Worlds Of Transformation

WORLDS OF TRANSFORMATION

Phillip Velasquez and Paul Lucas

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Copyright 2018 Phillip Velasquez and Paul Lucas

Cover Art by Raffaele Marinetti

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Smashwords Edition

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Actaeon

Mermaid of Marquadt

Foal

Indigo Depths

Unicorn Girl

Contact The Creators

Preview: Hippocampus

Other Books by the Authors

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INTRODUCTION

Becoming something other, something more, than what are is an integral part of life.

We change and grow throughout our lives. Sometimes the change is slow and gradual; other times it comes with the speed and chaos of a storm. Yet however it happens, people inevitably evolve from one stage of being into another. None of us leave this world the same as how we entered it. Not in body or mind or spirit. Transformation is forever imprinted onto the human soul.

Metamorphosis has also been a rich and integral part of humanity’s millennia-long storytelling tradition. Myths and legends of all cultures are filled with heroes and heroines becoming animals, monsters, and gods. It can be a reward or punishment, a curse or a blessing, an obstacle or a means to an end.

This collection explores many different kinds of fantastic transformation, and the incredible results they can lead to.

Enjoy!

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ACTAEON

Clark Chism crinkled his nose at the visual distortion in the deep shadows of the cavernous hangar. It was almost like a small swirling hole in the air. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear it away.

Are even you paying attention? grumbled Bud, his father.

Hm? Oh sure, Dad.

That distortion or whatever it was seemed almost like his eyes had developed an extra blind spot. A dot of visual discontinuity that was noticeable only when he looked elsewhere, but disappeared when he tried to look directly at it. When he was able to concentrate on it long enough out of the corner of his eye, it seemed to elongate and go on forever, like an opening into another universe...

Clark!

The discontinuity popped out of existence like a soap bubble. He shook his head, taking off his glasses to wipe them on his shirt sleeve. Sorry. Guess I was distracted by a, um, spot on the lens. Now, this thing is called what again?

Focus on what’s important, his father snapped. "The vehicle’s name is the Actaeon. The consortium that backs us uses mythological names for different projects and I needed a name that hadn’t been taken yet. He was a hunter transformed into a horse or something."

Actaeon was actually turned into a stag as punishment for spying on the goddess Diana, according to the myth, Clark said. Bud bristled at being corrected, but said nothing. Clark closely examine the large boxy craft splayed on four broad metal legs. It sort of looks like an Apollo Lunar Lander.

That’s not a coincidence, his fiancee Keryn said. She was as excited as Bud was grumpy. They had been wanting to bring Clark in on the project for moths now, and finally had gotten clearance from the oversight committee. We needed a vehicle with similar requirements, so we kind of ‘borrowed’ the design. Heavily modified and modernized, of course, as its designed to land on Earth after traversing temporal wormholes.

Clark snorted out a laugh. No, really, what’s it for?

Bud and Keryn’s unchanging sober expressions brought Clark up short. How is that possible? he asked. It looks too small to have one of those wormhole generators in it.

A conventional one, yes, Bud said. Ever since the first practical wormhole demonstrations a few years ago, people have only been talking about them in conjunction with space travel. Interstellar jaunts, planetary colonization, and all that. But this vehicle doesn’t need to punch a brand new hole into space/time, it uses the ones that are already there in hyperspace.

Clark crossed his arms. Maybe you better elaborate. Wormhole theory isn’t my specialty.

You’re a physicist. Haven’t you been keeping up?

He shook his head. I mostly analyze beta decay in sea sediment and pottery fragments. Why would I need to know about wormholes?

His father waved his hand dismissively. "That's not real science."

Dad...!

Keryn conspicuously cleared her throat, a silent warning that neither male was there to restart their long-running bickering feud.

Bud snorted, but went on. Well, even you should have enough background to understand the basics. Wormholes came about through a better understanding of quantum gravity. But one tidbit that was considered only a curiosity only is that gravitons, gravity’s carrier particle, are like photons in that they have no arrow of time. Past and future is all the same to them, and they exchange information back and forth through the past and future freely.

I did read about that. So?

So gravitons also distort the fabric of space/time. That means any massive object like a planet or a star essentially scribes a four-dimensional gravitational channel that extends both into the past and the future. A kind of graviton path in hyperspace. It’s not really a wormhole, but a kind of second cousin. If you think of a proper wormhole like a deep mineshaft, this would be a ditch.

Clark’s eyes widened, seeing the implications right away. But by taking advantage of that already warped space, you can create a wormhole using a lot less energy than a conventional one. But the downside is that you can only travel where the, uh, ‘ditch’ takes you.

Exactly! I’ll show you the equations later. And having to stay in the local graviton ‘ditch’ is hardly a disadvantage, as long as its Earth’s. The graviton path it’s been plowing through space for billions of years gives us access to almost all of the planet’s history up to this point. That’s what this whole project is all about.

You’re essentially building a time machine.

I honestly thought you’d be more shocked.

The younger man shrugged his shoulders. They’ve been talking about the possibility of time travel since the wormhole generators were first invented. Even the older, flawed versions of the theory pointed toward it. I guess I always kind of expected someone to come up with real time travel eventually. But what does all of this have to do with me? Why call me in?

Bud sighed. Because we found that we need someone who is expert in both physics and archeology. A physicist who is in a way a historian too. You were coincidentally one of the best fits we could find, and it won’t take that much time to bring you up to speed on the project. What do you say?

Besides, Keryn interjected, We've been dying to talk about all this with you since the project started. Once you sign the non-disclosure contracts, we won’t have to hold anything back.

Clark shook his head. I don’t know. The work I do is important...

Bud scoffed. Nothing a post-grad couldn’t do. But this is Nobel prize stuff, something that could change the whole world. Bud sighed, his shoulders drooping with world weariness. Plus maybe... I want my boy by my side when I do this. It’ll be my life’s great work, and you can share in it.

Clark laughed. Keryn made you say that last part, didn't she?

Bud laughed despite Keryn’s cross glare. Yeah, maybe that part was a huge pile of bullshit. She even had me rehearse it. He straightened again, ignoring Keryn's withering frown. But the other stuff still stands. Come on, grow a spine, boy. Don't you want to be in on this?

If it works. And that's a big if.

Keryn beamed her most persuasive smile at her fiancé. Well, honey, if all the science doesn’t convince you, how about this? The consortium funding us is willing to pay you five hundred thousand dollars a year plus full benefits and expenses for your work.

Clark’s jaw dropped. Bud and Keryn exchanged predatory grins, knowing they had him.

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Clark needed weeks of hard work and studying to get caught up on just the theoretical basics of the project. The six figure income was more than he’d ever hoped to have in his life, but he would definitely have to earn it.

He had always considered himself much more of an archaeologist than physicist. He had specialized in Greco-Roman and Mediterranean excavations and artifacts, classifying them according to minutiae in their isotope content. It was a very scholarly niche of research. It leant itself to a relatively sedate and orderly work lifestyle.

His father’s time travel project was the exact opposite, which proved to be a harried jumbled mess without end. Their engineers and managers were under extreme pressure from the financial backers, and the whole endeavor seemed to teeter perpetually on the edge of complete collapse.

Clark poured over superstring quantum gravity and temporal transactional particle interactions, the theories that led to the wormhole breakthrough a decade before. A lot of the material were in fields he had not bothered catching up on since college. He had three months of intense immersion in the arcane mathematics involved, and even when he joined the project as a research assistant proper he spent at least several hours a day reviewing the last few years of developments in the field.

As hard