Excerpt: The Adventures of Emit Spool

13. The Antiptines

Before the beginning of time, there was another universe. Before that one, there was another and before that other, was still another. Before those and before a bunch more of them that preceded them, there was a universe in which there lived a man. Well, not so much a man as they are known today, as a being that was that particular universe's equivalent of a man (which was called a smilurge). And the smilurge, who was named Bikert, was a student of the physical world. He learned all that was known about his universe in his search for immortality. And when that ran out, he went ahead and discovered some more. Over time, he was able to prolong his life, to gather great age and great knowledge into himself, but true immortality still eluded him.

Finally, after many lifetimes for others had come and gone, Bikert discovered a way to live forever. The problem with his previous research was that he had been focused on finding a way to change himself and keep himself from aging, from dying. That proved to be the wrong tack. Once he discovered that the only way to live forever was not to change himself, but to change the universe, he was able to design the perfect process. Finally, he would be able to live forever. The only hitch was the fact that the change he needed to work in the universe was fatal to both smilurge and universe alike- it would kill his entire race and several others- it would destroy the universe.

Luckily for Bikert, he was daft and brainsick as anyone had ever been, so the concept of ripping space-time to shreds and eliminating all life for just his own benefit didn't bother him in the least, so he went forward right away.

Bikert's plan involved making a small (smilurge sized) hole in space-time in the exact spot on which he stood, thereby making him a person (smilurge) out of time- not susceptible to its laws and even able to reshape time and the universe to his own whims. It was a good plan. It would have been a better one if Bikert had been a more careful mathematician. Not the type to bother with trifles, the mad scientist pushed on with his plans without rechecking his calculations and, even though he did succeed in creating for himself a nice hole in time-space, it wasn't such a little hole as he had wanted. It was in fact, much bigger than he wanted. Also, it wasn't smilurge shaped at all. It was much more like the spider web type shape that one could see in a cracked piece of glass. The other smilurge who were included in the hole in time (there were twelve of them, not counting Bikert) became immortal the same as the scientist did (and they got the same abilities to affect the universe and time that he gained, as well).

Not only that, but the effects of the web-shaped hole in time rippled out from the center for some distance, affecting those smilurge in that area in exotic ways. They were not out of time- were in no way immortal, but the way they traverse time was changed in ways strange and unforeseen. None of them were actually too bothered by it though, because milliseconds after Bikert succeeded in breaking his universe, it came to an end. To this day, Bikert will swear that the two events were a coincidence, but not one of those left who remember that day believes him.

As universe seceded universe, the Antiptines (as those immortals came to be called by themselves and the few others who knew them) continued to be immortal and unaffected by the universes' laws. Since the molecules of any universe are composed of the remnants of the previous universe's molecules, the atoms that had once been part of those poor souls who had been caught up in the rippling effect of Bikert's experiment stayed around being reused and reshuffled- spread about across great distances and clumped together into tiny little spaces. And, round about the thirteenth new universe, a wondrous thing began to happen. When those little spaces where those special molecules and atoms stuck, where those unusual electrons and neutrons and protons clumped, where those quirky little quarks and gluons and leptons gummed up together happened inside a living creature, that living creature experience time in ways strange and unusual.

Their numbers included:

Those who lived time backwards, those who lived repeated time and those who jumped in time. Each of those three could possibly be combined together to create those who lived time backwards repeatedly, or those who jumped backwards and forwards in time, etc. Some of those who lived time in such ways had no control over how time passed for them. Others of them could move through time in their own unusual way at their personal whim and still others could control some aspects of how they lived time, but not others.

The after a fashion, the Antiptines began to take notice of these certain individuals, watching how they succeeded or failed to live worthy and happy lives in their unusual states. Sometimes, one of the Antiptines would bother her or himself enough to interfere with the lives of these mortals, but more often than not, they did not. When they did interfere (and it was Bikert who did this the most for he was the most crazed among them) it often had disastrous consequences for the mortals involved. Once or twice it had resulted in the ending of that current universe. At that point, the others had decided that Bikert was not allowed to butt in anymore and they tried to limit themselves to only intervening in mortal's lives when it was absolutely needed (or to win a bet, because betting on the lives of mortals was about the only thing the Antiptines had to entertain themselves after they had read, seen, absorbed or flexirited every work of fiction every conceived and played every game, sport, dirty trick or biliplatre ever invented).