by Grant Fausey
Jolland struck the mechanical beast back, warding off his attack with nothing more than her mind. In chaos she thrived, destined to stand her ground in a bleeding panic of terminal illness. The focal point on which the universe hinged was the delicate balance on which all things would turn and flourish. But to the machine, she was merely a pawn in a much larger game that it could not win or lose, but rather play the hand dealt. Its lights flickered and dimmed, torn away from its measure of existence pending it was gone from her reach, entangled in a desperate attempt at survival against a greater odds.
Jonsanna Klue struck the machine again and again, repeating the distress of attack with deadly blows of violence that enabled his eventual victory. Sara Jolland pulled herself from the ground and matured with each instant of reconciliation. She was aware of more than she was willing to admit. The battle was over and the machine was obliterated, blown into a thousand pieces across time.
Jolland had no choice but to breath; a sigh of relief reunited with her self in a reality delivered by a foe. The reunification was swift and the mass that surrounded her devoured her co-existence of life and death. The battle won, Jolland cradled time spreading her existence over a charcoal dusting of eternity in which she faced the blackness of the Acreen, as it too surrounded her, entombing her, helpless in Kellnar's grasp.
––– 48 –––
TANNA DREL
Tanna Drel emerged from the crowd into the main square, meeting Bogar's henchman, Babloo Kyrant. "Sheers made it to the past, Drel," said the bounty hunter to Tanna, angrily. "He can't…”
"What are you talking about, Kyrant?" asked Tanna with a slight mockery in his tone of voice. "I'll kill him, myself."
"Well–– snapped Kyrant, "someone must have seen fit to take his place. There are clones running around everywhere. You had better do the job right this time, or I'll be looking for you, and next time––I won't be offering any deals to save your ass."
"What do you know of deals, Kyrant?" snickered Tanna.
"There won't be a next time. There's only now––Besides, I haven't killed anything fresh today."
"What?" questioned Kyrant before he screamed out, silently gasping for air? Travis watched Kyrant's death and turned away in disgust. His dismembered body splattered the ground, passing through the ripples of time.
"Damn," he whimpered, about to lose his cool. The disorientation from the temporal wave weakened his stomach and this was just about enough to overwhelm him.
It was a terrible way for Kyrant to die torn from limb to limb, but there was no choice but to accept it. The deed was done. Gayla buried her face in his shoulder, taken by the bewilderment of
"My God," he said with curled lips that coursed his face. Kristic turned back to Avenall, tears in his eyes.
"We're not dealing with something human, remember?"
Travis thought about the death of his father, the escape from Trithen and hearing of Maccon's voice for the first time. It was a nightmarish flashback into his past. His father's escaped, Callen beside him. The skycar's journey into the clouds flashed past him as memories. Only this time, they centered on boyhood companion, Callen Sheers.
A fighter streaked overhead, exploding in mid-air. Travis remembered seeing the cockpit scream away from the shattered craft in an explosion of exhaust and smoldering black smoke. The ground below Callen's feet trembled with enough force to shake the mountain apart.
"Travis," screamed Callen. "They're using planetary devastation devices." The ground fell away, crumbling into an open crevasse filled with rushing water. Travis caught a shard of rock, holding on by his fingertips, but the force of the water ripped him away sweeping him over the edge into a landslide of debris and smashing waves.
Callen, of course, was dead!
Travis tried to focus the vision. The same figure in the night huddled in the darkness. It was Tanna on Trithen. He was the one setting off the beamdrivers. The cover-up was the same. No detail left upturned. There were certain signs already; the temporal vortex manufactured at some single point in time: It had to be the Jantis Atilies. It wasn't a natural phenomenon. Finally, the pieces became all too clear. The pointer stone was a marker all right, but there were twin stones––The pillars of the black sun.
A loop, thought Kristic, an endless loop. The signs were already there––Planned for and executed. A single beamdriver wouldn't split the planet; alter its appearance maybe, but it couldn't be done just once. No, thought Kristic. It would have to be done twice––once to start the loop, changing the appearance and a second to stop the loop and relax the appearance.
"Damn," said Kristic to the others. "I have it. I figured out the cover-up. A Beamdriver explosion now will alter the surface. It wouldn't destroy the planet, but disrupt it. The new matrix would alter the landmasses, changing the contour of the oceans. But a second explosion would stop the change and re-alter the surface."
Travis jumped into the conversation. "I understand," he said, astutely. "He's using the same principle here. One loop to start the course the other to form an alternative future!"
"The temporal distortion," clued Gayla, following the example.
"Then another," continued Travis, "to end point the loop and complete the alternative future.”
“Yes––I see."
"The attack on Trithen," shouted Travis. "It had to be the attack on Trithen." Travis cupped his fingers over the stubble of his counterpart’s beard. "There has to be a platform, a drilling rig or maybe––" Gayla leaned in and finished his sentence, "a regeneration facility."
"Telta Minor, the mining rig..." shouted Travis. "That means Trithen had to be a decoy..."
"But for what?" questioned Avenall. "We're in the wrong time?"
"No––" shouted Travis. "Not the wrong time. We're in the right time, just in the wrong place. There's another location."
"That means Tanna's a clone," surmised Gayla. "Where's the real––" She stopped mid-sentence, and turned to Travis. “There's another…."
Tanna stood upon a hover platform, overlooking the valley where Callen Sheer's lay dead. He laughed, saying, "I've no time for simple farewells, old friend. I hope in time you will understand what I have done." However there was no way a dead man could understand what futures were being developed or schemed upon. Tanna adjusted the controls of a single Beamdriver, setting the depth to the planet's core.
"That should do it," he admitted, "just enough to shake it up a little then it's back to the future to set things straight again."
Jonsanna Klue stood on a ridge, beyond where Tanna's hover platform floated attached to the Beamdriver bore hole. He watched Tanna make the adjustments and set the device then with a silvery weapon in hand; he leaped into a fearsome battle for possession of the beamdrivers detonator.
"You're dead!" screamed Tanna. "I just killed you!"
"It's not that easy. It doesn't matter which shape you take. You're still slime ridden filth."
"Look whose talking!"
Jonsanna took the first punch but Tanna deflected it with a pass of his arm. A second punch, followed by a kick landed Tanna in the dirt off the rig. Jonsanna Klue leaped to the ground taking a clever smash at his side. He tucked and hit the ground himself.
The struggle ended for the moment bouncing back in a frenzy, whipping and kicking everywhere at the same time. But Jonsanna returned the blows, striking the pirate repeatedly to the ground until; finally, he pinned him to the ground by his throat.
"All right," demanded Jonsanna in a huff, keeping his fists tight against the bounty hunter.
"Where and when?" he asked Tanna, pushed at him; Tanna fighting to break the strangle hold he had around his neck. Jonsanna repeated himself: “Where and when?” He wanted to know the location and time in which Jolland was taken as an infant.
Tanna laughed, and pushed him off him. He stood up, wiped the blood from his mouth. "She wasn't taken," said Tanna bluntly. "She was manufactured, but there's more to it than that.
; "Manufactured," muttered Jonsanna Klue, staring at Tanna. "You mean I've been protecting a piece of––" he stopped. "No I haven't, have I?"
"It's too bad you'll never know the truth Jonsanna, but there just isn't enough time to tell––" Tanna paused, throwing the detonator at Jonsanna. The sound of clicking making the realization ever present, numbers racing backwards to zero.
"5... 4... 3... 2... 1..." The countdown beeped at zero, and Jonsanna jumped from the rig, whisked away in a pillar of light at the moment of the explosion.
Travis emerged first from the transport in the midst of the explosion, followed by Gayla, Avenall and finally Kristic. They rolled across the surface together, coming to rest at their destination. Travis hit the ground in a tuck and roll, slamming against Jonsanna Klue separating him from Tanna. He looked up, spit out a mouth full of dirt, and whaled.
"We're to late," cried Gayla. "It's the Jantis Atilies..."
"Why send me to the Jantis, Alvericon!" whispered Travis to himself. No one answered, but a light trickled into existence, illuminating the remains of Jonsanna Klue's body in a death glow.
"What can I do, he's dead already––Why send me here."
"Because you are the same, my son," Maccon said in Travis' head.
"Because of what?" answered Travis, pulling himself up to take a step back?
"Maccon is within you," Indigo said to him, "as am I. As Jonsanna Klue is you, so are you Jonsanna Klue."
"He's no part of me––" snarled the youth.
"Absorb that which you are, Travis. Become one with the light. He is a part of you, conceived as an insurance policy. You and all those like you are as one. Each created as a duplicate of the other, divided to become one. You are more than replicants, both the hope and essence of that which is the Source of Alvericon. The living light from which you were created is life itself, my son. And within you young Travis is the power to restore the galaxy.” Travis was dumbfounded. “ Look to the medallion,” the voice of Indigo continued; touch it with the power within you and become as one. Join. It is your destiny."
Travis looked flabbergasted at the medallion, touched it with his hand. "Trace it with the power within you and fulfill your destiny."
"Together as one," said Travis, looking to the others. Gayla touched his medallion first, followed by Kristic and Avenall: A noticeable brilliance spread from the center, each wave engulfed by the medals, in an explosion of light as blinding as the sun. Their voices combined in a single proclamation as they proclaimed the rites and rituals, drawing forth the powers of the Source.
"I summon all that I am;” said Travis, “all that I have been; all that I must be––Join with me, so that we may become one."
The medallions flared into a brilliant amber-white light then were gone, absorbed into a single being. Travis' medallion became a single light, fading its brilliance until the others were gone, only he remained. Astonished, he cupped the medallion and fell to his knees. The event transpired him.
Alvericon's image appeared upon his face, and for an instant the two were as one. The image faded away and Travis said, "Forgive me father for what I am about to do. I will miss you, always."
"Together," answered the voice in his mind. "We are stronger." A tear drops from his eye. "I know," he answered, wiping the teardrop with his finger. "I love you all."
"As we love you," answered Gayla. "Now, let's go! We've a rendezvous with the devil himself."
• • •
The time vortex swirled, continuing to extend through millenniums in opposite directions, opening a pathway into both the future and the past. Travis hurtled backward, thrown across the vast time-scape to the last moments of Atlantis. He flashed into existence, seeing Jolland stumble as the ground beneath her feet, collapsed. She screamed attempting to hold on as the ground crumbled away, slipping from under her fingers. Her nails dug into the surface, as she attempted to hold on to the crumbling ground. But it was too late. Jolland fell, but as quickly as she moved a cable connected with her, wrapping around her waist. It snapped tight at the other end, Relix and Jerolda Manchi pulling her aboard the Beamrider, Atlantis two.
Travis moved like the wind beneath her, traveling across the planet in the blink of his eyes. The starship circled the temple, slowing to recover the team, but Callen engaged in a fight to the death with the Kel-fee, dangling from the edge of the temple. Relix fired another line wrapping around him, pulling him away. The temple's stone pillars quivered under the stress, crumbling to the ground in a cloud of dust––a marker to the weary. Jolland pull Callen aboard, and wondered which version he really was. The task was over, and done. Sara Jolland saved, now all that remained was to set the record straight. The future was dependent upon his ways with the futures and his past lives. Only the truth stood in his way.
Sara Jolland's scream engulfed the blackness once again, as the lifeless took the form of Trithen Kellnar just in time to see Sara Jolland emerge from the darkness, only to be imprisoned in her own living light.
The force of the reunion was a draining, an experience in which the living was absorbed: A pleasurable feast for the devil in the Acreen. Hers was to be a slow and agonizing death.
"You will die," said Kellnar, within inches of the radiance. She was dying, but not alone. Her counterpart from the future was beside her, entombed with her. "And all that exists will be mine," spoke Kellnar. "And I will alter life as I see fit."
"You're mad," screamed Jolland.
"Perhaps,” he answered, “but you'll be dead and the generations to come will be the living light from which you were created, my pretty Jollands."
"It's not that easy, Acreen," announced Rallumn, adjusting to extend himself to a place between both Jollands and Kellnar. "It was my mistake that created you, nothing else. I recreated you."
Rallumn separated from the branches, standing erect upon the limbs that support him. The blackness oozed from his severed limbs.
"You can not rule the universe as one."
"Rule the universe," laughed Kellnar. "I do not intend to rule, anything. Only a starless night will prevail."
"You were created to preserve machine kind, not to destroy it," commanded Rallumn.
"Then you have failed, mighty sorcerer––for I am more than simple mind. I am all you hoped for and more."
"And what of machine kind?" asked Rallumn. "What will become of them in your new universe?"
"In my new universe: There will be no new universe, Rallumn. Only that what you have planned for!"
"Then I must return you to the living light from which you were born, Lukrin," said Rallumn, pulling himself from the floor of the regeneration station. "You see Trithen Kellnar is only a clone. All that surrounds you is of my renewal."
"You are not of the Industries, Trigennian," commanded Lukrin, grasping a hold of Rallumn by the throat. "I am the Industries, wizard. I've ruled in a thousand times, for a thousand years. For a millennium your universe has been mine, Rallumn."
"Not yours, Acreen," replied Rallumn. "My death will mean nothing, should you close your hand about my neck. It may appear your light guides what is visible, but your lives are now limited and all that you are is confined. I have seen to that. All has been planned on the curves of the future, Acreen."
"Then you will die, Rallumn," snarled Lukrin, closing his hand.
"Jolland," echoed the voice of Maccon. "It is your time, my daughter."
"Only to be reborn, Lukrin," commanded, Jolland; her body erect in the living light. Sparkles flew off of Trithen Kellnar, and Lukrin screamed. The image sprayed out in a brilliant light, dissolving away into the blackness. The temporal vortex spiraled around him, drawing the blackness into rippling shreds of his existence, the event absorbed by the time distortion within the universe of the Triad....
New Haven invaded the Nexusphere and Nexus dwarfed the heavens forming the infinite universe of the Source, filling all that could be seen in transcending time. The light of the universe blackened, and into the light came
darkness absorbed by the deepest holes. Its surface twisted and distorted, drawing within it the temporal distortion, connecting the vortex and everything within it into an endless loop at the edges of time.
A glistening field of stars surrounded it, becoming a part of the regenerative waves spanning the entire a galaxy; the entire universe, even the threshold of the infinite domain of the Source.
Lukrin was gone; all that remained was the living light of his rejuvenation. A new Earth emerged in the light; one that glittered with beauty: A radiant spectacle, shimmering with two luminous beings and paradise; a New Haven filled with the beauty and wonders of the world that came before it. The luminous beings embrace in love and kindness, filling each other’s hearts and minds with eternal value and reward. Each a renewed people within the Nexus: Living light from which life itself spanned.
"Yes...." whispered the first, "the prophesy––The future course of mankind.”
“And what of machine kind?” questioned the other. “What will become of them in your new universe?”
"As I have planned for you, mighty Rallumn," roared the second, our mind hearing the words as Indigo spoke them.
"Then I leave it in your capable hands, son of Alvericon. Guide the second generation a you would your own, and record its history within thy journals. Remember, as you must. Your journey will be one of importance."
"Rest easy," said Sara Jolland.
Travis, Kristic, Avenall, Gayla and Maccon stood as one voice. "We too shall keep your secret as he has for centuries, my Trigennian friend." The light separated, and Gayla embraced Kristic, kissing him tenderly, while at his feet, Tee hurried Jerolda Manchi along in order to reunite with his counterpart, Relix.
"Come on, I don't want to stand here and watch all this mushy stuff. We've done our job, now let's get back to some––"
Tee scrambled, falling down into the abyss of Rallumn's light. He dangled on a line, supported by Treads, Rotob, Clicks and Jumpstart. Jerolda Manchi stepped up beside them, helping to pull him in.