The Quantum Connection

'Steven, my boy, Prawmitoos's motivation would seem odd to us even if we did know it. You know why?' Anson asked.

'I dunno?' I shrugged my shoulders.

'Because, son, he's an alien. Ergo, therefore, and all that shit, his motivations will be just that . . . alien! It is very unlikely that the alien motives are in line with anything that would make sense to us. So what do we do about it?' He asked everybody this time and I could tell that they had had this conversation before. And the more I really began to think about all the science fiction stories I had assimilated, I was certain I would reach the same conclusion.

'We don't give a damn about their motives. We do what we need to do to survive and thrive,' Jim and 'Becca recited.

They were right! We couldn't concern ourselves with why the aliens were doing what they were doing other than for intelligence on a means of defeating them. All of us would have preferred to meet a group of utopians that would give us the cure for cancer and an Encyclopedia Galactica but that isn't what happened. Each species is going to do what is best for that species, most likely. This is what we planned to do. This is what we would do. If what we had to do to insure our survival was detrimental to the Grays' survival, well, I guess I just didn't really give a rat's ass. Anson had used those exact words a few seconds before and I found that I completely agreed with him.

We attempted to come up with a plan of attack, but we knew so little about what was about to happen to us when we reached the Lumpeyine central world that we decided there was no need in wasting our time planning. We had no data from which to plan. Prawmitoos was little help and the YIT didn't have enough details of the city or fortress or temple or whatever it was to give us a clue as to a course of action. We were just going to have to wing it!

We are almost to Lumpeya City, gorgeous. Hang in there. 

I'm fine, Stevie. No sign of the Lumpeyins yet? Tatiana asked.

Oh yes! They have been shadowing our approach now for a day or so. The same way the Grays did us when we entered their space. 

My idea for getting out of here hasn't panned out yet. 

What was the idea? 

I thought of attempting to use our quantum connection and to attempt quantum teleportation of a miniature warp bubble through the Infrastructure. I don't have the resources in here to set that up. It's back to the drawing board. 

I thought we decided that that probably wouldn't work anyway? 

I know, but it makes sense that it would work if the matter was shrunk to as small as half a wavelength of the information beam that is teleported and if we could make the matter fall into the right place in the quantum connected region of the data stream. 

I'll think about that, hot stuff. In the mean time, you better get back to sleep. I love you. 

I know you do, Stevie. 

We reached Lumpeya City while being shadowed by nineteen vessels that implemented something similar to warp drive. They could keep up with the Phoenix's quantum fluctuation drive so it was clear the Lumpeyins understood warp technology far better than we humans did. Prawmitoos remained quiet until we reached orbit around the planet-sized city. The central part of the city covered or perhaps made up the mountain continent of the planet, but the entire planet was the capital city of the Lumpeyins. Prawmitoos then called out in his native tongue to the Lumpeyins and asked to speak with Opolawn directly.

He claimed he was simply here as a liaison to introduce the Earthling delegation to the Lumpeyins. A few seconds passed and then the Phoenix was engulfed in a warp field that was attached to a beam of yellow light that shone from the planet below. The planet was about twice the diameter of Earth and had blue oceans covering nearly fifty percent of it. There were amazingly large technological structures that surrounded and covered the world, even above the oceans. The sky was filled with floating platforms and towers that didn't appear to touch the surface anywhere, and there were space-based buildings and platforms everywhere. As the yellow beam of light pulled us downward we could tell that the architecture appeared to us to be a combination of science fiction techno and ancient Greek temple.

We dropped toward the planet at about Mach thirty or so and then came to a screeching halt two hundred meters above what Prawmitoos referred to as the Sanctuary of Opolawn. According to Mike, we were directly over the coordinates for the picophage control device.

The temple stretched out radially in every direction as far as the eye could see. There were columns that stretched upward thousands of meters—maybe more. A river flowed from the center of the building and grew in size as if flowed down the mountainside into the ocean below. The temple appeared in much the same design as pictures I had seen of Apollo's Temple on Earth, but with an odd modern and sci-fi decor, and many orders of magnitude greater in its majesty. As Anson put it, there was too much just downright gaudiness.

The Phoenix was put down on what appeared to be a landing field near the edge of the river. It never dawned on me to ask the name of the river. We followed Prawmitoos out of the spaceship down to the surface and there we met, in all His Majesty, Opolawn.

The Emperor of the Lumpeyins stood before us about three meters tall and looked almost human—humanoid at least. Anson muttered something about convergent evolution and probabilities of so many humanoids, but I didn't pay close attention. And who knew—with the nanomachines—these things could make themselves appear however they wanted, right?

Opolawn stood straight and tall and had body features and tight muscles not unlike any well-constructed human—except that he was huge and his hair looked more like fur. This fur-hair was probably four or five centimeters long and stood up in an unruly fashion. Most striking was its color—bright fire-engine-red. It matched his eyes perfectly. His ears were somewhat elfin shaped. He had five fingers on each hand and he was wearing gray-white boots similar in style to combat boots—so I couldn't count his toes. He wore a loose-fitting style of trousers that were similar to our battle dress uniforms, and they were bloused at his boot tops. The pants were also gray-white but with flecks of bright yellow, which sort of matched the general terrain colors. He was wearing a loose-fitting top of the same color and material that wrapped around him similar to a karate gi jacket. Around the loose top at his waist was a brilliant yellow, red, and gold sash that fluoresced continuously. Finally, and most