by Dan Glover
"Ena gave me instructions, Grandfather Nate. I wrote them down as best as I could remember."
"We are taking an unbelievable risk sending you through a wormhole, Alpin. Are you sure you want to rely upon information given to you in a dream? Once you end up at the other end, there is no returning. Wherever you are is where you will stay for the rest of your life."
"I have no life without Ena, Grandfather Nate. I'm not sure why it took me so long to realize that, but it's true."
"Feelings change, Alpin. That too might change."
"I'm willing to risk that, Grandfather Nate."
Nate couldn’t help but envy the men... they were willing give their lives for a love that might or might not last... one was ready to take a gigantic leap into the future while the other was willing to dip his being into the distant past.
Something about the genesis of the people of the Lake had always bothered Nate... he knew how evolution worked... by tiny increments accrued over time a species gradually drew so far apart from others—either geologically or genetically—that they became something totally new.
Lady Lily had always explained to him that her people came into being when the Lake formed twenty five million years ago, but that story seemed in direct contradistinction to the theory of evolution.
He didn’t know enough to argue with the Lady but he always got the impression she had purposely withheld a great truth when it came to the origin of her people beneath the waters of that blue and beautiful Lake.
Ultimately he decided none of that mattered. Rather, he focused his attention upon the task at hand. Bringing Pete into his confidence lent Nate a sense of purpose that he missed.
"Though we managed to close the wormhole after Lily's accident, I suspect the probes are still entangled with our equipment here, Mr. Nate. It should be a simple matter of reenergizing the wormhole. I'm not sure how safe it is to step through it, however."
"Kāne assures me he is willing to chance it, Pete."
"You know that Karen is dead set against this, Mr. Nate."
"I know, Pete. But what we learn here today may serve us well in the future. If a thousand years is any indication, a billion years is liable to slip by before we know it and we'll be looking at the extinction of all life on earth. By establishing a wormhole to Miranda, we might be able to save ourselves."
Chapter 70—Days of Wonder
Their daughters took after the Ladies.
They were plentiful while the boys few. The girls were only able to reproduce one time. She wondered if it had something to do with going through the wormhole... perhaps something had changed in their genetic codes though of course there was no way of verifying that where they were.
They had long ago ceased to count the passing of the years. The Lake waters once warm turned cold and then balmy again. The surface froze thick at times with ten meters of ice and alternately melted as the warmth returned. Though she knew they could leave the Lake any time they chose she could think of no reason to do so.
Sometimes Ena wondered if the life she remembered above the surface had only been a dream while she slept in the depths of unknowing before finally coming aware of the Lake and its mysteries.
She didn’t know where Alpin came from nor did it occur to her to ask. She only recognized his fragrance and his visage as one she had known before and loved. Though she still thought in a kind of language they communicated through electrical impulses which radiated out from a spot just below her belly button.
As eons flew by she forgot her name or even that she once had one. Though she recognized the finality of the end lurking somewhere in the dim recesses of time the feeling did little to engender any sort of feelings at all, good or bad.
She watched as other living creatures were born into being, flourished a short while, and then reverted back to from whence they once sprang forth, or so she imagined. It puzzled her that she and her kind did not seem to share that same lineage yet her mystification was little more than a passing moment of wonder.
At times she surfaced from the waters to walk the shoreline and breathe in the air that tasted of trees and flowers and of the water itself. She had no reason to stay ashore though she felt that time would be a remedy to that.
When vicious monkey-like creatures began appearing upon the shores of the luscious Lake casting their filth into its precious waters she recognized them as those who would one day dominate the world with their idiocy and flagrant disregard for all other forms of life.
It occurred to her that she was somehow related to those strange beings that lived short and brutal lives procreating like mad filling all the land around the Lake with their ugly and offensive offspring.
Hers was a diverse family that scattered like weeks throughout the Lake. Some preferred the shallows while others the deep. The men were few. In time, it became a celebrated event when a male child was born though the females were not especially plentiful either.
Perhaps because she was the first, they all seemed to look upon her as a leader of sorts... a savior... though of course she could save no one, not even her own self. One day her man disappeared. Though she waited countless centuries for his return, it eventually became clear he had either drifted down into the bone yards that filled the bottom of the Lake or he had taken his leave of its waters all together to make a life upon the land.
She thought that no more than a minute had passed her by yet the changes being wrought not only upon the Lake but the surrounding forests told her that their time beneath the Lake was fast drawing to a close.
Watching as her children and then her grandchildren began diminishing one by one she wondered when her time would arrive. Yet she was still filled with a sense of longing for the fast approaching future when she would take her leave of the waters.
It had become hard to breathe the once crystal blue waters as they became fogged with the waste of the monkeys who seemed to disrespect everything in the world, even their own kind.
When a sudden fright came over though the cause of it was no longer clear she burst through the thin ice topping the Lake and took a deep draught of air into her lungs. Though she felt like coughing it out and diving into the water once more, she fought off the urge knowing her time in the Lake was over.
Walking upon the shoreline late one afternoon she came across a man, yet not any man she had seen before. Or had she? There was something startling familiar about his features... his body was covered in a foreign substance and when he turned and looked at her he seemed surprised.
"Oh! Who are you?"
The words... the light of them dazzled her momentarily. It had been so long since she had spoken but somewhere in the dim recesses of her memory she realized it was the way of communicating beyond the waters of the Lake.
"Il-y."
It wasn’t right but it was as close as she could come to it. Her tongue seemed stuck to the roof of her mouth as the words emerged and hung cold in the air like her breath. Though she put forth vibrations from the middle of her body the man did not seem to sense them.
He had odd appendages on the side of his head where gills should be... they did not flutter as he turned toward her. She thought she caught a sense of him staring at her body and wanting it though she couldn’t be sure.
"Lily? That's an enchanting name. You must be cold, Lily. Please take my cloak to wrap yourself in."
She should warn him... but about what? Her flesh frigid with the cold, she welcomed the warmth of the man's garment smelling the odor of his scent upon it lathered with that of fragrances long dormant in her memories.
She felt pulled in two, as if she was here and yet somewhere else simultaneously. The sun overhead brightened the forests yet shed little warmth upon the land. It was a tiny yellow sphere high in the sky though for some odd reason she had the idea it should be painted a dull red while hanging just overhead, large and bloated.
For just a moment she had the notion she could choose to stay or to go though what or who it was that
offered that choice was an unknown commodity... and then she saw it. The way before her had been written in the beginning. If she did not follow the path allotted to her she would disrupt the music.
She turned her back to the Lake and followed the man to a stone cabin high on a hillside. It seemed both familiar yet foreign. She thought she caught a sense of two girls who once lingered there with her for a long moment but then she promptly forgot what it was she was thinking about.
"Are you hungry, Lily?"
The man seemed to sense that she didn’t understand the words as he put a hand to his stomach and then touched a finger to his mouth. Her eyes must have spoken to him for he put an object onto the iron box in the room emitting heat and cracked something into it as he pointed at a chair.
"Sit... I'll have your breakfast ready in a minute."
.
Chapter 71—Inside Out
He thought how the journey must have been similar to being born.
"From what I understand, Kāne, your body will be torn apart, broken down into bits of information, and then due to the natural laws of the universe will reassemble itself on the other side of the wormhole.
"I cannot guarantee how that will happen, or even if it will. You may simply dissolve into nothingness as the information that was once you scatters between the stars and the galaxies of the universe.
"If you do reintegrate, you may not recognize the form that you inhabit. You may forget everything that you ever knew. You may find yourself ensconced inside of a rock or even within the center of the moon we are aiming for.
"What is worse, you may be cognizant of it all and yet be helpless to alter your situation. We have no way of knowing what will happen, in other words. Are you still willing to go?"
"Yes, Nate."
He had lied. He would rather be anywhere but here but the pull of Lily was too powerful. Kāne knew he could run away again like he had done countless times before but thoughts of his Lady would follow after him haunting him until he turned around and confronted them.
Alpin faced the greater of the unknowns. No one seemed to have any idea of how to duplicate the conditions that were present when Ena had crashed her anti-gravity craft into Kirk and his nanobots. It was all guesswork, though Alpin seemed convinced that he was somehow channeling the girl's thoughts about the matter.
"We've reopened the wormhole connecting the singularity here with the probes on Miranda, but we haven’t been able to receive any telemetry from them. As far as we know, they are dead, Mr. Kāne.
"The odds are when they reassembled they reverted to the constituents they were made of... you are likely to do the same. In other words, those probes are but a pile of dust. The fact that we are still entangled with that material means nothing.
"I happen to agree with Karen. This is madness. We have no way of knowing if we can succeed or for that matter will we know even after the fact. This is a one way trip for both you and Alpin, though you, my friend, are supposedly going into the future.
"That means you or whatever you end up as will be forever sundered from this time and space. Even in ten billion years we will not catch up to you. Alpin on the other hand will eventually catch up to us.
"Are you sure you want to do this thing, Mr. Kāne?"
"Yes, Mr. Pete. Please proceed."
He would have enjoyed saying goodbye to Daughter. Knowing she was forever out of his reach meant that she was dead to him, like all the others he once knew and loved during his days beneath the splendid Lake.
Kāne considered taking one last trip to his old home but upon reconsidering the consequences of such a journey decided against it. There was no sense postponing the inevitable.
It seemed strange to have so many others gathered around him. It was as if they knew he was going to his death. How odd that all his life he had been alone and now that it was coming to an end—one way or another—he longed to stay with them, those he had shunned for so long.
"Wait... we wish to go along, sweet Kāne."
The voice startled him... it was his mother. He hadn’t realized she was there, and Natalia was by her side. They pushed through the throng to join hands with him.
"You do not wish to do this, my darling mother. I may well be going to my doom."
It was one thing to die alone but knowing he was influencing others to join him filled him with remorse. This was a woman he loved beyond all others. Natalia was as beautiful as a new day dawning over the rugged mountains... he instantly recalled their every touch, their every kiss, and their every caress.
"We cannot live without our lovely Lily, my precious son."
It was a sentiment he could not deny. He too was driven to find the Lady once again and to never leave her side. If these women felt the same, who was he to refuse them their opportunity?
"Will it hurt?"
Natalia's voice was like a child's spoken along with a quiver on her lower lip. He had no way of knowing though if as Nate and Pete had surmised they were broken down to the elemental information contained within their beings, then there would be nothing there to hurt.
"No, my lovely Natalia... we will not feel anything at all. Come take my hand."
"No... please don't do it, mother. You'll be killed."
Nate stepped forward as if to object to the unexpectedness of his mother going through the wormhole with Kāne. Until that moment, he had not realized that Nate was his brother... he had always been more of a rival than part of his family.
Lauren had once explained to him how Nate had been conceived using part of her own body... though she was no longer able to bear children she still carried genetic material inside of her that if used in special ways would allow her to be a mother once more.
"It is better that they come along with me, my brother Nate. Please allow us this opportunity to be with the person we love."
"You don't realize what you're playing with here, Kāne. We have never tested this type of travel. If you wish to be a guinea pig, then do it. But leave my mother out of it."
"Hush, sweet Nate... I am making my own choice. Neither Lauren nor I can live without Lily. We must get to her, and if this is the only way, then we are both willing to give it a try."
"But I will never see you again, my darling mother..."
"Oh, I have a feeling we will be together again some fine day, my precious Nate. Time has a way of bringing back the past. Remember... where we are going will be around for trillions of years while this good earth will perish in another billion years. We'll be waiting there for you."
When he stepped into the singularity it felt like the time when he lived in the Caucasus mountain range and he used to jump from a high cliff into a deep pool of water a hundred meters below... the rush of electricity ran concurrent with the feeling of his stomach being intimately joined with his brain.
When he hit the water Kāne thought he had been somehow dreaming the whole of his life... that he was still there in the high and isolated mountains, a wild creature of the night stalking equally feral beasts.
The water was not deep. Surfacing, he looked up at the enormous red sun hovering above him like a gigantic balloon... in the distance he saw a shoreline strangely black with odd trees growing in configurations of people.
Suddenly Natalia was in his arms while mischievously kicking water into Lauren's face.
"Look!"
Natalia called out while pointing to a figure running down the black sand of a beach waving her hands high overhead.
They had found Lily.
Chapter 72—Thick and Thin
There was a problem.
According to the intricate calculations he had worked out so meticulously, reversing the process of sending himself forward in time entailed using far more power than the cold fusion globes he had designed were capable of delivering.
There were alternatives.
He could simply wait. In another thousand years he would catch up to Luciana and from her point of view it would seem as if he only jus
t left. He abhorred the thought of having to languish for so long before he could hold her in his arms once more, however.
His mind was busy spinning engineering feats that offered nearly unlimited power sources but to develop them would take centuries and there were no guarantees that those ideas would pan out as he envisioned. Often times he found that his ambitions far exceeded his genius.
If he was smaller, the problem could be solved immediately. But he would have to weigh a mere ten kilograms, no more, and less would be better. If he was a baby... why, then he could make it work. But how was that possible?
Looking into the mirror, he noticed he was a boy of no more than twelve. He had been a fully grown man before he was sent back. How was it that he had shed those years? Were those conditions something which he could again duplicate?
The scientists at the Isle of Skye had been experimenting with sending probes through a wormhole to a distant star system. He remembered listening to Nate and Pete discuss the possibilities awaiting them and though he had seen the answers to their questions he knew it was better to remain mute.
Certain items in the old villa where Pete and Karen had lived had become entangled with the probes sent forth into a far-flung future... it was entirely within the realm of reality to tap into that entanglement again even from old Kurgan, a thousand years in the past.
Time meant nothing between entangled particles. They essentially existed in a quantum state both inside and outside the physical universe as it was understood to be. In fact of reality the physical universe existed only as a representation inside the human brain.
Looking out the window Kirk saw who must have been two of the neighbor girls playing hopscotch on the sidewalk. They were in front of his wreck of a house their pigtails bouncing in unison as they took turns hopping from square to square. The spectacle ignited a flash of insight which he knew without a doubt would work.
The trick would be to bounce.
He had to both remain within this timeline while at the same time bouncing into the future. Being in the wreckage of the home where he had been born would work to his advantage. As his mind raced forward at light speed sorting the permutations he saw the way... he had only to entangle a present object to his Kurgan past along with one at the Isle of Skye future, focus a sudden burst of energy upon all three simultaneously and then step into the singularity.