Ballerina Justice and the Bro-bots of Peace
Chapter 19: The Puzzle is Solved

Jerry finished writing on the chalkboard and sat down. He was exhausted. Fool that he was, he had put everything he had into the reconciliation with Ball, and now that it was accomplished, allowed himself to finally be tired. It was as if, upon finishing a marathon, he learned that he now had to run all the way back, and he started to lose his stamina. Ball had not. She had been waiting for this moment for nearly a decade, and was invigorated. She was riding high on love, and to top it off, she was finally working on just the sort of puzzle she had been aching for. She ran forward, practically pulling him along. He dragged himself along behind.

“But it’s so simple, Jerry,” she said. “There is some sort of time anomaly seeping out of the hole. Like this.” She went to the table and quickly mixed two chemicals in flask. Then, she covered the flask with a balloon which proceeded to inflate with blue gas. When the balloon was sufficiently full, she carefully pulled it off, and let the colored gas seep out of the balloon. “See how the gas is heavy near the leak, and weaker the further it gets? Just imagine this gas also carried something with it that slowed down time wherever it went. Where it was heaviest, time would be slower than where it was lightest.”

“It would have been easier with a cigarette, dumpling.”

“Still haven’t quit?” She grabbed him from behind and kissed him on the cheek. “Some things will never change.”

He turned and embraced her. They kissed again and stared into each other’s eyes. “I have changed,” he said, and she smiled.

“In the old days, Ball, you used to talk about the fluidity of time, and I always refused to believe it, right?”

“Sure, Jer. But it didn’t matter. I still loved you.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I loved you to. I still do. I’m talking about the fluidity of time.”

“Do we need to get into this argument again now?”

“No. I don’t think so. I think I’m ready to hear you out, but I need you to take me through it. And you can start by telling me why I never believed you.”

“Well...” she gave it some thought. “You always said that if you couldn’t measure it, it didn’t happen. I would try to explain the relative nature of our points of view, and how you could never measure a time fluctuation because the fluctuation itself would affect your ability to measure it.”

“Ok. Well, let’s say, for the moment, that I’ve accepted your premise. Actually let’s do more than that. I’ve sat with this idea for the last 12 years, and I keep coming to the same conclusion. You’ve experienced it. You believe it. And I believe in you. It may not have been good enough for me then, but it is now. So, no, we’re not going to argue about this. Never again.”

“Ok.”

“But here’s the thing my dearest one, my one true love.” He kissed her again, this time on the neck.

“Stop it.”

Then, he held her at arms length, with a look of seriousness in his face.

“If we can’t measure it, how is it that we have measured it?”

And for that she had no answer. She stepped backwards, and fell into a chair. He, tired of standing, turned and found his own. For nearly thirty minutes, there were no words. They were lost.

Then, after what seemed to be an interminable amount of time, Jerry got up and walked back to the chalkboard, an idea forming in his head. Before he could make it across the room however, he was stopped by a violent alarm that seemed to permeate every room in the mansion. Instinctively, he hit the floor. Then he said, “Tru-bots. I’d better get out of here.”

“Hold on, Jerry,” Ball said calmly. “The lab has a secure room below the floor for explosives. Stay out of sight for a moment while I answer the vid-screen. If it is the ’bots, you can hide down there and no one will be able to replace you without a passcode. Even your radiation signature will be blocked.”

Ball got up and moved toward the vid-screen as Jerry crouched behind the counter, out of sight. If the Tru-bots had found him here, it didn’t matter how long he hid – they would replace him. For now, though, there was nothing to do but wait.

Ball pressed a small button next to the vid-screen and it lit up. On the screen were three figures, standing at the main gate to Silver Maples. In the dark, it was hard to see who they were, but at least one was...

“Whitty! Thank God. I was so worried. And Pete. Hold on, let me release the gate.” She pressed another button, and the figures walked out of view. “It’s ok, Jerry. They’re friends. You wait here and work. I’ll go up front and bring them back.”

“You’re the boss, love.”

She kissed him again, and departed.

Jerry heaved a sigh of relief, and sunk back into the time problem in earnest. If the robots’ instruments actually recorded time fluctuations, that meant the instruments themselves were unaffected by them. But everything he had ever learned about time fluctuations told him that such a thing was either not possible, or time fluctuations themselves were not possible. In no case had he ever heard of anyone having recorded proof. Belief in time changes was always based on intuition and faith. The fact that none had ever been recorded was the main bone of contention for unbelievers like him.

But yet he had seen it with his own eyes.

So what made these time fluctuations different? Both Ball and he had assumed the source of the time fluctuations, if indeed that was what they were, was a rip between universes. What if something had escaped from the other-verse and formed a window through which to view the fluctuations? Perhaps, driven by different physical laws than those in our own universe, this window allowed the robots’ instruments, instruments made under the laws of this universe to see without being affected? Maybe it was only fluctuations in our own universe that were invisible to our instruments. Maybe the ones created under different laws were visible under our own.

He went back up the blackboard and began to erase. Halfway into his task, he was surprised, however, by a familiar voice.

“Are you sure you want to erase that? It might not be all wrong.”

“Peter Elbert.” He looked across the room at the one who had been his personal enemy number one for 12 years. The two of them were alone in the room, whether on purpose or not was as yet unclear. “How is the good doctor today?” he said, with emphasis worthy of the Captain.

“Listen, Jerry. Before you say anything, I just want to say I know now I was wrong. When you got thrown out that day, I thought you were in the wrong. I thought you were being rash. You had taught me everything I had known, and I was grateful. But I thought...this time he’s wrong. This time he’s just trying to be provocative. He’s crying wolf. Like I said, I know now I was wrong, but I can’t let you think I betrayed you for money or power, or even out of cowardice. I really thought I was doing the right thing.”

Jerry let his words hang in the air. Then, slowly, he walked over to Elbert and shook his hand. “Ok,” he said, and that was enough.

And then something happened that Jerry would remember for the rest of his life. Ball walked in holding the hand of a young man, no more than 12 years old. She walked right up to Jerry, looked down at the boy and said, “Whittaker Ignatius Strohman, I would like you to meet your father.

Father?

Jerry’s mind went back to that fateful night. When she had held back her secret. The secret that was going to change everything. And he, so preoccupied with himself, with what he felt he needed to do to save her, let her hide it from him. He wondered if it would have made a difference.

To be a father. Like this. So suddenly. Surely there was no mistake, though. The boy looked just the way Jerry had at that age. A son. His son. Could he accept it? Could the boy accept him? Was he as surprised as Jerry, or had he known all along – known about an absentee father that had run away before he was born?

They sized each other up without speaking. Slowly, Jerry bent down and proffered his hand. “Hello, Whittaker.”

“Hello...Father,” Whit replied.

“Ugh.” Jerry laughed. “I think I need to earn that one. Why don’t you call me Jerry until we get to know each other a little better.”

“Ok...Jerry.” They let go of each others’ hands. “Most people call me Whit.”

“Alright, Whit.” Jerry considered his next words carefully. During the awkward silence, Whit looked back and forth between everyone in the room. Jerry just looked at Whit. “I...uh...hope we can be friends.”

What next? We could have a touching scene where mother, father, and son get to know each other a bit, perhaps open up to one another to show the seed of a tree that will eventually bear the fruit of family love. Or a long drawn out fight, where Whit condemns his new found father for being so long absent. What do you know about it? You weren’t even here. That sort of thing. Then again, perhaps being spared such a scene is in fact a preferable option. We will never know. Instead of diving into the mire of this sure to be dysfunctional family’s relationships, we are, for better or ill, thrust into distraction when a scream from the final member of the visiting party bursts into the room.

“Nooooo!!”

The scream filled the room and several others. It was full of fear and anger. Then there was silence. Jerry was about to explore, and replace out what it was when the robot, Ninety, burst into the room. In his hand was the leg of a wooden table, broken off at the base. He went for Jerry first. With a swift swing to the head, he was down, and Ninety moved to his next victim. Ball tried to fight back, but the robot was too strong for her and had her unconscious before she could strike. Elbert ran across the room toward Ninety and jumped on his back, where he began searching for a deactivation switch, but he was unfamiliar with the model, and before he was able to replace it, Ninety had pushed backward against the wall to shake him off, and followed with a swift swing of the table leg. Whit tried to run out of the room, but the robot caught him by the arm.

Ninety, Whit in one hand and the table leg in the other, said, “I do not wish to hurt you Whittaker. Your friends have not been seriously harmed, nor will you be. But they would not have gone quietly and we’re nearly out of time. Sit in this chair while I prepare a serum.”

Whit, scared, working hard to hold back tears, said, “Why are you doing this, Mr. Ninety? I thought you were my friend.”

Without pause, he replied, “We are in council with the Angel. She needs to talk with all of you, and we are out of time. Unless they are unconscious, she cannot connect with them, and we did not have time to convince them with logical argument. Remain still while I produce the serum.” He let go of Whit and worked swiftly and quietly. In less than one minute, he had produced a sleeping serum, and injected it into Jerry, Elbert, and Ball. Then he turned to Whit. “Let’s have another look at that ear.”

When the lights went out, Jerry dreamed he was back in his hidden compartment on the garbage scowl. He felt himself enveloped with emptiness as he had when he watched the universe open before him. It was as if he ceased to exist, and in doing so, became a part of something greater than himself. Greater, but at the same time, lesser, too.

In the midst of this darkness he vaguely remembered an early lesson from his childhood that had never left him. His father had asked him what his favorite color was, and he had said black. His father, ever specific if not pedantic, had crushed him by telling him that black was not a color, but rather the absence of it. That day, when Jerry first considered the absence of light, he had taken his first step into a larger world – a world of puzzles, of solutions, of science. That world had embraced him, if not controlled him, ever since. But today, at least for a brief moment, he put away that world of problems and solutions, and let himself travel back to that time of simple wonder. Today he felt the absence of color, of light, course through him, and for once, instead of trying to define it, he simply embraced it. A favorite color.

He had almost no memory of who he was, of where he had come from. He was newborn, and living solely in the present. Slowly, vague pictures formed around him, and he began to focus. Out of the darkness, he saw massive numbers of beings on all sides of him. Above, the world was growing brighter, but without any more resolution. Below, he found himself walking through the crowd, lost. The first thing he noticed, as the world slowly became more visible, was that that they were all mechanical. Hundreds of mechanical men on every side, wandering through a black fog, everywhere he went.

Then, coming into focus, he saw a young human, and memories started to flow back. His son. He was somewhere, with his son, and he...yes...and his wife...he had a family, and....something about a friend....and a robot...yes...no...he was losing the image. He walked up to the boy and attempted to speak, but could not. The boy grabbed his hand, and brought him through the crowd to another human. Yes...his family...he had been happy...but...where...? And then he was holding a woman’s hand, and he knew everything was ok. Another human joined them and they stood together, not talking, as the world above them grew too bright to look at.

Then the voice came.

It thundered from every direction. It came from within and without. It pervaded every inch of his body and the world around him. Like a tuning fork held to his tooth, he felt the voice coming from inside his head, but knew all those around him felt the same.

“Friends.”

The brightness above became a swirl of mist, moving and twisting through the masses. As it twisted, it formed into a vaguely female shape, like a ghost moving in and out of existence as it swirled. Sometimes a face would appear briefly, and disappear before he could really see it. But the voice was clear and constant.

“We have nearly run out of time. He is gathering the forces of darkness at the cradle of the universe, and he will destroy us before we are born. You have done well. Your infiltration of the mechanical men will succeed, but we need more time. The time is now. If you have not completed your missions, return and do so. If you have, move to the cradle and prepare for battle. We have one last hope, and if it fails, it will be only war that can save us. Let us pray to avoid it. Let us pray for peace.”

The masses began to thin, and Jerry soon found himself with his human company and ghostly apparition, alone in the universe. She spoke again.

“My children.”

Still, he could not speak.

“I have waited so long. Come.”

The swirling apparition moved. If it had had arms, one of them would have beckoned. Slowly, the world around them began to swirl, and they found themselves in a moving fog, coalescing into a familiar setting. They were back in the lab at Silver Maples, although it was more dreamlike than they remembered. Counters appeared to move and shift, tables were less than solid, and the fog never quite dissipated. Behind the counter, in front of the chalkboard, stood a beautiful figure. Like Ball, and yet not like Ball. Her hair was long and flowing, and her eyes, unlike Ball, were a deep shade of blue, almost indigo. And she, like much of the objects around them, was not quite solid.

“There are times when I replace it so hard to communicate with the Brothers. It is as if they have no imagination. This is far more pleasurable.”

Jerry at last found the ability to speak. “Who are you? Where are we? What happened?”

“You ask many questions my son,” she replied. “Let us take them one at a time, from back to front. Third question. What happened. My servant, a member of my mechanical Brotherhood, used his considerable skill to bring you into a state of unconsciousness, so you could meet with me here. Second question. Where are you. You are in the lab where my servant incapacitated you, sleeping. This vision is one of my own making, conjured from your minds in an attempt to replicate a familiar surrounding. First question. Who am I. That one may take a little more time.”

Whit walked over to her and held her hand. She looked down at him, and then at Ball and Jerry.

“This boy has taught me many things. Things even I didn’t know were possible.” She smiled and looked at him again. “This boy of my own blood.”

Jerry, Ball, and Elbert exchanged looks with each other. The apparition went on. “I am not much more than a spirit that has been roaming a universe for all of time. But before I was that, I was like you. I was a human. I lived in this universe with corporeal form. And I loved. At that time, I had a name. I was called Ballerina Justice.”

She laughed.

“It has been an eternity since I have heard that name. The last time I heard it spoken, it was...” She looked right at Ball. “It was your by your father, Ball.”

Ball stared in shock. Jerry nodded, as if to tell her to go on. Elbert looked confused. And Whit, still holding the apparition’s hand, looked up and smiled.

“George Rieder and I had been married for many years. Our world was at peace, and we were in love. Then, one day, he was helping me with a scientific experiment and I was drawn into another world. You would call it another universe.”

Jerry dared to speak. “What would you call it?”

She replied, “Ever the scientist, Gerald Strohman. Even here.”

He looked at her quizzically, waiting for her continue.

“Names can be deceiving. Sometimes I prefer to do without them.”

Jerry nodded.

Ballerina Justice continued her story. “After we were separated, I roamed my new world for an eternity. Like my grandson, here, and his mother...” Here she smiled at Ball, and Ball returned the favor. “...I was born to the Time People. It was my abilities that allowed me to survive by transforming into what you saw on the medial plane. I became spirit, and traveled along my new world’s time flows to the farthest reaches, until time itself dwindled and became nothing but a vanishing point.

“I saw many things in that world, which was not entirely dissimilar from your own. Civilizations rose and fell, men built empires, and technology flourished. And like your own world, the men and their technology ultimately brought themselves to galactic war and destroyed themselves.”

“Destroyed themselves? Like us? What do you mean?” It was Elbert. Jerry had forgotten he was even in the room.

“Yes, Peter Elbert. Like you. You too destroy yourselves. I have seen it.”

She let go of Whit’s hand, and walked to a chair. “You know, I hardly remember what it feels like to sit down. There were many nice things about being corporeal.” She sat down, and frowned. “As I expected. It’s just not the same.

“Now where was I? Oh, yes. Utter annihilation. I had seen it, and often wondered if I could stop it. Like all Time People I had grown up knowing the futility of attempting to change anything by moving through time. But somehow, in my new world, in my new form, things were different. I had my own present. I never forgot the time I came from when I moved along the flow. I thought, I can actually affect changes. I just didn’t know how.

“Then, somewhere along the millennia I came back to where it had all begun. The place where I had been transformed. And there, in the darkness, I felt something. A presence. I soon realized I was experiencing a connection with beings from my old world. I explored the connection, and found that these beings were not human, but mechanical. I had made a connection with robots, across the divide between our two worlds.

“I spent another eternity planning, and when I was ready, I came back to that place and built an army. A brotherhood of mechanical men who could infiltrate the civilization they lived in, your civilization, and stop this perpetual war between machines and men. I breathed life into these machines so they could bridge the gap between the forces at war, and bring peace to the universe.”

Jerry stood up. “But something went wrong.”

“Yes, Gerald Strohman. Something went wrong. The bridge between our worlds, the bridge I had built the day of my transformation, had grown, and they were seeping into each other at both ends. They are doing so now. And they are doing so out of time. They will destroy each other and...and...” She looked around the room, then walked over to Ball. “I have erred. It is your father who is bringing our universes together. I have tried to stop him, but I believe I have only encouraged him further. I am only just learning how to communicate with humans, and he is such a strange one, I can’t fully break through. It’s like only half of my thoughts get through. He believes if he can bring our worlds together, that he and I can at last be together for eternity. He will destroy everything.”

She took Ball’s hand.

“What can I do?” Ball asked.

“You must...” But the world grew dark. Ballerina Justice faded, as Ball’s movements became thick. The humans were suddenly wading through mire, in a world going black. Then, in complete emptiness, a voice rose through the dark. “...stop him.”

Jerry awoke with a headache to beat the worst hangover he could ever remember. He felt like someone was repeatedly hitting him in the back of the head with a ball peen hammer. As he opened his eyes, the lights of the room made him feel like was walking out into bright daylight from a dark theater, and he immediately closed them again. He did his best to force them open, but it took him awhile to focus on anything at all. When he did, the first thing he saw was the robot, offering him a drink of some kind.

“This will help,” Ninety said, and moved on to give similar drinks to Elbert and Ball.

The drink worked quickly, and in no time, he was feeling as if he was only in the midst of an ordinary hangover. “What the hell happened?” Jerry asked of the room in general.

Ninety answered, “Please excuse my impertinence, Dr. Strohman. I was asked by Her to prepare you for communication. Such preparation does require some unfortunate side effects.”

“Unfortunate isn’t the word. I feel like I’ve been slugged from behind with baseball bat in the middle of an opium binge,” Jerry replied.

“The analogy is not altogether inaccurate, Dr. Strohman. You were in fact hit from behind with a wooden implement approximately one meter in length, and given a moderate dosage of an opium derivative.”

“Glorious.”

“But who is she?” Ball jumped in. “She can’t possibly be my mother. I mean...I don’t have one, do I? It may well be that she new my father but....”

“Ball.” Jerry’s interruption was sharp and swift. “Your father told me about Ballerina Justice the day he fired me. I said the same thing. That you were a tech baby. But he just said something like, ‘let’s just say the robots were good to me’. I think he was trying to tell me that he had salvaged some of her DNA and was able to use it to modify the reproduction process.”

Ball got up and started pacing the room. She shook her head over and over again. “He told you? About her? He never told me but he told you? And you kept it from me?”

Ball was furious.

“Ball, it’s not like it looks.”

“How does it look, Jerry?”

“He was in some kind of trance. He told me this long involved story about his wife and discovering the other-verse, and about the vengeance he was going to wreak on it...”

“On what?”

“On the other-verse. I’m telling you he was completely out of touch with reality. Or at least I thought he was at the time.”

“Ok, ok, ok. I can’t think about that. There’s just too much information to absorb right now. We’ll come back to that.” She gave Jerry a hard stare. “What was all that business about war, and who were all those robots?”

Elbert commiserated. “Robots. Time flows. War. Leaks between universes. Somebody start at the beginning. Please. Jerry, can you make any sense of this?”

“It’s starting to come together for me. Much of it anyway.” He finished what was left of his drink, and went on. “When he was in that trance, your father had told me about the day she transformed. Basically, she had discovered the ripping process, and in doing so, got sucked into the other-verse. Something about the physical laws in the other-verse must have saved her from being completely destroyed.”

“But no one can survive a trip across the divide,” Elbert said.

“We don’t actually know that, Elbert. They may survive in ways we can’t track. Like she did. Or it maybe she had something special that allowed her to transform.”

“Like her time instincts?” Ball posited.

“Maybe. Yes, that would make sense. And she’s been surfing the time flows of the other-verse ever since.”

“And the leaks?” Ball asked.

“Well, that just gets back to what we were looking at before we were so rudely interrupted.” Here he gave a stern glance at Ninety, who gave no reaction whatsoever. “Let’s look at what we know.” He jotted on the chalkboard as he talked.

1. When anyone makes a rip, they create huge amounts of energy which close the rip and seal it off.

2. Over time, if the same area is over ripped, the seals lose their integrity.

3. We saw documentation of a certain area being over- ripped.

4. In that same area, we saw documentation of time anomalies that decreased in magnitude as they spread.

“I’ve been thinking about that, actually,” Jerry continued, “and I think maybe there’s something about the differences between our universe and the other-verse that allow us to see time anomalies that come from the other-verse in a way we could never in our own.”

“That would explain the time entries in the log,” Elbert added.

“My thoughts exactly. Alright, back to the list.

5. The time anomalies take the form of time apparently slowing down – a lot near the rip, and less so further away.

6. Ball’s father may be purposely trying to create a permanent hole between the universes.

“Ok,” Jerry went on. “Where does that leave us?”

Elbert, seeing an opportunity to contribute, jumped in. “Well, if the time anomalies are caused by the leak, then it would make sense that a permanent hole would allow the anomaly to pour into our universe.”

“Go on...” Ball encouraged.

“And if a small anomaly slows time down a little, then a massive anomaly would slow us down a lot. Maybe even bring us to a complete stop. Maybe that’s what she means by destroying both worlds.”

“But if a permanent hole would destroy both worlds,” Jerry chimed in, “then does that mean the time in the other-verse would speed up?”

Everyone looked to be at a loss. Well, almost everyone.

“Don’t you guys get it?” The whole room was surprised to hear Whit enter the conversation. “Mom, your thinking like a normal. Time is a river right?”

“Well...yes, Whit. Of course. But what...”

“And if something could slow a river current, it would have to be pulling against it, right?”

The room was silent. Everyone looked at Whit, and Ball drilled into his eyes in an attempt to get into his head. Suddenly, her eyes lit up and the epiphany embraced her.

“Of course!” She went up to Whit and gave him a big bear hug. “If time slows down here when their flow invades, then time would slow down there when our flow invades. Whit, I’m so proud of you.”

Elbert and Jerry looked at each other dumbfounded. Jerry broke the silence. “Sorry. Not really following you, Ball.”

Ball looked at Whit. “Why don’t you explain it, Whitty.”

Whit smiled. “Well...think of it this way. What if time in the other-verse flowed in an opposite direction of time in our universe. Would that help explain what you saw?”

Jerry laughed. Elbert, still looked confused, but pretended to understand.

“God knows I hate this time stuff. Always have,” Jerry said. “Nearly failed it in high school. But I think I understand enough.”

Elbert was relieved to hear Jerry understood as little as he did. Thinking further, he said, “Ok. So we have two rivers flowing opposite directions, and if they can freely intermix, they’ll both come to a dead stop. Ok. And ok, the Old Man is trying to make this happen. But how do the robots fit in?”

“I can answer that.” All eyes turned to the source of the voice. Ninety, the robot, was now ready to tell them everything.

Of course, “everything” is an understatement. Much is a rehash of what we have learned already, and the rest just makes it more confusing.

Basically, in communicating with the robots, Ballerina Justice created a new race. She called them the Brotherhood, and they called themselves Bro-bots. She had seen mechanical vs. organic wars in both universes, and in both cases they had led to the destruction of everything by way of these big hole/rip things. It created an end to time at both ends of both universes.

Creating this new race of Bro-bots was a sort of pet project of hers, as a way to end these wars permanently. She communicated with them, told them what to do, and basically pulled their strings to achieve her ends – world peace.

She was playing a long game though, and she had to stop the Old Man to give her plan some time to work.

“Well,” Elbert said. “We’d better figure out how to stop him. Anyone got any ideas?”

And our story shifts back to the still unnamed planet out in the colonies, where Dr. Caldonium Baker has made some new friends.