a whisper, yet the giant's words echoed in the room. He rearranged Oliver in his arms, placing both hands around the chest. Oliver's whole body became stiff, his own arms shoved out and were level against Benjamin's hands.

Maybe there could be another reason to lift the littles up this high. Not to stand on the shoulders of giants. Not to see farther than the Amazons, nor to let them glimpse past the horizon and become something more.

“Drrrr.” Benjamin began making a grinding noise with the back of his throat. Up Oliver went, and then stopped twelve feet up, his freshly combed brown hair bumping the ceiling, clinging slightly with static. The blood went from his head to his feet and back again. “This is flight control to Oliver; we have you cleared for landing at the beddy-bye-strip.”

“No!” That is not how flight control talks Ben!

Benjamin held him there while bringing him into the hallway, Oliver was eleven feet up, and then a moment later, two feet from the carpet, and then up again. “Eeeeeeeeeeaarrr”

A few steps later into the room. Up eight feet, coasting through the air, and down, to three feet, and then up to nine. Sideways and around. Ben was lost in his own world.

If he wanted to get down, he would have to play along. “Kiirk, 'Bee' Tower, 'Oh eSS' one over Beddie, six feet, inbound for landing.” Oliver was much better at imagining he was a plane.

Ben looked down at his boy, he had been having too much fun, and now for sleepy time.

“Looks like we're having some engine trouble, we're coming in for a hard landing! Brace yourself.” It was a gentle touchdown into bed, belly first, and on his pillow.

* * *

July 20^th, 2008, Rachel, Nevada - Earth

“This airplane is from the fifties? It looks pristine.” Ai wafted her sweaty jumpsuit's collar as she studied the interior. It was a hot July day in Nevada, and the AC was off while they were waiting on the ground.

Oliver humored her, “Nineteen sixty. Some of it is new, they basically rebuild them every four years. I'm not a fan of the new-old stock” he pointed at the bulbous screens along the radar station, it looked like something from an arcade machine from the seventies.

Lange butt himself in, “Yeah Gee-Pee-eSs is a bit easier than,” he pointed to the sextant above them.

Oliver relaxed a second before asking, “So, Ai, you gonna tell us if we got one of the big ones?”

Ai shook her head, “A what?”

“Hydrogen,” Oliver cut to the chase.

“They didn't tell you guys?” AI was surprised.

Lange gave his disappointment, “I don't think they want anyone to feel left out. There's an envelope we open after we're airborne.”

The mission had not originally been nuclear. It had not even been to this scale. Intelligence had picked up something that spooked the brass and the politicians. Maybe they had found a world the Nitz had already plundered, a warning from the council, or even an unstable sub-dimension with a message from the future. The entire war-machine of Earth turned on. A world at war, and it was all or nothing, this had to work.

America's bombs had all been retrofitted a few years before and even the gravity bombs had a computer now. Effort was being made to rebuild them, but it was easier to just borrow a nuke from the other powers of Earth. That was a sign that Earth was growing up, starting to think past the small differences of nations and cultures, that any country would share something that intimate. Even with that there were not enough of the big ones to go around. If Oliver's plane had been armed with American bombs, he would have been able to identify the ordinance, but the entire thing was covered in Chinese characters. He only knew the mass, which told him it was bigger than a Fat Man and smaller than a Tsar. He was not even sure the bomber was supposed to carry something this big.

“China does not do anything small.” She gave a half smile as her eyes caught Lange, like she was referencing something. Lange did a small shrink and smiled at himself.

“I'm going to go see what the holdup is.” Oliver stood up, sweat had pooled into his seat and his pants. He found cryptic answers to be boring, and it seemed like a good time to give the two space.

He moved up the plane and made his way to the cockpit. Collins was going through a paper checklist, and Captain Alder's gaze was outside the open left window. Oliver got quiet and tapped the pilot's chair to get his attention. He turned and pointed to something of interest for Oliver to see.

“I didn't think they'd make it.” The small planes had an ugly triangle tail like a freshwater fish and thin sectioned wings. They were distant and reflected the harsh summer sun, making them hard to identify.

Even a silhouette is enough, Oliver recognized it, “I thought they turned all the eFf-fours into drones. Are those from the Guard? How are they supposed to Dee-shift on a plane that small?”

The Captain shook his head, “Those are from Japan. What brings you up?”

“I think we have the eHtch-bomb.”

Collins shook a bit, put the checklist down, and addressed Oliver, “Finally figured it out?”

“How would you know?” Oliver knew Collins enough the man was more than willing to pretend he always knew what was going on.

“Convergence. The same names over and over. You know which ones have it because it's a symbolic challenge. Like Necessary Evil.” He pointed out to another couple B-52s, “The Great Artiste and Bockscar” Collins had a way of drawing on the weirdest things.

The Captain turned his head that had been enjoying the fresh air, “You looked at the envelope.”

“Actually, they put it on the in-flight checklist.” He flipped up the pages and put his finger on one box. Sweat was coming down his fingers and his hands shook slightly as he oriented the board for Oliver to see.

“They give us any idea how long we have to sit here twiddling our thumbs in the one-hundred-and-ten-degree sun?” Oliver asked, failing to hide his annoyance at the delay.

The Captain answered, “The bears just got in, they had some complication.” Fashionably late. The Russians always found a way to make warfare seem unprofessional, like it was nothing more than an ugly brawl. How did America convince itself they were a peer opponent for six decades?

Russians and Japanese planes flying alongside American bombers with Chinese bombs. Even a Canadian on an American plane! The world had been turned upside down. At least Oliver's grandpa wasn't around to see this.

Oliver looked at Collins, the man looked almost like he was about to vomit. His face was drenched in sweat. He reached over and gave him a quick shake. “Hey. You can do this. Remember Jimmy Stewart. He landed the plane with a broken arm.”

Collins turned his head, “No he didn't. The copilot landed the plane.”

Oliver corrected him, “What, no Stewart landed in Okinawa and went on to win the World Series, the movie is about over coming...” the conversation must have been elevated because Eskender took that moment to butt in.

“A Mandela Effect! You both remember a different movie.”

Oliver snapped at him, the heat was shortening his patience, “That's just some reddit bullshit. There's no such thing.” He had even called his mom, it was spelled Berenstain just like he remembered.

Eskender shook his head, “They're getting worse too. Ever since Terra got hit. It's the physics of the multiverse.”

He had just told him a joke... right? Made up a story?

“Why do you think they decided to ramp up the scale of this?”

Oliver could think of a dozen reasons why strategy called for an overwhelming alpha strike. It was the speed of this that was what had been rushed. Overlord took over a year of planning. The build up to the Gulf War took four months. This had been thrown together in under four weeks. War was delayed at Earth's expense, and every second counted. The only delay here was to align the 'symbolic challenge' as Collins had suggested. Today was National Moon Day in America, it would be December seventh, twenty-one sixteen on Terra.

Unprepared to deal with something that big, Oliver shrunk to the personal, “Ben, did you ask her?”

“Victoria? Nah.”

Oliver did not like that, “What do you mean no. What the hell?”

“She wants children, and I figure it'll be easier on her if...” Ben wasn't able to finish the unformed thought.

“No. Collins, back me up on this.”

Collins threw a bit of sweat from his forehead into his palm, “Not feeling it, just focused on one thing at a time.”

“Fuck both of you, if Derrick were here, he wouldn't stand for this moping.” Derrick was their electronic warfare officer. Most of that equipment had been torn out, not much use for it where they were going, and the space was needed for the dimensional travel machine. Eskender Desta was in his seat today. The Air Force had quickly gotten Derrick up to speed as another weapons officer and he was on one of the planes that had been in the boneyard just a month ago – the nearly dead restored to new.

Derrick would have found a way to make everyone happy. Derrick would have given some Patton speech or told some anecdote from his long experience in the military. Oliver was kind of an idiot though.

“OK I know how to solve this. Ben, you get to go first. What are your plans after we win? Next week, a year from now, what are you doing.”

Ben just turned and stared at Oliver. This is not Saving Private Ryan; you don't ask a stupid question like that. “I'm going to start going by Benjamin.”

“OK... I meant like actual. Eskender, what are you doing after this is over?” Oliver looked over his shoulders at the second man.

“I want to be a portal specialist.” You cannot pick the thing you currently are. Don't people know how this works?

“Smart ass... Collins?”

“Just one day at a time. I got no plans, that's how I ended up here.” Collins was too quiet.

Everyone's answers were awful. The literal worst answers of all time. How had Oliver screwed up ...

“Historian” Benjamin said it so quietly it was almost as a thought in their heads. Then he got louder, “and not a lame one, um, I want to study early twenty first century entertainment. Maybe late twentieth.”

“You just want to get paid to watch television.” Oliver saw through him, but it was an actual answer.

Collins lit up, “Shit that sounds awesome. Let's do it. Historian.”

“You sure Collins? Getting a degree in history is like seven years.” Ben didn't want his best friend to get his hopes up.

“I don't care if it's the last thing I do, I'm doing it. I want people to know I had it in me. Oliver what about you, what are you going to be when you grow up?”

“Victoria has a sister, right? Jennifer? I could marry her and,” He slapped Benjamin's shoulder, “We could be bros.”

Ben snapped off, “You stay away from that girl.”

Oliver chuckled, “OK dad,” his rolling eyeballs echoed through the cabin.

“You know she's got some condition right? Autism or whatever. She still wears diapers.” Ben tried to explain.

“Well, when they're that attractive I'm willing to try anything.” The three men gave him a scorned look. It was his stupid game and here Oliver was talking about dating a gal still in diapers.

“OK. For real. No making fun of me on this.” His voice and posture got serious, he took a large breath, he had been thinking of this for fifteen years. “I'm going to find myself. Not in that hippy-dippy way. I mean I want to travel the multiverse, find a copy of myself, and say 'hello'. I always was jealous of everyone growing up and getting something from their Terran counterparts, and I want to find another me and see how he's doing. If he's doing better, I'll say, 'I'm glad there's a me out there I can look up to and aspire to' and if he's doing worse I'll say 'Well, you've done a pretty good job yourself, and you're still OK in my book.'”

Eskender would need to let him down easily, that's not how the multiverse worked. “Oliver, the odds of running into a natural convergence are ten million to one.”

“A hundred thousand worlds, so one percent? I'm feeling pretty lucky,” Oliver waved off the criticism.

Ai had popped her head up and was trying to get to her seat when she heard Oliver's plans. “Oliver, what are you going to do if there's an equality? If you run into your twin.”

His plans were perfect, he had thought of everything, except for that. “Well, sometimes you're the Earth, sometimes you're the Terra, I'll just flip a coin and decide who’s better off.”

The ground crew was starting the process of getting the engines ready. Explosives would be shoved into the turbines to jumpstart the engines with pressurized air. Black smoke would pour from the bombers as the elephants began their march to take off.

Oliver found himself down next to Nick who shifted a bit in his seat a minute waiting for Oliver to say something. After thirty seconds without talking, the excitement caused him to blurt it out, “You gonna ask me?”

“Nick, just stick to flying, no one likes a lawyer.”

The cyan-blue sky was blotted with a hundred dark contrails. They all terminated at one spot, just a shimmer and haze of blue, red, and purple. It was the last time those planes would fly the skies of Earth.