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Where no Mortal has Gone

Copyright (c) FarmWolf's player

I never thought I would ever be furclad in space, Felix said to himself, then amended, I never thought I'd be furclad while actually floating in the void. As he floated, he recalled the events that had led to his current situation.

He had engaged the emergency shutdown on the transwarp drive and informed Control, but even as he spoke to them he'd watched the intermix injector continue its trip and bury itself in the red. What had happened next occurred too fast for a mortal to comprehend, but Felix suspected he was no longer a part of the mortal world. Now, he could remember the events with objective thoroughness. He saw the ship implode as the core spiked in reaction to subspace phenomena that no one had considered or even imagined.

Kisara will be interested to know this, he thought.

Kisara

If he were in fact dead, as he now strongly suspected, he wouldn't be able to tell Kisara anything. As he understood things, eventually he would leave this plane of existence entirely. Kisara would be left to live on without him.

Two hundred fifty years, he thought. We're forty now. If she lives to be three hundred, she will have lived without me for about two and a half centuries.

Felix's thoughts were interrupted at this point by the arrival of a ship from his space station.

* * *

Kisara's emotions roiled inside her all the way to Felix's last known position. Logically, there was almost no chance he could still be alive, given the data she had seen. All transmissions from the ship had simply ceased, and Kisara knew, from the very few examples in the recent history of the space program, that this invariably meant the total destruction of a ship and loss of its crew.

Emotionally, there was no way her attachment to Felix could be challenged. She knew what he meant to her and what she meant to him. Kisara would not consider the possibility that Felix could be gone until she saw the results of the sensor sweeps.

Her communicator chimed. It was Commander Koy, informing her that they had reached the last known location of Felix's ship. Kisara hunted down her resolve and headed to the command clearing. "No sign of the ship anywhere near its last known location," the science officer was reporting as she stopped beside Koy. "Increasing sensor resolution."

"Could the loss of communication be because the ship went deeper in subspace?" Albus asked Kisara.

"No," she replied. "Even if it had somehow slipped even deeper into subspace, the data would get through."

"Could it...could it have gone to another dimension?"

Kisara did not reply immediately. Computer models had indicated a slight possibility of dimensional shifting in transwarp space, but it was suggested at much deeper levels than where Felix had been operating.

"Doubtful. But if it did, I'm not sure how we could track it."

The science officer's new report spared Koy another attempt to break the silence.

"Sir, I may have something. It's a one-dimensional string of degenerate matter oriented along the Experimental's flight path. We'll have an analysts shortly."

Kisara stiffened. This was it. The ship had imploded after its transwarp core had gone critical. This was exactly what all the disaster models had predicted. Felix might as well be making his way to the next world even as they scanned the length of the matter string.

But, like any good scientist, Kisara refused to leap to conclusions. She might be almost sure about something, but until the instruments confirmed it, she would consider the possibility that she might be wrong.

"Commander." The science officer spoke, interrupting Kisara's thoughts. "I have finished scanning the matter string. It contains the entire mass of the Experimental. And its pilot."

Kisara threw back her head and howled, and in response to the mournful, penetrating sound the fur on the back of Koy's neck stood up.

* * *

Felix, contrary to Kisara's prediction, was not making his way to the next world yet, but was still near the search vessel. The former chief pilot could see inside the ship. Indeed, he seemed to see several places at once. He could see the crew scanning, he could see the remains of the Experimental, and he could see Kisara talking with Commander Koy. Felix focused his attention on Kisara and as he did so he moved right to the bridge of the ship and stood beside her. Now that he was among mortals, Felix could tell how physically insubstantial he had become. He seemed solid but at the same time, he could tell he was as tenuous to the people here as floating dust. He thought about trying to say something to Kisara but was interrupted by a voice saying gently, "There will be time for that. First there are some things we must discuss."

The voice came from a Kataran standing a short distance away. He and a female stood side by side, both furclad, both unnoticed by the crew, and both, Felix realized after a moment's observation, as physically tenuous as he was.

Felix thought he knew where they had come from.

"It's true, then," he said. "The transwarp core imploded and I've...not died, but made a transition from one form of existence to another."

"You're quite right," the female agreed. "Do you know why we're here?"

Felix reached for his knowledge of the non-physical world, taught to him in stages throughout his childhood, and found it came readily. "You're to guide me from this world to the next one, and you and others will teach me things I need to know there and help me review the life I've just finished."

The female Kataran nodded. "That's right. It's time for you to come with us now."

Felix agreed and concentrated on journeying with the two to their realm, but something occurred to him before he could form the complete thought.

"What about Kisara? Will she be all right here without me?"

Before he even finished the question, the answer came to him.

"Yes, she will, won't she? We figured this out before we went to the physical world. She needs to keep working on the transwarp drive and she'll have other things to do and people to help her. She had predicted she could deal with anything that happened and I'm sure she can."

As Felix explained this to his two guides, he noticed that he and they had in fact left the ship and were going where no mortal would ever go. When he finished talking, another thought occurred to him.

"How did I know all that?"

Again, the answer came right away.

"I remembered it from my time here. And different people remember different amounts depending on their experience and willingness to see reality. For the well-organized mind, most questions come with answers, especially here."

"You're absolutely right," replied the male. Felix realized that he knew this male's name. He also knew the female's name--the names of their souls, not their bodies. Felix had never seen these beings before, not in the forms they showed him. As he realized this, Felix understood that his soul had advanced to a level where he no longer needed to be met upon leaving the physical world by people whose bodies he recognized.

* * *

Felix had decided that he needed to send a message to Kisara, so the female helped him learn how. When he was ready, he used the technique she had shown him and sent the message Kisara would need to continue her work and her life. He did not need his review of his lifetime nor the enhanced reasoning power available in the non-physical world to determine the message that would help her most.

If anyone can fix that injector, it's you, he sent.

* * *

Kisara seemed to be watching herself from afar in the days that followed the accident. She was only dimly aware of the flight back to the station, the questions from teammates and from her superiors. She looked back through the data logs, not really expecting to find anything new. Sure enough, she didn't. She knew the injector had spiked, sending the core into overload. Neither she nor any other team member had the slightest idea what had caused it. An analysis of the particles collected was underway and the full findings would be disclosed at the hearing on the incident.

She spent little time in the lab anymore. Kelvin, Kott, and her other staff members were fully capable of analysis and documentation. Kisara simply sat in the darkness in what had been their den, breathing in the scent of Felix that still lingered everywhere.

That scent was slowly changing. Her friends were always with her. Koy, Aurora, Kelvin, Andrea, or some combination of them would stay with Kisara at all times, even curling up to sleep with her to provide continual emotional support. They kept her body warm and, more importantly, prevented her soul from freezing solid.