The end of a world began with a centimeter

In most universes, this did not occur. However, in one unlikely permutation there was a momentary wobble. A red dwarf swung slightly out of orbit and influenced something far greater. Not much, but as time progressed that slight change grew exponentially. A centimeter became a meter. A meter became a kilometer. A kilometer became a thousand kilometers. And so the changes went.

The thing influenced was a phenomenon referred to by many names. Humans, when they first discerned it, called it the Great Maelstrom. Two black holes in a tight binary orbit, destroying everything in their path. Glorious to look at but fearful to contemplate, it was a force of pure annihilation.

Even with that small change, it would not hit Earth directly. But it would come close enough. The sun would never survive it, let alone the tiny piece of rock orbiting it.

By the time Reploids were created, humans were looking uncertainly at the sky. A black hole cannot be seen, because it emits no light. But it permits no light to escape.

The sky was already turning black.

In a closely related universe, the sky was spangled with bright stars. And the Reploids and humans below them had no idea how lucky they were to be seeing them.

"Hm hm hm… hm?" A young female rookie stopped, puzzled. It was the dead of night, and she was delivering some papers to the navigator on duty. But there was something curious on the floor.

Shifting the papers to one arm, she knelt down to touch it with a tentative hand. The thing on the floor looked like a bizarre mating between a Met and a spider. Well, what was left of it did. It looked like it had been jammed into a trash compactor and ground down, hard. Wiring was sticking out in dozens of directions.

It was still slightly functional, though. There was a sad chirp as it tried to move, and a badly damaged camera focused on her for just a moment. Then the whole thing whined and collapsed, all life going out of it.

"Hrm? Hrmph." The rookie scratched her head, managing to pack a world of meaning into her monosyllables. "Hmmmm." Carefully sliding her other arm under the thingamajig, she took it with her to the navigator. She had no idea what it could be, but it was curious enough that someone should see it.

In another universe…

"Well, that was… abortive." X sighed, leaning back in his chair and reaching for a pack of cigarettes. He pulled one out, lighting it, then passed the pack over to Axl. With death staring them in the face every day, they had all picked up a few bad habits.

"She was pretty, though." Axl offered, passing the cigarettes over to Zero without taking one. His vices ran more towards sweets. In fact, he probably had the biggest sweet tooth in the Hunters. Not that anyone cared anymore.

"Didn't recognize her, not that it means anything." Zero held out his cigarette for X to light, and puffed at it thoughtfully. "That was the Hunter badge, though. Our worlds are that much the same." They had just finished watching the brief video clip the probe had sent them.

"Not enough information," X said flatly. "I'm not leaving this dirtball just to go to another world where I'll get to spend eternity in a black hole."

"Ah, X, that's not what will happen," Axl said with gallows humor. "I've been talking to the astronomers and physicists. The Great Maelstrom'll strip the atmosphere long before the time dilation effect gets too bad and not even Reploids can survive in those kind of temperatures. And time is subjective so even if the time dilation hit you, it'd only seem like a few hours from inside." Of course, from outside the effected zone, final dissolution could take thousands of years. It was all in the perspective.

"Thank you, Axl. I'll sleep a bit more uneasily tonight knowing that." X blew out a smoke ring. "What went wrong with the probe?" He glanced at a face in a nearby screen. It was Gate. He had called them to share the results of his latest experiments.

All kinds of avenues were being pursued in an effort to escape the coming disaster. They only had about fifty more years before the effects began to get catastrophic. The first colony ships had been launched nearly fifty years ago, when the full horror of what was bearing down on them was realized. Those first ships had been capable of traveling at a miserable fraction of the speed of light, and their destinations had been total crapshoots, but in those first years, people had been desperate. Cryogenic freezing allowed at least the possibility of survival, on some far off planet.

People were still desperate, but time was narrowing options. As the Great Maelstrom got closer, ships leaving needed to go faster to outrun it. With all the new technology advances, ships were going at almost .9 of the speed of light. New ships were launched every day, but they couldn't really make a dent in the world's population. What they really needed was faster than light travel, but experiments had not been promising.

X sighed, and closed his eyes. They were in Maverick Hunter HQ, but there wasn't any actual hunting going on. The Maverick wars had degenerated into a kind of despairing peace. What was the point in fighting over a dying world? Sigma had already left in his own colony ship, and good riddance. With any luck, he'd hit a star.

Gate was exploring a different option. By sheer accident, he'd chanced upon a warp to another dimension. It had been very small, but he'd taken readings. Since then, he'd been trying to duplicate the incident and meeting with some success.

"The probe was left too long in the void," he said calmly. The void was Gate's term for the space that was… not really space. A place between realities. It had no physical boundaries, no definition, and could not support matter. Anything left in it for more than a split second seemed to get squeezed. "We're still working on making the transition instantaneous." That was the critical part. Although…

"What about the sanity problem?" No one was quite sure what the mental effect of being exposed to the void would be. X tended to think that a person probably just wouldn't see much of anything, or even if you could, the mind would refuse to process it. But the hazard couldn't be ignored.

"Barny the Beetle came back safe and sound and apparently unaffected," Gate reported, holding up a small cage for them to view the creature. It was eating a leaf. "Rocky the mouse, however, was left a little too long in the void despite the titanium casing."

"Agh! Don't show us, please." X grimaced at the thought. "How's your funding going?" Gate looked thoughtful for a moment.

"I'll need some more probes. So perhaps another half million?" X winced, but nodded, then glanced at Axl.

"Axl? Can you ask your girlfriend for that?" Axl nodded, bright and chipper. What was left of the Maverick Hunters was being funded by a billionaire playgirl who was scared to death at the thought of taking a colony ship. She was also a diehard fan of all the hunters, especially Zero, and had developed a crush on Axl. Thankfully, he liked her right back and was cheerfully oblivious to how important his relationship was to the Hunters right now. If they ever had a lovers' spat, X wasn't sure what they'd do.

For now, though…

"Thank you for the report, Gate," X made himself smile, although his heart wasn't in it. "That's some solid progress." Gate smiled back.

"Thank you, X. I'll contact you in a week with my next report." The monitor switched off. There was brief silence, and Zero slowly stood up, going to the window.

An atavistic shudder of fear ran down X's spine. He knew what Zero meant to do. "Zero, don't…"

The red hunter ignored him, and threw open the blinds. It was night, and the stars should have been out. When X had first been created, there had been only a small black blotch against them.

Now there were no stars visible. None at all…

Elsewhere...

The little Met/spider scrambled down the sidewalk, cautiously evading feet.

It really wasn't very intelligent. In fact, it was extremely stupid. But its puny AI mind could handle basic traffic laws, and it waited until it saw the 'walk' sign before scampering across the street with the other foot traffic.

The camera in its helmet tilted around, catching everything that was going on around it. A little girl reached down to pet it, until her mother jerked her away with a frown. She didn't really think the little drone belonged to the Mavericks, but she was wary of it anyway.

The probe paused to tilt itself back, focusing on a well-kept building. It was the public library, a very imposing building built of steel and concrete, with an old-world style. Concrete lions greeted visitors, as they sat on the ledges that framed the stairs.

The little AI continued onward, recording. The city was very neat and clean, and the activity was bustling. Eventually, night fell, and the probe tilted itself up again to see the sky.

Stars.

"Ahhhh." X blew out a stream of smoke, leaning towards the monitor intently. "Paydirt." Axl grinned, slapping Zero on the back, who laughed and tugged on his spiky hair.

"Keep your hands to yourself, kid!" Axl settled back, still grinning. Although…

"If there are Hunters there, I bet the Maverick wars are still going on." Zero observed, and X shrugged.

"I'd rather have bloody warfare than the peace of death." The world really was very, very peaceful right now, at least on a global scale. No wars, no bombings, only quiet desperation as all the leaders of the world organized as many colonization ships as they could and poured funding into faster than light research. It was a bit surprising, really, how many leaders had chosen to remain. Or maybe not. You could call those men many things, but after dealing with the Maverick wars, "coward" was usually not among them.

Their families were gone, though. X knew that a large part of the general population was a bit bitter about that, but he considered it wise. How could a man think clearly when his closest loved ones were still in danger? And it was the cruelest sacrifice, sending them away while you remained, not even knowing if they would reach their destination and survive on an alien world…

X took a quick, hard drag of his cigarette, then stubbed it out. He pulled out a new one, lighting it.

"How many packs are you up to a day?" Zero asked, idly curious. X shrugged.

"I don't bother counting. It's not like it will kill me. Anyway, I'd take Sigma over this shit." He gestured to the window with the lit cigarette. "At least I can fight Sigma, even if he's like a damn vampire, coming back all the time." Axl made a strange, choked giggle at that image.

"Ahem," Gate cleared his throat, interrupting the byplay. "I'm getting closer to making the transition instantaneous. I haven't lost any probes recently, although I still need more. It might be wise to try and reach more dimensions." There were just too many people left on Earth to shovel into any one inhabited dimension. "While this one would be acceptable, an uninhabited one would be ideal."

"A place where intelligent life didn't evolve?" Zero snorted. "You only wish." Axl bent over, rummaging through a bag and pulling out a bag of chocolates.

"Candy?" He offered it to Zero, who took one absently. X shook his head, then looked at Gate.

"How should we tell the general public about this?" That was a critical question. Once people knew about an instantaneous way to escape to places that were guaranteed to be at least minimally habitable… there might be one hell of a riot. X wasn't certain how that would play out, just that it could get gruesome. A lot of the people still on earth were fine people. A lot weren't, too, since the colony ships had only taken people who passed certain requirements. And even fine people might lose it, with escape so close at hand. "We just can't let them all pour into one dimension. What a disaster that would be!" They all considered that for a moment.

"I think," Gate said thoughtfully. "That we should trust the President of the United States with this. He has already proven capable of keeping the whereabouts of colony ships a secret, and defending them when secrets got out." The current president was not beloved to most people. He'd used draconian force to secure the ships, and that had not endeared him to anyone, but X considered it fair. Still…

"Only one country?" he said dubiously. "I don't know… that hardly seems fair."

"Life isn't fair, X." Zero pointed out, and X turned around slightly to glare at him.

"Life isn't a weenie roast, either, Zero. Don't be trite. Oh, alright… I suppose we can trust him to share it with whoever isn't an idiot." Not a rousing endorsement, but it was the best X was going to give anyone. "First, though, we have to make it work. How much more funding do you need? And Axl, how's the bank doing?" Axl looked a little pained at that reference to his girlfriend.

"It's getting kind of dry, X. We're down to the last ten million, if you don't count fixed assets like property." Those kind of fixed assets were worth nothing, under the circumstances. "And I think we might need that ten million to establish ourselves once we get through, you know?" Axl suddenly grinned. "The price of gold is so LOW. We ought to buy a ton of it and take it through with us!" X considered that briefly.

"Gate, can you finish this on five million?" Gate considered the question carefully.

"If I don't buy any more probes, yes. But I need more if I want to research other dimensions." X considered that, then smiled slowly, taking a drag on his cigarette.

"Then I'd say it's time for a bit of presidential assistance… as long as we make the conditions clear." They had been privately funding the enterprise this long because they wanted to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Gate, his technical crew, the Hunters and Axl's girlfriend would be the first ones through. If the project had been publicly funded from the outset, that wouldn't be the case. "Since he'll just be funding the probes, I bet we can swing that. I'll arrange a meeting." The name Rockman X still had enough clout that he could probably get to see the president in less than a week. "Keep up the good work, Gate." Gate nodded, and the monitor blinked off.

"If we're going to start stocking up on gold, we should do it now," Zero said practically. "If we try to buy five million dollars worth of it all at once, people are going to think we're nuts. Or that we have an ace up our sleeves. We need to buy it slowly."

"I'll talk to Tabby about that." Axl volunteered. "She'll get right on it, she's great about that." X nodded. Axl's girlfriend was indeed a model of efficiency when it came to purloining whatever articles they needed.

"Hm… you know, maybe we should put her in charge of getting together all the supplies we'll need. It's more than just gold. She can consult with Alia and start making a list." With her functions as navigator made redundant by the end of the war, Alia had found a slightly different niche as a logistics specialist. "You can help them out with that, too." Axl might not be too helpful, but he occasionally had good ideas and Tabby would like it. Axl grinned.

"Sure thing!" He bounced up, eager to get started. Zero also stood up.

"Want to practice, X?" X frowned… they hadn't been practicing much, lately. There hadn't been any point. Then he thought about it a moment, and slowly nodded.

They could be walking into a war. It behooved them to get back into combat ready shape. In fact…

"Everyone should start practicing again. We need to set up a schedule." He wasn't going to have his Hunters walk into danger with their fangs pulled. By the time the portal was ready, he wanted them to be a lean, mean, killing machine.

Somehow, that thought didn't bother him anymore. X glanced at the window a little sadly.

Being in the shadow of absolute destruction seemed to have a corrupting influence on everyone…