BlackWatch

"But why? Why should I doubt you? Because you think having a multitude of civilizations out here automatically excludes the possibility of God? I don't think that changes things one little bit. If He can create one planet, why can't He create millions of them?"

"Yeah, maybe. If that's the case, I'd say He's got a wicked sense of humor, though."

She laughed. "May be. So, what happened during those eight years you were away?"

"I'm not sure I can explain, but I think we were being tested, or maybe evaluated is the best word."

"For?"

"A seat at the table, I guess."

"The table? What's that mean?"

"If we're worthy of survival."

"Jesus..."

"Look, I..."

"I know, I know. Enough with all the God stuff..."

"No, not really, just keep in mind that when you look at the universe solely through the prism of religion, you in essence cut off half your intellect. You can look at the universe through faith and reason, not simply one or the other, but the problem we ran into on earth was that we tended to use one to obscure the other. We had a binary way of looking at things, it was either this way or that way, and because of that rigid construct it could never be both. Maybe we evolved that way, or maybe religious power structures forced us into thinking of the world that way, but the net result was we set ourselves up to fail." He pointed at the reddening earth hanging out there in space. "There's the result of our failure, by the way. I'd prefer we not make the same mistake again, if it's all the same to you."

She looked at him for the longest time, said not one word, then she looked out the viewport -- at the moon spinning away, and at the baleful red eye hanging out there like an insinuation. At one point he almost thought she was going to cry -- but she caught herself and pulled back from the abyss -- then looked at him again.

"You never said what happened to you during the eight years you were gone."

"No, I didn't."

"Is there a reason why?"

He took her hand now, squeezed it gently while he looked into her eyes. "After the burn we'll be coasting, we'll be leaving the solar system at about 70 percent of light-speed. If all goes according to plan in about two years we're going to rendezvous with, well, with something out there."

She looked at him, wondered what he was holding back -- until his words registered. "Something?" she asked. "What does that mean?"

"Well, someone might be more accurate."

"Someone?" Her eyes blinked rapidly. "Who do you mean, exactly?"

"Well, it ain't a bunch of kids on Spring break heading to Florida, alright? My guess is they're, well, more like nerds. You know the term?"

She nodded slowly, and a smile creased her face. "But what about...?"

He brought a finger to her lips, shook his head. "Sometime before the Secession War, the first one, I mean, NASA discovered a ship beyond the solar system, a huge ship. They thought 'huge' because of the amount of light it put out, then someone figured out the ship was powered by a light sail, and that the sail was huge. I mean really, really huge. The ship was headed, well, sort of, towards our solar system, and some people in government were scared, afraid the discovery would shatter belief systems, and I think that's when things started to go to hell -- in a hurry -- and it's probably no coincidence the Secession War started a few months later. Society would have fractured, the whole religion and science thing again, and everything began falling apart in government. With no coherent policy, even a secret policy, politicians split along lines faith and reason and went their separate ways."

"That simple, huh?"

"Yes, but the scientists, well, they already had an organization in place to deal with such an eventuality. They called it the BlackWatch."

"We never..."

"Never heard of it. I know. But it's even more interesting than that."

"Something to do with the ship?"

"Yup. The BlackWatch had been talking with them for years. Learning -- listening, and learning. They were like, I don't know, like teachers, then one of them came in a small ship. He was...well, something like a man. Biologically male, anyway. He brought evidence of a really huge space-faring civilization they had discovered, and, well, they were off to see the wizard, going off in search of this old civilization, and they invited some of us along for the trip."

"Is that why...I'm here?"

"Yes. Your mother was one of the principal investigators, she discovered the ship, and she made first contact with The Watcher."

"The Watcher?"

"Yes. He was old; expendable, as I understand it. He cloned himself."

"He what?"

"Well, you see, in a way he was my father."

"He WHAT?"

"I know. I don't understand it all either. Anyway, this has been their plan, your mother's and The Watcher's, almost from the beginning."

"So are you..."

"Yes. His DNA was integrated into mine."

"Oh, God..."

"Do you remember the night I was taken? During the ride-along?"

"Yes... how could I forget..."

"There was a train under LA, a Mag-Lev. I was taken there, brought to Clarke Station. Your mother rode with me that day, and the experience was puzzling, almost funny. Odd, because I thought I recognized her. Funny, because it was you I recognized -- in her."

Sinn's eyes were unfocused. Diffuse.

"My mother...? Was alive?"

"Yes."

"Is she?"

"Yes."

"The Watcher?" she asked slowly. "Is he here, on this ship?"

"There are twenty five ships in this fleet, Sam. I'm not sure which one he's on right now."

"Sam?"

"Samantha. That's your name."

Her lips started trembling now, and her eyes twitching, so he pulled a blanket up to cover her arms, rubbed her shoulders.

"She's...my mother is alive...here, on this ship?"

"Watching us, even as we speak. Right outside that door, as a matter of fact."

"Oh dear God. I thought she was..."

"Social-Continental agents abducted you, Sam, to get back at your mother. The operation was conducted by your friend, the commandant, and perhaps that's why she named you Sinn. As in Sin, her original Sin."

"What did you say?"

"Nyx was the one who abducted you, who took you from your family."

"I always wondered what that name meant?" but she had turned away from him in that moment, turned and looked out the window again, and she heard the door open and close at one point and thought he'd left. Then she saw a woman's reflection in the glass, the figure inside distorted by the curvature of the wall, by the passage of time.

"Nyx was the daughter of Chaos," the woman said. "The only God feared by Zeus himself, she was of the underworld, Goddess of the Night, and she gave birth to Destiny, Death -- and Dreams."

Sam turned to meet the voice, and her recognition was instantaneous.

Austin looked at the two women for a moment, then backed out of the room as quietly as he could. His father and mother were waiting for him there, and they tried to console him, to comfort him, but there was little anyone could do now.

Radiation levels in Saint Angeles had grown far beyond lethal levels after the second subterranean detonation, and those who'd been exposed for more than a few hours were now growing very sick indeed. Tribonian Bergtor-son, Commander Weblen-son and his men, the remaining cadets in the Academy -- all were falling ill now, and none was not expected to live out the week. All were isolated in this one pod, and the pod would be jettisoned as soon as the last passed away.

He had wanted to tell her, but it was decided her mother would. Now, right now, and so he had left. It was his duty to leave, and Austin looked at his father as the father took in his son, and they held each other as closely as they could -- because each understood the solution was so simple. So dreadfully simple...and so irrevocably final.

+++++

"Tell me about the Watcher," Sam said when he returned later that 'day.' "What does he have to do with The BlackWatch?"

"His technology, he, well, he jumpstarted certain kinds of science. Primarily a new type of human-machine interface."

"Do you know who, or what they are? The Watcher's people, I mean?"

"I do, but it doesn't really matter now, Sam. At some point the BlackWatch learned who I was, who you were, then they told your mother about us, about your plans to mate with me. She knew she'd never be able to tell you about this stuff, that you were too far away -- emotionally -- to reach, or to understand. So she sent for me, sent for me so I could go back and get you out of there, and, if possible, onto The Emissary ship."

"What happened to you? During those eight years?"

"My father and I, both of us. It happened to us both. But not to my brother, for some reason."

"What? What happened?"

"A gift, you might say. Or a curse. We can move through time."

"What do you mean?" she scoffed. "We can ALL move through time, Austin..."

"Oh? Can you?"

"Of course. We're doing that right now..."

He smiled, held out his hand. "Take my hand," he said, "if you'd like me to show you what I mean..."

"What?"

"Take my hand, and shut your eyes."

"Why should I...I have no idea what you're trying to do to me..."

"I'm asking you to...take a leap of -- "

"What? Faith?"

"Yes, if you like. Faith. In me."

She did not hesitate now -- she reached out, took his hand in hers and...

...in the next instant she was standing on a sidewalk, looking in a shop window -- and the air outside was impossibly crisp and clear...

"Where are we?"

"Beverly Hills. Rodeo Drive. This is a store, an Italian store, called Gucci."

"When is this?"

"1974. There is great uncertainty here today because the President of the United States, or what you and I call the First Republic, has just resigned. There is a war going on now too, it's been going on for nine years in a place called Vietnam, and it's going badly."

They watch as a woman leaves the store, and Sam turns and follows the woman with her eyes. "I know her? I've seen her before..."

"Yes, her name is Elizabeth Taylor, and she is a very famous actress..."

"Is...you keep saying is, like this is just happening? But isn't it the past?"

"No, it's not the past. What happens five minutes from now has never happened before..."

Then it hits her -- she is standing on two legs!

"My legs! They're both..."

"Yes. They are. We have slipped behind that time, to a place where that had not happened -- yet. You have two legs here and now, and you have not been irradiated -- yet. Do you understand what I am showing you?"

She swallowed -- hard -- and her mind raced through the possibilities. "I can return to the past?"

"Yes."

"I can stay in the past, and live there as I was?"

"So long as you go beyond the time where your illness happened, yes."

"You're not telling me something. What is it?"

"You cannot go alone. Either I would have to go with you, or my father. And we would have to stay then with you, until you passed."

"And if I went to the future?"

"You would go there as you are now, and you would die within hours."

"What if I went back...to Saint Angeles as it was when I met you? Would all the people be there who were before?"

"There would be no before. All would be as it was?"

"Could I change things? The things that happened?"

"You could try."

"But...could I really change things...really make a difference?"

"Again...only if you try. But that's all anyone can do, isn't it?"

"The things in this window...what did you call this place?"

"Gucci. An importer of fine Italian leather goods."

"These things look so fine. I've never seen anything like them before."

"The world has rarely seen things so fine."

"Are the things in here expensive?"

"Yes."

"Like?"

"Miss Taylor just bought a handbag and a pair of shoes. They cost 15,000 dollars."

"I don't know what that means..."

"The woman there, behind the counter? She makes a little more than 9,000 dollars. In a year."

"But...that's grotesque! How could...something like this exist?"

"Such inequality has always existed, and in this case, such huge differentials drove events that led to the First Secession War, and the eventual collapse of the First Republic."

"Can we go back to ship now?"

He let go of her hand and they were in the room again, and the pain in her leg returned like a thunderclap, the radiation induced malaise came on as a seeping flow of warm water might, slowing filling all her unseen places with wasting illness. She felt disoriented -- until she looked out the viewport and saw the earth. It hung out there in space like a glowing ember, dying, slowly, but dying.

"I want to see my mother," the dying girl said.

+++++

Aurelius Krül-son sat behind an arcing row of tables in the front row of a small classroom; he yawned -- and wiped a smeary tear from his cheek -- while his friends filed-in and took their assigned seats in the Academy classroom. He opened his notebook -- Institute-issued and graded weekly for neatness -- and took out a couple of pencils from the pristine attaché case that lay by his feet on the simmering concrete floor. He looked at his friends, at Greggor and Pol and Misogi and he smiled inside, smiled at futility of the moment, and then a new instructor -- one he felt quite certain he had seen before -- walked into the classroom, and yet Krül-son caught his breath when he saw her, for he knew he had never seen so desirable a woman -- and while he knew desire was a very tricky thing, he was confident he knew where this desire would lead...

The instructor was short, and while not particularly slender she was by no means overweight, yet she exuded a precocious self-confidence that was positively buoyant; of more importance and certainly more to the point, he thought she was sexy, conscientiously sexy, like she enjoyed projecting authority through the overt appearance of sexuality -- and that made her a very rare bird indeed. She walked to the podium before the class and laid out her materials on the adjoining table -- slowly, quietly, her every move exuding a gentle mirth -- then she picked up a marker and walked over to the whiteboard.

'Sinn August-dottir; District Attorney's Office; Law of Search and Seizure I.' Her words on the board, like her persona, were carefully structured and precise; the lettering and punctuation left by her fine-boned hand was clipped and neat, and full of latent purpose. At first all Krül-son noticed was the curve of her hips and legs, but soon the wedding band on the third finger of her left hand caught his attention, yet after a moment his eyes wandered back over her exciting lines.

She turned to the class but looked right at Aurelius Krül-son, then she nodded at him, and smiled.

'Well, all she can do is try,' he said to himself, then he looked up slightly, looked up at one of the surveillance cameras in the ceiling and smiled.

© 2009-2016 | Adrian Leverkühn | abw | this is a work of speculative fiction, and no persons depicted herein, oh...yada-yada-yada. Well, you get the point, I reckon. Hope you enjoyed...the journey.