"Please, Jordan, if there is something I should be looking for, just tell me. Otherwise, I have a lot work to do trying to fix the damage done by the subject's absence."
Dr. Hall was very nearing the end of his patience. To be this close to the end and then to lose one. Subject X-Null! The very sound of that name infuriated Hall at this point. The 'X' series wasn't even one of the ones slated for the threshold exploration... how could this have happened? He should have seen this coming. That child had been becoming ever more distant ever since the sessions with Ward had been discontinued five years prior. Hall should have ordered deactivation the first time he noticed it, but X-Null had been earmarked for long-term continuance. Clearly a mistake, given the events of the last two days. Dr. Jordan continued typing, as he looked up and to the right out of the main satellite window.
"Any time now, Hall. If my calculations are correct... and I assure you, they are... we should expect reentry from the northeast quadrant."
"The northeast quadrant?" Hall demanded, not believing his ears, "But when...? That would mean it would be arriving anywhere from 15 to 25 years in the future."
"Exactly. I'd estimate sometime around April of 3011."
"So, X-Null has been gone 20 years from his perspective? God knows what sort of damage it could have sustained during that time. Jordan... are you absolutely certain?"
Jordan looked at Hall with a slight grin and a raised eyebrow. Of course he was certain. If there had been one undeniable effect of Jordan's own reintegration, it had been the retention of his unfixed mental time index. Similar to the way to partitions interacted with one another, Jordan's reintegrated mind was able to occasionally retrieve glimpses of his past and future selves as though they were through seen through his own present eyes. Though not as defined as the effect on the partitions themselves, they did make Jordan's belief, and resultant loyalty to the Project, unshakable.
"So, how long?" Hall demanded, looking again at the section of the threshold that Jordan had indicated.
"It should be any time now. If the... wait! There it is!"
Jordan pointed at a small dot on the horizon, nearly indistinguishable from the swirling morass of the threshold itself, save for a slightly unnatural glint of man-made material.
"Ah!" Hall breathed a sigh of relief as the shape drew nearer. Slowly, he was able to discern the familiar shape of the very shuttle that had brought the six of them to this satellite nearly thirty years ago and which was, at this very moment, sitting in the dock of the satellite. He spoke to Jordan, "Can you get any readings on the shuttle? How long has it been gone?"
"It looks like..." Jordan typed furiously, "... its own chronometer is registering a departure from the satellite three months prior to its relative age, which is... nine months... yes, nine months hence from our position. I'm registering... two life forms onboard... X-Null, of course, and... one moment... another partition... from the... from the 'L' series."
"That would have to be Subject L-107. I believe it works in equipment repair... that would make sense. All right, Jordan, it looks like you were right all along. I shouldn't have been surprised. Are you able to get internal audio from the shuttle?"
"It might be a bit difficult at this distance, but I can try," he continued, still typing, "I'm getting a faint signal... wait one... let me adjust for their speed... and..." Suddenly the audio in the satellite monitor room fired up:
"...the right angle. Welcome back, little brother! We have arrived back home in the Möbius engine. About a year ago for me, and about 20 years ago for you. There's the satellite, now. We should reach it in no more than about twenty minutes."
"Ha, ha!" Dr. Hall grinned like a madman. It was all happening. Thirty years in the service of this engine and it all was coming together. With the closest thing he had felt to happiness in a long time, he turned to Jordan and asked, "Is everything prepared for their arrival?"
"Yes, Dr. Hall."
"Fantastic!" Hall slapped his hand together as overhead audio continued. "Dr. Jordan… prepare to fire."
"Wonderful. So what now?"
"Now... they start attacking us."
"Fire!!!"
"What do you mean atta...?"
Ex never finished his question, however, as a sudden blast from the satellite tore a hole through the hull of the shuttle.
End of Part II
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"Quietly, sweetheart... the doctor said it would take a little while for him to recover from the anesthesia."
Ex heard the distant voice of a man echoing as he slowly began to regain consciousness. Ugh... he felt horrible. What had happened? The last thing he remembered, the shuttle had been approaching the satellite when Elliot had said...
"It's just so hard... seeing him like this..." Ex now heard another voice, this time a female. Where was he? He tried to open his eyes, but his lids felt like they weighed a ton.
"I know sweetheart, I feel the same way, but it's for his own good."
"But, he's only a chi..."
The female voice was suddenly interrupted, as Ex heard the sound of footsteps echoing across the floor. He tried again to open his eyes, but he just felt exhausted. He attempted to move his arm and, with great effort, was able to slightly raise his fingers. As this slight burst of strength again waned, his fingers fell back down upon what felt like bed sheets. He heard a third voice begin speaking.
"Bernard... Josephine... I'm sorry to have kept you waiting."
"Oh, doctor..." the female voice spoke worriedly, "...is he going to be OK?"
"Oh," the doctor spoke reassuringly, "your boy will be just fine. He should be coming around shortly. That was quite a fall he took, but there appears to be no real physical damage."
"Physical?" the original male voice spoke. "What do you mean?"
After a slight pause, the doctor said, "Perhaps the two of you should sit down."
Ex's mind began to clear, and suddenly he began to gather from context that he was in a hospital. Now it was coming back to him. Of course: the explosion! They had attacked the shuttle. He had no idea how he gotten here, but clearly he was safe for the time being. Unable to gather the strength to move, he continued to listen to the conversation going on about the other patient with an almost a voyeuristic curiosity.
"We're fine as we are, doctor," the man spoke again, "What is it?"
The doctor cleared his throat. "Your son... Leo... does he ever... exhibit any odd behaviors?"
"He's five years old doctor!" the woman replied with a hint of defensiveness "Of course he behaves oddly."
"Now... now... Josephine..." the man gently upbraided his wife, "How do you mean, doctor?"
The doctor paused as he chose his words. "When we performed the scan on Leo, we noticed something slightly anomalous."
"Oh, god!" The woman said, with a hint of rising dread.
"Now... we would like to perform some more tests, of course, but during the scan there was a noted irregularity in his brainwave patterns."
"Stop with the kid gloves, doctor," the man suddenly said sternly, "what did you see?"
The doctor paused for a moment, then began again resolutely. "All right... imagine the normal pattern of brain activity to look like a circle. A thought occurs and, in its brief life, it makes a full circuit from conception to execution to termination. Imagine that each thought we have are these small... almost mini-life cycles. The moment ends, the circle closes and the next begins. This cycle is what we would expect to see in any routine scan."
"But, in my son's?"
"Yes... well... that is the anomaly. It appears that your son's patterns are almost... how can I say this... duplicated. We see the cycle begin, but as it reaches the point where we would expect to find the termination, there is..." the doctor paused, "... a twist in the pattern. The cycle appears to fall back upon itself and retrace its journey... this time in reverse. This retro-duplication is consistent across each one of these cycles but, as it continues, each subsequent one seems to build in intensity, until it peaks."
"What does that mean?" the woman asked frantically.
"Now, please... Josephine," the man calmed his wife. "But, yes, doctor... what does it mean?"
"Well, I don't want to alarm you, but I will be frank. We feel that, if left unchecked, these periods of peak intensity could, over Leo's life, manifest themselves in potentially harmful ways."
"Such as...?" the man demanded.
"Well, that's just it. We don't know. It could range from anything as harmless as a period of intense hyperactivity... times when his mind runs faster than he is capable of processing it... to times when he runs the risk of suffering a temporary dissociation all together."
"Dissociation?"
"Yes... he could, during these periods experience a... a break with his own sense of identity. Periods characterized by paranoia... unfamiliarity with his surroundings... in severe cases, he may even imagine that he is someone else entirely. Now... all that being said... this is entirely treatable. If we are able to isolate this duplicate cycle we may be able to excise it."
"Excise it? You mean...cut it out?"
"Well... not in so many words, there would be no incisions of course, but great advances have been made electron-thought surgery..."
The man interrupted the doctor angrily, "You have got some gall, doctor. How dare you? How dare you suggest that we would even consider thought surgery on a five-year-old, for god's sake, based upon a possibility? Something that you freely admit you don't even understand?"
"I was only trying to present you with options..."
"Well, right now I'm presenting you with the option to leave my wife and I alone."
Ex listened as the doctor, clearly insulted, walked out of the room without a further word. Whoever the other patient was, Ex was pleased that his parents obviously cared so much. As he mulled this over, he began to feel the sensation returning to his body. Lord, did he feel wiped. He again heard the man speaking to his wife.
"Sweetheart, whatever this is...we will get through it together. Leo is a smart boy, you know that. Whatever these supposed 'experts' think, we haven't seen the slightest bit of evidence that there is anything wrong."
"But what if there is? Sometimes... sometimes he does behave oddly. Like all those pictures he draws. The same thing all the time. It's almost the same thing the doctor was talking about. That shape... like an eight... like those two circles."
"He's a kid, Jo... kids like to draw. Listen, it's going to be a while before he wakes up... why don't you step out and get some air? Go have a tri-garette, I'll stay here with him."
She sighed. "Yeah, that's a good idea. I need a break. It's just when I think of anything being wrong with him, I get so...I... I'm sorry. I can't... I..."
"I know, sweetie."
Ex heard the sound of a kiss, followed shortly after be the sound of a woman's footsteps leaving. He heard the man sit down. Slowly, with a laborious effort, Ex forced his eyes to open. As the room resolved itself, he focused on the man sitting in the chair. Rolling his head slightly to the right, he looked to the bed next to him to see his five year old roommate who they had been discussing so intently. As his eyes focused on the bed, he was confused to see the bed empty. What was... a sudden dread filled Ex's stomach... please, no.
"Ah, there he is!" The man sitting in the chair began to rise, "Welcome back to 2946, buddy!"
God, no... Ex needed time to sort this. but already he knew. The man stood up and began to walk to Ex's bedside.
"No, no... take it easy, Leo, don't try to talk. The medicine is still wearing off. Your mother is just downstairs." The man reached out and laid his hand on the side of Ex's hair, lightly touching it in a comforting way. Smiling, he said, "Ah, you'll be OK, buddy. It takes more than a tumble off a set of Arcturian Monkey Bars to do in a Gorcey."
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Dr. Hall and Dr. Jordan waited patiently as the electronic voice echoed through the docking bay. Hall sighed and, speaking as much to Jordan as to himself, quietly said, "30 years."
Jordan smiled. "I know... but, after this is over, it will be like the blink of an eye."
Hall looked at his companion. "You never had any doubt, did you?"
"Oh, sure, I had doubts in the beginning... back in school. How could I not? There were times when I thought he belonged in a nuthouse. But, then I saw the proof."
"Proof?"
Jordan grinned. "Come on, Huntz, don't pretend he didn't come to you, too. Why else would you spend the past 30 years in the swell of his nightmare? You wanted the same thing I did... never to die."
Hall started slightly. "You know about that, eh? So, he visited you, too?"
"Yeah... but he got to you much earlier. Probably thought that he needed to get to you at your most impressionable. For me, it wasn't until much later."
"Jesus, why didn't you ever say anything? Everything we've been through... Dell, Punsley, Halop... god, Amelita..."
"I know, I know... I should have, but this is the way he wanted it. It was important to him that we believe."
Before Hall could respond he heard the tell-tale clunk as the retrieved shuttle locked into its docking bay. The ship slowly rotated into place, revealing the hole that had been blown into the side. "Lord," Hall exclaimed surveying the damage, "what a number we did on this thing! I think this shuttle has seen its last flight."
"Well," Jordan replied ironically, tilting his head toward the earlier chronal iteration of the shuttle, still docked in pristine condition in another portal further down the bay, "or rather it will in... what do you think, about nine months or so?"
"Nine months?"
"Well, someone needs to train Subject L107," almost on cue, the landing ramp of the damaged shuttle whirred into action, lowering down to the bay floor as Elliot descended out of the shuttle, "and who better to do that than Subject L107 himself?"
Elliot advanced toward the two doctors, undoing the chin strap and releasing the helmet. He smiled at the doctors, "Well... that was close. I barely had time to get my blast shield down before the air rushed out. You don't want two damaged subjects on your hands, do you?"
Hall was not amused, "This is no time for levity, L107. We have been planning this for years. You can rest assured that our own sense of timing is a bit more precise than your own."
Jordan interrupted, "That will be all, L107. You performed admirably. Please report down to the conference room for a full debrief. Your earlier iteration will be down shortly."
Hall scowled, "I imagine the two of you will get along famously for the next few months."
"Yes..." Elliot grinned, slightly amused at what he knew lay forward, "yes, we did."
As Elliot exited the bay, Hall looked at Jordan and, growing very sober, said, "You ready?"
"Of course."
The two of them ascended the landing ramp and entered the shuttle. Approaching the control area, Hall was suddenly seized by a slight pang of guilt. Everything was playing out as Gorcey had told him but, nevertheless, the reality of his actions still were difficult to deal with. He pushed the thoughts out of his head though, certain that this would all soon end.
"Ah," Jordan called, reaching down into one of the control chairs, "here is our little friend."
"Is he...?"
"Of course he is," Jordan interrupted, as he hoisted Exnihil into his arms, holding him the way one holds a sleeping child, "Subject X-Null is dead."
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Bobby Jordan unceremoniously dropped his drunken companion out of the makeshift fireman's carry he had him in and onto his bed. They had all had a little too much SilverAle to celebrate the news about the Goldwyn Grant, but Leo had really overdone it. It fell to Jordan, as usual, to get him home - the price of living in the same part of the Institute campus. Jordan looked at his snookered friend with a mix of amusement and pity. Who would have ever thought that the most brilliant among their group of friends would also have the greatest problem with doing himself harm.
"Nah Gorsay..." Leo mumbled, still trying to sit up in bed.
"What's that, big guy?" Jordan asked, humoring his friend.
Gorcey pushed himself up into something resembling a sitting position, swaying the whole time. He looked up at Jordan and with an alcohol-thick tongue, repeated, "I'm not... Leo Gorcey."
"No?" Jordan asked, chuckling, "Who are you then, buddy?"
Gorcey sat a while, trying to put the words together, "I mean... I am Gorcey... most of the time... but there's somebody else," he tapped his temple meaningfully, "in here."
"I know, buddy, I know... but it's time to get some sleep now. They're making the announcement tomorrow... you don't want to show up with one still tied on."
"No!" Gorcey suddenly got very adamant, "You gotta listen...!"
"OK, Gorcey, OK," Jordan pulled a chair up from the desk next to the bed and sat down heavily with a sigh, "what's on your mind?"
"You guys think it's easy... doing all this stuff... that it's all a game..."
"What are you talking about, man? Nobody thinks it's easy."
"No... you do... you do... you, and Dell... and everybody..."
"I'm pretty sure Hall doesn't think anything's a game." Jordan grinned.
Gorcey got quiet and nodded. "Yeah," he continued after a couple moments, "That's because Hall knows... or he thinks he knows... he doesn't know everything."
"Know what, buddy?" Jordan said with a sigh.
Gorcey eyed his companion warily. "You're a good guy, Jordan."
"Thanks."
"No, no, I mean it... you're a good guy... I need good guys. You always treated him good."
"Who did I treat good?" Jordan looked over to the clock. Three in the morning, good god, he was never going to be able to get up tomorrow.
Gorcey tapped his temple again. "Him. Can you keep a secret, Jordan?"
"Yeah, sure."
"No. I'm serious. Can I trust you?"
"You know you can."
Gorcey's shoulders sank a little bit then, as if he suddenly made up his mind, began talking very resolutely, "When I was... a little kid... I had an accident; I fell. It wasn't bad or anything, but when they took me to the hospital they saw something in my head. They saw someone in my head."
"What the hell are you talking...."
"Just shut up and listen. This is crazy... I know you all think that anyway, but... there is another voice in my head. Sometimes he's quiet, just whispering, but other times he's so loud it's like my own mind get pushed right to the side. I don't know how he got in there, but all of this... all the school and the plan... even the Möbius engine... it's all to try to get him out."
"Jesus, Gorcey, you need to settle down. You just had too much to drink tonight. For god's sake, don't start any talk like this tomorrow, they'll pull the plug on the whole thing."
"No they won't, Bobby... the Institute wants this more than anything. Potenshial... potenshal..." Gorcey drunkenly stumbled over the name of his own project.
"Potentiality Partitioning..."
"Yeah... they want it bad. Time travel. It'll work, too. It did work. I know. That's where he came from... I know it."
"The little man in your head?"
"Don't joke! It's true. I hear what he's thinking. What's our work? We split it apart... we bring it together... split it apart... bring it together. It works on paper... and you'll see, soon, it works for real. But something happened... after it was all done. This... this... thing in my head... it's part of me from the future. It's one of those partitions... I know it. I don't know which one... which part of me... but sometimes I see the things he remembers... I see you... and Hall... a whole other life."
Jordan stared at his friend for a couple moments, then burst into laugher, "Ahhhh... you had me going for a second there. Time traveling thought monster... woooooo... you are a pistol, Gorcey!" He stood up, "Seriously, though, you have to get some sleep."
"I'm not joking..."
"OK!" Jordan suddenly erupted, "Then you're not joking! You're just utterly insane. What do you want me to tell you?"
"That you believe me."
"Listen... Leo... you're a brilliant man... half the things the team has accomplished over the past five years wouldn't have even occurred to us without you and Hall driving us, but this is our career you're playing with. If you want to throw that all away to because of some bizarre fantasy you're caught up in, then I'm out right now... and, trust me, you better not even mention this to the rest of the team. As much as they love ya, they're not going to be as patient as I'm being. I know the pressure you put on yourself, but, trust me, it's only going to get worse once we get out there. You have to keep it together."
Gorcey looked at his friend sadly. "I guess I was wrong."
Jordan sighed, "Look, get some sleep... I'll see you tomorrow. If you still need someone to talk to then, we'll continue when we're both a little more sober."
Leaving Gorcey's room, Jordan headed out into the quad to make his way back to his own building. Good god, what a night. What was he getting into, here? He buried his hands into his coat and began walking more briskly. As he approached the common area, he suddenly caught the slight aroma of tobacco from over by the benches. Looking over he saw a man sitting there in the shadows, smoking. Who on earth would be sitting out there at this hour?
"Jordan!"
Jordan started at the sound of his name. Who? He walked a bit closer, as the man stood up. Was that...?
"Gorcey!? How the hell did you get down here so quickly? I just left you five min..."
As the man approached, Jordan suddenly grew very fearful. The man looked identical to Leo... but perhaps ten years older. "Who are...?"
"Hello, Jordan," the man said, taking a drag off of a Carggite tri-gar, "So... you just heard the beginning. Interested in how it ends?"
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Jordan closed out the com channel and turned to Hall, "Dell and Halop have confirmed that the final data feeds from the exploratory probes have been loaded. The full threshold map will be available shortly."
Hall grunted, "Not the full map."
Jordan sighed, "Never give up the fight, eh, Huntz?"
"Just trying to be accurate."
"Fine... the entire curvature of the threshold... with the exception of the asymptote... will be mapped within the hour."
"And Punsley?"
"Yes, he's confirmed a successful launch by the initial iteration of Subject L107 from the docking bay. The shuttle departed at a bearing of twenty years hence to the Legion World sector to retrieve Subject X-Null from Medicus Two. At least we know that that piece worked out all right."
"Some of us know a little bit more..." Hall looked at Jordan with a raised eyebrow.
"Not this time, Hall. Anything that I've glimpsed through my mental time index has already come to pass. From this point on, we're flying blind."
"Faith does tend to be that."
Jordan smiled. "Did you just make a joke?"
Hall grinned wryly. The past nine months had given him quite a bit to be pleased with. All the years he had spent on this satellite, a prisoner to his own doubts, were finally coming to fruition. Gorcey, as mad as he had been, had been right.
It had been twenty-two years since the threshold had been created, and twenty since Gorcey had leapt into the abyss, partitioning himself into a nigh endless series of chronal duplicates. In the end, though, it was the leap that was needed. All the partitions had returned from the threshold unscathed, and through the combination of Amelita's psychological screenings to determine eligibilty for long term continuance, and the contextual leads that Gorcey himself had provided, they had been able to successfully identify the errant partition that needed to be excised.
Subject X-Null... Hall mused on the almost ironic designation. How strange that the name of the piece of Gorcey's timeline that had unbalanced him so should contain both the circle and the cross, the same shapes that informed both the design of the Möbius engine and the curvature of threshold itself.
Hall shook these thoughts away. Now was not the time for metaphysical musings. It had worked, that was enough. It was true that Hall felt that the final excision of X-Null needn't have been so convoluted - once he was identified and retrieved, he could have simply been deactivated without the added theatrics of the shuttle attack - but this was the point that Gorcey had been insistent upon prior to his partitioning: the errant partition had to be eliminated in a violent fashion.
Well, Hall thought, he had followed his old friend this far, to question at this point would be foolish. "All right, Jordan," Hall spoke, "It looks like all the pieces are in place... you ready to put this bastard back together?"
"I thought you'd never ask."
Jordan typed the initiation sequence into the control panel of the Möbius engine, and it began to whirr into action.
"All right," Jordan began, "deactivation of remaining active partitions underway... goodbye, Elliot."
"Please, Jordan..."
"Sorry... OK...deactivation complete... reintegration sequence commencing... Series A complete... B complete... C... D..."
Hall felt the anticipation rising in his chest. Gorcey's return, coupled with the full map of the threshold, meant the nightmare was over. They had done it.
"E... F... G..."
Thinking of the few remaining tasks ahead, he knew that everything from this point would be child's play. Amelita... the return to 2969... the restoration of Halop, Punsley, and Dell... the delivery of the completed engine back to the institute... all just rewards for everything they had sacrificed.
"H... I... J... K... L... M... N... O... P..."
And then... then, after all the practical details had been put to bed... the true reward. The great promise that he had been pursuing since the first moment in his childhood: Immortality.
"Q... R... S... T... U... V..."
Hall shook off his reverie. This next sequence was critical. No integration had ever been successful when a partition had been damaged. To attempt one with a partition missing entirely was theoretically impossible. But Gorcey had taught him that "impossible" was only a catchword for fear. It was possible, Gorcey had said, if one of those partitions shouldn't be there in the first place. It was just a matter of identifying the rogue piece.
"W complete... hold one... hold... yes!!! X!!! It held... Hall, Series X held!!!"
Hall slapped Jordan on the back, letting loose a laugh that was a combination of both jubilation and immense relief. The Möbius engine slowly whirred down as an electronic voice issued forth from the control panel, saying, "Reintegration successful."
"All right," Hall said, grounding himself back in the work ahead, "let's get him out of there and down to Medical. The sooner we get him reoriented, the better." They walked over to the integration chamber of the engine and releasing the locking clasps, raised the lid of the chamber. There, looking exactly as he had twenty years prior, was Leo Gorcey.
"Uhhh..." Leo groaned, opening his eyes, "When am I?"
Hall laughed. "Welcome back, buddy."
Gorcey looked up at Hall and Jordan. "Jesus... you guys look so old. How long did it take? Did it work?"
"One thing at a time, Gorcey," Hall said, extending his hand to Gorcey to help him out of the chamber. "Yes, it worked. The threshold map is compiling right now. We took it as far into the Asymptote as we could... we got a phenomenal amount of data."
"How long?" Gorcey propped himself up, swinging his legs to the side of the chamber.
"Twenty years."
"Twenty years... uhh..." Gorcey put his hand to his head.
"Take it easy, Gorcey," Jordan said, helping to stand him up, "You're going to be a bit wobbly for a bit... trust me. I went through the same thing during my restoration."
"No... it's not that," Gorcey said, still rubbing his head, "it's him. You got him. It's not in my head anymore... I'm free... I... uhhh..."
"Easy does it... there will be time for all that." Hall was beginning to get a bit concerned as Gorcey stumbled.
"No... uhhh..." Gorcey put the palms of his hands against his eyes, "Uhhhh.... god... my head... where is Amelita?"
Hall looked at Jordan with concern. Jordan returned the glance and, struggling to hold the swaying Gorcey said, "Don't worry, she'll be down to see you in a bit. C'mon... let's get you down to Medi..."
"No! I... ahhhh... what's wrong? I.... ahhhhh!!"
"Hold him, Jordan!"
"I'm trying! Easy...!"
"Noooooo!" Gorcey shouted, as his body suddenly collapsed, the weight forcing Hall and Jordan to lower him to the floor.
"What is the matter with him?" Hall demanded, "The trauma of reintegration shouldn't be this intense."
"I don't know... I..." Jordan placed a handheld mediscan against Gorcey's neck and, looking at the reading, suddenly looked at Hall in horror.
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"Unable are the loved to die For love is immortality Nay, it is deity -
Unable they that love - to die For love reforms vitality Into divinity"
Amelita sat on her bed, again reading the now yellowed letter, folded and unfolded so many times over the past fifteen years that it was beginning to tear at the creases. She had thought about transcanning it into holo-format but, somehow, the tangibility of the paper seemed to give it a greater weight. Small things like this were so typical of Leo. It was that sentimental side which only she had known, that she missed so much. Feeling the tears welling up again, she pushed the thought out of her head. She continued reading.
Isn't it funny the things we remember in our moments of crises?
I heard that poem perhaps once in my life, during some second millennium literature class I had to take at the Institute. Some crazy idea about balancing the curriculum to ensure that our technical educations were tempered with an element of spirituality. As if those who felt the draw to the temporal sciences weren't already gazing into the eye of God. But as I sit here now, just hours away from entering into the engine, these are the words that come back to me.
I know you think I'm mad... that somehow this work has overcome me and I've forgotten what is truly important. That - more than anything else could be - is my greatest regret. I fear that in pursuing what I believe is our only hope to be together, I may driven us permanently apart. I pray that I'm wrong.
Amelita, these past five years have been the happiest in my life. I never thought I would know peace like I found with you. Ever since my childhood accident, since I lost the sole proprietorship of my mind, I've known nothing but fear. How long could I hold on? What would he do during the times when he took control? What if, during one of those times, he didn't let go... and I was lost forever. These were the things that haunted me every day.
I know it's impossible for anyone to imagine what it must be like... to have thoughts entering your mind that you know are not your own. Sometimes I wonder whether even Möbius itself is truly my idea. My parents told me that as a child I would always draw the shape - the two circles that merged together at a cross point, but ever since I felt him enter my head, it's grown so much more intense. I've had that same image pounding in me, almost like a second heartbeat... O... X... O... X... O... X. It's the daily rhythm of my life.
It wasn't until I met Huntz Hall that I knew. The moment I saw his face I was seized by déjà vu. I had seen him before, or rather, that other part of me had seen him. When I met Jordan, it all but confirmed it. Whatever was in my head had come from the future. It was then when I conceived of the idea of Potentiality Partitioning. We are, all of us, component beings, our totality only defined the sum of each of our moments. If I could find that piece... find that one moment in my life that didn't belong... I could cut it out and finally be my own person again.
It was this, and this alone, that drove me. It was a novel theory, to be certain, one that Hall himself had hit upon independently... though his own motives were far from my own. He showed me the practical aspect - that if the same concept were applied to space itself, as opposed to a single individual - hypothetically, the secret to time travel could be unlocked. It was this that allowed us to gain the support of the Institute for this work and... well... you know all the rest.
I'm sorry that I'm dwelling on all of this again... I know you must wish that you never had to hear another word about this work again, but if ever I needed you, Amelita, it is now. I said before that ever since you came here I have felt peace. I can't begin to overstate how important that's been. You have calmed the storm in my head... allowed me to make the necessary advances that I never could have done without you. You stood by me when we erected the threshold... I know what a leap of faith that must have been, but you did it - I have to believe - because of love.
When I saw the horror in your face today, though, when you found out about the others... about how we had culled Halop, Punsley, and Dell... I feared that I had lost that love forever. You said that you wanted to leave the satellite, to go back. I beg of you, Amelita... please do not. I know that somewhere within you is that same love you used to feel. Please foster that for just a short time longer. I am putting myself through the partitioning process to map the threshold, certainly, but that is only the secondary goal. First and foremost, it is imperative that the errant partition be identified. Hall and Jordan can attempt this, of course, but I feel certain that you, more than either of them, have the capacity to truly know.
I know I have no right to ask this of you, that it may seem just so much more of the same spiral of madness that you've felt already, but if there is any part of you that still loves me, please, stay for this last task. Once it is found, Hall will know what to do. After that... after I am reintegrated... I will understand if it is over between us, but I hope against hope that that won't be the case...that the words of that poem will still be true more than a thousand years after they were written, and that love truly is immortal.
Yours forever, Leo
Amelita finished reading the letter, and let it tip back in her hand. Yes... the weight of tangibility. "Oh, Leo..." she said softly to herself, "I'm sorry, my love... but after all this time, it's just grown too heavy." She folded the letter again, and with an air of finality, shoved it firmly back into its envelope.
She reached across to her communicator and depressed the button. "Hall, come in."
"Hall, here," his voice came across, slightly slurred. It was clear he had been drinking.
"I'm made up my mind... I'll do it."
There was a long pause before Hall spoke again, but when he finally did it was with an uncharacteristic tenderness, "Amelita... I... I might have spoken too rashly earlier today... it's not the only w..."
"No!" she interrupted, adamantly, "My mind is made up."
"All... all right then... I will have Jordan make the necessary preparations."
"Hall... Huntz... will it... will it hurt?"
"Not at all. Everything we've seen in Halop, Dell and Punsley indicate they have no knowledge whatsoever that they were ever culled. It will be as though you are just waking up on the last day we take you back to. So... shall I tell Jordan you want the full fifteen years removed?"
"No... I want it to be twenty. To the day of my arrival. I don't want to have ever met him."
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Jordan looked at Hall across the gurney for a sign that he accepted it.
"Hit him again."
"Hall, this is pointle…"
"I said hit him again!"
Jordan sighed and changed the paddles again. "Clear!" He placed them again on Gorcey’s chest, as the chronal energy pumped into the body, violently raising off the gurney. Jordan again placed the mediscan to Gorcey’s neck. He shook his head. "Nothing, Hall."
"Again."
"No." Jordan hooked the paddles back onto the cart. "It’s over."
"It can’t be over."
"It is! We’ve been pumping him with chronal energy for the past two hours, Hall. He’s mainlined directly into the god damned Möbius engine! He is not coming back!"
"It doesn’t make any sense!" Suddenly enraged, Hall kicked the crash cart and stared at Gorcey’s lifeless body. Speaking as much to himself as to the absent Gorcey, he seethed, "What am I missing?"
"Listen, Hall..." Jordan pulled his gloves off, "Nobody believed in him more than I did... trust me. I believed in him so much that I volunteered to be partitioned. Believed in him so much that I was willing to sacrifice thirty years of my life to his cause. To stand by without question as we culled our own colleagues... our friends, for god sakes. To watch as the woman he supposedly loved wasted away until she couldn't take it anymore. But this," he gestured toward the body, "this is it. He's not coming back. He's gone. And what's more... he was wrong."
Hall shook his head. "I'm sorry... I can't accept that. When was he ever wrong? No matter how far out there he was, he knew what was happening. He was right about the partitions having to stay pristine; he was right about the threshold; he was right about the errant subject... why would he be wrong about this."
"I don't know... but he was."
"And what about the 'visits'? He came to me when I was a child... pushed me into this life. He came to you at the Institute... how could any of that happened if he died before he even went back?"
"Hall... it's all speculation... we don't even know for certain that it was him. I mean, how many partitions have we sent into the threshold over the past twenty years? For all we know, one of them could have taken a side trip before their probe returned."
"No... it doesn't make any sense."
"Sense or not, it's over. We have the map now. We know exactly how to take it back to before the threshold was erected. It's time to put an end to this."
"Oh... that's just great, Jordan. Let's just go back to 2969 and just turn this whole thing over to the Institute, and, oh... by the way, sirs... just ignore the fact that we're 22 years older than we are supposed to be. Ignore the fact that one member of the team is dead, three are zombies, and the psychologist you assigned doesn't remember the last three years. Get a grip, Jordan... you are supposed to be the sensible one."
"Fine... then what do you suggest?
He walked to the window of the Medical bay and quietly murmured, "I just.. don't know."
Hall stared out into the abyss as he heard Jordan beginning to close up the equipment behind him. How could this have happened? He watched the sickening shape of the threshold swirling around them. The human mind wasn't meant to conceive of motion in such a fashion. The forward swirl of space in one direction overlapped by its own movement backward had a nauseating effect. The mind literally had to choose a single direction to follow, to the exclusion of the other, in order to not be overwhelmed. As the conflicting motions drew into one other they descended backward into a cross point that extended backward, seemingly into infinity. It was called an asymptote, a point where the two curves drew ever closer to one another, but could never reach in any terms that the human mind could understand. They had mapped out nearly the entire threshold, certainly enough to cover any reasonable expectation of time travel to within a femtosecond, but to map that cross point was an impossibility. The two lines would remain ever apart, never crossing, never forming an...
"My God!"
Jordan paused in his clean up, 'What now, Hall?"
"The subject.... the... the... X-Null!" Hall excitedly ran over to the crash cart, flipping it back on. "Get the body out of cryo... that's it!"
"That's what?"
"No time to explain... I need the subject down here immedia..."
"Hall! Calm down! I'm not doing anything until you tell me what's going on."
"Jordan..." Hall said to his colleague with a wild look in his eyes, "...why did Gorcey go mad?"
"Why? He said he had a piece of his mind that didn't belong... that one of the partitions had gone..."
"...had gone back in time and supplanted that piece of his mind," Hall hurriedly interrupted, "We... and Gorcey himself... made the assumption that since it was X-Null, that point of entry was after his accident. That the violent trauma of the subject's death sent his mind backward to merge with Gorcey at the age of five... driving him mad and setting him on a course to partition himself to find that piece and get rid of it."
"Right... basically closing the loop..."
"But what if it's not a loop?"
"Hall... it's been a difficult day... I think you need to..."
"No... listen..." He pulled out his Omnicom and drew a vertical line with his stylus, "Say this is Gorcey's life... from birth to death..."
"OK..."
Hall drew a horizontal line across it perpendicularly, "And this is the point when he was partitioned... an infinite number of points drawn out. Now all of them are later merged back in... all but one." He drew a point on the horizontal line. "That one continues on a different path until its own death." He drew a curved line from the point, drawing up to an asymptote. "Both Gorcey and Ex's lines were heading to the same point... death... but they never merged."
"Right... that was the whole point."
"No... no, it wasn't. The errant piece of Gorcey's mind manifested when he was five... that is true... that's why he viewed it as an invasion... but he was already drawing the Möbius before that. I think... I think X-Null was already there when the accident happened. He had been since before Gorcey was born. God, it's so simple, really! What did Gorcey always say about death... what did he insist we tell the partitions?'
"There is no death."
"That wasn't just a platitude, Jordan! I think on some level Gorcey intrinsically knew that. He was living proof. Subject X-Null didn't die, he overlapped Gorcey before he was even born. But he didn't do it by going back in time... he did it by going forward!"
Jordan stared at Hall, mouth agape, mulling it over. "Jesus, Hall... I think... I think you're right!"
Hall smiled. "I think we can still save him, Jordan... I think we can save us all."
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Dr. Gabriel Dell looked over the shoulder of the new intern at the historical chronomap. This was his favorite question to pose each semester to recently graduated chrono-kymatology students. He knew full well that these anomalies were not part of the curriculum, so he liked to use it as a segue to introduce the practical aspects of time curvature monitoring.
"That would be a..." Thomas paused, sensing that this was a trick question, "...a retrograde eddy?"
"An eddy? That size? It spans from 2961 to 2991. When have you ever seen a thirty year long eddy, Mr. Lanese?" Dell clucked his tongue in mock disapproval. "What are they teaching at the Institute these days?"
"Yeah... no... I'm sorry. You're right... it looks like an eddy... it has a retrograde curvature, but it looks..." Thomas squinted, "..flatter? Like it collapsed?"
"That... Mr. Lanese... is what is referred to as a 'Notional Tangent'. It's a chronal branch that existed at one point, but, as you say, later collapsed on itself. They come into existence from time to time, but are really nothing more than academic curiosities."
"Wait... what do you mean, 'notional'? Do you mean to say that they are self enclosed... they contain their own parallel sequences?"
Dell scoffed. "Certainly not. What... do you think there are just parallel timelines spinning around out there? No, these chronal 'scars' were themselves, at one time, the main branch but... for whatever reason... they ceased to be. They have no longer have any real existence, so we tend to just ignore them, apart from accounting for their duration when mapping."
"How many are there?'
"Oh... too many to count. They've been more frequent in the last couple of years. The last one was... let's see..." Dell typed in a more recent range as the map shifted, "...a couple months in 3009, centered around that business with Phineas B. Fuddle."
"Oh! When he fought the LMB."
"Yes... quite. The LMB. Trust me, son, if you stay in this field for any length of time you'll find that group to be nothing but a headache."
"What do you mean? The LMB kicks nass."
"I'll excuse your language, Mr. Lanese, and instead ask you what you think of this." Dell typed into the monitor, calling up a chronoscope image of 4500 years prior.
"Ha! Is that...?"
"The crew of the Argo, yes. You'll find that a great deal of Terran legends have their basis in historical fact. There you have Jason... there is Castor... his twin Pollux... that large fellow is Heracles... and who are those three?" he pointed, as Thomas squinted.
"Whoa. That's Cobalt Kid... and... Eryk Davis Ester! Wait... in the water... that's Shark Lad!"
"Exactly. These are the types of shenanigans we have to put up with all the time with that group. The men coming out of the Institute have toiled endlessly for nearly a century, to no avail, to provide an accessible means of time travel, and these... "heroes"... just fall over backward into it all the time. Don't even get me started on the Yellow Kid and his vortex."
"So these Notional Tangents, then... are they because of them?"
"Oh, no, no. They've existed far longer than that. I just cited that Phineas one because it was so recent."
"And the events that happened originally... what happens to them?"
Dell sat down. "You're really putting far too much thought into this. I was just using the tangents as an example of the type of thing that you might encounter in the real world. Nothing happens to the events. They just never happened."
"But you said they did happen originally."
"You're getting caught up in circular thinking, Mr. Lanese. Sometimes events happen that the continuum... for lack of a better term, 'knows,' aren't correct. Rather than course-correcting those events wind up collapsing under their own falsehood. To use that Phineas nonsense, for example, who knows what could have happened then. You seem fond of the LMB, so how about a world where the Yellow Kid was still a villain? Or Jailbait Lass was a librarian? Or Shark Lad was... oh, I don't know... a Naked Mole Rat."
Thomas laughed.
"Exactly. The time continuum won't support absurdities of that magnitude, so whatever events would have happened in these tangents just... didn't."
"But that first one you showed me... thirty years. That's a long time for something that didn't happen to... happen."
"Yes... well... that was the heyday of the Institute. They were trying everything under the sun back then to bring about the promise of time travel. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that quite a few of those things went slightly awry. But, I wouldn't know. I spent the 2960's in one of the projects that never really went anywhere."
"You were on an Institute team?"
"You find that so hard to believe?" Dell grinned. "I wasn't always a stodgy old curvature monitor, you know. Oh, yes. I was part of Huntz Hall's team back in 2961. 'Project Möbius', we were called. Hall won the Goldwyn Grant that year for his work in Potentiality Partitioning... don't laugh, that was very big in the 60's. Anyway, we spent five years or so in an Institute sponsored satellite trying to make it work. It was me and Hall, and Bernard Punsley, and Billy Halop, and... uh... Bobby Jordan. Yeah... we had a lot of good ideas back then, but, I don't know... we just didn't have that core spark of genius that those things need to take off. Ah, well..."
"Are you OK, Dr. Dell."
"Oh... yes. Sorry, I just get a bit wistful when I think about those old guys. Hmph. They're all gone now. Hall was the last one to die... back in 2991. Oh, well... I say that, but actually there was a sixth member of the team back in school, but he never really had his heart in it. He passed on the chance to join us up there. What was that fellow's name?" Dell started typing into the monitor to see if he could pull up an old class picture. "Got married... I think... to some Psychology student... Lita or something... what was his name?" The monitor lit up with an image of the class of 2961. "Ah... of course... Leo Gorcey! Really nice guy... but sort of, hmmm... calm... I guess. A little too traditional to ever make it in Temporal Studies. Well... it's not for everyone, you know."
"That guy looks familiar."
"Who? Gorcey? I wouldn't think so. That image is from 50 years ago. He'd be at least 70 years old by now if he's even still alive."
"Oh, wait... you know what I'm thinking? He totally looks like this Tobacco dealer I met in shop on Legion World. It's actually sort of uncanny."
"Hmph. I wouldn't know. As I say, I'm not very fond of that whole planet. Too many superheroes. What's the fellow's name?"
"Oh, I forget. I've only been in his shop a couple of times, but he has the same sort of look as your old buddy. Sort of a smaller guy... like 5'6'' or so, but... actually, now that I look at the picture, he's probably about ten years older than your friend was in that picture."
"Hmmm... well... enough reminiscing for one day, I think. There is work to be done, Mr. Lanese... what say we get you mapping?"
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The tide swelled forward in red shift systole then receded backward into the blue diastole. The pulse was steady, a calming rhythmic voice unmoved by the storm all around. Through it all, the probe sailed quietly through space - an ever distancing dot in the black expanse.
x… o… x… o… x… o… x… o… x… o… x… o… x…
The heartbeat increased steadily, surrounding the craft and penetrating to the consciousness held within. He could feel it... the journey was almost complete.
How long had it been? Had it been scant moments ago, or eons measured on a cosmic scale? As the probe continued its descent into the infinite stretch of the threshold's asymptote, any human reckoning ceased to have relevance. In this expanse, if he wished, he could choose any moment of the sequence and fix it as the focus around which all others revolved. The only moment he wished to consider, however, was the moment when they had finally found him... the moment that set him on this course and would soon spell his freedom. He thought back.
************
"Can you hear me?" Huntz Hall asked, pushing back the feeling of morbidity that seized him as he looked at the lifeless bodies of Ex and Gorcey, now both hardwired together directly to the core of the Möbius engine.
"I can hear you, Huntz Hall," he responded, his voice an odd electronic thing, not so much spoken as willed through the makeshift sound system that Hall and Jordan had routed through the engine's monitor.
"Good. That's good. Jordan, adjust the frequency, please, I'm getting quite a bit of interference." Jordan typed into the monitor as Hall again addressed him, "What... what shall we call you?"
He no longer had any true name, and any that he may have had at one time had long since been lost. "You may call me as he called himself, for I, too, have come from nothing."
"Ah," Hall said. "Exnihil, then. That will make things a bit easier."
"Make no mistake, Huntz Hall," he spoke, "I choose this name not for the designation 'X-Null' that you and colleagues bestowed upon the original partition, but in spite of it, as it is the name to which he gave honor following his departure."
"Yes..." Hall said, leading into the task at hand, "But his departure was yours, as well, was it not?"
"Do not presume to speak on matters of which you have but only the slightest understanding."
"Then help me to understand. It is my belief that you are the consciousness that inhabited the mind of Leo Gorcey - the voice that drove him to distraction, and what caused him to wish to undergo his partitioning. Even in death you remain, an inexorable presence in Gorcey's very cells... and those of X-Null. Is this not true?"
"You speak as though events are a mere linear progression. The fact that you realize that I remain indicates that you know this is not the case. Speak freely of what you believe."
"All right, fine." Hall cleared his throat and, getting a nod from Jordan, began, "I think... I believe... that at one time... in a timeline that may no longer even exist... Gorcey enacted the events of Project Möbius for the first time. Something must have gone wrong, because his consciousness was projected forward in time, beyond the point of his own death. I don't begin to understand how, but I believe that the point of termination and the point of initiation... Gorcey's birth... are one and the same. They are somehow connected by a tangential asymptote. I believe that rogue consciousness was overlaid in Gorcey's mind at birth, but that he didn't become aware of it until he was five years old. It was that awareness that caused him - in the newly created timeline - to become obsessed with the elimination of that chronal partition - the one corresponding to that age... Subject X-Null."
"You believe a great deal, Huntz Hall."
"It has taken a long time, trust me."
"But there is more that you believe, is there not?"
"Yes... I believe that Gorcey made good on his plan, but that his logic was flawed. He overlooked the fact that the partitions' minds had a tendency to bleed into one another. I think that every partition that was created in this new timeline had the potential... and indeed, the likelihood... to suffer the same ailment that Gorcey himself had suffered. When X-Null was killed, and when his consciousness was projected forward, it was not merely his own, but his... complete with his own rogue element. When Gorcey was born again in what would now be a third timeline, his consciousness would have had a two-fold overlay."
"You have a keen understanding, but what you describe is merely the origin of the events."
"Yes... yes, I imagined so. I could see no reason, once the cycle began, for it ever to have ended. Each time Gorcey lived his life to point of partitioning... each time a new X-Null was created... each time Gorcey's consciousness was overlaid... a new timeline was initiated and the level of abstraction increased. It just got deeper and deeper until..."
"Until the infinite was achieved."
"So is that what you are, then, 'Exnihil'? Are you a recursive consciousness... an ouroboros?"
"What I am, Huntz Hall..." he spoke with what both Hall and Jordan immediately perceived to be a tinge of emotion, impossibly coming through the electronic voice, "...is a prisoner."
At that word, despite the fact that to lose his temper might endanger what he hoped to achieve, Hall seethed. "A prisoner? How dare you speak to us of imprisonment? Whatever you are now, at some level... you were initially Leo Gorcey. Whatever you became, it was, nevertheless, of your own doing. Can you say the same about me? Or Jordan? Or the other members of our team who were culled through your actions? Or Amelita? You drew all of us into this mad cycle... made us prisoners."
"It was your own choice to be here, Huntz Hall."
"You pushed me to come! Pushed all of us. You... or one of your past incarnations... came to me as a child and told me that I had to protect him. That if I did, I would live forever."
"I did not say you would live forever. I said that you would never die. You have not. Just as I exist in infinite recursion, so, too, do all who exist within the threshold. Each new timeline created since the first still exists in its entirety... within parallel tracks of this space. As Gorcey himself was partitioned so, too, in a sense, is the entirety of the Möbius space."
Hall made a short, slightly insane sound that vaguely resembled a laugh. Jordan looked at him with concern, but saw that it was just a moment of release. "That... that is so... twisted that it's nearly genius." Hall sighed. "You have wasted my life, Exnihil... excuse me... wasted my lives... on nothing more than a semantic twist. Well... no longer. I owe you nothing, Ex... or Gorcey... or whoever you might be, but... nevertheless... I am going to offer you your freedom."
"That, I fear, is not yours to offer. Had there been an escape from this cycle, it surely would have presented itself within one of the nigh infinite iterations that have preceded yours."
"Yeah... well... first time for everything. It may have taken an infinite amount of time from your perspective, and an infinite amount of Halls to play your game... but this Hall just figured out how to cheat. One of the things that Gorcey... our Gorcey... said was that the unless all the partitions remained pristine, reintegration was an impossibility. Any damage would result in the subject's death. He thought he was exempt from that rule, but...well... you see how well that worked out for him. You claim that all of Möbius space is nothing more than a timeline that has itself been partitioned? Well... I'm about to reintegrate them... but I'm going to ensure that there's a piece missing. This time around... Exnihil... I'm going to help you escape."
************
The probe continued its silent journey, now long past any external point of reference.
Within, as the core of the Möbius engine continued to pulse with an ever increasing power, the consciousness decided it would be only fitting that these last moments should be shared on a physical level. Projecting his thoughts outward through each cell of the two bodies, Leo Gorcey and X-Null opened their eyes.
What a novel experience, observing the child through the eyes of the man while at the same time observing the man through the eyes of the child. How interesting that the residual patterns contained on each of their minds should be so similar in the end. He thought of the shared perspectives they had felt toward all who had played a part in this grand drama. He thought of the way they had each viewed Jordan and Hall - the two who had believed; one with the unshakeable faith who, at the last moment, had wavered; and one who had struggled throughout but, in the last moment, had made the leap. He thought of how each of them had carried him throughout, and how each of them had held him at the last. He thought of the love each had felt toward Amelita, the beautiful woman who had stood beside him, filling his life with both compassion and adversity, but above it all, filling it with love. If only he had walked that middle path, they could have survived it all together. Balance was there before him, but it would be he who left, again and again.
The Möbius core pulsed more and more strongly, as the probe traveled deeper into the asymptote. Time and distance elongated impossibly, as the line between the two began to blend. How far had he gone... how long had he travelled? He had been certain that there had been times other than now, but as the probe continued, they seemed all as one.
He sat on the bench in the Institute common area, enjoying the night. He watched as the young student briskly approached, so full of the certainty of youth. He smiled, and called out to the young man.
He stood in the playground at the side of the sandbox and watched the little boy drawing in the sand. So intelligent, this one... but so unsure. Putting on an authoritative stance, he cleared his throat and spoke to the boy.
He looked at the beautiful woman before him, and the tumult in his mind drew away.
The probe continued deeper, as all of these moments - all of the mercy, and all of the severity, and all of the love - drew into the eternal now. The man looked at the child with a sense of growing serenity as the child looked back in kind.
As the probe moved ever outward into the asymptote, he felt the world beginning to unfold before him, all of the infinite potential paths it could take - one more likely than the others, even now beginning to coalesce. He held the thought of that world tightly as the engine pulsed more intensely.
He watched in his mind's eye as Leo Gorcey was born anew, his mind finally free of the burden of his madness. He watched as he grew into a young man, meeting Huntz Hall - but never feeling the pull that he did toward space and time. He watched as Hall, Jordan and the Institute team set off again to the stars to begin the work which, this time, would bear no fruit. He watched as Gorcey, left behind, found solace in the heart of a woman who believed in him, and who always would. He watched their life unfold together, first joined in marriage... then in flesh, as they bore forth a son. He watched that son as he discovered a birthright - an inborn power to tap temporal worlds that no longer existed, drawing on their energy... seemingly out of nothing. He watched as Leo and Amelita grew old, finally passing together into the great beyond, their love never wavering throughout. And he watched as their son, taking on the only name that he could, finally embraced his destiny... standing beside the heroes of Legion World as their equal, his deeds passing into legend as the hero, "Exnihil".
Yes... this was the world to come... the world that lay beyond the end of his journey.
He blinked. As the eyelids of both Gorcey and X-Null closed, it was as though existence itself collapsed into blackness for a moment. He knew... he was almost there and it was time to say goodbye. Calmly, with no regret, the man extended his right hand toward the child who, almost as a miniature mirrored reflection, extended his left. Their two hands touched, and together reached out toward the Möbius core, its pulsation so rapid now as to be a sustained unbroken tone.
Smiling as they lay their hands upon it, he felt all that now was... and all that had been... draw into the singular cross point. Holding his last thought, "There is no death," deeply in his mind, he closed his eyes for the final time, and let the world that he had created come to an end.
The End
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