“That also comes with toast and hash browns?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I’ll bring that right out for you, honey.” With that, she turned and walked away from him.
She placed his order on a rotating rack and rotated it toward the old man in the white beard in the kitchen. “Tall stack of Vermont blowout patches, smoke the pig, two shingles, sweep the floor, and a cup of mud.”
Before he settled into his booth, he peeled back the blinds that covered the plate glass window. Beyond it stretched clouds and sky. He saw no sun, but there was light everywhere.
Gabrielle bumped him. “Sorry, Hon, brought your kava.” She set the mug in front of him. Redfire sat down and drank from it.
Not only was it the best kava he had ever had, it seemed to flow directly into his blood, filling him with warmth and energy, as though every part of him were coming alive.
“Everything okay?” Gabrielle asked?
“Yeah,” Redfire explained “Really, okay. Really, really okay.” She swatted him playfully. “Now, ain’t you glad you got the kava instead of enlightenment?”
Keeler – Bill Keeler found himself lying in a bed, a most comfortable and familiar bed. He opened his eyes half expecting to see angels and seraphim, but instead was met with the sight of a tastefully appointed master suite. The Panrovian-style doors had been left open, and cool spring breezes wafted in over the verandah. The sky beyond was a jewel-like shade of blue he had not seen in nine years.
“I’m on Sapphire,” he whispered to himself. He didn’t go on to whisper to himself that he was lying in his own bed, in his own master suite, on his own family estate on the little peninsula that jutted into Lake of the Loons southeast of the sprawling city of New Cleveland, but each of these things was also true.
Best yet, his own wet bar was across the room from him. He sat up in bed, observing that he was wearing his favorite pair of pajamas, the ones made of pink Panrovian silk in the white bunnybeast patterns. He had taken the original pair with him to Pegasus, but they had mysteriously disappeared three weeks into the journey after he had shown up wearing them at one of Goneril Lear’s Senior Staff meetings. He checked next to the bed.
His bunnybeast slippers were there also, but it seemed like a warm spring day like this, he would not need them. He rose barefoot and walked over to the bar.
He could not help but notice that he felt really, really good. He felt no hint of fatigue, nor of any of the heaviness that had accumulated in his body over the prior fifty years. It was a cliché, sure, but he did feel like a kid… like his body was new and the world was alive with possibilities and potentials.
He discovered, halfway to the wet bar, that he didn’t actually want a drink. The open doors beckoned him to the verandah, so he strolled out onto it and beheld, as if for the first time, the well-groomed grounds of the Keeler family estate. There was a telescope fixed to the rail of the verandah, and he peered into it and saw the sleek communication towers and architectural monstrosities that made up downtown New Cleveland, some ten kilometers away.
A little man whose gray-blond hair was drawn into a ponytail at the back of his head entered the room.
“Tolkien?” Keeler asked.
“Forgive me sir, I am most surprised to find you up at this hour,” Tolkien said.
“What time is it?” Keeler asked.
“13 hours in the afterdawn,” Tolkien answered.
“And the date?”
“Pentember first, sir.”
“And the year?”
“7301, sir.” Tolkien seemed unsurprised by the line of questioning, even a little bored.
“Nine years,” Keeler mused. But that wasn’t right. Three hundred years had passed on Sapphire while Pegasus had been gone. “Are you dead?” Keeler asked Tolkien.
“I’m afraid not, sir,” Tolkien Xerox said. “Will sir be dressing this morning?” Keeler pondered this for a while. He checked the back of his right hand and saw the mark laid down on it, emerald green. “Not just yet Tolkien. I could do with some breakfast.”
“Breakfast?” Tolkien seemed a bit surprised at that. “At this hour, sir?”
“OK, brunch, just make sure it comes with pancakes and some melon slices,” Keeler told him. He yawned. Maybe something to drink would help him make sense of this situation after all. He returned to the wet bar and poured himself a glass of Borealan whisky. He lifted it to his lips and was surprised how dambed good it tasted, sliding down his throat like sweet, sweet cream, but giving him a kick like a Haligonian street-fighter.
“Nice,” he said, and poured himself another glass. He carried the second glass into the hallway with him.
It was as he remembered it, but it was like seeing it for the first time, all polished wood and smooth marble. The hallway led through the bedrooms in the west wing of the house.
He knew of a back staircase that would take him into the kitchen. He descended it, pausing to marvel at the tall, stained glass window built into the stairwell. His great great grandfather had acquired it when the Sumacian War Temple at Northworks had been renovated. Rumor had it, this glass window had once adorned a temple in the Unreal City… which no outsider had ever seen. It depicted a design of swords and stars, with stylized robots at the lower sides.
He continued down until he reached the main kitchen. The estate kitchen was nearly as large as the main bridge of Pegasus. This was necessary to keep up with the amount of entertaining that was expected of the Keelers. It was presided over by Rosalind, a heavyset woman of a certain age. At the moment, she stood near a range the size of a conference table, calmly turning over a skillet of pancakes.
“Good afterdawn, professor Keeler,” she greeted him, without turning away from her pancake-making duties.
“Good morning, Rosalind,” Keeler settled into the informal breakfast table that occupied a side alcove. “May I presume you are also not dead.”
“What a weird thing to say, even for you,” she answered.
She proceeded to place the largest, most perfect stack of pancakes in front of him that he would ever shove into his face. “Nobody seems surprised to see me here. Were you expecting me?”
“It’s not a surprise for you to roll out of bed at 13 in the afterdawn, if that’s what you mean,” Rosalind growled at him.
“I mean, no one is surprised that I am here instead commanding the Pathfinder Ship Pegasus.”
“You? A starship captain? You’re a stinking drunk!”
“Madame, I may be a stinking drunk,” Keeler began. Then, he decided not to belabor the point and asked instead for a datapad. Rosalind removed the kitchen one from its holder and gave it to him on the table. He accessed Sapphire’s demographic index.
“Inquiry, Redfire… Philip John Miller.”
The answer came back:
Philip John Miller Redfire is the senior tactical officer on the pathfinder ship Pegasus.
“Inquiry, Alkema, David… from the city of Josh-Nation.” The answer came back:
David Alkema is a junior officer on the pathfinder ship Pegasus.
“Inquiry: Brainiacsdaughter… um…is there a Brainiacsdaughter on the Pathfinder ship Pegasus.”
Affirmative.
“What about Keeler, William Randolph.”
William Randolph Keeler is the Chairman of the Historical Studies Department at the University of Sapphire at New Cleveland. He resides in New Cleveland, Oz Province.
“Nothing’s changed except me,” Keeler said. Then it occurred to him that he had been Chancellor of the University before leaving. He wondered who the current Chancellor was, and the Index answered him. “Mary Jane Watson?” he said out loud. “That skank!”
“More pancakes?” Rosalind asked, incurious about his choice of expression.
“Sure,” he replied. “Hey, I did train to serve in the Pathfinder program, didn’t I?”
“They offered to make you Voyage Historian on the Lexington Keeler, but you refused,” Rosalind told him, putti
ng another stack of delicious, sweet-smelling pancakes in front of him.
“What about my brother Ken?” Keeler asked.
“He’s in Corvallis.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“He’s the provincial advisor for environmental resource development.”
“He went into politics? That idiot-bastard.”
“It was your idea,” Rosalind replied. “You asked the provincial government to give him a position where he’d be no harm to himself or others.”
“That certainly sounds like something I’d do.” Keeler said. “What about Bettilou?”
“She’s a broadcast counselor.”
“What the hell is a broadcast counselor?”
“She has a program on the wireless. People call her and ask her for advice and she tells them how to deal with their moral dilemmas.”
Keeler scowled. That seemed like a perfectly … “Does she still live in New Cleveland?”
“Za.” Her tone of voice suggested that he ought to have known that.
He tapped the datapad. “Send a message to Bettilu Keeler. Bette, it’s your brother, Bill.
I’m in town for a few days. Call me.”
He realized that Rosalind was staring at him. “What?”
“You’ve barely ever spoken to your sister since I’ve known you,” Rosalind informed him. “She doesn’t even spend Christ-Solstice Mass here.” It finally dawned on him. “You think I’ve been here all along, that I never left. The past nine years didn’t happen out in space, they happened here. But for me it’s been more like three hundred years. So, you could all be dead, and this could be my Afterlife.”
“How much whiskey have you had so far today,” Rosalind asked.
“Only two,” he answered, not really paying attention to her. He accessed the Sapphire Topicality Index and requested the mission report from Pegasus. If this was nine years on, the ship should have completed its mission to Meridian. He saw that the mission reports were encyclopedic, and so he requested the summary, which the Index delivered to him.
Pathfinder 003 Pegasus arrived at the 10 122 Pegasi system and confirmed the locus of the Meridian colony.
An initial landing party determined that the human colony had been overtaken by an alien infestation. There were five casualties in the initial landing party.
A malfunction in the braincore led to the destruction of all planetary population centers (10) with the use of low-yield anti-matter warheads. The alien infestation was eliminated. Surviving human colonists were provided with assistance in rebuilding.
The primary braincore was isolated and deactivated. Ship’s operating systems were reinitialized using the secondary and tertiary braincores.
Pathfinder 003 Pegasus departed the system 65 days after arrival. Current destination is the 10 223 Equuleus system. Anticipated arrival: September 7308.
Keeler felt a sort of … disappointment at this information. “I wasn’t there, and it didn’t matter,” he said. “No wonder I drink.”
“Where’s my cat?” Keeler asked.
“What cat?”
“Queequeg?”
“That little gray monster?” Rosalind trilled. “Ran away. Years ago. Lives in Kandor, now. Manages a trading account for you on the Baden Baden Baden commodities exchange.”
“Well, good for him.” Keeler stood up from the table. “I’m going for walk around the grounds,” he announced.
“Shall I prepare your usual going-for-walk-around- the-grounds flask?” Tolkien asked.
He had been standing nearby the whole time. Keeler had not noticed him.
Keeler shook his head. “Not this time. I need to think, Tolkien.” He first passed the grove of Sleepy Hollow trees. He had no idea why they were called that, but they were quite scary. Their black trunks were as big around as buffet tables, gnarled and twisted. Sleepy Hollow trees lived long and this grove had been around since before the founding of the colony. Lexington Keeler, his ancestor, had been found passed out drunk among them on many occasions, which was why the early colonists chose this land for his estate, so he wouldn’t have to walk so far after a bender.
Nearby was a perfectly landscaped grove of Sylvan trees. These were native to Jutland province, but had, with exquisite nurturing, managed to thrive in the cooler, drier climate of Oz province. Their leaves were blue, silver, and black, and breathing in the aromas put off by these trees helped clear thought and enhance the ability to reason, and so they were usually much avoided by those who were otherwise fans of consciousness-altering vegetative pharmacology.
What the hell was going on? Keeler wondered, pausing to look to a distant pond where two young boys were playing. Could this really be an AfterLife? All those he had left on Sapphire were now dead, so that was certainly possible. Was the Afterlife no more than a different version of the planet you came from? It was possible, but it didn’t make sense, at least not when arrayed against what he could remember being taught of possible Afterlives in his Theology classes.
“You kids get out of my yard,” he yelled at the boys, but they ignored him.
On the other hand, if this was the Afterlike, it was very much in line with what the people of Gethsemane had described as their Afterlife, an idealized version of their own planet; in their case, one that was not doomed to collide with another world.
Maybe that was the only difference. Just as the only difference here was that he had not gone on the Odyssey mission and had never served as commander of Pegasus. Maybe it wasn’t a Gateway to the Afterlife, maybe it was a giant “Change One Thing” machine that changed one factor in your reality and created an alternate reality where only one thing had been changed.
Maybe furthermore, the “Change One Thing” machine had plumbed his soul and determined that deep, deep inside himself he had never wanted to be the commander of Pegasus, and so had created a world where that had not happened.
But how would that work? Did the machine create some sort of “pocket universe” wherein the one change had happened? Did it have to create a pocket universe for everyone who walked through it?
He snorted out loud. “Change One Thing” machines. “Pocket Universes.” It sounded like science fiction.
Then, he remembered, he lived on a spaceship.
He sighed and turned back to the house; passing by the topiary that had been trimmed into lewd animal shapes under the direction of his great, great, great, great grandfather, Felix the Perverse.
When he got back to the Main House, Tolkien was waiting on the steps. “Sir, I have to inform you that, since you are at home, your wife requests your presence for lunch on the west patio.”
Keeler was stopped in his tracks for a moment, then pushed Xerox out of the way as he broke into a run toward the west portico.
Redfire – The pancakes were every bit as good as promised.
The bell tinkled again, and Redfire turned to the door and was shocked to find himself looking at … himself, walking into the diner with a gorgeous woman on his arm, whom he recognized as Halo Jordan.
The Other Redfire and his wife strolled confidently over to the booth where Redfire was sitting. “Mind if we join you?” he asked, sliding into the other side of the booth, his wife next to him.
Redfire’s mouth had stopped working, and he was unable to say anything to his other self. The Other Redfire seemed to sense this, grinned, and explained, “I was told I would find me here, back at the Celestial Café. And sure enough, here I am. How am I doing?”
“You’re a little freaked out,” Redfire managed to stammer.
“As well you should be,” the Other Redfire said cheerily. “This is all pretty freaky-deaky. You went through the Celestial Gateway on the planet Gethsemane, expecting to find yourself in some sort of Afterlife. And instead you found yourself here, in the Celestial Café.”
“Right,” Redfire said. “Say, what happened to …”
“Commander Keeler? His … destination … for lack of a better word, or maybe that i
s the right word .. his destination was some other place…” the Other Redfire explained.
“But is this really the Afterlife?” Redfire asked.
The other Redfire began to point toward his nose, then veered his finger away. “Not quite, brother. It’s more like a…”
“Would you two like to see some menus,” Gabrielle interrupted.
“No thanks,” the other Redfire Replied. “We know what’s on the menu. Just bring us a couple of glasses of water, would you, babe?”
“You bet, sweet thang, I’ll be back when you’re ready to order.”
“So, this isn’t the Afterlife,” Redfire tried to clarify as Gabrielle walked away.
The other Redfire scowled, knitting his eyebrows. “The Gethsemanians believe they built a Gateway to the Afterplanes. Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that they have. Can we say that?”
“I guess so,” Redfire granted. “But what is this place?”
“You might think of it as a WayStation,” Halo Jordan offered. “First of all, it wasn’t your time to die. And second, your Final Destination is, at this point, quite vague.” She was much younger than she had appeared in the images back on Pegasus. As though the sixteen years spend on Bodicea had been given back to her, and then some.
“Are the people from Gethsemane in the Afterlife?” Redfire asked, The Other Redfire and Halo Jordan looked awkwardly at each other. Finally, Halo explained, “We can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?” Redfire asked.
“Did you happen to believe that when you died, all the answers to all the questions would be revealed to you?” Halo Jordan asked.
“Not… really,” Redfire admitted.
“Of course, you didn’t,” the Other Redfire said. “You only get to keep the knowledge you acquired in your lifespan.”
“You don’t know if they reached Heaven, and you’re not supposed to know,” Halo Jordan told him. “And, in a way, that is sort of your answer.” Redfire could only look disappointed as the Other Redfire continued. “I know you were hoping to have some questions answered, about who you are and what happened to you.
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