by Dan Glover
Lily didn’t realize until she sat down how tired she was. She hadn’t slept in two days nor had she eaten more than croissant for breakfast that morning. As she closed her eyes she felt watched, as if everyone aboard the train knew she had escaped from prison and if they turned her in they would receive a handsome reward instead of the death that awaited them all.
It irritated her for some reason... the voice prying her out of the sleep which she fought so hard to obtain. It was a woman's voice, hoarse and sick, as if begging her for something she could never provide. She ignored it hoping the woman would go away. Eventually, she did.
"I rather hoped you meant something else."
The words rang in Lily's mind yet they had not been spoken. She knew intimately that if the words emerged into the world that events would unfold that were better left alone. Each step down that path lead inexorably towards the abyss of loneliness and a world bereft of hope.
"Excuse me, miss... do you know where the train stops next?"
Lily kept her eyes closed. She had no idea where the train stopped other than at its destination in Moscow where she could board another that would take her home. Once in Lake Baikal, she planned on never leaving again.
"I know you're awake. Why won't you talk to me?"
Lily wanted to scream. There was no need to interrupt her sleep, not when the cost was so high. Didn’t the woman realize that?
The woman was dying. Lily could smell it in the air with each fetid breath. What did that matter, however? She didn’t know her. Let her die. Millions of her kind perished every year. What difference would one more make?
It occurred to Lily that she wasn’t dreaming.
If that were so, however, it meant she was no longer stranded on an alien planet somewhere at the edges of tomorrow. It meant she had somehow found her way home. When she opened her eyes, the woman had vanished. Lily didn’t know if she had simply evaporated or if she had gone to another car, perhaps the dining car, to get something to eat.
That was where she was supposed to be. Lily realized that she had changed the predetermined course of her life simply by willing it. If that was so, then the rest of her dream was just that... a figment of her overactive imagination. She would have no husband nor would she ever give birth.
A sudden urge rose up inside her to jump up and seek out the woman with the sick voice, to heal her, to love her for the next thousand years. Lily knew that if she followed the desire to go to the woman she would be lost forever.
She appeared at the periphery of her vision, a bag of bones that walked as if she was already dead. Even from across the car Lily could feel the pain emanating from the woman, the longing for a life that she had never lived.
"It isn’t my fault."
Lily didn’t realize she had spoken aloud until a little girl in the seat directly facing her opened her gigantic brown eyes to star at her, startled perhaps, at hearing the alien voice speaking from across the universe.
For a moment, Lily didn’t recognize the girl but then she flicked her hair back with a twitch of her neck just as Natalia was wont to do. It was one of her endearing features yet simultaneously infuriating.
"Yes it is."
The whisper was Natalia's but the women had vanished into the sands of time leaving the girl behind. Lily shook her head. A murmur was sounding inside her mind, not something she was actively experiencing. At least that's what she told herself. It had to be some sort of mistake, her being on this train again. Still, the three little words had effectively changed the course of history in just a matter of microseconds.
"Why don't you just go die somewhere."
Lily said it with venom in her voice, as if she might be happy to help the little bitch achieve the goal which was now set for her. A man in the seat next to the girl turned around to glare at Lily.
It was Kirk.
She was so flummoxed that she forgot how to speak, as if she had just surfaced from under the waters and had yet to learn to mimic the screeches of the monkeys that only yesterday had come down out of the trees.
"What are you doing here, Kirk?"
The words escaped her mouth before she had time to close it. She was no longer certain if she was asleep or awake... if indeed she had somehow been transported back to the particular moment in time that set it all in place.
"I'm waiting for you, Lady Lily."
He didn’t stammer and nor did he have that look in his eyes... the vacant stare that indicated he was no more than a bumbling idiot. He seemed to revel in knowing how unsettled he made her, as if he had planned the moment for ages. She had the sudden inclination to get up and run... to jump from the train if need be. She didn’t belong here and what's more, neither did Kirk.
She woke drenched in sweat with the concuba tree breathing softly over her body as it must have sensed her frantic mood. The dream meant something... before it faded into the dim recesses of her memory she pulled out one of the old journals and writing with the enclosed pencil on a blank page in the back she described her dream in as vivid a detail as she could.
Everyone had assumed Kirk was dead or so she had been told. The story went that Nate and Micah had been trying to save him after Kirk was attacked by a plethora of nanobots when the nest had been destroyed. Kirk had turned to steel, became so heavy they could no longer carry him, and was left for dead in one of the underground tunnels leading into Cornell.
They hadn’t told the truth, or perhaps they did but they themselves didn’t know the facts with any accuracy. Lily told herself none of that mattered any longer... the old world had passed away long ago. Or had it? She had no way of knowing that one way or another. It was only an assumption on her part.
Why would Kirk be waiting for her?
The boy arrived at Orchardton Hall little more than a blithering idiot, or so everyone thought. What if it was all an elaborate hoax? She knew a little something about hiding a truth... she had been deceiving others for better than a thousand years... and for how long before that?
It was hard, though. People asked her how old she was but there was no real answer... and no way to explain that either. She was both newly born yet as ancient as the Lake. Not only had her name changed over the eons but her body as well.
Perhaps that was why she was still so enamored with Kāne. He seemed as much a chameleon as she was, able to change not only his moods but his appearance at will. Once, he had been a precious blue-eyed young man with sparkling blonde hair that contrasted with her own dark locks... but no, she had the blonde hair... or did she?
A recollection of a million years ago bubbled up from somewhere deep inside what must have been her reptilian brain... of looking into a mirror and seeing a dark haired girl staring back, and Lily was not her name.
But what was it?
Chapter 58—Converging
He had never seen the kid before... or had he?
Arriving at Cornell University had given Micah a distinctly heady sense of déjà vu and now it was happening again. The boy was obviously from Scotland judging by his heavy accent and something in his eyes singed a fire into the echoes of Micah's memory.
"Your name is Micah."
The kid had walked right into his dorm room as if he belonged there. A momentary burst of anger blossomed in Micah's mind at the audacity of it all until the boy began to speak. He knew things... events that had not yet happened, the dreams that Micah had ruminated over for years.
"You used to live on the sixth floor of this building. You claimed that you invented tiny machines that you called nanobots. They were intended to heal the ills of humanity but you allowed them to run amok.
"After you spent three hundred years living in this building, you migrated to the south of France where you met a girl named Ena. You fell in love with her and you forgot your primary mission."
"How do you know these things? Do I know you? What is your name?"
"Don't be stupid, Micah... of course you know me... you've been waiting for me for a thous
and years."
"You're Kirk."
The words emerged from Micah's mouth of their own accord. Of course it was Kirk. Though he had only met the man briefly and at a bad time for them both, the eyes staring at him told him all he needed to know.
"I've brought you something. You'll require this if you are to accomplish what you set out to master."
Micah hadn’t noticed that the boy was carrying a black cloth sack... for an instant he the distinct impression that the kid was going to pull a rabbit out of it... that all this was an incredibly intricate joke that the upper classmen were playing on him.
Micah recognized the box right off.
"Where did you get this, Kirk? It shouldn’t exist."
"I made it for you, Micah. I knew you would need it."
The world spun around so violently Micah had to grab the edge of a nearby table to keep from toppling over. He had fairly convinced himself the extremely long and vivid visions he had were only that... dreams, fantasies that he had constructed in his own mind.
The sudden realization struck him like a hammer to the head: it wasn’t. Those fantasies of his had really happened... and if Kirk existed in the here and now it meant he too had been thrown back in time and space. But how had he ended up in the same place as Micah? What were the odds?
"There is a theory known as the twin prime conjecture."
The professor's voice sounded in his ears as if he was actually present, droning on about all manner of boring mathematical models that Micah had mastered in kindergarten. Now, though, it suddenly got interesting.
"Twin primes appear despite the general tendency of gaps between adjacent primes to become larger as the numbers themselves grow larger due to what is known as the prim number theorem."
It was as if the professor was in the same room reciting the day's lesson all over again for Micah's edification. As his mind sorted through all the various permutations, he realized that since the human brain was basically a mathematical construct, it followed that consciousness was too.
It became apparent to him that although he couldn’t prove it, due to the twin prime conjecture whenever a quantum jump occurred such as when he was teleported back in time, the second succeeding jump would take place at a magnitude of two, or the lowest prime greater than one.
"There exists what are known as isolated primes... these occur at random even though for every number there are an infinite number of prime gaps."
Micah's racing mind felt like a whirlpool spiraling outward and upward rather than down and inward... lifting his imagination into unknown realms of knowledge that even the professor did not dare to recognize, for going down that path led to madness.
"This conjecture can be justified if not proven as the constant approaches infinity. We may describe the density function as a combination of unknown values as well as knowing the number centered between twin primes is always divisible by three."
"How did you know to make this, Kirk?"
Micah held the black square box in both hands wondering if it was what he thought... the nanobots that he was to develop... and if so, where did Kirk come by the knowledge to develop such technology? The polymer did not yet exist... that was the main sticking point to reinventing his miniature machines.
"They taught me."
The boy nodded toward the box as he worked his way to the door.
"Where are you going, Kirk?"
"I have things to do. You should know that the nanobots inside that box are trans-generational... they have evolved an awareness all their own. Use them at your own risk, Micah."
"Wait, Kirk..."
But it was too late. The boy was gone as quickly as he appeared. Going to the doorway and staring down the hall, Micah couldn’t see anyone. It was as if Kirk had vanished into the floor.
Or had it all been a dream?
The box in his hands was solid and real... that much he knew. The thought of being the butt of a prank surfaced in Micah's thoughts once more... it would be just like the upper classmen to play a joke on him. They were probably all huddled together in the next room even now, laughing and congratulating each other on the success of their little charade... that was how Kirk had disappeared so suddenly... only it wasn’t really Kirk at all.
"The sum of reciprocal primes is convergent... it derives from careful use of the inclusion-exclusion principle."
In other words, Kirk's appearance at Cornell was a foregone conclusion of their both being kicked back into time... their positions were bound to converge as long as one of them made use of the inclusion-exclusion principle.
But he had always been told Kirk was no more than a low-grade moron... he couldn’t possibly have acquired the knowledge needed to succeed at such an endeavor. Unless it wasn’t Kirk at all... rather, it was the shell that had once been Kirk.
Micah had spent years telling himself that none of it had happened... he had never lived with immortal beings that promised him eternal life... he had never fallen in love with a girl named Ena who had gills where her ears should have been and who could swim miles beneath the ocean as easily as she walked on the land and who might have loved him back.
When he became a bit manic about it all, mother had insisted he needed therapy. All that taught him was to keep quiet about his delusions... to absence himself from others who would not understand... who all would be dead in just a few years.
That wasn’t a perfect solution, however. The more he withdrew, the more persistent his delusions became. Was he truly insane? Was he merely a man drowning and grasping at any straw?
His physician had pronounced the death sentence a month ago, talking to Micah as if he was a child who couldn’t understand the intricacies of the medical terminology he was using.
"I'm sorry to tell you this, son, but you have a terminal condition."
He didn’t seem sorry. Rather, the doctor seemed oddly smug, as if he had made an astounding discovery, one that would reverberate through the centuries.
"You have a disease for which there is no available treatment."
"Look, doc... don't talk to me like I'm a moron... my IQ is probably twice what yours is. Tell me my diagnosis."
It was pretty obvious to Micah that no one had ever talked to the doctor like he did prior to that day. The man blinked his eyes repeatedly while turning away from Micah's bespeckled glare.
"Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis."
"Idiopathic means you have no idea what causes my disease... right, doc?"
"Yes, Micah... that's right."
"I can expect to live another three to five years... right, doc?"
"You knew about the diagnosis already, Micah?"
"Don't be a fool, doctor... of course I didn’t know about the diagnosis, or more properly, my diagnosis. I know my grandfather and one of my uncles died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and I also know there is a genetic predisposition to the disease that runs in my family."
"Normally this disease strikes older adults so I'm a little mystified in your particular case, Micah. Do you mind if we run additional tests, just to confirm the diagnosis?"
"Yes, doctor, I mind. I'm not going to be your guinea pig."
"We can't cure your disease, Micah, but what we can learn from you might enable us to find appropriate treatment down the road. Please consider my request."
Micah hated the pity pouring out of the man's eyes. All his life people had pitied him for one reason or another... first there was his physical infirmities, and then of course his intelligence which set him apart from his family, his peers, even his professors at Cornell. And now they had something new to pity.
If the supposed delusions were indeed real, then that pity was sadly misplaced. All those folk who looked down their noses at him would soon discover that they were the ones in need of solace, not him.
Now, he had the answer to curing his malady right in his hands... if indeed the box contained what Kirk promised it did. Examining it, Micah could see no way of opening it... no hidden l
atch, no hinges at all. The box seemed an anomaly... something that by all he knew of the physical world could not and should not exist.
Yet it did.
The texture was neither rough nor smooth. The color seemed to shift whenever he tried to set his eyes upon it. Taking out a magnifying glass to study the surface did no good... even then he could discern no telltale signs of how it was configured or how to open it to see what was inside.
It would open when it was ready.
The thought appeared in his mind as if someone had written it there. He only had to be patient... the disease that was even now manifesting itself would be cured, and what was more, the onerous side effects of his original experimentations would be negligible now that the nanobots were trans-generational.
Micah had a feeling things were going to be different now.
Chapter 59—Free
She shouldn’t be feeling better.
Not an hour ago, Ginger was ready to die. Somehow, though, after Amanda forced her to her feet, made her walk to the winery behind Toulon Castle, and fed her half a dozen mugs of rich red wine nearly a century old, she was recovering her health.
"Why are we still alive, darling Amanda? I thought we were both nearly dead."
"Maybe we are dead, sweet Ginger... is that possible?"
For a moment, Ginger thought Amanda was right. That must surely be the answer... they were dead. But how was it that they were drinking wine? Ghosts couldn’t do that.
"No, we're not dead, my precious Amanda... our minds are still muddled from the Lake Syndrome and maybe too much wine, but we are anything but dead. Speaking of that, did the wine save our lives, perhaps?"
"Maybe... but unlikely, sweet Ginger... rather, I would venture to say those dark clouds were actually nanobots attacking Toulon. Somehow, though, they ended up infiltrating our bodies instead and inadvertently saved our lives."
"Wait... if that is so, then we no longer need to be close to the people from the Lake... is that right, my wondrous Amanda?"