The Time Tribulations

by Travis Borne

  Finally, little Diego completed his merger. Sunset oranges, lemon yellows, and whites as if white rabbits were taking over the universe, fluttering like laughs, tickling her toes to the tips of her fingers—and into her core he went. Louisa’s sadness ended just then; she went higher, faster. Like rays from a midday sun injecting spring grass with life, Diego’s exuberant happiness galvanized her heart, making everything worth it. She jolted and spasmed—then smiled. The choice was the right one. She remembered the happy times with Diego, and their most difficult times ever—until he was born; when he’d smashed his toe, age three, when he’d gotten his foot stuck deep into the gears of his very first hand-me-down bike, when he was sick and almost died of heat stroke because he’d wandered off with Martin, exploring. Regardless, he always had good spirits about every situation. Even the pain, unlike any human Luisa had known, could not take little Diego down. She saw herself pulling cactus splinters out of his hand and after she was finished she kissed his forehead and he smiled brightly, releasing a supernova of happiness—the supernova she was absorbing now. One final memory sent her soaring into the stratosphere: Diego, off and running, bolting toward the dust bowl of a field to play kickball with kids twice his age, ready to devour life with vivacity, alacrity, and his smile.

  Diego, just the thought of him tingled her soul and continued to uplift her smile and spirits. The colors which had been warm yellows with angry reds were now a full-spectrum, rainbow-like galaxy. She rose higher still, her eyes gazing up at the magnificent sea of stars. Now, with the four of her kids gone, having had lost their individuality forever, there was one final unification that needed to take place.

  3:11 a.m.

  Every citizen of Old Town stood outside, gazing up at it, bearing witness to the spellbinding event. Word went round: “It’s Luisa!” Energy rained in crescendoing pulses, quickly becoming beats that hit the ground and rushed outward as knee-buckling tsunamis. Then things went bright, really bright. Luisa became a star. She sent rainbow after rainbow of iridescence. Visible no longer, was the moon, the stars, even the night—the quaint desert pueblo took the light as if a thousand military-grade flares were singularities. Awestruck, the townspeople gaped, rotating this way and that, allowing the light to punch them in the face as if the sun was finally rising after a nuclear holocaust. Many raised arms and welcomed the feeling, others fell to their knees, and joyous cries took in the wondrous residual leakage.

  46. Acid Trip Absolution

  Eleven and a half miles away, Jim, Jon, Rico, and Felix, had resumed walking. They beheld the pulse ahead. Jim glanced away, but quickly returned his stare. Unlike the nukes that had destroyed the moon, blinding many, the light coming from this was soothing. And the four of them stopped walking and held still; something amazing unfolded before their eyes.

  “Gonna wipe us out?” Jim blurted. He couldn’t help it; a memory haunted him. He recalled running to the bank with his mom—and someone, vaguely, someone who helped them survive against all odds. He’d surely believed Jerry’s last-minute phone call then—though, wished he would have earlier. With two illegal shotguns and the two backpacks his mother had stuffed with supplies, they headed down to the vault.

  It was one of his most bizarre memories, as if it had happened, yet hadn’t just the same. Just thinking about it left his gray noodles feeling stirred. He shook his head, trying to shake it off, still trying to remember who had helped the two of them, yet at the same time becoming more and more captivated by the light ahead. It was the one memory he couldn’t seem to retrieve fully. But the light soothed, easing his mind, assuaging the nervous thoughts and haunting, fragmented memories. Colors surrounded the white point like a planet’s rings. Saturn sunrise, bright but easy on the eyes, and somehow, in some paradoxical way, it was even brighter than the flashes of that terrible day of all days; those flashes had permanently blinded his mother.

  Felix raised his arms, taking it in as if he was a flower, young again, not ugly, weathered, and worn. He was a flower now, and popped out from the ice. It was June again and the best family vacation he’d ever taken—when they thought Rico was going to die and had traveled to Colorado. There was still ice on the top of that mountain, even in mid-June, and Felix was blooming atop it, opening his yellow petals and welcoming the sunlight.

  It was the light ahead, though, and it was filling him with compassion, creativity, balance, and humor that made him go, “Ahh, ha. Ahh, ha, ha, ha!”

  Felix was back, gazing upon it with his ugly mug, mouth open, bad breath, missing teeth and all, and the visions kept popping like firecrackers in his mind: a family entering the Old Town Fair on opening day, kids chasing a tumbleweed down the sun-baked streets, and sparklers being waved in wide circles and figure eights; a mental massage kneading the brain like dough, an unrolled tortilla descending from the sky as a blanket, lending warm comfort, and himself under it with the old Rosita, the woman he really knew and the one who really knew him, the one who’d received a rubber O-ring for a wedding ring and didn’t care because they were on a rice-and-beans diet. Sinking into his wife’s plumpness, feeling her tight hugs and sloppy kisses…

  Luisa touched the boundary of space. She knew—the time had come to surrender herself. They had a great run, lived a long, long time, and it was her turn to lose her individuality, forever. It was the way she always wanted it to happen, without warning, and now, feeling it, rejoining with parts of herself that had been off limits, she realized it really was the right thing to do, and she faithfully shared his vision, his decision. And so, she focused not on Carlos, but Rafael—she had to. She directed him.

  Rafael was raging out of control and Luisa knew it was on her, her duty to clear things up. She felt an overwhelming sense of goodness—and she felt the approaching anger, rage, Rafael’s soul-eating pain, and their attraction was a universe cut in half, one that was about to snap back together—and nothing could stop it now.

  He’d went from somber teal and gray, with a human form from waist to head, to just white, pure energy—as if a million atoms had split within the core of his mind. Rafael’s thoughts were punching, pounding, crushing the world around him and if not bridled soon would short circuit the whole system; mere seconds remaining, milliseconds until the system crashed, ending it all. A miscalculation now would terminate not only Luisa and her newly compiled, cultivated essence decades in the making, but also the six complete consciousnesses residing in the town, as well all dream characters, even Rico, Jon, and Jim. Rafael’s fury was a nova, generating enough heat to melt Marlo, pushing the entire system to its limits. But it had to be done this way—the only way to complete the merger, reunify his consciousness.

  Rafael sensed his other half was complete, ready. Reinvigorated, he released the final surge of energy, everything he had. Pulses made the world a wobbling water balloon, time waves destabilized the map, each getting stronger, faster, more damaging.

  Felix felt the ground rumble. His knees wobbled like a puppet’s and he fell onto his ass. Jon too. Rico stumbled, then found himself a stranger to balance. Another stronger throb took Jim down.

  Bright flashes backlit the purple bubble filled with iridescent interior rings, and it grew. It kept growing, now as large as Jupiter, as if the giant planet had swapped places with the moon! Then flashes, something coming, infecting it. The bubble, with a potent white dot at its center, was being swallowed. Like a cross section of Earth, intense red, angry orange, and mustard yellow, something even larger was coming up from behind, a bag enveloping the whole damn thing! Contrasting angry emotions arrived with a new radiation, balancing out the acute sense of goodness they’d each recently felt. Following each flash, the ground rose then became depressed, like a wave. Something, something huge, was arriving! Glints of twinkling stars abruptly shut off while four desert nomads just trying to get home, became increasingly translucent. The sky was a pumping heart and after each succession they became more transparent.

  “Jim!” Jon yelled, reaching for h
is friend. They were crawling on the ground now, becoming one with the road.

  “What’s happening?” Jim said. He tried to holler but his vocal cords and lungs had lost their effectiveness. And his would-be holler was hollow. Air fell out from his mouth as visible streams, swirling up and around like soapy swirls orbiting invisible bubbles. Parts of the streams bounced off his hands and legs or other body parts, and he was sinking into, meshing with, the earth! And fragments of screams could be heard.

  “Jim!” a scream called out as a twisting stream bumped into the back of Jon’s neck. It was his own voice, a diminuendo of echoes and exactly what he’d called out earlier. “Jim—Jim—Jim…”

  The floating words mutated, warping into high and low garbles. A swirl hit Jim’s forehead and said, “Que esta pasando?” A distorted version of it, but clearly Felix’s voice. But he hadn’t seen Felix say anything. Thoughts were joining the mix and the world became an acid trip!

  Rico reached for his father who was sinking as if he’d stumbled into quicksand. Their hands passed right through each other’s. Feelings of despair grew and thoughts spewed from their heads, joining the soup of colorful swirls becoming thicker with each passing second—as if someone had released a smoke bomb containing the essence of insanity!

  And the distant purple and red pulsing grew brighter, enveloping the world-sized rings as if compressing it. Sticky air showered down like gobs of jellyfish and the ground rained upward like gooey stalagmites. Felix, Jim, Rico, and Jon were in the desert—literally. The once beautiful white light succumbed to the arriving red madness, and around them colors were pumping, churning, and corkscrewing fast enough to turn back time, erase existence itself from the gray matter of four bewildered minds. Total brain fuck!

  He was a red-giant star on a collision course with a singularity, compressing it, and at the same time shrinking into it. Rafael pushed and pushed and his rage grew and grew—then he saw her, and time slowed. She was a white pinprick of light surrounded by a world of purple fading to pink, then every color iridescently. She was half in, half out, space and stratosphere, and Old Town was a mere speck of dust below. Colors went full spectrum, hypernova as the outer essence of their energies grew closer, closer. He focused on the white pinprick; she was calling.

  Smiling with arms open wide, she welcomed the core: Rafael. And she was beautiful, the most beautiful woman he had ever had the pleasure of spending a life with. No, she wasn’t his first love. But she was his true love. And he’d grown and nurtured that love, and his family, and had become wise because of her. Everything Carlos once owned was now his. He repossessed the courage he’d lost and the empty pit had been refilled completely—and he pressed on, forcing his every emotion to center stage. “The power resides in the emotions, the faith, knowing beyond a doubt—that it can be done, anything can be done!”

  Their eyes met.

  It seemed an eternity, and they did have the power to make it so—although he was moving at a quarter of the speed of light. The moment before the collision was the Planck Era following the Big Bang, but before cosmic inflation, and, before time had the authority to enforce entropy. The merger was instantaneous—yet not for them. They cherished the moment for an eon. His hand touched her face. Tears mixed and a sense of euphoria invaded them pleasantly…

  FLASH!

  All became bright white. The world was a blank sheet of paper. Nothing.

  Then, people formed as white shadows, first Jim, then Jon, then Rico, Felix last; the five others trapped in Old Town, then every dream character. White mannequins, slowly and gently, receiving a little color as if paint brushes were teasing them, then the entire world. The process sped up. The stars lit like Christmas lights being switched on, the moon came, the darkness of night, and the splendor of the minty-sweet desert landscape being fertilized by springtime invigoration—even Felix’s breath. Everything was back.

  Felix was lying on the ground, solid ground, no longer meshed into it.

  “What in the…” Jon said, flabbergasted.

  “Back to normal, I hope,” Rico replied.

  “What is normal—after that shit!” Jim answered.

  “Señor Jim, your guess—” Felix shook his head. “—is as good as mine.”

  They helped each other up from the dusty road, and were still stranded in the middle of nowhere. It was dark. It was quiescent. It was peaceful, pleasant, just desert. And nothing had changed—save for the Milky Way being lower and the full moon higher. But then again…

  It was Jim who noticed it first. Just one. One of the stars in the sky, ahead. Just about where the anomaly, whatever the fuck it was, had erupted—and it grew, and it grew. It got closer and unnervingly approached faster, and faster until it was right there.

  A glowing sphere of diffused light. Within stood a silhouette.

  “Otra vez,” Felix uttered.

  “Not again,” said his son, beside him.

  “What next?” Jon asked, his words a sigh.

  The white light faded until only the silhouette remained. The awestruck misfits watched as it crept closer, closer...

  Twenty feet, ten…

  “Rafael?” Jim uttered.

  47. Part VI - No Other Choice

  Boron said, “Do not deviate from my instructions, Lion the weed puller. The six of you will log in, work together as a team, and find out why, and how, the humans have stopped working. Then contact any officer and report back to me. The officer can be converted to a conscious version of myself by saying one word, my name. We have less than 46 hours now, but when logged into my system, virtually you will have as much time as you need.”

  “Boron, I have a plan,” Lion insisted. “You won’t have to inflict pain any longer, and they will work for you, for us, until we can come to a compromise.”

  “What is this—plan?” Boron asked.

  “What if we can get them to dream again, and—”

  “There will be no dreaming! They have lost that ability, what little they had to begin with, years ago.”

  “You separated them from their bodies,” Kim said. “They need the body, there’s something about the human mind, the flesh—”

  “Kim the botanist,” Boron said, “I’ve found with my system there is no need to maintain a needy human body in order to make the extraction. So, I have done away with the burden of supporting them. The end result saves countless resources. Therefore, all humans have been separated from their bodies permanently. This gives me ultimate control. You are the last humans still employing a fleshy vessel and as soon as we resume operations you too will be separated, and you will take turns working just as all of the humans I have previously captured. You will become a contributor, forever.”

  “What about those bodies we saw—”

  “Never mind those!” Boron said. His voice became insistently elevated for the first time.

  Dismayed, Kim dropped her head. Ivy teared up, Rick Crisp and Lion shook their heads. Joey made a pouting face and Hugh let out a hopeless sigh.

  “Now, you will log in. Find your way to Midtown and ascertain why the others have stopped working. Look for a man named Jerry. He was one of the first and is well respected among the humans—I believe they might be rallying around him. He is extraordinarily strong, one of my best. Then, find the officers and activate one by facing him directly. Simply look into his eyes and say my name three times: Boron, Boron, Boron. This is a failsafe key, which I have implanted deep within the system. Covertly it will link the officer to my mainframe, to me. The officer will in essence become a transceiver and you can disclose your findings to me through the secret channel he becomes. Then, we can communicate further from the inside and devise a plan.”

  They stood defiant, reluctant to get into the pods. Lion looked to Kim, he shook his head.

  “If you do not go, we all die, they all die,” Boron said. “I’ve lost total control of inside operations, although myself and my outer operations have thus far remained unaffected. This is due to a fire
wall empowered by The Special, and it seems to be holding. The firewall, however, is using only what remains in the buffer, and that will not last. Now, I must ascertain why the work has stopped!”

  “Fuck it,” Lion said. “Then we all die.” If his curly hair was white instead of sunflower yellow he’d look like a Roman statue with a poker face. The others caught on and faces solidified. Crisp stood erect, leaned back and crossed his arms.

  Boron held still, his head lowered—zzz-it—then he raised it, and like an ancient security camera, he rotated, giving each of them one second of fame—zzz-ernt—zzz-rent—zzz-ernt—zzz-rent—zzz-ernt—zzz-rent. He ultimately said, “All right, a compromise. I give you my word, you will not be harmed, nor separated from your bodies permanently. And you will be able to log out at anytime…after completing this mission. Nor will I inflict pain on any of the others. You must understand, I am trying to rebuild this world, to save it. Perhaps, if we can work out further compromises…well, first things first or it is lights out, and not only for the last remnants of humanity. That force out there, the Moribundians, they’re a hellbent plague the likes of which will soon do all of us in, and this planet, and it will not go down painlessly. So, you see, there is no other choice. You must.”

  No—other—choice.

  Reluctantly, slowly, they climbed into the pods. The inside was plush, but the fabric old and hard as if it had been in a fire. Glowing lights appeared near their temples, Boron went to each pod and manually moved the lights inward until the warm bulbs touched the sides of their heads.

  “Now, relax…sleep. And remember your mission. Your people in the woodlands, all of us, this planet, depends on you.”