"Dale Against the Universe" - Part One

 

Part One

            Not every day is always a good one when traversing the infinite dimensional corridor. Sure, the worlds are amazing and beautiful; but they can be deadly and dangerous all the same. However, in this case, it wasn’t so much as the world we encountered, but the thing we brought to it.

            It had happened one journey we made to one of the realms that were influenced by the ongoing Cyber War – an interdimensional conflict in which sentient machines battle against each other or a human resistance of some kind. It began with the Cybermen, who tapped into the Infinite DC and began cyber-converting within each of the worlds. And then, one day, they received more than they bargained for when they encountered Skynet, a highly-advanced, self-aware computer system possessing artificial intelligence.

            The encounter also granted Skynet access to the Infinite DC, expanding on their goal for the extermination of mankind while also eradicating the threat of the Cybermen in its path.

            The whole ordeal has gone on for a number of eons across multiple worlds.

            The genesis of it has been a mystery for Neas and myself. We thought it began in the realm where we and the Doctor constructed a cyborg law enforcer named “Robocop,” not very long ago. As we and our companion, Al-Lee Kirsch, investigated over the realms, we found several possibilities of how it started – any of them being the opportune place to end the war.

            The one reality we came to had a corporation by the name of CRS (“Cyber Research Systems”), which carried possession of Skynet from a defunct Cyberdyne Systems – the one constant throughout the multiversal war. CRS was in the closing stages of fully developing Skynet, which left Neas, Al-Lee, and me very little time to stop them.

            Unfortunately, our objective was severely derailed when we were discovered and taken into custody. We were put into a plain, windowless room with a single steel table and chairs. I briefly got into it with the overly aggressive guard who shoved me in. “Watch it, mister, or you’re gonna lose those hands!” I warned him.

            Clearly, I wasn’t in my right frame of mind. The guy was bigger and brawnier than I was when I was in my “Skeeta” incarnation. As “Rania,” I was shorter and skinnier, yet I still carried Skeeta’s fiery temper.

            Poor Neas had to step in between me and the guard. “Don’t mind her,” he told the guard. “She’s just…a little on edge.” He wasn’t too far off the mark; I had been edgy the last few journeys. Once we were left alone, he confronted me. “Alright, Pop. What bug’s been up your butt lately?”

            I hated it when he phrased it that way. “It’s nothing,” I said.

            “We both know that’s not entirely true – not after you almost picked a fight with G.I. Joe back there,” Neas scoffed.

            His unrelenting prodding finally broke through my walls.

            “It’s the anniversary of when your mother and I married on our world,” I revealed. Neas’s mother being, of course, Kristin Curtsinger – an Earth woman I first met in my original incarnation, when I was a fresh-faced young explorer of the multiverse.

            This news just made Neas feel guilty. “Why didn’t you tell me? We could’ve stopped through home, so you two could catch up.”

            “Neas, the last time your mother saw me, I was a bald, heavyset African-American man. Could you imagine how she’d react if she saw me now?” I gestured to my overall figure, most of which was hidden by the white wool sweater I had on at the time. I then added, “Let’s not forget you, too. Last she saw of you, you were just a teenaged girl.”

            That didn’t deter him. “If she’s already familiar with the whole ‘regeneration’ thing, why worry?” he asked.

            “It’s been ten years on our world!” I told him. “A lot more has changed than just us, sweetheart.”

            “Regardless, you’re clearly homesick, Pop.”

            He was right about that. Over a few thousand years and five regenerations, I missed my lovely wife. I can’t tell you just how much I had. She was on my mind virtually every day since Skeeta left our dimension. I was able to cope with it in my “Elle Viane” regeneration. But it got worse when I was “Noraline.”

            Thankfully, I had Neas and a sweet little boy named Craig Williams to get me out of my funk, just before I regenerated into “Scarlet.” My hands were full with giant robots, alien parasites, and a lost child of mine who nearly had me killed from a scheme with the Master (or “Missy,” as she was known then).

            In my reminiscing, I noticed Al-Lee nursing her right temple. “Another migraine?” I asked her. She’d been having them for a while.

            “Yeah,” she confirmed. “Feels like it’s getting worse. What’s causing them?”

            Before I could provide my best medical diagnosis, Lieutenant General Robert Brewster arrived to question us. He was a rather stoic man, and rightfully so, being a United States Air Force officer and in charge of Cyber Research Systems. He was all business when he breezed through the door, ordering the stationed guard to leave him alone with us.

            Just as the questioning was about to begin, something crazy happen.

            Al-Lee, out of nowhere, lunged violently at the general. She came up to him from behind and snapped his neck, effectively killing him.

            Neas and I reacted to this with shock and confusion.

            “Al-Lee! What are you doing?!” Neas bellowed before he himself became her next victim. She grabbed him by the neck and actually lifted him off his feet. I should note that Neas is five inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than Al-Lee. Though Al-Lee was built like a bodybuilder, I never imagined her capable of such a feat.

            She pinned Neas to the wall, choking him.

            In trying my best to pry her off him, I noticed that her eyes were red…not bloodshot red but glowing red in the pupils.

            Like a Terminator.

            At the last second, I reached in the back pocket of my brown leggings and retrieved Neas’s trans-temporal sonic. He loaned it to me during our Cyber War investigations, believing it to have been better used by a Tinkerer. I triggered an electrical shock between the device and Al-Lee that dropped her to the floor, rendering her unconscious.

            Free of her chokehold, Neas coughed and wheezed. “What just happened?! What got into her?!”

            “I’m about to find out,” I said as I used the sonic to scan Al-Lee. The readings that came back on the device were unsettling to say the least. “Neas, we need to get back to your TARDIS immediately.”

            “Why?” he asked. “What did you—?”

            “I said now!” I roared; my edginess now drawn more from desperation than depression.

            We left the room (and the body of Lieutenant General Brewster) at just the right time. A sudden attack came over the CRS facility, once Skynet was finally activated, seizing weaponized drones on every human in sight. Lugging Al-Lee along, we tried not to allow ourselves to be sighted in our mad dash back to the Type-Z, which we materialized in one of the storage closets along the top floors. Along the way, we also noticed a T-800 model Terminator stomping through the chaos. We would’ve assumed him to be the culprit had we not seen the two familiar humans accompanying him: John Connor and Katherine Brewster, Robert’s daughter.

            Poor Kate. I can’t imagine how she’ll react, finding her father dead.

            With a small window of time, we boarded Neas’s TARDIS and immediately left, abandoning our failed mission. As soon as we were back in the dimensional corridor, I filled Neas in on what I discovered about Al-Lee: “The sonic detected Terminator components in her biological structure.”

            Neas frowned. “Like, as in implants?”

            “More like her entire endoskeleton,” I elaborated. “Al-Lee is a Terminator.”

            The look on his face when I told him broke both of my hearts. A woman who’d been like a sister to him and a daughter to me was one of the very things we’ve been fighting and protecting the multiverse from this whole time. In light of this unsettling discovery, Neas insisted on Al-Lee being kept into stasis for further observation. There was a pod in the ship’s lab with a magnetic field that kept her CPU inoperative for the time being.

            After we put her in it, I had to ask Neas, “Will you be alright, hon?”

            “I don’t know, Pop.” That answer deeply concerned me as a father.

            Over sixty years passed since then. For a Time Lord, that felt like a few days. Al-Lee was still frozen in the stasis pod. Whatever living tissue Skynet fitted her with had aged very little in that time. It explained so much about her – how she was able to endure physical damage in so many of our journeys, why she barely ate or slept, and how she was capable of immeasurable strength.

            But with these answers only came more questions: Was there ever a real Al-Lee Kirsch? How did this one end up on Gallifrey where we found her? And why does she not remember ever being a Terminator?

            Neas hadn’t spoken much. Our prolonged investigations just hardened him more.

            We needed a break from it all. So, one day, I used the control console to call Craig Williams. His sweet little face popped up on the monitor, smiling. I assumed I’d contacted him through his phone or tablet. “How’s it goin’, sweetie?” I asked.

            “Meh, same old creek stuff,” he said. “What about you guys? Bet ya’ll are having some fun adventures out there in the Infinite DC!”

            I didn’t have the hearts to tell him the truth.

            Craig never had the honor of meeting Al-Lee face-to-face, nor will he ever after what Neas and I found out about her. Instead, I asked Craig, “Hey, honey, how’d you feel about a lil’ trip to the Earth Neas and I come from?”

            His little face beamed at this. “Really?! I never thought I’d get the chance to see what your Earth looks like!”

            “Welp, now you will,” I said with a smile.

            After mulling over it for so long, now was a better time than any for us to return to Georgia and meet up with Kristin again. I didn’t care how she’d react to seeing me or Neas in our latest regenerations. Seeing her again, and with Craig no less, would be enough to lift Neas’s spirits. It took a bit of encouragement to get him to agree to this, as he was the one stalling this time, feeling it necessary to focus on the Cyber War investigation. He only agreed when I convinced him to do it for me.

            Georgia hadn’t changed much since either of us last saw it. For Craig, it was like taking his first step on the moon. He and I were the only ones reveling in the trip, whereas Neas was more dismissive.

            As it turned out, Kristin sold our old family farm. It was now a shopping mall.

            She took the hefty sum of money from the big sale and moved out west to California, which she always talked about doing before Candace (that’d be Neas’s original incarnation) was born. I’ve only visited California in other dimensions, but ours wasn’t too different. It was certainly just as busy, loud, and overcrowded.

            It took a bit of searching but we were able to find the address to Kristin’s new home, a large white mansion in the Hills. I felt a little small when I walked out onto the front terrace, even after stepping out of Neas’s bigger-on-the-inside TARDIS.

            “Ma must’ve snagged one serious fortune from that sale!” Neas observed.

            I rang the doorbell just as I remembered to check my breath. It still had the usual minty scent, which was good. Turning to Neas and Craig, I asked, “How do I look? My makeup’s okay, right?” I straightened my long brown locks for good measure.

            “Your fly’s open,” Neas said.

            My hands instinctively went to my crotch, feeling around for the zipper. I looked like a total idiot when I just felt the smooth texture of my “zipper-less” leggings and nothing else. Neas pranked me good. Nice as it was to know his sense of humor was coming back, he couldn’t have picked a worse time to make me look like a fool.

            The front door of Kristin’s mansion opened, and Kristin herself was standing there at the doorway, looking directly at me with my hands still on my crotch. My face turned red as I quickly cupped my hands behind me. “May I help you young-ins?” Kristin asked, inspecting at the three of us with her gaze.

            A gentle wheeze escaped my mouth as I fought to reply. She was as radiant as the day I last saw her with those lovely blue eyes, her short and bouncy blond hair, and a shiny-white smile framed by glistening, peach-blossomed lips. Though she was seventy years of age, she looked younger with fewer wrinkles than I remember, possibly using a skincare cream to make her look more flawless than she already was by nature. When she answered the door, she wore that gorgeous sun dress I bought her on our twelfth anniversary, still able to fit her petite figure.

            “Who is it, babe?” a man’s voice called out from inside the mansion.

            Kristin half-turned and responded, “A couple of millennials, by the looks of them. They’re here with a lil’ kid, though they haven’t told me what they’re here for.”

            That man inside the mansion came to join Kristin at the door.

            He was a 70-year-old bearded individual with an easygoing disposition that matched with his attire, sporting a zebra-striped blazer, an untucked white dress shirt, and light denim jeans. He also wore a black fedora that hid his long, graying hair, styled into a ponytail.

            I was put off by his presence, but no more so when I saw the way he had his hand around Kristin’s slim waist, as if he were her husband.

            And, as I would soon find out, he was.

            You see, this ponytailed gentleman’s name was Dale, and he was the man Kristin had chosen to marry in my absence from Earth.