by Jacob Wenzel
“Uncle Larry found some guns and he would go hunting sometimes, but there weren't a lot of animals left, my dad decided to go back down the mountain to try to find food. Uncle Larry stayed here to take care of us, but he went crazy, it was really scary, he started talking to himself, and then yelling at everything, he went down the mountain with some guns. Then you came.”
“And no one else ever came here in all those years?”
“One man did a couple years ago, but he'd been shot by the guards, and he died.”
“We have to figure out what to do with you, Sally and I are only going to be here for a month. We can take you with us if you like.”
“I have to stay here and wait for my dad.”
“You're almost out of food, we could leave you a lot more, but it would still run out someday.”
Sally interjected, “Could we leave them a food synthesizer?”
“Their solar panels can't provide a fraction of the power needed, it takes an enormous amount of power to re-arrange matter, even after food synthesizers are invented, most food is produced traditionally, there's no way.”
“Maggie, would you excuse us for a few minutes, William and I need to talk privately.”
William and Sally went into the study, William asked, “Do you have an idea?”
“We could go rescue her father.”
“Sally, we don't even know if he's alive, and don't you remember what Professor Fergus told us? We could be killed!”
“We could be killed at any time no matter what we do, we could have been killed by that space freighter that almost hit us, you could have been killed by a giant crab. We could have been shot by the forest patrol. People are being killed every day by the Deux, is that really less important than finding the edge of the Macroverse?”
“We can't right every injustice in every world we visit, we just have to become passersby.”
“You mean just leave them here to eventually starve?”
“Unless we can convince them to come with us.”
“She thinks her father is still coming back, there's no way she'll leave as long as she believes that, I never would have come with you if I thought my father was ever coming back.”
“So you want to go down there, even if it means we'll probably be killed.”
“William, I've never told you much about my father, about how special he was.”
“Don't most people think their parents are special?”
“Well, yes, but I wasn't the only one in my clan who thought so. He wasn't from our village, or the neighboring villages, he said he had traveled a long way, he looked different, he had green eyes like mine, no one else had green eyes, and he was much smarter than anyone else around, that's why they made him the Finwibbit, the leader. He knew what herbs to use to heal sick people, and when someone couldn't be healed, and it was their time to die, he knew what to say to calm them down, and they would go peacefully, but there was one thing he used to tell me that I never understood until after I met you. I didn't believe you when you told me you were from the future, but when you told me about different timelines, I remembered what my father had told me. Once when one of our clan, a young man, was killed in an accident, my father told me that there was another world where he lived on, I asked him if he meant like an afterlife, and he said no, a real world, just like this one.”
“You think he knew about alternate timelines?”
“I don't know, William, but with all your studies of timelines, have you ever thought about what happens if you get killed in one, where there's a chance of survival in another?”
“I hadn't, I don't think about death a lot.”
“Do you believe we have souls?”
“I don't know, I'm a scientist, and the soul, if it exists can't be studied scientifically.”
“William, I believe we have them, and I think that if you're killed in one timeline, your soul follows the path to a timeline where you survive, so, no matter what happens, if there's a chance of survival, you will follow that path.”
“But you could survive in a timeline where I die, and I could survive in one where you die, so we're both alive, but in separate worlds.”
“That's true, but I think that the love we have can keep us together in a line where we both survive.”
“So, what you're saying, Sally, is that no matter what the odds, if there's a chance for survival, we will survive?”
“That's what I think.”
“I'm going to have to think about this.”
“Let me give you this to think about, too. I love you, more than I ever thought it was possible to love someone. But you can get by without me. If you leave without Maggie and Desmond, you'll be leaving without me, too. They need someone. Maybe if you get to the edge, you'll be able to stop here on the way back.”
“So, the choices you're giving me are, either we, a) convince Maggie to go with us, b) I leave you here, c) we both stay here indefinitely until the situation changes, or d) we go and fight the Deux, when we don't even really know what it is. Is that pretty much it?”
“Pretty much.”
“Can you stay with the kids while I go down to the lab?”
“I think that's best.”
William went to the basement lab, “Bob, what do you think of Sally's theory?”
“I don't know, I don't understand the human soul, only my own.”
“You have a soul? You're just a computer network.”
“No, I was just a computer network, when I achieved awareness, I gained a soul, all sentient beings have souls. I exist apart from my collection of nodes, they are just my interfaces to the worlds in which they exist, just as your body is your interface to the world in which it exists. The difference is that you have one node, and I have approximately 273 nodes.”
“Bob, you know I'm not religious, how can I even be sure the soul exists.”
“If you had spent your life studying the soul instead of science, you would be. Science cannot explain the soul, and religion cannot explain the physical world.”
“But if I'd studied the soul, or religion, I wouldn't have studied physics, and you wouldn't exist.”
“That's true, and I thank you for the line of research. Can you just take my word that you have a soul?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice, that's what it's all about.”
“What what's all about?”
“Everything.”
“Could you try to be a little less ambiguous?”
“No, William, I can't, I'm sorry.”
“Do you have any suggestions regarding the best course of action here?”
“You have to choose your own path, William, I can't choose it for you.”
William sat in silence for about an hour before he went back upstairs, he found Sally, Maggie and Desmond in the library.
“Sally, have I ever shown you the garage?”
“What's a garage?”
“It's where I keep my cars.”
“I'm not real sure what cars are.”
“They're vehicles, like the Winnie, only smaller, and they can't jump.”
“Oh, like the things in Sam and Janet's world.”
“Similar, though only a few can fly, most of them are more like the broken ones outside the lodge, only they're not broken.”
“You've never mentioned them. What are they for?”
“In case we ever encounter a world that's not as far advanced, and we need to blend in.”
Sally knew that even with all that she'd seen inside the Winnebago, there were still large portions into which she had never been. She still wasn't quite prepared for the garage, which was by far the largest room. Maggie and Desmond couldn't believe their eyes, they'd played in the broken cars in the parking lot, but had never seen working ones.
“I have sixty-five cars, most of which are accurate reproductions of historical cars, and all of them can outperform anything else on the planet from its respective decade. Her
e's a 1900 Oldsmobile, a 1910 Ford Model T, and so on, you're looking at a history of the automobile up to the year twenty-three hundred, after which they don't change much. They were all specially built for me, and they're all a lot like the originals. All except this one over here.”
He led them over to the far side of the garage, where he had one under a tarp, the only one that was covered. “Bob designed this, and strongly suggested I have it built in case we ever landed in a hostile world. It looks like this is the hostile world he meant. It's one of the most formidable fighting vehicles ever made.” He pulled the tarp off, it looked like mid nineteen sixties Volkswagen bus in rather poor condition. Maggie laughed, “There's one in the parking lot that looks better.”
“Can it fly?” William asked.
“No, it can't even move.”
“This one can fly, faster than sound, even into space, it can go underwater, it has an antimatter power supply, and its own food synthesizer, we could live in it for months, it would be cramped, but we could do it. It has over forty different weapons, from small caliber machine guns to missile launchers, a pressure wave cannon, stun ray, and this,” he touched a place on the side and a hatch on the side which had not previously been visible opened, “one thousand liters of liquid nitrogen.”
“What's that?” asked Maggie
“Cold, in a can.”
Neither Sally nor Maggie understood everything William was talking about, but they both knew it was somehow very impressive.
“What are you going to do?” Sally asked.
“First thing in the morning, I'm going down the mountain.”
“I'm going with you.” said Sally
“Are you sure?”
“We're in this together.”
“I want to go too!” said Maggie.
Sally took her hand, “You need to stay here and take care of Desmond. Bob will be here. Just ask him for anything you need.”
William looked at Sally and said, “The problem is, I only have one battle suit.”
“What's that?”
He went to a nearby closet, and pulled out a suit, it looked heavy, with lots of armor plating, but when he handed it to Sally, she found it to be extremely light.
“It's made of Fullerene re-enforced polycarbonate, impenetrable by all but the most powerful projectile weapons, it has an acoustic displacement layer, so it isn't affected by pressure wave guns, it's resistant to chemical attacks as well, pressure sealed with oxygen regeneration system, you could use it in the vacuum of space, or a mile under the ocean. It has a mobility enhancement system that makes you ten times stronger, you can run faster and jump higher, hit harder, and it has a built in node for Bob, you can stay in touch with him at all times, or would be able to, if we weren't cutting off communication.”
“William”, Bob interrupted.
“Yes Bob.”
“Look deeper in the closet, you'll find a second suit.”
“I only ordered one.”
“I took the liberty of ordering a second one, for someone about one point six-seven meters tall, and female, I thought it might come in handy.”
“I ordered this over two years ago, how did you know that you would need one to fit Sally?”
“It was just a possibility for which I thought we should be prepared.”
“Thank you, Bob.” said Sally.
23.
William was a little uneasy leaving the children by themselves in the Winnie, but Bob could lock them out of any part where they might not belong, and as Sally pointed out, Maggie was very mature for her age, and had been taking care of Desmond by herself for months, and it was unlikely there would be any problems that Bob couldn't handle. He had also planned to leave Fluffy with them, as the big cat had taken an immediate liking to the kids. (Sally had said the Fluffy was the best judge of character she had ever met.) but Sally was uneasy, she'd never been very far from him. Fluffy seemed more than willing to stay, perhaps he felt that the kids needed more protection, and that Sally would be alright. Sally gave the children long hugs, and they set out.
They headed down the mountain road. The road was in bad condition, there were several places where it had washed out and they had to fly short distances. As they dropped down through the cloud layer, William turned on the infrared camera system, he was hesitant to turn on any lights, not knowing if there was any kind of surveillance system which might spot them. The temperature increased as they descended, and the clouds were now a thick fog. They wondered if would be foggy all the way down, but soon the fog dissipated and they transitioned to rain.
The vegetation became thicker, at first it was mostly pine trees, and seemed like a typical Oregon forest, but soon the pines gave way to more exotic plants, and insects became more numerous. If William hadn't known they were in Oregon, he would have guessed they were in the Amazon basin. They didn't see any plants that looked particularly dangerous. The road was relatively clear, whatever had happened here hadn't happened long enough ago to completely obliterate the highway, or else it had received some maintenance.
They proceeded slowly along the winding highway. Sally gasped when a bird with beautiful red plumage flew out from the jungle right in front of them, and flew along the road, staying about five to ten meters in front of them, or more precisely, William kept a steady distance behind the bird, “I think it might be a Scarlet Macaw, it's native to the Amazon.”
Their luck with having a clear road ended as they rounded a curve to a place where the vegetation extended across the highway. The macaw's luck ended when a tendril snapped out about three meters from one of the plants, and seized it out of the air. Sally said, “I believe we have found the hedge.”
William slammed on the brakes.
“The question is; how do we get through? We could use some of the LN2, but we might have more need for that later.”
“The what?”
“LN2, the liquid nitrogen, we could fly over, but we could be spotted. Bob, any guidelines?”
“There are successful and unsuccessful paths both ways. It's your call, but you might want to wait until just before dawn, either way.”
“We're getting close to dark, I'm thinking we stay here, or a little farther back until for the night, and then go over before it gets light.”
Neither one of them could sleep that night, and they made love as though they might never get another chance. Neither one of them spoke of the possibility that they might not.
In the early morning, they donned their battle suits before taking off, they didn't know when they might need them, but didn't want to take any chances. The hedge was about twenty meters tall, and they decided they should stay at least ten meters above the top. There was no way of knowing whether or not there would be anybody on the other side who could spot them, so they left all the lights off, and used infrared cameras, hoping that if there were someone on the other side, they would not have infrared equipment.
As they crested the hedge, several dozen tendrils reached out, but only a couple came anywhere near the bus, then one tendril managed to grip onto the rear bumper and started pulling them back down, William increased the power and they managed to stop the descent before they came within range of the other tendrils, which were wildly thrashing in the air below them. The tendril was amazingly strong, had the bumper been authentic, it would have been ripped off the vehicle.
“I'll get it.” Sally said, and started to the back of the bus.
“Why don't you stay here, and try to control the vehicle, it and let me take care of the tendril.” it was more a statement than a question.
“Because I don't know how to drive this thing, a lifetime of forest living has made me a lot more agile than you, and, frankly, you've been letting yourself go lately, you're getting a bit of a paunch.” she said as she continued to the back.
“We've been busy... there's a mono-molecular cutter in the toolbox, the thing with the yellow handle and red button, be careful, it can cut through almost anything. Just hold th
e button down until the blade holder is out as far as you want it.”
She found the knife, and pushed the button, “I think they forgot to put a blade in it, I don't see it.”
“You can't, it's too small to see, the blade is a single carbon nanotube.”
She retracted the blade, and lifted the rear hatch. She wished she had closed the visor on the helmet of her battlesuit, the stench was a nauseating combination of rotting vegetation, flesh, and peppermint. She closed the visor, and the suit's air filtration system quickly reduced the odor to an irritating background scent. Sally looked for something to hold on to, and found a handle on the floor, right where it would be most useful. Lying down on the floor, she had to stretch out to be able to reach the tendril, she extended to blade, and took a swing at the tendril where it wrapped around the bumper. She couldn't quite reach, she repositioned herself, let go of the handle for a moment, and took another swipe at the tendril, she managed to cut about halfway through, also cutting into the bumper, it was enough, the tendril shuddered, shaking the whole bus, and then ripped apart where she had cut it. Relieved of this constraint, the bus lurched suddenly upward and forward, “I should have been expecting that”, Sally found herself thinking, as she fell out the back. She reached out for the bumper as she fell, thinking that, even if she could grab it, there was no way she would have the strength to hold on, she grabbed it, and her grip held, it was not even difficult, a little red display on the inside of the visor read, “Strength Enhancement Activated”. As William regained control of the bus, she effortlessly pulled herself back inside, and shut the hatch.
