by Isaac Hooke
Ari untethered herself and pushed away from the terminal. She touched Hoodwink's bare wrist. Like her, he'd left the gloves of his suit on the terminal. He had no pulse.
She went to Tanner. No pulse either.
"They're dying!" she said. They're dead. "What do we do?"
"Neither of them have brain readings," Andes said. The bald child stared into his terminal. He sounded shocked. "We could hook them up to the ECMO heart-lung and keep them alive, but... but they're vegetables."
Ari set herself down beside Tanner, and sagged against the desk.
Neither of them have brain readings.
So this was how it would end.
The two people she loved more than anything in the world, both gone.
Ari's head tilted to the side, and her eyes lost focus.
She knew that death was nothing to fear. That Tanner and Hoodwink were in a good place, a better place, where they would know unlimited love, as she had when she was gone. Yet she couldn't help but feel a sense of regret for the life they could've had together.
"Wait a minute," she heard Andes say.
"Hey Teach."
Her head shot up. Tanner was awake beside her.
She buried her lips in his, almost falling off balance, not caring who was watching.
She pulled away. "I thought you were dead. You had no pulse. No brain readings."
"Maybe you checked wrong."
She touched his wrist with her index and middle fingers, just below the sleeve of his skin-tight blue uniform. This time there was a pulse. "No. I checked right."
Tanner shrugged. "Well, I couldn't die. Had to hold you to our lobster date."
She kissed him one more time, a quick peck, and then went to Hoodwink. She rechecked her father's pulse, hoping for a miracle.
Not this time.
"So you've left me again, dad," she said sadly. "So soon after coming back. Just like you always do."
Tanner was alive at least. Life was often bittersweet, wasn't it?
A brief, brilliant flash came from the window on the far side of the room. The children hurried over to it.
"Guys," Stanson said. "Take a look at this."
Ari and Tanner approached the window together.
When Ari got close, Caylin held her hand.
She stared out the long window into the starfields of the Ganymede sky.
Ari saw the purple ribbons of the aurora borealis. The dancing lights that were one of the greatest spectacles of the universe, the lights that Hoodwink promised she would see one day.
And above those ribbons she saw a spreading cloud of glitter, in a pattern reminiscent of fireworks. She realized it was debris from the ship that had been in orbit. There were no plumes of smoke, no fireballs, just pieces of metal expanding from a central point in the sky, the tiny metallic edges catching the light of the distant sun.
"Hoodwink," she said. "So he's really gone." Her voice cracked. "He's crossed the final Forever Gate. For us." For me.
Tanner rested a comforting hand on her shoulder. "When beggars die, there are no comets seen; but the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."
Ari smiled sadly. "He never got to build the utopia he wanted."
"We'll do it for him." Tanner lowered his hand and clasped hers in his.
"He's not dead," Ari said. "Not really. None of us ever dies." She glanced at Tanner. "Did you see it, when you were gone? Just now?"
"See what?" Tanner seemed genuinely puzzled.
"Forever." Ari stared at the twinkling debris. "When I fell from the wall, Brute slammed the disk into my head. I found myself back here, in the Outside, except I was looking down at myself from a corner of the room. There was a wispy cord that connected me to my body. As I watched, that ethereal cord slid over to the terminal beside my body.
"There was a being next to me. I couldn't see him, but he told me not to worry about the cord, or how delicate it looked. There was a tunnel behind me, and I went inside. There were beings of light in the tunnel. I saw relatives. I saw Cora. But Hoodwink wasn't there.
"I neared the end of the tunnel, and my life played back. My actions weren't judged by anyone except myself. I could see myself, reliving the important events from the point of view of the people I cared about. And I could feel how my mistakes hurt them, because I was them. I felt the hurt I caused Hoodwink and Cora. I felt the hurt I caused you. I—"
Tanner interrupted. "You've never hurt me."
"I have. But in that moment, I swore if I ever returned that I'd be a better person. That I'd help others, even gols, and try to be more mindful of how my actions affected them. I emerged from the tunnel into a land of brightness. I felt peace, well-being, love. There was a bridge of white light, spanning a sparkling river. A gold gate, towering to infinity, was set across the middle of the bridge. It was the final Forever Gate that all creatures in the universe must one day pass.
"I looked back, and saw that I still had that thin umbilical connecting me to the world of the living, though it was slighter than ever. I knew if I crossed over that final threshold, if I crossed that final Forever Gate, the cord would break entirely and I could never return. So though I felt peace, forgiveness, and love, I didn't cross. Instead, I waited."
Tanner was silent a moment. "Why? If that place was so good, why would you want to come back to this?"
"Because Hoodwink wasn't there." Ari squeezed his palm, and looked into his eyes. "And because you weren't there."
EPILOGUE
A million bits of crumpled metal and ice drifted through space. Ranging in size from specks smaller than dust to fragments larger than mansions, the edges of each individual piece sparkled like icicles under the faraway sun. Some of them rotated. Others broke apart and disintegrated. Many of the metallic fragments were in fact coated in ice, or were chunks of ice themselves. Large swaths of mist—microscopic pellets of frozen water—gradually dissipated in the gaps between fragments, proof of what happens when an exploding ocean flash-cools in space.
A small pod floated amid the glittering wreckage. It carried one roomful of water, one compact energy source, and one bittersweet Satori.
Graol had the pod all to himself. Through the portal, he saw other pods dispersed among the glittering fragments. The nav controls of those escape pods were all preprogrammed to return to the nearest colony, in this case the third planet of the system, Earth. The Vargos was gone, but its passengers survived.
Still, he felt little satisfaction over what he had done.
The Vargos had possessed some of the same security layers as the human starship. Sub-A.I.s could veto commands from the main A.I., The Shell. However there was a flaw in the security design—no sub-A.I.s protected the power system. That area of the ship was just a dumb interface under the direct control of The Shell, like the satoroids. Thus the tailored virus Graol had created allowed him to bypass the security measures of the power system and overload the core.
When he initiated the overload, the automated escape procedure kicked into gear. The fleshy umbilicals and placentas slid along the support tracks to the evac chambers, bringing the respective Satori along with them. Eight Satori at a time were packed into the escape pods of the lower-class oceans, while the pods of the upper class held only one. The slave classes were left behind, as none of those races had consciousness anyway. Once the occupants were loaded into the escape pods, the hatches were sealed and the pods jettisoned.
There was enough time before the core exploded for every Satori aboard to be stowed in a pod and ejected. At least that's what Graol hoped. He hadn't wanted to kill any Satori by doing this. That wasn't what this was about.
No. It was about Javiol, and his surrogate Jeremy.
The thirty-eight remaining surrogates would have awakened the instant they were transferred to the escape pods. Forcibly emptying the Satori consciousnesses from the human surrogates was essentially the same as killing those surrogates. When Javiol awoke, the human that was Jeremy died, ending h
is link with One.
Destroying an entire ship was a harsh price to pay when Graol only needed to disconnect one surrogate, but Ari and Tanner didn't have the luxury to wait around while he tracked Javiol down.
So he'd destroyed the Vargos.
Javiol was floating somewhere out there in the debris field at this very moment, lying awake in a pod. He was upper class, so he would be alone like Graol. Without The Shell to guide his awakening and initiate Return therapy, he'd have no knowledge of who he was, nor of the technology available to him within the escape pod. He would still be Jeremy in his mind. Graol imagined him frantically slamming his tentacles into the metal walls, flailing about like a caged prisoner, trapped not only in a cell of metal and water, but in a body of tentacles and cilia.
It would be a long journey for that one.
Graol tethered himself to the local A.I. of the pod and prepared to enter hibernation. His only regret was that he hadn't had time to permanently transfer his consciousness to a human body before he destroyed the Vargos. That would just have to wait another day.
Goodbye Ari.
Before he went under, he reached out, searching for Javiol.
There. A quadmind whose thoughts were a confused bundle of madness and terror. A quadmind that still thought it was human. A quadmind that once believed it could do anything to anyone, no matter how cruel or sadistic, without repercussions.
Graol transmitted a single message.
Welcome to the real world, Jeremy.
He thought he heard Javiol scream.
This is the end.
Thank you for reading The Forever Gate!
If you want to be notified when my next novel is out, click here to sign up for my New Release mailing list. This list is only for new release announcements--no ads, no blog posts. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Until next time,
Isaac
Postpartum
If you loved this book, please consider leaving a review. Comments and reviews allow readers to discover indie authors, so if you want others to enjoy The Forever Gate as you have, please leave a short note.
You can keep in touch with me or my writing through one—or all—of the following means:
Twitter: @IsaacHooke
Facebook: http://fb.me/authorisaachooke
Goodreads: http://goodreads.com/isaachooke
My website: http://isaachooke.com
My email: [email protected]
Don't be shy about emails, I love getting them, and try to respond to everyone!
Thanks again for reading The Forever Gate.
About the Author
Isaac Hooke is the author of the military science fiction novel, ATLAS. His experimental genre-bending action novel THE FOREVER GATE was an Amazon #1 bestseller in both the science fiction and fantasy categories when it was released in May 2013.
When Isaac isn't writing, publishing, and blogging, he's busy cycling and taking pictures in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
He's been writing since 1997, and he has a degree in Engineering Physics.
Also By Isaac Hooke
ATLAS
Caterpillar Without A Callsign
Just Another Day
Finding Harmon
www.isaachooke.com