The Time Tribulations

by Travis Borne

  “Pain? What—” Jim said, uneasily.

  Noit interrupted, engaging his mouth, “A necessary part of life. This is the reason none can exist here, or elsewhere, be it the physical universe, or in the here-and-beyond, without us. We are, for reasons we do not completely understand, special. We bring the pain, carry it, while all others lose it and can live in perfect harmony. As Amy said, reset the day, experience old things anew and for the very first time, again and again—over and over for next to eternity.”

  “Jim,” Herald said, “so you are enjoying fishing as if for the first time, and you are doing it automatically without thinking. This is the tier in which you reside, Jim, with your wife—my very special daughter—and your virtual hunting dog, and your virtual shotgun, your truck, clothes, hobbies—everything.”

  Ana understood much of Herald’s explanation, for she had forgotten much, forgotten pain, although he tried to keep her in touch—he tried, he really tried, but eventually, like Amy and the others, he left her alone. He let her be, ultimately, just happy. Now he was helping her along, returning to her once again some of the painful memories and feelings.

  “You’ve lost it,” Herald said, “all of you. But I felt something earlier, when Amy came to me…” He smiled larger than he’d probably ever smiled.

  “What is it, Herald?” Ana asked slowly.

  “Life. I felt life—returning. It’s not over yet! We were about to go through with the last stage of our plan. Noit, would you please. I believe you can accomplish this better than I.” Noit nodded slowly.

  “This is the last tier,” Noit’s mind explained to their minds. “We have managed to filter everything as we traveled up the line until only the good remains, and we find ourselves in a predicament. Herald and I, and the seven others—” Noit’s mind delivered the names of the other anomalies and realizations went round. One of them, Rochowan, had always been close with Q, and like Herald was misanthropic of his race. Rochowan wanted the next step more than anyone. “—we are the only ones still cleaving to anything that resembles true life. As Herald explained, true life must contain pain, else it is death in disguise. The final tier, the one to which Q and countless others want to transcend—is not a better form of life as he thinks, it is not a more capable, pliable, or manageable world, and happiness will reign there no better than it can reign in the three-dimensional plane of your home planet, and it is most surely not the ascent to becoming a god. You see, the amount of pain you can experience is directly proportional to how alive you are in any given place, realm, plane of existence—or tier. And the next tier is—the end. Game over. It is a means to provide needed rest, the final resting place—a way to finally transcend into nothing, from something. It is relief for those who desperately need it: Herald, and I, and the seven others I’ve just named.”

  “It can’t be,” Amy said. She thought, Q’s data, years’ and years’ worth, and they are so sure of themselves. Then she thought of Rochowan, always at Q’s side.

  “I gave you a taste of the pain, Amy,” her father said. “You remember now, don’t you, how it actually feels, how action means everything, and just thoughts, well… Q’s data is corrupt, here, in this realm of thought, and he is not an anchor. I believe you can get what I have, that you will be special in this terrible regard, one day. I saw something in you today, and, you have recently demonstrated that you can affect the others, pull them out—wake them up.”

  “So, what does this mean, there’s nothing ahead for us?” Jim asked.

  “Ahead, Jim, no. But back, yes—if you so choose. Come here for a moment, if you would.”

  Jim wanted to know. His face looked confused. He looked at Amy—she nodded—and then back to Herald. His countenance was a fisherman in a thunderstorm, and the fisherman dropped his rod and it sunk into the clear water, coming to a gentle rest on the colorful stones. Perturbed, Jim trudged through the water; he made his way to Herald.

  Noit sent Herald the nod. It was the nod Herald had been hoping to see for an eternity, and as Jim arrived before him, Herald put a hand on his forehead.

  107. Sizzling Fish Dinner

  Herald lowered his wall and gave Jim a full serving. And he also gave him back the other stuff—again.

  It took Jim the rest of the afternoon to recover, and Amy, who’d recovered herself in minutes, remained by his side the entire time.

  Herald and Ana fished, as well did Noit and Taleena. Noit tried to do it without cheating but even in Ana’s world, a realm supposedly of her own making with hard-fixed laws, he couldn’t help himself. The silver trout were little metal cutouts and his hook was a magnetar. Taleena, nimble like one of the red-and-black flipper bots—save for the light-bulb head, which sometimes tugged on her neck as if she was a child wearing her father’s motorcycle helmet—was far stronger than her thin, petite self appeared to be. She attempted to give her tall friend a handicap. She was on the southern edge of the crimson-sand beach, skipping the rocks she’d collected. The saucer-shaped finds went across his line like spaceships on a bouncy crash landing.

  The rest of the day was pleasant, and perfect in a new way. Together, the four of them, while Amy watched from atop the big rock with her zombified husband, caught plenty for dinner and soon headed up to the cabin.

  The month of May, and the setting sun left them a pleasant cool. Fish simmered on the stove, and thanks to an outside draft, smells of butter and spices were whipped into an air-assault frenzy. Sitting at the head of the table, back to the window, Herald put his hand on Jim’s right shoulder. “What do you say—let’s go get your brother?”

  Jim looked to Herald slowly, exhausted-like, as if he’d pulled a whole day of lumberjack duty with the big man himself; and he remembered his brother as if it was yesterday. It all came back to him as if a car had fallen from the sky and landed on him. Herald’s pain was great, nothing compared to the easy street he himself had roamed, and now, he was ready to swallow his share. They hadn't been able to rescue Jerry’s consciousness, then, they just weren’t powerful enough to overcome the plague that had solidified the planet Earth, but now…

  “Fuck yes!” Jim’s first words. The attitude of the old Jim sprung to life. “But why didn’t you tell me, Herald?” Jim asked. The others were jolted by Jim’s sudden shift from lukewarm cadaver to agitated, and a little red, redneck.

  “You think I didn’t? We discovered the consequences of moving up through the tiers rather quickly, but with more power each time, your subconscious always filtered out the bad. It was an invisible snow ball—like dark matter, we just didn’t spot it soon enough.

  “But that’s life—always looking for something better, and working toward it until you don’t even realize you’re dead.” Ana and Noit brought two steaming trays of sizzling fish to the table; the butter was popping as if beer had been poured around the fillets. The aroma opened nostrils, especially Amy's.

  Herald took a bite and his eyes rolled around, then continued talking with his mouth full and his tongue dodging the burn. “Woo…hot…” But he managed to get the first painful bite of heaven under control. “Like on Earth, Jim. People working their entire lives for the cash to buy more stuff, all the while searching for that perfect life—never being able to grasp it, or happiness. And if they did manage to beat others—while beating others down many times—in pursuit of everlasting glut, they’d sit on it like a chicken guarding its golden egg, and they’d essentially end up dead like you’d been, then the fuckers would fucking die anyway—”

  Ana sent him a wry face from the kitchen. She was too acquainted with his misanthropy and knew it was buried like a Mar’s dust storm buries a solar panel—still right there.

  “Yes, dear,” Herald said to her glare. He chuckled the evil thoughts into temporary oblivion. “Anyway, Jim. Here on these virtual tiers of this next level of existence, you have much power and your subconscious always gets exactly what it craves—a perfect life, which is as Noit had so elegantly stated with his words outside: deat
h in disguise. Lack of pain…complacency becomes blinders and your death sneaks up on you from both sides. For this reason, Noit and I, and the seven others, eventually needed to move forward with the next step. The end. So, we let Q run with the idea—Rochowan became his anchor—and the crazy little fuck has been a cog in a cuckoo clock with a black hole for a counterweight. He’s picking up steam, too…we don’t have much time.”

  “Hey, I like Q,” Ana said. She shook her head, smiling an angry smile with a scrunched face. After setting the salad on the table, she took the chair next to Mr. Mordant.

  “So, we go back,” Jim said. “We fight, just like Amy said.” Amy smiled and nodded devilishly, with a mouthful.

  “And I am going with you. I have a present for you, and I must release my paradox, as well must Noit and the other seven, if the universe is to continue on. Noit, I’m taking your place. Ana, will you be at my side?”

  “Have I ever not been?” she replied. Herald smiled, and she could feel the love in his heart, empowered—smashing his demons to bits.

  “Great, then you will take Taleena’s place. Noit, I need you and Taleena to remain here for a very important reason, the utmost.” And Herald filled him in with the details mentally. Flash! Their white-lightning trees sparked like lightning on Saturn’s poles, and the red demons and brown trolls and yellow-eyed snakes took jolting volts that zapped them into a stupor.

  “What’s with the paradox stuff?” Jim asked. His eyes were rolling too. He added, “Ana, this is the best, I can’t remember a time when it was any better.”

  “You’re waking up,” Herald said. “Welcome back. You can taste as though you really know things can be terrible, as well as good. Limitations mean life and soon you’ll have them once again. Chance, and the possibility of getting smashed, burnt, or even tortured. This is the ratio of pain and limitation, to life, as Noit explained outside. More pain, more real and true life.”

  Noit fit a morsel of fish into his teeny-tiny mouth, and because he was using it to the best of its not-so-good ability, he spoke with his mind: “The paradoxes, Jim, are just more checks and balances in the grand, ever-evolving system—routes, possibilities, chances, exits as well. We must agree, us nine—who have by chance found each other—to fix the paradox that each of our minds have managed to contrive on the three-dimensional plane and surrounding tiers. The nature of this cannot be explained with words or any mental transference, but I believe you just might learn it for yourself, one day.

  “Now, we must begin quickly—” Noit’s golden-yellows spun round like two yellow suns in a death dance. “This really is good fish, Ana. We make a fabulous team.” He sent her a fist bump mentally; in her mind he wasn’t slow—he was a basketball all-star, a very tall and still, blue one. He then continued as his usual calm self, “Word will filter quickly now, it must because Q with his combined, massive following has the power to take the next step, and he won’t release this dream, or his embedded visions easily. Herald and I, and the seven others, have implanted deep thoughts and now the projection led by Q, has a mind of its own. With enough boarding his mental train, joining, focusing, and creating the path forward, they can punch through, and all will be extinguished—with their combined power of belief each of the branches on the paradoxical ends of the white-lightning trees within our mind, that which is also a beginning somewhere else, will lose its power, forever. In turn, we will not be able to repair our paradoxes, and because of that, the entire universe, such as a pleasant dream that gets injected with a bad notion, will fail, faster, then faster until nothing exists. The final test. It is going to be close. I admit, we had given up, but Amy has given us hope. She chose pain and has for some time now, been secretly holding on to it. Only because of her recent on-her-own enlightening, we still have a chance.”

  They finished dinner, savoring it like no other. The fish was hot soup to frozen stomachs, and life in its totality, involving not only the good stuff, was an ice age coming to an end. They had to welcome pain, and limitations, as disconcerting as it might sound. And they did. And the two special ones, with a little of Amy’s help—her own special uniqueness that had recently mutated into the key—connected with the others. Through a powerful mental channel, right there in the living room of the cabin, with cool air drafting through the shattered window, the three of them connected with the seven other anomalies. Because of Amy—the odd-ball-out who had somehow managed to flip her own switch—it was enough; and Herald, and his daughter, and the love of his life, and the son-in-law Herald once wished Amy had never met, disappeared.

  108. Clusterfuck Bliss

  “There it is,” Jim said. He pointed to the twinkling spec on the edge of the front viewport as they neared old orange, and the system outlined it, a teal label with a line leading to a single word: EARTH. “Are you all right, Aim?”

  “I’ll be okay.” She was staring out blankly, swaying the ship again, getting ready for it.

  “You know they did what they thought was best—and you saw our bodies. I don’t think we would have survived the trip—” Then Amy took the ship into a massive loop, maneuvering the large craft according to the deceleration trajectory displayed on the HUD; Jupiter swerved from the viewport as she hit the tangent then pulled away from it, then it disappeared, then appeared again as she whipped the space-jet around to face it, now moving significantly slower; the pale bluish dot crawled across the screen until it was dead center, a lightning bug on the front windshield, and Jupiter, like a god in its own right, stole their attention. They passed it like passersby sneaking by a ghost. As well—their eyes met—the point of no return.

  Jim was less shocked by the maneuver, as he’d just recently been to the nothing, and the something, and through multiple wormholes with her. But he did go quiet long enough to lend more awe to her expertise as a pilot. After they straightened out he said, “Put it back on auto-pilot now. Talk to me, would you?”

  “Flying, it relaxes me, Jim. Don’t worry, I’ll be okay. Now, a little more than four hours until we arrive. We’ll need to slow to turtle speed as we approach so the machines won’t detect us. Activating blockers now.” She pressed a sequence of buttons on her panel then got up and headed to the rear door. Her long white hair swayed, nearly reaching the floor, and the door opened with a swish as she approached it.

  “Where ya goin’?” Jim asked, still focused on the panel in front of him. He was putting the final touches into the automation, double and triple checking their final moves; here and now—they were back in the three-dimensional plane.

  “Shower, dummy.” She put her hands on her hips and shifted them to the left. “Well, are you gonna join me? This body hasn’t had a bath in at least two hundred years, and I know you don’t smell it but I sure as hell do. And I need something else, Jimmy.”

  “What?” He turned around. His eyes became speed bags and the horny boxer in his skull went to work. He uselessly glanced at the flight schedule one last time—plenty of time—then bolted.

  She was nude save for the headgear and her clothes were breadcrumbs leading to the elevator. Her hair, unlike his that was just bleach white, gleamed with streaks of silver; they hadn't the chance to cut it yet. Jim’s 250-year-old, 30-year-old body was powered by hormones like a bear awakening for spring.

  He knew she was going to be all right now; she was smiling devilishly, again, recovering at the same speed they were traveling. She was the strong one, always was, as resilient as the water foxes on Ternus, the insane surfing wonders who took punches that would deter even the toughest from attempting to ride those swells again. But there she was, after all that had happened earlier, as graceful as a Greek goddess—with the hair to match.

  Her beauty put his mind in slow motion, but his clothes were at the mercy of his youth-infused, super-sonic hands, and he showed them not a sliver of lenience. Ripping, tearing, throwing, trying to work himself around the four-foot-long hair dangling from his noggin, he tossed his shirt up into the air then worked on his pants
while trying to slip out of his shoes. Low gravity settled his shirt like a feather, halfway into the HAT behind their seats at the bridge. Pants at his knees, as well the mop of all mops attached to his noggin, were what tripped him. Amy, nude and giggling, opened her arms. Like a football player who’d underwent drill-sergeant mind control, he got up. The eventual clash was a flesh-magnet galaxy merger.

  …clusterfuck bliss.

  After—he held her in his arm while playing with his other, wriggling his fingers just like the first time he’d logged in to Herald’s map. Then, he couldn’t believe they were fake—now, he couldn’t believe they were real.

  Amy used his perfectly sculpted chest as a pillow and watched. She thought of one of the other Jims. Through the memories of the last printed Amy, she saw Jewel City’s central park, specks of clouds in the sky, and Jim playing with her robotic arm. He was making the fingers bend and twist like an octopus’s tentacles. And she saw the real Jim again, and loved being in his arms. She squeezed her nude body into his and smiled then took in a deep, rejuvenating breath. The bed was soft, clean, and to her it smelled as if a maid had done a number on it mere hours ago—but they were alone. It was the intensity. Smells, and they both noticed, were a little different in this real world, and all of their senses seemed heightened. And things felt weird, like being home again after winning a trillion dollars and blowing it by spending every penny, in every world, on every possibility. Weird, but good. Really good. And it was the same room: one they hadn’t been in for what seemed a billion years, but it also felt like yesterday.

  Jim dropped his right then used it to make whole his embrace on Amy. She snuggled as close as a solid body could and returned the hug, then closed her eyes. He left his open, staring at the silver walls of the captain’s quarters.

  Jim felt a humbling, almost crippling gratitude for what Ana had given him on Frisson, as well for Herald: the man was not only his father-in-law, but his own father. Jim’s heart was like that of an organ recipient, hot and alive, and grateful. As crazy as Herald got sometimes, Jim realized he was truly wise, unlike any person, or alien, he’d met in all of his travels. Herald likewise had made the same sacrifice, for his daughter. Selflessly both he and Ana made the choice without hesitation.