by Dan Glover
"So there was no Big Bang, my precious Pete?"
"Not in the sense that it was originally envisioned by researchers before the Great Dying. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, all natural systems are irreversible. In other words, what was born will one day die. The universe will eventually succumb to entropy, or heat loss.
"However, if we look at the universe as a black hole, the physical laws governing the inner workings fail at the macro level. It has something to do with Ena's theory that we can encode signals sent by way of wormhole upon the surface of entangled particles rather than embedding them inside. We have yet to prove that hypothesis, but I have a feeling if Ena says it will work, well then we can count on it."
Despite Pete's optimism about her skills, Karen felt like a failure. She had worked for centuries on perfecting a cure for Lake Syndrome, if indeed cure was the correct term to use. She had begun to believe it wasn’t.
All her training and all the information she had access to in the old Archives had become an albatross around her neck. Any spark of creativity she once possessed had been buried under the minutia of three thousand years.
"Come to Toulon, darling Karen. I need your help on some experiments I'm running that concern Lake Syndrome."
"Pete needs me here, sweet Amanda... but as soon as we're done with processing the information he requires, I'll talk to Sileas about making a trip to the south of old France. It's been too long since we've visited."
She privately doubted Amanda was getting anywhere with her experiments. They'd worked together for so long that she could tell by the tone of her old friend's voice as to whether or not she was making any real headway.
Still, it intrigued her to think that a breakthrough might be on the horizon after all. She'd become so used to requesting the presence of one of the Lake people whenever she made a trip anywhere that it was now second nature. Sileas was always willing to accompany her any place and at any time... still, Karen knew it was an inconvenience for her friend if only an unvoiced one.
Thinking of working with Amanda again meant she'd have to brush up on her knowledge. The girl was pernicious with her learning and being a trained doctor meant Karen had to present pertinent answers to Amanda's questions.
It felt good to be needed again.
Chapter 17—Exile
Life without Kirk was even worse than she ever imagined it could be.
Her family was there for her but seeing them all together only reminded her of how much she missed her man... his big arms hugging her close, the way he had of laughing at things she thought were dumb, and how he loved her and their daughter.
"When is daddy coming back home, mommy?"
"I'm not sure when daddy will be home again, sweet Candice. I'm sure wherever he is, however, he's doing his best to make his way back to us."
She didn’t want to lie to her daughter or to get her hopes up about seeing her father again. Luciana dreamed of Kirk most every night... at least when she was able to sleep... waking herself from the middle of a nightmare where she felt tiny worms boring their way into her body, eating away at her until there was nothing left that was Luciana. Instead, she had become a lump of metal, a cold and a hard chunk of iron that nonetheless throbbed and writhed under the glare of the sun.
She had been so little when Kirk left for old America that Luciana wasn’t sure if Candice would remember him. But she did. The little girl began drawing pictures of him, crudely at first, but soon so detailed that Luciana knew without asking who it was.
"You are quite an impressive artist, my precious Candice! Where on earth did you learn to draw so well? You were so little when daddy left us... do you actually remember what he looked like?"
Kirk had always been funny about having his picture taken and it wasn’t until he had been away for several years that Luciana realized she had no keepsakes... no photographs of him to share with Candice. But the girl's drawings were eerily similar to how Luciana remembered Kirk. She doubted she could draw a better facsimile even if she practiced for a hundred years.
"My daddy visits me in my dreams, mommy. He whispers secrets to me."
"What type of secrets, my sweet Candice?"
"Oh you silly mommy... I can't tell you that. It's a secret!"
After waiting for a year and then another two at Toulon, they decided to move home to the Isle of Skye. Candice wanted to be closer to her Grandmother Ena and Luciana found herself homesick for the damp and dreary Scottish days.
By the time she was three years old, she was reading books and writing music that she taught herself to play on an old clarinet she found in the attic and the piano missing several keys that adorned the vast sitting room on the third floor of the villa where Luciana had grown up.
Luciana remembered having been a precocious child too, as was her brother Niall. Candice reminded her of him at that age. She missed her brother. He had left one day without a word and though she didn’t know if he actually went to old America as she asked him to do, she felt guilty for having egged him on.
Chester insisted upon accompanying her to the Isle of Skye as well. The big cat seemed to mourn the loss of Kirk as much as Luciana, perhaps more so. He abandoned his pride of tigresses, loped alongside the old Jeep that she drove, and once settled in the north of old Scotland took to hunting the gnus that flourished there.
Luciana didn’t count the passage of time yet before she knew it, Candice was an adult. She knew the girl deserved better than to be sequestered alongside her reclusive mother in a rotting mansion on the edge of a constantly raging sea. She belonged in a community. Yet try as she might Luciana couldn’t force herself into moving back to the south of old France or even to Orchardton Hall. She felt as if she belonged on the Isle of Skye. That was where Kirk would come looking for her.
As if he read her thoughts, Grandfather Nate appeared on a rainy autumn day when the leaves had fallen from the trees leaving them standing like naked skeletons in front of the gates of hell.
Though he didn’t mention it, she could see it in his eyes... the horror of how she had let herself go. Whereas once she had swam the ocean daily to renew her vigor, now she shunned its waters, preferring instead to sit alone in darkened rooms as spiders of mildew black as her mourning gown slowly crept up the walls to cover the ceilings and even the furniture with its sickly malaise. Her clothes stank of it.
Looking about her, Luciana felt ashamed of how low she had fallen. Her beautiful and precocious daughter warranted better than to be shut away with a mother old before her time in an old and leaky excuse for a home. She wanted to grab the girl up in her arms one last time before pushing her away forever.
"Why don't you and Candice take a trip with me back to Orchardton Hall, sweet Luciana? You're always cooped up here in this rancid old villa."
"I don't want to leave here, Grandfather Nate... but Candice might enjoy a trip to see her grandmothers. She hasn’t seen them in years. The Ladies will enjoy seeing her again, I'm sure."
"Come and go with us too, mother. You'll grow old and sick here all alone."
"Please go, Candice, and enjoy the company of others for a change. I'll be along when your father gets here."
Before Karen and Pete had left the Isle of Skye for the last time, the good doctor told Luciana how travel had become remarkably easier with the invention of the anti-gravity crafts. Grandfather Nate, Ena, and Pete, with help from the scientists from old America, Freddi and Ronald, had nearly completed a fleet of larger machines they hoped would one day ferry people into outer space.
Such thoughts frightened Luciana, however. She still had hopes that one day Niall might return with Kirk, both of them alive and well. If she were to go farther than the Isle of Skye he might never know how to find her.
Of everyone who had gone away, Luciana missed her mother the most. Ena had been a constant source of strength and advice. She had welcomed her home after the loss of Kirk without a word of reproach for having left the Isle of Skye behind many y
ears ago.
"I thought you hated the weather here, precious Luciana... I don’t mean to push you away but you seem so sad. Wouldn’t the sunshine of Toulon feel good on your skin?"
"Thank you for thinking of me, mother, but no. I can't go back home, not without Kirk. Everything there reminds me of him. If my being here bothers you we'll move into another house."
"Having you here is a dream come true, my darling daughter. Stay as long as you wish. I'm planning to travel to Orchardton Hall to help Grandfather Nate with his latest invention. He said he asked you to go but you refused."
She hated the way everyone worried about her. Couldn’t they just leave her alone? She wasn’t hurting anyone by living on the Isle of Skye. Candice was happy and thriving. But between her mother and her grandfather she got the feeling that her parenting skills were as suspect as her father actually showing up at home.
She missed working in the vineyards most... the warm sun annealing her skin to a bronze brown color that matched her eyes and a salt water breeze blowing in from the Mediterranean making her thirsty when she licked her lips. She thought often of Kirk... how he had learned so much about wine-making that folk traveled from hundreds of kilometers away just to talk to him for a few minutes.
"I'd rather die than see you and our precious daughter turned into metal monstrosities by Micah's nanobots, my sweet Luciana. If we go to old America now, perhaps we can prevent an all-out attack later."
She hadn’t wanted him to leave her yet she couldn’t forbid it either. She knew Karen had convinced Grandfather Nate to take Kirk along instead of Pete... all to save herself the heartache of losing a husband. For years afterward, Luciana couldn’t be in the presence of any of them. She blamed grandfather for leaving Kirk behind... she blamed Pete for being weak... but most of all she hated Karen for going behind her back.
"Nate and Pete finally finished working on their anti-gravity device, sweet Luciana. They're planning on taking it for a test flight tomorrow."
She knew of the work... Kirk often talked about the project and how frustrated he felt not being able to help more.
"I never attended school much when I was a kid, my darling Luciana. No one cared if I went or not, and when I did go all the kids made fun of my stuttering. Finally, instead of going to school I began breaking into houses. They caught me and sent me to the reformatory. I didn’t learn anything there either."
"But you don't stutter, sweet Kirk."
"I stopped, but I used to stutter all the time, darling Luciana. Even the people who didn’t make fun of me always wanted to finish my sentences for me. I didn’t have any friends. I liked being alone best anyway.
"Now, though, I wish I would have gone to school more. Maybe I would know what Nate and Pete are talking about. They're working on a new invention... Nate talks to me about it all the time but I never know what to say. I don’t know anything about mathematics or science."
"Just be his friend, sweet Kirk. That's why he talks to you. He doesn’t expect you to solve his problems."
She had never liked Pete. The man seemed nice enough but he was always putting on airs, as if he knew things others didn’t. Luciana heard he was a scientist before the Great Dying... a genius... but he didn’t seem so smart to her. Rather, he seemed wooden and stiff, as if he was always acting like others wanted him to be. He couldn’t be himself, she supposed, because there was nothing there behind the façade.
"Please don't go with Grandfather Nate... he's just using you, my lovely Kirk."
"I have to go, precious Luciana. He's my friend. He saved my life and I owe him. I'm proud that he asked me to go."
"Oh, precious Kirk... he asked you to go because Karen put him up to it. She doesn’t want Pete to go with him to old America. It's too dangerous. You'll never come home again... she knows it as well as I do."
"All the more reason for me to go, my lovely Luciana... please wait for me. I promise I'll return to you one day. Nothing but death could keep me from your side."
He was dead. She knew it ages ago, when Candice was still a child, yet she could never admit it. She had waited, first in Toulon and then when it made her too lonely, she came home to the Isle of Skye to wait. Candice was grown now and gone back to Toulon where the weather was better and the wine plentiful.
Luciana had been alone so long she didn’t know how to change. When she saw laughing happy couples she hated them for their mirth, so she kept to herself, with no one to salve her grief, not even one person with whom she felt comfortable talking.
When her mother left, she told herself she didn’t care, that they had never been close anyway. She thought briefly of traveling to the Grampians to find her father but she knew he'd turn her away. She was too much like him, she supposed.
As the centuries passed the old villa rotted around her until the roof began to sag with the incessant rains and all the rooms stank of mildew and mold yet still she stayed on, waiting for the impossible.
And then one day Grandfather Nate returned.
Chapter 18—Sounds of Silence
He could still hear them humming to him when the nights were still, whispering secrets only he could hear.
Though he tried to put the nanobots out of his mind, his love affair with them was far deeper than he realized even though they were but tangled bits of sand impregnated with a twist of hybridized nucleic acid.
He had taken advantage of the secondary structure within nucleic acid to pattern his nanobots in a base-pairing manner to allow them to reproduce despite the fact his miniature machines were non-biological agents.
Noticing that several biological structures relied on psuedoknots, Micah had incorporated them into the inner workings of his nanobots even though it made the standard method of dynamic programming more difficult to predict.
Since his nanobots were programmed to seek better solutions to every difficulty they encountered, they were able to circumnavigate the general problem of predicting lowest free energy structures and organize themselves into self-replicating machines capable of interacting with their environment.
They recognized Micah's body on account of their long embrace together. His nanobots had not only saved his life but prolonged it well beyond the normal expectancy range for human beings. He knew that for them love was as foreign as spoken words... but what was love anyway but a chemical reaction deep within the human brain?
"Is Kirk dead, Micah?"
"Something has happened to the nanobots' nexus, Mr. Nate. They didn’t have time to finish reprogramming Kirk's body. I'm afraid he might have suffocated."
"Why is his body so heavy?"
"I set up a default program in all the nanobots so if something happened to their central brain they would automatically take on a reverse polarity to the ground... in other words, they become highly magnetic."
"Will we be able to move him, Micah?"
"No... not unless I can reprogram a new nexus."
"How long will that take?"
"At least ten centuries, Mr. Nate... the nanobots have to reconfigure a new brain. They are basically starting all over again, by themselves this time. Before, I was there to alter the programming if a need arose. Now in order for that to happen, they need time and energy. I can supply the energy but time will take its own course."
"I hate to leave Kirk here, Micah... animals may break into this tunnel and make off with his body."
"Don’t worry about that, Mr. Nate. The nanobots have created a shell around him that nothing can penetrate. He'll be all right here until we're able to return for him."
It was too easy to lie to them... they all seemed to believe every word he said. When he told them the nanobots were dead, the only person who questioned it was Ena. She too was easily mollified with the news that they were never alive in the first place so the nanobots could not die.
"Only that which is born can die, darling Ena. My nanobots are inorganic self-organizing molecules capable of interacting with living tissue but they are not in any s
ense of the world alive themselves."
"What will happen to them now, sweet Micah? Will they turn back into sand?"
"They are sand, my precious Ena. That is all they've ever been. They will doubtlessly lie dormant until time undoes their programming and renders them obsolete like the rest of the world and the things in it that were built by human hands."
He knew better, though.
His nanobots had been outfitting with a failsafe device in case of a devastating attack by an unknown enemy. He expected the unexpected. By instilling a default mechanism within the nanobots, he effectively guaranteed not only their immortality but his.
He knew if his miniature machines ceased to function, so would he. His body was weak. The flesh had always vexed him with its infirmities and obscenities shrieking out for a cure that no doctor could offer. He had been born a misshapen lump of fragile tissue held together by an intelligence that surpassed any other person's he'd ever met.
Knowing that Kirk's body was available lent Micah an idea. He had never attempted to inculcate a living brain with the intelligence of metal—not even his own—but it seemed that the time was ripe. Since all nanobots were entangled, it would be a simple matter to generate a non-descript program and upload it into the general network.
Once installed, the nexus—the mind of the nanobots—would begin using the synapses within Kirk's brain to regenerate itself. Rather than existing in the open, the protective shell of Kirk's skull would serve to alleviate most of his concerns regarding attack by the elements or wild animals or errant jets.
He knew they destroyed his nexus on purpose. At first, he rejoiced to finally be free of his metal monstrosities that demanded so much of him. Soon, however, he realized his mistake. He could never be free.
Long ago, Micah had ceased counting the centuries as they flew by. As a youngster, he knew that time was plotting against him... in only a few short years he would grow sick and die. It didn’t seem fair. He sat watching through the picture window while other more able-bodied boys and girls ran and played in the park across the street from where he lived always yearning to join in but knowing he couldn’t.