flight to Wyoming.
“Who?”
“Maire. The Alpha Centauri system. Just one of infinite possibilities. The first to respond, because of the relative proximity.”
“I don’t—”
“We traded signals for thousands of years, neither civilization understanding that someone was listening. Someone was out there. And when the Sol system finally died, when Michael Balfour’s probe finally reached Proxima Centauri, the aliens there—people with two hearts, black blood, but
Richter broadcast his lack of understanding with a long draw of coffee.
“Life isn’t a straight line. This time, Maire was there to catch you. Another time, Michael pulled you out, and you led the resistance against the Enemy. Another, Maire’s forces got to Earth before Michael ever had a chance to build the probe. Sometimes life curves out and back again, intersecting places it’s already been. This place—this ridiculous coffee shop dream—it’s the place where everything collapses. It’s the Delta merge, the place where the two most probable timelines collide. It’s the place where a war between two solar systems begins and ends.”
“What does that make Maire?” Richter couldn’t look at Benton’s eyes. “Or us?”
“She’s the eraser at the other end of the pencil. The backspace key. The counterpoint to everything the author’s written into existence. She’s the unraveling. Revenge. And us? We’re a part of her, now. She’s torn us from him, and she’ll use everything we know to win her war against Paul.”
He opened one of the folders on the table. There was a photograph of the author in London. A postcard shaped like a sea monster. A tiny slip of paper on which a left hand had written a three-word note.
“There’s boxes of this stuff stored here. Maire’s built quite a collection. She’s pulling things from him, storing them away in this construct, using each innocent little memory to destroy him. The whole back room, shelves and stacks. She’s breaking him down.”
“And you’re going through it all, trying to find something to help him?”
“Trying. Not much luck. It’s a mess.”
“Why help him?”
She frowned at the question.
Richter shook his head. “If he’s written these horrible futures into existence, if he’s the cause of these wars, why help him fight Maire?”
Her fingertips traced over fading photographs, crumbling paper. She pulled a line of poetry from a notebook page, drew a memory of a skin’s texture and taste from a passport photo. “He made this. All of this. Even Maire. Us. Without him, we never would have existed. Maybe I feel an obligation to help the person who gave me life.”
“You really want to help him?”
Hope nodded her resolve.
Richter reached into his pocket and placed something on the tabletop. She saw small paper edges through the cage of his fingers.
“If this is the place where it all comes together, if the coffee shop is the place Maire hides the pieces of him,” Richter lifted his hand, revealing a colorful book of matches, “then maybe it’s time we end this.”
She took the matches, popped the cover open. There was a number, a cartoon face. Pigtails. She wondered where James had gotten the matches, but it didn’t matter. The Cafe Bellona was a focal point. Nothing had a satisfactory explanation. Nothing needed one. Sometimes life collapses into distinct moments of chance. Sometimes life, or the digital approximation thereof, is a spectrum of gray.
She picked up a photograph, let her thumb trace the eroding surface. He looked happy. Whole. A depiction of a time and place he’d never live now.
She took Richter’s hand. Her face bent into a quiet attempt at a smile, but it only squeezed wetness across the colorless hemispheres of her eyes.
She’d been trapped so long here, searching for an answer to the calculus, the silver concretion savaging the author. She’d tried to prevent Maire from using her against Paul, but exiled to the construct, she’d been powerless, deconstructed. A silver marble held in a child’s hand.
Hope tore a match from the book. Her third strike resulted in flame. She slowly, gently singed the edge of the manila folder on the table. Outside, the wind grew louder. A building collapsed. The sky tasted like ash.
She fed a postcard into the fire. The ground shook below them.
Richter pushed a note into the curls of flame. One of the front windows splintered.
“The whole back room?”
“And the basement. Stacks of boxes.” She held the burning edge of a photograph. The author’s face blistered and fell away.
Richter counted twenty-seven matches.
“Are you okay?” Alina’s voice echoed out into the command chamber. She adjusted the drape of the interface web, reached out to see for herself how he was doing, but felt nothing. There was none of the consciousness lockstep that interfacing with Sam had provided. Paul was wrapped in layers of silver.
The vessel shifted, walls realigning, nacelles stretching out, clawing. They fell.
Concern itched to life behind her eyes. “Paul? Talk to me.”
Somewhere below them, rapidly approaching, was a small blue planet and the exile city and Maire.
“Paul?”
She could feel him trying to contain the silver, the trillions of souls inserted not gently into his core.
“Hold on, Paul Hughes. Almost
there it is.” Reynald fingered sweat from his forehead. The targeting laser arced over the author’s skull. Reynald hesitated, looked up at Hank.
“Go for it.”
He triggered. A stark lance of white light
rocked the superstructure as a shard of silver tore from his caudal fin. Alina swung in the interface web, burying panic, unable to keep her hearts from racing. “Hold on, baby. Just
come and get me.” Maire grinned, leapt into the air as the city shattered beneath her, the planet imploding, great plates of continent glowing with ancient silver light. She could feel him, the line collapsing above her, countless futures dying in his wake. Every particle of her glinted with the shift, with the ocean of machines that defined her.
She could see him, the terrifying shiver of his form, as it tore through the fabric of that time and plummeted into the merge. Her claws cut into her fists in anticipation, spilling torrents of black blood and mercury into the sky. She could feel the god buried somewhere in
Alina saw through his blurred, dying eyes, the nightmare below them, the monster that was Maire, looking up and through, a smile on her face, her Enemy army surging below, an armada of them careening around the planet toward Paul. He shook, and she didn’t know how to stop him. Didn’t know the plan. He was silent. Alina sobbed, helpless.
Richter lit every match in the book, let the flame grow. Hope wrapped her arms around him. He kissed her forehead, finally home.
Was that an orgasm? I’ll be the old man with cats. With loves.
This is where the fish lives. We did the 69. How do you catch a unique rabbit?
