RIME (Kindle Single)

by Tim Lebbon

  “Is that really how you see us?” Luke asks, and he seems genuinely hurt.

  “We’re doing our best for you,” Olivia says. “What you’ve been through is amazing. The greatest adventure of any human alive. It’s our job to ensure that doesn’t destroy you.”

  “And to make sure every detail of what I saw and did is recorded.”

  “Of course,” Luke says.

  “I killed a god, which resulted in the deaths of millions.”

  “And you might well have made humankind an enemy.”

  I think about that for a while, and wonder what would happen if those things followed me back. I doubt that will happen. They were the ones who sent me on my way, and I’m beginning to understand why.

  Olivia touches my arm and nods towards the river. Several boats are drifting against the current, some sort of graceful propulsion system flashing silver beneath the water.

  “We’ll sit here and eat,” she says.

  “You’ve no more questions for me?”

  “We thought you might have some for us,” Luke says. The floating drone makes a small sound and moves away, accelerating quickly into the sky and disappearing against the vast bulk of the looming tower.

  They don’t call it a sentence, but I do. It’s much better than I deserve. Olivia suggests that it’s a form of freedom, even though I’m injected with some nano tech which will ensure that they’ll always know where I am, who I’m talking to, and what I’m saying. My life is no longer my own, if it ever really was. Perhaps I catch something in Olivia’s eye––a look, a flutter of something more than fascination––but then she turns away. She says that I’m too special to be lost.

  Luke tells me I’m too precious to be punished.

  So I’m cast adrift, and told that I’m free to go.

  I decide to spend one more night in my rooms in the tower, and Olivia promises that she’ll bring me everything I need to travel the following day. She also hands me a beautifully printed invitation to their wedding, and I’m profoundly touched by the gesture. Maybe I’ll even accept. I can see myself now, sitting in the corner of the dance floor telling my tale to anyone who’ll listen.

  Because that is what my life will be from now on. Even though this brave new world didn’t find me guilty, I know the truth of my crime, and I’m ready and willing to confront the consequences. My self-imposed sentence is to travel this rejuvenated Earth and tell my story. I’m sure that’s what those space creatures wanted, and why they sent me back. I’m a warning, and my cautionary tale is my legacy.

  Next morning we stand on the riverbank, and Olivia and Luke seem sad.

  “I’ll come back,” I say. “I don’t want to miss the wedding.”

  “Stay in touch,” Olivia says, needlessly because of the nano tech they’ve injected into me. Still, her concern is touching. “There’s so much you don’t know about the world. It might even be dangerous you going out there alone.”

  “I’ve been in danger before.”

  I board a sleek boat that will take me down the great Amazon River towards the sea. They watch me leave, and I look back at them standing on the riverbank, the tower looming behind them. We wave, but part without another word.

  Towards the end of the first day I see a huge clear dome set back from the river, like a boil on the land. I borrow binoculars from the boat’s captain, and inside the dome I can just make out a fragment of the rainforest this place used to be. It’s preserved in time, a remnant of the past sheltered from reality, something to study and look at and perhaps feel sad about. To me it seems out of place, a meaningless leftover from a past that failed.

  I stare at the dome until it disappears upriver. I am also a remnant, but I will not be contained. My journey does not end.

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