Nova Oobleck Surfs the Second Aether by Paul Di Filippo (ParSec #1, Autumn 2021) opens with Oobleck being accosted by a partner from a recent heist: Oobleck has swindled Manzello Lorikeet of his share, and he takes her sigil and a copy of her Kirlian aura (to unlock it). Lorikeet then shoots transposon particles at Oobleck, which sends her to the Second Aether, a multidimensional nexus that sends her to various other timelines over the course of the story:
For an infinitesimal moment after she was shot, a period that was all time and none, Nova Oobleck saw the essence of the Second Aether, with its hyperdimensional moonbeam roads twisting to infinity. And then she was jarringly reembodied in a new brane.
Stable once more, however temporarily, Nova felt her insides still shimmering from the invisible massless bundle of transposons that had burrowed into her gut at the impact point of the blast from Lorikeet’s Tegmark gun. It seemed almost as if the active particles were writhing like snakes inside her. Now and then, it struck her that she could sense an individual transposon dart away from its fellows, radiating outward and losing contact, thus bringing her that much closer to the end of her unanchored status and a permanent renewal of solidity. She sensed that when the knot of transposons achieved a certain phase-state, she would again be ejected from her place in this merely eleven-dimensional reality and sent randomly across the Second Aether. And there was nothing she could do to prevent it. p. 51
Oobleck ends up in a timeline where she is the bombardier on an aircraft that is (according to the pilot) en route to bomb the Sultan’s Palace. At the same time as she drops the bomb the transposon particles energise to shift her to another reality, but the decoherence effect of the weapon sees the pilot and the plane come with her. They force land, and Nova gets out. When she is attacked by three trolls the pilot (a hive being) disassembles and attacks them.
When Nova shifts again she does so alone, and finds herself on a desert planet called Spalt. Eventually she comes upon the house of a self-exiled scientist called Barxax. He manages to stabilise her but, when he dies a year later, she shifts again. This time she ends up back in the Second Aether, where (spoiler) she is finally rescued by a multiverse ship commanded by Ona Von Bek. They then set off to retrieve Oona’s sigil.
This is a readable and engaging piece—there are touches of Vance and Moorcock—but ultimately it is a series of loosely connected episodes with a deus ex machina ending. Pleasant enough, just no real plot.
**+ (Average to Good). 6,050 words.