Roo

Cass rose early the next morning to shower and dress before making her way down towards the empty refectory, to grab what passed as breakfast now that Bedge wasn’t there
In many ways, she missed the weirdly subservient killing machine – and not just for the delicious meals he used to prepare; the overflowing laundry basket in the corner of her room, in ever more urgent need of attention, also made her guiltily wish that he were still there; and while she would have scoffed at such notions in years past, she had got quite used to all those little things he used to do, like making sure that even her socks and underwear was all freshly ironed and pressed
Perhaps, she mused as she fumbled inexpertly with the cooking range, it might be worthwhile returning to Fernando’s when Jay was better, to retrieve Bedge and see how things were going with Efof and all the Ssala – many of whom were friends that she often wondered about

The refectory was still empty when she finished overcooking the scrambled eggs, and so she sat alone and ate the rubbery concoction in silence, perusing her terminal, and checking the progress her machines were making with the now almost complete new drive room, and the range of other systems she had elected to bring back up to full capacity, now that they had the resources and raw materials
As she had hoped, it was White Wolf who scampered into the refectory first, the giant hamster closely followed by Candy Kane, who Cass eyed hungrily; wishing, not for the first time, that is was she who had got to the remains of the sex-bot first, so she could have dissected the thing to divine its many technological secrets
“I was hoping I’d see you” she smiled up at White Wolf
“Oh?” the giant hamster rumbled, glancing over at her as he helped himself to the contents of one of the fridges “I take it those nanites you found aren’t up to scratch?”
“Yeah” Cass sighed, hiding a brief flash of irritation at the hamster for not having come to her earlier, had he already guessed that the nanites would be useless
“So I suppose you want to ask me a few questions?” the giant hamster smiled as he placed a plate of fruit down on the table opposite Cassandra and nudged a chair out of the way to sit opposite her on the floor, while Candice silently shimmied into a chair next to him
“The Roo” Cass said simply “What are they and how do we find this outpost?”
“Ah, the Roo” White Wolf smiled, settling back onto his haunches and picking up an apple “The shortest and sweetest explanation I can come up with, would be that they are a race of rodents whom I rescued from subjugation and slavery on the Planet Reuben”
“And...?” Cass raised her eyebrows expectantly
“And... As a result of which, with some later ah... interference from myself, and several million years evolution, became Atemporal, and rose to become something of an inter-dimensional empire”
“Care to give me a rundown of Atemporality?”
“Well, it's a little hard to describe in human experience terms, Cass." White Wolf put his right paw pensively up under his cheek pouches and scratched his chin
"As you probably already know from my JMC personnel file, I was once a human until I accidentally got combined with an engineer’s black hole induced longevity experiment” he continued “And I assume you also know about Einstein’s theories about how time slows down as you approach the speed of light, and not even matter traveling at the speed of light can escape a Black Hole?”
“Elementary stuff” Cass nodded, silently wondering where this was going
“Well, it seems I've inherited some of a Black holes other characteristics, and because of that, I literally exist outside of time or without time, if you will. Because time in the universe is sort of like a physical dimension that you can assign a mathematical value to, you know - like height, width, depth, weight and all that. So in a sense, it's just one of a long string of values describing stuff; and in my case, I have a value which is unlike the human race and most of the inhabitants of this universe, in which I'm not affected by time in the same way by time and can therefore do things that temporals cannot.”
“Such as?” Cass asked, her interest piqued
“For example, if you know about past Phil's time looping issue, I can remember things outside each separate time loop of his, or when time reverses or jumps forward or other stuff like that, I’m aware of it happening. Heck, I've already experienced the full course of time from beginning to end, and then around into the 'next loop', for this universe several times already.”
Cass opened her mouth to say something, but White Wolf held up a paw
“And, before you go asking” he said “No – I can't predict future events with any accuracy because things are always changing due to two main reasons; the first being the uncertainty principle, and the second, far more important one, being that for every binary event or decision, time and the multiverse sort of takes all of them into account and creates alternate realities as events go along”
“Yeah, but if things are always changing” Cass frowned “and you’ve seen this universe through from beginning to end a few times, then this universe, this reality will be utterly different to the one you originated from – you’re a refugee from another time and place, that’s still here and now?”
“You’re beginning to grasp it” White Wolf smiled “Some things, though, remain the same – major historical events, and suchlike; but the time and place these occur can be very different; the Boston tea party, for example, occurred in Baltimore the first time around for me”
“You though” White Wolf murmured thoughtfully “You’re new”
“How so?”
“People, events and even places can bubble up through time” the hamster explained “and as I said: For every choice or decision, you get an alternate reality”
“Yeah, but the possible permutations generated by even a single person throughout just one day are mind-boggling” Cass protested “Scale that up to a galactic or even a universe wide level and you’re looking at an infinite...” she paused to regard White Wolf keenly “How is it even possible to navigate around realities, when they’re all changing, and all generating their own alternate realities? Infinity to the power of infinity... and that’s before you even take into account the utterly alien dimensions that bear no relation to ours”
White Wolf twitched his whiskers, wondering if he had maybe given too much away
“Thanks to the perception or experiences given by Atemporality” he began “I and consequently, the Roo, slowly invented the required technology to travel to many of these realities; and while exploring them, we came to realize that in a sense, the different realities are simply another digit in that long string of mathematical values; kind of like a multiverses GPS coordinates, describes each of these "realities" qualities and their overall placement in the scheme of events and stuff.”
“So it is possible” Cass nodded “What’s GPS?”
“Global Positioning System” White Wolf smiled “An old fashioned way of pinpointing your location; but no matter – You’re correct in your theory that the multiverse is infinite; or at least it is as far as we’ve been able to determine...”
“Isn’t dimensional travel dangerous?” Cass queried “Realities where the universal constants are different must make the experience extremely hazardous”
“For Temporals it can be deadly” White Wolf nodded “But as Atemporals, we can exist and take actions in many dimensions – even ones where time doesn’t exist!”
“That...” Cass frowned “is a hard concept to get my head around; actions denote events occurring over time, and yet in those dimensions, time doesn’t exist...”
“You’d have to experience it to see what I mean” White Wolf smiled
“I guess so” Cass shrugged “So how do we go about finding this outpost?”
“Finding the Roo is actually pretty easy once you know what you need to look for” the hamster explained “We’re going to need to ramp the Dwarf’s systems up to near maximum output for a gross long range scan for inter-dimensional objects around the three hundred exa-electron volt range - The Roo hide their civilization and various outposts that way.”
“And after that?”
“After that, we proceed very carefully” White Wolf stroked his chin thoughtfully “I’m a persona non grata amongst the Roo at the moment, and I’m not certain they’d appreciate me turning up w...” he stopped and regarded Cass “It’ll be dangerous”
Eyeing her reflection in the hamsters unreadable and inhumanly black eyes, Cass frowned, wondering what it was that he had just left unsaid
“I’m afraid we don’t have the luxury of being picky” she murmured after a moment “This is likely to be the last and best chance we have of finding the resources we need to deal with the nanophage”


Over the next few days while Cass and others worked on implementing White Wolf’s prescribed modifications to the sensor arrays, Jay’s condition slowly worsened, with Doctor Black eventually diagnosing multiple organ dysfunction
Once a sensor sweep had been performed and the outpost had thankfully been found, it took a further ten days travel to get to the system where it was located; by which time, even with Jade and Phi’s best efforts, Jay had deteriorated even further, to the point where only drugs and machines, safely situated outside the field system, were keeping him alive; so it was with some apprehension that Cass met with White Wolf and several other members of the crew in the new Drive Room

“So that’s it?” she asked, eyeing the blue green planet and it’s large murky green coloured moon that was displayed on the monitors “That’s where the base is?”
“That’s it” White Wolf nodded
“So what’s this meeting about?”
“We’ve got a bit of a problem” the giant hamster explained “Watch this...”
He initiated a sequence of commands that fired a robotic probe towards the planet, the tiny droid’s impulse engines glowing brightly against the inky blackness of space as it streaked towards its target
There was a bright flash as the probe dipped in beneath the moons orbit and the probe vanished
“What just happened there?” Cass asked
“Pulsar cannon defence system” White Wolf explained “Our probe just got obliterated”
“Seems like the Roo aren’t keen on visitors”
“Indeed” the hamster nodded
“Well, that’s bloody stupid, isn’t it?” Cass sneered “Why the smeg would the Roo, go to all the trouble of hiding this outpost, only to go and announce its presence with a bloody planetary defence system? How are we going to get down there?”
“Well, there might be a back door somewhere...” White Wolf began

<tag>
Is there an emergency back door?
Where is it, what is it?
It is defended?
</tag>

<ooc>
Okay, so I had a busy weekend too...
That was something of a joint post between White Wolf and myself (he supplied a load of the text, I gave it a slight editing), giving you a brief overview of the multiverse and the vermin that travel between the various realities
</ooc>