Pariah...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Pariah is a serial, not just a story. Based on my Timeater stories, we are following the exploits of one specific timeater who is named Pariah. This will give us the latitude to show what Timeaters are, and what kind of world they have.

The sweltering sun shown mercilessly down on the putrid stadium where the howling crowd cheered its favorite warrior. They also mocked and cajoled the surprisingly calm man who was forced roughly onto the stadium floor where he was sure to meet his doom. The multitude, in its insatiable bloodlust, did not mind the fact that the gladiator was heavily armed and the newcomer bore no weapons. The gladiator, though, felt some sense of justice. He refused to use the tools of his trade on this unfortunate challenger.

The crowed shrieked with delight, surprise, or contempt at the gladiator threw his mace and sword aside and took a fighter's stance. The stranger, for his part, did nothing of the sort, choosing rather to stand awkwardly and meekly near the door through which he had been forced. The two men regarded each other for a moment. The gladiator felt puzzled looking into this man's eyes. He was obviously a stranger, bearing none of the roman features to his face, and it was hard to say how old he was. The most striking feature of this man, however, was the total lack of fear on his face. His look was not fearful, but neither was it intimidating or self-assured.

The gladiator sighed, as he realized he would have to make the first move. He circled the man cautiously, growing bolder when he realized the man made no move to defend himself from the oncoming attack. With a suddenness that had made him the victor in so many other matches, the gladiator lunged, aiming to knock the man down. His attack never connected. In almost an off-handed manner, the stranger stepped aside, grabbing the gladiator's outstretched arm. Allowing the gladiator's momentum to carry him through, the stranger twisted the arm behind him, placed his knee in the small of the gladiator's back, and pushed.

The gladiator heard his arm crack, and felt the pain flood through him as the stranger, with a strength that belied his frail frame, pushed the gladiator to the ground.

"Please let him kill me," the gladiator thought to the gods, "I am only a slave. If they let me live, I will only be shoved into the next match with a broken arm, and die in disgrace." Tears pushed from behind his eyes, and he force them back.

"Never cry," he thought to himself, "Never cry!"

He heard the roaring of the crowd through his pain, and felt himself being dragged. He looked up, and saw the stranger forcing the door to the ramp, and dragging him up into the dim interior.

The stranger pushed the door shut, and knelt beside him. The gladiator spit in his face, but the stranger ignored him, touching the broken limb instead. Instant relief flooded through him. The total absence of pain left him on a euphoric high for a moment. He moved his arm and flexed his fingers. The limb was healed.

"What's your name," asked the stranger absentmindedly, rummaging through the gladiator's garments.

"I am called Sparticus, who are you?" the gladiator asked. At that moment the stranger found the medallion on Sparticus' neck. With a satisfied smile, he pulled it off.

"What are you doing," Sparticus asked.

"Consider this payment for healing you," the man replied.

"But I've had it all my life," Sparticus protested, "It was my mother's." The man looked Sparticus in the eyes with a look that was both demanding and pleading at the same time.

"I NEED this," he whispered. Sparticus looked at him with curiosity and wonderment.

"Are you one of the gods?" he asked.

The man stood, and with a sad smile answered, "Far from it. I am just a simple outcast."

And then he was gone.

He saw her. A female caught eternally between girlishness and womanhood, strikingly beautiful in a way that he could not describe. Pale in face, with blond hair drawn back by a simple string, and eyes of ice. She was sitting on the edge of a cushioned chair contrasted against a green wall. Her face emotionless, cold, like snow on the verge of melting, spring striving to break through, but never making it.

As he watched she was lead to a room, and doctors crowd around her. They talk and talk, explaining what they will do, saying it will not hurt. She doesn't seem to listen to them, her eyes far away, dead. They begin to work. He feels cruel claws grab him and pull him from all that he knows and loves. He feels pain beyond imagination. He sees her smile at his pain.

Suddenly he breaks through into the cruel, harsh light. And as he lays there crying, he hears them tell her that it is all over. Then he is thrown in a stifling black abyss, dead masses all around him, and thrown into the cold.

Then, for the first time, he feels it: the passage. And with the passage comes a sense of healing. Suddenly all the pain is gone, and from around him the very earth and air exudes a healing.

He was in a cold place again, resting in a cushion of snow. A stone structure extended above him stretching up and up to the sky. At it's pinnacle was a simple cross.

The large, oaken doors above him opened, and a plump lady squawked as she nearly tripped over him.

"Parson! Come 'ere! Someone's left a baby on our step!"

The man she called Parson came to the door. He saw for the first time those soft, warm, caring eyes looking down on him for the first time.

"Well don't just stand there, Mary," the Parson urged, "get a blanket, wrap him up!"

As the two carried him into the huge church, the woman named Mary commented, "'E looks like a newborn."

"Poor child," the Parson answered, "I pray he lives."

From that day forward, the Parson and Mary became mother and father to him. The Parson taught him about love, and Mary taught him how to work. When he was old enough to work, she had him at it from sunrise to sundown. Then he would say his prayers and spend several hours in study with the Parson.

During one of these times, on the sixteenth year after he had been found, the Parson ceremoniously removed his crucifix and hung it around the boy's neck.

Oh, how he cherished that gift! He immediately took it off and looked it over. It was made out of some kind of strange metal. It had grooves around the sides and an irregular hump in the crux. From that day forward he would take it with him wherever he went.

One cold, winter evening, he was gathering wood in the forest. As he carried it back to the chapel, he pulled his threadbare cloths around him and shrugged against the wind. Suddenly from behind him he heard hoofbeats behind him. He turned to see who it was. Like lightning a midnight horse bowled him over, sending the wood flying every direction. He lay gasping for air as the horse stopped and the rider dismounted. A black-cloaked figure approached him, stood over him, and pulled back the hood revealing the face. The shock he felt at recognizing the person was tangible. It was the pale-faced woman.

She stood, hatred burning in her cold eyes, as she addressed the shivering, gasping form on the ground in front of her.

"It would seem fate has decreed that you should live on," she spoke cruelly, "Very well, then, I will tell you your fate. You are to spend all time miserable. You will have no friends, no relations, and no will of your own. You will be an outcast, and wherever you go, people will scoff you, time wanderer, chaos catcher, healer, and destroyer. Thus I name you, as is my right. You are hereafter to be called Pariah! Now GO!"

The world faded around him.

From that day onward, he never saw his beloved Parson and Mary. He found himself in different worlds, compelled by a strange new urge. The urge, which he called the "Tracking" compelled him to look for trinkets. Sometimes coins, sometimes tiny statues, sometimes jewelry. All of them had the same grooves as his crucifix, and he began to realize that they were all part of a larger device.

He did not control the passage. It occurred whenever he found what he was looking for, and it always took him to a seemingly random time. His first passage took him far into the past, when all the earth was ice. Here he learned to fight to survive. His second passage took him into a time of disease among a gentle group of savages. Here he learned to heal with a touch. His third passage took him to a time of philosophers, actors, and thinkers. Here he learned to use his mind.

He traveled many places and learned many things, but two things always haunted him. The first was that he was a man out of place. Wherever he went, whatever he did to help, all people seemed to tolerate him coldly, hate him, or ignore him. The second thing that haunted him was the pale woman. She seemed always in the distance. A servant girl here, a noblewoman there, and a leper somewhere else, she was always a fleeting glimpse, a specter, intangible. The one person who could understand him, tell him who he was and what his mission was always remained tauntingly in the distance.

His troubled thoughts at an end, Pariah fell asleep.

Sleep does not come easily to one so immune to time. Even time seemed to look upon him with contempt. It was only the fact that he had just arrived, having been in this place too short a time to achieve his appointed goal, that told Pariah he would be in the same time when he awoke as when he had fallen asleep. Time would still toss him out in the end. But, time at least, would know that he had ever been.

Dreams are a blank to a man who belongs nowhere. Pariah's night was as cold, as foggy and as empty as the field in which he had found himself. He did not dream his wishes and desires, nor did he relive the better times of his simple life. In place of these things which others might call normal, he drifted through the hopes of others. It was their time he had entered, their acceptance he desired most and, for the memory of a single one, his restless journey would be at an end. Alas, he would be no more real to them than the half forgotten remnants of the dreams he had invaded in place of his own.

He awoke with a staff in his chest. A shepherd, leery of strangers on the moor where he grazed his sheep, had Pariah securely pinned to the rocky soil. To his left, at the top of a large hill, was a disused castle which symbolized hard times for the region. Language would come to Pariah as second nature. It was part of the gift. Culture shock was another matter entirely.

"What is it Conner?" Asked a voice from the right. "Another wolf in the flock."

The man replied without looking away from Pariah's eyes. "Na Marge. Tis but a man, if such is not worse."

Pariah was compelled to look right, knowing that he would see the same haunting woman who had marked his long journey, yet he dared not upset the armed man holding him fast to the ground by the rod in his chest. She was always there to give him solace that he might not lose his mind. But she was always to remain out of reach. Pariah knew the rules after having lived within them for such a long time. Nobody told them to Pariah, yet, nobody had to.

"Let him up that we may look on him," she called.

Conner was reluctant to release his charge. "A wolf is driven to be a wolf. Alas, a man is undriven and can be many things which are worse."

"Aye, yet can a man also be better than a beast on the moors."

For the first time, Connor's eyes drifted away from Pariah's, however they did not turn to Marge. "What be your name, lad?"

"Pariah," he replied. The staff began to hurt and Pariah was as afraid to show his weakness as he was to overspeak. Silence often spoke best for Pariah.

"Queer name you've got," Marge answered. "From where does it, and him to whom it is attached, come?"

"I've been abroad so long that I no longer recall."

Connor didn't like Marge talking to the stranger, which was very evident by the way the staff tried to cut through him whenever she addressed him or he replied. It was the same to her, maybe she even enjoyed the torment she could bring him for the duration of this short encounter.

"Fetch your brothers, Marge," commanded Connor. "I grow weary and must return to tending the flock before the wolf returns."

"Aye, poppa," she replied with some distaste.

To Connor, it must have appeared that she was attracted to the stranger as strongly as, in truth, she resented the fact that he even lived. Connor lessened the force on the staff as soon as she is over the hill, through the fog, and out of sight. He says nothing to Pariah and feels nothing about Pariah. Then Pariah sees in a flash of his mind that Connor feels as little toward Marge. The pale woman is also an outcast in her own rite.

Pariah's sharp senses caught movement amongst the sheep. Connor, at first, thought it was his sons coming to relieve him, however, something didn't feel right to him. He withdrew the staff from Pariah's chest turning to see the wolf returned and again amongst his flock. Less than a moment passed before Pariah jumped to his feet.

"Where are they?" cursed Connor, running into combat with the beast.

Almost instinctively, Pariah broke to the left, flanking the animal between Connor and himself. He found it odd that the beast would attack alone since he knew wolves to attack in packs. The wolf, senses abnormally dull, caught both Connor and Pariah only after they were in range. He feared the weapon more than Pariah, jumping toward Pariah.

It took no thought for Pariah to strike the beast's breast plate hard enough to take it down. Around the animal's neck hung the prize Pariah had come for. Pariah had never seen the crystalline medallion before, but he knew it when he sees it. The wolf ran faster than Pariah, yet, Pariah claimed his reward before it got away.

Connor hit Pariah from behind. "That's Stefan's mark," He replied.

Some time passed while Pariah, outcast from time, sleeps a fitful sleep. He awoke, battered and bruised, in a straw bed. Two strong men noticed that he has returned to a reasonable state of consciousness and approached him with great care. By the medallion around the shorter man's neck, he knew that one of them was Stefan.

"What ever shall we do with this lad?" called Marge from just out of sight.

"What do we oft'n do with common thieves?" Replied Stefan.

Connor emerged from the shadows, across the dark hall, hearing the commotion. "Nay," he cut in. "The lad's worth something."

"Can we allow thievery to go unpunished?" Asked Marge.

Connor took only a moment's contemplation before answering. "May, Lass, shall his good deed go unrewarded?"

Pariah sat up slowly, careful not to provoke another attack. He knew that his wounds would soon heal. "T'was the wolf I got the stone from."

"And, as poppa said, ya know these beasts enough to train them," Marge cut in.

"Did the beast take the stone from you, Stefan?" Demanded Connor.

"I know not, poppa. It happened in my sleep."

"'Tis indeed odd that the beast went for your stone, is it not Stefan?" Connor's perceptiveness was at once an aid and a hindrance to Pariah. After all, he would find Pariah at least as odd.

Stefan hesitated enough to indicate that he was hiding something. "Aye, poppa."

In the days which followed, Connor had taken Pariah into his family just enough to have him herd the sheep. Connor knew that something was odd about Pariah and wouldn't let him work alone, however, he did give Pariah a chance to fight the wolf. It was odd of Connor, yet it was not beyond the powers of the will which drove Pariah ever onward.

It took a day and a half before Pariah was ready to claim the prize. Each time he had seen the wolf, it had been wearing the stone. Unlike connor, who had to see the stone, Pariah could feel it. But, Connor had noticed often enough to suspect his son of being a werewolf. The truth was so much stranger that Connor would never believe it; and all Pariah knew was that he had to take the stone from the wolf, not the boy.

The sun had a reddish-orange haze as it sunk rapidly into the foggy moors behind a foothill. After it's previous encounter, the animal knew to avoid Pariah. It had lost its healthy fear of Man and struck Connor as Pariah crowned the hill about 50 paces south of him. Connor's screams attracted Pariah much faster than the wolf thought he could move.

Pariah's staff caught the aggressor by the breastplate and threw him several paces aside. The animal was on its paws again almost without hesitation and Pariah knew his time had come. Going low to capitalize on his quadruped nature, the wolf took a defensive stance. However, Pariah's target was not the wolf so he could move in where he was unexpected. As the powerful paws of the beast threw Pariah's staff back, Pariah swung the staff into the necklace around it's neck.

Having the stone, Pariah turned to Connor.

Connor was in bad, but survivable, shape and he knew it. "For the love of God, lad, kill me."

"That will not be necessary, Sir."

From under his cloak, Connor pulled out a small silver dagger. "I beg you not to let this curse fall upon me. And, when this deed is done, free Stefan as well."

"I was sent to take this curse from you, not your life." Pariah used the dagger to cut the necklace from the power crystal, then placed his hand on Connor's forehead. "God's grace shines on you and you are healed."

In the discharge from Pariah, he caught sight of the wolf. The beast vanished into the bright light because, unlike Connor, it was never really there. It was a simple shepherd's nightmare given form by a battery of unknown origins. Pariah had found the power source for his device.

Connor awoke a few minutes later, upset that he had fallen asleep on watch over his sheep. He had often warned his sons that a moment's carelessness could cost the flock, however, he had set a bad example. At least they hadn't seen his lapse in judgment. Thirteen black sheep remained grazing in the pasture so Connor was confident that the whole flock remained.

December 1998

The chapel that Pariah had grown up in was located in a time of poverty and riches, with kings, knights, peasants, and priests. It was a rough and hard time, when death was always present, and pain was common. It was an ugly time, when maids were haggard old women by twenty. But for Pariah, it was always the most comfortable time. He knew it like he knew no other period, and it hurt him that he had never been able to return. Oh, he had gotten close, but never closer than a century.

It was the time BEYOND that, the time that Pariah thought of as "the future", although the term was relative to be sure, that made him most uncomfortable. It was a bizarre land filled with odd things. As people advanced beyond work they began to develop ways to make their lives seem full, by something they called "art", and later "entertainment". Seldom did such things hold meaning for him.

He sat now, in a future far from his childhood, in a dark corner of a rough, seedy bar that was a small part of a giant platform spinning through an incomprehensible void, far, far from earth. Chaos swirling in the air around him, tugging at the order within him, the entropy attempting to claim his soul. It was a conscious effort to keep it in, and even so, he felt it slipping away.

He sat at the table with loneliness his only companion. To him, loneliness had a form. He was a dark, hooded figure, like the monks that used to worship at Parson's chapel. Only Pariah never saw his face. Sometimes he caught the glint of teeth under the hood, but could never tell if loneliness was grinning at him, or bearing his teeth in wrath. Loneliness never spoke.

All this he ignored, choosing rather to study the device he was constructing, while Loneliness watched without interest. He had had to dismantle half of it to slip his newest acquisition, the jeweled power source, into it's place. As soon as he had, parts of it lit up, and the crucifix that formed the center began to hum. He quickly put it back together and looked it over. It was at once familiar as a tired image, and strange as the world he was now in. It was now powered, but still appeared to be missing a several things. Pariah considered that it might need a gage of some sort, and a triggering mechanism. His mission was not done yet.

This was driven home by the urging of his senses that his next piece was calling to him. Singing, almost. He replaced the device in the leather satchel, and rose to leave.

Hexstation, as they called the ring that spun through space, had spun eccentrically off its orbit around the mining moon Ganymede, and was decaying with every pass. The projection was that in twelve years it would either crash into the moon's surface, or swing violently out into space to grow cold and die. No effort had been made to correct the orbit, because repairing the station would have taken more money and time than simply building a new one.

No place echoed the disrepair that was evident throughout the station more than the corridors within. The once ordered set of main passages, secondary corridors, ducts, and service tubes had become indistinguishable from each other. A maze of unlit rat's nests, with bodies crouching near functioning heating ducts for warmth, or wrapped in ragged issue blankets, attempting to sleep despite the unhealthy throb of machinery, and sparking of stripped wires.

All this Pariah navigated with ease, led by the tracking further towards the core of the monstrosity. He was eager to recover the device and leave this putrid, dangerous place. He paused occasionally to note the progress of the pack that was following him. He had almost smiled with flattery when the rough bunch had gotten up and left the bar behind him, and their numbers had grown since. It amused him that they thought he was important enough to follow, although their intentions were no doubt to harm him.

It was too large a group for him to fight, and he was deprived of his greatest weapon, which was entropy itself. When he traveled into the future the net entropy in the environment around him was always greater than that in his own body. If he went far enough into the past, the opposite was the case: he had more entropy than the environment around. When that happened, he was able to let loose the entropy within himself in a devastating blast that was helpful in situations like this. Right now he was only capable of healing.

His thoughts were interrupted by a gloved hand that came down hard on his shoulder, jarring him, and spinning him around.

"Lessee wah uew go' inna bag, freend," the voice slurred in what Pariah assumed to be a later English dialect, far beyond what he had encountered before. He sighed, at this. When the language was still in its earliest state, it was lilting and musical to his ears. The further in the future he went, the more it seemed to run together in a disgusting way.

"Leeme lone'. Don' go' nuttin uew wan inner bag," Pariah mimicked the dialect, stepping back into the shadows, and readying himself for the fight that was sure to come.

"Rough' im up!" shouted a female voice from the crowed that had gathered. He instinctively looked at the source, and froze in momentary shock. He had expected to see her there, as always, but not like this. She was dressed in the alien way of this people, wearing ragged leather that exposed her body indecently, in a way that may have had the intention of being alluring, but became sickening and pathetic. Her pale features were accented by the black tar smeared on her lips and around her eyes. Her head was bare accept for the occasional spike of hair that stuck up at points, smeared with the same black tar. She had become a mockery of herself. All that was beautiful about her was perverted.

Pariah lost composure, wrenching, and falling to his knees. These unreal, pseudo-humans gathered around him, mocked him, laughing and kicking him. He felt his ribs crack under the blows. Rough hands grabbed the pouch from him containing the mechanism. Her face danced before him, the grotesqueness of it searing into his mind as it laughed at him, and Loneliness stood aside watching impassionately.

As the device left his side, the Tracking became unbearable, wrenching his brain in two as it pulled him in opposite directions. No longer able to control himself, Pariah let the walls that held the order in and the entropy out come crashing down, and the order left him in a burst. Then all was still.

Pariah lay there for long moments, coughing on his own blood, feeling utterly filthy. When he looked up, he was surrounded by infants, floundering in cloths too large for them. She was nowhere to be seen. He hurt far too much to appreciate the irony in this. Loneliness looked on, unfeeling.

The leader of the group had apparently left with the satchel and the device before Pariah had absorbed the entropy around him. He followed the stronger Tracking urge, hoping it would lead him to the device. What he found, instead, was an electronic logic circuit with an elaborate safety lock. This was, apparently, what he had come to this time to obtain. He ground his teeth in frustration, and began following the secondary Tracking. In six hours he had circled the station twice, and the signal had only become weaker. It was becoming painfully clear that his quarry had taken the device on a shuttle to the moon's surface.

His problems were worse than that, though. Not only was he injured, but having let loose of all control of his personal entropy, he was becoming weaker by the hour. He already noticed a slight tremor in his limbs, dark spots appearing on his skin, and lines forming in his weathered face under greying hair. He was dying.

There had to be a reason why the new part had a stronger draw to Pariah than the half-completed device that he'd lost. It was as though loneliness was unwilling to lose his only companion, commanding Pariah back to the panel embedded in the wall. Pariah could not overcome the feeling that he was being told something in a voice, which he could not hear.

A shadowy figure, more death than loneliness, moved about at the end of the hall. Although the hall itself was the only decently lit part of the whole station, Pariah could not see the figure clearly. His movement left yellow-green streaks in the environment, which swirled about and vanished like a spring fog before Pariah's tired eyes.

Pariah could only think about how pretty death's fanciful dance was as he slipped into the warm void, which had opened like a trap door beneath him. There had been no pain in his passing into the space outside of space-time, yet he fought to hold himself awake. He could not slip outside of time as long as death was aware of him. In all of this, Pariah's most frightening revelation was that he had come home. Death had come for Pariah in the time he would have lived to see if he had not been cast into the maelstrom of time's exiles.

After what Pariah could only think of as moments, he awoke strapped into a plastic tube. His back was poorly supported by a warm panel beneath the neon lights of the case, which prevented pariah from seeing beyond his cell. Pariah thought back to the Parson's teaching and did not remember having heard of these things. It hurt so much for Pariah to think about the loss of his parents, and as he did, time slipped away.

The lights had dimmed to let Pariah see death standing just beyond the confines of his plastic coffin.

"Who are you," Asked Pariah?

"Be I as much as your father and your son," replied death.

Pariah wiped a slim smile onto his face at the sly response. "Anybody ever tell you that you sound like Diogenes?"

"Yep," snapped death. "You deed."

Death couldn't have been more than five feet tall, wrapped in a dingy green robe, which had earlier appeared black. Pariah was happy that death had not pulled back the hood of his robe to reveal the flesh less face beneath it, yet he felt equally disappointed at being the denied the full show. It hadn't occurred to Pariah that he had been seeing Death's hands wave above the case which restrained him.

"Will I get to see the Parson and Mary here?"

"Parson? Nobody cares much for the welfare of mere workers, much less their spiritual well-being. This medical station is a compromise because it's too costly to ship new functionaries out here unless absolutely necessary."

"Then you are not Death?"

Death smiled, although Pariah only saw the movement of his hood. "Naw, but it's a cool name and I think I'll stick wit it."

"I be afeared to ask who you be." Pariah's old skill failed him, although it was not unusual to him. Black angels are beyond time; thus Pariah didn't think he'd be able to adapt to his environment.

"Ye can think o me as a fellow traveler, lost as much as ye be."

Pariah took a deep breath only then realizing that he was still breathing. "This be not the torments I 'spected o me grave. Tis hardly the place I though o ta spend eternity."

Death almost laughed, then looked down as though unable to complete the simple task even of a weak giggle. "You're a real mess. If such be not worse condemnation, you be still amongst the living. Such that life be lived here."

"Then why be I in this coffin 'ere?"

"Couldn't help but see your photon crystal. Fer the use o it, I'd be able to get us both out o this place."

"Do I get out of this cell if I do it?"

"Lord only knows I wouldn'a be willin' ta upset the league. Ya get out o the tube soon as ya be well enough, not withstanding."

"One o me attackers took me crystal to the surface o the moon."

Turning to a lighted panel on the far wall, Death replied," I know. Me ship be down there as well."

Feeling weak, Pariah relaxed into the warm stream of energy flowing across him. He had learned to draw his strength from around him in another land of another time. Death noticed Pariah's pull on the aging power systems of the tube and, indirectly, on the station as a whole. The lights grew weak and panels grew hot. Pariah grew strong, yet, tired.

The tube did not encircle Pariah when he awoke. Time still restrained Pariah, as did the tracking. He was unsure how much Death had found out about him in the plastic coffin, however, he was honored to have a friend. If not a friend, Death was at least an ally for this time. And yet the comfort Pariah found in his allegiance to Death was shattered by the knowledge that Death held secrets to the nature and structure of the device Pariah was desperately drawn to complete.

Death had taken Pariah to a small ship beneath the station while Pariah had slept. He seemed as eager to retrieve the crystalline structure as Pariah was compelled to collect it. Pariah couldn't help but question Death's motives. Would Death part with the power source to the device once he had it?

"I see y'er awake," Death commented. "There wasn't time to suit you up."

"Uh--ok," Slurred Pariah, too tired to care what Death had said.

In a moment, the ship had dropped free of the station and assumed a steep dive toward the foggy surface of Ganymede. Centuries of dumping onto the moon had reshaped the surface into a foggy replica of decimated Earth. Some plant life even appeared to grow in the equatorial region. Pariah could feel, and Death already knew, that Ganymede was not a welcoming world.

As a pilot, Death was a daredevil. He dropped the ship to within meters of the moon's soupy atmosphere before even trying to change course. Then Death pulled the shuttle onto its side to skim over the clouds. Pariah was afraid to look over his left shoulder and down into the towering stratocumulus clouds of Ganymede. Death didn't seem to care about his passenger's unobstructed view of the half dead moon.

Pariah tried to keep his eyes facing to the right and on that Death was doing. Death had taken the complex lock, the piece Pariah had come for, from the station and was using it to locate Pariah's lost prize. The method didn't make sense to Pariah; however, he was compelled to watch as not to look outward upon the dizzying heights. Whatever it was, Death controlled it by force of will. Death did not seem to have an easy time getting it to accept his commands, tensing up every so often when the light patterns did not match his intent. There were times when it looked like Death would crush the device with the force of anger in his slim hands.

Not knowing if he should speak, Pariah first felt, then saw a halo of yellow-green energies within a dense cloudbank. Pariah did not know the full power of the device he had been compelled to build across time, nor did he really know anything about it, however, somebody other than Death knew how to use it in this time. Perhaps this was the time when Pariah would have his answers. Before he spoke, something else appeared from the dread fog of bottomless time. Pariah knew that his mother had left this time.

"Target," Pariah squeezed out.

"What," Death began? Just looking up from the frustrating device was enough for him to see the bright sphere on the horizon plus realize that he was off course. He more threw than tossed the device to Pariah then made a series of sharp turns. "See what ya can make o dis junk."

Pariah looked the device over. In most places it was a rectangular mirror, yet colored tubes ran just beneath some parts of the shiny surface. Metallic gold, brass and black pentagons sat even with the surface breaking the reflection over such small parts of the surface that Pariah had to look for them to see them. It was smooth with the exception of the customary ridges around the edges.

It felt the power, which Pariah had absorbed from the healing tube, throbbing gently in Pariah's fingertips. Parts began to glow from within it until a stout and angular pattern of lines formed on the surface. Pariah could feel more than see that the pattern had some meaning, however, he could not read it. Yellow, green, blue, orange and white lines seemed to float in an eternal black void within the rectangular surface.

"Suit up," commanded Death. "Looks pretty, tastes deadly out there."

Unable to read Death's mind, Pariah couldn't really understand what Death had told him to do, but he didn't want to admit it. He put the device into his coat pocket, then looked around the cabin for a suit. Lost, yet not stupid, Pariah found four suits folded neatly inside of plastic cubes at the back of the cabin. Pariah almost panicked trying to get one of the cases open and Death noticed.

"Havin' troubles?"

Pariah tried to make the best of it, however, Death didn't have to look to see that Pariah's smile was a fake. "I seems to have lost th' key."

With the tap of a button Pariah couldn't see, Death sparked a small charge within one of the cases. The top panel cracked, breaking away into a million shards attached to an internal plastic membrane. It hadn't occurred to Pariah that the switch was on the panel in front of his seat where, hidden within a thousand possibilities, he'd never have found it.

"Dat should help you. D'ese ol' clunkers take a while ta git used ta."

"Thanks," Pariah replied, putting his hand through the mesh between him and the suit. He was afraid that he would get cut on the shards, however, he was more afraid that Death would see him as he was. Deep down, he knew that Death was just as out of place. Both Pariah and Death spoke a mixture of many accents, each unable to discern his native tongue from amongst them.

Wanting less to ask than to find out, Pariah was consumed by one question above all else. If Pariah was the timeater, then what was Death?

The small shuttle drifted to a sudden stop in the dusty surface of Ganymede. Death had waited until the last moment to rotate the ship into its upright position and, had Pariah really been aware of it, he'd have been driven to hysterics. As it was, Pariah rode the ship's twists and turns, fastened to the metallic deck by gravity generators in his shoes, as though he was in empty space. Although he didn't show it, Death was impressed.

"After while, gravity gets be a drag," Death stated while unbuckling his harness.

Pariah smiled, yet, Death didn't see it. "What don't?"

"Me ship's just out sight. She's got good shape."

"We still got get the crystal to run her."

Death was dressed, over his dingy robe, up to the helmet before he replied. "Crystal is on ship. Why else take crystal?"

"You know who took it."

"Had no way knowing the strap me find be that bad. Shocked hard moment we reach perihelion. Crash nearly hit station four year ago."

Pariah snapped down his helmet, matching Death's movements. "Do you have the crystal, then?"

Death released the hatch on the starboard side causing a moment of explosive decompression. "Mate have device. Need q-tech to install it."

"Q-tech"

"Quantum Technician. You build drive unit from parts. Must have good skills for do that."

It wasn't clear to Pariah if he should play along or admit to the truth. He had little choice other than going with the game at least long enough to recover the device. Pariah had recovered the one part he'd come for, however, jump would be impossible until he recovered the device. It even occurred to Pariah that he could leave the device and stay in one time for all time. Only the tracking refused him solace.

"You needs me to put the crystal in? That's it, right?"

The channel between Pariah and Death went dead for a short pause while Death contacted his associate in the ship. Pariah used the time to contemplate how he was going to react to having been led on by Death's game. Having never been a vengeful man, Pariah's only thoughts were that he could still be walking into a trap. Death signaled for the massive ship's door to open, however, Pariah would not enter until his query had been answered.

"Deals this," Death began. " Ya put in these crystal so's we can goes home an ya get yourself a lift."

Pariah entered the ship through the huge airlock door. The fog cleared on the inside of the ship and he could see just how large of a ship he was in. It was large enough to effect Hexstation's orbit. Caution compelled Pariah to deny curiosity as to what such a large ship, larger than the cities Pariah knew, could be carrying. Death was a comforting adversary.

Death's compatriot was a tall, slender man with flowing silver hair. He wore some kind of a hard uniform, like a blue shell molded over his body, leaving only his head exposed. Thin as he was, he must have been a strong man to move in such a stiff, hard suit. He looked to Death for a signal to hand Pariah's satchel back to Pariah. Before he actually returned the bag containing the device, he took Pariah to a large brass tube, about 4-foot in diameter, running from floor to ceiling in the center of the ship.

Death pushed the release on the wall, and the tube slid down into the lower deck to reveal an inner tube. The inner cylinder was a mosaic of colored crystal and Plexiglas. At a point, nearly 6 feet from the bottom, there was a frame much like the device Pariah was building. This new device wasn't much like the one Pariah had traced through time and space, but it was close enough around the crystal's containment frame.

While Pariah pulled the frame apart to install his crystal, Death and his comrade argued in a language foreign to Pariah.

"This new Navigator better be better than the old one," warned the comrade.

Death looked over Pariah's shoulder with distrust in his mind. "He will be."

Comrade pushed Death's head around so that he could look Death in the eyes. " The customer doesn't want excuses. Do you want the league coming down on us?"

"Calm down," Death warned. "You'll scare the q-tech. Without him, a class 5 couldn't move this frame."

"All I have to say for you is this better work or kill you. There will not be anything left for the league, or the customer, when I get through with you."

Pariah then cut in without really noticing that they were listening to him. "New power source installed and running."

Comrade looked into Death's eyes with a small gasp.

Death answered Pariah for both of them. "I thoughts that photons crystals be some kind of quantum's memory."

It wasn't easy for Pariah to come out of it, yet he thought up a reply. "It's the heart of the ship. New crystal makes everything new."

Impatience took Comrade to the bridge of the ship where he prepared for the jump. Death stayed with Pariah. Pariah didn't even notice Comrade's absence.

"Me suppose ya has to be a q-tech to get these stuff."

Pariah knew that his bluff was weak and that he'd have to leave as soon as the chance presented itself. "Ya never stops learnings."

Suddenly, the large tube closed over the crystal chamber with a loud slam. Both men in the chamber turned to face the closed cylinder. Death dropped to the floor while Pariah tied his satchel back on. Shock from the launch, at which Death swore in a dozen alien tongues, knocked Pariah to the floor.

Death got up and ran for the bridge as the ship entered deep space to ready for the actual jump. Pariah would then have jumped save for two things. He had not recovered the entire device and a new presence knew of his presence. The ship had a mind of its own now and it knew Pariah was there. It was not the ship's own mind, yet, it was the mind of a man inside the ship thinking for the ship.

Then the actual jump happened.

In an instant, the ship ceased to exist except for the memory of it and the possibility that it could be. Pariah knew the feeling although he'd never been inside of something, which was doing it intentionally. It presented Pariah with a chance he thought he'd never have. He was drawn to go home to the Parson and Marry.

"Pariah," came the ship's booming voice. "You don't know what you're doing!"

But, it was the voice of a man so Pariah didn't heed it. Pariah took his satchel, plus the piece in his pocket, and jumped to the place where he was most comfortable. Even the tracking couldn't stop him. He left the crystal where it was.

February 1999

The old chapel in which Pariah had spent his boyhood had experienced the cycle of seasons like most other places on earth. However, looking back on it, Pariah always remembered it as it appeared in winter. He had arrived in the winter and departed in the winter, and it was what he associated most strongly with the chapel.

It was for this reason that the scene he stepped into caught him off-guard. The freshness of the chilly air, so unlike the artificial, recycled atmosphere he stepped out of, was the first thing that caught him. Though a nip still hung in the air, the world was springing forth with a fresh beauty that stunned him. Pink buds hung on every tree, and he realized that this must be spring.

Before him stood the low-hung archway with the weathered wooden door leading to all he ever loved. He knew that a few steps forward would afford him the opportunity he had so long sought in vain, but he hung back with a nervous tension. He found himself apprehensive of meeting his adopted parents again. Would they remember him, or reject him, as did all other people of all other times. Pariah realized that, like most people he had ever met, he was suspicious of any opportunity that seemed too easy.

While he paced back and forth, trying to summon his courage, he found his mind drifting to the events of the immediate past or future in this case. The man, who allowed himself to be called death, was, of course, nothing of the sort. But he was more than merely human, for he had recognized Pariah's existence as easily as if they were peers of a sort. Stranger than this, however, was that the craft he had just left had been alive, and had called him by name. Abandoning these bizarre thoughts as being another part of a bizarre life that often resembled a dream more than reality, Pariah approached the chapel.

As he did, he heard the sound of laughter, and caught a glimpse of the bulky form of Mary chasing a giggling child across the lawn shouting playful endearments like, "I'll getcha' ye little scoundrel," and, "My, but you do run fast fer having such wee legs."

Pariah was stunned. Unlike most people, there were no barriers between his conscious and subconscious. He could remember every detail of every moment of his life, and he remembered this one quite well. That was him that Mary was chasing. He was no more than two years old. It was the Sabbath, and Parson was resting, while Mary was playing on this bright spring day with the baby. In a few moments, a stranger would approach them, interrupting their play. That stranger was him.

Never had he felt more locked into fate as he did now. He saw himself through the child's eyes as he approached Mary and asked her if he could rest a while in the chapel. Mary greeted him briskly and cheerfully.

"And what be yer name, stranger?" she asked, as she led him into the chapel. He was two people at once, experiencing this event as a child and a man. The child resented his arrival, as it interrupted his fun. The man struggled with the question for a moment. Here he was no outcast.

"My Christian name is John," the man replied. Mary laughed.

"'Tis a good name. We named our little one the same."

The child wondered at a man sharing the same name with him. The man wondered at the child's wonderment.

Someone once stated that you can never go back again, and until this moment, Pariah had thought that to be the truth. He had been cursed in more ways than he could easily count, but he had this blessing: in the moments of his life that he felt the most joy and security he was able to relive from the simple joy of a child, and the experience of a man.

Pariah passed the afternoon watching himself play about with Mary on the lawn eating the simple but wholesome food he was offered. He could not interact directly with himself. There was nothing to interact with, for they were the same person.

That night, Parson insisted that he stay the night with them, and having nowhere else to go, Pariah accepted.

The man and the child fell asleep simultaneously, and both woke with a start at midnight. The child did not know why he had woken, and cried for Mary. The man had awoken because of a sudden jar to his senses, which was something like the tracking.

On instinct alone, he left the chapel and wandered through the cold night. The moon was full, and he could see his way through the forest surprisingly well. The sense that compelled him was aimless, unlike the tracking, but there was an urgency about it that made it difficult to think of anything else. Ahead of him he recognized a familiar form wandering in the same aimless, frantic fashion as he. He rushed toward her, and spun her around to look into her face. She shrieked in surprise and terror. Her face was the same as always with one exception: her eyes where not the cold orbs that he so often recalled. Rather they were large and frightened.

"Who... who are you? Where am I?" she asked in a trembling voice. Pariah searched her face for some hint of deception, of playacting another, tired role. There were none. She was honestly lost and confused. What is more, she had no recognition of him. As he searched her face, she did likewise.

"You... don't belong here either, do you?" she questioned. Pariah shook his head sadly. He could think of nothing to say no questions to ask. All strength left his body, and he slumped to the ground. She stood timidly by for a moment, and then, hesitantly, she touched his shoulder.

"Can you help me?"

Pariah felt the urging welling up within him. As much as he wanted to stay here, he did not belong, and apparently, neither did she. In a very few moments, he would be rejected by this time, and jettisoned into another.

He rose from the ground and gently took her hand.

"I will send you to wherever you belong if you will do a favor for me," he spoke.

"What favor?" she asked.

"I will collect on it in time," he replied, and in a flash they were gone.

March 1999

It had occurred to Pariah that his mother, much like Pariah himself, didn't really belong anywhere. She didn't even seem to know that he was her son yet. Irony caught Pariah as he jumped through the moments as a quantum probability curve. As his mother had come to Pariah on his first jump, so had he come to her on her first jump. And yet, she was not a timeater.

Pariah knew that his mother had been taken from close to the time he had just left. She had a wide-eyed innocence that compelled Pariah to protect her and be there for her, as she would not be there for him. Unless Pariah had already been born, he knew that she had to go back to her own time. However, Pariah did not have that much control over the jumps. Out of love, he released his mother and trusted God would send her to the place where she was supposed to be.

Jumps were almost instantaneous and Pariah thought it odd that he'd even had the time to think while he was inextant. Something about whatever his mother was seemed to make time forgive him his faults as long as the two were together. Each was an outcast alone. Together, they were time's children.

He dissolved again into time, feeling the tracking lock onto his mind and obliterate any thought he had which was outside of this sense. The tracking left Pariah no doubt that it would do his thinking for him. Time seemed to be important to the tracking even though Pariah could move through time in any direction he was drawn in. It was odd to Pariah that any force great enough to move a man through time would even understand the idea of hurrying.

Pariah flashed into being inside of a cold, damp cavern. It was a new experience for him. His enthropic state matched the environment into which he had landed and, aside from the hidden nagging of the tracking, Pariah felt that he was a part of this time as much as any native of it. He nearly spoke aloud the forbidden word 'normal.'

The air was stale and musty as though mortals had not inhaled it in centuries or more. Pariah took short-lived comfort in again being amongst the mere mortals even though he was nowhere near home. Without light, Pariah could see around the cave with the help of a luminous fungus. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was well below sea level, wherever he was, and that somebody was coming. Somebody he had to avoid.

Scratching in the walls grew louder by the second. Pariah felt the panic flow through him, yet he maintained his cold composure. He had landed inside of an archeological dig. More to the point, he knew that he had landed inside a crypt that was about to be excavated. The tracking told him this much and that he was not to meet the archeologist by telling him nothing about this time.

Pariah's cave was unremarkable from any other subterranean passage. Whatever was within the cave had been built deep inside it, so Pariah rushed away from the walled up entrance and into the darkness. Although the cave itself had not been man made, care had been taken to seal off any side passages that did not follow the one permitted path. The fungus barely lit Pariah's way along the disused walkway. Once, the path had been clear and smooth, however, centuries had covered the floor tiles with limestone growths until it was barely noticeable. Pariah saw it because he knew it was there.

Light at the end of the tunnel nearly blinded Pariah as he heard the men break through at the beginning of the tunnel; Yet Pariah did not break his stride to run into the light. He stepped gently into the voluminous cavern where he got his first look at the huge crystalline pyramid. It glowed so Brightly that Pariah's eyes hurt. If not for the force of the tracking, Pariah would have turned from the structure and run away.

Footsteps echoed through the caves. Pariah could not make out the words spoken by the archeologists. It was as though the tracking wanted him to avoid these men so much that it had forbidden him to even speak their language. Luck would only hold them back, in jubilant celebration of their achievement, for a short time before curiosity drove them deeper than Pariah even desired to go.

They had a choice that only mortals knew and Pariah envied them. He charged at the structure, finding that the door was already open and inviting to all comers. The light was not as bright inside the structure.

It looked as thought the entire building had been cast of ice, yet it was warm. There were no sharp corners on anything. The hallways were about 7 feet wide, nine feet tall, and made only gradual turns. Pariah could not tell if he was short on breath from panic or from the artificial atmosphere within the structure.

The tracking drove him deeper through the nondescript pathways deeper into the alien bottle. Pariah would otherwise have been afraid of getting lost for all time within the fifty-story behemoth. Scale lost meaning to Pariah and the building was a thousand and more stories tall in his mind before he reached the room he was driven to enter. It was a room full of translucent tube shaped caskets containing whole families frozen in time.

Pariah walked on top of some caskets embedded into the floor and between others that were spread around the room like tables. A glowing panel on the far wall, obscured by metal and crystal shapes, led Pariah to believe that these people were anything but dead. They had landed this whole building inside of a cave.

The tracking would tell him nothing about it so he guessed, allowing his guesses to fill the gaps that the tracking considered too unimportant to fill. For Pariah, it would have been only natural for the tracking to demand something within a casket; however, it wanted something inside the panel. Pariah did not know the device and feared pulling the part out. The thought of killing those people was more important to Pariah than the thin, silvery bar of metal, which the tracking demanded. They mattered so much to Pariah that he did not even touch the device.

Instead, he hid amongst what little translucent material he could find in the room. Pariah did not have to be told how close the archeologists were to know that they would be in the room in under a minute. He left no trace to give himself away aside from his own body snuggled behind a gold and ruby box at one end of the room. The tracking would not let him leave without the part he had come for.

A shadow formed on the far wall, just barely in Pariah's field of vision. Several other shadows flowed into it, dancing about with the non-descript form of a black flame. Pariah could not make out the shape of the archeologists, but the tracking burned within him to drive him into completing his task. It Had become a battle of wills. The battle ended when the first shape crossed the threshold and entered the room.

It was Pariah's first encounter with a decidedly non-human entity. The arriving explorers were silvery creatures, just barely shorter than Pariah was, with four arms and long hair. Their eyes were a deep blue, blended with black like a bottomless pool in the endless sea. Pariah could not get over those deep, mysterious eyes.

One of the creatures saw Pariah. He approached the enchanted Pariah gently. Pariah did not understand his words, as the tracking had forbidden him the required skill, and grew more uneasy as the creature approached. The tracking burned ever hotter within Pariah for him to flee even as it forbade him to slip into time. There was a danger somewhere in the copper robed creatures, which Pariah could neither see nor escape. All the while, the creature spoke gently at Pariah.

A bright flash caught Pariah's eye. His tuned reflexes reacted before Pariah knew what had happened, and he was airborne. Pariah saw the startled creature look around the room for the source of the blast, while he grabbed the key from its socket in the wall panel. The action was so well choreographed by the tracking that Pariah didn't have to see himself grab the key with his right hand while watching the creature to his left.

Pariah awoke amidst a hail of musket fire, with the key still grasped tightly in his right hand. He was lying within a shallow fog clinging to the rocky ground. Voices shouted out, screamed and were silent a moment later. Putting the key into his pouch, Pariah dared to raise his head slightly above the fog bank. Battlements had been built from the large stones littering the ground. Men shouted and whispered rushed instructions that Pariah could not make out.

April 1999

Battle is a very old and very well used tradition. Men had been engaging in it for as long as Pariah could trace. Landing in the middle of one was no new situation for him. To an extent it was harrowing, but he took comfort in the fact that probability would not allow him to die until he had completed his mission, whatever it was.

His well-honed senses immediately told him which direction the fire was coming from, and he dove for the nearest cover. The nearest cover just happened to be behind a rock wall where tattered soldiers were loading muskets in a frantic, hurried way. They did not seem to be particularly surprised that a stranger had just dived over the wall and was now huddling in it's shelter, but this was usual. All men saw him as commonplace, not of concern. He was the proverbial "normal guy" everyone ignores.

Saving his skin was the first priority, and now that he was more or less sheltered, he began to consider the NEXT priority: finding the item that he came for. The tracking was, of course, pulling him, but he ignored it for a moment in favor of another thought: if he could find his mother in this time, he might be able to finally find some answers. He had caught a brief glance of her as one of the frozen bodies on his last jump, but interaction had been impossible. In any regular time, interaction was improbable at best. She was always a part of a larger group, which made approaching her a wishful dream. It might be that he would NEVER be able to collect on the favor she owed him.

Pariah considered the episode he had just left. It discouraged him greatly. He had had no desire to pull the key causing the death of the still bodies in the pseudo-coffins, yet in the end the tracking left him no choice. Like it or not he was forced to elevate the mission above his own moral senses. He wondered how free he really was.

"You seem a wee bit troubled, friend," came a kindly voice beside him.

Pariah turned startled. One of the soldiers had turned from what he was doing in the heat of the battle and was now, for all intents and purposes, trying to engage him in a friendly conversation. This, however, was not the most surprising thing. The most surprising thing was that this man was talking to him at all.

Having no idea how to respond to this man, Pariah stared at him in silence.

"Sorry, friend, I didna' mean to startle ya'. The name's Joseph Blecky. I'm one of them they call the 'century-men'."

While the soldier was speaking, the sounds of battle around them faded, and the universe seemed frozen in inactivity.

"You've... stopped time?" Pariah managed.

"No me friend, we are simply conversin' OUTSIDE of time, there's a difference ya know."

"But why? Why go to the trouble of suspending time?" Pariah wondered.

"Is yer'... what did you call it... 'trackin' bothering you now?"

Pariah realized it wasn't. "What ARE you?" Pariah asked, bewildered. Joseph laughed.

"I told ye, I be a century-man. And you," he added with satisfaction, "Are a timeater."

The word timeater meant something to Pariah, but he was not sure what. He knew it was what he was; it was what made him leap randomly through time, while most people traveled in a steady line from their births to their deaths. But what was this 'century-man'?

As if in answer to his question, Joseph spoke up, "Ye seem a bit shy, lad, so I'll explain myself. I am one of those people who lives for several centuries at a time. I myself live five hundred years, two hundred and ninety-three of which I've yet to live."

"But how do you know when you'll die?" Pariah asked.

"Well, ya see, I've lived it once or twice now. That's the other thing about being a century-man. You can live your life over, or even jump around to points during your life. Let's say I wanted to jump to my hundredth birthday. One thought and I'd be blowin' them candles out."

Pariah's head swam with this. It was difficult for him to comprehend the leap through time, but not space. In a way, he felt sorry for this man. He could not imagine being confined to five hundred years of time. It seemed so short a period to experience over and over again. In another sense, Pariah envied him. He had a stability and attachment to the real world that Pariah could never have.

"Why are you talking to me. People don't notice me."

"Well, lad, the fact is that you aren't real to other people. You are like a spirit who flits through time. I can break my attachment to time and so I notice people like you. Besides, we have met before. You told me you had been here, so I knew where to find you."

"I don't remember ever meeting you," Pariah said in confusion. He thought he would remember such a meeting, but his memories did not flow from past to future. They flowed from event to event. Nor did he remember the people he met, oftentimes, because, just as he was not important to people, they were not important to him.

"Aye, but when you did meet me, you told me we would meet here. It took me 30 years to find you, but I have," he smiled a friendly smile which filled Pariah with a warm feeling. He was not used to people caring.

"Why go to all the trouble of searching for me, then?" Pariah asked.

"Well a fella's got to do somethin' with his time. Plus, we be two of a kind, you and I. It is nice to have a mate to talk with."

Pariah thought about their similarities. He thought about the various 'outsiders' he had met that did not conform to the set state of one dimensional time travel. Then it struck him.

"If you are a century-man, and I am a time-eater, then what is my mother?" Pariah asked excitedly, eager to have this question answered.

"Yer' mother..." Joseph said slowly, as if rolling the thought around in his mind, "Now you mentioned your mother before, I think. Said she follows you around playing different people in time."

"That's right," Pariah said earnestly, "I can never tell if she is just playing a part, or actually thinks she is that person."

"Well now," Joseph considered, "She might be- and this is only a thought, mind you- she might be a spirit."

"A spirit?" Pariah questioned in bewilderment.

"Aye, lad, a ghost flitting through time."

"I... don't understand."

"Nor do I, son, but then, I don't understand myself either," Joseph paused, as if listening to something else in the stillness of non-time. "You best be getting' on with yer' search lad," he eventually said with an air of finality. As soon as the words were felt, the violence of the battlefield erupted full on them. Joseph turned to loading his musket, as if Pariah didn't even exist. Pariah was too confused to attempt to communicate with him again, as he seemed to be ignoring him with the rest of the crowd.

Focusing on the tracking, Pariah followed his silent guide to the west, dodging from tree to fence to hole in the ground to avoid getting hit. A full day passed that way until night brought a stop to the firing. Pariah walked wearily on through a dense forest so black in the night he could see nothing, and would have stopped but for the tracking.

As the morning broke, he trudged up to a lone farmhouse in a clearing in the woods. There, in the yard, was his mother feeding chickens. She was alone and standing before him. It was his perfect opportunity to approach her and finally know for certain the truth about himself and her, and the world in which they lived. He hesitated, remembering what Joseph had told him. An incredible weariness came over him, and with it, the certainty that there was no longer any point in pursuing this answer. He plodded past her in the morning stillness and into the farmhouse. The tracking guided him unerringly to a small cupboard in which sat a vile of some luminescent liquid. This was the item he needed. He took it and disappeared.

May 1999

To Pariah, it should have seemed that the world disappeared and he remained, yet, it never did. Pariah felt and thought that he left the world. The world beyond continued while spooks and spectors like Pariah danced about through destiny. Time tossed him about like an amateur ballerina with skill lacking only experience.

Another moment, time so short as to escape measurable length, and Pariah was again solid. Each jump was the length of a single thought on the inside. To the reality which held even the 'century men,' the jumps could be of unlimited length both in space and time.

Pariah had never collected a fluid as part of the device. All the parts to this point had been mechanical. He slipped the vial into his pouch while his tired eyes adjusted to the bright light around him. Every part of the room had been painted bright white so that the bright light disoriented Pariah. Had Pariah not known better, he's have felt that somebody had built this place just to trap him.

A door appeared just long enough to open and Pariah was confused. Somebody is always around when pariah actualizes, yet, nobody could possibly be in the empty room. Pariah moved through the door into another empty room. A sudden blast shook gravity loose from its merciless grip on Pariah and Pariah leapt with the little friction left between him and the floor.

Through a shattered bulkhead, Pariah floated outward and over a countryside village. Time moved so slowly that the tracking could not speak inside of Pariah's head. There was no air in the strange place, yet pariah only felt that his breathing was labored when he thought of it. Moving with the force of his thoughts, Pariah quickly learned to fly through the alien terrain.

In the widest street beneath him, Pariah caught sight of a pale-green robed Death marching cautiously through the airless silence. Pariah's shadow was as wide as the lifelessly still street. It was not odd to Pariah when he saw the great expanse of his leathery wings etched with darkness into the sunburned dust beneath him. More than a bird, Pariah was a dragon stalking death as death had stalked him.

Pariah arched his armored back, turning wildly as to come in behind Death. Death knew that Pariah was there without seeing him. Dense clouds formed just behind and above Pariah on Death's cue. Lightning, from Death's magical prowess, danced madly across Pariah's back while Pariah dove at Death's still form. As Pariah passed from that world to the next, his only thoughts were to hold his dive true to Death's location. Crashing to the ground on top of him, Pariah took Death back with him.

A bright blue-white flash jolted through pariah, dying out as it faded to a pastel green. It was the second time that Death had apparently killed Pariah. Again Pariah awoke in a plexiglass cylinder with Death standing over him. This time it was Death who was surprised.

"We got ta stop meetin' like thus," Pariah groaned.

Death would have smiled, again, if he had known how. "How does ya keep doin' that?"

"I open me mouth and the words come out. Same as you."

Pariah's vision cleared up so that he could see technicians scrambling about behind Death. Only about half of the specialists were human, however, Pariah wasn't afraid. Joseph Blecky had convinced Pariah that he would be effectively immortal for as long as the tracking drove him onward. And Pariah hadn't yet noticed the absence of the tracking.

A tall lizard scanned pariah with a wand not unlike the tube Pariah had picked up in his previous jump. The case containing Pariah did not open until the lizard gave the machine permission. It was cleaner than the station, around Pariah's tube, and in much better repair. Something told Pariah that it was actually an earlier time which baffled him ever so slightly. Death remembered the future as clearly as Pariah did.

"Ye knows," began Death," that ya shouldn'a be surf'n ugly. Ye could--should'a shockened hard."

"Ye knows I has no idea what yer talkin about?"

Death pointed a ghastly thin, dark finger at a slot in the coffin which Pariah occupied. "Ye forgot yer mirror. Raw data into yer brain can kill, ye know?"

Standing over Pariah's head, a furry creature beeped, barked and whistled something at Death. Pariah sat up to see what was making the noise, yet he was still too weak for such exertion. Death did not look at the creature, however, Death responded in a way that Pariah could understand.

"I meant to pay for the game. He'll get his royalties. Calm down. It's not like this guy's easy to find.

The Furry doctor began chattering back at Death, however, Pariah's collapse back into the padded mesh of the tube broke up the argument. Pariah jumped into sleep thinking that he was one of the few men who had ever lived and also stalked death. Death, feared by other mortals, was a traveling companion of Pariah.

Pariah was alone with Death in the darkened control room when he awoke. Death noticed Pariah begin to stir and helped him to a sitting position inside of the opened tube. It was a puzzle to Pariah if he couldn't stand up because he was still too tired or because he was too weak. Death sat beside Pariah on the top of a silvery tube projecting two feet or so from the wood grain floor.

"I knows I shouldn'a, but I looked through yer crystal," Death said. "You was gone and I didn'a has any idear when you was comming back."

Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Pariah looked at Death as though he had something to say. But, all Pariah did was look. Death was talking to Pariah and Pariah thought he could learn about the device if he listened more than spoke.

Death turned his cold, red eyes down to face the floor. "This game of yours is one a the best we has round here. I wasn'a lying when I told the elder I was gonna find ya an give you your money. To you all, I may look like a monster, but I has a heart just like yours."

"Does you still has the crystal?" Pariah queried.

"First think I did was to gets a new photon crystal. I puts yours in a nice safe place fur you. It be right in me bag."

Pariah had no idea why the tracking would want a game. "Do you finds anything else of interesting in there?"

Death's actions would have implied insult if he knew the meaning or use of the term. "Its not liking I goes through people's stuff."

The tracking didn't seem interested in the crystal. It seemed to still be in shock from the game Pariah had played with Death, yet, the sensations had begun to well up deep within Pariah. Pariah was almost afraid to get the crystal because it would surely lead him to jump again into the limitless void beyond space and time. To pariah there was neither a difference nor a meaning to either space or time. Both held Pariah in contempt.

"I does not seems to has my stuff on me. Is there being a place I can goes to gets it back?"

"You stuffs in the safes here. You carries some expensive hardwares. Dee council keeps that stuffs safe."

"When wills I be able to reclaims my stuffs?"

"You wills wants to gets better first. I says about a days for that. You all cans gets your stuffs anytimes you wants."

"Wells--I guess I is going to bees here awhile."

"I has loaded your displays for you all. It bees the leats I cans do for you."

"Thank you," Pariah replied as though he had understood.

Against his will, as if he was in control of anything as large as destiny, Pariah fell into sleep. It was an odd thing for him to do and he accepted that it was not a natural process. Maybe Death had flipped some unseen switch. It was not beyond belief that these aliens had drugged weak Pariah.

A voice beyond Pariah's voice called to him from the cloudy void of dreams. It was an unusual experience for Pariah to be so imprisoned. On the outside, the aliens had Pariah under unending observation. Someone knew where Pariah was at all times and this prevented even the might of time from casting Pariah out. The voice was not that of time.

From the fog, a man in bright white robes stepped into Pariah's train of thought, bringing to a halt all of Pariah's wanderings. He had a face, beneath the glowing cloak, which was familiar to Pariah. The blinding brilliance of the man's clothes first broke to reveal the face of the Parson which then became that of Pariah himself. This Pariah was at once older and younger than Pariah. Pariah knew him only as the tracking.

"Choose," He commanded in a voice stronger than gravity.

July 1999

"What?" Pariah asked in disbelief, the word being quite alien to him, "I don't understand."

"Choose," the tracking spoke with mechanical intonations, as if it was less of a command, and more of an inescapable force. Pariah sat in stunned silence, working the thought through his head. As this occurred Pariah felt a sensation that terrified him as much as that word. His thoughts seemed to take time, REAL time to formulate. The passage of time was something that had not had meaning before this, and it seemed like hours, or days, or years, before Pariah was able to speak again. When he did, his words rushed forth in an angry torrent.

"CHOOSE?!? You have stripped me of will, of decision, of life as any real man would know. I am PARIAH! The outcast! Swept along by a force I cannot understand or control. I have spent an eternity this way, and now, when I have nothing left in me but helplessness, you ask me to choose? Who are you that you can command this of a man? I choose not to choose!"

"Ah," the tracking spoke, with the air of mock enlightenment, "A fool."

Pariah awoke.

Upon his awakening, Pariah found himself alone. He still sensed that his movements were being tracked. In the center of the room sat his fully assembled device.

His body rebelled with great pains when he pulled himself from his plastic womb. It triggered a familiar memory. He ignored it and approached the device. He refused to touch it at first, walking lightly around it and inspecting it at every angle. It was not a pretty thing to behold. Archaic devices attached to mind boggling technology, bits of junk, and costume jewelry. At it's center was the beautifully simple crucifix Parson had graced his hands with an untold amount of time from now. The cross seemed somehow marred; perverted by the apparatus surrounding it. Next to it sat the vial of luminous fluid he had obtained on his last adventure. This puzzled Pariah. Death seemed to construct and activate the device without the fluid.

With trepidation, Pariah reached an anxious hand to touch the device; not quite believing it's tangibility. As his fingers brushed its edge, it hummed to life, the crucifix lighting up. He jumped back as if shocked. A recognizable shape materialized atop the device, looking absurd in the gloomy metal-lined room.

"How may I assist you?" it asked pleasantly.

"What are you?" Pariah whispered, barely able to find his voice.

"I am 'Guide.' My purpose is clearly stated in my name," the thing responded.

"But you're a chipmunk," Pariah said, recognizing the creature from his boyhood days in the forest.

"I assure you, my present form is inconsistent enough to be noticeable."

"What?"

"If I had appeared as something consistent with your present surroundings, you would not have noticed me. If I had appeared as something astoundingly bizarre and inconsistent, your mind would have rejected me. As it is, I am now noticeable to you."

"Where did you come from?"

"You ARE full of questions, aren't you?" the chipmunk leapt deftly from the device and scuttled up to Pariah's shoulder, it's tiny claws pricking him as it went. It spoke into his ear, as if suspicious of eavesdroppers.

"I am generated by the OM complex, the device you have so carefully constructed. I can be seen, heard, and felt only by you at this moment. I could reveal myself to others, but they have no need of a guide. You seem to."

"In that case, what in the universe is this 'OM complex' for? Why have I spent the better part of my existence building the cursed thing?"

"Ah, that," Guide regarded the question in an offhand manner, "The 'OM complex' is many things. It is a projector of ideas, an accelerator of destiny, a petty toy. It's actually just a means to an end, specifically, your end. It is better experienced than explained." Guide jumped from Pariah's shoulder and skittered across the room, taking stance on the plastic tube that had recently housed Pariah. It began cleaning itself, licking its forepaws and rubbing them back across its little head.

"Death said it was a game."

Guide laughed.

"Many things must be games to one who calls himself 'Death'," then it sobered up, "Some believe life to be a game, whilst others think it to be a struggle, or at best, a poorly told joke. This makes life no less profound."

"So the truth of life is relative?"

Guide's visage darkened.

"That is a fool's philosophy. Human perception is relative. Truth is concrete, if a bit beyond your comprehension."

"Then what is this 'destiny' of mine that the device is to fulfill?"

"Talking to ourselves, then, are we?" Death's voice came from behind. Pariah spun around in surprise. Death seemed to be smiling. Pariah tried to think of a response, but gave up and said nothing. After a moment of silence, Death's face resumed an emotionless look.

"I's never do express humor well. Hark, I've gotern bad news fer ya. It seemses the league caught up wich me. Monees a mite low. I seems ta remember you a decent Q-tech and navigator. Ya helps me out on dis next job, and I gets you yer pay. Ya in, or no?"

Pariah glanced uncertainly at the chipmunk on the tube. The chipmunk caught his glance and shrugged, inasmuch as a chipmunk can.

"It's your choice, ace," Guide commented, "But I assure you, you are perfectly capable of assisting this... individual."

"Then I am allowed the choice? What of my 'destiny?'" Pariah asked Guide.

"I knows of no 'destiny.'" Death commented.

"'Man chooses his path, but the Lord directs his steps,'" Guide quoted.

"I will be comin' with ya, ifn' ya's lets me bring the 'game,'" Pariah told Death.

August 1999

Death puzzled a moment before answering. "Da game is being a big part oh da cargo fer this jump. I is expecting ta ship one billions units sin this hop alone."

"Ya's duplicated the game?"

"Sure. Ya being an odd sort of mans. Da game just being code insides that dare photon crystals."

Pariah pulled back his line of question to avoid looking incompetent to Death. He didn't know this technology as well as Death did and he hadn't understood what Death had meant by 'the game.' It was not that Pariah feared losing this job. In truth, Pariah did not know what his job would be, yet, Death knew things Pariah needed to know.

"I is hoping fer a rematch, ya knows," Pariah replied.

"If'n ya thinks we's have da times," Death responded. "What is bweing your class? What level does you flies at?"

Unwilling to expose his ignorance, and without the tracking to enlighten him, Pariah tried to sidestep the question. "What evers ya being needed."

"If'n I upsets the league, they's send a class 5 back ta da days I was borned and sells me to a Quita butcher. Yous don't has a league registry, does ya?"

"Not yet," Pariah confidently answered.

"Da last strap I kept, he shocked hard an I's lost me cargo where ya found me. He been no good. I seened ya jump from me hopper so as I's knows ya can do it. I's cans not affords a registered navigator."

"I's not lets ya down."

Death slapped himself on the forehead, struck with sudden understanding. "I's gots it now. Goods navigators cans buy planets afters four or so jumps. Yous not need the monies from dis game if I's gets ya into da league."

Pariah was unsure about playing Death's line of thought and tried not to commit. "Everys Little bits helps."

"Ya has a small cargoes dis time." Death began. "Abouts 12 freighters."

Cautiously, Pariah moved into his own line of question. "You has ta make up ta da league fer da ship yous lost."

"I gots the hopper. Me cargo was lossed."

"An I gets me league registry plus my monies?"

"As in I said. You bees legal after doin' dis trick."

Death, mistaking Pariah's inquisitiveness for hesitation, nearly dragged Pariah to the hopper. Pariah was surprised that the shadowy, stick man could so easily lift him off the warm wooden decks and drag him airborne through the lighted tubes. He was not, however, so surprised that he failed to pick up the OM complex and sling it over his shoulder. Every intersection of the flourescent green pipe through which Death pulled Pariah was so much like all the others that Pariah became lost in the dreamworld around him.

Somewhere in the labyrinth, Pariah was again allowed to make use of his own feet to traverse the aluminum flooring. It was so brightly reflective that Pariah could not tell that he was on a solid surface. Lime illumination came from the top of the tunnel, circling overhead and down to the flattened floor beneath Pariah's feet. There was nothing but light.

Guide, the deft and wise chipmunk, darted around the hall so rapidly that he had to circle Pariah to avoid outrunning him. When Guide again ran up pariah, sitting on Pariah's left shoulder, nothing but the dark form of Death showed in the unearthly light. Pariah learned fear as he thought about the absurd concept of getting separated from Death and lost forever in the maze. Only his intellect believed that Death would not abandon him. And, how much did Guide know about these ships?

Footsteps smacked hard against the smooth alloy liberating the slightest taps as they moved along through the passages. Pariah had to listen hard to hear that there was sound in the huge structure. And Pariah missed the guidance of the tracking. In this place, there was silence within and without.

They came to a stop after an indeterminate time, even as time was an unfamiliar idea to Pariah. Pariah only knew that his nerves grew uneasy without the rapid transitions of his former reality. A moment later, Death had Pariah inside a lift of some kind and they were off again.

Unable to stand the silence any longer, Pariah spoke out." My grandmas, whats a big ships ya has here."

Death's reflexive action would have been surprise if he had known emotion as Pariah did. Unable to take anyway but seriously a remark without corporeal logic, Death stumbled over the words of his reply. "These Hopper ships carries full convoys. Dis is a small one. She bees only 'bout da size of a smalls moons."

"What kinds of engines would yous use ta push dis thing?"

Again, Death was stumped. "You bees an odd mans. Skills of a q-tech, yet you's don'ts knows hows ta copies games. An a Navigators withs no ideas how ta jumps a hoppers."

"You's say I is a straps."

"Inexperience not makes up fors dis strangenesses."

Guide urged silence of Pariah. Although pariah had no beginning of an idea of why Guide would ask this, Pariah agreed to comply. He had learned his lesson about being seen talking to himself. It was the most unnatural action Pariah had ever attempted considering how his entire existence, less and more than a life, required that he be watched by day and night.

"Death cannot fly this thing, nor can he teach you how to," Guide squeaked calmly in Pariah's ear. Pariah took a moment to consider why Guide's voice had become so high pitched, then decided that it was really just his nervousness which made it appear so.

Pariah glanced a question at Guide, careful not to lose sight of Death. He did not want to make Death any more suspicious.

Words were not needed when talking with Guide. "The hopper will actualize at whatever point in space-time that you feel yourself at when you are tapped by the photon crystal. When the crystal taps you, the whole of this universe will flood into your mind. Picture yourself when you were flying to that moon with Death back when you first met him."

Again, Pariah wanted to speak and was unable to. He wanted to know how he would be able to jump to the same place he had earlier occupied without colliding with the earlier, or later, version of himself: And why was Earth such a good place to send this fleet of cargo ships?

Before Pariah knew it, Death led his small party from the lift to a waiting cart in the center of a hallway larger than any road that Pariah had ever seen. It seemed a good way to travel around a ship the size of a hopper. If Pariah had lived in a world where logic applied, he would have had a hard time accepting that there were larger ships than Death's hopper after having moved about within the massive ship.

"Does ya feels well enoughs for doin' dis trick, Pariah," Asked Death?

Pariah wanted to make a reply to both Death and Guide without Death knowing about it. "Eyes cannot imagines why yous wanna goes back dare, buts eyes donna supposes it's me places ta worry 'bout it."

Death spoke on while Guide washed his forepaws again. "Dats a big hubs o da trade routes fer your galaxies."

Guide looked up, then around the halls. "Inform 'Death' that you have to stop off at the temple before doing your trick."

It seemed out of place, especially to the topic of conversation, but Pariah complied without a segue. "Oh, I have to stop off at the temple before I can do the trick."

A moment of confusion delayed Death's reply, however, it did not prevent it. "My lasts Navigator didn'a do sa, buts I hears it's good fer you alls."

The small car came to a sudden stop, telling Pariah why Guide had been so cautious of its timing. Dismounting from the low cart, Pariah followed Guide toward a door on the driver's side of the vehicle. Guide paused before entering to allow a small group to exit the temple as though Guide was physically there.

Toward the end of the small procession, Pariah saw his mother in a semi-ornate gown. Her hair was just longer than shoulder length, sweeping the back of the gown's sequined collar. The whole dress was done exclusively in shades of pale white in a style like Pariah knew from the time he most considered to be his home.

"Who is she," Pariah asked Death?

Death's red eyes rose from the console before him until he saw who pariah had asked about. "She's one of the pilots. We's donna jumps hoppers from docks, ya knows."

Her deep eyes met Pariah's vacant stare when their hands connected with a gentle brushing of exposed flesh. She was the same woman from the forest back in Pariah's home time, yet, there was no harshness in her. Perhaps she had forgiven Pariah for the mortal sin for which she had once thought he deserved to die. Pariah silently thanked God for the peace he had given her.

Guide urged Pariah to rush his pace with a loud squeal heard only by Pariah. Pariah did not want the single moment of forgiveness to pass. To him it was the answer to a prayer he didn't know he'd made.

"Me lady," Pariah answered, walking slowly to where Guide demanded him to go.

Guide seemed pleased that the temple was empty, instructing Pariah to set the OM complex on the floor where it could not be seen from the hallway. It had been some time since Pariah had entered a church in any time and it felt like home to him.

"What do we do now," Pariah asked, half lost in a dream.

Leaping on top of the OM complex, Guide responded, "You prepare for the jump. You're about to intentionally stop existing and you'll never withstand the strain without spiritual assistance."

"And what will you be doing?"

Walking away from the device, Guide replied," Handling a little problem."

Small spheres of light darted rapidly around the dark temple, much to Guide's displeasure. Guide cleaned his forepaws to imply that he was less than impressed with the light show.

"Manual running," boomed a metallic voice.

"You are not inconsistent enough to be noticeable," Guide droned with a smirk only a chipmunk could achieve.

"Manual is not decorative," replied the voice in a louder tone.

The spheres formed into a ring which surrounded Guide in a rainbow of dancing lightning. Guide looked up with the impression of being unemotional and told the lights, " I can directly crack your database."

"You wouldn't!"

Chipmonkishly defiant, Guide leapt through the air toward the OM complex. A triple axial somersault later, Guide stood upon the amalgomous pile of archaic junk which had combined to be the OM complex.

The dancing plasma coalesced into a jelly blob about 4 feet off of the floor, landing in the form of a plastic beaver. With forepaws crossed, Guide stared the new form into a more lifelike representation of the forest creature it had chosen to become.

"You would," it complained.

"Manual--I need to know if Pariah can have a league registry."

"It is not logical that I should have to be both decorative and functional."

"Answers are your function."

Manual formed into a sheet of plastic, then rolled out into a semicircular view screen inches from Guide. Guide melted into a ball of dancing fire which hovered in front of the screen for a few minutes. Pariah lost track of the time as he turned to the meditations that his beloved father, the Parson, had taught him. The room almost felt as if Mary would rush in at any moment and tell Pariah about the chores he had forgotten to do.

In a flash, bright enough to reach Pariah in his meditation, Manual vanished and Guide returned to his familiar form. Pariah turned to see Guide sitting in prayer on the OM complex, then returned to his own preparations.

"What is your conclusion," Pariah asked?

Guide didn't look up, however, Pariah didn't look to see if he had. "The League's knowledge of you will not hold you to any set of time-space coordinates. Star Navigators have so much in common with Timeaters that the League will not be aware enough of you to hold you in any singular form."

Death eventually came to get Pariah from the temple. Pariah, and presumably Guide, had no idea how long a time had elapsed in the wood paneled room while busy preparations stirred with noisy life around the great mass of the hopper. It did not seem unusual to Death that Pariah had to be retrieved from the temple. Had Death been in better shape to express emotion, Pariah would have seen that Death was actually pleased. Guide knew as much without having to see or hear anything.

Back in the short car, Pariah was at peace and didn't notice the vague homogeny of the halls through which Death drove. So close to the center of the ship's propulsion system, there was more distinction between the halls. Pariah was comfortable with the ship's design before he returned to the task at hand near the lower cockpit. Although Pariah couldn't read any of it, the walls were so ornately decorated with graphs and displays that it appeared to be a museum.

The cart came to a steady stop at the expert hands of Death. "We's already underways."

Guide leapt from the cart before any of the others disembarked, however, he moved cautiously around the room to escape detection by any of the ship's delicate hardware. Even Pariah could feel the immense power buildup in the coils of the hopper's jump system.

"I guesses we'll not has time fer our games, then?"

Death made a sound which could have been a laugh, yet, it could have been a nervous cough. "Businesses afore pleasures."

"Yes sir," quipped Pariah.

Guide pointed Pariah to the right door, which opened as Pariah approached. It seemed a poor security system to Pariah who did not enter the room until Death crossed the threshold.

Inside, the room was almost a shapeless dome with a reclined chair in the center. The walls had been colored a pastel blue, however, it did not look as thought they had been painted. Colored light seemed to be emitted from the surface of the walls to almost an inch in front of them. This light looked like a solid block, leaking enough brightness to illuminate the room, but Pariah's hand passed through it to the cold, crystalline feeling surface behind it.

What Pariah assumed to be his chair was a cross between a chair and a table. An imprint had been melted into it so that it would conform to the body of the navigator who occupied it. The headrest rose at an angle of almost 15 degrees while the footrest dropped at the same angle. Between the two was a flat yellow section for Pariah's midsection, resting on a large, aluminum colored box.

When pariah sat in the indented section of the seat, armrests came up to hold his arms and hands. Pariah found his hands setting in plates which moved to whatever angle he put his hands at. Each finger had a small switch beneath it. His thumbs rested against small buttons which activated when he pulled his thumbs toward his palms.

Guide made sure that Pariah sat the OM complex near the headrest while Death pushed Pariah's head back into the outline.

"Da first step be sirrogation, " Death started. " Pulls in yous thumbs ta turn on da visor, den use da other switches ta fit da colors inta da outlines."

"Don't worry," Guide cut in. "Guide will match the crown to your emgrams for you."

As he had been instructed, pariah pulled in his thumbs and prayed for the best. Eyes closed, an image formed in the back of Pariah's mind. Blurred colored areas formed at the bottom and two line graphs formed near the top. Guide focused the images into a single image, then adjusted the colors so that they filled the area under the lines. It only took Guide seconds to have the whole image perfectly set and Death was mute with surprise.

"You is no strap. I's only seened class three and bettas does that well."

"Relax your thumbs all the way out," commanded Guide.

"I's not wanna knows who you be," Death said.

Pariah became aware of every molecule of the ship and its cargo. The hopper is really just a large hull with a jump system and some engines. Everything else is parking space for the freighters. Fear tensed Pariah a little bit as he felt the ship's motion for the first time. Space was compressed around the ship's momentum.

Every living thing within the ship was warm to pariah's feeling. It was almost as though he was holding every passenger of the hopper in his mind. Pariah relaxed a bit more, stretching from the amorphous life within the hull to touch the nearest stars. Upon doing so Pariah was ready for the trick.

Becoming the ship had been a minor shock to Pariah. Not existing was a familiar, almost homey, feeling for Pariah. As long as he didn't let his mind close in and try to feel the ship's hull or his own body, Pariah was comfortable. Moving beyond space-time to perihelion gave Pariah almost addictive control over his familiar mode of travel.

One thought is the width of one trick.

The photon crystal injected an image of the hopper, in every detail, into Pariah's mind and he felt himself falling. Pariah rolled the ship clockwise trying to keep flying, but he could not hold it. He was drained almost completely after an instant trying to move under his own force.

"Only the will of God is that strong."

Falling back, he thought first of home and how much he wanted to be there. Then he remembered his mission, changing his mind at the moment of actualization. He barely pulled through. Even the smallest measure of a second would have jumped the hopper into Pariah's childhood. Instead, he pulled off a rough landing in orbit around the colony where he had once seen an abomination of his mother. Pariah could feel that Death was pleased, although he could barely feel that Guide was even there.

Pariah was so tired that he could only sleep. He did not regain consciousness for more than a day from his own perspective, fearing that he never would...

September 1999

Pariah woke from a dreamless sleep, and thought about how tired he was of the plastic cylinder he continually found himself in. This time it was open and he did not find himself constrained. There were others in the room, but they went mechanically about their business, paying him no mind.

Guide sat patient and unblinking at the foot of Pariah's resting spot.

"Good morning, sleepy-head, what shall we do today?" the chipmunk chirped in a wry, friendly way.

"Where's death?" Pariah asked groggily.

"All around us," the chipmunk grinned. Pariah looked confused. Guide shrugged and continued, "He should be along any moment now. If you're interested in knowing, you preformed your first jump quite well. There was a tricky moment there, but you got through it fine. If you like, you could stick around for the next jump."

"Do I have a choice?"

"You always have a choice. Do whatever you like."

"But what is the right thing to do?"

"That," spoke Guide, "I cannot tell you."

Death walked into the room beaming, if someone as dark and expressionless as he was could be said to "beam". Pariah sat up in his container as Death spoke to him.

"You did good trick. Yose stick 'round and even Ise won't be able to afford you."

"Ima takin' it ting's gone well, den?" Pariah asked, not really knowing what he was asking.

"Without a... how'd dat go? Hitch?"

"So waz to 'appen now?" Pariah asked, at a loss for what else to say. Death gave him a meaningful glance.

"You wuz sayin' youda wanted a re-match."

Pariah's stomach turned at those words. To re-enter the game was to be thrown into a self-defined world where his ability to imagine, to create was pitted against another's. Pariah suddenly felt alone against a very dreadful challenge that he could not meet, but dare not resist. He shot a frightened glance at Guide, who was scratching at the plastic surface of the cylinder in rapid bursts of motion. Guide caught the glance and responded.

"Well, yes, I CAN accompany you into the game, but it wouldn't be fair."

"Fair?" Pariah blurted out, without thinking.

"Would that be bein' a yes?" Death asked.

"Yes, fair. You are entering a friendly game, a contest of skill. It would hardly be fair if I were there to tell you every move to make while 'Death' has to figure it out on his own. That's called cheating," Guide replied calmly.

"I... I will play a game with ye," Pariah managed to tell Death, afraid of saying no, but terrified of saying yes.

Again Pariah stood in the blank room, the entry program of the game. The seamless, white walls stood calmly waiting for Pariah to choose a form and a world in which to compete. All at once color began to seep through invisible cracks in the wall, swirl together and take on dimension. The twisted, spectacular landscape that emerged was a merging of the two minds that formed it. Pariah's predisposition for pastoral delights fused with the eerie, morbid makings of the mind of Death. A starscape stretched across the black sky, filled with chaos and destruction as stars fell together and Galaxies spun apart. From the quaint, beautiful English countryside that formed the land jutted spires of stone, and thunder seemed to boom in the distance accompanied with flashes of light.

Before, when Pariah was not aware that it was a game, nor that he was competing with someone, he had chosen a powerful, winged, free form to soar away with. Now, in the fear of what this truly was, Pariah desired to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, and to take flight. As the scene snapped into completion, Pariah flitted high above the land as a tiny bat. He screeched into the night and listened to his voice echo back. Each echo carried with it a thousand details about the landscape. Before it had taken him no time to find Death, so he expected him to be close by.

Fortunately, Death had taken no precautions to conceal his presence. He waited with a sinister arrogance atop one of the pillars of stone. He was, as always, the skeleton of the grim reaper, with screaming specters racing around him madly. And at this terrifying image, Pariah grew strangely calm. For, all at once, he saw Death for what he truly was. He was a sickly pretender. He was not only nothing near the 'death' he claimed to be, but he was very mortal, and very afraid of that which he pretended to be. He also knew what he must do.

Flying around behind Death's range of vision, Pariah came in as close as he could. One of Death's spectral guards spotted him when he was nearly on top of Death. Death's morbid form spun with unearthly speed to deal with the oncoming threat, but Pariah was just as quick. He morphed from the tiny bat to his human form, and dealt a bone shattering uppercut to Death's jaw. The ghastly figure shook it off as if it had been nothing, and countered it by shooting a searing red wall of energy from his burning eyes. Pariah was flung back over the edge of the stone column and went plummeting toward the ground far below. Despite the pain, Pariah managed to gather his thoughts in time to morph into the form of a Falcon swooping up just in time to save himself from his destruction. As he soared skyward, he saw Death disappear in a flash of light, laughter ringing in his wake.

It was not laughter of humor, simply part of the guise. Pariah circled, scanning about to try to find some trace of his foe. There was a plateau in the middle of the expanse of monolithic stone towers around which a large mass of thundering clouds swirled.

"He's calling me to the challenge," Pariah thought, winging his way towards the plateau.

Pariah came to rest on the ledge of the plateau, morphing once again into his human form. Death had seen him coming, and smugly waited for his arrival. Pariah knew that Death could pull a trick like he had in the last game they played, and killed him on the descent, but he suspected correctly that Death wanted to draw the match out.

Death's toothy grin leered at Pariah as he pulled out his weapon of choice, a long metal pole with a handle halfway down. Death twisted the handle, and with a "shing!" sound, a sickle blade sprung out from the side. Suddenly Pariah remembered a time that now seemed long ago where he had stood in a coliseum facing a gladiator. He remembered how the tracking had guided him through the movements of battle. Death floated towards him, sickle arching upwards. Pariah waited calmly in an unimposing stance with neither fear nor confidence. Suddenly, Death flew towards Pariah bringing the sickle down for the kill.

At the last second, a sword appeared in Pariah's hand, flying up to block the blow. Pariah continued the momentum of the blade, hooking the sickle with his own weapon and flinging Death beyond him to clatter awkwardly to the floor of the stadium.

"Yose be more than ye seem," Death observed as he whisked upward from his landing-spot to rejoin the fight. Pariah blocked a sideways swipe, deflecting Death's blade and swinging inwards with his own.

"And you be less than you seem," Pariah said, his blade neatly cleaving Death's tattered robe in half. It flittered empty to the ground, but Death was no longer in his robe. Instinctively Pariah dropped to the ground, as Death's sickle swished through where his torso had been. Death had appeared behind him. Pariah rolled and came up facing his opponent.

"Tell me," Death spoke, as Pariah flew at him, "How ya bein so talented, but so naive'?"

Pariah swung towards Death, and was blocked. Death caught Pariah's sword against his sickle, and pushed away, throwing Pariah off balance.

"How are ya meanin'?" Pariah asked, barely blocking Death's next blow.

"Yose dona' even know da rules to yer own game," Death said, catching Pariah's sword with his sickle, and flinging it out of Pariah's hands and over the edge of the plateau, "of life itself," Death continued, raising his hands to summon his demon-like minions from the ground, "An' dat rule is simply dis: Ifn' you can't beat death... become him."

The demon's grasped Pariah's arms, pinning him to the ground. Death floated up over him.

"Checkmate. Game, set, match, as dey say." Death leaned down close to Pariah's face, and whispered in his ear, "Tell me, laddie, d'ya fear death?"

And with that, Death took Pariah for the third time.

October 1999

Pariah awoke dumbfounded. He could not fear Death whom, to him, was no more real than the illusion which the alien called Death had projected around himself. Death was a mythical creature who everybody else believed in. It was the defeat that Pariah really feared. Timeaters defeated Death with every breath they took until they denied that he even existed.

Ignoring the numbness of his newly awakened body, Pariah sat up determined not to be taken again. Guide, turning to look Pariah in the eye and frozen in note that Pariah had risen to meet his eyes, was almost astonished by Pariah's resolve. He knew that Pariah had gone to meet defeat for a second time in the game, doing worse the second time than the first, before Pariah had entered it. Pariah was trapped more flesh than spirit.

"Soon, you must discharge your entropy," Guide stated.

"And, if I don't, then I meet my death?"

Guide met Pariah nose to cold, wet nose. "You are not yet ready, Pariah."

For a moment, Pariah considered facing the unknown, then realized that any path he took was uncharted. "Then, I must play the game one more time?"

"When you respect the harsh reality, a beautiful dream disguised as a monster, which the Death entity only meets with fear, then you will be the master."

"Am I not already beyond Death's grasp?"

A pause, one moment for Guide and an eternity for Pariah, interceded while Guide formulated a reply. "Perchance I should have stated that you will then be a man."

Death groaned, shaking sleep from his eyes with a somber cry of victory.

"Reach your destiny now, Pariah. It's time to take Death home."

A moment passed, Death reaching a waking state, while Pariah considered what he wanted to say to Guide. Guide fidgeted about nervously and it did not appear to Pariah that he feared their conversation being overheard by Death. His remark of time took on an ominous color in Pariah's mind. Destiny awaited Pariah not far from the cavernous room where he lay.

Pariah drew a deep, labored breath preparing to meet the question which even enlightened Guide could not predict. Time, having no meaning to a timeater, had come for Pariah and pariah was ready to face victory or defeat. Only doubt in an uncertain state made Pariah uneasy. Oddly, Pariah drew strength from his uneasiness.

Barely on his feet, Death stumbled toward Pariah. Death did not long gloat over his victory. He respected Pariah enough to let Pariah see him in his moment of weakness. Pariah caught Death, amazed at how light Death was, and held him up for the remaining moments of his recovery. To Death, Pariah was already a man.

OM complex in his right hand, Pariah walked through the doorway into the confined passage beyond. A yellow haired humanoid in a silvery robe noticed Pariah from the far end of the hall. Death, knowing that Pariah would be lost in the bulk of the hopper, left the room and assumed the lead. The humanoid's presence panicked Death, who slammed Pariah to the port bulkhead in time to catch a bright green flash in his own right shoulder.

The OM complex melted into a puddle on the floor, then jumped into the form of a lime colored vest around Pariah's chest.

"Wherez ya got dat an' howz much ya want fer it?," Death inquired.

Destiny had indeed come for Pariah and forced his hand. Pariah placed his hand on the wound of his stunned comrade, discharging the entropy he carried within him. Time stopped, ceasing to be real within the blast, while Death reformed around his spiritual essence into a healthier version of himself.

Guide took the shock poorly, vanishing into a bright flash visible along the length and breadth of the corridor. Then Guide entered a restful sleep within Pariah's mind. Pariah could feel Guide's mind within his own, yet they were separated in thought.

Recovering rapidly, Death continued his inquisition. "Dat be psion armors. Itz be from dey old empires. Almost no wieghts, yet infinitzly denze."

Pariah was not interested in the OM complex at the moment. Two humanoid reptilians stood over the lifeless form of the attacking humanoid. Their armor was grown into them like an exoskelital shell. Upon the back shell of each enforcer was a symbol made of parallel lines running through a circle.

"What waz dat dare theng?" Pariah asked Death.

"Wordonean Enforcers," Death replied.

"Whyz dey wantz ya dead?"

Death was at a momentary loss for words. "Dey not wantz mez dead. Dat waz a Matronite an 'e waz tryins ta killz ya."

Pariah looked Death in the eye as though the truth he sought was written in the black ember of the nearly invisible portal to the alien's mind. "Why?"

"Dey worship da natural motha. Ta dem, da league be a threat ta da natural statez o da natibes."

"You're showing your hand, Pariah," warned Guide. "Matronites view the expansion which the Star Navigators make possible as imperialism. In the same way, Timeaters interfere with the 'natural order' and they don't like you. Do you want it to get around just how little of this time you know about?"

"I sees ya point," Pariah closed, uneasily.

Turning back to Death, two additional enforcers slipped up behind Pariah and lifted him to his feet. They did not say anything. Pariah was carried into a smaller room at the end of the hallway without seeing Death. Every wall of the small room looked mirrored, however, the walls did not reflect anybody in the room. Pariah had to look behind himself to see Death crumpled on the luminous floor.

When Pariah's eyes turned from Death to survey the expanse of the room, he noticed a pale green, glowing disk hovering in the center of the open space. The same symbol which had been on the enforcer's shells was embossed into a triangular plate on the front of the disk. Upon the disk, sat a creature who looked like a dog in a silver suit.

Guide hid in Pariah's mind. He seemed to fear that this creature would know of his presence. Pariah did not know why Guide would be afraid of this alien when the technology of the OM complex allowed Guide to remain invisible to all but Pariah. There was no longer a sense of weakness as Guide had been drained during the discharge which healed Death. Guide was both strong and afraid.

"I trust that you are unharmed," Began the creature.

"I am," replied Pariah. There was a feeling in Pariah's mind that he had a million questions to ask this creature, yet, none of them would form clearly enough to be asked. What Guide expressed as fear, Pariah tried to express as respect.

"And, I take it that you are this Navigator's keeper?"

Death stood beside Pariah to answer. "At this time, I be so."

The disk hovered a bit closer to Pariah, but the creature kept his eye on Death. "Has he no keeper at this time?"

"He is unkept, save by me, group leader."

Turning eyes to Pariah, however keeping the conversation with Death, the group leader responded," He flies well for a strap. Class 3 trick."

"His registration is new. This was his first jump."

"Security will have the bridge secured momentarily and he may complete the trick then."

"As you will, group leader."

Without a sound, the disk hovered back to the far end of the room and up through a door in the ceiling to leave Death alone with Pariah.

"What was that all about?"

Death sat down to conserve his strength before replying. "Thats waz ya League repressentatives."

"An interestings mode o' travel he's got."

"Lets not forms confuse ya. He's being da sames race as me."

"Takes some gettings used ta."

"Yar psion shields changes shapes fer ya."

"But, dat's a machines."

"We's all living in machines, Pariah. Da body in just sa much hardwares."

"I's donna think o it dat ways."

With that, the gate behind Pariah dissolved, opening into a large tube designed for use by the group leader's disk. When the group leader did not enter the room through the passageway, Pariah ventured into it, followed by Death. Guide returned from his slumber to chipmunk form and led Pariah down the tube.

The tube was nearly transparent. As he walked along its slick surface, Pariah could see into the mechanical systems between two of the ship's bulkheads. It was like looking out into a cave full of crystalline lightning. Most of the ship's hardware was spherical, linked together with glass tubes full of phosphorescent fluids. Intricately crafted silver cones ringed with dancing lightning sat at the ready to move the huge bulky hopper.

Every so often, the sides of the tube would open up into other tubes running like elevator shafts to other levels. Pariah stayed on the path through the horizontal tube rather than risk a fall down one of the side shafts. Then the tube dove sharply to the port side, toward a colorful metallic sphere sitting on top of several large columns. Death somehow held his balance while Pariah slid down the slope into the sphere.

A gate opened and Pariah found himself standing to the starboard of the table he had ridden on when he'd made the earlier jump. He sat down on the table and it formed the comfortable seat it had earlier been. Death saluted pariah before leaving the room for what Pariah assumed was the bridge of the ship. Pariah situated himself into the position he remembered, preparing to activate the drive unit.

"Group leader knows you're a timeater," Guide whispered into Pariah's ear.

"Is that why you fear him?"

"You are of no interest to the League and they'll let you go."

"You didn't answer the question."

Guide pushed Pariah's head back into the pillow and started to adjust the image forming at the back of Pariah's mind. Pariah recalled the way the image should look, maneuvered the hand panels around to see what they did, then set the focus himself. If it had been on Guide's mind, he would have been impressed by Pariah's skill.

Death had gone to the bridge as Pariah had guessed. He was surprised that the Group Leader took no further interest in his talented charge. Without having to be told, Death knew that his friend and worthy opponent would be gone not long after returning the hopper to its base in the Delarian trade zone. For these few moments, Death was all that he had dreamed he could be.

Traders all around the bridge gave final signals that their cargo ships had been bolted in place while Death stood behind the captain. The Group leader hovered just over Death's right shoulder and Death was the proud master of his miniature empire. All the wealth and power of the old empire couldn't buy the pride Death had for the few remaining moments of his reign.

One day, Death would repay his friend if it took him the rest of eternity.

Group Leader, Kyla whom Death had known since childhood, smiled as Death gave the command to embark. Death had never been a bad Atin, he'd just tried too hard to do everything at once. Kyla accepted Death's moment of glory knowing that it was short lived this time but would come again.

The pulse of the great ship's engines increased as the lumbering hulk crept slowly forward. Under the command of her trainer, the bulky ship banked with the nimble stealth of a lynx and came about true to her destined course. Then she leapt into warp space with all the contained fury of her primary drive system. Full speed came quickly after that.

Pariah, strapped into the nervous system of the beast, felt it all. He was mind and soul to the ship's great, powerful body. Without the doubt of his first trick, he was clear to experience what he had earlier missed. And he knew that this may be his only chance to live this life.

When the hopper reached top speed, power shifted to the jump system for Pariah. Pariah felt neither fear nor shock as the whole mass was reduced to a quantum probability curve within the photon crystal. He trusted God's will to be done in any case and his faith was stronger than any fear he had ever known. In an instant, the photon crystal resonated the tap back to pariah who felt himself back where his journey had begun. Victoriously, he rolled the hopper hard to starboard before actualizing it into being.

Kyla silently promoted Pariah to second class so that only he and Death knew about it.

Then they released Pariah outright. He awoke from his long slumber in a foggy room filled with bunks. All but one bunk other than Pariah's was made and the long room looked unkept. Except for the man who's mind had called Pariah from the timeless void, nobody else was close enough to be felt by Pariah's senses. The mind was familiar, although sleep called Pariah back for a short nap before memory spoke his name to Pariah.

January 2000

"Good morning, sleepy head," a grinning, wrinkled face leaned over Pariah, as his eyes blearily focused on the man standing over him.

"I trust you slept well?"

"Joseph Blecky?" Pariah stammered, surprised at seeing the man, and even more so, at seeing him looking so old.

"The same," Joseph said, his accent much less Irish and far more American than it had been on their last encounter.

"Now you just lie back and let old Joseph take care of you, m'boy. Gallivanting around the future can tucker a fellow out, I reckon."

With that, Joseph headed to a cast iron stove that occupied one corner of the crude little barracks they seemed to be in. Steam rose from a pot that was happily bubbling on top of it and an enticing smell spread through the cold air.

"So what is it like?" Joseph asked, as he dished the stew into a tin plate.

"What is what like?" Pariah asked, as he gingerly placed his feet on the plank floor and peered at the snow falling through the plate glass window on the far side of the room.

"The Future, of course," the Century man asked, as he handed Pariah the tin plate. Pariah said a quick prayer over the food, and then considered the question, as he tasted the stew.

"Future is a crude term, but I can sum the question up by saying that all of time is repulsive and chaotic," another voice interceded from the far side of the room.

"I wasn't asking you," Joseph cast a glare at what appeared to be a grossly distorted pot-bellied pig that had just spoken. Joseph turned to Pariah and winked, "You're friend seems quite the pessimist."

"My friend?" Pariah asked.

"He came in with you," Joseph commented, "I certainly don't know him."

"Manual does not recognize the term 'friend,'" the pig replied.

"Manual?" Pariah asked, astonished, "but..." he thought for a moment, then turned to Joseph.

"You can see him?" he asked the man.

"Not with me own eyes, but I can see him through yours," Joseph replied.

"Ugly lookin' creature, too," he added.

"Manual," Pariah addressed the glaring pig nervously, "Where is Guide?"

"It is not Manual's function to locate Guide," the pig snapped.

"What exactly IS your function?" Pariah asked.

"It is Manual's function to provide only such information as is necessary for the timeater known as Pariah, and only then when Pariah requests such information in the proper way."

"I believe the swine wishes to be left alone," Joseph grinned, "Shall we talk of other things?"

"This form was not chosen by Manual!" the squat creature droned in a high voice, "Manual is not decorative! Manual's function can be served without form! The program is in error!"

That said, the pot-bellied pig sat down on its haunches, closed its beady eyes and lay its head upon its chest.

"This stew is quite good," Pariah commented.

"Thank you," Joseph gave a little bow.

"What things did you wish to speak of?"

Joseph's visage sunk heavily as his mind turned to the subject for which he had summoned Pariah.

"Something ominous is afoot, Pariah," Joseph began. He looked at the slight glow Pariah's new armor emitted from beneath his cloak. "You were attacked this last trip, yes?"

"Attacker's came after me, but they never succeeded," Pariah replied.

Joseph nodded gravely and paused for a moment before continuing. "And well it is that they did not. That armor you wear is mighty stuff. I've heard of it before."

"What is your concern then?" Pariah asked.

"The danger of which I speak is deeper than an attempt on your life. I myself have been exterminated in several time lines by the force, which pursues us. I don't know the details, but whatever it is that seeks to eliminate our kind, 'time-anomalies' they call us, is set for a pattern that will destroy time itself. I do not know their pattern, but I do know this: you are the key, Pariah." The aged man placed a shaky hand on Pariah's shoulder, and looked him in the eye.

"It is time to ask yourself," the Century-Man said, "What your purpose is. You may seek self-preservation, self-glorification, or you may seek a path that leads to self-destruction but preserves time itself in the process."

"Sir, please, I don't understand," Pariah pleaded with his mentor.

"Will you remember my words?" Joseph asked.

"Yes."

"Then when the time comes that you do understand them, consider them well."

The hog stirred in the corner, opened one eye and spoke flatly. "Such conjecture is foolish. His life spans a meager 500 years. Inane, unprecedented babbling."

An explosion burst outside, very close to the cabin, and the bunks shook while pots and pans tumbled from their places. The Century Man glanced up, and then back at Pariah.

"It is time for you to go, now. I know that we will meet once more for the first time. Tell me all that you can about yourself then. For now, God be with you."

Pariah felt himself slip away.

February 2000

It was the first time that Pariah had experienced the movement through time of another anomaly not unlike himself. Time itself felt so little for Pariah that his friend was not actualized to definite form under Pariah's gaze as outsiders did. Alone, Pariah also vanished into the tide of time's flow.

Moments later, Pariah was a workman on an archeological dig. He left a room as though he had ever been inside of it, then picked up a shovel to join the rest of the laborers in shifting sand. Pariah knew that this was an earlier dig by the dress of his comrades. Nobody ever noticed how odd Pariah looked.

The subject though had been missing as Pariah had been conveyed through time. Pariah had been pushed through time again, however, it was in answer to the question Pariah had asked only in the back of his mind. He knew this much from a dark ache in his heart. But, he could not recall the question.

A desert sun tried the whole day to bite into Pariah's untanned flesh, yet could no more get through the psion armor than the Matronite in Death's ship. Heat was pure entropy. Pariah's own molecular peculiarity resisted it some in a way that the men on his sides could feel. It just wasn't as hot within a dozen or so feet of Pariah.

Sunset brought a rapid cooling to the shifting sands and Pariah found it hard not to discharge himself in the thermal venting. There was an unmistakable vibration within the sand as though something had moved beneath it. A massive disruption that only the likes of Pariah could have felt. Something had been actualized into the dermis of mother Earth. A thing left for Pariah to find.

"Shall I have the men run lights and dig on after the meal?" asked the foreman.

The chief archeologist looked up from his papers only long enough to answer. "Our permit time is running short, but there's another week on it. Do you think it wise to push the men so hard?"

A junior archeologist cut into the exchange with a more forceful tone. "You saw the signs, Dr. Barrister. This dig makes or breaks our grant."

"I'll have the men eat while you two work this out."

"Fine," Dr. Barrister dismissed.

"Imagine, Daniel. This is the missing link we've been dreaming about."

"Not the missing link, Chuck. A missing link."

"We should dig on with all speed. Any missing link is worth a fortune. Proof at last."

"I like my omelettes with more than one egg, Chuck."

The junior man smiled nervously. "One day you'll have to tell me what that means, Daniel."

As Pariah passed by, the two men parted with a smile. It was not Pariah's intent to join the men in the mess tent, even though he was hungry, because of the thing in the ground. He needed a safe place to talk to Guide. Manual would know more, yet Pariah had a friend only in Guide. Guide would confide in Pariah.

Pariah slipped behind the tents and hid near the pile of shifted sand from the dig. There he willed the chipmunk form from his mind into being on top of a small mound a few feet from his face. A tear crept into Pariah's eye with neither his knowledge or understanding.

"Never fear--Guide is here," quipped the chipmunk.

"Can you detect that thing in the ground, Guide?"

Guide paused for a data lookup. "Detection is not Guide's function. The OM complex has a reading on the anomaly, which probably answers Pariah's question."

"You're sounding like Manual, there."

"Sorry. I read the reply a bit literally. It was not Guide's intent to cease being user friendly."

"Could that be my mother stuck down there?"

"Negative. The Paraseer is quantumly entangled to you and cannot lead or lag your jumps by that offset. If you wish, the OM complex allows you to feel her location."

"What's a paraseer?"

There was no pause long enough for Guide to look up the answer in the OM Complex. "You'll have to consult Manual for that. I'm programmed not to understand."

"Best guess. What is that thing?"

Guide replied again without contemplating. "That seems to be a psion projection. Somebody's trying to alter probability over a volume of quantum particles."

"To what end?"

"Guide cannot read minds. Even the OM Complex lacks sensors for indirect thought perception."

"So you can only read my mind."

"If you allow it. You can also read Guide's mind when I allow it."

"Ok, what can you tell me about that thing?"

"Guide... Sorry. I can tell you that somebody in the camp must be acting as the lense for this projection."

"But why's it breaking up like that?"

"Probability is not exact. Until it's actualized, the projection is only a weighted potential. Decoherence is a myth."

"I should eat. Thank you, Guide."

Jumping up onto Pariah's shoulder, Guide answered," Would Pariah like to discuss the weather?"

Pariah stopped to look into Guide's eyes. "Are you broken? I don't understand."

"I wish to be your friend; Not just your tool."

Guide vanished a moment later leaving Pariah sad with how he had treated his loyal companion. Pariah didn't even know why he had used Guide to do Manual's job without accounting for Guide's ability to feel. A nagging feeling at the base of Pariah's brain hinted that Guide was in the same conflict.

Sure enough, the OM complex allowed Pariah to find his mother in the mess tent. She had taken the shape of a reporter following what, to her character, was the single worst assignment her editor could have assigned her to. It crossed her mind at least once an hour, even while sleeping, that her editor was trying to make her quit. Resentment drove her perseverance.

She sat in a light corner of the tent cleaning the lense of her camera while muttering insults under her breath in a decidedly unladylike manner. The lense had been clean all along, yet, sitting still was not an option for her. In her mind, she was a jet-setter in a world before there were jets. There is nothing she would not have given to cover the lavish parties at sea or intrigue aboard the dirigibles.

All of this was safely beyond Pariah's knowing as he watched her silently from the shadows on the other side of the tent. He could read her lips every so often and knew she was upset, however, even he knew that there was nothing he could do. Beneath the scars of another woman's life, Pariah saw the beautiful spirit of his mother. He thought it would be ironic for her to finally realize how much travel she had done in the centuries that they had both lived.

The foreman tried very hard to accommodate the conflicting desires of both Daniel and Chuck. All the time, the thing in the ground moved about as bits of it vanished into chaos and entropy as part of the same conflict. Labor was recruited to string up the lights for Chuck which Daniel didn't see worth using. Time came when Pariah could no longer take the disharmony.

Pariah didn't volunteer for the light crew. He walked back into the darkness between the tents to focus his mind. There he saw Daniel walk out of the main tent after a heated discussion with Chuck. Always most comfortable in the shadows, Pariah slipped back where he could not be seen as though being noticed was a death sentence. He felt Chuck thinking so hard that Pariah could not deny his instincts.

Chuck paced about in the large administration tent cursing his old friend's stubborn nature in the darkness. His drive to reach the thing in the ground packed enough energy for Pariah to feel it without the aid of the OM complex. Alone, Chuck was an anomaly which Pariah could not miss. And Chuck could not hide himself while holding onto the thing in the ground.

Pariah stepped from the shadows to ask Chuck his question, playing a hard gamble for a timeater. "How long will it hold coherence?"

Chuck knew the words and their use told him that his next statement was a poor and easily dismissed lie. "I Don't know what you mean."

"It's losing details as you forget what they are. How long before it turns back to the chaotic potential from which it came?"

Guide appeared and slipped onto the table which Chuck turned to face. Pariah was uneasy that Chuck had turned away and was working unseen on the folding table at the far end of the tent. He also felt that Guide had a conflict of his own with the exposed Matronite.

"When will the League stop holding these primitives in their ignorance?"

A bit more fo the thing in the ground strobed out of reality with the stress Pariah's question had created, however, Pariah didn't care. "If you're case is so strong, why do you have to plant evidence?"

"The odds are so long that there isn't enough proof without our help. You should know that--we told you that."

"And I'm sure you were told that it's all a matter of faith anyway."

Matronites spell faith with only four letters: deny. Chuck's rage blinded him more than the thing in the ground could take and it began to vaporize. Pariah had a hard time holding onto his entropy in the disturbance.

Chuck turned around holding a pocket sized metallic disk which frightened Guide. "You imperialist leaches cannot hold back the enlightenment against us. It's time to die, enforcer."

Pariah felt even Manual's fear of the alien weapon and knew that he had to act before the weapon did whatever it does. All that comes naturally to a timeater's defense is the entropy within him so Pariah strobed with the combined force of his energies and that remaining of the thing in the ground. Only healing power flowed from Pariah, yet, he hoped it would be enough.

Daniel didn't recognize his one time partner when he arrived in the tent. Maybe Chuck had evolved and maybe it was his natural form, but it was not pleasant to anybody. The laborers chased the six legged, winged reptile out of their camp and into the desert.

Slipping the fallen disk into his pocket, Pariah vanished into the drenching warmth of time. His question had been answered and yet he did not understand the reply. What did the Matronites have against timeaters and century men? It was time to return to Joseph Blecky for answers, but not on this jump. The tracking had again called Pariah to his aid.

March 2000

There was a boom in dark night as Pariah materialized in a torrential downpour. He was soaked instantly, and his feet began sinking in the mud of what appeared to be an endless dark plain.

"Aww, what is THIS!" Pariah complained.

"You should have availed yourself of the opportunity I gave you to talk about the weather," Guide quipped.

"I doubt you could have predicted this," Pariah commented

"You'd be surprised," Guide answered, "Now concentrate. What are we doing here?"

"How should I know?" Pariah shrugged helplessly, through chattering teeth. He pulled his cloak around him and tried to gain some relief from the damp cold.

"The tracking has been re-instituted, it pulled you here, so it must be giving you direction."

Pariah frowned and tried to focus his mind, to search for some residue of the tracking within himself.

"I... I don't feel it," Pariah finally confessed, shoulders sagging from the effort.

"Nor will you," spoke a familiar voice swirling up from a writhing, half-formed shape in the mud at Pariah's feet.

"Manual..." Guide frowned as the swirling shape convulsed into the form of a very large Cobra. A look of self-satisfaction spread over the reptilian face as Manual spread his sinister Cobra's crown. Guide leaped down from Pariah's shoulder and began circling Manual, while his chipmunk's body and snout enlarged and elongated into the sleek, predatory form of a mongoose.

"Why Manual, I've never seen you look so good," Guide commented with a wary humor.

"Guide has chosen an interesting form, as well," Manual dead panned back, weaving rhythmically back and forth and flicking his tongue.

"Hey, I'm a stylish linear-graphic module, I do my best to keep up with the Jones'," Guide darted about Manual quicker now, and the two of them preformed an elaborate and hostile dance as they spoke.

"So what brings you out of the woodwork, Manual, old buddy. Get tired of sitting back in the OM complex calculating the quantum potential of goldfish on the third dimension?" Guide teased. Manual hissed in annoyance.

"Manual is functional at this point in order to guide the timeater in his mission on this plane. Guide is causing a hindrance to the plan. Do not force Manual terminate Guide's program."

Guide snorted, "Don't overestimate your abilities Manual."

Manual stared at Guide coldly.

"Manual does not overestimate," turning to Pariah, the Cobra said, "The force you call the 'Tracking' has summoned you here. Manual is to lead you through the specific instructions of the 'Tracking'. Please follow Manual."

With that, the snake turned and slithered through the mud at a surprisingly quick pace, the rivulets of brown water running into the path in his wake. Pariah loped clumsily along behind, his feet sinking in the wretched mud, and a heavy slurping sound coming from beneath every time he lifted his foot. Guide darted up Pariah's leg, and nestled himself in the crook of Pariah's arm.

"So the tracking works THROUGH the OM complex?" Pariah asked the mongoose, as it peeked out from its perch.

"When the OM complex is assembled, the tracking maintains some level of control over it, yes," Guide responded.

"And who controls the rest of it?" Pariah asked.

"You do."

"I have control over the OM Complex?"

"You always have. Your control has been clumsy, true, but nevertheless, you have maintained it. The 'game' you played with Death responded to your will..."

"But Death won. Twice, in fact."

"Only because you let him. I am your Guide, and subject to your commands. The armor you wear responds to your will. The Tracking and you are partners, whether you like it or not."

"Then there are functions to the OM Complex that I do not know about and have no control over?"

"Certainly there are."

"What are they?"

"Manual has that information. You will have to ask him." Pariah rolled his eyes at this and plodded on, squinting through the sheets of rain to keep track of Manual, and to try and make out some landmarks of this seemingly endless black plain. Finally he asked Guide, "Do you have any idea where we are going?"

"I was not privileged to that information, but if I were to venture a guess, I would say we are headed to THAT."

Upon the word "that" the sky was illuminated by a brilliant burst of lightening, and Pariah could see immediately before them what appeared to be a Roman Coliseum covered with a dome. Pariah knew that it was not the one in which he had fought the valiant Sparticus, or any other one of Roman design. The dome was far too futuristic.

"What IS that thing?" Pariah asked over the booming thunder that followed seconds behind the bolt.

"I would say we are about to find out," the mongoose said, and huddled a little further under Pariah's cloak.

It was an odd trio that strolled through the massive front arches to the Coliseum. The cobra that appeared to be as large as an anaconda flowed up the stairs entering the structure with a serpentine grace, the mud sliding off its body and disappearing as if it had never been. The shivering man, on the other hand, positively dripped with mud and rainwater. The mongoose slipped from beneath Pariah's cloaks, and dropped gently to the floor.

The giant building in which they stood was illuminated from indiscernible corners, and the light was refracted through monumental glass pillars and reflected off of well-placed mirrors. The entire structure had an awe-inspiring, timeless look to it.

The snake turned abruptly and spoke to Pariah.

"Fifty meters from this spot is a group of people. They are armed and seek your destruction. You are to destroy this citadel and those within it. I will not accompany you beyond this point, as I find it distasteful."

With that the snake seemed to sink through the floor and disappear. Pariah turned in desperation to Guide.

"I don't have enough negative entropy to destroy this entire building!"

"Relax, Pariah, I have the information I need now to Guide you. This is a citadel. Damage the operator at the center of it, and the rest will take care of itself." The mongoose smiled, "Care to do a little reconnaissance?"

Pariah peeked over the far end of the pedestal that formed the center of the building. There were two men standing near a chair in the very center of the pedestal that looked much like the one he had taken to make the jump for Death's ship.

"Matronites," Guide whispered. The two men were talking to one another, and Pariah began listening to their conversation.

"Don't we need a Q-tech to operate this thing?" the first spoke.

"Indeed we do. But fate has provided us just such a person," turning to where Pariah peaked over the edge of the platform, the Matronite looked directly at Pariah and said, "Isn't that right?"

Pariah froze in confusion.

"You may come out now," the man continued looking at him, "We have been waiting for you."

Pariah reluctantly stood and walked slowly up onto the platform. The leader of the two motioned to the other man who handed him a helmet.

"If you would kindly put this on, we will begin the process." Pariah hesitated.

"Do as they say," Guide whispered. Pariah accepted and donned the helmet.

"Make yourself comfortable," the Matronite gestured to the chair. Pariah sat.

"A few preparations must be made, and then you will assist us," the man said, and then disappeared from Pariah's view.

"What are they doing?" Pariah quietly asked Guide.

"They are using you to summon a large group of timeaters to this spot. It's an easy and effective way of destroying them."

"I really hope you have some sort of plan, then," Pariah groaned.

"Trust me," Guide assured him.

A visor slid down over Pariah's eyes, and a complex set of geometric patterns projected from it. Suddenly Pariah was dead to himself, and the geometric patterns were all that were. They became barriers about the room.

"You are getting ready to call the timeaters," Guide spoke. Clouds began to rise from beneath him, and Pariah sensed a hundred separate souls beginning to join in unity.

"NOW!" shouted Guide, "Release your entropy!"

Pariah let go of his personal entropy, and was flung with a tremendous kick through space and time as the citadel collapsed around the two stunned Matronites.

April 2000

Time itself could no longer hold Pariah as his speed increased. He fell, ever faster and harder, through the non being of the quantum probability he had been bodily reduced to. Manual and Guide called out with the will of the O.M. complex to stop the buildup before the fabric of time-space ripped open to unite all point-moments into chaotic, then silent, oblivion.

Pariah had been crushed too hard with the force of the blow to think even a single thought in all this time, although the jump seemed to last an eternity this time. Rather than seeking a companion moment which would welcome Pariah into its reality, the tracking seemed to look for another timeater. The future version of the citadel linked hard, pulling itself into the same overlapping timeflow where an earlier structure stood. Trapped between the two, Pariah was pulled through a hardened shaft to wherever he was wanted.

A new mind called out, scanning the shaft for one such as Pariah was and called him into being by force of will. The new mind was locked at once into the hard reality of its own time and yet could reach out into the shaft to grasp its charge. Both and neither, all and nothing, the new mind was bridging the superimposition of all potentialities to elect the one it most desired to make real. Pariah could not escape his new lord. Even the tracking could not pull him free of this strange master.

"Never jump from within a citadel," Manual thought into the common mind.

Guide tensed up his part of the singular intellect shared by all three travelers, with the sting of the remark. "Manual should have informed Guide of this."

If Pariah had possessed or been possessed of the strength to ask anything, he would have asked why this was such a bad idea. His compatriots, Guide and Manual, knew this and could not decide who was to answer so neither did. Pariah's mind was alive with dancing colors and unreal phantoms until there was no room for thought or feeling within him. Even his actualization did not clear his perception enough for awareness to return.

Pariah was returned to a citadel. A strange man, in an all black and featureless suit, took off the crystalline helmet of a q-tech. Other men, in semi-ornate uniforms came into the domed room to take Pariah into a type of protective custody. It was a drill which these men had done many times in the past with every intention of doing so again in the future.

"This is an odd one, Terran," said the q-tech.

Terran didn't take his eyes off of Pariah. "What do you mean, Nikka?"

"He feels like a novice, but he definitely knows his power."

"All Timeaters know their power, Nikka. We couldn't use them if they did not."

"I don't know, Terran. This one seems skilled more than most of our veteran timeaters."

"The council will be pleased with this acquisition, then. You did well, Nikka."

"Sometimes you have to wonder. Would you want to live like this?"

"I do live like this and so do you."

"Haven't you ever wanted anything more than service?"

"We don't know anything but service, Nikka."

Nikka sat down the helmet, preparing to leave his station before replying. "This timeater knows other ways."

"You're losing it, Nikka. Timeaters don't even know this much of life. They are simple shadows in a world of substance."

Guide was afraid that the O.M. complex would not escape detection in the world where such technology was known. The Phaelon alloy of which the complex was cast was old imperial, from a time and place well beyond anything known to these people. However, the structure and function of the complex itself was well known to these people. They were a real threat.

Somehow, Pariah escaped being searched. Nikka had given his comrades good reason to look Pariah over more than any timeater these people had possession of and yet Pariah was left to himself. Guide's program did not cover as much of the social structure of these people which Manual knew for reasons only the tracking could know.

Timeaters lose power the longer they stay in a point-moment of time-space, yet these people also needed Pariah thinking clearly to be of use to them. It was Pariah himself who had to sidestep reality enough to release his enthropic imbalance into surrounding space-time without being vaporized in the process. No technology known to these people could overcome their need to keep Pariah thinking for himself even though it was a disadvantage to them.

Manual did his best to keep Pariah aware that Pariah's unawareness was protecting all three travelers. In the end, Manual would have to find a weakness in the wall of security these people had built up over centuries. This was a race which had been keeping, controlling and using timeaters as its primary resource for longer then its history was allowed to record. Guide could do nothing at all.

Eventually, Manual decided that the only way out of this trap was to do what these people wanted of Pariah. He could only jump back into the void between the instants of time when they least expected it; Or when they most expected it. There had to be a moment when Pariah was expected to be handed off to a version of the citadel even further forward in time and then, if the timing was right, Pariah could slip the noose.

Pariah was taken into another circular room. This room was more like a lime green cylinder hundreds of feet high, with a table wrapped almost all the way around its perimeter. Thirteen old men in brightly decorated, colored robes sat at intervals along the table. The only break in the table was at the walkway through which Pariah had been guided to the center of the tube.

It was not hard for Pariah to know what he was supposed to do. The council had grown old and needed to be regenerated. Pariah was just one of a dozen or more timeaters held by the council for this task whenever the council needed it. Manual advised Pariah not to resist them in any way or they'd see more than it was safe for Pariah to show.

"Timeater," one of the old men called. "Do you know why you are here?"

Guide suggested that Pariah make himself look groggy, even though neither he nor Manual could manifest to speak aloud in this place. This was a race which stood too much of a chance at detecting the O.M. Complex as no other group Pariah had encountered had.

"I do, sir," Pariah answered.

All thirteen of the strange men stood up.

"We are ready when you have prepared yourself adequately."

Pariah took a deep breath. He would stand a chance only in that these people did not know timeaters could hold back some of their strength when discharging. "I understand."

The actual discharge was one of the weakest in Pariah's history as a timeater. As the entropy within Pariah created an imbalance in the space of the room, time moved backwards within the field. Pariah had less entropy than the matter making up both air and the objects in the room, so his sudden release also discharged the area around him. When the field got larger, time simply stopped within it.

Everything within the room was then in a quantum probability flux from which any state of being could be reached. Pariah would easily have chosen freedom, yet that choice was not available to him. The council also had the choice made for it by the nature of the way the flow is governed. Anything inside the room was restored to its natural state.

Reality crystalized around the phantom forms until the council was back in its desired, more youthful, form. Time was restored to its forward flow at the same rate as the rest of the universe knew it to move. The room itself was unchanged through all the centuries, maybe more than millennia, of time through which it was used. Pariah also grew healthier with each discharge.

Pariah feigned weakness, falling gently to the floor in hopes that whomever was watching would lose sight of him. It didn't work. Manual almost found humor in Pariah's failure, but Guide held Manual back. For a time Pariah would actually be safer in captivity. The Matronites held no power over the council and the council would see to Pariah's welfare.

Given the random nature of actual time, Pariah could never be free of the Matronites and he knew it. There is nothing which a timeater can wait out since no timeater moves through time in only one direction. Pariah could easily jump to a time when the Matronites had him as a primary target when he next jumped free of the council's control. His mother had been right in that he would have no rest.

Few guards were allowed to see Pariah, or any of the other timeaters in the small rooms where they were held in isolation. The room reminded pariah of the small cell where he had lived in the Parson's home. Pariah was allowed to have only a bed and a desk in his room, along with the toilet and sink which he needed. These people would allow Pariah no chance to leave record that he had ever been in that room or even in that time.

After a period of time, Pariah was taken back into the citadel for use at a point further into the future. Again, the impenetrable cylinder of will between the two versions of the citadel encased Pariah for a guided jump. This time, Pariah let go and slid up the tube with all of his force. He could not think for himself, however, he could still feel. Manual panicked at loss of understanding for what Pariah was doing.

Pariah remained trapped, although he had begun to pull free of the q-tech's will. Time was close when he'd be strong enough to break out. He also knew that his mother must be close for him to be able to feel so free. Less than a single moment was consumed in Pariah's appearance back at the citadel.

June 2000

Pariah did not know how many years he had jumped ahead, but the citadel remained unchanged. Only the faces of the Q-techs, who took little notice of Pariah even as they escorted him on to his task, had changed. Equally, Pariah did not pay them much mind. They were as two absentminded individuals casually performing a task together because they had to. Pariah noticed that thought things looked the same, he felt a certain oldness to the place. He was slightly concerned that guide and manual remained so silent. The room that the techs led Pariah to was immense, and Pariah was taken aback at the utter alien nature of the place. It seemed to be comprised of one gigantic mesh of organic matter that was laced and integrated with circuitry. The organic mass seemed to be growing crystals out of pours that swelled with the mass of the crystals as they grew. As Pariah looked closer, he noticed that many of the crystals were fractured and dark.

At evenly spaced intervals around the perimeter of the room stood a group of robed figures. Pariah was lead to a platform at the center of the room, and instructed to begin at his leisure. Once more he preformed the duty that was becoming familiar to him, and as reality crystallized within the room, Pariah saw that it had become beautifully... different. Just how it had changed he was not able to note, as he was whisked away from the room and given the chance to prepare to be sent on. No one bothered to explain to him what had happened, as a timeater was simply a commodity to them. The time came again, and Pariah was sent on with no farewell or ceremony.

And on it went like that. Pariah appeared, was assigned a task, and sent on. The citadel began to change very gradually, and the sense of oldness and decay began to appall Pariah. More disturbing to him, though, was how Guide and Manual seemed to sink further and further into hibernation. They seemed to him to be his only hope for breaking this maddening cycle, and they had utterly disappeared. After many transportation's Pariah settled into a state mechanical repetition. His mind seemed to shut down its higher functions, and he became no more than the tool that the keepers of citadel had made him. In the mindlessness of the endless chain, Pariah's muddled brain did rise to question one thing: where does it all stop? Time could not keep decaying forever. Eventually it had to end. The further time progressed, the more need these people had for timeaters. But Pariah and his brothers could not keep back the inevitable chaos forever. And these people, who had so much technology and so much understanding and manipulation of time, could do nothing about it. Or could they? In a sense, this was a race between technology and universal forces. Could these mortals defeat the greatest enemy, time itself? In the end, Pariah knew that time would win out. But where would that leave him? What would happen when he was sent on, but there was no place to go? Would he be free? In a sense, Pariah did not fight the cycle, because he wanted to know how it all ended. And then it happened.

It was a jump just like any other, yet when Pariah actualized in the citadel, he suddenly awoke. His dead mind returned to life, and he actually noticed his surroundings. As always, the citadel was the same, with the only signs of aging the feeling rather than appearance. Something called to Pariah in a way that seemed familiar. He searched for Guide and Manual, or even the tracking, but none was present. Then his eyes focused on the Q-tech that had summoned him. It was his mother. A thousand questions leapt instantly to his mind. How could she summon him? She was just a paraseer. But then, he knew nothing about the abilities of the paraseers. Perhaps she had not summoned him. His thoughts were interrupted by her voice.

"Take the timeater to the task," she waved dismisively, "I'm exhausted from the summoning."

Pariah was lead without a word to a bedside. Some ancient and apparently important man was dying, and they wanted a timeater to revive him. Pariah did his bit, and without any thanks was taken to the containment area. His head was spinning, and he felt something occurring just beyond his senses. He sat for exactly a half-hour before his head stopped spinning, and the two animals appeared before him.

"Come," said Manual.

"You are leaving," Guide said in a softer tone.

"You mean breaking the cycle?" Pariah asked.

"Yes," Manual answered.

"But how?"

"Because three separate wills are calling for you."

Pariah was about to ask whose wills, but he sensed the moment's approach and seized the opportunity.

As the tunnel of light that was more feeling than reality receded, Pariah found himself sitting in a large crowd with a deafening noise like an explosion sounding continuously. He looked towards the painfully bright light and found himself looking at what appeared to be some sort of early spacecraft attached to a giant, orange rocket that was thundering away, speeding the craft up into the atmosphere.

As the sound faded, an old man next to him turned and spoke.

"Spectacular what the human race has achieved, isn't it?"

"Excuse me?" Pariah asked, turning to the voice.

"I said, spect..."

"Joseph?" Pariah exclaimed, as he examined the face, "Joseph Blecky?"

"Have we met?" the man asked.

"But... but you're so old!" Pariah was somewhat shaken by this.

"Yes, I am. May I ask who I have the pleasure of addressing?"

"I'm Pariah. I've met you before in the past."

"A different past, perhaps. You are not usual, my friend. Come with me to a little diner I happen to know of. You can tell me about yourself."

Pariah smiled. It was beginning again.

July 2000

The three wills calling to Pariah were still a puzzle which could not be as easily digested as the meal he shared with the century man. Joseph, who moments earlier did not even know that there was a Pariah, could not have been one of the three. Although Pariah's mother would know him well enough to call out to him from the void between the moments of time and space, she would have no need to do so since she shared his passage with him.

Timeater's are mere shadows who fade, unnoticed, into the vagueness of lost memory as soon as the lights fall into restful sleep. The vigilant eyes which forever bind Pariah to singular moments do not tire themselves seeing Pariah as even a real person who had value more than being a simple object not to collide with when moving across a crowded room. It was almost odd to Pariah that his anonymity was easiest maintained where the most eyes see him. In all of time, who knew that Pariah had ever been?

Guide and Manual could call Pariah to no place where he was not already located since Pariah wore them as his undershirt. In the end, three was a hard number to achieve, yet Pariah believed that he had that many candidates reasoned out. Death knew of Pariah, as did the tracking and the Matronites. Only one friend could call to Pariah from amongst the chosen few with the knowledge to do so.

"Why am I here?" Pariah wondered aloud.

Joseph did not look up from his meal to answer. "That's a deep question, my friend. Why are any of us here?"

"For us, that is a much deeper question than for most."

A short pause ensued while Joseph swallowed his food to answer. "I don't agree, Pariah. I just think that we're more sensitive to the question than others."

Pariah held back explaining the trouble bouncing about inside his skull. If three wills had called to him, then why had he not actualized where one of them stood? One of the three, if not more, was closer to Pariah than Pariah was comfortable with. Unseen in the crowd, somebody was watching both pariah and Joseph. Maybe the same will had called Joseph to this place.

Unaccustomed to alcohol, Pariah got easily drunk from the watered down wine he shared with Joseph. Joseph noticed Pariah's state and did not force his friend any further than Pariah was willing to go. Pariah told the century man as much of his life's story as he could recall with the whirlwind in his mind and the numbness in his tongue. It would have felt odd to Pariah that he could be so open with anybody if Pariah could have exceeded the bounds of his drunkenness enough to even notice. Neither Guide nor Manual had a say in the matter as long as Pariah was inebriated.

The two unique men shared a toast to innocence, a toast to life and a toast to the companionship which neither man was to know at great length or in great depth. Pariah's mother brought the bill to the table as Joseph portioned out the last quantity from the bottle into his own cup. Pariah was grateful that he would have a singular moment more of peace and friendship to keep inside his mind for as many eternities as a timeater can live. Memories are all that a shadow is allowed for company in the void of being.

"To the children that we truly are at heart," toasted Joseph.

"And to our heavenly father without whom we would be even less," Pariah concluded.

Joseph paid his tab while Pariah tried to find the ground beneath his feet to walk upon. Pariah's mother came back to the table and helped old Joseph support his friend until both had left the establishment. It was a hard walk for the elderly aspect of Joseph, and he had to rest a moment on the road just outside of town. There pariah heard the voice within his mind which had called him all the distance back to that one point in time-space. This time, it was the sober Pariah who carried Joseph on the short trip.

His tracking called out to Pariah from deep within a cave. Though much effort had been expended to cover it up, Pariah knew that the cave was not a natural formation. It had been cut into the foot hills to hide something which Pariah was now called to find. Yet, Pariah also knew that the thing he was to seek actually meant to find him. Its mechanical mind would have come to him if it could have moved about on its own.

Through many miles of twisting passages, Pariah was pulled to a dead end. The great distance Pariah had carried Joseph was the result of the maze through which he had come since he was barely a thousand feet into the stone growth into which the cavern had been hewn. Pariah felt Guide panic a bit as a bright light flashed around Pariah, followed by the vanishing of the stone wall to Pariah's left. It was as though the blockage had never been there.

"You've been scanned, Pariah," called Guide.

At the point when Pariah stepped from the false stone tunnel into the crystalline hall past the door, the tracking fell silent again. Pariah stopped the moment he felt the wall re-materialize behind him. The light was still too bright for Pariah to see clearly down the long passageway, however, he knew that it was also a dead end. He sat the tired Joseph down on the warm floor and stretched a moment to see what would happen.

"Is it advisable to proceed?" Pariah asked Guide.

Guide materialized as a beaver in the middle of the hall. "We just passed thought a biometric scanner," he began. His eyes rapidly scanned the hall as though Guide's sensors within the O.M. complex were being blocked and he knew no more about the room than Pariah did. "This ship is yours, Pariah."

"Ship?"

"Near as I can gather, this entire mound is a craft of some kind. Manual will not answer inquiries."

"How can I have a ship?" Pariah asked. "I'm a timeater."

"Manual will not answer inquiries. The scanner cleared you for all operations. No further data is available."

"Is it advisable to proceed?" Pariah repeated.

Guide completed his nervous scan of the hall before answering. "No alternatives exist, Pariah. Guide advises rest before proceeding. This ship is very large and complex."

"You know all of that just by looking around the room?"

"Did Guide really have to tell you any of that or did you already know it all?"

Pariah conceded, although not in words, that Guide was right. Guide did not have to tell Pariah that the ship was either huge or complicated in its architecture. It did not puzzle Pariah that he knew as much about a ship he had never seen before. As a Timeater, he had become numbly accepting of the world around him because, like dreams, the realities he found himself within did not exist to him long enough to have to make sense. He knew that he would wake up into another dream as long as he survived each dream.

Joseph and Pariah both slept comfortably on the floor for an unknown amount of time. The most amazing part, for Pariah, was that both of them were still in the room when their morning came. It was different for Joseph, who had a single time line where each moment was preceded by another moment and led to another moment of his life. Century Men only experience these moments out of sequence. Timeaters live in moments which do not have the pretense of continuity.

Guide pretended to awaken as he pretended to sleep. He yawned, showing the immensity of his imaged teeth, as Pariah stood erect. Joseph relaxed a few minutes longer while Guide dashed, unseen, to the end of the hall looking for the next door in the labyrinth. It was compulsive in Guide's programming to live up to his name.

The hall of the craft did not have any doors at all. Even the entrance through which Pariah and Joseph had come into the hall just appeared to be a wall to Guide's scanners. Guide did not like to admit that this ship was in charge and that there was nothing he could do to guide Pariah's journey. Helplessness violated Guide's programming. All he could do was guide Pariah down the hall where Pariah, who the ship could scan as being there, would trigger the locking mechanism leading into the next room.

Pariah helped Joseph to his feet and walked slowly toward Guide at the far end of the hall. Guide did not tell Pariah that he was unable to really help so that Pariah would not panic. Nobody in the room failed to notice that there was no way of reopening the door through which the travelers had come into the hall. Each man faked courage to spare his companions the discomfort which each was already suffering in silence.

Joseph, leading Pariah by about half a step, reached the end of the hall without a single opening in the wall appearing. Guide realized that the hall was some kind of airlock, yet, he didn't tell Pariah because he thought Pariah already knew as much. In Guide's mind, trying to tell Pariah too much would reveal just how little Guide actually knew. Still half asleep, Joseph just did whatever his companion did.

At the end of the hall, nothing vanished. Instead, another wall appeared to cage the two men into a twelve foot cube. A series of thin lights scanned the occupants of the cube before a thin membrane of yellow-green light drifted from floor to ceiling. Then the membrane passed over the men from left to right. It noticed the space occupied by Guide, much to Guide's dismay, and passed around him as well. Joseph didn't admit to noticing.

Then the wall to Pariah's left turned black as pitch. Lines formed on the wall until a map of the structure had been drawn in white onto the blackness. It did not look like a map of any floor of the craft, but appeared to be an ordered list of floors. When Pariah touched any floor in the drawing, a small box appeared on the wall with writing Pariah could not read. The wall did not respond to Joseph's touch at all.

"Command deck is down three levels," Guide said.

"No time for discretion, " Pariah began. "How do you know that, Guide?"

Guide was proud, if that is the right word for the relief he felt at not being useless anymore, of his ability to read the strange language and let his pride show in the rigid stance he assumed. "Guide can handle this method of communication. It is part of my programming."

"And what is this big floor near the bottom?"

"That is the cargo hold," Guide answered. "The manifest says it's still almost full, although it does not list the contents."

Joseph did not know if Pariah was talking to the computer or to his unseen friend, yet he knew that he could not play ignorant any longer. "Is this a timeater ship?"

"Timeaters do not have property this large, Joseph," Pariah replied in an unfittingly gentle tone. "I'm as lost here as you are."

"But you can read those displays," He continued.

Pariah was not willing to introduce Guide to Joseph for reasons which knotted his stomach. "I have a translator."

A pair of parallel lines went from the top of the drawing to the bottom and Pariah took this to be the elevator shaft. Four floors from the top, there was a red line. Pariah touched the elevator shaft on the larger floor near the bottom and Guide's image blurred for a moment. Another wall vanished for a few moments and Pariah's party stepped through the doorway quickly.

The ship's cargo hold was lighted by an eerie, dim red light. It was so dim that the light looked orange. At minimum, the cargo hold was fifty feet in height and over a mile in diameter. Self illuminated bluish cylinders, like the elevator shaft Pariah had just left, ringed the parameter every seventy five feet or so. A woven mesh of metallic reinforcing beams covered the ceiling to give the deck above rigidity enough to remain standing with the huge volume os unsupported space below it.

Inside the cargo hold, Pariah saw millions of oval shaped structures which looked like eggs. Some of the containers were the size of trucks and others were small enough for a man to see over. Pariah was drawn, as was Joseph, to look into the eggs, however, the thick material prevented either man from seeing into the containers. Each container was smooth and had a metallic, cold feel to it. The room was warm, yet not warm enough nor humid enough for an incubator.

"Any ideas where I can find a computer in here," Pariah asked?

Joseph wandered off a bit into the collection, calling back, "Don't look at me, Pariah. That's not my field."

Guide hopped up onto the egg closest to Pariah's face, then asked, "Are you sure you want to know?"

Pariah's trust for his friend turned the simple question into a complex quandary. Surely loyal Guide had a real reason for not wanting Pariah to know what was in the crates. Maybe Guide thought Pariah did not want to know.

"I can never be sure of anything," Pariah began. "I must know."

"Very well, then," Guide replied. Guide jumped down and phased out for a few seconds. Then an orange-yellow light emerged from the ceiling, painting one of the eggs and making it transparent.

Within the egg, was a dinosaur of some kind. It was not an embryo. The creature within, although not alive as Pariah knew life, was full grown. Somebody had packed up a managery of huge reptiles and placed them in the cargo hold of the alien ship. Pariah was at a loss for words.

There was nothing which Guide could say and even Guide did not know why he had questioned Pariah's request to examine the contents of the shipping carton. Joseph noticed the light, so bright that it could not easily be overlooked, and returned to Pariah's side. The light faded in just over a minute which may as well have been a century in the distorted time of surprise. Yet, even Pariah did not know why there was any surprise at such an obvious fact.

"What is that thing," Joseph asked at last?

Manual's response was lost in a storm of thought deep within Pariah's flooding mind. He did not even notice Manual, now a monitor lizard, appear upon the same egg where Guide had earlier been. It was all too convenient and starting to make a kind of sick sense to Pariah. Pariah had always been a pawn, to which he had adapted well, however, he still did not like being played with.

"We're going to the bridge," Pariah commanded.

"As you say," replied loyal Guide while Manual hesitated and Joseph wondered.

Guide opened the lift door while Manual babbled on about the value of the find housed in that room. Manual did not want to leave the room with all the articles of his faith neatly packaged for his inspection. It was not only loyalty which drove Guide to open the elevator door as Pariah had asked. He felt the same sickness that Pariah did. Everything in that room was a counterfeit attack against truth. Joseph didn't know it and Manual didn't care.

"What's on the bridge," Joseph asked?

"A way to get you out of here, I hope."

Joseph did not know what to make of Pariah's comment as the tone in his voice could have been anxiety or anger. "You want me to leave?"

Pariah tried to calm his friend by looking him in the eye to reply. "You have to escape what I'm about to do."

"I don't like the sound of that, Pariah."

"You would like it less if you knew what I am about to do."

Manual finally stopped babbling when he realized what Pariah was saying. His thoughts, if programs can have ideas of their own, had been lost in the treasure to which he felt fate had guided him. Even without knowing what Pariah had in mind, Manual liked it less than Joseph did. Manual knew that the artifacts were less even than trinkets to Pariah and Guide.

Guide knew what was in Pariah's mind.

The trip to the bridge didn't take more than a few seconds. Pariah felt the room run out of air with the strain of his first real attempt to play a leadership role even in those few seconds. His breathing was labored with little more than the panic in his veins. He had to admit to himself that he didn't like what he had to do any more than his compatriots. Only Guide shared that understanding.

"This is a Matronite ship," Pariah thought aloud.

"Matronite," Joseph inquired?

"They don't like us," Pariah replied. "You'll find that out in time."

Once on the bridge, Guide tried to access the system's computers for Pariah. He told Pariah which icons to tap since the system would not accept Guide's attempts at pulse interfacing. Even Pariah could not override the security of the system so he had to do Guide's bidding so that Guide could follow his instructions. It did not take long for Pariah to get the elevator ready to take Joseph to the edge of the ship.

"I suppose that we'll meet again," Joseph said.

Pariah closed his eyes as not to see his friend and make it easier to accept surrendering the companionship he so rarely knew. "Will 7 minutes be enough for you to get clear of the ship?"

"I'll manage."

"We will meet again. Count on that."

With that, Joseph entered the opened elevator and left the craft as fast as his elderly body would carry him. Guide planned ahead, setting Joseph's lift to take him close to an exit from the mound which was a strait shot. Pariah waited a few minutes, then entered the lift himself. Seconds later, Pariah was back on the cargo deck.

Pariah wasted no time getting as close to the center of the cargo room as he could. Then Manual realized what Pariah was up to and was mortified as much as a computer program could be. Guide remained cold, somber and quiet. Nothing in the room could tell Pariah when the seven minutes were up.

"You cannot destroy the truth, Pariah," Manual warned.

Pariah felt nothing when he replied. "It's not truth I'm after."

"These things have been extinct for millions of years. The information in this room is priceless."

"Whatever this stuff is, it's also part of the reason Joseph and I are being hunted. It's not worth our lives."

"You're being hasty, Pariah. If it's that important, then stay here and try to figure it out. Don't you want to know what it is that somebody wants you dead for?"

"In a better time, I'd be inclined to agree with you."

Manual hopped onto an egg to face Pariah. "No time like the present."

"This is a Matronite ship. They must know I'm here and I don't have time to look around before they get here."

"Then move your ship. What kind of captain would abandon his ship this easily?"

"In other conditions, it would never have occurred to me."

"Then why not go back to the bridge and set a new course?"

"This isn't my ship," Pariah began. He looked deep into Manual's synthetic eye images to continue. "This is the tracking's ship."

"You haven't answered my question, Pariah."

A billion or more questions flooded Pariah's mind, yet the seven minutes had to be up by then. Pariah didn't know why he couldn't hide the ship, or why he was so obsessed with destroying the craft his tracking once owned. Answers which Pariah might never find anywhere else were in the ship's computer core, however, he discharged his entropy into the cargo hold.

The ship's metallic hull buckled from the force of rapid aging. Warp capable craft seem unnaturally sensitive to dimensional instability and the tracking's ship was no exception. Everything in the cargo hold was reduced to a fine powder of mixed, pure elements in the blast. Pariah vanished into the void between moments to avoid having the decks cave in on top of him.

In the void, Pariah felt the second of the three wills calling to him. It had enough force to call him from the blankness where neither time nor space dared venture. All of Pariah's strength faded and he dropped, half asleep, into a fog. The will which had called him was not yet ready to have Pariah see him.

Continued here from August 2000