Raine VS The End of the World (63 page)

Later that night, Lily handed the
Belladonna
's key, along with a duplicate, to Raine and Gerrit, making them Co-Captains. Despite Lily’s protests, they insisted on reciting the Time Keeper’s Oath again.

“I don't want you to think about the mission for the time being,” Lily said, echoing her parents' words to her. “You're two-thirds of the exclusive society of official Time Keepers now; you have all the time in the world. There's no need to rush into heroic deeds like I did.”

Both Raine and Gerrit were saddened by the news of Lily's sudden departure, but the woman assured them again and again that this was for the best.

“Gerrit’s first reaction was right, Raine. Put my sob story aside and just look at the facts. I used you. I created you so you could fight for me. You two were my soldiers, and without you, there would be no more chances. But now you are both free, and my spirit longs to return to Earth. You two have something I never will – each other. You’re not bound to Terra, and you’re not bound to the
Belladonna.
She can take you wherever you want to be, believe it or not.”

“I don’t want to be anywhere else!” Raine cried aloud. “I want… I want to be by your side. And to help you with the mission.”

“Then travel to the beginning and talk to that Lily. There’s a ton of fight in her. You’re seeing me at my weakest here, but maybe that’s just how these things run their course.”

Seeing as how her companions were both saddened, Lily’s voice took on a calmer tone.

“Don't you worry about me,” she said. “I’m just going on a solo quest; I can think of no better way to keep my promise to you, Raine. I won’t give up on Earth, not while there’s still something I can do to right my wrongs. I'm very capable of handling myself, and the free people of the surface are anxiously awaiting my return. If ever things go badly, you know what to do.”

Gerrit nodded. “Send the red envelope and data cards back to the Triassic.”

The answer was met with silent approval. With her things packed into the
Raven
and a full tank of temporal energy, Lily offered her final embraces.

“Rutger?”

“Yes, my Captain?”

“As you’re aware, I’m taking an instance of you with me, but to the Rutger of the
Belladonna,
I say this: Thank you for everything you've done for me all these years. You're the best guardian and friend a girl could ever have,” she said warmly.

“Your gratitude is acknowledged, Miss Lily. It has been my utmost pleasure assisting you. May your voyage be an unparalleled success.”

“It will," Lily said. "I know it will.”

“Take care of him for me,” she mentioned to Raine and Gerrit. “He may be a computer, but he's a sensitive soul.”

Raine nodded. She’d never forget how loyal of a companion Chance was when she needed him the most.

The bay doors opened and the
flight tray aligned the
Raven
into takeoff position.

“Lily! Wait!” yelled Raine. “When will we see you again?”

“You can call me anytime once I reach the
Valkyrie
, but if you’re going to time jump, don’t wait up,” Lily beamed. “I’ve spent too long working to justify my existence. I lived because I wanted to assign some kind of meaning to my life. Why fate chose me to survive while my parents died. And the more I think about it, the more I think I know what the answer was. It was you two. I was supposed to live my life, not theirs. I gave all my hope and love to the mission, leaving none for myself. The best advice I can give you is to think twice, thrice, and a million times before you make the ultimate sacrifice.”

Her eyes met Gerrit’s, and he was struck silent. It was the same look he wore like a mask when he’d considered wiping his memory back in
Endless Metaverse
. He sought out a real life, a life of love, truth, and something he didn’t expect: responsibility. Now he was being given the ultimate one. It was terrifying. But he also had faith in himself, and in Raine.

“Lily, may you have a fruitful journey,” he said at last. “I hope you find what you are looking for. And I’ll be rooting for your Ark to pierce the heavens. Give Yossa my regards.”

“Thank you, Gerrit,” she replied. “I’m sorry, Raine. I hope someday you will understand.”

“I hope so, too,” Raine said through tears. Now that she had finally discovered where she’d come from, where she belonged, and the true purpose behind her existence, she was about to lose the one person who had literally given her life.

Former Captain Hermes turned on the ignition. Raine and Gerrit waved as the first airlock closed, sealing them away from their creator. On their video feed, she gave them a thumbs-up. Then the second airlock opened and the
Raven
burst out into the void.

They watched as Lily’s ship faded away into the distance. Ever the drama queen, Lily had even set up classical music to play herself out: “Silent Lucidity” by Queensrÿche.

Lily looked at the family photograph she’d affixed to the
Raven’s
dashboard. She kissed her parents.

“Mom, Dad, I’m sorry. I couldn’t see it happening any other way. I hope that I did the right thing.”

So
, she thought to herself,
the end result of my time on Earth will culminate in one of many scenarios if and when Raine and Gerrit take the
Belladonna
back into the past.

A few of the more likely possibilities:

1. Lorelei’s Split Universe Theory is correct, and her supposedly already-split universe would split into two or more. With the
Belladonna
forging an infinite amount of alternate timelines, the resulting versions of herself, and Raine and Gerrit, would go on to live independently of one another.

2. Carl and Elizabeth’s Causality Theory will kick in; this was to Lily perhaps the most pessimistic but also the most realistic outcome. Should Raine and Gerrit travel to the past, she would be sealed in a tangent universe. Trapped on an instance of Earth that would never have occurred, Lily, and everyone else on Earth, will disappear into the ether as time wipes its slate clean, like an Etch-a-Sketch. Raine and Gerrit would disappear in a similar fashion should they send a red envelope back to the Triassic, negating the eventuality of their own existence.

3. Theory of Consciousness: a rather far-out possibility, first posited by her grandfather, Timothy O’Brien, whose pet hobby was studying the saints and mystics: that of consciousness transcending temporal limitations. Lily wished she could take comfort in it, like Lucille did. In this instance, her consciousness, or spirit if you will, was destined to revert back to her ten-year-old self should she receive the red envelope warning her against cloning herself. She would not remember a single thing about the events since she first began the mission. Meanwhile, Raine and Gerrit would continue to exist in the future timeline of an alternate universe, their unique consciousnesses forging a new reality.

4. Spiral Collapse Theory – Perhaps the most frightening theory that Lily could imagine, and one that was not dependent on her sending the envelope. Spacetime, in an effort to right itself, would systematically eliminate the alternate worlds created by the
Belladonna’s
travels. In unraveling these realities and ultimately preventing the
Belladonna
from ever traveling through time, cosmic ‘ripples’ might manifest in the revised worlds, progressing from oldest to newest, destabilizing their existences until all branching world lines inevitably collapse.

5. Every single one of the above, with either infinite or nearly infinite variations at every conceivable branching path, would occur inevitably in countless parallel worlds, according to Lacie’s understanding of Multiverse theory’s Many Worlds interpretation.

Either way, things would never go back to the way they were.

And maybe that’s for the best
, Lily thought, unstrapping her sitar and playing along with the music.
Planet Earth is in desperate need of a regime change.

This is Captain Lily to Ground Control: I’m feeling very still. And I think my spaceship knows which way to go.

“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” – Dr. Seuss

In one of many possible worlds…

Once the
Raven
left the debris field, Raine was absolutely exhausted. Gerrit undoubtedly felt the same way, and neither of them spoke for the rest of the night cycle, until they were about to go to bed.

“If you need me, I’ll be in Carl’s study,” Gerrit said.

“We’ll figure all this out over some morning cocoa. Rutger’s set to give her a call the minute she lands.”

“Listen to us, we sound like a married couple,” he joked.

Raine rolled her eyes. “Don’t get too excited,” she replied with a wink.

They bade each other a good night at eleven thirty, as per the
Belladonna’s
emulation of Earth’s twenty-four hour cycles, but before XF-22 could show them to their rooms, there was a flash of light in the docking bay. A booming din enveloped their eardrums.

“What’s happening?” Gerrit asked of Rutger.

Before the android could answer, the
Raven
materialized right in the dock it’d just left. The stunned trio regarded the craft with caution.

When the back doors opened, a graceful woman in her mid-fifties, absolute calm radiating from her presence, emerged from within, wearing a most elegant gown and a suede coat. She pulled off her goggles.

“Ah, it’s good to be home,” she intoned.

Lillian Hermes descended her ship and walked over to Raine and Gerrit.

“What’s with the silence? You’d think you two had never seen a time traveler before.”

She held them both in a long embrace.

“Lily?” Raine began. “You… came back…”

“Yes, my darlings. And I did it. I saved not just the human race, but planet Earth as well.”

“You what?” cried Gerrit. “How?”

“It’s amazing what a motivated populace curious about the unknown can do in just two decades. As soon as I returned, I made a global plea asking for all peoples to help me avert a coming disaster. I gave them their options, and they did the rest, really. We reconfigured
Metaverse
satellites into a literal world wide web. Anti-mag plasma shields linked to fission drives; they go together like old mahjong partners. We cast out our anti-EM net to trap the solar particles and crossed our fingers. Talk about embracing destruction. When the flare hit, we absorbed its energy. Hey, Hanako, get over here!”

A floating sphere whizzed by from the
Raven.
Lily snapped her fingers, and Hanako emitted a hologram showing planet Earth surrounded by a thin electric shield, glowing bright orange.

“The miracle came when we realized how much extra power the machine took in. Even with seven hundred Gigawatts lost in the stabilizing and conversion process, we were left with an insane fifty Terawatts, enough to power every device on the planet for weeks. The only problem was the half-life on the energy – I didn’t have any method to store it cleanly. So I proposed we develop a positron-stabilizing core and create something productive for once.”

“Long story short, that core became the heart of my Space Ark.” Lily pulled out a video showing a mothership the size of a small moon flanked by hundreds of support vessels orbiting Mars. “Not bad, eh? We christened her the
Frontier.
Yeah, predictable, but you try getting two billion people to agree on something. Personally, I can’t fathom how most of the populace decided to remain on Earth when there’s an entire universe to explore. The ship’s volunteer-run, too. Rutger, I’ve got some tea in the trunk. Could you put the kettle on, please?”

Raine still could not believe that the woman who had made such a dramatic departure was standing before her over three decades older, smile lines coloring her face.

“Most certainly, Miss Lily. It is most fortuitous to have you back.”

Lily crossed her arms.

“Back? I don’t think so. I’m just here for a few old files. A rather critical interior decorating job needs some finishing touches. Plus, I realized that I was missing the genomes for my favorite type of mango. I desperately seek to test whether they’re fit for terraforming.”

“This is nuts!” Gerrit exclaimed. “What does this mean for us?”

“Nothing,” Lily said simply. “I’ll go on doing my thing, and you two do whatever you were going to do. That reminds me. Rutger, I’ll need the fuel cells in the
Raven
topped off. You never know when you require a temporal jump or two.”

“Very well, Miss Lily.”

Raine scratched her head. “Sorry, you mentioned something about interior decorating?”

“Ah, that. Let me show you.”

Lily raised her wrist communicator to a terminal, wirelessly transmitting data.

A hologram revealed thousands of machine appendages from the moon-sized mothership in the process of building a familiar space station – it was the
Belladonna
herself!
But how?

“Another one of my lifelong projects. It’s an exact replica,” Lily said, zooming into the bridge. The camera passed through the hull, revealing dozens of droids working to match the conditions of the interior to a central hologram. “And in the med bay…”

A seven-year-old incarnation of Lily floated in cryo-sleep, a peaceful smile bringing out her soft features. Elder Lily placed her hand against her much younger self’s virtual one.

“A few years after I left, I was perusing my media library when I caught on the video of the fateful day I lost my parents. Watching it, something bothered me with Rutger’s recording. The mugs by the central console, they didn’t match.”

On the hologram of the bridge, two mugs sat on a desk; a white mug with the letters CERN imprinted on it, and a hand-painted blue one.

“Mom did own a CERN mug,” Lily said with absolute certainty. “It was her grandfather’s. But she rarely ever used it. I remember that day as clear as anything I’ve ever experienced. I was unconscious for a brief period after arriving in the Triassic, but I awoke with a sharp mind, and the first things I recall with precision were my parents’ half-full coffee mugs. The one Dad used that day was green, not blue, and Mom’s had “Don’t Panic” printed on its side; she was a big Douglas Adams fan. Do you two understand what this means?”

Gerrit took a shot. “Could it be that you’re--”

“Going senile?”

“Er, I was going to say, trying to send yourself a mental message by swapping the mugs? But how could—“

Lily high-fived the boy. “Bingo! And what do you think that message could be?”

“I… I haven’t the slightest!” Raine chattered anxiously, to Lily’s light laughter.

Despite being old enough to be my grandmother,
the girl mused,
she’s still very in touch with her inner child.

“Remember what I told you two, about how I wondered if ripples in the past can affect the future, and vice versa? Well, here’s something to chew on. To discover why the
Belladonna
can still exist in this world line, I dropped off a probe in the Triassic to study my seven-year-old self, to investigate whether or not she’d disappear. So far, so good, but I’ve always got a back-up plan. Should time itself swallow the
Belladonna,
I’ll send the Mark II to replace it. As to the obvious question of whether I am or shall become a clone as a result of this, I have no idea, and in many ways, I’d rather not know.”

“Gosh, this is heavy,” said Raine, massaging her temples, a habit she picked up from Lily.

Gerrit paced. “So, you reconstructed and edited her exact cache of memories? There’s still a margin of error. What if she accidentally remembers, say, making the clones?”

“Highly unlikely,” Lily countered with a shake of the head. “I’ve been storing my memories diligently since I was five years old. Rutger’s records are impeccable; we’d be able to tell if I missed something. And we’ll know if ever the ripples catch up to us. In any case, I… kind of wanted to see you both again first. Just in case.”

The
Belladonna’s
captains nodded.

The trio headed to the observatory to savor the tea Lily brought from the future – she proudly declared the leaves as being among the very first grown on Mars’
Bradbury
settlement.

Much to Raine and Gerrit’s disappointment, Lily made it clear that she wouldn’t be staying for long.

“It’s not that I don’t want to hang with you guys or anything,” she said. “There’s just a lot to do back on the
Frontier
, and at my age getting too comfortable can be dangerous. Although… I may be a guest on your vessel now, but that doesn’t mean I can’t give you a few Captainly pointers, does it?”

“Not at all! Please share with us your unflinching wisdom, O Captain,” said Raine.

“Well, here’s one thing. I’ve been continuing Lacie’s research. She used paradoxes in the models of quantum physics to delve further into the unknown. In my future, we’re not even sure that matter exists independently of consciousness. It’s pretty mind-blowing. We still haven’t sorted the question of one Universe, zero or holo-Universes, or one of the Multiverse models, but I do know this: G.K. Chesterton’s words ring absolutely true – that ‘a paradox is the truth standing on its head to gain attention’. What may seem like unanswerable logical and scientific questions can actually be invalid questions. Very often the truth behind any given matter is unquestioningly simple.”

She saw that she had lost them, and laughed.

“Okay, take, for example, you two. With my parents’ genetic blueprints, the
Belladonna
gave birth to you. It should have been impossible to carry their ideals and enthusiasm through to an entirely different lifetime. You are paradoxes in and of yourselves. But if it weren’t for that pep speech you gave me way back when, when I was at my very lowest …”

“That was just two months ago for us,” Gerrit piped in.

“Yes. That day I realized that I was worthy of forgiveness, and that it wasn’t too late for me to redeem myself to planet Earth. You two gave me a second life. The paradoxical love you showed me carried on through to the entire human race. In a way, they have you to thank.”

The mood in the
Belladonna
that night was carefree, lighthearted. Lily shared with them the media from her future world, and her Ark’s blueprints. She also copied some additional data from the ship’s library.

“I’m stocking up on a few of the classics,” she said. “Ever see
Contact?
”

“Nope,” both replied.

“Ah. Check it out sometime. It’s a pretty good one.”

With her hard drives filled up, Lily went into her room and hugged her stuffed elephant.

“Hey, Scottie. It’s been a while. I want you to watch over Raine and Gerrit for me, okay? And if they ever have any kids…”

The approaching shadows stopped Lily from completing her sentence. Standing opposite the doorway, the Co-Captains never looked more like Carl and Elizabeth.

She captured the 3-D image with her Holo-Lens.
Yes. This is the way it was meant to be.

Precious data in hand, Lily addressed them one last time as she prepped for takeoff.

“I once read a theory that life only gives us seven real choices, choices that shape the outcome of the rest of our days. Only, we can never know which decisions are crucial, and which ones don’t really matter at all. Isn’t that an intriguing notion?”

Gerrit took the bait. “It would mean that we have to treat each decision with utmost consideration.”

“Before attempting even the smallest thing, nothing is more important than having the right philosophy,” Lily nodded. “Otherwise, you’ll be chasing your shadow in a house of mirrors when it all comes tumbling down. Sometimes fate drops breadcrumbs, and sometimes it sends the big bad wolf after you. There’s a reason why the American Indian tribes planned for the next seven generations. I’m probably the last person who can say this, but the real strengths of the human race are in love and solidarity, not the innovations and whims of individuals. We’ve been fighting nature for so long that we forgot what it means to embrace it, and to trust the best in ourselves in the eternal struggle between order and chaos.”

The oddest thing,
Lily contemplated,
the stab I didn’t expect to dawn over time, was that the
Metaverse
played a crucial role: its destruction empowered the people of Earth. Under Lorrie, they had a shared history of oppression, a universal language, and a common enemy. That’s what I didn’t understand at first. The more I considered it, the less ridiculous the possibility became:

Could this have been your grand plan all along, Lorelei - to die as a symbol of unchecked oppression, leaving me alone with your example, your lesson, your technology, and your people? It would explain the odd behavior both yourself and Lacie showed at the ends of your lives.

You’d survived the wounds from our battle. Not long after the global solar web prevented the flare from taking your life, I found you dead atop the
Spire,
by your own hand. The note in Lacie’s memoir read, “Don’t save me.” Why, Lorrie? Was the universe too small of a pond for you to play in? Or was this your form of spiritual alchemy? ‘Through fire, nature is reborn.’ If this was indeed your intention, then you had me fooled till the very last.