“Listen. I don’t have your things. I gave them to maintenance last year. You weren’t coming back, and I needed the space,” O’Sullivan said.
Clark strode over there, causing the FCF man to hop out of his seat. He pulled on the right desk drawer and slid it open. It was full of useless trinkets: paperweights, rubber bands, and things they just didn’t need in the twenty-third century.
“Where is it?” Clark yelled, his pulse racing as he thought about the memories stored in there. His wife’s hairbrush, her diary…their wedding vows, written on napkins from the lounge of the hotel they were married at. They had been nervous and sloppy drunk the night before, leaving the vows to the last minute because they assured one another they could speak from the heart at the moment. Turned out after five glasses of Ganymede red, and an empty stomach, they decided they’d better be prepared. The results were almost sad, but hilarious. He treasured those memories, and always kept the napkins close. Now they were missing.
“I told you, maintenance…” He was cut short as Clark threw a right hook at him, catching the larger man off guard, and O’Sullivan almost fell on his back from the impact, but he caught himself, clutching his jaw.
Clark’s hand burned in pain from the punch, and he held it to his chest, backing out of the room.
“Get the hell out of here, Thompson! You’re nuts! She’s gone, and you and your wormhole can’t change that!” O’Sullivan yelled across the office.
Clark paused, feeling the words wash over him. Instead of letting them anger him even more, he took them and let himself use them as motivation. The man was wrong about everything. He would change the past, and then his present.
*
The FCF Type-Four transport vessel was comfortable and spacious enough for a crew of eleven, and had a decent amount of storage. He only needed some clothing, food rations, and medical supplies, so it almost echoed like an empty room in a new house. He’d spent enough time on board the FCF vessels that he knew he could handle a trip like this, but doing it all himself caused him more than a little anxiety. He was a scientist and a UEF ambassador, not a pilot or engineer, and he’d initially thought he could convince someone to come back and help him.
The bridge was nice with just him there, and he almost laughed at the luxury of the newest ships. The original First Contact vessels had mostly been welded-together metal, function over fashion. This many years later, with more than just military types flying in them, they were as pretty as they were efficient.
When he’d poked around the FCF and any others for crew potentials, he got nothing but cold shoulders, no doubt at the orders of O’Sullivan. Clark had waited against his hopes until he had a full grasp of the ship, and this had delayed him by a month while he read schematics, took training simulations, and learned the inside-out of the cryo-tubes. The trip back was six Earth years, but in the cryo, he would hardly age.
The wormhole generator was clasped to the ship, and would be enclosed by the displacement drive’s sphere shield. Moving the ship out a few thousand kilometers from New Skarsgaard with his plasma drives, he calculated his anchor, and set the coordinates into the computer. Two hours after arriving in orbit, he was heading FTL toward his old home, nervous about being alone for the trip, and excited about what was to come.
With any luck, he wouldn’t be alone on the trip back. Instead of slipping right into the sleep chamber, Clark decided to run the numbers a few more times, and make sure his wormhole would work. He watched his screen countless times, as the calculations showed a swirling blue-white simulation with the exact amount of hours it was folding. When he was confident his values were all right, he finally let himself think about heading into the tubes for the long journey.
As he strapped himself in, and set the instructions, the worry something would go wrong in transit struck him hard. If it did, he might be stuck somewhere. It was doubtful he would be able to fix anything seriously wrong. Perhaps he would be able to use the generator to get from point A to B more easily. He should have considered using the wormhole for the trip from New Skarsgaard to Earth. But he didn’t have time for that. And since he wasn’t aging on the trip, and it didn’t matter when he arrived, since he was heading to a particular point in time, it only made sense to take the six-year journey the tried and tested way. Even when the wormholes had been used during the war for fast travel, their behaviour was sporadic and unreliable.
No. Clark knew he was taking the right course of action. Once out of his fleet suit, and into his beige shorts, he slipped into the tube, closing the hatch behind him. The soft plush lining felt comfortable against his skin, and he pretended he was just going to sleep in a high-end hotel back in D.C. With the press of a button the air felt lighter, and his eyes closed slowly. He knew they would open in a blink, and he would be near Earth once again.
The scene played out like a vintage movie, cast on the back of his eyelids. It was the same memory he’d seen every time he closed his eyes for the last fifteen years.
Long Island, the least likely spot for the colony transport pick-up to Clark, but he wasn’t in charge of the logistics. From there they would meet at Enceladus with the other lottery winners for their specific colony. Of course, most of the people heading to Clark’s colony were hand-selected for their skills in one area or another, and with them their families, so the actual random lottery process was much smaller than the UEF was advertising. Clark felt of two minds about it, because they needed those skilled workers and minds to succeed, but he did want everyone on Earth to have a fair shot at life after the sun went Red giant.
From Long Island, they could meet from most hubs of the USA, by land, air, or water, so it made sense, but there were just too many people there for Clark to feel comfortable. He would have preferred the fields at Kentucky, where they were from. His wife, Madeline, clutched his hand as the small transport vessel lowered toward the large concrete shipping harbor along the ocean. People were lined up against the fences for what appeared to be forever, when he’d looked as they were a thousand meters up. They appeared to be yelling and pushed against the chain link; armed guards created a semi-circle around the dignitaries that would be leaving in this first batch to Saturn’s moon.
Madeline looked out the window and he could tell she was afraid. Afraid of the crowds, but more afraid of leaving Earth for a life so far away.
“I’m sorry, Maddy,” Clark said.
“For what?” she asked, turning to look him in the eyes. She always had the most beautiful eyes. Hazel with a ring of dark green around them.
“For spending more time trying to climb a ladder than spending time with you. For not giving you a family and a white picket fence.” His eyes were welling up.
“It wouldn’t have done any good anyway.” She waved to the dimming sun in the sky. “Clark, I’ve always known you were driven, and I wouldn’t have been with you if I wanted a different life. I love you, and always will.”
“You’ll work side by side with me at our new home. You can oversee the gardens, and we’ll have dinner together every night,” Clark promised.
She squeezed his hand one last time as the transport softly landed on the ground.
The doors opened, and they took their few personal items off; the rest of their stuff would be on the equipment vessels arriving before them. They were greeted with a cacophony of yelling, and Clark felt his pulse pick up. It was akin to the feeling of a tornado sweeping through Kentucky farmland on a hot summer night, dark skies and strong winds, right before it all came to a sudden calm.
Loudspeakers were booming across the open space, about the lies of the UEF and the fact the lottery was a sham. The fences were rocking back and forth, and in moments they were down in sections. Floods of people poured through and were running across the concrete pad toward Clark and Madeline. The guards moved forward, guns raised, and a few of them tossed gas canisters at the impending mob.
“We have to get out of here!” Clark yelled at his wife, grabbing his bag
and her hand. Laser fire erupted around them, and now he knew the rioters weren’t empty handed. The larger vessel sat near the water line, some one hundred meters from them, and that fifteen seconds would feel like a long run. His legs pumped as he tried to close the distance, and he turned around as he was half way there, only to see his wife going back to the small ship.
“Maddy! Get over here!” he yelled, but she couldn’t hear him over the noise.
He tossed his bags down, and ran back for her. Laser fire was everywhere, and defense drones hummed around the sky above them, shooting people down. It was pure chaos. Madeline had dropped her pack. That was why she was so far behind. She’d gone back for it.
He saw her grab the pack, and the rioters closed in around her.
“No! Maddy, come to my voice!” he yelled, still running for her.
Overhead, drones were picking off targets, and they saw the group around his wife. Her ID chip was undoubtedly being scrambled by being around so many bodies. They opened fire, and ten people instantly fell to the ground.
They peeled away from her like a banana, and Clark saw her standing there, unscathed for a second, people all around her on the ground. Then she fell alongside them.
He was at her side, stumbling over corpses to get there. The guards were there, dragging him away. She had a burn on her forehead where the beam had hit. Clean death, as the drones were programmed to do. His heart melted, and he screamed like he’d never screamed before. He cried out in anguish, as they dragged him away from the remaining rioters, and into the transport vessel. He hadn’t even realized he’d grabbed her pack, until days later, when he’d finally stopped moaning and crying. In it were their napkins with their drunken vows on them, a diary, and her hairbrush.
He blinked his eyes as consciousness slowly came back to him. The memory was so vivid he almost spat, to get the taste of iron and laser fire out of his mouth, but it all came back to him. Alarms softly chimed to let him know his heart rate was too high, and he breathed it out, like he’d done so many times before going to sleep.
He was back, or at least he hoped he’d made it without incident. It honestly felt like he’d just settled into the tube, but he knew it had been years by the cyro-clock readouts embedded in the chamber’s glass viewscreen. Amazingly, his body wasn’t more than just a little stiff as he got out of the cryo-tube. The lights softly flicked on, slowly getting brighter over a few minutes, allowing his eyes time to adjust.
He didn’t need to check his location to confirm where he was. The sun hung in space, dimmer and more ominous than he could have imagined. On the way to a Red giant but still a couple centuries or so from being critical, though it was unlikely anyone on Earth could still be alive. Or maybe they’d found a way. He wouldn’t put it past the resilience of humans to find a way to survive and perhaps even thrive. It would have to be much colder there now, so he imagined anyone still there would have emigrated to the equator, looking for solace.
Guilt that he hadn’t just come back and got another round of colonists came back for an instant, but the UEF had been right. There was hardly enough for any of the colonies to ensure the people they brought with them would be fed, let alone thousands upon thousands more. He knew there should have been a better way, but they’d never expected the war to happen.
Earth looked sad as well. Continents had been destroyed, and half of what used to be Africa was now under water. He sat there, head pounding as he considered checking to see if he could find signs of people, but he stopped himself. He wasn’t there for them. He was there for her, and soon he would be then for her.
Not wanting to waste a minute, he confirmed the wormhole generator was undamaged from the transit. It was inside the shield of the ship’s sphere displacement drive, so there should have been no way for anything to pierce it, but the scientist in him had to ensure safety first. He stared toward the sun, remembering the day he saw it shooting flares off to defend Sol’s invasion. That felt like a lifetime ago.
The computer chimed; the diagnostic scan was complete, and the generator was ready to go. The past few years were culminating to this moment, and he slowly keyed in the parameters. The blue-white swirl appeared a thousand feet away, and he took a snap-shot with the ship’s cameras to mark the occasion. Earth and the sun lingered behind the beautiful maw of the time hole.
Wanting to just fly through it, he almost set course, and did just that; but instead, he took the precaution of sending his probe through first. He sat, nervously sweating as it entered and returned through the opening, and when he saw the shots back of the lush green and blue planet, and bright hot sun, he knew he’d done it. Clark’s hands shook excitedly as he moved the ship in front of the wormhole. From there it was daunting and gorgeous. He entered slowly, his ship rocking back and forth for a few moments before settling back down, as he crossed through the small fold.
Just like nothing happened, the ship’s viewscreen showed Clark something he’d never thought possible a few years before. A healthy sun, and Earth as it had been.
He’d made it.
The ship’s time equipment couldn’t adjust for the movement backward, so he could only hope he was indeed in the right time, or on the right Earth for that matter. The idea that a wormhole could travel through other dimensions was more than a theory according to reports he’d heard during the war. A crew had come from an alternate Sol to help find the location of their ultimate enemy, Empyrean. He prayed his calculations were accurate.
Since he was in an FCF Type-Four transport vessel, he would raise no eyebrows as long as the identification number was valid, which he knew it to be. He brought the generator with him, wishing he could leave it, but fearful that someone would take it or worse while he was back on the surface of Earth. He couldn’t risk that.
The quick trip down to Earth was exhilarating. It was never as much an oasis as some societies had hoped, but it was a far stretch from the brutality of the world pre-United Earth Foundation, before the threat of interstellar wars and alien invasions. They as a race had been petty and selfish, bickering about religion, borders, and so much that didn’t benefit the race as a whole. Religion still existed, but finally humans could be humans, and put their energy into something bigger than their small planet. Of course, that level of enlightenment had been cut short when the war came.
He passed through the atmosphere, his ship jiggling at the change of pressure, but stabilizing quickly. He flew high in the sky, over Canada, lowering as he was over Indianapolis. The rolling pastures that gave his old home the Bluegrass State nickname spread in front of him, and he swallowed hard, fighting back the emotion of being there… of being then.
There was a large transport landing area near the university where she worked. He’d picked this time for selfish reasons. His other self, the one from that time, was working hard in Washington. He was part of the colony transition team, and it had been weeks since he’d been home to Madeline. If he was going to convince his wife to come with him, he knew that doing so at a time when he knew she was angry with the present ‘him’ would bode in his favor. It felt underhanded, and he hated doing it this way, but what choice did he have?
It was three years before the invasion. From the displacement travel, he would appear about 15 years older than he was… forty-eight to her thirty-two. Once landed, he noticed there were no other space vessels in the landing pad, and he knew this would only draw attention to himself. He rushed out, half-running to the automated taxi pods. He stood at a blue one, and saw his reflection in the mirrored glass. When did he become such an old man? He felt like he was in the prime of his life, but the grey in his hair and the wrinkles around his eyes begged to differ. She would be repulsed by him; maybe even think him some lunatic, and not Clark at all.
With great trepidation, he held his thumb to the device, knowing his print would get him access to the UEF’s account, and he was let in the travel pod. After saying his destination out loud, the vehicle began moving, and Clark looked out the w
indow longingly. He’d come to love his home on New Skarsgaard, but Kentucky would always be his real home.
The trip was fast, the roadways designed for multiple layers and efficiency; traffic jams were a thing of the past. Soon the pod was pulling over, and Clark saw the beautiful grounds of the university. She spent her lunches eating outside in the gardens, and he was right on time as planned.
The pod zoomed away, leaving a nervous Clark standing there, alone on the sidewalk. He could do this. He’d traversed space, then time, to make it here. Talking to his wife should be no problem, but it was. He hadn’t seen her since that day. The day she was killed, and he was ushered away screaming. The day it all ended for him. He started walking with purpose. That was the wrong way to look at it. There was no then or later, only now.
Clark’s confidence grew with each step, and by the time he reached the gardens, he was so sure it would go well… until he spotted her. She was sitting on the bench he’d seen her at so many times before, but not enough times as well. He saw the lonely look on her face as she ate her lunch, no doubt a sandwich, since cooking for one wasn’t much fun. His gut felt like he’d been punched, and he almost doubled over at the pain. Maybe he didn’t deserve her. Maybe he should go find the younger version of him, and make sure she got put on a colony ship without him. He stood there, worrying and wondering when he heard a voice calling his name.
“Clark? Honey, is that you?” Her voice sounded like an angel, and he couldn’t help but run to her. She was standing now, squinting at him, and he stumbled over his feet and almost fell as he approached her. He recovered and soon she was spinning in his arms, tears of joy and fear spilling down his face. She was laughing, until he stopped and set her down. Her hand instinctively went for his face, but it paused in the air just short of his cheek, and her jaw dropped.
Explorations: Colony (Explorations Volume Four) Page 24
