A Taste Of Tomorrow
Part 2
“Who's your daddy?! Come on, you know who your daddy is. Who's your daddy? … D'Argo! Tell him who his
daddy is!” He slams Rinic Tolven down on the surface, angry that they’d been given something that would
poison Talyn, and D’Argo’s deep voice sounds behind him, responding to his question as though they’d
rehearsed it in advance.
“I’m your daddy!”
He doesn’t remember what has happened before this moment, but he knows that what transpires here is critical
to the survival of Moya, Talyn, and everyone aboard both ships. He’s almost out of control, because Aeryn
remained behind with the copy, and he’s anxious to the point of explosion when he thinks of them together.
There’s no knowledge of how this duplication has happened, no expectation of what he’s trying to achieve, but
he’s carried forward, words and actions magically provided for him as the microts march by one by one. Tolven
lies, Tolven dies by strannat impalement. Bombardment from below, retrieval squads above, the two ships
starburst in quick succession. The other one has taken everything, Aeryn has gone with him. He’s the guy
who got left behind.
He strides around his quarters, discovering what is missing, scattering the chess pieces into clattering
confusion. “I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.” Another microt ticks by …
“Who’s your daddy?!”
Aeryn is going to leave him behind. He slams Tolven down, hears D’Argo’s answer sounding behind him, and
can only think that Aeryn is going to leave him behind. And that he loves her.
* *
Einstein watches as the snarling blue funnel tightens, sucks in the edges of its own vortex, and disappears into
the hollow, collapsing in upon itself. Somewhere on the other end of time and space where a reality used to
exist that included John Crichton returning to Moya, the other end of the wormhole is doing the same thing, the
two ends rushing toward the human trapped in the middle. The visual disturbance winks out of existence with a
final burst of light, and his artificially constructed surroundings are calm and silent.
Empty eyes consider the placid sea around the intact iceberg, seeing the possibilities that are opening up
rather than the still surface, and he gauges his resources. There is energy and potential left; he can continue
the task assigned to him. It is time to wander the crossroads and byways of realities, ensuring that their effort
will achieve the desired outcome.
* *
“Who’s your daddy?!” He remembers this happening before, but it doesn’t trouble him. What troubles him is
that Aeryn is going to leave him behind, and there doesn’t seem to be anything he can do about that. He is
something of a spectator as he yells angrily at Tolven, participates but devotes only a portion of his attention as
the strannat kills the traitorous son, and continues to analyze the few memories that exist.
He finds something lodged deep within his own mind, hidden from rational examination but there to be found if it
is the two-hundred-and-seventy-eighth time he’s raced back to Moya knowing that they have to flee the planet
of Kanvia. What he finds is a tangled bundle of interwoven equations, constantly churning to adapt to the
conditions around him. He runs toward Command as the bombardment from below begins, and analyzes the
first level of symbols. He doesn’t understand much of the information contained in the symbols, but it seems to
have something to do with space, time, and movement within that malleable substance.
“I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.” Another microt ticks by …
“Who’s your daddy?!” The equations are still there, and he picks one fragment at random and begins to
decipher it. It’s something to do.
* *
Einstein emerges into a place in the future, careful not to touch anything or even move. If he merely observes,
there will be no ripples. But there is nothing left to observe. There is a carpet of dense gravity points that glow
warmly, the dying remnants of stars that went nova when they had consumed too much additional material.
They have been used as weapons, the stolen mass toppling their precarious balance of fuel versus fusion, and
burned out in a frenzy of energy eons before the laws of physics normally would have ordained.
This is unexpected -- an unwelcome discovery. Their calculations, their research, the permutations they
explored all dictated that this would not happen. Einstein searches for signs of the races that should inhabit
this portion of space, and finds nothing. He reaches out to touch his own species, seeking their specific
signature … and finds nothing. They are extinct; their realm has been destroyed.
His resources are failing, but there is time to explore one more reality. This is the fourteenth that has yielded
destruction, but he hopes that another will reveal a better outcome.
* *
The first equation had been difficult, requiring that he decipher the meaning of symbols he’s never seen before
in order to ponder the string’s significance. He cracks a second. The third and fourth come more easily, but it
takes a total of six thousand, four hundred and twenty-one repetitions of his short life before he solves the fifth
small mystery, and his world trembles for a microt. He’s nearing the end, getting ready to scatter the chess
pieces, and he devotes his entire attention to the emotions provided because they’re his single link to Aeryn.
He loves her, and he misses her with an intensity that makes the grief a pleasure because it is all he has left of
her.
“ … he just better be taking care of her.” Another microt ticks by …
“My name is John Crichton … Astronaut. I was not at the refreshment house after hours. I was not present at
any bombing or explosion. I did not have a private meeting with the beautiful Miss Sarova. The end. Cross my
heart, smack me dead, stick a lobster on my head.”
This is new.
He pays close attention, gathering clues as to why he is standing with one of the ugliest, drippiest creatures
he’s ever encountered on his head, and knows that the fifth equation’s solution and its associated shock wave
are connected to this change in his ‘life’. He has more information to work with this time, so he hopes it will take
less than six thousand repetitions to solve the latest puzzle.
* *
He comes before The Gestalt, the forty-second of his line to be known as Einstein, and stands diminished, no
longer able to continue the quest. There are an infinite number of permutations branching out from the single
event that they adjusted, and they are exploring each and every one of them, looking for their future.
“Outcome,” the multitude demand of him.
“Destruction,” he reports.
“Constants,” they request. If they find a single element that persists across all realities, then there is hope that
something can be repaired. They seek a clue to guide the search.
“None,” he says with his last breath. “I require surcease.”
Another comes forth -- young, idealistic, transformed and ready to travel the rivers and oceans of time and
space, seeking the branches that contain species survival. He assumes the knowledge, takes into his soul
everything that the previous forty-two beings known as ‘Einstein’ have learned, and pledges his life to The
Gestalt.
“Go,” the new Einstein is ordered, and he resumes the search.
He wanders the alleyways, avenues, and thoroughfares, carefully mapping each twist and turn. He finds
shattered rock where once planets spun, debris where civilizations should have grown and held. The hynerians
have evolved into predators, feasting on a dwarfed race of reptiles that run from the hunters in fear. Another
turn in space and he finds a place where monstrous pale-skin quadrupeds with black eyes and the ability to
foresee the future rampage through the galaxies, bending every other civilization to their mindless rule. He
rests there for twenty-six microts, puzzling how a species has reverted to walking on all fours and yet continues
to conquer, finds no answers, and moves on.
* *
“Cross my heart, smack me dead, stick a lobster on my head.”
The sixth equation is stubborn. He has examined the rest of the tangle, looking for a different point to work on,
but this one holds the key to unlocking too many others. He sighs, watches for a microt as Talyn starbursts,
lets his body turn to leave Command on its own, and goes back to his quarters while wrestling with the
mathematical problem.
“I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.” He always stops what he’s doing at this point, to
send her his message. He tried saying it out loud the last four hundred and six times, but his dialogue is
permanently scripted for him, so he has to repeat it silently, the timing perfect after so many circuits through
this moment. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of arns, babe,’ he promises the one he has lost. ‘I love you, Aeryn Sun,’
and then all disappears as his life starts over again.
“Cross my heart, smack me dead …”
* *
A small group of ships is gathering supplies, preparing to flee another scene of conquest and death. Known
only as The Family, they are a strong, burgeoning clan that dispenses a compassionate rule to any who chose
to travel with them. Twenty-six ships travel in phalanx, protecting nine adult leviathans and four young ones.
Life and gestation goes on within and without. Fifteen of the females living within the gentle beasts are
pregnant; one of the leviathans travels without any occupants or burden of any sort as she is close to giving
birth to her own infant. The clan cares for all who come to them seeking protection and membership, provided
they are willing to sacrifice in the interest of protecting the expanding community.
Einstein detects a potential for a positive outcome among the genetics of the base family -- those individuals
linked together by the fragments of almost forgotten genes. He seeks out temporary refuge among these
people in order to learn more and is brought before the matriarch.
She rises slowly to her feet, standing straight and walking on her own despite her two hundred and sixty-two
cycles, and comes to look at him more closely, one aged step at a time. “I know who you are,” she accuses
him, hostility apparent. “I know you can see more than the here and now. Look within us and see who we are
and where we came from.”
He delves deep, tracing the bloodlines, and finds their beginnings. The intricate combinations of proteins are
there, buried under generations of breeding with sebaceans, but the influence of the almost forgotten genes
emerges without fail every third generation to produce a crop of blue-eyed offspring who can control time,
space, and destiny. They do not meddle, they do not tempt fate; they use their special sight to find the
pathways that will lead to survival, and let the rest of the universe spin into destruction around them. There
was a time recently when they exerted force, attempting to alter the inevitable outcome -- he can feel the bulge
in the fabric of space where they tried -- but they stopped abruptly, and have turned their backs on that
struggle.
“Help us,” he entreats, because this family can make the difference for countless others, and they have shown
a willingness to participate.
She beckons to a child, one who hovers just short of becoming an adult, and he comes to stand under her arm,
his blue eyes glaring at Einstein with undisguised malice. She hugs him for a moment, affection clear in her
embrace. “This young man’s name is John,” she says, fingering his short, dark hair. He stands relaxed
beneath her slow, loving touches, comfortable with the attention from his great grandmother four times over,
but without easing his obvious distaste for their visitor.
“Eight cycles ago, he went where he wasn’t supposed to before he could understand why we no longer explore
those places.” She leans her head against the youngster’s brown hair, tears brimming against wrinkled lids.
“This John discovered what you did. We know the price John Crichton was forced to pay. We will not help you.”
“The other one survived because of that sacrifice,” he protests. “His choice resulted in this permutation.”
“He is John Crichton, and you gave him no other choice. I know what moment he chose. This young one found
where he is, but could not release him. You are cruel. We will not help you.” When she begins to cry, grieving
for the one who still lives outside of time, he realizes that this is not her daughter. He has come across Aeryn
Sun herself, who has outlived the expected lifespan of a sebacean by dozens of years, and there is no hope of
overturning her decision.
“You may stay until you are rested,” one of the older blue-eyed men invites him, showing the compassion that
has made The Family a legend. He stands to the other side of the woman, letting her lean on his arm when she
tires. “After that you must leave.”
He stays two solar days, gathering strength and learning of the resource his species has unknowingly
discarded, then continues his journey, seeking out a similar permutation where their compassion might extend
to his species.
* *
“I'm makin' like an army!” he cries the answer to D’Argo, moves to another opening in the wall and shoots. His
lungs are burning, his heart feels like it’s about to explode inside his chest, and although it’s his eighth trip
through this new portion of his life, he still thinks he sounds like a lunatic.
The sixth equation finally gave way before patience, and nearly a dozen more fell into place in quick
succession, creating what had felt like the San Andreas of ripples through his limited universe. He’s gained
endless days of time to run his calculations and a slew of answers, including the answer to the mystery of the
other John Crichton. Aeryn is here, fighting alongside him, although they’re at odds over something. He’ll take
the rancor because it brings with it the gentle moments when he gets to sit with his head on her shoulder. In a
couple of arns he’ll be there again, overwhelmed with guilt because he screwed up more than once, but he’ll
take the bad with the good. It’s Aeryn, after all.
The battle ends, and he diverts most of his attention to catching the equations as they fly by. He snatches at a
small fragment, examines it, sees the next logical step, then devotes all of his attention to aiming correctly as he
dives through the time rift. He adds another symbol to his understanding, and this time he knows that his life
has expanded another thirty-one microts into his past. It never moves forward. It never expands beyond the
critical moment when Aeryn leaves him behind.
The end arrives too soon. “I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.”
‘I’ll be back in a while, babe,’ he promises as always. ‘I love you, Aeryn Sun.’ He clings to his grief for an
instant in time, his single link to Aeryn, and then …
“I'm makin' like an army!” Ninth time around, and he still thinks he’s acting like a lunatic.
* *
“He found what you did. We know the price he was forced to pay. We will not help you.”
He is the seventy-sixth of his line, and stands before another version of the aged Aeryn Sun, just as each of his
predecessors did. They have found no reality that varies from this one pronouncement, no relaxing of the iron
core of her distaste for his people. He nods -- a habit they have acquired after so many visits to this moment --
and chooses not to stay. His time is almost over, his energy expended. The Gestalt waits to reabsorb him and
to pass his knowledge on to the next.
He passes on something new this time. Despair. They will not survive.
* *
He’d cracked an important calculation over the last one thousand, three hundred and sixty-two repetitions, and
it has given him back another huge span of days. He can stride forward in time again and again, reliving
moments of sorrow and joy, camaraderie and grief, touch the gleaming bronze hull, shy away from the loss of
Zhaan, and embrace his friends.
The loss of Aeryn arrives, he stands in his quarters, frustrated and angry, scattering the chess pieces and then
wishes he could hold his breath, because he remembers where he gets to begin now. There is no jolt as he
jumps back, he is simply at the new beginning.
“Been … thinking about that thing we talked about,” he says quietly to her. The space station is a shambles,
Borlik is dead, and the children are safe. They’re alive, and she’s unharmed. He doesn’t remember being
happier. “About charity, and … ah … maybe …”
“Maybe you were right. We should do nothing.” It’s not exactly the answer he wanted to hear, but she stands
close to him, and the smile suggests that not all is lost.
“What about body fluids?” he asks. She smiles at him, and there is no way not to smile back.
“There’ll be a backlog.”
Rygel floats near to them, overhearing only the last part. “Fluid levels? Back log? Is there some kind of
problem?” The hynerian is uncharacteristically concerned, perhaps shaken by … something he cannot
remember yet.
“Shut up,” he snaps, and feels joy at the small bit of banter.
“What did I say?” Rygel demands, looking hurt.
“Shut up!” he says again, and Aeryn’s voice joins in perfectly with his. He is with Aeryn, and they are in
harmony. He nearly cries with the intensity of his love for her.
He remembers fluid levels, breath-stopping desire for her, and much more -- moments that he had enjoyed, but
had taken for granted. He’d taken time for granted until it he had to fight for every additional microt. John
Crichton traverses his life again and again, nearly ecstatic with the increase in longevity, no matter that the
result is always the same. He treasures and memorizes each fleeting moment over the next fifty-one
repetitions, then settles down and begins working on the next calculation.
* *
He comes before The Gestalt, the eighty-third of his line, and stands exhausted of energy, no longer able to
continue the quest.
“Outcome,” the multitude demand of him.
“Destruction, annihilation, devastation,” he reports.
“Constants,” they implore, because they still hope for a way out of the future they have made for themselves.
“None,” he says with his last breath. “I require surcease.”
Another comes forth to continue the quest, but this one is different. They have chosen a rebel, a rogue
mentality that has repeatedly refused to follow accepted doctrine. This one bounces with energy, ricochets off
the edges of the energy state that keeps this moment confined in time and space. He drinks in the knowledge
as if it were a tonic, his excitement growing with the acquisition of each fact, and proclaims “I am not Einstein. I
chose another name.” He searches what the first eighty-three have learned, says, “Call me Hawking,” and
refuses to pledge his life to The Gestalt. He says that truth is more important, and vows to seek out the
undiscovered permutations that no one has accounted for as of yet.
The Gestalt watches him depart, experiencing something very much like humor, and then turns back to the
flickering energies that represent the slow demise of their species.
* *
“You’re alive!” He lunges into Aeryn’s embrace, kneeling in the cold, and he’s nearly mindless with relief.
It’s his first time through this period, and he likes the feel of her arms around him, but the magnitude of his relief
would have him scared to immobility if that were possible. He has to follow time as it flows forward, but he’s
hesitant this time, because he suspects that something hideous has happened, and he doesn’t look forward to
finding out what it was. His universe lurches, and wobbles, sending out the familiar ripples, and he’s afraid that
on the very next circuit he’ll find out what he’s missing.
* *
The sleeper ships arrive, four of the original ten that departed. The passengers are stacked in careful ranks,
cryogenically preserved for the centuries-long flight. The automated systems find a suitable planet and awaken
the travelers. They find the remains of a civilization of large predators, stare in interest at carven images of a
reptilian species, and set up their temporary structures in the heat of late evening. Hawking watches with
interest as what appear to be sebaceans labor in the killing heat, lingers for nearly a cycle to watch as they
colonize this abandoned world.
He is still there, learning of this new species when a wormhole opens and the colonists’ descendants arrive. A
new species disembarks, centuries of fast evolution separating long-sleeping ancestors from the new breed.
The first travelers were forgotten by the time the young ones learned the secret of spanning the universe in a
flash of energy. Neither group expected to encounter the other, and both groups are equally shocked and feel
threatened. Arrogance, pride, and a need to survive set them at odds. Fighting breaks out. The colonists
wield aged weapons, destroying several of the newer ships because they take them by surprise. The wormhole
is used, snakes out, they lose control of the destroyer.
Hawking mourns the loss and moves on. He travels back, seeking the overlooked elements. Charrids become
a food source. Sebaceans fall to the nebari. A new, unknown species arrives from a different direction, leaving
nothing but charred cities in its path, and all of the species unite to stop the onslaught. The advancing fleet is
herded into a single location, and the destroyer lashes out again, wielded by the scarrans this time. Victory for
the alliance, and then they begin to fight among themselves once again.
Hawking watches as they lay waste to parsecs of space, and tries again. He turns his attention to the forbidden
regions, and travels back in time to explore where none of the Einsteins dared to venture.
* *
"You are … mentally damaged!” Rygel accuses him.
“No, I’m a guy! A guy … guys dream about this sort of thing!” he objects, and he’d faint if he could because it’s
Aeryn’s voice coming out of his mouth.
Rygel and D’Argo are staring at him like he’s absolutely insane, and he’s thinking that maybe he deserves it this
time. There have been some changes to his body: a couple of additions and a fairly critical subtraction if the
way these pants fit is any indication. Despite everything that he remembers of his future, he’s going to give this
situation top billing when it comes to ‘bizarre’.
He’s been adding time in leaps and bounds lately, averaging less than five hundred repetitions between each
expansion of history, and he knows what his ‘life’ is now. Finishing an entire revolving string of the equations
has revealed that he is in a time bubble, the last remnant of a collapsed wormhole. The ripples and
earthquakes restoring his past are a physical signal that occurs whenever he manages to expand that bubble
outward. The center, the location of his sphere, is fixed in place, so history terminates at the same moment
every time. If he wants to regain more of his future, he’ll have to find a way to move the sphere … and he’s
learned enough to know that he can’t do that from inside it.
He can’t remember how he got here, or why, but it seems irrelevant when weighed against what he will gain if he
can get out.
He’ll be able to look for Aeryn.
Except … he appears to be Aeryn right now, and there isn’t a single clue how this has happened, except that
Rygel is talking like a Peacekeeper hynerian, threatening to break his legs, so he suspects that John Crichton
isn’t the only person aboard Moya who’s gone through a wild metamorphosis in the unknown recent past.
Several arns and a brief residence inside the gaseous Dominar later, he has his answers. He pays close
attention to his life until he links up with the part he remembers, then turns his attention to a different mystery.
He spends the rest of the loop puzzling over a single anomaly, comparing it to the calculations he’s been
solving. The formulas all say that he shouldn’t be able to remember from one time to the next. What he is
doing is theoretically impossible.
When he slaps the strannat on his head, he knows his time is almost up, and he decides that this line of
thought is self-defeating. The important thing is the equations. Worrying about anything else is a waste of time
… an item he has come to value above all else with the exception of Aeryn.
“Cross my heart and smack me dead. Stick a lobster on my head.” His truncated life is almost up. He’ll send
his usual wish to Aeryn, loop back, and get to work.
“I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.”
‘I’ll be back in a couple of cycles, Aeryn,’ he promises, expends his last microt hoping that she’s all right
wherever she is, and then he’s back where he started.
“I’m a guy!” Well … not for the moment he isn’t.
* *
“Outcomes,” The Gestalt demands.
“Uncertain,” Hawking reports. He bounces from one side of the enclosure to the other, energy intact.
“Possibility of survival?” they chant, hope awakening.
“Yes.” He has not found the direction they must take, but he has found the absence of a set of possibilities.
“There is a constant,” they surmise.
“Yes.” One single factor is missing, and he is certain it will make the difference.
“Share it with us.”
The knowledge of eighty-three Einsteins and a single Hawking is dispersed through an entire species, flooding
throughout the mentalities that have conspired to control their destiny. They examine the evidence, and they
do not like the conclusions they are forced to make.
* *
The oil soaked moon beneath him continues to burn, the planetary-sized inferno glowing behind the thickening
overcast of smoke and soot. Something is exploding down there, creating flashes that resemble lightning,
yellowish incandescence flickering beneath the clouds of pollutants. He tumbles for a moment, the motion
unfelt in the absence of gravity, but the moon makes several fast orbits from above his head to beneath his
heels and around again until something about his grip on D’Argo makes it stop.
He’s done this over three hundred times, and he still gets a thrill every time the oceans ignite. It’s not every day
that someone from … somewhere he still can’t remember … gets to burn an entire planet. It had taken more
than one hundred repetitions for him to get used to what’s going to come next. He’ll be nearly frozen solid and
gasping the last of his oxygen by the time she gets to them, and it will take arns before he feels like he’s thawed
out.
She’s going to come from behind him, he knows it, and wishes that he could tug on D’Argo’s arm to turn him
around so he can see when the Prowler appears in the eternally night sky. He’ll pass out right after seeing the
black rapier-shadow cut across the dim light cast by the gas giant, but he’ll go out watching Aeryn come to get
him, and that’s worth a bit of hypoxia any day of the cycle.
* *
The debate rumbles throughout The Gestalt for cycle upon cycle, the elements of the plan carefully examined
by every member of the combined mentality. Dissention and uncertainty -- two long ago discarded sensations
-- are rediscovered. The potential for disaster is great, the possibility of success dangerously slim.
“There will be echoes,” they worry. “Echoes of his unrealized futures as well as those of the valid avenues that
remain open. He has already experienced one possible future.”
“He forgot his future almost immediately when he was first removed from the stream,” Hawking confirms, calling
on inherited memories of an earlier Einstein. “There was only the most instinctive awareness of the resonance
of that path. It could serve to guide him.”
“Others may detect the echoes,” they agonize over the unknown factors.
“Unlikely,” comes the dissenting view. “None of the species living aboard the leviathan are that perceptive.”
“Maintain the current status,” the conservative portions suggest. “Leave everything as it is. Perhaps we will
survive. There are futures as yet unexplored.”
“We cannot,” Hawking informs them. “He adjusts his environment. The outer rim threatens to infringe on the
plane of a wormhole. The bubble will rupture, and he will die in the transition.” Hawking is their servant, but he
fidgets, impatient because their time is limited and the debate is taking too long.
“Adjusts his environment,” repeats The Gestalt, marveling at the accomplishment of a single mortal being. “But
there should be no memory, therefore no ability to effect change. There was an unexpected permutation.”
“Yes, there was,” agrees Hawking.
“He must not be placed in the moment from when he was taken,” another portion of The Gestalt interrupts,
returning to the more pressing problem.
“If he is returned to that moment, it will serve no purpose,” agrees a different grouping from within the whole.
“Another moment must be chosen. One that embodies a different outcome for all.”
The weight of a civilization swivels ponderously to contemplate the single mentality that has managed to find
promise where they were unable to detect any future at all, and places their survival in his hands. “You have
found such a moment,” they theorize, hope returning at last.
“Yes. There is a place in the stream that has potential for success,” Hawking assures them, then issues a
caution. “There must be other alterations, however. Certain events must be adjusted.” He leads them along
the pathways he has explored, pulling aside small events, pushing others toward the middle of that path,
showing them how it can be done. The ripples are few and will die out within cycles. Their future stretches out
before them with no end in sight. They would survive.
The decision is made almost instantaneously. “Do it.”
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Part 2
“Who's your daddy?! Come on, you know who your daddy is. Who's your daddy? … D'Argo! Tell him who his
daddy is!” He slams Rinic Tolven down on the surface, angry that they’d been given something that would
poison Talyn, and D’Argo’s deep voice sounds behind him, responding to his question as though they’d
rehearsed it in advance.
“I’m your daddy!”
He doesn’t remember what has happened before this moment, but he knows that what transpires here is critical
to the survival of Moya, Talyn, and everyone aboard both ships. He’s almost out of control, because Aeryn
remained behind with the copy, and he’s anxious to the point of explosion when he thinks of them together.
There’s no knowledge of how this duplication has happened, no expectation of what he’s trying to achieve, but
he’s carried forward, words and actions magically provided for him as the microts march by one by one. Tolven
lies, Tolven dies by strannat impalement. Bombardment from below, retrieval squads above, the two ships
starburst in quick succession. The other one has taken everything, Aeryn has gone with him. He’s the guy
who got left behind.
He strides around his quarters, discovering what is missing, scattering the chess pieces into clattering
confusion. “I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.” Another microt ticks by …
“Who’s your daddy?!”
Aeryn is going to leave him behind. He slams Tolven down, hears D’Argo’s answer sounding behind him, and
can only think that Aeryn is going to leave him behind. And that he loves her.
* *
Einstein watches as the snarling blue funnel tightens, sucks in the edges of its own vortex, and disappears into
the hollow, collapsing in upon itself. Somewhere on the other end of time and space where a reality used to
exist that included John Crichton returning to Moya, the other end of the wormhole is doing the same thing, the
two ends rushing toward the human trapped in the middle. The visual disturbance winks out of existence with a
final burst of light, and his artificially constructed surroundings are calm and silent.
Empty eyes consider the placid sea around the intact iceberg, seeing the possibilities that are opening up
rather than the still surface, and he gauges his resources. There is energy and potential left; he can continue
the task assigned to him. It is time to wander the crossroads and byways of realities, ensuring that their effort
will achieve the desired outcome.
* *
“Who’s your daddy?!” He remembers this happening before, but it doesn’t trouble him. What troubles him is
that Aeryn is going to leave him behind, and there doesn’t seem to be anything he can do about that. He is
something of a spectator as he yells angrily at Tolven, participates but devotes only a portion of his attention as
the strannat kills the traitorous son, and continues to analyze the few memories that exist.
He finds something lodged deep within his own mind, hidden from rational examination but there to be found if it
is the two-hundred-and-seventy-eighth time he’s raced back to Moya knowing that they have to flee the planet
of Kanvia. What he finds is a tangled bundle of interwoven equations, constantly churning to adapt to the
conditions around him. He runs toward Command as the bombardment from below begins, and analyzes the
first level of symbols. He doesn’t understand much of the information contained in the symbols, but it seems to
have something to do with space, time, and movement within that malleable substance.
“I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.” Another microt ticks by …
“Who’s your daddy?!” The equations are still there, and he picks one fragment at random and begins to
decipher it. It’s something to do.
* *
Einstein emerges into a place in the future, careful not to touch anything or even move. If he merely observes,
there will be no ripples. But there is nothing left to observe. There is a carpet of dense gravity points that glow
warmly, the dying remnants of stars that went nova when they had consumed too much additional material.
They have been used as weapons, the stolen mass toppling their precarious balance of fuel versus fusion, and
burned out in a frenzy of energy eons before the laws of physics normally would have ordained.
This is unexpected -- an unwelcome discovery. Their calculations, their research, the permutations they
explored all dictated that this would not happen. Einstein searches for signs of the races that should inhabit
this portion of space, and finds nothing. He reaches out to touch his own species, seeking their specific
signature … and finds nothing. They are extinct; their realm has been destroyed.
His resources are failing, but there is time to explore one more reality. This is the fourteenth that has yielded
destruction, but he hopes that another will reveal a better outcome.
* *
The first equation had been difficult, requiring that he decipher the meaning of symbols he’s never seen before
in order to ponder the string’s significance. He cracks a second. The third and fourth come more easily, but it
takes a total of six thousand, four hundred and twenty-one repetitions of his short life before he solves the fifth
small mystery, and his world trembles for a microt. He’s nearing the end, getting ready to scatter the chess
pieces, and he devotes his entire attention to the emotions provided because they’re his single link to Aeryn.
He loves her, and he misses her with an intensity that makes the grief a pleasure because it is all he has left of
her.
“ … he just better be taking care of her.” Another microt ticks by …
“My name is John Crichton … Astronaut. I was not at the refreshment house after hours. I was not present at
any bombing or explosion. I did not have a private meeting with the beautiful Miss Sarova. The end. Cross my
heart, smack me dead, stick a lobster on my head.”
This is new.
He pays close attention, gathering clues as to why he is standing with one of the ugliest, drippiest creatures
he’s ever encountered on his head, and knows that the fifth equation’s solution and its associated shock wave
are connected to this change in his ‘life’. He has more information to work with this time, so he hopes it will take
less than six thousand repetitions to solve the latest puzzle.
* *
He comes before The Gestalt, the forty-second of his line to be known as Einstein, and stands diminished, no
longer able to continue the quest. There are an infinite number of permutations branching out from the single
event that they adjusted, and they are exploring each and every one of them, looking for their future.
“Outcome,” the multitude demand of him.
“Destruction,” he reports.
“Constants,” they request. If they find a single element that persists across all realities, then there is hope that
something can be repaired. They seek a clue to guide the search.
“None,” he says with his last breath. “I require surcease.”
Another comes forth -- young, idealistic, transformed and ready to travel the rivers and oceans of time and
space, seeking the branches that contain species survival. He assumes the knowledge, takes into his soul
everything that the previous forty-two beings known as ‘Einstein’ have learned, and pledges his life to The
Gestalt.
“Go,” the new Einstein is ordered, and he resumes the search.
He wanders the alleyways, avenues, and thoroughfares, carefully mapping each twist and turn. He finds
shattered rock where once planets spun, debris where civilizations should have grown and held. The hynerians
have evolved into predators, feasting on a dwarfed race of reptiles that run from the hunters in fear. Another
turn in space and he finds a place where monstrous pale-skin quadrupeds with black eyes and the ability to
foresee the future rampage through the galaxies, bending every other civilization to their mindless rule. He
rests there for twenty-six microts, puzzling how a species has reverted to walking on all fours and yet continues
to conquer, finds no answers, and moves on.
* *
“Cross my heart, smack me dead, stick a lobster on my head.”
The sixth equation is stubborn. He has examined the rest of the tangle, looking for a different point to work on,
but this one holds the key to unlocking too many others. He sighs, watches for a microt as Talyn starbursts,
lets his body turn to leave Command on its own, and goes back to his quarters while wrestling with the
mathematical problem.
“I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.” He always stops what he’s doing at this point, to
send her his message. He tried saying it out loud the last four hundred and six times, but his dialogue is
permanently scripted for him, so he has to repeat it silently, the timing perfect after so many circuits through
this moment. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of arns, babe,’ he promises the one he has lost. ‘I love you, Aeryn Sun,’
and then all disappears as his life starts over again.
“Cross my heart, smack me dead …”
* *
A small group of ships is gathering supplies, preparing to flee another scene of conquest and death. Known
only as The Family, they are a strong, burgeoning clan that dispenses a compassionate rule to any who chose
to travel with them. Twenty-six ships travel in phalanx, protecting nine adult leviathans and four young ones.
Life and gestation goes on within and without. Fifteen of the females living within the gentle beasts are
pregnant; one of the leviathans travels without any occupants or burden of any sort as she is close to giving
birth to her own infant. The clan cares for all who come to them seeking protection and membership, provided
they are willing to sacrifice in the interest of protecting the expanding community.
Einstein detects a potential for a positive outcome among the genetics of the base family -- those individuals
linked together by the fragments of almost forgotten genes. He seeks out temporary refuge among these
people in order to learn more and is brought before the matriarch.
She rises slowly to her feet, standing straight and walking on her own despite her two hundred and sixty-two
cycles, and comes to look at him more closely, one aged step at a time. “I know who you are,” she accuses
him, hostility apparent. “I know you can see more than the here and now. Look within us and see who we are
and where we came from.”
He delves deep, tracing the bloodlines, and finds their beginnings. The intricate combinations of proteins are
there, buried under generations of breeding with sebaceans, but the influence of the almost forgotten genes
emerges without fail every third generation to produce a crop of blue-eyed offspring who can control time,
space, and destiny. They do not meddle, they do not tempt fate; they use their special sight to find the
pathways that will lead to survival, and let the rest of the universe spin into destruction around them. There
was a time recently when they exerted force, attempting to alter the inevitable outcome -- he can feel the bulge
in the fabric of space where they tried -- but they stopped abruptly, and have turned their backs on that
struggle.
“Help us,” he entreats, because this family can make the difference for countless others, and they have shown
a willingness to participate.
She beckons to a child, one who hovers just short of becoming an adult, and he comes to stand under her arm,
his blue eyes glaring at Einstein with undisguised malice. She hugs him for a moment, affection clear in her
embrace. “This young man’s name is John,” she says, fingering his short, dark hair. He stands relaxed
beneath her slow, loving touches, comfortable with the attention from his great grandmother four times over,
but without easing his obvious distaste for their visitor.
“Eight cycles ago, he went where he wasn’t supposed to before he could understand why we no longer explore
those places.” She leans her head against the youngster’s brown hair, tears brimming against wrinkled lids.
“This John discovered what you did. We know the price John Crichton was forced to pay. We will not help you.”
“The other one survived because of that sacrifice,” he protests. “His choice resulted in this permutation.”
“He is John Crichton, and you gave him no other choice. I know what moment he chose. This young one found
where he is, but could not release him. You are cruel. We will not help you.” When she begins to cry, grieving
for the one who still lives outside of time, he realizes that this is not her daughter. He has come across Aeryn
Sun herself, who has outlived the expected lifespan of a sebacean by dozens of years, and there is no hope of
overturning her decision.
“You may stay until you are rested,” one of the older blue-eyed men invites him, showing the compassion that
has made The Family a legend. He stands to the other side of the woman, letting her lean on his arm when she
tires. “After that you must leave.”
He stays two solar days, gathering strength and learning of the resource his species has unknowingly
discarded, then continues his journey, seeking out a similar permutation where their compassion might extend
to his species.
* *
“I'm makin' like an army!” he cries the answer to D’Argo, moves to another opening in the wall and shoots. His
lungs are burning, his heart feels like it’s about to explode inside his chest, and although it’s his eighth trip
through this new portion of his life, he still thinks he sounds like a lunatic.
The sixth equation finally gave way before patience, and nearly a dozen more fell into place in quick
succession, creating what had felt like the San Andreas of ripples through his limited universe. He’s gained
endless days of time to run his calculations and a slew of answers, including the answer to the mystery of the
other John Crichton. Aeryn is here, fighting alongside him, although they’re at odds over something. He’ll take
the rancor because it brings with it the gentle moments when he gets to sit with his head on her shoulder. In a
couple of arns he’ll be there again, overwhelmed with guilt because he screwed up more than once, but he’ll
take the bad with the good. It’s Aeryn, after all.
The battle ends, and he diverts most of his attention to catching the equations as they fly by. He snatches at a
small fragment, examines it, sees the next logical step, then devotes all of his attention to aiming correctly as he
dives through the time rift. He adds another symbol to his understanding, and this time he knows that his life
has expanded another thirty-one microts into his past. It never moves forward. It never expands beyond the
critical moment when Aeryn leaves him behind.
The end arrives too soon. “I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.”
‘I’ll be back in a while, babe,’ he promises as always. ‘I love you, Aeryn Sun.’ He clings to his grief for an
instant in time, his single link to Aeryn, and then …
“I'm makin' like an army!” Ninth time around, and he still thinks he’s acting like a lunatic.
* *
“He found what you did. We know the price he was forced to pay. We will not help you.”
He is the seventy-sixth of his line, and stands before another version of the aged Aeryn Sun, just as each of his
predecessors did. They have found no reality that varies from this one pronouncement, no relaxing of the iron
core of her distaste for his people. He nods -- a habit they have acquired after so many visits to this moment --
and chooses not to stay. His time is almost over, his energy expended. The Gestalt waits to reabsorb him and
to pass his knowledge on to the next.
He passes on something new this time. Despair. They will not survive.
* *
He’d cracked an important calculation over the last one thousand, three hundred and sixty-two repetitions, and
it has given him back another huge span of days. He can stride forward in time again and again, reliving
moments of sorrow and joy, camaraderie and grief, touch the gleaming bronze hull, shy away from the loss of
Zhaan, and embrace his friends.
The loss of Aeryn arrives, he stands in his quarters, frustrated and angry, scattering the chess pieces and then
wishes he could hold his breath, because he remembers where he gets to begin now. There is no jolt as he
jumps back, he is simply at the new beginning.
“Been … thinking about that thing we talked about,” he says quietly to her. The space station is a shambles,
Borlik is dead, and the children are safe. They’re alive, and she’s unharmed. He doesn’t remember being
happier. “About charity, and … ah … maybe …”
“Maybe you were right. We should do nothing.” It’s not exactly the answer he wanted to hear, but she stands
close to him, and the smile suggests that not all is lost.
“What about body fluids?” he asks. She smiles at him, and there is no way not to smile back.
“There’ll be a backlog.”
Rygel floats near to them, overhearing only the last part. “Fluid levels? Back log? Is there some kind of
problem?” The hynerian is uncharacteristically concerned, perhaps shaken by … something he cannot
remember yet.
“Shut up,” he snaps, and feels joy at the small bit of banter.
“What did I say?” Rygel demands, looking hurt.
“Shut up!” he says again, and Aeryn’s voice joins in perfectly with his. He is with Aeryn, and they are in
harmony. He nearly cries with the intensity of his love for her.
He remembers fluid levels, breath-stopping desire for her, and much more -- moments that he had enjoyed, but
had taken for granted. He’d taken time for granted until it he had to fight for every additional microt. John
Crichton traverses his life again and again, nearly ecstatic with the increase in longevity, no matter that the
result is always the same. He treasures and memorizes each fleeting moment over the next fifty-one
repetitions, then settles down and begins working on the next calculation.
* *
He comes before The Gestalt, the eighty-third of his line, and stands exhausted of energy, no longer able to
continue the quest.
“Outcome,” the multitude demand of him.
“Destruction, annihilation, devastation,” he reports.
“Constants,” they implore, because they still hope for a way out of the future they have made for themselves.
“None,” he says with his last breath. “I require surcease.”
Another comes forth to continue the quest, but this one is different. They have chosen a rebel, a rogue
mentality that has repeatedly refused to follow accepted doctrine. This one bounces with energy, ricochets off
the edges of the energy state that keeps this moment confined in time and space. He drinks in the knowledge
as if it were a tonic, his excitement growing with the acquisition of each fact, and proclaims “I am not Einstein. I
chose another name.” He searches what the first eighty-three have learned, says, “Call me Hawking,” and
refuses to pledge his life to The Gestalt. He says that truth is more important, and vows to seek out the
undiscovered permutations that no one has accounted for as of yet.
The Gestalt watches him depart, experiencing something very much like humor, and then turns back to the
flickering energies that represent the slow demise of their species.
* *
“You’re alive!” He lunges into Aeryn’s embrace, kneeling in the cold, and he’s nearly mindless with relief.
It’s his first time through this period, and he likes the feel of her arms around him, but the magnitude of his relief
would have him scared to immobility if that were possible. He has to follow time as it flows forward, but he’s
hesitant this time, because he suspects that something hideous has happened, and he doesn’t look forward to
finding out what it was. His universe lurches, and wobbles, sending out the familiar ripples, and he’s afraid that
on the very next circuit he’ll find out what he’s missing.
* *
The sleeper ships arrive, four of the original ten that departed. The passengers are stacked in careful ranks,
cryogenically preserved for the centuries-long flight. The automated systems find a suitable planet and awaken
the travelers. They find the remains of a civilization of large predators, stare in interest at carven images of a
reptilian species, and set up their temporary structures in the heat of late evening. Hawking watches with
interest as what appear to be sebaceans labor in the killing heat, lingers for nearly a cycle to watch as they
colonize this abandoned world.
He is still there, learning of this new species when a wormhole opens and the colonists’ descendants arrive. A
new species disembarks, centuries of fast evolution separating long-sleeping ancestors from the new breed.
The first travelers were forgotten by the time the young ones learned the secret of spanning the universe in a
flash of energy. Neither group expected to encounter the other, and both groups are equally shocked and feel
threatened. Arrogance, pride, and a need to survive set them at odds. Fighting breaks out. The colonists
wield aged weapons, destroying several of the newer ships because they take them by surprise. The wormhole
is used, snakes out, they lose control of the destroyer.
Hawking mourns the loss and moves on. He travels back, seeking the overlooked elements. Charrids become
a food source. Sebaceans fall to the nebari. A new, unknown species arrives from a different direction, leaving
nothing but charred cities in its path, and all of the species unite to stop the onslaught. The advancing fleet is
herded into a single location, and the destroyer lashes out again, wielded by the scarrans this time. Victory for
the alliance, and then they begin to fight among themselves once again.
Hawking watches as they lay waste to parsecs of space, and tries again. He turns his attention to the forbidden
regions, and travels back in time to explore where none of the Einsteins dared to venture.
* *
"You are … mentally damaged!” Rygel accuses him.
“No, I’m a guy! A guy … guys dream about this sort of thing!” he objects, and he’d faint if he could because it’s
Aeryn’s voice coming out of his mouth.
Rygel and D’Argo are staring at him like he’s absolutely insane, and he’s thinking that maybe he deserves it this
time. There have been some changes to his body: a couple of additions and a fairly critical subtraction if the
way these pants fit is any indication. Despite everything that he remembers of his future, he’s going to give this
situation top billing when it comes to ‘bizarre’.
He’s been adding time in leaps and bounds lately, averaging less than five hundred repetitions between each
expansion of history, and he knows what his ‘life’ is now. Finishing an entire revolving string of the equations
has revealed that he is in a time bubble, the last remnant of a collapsed wormhole. The ripples and
earthquakes restoring his past are a physical signal that occurs whenever he manages to expand that bubble
outward. The center, the location of his sphere, is fixed in place, so history terminates at the same moment
every time. If he wants to regain more of his future, he’ll have to find a way to move the sphere … and he’s
learned enough to know that he can’t do that from inside it.
He can’t remember how he got here, or why, but it seems irrelevant when weighed against what he will gain if he
can get out.
He’ll be able to look for Aeryn.
Except … he appears to be Aeryn right now, and there isn’t a single clue how this has happened, except that
Rygel is talking like a Peacekeeper hynerian, threatening to break his legs, so he suspects that John Crichton
isn’t the only person aboard Moya who’s gone through a wild metamorphosis in the unknown recent past.
Several arns and a brief residence inside the gaseous Dominar later, he has his answers. He pays close
attention to his life until he links up with the part he remembers, then turns his attention to a different mystery.
He spends the rest of the loop puzzling over a single anomaly, comparing it to the calculations he’s been
solving. The formulas all say that he shouldn’t be able to remember from one time to the next. What he is
doing is theoretically impossible.
When he slaps the strannat on his head, he knows his time is almost up, and he decides that this line of
thought is self-defeating. The important thing is the equations. Worrying about anything else is a waste of time
… an item he has come to value above all else with the exception of Aeryn.
“Cross my heart and smack me dead. Stick a lobster on my head.” His truncated life is almost up. He’ll send
his usual wish to Aeryn, loop back, and get to work.
“I don’t know what I hope, he just better be taking care of her.”
‘I’ll be back in a couple of cycles, Aeryn,’ he promises, expends his last microt hoping that she’s all right
wherever she is, and then he’s back where he started.
“I’m a guy!” Well … not for the moment he isn’t.
* *
“Outcomes,” The Gestalt demands.
“Uncertain,” Hawking reports. He bounces from one side of the enclosure to the other, energy intact.
“Possibility of survival?” they chant, hope awakening.
“Yes.” He has not found the direction they must take, but he has found the absence of a set of possibilities.
“There is a constant,” they surmise.
“Yes.” One single factor is missing, and he is certain it will make the difference.
“Share it with us.”
The knowledge of eighty-three Einsteins and a single Hawking is dispersed through an entire species, flooding
throughout the mentalities that have conspired to control their destiny. They examine the evidence, and they
do not like the conclusions they are forced to make.
* *
The oil soaked moon beneath him continues to burn, the planetary-sized inferno glowing behind the thickening
overcast of smoke and soot. Something is exploding down there, creating flashes that resemble lightning,
yellowish incandescence flickering beneath the clouds of pollutants. He tumbles for a moment, the motion
unfelt in the absence of gravity, but the moon makes several fast orbits from above his head to beneath his
heels and around again until something about his grip on D’Argo makes it stop.
He’s done this over three hundred times, and he still gets a thrill every time the oceans ignite. It’s not every day
that someone from … somewhere he still can’t remember … gets to burn an entire planet. It had taken more
than one hundred repetitions for him to get used to what’s going to come next. He’ll be nearly frozen solid and
gasping the last of his oxygen by the time she gets to them, and it will take arns before he feels like he’s thawed
out.
She’s going to come from behind him, he knows it, and wishes that he could tug on D’Argo’s arm to turn him
around so he can see when the Prowler appears in the eternally night sky. He’ll pass out right after seeing the
black rapier-shadow cut across the dim light cast by the gas giant, but he’ll go out watching Aeryn come to get
him, and that’s worth a bit of hypoxia any day of the cycle.
* *
The debate rumbles throughout The Gestalt for cycle upon cycle, the elements of the plan carefully examined
by every member of the combined mentality. Dissention and uncertainty -- two long ago discarded sensations
-- are rediscovered. The potential for disaster is great, the possibility of success dangerously slim.
“There will be echoes,” they worry. “Echoes of his unrealized futures as well as those of the valid avenues that
remain open. He has already experienced one possible future.”
“He forgot his future almost immediately when he was first removed from the stream,” Hawking confirms, calling
on inherited memories of an earlier Einstein. “There was only the most instinctive awareness of the resonance
of that path. It could serve to guide him.”
“Others may detect the echoes,” they agonize over the unknown factors.
“Unlikely,” comes the dissenting view. “None of the species living aboard the leviathan are that perceptive.”
“Maintain the current status,” the conservative portions suggest. “Leave everything as it is. Perhaps we will
survive. There are futures as yet unexplored.”
“We cannot,” Hawking informs them. “He adjusts his environment. The outer rim threatens to infringe on the
plane of a wormhole. The bubble will rupture, and he will die in the transition.” Hawking is their servant, but he
fidgets, impatient because their time is limited and the debate is taking too long.
“Adjusts his environment,” repeats The Gestalt, marveling at the accomplishment of a single mortal being. “But
there should be no memory, therefore no ability to effect change. There was an unexpected permutation.”
“Yes, there was,” agrees Hawking.
“He must not be placed in the moment from when he was taken,” another portion of The Gestalt interrupts,
returning to the more pressing problem.
“If he is returned to that moment, it will serve no purpose,” agrees a different grouping from within the whole.
“Another moment must be chosen. One that embodies a different outcome for all.”
The weight of a civilization swivels ponderously to contemplate the single mentality that has managed to find
promise where they were unable to detect any future at all, and places their survival in his hands. “You have
found such a moment,” they theorize, hope returning at last.
“Yes. There is a place in the stream that has potential for success,” Hawking assures them, then issues a
caution. “There must be other alterations, however. Certain events must be adjusted.” He leads them along
the pathways he has explored, pulling aside small events, pushing others toward the middle of that path,
showing them how it can be done. The ripples are few and will die out within cycles. Their future stretches out
before them with no end in sight. They would survive.
The decision is made almost instantaneously. “Do it.”
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
