“Yes. You'll all no doubt be eating a lot of soft food the next week or two. Good thing the gravity field on Andorran was 80 percent Earth standard, or you'd be spending the next two months in full rehab.”
This is insanity. It wasn't supposed to be like this!
Almost on cue, George's prediction was borne out, and Lara felt an extra weight fall upon her as New Terra leveled out of descent. Her arms fell into her lap, as if weighted wrist pads were suddenly, awkwardly added. She didn't mind the emerging headache so much – she became used to them in recent days. But her breathing became sluggish, as if during the onset of a chest cold. Even that would not have been such a bother if not for the general sensation of being extraordinarily bloated.
George said, “The initial symptoms should settle in a few minutes, be a bit more mild. Or so I've been told.”
She stretched her eyes, trying to keep them open. “We were ... preparing ... were going to prepare ... but everything else kept happening. Just forgot.”
Lara chose not to fight the exhaustion that combined with the planet's gravity to bear down upon her. “How much longer?” She asked after closing her eyes and resting her head.
“On our current track, about 35 minutes.”
The words registered somewhere in the back of her mind, but they were unimportant. Her mind was trying its damndest to persuade her that now would be the perfect opportunity for that much-overdue nap.
So, he says this isn't going to be easy for us. He's trying to prepare us. If that means I'm supposed to be afraid of what's coming, then I guess I'll be unprepared.
Just doesn't really seem to matter. Does it, Daniel? Once you've faced death, is there a reason to fear anything else life will offer?
She heard a reply.
“Without fear, there's no challenge.”
Her eyes flickered open, and the voice of a man so familiar – the man who came to represent the future – echoed in the cockpit. Or so she was certain for all of five seconds.
She looked ahead, through the viewport. Clouds. Endless sheets barreling upon the shuttle in horizontal swishes.
She mumbled. “Dreams. And then reality. Always reality.”
George might have said something else, but again her eyes were shuttered. His face. That's all she wanted to see. His face. The large oval ginger eyes. Warm, reassuring lips against her own. And countless light years away from the reality.
…
“We'll always be afraid,” Daniel Loche told her. “If not for ourselves, then for the people we love.”
He cradled their daughter in his lap, the morning light breaking hard through the Oregon woods. The girl giggled, her attention gobbled up by a transparent globe she spun around in her hands.
“But I don't want to FEAR anymore,” Lara insisted. “It's all I've ever done. Nothing can ruin what we have here.”
“In this place, no,” he looked around and smiled. “Destiny is exactly what we make it.” Daniel caressed his daughter's saffron hair. “She's a beautiful child. And she always will be. Even if you awaken from this dream. Even if all this goes away.”
“And if I ask you to stay? Will you?”
He leaned over and kissed Lara upon the cheek. “You will never have to ask. Until it comes time to leave this place. And then we'll both know what to say.”
Her tears gushed. “That's exactly what I'm afraid of.”
“Yes,” he said with affirmation. “Yes, it is.”
…
And in that moment of confusion someplace between where Lara Singer wanted to be and where she had to be, another voice intervened, her eyes slipped open.
“Falling asleep, is she?”
Maybe it was Stephen Kreveld. No, Mifuro? George?
“Only 20 more minutes,” another man replied. “I can take the shuttle in myself. Let her sleep.”
…
“Do you know that I’ll always love you? And our little girl?”
“Of course, Lara. Now rest! There’s so much ahead of you.”
…
In that instant, the orbital shuttle New Terra began its final descent through the cloudless night over the Dakota Territory.
And Lara Singer fell into a sound sleep.
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