Page 56 of Time Traveling Space Bastards

M y initial plan was to go back seven thousand years on my planet first so I could see how a human got the holy texts here and go forward from there. I couldn’t exactly do that because my brother finished his time machine first and could have been on Earth doing literally anything.

It wasn’t just him hunting the Devouring Mother. My brother was a lot, and I was actually worried about him. We didn’t know enough about Earth and my brother was entitled on a good day. There was a part of me that worried he’d also try to dominate that entire planet and try to crown himself king because that’s what he wanted to do to our galaxy.

But that was settled. I wished it hadn’t come down to killing my brother, but he really gave me no choice. My mother would understand, but my father was probably going to grill me over every little detail. Valtens ended up the way he did because of my father. My mother was the queen, and my father was her consort. My father never really liked that.

But first things first. I deeply regretted that the first time Baxter got to time travel, it was just two weeks back in her own city. Big Daddy tried to make up for it by letting her fly him. I wasn’t even sure if he would take us back now with me driving.

Everyone was strapped in but me. I’d be setting the controls and strapped myself down because anything could happen in a black hole, even with all my preparations.

“Want to go home seven thousand years in the past?” I asked, pressing the button to activate the black hole matter.

“Maybe,” Big Daddy said.

I didn’t know if he was just being difficult, or he was about to take us somewhere I’d never been to before and have to figure it out. Big Daddy liked to mess with us sometimes. Taking us where we needed to go instead of where we wanted to go ended up being a good thing, but that wasn’t the only way he fucked with me.

I just sighed and strapped myself down. We could end up on my planet seven thousand years ago or we could end up somewhere entirely different. And I hated that I basically had zero control over that, but I was the one who wanted a sentient time machine, so it was my fault.

“Hang on tight, Big Mommy.”

“What does that mean? Oh, holy shit!”

Yeah, my time machine didn’t really work by shooting off into space and breaking the atmosphere if we were leaving a planet. It was instantaneous. The black hole matter in Big Daddy’s core was yanked through time and space back home to its original black hole.

This was a little different from Baxter’s first experience time traveling because we were leaving her galaxy. It was a bit of a yank through the black hole and then once we were clear of the gravitational pull, it got a lot smoother.

I could tell when we were through and there was something I needed to show her. I unbuckled and held out my hand.

“Come see.”

“Is it safe now? Sorry, not sorry if I puke on your shoes. I used to get car sick as a kid because my parents drove like what we just did.”

“Completely safe.”

“I’ll hold your hair back if you get sick,” Torrek said.

“Wait, nope. Maybe. Yeah, I’m not going to puke.”

I grabbed her hand and took her to Big Daddy’s controls. I was going to show her something no human had seen before. I asked Big Daddy to open the control panel so she could see outside. I made a sweeping gesture with my hands.

“Welcome to what’s behind the black hole. This is my galaxy. That’s my planet right there.”

“It’s gorgeous! I’ve seen photos of space before, but I never thought I’d be up here seeing it in person. And this isn’t even my galaxy.”

She was so excited, and it just made me feel amazing that I could do this for my Velne. I could have landed on the planet itself, but I vividly remember seeing space for the first time as a child. It was a big experience for me, and I had it the next few times I’d gone up there.

Space travel was common on my planet. We visited other planets in our galaxy to either vacation, visit family friends, or just to trade resources. I was a lot older than my first time in space and I’d done it a lot because of my family, but it never really got old.

“This is…wow. There are no words. I’m up here and down there, there are people living their lives on those planets. It’s surreal.”

“Not yet,” I said. “If Big Daddy did his thing, we’re in my galaxy before our ancestors discovered it. You’re looking at a completely untouched galaxy right now. The next time you see it, every planet is going to be occupied and developed.”

“Wow.”

“Ready to go down?”

“Will it be as bumpy?”

“It’s only bumpy through the black hole.”

“Then, let’s go!”

I was just as excited as she was. I was about to see my home in her natural state, before any of us got here and started building. This was my history.

Yeah, I was about to manipulate it by leaving Baxter’s books in a cairn we were going to have to build, but I couldn’t change that much of our past without completely erasing Enix and maybe myself.

I still needed to figure out how to fix the present, but maybe an idea would come to me while we were doing this.