by TylerRose.
“Such as who?” he had to ask.
“Starbird. If I am not here, she will die. Roc will not be strong enough to save her. You must help me be sure everyone is where they must be at the beginning of the fight, I know Jerome well enough to know that he will not listen to me. He thinks he knows so much when it comes to fighting. He thinks he can find a way around what I know and what I see; but he cannot see the picture I do. He discounts the information I have because he’s got a book he wrote himself. He sees a picture the size of a postage stamp while I am seeing a two by three foot poster.”
“You have an interesting way of putting things into perspective,” Landra Ahr said.
“Yeah, well, I work with what I got. There’s more. Not once, in any of the timelines, did you survive. You will perish at the Davis Besse nuclear power plant. There is no stopping it. Without this knowledge, everything that is you will be lost. With this knowledge, I know that you will manage to preserve yourself and be again as you are now. Or close to it.”
“You know this from watching timelines?” he asked.
“There will be times when you will have to trust that I know what I’m talking about. I know what is right and I know what is wrong. I feel it like a shiver in my bone marrow, like a lump in my gut, a searing heat in the side of my brain. I just know. It’s one of my abilities. One I had even before the first time I Widened the Breach. Remember that I am attempting to set things right here, I am attempting to change what Earnol interfered with that he had no right to get involved in. I haven’t learned his motivations yet, but I will. Once the battle is done, that is my next task.”
She looked out over the meadow again, then back to him.
“I am the Witness and you are my Confessor. That is the way of it. You are the only one to whom I can say anything and everything. What I say will not go beyond you, me and the walls surrounding us, no matter where we are. You are the keeper of my secrets and I will tell you things I can’t tell Jerome. You will be the only one who knows everything there is to know about me. I know that there will come a time when you must choose between me and L’Roc-ai for the greater good. Not of a planet but of the Universe. You will then become my Herald and my Sentinel. There will be many times when you must trust that I know what must be done and how it must be accomplished. At those times, you will become the Enforcer of my will. When I don’t know how to accomplish what must be, it will be for you to help me figure it out.”
Landra Ahr scrutinized the emotional energy around her, finding nothing to indicate deceit. His sensors detected a different energy signature entirely. One of profound serenity. One of truths spoken in absolutes. He took snapshot images of her face whenever she looked at him, to evaluate eye dilation and skin coloration.
There was a silence as Landra Ahr processed the computations and percentages in a preliminary analysis.
“You have given me a great deal to think about, Tyler, not much of it pleasant.”
“There will be more when I’m ready to tell it and you are ready to hear it. Most of it more unpleasant.”
Landra Ahr left her with the last word, going back down to his command center to begin full and repeated analysis of all she had said. Most disturbing to him was her statement that he would choose her over L’Roc-ai. He did not see how that could be possible. He was absolutely devoted to Roc, bound by duty and sacred oath.
He found it interesting that Tyler spoke to him as if he still felt emotions, as if he was still the humanoid. The others treated him as the unfeeling automaton. Her familiarity with him was different from what she had with Jerome. She held Jerome at arm’s length except for the occasional intimate moment.
Much to analyze.
Lying in her bed,another night of waiting for sleep to find her, Tyler’s eyes remained closed when she heard the knock.
“Yes, Landra Ahr.”
He entered her room, registering her figure under the light blanket on the bed in the dark. Blinds covered the windows, blocking the lamp that shone in brightly from the side of the parking lot.
“No music tonight?” he asked quietly.
“I’m tired. Are you disappointed?”
“I am. However, I welcome the opportunity to talk plainly with you, if you do not mind.”
“I do not.”
“You gave me much to think about last night,” he said, moving closer.
“I’m sure you have thought about it every single moment,” she said.
“Indeed.”
“What is most disturbing to you?” she asked.
He sat on the floor beside her. “I have run scenarios for the last twenty four hours. I cannot find one in which I would choose you over L’Roc-ai.”
“I do not know the conditions. I know it will happen and you will know which is the clear choice at that time. You will not betray your oaths in doing so.”
“You said that you are putting things right. Things a man named Earnol interfered with. Who is he exactly?”
“He is the chief dude of the Ambassador’s Administration for Space and Time Travel. The AASTT. He is station Administrator and Head Guardian of the Flow of Time. He’s also the President of the Council of the Celestial Congress. He’s got it all locked up and there is almost no one capable of standing up to him and winning. He was a constant annoyance, manipulating where I went, where I didn’t go, and kept me from Earth during the battle against Adamantine in all the time lines in which I was not present.”
“If he kept you away in almost every time line, then how can you know you were supposed to be here?”
Her eyes opened to look at him in the dark. “It’s not just that I know I am to be here, Landra Ahr. He knows I’m supposed to be here. There is a reason he does not want me to participate in the battle. A reason of his own that has nothing to do with right or wrong, nothing to do with correct and incorrect flow of the time line.”
“What is his reason?”
“If I knew that, I’d take him down right now. He’s making Julian hide it as well. I don’t know what he holds over Julian, but it is effective enough to ensure his silence. Julian has told me that he cannot tell, that he cannot guide my search for truths; but he will not hinder me. When I discover truths, he confirms them. That he can do without endangering himself.”
“Who is Julian?”
She yawned and her eyes closed again. “Earnol’s son and my Adjutant. He has been my friend and ally, to the extent he can. He helps me now, having come over from our original time line with me. He hates what his father has done and is doing, and knows it is wrong; but he couldn’t do much about it before.”
“Is not coming here with you a form of treason?” Landra Ahr asked.
“Is it treason to fight against a tyrant in the name of Right? What I have to figure out is why Earnol fears me so much. His fear is the key.”
She fell asleep for ten seconds and jerked awake.
“When did he first begin to fear you?” Landra Ahr asked.
She fell asleep before she could answer, jerking awake again a few minutes later.
“Do you know who your closest Sistarian ancestor is?”
“I don’t even know for certain if it is my mother’s or father’s side of the family.”
She fell asleep a third time. Interesting readings he’d have to study later. The interlude was too brief and she startled awake once more.
“What is the average Sistarian lifespan?” he asked.
“From two hundred to 2500 years.”
“Excuse me?”
She nodded against the pillow. “Those without abilities, or with low levels of ability, average one hundred and fifty to two hundred years. Those with higher ability average one to two thousand years and experience as many as fifteen Widenings. There have been a few, less than twenty, who have lived to be four thousand years old.
Landra Ahr filed away the information for later analysis and pursuit another night. “Why do you have more Sistarian DNA now?”
“I told them to co
llect only Sistarian DNA. So instead of being a blue-eyed blonde human, I’m a green-eyed flame of a redhead Sistarian.”
She yawned, her vital signs changing as she descended toward deep slumber.
“Some of my internal organs are different as well, but not by much. My brain is sharper, quicker, more able to deal with the abilities that have come and will come. As it stands now, Dr. Dominion will go down within minutes, and easily.”
“Do not underestimate him,” Landra Ahr warned.
“I don’t. It is he who will underestimate me. He will not expect me to come after him in a physical fight and that is how I will take away the technology that makes him strong. Without his technology, he is negligible.”
“You know much for having never seen him.”
“Do you think the battle on Earth was the only thing I watched? I studied Adamantine’s entire life in minute detail. I followed Dominion’s as well. And yours and Roc’s and Starbird’s and Jerome’s. When I say I know everything, Landra Ahr, I mean it. I know everything. The only thing I couldn’t follow was my own damn life and that of my parents and family.”
She sighed and fell asleep. Solid sleep at last.
Landra Ahr spied the vidpad peeking out from under her pillow. He took it, plugged himself into it and downloaded everything in the thing. The songs in her players, how many times she had played or skipped each one. Information in her calendar, which told him what planets she’d been to, when, and for how long. Her various information searches and what she’d found. Through his own knowledge, he hid the machine’s signal and gained access to the AASTT & Congressional databases. He started to download everything he could reach on Earnol Kragnorman’s history, associates, family, every vote he’d run or participated in.
Everything.
He remained in the room though the night, processing everything she had said. He had no reason to doubt her. She was definitely seeing a very large picture of the galaxy as a whole. One no one else was capable of seeing. While the rest of the group focused only on ignoring the impending battle, she was looking beyond it to what would come next. She was preoccupied not with defeating the foes who would soon be in front of her; but with solving the mystery of herself. So many things were making sense to him now.
At 2:04 am his sensors picked up matching energy surges, one within Tyler and the other in the wall opposite her bed. Both were new to his sensors, and extraordinarily strong. The one in the wall became a physical manifestation that could be seen with the naked eye. Tyler lifted up to lean on her left arm, turning to stare hard at the swirling energy in the wall.
From start to finish, the phenomenon lasted 87 seconds. She signed in relief, left the bed for the bathroom, returned and slid under the blanket and pulled up the comforter for more warmth. She reached for her water glass.
“You’re still here?” she said quietly. She gulped swiftly, eight times, nearly emptying the glass.
“Yes. What is it that just happened?”
“A portal.”
“To where?” he asked.
“To wherever it is the dead go,” she replied, lying down and settling into the pillow.
Landra Ahr would have liked to pursue the topic, but she fell asleep again. The blonde little girl who had been the Tyler Rose Brooks he’d first met was to become a very complex woman of astounding capacity and personal fortitude. He remained in her room, timing her dream cycles and monitoring her brain waves every second.
At 4:27 am a much smaller field surrounded her. She gasped and startled awake, blinking her head clear in the dark. This one left her trembling for a moment.
“What happened?” Landra Ahr asked.
“An earthquake somewhere.” She eased herself back onto her pillow and was asleep again within seconds.
Before ten minutes passed, she went into another dream state. At quarter after five in the morning, another portal opened, this time in a small picture between the windows. She woke, stared at it until it slowly subsided, and laid back down. She was asleep in seconds. Her heart rate had been astronomical, breathing rapid and shallow, body temperature slightly elevated. All returned to normal in the minute after falling back to sleep.
If this was a typical night, it was no wonder she slept until 10am every day and woke just as tired as when she’d gone to bed. It was no wonder she often napped in the afternoon.
Landra Ahr decided to get the others to ease off their comments about her naps and constant fatigue. Even Jerome’s sleep and psyche were not so tortured.
Once the dark of night began to turn into the gray of pre-dawn, she finally slipped into solid, uninterrupted sleep with normal dream cycles.
Understanding now the real reason she kept a small coffee pot in her room, Landra Ahr rose from the floor and went to it. She had prepared it before going to bed. As it had no timer, he pushed the start button to begin the brew.
He left the room, seeing Jerome at the laundry station on the top of the stairs. A load of clothes was going into the washer.
“Did you spend the night in Roc’s room?”
“No. From now on, please do not start a wash cycle until ten am,” was all Landra Ahr replied as he floated downstairs on his anti-gravity cushions.
As expected, Jerome came to the command center moments later. Landra Ahr cut him off before he could speak.
“You want to know what it is Tyler and I might discuss all night. It is not your concern, nor that of anyone else in this building.”
Jerome was taken aback. “That’s kinda harsh, man.”
“You will cease your comments about her taking a daily nap. There is much more to her than you have bothered to learn. I suggest that you make the time to learn all about her that she will allow you to know.”
Jerome cocked his head. “This is a very interesting change from a few weeks back. Even you weren’t sure how far we could trust her.”
“I have a much better grasp of her importance. She is absolutely vital to our success. She is the reason we are here and doing all this. If you will excuse me, I have a great deal of data to analyze.”
“Anything I can help with?”
“Not this time.”
Jerome left the command enter for the kitchen, his newspaper and a fresh cup of coffee. Roc and Starbird were there with a project of organizing the kitchen.
“Any idea why Landra Ahr would suddenly take such an interest in Tyler?” he asked.
“Didn’t know that he had,” Starbird replied. “Don’t see that it matters.”
“He has always taken an interest in the people under his command,” Roc said. “Each in his or her own time.”
Jerome wasn’t satisfied with Roc’s answer. Tyler herself had said she was under no one’s command. There was much more to Landra Ahr’s interest. He let the subject go for the moment, deciding to look into it another time.
Tyler woke at ten in the morning, her cutoff time no matter how little sleep she had gotten. Sounds of the washer on spin cycle came through the door. Smelling coffee, she looked to the cart near the corner and saw it had already brewed. She didn’t remember waking up to turn it on, as she sometimes did around eight in the morning. Landra Ahr wasn’t in the room anymore. Likely he had turned it on for her and left.
She trudged to the bathroom and back, got her coffee together, and sat in the window with a blanket around her shoulders. She was bone tired, the disturbances of the night powerful ones. She remembered a portal opening. She remembered the earthquake. She’d have to watch the news and see where it had been. But it was the final dream, the interrupted dream, that held her mind as she sipped coffee from the spoon and tried to warm up and wake up.
She churned the dream over and over, trying to figure out who was the dark man she reacted to with such reverence and a posture of submissive respect. She wiped the grit from her eyes repeatedly and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders, shivering with cold. Coffee cooled enough to be drunk, she sipped from the cup.
Most likely she’d b
een remote viewing. But from where? Any of 500 planets, a thousand.
Landra Ahr detected motion in Tyler’s room. He waited half an hour before going up to continue his information gathering. He detected no change in her emotional state as he knocked and she bade him enter.
“I hope you do not mind, but I would like to continue our discussion.”
“So long as you don’t mind that I’m not awake,” she said muttered, groggy and heavy-lidded.
“You had a rough night. Is it always like that?”
She nodded, shivering and pulling the blanket tight around her shoulder. “More or less.”
“It is 75 degrees in here. You are cold?”
No physical reaction to the question, as though she was numb. “I’m not used to being on Earth yet. Where I came from is warmer than this area, overall. I’ll warm up as I wake up.”
“Are your nights always like it was last night?” Landra Ahr said, returning to his purpose.
“Some worse than others, but yes. Pretty much.”
“What do you remember of the happenings after you fell asleep?’
“About two in the morning a portal opened up. Sometime later I felt an earthquake,” she said. “Don’t know where it was, though. I had a really powerful dream just before I woke up. Probably a remote viewing of something happening on another planet. Didn’t look like earth.”
“There was a second portal. A smaller one in the picture between your windows,” he said.
Tyler’s eyes narrowed as she searched her sleepy memory. “Oh, yeah. I remember that now. She was very weak.”
“You know it was a female?”
“I can discern the sex of nearly all of them. Sometimes more than one person goes through at a time. When I was pregnant on Voran III, it was babies that came to me. Babies that died before, during or shortly after birth around the planet. Sometimes they brought the mothers with them.”
“How long has this happened to you?” he asked.
“Since I was a kid. My Gramma Addie is the only one who knows about it. She helped me to understand what was happening. She had always known I was special, that I could do things and know things. She is a seer herself.”
