Encompassing Love

by Richard Lord

  A few feet away a different version of Tomorrow looks at a different version of Adam, “What was that?”

  Adam assumes she is referring to the gun and then he sees her click to his side and grab it.

  CHAPTER 40

  “What I saw was not real. What I felt was not me. What I did I would not do.” -- from the Book of model KRY-1-CT-A1

  “So these synths. You’re thinking that this Venetia was one of them?” Persistence asked Tomorrow.

  “Well, most were.” Tomorrow considers her wording and corrects herself, “Are. I don’t know when we are Persistence. I am kind of new to my former memories. Sometimes I wonder if I have been, all along.”

  “No, Sara. You raised Brian and I. We didn’t always like it, but you did your best with us. It couldn’t have been easy knowing how different we were.”

  “Thank you, but consider that those memories are installed. So that sounds like I am a synth. I was made in the factory. I was born after the martyr, but I was conceived before that.” Tomorrow began to wonder at her own life.

  “Time is confusing, Sara. I don’t fully understand what you and Renfield did to merge with your pervious memories, or lives, or however I should say it.” Persistence held out her hand to Sara.

  “We lived another life, we had an epiphany. Every memory was as one.” Tomorrow stood quickly. Adam and Bob also merged memories. What if?”

  “No, I know Adam and Bob. I think something happened to Bob after that moment. My guess is he tried something and Stephen caught on and used it against him. I don’t think he was a synth when he went there. If he was afterwards, it’s because Stephen figured something out and the plan failed. Bob and Adam did not get along well, but neither would have endangered their own.” Believe me. Brian and I spent far more time in nothing with Bob than even you can claim in lifetimes.”

  Sara looked at Persistence remembering the years she was around to perceive the time flow while the two of them grew old enough to understand more than she was giving Persistence credit for. “It’s odd, I distinctly remember being Sara, but I know I am Tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, sounds weird to me too, but you raised me and your personality is not too different, after all of these years. Or whatever you would call the time from me being small to you thinking I’m pregnant.” Persistence then said, “It’s not my first child, obviously, so yes, I know the signs. Thank you for reeling me in.”

  “No problem, you’re not the first pair of brats I’ve raised. Wait, no. You were the first, but I didn’t know that at the time.” Sara chuckles.

  “You’re worried about both of them, aren’t you. You don’t just love Adam. You are his other half.” Persistence stops talking and then begins again. “Joy is your…” She stops again.

  “We lost a lot. Joy is…” Tomorrow begins to cry. Persistence puts her arms around the woman who raised her. At that moment they both reappear and they see Joy.

  Tomorrow gasps at the horror of the device she is connected to and the tubes running in and out of her. Persistence clicks to Joy, Tomorrow clicks to a mind she hears. “Planning is over.” Sara says to Renfield and Conan. “Move now!” She clicks again, finds Venetia in bed with someone she knows. Venetia looks confused, but not enough not to move as Tomorrow leaps towards the bed with a deep vengeance in her eyes. Tomorrow reaches to the neck of the man Venetia was with and pulls hard. Her hand suddenly feels empty.

  “Well, I didn’t expect that.” The man is standing behind her smiling at her. Then Tomorrow watches as Conan appears and draws his attention. She watches as the man smiles then clicks behind Conan and pushes his spine into his heart. She sees Conan begin to drop while the man smiles at the body, but then she notes another figure and turns her head to the presence she knows. He grabs her and they reappear in their first camp.”

  “What were you thinking?” Adam yells at her.

  Tomorrow begins to cry. “I taught that young man. He helped us! I taught him! He helped, Joy?” She was in shock and Renfield knew it.

  He turned to pick Joy up off the floor. She hazily looked up at her father. He clicked. He yelled to Persistence, “Do something!”

  Her face goes pale, “My husband is dead or you wouldn’t have to go back.” Persistence looks at Joy and walks to the water supply to rehydrate her.

  Renfield pauses. “Conan was a hero. Not that it helps, but you should at least know that.”

  “He was good to me. I was happy. You got him killed.” Persistence continues what she is doing as if the facts of her current loss are just benign.

  Renfield realizes Persistence is also on shock. He cannot think of anything to say, but it reminds him to grab his own wife so he clicks and then reappears. Then he sees Persistence with her wrist in Joy’s mouth. Persistence looks at Renfield and says, “She needs nourishment. I don’t need anything anymore.” Persistence is conscious but clearly fading from the blood loss.

  Adam grabs Persistence and clicks.

  “Sir, we’re going to need her name and your name. Please fill out these forms. We have her on an I.V. Do you want to tell us what happened?”

  “Huh? No, I’ll leave that to someone else to explain.” No longer caring who saw what, he clicks. Renfield feels the breeze of nothing and everything although there is no wind. He looks upwards from his perspective, knowing there really is no particular up or down here. He yells out. “Lucy! I’m home!” No one hears him. He thinks about Tomorrow. Then the cacophony begins.

  “Hello, Adam.”

  “Fuck you, Bob”

  Brian cuts in, “He knew. He’s been here longer than any of us. He and you merged, so you knew!”

  Persistence thinks in, “No. He didn’t know. It was after.”

  Brian responds, “Which one of them didn’t know, Persistence? What are you getting at?”

  “Calm down, Brian. He’s the only one of us still alive in almost every timeline.”, Persistence remarks.

  Brian says, “That’s why I trust him the least.”

  “Yeah? It’s why I trust him the most. Plus there is still Joy and there is still Tomorrow. Bob has been here the longest. I think grandfather is right. He knows something we didn’t learn.”

  Brian thinks to Renfield_2, “You only know possibilities or you would not have made mistakes.”

  Bob responds, “True, but more possibilities than you. I’m not sure about him. We are here viewing our own futures, he’s lived it.”

  “Umm, just saying…I can hear you. If you were corporeal I would most definitely kill you right now, Bob.” Adam’s mind explodes with anger at many things. He realizes Persistence is there because she is in nothing, but he just left her in a hospital because she had slit her own wrist to feed his daughter. It’s maddening but he knows how this place works less than the other three do. He gets the concept, it is nothing therefore there is no time, therefore there is no then, now or later. However, Adam also knows that what happens in the universe changes what they see. He remembers the before and after, but like them not while they are there. So he concludes that something changed since they aren’t discussing the current perils. The problem is, he can’t know when it changed and that riles him.

  “I have the good fortune of you exiling me to billions of years of watching. You have the misfortune of knowing almost everything I had to see.” Bob thinks to Adam.

  “It was an agreement. Why did you help Stephen when you were supposed to stop him?” Renfield asks.

  “He’s been here. He’s already heard this conversation as well as others. Don’t be so naïve, especially since I know you know that.” Bob responds and all of them feel Brian become suddenly absent.

  Persistence hears both of their thoughts and thinks out, “We can’t know what he knows. None of us has the same experiences.”

  “Not true. You and Brian’s were close enough. You know where he went.” Renfield tries to think directly to her, but realizes that won’t work because she has blocked her mind.

  Renfield notes Per
sistence is no longer there and feels Bob’s anger as Bob says, “I’m trying to help!”

  “Yeah, too little too late. Want to see a trick?” Renfield asks.

  Bob says, “Don’t even consider that or you will never meet Tomorrow.”

  “First, let me be clear, I hate the name Bob. Second let me be clear, I don’t like you no matter what I call you.” Adam explained.

  “Yeah, Adam, you’re kind of a jerk yourself.” Renfeild_2 responds.

  Then as the two sides lock into thought against each other at speeds of consideration that are mind boggling even to themselves a spark of something comes to be and they both brace themselves.

  “I suppose I’ll be seeing you over the next few billion years.” Renfield comments.

  “I suppose this is why you are first, Adam. I look forward to meeting Tomorrow all over again.”

  “Whatever, Bob. I met her first, then I created you. I also created Joy.”

  Bob thinks out in his last moments. “You named them. Solstice, Illumna. How did you keep this from me?”

  “I was first, Bob!” Renfield relaxes his mind.

  Both of them feel the inrush of everything all at once and then they explode into everything as nothing ceases to exist.

  CHAPTER 41

  “Entropy is an immutable fact. Everything breaks down. Then there is Infinity, everything continues. It is by relativity alone that we can understand how both immutable forces can exist in the same universe. Therefore, I have given in to Adam’s insistence that the tenants of quantum reality must be true. If they were not, I couldn’t do what I do.” -- from the Book of Brian

  The brook ran water over stones. An amoeba washed down stream without any control, hoping to catch a protein floating by. A cilia was experiencing a similar problem without a mass to allow its wiggling function to gain traction. The cilia noted the amoeba and made a deal. The symbiosis being forever locked into the two protozoa. Time went by.

  Then a fist emerges from a pond and a human face rises seeking air.

  Breathing rapidly after feeling so suffocated, the man raises himself from the waters and looks around. He hears a voice from the trees.

  Sitting on a branch, Joy comments, “Hmm, Mom was right. Nothing kills you.” She leaps down and says, “You have no idea how boring it was to sit in these trees for this long waiting for you to get your butt in gear.”

  Slowly Renfield remembers, as he whispers to no one, “Impossible!”

  “Thank me later.” Joy responds, “Last I checked you have three cities in play.”

  Still choking for oxygen, Renfield asks, “How? How can I be if everything is no longer?”

  “Think it through, Dad. You made it through hell, as Dante predicted. You spent a long time in purgatory on the way up. You must have been struggling with a lot of your decisions in life.”

  “I have to go find Tomorrow!” Adam yells as he looks down into the water.

  “I hope so, otherwise I don’t exist. You don’t exist. Now do you understand, Adam? You never had a mother. You were never born, you always were. You are first. Instead of a mother, you had circumstances. By now I’ve seen enough iterations to realize you are Renfield_Prime and you are Bob, Adam. You are also my father. You’re still dying, so there’s not a lot of time to waste. Let’s get on with it. Mom would be happy to see you. You’d be impressed by whom she’s become. However, she said she had waited for you once before and she wasn’t going to do it again so she left. She made a comment that she was going to you, and I think I know what she meant, but…”

  “Slow down, girl. Explain how, what?” Renfield’s mind begins to piece the recent past together only to realize there is nothing about it that is recent or the past. The conclusion strikes him. All of the versions of him are transmutable. Renfield was all of the hims. He is all of the hims. Then another thought becomes clear and his mind races. He thinks to himself, “I was all of them. I knew that to be true. I even talked about it, but I couldn’t rectify that. It’s hard to conceive. You dragged me in there?” Adam points back at the water.

  “Yes. Something you once told me about Aboriginal belief systems.” Joy responded.

  Adam looked around at the trees and the then back to the water.

  “Apparently you actually did pay attention when I spoke. Reminiscent of a song, ‘Take me to the river’.” He can’t help but drum the bass notes on his thigh and then he laughs and continues, “You know it? Drop me in the water? I once saw a legendary band do a cover for that. I knew the original keyboardist.”

  Joy looks at her father not interested in his reference. “Yeah, Dad, you’ve known a lot of people. Pretty much par for the course when you keep doing life over and over again for as long as you have.” She realizes she is being flippant and answers the actual question, “You taught me aboriginal culture is the oldest surviving culture in recorded history, so it seemed I should listen.” Joy looks at her father wondering what it could possibly be like to cease and then be again.

  “I don’t do life over and over, Joy. I try to get it right, for everyone. Before it was ‘rewinds’.” Renfield remarks. Then he looks at his daughter and asks, “This is different. How long have I been dead this time?”

  “Apparently you have no problem with conception.” Joy points out, but it seems a non-sequitur to him. “Christina didn’t, so she had Mom and Mom and you had me.” Joy smiles at her groggy, newborn father.

  Adam feels what people refer to as ‘heart strings being plucked’ at the mention of Christina. Then he looked up at his daughter. “So you plan to shake the tree?”

  Joy grinned at her father in a sarcastic way, “You sir, already have.”

  Adam looked at her and considered what she was getting at. “By your own words your part of it all. You’ve woven through time more than I have. There are things you could have changed but didn’t.”

  In her defense Joy replies, “I’ve moved through it more than you have. No one has done it as much as you. Nothing is as old as you, don’t you get that?”

  Adam changed the topic, “Joy on your fishing expeditions did you find out who the other one is?”

  “Yes. I’m not going to tell you. Stay away from him. He’s more deadly than you and far scarier.” Joy walks towards him. “You’re not scary to me. Mostly. You’re my Dad. He is ruthless. One who serves him heals even faster than you can yet he’s completely subservient to him. Do you understand?”

  “Is it your uncle?” Adam asks with a wry grin.

  “Dad, I’m serious. I’m not going to answer any more questions about it. He’s in a whole different timeline. How the two of you crossed is something I don’t understand. You always say there isn’t such a thing as a multi-verse, but then there is Mom. She’s two people, merged as one, but she lives both lives. You are far more than that and yet here you are. Please, Dad, let it go.” Joy picks up her pack from the ground. It was packed with raw meat, she decided not to tell her father it was from a slain Hunter. It was bait for anything that might disturb the rebirthing process. She did suspect he might be able to tell from the smell. For a man who seemed to have a poor sense of smell, certain things triggered his sense. He didn’t say anything about it and she decided to leave it alone. She had shut off her mind to him and knew he was aware of that fact and hadn’t brought it up. “I know a lot. I know he’s deadly. I know if he perceives your abilities. He will see you as a threat and he will come for you. He has…”

  Hearing her thought Adam says, “The stone. I know, I saw it.” Adam answers and then adds, “He already knows. We’ve been in combat. I know he chose to be there, so we had to have met in his linear, before. What you just did, by Aboriginal terms, I am the sun, he is the moon. He will come for me if I don’t go for him.”

  “Dad, you don’t understand. He conquered entire continents and he’s not even in the history books. It seems impossible. I saw him slaughter an army while telling his men to hold still. He is something we don’t understand. Please, I don’t want
to lose you again.” Joy looks down at the ground to avoid her father seeing her face so full of concern, then back up as she says, “Plus that tree hurts my butt.”

  Renfield grins at the distractive maneuver. “So, speaking of butts where did your mother go?”

  “Well she used to hunt raiders with me. It’s become a problem between the cities again.” Then Joy stops and looks at her father. “Oh, you don’t know. She has connected them in time now. She figured out what you had done. She runs the commerce and she can’t keep her hands out of protecting it.”

  “Interesting, but not surprising. I suspect you’re helping her with that too.” Adam replies.

  “Yeah, Dad, I’m faster than her. The situation has become organized as you predicted.” Joy pulls two grapes from her breast pocket and tosses one at his mouth and the other in the air. Renfield clicks to it and catches it as Joy swallows hers. “You’re getting better with accuracy, but…”

  “Yeah, yeah. I saw. You’re more accurate still. You threw it and clicked right to it, but I’m not sure if that’s fair since you knew where you were throwing it.” Renfield narrows his eyes at her and then grins. “So who’s in charge? Never mind, that’s a dumb question. She controls the commerce. The golden rule, she who has the gold makes the rules.” Renfield grins again. “When did she go?”

  Joy looks over her shoulder at her father, “I didn’t know she could go when.”

  “Stop being coy, obviously you know she can. She doesn’t do it except for in a pinch, so when did she go?” Adam looks at his daughter and knows she knows that he knows she knows.

  “I don’t know. She said when you saw her again she would be different but she would still be by your side. She said you once made her wait for you, now you must wait backwards for her, whatever that means.” Joy looked to her father’s face for a clue.

  “Hmm, it means your grandmother was my wife, in another life. Not impregnated by me though.” Then Adam says, “Well with Solstice of course.” He lowers a brow to Joys as he chokes out the emotion welling inside him and puts on a grin, “But that means you aren’t my granddaughter. Amen to that. Oh wait, I got stuck with you as a daughter. That’s even worse!” Renfield throws is hands in the air in exaggerated exasperation and grins at her.