Assimilated

by Nick Webb

“But, what will be in its place? Just empty space?”

  It was a conversation that they’d repeated for years now, ever since she’d been old enough to understand the concepts of galaxies, and universe, and light speed. Ever since her mother had died. Had she been ready even then? Of course not. But he’d needed her to be.

  And besides, it wasn’t like he understood those words. Not really. Not truly.

  “No. Not empty space. There will be nothing there. No space. No time. Not for us, at least.”

  She shook her head in frustration. “Okay, okay, fine. But look. What about the people at the center of the Empire? They’re halfway between us. Will the Pollux Cluster exist for them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why can’t we dimensionally leap to the center of the universe, and then leap the rest of the way to the Pollux Cluster?”

  He sighed. This was always the difficult part. “No. It exists for them, but it does not exist for us. So if we were to dimensionally leap to, say, Telestia, the central world of the Empire, we could go ask someone if they’d ever heard of the Pollux Cluster. They would, of course, say no. They couldn’t answer yes because it doesn’t exist. It is outside of the space-time of the universe. Our universe.”

  “But you just said that the Pollux Cluster does exist for them.”

  “And so it does. And there’s the paradox. The only way it resolves is if their universe diverges from ours. There become, in effect, two universes. One where we are the center of the universe, and one where Telestia is the center of the universe.”

  “And there’s a universe where the Pollux Cluster is the center of the universe?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “So is that a third universe?”

  He nodded. “And so you see the dilemma. From one universe spring universes without number. And all because we are here to observe them, to disagree about those observations.”

  She pondered the sky as it wheeled overhead inside the dome. Tendrils and filaments and strings of light glittering their untold number of stars, galaxies, planets. People. Mothers. Children. Friends.

  “And so to stop it, Gaias came up with the Binding?”

  “He and Kestus, yes,” said Gherens. “He told the emperor that the empire must be broken up into a number of pieces, so that each piece could survive on its own, at least until it, too, became caught up in the universe’s expansion. But the emperor wouldn’t have it. And so Gaias Justus discovered another way. A brilliant way. And it’s a plan that gave rise to us. Our births, our lives, our destinies, are wrapped up, inextricably, in that plan. The Binding.”

  Her eyes drooped. She looked like she was trying to stay focused on the universe rotating overhead, but she was fading fast.

  “Right. Off to bed. It’s a big day tomorrow.”

  The next day was rainy. Of course. Supreme Admiral Gherens always seemed to depart on his campaigns with the cold farewell of rain. But he smiled—at least the crops would grow. The people fed. Life would go on. It always did.

  His ship was waiting for him on the landing pad hovering near the estate. The children’s nanny was there, her hands on their shoulders. Cassalla gave a small wave, and her older brother, Tomas, who already towered over the other two, looked stoic with a firm jaw and a half-frown. A crowd of well-wishers had congregated as well. It was rumored that Gherens was leaving today on a mission related to the Binding, and word had spread like gossipy wildfire.

  As he approached, Cassalla broke free of protocol and her nanny’s firm grip and ran toward him, wrapping him in a hug.

  “When you get back, we will finally take that trip to Telestia, won’t we?”

  He held his jaw tight. Now was the time. The moment he’d been dreading since he held her as a newborn just a few years ago.

  “Right? Papa? You know I’ve been longing to see it for forever!”

  He knelt down. “Little star, I promise you’ll see it.”

  She smiled, but after a moment, her face wrenched in painful realization. “What do you mean ‘you’ll see it’? We’ll see it together, right?”

  He shook his head. “Love, this is the last trip for a reason. The final one. The key to the Binding. And over the next few years, dozens of your cousins and aunts and uncles will make similar journeys.” He held her at arm’s length, still kneeling, still staring into her bewildered face. “Little star, this is the only way. The only way to save the universe we love so.”

  She tried to speak, but had no words. The nanny and Tomas neared the two of them.

  Admiral Gherens pulled her in close. “If this works, love, we’ll see each other again. I promise. The three of us. We will see each other again.”

  She pulled away, another realization falling on her, and she glanced in wide-eyed confusion at Tomas. “But that means you’re going too?”

  Tomas shook his head. “Not now. Not with father. But I’ll leave next year. For the Sculptor Cluster. Opposite you and father, like the third point of a triangle—it’s all part of the Bind—”

  “But I don’t want you to go!” she wailed, looking from one to the other. “How can you do this to me?”

  Admiral Gherens struggled, his eyes red. “I do it because it is necessary, child. It is the empire’s only hope.”

  “I don’t care about the empire, I care about you!” she cried, shrugging off his hand as he reached for her quivering shoulder.

  He set his jaw. He must be stoic. Especially with all the people watching. They needed hope. They needed to know this was going to work, that the empire could be saved. That they could be saved. That the inevitable partings to come, brought by the accelerating expansion, could be prevented. That, somehow, the universe could be bound together by something more than vacuum energy and quantum statistics. Something more tangible and fleshy and real. And yet, a lifetime of not seeing his daughter. His son. Even simple messages would be forbidden until the completion of the Binding, years from now.

  “Love. I don’t do it just for the empire. I do it for you. I do it for Tomas.” He paused, searching for the right words. “I do it for mother.”

  Cassalla opened her bleary eyes. “Will she be waiting for me on Telestia too? Both of you?”

  He held up his hands. “I don’t know, child. But if anything could make that happen, it is the Binding.” He gripped her shoulder and pulled her in close. “Come. It is time.”

  They embraced, and she cried more. Then, standing, waving to the crowd, he boarded the ship.

  With a roar of antigravity thrusters, the ship lifted high into the sky and blazed into the atmosphere. Cassalla broke free of her nanny’s grip once again and ran for the liftoff point, blocking the sun out with her hands as she watched the ship soar higher.

  “Goodbye, papa.”

  III

  Fifty years later

  Daedalus Galaxy, Coma Supercluster

  “Sir? Shall I order pursuit?”

  “Of course we’ll pursue! What in the blazes did you think we were going to do?”

  Fleet Admiral Cassalla Gherens didn’t suffer fools easily. But her new executive assistant, who was filling in due to last week’s untimely death of her previous assistant, was putting her tolerance limits to the test.

  “Of course, sir. I’ll order the fleet to regroup and form up into pursuit pattern delta two. The damaged vessels can easily—”

  She shook her head, coughing once from the acrid smoke still lingering from the heat of the battle. “No. No waiting. We leave now. Every ship that is capable of interstellar travel is to converge on our position now and we’ll make the dimensional leap together. Intel is absolutely sure the rebel ships retreated to their supposedly hidden base in the Trantium System?”

  “General Orso is almost certain, sir.”

  Almost. She drummed her fingers impatiently on her command console. So little time. “Fine. We leave in three minutes.”

  “But, sir—”

  She snapped her head toward the man. “Three minutes!” Gherens stood
up and retreated to her office just off the bridge of her battleship. She glanced up at the clock hanging precariously on the wall. It had been knocked askew by the pounding her ship had taken during the most recent skirmish.

  Fourteen hundred hours.

  So little time.

  The rebels had attacked suddenly, and mercilessly. They’d been building forces and strength for decades, and the previous month they’d finally launched their rebellion. While their campaign had been devastating to the empire, they’d underestimated the empire’s resilience. It had covert fleets and bases that not even most senior commanders knew about.

  And of course, they’d underestimated its admirals, foremost among these Fleet Admiral Cassalla Gherens herself, supreme commander of imperial forces in the Coma Cluster.

  But they’d struck at the most inopportune of moments. Today was the day. Today. Or rather, it should have been. She glanced at the clock again. Fourteen hundred hours, two minutes. A quick mental calculation told her that she could still make it to Telestia before the day was over.

  But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Her fleet, her people, and her empire depended on her.

  Your people need you, Cassalla, a familiar voice whispered in her ear. Gruff and friendly, it reminded her of dark, cozy planetariums.

  She spun, facing the source of the voice. “And what would you do?”

  The large framed photograph on the wall remained silent, of course.

  “I know what you’d do. You already did it. Fifty years ago.”

  Admiral Gherens, the black-haired man staring out of the photograph, said nothing, as pictures were wont to do. But the voice in her head answered. I did it because I love you, little star.

  “But what of the empire, Father?” She stepped closer to the picture, staring at the inanimate eyes of the man she’d once known. The man who’d left her. “How can I abandon my people in the vain hope of preserving something that’s already lost? Like you abandoned me? The outer galaxies have been beyond our reach for decades now. The initial stages of the Binding failed. What makes you think fulfilling my place in it will solve anything?”

  The picture stared out blankly. The voice in her head was silent.

  She smirked. “That’s what I thought.”

  You’ll do it because you love me, too.

  “Nonsense,” she said, shaking her head. “Love didn’t save Tomas, did it?” She glanced at the other, smaller picture on the opposite wall. A young man. Barely seventeen, posing, arms folded, in a forested grove. A picture perpetually capturing his youth, though he was nearly fifty years gone. She whispered, “It was because of your love that he flew to his death.”

  The accident had been unexpected—ships on interstellar travel were hardly ever lost anymore, least of all because of malfunctions in the dimensional-leap engine. But when the burning husk of Tomas’s ship appeared in the atmosphere of his destination, the Binding world of Fornix in the Sculptor Cluster, she’d taken the news hard. She swore off the Binding. She entered the Imperial Academy. She rose to even greater heights than her father.

  And she swore she’d save the empire her way. She’d force the warring, fragmenting pieces to stay together. And those systems and worlds that slipped beyond the veil to their own reality, caught up in the inexorable expansion of the universe? They’d cope. They’d find a way to survive. Life would go on without them. Just like life had gone on without Tomas. Without her father. She’d survived on her own for fifty years. Hadn’t she done well without them? Surely, she had.

  She glanced at the clock. Fourteen hundred hours, ten minutes.

  And yet…

  What if she could still fulfill her part of the Binding? What if it truly wasn’t too late? Years ago, the principal scientists of the Binding had assigned each participant a window of time in which to complete their mission. Her optimal time had passed decades since. But the window had extended for years into the future.

  That future was about to expire in less than eight hours. It took six hours to make the dimensional leap to Telestia. That left her two hours until she lost her father forever, because in eight hours, the world to which he’d gone fifty years ago, some forbidding planet whose name she’d forgotten, would slip past the barrier of the navigable universe, beyond her reach until the end of time.

  “Admiral Cassalla,” said her assistant’s voice through the intercom.

  She raised her head to answer. “Yes, Commander?”

  “The fleet is ready. And fleet intel has sent a message. They confirm: the rebels have retreated to the Trantium System. All of them. Shall I order pursuit?”

  All of them? That was too good to pass up. They could end this rebellion permanently in the next few days. The empire would know peace again. She could save it.

  But there was still time. She could still make it to Telestia. Fulfill her role in the Binding.

  Fourteen hundred hours, twelve minutes.

  Gherens paused, glancing once more at her father.

  I love you, little star.

  She shook her head. “Affirmative, Commander,” she said.

  Goodbye, father, she thought.

  Moments later, the telltale lurch of the floor indicated to her that the ship had commenced its dimensional leap, in the opposite direction of the Hydra Galaxy, where her father had gone…

  Passing the invisible line, the veil, that now descended into place between them. Forever.

  IV

  Thirty years later

  Daedalus Galaxy, Coma Supercluster

  The new empire was better than the old.

  The pieces of the Empire That Was are better on their own, Empress Cassalla Gherens thought. Better on their own than being forced into a form that wouldn’t work. Like new wine in old bottles. The new wine was bursting the seams of the old empire. The new, smaller, more flexible bottles were better. She glanced up at the map on her wall, tendrils and filaments of galaxies and clusters, now intersected by a myriad of lines and boundaries, borders between the various kingdoms that had sprung up to replace the Empire That Was.

  “Empress?” An elderly man poked his head into her simple, utilitarian office.

  “Is it time?”

  “Yes, Empress. The delegates are all seated, the assembly has settled the administrative matters, and they are ready for the ceremony.” He stepped fully into her office and pressed the door closed, eyeing her. He was probably going to try to convince her. Again.

  She stood. “Then let’s get going, shall we?”

  “Empress,” he began, “is this wise? Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Always so practical. So sensible. Ever since he’d taken over as her assistant before the Battle of Trantium all those long years ago. He’d seemed incompetent then, but what she’d mistaken for incompetence and hesitation was actually care and thoroughness. She’d miss that.

  “Wise? Probably not.” She glanced back up to the map, and next to it, to two photographs. “But do I want to do this?” She turned to regard the man who’d served her faithfully for so many years, and she wondered if she looked as old and frail as he did. As haggard. She chuckled to herself. No, she probably looked worse, being a decade his senior. “I’ve wanted to do this since I was a girl.”

  The assistant nodded. She was used to arguing with him, but he’d learned when she was determined and unlikely to be swayed. “I understand, Empress.” He opened the door and motioned her through.

  Vast and cavernous, the assembly hall for the Intergalactic Government of the Obsidian Empire—one of the smaller kingdoms that had arisen out of the ashes of the old—loomed ahead of her, packed to capacity by tens of thousands of delegates from the hundreds of galaxies and millions of worlds her government administered.

  The ceremony was short, and solemn. As the Obsidian Empire was so young, she was the only ruler it had known. And for such a respected and influential emperor to give up power after just a few short years in office, well, that had been unheard of in the millions of years of
history spanned by the Empire That Was.

  She handed her exquisite jeweled scepter to her successor. A younger man, fit and energetic, who’d jumped at the opportunity her resignation had created. He was overeager, and a little too swayed by power and influence, but he’d do. He was good.

  Like him.

  The time had come for her to find him. All of them. The surviving old Binding scientists, all long since retired, had assured her it was far too late. Long past the time the Binding had any hope of working.

  And yet.

  And yet she hoped. She coughed, holding a hand to her mouth, struggling to suppress a fit. She was no longer empress, but neither did she want to appear weak in front of her former subjects. She’d die soon, she knew. Ninety-one years came with many benefits, but time always exacted its price.

  Yet there was still time to make that last journey. The one old Gherens had promised her. He’d meet her there. Along with Tomas. Along with her aunts and cousins and grandparents—all the other participants in the Binding. Each scattered across the distant borders of the Empire That Was, each returning across their respective veil, returning to Telestia. Meeting together across space and time, across the inescapably-expanding fabric of the universe, and as a result, bind reality together.

  The last details of the ceremony passed in a haze as the main duty was done, and soon, she found herself staring up at the ship that would carry her home. Climbing the ramp, she paused to wave goodbye to her assistant. He stood, rail-straight, and nodded once, a glimmer of a smile in his eye. Damn, she’d miss him.

  Soaring high above the clouds, the ship shot away into the upper atmosphere, and then on to interplanetary space, where it was safe to perform the dimensional leap.

  She was alone. No one needed to come with her. Years in the Imperial fleet were enough training for her to pilot a ship this small. Just a simple craft with basic life support, riding atop a dimensional-leap engine. An ensign out of the Imperial Academy could have flown it.