The Time Tribulations

by Travis Borne

  103. The Gift

  “I’ll leave the two of you alone,” Red said to Steve and Rafael. He and Maggie, along with Winter, gathered the youngsters and headed into the facility through the steel door. The kids smiled and waved goodbye to the only awake newcomer, and Rafael waved back with his white robotic arm; it glitched as he raised it, one finger wouldn’t extend.

  Steve sat alone with him, amid the sleeping party of five plus two, Isaac and Madison—stable versions of their 33.3% parent, Herald—and explained a few things about their special gift. And he told Rafael succinctly about the plan, which was hard for Rafael to digest. Rafael didn’t sit well with it but it did make sense, unfortunately, and he could fathom no other approach, yet. Rafael realized then the scope of what had transpired here in the Vallecito bunker all these years while he had been away selling tacos and tequila. And he shook his head in dismay, saying, “There must be another way.”

  “We can discuss it further while the others sleep,” Steve replied. “We have all night, although we must hurry, and execute a plan within the next twelve hours.” And he continued, just himself and Rafael cognizant at the table. Steve explained the details of Jerry’s transmission, the white hole, Boron, and the citizens who had been saved, sacrificed, and those continuing to be sacrificed, right now. They had recorded Jerry’s entire transmission and had a location too. And they knew what Jerry and the undersea prisoners desperately needed. But here, from the bunker, they could not send him the lending program; the connection to Jewel City was as it had always been, one way. And Steve relayed Jerry’s potent but pithy messages using a shorthand language shared by the bots, one that could expedite the explanation: the citizens of Jewel City who had been stolen were still trapped but safe, for now, and every other one who had been logged out of Boron’s system were successful in being out-processed.

  So, they had to get back, and soon, but for reasons even weightier than those. Steve explained one detail that had not been told to the others: the deceptively leaked, DNA-damaging radiation from the drones that had ravaged Jewel City. It was something, having possessed technology throughout the years, that he and those here, in the bunker, were familiar with. And Steve disclosed the secret of the elevator ride down, its teal banding light: it was also a cleanser, and had sterilized the damaging effects. A big reason to rush, Jewel City needed the one thing it lacked, the sterilization tool. It could cure the affliction and at the same time handle genetic disorders, diseases which had sprung up because of the revert—as well, cancer.

  “But there’s something I’d like to show you first,” Steve said. “Now, how about we head down.”

  The two of them departed the quiescent forest and headed through the steel door. An inclined path spiraled deep into the facility. The corridor was just as Rafael remembered, glass on one side with intermittent open windows, and the magnificent tree growing in the middle. It had since grown to fill the 100-foot-diameter cylinder: The White Lightning Tree, as Herald had named it when he planted it some 25 years ago.

  “Odd,” Rafael said, “being here, in the bunker again. My home, like a hometown. It’s, as though, some other life, when I was far simpler as a person…” Steve nodded as Rafael’s words faded into thoughts, and quietly they continued deeper.

  Although, Rafael thought again, I am not a person, just a bot. But I feel like a human, in my heart, even though I’m wearing this old bot again, my current vessel. How things change. The ups, downs, now here again…

  And Rafael knew just where they were headed first—as his tired, white body walked alongside his graceful friend. They passed the cafeteria, and the garden rooms which looked just as healthy as they had twenty years earlier. They passed the movie room, the living quarters, then took a left. The corridor narrowed and ended with a steel door; it opened as they approached. The old shop.

  They had expanded it by at least a hundred feet! And it was crammed with technological wonders.

  “Your old workbench, Rafael,” said Steve, pointing to the right. “We haven’t touched it, but as you can see much has changed.” There were at least a dozen helpers all working at various stations within the brightly lit space, and all possessed newer, highly capable bodies— but no two were alike.

  “You have been working,” Rafael said. “I suppose you have a new vessel for me?”

  “That, my good friend, is correct. And it is a very special vessel, the first of its kind.” They continued on toward the back, slowly, for after passing the various workstations—some resembling Herald’s lab at Meddlinn—gracious, heartwarming reunions took place. Before long Rafael was able to move forward no longer. He was a celebrity, surrounded by bots of all types; every online bot, big or small, arrived to greet him.

  It was welcome tediousness and it made Rafael feel even more human. Good feelings flooded him with warmth and he remembered his youngest, Diego, leaping into his arms. Existence, be it channeled through bot or human vessel—skinny, three-foot-tall, red-and-black flipper, even the plugged-in buzzers on the far wall blinking a hello, in a language he could read—was a grand and special, wonderful, truly marvelous thing. Switches continued to flip inside Rafael’s head. He was hyperaware of it all as if he was somewhere in the ceiling: his evolution continued. Another rung on the ladder of life and climbing—like when he’d asked Herald to place those few jumper wires in his ancient 386 casing, just as fast as he evolved after that first little jumper wire made a connection; oh, how it shocked Herald good. And he remembered Ana behind Herald, laughing, then checking to see if her love was okay, kissing his finger. Like a syringe of roids, that one tiny wire delivered to him a surge of power.

  And he remembered his food stand under the blistering desert sun; it was Carlos’ and Luisa’s, but both were his essence just the same; it was all a part of him. And his children, how he loved them so: Mateo, Nicole, Martin, and funny little Diego. Love came to him like magnets to a magnetar: on hot days that would make almost any man take a knee, working as a team in the old food junker they’d built from scrap, using their bare hands as a family. Lessons taught to his kids—but those were the lessons he’d received, and he was getting loads more now, those that bolstered the true and grand worth of life itself, reinforcing the notion that bad, terrible, highs and lows—it’s all, everything a part of the grand experience.

  The crowd of emotional bots made a hole, and he looked upon it. Rafael stumbled forward, slowly. The old, white body, glitching a little here and there, with only a hole for the mouth, pulled itself along. His brown eyes were two warm hearts, pumping, and now, crying a river. It was magnificent. His heart went warm and his eyes flooded.

  He said the word magnifico, in his mind—and hugged each and every one of his friends. It was as if, they’d been waiting for him all this time, faithfully. The bots knew Rafael too well. He was their leader, the great Rafael they’d even say, back then.

  He had surmised it was another deeply implanted algorithm, that his best friend in the universe, Herald, had somehow implanted it within their minds. But now he knew, and everyone who had remained were here, surrounding him, patting his white plastic shoulders or the top of his glossy head. All of his best friends, he realized then with warmth that was a supernova heating a stalled galaxy, just understood him, and better than he could have known at the time.

  Rafael had always thought, that somehow, he was special, but realized just then and there while looking up at it, that he was no different than any other bot. He had his own unique dreams just like any other, sure. Steve had always dreamed of becoming an oceanographer; he wanted to work with dolphins, so the bots had worked together to make his dreams a reality, and his body was the only one with seamless skin that could generate any images on the outside. Rafael saw the new aquarium across from the White Lightning tree and put two and two—plus a few hundred more—together in just that moment. The bots had been building, catering to each other’s dreams, as well those of every human. One big family. Love. Togetherness. Here, surviving,
making the best of a dead planet.

  All of the bots had evolved in some way or another: some wore clothing and some were black, some were red and some were beige-white as if they’d chosen the simple life of a minimalist. And there was even a blue man—blue bot. Others had multi tools: they could solder a wire onto the electron of an atom with their telescopic eyes. And Steve had his ocean, and while it wasn’t the real deal, the thought was everything. And here, finally, was Rafael’s. They had not forgotten him.

  The gift.

  “We just knew you’d come back, somehow,” Hal said. He was wearing simple jeans and a T-shirt, but hadn’t changed a lick. Hal had always been selfless, putting the needs of everyone before his. He said slowly with the utmost calm, “We wanted it to be special, Rafael.”

  “Well, how about you try it on for size?” another said quickly.

  Rafael’s still magnificent brown eyes spoke worlds. They spoke gratitude, and 633 gazillion years worth of gracias, muchas gracias. His every second, since he had first been turned on until now, was appreciated. Gratitude was a golden retriever with its head out the window, doing 55 on a sunny day. Lessons both painful and happy hit him like a 12-gauge unloading into the back of his head. And he nodded.

  And Steve opened his head, that had been figuratively blown from his neck, and took it out. All bots, like a factory that had been powered down to observe precious seconds of silence, watched as the culmination of nearly two decades of work became a powered-on reality.

  104. Part X - Father and Daughter, and The Wall

  “I can’t go, Dad.” There, she finally said it. The radiant fingers of her aura meshed with his like a sea of spiders intermingling—and she fell into him. Her father’s essence was her anchor and the decision tore into her.

  “We’ve come too far to turn back now,” Herald said gently. “And you know what we can achieve if we remain here. What about your mother, and Jim?”

  “I’ve already discussed it with him. He wants to go back too. And you know Mom, she’s just like all the others, enthralled by Q’s vision of the next tier.”

  “I want only the best for Ana, she deserves it. And, Q would never allow it. The others want to live. They’ve been waiting for this transition for a long time and it’s going to take every one of us to punch through.”

  “But it’s still an unknown,” Amy said. She floated around him; colors were the skin of a supernova and they were sponges to each other’s vibes. “Just what is on the other side? I have always gotten the feeling you don’t believe Q. And why I have I never been able to read you like I can the others?”

  Herald paused. His innermost thoughts were behind the wall she could never surmount. He said only, “Soon, Sweetie Pie. You know how much I love you.”

  “I love you too. But so secretive, even with me, Dad—why?”

  “There’s a time for everything. Now tell me, why do you want to go back?”

  “It still hurts—I abandoned them, and I hated lying.”

  “You never lied, Amy. You comforted him, soothed his pain, as well the grief within them all. Their eyes when they realized you were still alive—you beheld their healing, their rebirth.”

  “Your plan, Dad. It didn’t have to be like…maybe Q was right. It’s just I can’t stop thinking about it. I want to save Jerry, too. We should have helped. Maybe…we should’ve stayed.”

  “You well know the risk we would have taken, when so many others here depend on us… It can only be achieved with all of us. And although that Jim possessed a lent consciousness, he is no lesser for it. He made the choice, and we accepted it.”

  Father and daughter shared the memory while floating in the swirls of colors, colors that could detonate a pair of organic eyes like an atom bomb. Neither made an attempt to create a world—they just embraced each other’s essence. Herald felt her pain, this time more than previously. And it tugged on the side of him that knew the truth, the side of him that was going to let it happen. He’d given Q the reins and the little bowl-cut bastard was running with it just like he always had known he would. Everything was moving right along as planned.

  The last minutes on Earth. The memories of that day. The memory of that nod, inside the borrowed virtual world in which they’d pretended to exist for real. The nod had bounced between them like a deflated ball, the feeling was analogous to the one they shared when Manny, Blanca, Red, and Maggie had decided that they also wanted to remain on the dying world.

  But just like the four of them, and their families, the printed Jim had been so adamant, and driven, a first for the last of the towns. It was exactly the same with the others in the bunker, and Herald agreed, they all did: they should have their choice, and own it—for if there’s no choice then what is there? He thought about just that, just then, as the two of them floated within the multidimensional rainbow soup, and he decided to let Amy have some of the memories he had only shared with one other soul, Ana: when he sat atop Meddlinn, the day after he’d met her—when he decided that he would try to save some, not all. He’d do his best, but he didn’t want them all. The sick fucks, the rapists, the superficial slobs and gluttons, the prideful waste of humanity that he knew would never learn—even if they were given a million years to try.

  Amy saw the pith of her father’s misanthropy. It was vile and crushing, but she also saw the common sense behind it, and his take on things. She thought, too, that she saw someone else, lurking in the distance of his thoughts. Someone terrible, the opposite of the imaginary beings who had always been in her company. He looked red, and large.

  Herald pulled slowly on the wall only he and so few others had the power to create. An impenetrable safe within his mind, supposedly, as many speculated. It was surmised to be the realm of paradoxical matter, not thoughts or memories, but a grand, or diabolical, essence. Ana had slipped once, revealing to Amy something about a white-lightning tree, as well a container where Herald could secure something else. And Herald lowered it just enough so Amy could get a taste.

  With alacrity, Amy climbed. She wanted to see this white-lightning tree that had been a rare feather of a rumor. But instead she saw disgusting creatures as she was finally able to mount her father’s special wall. There was a brown warty troll, shackled and rotting, his leg half eaten away by what appeared mold encased in a white web. He was slimy and smelled like a teen who hadn’t showered in four days, but still alive, and bubbling as if he was being boiled. A living film of worms and maggots floated around the glob of a monster. There were bogs, and puddles like black mirrors, and with his one free arm the troll gorged on the bile and guts around him—until he spotted Amy. She jerked her head away. She was there now.

  Dauntless, Amy, she told herself. Jon always said her dad was dauntless, back then, when he so often talked about old times. So, Amy stood firm. Dauntless. She let the word give her power.

  Human bodies, and mountains of bashed television sets. The distant forest haunted her as she focused on it next; she tried to see something else, to understand, searching for the supposed tree, while keeping her eyes off the troll. The gross one delivered fear into her heart like a cold sword, and her imagination got the best of her: she imagined his slimy hands around her neck, covering her eyes; he was riding her, and choking her.

  Thorny vines grew in her mind alongside an unfamiliar nervousness, but she focused on the distant forest now, trying to see more. There was something within it, she was sure of that. Angled eyes, red and glowing, the beast she thought she had imagined earlier at the edge of her father’s regular thoughts. The time spent trying to make out just what it could be allowed the vines to enwrap her legs. The thorns contained pain, and like syringes they injected panic; with panic arrived changes. The flow of time she was experiencing became disrupted. Her heart pumped faster, then slower as if it’d been shut down, then faster, then slower. Each pump was a tire hitting an underwater gong. And as if she was a rubber stretch doll being ripped apart by a possessed tweaker, she felt the ends of her arms dis
tant, then close, and her eyes as if they were looking at everything from the back of her head. Getting pulled, then compacted, even twisted now, and all the while the vines were wrapping themselves around her legs, her waist, her torso, and soon, her neck. She wanted to scream—but no, she was stronger now. She desperately wanted to understand her father.

  The thorns sent racing visions into her mind: liquid metal, silver with a reflecting spectrum of colors beyond normal human perception: the weird ones. It flowed into her, down, cold—then, pitch darkness. Flash! Blood so dark it bordered on being black, and glossy like living, flowing, dark mirrors that had been melted down. The blood filled the realm in which she now found herself, a bathtub overflowing, being filled with a fire hose. No, it wasn’t a hose, it was a—control your thoughts, Amy. It’s not a snake!

  She was swallowed by the dark current and lost all bearing. And the throbbing, and slowing, and speeding up, warping, twisting, continued—faster, faster, faster. She went helplessly with the flow, into her own mind, having been ejected from the wall, or whatever it had become. Crash! She obliterated one of the dams in her own mind, one she’d erected to enable herself to get through difficult moments. Crash! Another dam exploded to pieces, and with it another part of her sanity. And another, as if it had taken a meteor. She was drowning in the black river; she went under and swallowed a lung’s worth of the metallic oil. And the vine was still wrapping itself around her like barbed wire, each end connected to a revving semi hellbent on ripping her in half.

  She surfaced. Breathe, Amy, breathe! Her face glossy, her hair was a skull cap, and only the whites of her eyes, wide eyes so terrified they were crawling out of her skull, could be seen; everything was only red and black. Dunk! She tumbled end over end: a melted glob of rubber bands. It’s not real, Amy, breath! She surfaced again and managed another breath.