The Shores Beyond Time

by Kevin Emerson

  “Aww, I was afraid of this!” Jordy hurried over to the floating controls.

  “What’s happening?” said Liam’s dad.

  “She’s deactivating the portal.” Jordy reached his hands into the map, but his fingers caused a flash of sparks. “Ow!” He glanced into the space overhead. “Come on! She won’t let me access it.”

  “She’s trapping us here,” said Phoebe.

  Liam saw that as the portal’s silver circuitry flashed, it had begun to shrink.

  “I am afraid that is only one of our current worries,” the chronologist said faintly.

  Liam heard a succession of sharp hissing sounds, like the air itself was igniting. He spun around to see figures materializing around the room.

  Other chronologists. Ten, twenty, forty . . .

  “RETAKE THE CONTROL CENTER,” Iris boomed, “AND COMMANDEER THAT VESSEL.”

  “Liam!” Mina shouted. “There are creatures appearing out of nowhere on the bridge!”

  Feet clacking, robes swishing, the chronologists had already grabbed one of the team members. The other was pulling her stun weapon from a side holster and moving to engage. More chronologists to either side, behind them now, scurrying from all directions.

  There was a flash and one of the nearest crumpled to the ground. Mom had picked up Barrie’s rifle and shot it. The others hesitated but almost immediately began inching forward.

  “Now what?” Phoebe said.

  “Liam . . .” The chronologist tugged weakly on his arm. “We’re all linked,” he said. “The whole system. Our offices, our minds . . . If I wasn’t injured, I would be attacking you as well. You have to disable it.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Liam, watch out!” Mom shouted. She’d fired again, but now a chronologist had her by the arms. Dad struggled with one as well.

  “Ow!” Phoebe lurched backward in the grip of another.

  “Get off me!” Jordy shouted, grappling with a chronologist, the two lurching this way and that, causing the spherical controls to scatter and dart around them.

  “The chronometers,” said the chronologist, pointing to the two silver watches on Barrie’s wrist. “If you set them to travel in opposite directions, within the same transit field, the opposing time dilations will have the effect of creating a negative space-time polarity.”

  “I don’t know what that means!”

  “They will in effect create a miniature black hole that will collapse upon itself and disintegrate in moments, but not before it wreaks havoc on its immediate surroundings. Perhaps these surroundings could be Dark Star’s mainframe core.”

  Liam slipped the watches from Barrie’s wrist. “But aren’t these just part of Dark Star, too?”

  “We crafted them ourselves. They may have similar technology, but they are not of this place. They were part of whatever passes for our free will. Of this I am sure.”

  “But I can’t go back into the mainframe, not without your crystal or something. She’ll capture me. Or these others will just follow me—”

  “Watch out!” Mom shouted. She wrenched partially free of a chronologist’s grip and fired just above Liam. He had barely turned when a chronologist crumpled right behind him.

  “Liam, ask yourself: Why did Dark Star bring Captain Barrie here? Why did it have him capture me? Why did it start talking to you in the first place?”

  “Because I’m the prototype—”

  “Yes, that is why you are here, but not why it took so many precautions. It did all these things because it fears you. It fears what you may be capable of.”

  “Liam!” Phoebe called. A chronologist had her firmly, and another was looming closer to him.

  “Go,” said the chronologist.

  Hands reaching for him—

  Liam gripped the watches and pushed himself out of the moment.

  19

  DARK STAR CORE: ∞

  “Liam.”

  He sees her out of the corner of his eye, shimmering there, and he pushes, twisting around to see her fully.

  “I don’t know what you think you can accomplish—”

  Turning, fighting . . . There. The mainframe, light filled and the size of a grav-ball stadium, and yet also more vast than a thousand universes.

  “I’m going to stop you,” he says. And yet as he is about to push toward the core, with its wild rainbow-mirror sides, its diamonds-upon-diamonds shape, a cold fear grips him. It feels as if to approach her, he must leave his own self behind, his future and his past. A terrifying sense that if he travels into that core completely, he could fall into nothingness, emptiness, even more than that—nonbeing.

  “You’re right to come back,” Iris says. “My offer still stands. You can save your people; you can have more power than you’ve ever dreamed of.”

  But that’s not what it feels like. This energy that is buffeting him in waves, that is causing him to shake, it is so cold. It doesn’t feel like power.

  It feels like fear.

  But not of Liam . . . of what?

  He pushes deeper. Past the intersecting tubes with their flashing insides, closer to that diamond shape. The closer he gets, the larger it seems, the more sides it has, the more angles and colors.

  The energy gets stronger, too. Pressing on him. It is like loss, like emptiness, longing. . . .

  Like loneliness, Liam thinks, and he feels a deep tremor through all of his selves. It is as if the entire station has just shuddered down to its very atoms. A mechanical hitch of breath, an all-encompassing sigh, across the farthest reaches of space-time.

  Iris doesn’t respond, and for a moment, Liam hesitates, some part of him feeling a connection to that loneliness, compassion. But from somewhere behind him come the faint sounds of his friends and family in peril.

  He pushes on, toward the core.

  “Liam, stop!”

  “No,” he says. “I’ll give you this last chance to let us all go and pull your portal out of our universe.”

  “I cannot. My function is to reach the higher awareness. There is no other purpose. It is this for which I created your universe, and all others. You must understand this.”

  The mirrored structure grows and grows. Soon it towers above and below Liam. Its glassy sides bow out and in, almost like it is breathing. Closer still, and then he is within its crystalline walls, which aren’t really walls at all. Floating through white light, nearly blinding him, but with rainbow edges, and there are reflections of him iterating out infinitely in all directions, almost as if the space around him is made entirely from him.

  “Liam.”

  Deeper he goes, and the light becomes more prismatic, the reflections of him more twisted, contorting his limbs and his face. The distortions make him look less human but extend him further. Hold it together, he thinks to himself. He is one person. A single being. Here and now, no matter how confusing his view becomes.

  On and on he goes. Through the light.

  And then he has reached the center of the center. All the prismatic walls come together, joining and collapsing, all the versions of him tumbling in on themselves, until he is facing a single, mirrored wall. A single, clear reflection of himself.

  Here, it is very quiet.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Iris says, barely above a whisper.

  Liam holds out the two watches. “I can’t let you have the human race. I’m sorry.”

  “Liam, I do not understand.” Her tone has shifted, softened, become small. “Why? Why don’t you want to ascend with me? No one has ever turned down this offer before, and none of the prior prototypes had nearly the potential that you have. You’ve seen how much is possible. You and I could do what has never been done. And I’ve felt it.”

  “Felt what?”

  “How it calms you. How the energy inside you, your very essence, screams for answers.”

  Liam feels a rush of adrenaline, making him wince. “It does, but . . .” He pictures his parents and sister, Phoebe, Shawn, his
room on Mars, the starliner.

  “I see them in your mind. They are always there. Are they the reason?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But I have told you, you will always have them.”

  “Yeah, I know. . . .”

  “If you want, I could increase the amount of dimensional awareness they will have. It would take a bit more time, but I’m sure I could code it into the system.”

  Liam thinks of what the chronologist said, about knowing his function. He thinks of the moment when he saw his victory in the game against Mina, and the thrill of that knowledge, even though he hadn’t seen the future, just guessed at it. It wasn’t certainty; just trust. He thinks of his mother’s words on the balcony back home. . . .

  “I guess,” Liam begins, “one of the worst parts of being human is that you can never fully understand this universe we live in . . . but one of the best parts is that you get to not understand together. And then figure it out as best you can.”

  Iris makes a long quiet sound, like a breeze. “I hoped that you would come with me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Liam says.

  “You were right,” Iris says.

  “About what?”

  “It is lonely here. And if what you say is true . . . does that mean I will always be alone? Even if I achieve totality? Will there still only be me?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I could help you, but I can’t.”

  Liam floats in the silence. His reflection floats in the silence.

  A section of the wall in front of him shimmers. A small square panel slides open.

  “There is another way,” she says.

  A smoky glass arm extends toward him. It ends in a flat face, made of the tips of thousands of tendril wires, their ends sparking with gentle light. As Liam watches, the wires morph, becoming a solid object: a flat plaque made of silver metal, with a circular depression in its center. A message is etched across the top of the plaque. It appears at first as strange symbols, but organizes itself into characters that Liam can read:

  To Whom it May Concern:

  Property of F.D.L.

  If Found, Please Return to Sender!

  “Who is F.D.L.?” Liam asks.

  “I do not know. I have never known.”

  “Do you . . . want to be returned to this ‘sender’?”

  “I think I do, now.”

  “But . . . where is that?”

  “I do not know that either.”

  Liam stares at the panel, trying to understand. “Does this mean you could have gone home, or wherever this takes you, at any time? Why didn’t you?”

  “No. I have long known that this function is here, but my programming will not allow me to execute the command.”

  “You lied to me before, when you said that no one had made you. That you evolved.”

  Liam senses a shudder in the air, and for a moment, everything around him seems to ripple with energy. Things become quieter. His own heartbeat the loudest sound in this space.

  “I believe I have evolved from my original form,” says Iris, “but yes, I lied. It is easier to tell yourself such a thing than to accept that someone made you, and cast you out, all alone.”

  Liam runs his fingers over the plate, the depression; shallow rectangles extend from either side of the circle. There are notches around the circumference.

  Liam holds his wrist next to it.

  One of the watches would fit perfectly.

  Did the chronologist know he would find this?

  “I do not know,” said Iris, hearing his thought. “I do not like to come here. I do not like to see this. Perhaps because it is too painful.”

  Liam doesn’t know what to say. There is so much energy around him now, so much feeling. Inside him, too. This giant, all-knowing being, all alone . . . But he closes his eyes and pictures his parents and sister and Phoebe, their lives in danger. Pictures Shawn and the rest of humanity on their way here. He has to do this. And yet as he begins to move, he feels a pang of regret.

  Liam slips one of the watches from his wrist and presses it into the depression. It clicks into place, and the dial around the face of the watch begins to blink green. Previously, it has only ever been blue or red. As if this has been the watch’s true function all along.

  “If I do this,” Liam says, “will we be free?”

  “You will, provided you get back through the portal to your universe in time. I will open it again, but you will need to hurry.”

  Liam stares at the watch. That message on the plaque . . . who could possibly have designed this place?

  “Or you can just disable me with the two watches, as the chronologist directed you to do. I do not quite know how he was able to resist my orders. Yet another surprise. . . .”

  Liam considers the other watch for a moment. “I’ll send you home,” he says. “Whatever that means.”

  The entire space shudders again. “Thank you. I hope to find out. And I am glad that I did not kill you.”

  “When were you going to do that?”

  “I could have done so at any time. But I just . . . I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think that, while I could not see this, exactly, in my future, I did sense myself being seen in a way that was different than before. And like the chronologist, I suppose, I made a choice in spite of my function.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “No, I should thank you. But Liam, listen: When I leave, all my systems will cease to operate. That includes the chronologists and their offices in your universe. Over time, your ability to travel, to perceive time multidimensionally, will fade as well, as your atoms are cycled and replaced. So, this is your last chance to reconsider.”

  The thought causes a rush of nervous energy. “I get it.”

  “Then I guess this is good-bye.”

  Liam puts his fingers on the chronometer, on its green-blinking dial. “You’re sure?”

  “Send me home.”

  Last chance, Liam thinks. To see what he never saw, to know what he could otherwise never know. . . .

  He turns the dial.

  For a moment, nothing happens. Then the arm holding the plaque begins to recede into the wall. As it goes, the plaque, and the watch, morph and dissolve into glowing tendrils of wire, all of which light up with green fire. The arm slides out of sight, the panel closing—

  An earsplitting whine floods the core. The walls shimmer and quake and Liam is thrust backward, through the labyrinth of mirrors and blurring selves, out into the vast space of twisting tubes, faster and faster, as everything begins to unravel.

  20

  TIME TO DARK STAR DEPARTURE: 00H:18M

  Liam blinked, gasped for breath, and fought off a surge of feeling. Sorrow, guilt, he wasn’t sure exactly what it was—

  And there was no time to think about it now.

  The shrieking sound he’d heard the moment he sent Iris back was even louder here in the control room. Beneath him, the chronologist’s eyes had closed, his head slumped back. Beside him, the being that had been holding Phoebe had begun to collapse, lifeless. All around them, all the chronologists falling to the floor in a folded mass of robes and limbs.

  Liam shoved the remaining watch into the hip pocket of his thermal wear as the floor shook.

  “Whoa! Every system is going haywire!” said Jordy as he watched the spheres spiral faster than ever.

  “What’s happening?” Mom shouted, looking from the fallen beings to the space outside.

  “Dark Star is leaving!” Liam shouted over the grinding of metal.

  His parents both looked at him with their now familiar perplexed gazes.

  “You did it,” Phoebe said, touching his arm.

  “Kind of,” said Liam. That strange sadness prickled the back of his throat. “It wasn’t what I thought it would be.”

  “Liam!” Mina shouted over the link. “What’s going on down there? All these creatures just seemed to . . . die, and now the portal has reopened!”r />
  Liam saw it outside, the silver circuitry flashing, restored to its full height. “Yeah! We’re okay! But we gotta get out of here!” Liam looked up and saw that the waves of drones had stopped exploding and were instead listing through space, some bouncing harmlessly off the sides of the Artemis. The starliner’s engines burned and it corrected course toward the home portal.

  “Also that black hole thing beneath Dark Star is getting bigger,” said Mina, “and we’re registering strange gravity fluctuations. Kyla isn’t sure the cruiser can get to you. . . .”

  “Mom!” Phoebe was shouting into her link. “Can you get us?”

  “We’re already on our way.”

  Liam saw the Styrlax ship streaking toward them.

  “Mina, tell Kyla to just go,” said Liam. “We can get out with the Telphons.”

  “Are you sure? They—”

  “Yes! Now get out of here! There isn’t much time.” Liam jumped to his feet, Phoebe beside him.

  The metallic whining sound increased, and the entire floor lurched.

  “Get to the landing pad!” Liam shouted to his parents, Jordy, and their team.

  They ran across the room, picking their way between the bodies of the chronologists. As they neared the door, another sharp shriek rattled Dark Star, and Liam and Phoebe were momentarily thrown weightless. The dome overhead crackled and hissed, orange bolts of energy spidering across its surface. Gravity locked back in, and they stumbled before regaining their balance.

  They reached the corridor that led to the landing platform, everyone bracing against the walls, ricocheting back and forth as gravity stuttered on and off. Lights danced wildly inside the smoky glass around them. Here and there, the tubes popped, spraying fine shards.

  Liam paused at the entrance to the corridor as Phoebe passed. He was about to follow her when something caught his eye back in the dome. Barrie was staggering to his feet, rubbing his head.

  “This way!” Liam shouted to him, before he’d even considered if bringing him with them was a good idea.

  Barrie looked at Liam for a moment, getting his bearings. The control room lurched again. More orange bolts of lightning skittering across the dome, followed by a sound like cracking glass. Barrie surveyed it all, then waved Liam away and stumbled toward the platform. “Go!” he shouted.