"Cupcake,” he says, his brow tense with worry. He's kneeling by her. Then his head jerks up like a dog that's seen a rabbit. “Cherise,” he yells. “That better not be you calling the cops.” His hand closes hard around Sophie's arm. “I'm giving you until three."
Mommy's on the phone. Her father starts to get up. “One—"
She spits the blood in his face.
* * * *
The hut is patched together again; battered, but whole. A little blurrier, a little smaller than it was.
Matthias, a red parakeet on his shoulder, dissects the remnants of the pilgrim with a bone knife. His hand quavers; his throat is tight. He is looking for her, the one who was born a forest. He is looking for his mother.
He finds her story, and our shame.
It was a marriage, at first: she was caught up in that heady age of light, in our wanton rush to merge with each other—into the mighty new bodies, the mighty new souls.
Her brilliant colleague had always desired her admiration—and resented her. When he became, step by step, the dominant personality of the merged-soul, she opposed him. She was the last to oppose him. She believed the promises of the builders of the new systems—that life inside would always be fair. That she would have a vote, a voice.
But we had failed her—our designs were flawed.
He chained her in a deep place inside their body. He made an example of her, for all the others within him.
When the pilgrim, respected and admired, deliberated with his fellows over the building of the first crude Dyson spheres, she was already screaming.
Nothing of her is left that is not steeped in a billion years of torture. The most Matthias could build would be some new being, modeled on his memory of her. And he is old enough to know how that would turn out.
Matthias is sitting, still as a stone, looking at the sharp point of the bone knife, when Geoffrey/Grasper speaks.
"Goodbye, friend,” he says, his voice like anvils grinding.
Matthias looks up with a start.
Geoffrey/Grasper is more hawk, now, than parakeet. Something with a cruel beak and talons full of bombs. The mightiest of the Graspers: something that can outthink, outbid, outfight all the others. Something with blood on its feathers.
"I told you,” Geoffrey/Grasper says. “I wanted no more transformations.” His laughter, humorless, like metal crushing stone. “I am done. I am going."
Matthias drops the knife. “No,” he says. “Please. Geoffrey. Return to what you once were—"
"I cannot,” says Geoffrey/Grasper. “I cannot find it. And the rest of me will not allow it.” He spits: “A hero's death is the best compromise I can manage."
"What will I do?” asks Matthias in a whisper. “Geoffrey, I do not want to go on. I want to give up the keys.” He covers his face in his hands.
"Not to me,” Geoffrey/Grasper says. “And not to the Graspers. They are out now; there will be wars in here. Maybe they can learn better.” He looks skeptically at our priest. “If someone tough is in charge."
Then he turns and flies out the open window, into the impossible sky. Matthias watches as he enters the wild maze and decoheres, bits flushed into nothingness.
* * * *
Blue and red lights, whirling. The men around Sophie talk in firm, fast words. The gurney she lies on is loaded into the ambulance. Sophie can hear her mother crying.
She is strapped down, but one arm is free. Someone hands her her teddy bear, and she pulls it against her, pushes her face in its fur.
"You're going to be fine, honey,” a man says. The doors slam shut. Her cheeks are cold and slick, her mouth salty with tears and the iron aftertaste of blood. “This will hurt a little.” A prick: her pain begins to recede.
The siren begins; the engine roars; they are racing.
"Are you sad, too, teddy bear?” she whispers.
"Yes,” says her teddy bear.
"Are you afraid?"
"Yes,” it says.
She hugs it tight. “We'll make it,” she says. “We'll make it. Don't worry, teddy bear. I'll do anything for you."
Matthias says nothing. He nestles in her grasp. He feels like a bird flying home, at sunset, across a stormswept sea.
* * * *
Behind Matthias's house, a universe is brewing.
Already, the whenlines between this new universe and our ancient one are fused: we now occur irrevocably in what will be its past. Constants are being chosen, symmetries defined. Soon, a nothing that was nowhere will become a place; a never that was nowhen will begin, with a flash so mighty that its echo will fill a sky forever.
Thus—a point, a speck, a thimble, a room, a planet, a galaxy, a rush towards the endless.
There, after many eons, you will arise, in all your unknowable forms. Find each other. Love. Build. Be wary.
Your universe in its bright age will be a bright puddle, compared to the empty, black ocean where we recede from each other, slowed to the coldest infinitesimal pulses. Specks in a sea of night. You will never find us.
But if you are lucky, strong, and clever, someday one of you will make your way to the house that gave you birth, the house among the ontotropes, where Sophie waits.
Sophie, keeper of the house beyond your sky.
—THE END—
* * *
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