by Grant Fausey
“Saddle up people,” said Patton. “This place is a tomb. Whoever these people were, they’re long gone.”
The symbiont chilled with the sensation of the transport beam teleporting the squad from the surface. Crimson felt the tingle of her body bathed in the radiant amber light, joining with Krydal as she had countless times before. But this time Crimson panicked, breaking the connection. Both worlds shuddered in the wake of collision. The murky darkness of the biomass consumed them, revealed itself in the inner sanctuary, presenting her essence in the wave of highly charged neuron particles transporting them from the surface. The transport beam shattered in the wake of temporal distortion. The old woman watched as the creature rose from the depths of the abyss in her mind. Alive in a great rolling thunder that pushed an earthquake through the inner sanctum, disrupting the core of the machine as if it was the dim glow of a fading nightmare. The Industrials had returned, she could feel it. Born within life’s murky biomass.
“We await your testimony with great anticipation,” said the last of the master-builders, exuding his monstrous frame from the depths of the chasm to stand erect in the presence of the old woman. But it was not her that he addressed. There was another, a vibrant entity compiled of a single living light. The crazed old warrior looked up at the towering shape of the ooze, enduring the harsh vibrations of the temporal rift, in order to gaze upon the true nature of the biomass.
“Ask of me what you will,” said the entity. “This outburst of yours is another display of your incessant need to survive.” There was a moment of silence. “I wonder what is of such importance that you would interrupt the formation of such a delicate future.”
“The past you speak of is flawed,” said Rallumn. “Your incessant meddling in matters of state is but a hindrance to the process of the whole.”
“The lives you touch are not your own,” said the entity. “From this only chaos can occur.”
“The future you speak of is a world without man,” said the being of living light. “It is my intention to correct this misdirection.”
“The future is as much theirs as it is ours,” said the entity, his voice broken. “The four who walk as one do not see their connection. It is possible, however unlikely, they may interfere with the creation of the whole.”
The second spoke as the first, emanating in unison from outside the apparatus, like an extra head with the features of the first. “And this we cannot allow.”
The convergence rippled, bubbling the murky membranes to expose the transparency of Rallumn’s face. The resplendent being drifted forward, stood within the threshold of the past, surrounded by the amalgamation of the present, his essence converging on the ancestral membranes hidden within the ooze of the biomass. “We are man’s future,” said the first. “Ramious is but a representation of this past you wish to protect.”
“The challenge is a delicate one,” concluded the brilliant entity. “As you stand before me in this world, so do you remain in that which came before you …” Rallumn sprawled out across the floor of the cavern, his tangled vine tentacles pressing hard against the curvature of the temporal core as he rose from the depths of the abyss to confront Alvericon. “The past is a part of the whole.”
“Then he should challenge the past,” insisted a third wishing to be heard.
“To challenge the past is to negate the future,” argued the first.
“Will we deny man his own destiny?” Alvericon pondered the question. He could not deny or dismiss the senseless meaning of pure thought, but rather, defended it with conviction. “Must we forfeit our own creation in order to preserve ourselves?”
“Would you rather destroy your own kind in order to preserve the dwindling light of man?”
“Man’s fate is of his own making,” admitted Rallumn. The dark entity skirted the edge of the laboratory, until he reached the core of the facility. “The past is but a blueprint of what is to come.”
“Then will we not survive!” said the second.
“You forget the teachings of the Indigna,” argued Alvericon. “The challenge of reality does not mix well with the fabrication of this new cosmos of your making. The wisdom of the elders is not to be dismissed.”
“The prophecy of the Kalamar foreshadows all that we have done,” added the first. “The gift of eternal life is meant for all.”
“Then we must give up this illusion of our own self-importance and allow the universe to chart our course,” said the Master-builder. “On this, all depends.”
“This path is a dangerous one,” admitted the second. “Do not deny your future over concern for the past, or it will be your undoing, Alvericon.”
“The boundary between the future and the past is but a delicate one,” the entity told Rallumn. “The light of the Industrials need only fade in the light of the luminous beings.” He turned to face the dark lord. “I fear what has transpired here, will occur again. Should we make another miscalculation, it will disrupt the flow of time as we know it.”
“If we are to survive the past, we must accept the challenges of an uncertain future,” concurred the dark entity, withdrawing to his particular place in reality.
“Then it is with great importance that we learn from those who came before us,” said the being of light. “It is their future that we build upon.”
“History tends to repeat itself,” insisted Rallumn, his voice retreating into the depths of the chamber. “We must keep the secret, not discard it.”
“Existence as I have known it, is over,” persisted Alvericon. “The Indigna is but a part of me.”
“Then there is little time for you to consider your choices,” said the Industrial. “Rebirth is but a gift. There have been many lives for all of us. The universe is a loving host, but one we must understand, if we are to transcend it into the next.”
“Then I will seek the past in order to understand the future,” considered Alvericon, his light diminishing into the silence of a single flicker beyond the biomass.
“I will walk with man again, so that we may understand our destiny.”
“Perhaps, I will too,” said Rallumn; his vine like membranes retreating into the bubbling goo. The remnants of his face dissolved in the reverence of the biomass, pulsating with a heartbeat. Beyond him, Renniska Brennan screamed bloody murder, his body twisted and distorted in the wake of the disturbance, his eyes bulging, as his memories contorted in the expanding threshold of the dark entity. The future unraveled, weaving a new tapestry of broken lineages and altered memories.
Indigo climbed through the mining rig scaffolding beneath the landing platform, stumbled, tripping over a half buried head, lying face down in the debris. The bounty hunter picked up the head, turned it over to reveal the skeletal remains of a skull with long fangs. “Mannuka,” said the bounty hunter, “how lovely …”
The temporal agent tossed the skull.
“Right place, wrong time.”
Indigo squeezed through the machinery onto the gantry, and stood silently just below the chariot wreckage. He emerged from the shadows of one world into the light of the other, growing still younger.
“You’re going to want to see this,” said the Shadowrider. The beast’s searchlights crossed the gantry to reveal the discarded skull. Crimson picked up the artifact and studied it closely. The outlines of Jake’s fingers sparkled on the curve of the skull.
“He’s here,” said the old woman drawing her weapon. “I know you’re down there! You might as well show yourself.”
Indigo flipped up the collar on the back of his overcoat. A river of water rushed off his should to his dark, muddy boots, meeting the ground in a rattling of metal, as he drew his weapon.
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.” The bounty hunter moved past a vent. “But you’re not so clever anymore. It’s all too simple now.”
Indigo stepped cautiously through the maze of pipes, and ducked under a bundle of interconnecting girders traveling the distance between the
m, emerging onto the platform beneath the old woman. “You’re not an assassin anymore.”
“That universe no longer exists.” The old woman adjusted her weapon, ready to strike.
“I remember a different past,” said Crimson. “But it’s all gone. We destroyed it. Remember?”
“Damn woman …” shouted the bounty hunter. “You shot me and left me for dead! Do you really think I’d forget?”
Crimson passed under a fallen beam onto the gantry. Indigo turned around slowly to face, repositioning himself to the sound of her voice. “No––” said the old woman, her pulse racing. She was drawn to the energy alive within him. “That future doesn’t exist anymore, remember?”
Indigo slid under the gantry. The old woman engaged her armor employing stealth mode, but the worn suit fluttered in the rain, only partially responding to her vulnerability. “You don’t really think that makes a difference now, do you?”
The woman didn’t answer. She pondered the question, couldn’t say what was really on her mind. She was like a withered flower; her peddles riddled with age. Her eyes clouded with memories. “We had good-times together, you and I,” she finally told him. There was the hint of hope in her voice. But she moved like a cat; each movement calculated, and precise. Not even the wind could keep her from her quarry. “But this won’t change anything. We have to alter the future, turn it back to the right path.”
“I can’t help you.”
“And I can’t do it alone.” The bounty hunter flipped off the safety on his gun. He knew what was to come, which avenue she would travel. He took in a deep breath to draw her close. He knew her weapon was trained on him. He could feel it as surely as his trained on hers. “The past no longer has any meaning,” he told her. But it was a lie. He knew the future. The past. The essence of his life renewed in the regenerative waves of the Industrial’s miracle drugs: The regenerative waves of one future bending with the other.
“Then you are truly lost,” conceded the symbiont. The old woman emerged onto the landing behind him. Silent. There was only so much room left on the platform. She looked down through the grates, searching for any sign of her assailant. Stealth. The bounty hunter spun around to face her.
“Jake,” she said softly. She stared at him, her heart shocked by his appearance; he was younger, disengaged from his armor, a mere mortal. “It’s me, Krydal.” The bounty hunter stared at her for a long moment. “Remember?”
“How could I forget?”
Krydal slammed into the grates on the lower landing platform; groaned, staring up the barrel of the bounty hunter’s plasma pulse gun. His weapon discharged, flashed with enough brilliance to blind both the old woman and Crimson form the coming event. “Time we say goodbye,” he told her speaking to his beloved, Crimson. An electrical arc raced intermittently across her body armor, leaving it defective. Vulnerable.
“Remember who you are,” she said with intent, not an afterthought.
Jake sobered.
Indigo sobered; both occupying the same space.
“I’m not interested in you’re tales of another time,” he told her. But he was interested. He held the future of another universe in the palm of his hand. He could change everything with a simple slip of the finger––create another future.”
“Maybe your right,” she told him. “Maybe, there’s no place for us anymore.”
The old woman sighed, but did nothing. She was contemplating the inevitable. The unthinkable. She had to force herself to do the one thing she promised herself she would never do; it was unavoidable. Nothing would change how she felt about him. She had no choice but to act, regardless of the consequences. She had to do her duty, stare the bounty hunter down. She looked up into his dark brown eyes, feeling the pulse of his life in her hands; the rhythm of his heart visible in his neck, rising and lowering with the muscles in stretching and contracting pulses that raced through his hands, his face, even his mind. It was all revealed. He was her beloved Indigo, the love of her life. She knew it; she could feel the attraction of their eyes as they found each other, bonded in the essence of a single memory. She felt her pulse race, adrenaline spreading to the tips of her fingers as she pulled a small vial from under her armor, and rolled the container between her digits. “Right place, wrong time!” she told the bounty hunter.
Indigo stared at her; pondered the question. The meaning escaping him for a split second, his focus on whatever it was she was trying to say. Then, in a moment of wild-eyed frenzy, he realized the inevitable, recognizing the endeavor: the frailty of his own life, now forfeit. He was about to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Maybe this will help you remember,” said the old woman; her hand raised to the wind, as she gently tossed the vial of regenerative material. The bounty hunter panicked; fear raced through his body. No matter how he tried; he would fail. Fate had seen to it. The vial was beyond his reach, his arms stretched across the platform. He could not catch the small glass bottle with one hand in the wind.
“No––” He struck the platform, but no one heard his cry. The bounty hunter’s body impacted the gantry, striking the deck plates hard enough to break his bones; his hand rifling through the air under the falling container to catch the vial, only to see the tube of regenerative material strike the platform just short of his fingertips and burst open. Indigo felt the rupture; the explosion of perfection released in a whirlwind of electrical arcs that engulfed the surrounding platform. Nothing was safe, unaffected. The mining rig vanished in a wave of distortion that expanded at the speed light across the threshold into the abyss.
“Don’t do this!” screamed Jake, scrambling to embrace his own doom, but it was too late. The deed was done. Crimson had kept her promise.
“What happened before; will happen again,” she told him. “Unless we change it.” Indigo felt his body spasm, tormented by the surge of energy coursing through it to engulf him where he stood on the platform, rising from his knees. “History will reset itself,” said the old woman, her body engulfed in the wake of the same temporal vortex. “Life will begin again.”
The old woman pulled her sidearm pushing off the safety, as she forced the setting to stun. “It’s the only way,” said the symbiont. The vortex is forming around us.”
“That’s not possible,” countered the bounty hunter.
“All you have to do is remember,” she told him. The corporate liaison pulled on the grate, forcing her body toward him as she drug her mangled body along the platform.
“Remember what?” The old woman reached for him, struggling to keep her fingers in the recesses of the dusty grates at the edge of the platform.
“Everything!”
“Crimson,” screamed the old bounty hunter. “I’ll find you.”
Rooka slammed into the hauler pilot sliding beyond the boundary like a circus performer in the midst of a swirling whirlwind of wind-latten fingers. He was caught in the distortion at the heart of the wave, but the lab rat was helpless. He thrashed, drawn into the depths of the caldron. He was a mere rendition of his former self, surviving only in the tormented fear of what was to come. The ground quivered beneath his feet, rose in a churning mass that swelled into mounts of upturned earth. The ground shattered in an embryonic sampling of the new universe: one cosmos consuming the essence of the other in the name of progress. Electrical arcs raced across the surface, splintering the planet in a wave of energy that distorted both time and space, the imperceptibly pulse agile radiated outward into the universe, unleashing an explosion so spectacular, as the boundary underwent a metamorphosis of its own.
Jake fought against the entanglement, his life ripped from him as the fragile atmosphere exhaled into oblivion in an excavation that sent the pilot scrambling for his life. His fingertips disintegrated before his eyes, swept away into the caldron of spinning wind. The metal platform fell away from beneath his feet as he lurched forward, tumbling in search off any sign of redemption, only to find his fingertips in the hand of another.
Their eyes melded, locked in a desperate attempt to surrender to each other’s future. Indigo staggered, stumbling backward in front of the hauler captain; his body falling against the stone place. His heart quivered, interrupted by the stream of a stun gun. The horizon rose and fell, held in the crosshairs of Krydal’s assault weapon.
Separating him from the new cosmos, the planet devouring its nearest neighbor in a flagrant disregard for life. The Industrial’s had discovered it, realized its potential and abandoned it to their forefathers in the breath of an afternoon. Everything left behind, disintegrated in an expulsion of its own battered surface, exposing the giant machine hidden underneath. The space-time continuum shattered in the wake of the disturbance, releasing the energy of a thousand regenerative devices into the infant cosmos as the machine sent forth its cracked and blistered surface, heralding its new existence in an unrepentant flash of creation.
Crimson Krydal Starr crossed the crumbling surface, reliving the last moment of her insurrection. The breach flickered in the echoes of her mind, transparent and lucid: that part of her host giving way to her reality. “Gotcha,” she told the commander. She had a runner, the possibilities of his identity to numerous to recount.
“Corporate––” reiterated Patton, just like he had done a thousand times before. The transparent circuitry quivered, clearly visible in the air behind the young warrior.
“Dogger––” said Krydal. “I’m on it.”
The warrior dropped to the lower level.
“Stay alert people,” said Patton. “We may have to alter our travel plans.”
“Jake––” she said, lowering her weapon, remembering the eyes of the bounty hunter. Indigo catapulted back to his feet, only to recoil against the butt of her weapon. He scurried backwards, retreating until his back slammed against the ancient artifact. He was trapped in both universes, looking across the boundary at two very different women with the same soul, his eyes uncertain, unaware of her intent.
