Chapter Text
This is a translation of a book that will be published in 600-odd years. Fortunately, this will not violate causality or cause any time paradoxes, but unfortunately I can absolutely not explain how I got my hands on it, because that absolutely would cause time paradoxes: paradoxes galore, in fact. And causality collapses. Those are bad, so don't ask me how I got this book, got it?
Anyway, this book was (is, will be, whatever, don't worry about the tense) originally written in a language called Galactic Common. It is a sort of (very explicit) biography on the life of Prince Caravel of Norrah, and his various misadventures. Its original title is actually very clever, and uses Galactic Common's nearly unique capacity for ambiguity -- in fact, only one language in the galaxy allows more ambiguity: the humming tongue of the Monks of Ibados, which has the drawback of not allowing any precision at all, what with it being developed for the monks to use while making out with one another. Ibados is a weird place, don't ask. Galactic Common lets you be reasonably precise or infuriatingly vague, to your own preference, making it more broadly applicable.
The title of this book, in Galactic Common, is translateable as "The Downfall of Prince Caravel". Another option is "The Humbling of Prince Caravel", with an implication of either humiliation, a lesson being learned, or both. A third option is "Prince Caravel is Lowly" with a sort of implication of him being either a pervert or possibly a saintly, kind sort of person. It's used for both. A bizarre coincidence of homophones allows the title to also be read as "Tick tock on the clock, but the party don't stop," but we will not be considering that translation.
The point is, the title makes you unsure if this story is a tragedy or heroically inspiring. How will it all end? Will Prince Caravel make it back to Norrah and can he overthrow his evil stepbrother once there? You'll have to read the book to find out!
This book is, frankly speaking, neither a tragedy nor inspirational. It's smut. The fact that it is autobiographical does not excuse that. Frankly, Prince Caravel has sex with a completely outrageous menagerie of alien men, male-like aliens with different underlying biology, aliens from all-male species, abstract concepts that have for some reason chosen a male identity, and so on. There's a few transgender men and he/they aliens in there too, of course. Not to mention the robots. Goodness, the robots.
All the same, I swear this tale is true, and if you really think it's impossible to have sex with as many men as Prince Caravel, just ask your mother.
Sorry, cheap shot. Also there would be nothing wrong with it even if it were true. Anyway, let's start the actual story, as translated by yours truly.
Planet Norrah: picture it, would you?
Can you see the miles-high towers of painted glass, white marble, yellow stucco and green, red, blue, white, gold stones and gems -- these pillars of crystal?
Imagine traffic. On the ground, below, the commoners, in four-wheelers, six-wheelers, eightwheelers. Carriages streaming in a multicolored river in every possible direction. Above them, in the air, flitting between buildings in orderly lanes and lines, the nobility, in fixed-winged, rotary-winged, and jet VTOL aircraft of every shape and size.
The towers of steel dressed in gowns of painted glass and stone, each so tall its elevator shafts are vacuum tubes and its elevator pods are supersonic bullets. They reach above the clouds.
On street corners and under the cover of the towers, the buskers, the beggars, the salesmen, the salarymen, the vendors, the commuters, the lawmen in their funny hats, the knights in their not-so-funny black ceramic matrix armor.
Stray glooptas and sheftors, eye stalks bobbing as they hunt food dropped by passersby. The occasional funny-looking alien tourist taking pictures.
Neck ties, gowns, dresses, cloaks, off-the-rack tube tops, tall hats, small hats...
Drug stores, medicine stores, stimulants, depressants, snake oils and panaceas, second-hand clothing stores and third-hand book stores. Trendy doodads for sale in flashy boutiques and useful doodads sold in far less flashy cornershops.
It is not exactly silent. In fact, the noise of walking and living and moving along and living life is a roar, but it is a sort of uniform roar that is the closest thing a city of two billion can come to silence. It is the sound of business as usual.
Then, a sound that cuts through all that like a can opener through a new phone.
Prince Caravel's sports vehicle roared through the air like a very large, very illegal and very golden firework. The sonic boom rattled the multicolored windows of the cloud-piercing towers around him, and he rounded corners like a daredevil with no regard for his life, and perhaps without regard for anyone else's life either.
His radio sputtered, and the music he was blasting paused for a second. "Peacekeepers speaking. Pull over immediately."
Oops.
He landed near Adlewood Park, which was a park in much the same way that an ocean is a swimming pool. The entire park, which contained mountains and two whole river valleys, was enclosed within the enormous capital city on Norrah. A peacekeeper waddled out of his attack helicopter toward Caravel's landed craft. As all lawmen everywhere, he looked like he had not run in the last twenty years. He was wearing aviator glasses (Translator's Note: evolved convergently on Earth and Norrah), a leather jacket that did not sit right in the armpits, and a helmet with a plume on it. He was chewing on the stub of a cigarette.
"Mach 3 in an inner city. That's gonna be somewhere around two million credits."
"C'mon, officer," Prince Caravel said, and put on his best, prettiest pout. Like all space princes everywhere, he had pastel pink, fluffy hair, and huge, blueish-purplish sparkling eyes, like gemstones.
"Buddy, you've committed a crime," said the cop, unmoved.
"Do you know who I am?" said Caravel, and did not wait for a response. "I am Prince Caravel, heir to the throne!"
"Not any exemptions for princes in the traffic ordinances."
"My dad is the law!"
"I am the law, kiddo. Also we're a constitutional monarchy."
"My dad literally has absolute power."
"That is what the constitution says," the peacekeeper admitted.
"He can just pardon me!"
"Then ask him to. I'm here to write a ticket. Not like you can't afford it."
The peacekeeper had him there. Two million credits was more than many on Norrah saw in a lifetime, but it was pocket change to Caravel. Literally. He knew for a fact he could scrounge up the chips to pay the fine from the floor of his craft, if he cared to. Problem was, Caravel really, really did not want his dad to know that he'd gotten another speeding ticket.
"Sir. Please. I would do anything." Caravel said, seductively. He licked his lips and batted his eyes.
The peacekeeper realized that he was, should he want to be, in the intro of a badly written porno.
"Then pay the fine," he said, and stuck the note to Caravel's forehead.
Humiliated, Caravel flew home, well under the speed limit. He approached the Eastern Landing Pad of the Royal Palace, a sort of glass and marble cube with faint suggestions at towers on each of its corners, measuring some sixty kilometers to a side (translator's note: I will be converting units, so you don't have to memorize how big a fnarn is. You're welcome). An area so large you could not cross it on foot in a day lay in permanent darkness due to the palace.
He was still muttering to himself as he came in for the landing. "The real crime... is that leather jacket of yours. Hah! Yeah, that's what I should have said to him."
Caravel hopped out of his sports vehicle and threw the keys to a servant in a plumed helmet -- always with the plumed helmets -- and ran face-first into the chest of his stepbrother, Zibek. Where Caravel was 170 cm tall and built like a Darravarran Stick Bug (excepting his well-formed behind), Zibek was two meters tall and had more muscle mass than a bull. Where Caravel had light, fluffy hair (which, credit where credit is due, had amazing volume and settled naturally into a photogenic position worthy of a billboard within seconds of Caravel waking up every morning), his stepbrother had pitch black, straight hair that he tended to cut rather short.
The two could not be more different, so of course it was no surprise that they shared zero DNA in common (translator's note: are you a geneticist? You better not be).
Caravel craned his neck, looking up at the one thing that was the same between the two of them: the royal, blueish-purplish gemstone-glittery eyes. Zibek peered down his chiseled jaw at Caravel in turn, his upper lip curled.
"Zibek, what a coincidence," Caravel said, what with each landing pad on the Palace being several minutes away even with speed-of-sound transport, and Zibek being right by the one Caravel was going to land on.
"Caravel," Zibek snarled.
Caravel looked up politely. "Was there something?"
"Yes. You got in trouble again."
"Is it such a big deal?"
"We are royalty. We are not criminals."
"You've assassinated people!"
"Through the proper channels," Zibek replied. "You're embarrassing the Crown."
Caravel pouted at his stepbrother. It was bad news that even Zibek knew already. The Emperor was probably furious.
"I found it necessary to tell him."
"You told dad about the ticket?"
"No, Caravel, he told me about the ticket. I found it necessary to tell him about your... proclivities."
Caravel's stomach dropped through the floor. There was only one thing that could be referring to. "I--my--you...?" he stammered.
"He has a right to know, Caravel. It concerns the possibility of a future heir. Besides, it is unbecoming. Space princes are supposed to woo space princesses, Caravel."
"I--I--I can literally appoint anyone as my heir! It doesn't have to be a biological child!"
"He has a right to know, Caravel," Zibek repeated.
"And he was going to know! Just... slower, alright?"
"The old man will not live forever, brother. I am just concerned that the right man becomes the next Emperor."
"Yeah, and I'm the most qualified!"
Zibek gave him a look. "I suppose the Emperor decides that." That was prince talk for "My fucking ass you are, twerp."
Prince Caravel stormed off through the palace, and then tried to gloomily huff in one of the palace's internal transport pods, which felt less impressive. They were a sort of internal metro train network in the palace. At least he got a private car.
He got off at the next stop and stormed on foot some more. There were enough mirrors in the Royal Palace to let him know that he at least looked good while storming. Caravel was proud of his looks: his pastel pink hair, his pretty face, and especially his bubble butt, which he always took care to show off. Today's outfit, for the record, was a white military uniform with gold detail, and a cape that matched his hair. The cape was, of course, short enough to not hide his ass.
Caravel was very proud of his appearance and especially his ass, which is why he liked to devote about a paragraph to describing it any time it came up in his internal monologue.
He was not sure where he was storming to, but soon enough he found himself at the transportation lab, where the Royal Scientists usually worked hard on calibrating the emergency teleporter. It existed mainly in the event that some invading armada decided to just ram a relativistic tungsten rod into the Royal Palace. In theory, it would allow the most important people to escape.
The room was empty at the moment, so Caravel watched the numbers on the displays move around in all sorts of funny ways that would probably give the scientists a headache when they came back from their coffee break. Because of the unstable nature of spacetime, near-constant non-automatable adjustments had to be made to the computers. At least, the scientists said it couldn't be automated, but then again, if it could be, they would be out of a job. Caravel wondered what strange, distant world the portal might be aimed at right now.
With a buzz, he was given an alert that Emperor Dreadnought was expecting him in Throne Room 9B. That was the one with the six meter tall fountain hewn from solid lapis lazuli right behind the throne, Caravel thought, as he turned back to the Palace Metro.
This was correct, though he had gotten the fountains mixed up. This was the six meter tall solid lapis lazuli fountain with the scimagor statues hopping out of the water. He had been thinking of another six meter tall solid lapis lazuli fountain with plant motifs rather than aquatic animals.
Underneath the six meter tall solid lapis lazuli fountain with the scimagor statues (translator's note: scimagors are aquatic animals in a similar niche to dolphins, but they have tentacles) sat the Emperor of Norrah. He was wearing the Imperial Crown, which was bad news. The thing weighed in at nearly 400 kilograms and that was just the gold and titanium. The gemstones doubled that. It had built-in anti-gravity assists so as to not crush its wearer.
The Emperor himself, looking like some sort of dried out fruit hanging beneath a huge and colorful canopy, was an old man, but he was in this instant filled with a silent fury that was nearly inspiring the furniture to spring to life and run and hide.
The hall was empty, except for Prince Caravel, his father, and the small man that Caravel knew as "the announcing guy". His actual name was Yawl ta Norrah, Duke of Westwood and Count of The Space Elevator. The name ta Norrah was the signifier that he, like Caravel, was a member of the Royal Family, albeit a distant one. Caravel knew none of this. He was 834th in line to the throne, while Caravel had been -- but did not know if he still was -- first.
Yawl's job, as Caravel, on the other hand, had astutely observed, appeared mainly to be to announce things. When Caravel entered and the guards stepped outside and closed the doors behind him, Yawl stepped forward to do his job.
"His Holy, Royal, Imperial, Most Excellent and Exalted Supermajesty, Dreadnought IV ta Norrah, Emperor of Moon Norrah and the Fealmerrin Star System and Total Overlord of Her Entire Sphere of Influence, King of Selenos, Walgrond, Farsooth et cetera et cetera, Duke of--"
"The quick version, Duke Yawl."
"--um, et cetera et cetera..." he mumbled inaudibly for a second, "He welcomes thee, Caravel ta Norrah, Prince of the Royal House and Duke of etceteraetceteraetcetera um... He will speak now."
"Leave."
The Duke left. He was an oddly good sport about being a Duke and being called in to say a sentence and a half and then leave again. Then again, no one wanted to be near the Emperor when he was angry.
"You were caught again."
"Look. Ha-ha, father. Um. Traffic cops, you know what they are like, right? Small men with big jobs, won't let anything slip?"
"Several thousand people saw you acting like a common hooligan, causing a sonic boom in a downtown district. I do not care about one single watchman."
"What I was gonna say was, like. The real crime was the jacket the cop was wearing. Ha! You should have seen it. You should have..."
The Emperor was giving Caravel a look that could wilt flowers.
"Is what Prince Zibek says true?"
"Father, I--"
"Is it?"
"Yeah, probably."
"Including the anecdote about the coin?"
How the fuck did Zibek know about that?
"...Yeah."
Emperor Dreadnought IV put his face in his hand, which made his enormous crown swing forward dangerously. Caravel ducked out of the way and retreated to safety, having been inches away from being impaled on a ruby as long as his forearm and as thin as a finger.
"No heirs, then."
"Father, the sovereign has a right to appoint--"
"Leave. You do not understand this."
Those who did not know Emperor Dreadnought might think that was a mostly harmless interaction. It was not. The Emperor was the sort of man who would scream at you no matter what you did. Nothing was good enough. Indeed, the fact that the Emperor had never once been less than shouting at the top of his lungs with Caravel in the room was how experts and observers early on started to figure out, even before it was official, that Caravel was the favorite.
When he spoke softly, you were in deep, deep shit. This was the first time Caravel had ever been spoken softly to by his father, and he was rattling with fear, and on the verge of tears, as he left Throne Room 9B.
On a whim, he went back to the teleporter room with something.
Caravel woke up in the middle of the night and needed the bathroom. He also wanted to walk a bit, so he went not for his own solid diamond toilet in his private bathroom, but wandered off in his pajamas through one of the Palace's mile-long corridors, clad in miles and miles of soft, deep, red carpet that you could walk barefoot in, until he found a guest bathroom he had never seen before in his life and did his business there. He looked himself in the mirror and did not like what he saw.
His gorgeous hair was sullen and heavy, and his eyes looked a mess, red from tears and ringed with dark from lack of sleep.
As he was walking back, he heard noises from his suite.
He peeked around a corner, and spotted dark-clad men running about. He caught a glimpse of his favorite pillow being torn apart. He saw the knives the men had. He figured they were not there to ruin his bedding. He made one of the first smart decisions of his life, and ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction. The thick, soft carpet on the floor dampened his footfalls. The dim, yellow nighttime lights watched him run.
When he got to the Palace Metro, he threw himself into a cart, slammed the button for the nearest stop to the teleporter, and laid there on the floor, too terrified to lift his head to the windows for the entire duration of the trip.
When the doors opened, he waited to be attacked from outside, but it appeared that he had arrived unnoticed, and he carefully crawled on all fours out onto the carpet of the corridor. Realizing that this was ridiculous, he stood up, and started running again.
Around every corner he expected an attacker. Every ancient suit of armor gave him a start. He charged with a speed he never knew he had, taking the turns at full speed and almost falling over every time he did.
Caravel arrived, nearly flying, in the teleporter hall, where something brushed his hair.
He stopped and turned around. Garotte wire had been suspended in the doorway, and might have hurt him badly had he not been, apparently, a lot shorter than his attacker had expected.
"Fucking... I said he was 1.7 meters. I did not say put the wire at 1.7 meters. You were supposed to put it at neck height."
Caravel recognized the voice of his stepbrother Zibek even before he stepped out of the shadows. He was wearing black clothes. Nothing ornamental whatsoever, which was unusual even for Zibek, who tended to follow a philosophy of "accessorize light, but do accessorize." The closest thing to an accessory was the neck on his black turtleneck.
Zibek's large, lumbering masked servant, whom he was chastising for the wire placement, was also wearing plain black.
"Hi, brother," said Zibek, with a smirk.
"Why? Wasn't it enough to get me out of the way?"
"You could have always come back. I'm bringing back an ancient tradition."
"Let me guess. Fratricide?"
"Yes! The ta Norrah Dynasty used to do it all the time. Kept all the useless uncles and aunts who just live at the palace and eat food at a manageable level. Did you know the Royal Family is currently eight thousand, twenty-nine people? I intend to make it eight thousand, twenty-eight tonight. I'll cull the rest once I'm Emperor."
"That sounds evil."
"Duly noted. Are those your last words?"
Caravel looked down at his silk pajamas. They were, quite tastefully, the exact pastel pink of his hair. "I don't wanna die in my pajamas."
Zibek threw his head back in laughter. "That was even worse! Come on!"
Caravel was standing less than a meter away from the console under which he had hidden his suit case. He thanked his eight hours past self graciously for having the idea of taking the most necessary things and stashing them here. In that suitcase, he had everything he needed to start anew somewhere: recuperate: go on a space-prince adventure and assemble a team of loyal followers and maybe an army and then come back and take back his crown.
Only the bare necessities had fit in there. He had a toothbrush, toothpaste, a book for if he got bored (there was a bookmark in it but he had not opened it for three years), his three favorite princely uniforms, his leather boots, his makeup kit, a magnetic board game made for road trips, a handheld gaming device with charger, oh, and some lube and condoms, of course.
Fuck! He had forgotten to pack money! He was going to need money to survive among peasants! Hopefully he might have a million-credit chip in a pocket somewhere. It wouldn't be the first time he sent clothes with money in them to be washed. Barring that, there was always relying on the hospitality of good but simple folk. He was a space prince, after all.
The problem was, he figured, the suit case was down there, the portal was over there, the activation switch for the portal was way over there, and Zibek and his goon were very soon going to be here.
Caravel had not the time nor the resources to think hard, and he certainly did not have any ability to think long. To think long and hard was entirely out of the question.
But he thought quickly, and hoped it was good enough.
Just as the huge man Zibek was ordering around was about to grab him, Caravel ducked, grabbed his suitcase from the shadowy recess where it was hidden, jumped up and swung it around like a champion thrower -- the sudden movement was enough for the big, masked man to flinch, as he thought Caravel was going to use it as a weapon.
Instead, Caravel flung it at the switch. Without waiting to see if it would hit or not, he leapt over the safety railing and booked it towards the huge, humming frame. Behind him, his abandoned suitcase with the most important necessities for surviving in an unknown place, sailed gracefully through the air and crashed into the power switch so violently that it broke. Multicolored lightning started arcing around it.
The suitcase broke as well, and five sets of Prince Caravel's pastel pink boxer briefs (scented with bergamot, lemon, a touch of rosemary, and with middle and base notes of geranium, oakmoss, sandalwood and vanilla) scattered like five very large butterflies, incidentally landing all over Zibek.
In a flash, a clap, and a sudden, uneasy sense that reality itself had moved over and turned inside out, Prince Caravel vanished, and in the next second the teleporter overloaded and several monitors exploded with showers of sparks. A few even flew off the walls, by mechanisms unknown and unexplainable. Everything quieted down, and the room was left a lot darker than it had been.
Zibek removed a pair of lemon-and-rosemary-scented underwear from his face and scowled at his henchman.
"Where did he go?"
"I have no idea, boss."
"Does he know?"
"I don't think so, boss."
"In that case, he's as good as dead," said Zibek, drawing a very logical conclusion.
Unfortunately for him, the fates of space princes are governed by fairytale logic, which is to say that they are not governed by logic at all.