by Shawn Jones
He asked no one in particular, “What happens if I leave them?”
Addison looked at him confusedly, while in his ear, George answered the question. “Absolute paradox, Father. You cannot allow that. Your camouflage has rebooted. It’s available again.”
Looking at the stokes frame and back to Addison, Cort said, “You have to leave. Come back in five minutes. If you don’t, everything goes wrong.”
Refusing to move, Addison asked, “What do you mean everything goes wrong? For you or me or them? And who did you put in the car?”
Cort turned to the wreck and said, “For the planet. For humanity. They were going to die. I had to save them. Put your weapon down. We’re both here to protect Diane.”
Cort’s voice, or his words, seemed to bother Addison. Cort’s living reflection glanced at the little girl he was standing over, then at his wife, then back to the car, and a slow realization made him falter for a moment. But only a moment. “You aren’t taking them. I’ll kill you first.”
—
Using his medical override, Ceram sent a series of commands to Cort’s suit. “I have to stop paradox. I’m reprogramming the second dose of synthetics. He has to render Addison unconscious. Get him to hit Addison,” he said to Kim and George.
“What?” Kim asked.
“We can’t let Addison remember any of this. The galaxy depends on it.”
Biyadiq understood and started typing on her flexpad. They had to prevent Addison’s short - term memory of what was happening on Earth from becoming long - term memory. If they didn’t, if Addison remembered this night, the future of Earth and the Ares Federation was in jeopardy. After Ceram cleared the biosynthetics’ programming, she started working furiously to send them new instructions.
She opened a comm to Cort and said, “Stall him. I need two minutes.”
“Two minutes for what?” Cort asked.
“Synaptic consolidation! Stall him!”
—
“Lower the weapon so we can talk.”
Addison had to know who was in the suit. His sanity depended on it. That curiosity got the better of him, and he lowered the gun. “Who are you?” He asked again.
The apparition touched the collar of his suit and took his helmet off. Shock and confusion colored Addison’s face.
The armored man said, “I’m you.”
Addison couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The scar. The eyes. A little older maybe. But Addison knew he was staring at himself. What the fuck? His paranoid mind refuted what his eyes and ears told him to be true.
The man was him. Older, but still him. How? I’m looking at myself. My own soul is behind those eyes. He was struck by the depth of the gray-green eyes he was staring into. They carried a heavier burden than his own did. Tired eyes that had seen more death than Addison’s had. More death and more pain.
Addison’s own burdens flashed through his mind like a time - lapse video. As Ben’s sword, he had delivered death across the world. The loss of his parents, and Angela’s, added to his own grief. He remembered seeing his sister’s arm, frozen, sticking out of the rubble of a ruined train station, their mother’s wedding ring still on her hand. But this man… his eyes had seen more. He’d lost more.
He wondered how much more death his opponent had seen. How much of it has he wrought? The thought of more blood on his hands, future or otherwise, saddened Addison. The gun in his hand was comforting, like a teddy bear to Diane. The thought that he might never put it down was too much.
Addison was about to raise the gun again, but something stayed his hand. “This is bullshit.”
—
Addison’s emotions hit Cort’s mind like a physical force, causing him to shake his head. Cort massaged his neck, and looked back at the man.
“Hear me out. They are supposed to die tonight. I was given a chance to stop it.”
“So you stopped it. Now leave.”
“It’s not that simple. Gods but I wish it were was . I have Clem too. He’s on my ship. He didn’t die on the battlefield. He was taken.”
Cort had near perfect clarity. He could read Addison’s every thought and feeling as if they were an echo of his own. And every second it went on, his head felt like it was closer to exploding.
“Taken? Like Roswell shit?” Addison said. “Whatever or whoever you are, you aren’t taking my daughter.”
Cort looked at the stokes and pointed at Angela. “She’s a whore. You can keep her. But Diane has to go with me.”
—
Addison took a step closer so he could have a better look at the scar on Cort’s cheek. He remembered when and where they had gotten that scar. A heartbroken teenager built a bomb, and was going to use it to kill the girl who had rejected him. It was impossible. Ben had to be fucking with him. He said, “My daughter stays. You take the whore.”
“They both go, or they both have to die… Or I have to kill you. And that will ruin everything.” Or will it? It might affect the future, but it won’t affect us. It sure as hell won’t affect an escape to Solitude. Cort activated his sidearm. The handgun showed green on his HUD. All he had to do was raise it and pull the trigger.
—
Above them, Salana and Ceram rushed to program the dose of synthetics that would inhibit the creation of proteins that created synaptic bonds. In doing so, they could change a history that hadn’t been written yet.
Ceram explained to Kim that deep in Addison’s medial temporal lobe, proteins were being synthesized, so that the short - term memory of what was happening on Earth could begin the process of memory consolidation, and become a permanent fixture in his mind. The new synthetics would stop the formation of those proteins temporarily.
Kim asked, “Why won’t he listen to Cort?”
Salana said, “Have you ever looked in the mirror and lied to yourself, Kim? It’s like that, but there’s no mirror. Addison can’t trust a man who is looking at him with his own eyes.”
—
Moments passed as they measured each other, Addison wanting to believe, and Cort willing him to do so.
“Listen to me. I saved Clem. Just walk away, and I can save Diane, too. Otherwise, she dies tonight.”
Addison quickly glanced at his sleeping daughter. “She seems just fine to me, and I’m going to keep her, if it’s just the same to you. Thanks for pulling her out of the wreck, though.”
Cort turned back around to the car. The sirens were closer now. He had maybe one minute left before time would be irreparably changed.
“There’s a lot in store for us. More than you can imagine. The whole galaxy will be hers.”
He could see that Addison’s head was starting to hurt, too. Or maybe he sensed it. The echoes in his mind were louder. “It’s going to get worse. For both of us. I have to go.”
“Then leave.”
“She has to come with me. Look. Think Doctor Who. But I only get one shot at it. Ben’s fucked with our life too much. Let me at least save her.”
—
Addison thought of Ben Natsumo again. I’m going to kill him. You’ve fucked with me one time too many, Ben.
“No. You can’t. Trust me.”
Addison twisted slightly, into a Weaver stance. The gun pointed at Cort’s face again.
In his comm, Cort heard Salana scream, “Hit him! Knock him out!”
“What?”
She screamed again. “Now! Knock him out!”
Cort stepped forward. Addison aimed at Cort’s head and pulled the trigger twice. Cort’s gauntlet connected with Addison’s skull at the same moment that the copper-encased round left the younger man’s gun.
Addison lost consciousness as the slug, traveling at eight hundred and thirty feet per second, slammed into Cort’s face, and the two bodies fell together.
Tears streamed down Kim’s face as she watched George take control the CONDOR. He turned and injected Addison’s body with the reprogrammed synthetics, then picked up the stokes frame and ran from the scene. On the ro
ad above the bridge, he jumped the suit into the back of the cloaked shuttle. George raced into the dark sky, to prepare for the jump to the Remington, while Biyadiq and Ceram went to work on their patients.
—
Once he was in the shuttle, Kim rushed to her husband and bent over the CONDOR to pull his helmet off. Horror turned to tears of joy, and she dropped the helmet when Cort opened his eyes.
Cort asked, “What happened?”
“He shot you.”
“Is Diane okay?”
Without looking up, Doctor Biyadiq said Diane was going to be fine. Kim wanted to know why Cort passed out when Addison shot him.
Salana said, “I don’t think it was the gunshot. I think it was the blow to Addison’s head. It must have something to do with the telepathy. The General felt Addison’s shock somehow.”
“Everything was out of sync,” Cort said.
Kim cradled his head in her lap and asked, “What do you mean, Baby?”
Cort’s eyes watered. “He loves Diane as much as I do. He had the same fears, the same concerns. Reading his mind was like an echo of my own thoughts. I even knew he was going to pull the trigger. It felt like I was doing it. Gods! I have such a headache.”
—
Angela woke up screaming, with Ceram’s brownish-black, moist mandibles, directly over her head. The screams died when he injected her with a dose of synthetics that began healing her body. She should have gotten her synthetics on Earth, but that dose had to be reprogrammed to prevent Addison from remembering the crash and meeting himself. After injecting her, Ceram turned his attention to Cort.
The stress of the superhuman run, the echoes of his own thoughts, and then being shot by himself, had taken their toll on Cort, but he smiled at Ceram.
“Pretty smart, huh?”
“Foolish, Cortland. But necessary. I was concerned about the effects of telepathic shock. If he’d seen you put the helmet back on, your plan might have failed.”
Cort explained to the others what he had done. To buy time, he had briefly taken the CONDOR’s helmet off. While he appeared to massage his neck, he was instead putting the camouflaged helmet back on, with an image of his own head being projected from its face shield.
Kim slapped him, causing him to wince. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Too much was happening. There wasn’t time. I hoped you’d figure it out. Gods, I hurt. I don’t think it would have worked in daylight. But it was so dark, he missed the distortions from the suit’s camouflage when I put the helmet back on.”
Ceram kept the armor on Cort, and locked the suit’s joints so he could use the CONDOR to stabilize Cort’s body for the trip to the Remington.
—
In a medical bed, Cort sat up and looked at Diane asleep next to him. When they returned to the ship, Cort ordered Ceram to keep Angela isolated, while he and Diane shared a room. Cort’s joints were still swollen but healing rapidly, thanks to several emergency doses of synthetics. Several blood vessels in his eyes, legs, and arms had burst. But he still managed to smile at his sleeping daughter. Kim paled when she noticed Cort’s tears were tinged with blood.
Ceram walked into the room and clicked to Salana, who handed him her flexpad. After looking at it for a minute, he told Cort that Diane was fine, but Cort most certainly was not. The changes in his brain were accelerating, probably because of his interaction with Addison.
“We think your brainwaves overlapped. It short-circuited your brain, because you were able to read his. We need to operate now.”
“Not yet. I want to see my daughter.”
“Cortland, the longer you wait, the less likely success will be.”
Anger boiled in Cort’s blood. “Listen to me, you miserable….” He looked down and saw Kim’s hand on his arm. Taking a deep breath, he started again. “Ceram, listen. I just need a day or two with her. Your species isn’t attached to their young, like ours is. If you could guarantee success, I’d do it. But from what Salana told me this might just kill me. I didn’t break time to come this close to seeing her smile again, just to risk losing it at the last minute. Give me two days with her. Then you can operate.”
“Very well, Pledge Father.”
Turning to Kim, Cort asked to see Dalek. After visiting with his son for a few minutes, he told him about his sister, Diane.
A few hours later, Cort was able to stand up and walk to Diane’s bed, where Doctor Biyadiq prepared to wake her.
With only humans in the room, Salana touched Diane’s thigh with a transdermal syringe. A long moment later, the ten year old’s eyes opened dreamily.
“Daddy.”
Cort held her hand and tears filled his eyes. “Hey, Dianosaur. How do you feel?”
“Mommy hit me.”
He was shocked by those first words she uttered. After more than two decades, the first thing she said to him was about Angela hitting her. Then he remembered. It had only been one day for Diane. Cort’s free hand flexed involuntarily, and he fought to keep his voice steady. Reaching up to brush the blond hair out of her face, he said, “That won’t happen again.”
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
His huge hand engulfed hers, and he kissed her temple. “I’m just happy. It’s been too long.”
“Too long?”
Cort was tempted to turn his inhibitor off, but Ceram spoke in his ear and warned him against it. Instead, Cort moved her bed to a sitting position and sat in a chair next to it. He told her the doctor needed to check some things, then they’d talk. Salana walked back into the room, Cort introduced them, and she started to run scans of Diane’s head and body.
In the best English Cort could remember hearing from Biyadiq, the doctor asked Diane how she felt.
“Sleepy. And Daddy looks old. And like he got beat up.”
Brat. “Yeah, sweetie. I’m a little older. I’ll tell you all about it when the doctor is done, okay?”
“Mom slapped me. I asked about a man she was holding hands with, and she slapped me.”
“She won’t ever do that again, I promise. Let the doctor run her tests.”
“Why were you a robot, Daddy?”
Cort held his finger to her lips and told her again to let the Doctor work. After the tests were through, the dark-skinned woman smiled.
“She’s fine. There is still some minor damage to several blood vessels on her left frontal lobe, but the biosynthetics are already repairing it. I gave her another dose just now with her stimulant. This one was tuned to her specifically rather than being an emergency field dose.”
Cort smiled and thanked Biyadiq. He lifted Diane off the bed and carried her to a viewscreen. “Dianosaur, I have to tell you something that you won’t believe.”
Ceram commed him and suggested Cort wait to tell Diane everything.
Cort put Diane down for a minute, and opened his flexpad, rather than speaking to thin air. He told Ceram he could handle the parenting part. He might only have two days to get Diane ready for the future, and he wasn’t going to be gentle with a kid he knew was tough.
Cort told her about Solitude. It was going to be her home, and all he had to do was convince her he was telling the truth, was to show her a picture of a small dinosaur.
Diane smiled, showing all her teeth but a missing one, and said, “Hunh unh!”
“Yep. It’s real. Look at this one.”
The next few pictures were of dinosaurs and small mammals on Solitude, and a little boy riding a giant cockroach, as if like it was a horse.
“Daddy,” Diane asked seriously, looking up at him. “Where’s Mommy?”
“She’s asleep. Don’t worry about her though. This is our time.”
Diane looked at him with steel in her eyes. “You aren’t lying? Dinosaurs are dead, but you said you won’t lie to me.”
“Remember the book about the time machine?”
Diane turned her head to the side, the same way Dalek did when the boy doubted Cort. “Yeah.”
Cort realized
that it must be a habit he had, too, though he couldn’t remember an occasion where he did it. “This is going to be kind of like that.”