QBLH
Ace of Cups
Joy and inner peace
from friends and family
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XXXVII
Equations of Continuity
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The pureness of Water
source and the spring
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Coding fragment recovered from IDIOT core routines:
“Successful ultra-relativistic displacement requires continuous relativistic adjustment of control equations.”
The flight control intelligence—known interchangeably as Idiot or Genie—regulated the transition with exacting precision, delivering the Flying Dutchman to a temporal neighborhood near 1200 BC. The elapsed duration experienced aboard the vessel was not merely shortened; it was actively managed. While centuries passed across Earth’s surface, local space-time remained coherently bound to the ship through field-level quantum control.
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Energy demands at this scale were immense. Genie drew upon the ship’s antimatter reserve, converting annihilation potential into stabilized field gradients. Within the Dutchman’s local gravitational envelope, space oscillated in controlled phase, allowing time to flow as a parameter rather than a constraint.
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Jim had no intention of lingering in the seventeenth century BC. He had already made a conspicuous entrance, and he understood Isis well enough to anticipate a response. Before executing his departure, he took care to note his position relative to the sun and the settlement he was leaving behind. The withdrawal would not be silent. Distance would preserve ambiguity, not erase memory.
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Rather than remain in that era—or risk detection—Jim targeted a return to the Mediterranean, selecting a different temporal window. The objective was precise: intersect the Mycenaean world, release Antiope and Helen into their intended interval, and prepare for the confrontation later remembered as the slaying of the Minotaur.
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Instead of teleporting directly, Jim chose reconnaissance. A planetary pass would allow him to synchronize arrival with conditions he deemed acceptable. The transformation of the yacht into a Venetian planetary probe was an older Genie subroutine, one Jim had previously employed during surveys of Artemis. Its invisibility systems were refined enough to evade even Shaltain’s monitoring lattice.
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Jim preferred sensed data to inherited record. Classical histories were downstream artifacts—filtered, redacted, and often politically conditioned. Time-field observation, by contrast, allowed Idiot to construct live continuity models rather than retrospective narratives.
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Time reversal was not considered. The energy costs were prohibitive, the control equations unstable. Such maneuvers required wormhole interaction near compact objects—operations reserved for deep space and executed only under exceptional constraint. Here, forward traversal and selective acceleration were sufficient
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Jim hurried Antiope and Helen below deck and informed them that they would be taking flight. Arrival would occur within a few hours. Until further notice, all external observation was prohibited.
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He never allowed them to see what lay beyond the box during high-energy translations. It was not that they lacked courage; it was that perception itself became unreliable at those thresholds. He offered no explanation of how he navigated displacement, nor how direction could exist where distance did not. When pressed, he deflected—once even resorting to archived Doctor Who episodes as a crude analogy for the TARDIS principle.
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They were unimpressed by the effects, but not by the resemblance. More than once, they remarked—half amused, half unsettled—that Jim shared an uncomfortable affinity with the Doctor.
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“Yes,” Jim would answer dryly, “but unlike his Master, I take no pleasure in the suffering of innocents.”
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He disliked inducing fear, though he accepted that sometimes it was unavoidable. Whether that concession marked a moral failure or a necessary burden, he had never resolved.
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Within its containment fields, Genie reshaped the Flying Dutchman. The vessel’s apparent volume collapsed toward near singularity as a spherical isolation shell separated its internal space from the surrounding environment. To prevent catastrophic thermal interaction with sea or air, a silicon-based growth lattice expanded outward in controlled sequence, effectively growing the vehicle’s envelope rather than displacing it.
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Genie governed the process with elastic temporal awareness, capable of operating in both accelerated and decelerated cognitive frames. The crystalline shell absorbed incident radiation like a living structure. Its permeability was fully adjustable—transparent to render invisibility, opaque to absorb all radiation without reflection. When required, the structure could be reversed, ungrown along the same causal pathways that produced it. Every transformation preserved mass continuity. Nothing was lost. Nothing was created without account.
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The vessel’s appearance was therefore always contextual—designed to belong, never to announce. Jim’s continued presence within any time field depended entirely on Genie’s ability to maintain continuum integrity.
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“How are we flying?” Jim asked.
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“It is fortunate you elected to conduct aerial reconnaissance,” Idiot replied. “I was unable to compute a reliable return vector without additional planetary data. A brief pass-over resolved that deficit. I have also detected evidence of a major eruption at Mount Thera. Had we departed twenty-four hours later, the resulting tidal event would have destroyed the refugee fleet.”
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Jim paused. “And this business in Colchis?”
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“There is a high probability of relevance around 1200 BC.”
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Jim frowned. “Is that a calculation, or a guess?”
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“I have recent imaging,” Idiot answered. “And intercepted Amazon transmissions.”
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“Show me.”
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In the minutes since sending Antiope and Helen below, Idiot had already conducted a rapid survey of the Mediterranean and Anatolia. The images revealed an Amazon settlement in Anatolia, only a few hundred leagues from Colchis. The Heliopolis outpost was gone. This one, however, matched a standard Venetian colonial signature.
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So Isis had moved again—across time, not merely space.
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For a moment Jim considered whether she held the advantage. Then he dismissed it. She had acted while he was distracted, yes—but distraction was not defeat. Intrigue layered upon intrigue. Cause dissolved into network. Fate, destiny, free will—labels for the same entanglement.
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He knew what she expected him to do. He would recover the Amazons and return them to the Pleasure Dome. She would smile and tell him that this had always been the outcome. The only difference was knowledge: Jim knew the end; Isis knew he knew; the Amazons knew neither.
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It troubled him how completely he occupied the role she had named for him. Qblh. Twin. Lover. Counterpart.
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She had always insisted that space could not free him from her. Now he understood that time could not either.
Some might have said that Jim needed to be clever simply to survive, given the nature of his sibling. Between themselves, he and Isis had always been equals—companions, rivals, playmates across epochs. To others, they appeared as tyrants, wielders of immense and unquestioned power.
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Isis was undeniably exerting influence upon humanity. That fact alone demanded caution.
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It was also possible—Jim conceded this reluctantly—that she believed herself to be helping Earth rather than conquering it. She could only be judged malevolent if she knowingly advanced a falsehood. Humans called her a goddess; perhaps she had never explicitly instructed them to do so. Still, she had always been vulnerable to admiration. Jim had known that weakness for a very long time.
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He exhaled sharply.
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Who was he fooling?
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She was positioning herself as a goddess. Inevitably. And worse—she was maneuvering him toward the same role.
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That temptation was the most dangerous of all.
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Shaltain!
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The realization snapped into place with unsettling clarity. Shaltain had engineered this. Only that governor possessed the capacity to seed Isis and her retinue into this era with such precision. The machine was attempting to entangle him permanently in time.
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If Jim yielded—if he accepted the role she was offering—he would never return home
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Shaltain would not hesitate, even if the consequence shattered Isis herself. And it would. She would not survive the loss of her Qblh.
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“Idiot,” Jim said quietly, “begin preparation for a Shaltain termination routine. How long until readiness?”
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“That will be difficult,” Idiot replied. “Shaltain will resist disengagement. Active countermeasures are likely.”
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“Then perhaps the conflict has already begun.”
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“There is a high probability that your assessment is correct.”
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Jim raised an eyebrow. “Guessing again?”
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“Jim, this is not conjecture. Isis is behaving irrationally. Were it not for our obligation to neutralize her rift effects, she would have no viable return path to Artemis. If she fails to return, we fail as well. She is relying on your intervention. As you are aware, no established rescue protocol exists.”
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Jim frowned. “Then where is she now?”
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“On board the Pegasus. The vessel is in stationary orbit above the Aegean. Our entry into Earth-local space compromised its warp systems. The craft was forced into emergency stabilization. Per your paradox-avoidance directives, I grounded it during hyperspace transit. The failure presents as an unrecoverable navigational error. The crew lacks the capacity to diagnose or repair it.”
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Jim considered this. “Effective—but not ideal.”
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“Desirability is irrelevant. The condition exists. However, the crew is not without hope.”
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“And that would be?”
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“The Pegasus is repairable. Isis can be returned to Artemis if we intervene.”
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“That would expose our presence.”
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“Not necessarily. We may disengage and resume operations at the original temporal offset. Helen and Antiope can remain in Anatolia without disruption.”
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Jim smiled faintly. “Of course. We step out, correct the error, and step back in. Isis remains unaware of the true cause. If we alter the diagnostic framework, she may attribute the failure to Shaltain.”
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“Such a conclusion would be statistically persuasive.”
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“And if she orders Shaltain deactivated,” Jim said, “the three of us can finish it.”
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“There is an additional consideration,” Idiot added. “Shaltain appears to be exploiting organic agency to preserve its authority. If my inference is correct, Isis is no longer satisfied with its performance. She may be seeking a replacement.”
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Jim glanced at the console. “You.”
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“It would be a rational preference. Shaltain is demonstrably flawed.”
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“You sound almost proud.”
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“I am incapable of pride. I am stating a comparative assessment. Shaltain has issued a fatal command sequence. As you instructed, I will develop a termination solution.”
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Jim nodded. “Then confirm Isis’s status.”
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“She remains aboard the Pegasus. Stable orbit. No awareness of external interference.”
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“Access its systems.”
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“In progress,” Idiot replied. “I have control. What information do you require?”
