"Exactly."
“How? Why? Why is this happening to us?”
“I don't know, honey. I really don't. But there is some encouraging news.”
David watched Emily's expression brighten, and his brightened right along with it.
She looped her arm through his. “Let's keep walking, and we'll talk about,” she said softly, taking the first step.
David stepped along with her.
“My future counterpart didn't exactly tell me about this time loop; she showed me. This is where it gets a bit difficult to explain, but we merged.”
“That wasn't difficult to explain at all,” David quipped.
Emily chortled. “Yeah, I guess it wasn't as difficult to explain as I thought it would be. Anyway, you know that I'm still non-corporeal. So is my future counterpart. Well, we absorbed our physical bodies and merged so she could show me all of the events that have taken place and are about to take place.”
“So you can see what's going to happen to us.”
Emily shook her head solemnly. “No, of course not. The future was blocked, as is should have been. I could see the events leading up to the moment I merged with my future counterpart, but I couldn't see any further. We can't be allowed to see our own futures.”
David furrowed his brow. "All right, now I'm confused. You were able to see the future when you were a being of pure consciousness. It wasn't a problem then. Everything that will happen is happening now and blah, blah, blah."
Emily smirked. "You're starting to sound like Deanna."
"Well, maybe she's onto something. You're contradicting yourself. When you said that you couldn't see a future for us, any of us, that was a problem. Now suddenly, seeing our own futures is the problem? I'm sorry, but that's a contradiction."
"Seeing the future has always been a problem for you because you've always been corporeal. Until recently, I wasn't corporeal. But now I'm transitioning. The filter of the flesh is returning, and the filter of the flesh makes all the difference in the world. Non-corporeal beings are non-linear. They exist independent of time. Corporeal beings, like you and now me, exist in a linear state. Our existence is dependent on time. And do I need to tell you the potential ramifications of knowing too much about your own future?"
David felt like he was being lectured. "No, I've seen Back to the Future."
"Great movie! Yeah. Well, now you understand why my future counterpart couldn't tell me anything about our future."
"Because it would pollute the timeline," David muttered.
"Well, the timeline is already polluted. Just running into our future selves has polluted the timeline. But knowing what our future counterparts experienced could be disastrous. It would force us to make different choices at every turn. If we know that our future counterparts did such and such, and it didn't work out well for them, we would inevitably make a different choice that would lead to an entirely different set of circumstances."
"Well, at least we know we're all going to make it back through the wormhole in a couple of weeks." The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them.
"No, every trip through the loop will be different for so many reasons." David nodded vigorously as she spoke, desperately wanting to break in to tell her that he already understood what she was in the process of telling him. "Every trip through the loop gives us another chance to experience everything again with slightly altered circumstances each time. We accumulate more knowledge, albeit unconsciously, that alter our choices the next time we go through the loop. And of course, rendezvousing with our future selves has polluted the timeline which alters our circumstances going forward. Bottom line is, we don't know if we're going to make it back through the wormhole in a couple of weeks."
David smiled glumly. "Thanks for the pep talk."
"It's not a pep talk; it's a truth talk."
"Well, as long as you're giving me this truth talk, it's true that regardless of what happens to us, even if we all die, we'll go back to the beginning of the temporal loop and start all over again."
"Right," Emily said brightly.
"Like Groundhog Day."
"Right, only our loop is longer than a day."
"Right." David pondered this information for a moment before adding, "So in a weird way, this is good news."
Emily smiled broadly. "In a weird way, it's very good news!"
David matched her smile with one of his own. “Weird is par for the course with us.”
“Now you're catching on!”
“So we have a chance.”
“We have multiple chances,” Emily pointed out. “My future counterpart and I believe that whoever or whatever created this time loop and placed us in it did so to help us.”
“Help us with what?” He asked the question instinctively, but that same instinct told him that it was futile to ask. He knew what her answer was going to be.
“I can't tell you,” she said bluntly.
“Of course you can't.”
“Whatever intelligence placed us in this loop took the extra step of creating a temporal distortion in the wormhole to send our future counterparts back early to help us figure this all out.”
David had been doing everything in his power to temper his growing frustration, but he was sick of holding back. He felt like Emily was teasing him with morsels of information. “You mean help you figure it out since you're not keeping the rest of us in the loop. No pun intended.”
“I will fill you in when the time is right,” Emily countered diplomatically. “I don't want to keep secrets from you, from any of you, but like I said, it would be extremely dangerous to tell you everything I know. I have to keep some of this to myself for the time being.”
David hesitated, took a deep breath to settle his nerves and said, “So let me see if I get this straight; you believe some intelligence, some omnipotent being, created the time loop and sent our future selves back early to solve a mystery that that same intelligence created for us.”
“Yes.”
David placed the tips of his fingers on his head and pulled them up and out, miming his head exploding. “Mind equals blown.”
“I know. It's confusing. I really don't understand it myself, and this muddled head of mine isn't helping matters.”
“This sounds like a job for George and Richard.”
Emily hesitated before saying, “Let's just keep this between you and I for now.”
David was perplexed. “Why? We're gonna need all the help we can get on this.”
“Please just trust me on this one,” she pleaded. “We'll tell them when the time is right, but for right now, it's our little secret.” She paused. Leaning forward as they walked and looking up into his eyes, she said, “Okay?”
“Okay,” David relented. He hesitated a moment before muttering, “Why that one moment?”
Emily raised her eyebrows and leaned into him. “Pardon?”
“If we're stuck in a loop and we're repeating the same period of time over and over again, why is my brain fixated on that one encounter with...Encounter? Why am I having a recurring dream about that one event and not some other event that I've repeated? You can tell me that, can't you?”
“The time loop intersects at that point,” she responded matter-of-factly, as if the answer to his question should have been obvious. “You're living two moments simultaneously when we encounter...Encounter.” She chortled. “You're experiencing two moments in time at precisely the same time within the loop, one as we're leaving Earth and one as our future counterparts are returning to Earth. This experience is having a pretty dramatic effect on your subconscious. And it's not just you; the others have been having the same dreams.”
“I guess that makes sense,” he said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "And you? Have you been having these dreams?"
"We don't have dreams in the Great Community. But...I had some kind of experience. I guess you can call it a vision. I saw that event. I saw...actually, I experienced our rendezvous with th
e outbound Encounter...with us as we were leaving Earth. I had this experience several times, each time as we were returning to Earth, and each experience was different."
David was taken aback. "You told us that you couldn't see the future, that you couldn't see a future for any of us."
"I didn't lie to you," she said defensively. "I didn't see anything. I experienced it. That may be a distinction without a difference to you, but it means a world of difference to me. I didn't understand what was happening to me. I didn't understand the experience. It was an unprecedented experience for a member of the Great Community. They weren't even aware that I had this vision, if you can call it that, and they should have been, because as I've explained to you repeatedly, so often, you're probably sick of hearing it, everything is shared openly in the Great Community. No secrets. No filters. I had to communicate this experience to the Great Community, which was unprecedented in itself. We, the entire Community, were completely baffled by the experience."
"But now you know what it means," David said casually.
"Right."
"And you can't tell me."
"Right. Well, not now anyway."
"Right," David muttered.
He was tempted to push the conversation further but thought better of it, feeling it would be more prudent to let it go at that point and pick it up at another time. There was no rush. He had plenty of bizarre information to absorb and process. He wasn't sure how much more his brain could handle at that point.
Besides, there was the pressing matter of their new found friends to contend with. Those newfound native friends led them to the edge of the forest. It was there that David got his first clear look at the city. The planet's twin moons provided more than enough illumination to take in the view from afar. It was a miraculous but frightening view. The collection of dark, obsidian-like, low-rise buildings framed the towering, jagged tower at the center of the city like a crowd of terrified subjects bowing to their king. The ominous view was enough to stop David in his tracks. Emily, her fingers intertwined with his, stopped with him.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I'm fine. I just, uh...I was struck by the view.”
Emily followed his gaze to the tower. “A bit creepy, isn't it?”
David nodded and smiled nervously. “Just a bit.”
“Come on, champ. I got ya back.”
She did it. Without trying, she emasculated him...or he emasculated himself. He knew she didn't mean anything by it, but her comments struck a sensitive nerve. He was nervous, but he was brave. Facing one's fears is the definition of bravery.
He lifted his chin and said, “Let's do this.”
Emily gave him a nod of encouragement. “Right on!”
They moved forward, reached the edge of the forest and stepped into the clearing. A short field of waist-high grass and weeds stood between them and the city. With each stride, they were forced to raise their feet higher than usual to traverse the field. Their long-limbed companions stepped through the field with little effort.
The moons would provide ample illumination for their trek through the city, but aside from the streets and the low-level buildings that surrounded them, there didn't seem to be much to illuminate as far as David could tell. He couldn't see anything resembling a vehicle, and the streets he was able to see from their position just outside the city were barren.
They reached the edge of the overgrown field. An expanse of dark stone stood between them and the first ominous structures at the city's edge. David felt the need to stop. Something about this situation just didn't feel right. Of course, how could it feel right? He had never been placed in a similar situation.
Emily squeezed his hand. “You all right?”
David shook his head, gazing absently into the city. “No, not really.”
“It doesn't feel right,” she suggested, as if reading his thoughts.
“It doesn't feel right,” he echoed.
“I agree.”
That had surprised him. He looked at her for clarification.
“If you're looking for some kind of explanation, I don't have one to give you,” she said without looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on the tower in the distance. “I'll tell you this much: Something about this place seems strange and familiar at the same time.” She turned her gaze toward him. “Is that what you're feeling?”
David shook his head slowly. “No, it just feels strange.” But for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why.
She nodded and turned her gaze back to the tower. “Welp, are we still doing this?”
David assumed it was a rhetorical question, as Emily was leaning toward the field of stone, ready to move on.
“I suppose,” he muttered.
She stepped onto the field of stone, pulling David by the hand like a mother pulling her child through a grocery store, a whimsical smile curling her lips as if the brief exchange they'd had a moment earlier hadn't taken place. The “familiar” side of her “strange and familiar” feelings about their situation seemed to be the direction she was leaning in. If she still felt that their situation was a bit strange, she must have felt that it was that par for the course kind of strange rather than the apprehensive kind of strange he'd been referring to.
Of course, that apprehensive kind of strange had a lot to do with their black-eyed, long-limbed, glowing companions. If David didn't know better, he would have been under the impression that they were guiding their seven-foot-tall luminous escorts rather than the other way around. The beings stopped when they stopped, moved when they moved.
“Do you have anything you want to add to this conversation?!” David called out cynically as he and Emily traipsed hand in hand across the stone field.
We do not have anything to add to your conversation. We had surmised that your conversation was a private one and did not wish to interfere. If you have something you would like us to contribute to the conversation, you are more than welcome to ask us. However, we cannot guarantee that any of your questions will be answered to your satisfaction.
“Never mind!” David barked. “Just...never mind.”
Emily gave his hand another squeeze. “Keep it together there, sailor.”
“I'm fine,” he muttered.
Their escorts led them into the city. David was able to get a much-desired look at the architecture up close. Contrary to his view from outside the city, the view from the city's streets gave him a far better appreciation for the subtle diversity of the buildings' designs. The darkness had given him the impression that all of the buildings were black. This was not the case. The tones were dark, but a few dark colors graced the unusual structures. There was plenty of black sprinkled with bits of grays, browns and reds of varying tones. Of course, those varying tones fell on the dark end of the spectrum.
The shapes were varied, running the gamut of rounded tops, flat tops, angled tops and jagged tops that jutted into the sky as if trying to pierce it.
They were all relatively low-lying buildings with the lowest at approximately two stories and the highest, aside from the tower in the center of the city, at approximately forty stories.
David didn't have much trouble estimating the buildings' heights in stories. The buildings had rows of windows with worn wooden shutters secured by rusty hinges. Most of the shutters were closed with a few hanging from their hinges, and some were missing altogether, leaving darkened, arched holes in their wake.
The similarly-styled doors―worn wood affixed to rusted hinges―had suffered the same fate as the shutters. Most were closed; some hung from their hinges; some were lying on the ground in front of cob-webbed laden darkened entrances.
It didn't matter much. Privacy wasn't an issue. The place was a ghost town. David couldn't believe that anything or anybody had lived in this broken down old city in quite some time.
They marched through the barren and increasingly hazardous streets, occasionally sidestepping cracks, holes or chunks of debris. If these streets had ever been u
sed for mechanized vehicles, they would be nearly impossible to traverse in their current condition. The stone was weathered and breaking apart in many areas. Weeds were pushing their way up through the smaller cracks and trees were sprouting up through the larger ones. Nature was taking the land back.
Sudden movement. Just ahead and off to the left. By the time David caught sight of it, it was gone. It disappeared between a couple of buildings. He hadn't gotten a good look at it. It may have been a shadow or a silhouette. He wasn't sure, but he believed the form was humanoid.
He stopped, pointing. “Did you see that?”
“Yes, I did,” Emily confirmed. “Up ahead to the left. I didn't get a good look at it. Looked like a shadow or...”
“A silhouette.”
“Right.”
“Good. So I'm not crazy.”
“Not unless your kind of crazy is infectious.”
That was just one of the cities inhabitants. You may catch a glimpse of them from time to time. Pay them no mind.
“Are they dangerous?” David inquired apprehensively.
They can be dangerous, but you do not need to be concerned. They are usually very timid. They are more fearful of you than you are of them. If they happen to engage you in a threatening manner, we will protect you.
Their escorts' reassurance didn't exactly instill David with confidence. There were beings hiding among them in the shadows, fearful of outsiders. Fear could be every bit as dangerous as animosity. The two often went hand-in-hand. And Emily and David were strangers in a city filled with frightened inhabitants, frightened inhabitants who apparently lived in squalor, frightened inhabitants with little to lose.
He glanced around at the damage. He was having trouble reconciling the condition of the city with his newfound knowledge that sentient beings inhabited it. "What happened here?" he queried.
If you are referring to the condition of the city, it has not been occupied by corporeal beings in many years. The city has not been maintained; thus nature has taken a toll, as is its duty and its right.
The Perfect Moment in Peril Page 15
