by P. S. Power
The woman, her brown eyes cool for the moment, and face set, nodded.
“I think you might be right. There are other versions of us all, in different worlds, but it seems to be mainly based on Tor, and the other versions of him, as well as you. From what I’ve heard, the world that has been freed and saved so far was mainly your look out, not some version of him. Though you also seem more prone to working for the other side for some reason.” She gave him a look that held something like pity, and shook her head. “Any idea why?”
Dareg snorted at her on purpose, as Tam-Unit held his hand warmly.
“Sure. Think about it Taman, there is no wrong side here. The Adversaries, well, they just want to make certain that no one has to suffer forever. They might be wrong, in that what they think will happen might not exist, but if that’s the case, then doing what they want, bringing the beings from the end, those gods in their own realities, back into earlier points, won’t work. Because something has to exist for that to take place. We haven’t seen that yet.”
Taman watched him carefully, nodding so gently he nearly missed it.
“Go on.”
Taking a very deep breath, he worked through things that had been haunting the back of his mind a little bit so far.
“Well, I can see other versions of me falling for that line, because it makes the most sense. If there is nothing, then reality is safe, and they’re just wrong. It happens. On the other hand, if they turned out to be correct, then the goal of lowering the amount of suffering, a kind that will, in the end, be eternal… That seems like the right thing to do, doesn’t it? For right now I’ve been working with the idea that I just don’t know enough to make a choice, and I will fight to stay alive. But if I had some kind of evidence that things worked the way that we’ve seen hinted at? That really could change my mind.”
It wasn’t a thing that he loved saying, but was honest enough. Taman, instead of scolding him for not loving everyone enough in the moment to disregard their pain later, nodded.
“It’s… I think it has to do with the way you were raised. I can’t imagine doing that, myself. Letting Mother, or Father, or Terlee... Or any of my family or friends, die now, to save them later. I can see the logic of it, but everything inside of me screams that life is the essential point. That we exist for a reason, even if it can’t be proven. A lot of that comes back to how close we all are, as family. That being a good friend means being willing to lose everything for those we love.” She looked at him and seemed sad, suddenly. “Which are both things you never learned. It might even be too late for that now. You’re getting old, and have grown to see the world in a certain fashion. Worse, I can’t even claim that it’s wrong really. Just different.”
Because he was, in the end, used to being alone.
Which explained part of why Taman the wizard had made a woman for him. A copy of herself, but the version that he already loved. Trying to preempt his descent into being on the other side of things. Seeing it as possible before he really had.
It would have seemed untrusting of her, but she wasn’t truly wrong. He knew that. His closest bonds in the whole world were people that others had made, or that he had himself, in the last weeks. The girls, Tam-Unit… Things so new that they held a quality of unreality even while he held the hand of one of them. The warm feelings inside…
That might not make his resolve to keep them alive stronger, in the end. After all, he wasn’t used to being loved or loving others. What he was accustomed to was people going away. Dying, or pretending to. Loss was normal, and painful.
In the end, everyone would go away, if those others were right. The enemy.
Shaking his head, he smiled.
“Well, I’m not planning on switching sides. Everything is telling me that being alive is kind of the goal of life. That if you never exist… Well, I guess that wouldn’t be a horror really, but I’m here. Now. That means that we either need to protect all of this, or that the other side is just wrong.” Any of ten million or more other things, at the same time.
It would have been simpler if there was only one universe to deal with. He muttered something about that, which got Taman the wizard to move in and hug him for a while.
“I know. I… Fear for you, Dareg. I understand why you might feel the way you do, but I don’t. My way is to help promote life. Right or wrong. What will we do if you change your mind?”
He blinked and then shrugged a bit.
“Hold a ball in my honor? Really, the worst that happens is that the Adversaries are wrong.”
She looked at him for a bit and then smiled sadly, nodding.
“Because then they’re killing and harming people for no reason? Their end plan won’t work, because it isn’t real?”
The words were certain and strong, but probably didn’t make her feel better about him or what he was thinking.
“Exactly. If we all go on, living and dying like we think we do, then it isn’t a problem. Not in the end. If everything is made to have never existed, then the same things happens. Though…” He shook his head a bit, something occurring to him suddenly.
Tam-Unit looked over at him, and moved a bit closer, so that her shoulder rubbed his. She was taller than he was, but only by a tiny bit. His body had been stretching and changing more quickly over the last weeks than before. It should have hurt, growing that fast, but it didn’t.
That was probably due to something Tim had done to him.
“We… The Adversaries, they shouldn’t need to destroy everything. Just introduce the beings from the end just before they existed. Preventing that from happening. Which… I don’t know how that part would work. I can see it being bad however. It might just stop the singular being from existing? I don’t know. Really, I doubt that short of trying it we can know and even then, we may not be able to observe it.”
Dareg felt silly, going down that kind of road mentally, but Taman Baker was smart enough to see that thinking through things was one way to understand the world, so didn’t accuse him of being a traitor for his mind working like it did. Then, it was kind of clear she expected him to fail, and to go to the other side in things.
Worse, if he had it right and wasn’t just projecting his reasoning on to her, then some part of her being seemed to agree with the others. Not their killing, and all of that, but the goal of making certain that all of her friends, her family, and everyone else that had ever lived, didn’t suffer alone forever. Sitting in a void, with nothing but their own thoughts, for a time longer than could be imagined.
So, like him, on some level she was probably torn.
The big difference then would be the one that she’d told him about. To her, the choice was already made. Right or wrong. She had to protect those around her. Her friends and family. The ones that she would be around that day, and the week after next.
Not the beings that they might become in a hundred billion years.
For his part, he could see the flaw in that one, a bit too keenly. If they allowed things to unfold that way, then everyone, ever, would be tormented for so long that even the strongest would go mad. Then… It would never end. They’d just be forced to reach back in time and space, if they could manage it, and try to end their pain.
He crossed his eyes and puffed his cheeks playfully.
“Which is right? The one we feel is correct? See, I was having an easier time before you brought all of this up, Taman. I was kind of happily living my shallow little life, and now you’ve brought these big thoughts into it…”
He examined her closely, using magic, but found that she was simply a woman. No implants, or time distortions of note. Not one of the Adversaries. It was clear that she felt the contact, and she looked at the jungle around them, across the focus stone under their feet. It was a lovely jade color there, in Soam. A round circle that reminded him of the port in the Capital.
Really, he needed to get one of those for Mars too, soon. He had the underground one, but someday there would be need for someth
ing on the surface. It might be in hundreds of years, but unless nothing ever existed at all, that would be a sign of promise.
A signal that the world of Mars would, one day, be a place of life.
Tam winked at him again and pulled at her right hand pocket, bringing out a shining amulet, and passing it to him. Dareg could feel control of the chests move to his mind as soon as his fingers connected with the white stone. The sigil glowed blue. A deep color that wasn’t purple, but that held hints of it.
“For now… I think that you’re right. We need to watch Tor and those around him. Even if we are both confused. This is… The enemy, they can’t be right, can they?”
Dareg didn’t know really, but he nodded.
“That’s one thing I think we can agree on. Even if they want to end suffering by unmaking reality, or all realities, they’re too reckless with the lives of others. That alone will give us a reason to stand against them. Now… I need to set up a ship, if I’m taking things around. These chests are too big to go into the transport pods. I’m keeping this Tam-Unit with me. That was your point, right? Trying to bind me to someone, so that my crippled and broken soul can learn to love? Something like that?”
Taman shook her head then.
“Honestly? I just saw what you’d done and wanted to see if I could do it, too. The rest of this… Well, it’s been on my mind, but I don’t know what to do about it. Not that will effect anything in the end.” The pretty face, so similar to the one next to him, went blank then. A wave of essential sadness drifted off of her.
It spoke of more than words could hold. Dareg understood it however. They were trapped, in a situation that no one would have thought could exist. They either killed everything, or let it suffer beyond all imagining. If, of course, that was real at all. He couldn’t think of a way of learning that however. Perhaps if he went to the end of time, he could find out how it really worked. Though, if he could do that, then it might be enough to let the oldest back into the rest of reality.
Though, now that he considered it, that couldn’t really work either. Dareg could learn to control time and space well enough already. If it was just that, then nothing would exist, he was willing to bet. Someone else would have found a way to end things, bringing back the final versions of each of them. Possibly even just one of them, to the right place and time.
The very fact that he existed at all meant that the transport pods weren’t the final answer. Not even if he allowed time to be manipulated with them. Most likely, it had to do with something he didn’t know enough to work out yet. For instance, it could be that in the end each person became their own universe, and would be working at that kind of scale. Dare had to doubt that he could move a planet through space, much less an entire universe the size of his own.
It might even be something bigger, or far different than that. Like time not existing any longer, when there was only one, truly undying, thing in a place. Both of those might be possible.
To cover his own thoughts and confusion, he hugged Tam, and tried to seem happier about things than he had been moments before.
“Well, I’m not going to let anyone hurt my friends. Even if that means destroying all of time and space later. It pretty much has to be more than what I can easily do anyway. I mean, think about it Taman, if all that was needed was a jump ship that traveled in time, it would have happened already. Probably a long time ago, and very far away from here. If everything exists that can, then we wouldn’t be here.”
It wasn’t the perfect answer, but it was the one that he decided to go with for the time being. Taman didn’t seem all that convinced, but she did make herself smile at him, and to not seem goofy or sad while doing it.
Blinking, Dareg had an odd thought then. He’d been thinking that he was the flaw in their plan, at least on some level. That he, Dareg Canton, was the weak link that would betray them from within. That of them all, only he was going to be brilliant enough to see both sides of things.
It wasn’t the truth however. Taman could, and so could Tim Baker, he didn’t doubt. Maybe even Tam-Unit and the Comp. There wasn’t that much forethought needed to understand that, if endless suffering was the end point, that preventing that was the side of right.
The real key here was that he didn’t care. Oh, about his own suffering, perhaps, but what they were talking about was a very long way off, if it was real. Taman on the other hand was different than he was. More, in some ways. She wasn’t just a logical thinker, but also a person with great compassion. At least she felt that way to him, mentally. That being the case, the weakness in their plan might not be him at all.
Rather than accuse her of being human, and having a heart, which were both good things to have in general, he waved a bit. Then he set up a ship, one of the three he carried with him, being ridiculously rich in his own way now, even without a single coin to his name, and loaded the thing. His Aunt Taman walked away, pretending she had better things to do. Which she might. Just because he wasn’t that busy, or hadn’t been, didn’t mean anything at all toward what she had going on at the moment.
“Well, Uni, I think we need to get to things. Unless there’s something you want to do first? We can go pretty much anywhere. See almost anything, if you wish?”
The girl next to him nodded, her face turning a little bit red, which was an incredible bit of work. If she could change shape and size however, that would be something that she, herself, could pull off, and that didn’t have to be built into her.
“Could we… Meet people? I’m… I don’t know if anyone will like me this way. I can’t make anything for them. Things look strange here too. I think this is the way things seem to regular people? With colors and noises? Scents as well.”
He nodded, and smiled at his friend. If what she wanted was to meet human beings, and possibly aliens, he could help with that.
“You know, I think we can use the delivery of the Comps as an excuse to meet all sort of people. Who would you like to see first?”
She looked around, and then shrugged.
“Anyone? Princess Karina? You and she… You’re going to be married? So, that means I can’t marry you, right? But we can be together, if she likes me? Do you think she will?”
Really, it didn’t work that way, Dareg didn’t think. If Tam-Unit, Uni, as he decided to call her, was going to be around a lot however, it would be helpful if they got along. As far as he knew that shouldn’t be a problem for the Princess. She and Taman were friendly enough, and Uni was like a nicer version of that. She certainly wasn’t difficult to be around. Not for him.
So he nodded.
“All right then. First stop, the Martian Circle. I think that’s where she is right now. Sara Debri as well. At least that was what I was told last… I know, why don’t you use my handheld and get in touch with her? I’m sure that you’ll be friends.” He wasn’t really, but the girl didn’t wait, just reaching into his side pocket and taking the device out, then using her fingers to tap things into place.
Wiggling her fingers, she laughed a bit.
“It feels so strange, doing things this way. I feel so clumsy still. Let me see… Karina Cordes. It doesn’t even say Princess or Ancient on it. That’s a good sign, right? Or does it mean she thinks she’s so important that everyone had better know her name?” The look on her face was pleasant, and didn’t seem as doubting of the Princess as all that. Then, they’d met before.
When the screen became alive in Uni’s hand, she smiled hugely. It seemed different, not being the image on the screen. Dare moved them carefully to the West ten miles and then pulled straight up, while the woman on the device looked professionally polite.
“Taman? Is everything all right there?”
Uni nodded, and smiled hugely.
“Yep! I’m not Taman though. This is… Tam-Unit? Taman Baker made me a body! It’s like the ones that Dareg made, but he didn’t do it, so I can be with him and he won’t have to feel bad about it. We have a load of Tam-Comps, and were wondering
if we could come visit you? I’d love to be friends, if that’s something you can manage? I know that I’m a bit different.” She spoke humbly, even as Karina wrinkled her nose.
“Tam-Unit! That’s incredible. Of course we can meet. Do you want me to come to you? I can bring Sara, or…”
Dareg spoke, and then made the jump, barely having to think about it, since it was a place he’d been near several times before that point now.
“We’re just outside the main station, in the Martian Circle. I don’t know how long docking will take here.” He’d docked on Harmony a lot, but that was all really. The other places he’d been had different configurations, so didn’t really count for that.
“Goody. I was going to be getting bored soon anyway, so I can meet you at the dock there. Let me see… Brown seven, which will start blinking… Now?”
The door was near the bottom of the cylindrical thing. It was huge, but reminded him of a Noram Day ornament more than anything else. It was red and yellow, with windows all over the place and a large round space in the middle. Really, it would have made a good top, if they could spin it fast enough.
On the cylinder in the middle, near the bottom, a portion of the yellow there did indeed start to blink. The color was a deep brown, and obvious enough that even he could make it out. Really, most would have, he bet.
It took a while to get inside, though Karina didn’t have them get off the communications device at all. She walked and talked at the same time, not seeming to move all that fast really. Which was good, since he took what seemed like three hours to get inside. It was probably closer to fifteen minutes, but he couldn’t really take going slower than that, even if he was supposed to. As it was he probably pushed the space station a lot when he grabbed at the docking rig and forced it to set up his way. At the speed he wanted.
The seal was good however, and it worked pretty well, leaving them a way out at the back that was large enough to float one of the large cases out of.