Page 63 of Time Traveling Space Bastards
“So, we have people called prophets on Earth. The Devouring Mother can still be a prophet, but we can make her a recluse. No one knows her true identity, and she likes it that way because no one on Earth believes her.
“You tried to locate the Devouring Mother, but you met her scribe, me. The Devouring Mother is a prophet, but she’s not a writer. She shares her visions with me, and I weave them into the holy texts. I don’t know her, either. All my communication with her is electronic, so I’ve never seen her face.
“I didn’t hear from her for a long time, and then she sent me the information for the last book and the purpose for writing them. Valtens figured out I was the scribe when he got stuck fifteen years in the past and got close to me, hoping I would tell him who she was.
“When he realized you had found me, too, he decided to just kill all of us and come back with his own version of the texts that suited his needs. So, you didn’t find the Devouring Mother, but you found her scribe with the last holy text in her head.”
“That’s brilliant,” Mom said. “I see why she’s your bond. It explains why you and Valtens were so focused on her and why he tried to kill her. If she’s just the scribe who only got information as needed, then people won’t pressure her, and she won’t be in danger if you can give enough of an explanation for the last text.”
She was brilliant. That would secure my place on the throne and she was willing to deal with the attention to help do that. All we needed to do now was figure out what the last text was supposed to say and make the announcement.
“Listen, I know you don’t want to tell me how to write my story, but if I want to come up with an ending that’s going to settle the conflict, I’m going to need help. I got a crash course in what’s going on, but those books were me trying to write an entertaining tale people would buy and possibly reach people who might have met the time traveling space bastards that crashed in my pool.
“All I wanted was a group chat so I could talk to those people about that without having my agency taken away like my parents did to me for tellingthe truth.I never intended for it to be the basis of any society. The planet being discovered and invaded was just for drama, not because I see the future.”
“Excuse me, but your parents didwhat?”Mom said.
Yeah, Mom was going to hate what they did to her just as much as we did. She looked horrified when Baxter told her everything that happened after we left to fix Big Daddy. It was our fault, and I felt terrible about it, but ithadto happen like that.
“That’s terrible, but rest assured, it will never happen here. We have multiple planets in this galaxy that can sustain life. You’ll see people from other planets here all the time and you’ll travel to them as well.”
“It’s going to be a totally opposite situation. As far as we know, Earth is the only planet in my galaxy with life on it. People have been claiming they’ve seen people from other planets or that things that seem impossible were done by them.
“Most people don’t believe anyone that they’ve seen, met, or been abducted by people from another planet, but there are those that do. I’m the only human in this galaxy. People might not believeI’mreal or that anyone met me.”
“Oh, love. You’re about to be one of the most important people on this kingdom. You won’t have as much power as myson, but you’re going to be his consort. You’ll be infamous andeveryoneis going to know you’re human.”
“Weird, but okay. I’m also going to be shaking shit up as my official cause. I’m also bonded to TorrekandEnix. Cyborgs can love, even if they haven’t been programmed to, which means it’s possible. Enix saved my life and Ghol savedyours.Neither of them were programmed to do that.
“They can eat and drink. They can learn things they weren’t programmed to do. The cyborg also have preferences. There are foods Enix doesn’t like, and that was all him, not someone telling him he should. They should beallowedto say no if they don’t want to do that without getting their brains erased.”
“I actually agree with you on that and I’m sure Kuka does, too. You do realize you can use the fact that Enix saved the future king’s Velne to do something big that starts that movement and makes sure Enix’s awful owner can’t take him back for any reason. Or, technically, since I’m still queen and Ghol prevented a coup, I can start it and you can finish it.”
That was why I loved my mom so much. The Enix usually passed to different family members when their owners died. Ghol was purchased for my brother by my father. If my mother hadn’t been who she was, she could have just assumed ownership of Ghol and tried to say that Ghol protected her because he belonged to our entire family.
My mother knew better and so did I.
So, we had a something of a plan for my crown, my friend, and the cyborg who saved my mom.
We just needed one for the future of this planet.
This was stressful, but what was the point of being a pantser instead of a plotter if I couldn’t come up with an ending that stopped some alien from trying to do Space Columbus on a bunch of planets? No pressure.
I really needed a forty-eight-ounce tumbler of coffee, another four million dollars, and everyone to tell me I was pretty. You know, just a minor pep-talk and bribery. It was extremely motivating.
I knew my books, but I was missing a lot of history of this planet and I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and make it worse because I knew the history of my planet when people were doing that shit to other cultures.
But maybe that was the answer—using my planet’s past to fix this one’s future.
“I think I have it, but you’re going to have to fact check me if it’s going to work here.”
“You’re pretty brilliant, Baxter Holmes. You can do this,” Torrek said.
“Okay, so my planet also has people called prophets and a lot of them wrote things down that eventually became some religion’s holy text that societies were built on. Some of them just made vague predictions someone could interpret as being true if you really wanted it to be.
“We can use that. The books were always meant to try to connect me with other people who might have met you. We can say in her last message to me, the books aren’t about a future to come, but a test and a cautionary tale.
“The Devouring Mother wrote the texts to inspire the people to push ahead with technological developments, but it was never a prophecy in the way that meant they should use it to go on the attack, only to protect. Her last prophecy before she told me I’d never hear from her again was that if this planet attacked another unprovoked, its society would crumble. Traveling the galaxy to learn about other cultures and peacefully merge them is the way forward or only peril would follow.”
