you know, who have no memory of ever meeting you. My man Oive is a damned fine riverman, but he's not the best. Why not? An infinite number of parallel branches means there's an infinite number of other Oives out there, just as good as he is. That's another reason I didn't grieve too much over Tito. I'll see him again. I'll even buy him a mead and tell him how I witnessed his murder.
Don't look at me like that, newb. Cross-time trading is a weird business, and the sooner you wrap your head around it the sooner you'll fit in. Or, you know, don't. You can always head out of this warehouse back to flatland and tell someone what you saw. In which case you'll get burned at the stake, or locked up, or whatever it is your people in your branch do to crazy people.
What?
Yeah. Infinite branches, infinite number of me, infinite number of you. Even an infinite number of bars, just like this, where you and I are having this very conversation.
And, of course, an infinite number of Friedricks.
This story isn't about an infinite number of Friedricks, though. It's just the 12 or 13 of them that I'm facing across the clearing. What lesson number are we up to, newb? Because lesson number whatever: never ever EVER fire off a Pauli Gun while the drive is engaged. "Weird shit" doesn't even begin to describe it.
So, anyway, back to the story. One moment, I'm feeling pretty good, pointing my tri-barrel at Friedrich, snatching up his briefcase, and trying to come up with some witty line...and the next, there's another dozen or so Friedrichs all piling out of their ships, coughing, getting to their feet, and staring at me. And in a second they're all going to remember that they've got guns too.
I look around, waiting to see if a dozen al-Dins are going to come crashing out of the aether and a dozen other mes are going to ride to my rescue, but I guess that'd just be too...what? "cinematic". The universe does not give a shit about who's the good guy and who's the bad. Stochastic ship happens.
This particular bit of stochastic shit is a 13-against-one fight, and I'm not ashamed to say that I wanted to get out of there. Immediately..
So I scramble backwards into the ship. Johann-stepson-twice-Chang, say what you will about his personal grooming habits, is a good man in a tight spot, and as soon as the al-Din crashed out of the aether, there he was, pulling burned out tubes and popping in spares. No sooner did I have the hatch locked behind me then he announced that the electronics were warming up and we'd be ready to phase in half a danda.
Yeah, eight minutes, kid. You're catching on. Good.
Doesn't sound like that long, but when you've got twelve guys who hate your guts trying to break into your ship, going all crowbar-and-raven on the hull, it's a Hades of a long time.
I was rubbing the belly of the ship's Buddha, waiting for Johann-stepson-twice-Chang to give the word that the tubes were warm enough. It seemed to take forever - and then he called out. Oive didn't even wait for me to give the command, he hit the drive immediately. Out the windows I could see that the Friedrichs had heard the whine and they stepped back. Too bad - I wouldn't've minded smearing one or two of them out across a few branches.
So that's it. We got out of there and back to a trading post. Because of the stormy aether and the stunt with the Pauli Gun we were pretty far out in the boonies, but not way WAY off course. No lizard-people or lemur-men or any of those other campfire stories you hear. Just normal-grade weird stuff: Litchenstein world empire, EEka Babylonia, peaceful end to the Soviet Union, Suffi moon landing.
What's that?
The Firefly Season Two?
Yeah, well. Am I sitting here in front of you in a golden robe with sixteen bonded porters behind me at my beck and call? No? Well, that's how you know I it didn't work out.
Andre-the-baptist, you're a rude one. Well, you've paid for the story, so I'll answer your question. But my crew just showed up, so after you get one last answer, then you leave, and we never talk again, OK?
So anyway, we get back to the trading port, and I open up the briefcase that Friedrich took off of Tito. And I know that Firefly Season Two is in there. I KNOW it. Because, remember, I touched it with my own two hands, just before Friedrich killed Tito.
So I open up the brief case.
And it's not there.
Sure, there's SOMETHING there, but it's not what had been there half a day before. When Tito had popped open his briefcase I'd picked up the video. I'd taken the dust proof can in both hands, read the label, then opened it and saw the mag tape.
And now? Now there's just a flat plastic case, about the size of a book, but thinner.
When Oive fired the Pauli Gun with the drive on, some really weird shit went down. All those Friedrichs? The one I took the briefcase off of was * A * Friedrich, but he wasn't * MY * Friedrich. An infinite number of branches. An infinite number of Friedrichs stealing an infinite number of briefcases from an infinite number of Titos, pursued by an infinite number of Hucks.
And when thirteen Friedrichs crashed out of the ether, I had the bad luck to grab the briefcase that had a version of Firefly Season Two...on some weird media I'd never seen before. I'm used to weird formats - if the gadget mongers at this port can't convert flutter-disk to F-scroll for you, you're just one hop away from a whole new set at some other station who can.
But this media? I've never seen anything like it. Inside the case were three plastic leaves, each one holding a little plastic disk with a mirror finish. The case says "Digital Video Disk" in one place and "DVD" in another. Not only have I never heard of it, but in two years of asking, I haven't even found anyone who's heard of -
Wait.
What?
You're not shitting me, are you?
Newb, I swear to Saturn, if you're screwing with me for a laugh, I'll flense your skin from your still-living body and pack you in a barrel of quince juice.
You're serious? So if I had a 35 millimeter film printer, could you hook your 'laptop' up to it?
OK, kid, one last question. Are you looking for a job?
Alright then.
Let me introduce you to the rest of the crew.
We hope you enjoyed this short story.
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