I am a traveler.

That might sound like a mostly meaningless statement, but it is vital to who I am. Indeed, it is one of the first things I learned about myself when I woke up.

“Are you awake Lord Traveler?” the figures leaning over me asked as I slowly came awake. I was laying on a medical bed, the sheets thin and cushions hard but not unpleasant. Strange machines hummed quietly around me, bright lights shone down on the well cleaned room.

“Lord Traveler?” the figure asked as I looked around confused. There were two people in the room with me, watching me with concern, both in simple scrubs clearly designed more for ease of cleaning than for aesthetics. One woman, one man, I recognized, the woman was the one speaking while the man’s gaze flicked between me and the nearest display.

“Wha?” I croaked, realizing my mouth and throat were too dry to speak. The female quickly understood and held a straw to my mouth which I quickly sucked on, enjoying the lukewarm water as it washed away the gritty feeling.

“We did as you asked, Lord Traveler,” the woman said as I took another long sip of the water, “I hope everything is as it should be.”

“I-,” I stuttered, even with my thirst quenched I had no idea how to respond to that. They clearly held me in some reverence, beyond what concern a doctor might normally have for a patient. Lord implied some figure of authority or nobility. But I didn’t know anyone here, in fact, I realized to some panic, I didn’t remember much of anything. I could speak, I knew math, and a surprising amount about theoretical physics, but no people, names, faces, locations.

Just as the panic was beginning to show on my face the door to the small hospital room opened, admitting an older woman dressed not in scrubs but long robes. A golden mantle hung from her shoulders and an elaborate head piece sat atop her greying hair.

“The Traveler is still recovering from the surgery,” she explained, holding the door open behind her with an elbow, her hands carrying a covered tray.

“I’ll speak with him from here,” she continued, motioning for them to leave. They quickly left, whispering something that I didn’t catch and bowing respectfully to the old woman on the way out. Once they were gone the woman sat the tray on my lap and continued, “sorry about them, there are parts of the prophecy that only the inner circle knows about.”

As she spoke, she removed the covering of the tray to reveal a rather simple fair, a Hamburg steak, carrots and mashed potatoes, all clearly made from frozen ingredients in the hospital’s cafeteria. None the less I realized I was starving and quickly tore into the food.

“They aren’t the only ones,” I said around mouthfuls of dry beef, “I don’t even know where I am.”

“You are in the sanctum of the traveler, built upon the spot you first arrived. You said this might happen,” she replied, lowering herself onto a stool next to the bed, “When you were here a millennia back you told us you might return, telling us to watch for you.”

“And perform surgery on me?” I asked incredulously, the only reason I wasn’t angrier was part being overwhelmed, part raw confusion, but mostly that my focus was on the food.

“You were very specific,” she nodded, “we had to install the device as soon as possible, before you travel again.”

“Why does everyone call me a traveler?”

“So it’s true you have no memory of your last visit here? Or even your nature?” She asked in return, “in our secret scriptures it is said that when you returned you will have lost your memories. But I had hoped… never mind, it falls to me to relay what I know.

“Yes, you are a Traveler,” she continued, “a supernatural being who walks between worlds, according to the general public, doing good, helping the weak and teaching us to survive. But those of us in the inner circle know the truth, you do walk worlds, but not willingly. After a time you will ‘travel,’ leaving this world behind and arriving at a new one. This happens whether you wish to or not, and will continue to happen.”

“That’s…” I said simply.

“Yes, but that is what you told us,” she shrugged, “but there is more you need to know, every time you travel your mind and body is… reset. Your memories wiped, injuries healed, and everything returned to how it was when you arrived. Back then you had a device that allowed you to retain your memories, and even various… abilities as you traveled, but it seems that since then you’ve lost that capability. The device we implanted will, among other things, allow you to remember.”

“I don’t remember anything,” I replied.

“But from now on you will, you won’t remember past worlds, where you traveled before, or your first visit here. But you will remember this as you travel again,” she assured me, though I didn’t find it that assuring.

“This… this is…” I started, finishing up my food.

“Overwhelming?” she asked with a friendly smile, “I can understand, if not relate. When I was but a girl I was taught of your exploits in our past, how you triumphed over evil to free our people, how you gave us a holy task should you ever return. Yet here you are, just like any other man, confused, lost, scared… sadly there is little I can do to help save pass on what information you gave us long ago.”

“Ok,” I replied slowly, looking at the empty food tray, “let’s say I believe you, which I’m not sure I do, what else can you tell me?”

“Only what you told us,” she replied, “the device you gave us, and is now implanted in the back of your neck, not only allows you to remember worlds you’ve visited since you’ve had it but also tells you how much time you have left in the world. The records indicate that there are limitations to it, that it will only give you a few days’ notice, but should still be helpful. It also allows you to travel early, up to ‘about a day,’ in your words, before you are supposed to travel you can initiate the jump early.”

“How do I check this ti-,” I started, only to jump as a series of numbers appeared in my vision, slowly counting down. I reached out and waved my hands to try and touch the numbers, but they weren’t there, despite how real they appeared.

“You said the device was easy to figure out,” she chuckled.

“It says I have… fifteen minutes?” I read, indeed the timer appeared to be counting down the last few minutes until I was supposed to travel.

“Glad we got it implanted in time then,” she nodded, “I’ll stay here until you Travel, anything you wish to know?”

“How is this possible?” I asked, my mind spinning at the ramifications, “traveling between worlds? Do you mean planets or star systems… universes?”

“From what you said, you travel between realities, and no, I don’t know how it works. No one does, not really. If you understood it back then you didn’t explain it to us,” she shrugged.

“Then… what should I do?” I was starting to panic, was it even possible to travel between worlds? Between realities?

“You should find something you can take with you between worlds to defend yourself,” she replied immediately, her smile fading, “much as you can retain your memories it’s possible for you to carry with you bits of other realities. Indeed, when you were last here you could fly, pick up boulders with one hand and survive being shot with a ballista, if the records are to be believed. You said that many other worlds aren’t as friendly as ours, and that was after you were attacked by a dozen knights. Gather unique capabilities as you travel. Meet people, learn from them.”

“What are the chances that I’ll even encounter humans in these other worlds?” I scoffed.

“Better than you think,” she smirked, “while the laws of nature may change you appear to be… drawn to realities with humans according to your own accounts.”

“How will I get anything done if I’m only in each world for minutes?” I asked, glancing at the timer that was now passing five minutes.

“The time you spend in each world varies, from minutes to years. But so long as you survive, you’ll appear in the next world just as you are now.”

“Why?” I asked after a long minute of silence, head in my hands as I stared solemnly at the last remains of the mashed potatoes.

“I think of you as a guardian angel,” she said warmly, “you go where you are needed, helping out until you vanish once more, moving onwards on your eternal mission.”

“I don’t feel like any kind of angel,” I despaired.

“What is an angel, but a man filled with a divine grace? This might seem a curse, but I believe in you. If for no other reason than you fear the nature of your existence, many would see it as an opportunity to do as they pleased. Take what you want, do as you wish and move on before the consequences catch up.

“You will do great things,” she continued, the fervor of her belief seeming to turn her from the old grandmotherly type into a beaming young girl looking up to him like some kind of hero, “you will save worlds from evil, free people from tyranny, and learn more about the universe than anyone else. I know because you’ve done it before and will do it again, such is who you are.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, part of me was scared, how could I possibly live up to those expectations? She said it with such conviction that part of me was caught up in it, eager to justify her belief in me, as groundless as it felt. Whoever I was when I was last in this world, that wasn’t me. I had no memories of that time, none of the skills, knowledge or abilities. And how could she know for certain who that me was? If I traveled worlds, unable to retain even my memories without some implant, how could she know for certain what I’d done? Surely everything she heard was my own tales, or the tales of whoever it was that she thought was me in any case.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

For as much as I wanted to dismiss her beliefs it was clear from her face that she was truly, religiously earnest. Even as my mouth gaped like a fish, unable to respond, she continued to look upon me like some kind of angel, unable to do wrong. And some not inconsequential part of me felt the need to at least try to live up to her expectations.

Sadly, I almost immediately messed up.

\-\-\-\-\-

There is something you should know about traveling, in regards to me, it’s not a comfortable experience. In my years of study, I’ve only managed guesses about how or why it works. My best theory is that there is something about me that builds up some kind of instability between my existence and the world I find myself in, like a static charge from a tesla coil. Now what should happen is eventually myself and the world find a kind of harmony, influencing one another until we stabilize. But for some reason that doesn’t happen, my ‘frequency’ or whatever is static, refusing to be influenced. Thus, the instability builds up until I’m violently ejected from the world. I then jump to the next world like a bolt of lightning, dispersing the excess energy and restarting the process again.

All you really need to take from this is that each trip is… uncomfortable. Something I began to learn as I fell three feet to the ground, tumbled down a short flight of three stairs before landing hard on a tiled ground in the middle of a small cafeteria. Upon looking up a middle-aged man was looking down on me in shock, nearly dropping his tray of food.

A confusing situation to be sure, and a stressful one once I was taken before the station commander and asked a number of very pointed questions. The short story is I appeared on a planetary research station orbiting a dead world. While they were suspicious at first, who wouldn’t be when a guy falls out of the air aboard your remote station, once I agreed to be scanned they opened up to me. I was as interested in the results of the scan as they were.

“You only have the one implant?” a biologist named Dave asked as he looked over the printouts.

“Ya,” I agreed, “apparently it’s what lets me retain my memory as I travel.”

“It looks like a quantum memory module, but not one I’ve ever seen,” Dave admitted, “I didn’t even know they had quantum memory implants. The ones I’ve heard of need massive cooling units, not something you can really fit in someone’s skull.”

“Can I see?” I asked, taking the tablet and inspecting the pictures, “looks like it uses crystalized photons to contain the Q-bits, without needing to cool them down.”

“Is that… possible?” Dave looked perplexed, I remembered he was a biologist, not a physicist.

“Sure, under the right situations photons can crystalize into semi-physical structures that mimic quantum wave forms.”

“I thought you had no memories before you got that implant.”

“No personal memories,” I corrected, “apparently the results of whatever education I got remain.”

“Maybe you can help us with something,” Dave said, motioning for me to follow. I handed the tablet back and trailed him out of the small office and down one of the many hallways in the station.

“We’re researching the remains of an industrial age civilization,” Dave explained, “what data we can find indicates they were threatened by some kind of parasite, which somehow resulted in the destruction of their culture. This was millions of years ago, mind, so we haven’t been able to find any living specimens of the parasite, but we’ve found several partial fossils.”

“A parasite that can drive a species to extinction?” I shivered, “sounds dangerous.”

“For an industrial civilization, sure, but I doubt it would be much for us,” Dave assured, “even so, we’re taking all precautions. Even if we somehow found a living ancestor that was, somehow, able to infect us it would still have to get through full biological containment.”

“I was suddenly worried I’d arrived into some B, sci-fi, horror flick,” I said with a smirk.

“This is a government funded station, they don’t like taking chances,” the biologist replied with a similar smile, “in any case, we’ve only found one, mostly, intact specimen. The issue is we found it encased in a salt crystal, probably got caught in a flood and was washed into a dead sea. We can’t figure out how to remove the salt without damaging the specimen.”

“And you can’t just submerge it in water?”

“First thing we thought of,” Dave chuckled, “but we’re afraid the water would damage the fossil.”

As we spoke Dave walked into a viewing room overlooking something like a surgery ward, thick glass separated us from a torso sized block of salt which, itself, was contained in thick, transparent plastic. Several figures in biohazard suits worked with various instruments along the far wall, occasionally picking up some instrument to take a scan from some new angle in the hope of figuring something out.

“The creatures have a thick carapace on their back and legs that makes them relatively durable,” Dave explained, pulling up an image that appeared to be a render of what they think the creatures looked like, “but see these mounds on its side? They have some hair like substance extending from them. We’ve found evidence of them in fossils, but we’ve never been able to study it directly.”

“Why have that hair?” I asked, the creature looked like an oversized beetle with a segmented back and thick legs that could be folded into its chest, forming a solid carapace resembling the back. The only openings in the chitin were on the creature’s sides, where fleshy mounds extended out with long hairs reaching nearly a foot out, as wide as the creature itself.

“We think it was some kind of sensing organ,” Dave said, turning the image till the front of the creature was visible, which was rather plain with a pair of powerful looking mandibles sticking out from under the edge of the carapace. But, I noted, there were no eyes.

“Interesting,” I commented, looking at the more detailed scans of the oversized salt crystal. It had apparently taken quite a bit of effort to simply get the entire chunk into orbit without falling apart. Even then several cracks came uncomfortably close to the specimen.

“You could try injecting a stabilizing agent,” I said, “something to prop up the tissue and hold them in place. So they don’t fall apart while you cut away the salt.”

“A few small holes would be preferable to shattering the specimen,” Dave nodded slowly, a look of contemplation on his face, “we can try it on some smaller, fragmentary remains. Just to test it.”

It was quite enjoyable to work on such a project, and something strangely familiar. I’ve taken to assuming that I was a researcher in my original world, though I’ve no idea if it’s true or not. Regardless I spent the next day helping the team concoct a soft setting gel that could be injected into the desiccated tissue and support it for long enough to extract the fossil. We actually used samples from creatures that currently lived on the planet’s surface, partly recreating the blood-plasma analog in order to minimize the chance of the gel damaging the sample.

While the others were working on that I took to studying myself and trying to figure out how the strange implant in my skull worked. Dave had been correct to say it was likely a quantum storage module, but I was more interested in how it traveled with me. The priestess had said that it was possible to take parts of each world I visited with me, expanding my abilities so I didn’t arrive in each world with little more than the clothes on my back.

With the help of Dave and a few others, who were willing to assist me while the chemistry team worked, we fabricated a few simple implants that, I hoped, would follow me on my next jump. Near as I could tell the main implant was entangled with my very consciousness, somehow. By the transitive property I entangled the new implants with the original, hoping they would then follow me in the same way. It was nothing too over the top, the medical machines on the station couldn’t handle more then that, but I managed to place a couple sensors along my collar bone, linking their output to my main implant where they could be displayed.

I would have liked to do more but I soon got word that they were preparing to extract the fossil, the injections having been successful.

“You’re just in time,” Dave said, not looking up from the observation window where several figures in biohazard suits carefully cut away at the salt. While the stabilizing gel would stop most cracks and fractures from damaging the tissue it was still delicate work. For several hours various workers took their turns using high speed drills that closely resembled dental equipment to slowly crave away the salt. And slowly the creature was revealed.

It had died with its legs curled up under it, making it look like a large chitin bound book, nearly two feet on the longest side and more than half that on the next. The most delicate work was around the strange fibrous tendrils around the fleshy bumps along the creature’s side. It had taken time for the gel to propagate along the thin strands, which was the main reason the was chosen to make the agent chemically similar to blood plasma, but some small, soft brushes and lots of time and they were eventually freed of the salt prison.

“Looks too big and hard to be a parasite,” I commented as the suited figures carefully looked over the creature for any last traces of salt.

“We assume this is the breeding stage in their life,” Dave replied, “there are small channels in their mandibles that, we think, were used to inject eggs into their prey. There are a number of macro-organisms on the planet’s surface to whom that wouldn’t be more than a bug bite to us. Or rather, there were. The locals hunted them to extinction before reaching the industrial age, like humans did to Mammoths on Earth, so these parasites made the jump from those large creatures to the sentient aliens. And were too good at it.”

I didn’t know as much about the history of this world as Dave so I didn’t question it. But something about the bug made me uneasy, large mandibles, eight thick legs, the strange tendrils, it was as if the creature was designed to scare people.

“Amazing,” Dave said, interrupting my contemplation, pointing at the test results on the tendrils, “they’re nerves of a sort. Meaning they were far more sensitive than simple whiskers.”

“Does it even have the brain to handle that kind of information?” I asked.

“The neural structure is simple but robust,” the biologist replied, “even with partly intact specimens we were able to determine they had a very high neural plasticity, far beyond what would be expected in even a large insect. This is probably why.”

“Would also make them hard to kill,” I noted, “take out one nerve clump and the others simply take up the slack.”

“A distributed neural system,” Dave was excited, nearly bouncing on the spot as he looked over the scans that were much clearer without the salt.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the tablet, “looks like some active neurons.”

“Probably just the salt in the creature’s body,” Dave dismissed, “salt is, by its nature, highly reactive and ionized. Wouldn’t take much to trigger a few stray signals.”

If I ever meet whatever god or gods made these worlds I travel through, remind me to punch them. For it seems every time someone ‘temps fate’ it goes poorly, I don’t know why, but I’ve taken to blaming the fates. Hence my desire to sock them.

We were interrupted by a scream from the containment room, quickly disrupting our discussion. One of the biologists had gone to remove a couple traces of salt on the creature’s mandibles, and the mandibles had closed. Hard. Despite being encased in salt for hundreds of years it was strong enough to cut clean through the biohazard suit and deep into the man’s arm. It took both of the other two people in the containment room to pry the jaws open enough to extract the trapped limb.

Dave and I watched closely as they pulled the bleeding man out of the room. Despite the surprise it didn’t seem the creature was moving more.

“A stray signal from a salt ion triggered an instinctive reaction to bite down,” Dave said, as if to explain away the situation.

“Are any of the eggs viable?” I asked in a panic, suddenly remembering what he said about how the creature breeds.

“I doubt it,” Dave replied, but his voice lacked the certainty I wanted. I’d been told my travels were attracted to important times and places, what if I was about to witness a new outbreak of the parasite? It had already driven one species to extinction, I couldn’t let that happen again. If I had any power to stop it, I had to do so.

So I ran from the room, leaving a stunned Dave in the observation room and quickly found the injured scientist. A doctor was already looking over him with his own implants, augmented by some hand held scanners, while his friends, still in their biohazard suits held him down on the stretcher. Partly to test my own new implants I ran what scans I could.

I didn’t exactly have a full sensor suite, several passive scanners, lidar and short ranged quantum scanners, but the few eggs I could pick up from five feet were all ruptured and dead from being encased in salt. The eggs were small, like grains of sand, but once I was able to locate them I quickly relayed what to look for to the doctor. He was annoyed that I was butting in and ran a quick scan with his own, more powerful, sensors. A quick report that all the eggs were dead and a ‘please go away’ were all the time he gave me. I sighed in relief and did as I was told.

As I walked back to the observation room I realized how foolish I was being, hundreds of years encased in salt would kill almost anything. Dave was probably right, the salt ions triggered an instinctive reaction. That, by itself, was amazing. But hardly a cause for concern.

Dave wasn’t in the observation room when I returned, instead I heard some movement in the containment area. Dave had probably suited up to go check on the specimen.

He had, but he wasn’t inspecting the bug. He was on the ground, bleeding, a dark shape chewing at his neck. My blood ran cold as I realized the creature had, somehow, survived being encased for so long. The bite was merely the results of it waking up. It had woken and attacked Dave the moment he entered the room, catching the biologist off guard. The powerful mandibles had removed Dave’s arm.

While Dave fell to the ground in shock the bug had angled his dismembered arm so the bleeding stump met up with one of the hairy mounds on it’s side. I watched as the tendrils worked their way into the flesh and made contact with the nervous system within the disembodied limb.

Dave’s own arm worked to hold him down as the creature chewed through the biohazard suit with it’s powerful mandibles. I took off at a run, once more, hoping I could save him.

I ran into the locker room, filled with hazard suits, and passed them. Reaching the airlock I pressed at the keypad to one side, but it needed a code. A code I didn’t have. Furious I turned all my limited sensors to the device, hoping to determine what the correct combination was. It was hopeless but I was in a state of panic, unable to really think clearly.

I froze in surprise as the other side of the airlock opened, had the bug somehow accidently opened it?

Through the thick glass I saw the bug thing scuttle in, dragging one of its legs behind it, apparently not completely untouched by the ravages of time. Dave’s arm was affixed to one side of the creature, helping it along in a jerky motion as if the owner wasn’t used to it. To the creature’s other side was Dave’s head, I realized with a cold terror.

The controlled arm reached up to the keypad and, to my growing terror, began slowly pressing buttons. It was reading Dave’s brain with those strange tendrils to figure out how to escape. No wonder it had wiped out the alien species on the planet below, if it could make use of the knowledge of its hosts.

I stumbled back as an alert appeared in my vision, ten seconds until travel.

Not now! I thought, I had to stop it! I quickly looked around for a weapon, but this was a locker room for a biological containment room, not an armory. I picked up a stool that was nearby, readying myself for the moment the door opened. This was my last chance, I was wrong about the eggs, and I was wrong about the creature being dead. But I could stop it now.

I could see the results of what would happen if I failed, the creature would generate new, viable, eggs and spread. Using the knowledge in the minds of the scientists they would spread to other stations. Other worlds. It would be like a wildfire, maybe humanity would survive, but just as likely they would come to an end.

The door slid open, slowly, and I charged, letting out a scream as I hefted the stool over my head.

And the world vanished around me as the timer in my vision hit zero.