Raine VS The End of the World (62 page)

Lily gestured to another large-print family photo, only the age difference between Lily and her parents was not so pronounced; the three could have been siblings. “A much earlier instance of me did warn them. And in one world, younger versions of Carl and Elizabeth survived. But see, they were too attached to their own timeline, too concerned with saving the human race in their own way. They argued with that other me, saying that to change history and continue rewriting it to achieve a singular outcome might cause catastrophes that could unravel the very fabric of the universe. The accumulated energy caused by constantly traveling to and from certain points in spacetime might eventually be enough to create troubling anomalies.”

“You mean like a black hole?” Raine inquired.

Lily nodded. “Or a wormhole, but yeah. Something like that. Thankfully my findings, and those of my parents, don’t support any such thing. So far there’s no evidence of the
Belladonna
causing spatial or even sub-spatial distortion. They or I could be wrong, of course. I can’t imagine what that version of me went through, but as their daughter, I’m sure I wanted to join them. The Lily from that timeline went on to live with her parents, but sent a message back informing my past self that she didn’t think they were going to accomplish the mission. And so, a few dozen time loops later, here I am,” Lily said.

“Geez, time travel is complicated,” bemoaned Raine.

“It’s not really fair, is it? That version of you got to grow up with your parents,” Gerrit said grimly. “I’d be pretty frustrated to be in your situation.”

But Lily just shrugged it off.

“It’s enough for me to know that somewhere, sometime, they’re safe, even if that future may no longer exist. If it does, it’s in a place I can’t get to, anyhow. And I never forget to remind myself that the more I do what I’m doing, the more I’m toying with the ultimate fate of the universe.”

“How could you ever get used to that?” Raine asked.

“I don’t.” The reply was terse, but without aversion. “It’s a lonely job, but someone’s gotta do it.”

A dead hush fell over the observatory.

“Lily?”

“Raine?”

“Is that why you modeled us after your parents? Because you were alone?”

Lily gave her an embrace. She took hers and Gerrit’s hands.

“After losing Lucy, I realized there was something else I misplaced along the way. And that maybe we could get it back, together. I can’t ask you two for any more. You deserve to live the rest of your lives in peace and comfort, away from all this. Rutger can transport each of you to any point in history. You can live however you wish, and if you like, you can make it so that you won’t remember a thing. Think it over; you’ve got all the time in the world.”

With that, Lily turned to walk away.

“Where are you going?” asked Raine.

“I’ll be downstairs, putting the finishing touches on my mini-thesis. Gotta update my emergency letter to my past self. Figured I’d recommend not cloning herself.”

“Fair enough,” she replied as Lily descended.

Gerrit plopped down on a velvet sofa near the immense bookshelf, staring at the innumerable plaques on the wall.

“You wouldn’t think two people as attractive as us could get so many accolades,” he joked.

“Speak for yourself,” Raine said, joining him on the sofa. “She looks like a rocket scientist. I can’t see myself in her at all.”

Just then, Raine noticed that the late Elizabeth wore her favorite colors: purple and green.

In another frame, Lily was dressed up in a neon spandex outfit with goggles and a purple wig, striking a pose. So she’d met her creator-and-sorta-daughter in
Flynn’s
arcade, too.

The puzzle pieces were falling into place deep in her mind, a hundred perfect
Tetris
combos in a row, spinning her head in circles.

“Where are you going to go?” Raine asked Gerrit at last, breaking a long silence.

“I don’t know. How about you?”

Raine held up her hands, the universal sign that meant ‘I haven’t the slightest idea’.

“Not a clue. I kind of… no, I really want to help Lily. I just wish there were something I could do.”

“Ugh, I feel the same way.”

“Do you think… hmm,” Raine mumbled.

“No, go on.”

“I mean, maybe we could do it. If all of us traveled together to save the world, it might just be possible.”

Gerrit laughed. “I was thinking the same thing, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up.”

“No, I think it might just be the best-case scenario, Gerrit!” Raine exclaimed, taking his hands and looking deep into his eyes to be sure they were on the same level. She paced the observatory floor assuredly. “Lily’s too stubborn to admit it, but I don’t think she can do this alone.”

Gerrit nodded in agreement. “We made a pretty good team back there,” he said, putting an arm around Raine, who turned red and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“We sure did.”

XXXIV. Don’t Say Goodbye

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”

– Gautama Buddha

The
Phoenix
was always safe. It was her personal womb. Lily zipped up her spacesuit and sat with arms wrapped around bent legs, knees knocking from the clinical cold of the claustrophobic ship's oxygen pumps.

She’d already tried to forget. Short of wiping her memory, forgetting was next to impossible; maybe remembering and accepting would be the key. But the past brought nothing but pain. Lillian had a million things to feel guilty about; Raine and Gerrit were simply the most recent victims of her grand schemes.

Lorelei, you old fool. Maybe you were right after all,
she thought.

Lily took a deep breath. The
Phoenix
had regulated the air pressure, feeding her more than ample amounts of oxygen to help speed her thoughts along.

Whatever the answer to her Universe, Multiverse, or Split Universe quandary, it was too big a question for a lone soul to ponder. The possibility that she was responsible for the creation and destruction of an unimaginable number of life forms in hundreds of jumbled up universes was too immediate to ignore, yet too terrifying to face.

Now that she’d prepared her red envelope to send back to the Triassic, what were her options? To continue fighting the good fight? It was unthinkable to do anything with her life but to quest for timely interstellar colonization. However, if the means to that end only created more death and destruction, how could there be a point to saving just one planet?

She took in what little she could glimpse of the Earth from outside the sleek dome of her cockpit and through the docking bay’s viewing window. She recalled the faces of all the people on that big blue paradise her parents once called home. They were faces of good people, honest people, but she felt no connection to them, and she had no idea whether that was because she was half-raised by a computer on a time-traveling space station, or because she’d now half-convinced herself that she was something beyond human.

With the
Belladonna
, Lily knew, she essentially had the powers of a demigod. She’d transcended human limits, bent the spacetime continuum to her will, and even created and destroyed lives of genetically engineered beings, not to mention experimenting with societies, civilizations, and power-play on a global scale.

Her quest against Lorelei, to cite one example, ended in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and the lifelong trauma of untold tens of millions, not to mention that psychic fallout from the
Metaverse’s
programming remained a poison to the populace at large. Increasingly more of the recently freed demanded the return of their enslavement, as they had grown accustomed to it.

Was this to be her legacy? A generation of humans who knew nothing but bondage and escapism? To survive, they needed to unite: to branch their civilization out into space, to terraform new planets, to escape the beautiful, radioactive deathtrap that the third rock from the sun was about to become. Maybe she could pick up where Lorelei left off and reach a polar outcome.

Just as the thought entered her mind, countless failures impressed themselves upon her, one by one, in a flurry of bad memories.

Zero percent success rate.

Perhaps the problem was the constant in the equation.
Maybe the fates have it in their heads that if the human race is to be saved, I simply shouldn't be the one to do it.

All this thinking left her breathless. She inhaled the recycled air for all it was worth, filling her lungs with what she hoped to be among her last few breaths, and observed her body.

The best thing about this chamber was its utter silence. Lily breathed of the oxygen slowly, carefully, methodically. This was to be her final journey. A calm, peaceful descent into the Earth's atmosphere. She would kill the shields, burn the
Raven
through re-entry, and crash herself into the Earth. Hopefully the G-force would knock her out first.

She looked at the controls before her, and then pulled up a real-time holographic image of the ship's bridge. The trillions of credits of technology aboard the
Belladonna
showed in every nook and cranny, and in every emergency survival device. The DNA of millions of Earth species, including several thousand humans, were stored in the ship's extensive cold library. Within Rutger’s memory banks, all of humankind’s culture, history, technology, and biology were at her fingertips. If she had half a mind to do it, Lily could terraform an entire world herself, create a new planet, and transport a smattering of humans onto it to breed, mine, sell real estate, and just about completely pillage the place. That wasn’t exactly the end result she was looking for, but it might have been something.

Wasn't this the kind of power reserved only for gods?

Perhaps the
Belladonna
was her Mount Olympus. Or was she Hades, with the underworld her domain? It sounded right: a place without end or hope, surrounded by the eternal, unyielding cries of dead souls writhing in torment. Lorelei's
Endless Metaverse
may have been artificial, but at the very least it offered solace to its users’ ultimately doomed spirits, be it with the destruction of Earth, or unto the final symphonies of the universe.

Nothing lasts forever. Why should the human race be an exception?

Now I'm starting to sound like her,
Lily reflected, pulling her hair in frustration.

You're stalling, Lily. You want them to find you. You're weak.

She clenched her fists and banged on the control console.

“I'm not weak, dammit! I'm not!”

Lily punched the button to begin the cold launch sequence.

Nothing happened. She punched it again.

“I'm sorry, Miss Lily, I'm afraid I can't let you do that,” Rutger chirped.

“Don’t give me that HAL bullshit! This is a direct order! I am the Captain here and I will do what I want! You're breaching your authority!”

“You’re not hurting yourself on my watch, Captain. You know it is one of my directives. Sir Gerrit and Lady Raine have been notified and are en route. You must understand that this is an emergency situation.”

By this time, Lily had stepped out of the ship and walked over to the docking doors. She hit the manual airlock switchboard with a pipe wrench until it fried.

There was a banging at the entry hatch leading into the dock. Pressed up against the glass porthole, Raine and Gerrit struggled to pry open the door.

The latch had been locked and deadbolted. There was no way they’d be getting in.

“Let us in!” Raine declared over a video chat window that suddenly appeared on every display console. “We love you, Lily! You can't leave us!”

Gerrit chimed in. “You're not a bad person, Lillian. Open these doors. We can help you.”

Lily glanced at her two teammates - no, her warped creations - with regret and longing.

“I wish I could join you,” she began sadly. “I wish I could just put all this pain and regret behind me and keep going, but I... I can’t be sure if I'm doing the right thing anymore. Maybe I've been doing this too long, I don't know. But I do know that if I can't fully commit myself to the mission, I shouldn’t be working on it. Maybe you two…”

“Nonsense, Lily,” Raine interjected. “You promised me you wouldn’t give up on this world! I’m holding you to your honor! There's three of us. We're a team; we’ve always been a team, ever since you were born to two parents named Carl and Elizabeth. We're going to save this planet together. I can't imagine how difficult it's been for you. I can't claim to have lived in your shoes, but in all the time I've known you, my life has been one hell of an exciting adventure. And I'm sure Gerrit would agree.”

“B-but… I’m a failure,” Lillian whispered. “A total failure.”

The loudness of Raine’s reply took them all by surprise. “Look right in front of you, dammit! What do you see? Think about all the people you’ve helped! And all those you can still help through your love!”

Gerrit continued calmly. “Lily, Raine speaks the truth. We believe in you; now you just need to believe in yourself. Plus, if it's any consolation, I, too, trust that whether we are living in a singular universe, or one of many, the best thing we can do is live for the future. Only then might we be able to discover the truth. I won’t rest until every human is living amongst the stars, and free of their mental shackles. To work towards a world where that can happen… that would be the ultimate privilege, the highest duty a man could aspire to.”

Lily had tears in her eyes. She’d never felt so appreciated before, so wanted, so loved.

Hands shaking, she dropped the wrench and collapsed on her knees, sobbing. She pointed her sonic keychain at the deadbolt and unlocked the hatch. Raine and Gerrit rushed to her side, and held her in their arms for a long time.

“Lily,” Raine said, breaking a long silence.

“Yeah?”

“I don't know how keen you are for this, but... seeing as how we are practically family, I think we should live like one.”

A hopeful smile charted its beginnings across Lily's face as she looked at both Raine and Gerrit in turn.

“Do you mean... you will stay with me?”

Raine turned to Gerrit.

“I want to see where this baby can take us,” he said. “I know it'll be tough, and a lot of work and responsibility, but you've got a better chance of achieving your goals with us on board.”

“We've discussed this,” Raine quipped.

Lily was impressed.

“How long was I gone from that room? You two are quite the dynamic duo.”

Both Raine and Gerrit flushed and exchanged awkwardly smug expressions.

Raine offered Lily her hand, and the three walked back onto the bridge side by side.

∞

Over the next two months, Lily gave her companions refresher courses in the workings of the
Belladonna
and the intricacies of temporal travel. They ate, drank, laughed, and learned, going over Lily's various notes and charting out survival scenarios.

However, both Raine and Gerrit sensed that despite their best efforts, they were losing Lily. After that fateful first day, she spent long hours in her study poring over blueprints and maps, and rewatching news transmissions from the surface. Behind her kind visage, she was deeply troubled. By what, they could only guess, but Raine speculated that whatever had happened between her and Lorelei left scars that only time might heal.

It was a quiet morning when Raine approached the hot tub in the midst of the food forest, and joined Lillian in silence. With cucumber slices over her face mask, Lily said nothing, smiling at the welcome but unexpected company.

“I’ve made a decision. I'm trusting you and Gerrit with the
Belladonna
,” Lily said out of the blue. “My time as steward of this station is over.”

Raine blinked. “That's nonsense, Captain. You're sticking with us.”

Lily leaned her head forward and squinted, letting the cucumber slices slide down her mud-covered face. She gave Raine a dead serious stare.

“You said it yourself. It may not be too late for this timeline,” Lily reasoned. “I've been thinking that it's still two decades before the flare hits. Lorrie left behind a plethora of solar fields and factories, and the people of Earth are pretty united. I might be able to construct the Ark that my parents had always envisioned. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll stand a chance at finishing the mission this time around.”

“Then Gerrit and I will help,” Raine said gently. “We're Team Hermes, right? Family sticks together, at all costs.”

But Lily kept silent.

“We may share genetic traits, but we're worlds apart, Raine. The last thing I want for you and Gerrit is to continue following my paradigm. The most dangerous fallacy is the appeal to authority; without it, without some messed-up hierarchy based on order-givers and order-followers, who knows what the world would be like right now?

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don't have the right to claim power or leadership over you two, or anyone else. And yet, I can't break my pattern through force of will alone. I've survived as long as I have because I'm strong, uncompromising. It’s hard to explain… it's like I'm a dish missing an essential ingredient, so I’ve tended to overcompensate, which leads to my overpowering those around me. I may still be young, but no one should be forced to bear the burdens that I have. With that said, I can see that the only way for me to break this cycle of obsessive control is to relinquish my birthright, to pass on the power of the
Belladonna
. Do you understand?”

“I think I might, with time, understand more than I do now,” Raine replied honestly. “But I also think that if there's hope for this world, you're the only person who can realize it.”

Lily took Raine's hands in hers.

“Thank you, Raine, but if this world has any hope, it will come from its people, not from yours truly. You and Gerrit are ready,” she said. “I know deep in my gut that I can leave the
Belladonna
in your capable hands.”