by E. R. Torre
He stepped past these places, walking at an even, unhurried clip. He stopped for a moment before a ten story apartment building and looked up and to its top floor. Boarded windows suggested the penthouse tenant, and most of the tenants that once stayed at this place, were long gone.
He continued forward, making his way deeper into the center of town.
Soon, he reached his destination.
The Alegria Hospice was one of the few structures in the neighborhood that was still in use. Yet it was a dreary place.
The once bright yellow paint that covered her outer walls was faded and chipped. The windows, though intact, were caked with desert sand. The parking lot had but a few vehicles in it.
The man walked through the parking lot and to the building’s entrance.
He stopped before the main door and by an enclosed compartment. Within that compartment sat an overweight Security Guard. He held a computer tablet and didn’t notice the man before him. The man tapped on the glass separating them to get the Guard’s attention.
The Security Guard looked up and, with his free hand, made a motion to wait a moment. He finished what he was doing on his tablet and set it aside.
“Good evening,” the Security Guard said. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m here to see a patient.”
The Security Guard nodded. He reached to his side and pulled out another tablet. He slid that tablet through a small opening under the glass partition.
“Fill out the information asked, including who you’re visiting.”
The man did as told. When he was done, he slid the tablet back to the Guard.
The Security Guard took the tablet, checked the information on it, then turned to the right and grabbed an adhesive paper his printer spit out. It had a photograph of the visitor and his identity printed in bold letters.
“Stick that to your chest,” the Security Guard said.
The man did as told and the door leading into the Hospice buzzed. The Security Guard motioned to the door and nodded.
“Have a pleasant day,” he said.
The man walked the corridors of the Hospice as if he knew the place. He did, if only by the schematics in his memory. The staff around him barely noticed as he moved through. He dodged a man in a wheelchair and slipped past a toothless woman in a gurney whose eyes were locked onto the ceiling.
When he reached the lobby’s elevator, he waited for its security scanner to read his identification badge. Once done, the elevator doors opened.
The man stepped inside and the doors closed behind him.
In seconds the man walked the corridor of the fifth floor. At the center of the floor was a nurse’s station. A single nurse sat in her post, her attention directed at a computer screen. She tapped at the screen and barely noticed the man as he passed.
He entered one of the four corridors that stretched out like compass points and passed several doors, all of them open. Beyond each was a small room that contained two beds. Some of the beds held elderly patients while many others did not. On one of them a pair of nurses quietly packed personal items while a housekeeper removed stained sheets.
At the end of the corridor he found the door he was looking for. On it was a room number and, just below it, a plastic slip. Within the slip were printed two words:
David Desjardins.
The man entered the room.
Unlike the other rooms, there was but one bed at the center of this one and on it lay a frail, elderly man. The bed was his home and had probably been so for the least a couple of years. White sheets were pulled up to the elderly man’s chest and his arms were at his sides. Clear plastic tubes snaked from machines and connected to his veins. They offered sustenance and medication and kept him alive.
The man at the door hesitated a second before quietly entering the room. He closed the door behind him and barricaded it with a chair. It wouldn’t stop anyone from entering, but it would alert him when someone tried.
The man walked to the bed and pulled up a second chair. He sat on it and examined the computer console at the foot of the elderly man’s bed. He quietly read the information on it. It consisted of a long list of medications and treatments.
The man leaned close to David Desjardins. He spoke.
“Hello, David,” he said. Though a man, his voice was that of a woman.
David Desjardins stirred. One of his eyes opened a fraction of an inch.
“S… Saint Vulcan?”
The voice was barely audible.
The man who entered the Hospice and David Desjardin’s room was no longer a man. His face, like his voice, was that of a woman.
“You came back,” David added.
“I told you I would.”
David closed his eyes and Saint Vulcan gently grabbed David’s hand.
“Was the mission… was the mission a success?” David asked.
“The Thanatos launched,” Saint Vulcan said. “It did so a few years ago, shortly after I visited you.”
“Why… why did you wait…?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“How long before it reaches…?”
“Two hundred and fifty years.”
The elderly man let out a soft laugh.
“No time at all,” Desjardins said. “We must seem so very… so very insignificant to you. We stomp around as if we’re rulers of all we survey yet we’re gone in an… in an instant.”
“Long enough,” Saint Vulcan said. “I’ll remember. Even when you’re gone, you will live within me, David.”
The elderly man nodded.
“I kept your secret. No one knows you’re alive, Saint Vulcan. Not that they’d listen to an old man like me anyway.”
David cleared his throat.
“Are you… are you going to stick around? Keep me company? That is, unless you’re busy.”
“I’ve got all the time in the world,” Saint Vulcan said.
She released the elderly man’s hand and walked to the room’s sole window. From it, she saw the Onian Starport and a shuttle craft lift off. She imagined the sound of the ship’s engines, the rustle of the breeze, and the heat surrounding the capital.
Saint Vulcan nodded. Despite everything, it was a beautiful world and the people within it were beautiful to her. Every single one of them.
“I’ll stay as long as you need me to,” Saint Vulcan said.
EPILOGUE THREE
TWO HUNDRED YEARS LATER
The young male clone sat alone and confused in the massive ship heading to a destination he for the moment did not know.
He ate a meal prepared by the ship’s food systems and stared out of one of the innumerable windows before him.
He spent hours staring though the massive ship’s windows and into space and, in time, the memories of being David Desjardins would return.
But in that hour and on that day, he watched the tail of a comet disappear into the darkness. For one brief moment it glowed with life and was gone.
He wished he could accompany it on her journey.
Laverna parked her shuttle within the comet and used magnetic anchors to lock it down.
Even now the comet’s path took it farther and farther away from the Thanatos and the Solar System the super-juggernaut was headed for. In fifty years the man on that ship would reach his destination and finish Elias’ –Saint Vulcan’s– mission while Laverna waited just outside that solar system for him to do so.
Then she would act.
In between, she had time to make peace with her memories.
She closed her eyes and returned to that pleasant dream…
The shuttle was small and white and clean. Cleaner than any shuttle should be.
It entered the green planet’s atmosphere and flew past impeccable white clouds. The sun shone down brightly, illuminating this perfect world.
Laverna stared out the shuttle’s window. In the far distance was the farm, her destination. It didn’t take long before the shuttle hovered over it.
Laverna checked to make sure the ship’s internal mechanisms were completely off. She again looked out the window and spotted an elderly woman approach.
The woman waved and Laverna smiled and waved back.
The shuttle’s side door opened and a step ladder slid down.
The fields before Laverna were incredibly green and filled with flora. She spotted a cluster of Hermes trees and their multi-colored fruit. Beyond them were the Beyona vines. Beyond that…
“Welcome back, Laverna.”
The voice came from the elderly woman. She now stood just outside the landing pad’s perimeter.
“Hello, Persephone,” Laverna said.
“Why are you always so formal?” the elderly woman said.
Laverna smiled. She reached out and hugged the woman.
“Hello, mother,” Laverna said. The smile on her face was as bright as the sun’s. “Oh, mom, you wouldn't believe the things that happened since I left. You won’t believe the things that are still to come.”
THE END