by Dan Glover
Lily had instigated the affair, or at least that’s what he told himself. Plus it was common to share partners among the people of the Lake. But Nate wasn’t of the Lake, at least not entirely. He was one of the first born who share traits of both species, like Catan.
"This is your son, darling Kāne. Hold him. He knows you as his father."
Ginger had nearly died giving birth to their boy yet he had left them both behind like forgotten toys. These memories were unwanted and yet he couldn’t seem to stop fixating upon them.
What was it that Ginger was trying to tell him?
"I have to go, darling Luciana. Come with me. I need your help."
Chapter 50—Days Past
The flash momentarily blinded her even though she shut her eyes.
Ena had expected an explosion. There was none. Instead the whole of her being had lighted up as if she had become a kind of supernova, a star burst dominating not only the galaxy but the whole universe.
When she opened her eyes she was in a world of water. At first she thought perhaps her sight had been scalded in the burst of unleashed energy and even though she took a moment to collect her wits and put her hands over her face when she took them away opened her eyes again, the world was still blue and bubbly.
Reaching out a hand to touch a leaf of a nearby tendril waving placidly in the warm currents she didn’t recognize the plant. The edges of the vine were whorled with miniature red buds that seemed to revel in her touch expanding and contracting until they formed a mirror image of her hand.
She thought how she must be dreaming even though she couldn’t seem to remember going to sleep. She had been in old America. Spotting the pyramid had been easy. It dominated the landscape below her like a great hoary ghost that had no right to exist in the same world as she did.
It was Micah's doings. The thought had surfaced at the same time she began to wonder what had happened to the boy once he fell from the anti-gravity craft. She knew coming into contact with the warp field could have detrimental effects yet she had yet to fathom exactly what those effects were.
Now, she thought how she might have discovered just what would occur in that situation. She had flown the craft into the pyramid in an effort to thwart whatever purpose Kirk might have in mind... and Micah by proxy, of course. Kirk was but a plaything, an experiment into a depravity that Micah feared.
"If I can create a new nexus for my nanobots I might be able to save Kirk, my sweet Luciana. Otherwise, I'm afraid he will be welded to the earth forever."
She had known the boy was lying yet by her silence she allowed it to continue. She should have alerted the others to Micah's machinations, his ambitions to conquer the world of the living by overwhelming it with metal monstrosities.
"Why can't you simply reverse the polarity and free Kirk's body from the earth's grip so we can bring it home for burial, darling Micah? At least that way Luciana will have closure. I worry about her all alone like that at the Isle of Skye."
Ena pressed her daughter into coming back to Toulon with her but the girl would have none of it. She seemed bewitched by the thought of Kirk appearing again. Trying to reason with Luciana was impossible. She wondered if they produced Kirk's body if that might be the key to dissolving the incessant mourning that her daughter had fallen into.
"I have nothing to upload the program into, sweet Ena. There has to be a central processing unit, otherwise there is no way to reach all the nanobots."
The boy was not telling the truth yet something kept her from confronting him. An unwholesome uneasiness always invaded her psyche when Micah appeared, as if the boy put off some invisible energy that only she could feel and if she revealed her secret he might become more dangerous than he already was.
Apparently Micah had forgotten bragging about how his miniature menaces were entangled with one another. Ena didn’t understand the science behind it, but she knew that when particles were entangled, what happened to one was instantaneously transmitted to all the others.
After mulling the problem over for centuries, Ena came to the conclusion that for the good of everyone else Micah had to somehow be eliminated. She didn’t have the audacity to kill the boy outright nor did she have sufficient evidence of his plans and prospects for ruling the world so she couldn’t approach Grandfather Nate or the Ladies.
She had to take matters into her own hands. Ridding the world of Micah was only the first step, however. If what the boy said was so then the creation brewing inside of Kirk's skull had to be dealt with as well. There was no choice left. Unless she wanted to live to see her friends and lovers become swarms of intelligent metal drones she had to act immediately.
Banishing Micah was easy. He had no idea that she was onto him and the secrets he was brewing. For a genius the man was surprisingly stupid and far more pliable than any male of her species. They were all partners of her own prescient abilities though not to extent that she felt.
In a sudden spark of insight Ena saw that it wasn’t Micah at all... it had never been. There was someone far more ambitious playing the tune to which the boy danced... the one person she would have never considered in a million years.
Kirk had always seemed a dullard... the few times she spoke to him he had answered in monotone syllables as if embarrassed by some unseen infirmity that disrupted the flow of thoughts from his brain to his mouth.
Was it possible that he had been playing her? What she didn’t understand was how he had managed to trick everyone into thinking he was an imbecile or why he desired such a thing. He was hiding something of importance that her prescience hadn’t the strength to see... until now.
Kirk was a disruption in the music. He didn’t belong where he was... something had occurred to the man that had uprooted him from one time and planted him solidly into another. Ena sensed it was related to the singularity produced by the anti-gravity machine but the circumstances weren’t clear to her.
The one thing she knew with a certainty was that the idea for the nanobots did not originate with Micah... he merely copied an already extant blueprint. Micah was no genius... he had been posing as that which he desired to be but never would obtain, not without help.
Without Kirk, Micah would have failed at the experiment he called his nanobots. The boy would have died a thousand years ago of the disease rotting his body as it aged him well ahead of his years.
But Kirk and Micah had never met face to face, to her knowledge. Or had they? She recalled a discussion she had with Grandfather Nate just before she left Toulon for old America.
"I don't understand where our probes are going, precious Ena. According to our equations they should be landing on the moon of a gas giant circling a red dwarf star."
Grandfather Nate visited her in Toulon along with Pete and Karen bearing strange tales of sending out interstellar probes but losing contact with them soon after.
"I know nothing of mathematical equations, Grandfather Nate... but isn’t it possible your probes are landing right where you intend them to land?"
"Is it the communication devices that are failing, darling Ena?"
"No... I think not. You are thinking in terms of linear time, Grandfather Nate. The wormhole you've established transcends both space and time. The probes are landing right where you intend them to land. It is the time that has been displaced."
"We never considered that option, my precious Ena. That solves an enormous riddle that's been plaguing us for a century. But how do we remedy the situation? How can we control the time factor?"
"There is no time, Grandfather Nate, and no space. They are an illusion, and therefore uncontrollable in tandem. When you pierce the veil of the space continuum, you no longer have the option of selecting the time coordinates. Visa versa, when you pierce the time continuum, you can no longer rely upon space coordinates."
Her grandfather had walked away with a perplexed look on his face as if she had just told him all his hopes and dreams were nothing more than that. Ena didn’t know how she kne
w the things she did but she understood enough to realize that interstellar travel the way Grandfather Nate envisioned it was impossible.
Yet the paradox of it all was how time travel was not impossible at all... in fact, it was a logical certainty given the circumstances. If Micah and Kirk were both thrown into the well of time at precise enough intervals they might have somehow crossed channels, in a manner of speaking.
Whatever energies comprised their bodies as well as their consciousnesses might have become entangled... no, it was too far fetched... the two of them sharing for just an instant each other's awareness wasn’t even remotely possible. She was obviously daydreaming again.
Yet here she was... finding herself swimming through an obviously alien landscape making her way toward what seemed to be the blue dawning of a new day far above her... but what kind of day?
Chapter 51—Time Beyond
She recovered more quickly than she expected.
Karen remembered being deathly sick with Lake Syndrome when she first came to Orchardton Hall. It had taken the better part of two days to recover. Within an hour of Maon finding them she was fully recuperated and ready to travel. She didn’t know how they were going to manage that feat, however.
Pete proclaimed that the anti-gravity craft was smashed beyond repair, especially since they were in the middle of a forest at least a thousand kilometers from help. It was becoming obvious that their only alternative was to walk to Toulon, a journey of several months even with luck.
Still, the fact that Pete was breathing again enlivened her spirit. She had been so certain he was dead. His heart had stopped beating, he wasn’t breathing, and even his body had grown cold to the touch.
"The nanobots I carry in my bloodstream are under instructions to save my life, darling Karen. When I'm in the presence of the people of the Lake they are dormant. But when I'm isolated from them and in danger of succumbing to Lake Syndrome, the nanobots take over my vital functions keeping me alive."
"If that is so, my precious Pete, then we've discovered the cure for Lake Syndrome."
"Only if we wish to become metal monstrosities, my lovely Karen... in time, I'll revert to what I was when Micah held me captive in old America. It was only the presence of Lady Lily that freed me from that nightmare."
"Do the nanobots have the same affect upon me, my darling Pete?"
"You're the medical doctor, sweet Karen. What do your observations tell you?"
"I knew I was infected with Micah's nanobots from the moment I met him again in old New York City. He said we were all contaminated by them, or invigorated is how he put it. I never felt any symptoms, however, nor have I noticed any since then.
"I do know that I was certain you were dead. You had no bodily functions, my miraculous Pete. I also know I didn’t want to go on living without you. Yes, I am a medical doctor, and for all intents and purposes you were dead. I don’t pretend to understand how you are still alive."
She had always feared what would happen to her husband if Micah was successful in rebuilding his nexus. Though the boy promised her that he had no ill intentions toward anyone either at Toulon or the Isle of Skye she couldn’t help but sense that he was keeping some dread secret from her that even their long friendship couldn’t pry loose.
Over the centuries she came to hate Micah... not the boy but the ideas he represented. Life was too precious to befoul it with the ugliness of inorganic matter. To pretend that bits of silicon sand could be the salvation of anyone or anything seemed a misguided attempt at remaking the world in an unwholesome image of some dark god lording over others at their own expense.
That Maon and Sileas had been ejected from the anti-gravity craft but only sent back in time a few minutes as well as a few miles away had been nothing short of a miracle. She had talked to Nate about the potential for time travel by way of the warp field generated by his new invention but she couldn’t conceive of such an application being useful in any sort of way.
"When we are inside the anti-gravity craft we are no longer inside this universe, my precious Karen. The warp field acts as a kind of event horizon protecting us from the singularity that is the universe as well as shielding the universe from the singularity that is inside the warp field."
"What would happen if one came in contact with the other, darling Nate?"
"As near as we can mathematically model it, there would be an instantaneous annihilation, although there is a built-in repulsive field surrounding the craft. As long as anything like a bird or an animal approaches the craft slowly, it will be shunted aside without harm. If there is a violent collision that pushes through the repulsive field, then it appears the object will disintegrate in one universe and appear in another."
"I don’t understand, sweet Nate. Do you mean in another place?"
"That is something we don't yet scientifically understand, darling Karen. Ena tells me that we are dealing with not only traveling through space but through time as well. We're not sure how to reconcile our equations to the possibility of time travel when they have told us repeatedly that it is an impossibility to go back in time."
"Everything I have ever read about it, my precious Nate, states that time travel as such would have more to do with consciousness than corporeality."
"Aren't consciousness and corporeality tied up together anyway, sweet Karen? Can we separate one from the other?"
"That's a question that goes back thousands of years, darling Nate, and one that has never had a sufficient answer. In the years before the Great Dying I remember reading a book by a man who claimed that he could prove our reality was only a computer simulation being run by an advanced race living in the future. His proof was that such a conjecture couldn’t be disproved but neither could it be collaborated.
"His whole thought process reminded me of people like Marilyn who believed in a god because their faith could not be disproved. There is a sort of hideous insanity lurking inside those sorts of thought processes. When we begin to ask if we can disconnect our minds from our bodies we are automatically assuming they are indeed divided.
"So when you ask if we can separate consciousness from corporeality I have to say: no. But that does not preclude time travel. Corporeality arises from consciousness, not the other way around. If the consciousness of a being is teleported to another time and place, they will create their world through being aware of it just as we do here."
"Life is but a dream."
"In a sense, yes it is, sweet and precious Nate... as long as we remember we're all in the same dream."
"I'm wondering if we are going about this all wrong, sweet Karen. Perhaps we have no need of a starship. All we require is the singularity produced by it."
"So we could simply teleport from one planet to another... that's an intriguing hypothesis, precious Nate, but not one I would care to test personally."
"Maybe we already have, sweet Karen... perhaps the fact that we are here now is proof that the teleport method of time travel works."
"I'm not following you, darling Nate."
"Lily once told me that her species came into being some twenty five million years ago when they spontaneously evolved right after Lake Baikal was created in an earthquake."
"Yes... she told me the same thing, sweet Nate. What does that have to do with time travel?"
"From what I understand in reading the Archives, darling Karen, the ancestors of human beings had not evolved by that time... that didn’t happen until two million years ago, give or take. So how could we be so closely related?"
"Are you saying one of the Ladies were sent back twenty five million years ago to Lake Baikal? That hardly seems plausible, precious Nate."
"No, darling Karen... I am saying one of the hybrids was teleported back... it had to be someone of mixed blood."
Chapter 52—Backwards
For a split second she thought she saw her son.
It was merely a passing glimpse but the feeling arising in her hearts spoke to her of times long past b
eneath Lake Baikal. Noticing a hitch in Natalia's voice informed Lauren of unspoken secrets that her lover didn’t wish to share.
The land of old Australia seemed backwards. Though they came there in the spring, autumn was descending over the low plains that ran inward from the restless sea. Standing in one of the parapets of their newly discovered castle Lauren could look out in all directions as she marveled at miracles she had yet to dream about.
"I miss our Lily."
It was the first time Natalia had spoken their lover's name. Lauren had been thinking of the girl too, ever since seeing who she thought might have been her son Kāne sailing into the east.
Where could the man be bound for now? Had he known of their impending arrival? It would be like him to keep running away, or perhaps she had always misread the man's intentions.
Kāne walked his own path. Once that had endeared him to her but as the centuries passed Lauren began wondering about his true motives... or if he even had any. Perhaps he merely went where the wind blew him.
One thing she knew: when Lily called, he listened. He might not have remembered her name or even the fact that they'd once been lovers but something continued to pull him to the girl's side, especially when she was in trouble.
"Yes, my lovely Natalia... I miss her dearly as well."
Lauren hated lying to her lover yet she salved her remorse by telling herself everyone told mistruths at times, especially when it was meant to save someone from the inevitable hurt that was reality.
She didn’t miss Lily at all. She reveled in her time alone with Natalia yet she knew the girl had a tender spot deep inside of her for Lily... she was the one who had once saved her life, though of course Lauren had done so as well and only just recently.