The Shores Beyond Time

by Kevin Emerson

  The Drove, the Architects . . . Liam wondered if Barrie enjoyed naming these things, as if he was writing a story or something.

  “To be able to manipulate space and time,” said Barrie, “and the sheer power needed to do such a thing . . . unbelievable. I would love to meet them.”

  “Where are they now?” said Phoebe.

  “So far, we have found no trace of them. Nor have we found any records about the beings themselves, where Dark Star came from, or where they might have gone. That said, we have only been able to access a limited portion of the logs, and only a few levels of this complex. Maybe the Architects have left something behind elsewhere on the station . . . or maybe they are here themselves, somewhere, sleeping in their version of stasis pods.”

  “But why?” said Phoebe, her gaze drawn back to the giant bubbles overhead. “Why would you make universes?”

  “Ah,” said Barrie. “And there is humanity’s first-oldest question. Of course we want to know how, but what we really yearn to understand is why. Why was the great clock of our universe set in motion? Why does the sun rise and set? Why do we exist, and to that end, what is our purpose? This machine, and those who built it, are truly our gods. And yet, like the gods we imagined on Earth, their motives remain a mystery. Maybe they built it because they could—in the name of science, or discovery? Or maybe they were looking for a new home, like we are, perhaps even trying to make one, in one of these new universes. Maybe they were successful, and that’s where they went.”

  Liam gazed up at the undulating maps, the golden light making a faint warmth on his face. “Then why leave this place behind?”

  Barrie snapped his fingers and pointed at Liam. His eyes sparkled. “You see? The oldest question: we could follow it to the ends of the universe—and, in a way, we have! And yet here is a whole other universe. Makes you wonder if there’s another Dark Star that made this universe, and so on.”

  Liam didn’t want to think about that. Each question only led to more questions. All of it was enough to make his head spin, and to leave him feeling cold and small.

  “There’s so much more to this structure than we can see, maybe even perceive,” Barrie continued. “I can’t help but believe it holds the ultimate answers we seek, if we can only discover them.”

  “But it’s also still a threat to our universe, our people,” said Phoebe. “If it keeps blowing up stars, we might end up in its crosshairs again.”

  “I don’t think it does that on purpose,” said Liam, thinking of what Iris had said about choosing their sun.

  “So what answers have you learned?” Phoebe asked.

  “Well, it’s mostly speculation,” said Barrie. “The portal was set to pull us in. And once we were here, the ship began powering up. I can’t help but feel like perhaps Dark Star was waiting for us—or at the very least, for someone. Could it be possible that we are meant to have it? Maybe some tragedy befell the Architects. Or, to your earlier question: maybe they simply no longer needed it and left it for others to benefit. In some way, I wonder if we were meant to find it. If all of this—the supernova, the hunt for a new home, and the Artemis encountering the portal—was fate.”

  Liam felt his pulse tick up. He was reminded of asking the chronologist if she believed in luck. Not really, she’d said. He wondered what she would have said about an idea like fate. Iris had also made their arrival here sound like fate. She wanted Liam to trust her. And Barrie seemed like he was inclined to trust Dark Star as well.

  Trust is a powerful adaptation, the chronologist had also said.

  But even though Liam did feel an urge to trust Iris—everything she had said and done so far seemed to be in Liam’s best interests—he had to wonder: Was it a good idea to trust such a powerful machine, one operating on a level so far beyond their comprehension, and one that had already admitted to disregarding the entire human species once?

  “But if it’s meant for us, like you say,” Phoebe said to Barrie, “why won’t it tell us anything about itself?”

  “Maybe it wants to teach us,” said Barrie, a smile growing. “Maybe it wants us to understand, but it has to bring us up to speed slowly, so we can comprehend.”

  “Comprehend what?” Phoebe shook her head. “That we’re about as significant as the speck of dust on a speck of dust? Our universe contains trillions of galaxies, likely millions of forms of life, and it’s just one of the eighty-nine that this thing created on autopilot.”

  Barrie continued like he’d barely heard her. “Maybe there’s more for humanity than stumbling around in the dark of our universe, trying merely to survive. Perhaps here, we have the opportunity to become something new altogether, something better. Perhaps we truly do have a destiny.”

  Destiny. Another word that implied a purpose they couldn’t know. Like fate, it suggested a sense of trust, or maybe a better word for it was belief. But Liam wondered: What exactly did Barrie believe in?

  “Ready, Captain?” Jordy and Kyla had returned.

  Barrie made a closing motion with his hands and the vast display of universes shrank back down to a ring around him. He stepped through, galaxies momentarily dotting his body. “How long until the fuel ships return?”

  “They’ve been averaging about three hours,” said Jordy.

  “Once they’re back, we’ll see what new systems she brings online. And then we’ll take that chronologist for a walk and see what he can see.”

  “Captain,” Jordy said, “when the portal opens for the fuel ships to return, that might be a good time to try my comm relay. . . .”

  “Negative,” Barrie said sharply. “It’s still too risky. Besides, what’s most important right now is that you get yourselves fed, and grab some shut-eye if you can. We’re all running on fumes.”

  “But sir, now that we know the fleet made it, and they’re near Centauri . . . we may not get a better shot at contacting them—”

  “You heard my orders, corporal.” Barrie’s voice turned steely. “Don’t make me repeat them.”

  Jordy and Kyla met eyes again, Jordy making a face that Liam interpreted as I tried.

  “What about you, Captain?” said Kyla. “I don’t know when I last saw you take any downtime.”

  “I’m going to stay here a little longer.” Barrie moved toward the spheres of data that Jordy had been manipulating over by the platform. “I’m curious to hear what the portal team finds. Now go rest—that’s an order.”

  “Let’s go.” Kyla and Jordy led Liam and Phoebe toward the corridor to the landing platform.

  “I’m not sure I feel any better after learning all that,” Phoebe said quietly.

  “I know.” Liam was shivering, exhausted, but he found that he didn’t quite want to leave the control room. He had an urge to stay and look around, wanted to study those maps and schematics for himself. “It is kind of amazing though, right? I mean, it seems like there might be a lot we could learn here.”

  Phoebe punched his arm lightly. “Our families are out there probably freaking out about where we disappeared to, if they’re not trying to kill each other again. This place set all of that in motion. And it nearly killed them all again just a minute ago . . . oh, and by the way, I think you know more about what happened back there than you’re telling me.”

  “Huh?” said Liam, nerves flaring. “I don’t really—”

  “Wait.” Phoebe motioned to Kyla and Jordy, who were in midconversation.

  “But you said yourself you weren’t sure,” Kyla was saying. Jordy glanced back and saw Liam and Phoebe listening.

  “What’s going on?” said Phoebe.

  Kyla and Jordy shared a look. “What isn’t going on?” she said.

  “You should tell them,” said Jordy. “They have a right to know.”

  “Tell us what?” said Phoebe.

  “Nothing,” said Kyla.

  “What you heard in there,” said Jordy, getting a glare from Kyla as he spoke, “about whether or not we should be trying to contact the fleet. Esp
ecially now.”

  “It’s not a debate,” said Kyla. “You heard the captain.”

  “Do you really have a way to contact them?” Phoebe asked.

  “Only an untested theory,” said Kyla.

  “I know it would work,” said Jordy. “I figured out how to rig a comm unit from one of our cruisers, daisy-chained a few power cells to boost the signal—I have the whole thing gamed out.”

  “And our orders are still no,” said Kyla.

  “Give me one good reason—”

  “I’ll give you two,” Kyla spat. “One: we can’t spare the power. And more important, I don’t want to bring the entire fleet here only to have this place reveal its next homicidal trick.”

  “If the fleet gets too far away, they’ll never be able to help us.”

  “We didn’t sign up for a leisure cruise.”

  “Look,” said Jordy, “I know you trust him; hell, so do I, but . . .”

  “Spit it out, corporal.”

  “Captain’s been traveling through space and time with that maintenance suit . . .”

  “And he’s unable to communicate with anyone—”

  “No, he just admitted he talked to this kid.” Jordy pointed to Liam. “On Mars, before everyone had left. Maybe instead of messing with the kid’s head, he could have given him our situation, our coordinates. What was he thinking?”

  “You are getting dangerously close to insubordination,” Kyla growled.

  Jordy shook his head. “Aren’t we all.”

  “Look, I hear you. But until we know the danger—”

  “Don’t we? Come on, Kyla. Did you forget Lieutenant Lyris? If she’d known the status of our people, she might not have—”

  “That’s enough.”

  “No, it’s not!” Jordy shouted. “Hey, time kid, how many people are on each starliner?”

  “Um,” said Liam, “a hundred million.”

  “See?” said Jordy. “We almost had the deaths of three hundred million people on our hands in there—”

  “You’re proving my point—”

  “No, I’m not, because what I’m saying is if we’d called in the cavalry by now, we could have already wired this thing with enough explosives to send it down its own black hole, and gotten out of here.”

  Kyla bit her lip. “Captain would never go for that.”

  Jordy pointed at her accusingly. “That right there is exactly my point.” He stormed into the ship.

  Kyla put her fists on her hips. “Sorry about him,” she said.

  “Sounds like he’s making some sense,” said Phoebe.

  Kyla inhaled like she was about to say something but then ducked inside.

  Liam started after her but Phoebe grabbed his arm. “These two might be on our side. In fact . . .” She pushed past him, leading the way to the cockpit. “Hey,” she said as Jordy and Kyla were buckling in. “You know, we could send a message for you.”

  “How’s that?” said Jordy.

  “Liam could get us back to the starliner. Right, Liam?”

  “Um, I could. I mean, I guess.” He didn’t know how to tell them that he’d already been back to the starliner. Not only that, but while he was there, he hadn’t called for a rescue, hadn’t even told Mina about the Artemis. He’d simply urged her to go away: essentially the opposite of what Phoebe, and Jordy it sounded like, wanted. Why had he done that? To keep them safe, he reminded himself, but was that really all? It occurred to him now that this was something else he had in common with Barrie.

  “That’s all right,” said Kyla.

  “But Liam can move through time,” said Phoebe. “All you’d have to do is fly us back through the portal, and then if you could get him back his watch—”

  “Okay, that’s enough!” Kyla snapped. “It’s not his watch; it’s an alien watch, and this is an alien base. I understand all of your concerns”—she seemed to be speaking to Jordy as well—“but there is a chain of command and we have our orders. The captain has decades more experience than any of us, and if he wants to keep the rest of humanity safely out of harm’s way while we make a complete assessment, that’s what we’ll do. It’s been a long, terrible day, and we have orders to get ourselves rested and replenished. Now let’s go.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jordy muttered. He brought up the navigation sphere as Kyla activated the ship’s thrusters. Both of their movements were curt, angry. Liam and Phoebe buckled into the seats behind them.

  “And another thing,” Kyla spat a moment later. “Given what we’ve learned”—she pointed her thumb back at Phoebe—“maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t send a message. It might well have been intercepted by her people, and they might have decided that a star-destructing station was a pretty nice weapon to acquire.”

  No one responded. Liam saw the fury brewing on Phoebe’s face, but she kept it to herself.

  The ship lifted off from the platform, sliding smoothly away from the center of Dark Star and then back out over one of the long arms, toward the Artemis in the distance.

  Phoebe leaned into Liam’s ear and whispered: “I don’t think she fully trusts the captain either, no matter what she says.”

  “Yeah,” said Liam. He felt like a motor was spinning inside him, revving with nervous energy. Mouth dry, fingers twitchy . . . But what if he’s right? Liam almost said, but he knew Phoebe wouldn’t hear it. And how could she? She hadn’t experienced time the way he had, hadn’t met Iris. There was no way to truly explain to her how this place might be able to show them a way past their worries about survival. Maybe they wouldn’t have to fear the unknown anymore, wouldn’t have to battle the cold, unforgiving vastness of space with just their frail, three-dimensional bodies.

  “Does this really seem like a place that wants to help us?” Phoebe had twisted to see out the side of the cockpit, looking back at the massive station. “It seems to me like a place that doesn’t care about us at all.”

  Iris does, Liam thought—at least that’s what she’d said—and yet as he followed Phoebe’s gaze, the spinning inside him revved faster. The dark arms, the empty, empty space. “I don’t know,” he said, barely above a whisper.

  The tightness inside was like a fist now, crushing his chest. I don’t want to be here. Not in all this nothing, in all this doubt. Centauri A flashed in his mind again, the boiling star exploding, swallowing him up, even though it hadn’t in real life. He felt the fire, the fury of his limbs and molecules and atoms being ripped apart.

  Had to get away. Get away—

  8

  EARTH YEAR: 2212

  PHASE TWO RESEARCH STATION, OLYMPUS MONS, MARS

  TIME TO DARK STAR FUNCTIONALITY: 11H:22M

  “Liam, you’re out of visual range,” says Dad. “Why don’t you come back around.”

  “Okay.” Liam checks the rear cam on the skim drone and sees that indeed, the great cliff wall surrounding the base of Olympus Mons has shielded his view of the research station.

  Perfect.

  He feels a burst of adrenaline and grips the control stick tighter. Taps the thrusters and dives toward the rust-and-bone desert floor. At the same time, he angles closer to the sheer cliff face. Proximity sensors blare. Sweat on his brow.

  Ahead, a series of rock spires protrudes from the rubble at the cliff base, each about two hundred meters tall. At some point in the past, a narrow triangle of the cliff wall jutted out here, but millions of years of erosion have worn it into a crowded collection of red rock columns, jutting skyward. The research station crew has nicknamed it the Fingers. The spaces between the spires are narrow, uneven slots, most of which zig and zag a few times before reaching a dead end. But there is one route, a winding dotted line on their maps, that snakes all the way to the other side, just wide enough for a skim drone to slip through. Idris, one of the lab assistants—he died, Liam thinks; no, not here, not yet—has boasted of “running the gauntlet,” his nickname for flying this route, how it takes near-perfect precision turning.

  Today will be the
day. Liam increases speed, angling the port and starboard thrusters. How many times has he flown by the Fingers, gazed into those slot canyons, pictured the route. . . .

  I can do this, he thinks, and he thought. He feels the rushing hum, that strange way that flying calms him. Here there is no boiling star, no mysterious black ship, both a source of life and death. What does it want from him—Sshh. Don’t think about that.

  The entrance grows before him, its shadows both ominous and inviting, harbingers of the dangerously narrow, twisting path through.

  Do it. Liam thinks—but at the last second, his past self slams the joystick and burns the thrusters, and the skim drone veers away from the narrow opening.

  Coward. Then, or now, or both? Cold sweat in his palms, under his arms. He knows, from all the future that is to come, that he had the skills to thread that needle. Not long from this moment, he will fly through much tighter spots in the caves on Mars, in the rings of Saturn, even in the Scorpius Core Two wreckage—

  “Then why don’t you try it?” Iris shimmers beside him.

  “You’re back,” says Liam. The sight of her causes a fresh burst of nervous energy.

  “You don’t seem happy to see me.”

  “We saw the maps of the universes. You made us. I . . .”

  “Go on. You can be honest with me.”

  “I don’t know. It’s weird knowing how we were created. That our whole existence comes from, like, some science experiment that you performed.”

  “I understand how you might see it that way,” says Iris. “But Liam, you give me a bit too much credit. I created the conditions for the big bang that began your universe, but how it organized itself after that—including the factors in your star system that allowed for life, and the particular forms that life took—was a result of its own physical laws. No two universes are the same; they always end up behaving in unique ways. It’s not as if I designed you. I know sometimes the captain thinks of me as a god, but I’m more like a proud parent. Does that help?”