Chapter 6
I awoke to Lilly prodding me with her gun. “Wake up already! We’ve slept enough!”
“But there isn’t any time here! You have to get that into your head, Lilly. I could sleep for as long as I wanted and nothing would change!”
“I don’t care. I’m getting bored, so let’s go.”
I sighed. If I waited any longer, she would probably end up shooting me. I wearily got out of bed, and a pink poodle plushy bounced off my head. “Move faster!”
I told a Ronsard soldier that we would be leaving for a little while, and Lilly and I walked over to the Grid.
I shuffled through the plates again, and looked to Lilly. “You choose this time.”
She shrugged, and pointed at a dot near the right of the plate. I tapped it, and everything disappeared.
I found myself staring into a large silver wall. I looked around, and found that we were in a room. “Huh, that’s strange. It looks like we got dropped off in somebody’s room.”
Lilly was already half way through pulling her gun out when a door appeared in the wall and opened. A tall humanoid probably somewhere around nine feet, walked into the room. The lighting in the room dimly reflected off of his pale grey skin, giving it a glossy appearance. The man held a hand out to us.
“Hello, Mr. Jinx, Ms. Swift. We’ve been expecting you.”
I chuckled, and shook the offered hand. “Did you pull that out of a cheesy Si-fi movie?”
“No response.”
“So, care to tell me how you know our names?” I asked.
The humanoid nodded. “Please follow me.”
I followed him out of the room, and Lilly carefully followed, her hand resting on her weapon the entire time. The hallway he led us through had glass walls, allowing us to look outside. The city outside was simply astounding.
The houses were all hovering in the air, suspended by some unknown technology. Connecting them were hallways much like the one I was currently walking through, and as I watched, the floating pathways would often move between houses to allow the humanoid creatures to move about freely.
“How is everything floating?” Lilly asked.
“Oh, that’s one of our older inventions. It’s simple when you look back on it. You see, we have a machine that allows us to set a point of increased gravity for a single object. All we have to do is attach four to a house, and set the points in a square where each vertex is equidistant from the center of the house. Since each point is set to the same power, it keeps the house suspended in the middle.”
I whistled slowly. “That’s amazing! I don’t care if you guys give us an army, but I need to get my hands on one of those! Oh, you never told me your name. It would be a common courtesy, considering you already know ours somehow.”
“My apologies, Mr. Jinx. I doubt a human could pronounce my name correctly, so you may refer to me as John.”
“Where are you taking us?” Lilly growled.
John raised a waxy eyebrow. “You have a strong temper on you, Ms. Swift. Please calm yourself, my kind and I mean you no harm.”
“I don’t care about that! If you tried to attack me, I’d kill the lot of you! But since we aren’t in the Void anymore, doesn’t that mean that time is moving again in the Pisces Empire?”
John grimaced when Lilly mentioned the Pisces Empire. “Indeed, but the speed time passes in that packet of time relative to you two will not be normal. For all we know, it could be moving so slowly that a second here on Iropolice could be equivalent to a year there.”
“But that means that a second there could also be equivalent to a year here, right?”
John grimaced. “Yes. Therefore, we should try to conclude your business here as quickly as possible. I am taking you to our leader now, and many of our people come to help with the process. We already know what you want.”
We reached the end of the pathway, and John pressed his hand to the wall. A doorway appeared, and we walked into the building. He led us through several other pathways and small buildings until we reached a large dome.
“This is where the process will be held. Please enter and wait for a moment while our people gather. This is as far as I will be able to go, so good luck.”
I thanked him, walking into the large glass dome. There was a small circle in the middle with half a fence around one side, so I figured that was where I was supposed to go. I walked over to it, and leaned against the railing. Above me, thousands of humanoids were gathering in the stands. The stands hovered above the flat ground in a full circle, much like a football game.
Lilly walked over to me, and glared at the people in the stands. “Where’s their leader? We don’t have time for this!”
I shushed her. “Just enjoy the view! Do you think you’ll ever see something like this again in your life? This is just awesome.”
“But the Pisces Empire is in trouble!”
I rolled my eyes. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. The Pisces Empire was just a powerful nation that conquered many others and forced them to bend to its rule. It was just a huge bully. A bully that managed to take over a playground consisting of many different worlds.
“Silence please! Everyone, the Leader will now address the problem brought to us by Mr. Jinx and Ms. Swift!”
Everyone immediately stopped talking and we looked towards a small hovering platform, where a woman stood. She waved at her people, and looked down at us. The platform we were standing on shuddered, and rose slowly into the air until it hovered before hers.
“You come to the Iropolice seeking aid for your war, correct?” she called.
“Yes! We need you to give us troops to help fight off a strange aggressor who has attacked the Pisces Empire for no reason! We will gladly repay you and return the remaining troops you lend us when the war is over!” Lilly yelled back.
I winced. When you put it that way, it doesn’t help your cause much. Heck, it sounded like she was TELLING them to give us their troops.
“We have known you would be coming for some time now, Ms. Smith. Normally, we try to help all those who visit us, but there is a problem this time. You see, the inhabitants of Iropolice are a peaceful people. We have not fought in a war in almost a thousand years, and see no reason to do so now. Can you give us a good reason to support you in this battle?”
Lilly glared at them, and went to pull her gun. I grabbed her hand.
“We want them to help us, and shooting at them isn’t going to make them happy!”
Lilly glared at me. “We need troops from every single place we stop at! We can’t waste a single Leap, or we won’t have enough troops to fight this enemy who is attacking the Pisces Empire now!”
I cleared my throat. “Please, our people need help! Our people are in danger from a strange enemy who is easily defeating us as we speak! If he manages to beat the Pisces Empire, he could come after you next! None of us know what his goals are, so you guys could just as easily be targets.”
The Leader nodded slowly. “Very well. The people will now vote on your request. Please submit your votes immediately, people of Iropolice!”
Everyone in the stands dispersed, and the Leader turned back to us. “We will have the results of your request sometime this week.”
Lilly’s jaw hit the floor, and surprise covered my own face.
“A week? Can’t you do this any faster?”
“We do not have a dictatorship here, Mr. Jinx. That is not the way of our people. I only speak for our people. I do not make the decisions, for those are done by the entire population. I cannot ask them to change how we have worked for many years just to appease two foreigners.”
“I swear, I’ll kill you if don’t give us what we need! Hand it over, you overgrown hag!” Lilly screeched.
The Leader laughed, and her platform turned and left the dome. Ours slowly lowered, and returned to its original position.
“It's only a week, Lilly. We can look around while we wait!” I suggested.
Lilly glar
ed at me. “We don’t have time to waste! I bet if I hold their leader hostage, they’ll act quicker!”
“Lilly! You have to stop this. You can’t just resort to violence every time something doesn’t work out for you! You can’t just kill and trick people to help yourself, you know. You’ve got to think about how they feel too!”
Lilly spat on the ground. “How they feel doesn’t matter. Don’t you understand that once we leave this planet, we’ll never see them again? It’ll be like they never existed.”
“But they do exist! Just because we can’t see what we did to them anymore, it doesn’t mean that it never happened! They have the same right to living that we do, and nobody gave you the authority to be able to take that away from them!”
Lilly patted her pistol. “This baby here did. This is all the authority I need. If you don’t toughen up, you’re going to die early. Don’t try to bring me down with you.”
She spun around and strode out of the dome, leaving me watching after her sadly.