by Dan Glover
"Kāne and Alpin showed up not a week ago, precious Nate. They are in the vineyards helping with the harvest. I was just on my way there when I saw your ship. Where have you been for so long, darling Niall?"
She noticed a cloud pass over Nate's face at the mention of Kāne.
"I was in old America with Kirk."
"For all these years? I thought Kirk was dead."
"Something happened to him, darling Amanda... he wasn’t dead but he wasn’t himself either. The nanobots of Micah's had taken over his brain. He saved my life, though."
"So where is Kirk? How come you didn’t bring him home with you?"
"There was an accident, sweet Amanda... well, not exactly an accident. Someone flew an anti-gravity craft into some sort of edifice constructed of nanobots. When it hit, Kirk disappeared. We assumed he was pulled into the wormhole generated by the warp field on the anti-gravity craft."
"It was Ena... she left here with Micah to find Kirk's body and bring it home."
"Are you certain, darling Amanda? If that's true, she is gone too."
"I heard them arguing about their destination before they left here, my precious Nate. I'm positive it was her... and Micah as well. Does that mean they were pulled into the wormhole too?"
"I'm afraid so... what terrible news... there is no telling where they might have ended up."
Amanda couldn’t remember ever seeing Nate look so forlorn... it was as if he had lost another trusted friend. Perhaps in a way he had... with Ena gone, he no longer had anyone to rely upon as far as his work went.
She remembered how proud he was when they first developed the anti-gravity unit and though it would have been the easiest thing to claim all the glory for himself, Nate told everyone how none of his work would have been possible without Ena's help... in fact, he went so far as to say she was the true innovator... he and Pete had merely followed her directions, and reluctantly at that.
It didn’t seem fair. Amanda had watched Nate and Pete struggle and sweat over their work for years yet couldn’t seem to solve the enigma, yet Ena took one look at it, suggested a few changes, and presto! The machine flew as intended.
In fact, the power generator they used at Toulon was another of Ena's innovations... a cold fusion unit whose inner workings had baffled even the most intelligent researchers before the Great Dying.
Amanda had no idea how it worked and what was more, Ena herself claimed not to understand it either. She said the way to make it work came to her in a vision... that she saw a need for a power source that didn’t rely on fossil fuel and the cold fusion unit was the result.
Apparently it ran on microscopic droplets of seawater fed into a magnetic matrix which held in place a tiny glowing globe of blue fire that produced no ash, no radiation, and no residual pollution like the old combustion engines that ran on gasoline and diesel.
Rather than having to run hard wires to power the lights and other appliances, Ena's invention worked simply by flipping a switch which allowed the ground to be completed between the cold fusion unit and the earth.
When Ena visited Toulon she brought along long tubes which she stuck to the walls and the ceilings of the castle that like balloons rubbed on cloth clung there as if charged with static electricity.
"You can move these anywhere you want, sweet Amanda... I'll also convert your electrical appliances to work the same way... you will not have to plug them in... all you do is turn them on and they will work."
"I don’t understand, my wondrous Ena... how is that even possible?"
"The planet is actually a gigantic reservoir of electricity... this tiny glowing globe is in effect drawing positive ions into its magnetic chamber by fusing together the hydrogen atoms with the oxygen atoms on a molecular level. It doesn’t actually produce power... it generates power by gathering the latent ions already in existence all around us."
"I didn’t know you were an inventor, sweet Ena."
"I am not, darling Amanda. I am just a girl who happens to see things backwards."
Amanda watched appreciatively as Nate and Niall ate stack after stack of hotcakes that she offered up fresh from the griddle. It was obvious they hadn’t eaten well in a long while. Finally, they seemed to have had their fill.
"Thank you for breakfast, sweet Amanda... I'm going down to the vineyard to see if I can be of any help in the harvest. I'll talk to you both later."
Niall walked outside leaving the two of them alone in the kitchen. Amanda felt as if she should say something but it didn’t come out the way she wanted.
"Are you staying, my sweet Nate?"
"To tell you the truth, my precious Amanda, I was afraid you and Ginger would turn me away the moment you saw me."
"Oh, you silly man... you have no idea how long we've waited for you to return to us. I didn’t mean to assume you were actually going to stay with us like before... I just wondered..."
"I know I hurt you badly, my beautiful Amanda, and I know I do not deserve a second chance... but yes, I would dearly love to stay... I mean, if you'll have me."
"Come... let us go to the vineyard... Ginger will be ecstatic to see you again, my darling Nate... but first, could we... I mean, if you feel like it after your arduous trip..."
Chapter 65—Somewhere in Time
He belonged with Ena.
It perplexed him how he didn’t recognize the true depth of his love for her until his last trip to the Isle of Skye... where he found his wife gone, the old villa where they once lived falling apart, and their daughter Luciana a shell of her former self.
He approached Karen about his dilemma while they were walking back to Toulon Castle after having worked the vineyards all day long. He took the opportunity to introduce her to his idea of finding Ena once more.
"I had a dream, Dr. Karen. Ena came to me telling me she needs me. She said that you could help me get to her."
"I don’t understand, darling Alpin... where is Ena? No one has seen her."
"She's at Lake Baikal."
"Oh... well we can get there in a matter of minutes now... come, I will take you."
"That won't work, Dr. Karen. She's at Lake Baikal, but she isn’t there now."
"I'm not sure I follow, sweet Alpin."
"She told me how she was in the anti-gravity craft that crashed into the nanobots in old America. When she came into contact with the singularity of the machine, she was thrown backward in time. She is at Lake Baikal but she is twenty five million years in the past. She is the first mermaid."
"That isn’t possible, my precious Alpin... coming into contact with the singularity doesn’t work like that... if Ena did have a direct encounter with warp field, she would have been disintegrated into her molecular constituents. She would no longer exist... at least not in the sense we think of it."
"How do you know that for certain, Dr. Karen?"
"Nate and Pete have been running experiments by sending probes through a wormhole they opened up using the same sort of warp field generated by the anti-gravity machines.
"In order to monitor the probe they used a quantum communication device which Ena showed them how to make. But they could not detect a thing. Whatever they send into the wormhole disappears completely. It must disintegrate."
"Did they ask Ena why that was happening, Dr. Karen?"
"Pete said that she muttered some nonsense about the probes going exactly where they were intended. They ended up in a different time frame. But everything we know tells us time travel is impossible. That's why I'm skeptical about the story you're telling me. Ena could not have traveled backwards in time."
"You're wrong... I've been having these dreams, Dr. Karen... she comes to me in them explaining how I can join her. I need your help to do it, however."
"I'm not going to help you commit suicide, my precious Alpin. Playing around with the warp field on the anti-gravity craft isn’t something to be taken lightly. We know that it works but we have no idea how or why. If you're asking me to do what I think you a
re, there is no way I'll be a part of it."
"You must think I'm a lunatic, Dr. Karen, but I assure you I am not."
"I lived on the Isle of Skye for centuries, my sweet Alpin. I doubt if I saw you more than half a dozen times during all those years. Why the sudden interest in Ena now?"
"I'm not exactly sure, Dr. Karen... but I feel drawn to her in ways I never was before."
"You've been close to Kāne for a while now... right?"
"Yes, Dr. Karen... I have been with him for a month or better... why?"
"His presence has been known to be disruptive to members of your species... perhaps that's why you're having these dreams, my precious Alpin. Please consider that before you do anything dangerous."
"I started having those dreams before I went to the Isle of Skye and met up with Kāne, Dr. Karen. That is what led me there in the first place... I thought I would find answers."
"Yet all you discovered were more questions..."
"No... I discovered my calling... isn’t that something to be treasured rather than shunned?"
"Let's discuss this with Nate and Pete, my darling Alpin. They are more familiar with the workings of the warp field than I am. I recall Nate once mentioning how we may not need a starship at all to travel to other star systems... he theorized that we might make use of wormholes by stepping right into them. I have a feeling he will be interested in what you have to say."
All he had to do was to jump... at least that's how Ena explained things to him. It had to be from a precise height, however, and at a predetermined time. Otherwise, he'd end up somewhere else.
He would do it by himself if he had to, but he'd feel more confident if he had the help of Karen. Alpin loved his Grandfather Nate but he suspected the man would seek to turn him away from his plan. Neither he nor Pete had the imagination of Ena. And once they turned him down it would be that much more difficult to rely upon Karen's help.
Maybe that was her rationale for involving the two men. Perhaps she knew that Alpin could slowly sway her to his way of thinking but with Nate and Pete on her side she would remain adamant in her refusal.
There was one person who might help him without asking questions. Alpin knew where to find him... he had been helping with the harvesting of the grapes and more than likely he was still in the vineyard even as the sun set below the surrounding hills... the man worked like a machine rarely stopping even for sleep.
"I need your help, Kāne."
"You wish to go to Daughter."
"How do you know that?"
The burly man touched a finger to his head while continuing to cut bunches of grapes with his other hand laying them carefully into the basket by his side. They were alone in the vineyard... Alpin couldn’t help wondering why Kāne was still there, still working in his slow and methodical way. The man seemed to read his thoughts again.
"I will be leaving soon. I do what I can while I can."
"But where are you going, Kāne?"
"My Lady calls to me."
"You mean Lady Lily."
"Yes... just as you must go to Daughter, I must go to my Lady."
"Where is she?"
Kāne raised his face to the night sky, searched for a few minutes, and then raised a finger to point at a patch of sky that seemed empty to Alpin.
"She is there. We cannot see the star that she circles... it is too dim. But she is there. I feel her."
"How will you reach Lily if she is in another star system?"
"The same way you will reach Daughter where she is at. I will help you if you help me, Alpin."
Chapter 66—Needs
Constructing the anti-gravity device was as easy as building the nanobots.
He worked unhurriedly knowing all the time in the world existed, the old infernal feeling of always having to rush had finally faded away along with all his insecurities and other infirmities.
They no longer shouted orders at him... with the altering of their structure Kirk had resolved the onerous issues that bedeviled Micah for so many centuries. It was really quite simple... by modifying the algorithm which enabled the nanobots to continually better themselves he had brought a halt to the changes they sought to convey to any alien DNA they might come into contact with... specifically human DNA.
They guided him now, like a gentle mentor who served rather than demanded. They knew of things Kirk had scarcely imagined and with their help he was able to alter not only the course of his life but the entire trajectory of humanity.
He didn’t require the anti-gravity craft as much as he needed the singularity produced by the warp field... the wormhole that would lead him home again. The cold fusion generator was child's play... realizing he needed a power source greater than the entire output of New York City required that he construct it.
Knowing that he could change the course of history with but a thought did not fill him with the sense of power that it once did. Now he only did what was needed. He took no credit... that was for others to do.
One day, a pretty girl named Ena would see his inventions and recreate them for others to use freely all the while knowing the ideas were never hers. The world around him with all its madness, ruthlessness, and idolatry would soon blink out of existence forever and be replaced with one filled with love.
He had it in his power to stop the Great Dying but in doing so would wreck havoc upon the time line where Luciana existed. Indeed, she would not even be born if he modified the music as much as that.
He understood it now.
For most of his life he had listened as the Ladies talked of the music, of how it ordered the universe, and of how unchangeable it was... for if the music grew discordant, the reality of how things were would cease to unfold as was its wont and instead chaos and disharmony would arise.
He never understood the music. At first, he thought it was something like the god that Marilyn had rambled on about for so long... a jealous and cantankerous bearded old man staring down from heaven glowering at all the sinners reveling in their malfeasance and periodically killing off the majority of the human race with fire and water, malice and hate.
Later, he thought the music really was a melody playing that only the Ladies could hear... that he, like all human beings, was imperfect and therefore unable to hear something as a harmony that bespoke of times to come as well as times past.
Now, he knew... the music wasn’t a melody at all and yet its harmony pervaded all creation, ordering not only the structure of things but their behavior as well. Being an aficionado of the music meant understanding the subtle nuances of ebb and flow and to disrupt the music meant to go against that which was meant to be.
But who or by what intended the future as it was meant to be?
The question intrigued him. If the future was an actual thing set in stone then it could not be altered and so the music was in a sense useless. It meant nothing. Instead, the future did not exist until the music called it into being. But even then, the melody was nothing more than a harmonica of doom, a dream of disaster waiting to happen.
Looking back upon his life, Kirk realized that whenever a genuine need arose, it was met. It wasn’t something that he recognized by slow degree but rather all at once in a blindingly grand flash of insight that staggered him in its simplicity and grandeur.
It wasn’t music that could be heard with his ears... he had never taken into account the fact that those of the Lake had no ears. They had auditory organs that were more related to the sense of sight... yet even that wasn’t quite right.
When the Ladies spoke of the music, they were delving beneath the flow of time as it was ordinarily experienced by human beings and tapping into the ever-present moment which encompassed yet did not contain the entirety of potentialities unfolding ceaselessly in the harmony of what was better.
Micah had been right to instruct the nanobots in that fundamental endeavor yet the boy failed to realize the trans-generational nature of the moment. He assumed as did every living human being that time
was an actual entity flowing like a river into the sea of eternity.
By incorporating the ability for the nanobots to develop self awareness Kirk was able to lend them the insight they were heretofore so sorely lacking. It had been his own fault, he supposed, in a convoluted sort of way.
They all thought he was a danger to them. That's why Ena had crashed her anti-gravity craft into him propelling him back in time to his childhood. What she hadn’t known was that he had planned it to happen that way... in fact, if events had not unfolded exactly as they did, he would have ended up in some other backwater a million years from now.
He wondered if Nate would still be his friend.
Kirk missed drinking together with him in front of a campfire on the warm Mediterranean beach where the Toulon vineyards grew and castles full of the magic of love still existed.
When he grew impatient with the sluggish way his creations were coming together Kirk reminded himself that he had to get it right the first time... should he fail, the timeline would be altered dramatically. No one could know what it was he was working on.
It wasn’t hard to keep to his work to himself. He had no friends and his family was dead. He found it curious that the dreams of his old man that had haunted him for centuries ceased the moment he plunged the knife into the old bastard's chest.
Knowing he should feel some sort of remorse was the closest he managed to arrive at the knowledge he had truly put an end to his own parents' lives. It had been like watching someone else do it. He felt nothing... no regret, no joy, no sorrow, and no elation. At the same time, though, a burning angry love flushed his heart each time he thought of Luciana waiting for him alone and forlorn.
Obtaining the materials he needed for his inventions was as easy as visiting a nearby reclamation center filled with the discards of an instant gratification society ready the throw away outdated machines that were still in perfect operating condition. Money was no object. He had run the algorithms and handily invested the remaining inheritance money in the stock market gleaning ever increasingly large profits as the weeks passed.