Keystones: Altered Destinies

by Alexander McKinney

  Susan flashed twin beams of light into Deklan’s face, dazzling him. “You let me sleep on the drive from New York to Afton, and you convinced me at the pet store that we had to flee Earth.” She shrugged and looked a little embarrassed. “We’ve only known each other for a few days. I don’t know how many other personal stories I can tell you that no one else would know about.”

  The guilt that Deklan had carried since her assumed death withered like a dying weed. His biggest mistake was somehow redeemed. He let go of his mother and walked over to crush Susan in a huge hug.

  Day 5

  Calm Arrives at the Terra Rings

  Calm could feel a hand shaking his shoulder. He’d nodded off on his mattress again. He cracked his eyes open and focused on Andrews, blinking the sleep out of his eyes until there was only one of him. “I’ll have you know that the girl that I was dreaming about was much prettier than you are.”

  Andrews didn’t sound amused, but he didn’t sound offended either. “Happy to hear that, sir.”

  Calm worked his tongue around his mouth before he yawned. “Now why are you waking me up?”

  “We’ve arrived and will soon be docking at the Terra Rings.”

  “We’ve arrived?” he asked with surprise. “I knew we were going fast, but it took me months to get out to the Oort Cloud. Where have we arrived? Is it really Earth?”

  “Yes, we’ve found Earth. We also know that Callisto, along with every human settlement from our solar system other than the Terra Rings and Earth itself, is missing.” Andrews paused in thought for a moment. “And the FAME stations in the Oort Cloud.”

  “But Earth and the Terra Rings are here?” Calm wanted to be very sure of these details.

  “Yes, we’re on an approach vector to the Terra Rings now. We should be docked within twenty minutes.”

  “That’s amazing.” Calm’s head sank down as he thought about this.

  Andrews continued his briefing on the situation. “We’ve also been sifting through the news reports from Earth and the Rings. A great number of people and animals have become Keystones.”

  Calm’s gaze snapped up to meet Andrews’. “How many is a great number?”

  “Things are chaotic, to say the least, but low estimates run in the hundreds of millions of people.”

  “Hundreds of millions of Keystones?” He said it as a whisper more for his own ears than Andrews’. “Hundreds of millions.”

  “Yes.”

  What would they be able to do? Calm wondered. It would change the world. His mood was buoyed by the potential for excitement in this news. “Are there reports on their new powers?”

  “Yes.”

  Calm nodded. “And?”

  Andrews’ expression turned grim. “They are many and varied. Some seem hard to credit, especially if you want to sleep well at night.”

  Safely on Ring Two

  Deklan awoke in a comfortable bed without any injuries. Life was improving. He didn’t have the future worked out, but the booking was pre-paid for a week. All of his needs were seen to, and he’d had the opportunity to buy himself some clothes. Being alive was great, but being alive and wearing something other than a hospital gown was bliss.

  He luxuriated in the simple joy of waking up and stretching, crushing the pillows around him, and enjoying the silky sheets sliding over his skin. He had nowhere that he needed to be.

  The Terra Rings had been every bit the shock that he’d been taught to expect, if not more so. Everything was clean and artificial. There didn’t seem to be any natural products anywhere. It was almost as though the designers had made a conscious decision to separate themselves from Earth-bound humanity.

  To his delight his mother had managed to keep hold of the redwood seed, and together with his father, Susan, and Michael they had snuck into one of the artificial parklands and planted it, a silly thing in light of everything else they had experienced, but still fun.

  Deklan’s other thoughts revolved around Susan. Many casual comments by her confirmed that she was indeed who she claimed to be. Deklan just didn’t understand how it was possible. After vanishing without a trace, she had reappeared in outer space. She was also now the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Somehow she had died and returned to life. The guilt that Deklan had felt for her death was gone. In its place was a profound relief that she was alive.

  Cay Navigates

  Cay walked through a maze of corridors. Most doors led him to greater clarity and awareness. From time to time he did make mistakes and needed to backtrack, but by and large he was developing a feel for this strange place. No longer disturbed by the vague and indistinct nature of his surroundings, he had grown curious. Where was he? What did all of this represent? He had a rough sense of time and thought that days had passed while he’d been wandering.

  At the end of a corridor Cay was faced with a choice. Most corridors had no more than three doors, but this one ended in ten, each of which would continue branching off into other corridors. At times like these he found it best to pause. He had learned that every door gave off a sense of being the right one. It was just a question of intensity.

  He walked past each of the doors and let his fingers trail over the handles. Different sensations came from each, sensations of size, power, stability, and, most importantly, home. It was the door with the greatest sensation of home that he chose to open.

  The corridor that it disclosed was no more remarkable than any other. Already at the end of it he could see more doors. Disappointed, Cay entered it. There was a new sensation, however, an option he hadn’t felt before. Closing his eyes, he proceeded.

  Cay’s eyes resisted opening. It felt as though each eyelash was glued to the next one. His muscles felt sore. Aches in his back, legs, and shoulders throbbed. He was in a bed with a mask strapped to his face. Under the mask he felt a tube running down his throat. He reached up and touched his head. Electrodes dotted his shaved scalp. A pulling sensation alerted him to the IV in his left arm.

  In less than a minute a tired-looking doctor ran into the room. His coat bore a clip with the name Dr. Maple on it. Cay waved at the man and then pointed at the paraphernalia attached to his face and head.

  “One minute,” said Dr. Maple, reaching down to remove the mask.

  Cay felt the tube coming out of his throat and was amazed at its length.

  Seeing his expression, the doctor said, “It was how we fed you.”

  Cay tried to speak but could only cough. After swallowing a few times, he tried again. His voice was hoarse and hard to hear. “Where am I?” he asked.

  The doctor looked at the walls and back at Cay with an eyebrow raised. “FAME Station 5.”

  Cay massaged his throat. “How did I get here?”

  “Calm brought you back from the artifact.”

  Cay thought about what else he wanted to know. It all boiled down to one question: “Am I going to get paid?”

  Dr. Maple turned from the monitoring equipment to stare at him. “That’s your first concern?” he remarked.

  “With money,” said Cay, “I can fix anything else.”

  Dr. Maple turned back to his equipment. “It’s not my decision and I haven’t asked, but let’s run some tests, shall we? You’ve been in a coma for five days.”

  “Five days?”

  “Yes.” The doctor looked at his Uplink and read a question. “Do you know your name?”

  Of course he did. “My name is Cay.” Then, thinking of all his time spent walking through corridors, he said, “It felt much longer than five days.”

  Dr. Maple looked around the room again before focusing back on him. “What felt longer than that?” he asked.

  “I dreamt. It was a very long dream.”

  “You dreamt?” Dr. Maple said nothing further about the dream, but his expression spoke volumes. Cay knew that he wasn’t telling him something. “We’ll talk more about that later,” added Dr. Maple.

  Cosmological Anomaly

  Elizabeth and Chesh
ire sat in a small spacecraft situated in an area of empty space between the orbits of Earth and where Mars used to be.

  A purple flare lit the area. It was the size of a pinprick at the beginning, but it expanded into a shifting array of shades of purple ranging from a dark violet hue to lavender. The edges of the wormhole grew outward, but it wasn’t a uniform growth. Instead, it was like the opening and closing lips of a lamprey, one big enough to swallow spaceships whole. The inner edges tapered to a narrower tunnel that Elizabeth could see down, but the end was hidden behind a curve.

  “What is that exactly?” she asked. Elizabeth didn’t feel scared, just curious. She knew that with Cheshire there nothing bad was going to happen to her.

  Cheshire leaned back in his seat, and his voice took on an academic tone. “Well, its technical name is an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, more commonly known as a wormhole. I prefer to call it a gate. Before now they existed only in theory. The artifact used a specialized wormhole to move everything in our solar system to multiple destinations five days ago.”

  “A wormhole? As in a tunnel through space?” she asked without looking at him, transfixed by the wonder before her.

  “Not just space but, if the theories are correct, time as well.”

  For that Elizabeth spared a glance his way. “Time?”

  He shrugged, looking sheepish. “Some of them maybe. I don’t know for certain.”

  A question he didn’t know the answer to, thought Elizabeth. She kind of liked it. “Why did it open here and now?”

  Cheshire looked happy to be able to answer her question. “Because Cay found his way home. An impressive achievement.”

  Elizabeth didn’t know who Cay was. She turned back to the wormhole. “How far does it go?”

  Cheshire grinned at her, one side of his mouth showing bright teeth. “Thousands of light years in the blink of an eye.”

  She nodded, enjoying his smile as much as anything else. “What’s on the other side?”

  His face lit up again. Elizabeth knew that he loved knowledge more than anything else. “Another system with more wormholes.”

  “And after that?”

  “It continues almost to infinity.”

  “Almost?”

  “The universe has limits. They’re just broader than our minds can encompass.” He smiled again. She knew that, true as his statement might be, he also liked the sound of his sentence.

  “Are people ready for this?”

  “Not even remotely.”

  It was time now for the question that she had wanted to have answered since Cheshire first told her about all of this. “Then why work so hard to make it all happen? Why did you arrange the Sweep?”

  His smile slipped away, and he held her hand. “The other option was extinction. Regardless of how many people my actions have killed, and regardless of how little right I had to make a decision for humanity, I couldn’t stand by and let everyone die.”

  Every fiber of Elizabeth’s being was intent upon what Cheshire was saying. She knew that he never did anything without a reason, and she trusted him, but this was something else. “Extinction? How?”

  Cheshire’s next comment came as though spoken from a long distance away, dropping into the momentary silence like a lead weight from a great height. “War.”

  “What now?”

  “War. Just with a different enemy.”

  About the Author

  Alexander McKinney first discovered his love of Fantasy with ‘Dragons of Autumn Twilight.’ From there he proceeded to devour every novel of Dragonlance mythology that he could find. His lifelong obsession with the genre can undoubtedly be laid at the feet of Margaret Weis & Tracey Hickman.

  Branching out from medieval worlds took time, but eventually a dearth of locally available titles required the radical move to the genre of Science Fiction. There, lying in wait was a host of glittering treasures: Herbert, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein. Authors who only sunk the hook deeper.

  Alexander lives in the Bahamas and proves that insanity goes hand in hand with a passion for writing as the pursuit of new stories frequently interferes with the pursuit of enjoying beaches and sunshine, a choice that he is certain most people would not make.