Halcyon System 3 Chapter Twenty-Nine

I know now that it couldn’t have been okay.

But it took a long time—and literally reliving it—to realize that truth.

To get there, I had to struggle for a decade with what it was. I had to hold the maroon sun, the buzzing, electric sound and smell, and the monsters that killed Mom in my mind, because no one else would let me share that pain with them. I had to deal with it every time I tried to convince Alice that I wasn’t lying, every time the principal or counselors or Doctor Smith—long before he became a director, he was my therapist, remember?—told me I was making things up.

Then I had to find all the ways to stop it, only to realize that I, as I am now, can’t. It’s impossible.

The past is the past. It’s the Truth. And no matter how much Mr. Williams or the other history teachers suck at teaching history, the past doesn’t lie.

It’s almost as truthful as math.

◄▼►

Victoria, British Columbia - April 13, 2033, 4:23 PM

- - - - -

Dinner was chicken nuggets, frozen veggies, and prunes.

Claire was being squirmy in Alice’s lap, but she didn’t mind. The bunk bed was warm, and Miss Marvelous the Elephant Princess was tucked in her arm, right next to her little sister. Claire liked to pretend that Miss Marvelous was reading along with her, even though Alice did all the work.

The book tonight was Green Eggs and Ham.

Dad was looking for a job with a single bottle of beer to accompany him. Just one.

And Mom…

Mom was alive.

This couldn’t be real. But it had to be. The last ten years of Alice’s life had been a nightmare. She’d had to be both mom and dad for Claire. Someone had had to do it, and even though she was eight, then nine, then ten, she’d been the only one who could. Dad sure wasn’t going to do it.

But…Mom was in the kitchen, singing. Her accent was charming. Alice wished she could sound like that when she sang. She was accompanying the radio.

Alice reached for her aug to figure out what song it was, but the aural and optic machines she’d gotten so used to were gone. Whatever…wherever…she and Claire were, it was a perfect copy of…of…

Of what?

What was so important about this night? It was just any other night before the car crash…no…before what Claire had told her about Mom’s death. The car crash was someone else’s lie.

“Don’t do anything,” Claire said from her lap. “Just keep reading. There’s nothing we can do to change what’s going to happen, and we have to leave before it happens, anyway. Four minutes, eighteen seconds.”

A bad feeling grew in Alice’s chest. A tightness, like a heart attack—or like whenever they lost a soccer game. And just like that, she knew. Everything Claire had told her about Mom’s death…all of it. It had just been words. Alice had wanted to believe it. Or at least, she’d thought she did. But when it came down to it, the lie she’d been told was too firmly rooted. It had been the lie she’d built all her personas on. She was the girl with the tragic past who overcame that to be Valedictorian and soccer star. The caretaker for her ungrateful sister. Whatever she needed to be, she was.

And it all stemmed from this one night, and the things that had happened in it.

Mom shouldn’t have been home. She shouldn’t have been in the kitchen, singing some song with a slight Quebecois accent. If the timeline that she knew was correct was, in fact, correct, Mom should have been driving home with a store-bought rotisserie chicken and a tub of mashed potatoes. Instead, she was cooking chicken nuggets, frozen veggies, and prunes.

Green Eggs and Ham slammed shut.

“What are you doing? We have to get going soon,” Claire asked, glaring up at her. Her tiny fists balled, but Alice wasn’t scared. A four-year-old couldn’t hurt her. She was eight in this reality. That was old enough to make a difference. Old enough to change things.

Old enough to make sure everything was okay.

◄▼►

As Alice stood up, her little sister stared and shook her head. She leaned in close. “Alice, I’ve been here. I’ve tried everything I could. You think this is bad for you? I had ten years of thinking about this, and when I got my chance, I couldn’t change anything. You won’t be able to, either.”  Her fists were still balled, like she was ready to fight.

Maybe she was. Alice hesitated for a second. Just for one second. What if Claire was right? She’d been right about the rest of it, after all. What if…no. No. Alice wasn’t Claire. She could fix this. “I don’t care. This isn’t what was supposed to happen. I’m going to fix it.”

“You’ve already messed everything up,” Claire yelled. Her hands shot out in an out-of-control shove. Alice grabbed her wrist before she could get hit in the face, and Claire flailed wildly—and helplessly. Then she smiled. “I know something you don’t know.”

“What?”

“We can try this as many times as we have to, and I’m Mom’s favorite.”

Before she could figure out what Claire meant, the little girl started crying. Loudly. Mom’s singing stopped a second later, and before Alice could do anything to stop Claire, Mom was there. “What’s going on?”

It was pretty obvious. Claire’s wrist was bent at a funny angle—not enough to be broken or anything, but enough to hurt a kindergärtner. Green Eggs and Ham was on the floor, upside down and open, and Alice had stepped on it. The spine was bent. And Claire, of course, was crying.

Alice tried to protest. Then she tried to explain what was about to happen. But Mom only rolled her eyes and sent her to her room. Claire got to hang out in the kitchen with Mom as she finished up the chicken nuggets.

That was some bullshit.

She sat on her bed—the top bunk, of course—and stewed. And plotted. Or at least, she tried to, but it was only a couple of minutes until dinner.

She ignored the strange sound behind her. Then it was gone, and Alice went back to plotting until she got called for dinner.

Mom was the prettiest person Alice had ever seen. Blonde hair that looked like gold, eyes like gemstones, and a bright smile. Usually, it reached her eyes, but when she smiled at Alice, it was mixed with disappointment.

The dino-nuggets were okay. Alice had to improvise her way through the questions about school. She didn’t really want to talk about it; what was her friend Candy doing at seven, anyway? She wanted to be a wallflower tonight, but since she never was, Mom and Dad weren’t having it.

Claire, of course, was both smug and quiet. Alice had no idea why her little sister was trying to stop her, but for now, all she could do was wait for dinner to be over to try to initiate some sort of plan.

Even when Dad asked if Claire was still having nightmares—a moment Alice thought she might switch ‘sides’ and help her out—Claire shook her head.

“I’ll tell you a few stories before bed, anyway. Then we can sing a lullaby,” Mom said.

Alice could only roll her eyes as Claire nodded eagerly. This was seriously some bullshit.

◄▼►

Fucking Alice.

Fucking stupid, perfect, knows-better-than-everyone-else Alice. 

We were supposed to spend exactly four minutes, eighteen seconds reading, then climb the ladder. But Alice screwed that up. She thinks she can fix this, and I get it, but she can’t. It’s not possible. Mom has to die. Even if it hurts Alice. Even if if hurts me.

And it’s not like this isn’t hurting me. It’s just that I’ve been dealing with that pain for a long time. Longer than anyone should have to. And I’ve been doing it alone.

Besides, if everything had worked out the way it was supposed to, we wouldn’t be here to see it. We’d be in R-20, waiting to Mergewalk into Merge Prime's origin reality. This would be over. We’d be fighting monsters or something instead of having a scowl-off from our bunks. My five-year-old body isn’t ready to deal with the kind of mad I am. I’ve got big feelings, and no good way to deal with them.

But I try anyway. “You realize we’re missing all our windows, right? Four minutes, eighteen seconds isn’t the same as three hours. Three. Goddamn. Hours. That’s how long we’ve been here, and James doesn’t have a connection here. We’re on our own until we leave. Now, get your stupid-butt butt down here so we can go. Hopefully, this didn’t all get screwed up, and we can fix it.”

“No.” Alice is nothing if not determined. She might be eight. This might be before she had a bunch of masks. But I can still see her trying to put one up. “If I can wake them up—“

“I tried that. I set of the fucking fire alarm. It didn’t matter. Mom just died outside, and the memory reset. That’s how this reality works, Alice. It shows a moment in reality, one that you most want to see. We’re here because you believe me, but you don’t really believe it had to happen. You think you can fix it, but you can’t.”

“What about—“

“There’s no ‘what about,’” I half-yell. Alice glares at me and points at the door. I nod slowly and calm myself down with deep breaths like the counselors at Lansdowne told me to do. It helps a little. Not much, but a little. “There’s no ‘what about.’ This is what has to happen for us to be us, or some shit like that. It couldn’t have been okay. It had to happen the way it did. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“I don’t believe you,” Alice says.

“Fine.”

“What?”

“Fine. You don’t believe me? See for yourself. We’re already behind, with time bombs in our packs.” I look around. No packs. “Wherever they are. We probably already messed this up, so go ahead. Give it your best shot. But don’t expect to succeed.”

Alice says something, but I just roll over and cover myself with my blanket. The sooner Alice sees, the sooner she’ll understand.

Hopefully.

◄▼►

Everything happened exactly like Claire said it would, and in the end, Alice had to admit that her little sister was right.

She tried waking Mom and Dad up and getting them to move downstairs, to the atrium. They’d be safe there. Or safer, at least. But the whole time they walked, Claire kept shooting her sleepy-looking eye-rolls. And when they stepped into the atrium and the air filled with the scent of roses and machine oil, Alice couldn’t do anything to stop their mom from throwing herself in front of the monsters that came through the front door.

A second later, she was reading Green Eggs and Ham to Claire, who squirmed in her lap and turned to face her. “I told you so,” she said.

Alice didn’t respond right away. Then she made a decision. “I have to be faster, that’s all.”

“No. What you have to do is what we came here to do,” Claire said. “There’s nothing you can do to change the end result. It has to happen, even if it hurts.”

Part of Alice wanted to believe Claire. But the rest…the rest refused. “I’ll try again.”

Claire sighed and settled in to hear about eating eggs on a train in the rain, and Alice kept reading. Another plan would work. Or two. If she was right, she had as many chances in this reality as she’d need.

◄▼►

By the time Alice finally figures it out, we’ve been through the evening three times. On the fourth, she shuts Green Eggs and Ham as soon as we arrive. “Okay. You’re right. Let’s go.”

“Fucking finally,” I whisper. Dad doesn’t want older me swearing, so who knows what he’d do with a five-year-old dropping the F-bomb.

I don’t bother wasting my time moving to the bedroom and climbing into Alice’s bunk. We’ve missed that window by about nine hours, and it’s not coming back. The first thing we need to do is get to another reality—any reality where James can make contact with us. So, once I’ve got Alice’s finger wrapped in my too-small fingers, I Mergewalk toward the first reality I can find. Wherever it is, it’ll be better than this. I hope.

There’s a lot of hoping going on, because at this point, we’re so far off-course that it’s looking impossible to correct.

When the Mergewalk ends, I’m not so sure that’s true.

The good news is that James is back. [You missed our rendezvous. What happened?]

“Alice was being dumb,” I say before she can make excuses. She’s got her backpack on and her nearly-empty submachine gun strapped across her chest. I check. The Revolver’s on mine. “How long…?”

[About six minutes late.]

“We were there for at least nine hours,” I interrupt. “We went through several cycles.”

James goes quiet. While he’s processing that, I look around. The yellow, smoglike clouds and pale white sun are familiar. So is the stink, and the lightning. I’ve been here before. No. I haven’t been here before, but ‘here’ has been where I am. This is my second merge.

What are the odds of that?

[Okay. I’m adding that to my calculations. The time dilation means there’s no way you could have hit the R-20 meet-up accurately. What I’m confused about is why we’re in R-389.]

I pull the Revolver. “It doesn’t matter. Can you get us back on course?”

[Yes, actually. It’ll be pretty easy from here.]

“Claire, is this…?” Alice asks. She’s got the submachine gun out, but it’s aimed at the ground.

“Yes, Alice,” I say. I try to push the annoyance out of my voice. Even if it’s not her fault we missed the rendezvous with James, it’s hard not to blame her. “This is the reality that wrecked your graduation.”

Shockingly, she doesn’t immediately try to fix it. It takes me a minute to realize why: this isn’t the merge that wrecked it, just the reality. There’s no West End High here. No Mr. Roberts. No tree faces. Just a thin white light, smoggy yellow clouds, and thinlings.

[Options. Option One: We leave in the next forty-five seconds. That gets us exactly where we need to be in R-20 to immediately hop into Merge Prime’s origin reality. Option Two: We wait four minutes, forty-four seconds, bounce across three separate realities, and end up perfectly in the origin reality. Any preference?]

I wait. Alice waits, too. It’s quiet for a couple of seconds. Then I clear my throat. “Do you need to do anything here?”

It hurts to even ask, because we’re already behind schedule, and the weight of the bomb in my pack is heavy—and only growing heavier with each passing second. If it was just up to me, I’d go for it. Of course, if it was up to me, I’d already have made my move. Sentiment isn’t a big thing for me—not compared to the mission. Not this time, at least. But it’s up to Alice, in a way. I can’t carry out the mission without her, and if she needs to kill a thinling or two to make herself feel better, then so be it.

At least it’s not as stupid as trying to change the past.

But she shakes her head. “No. Let’s go.”

I nod and prepare the Mergewalk.

[Remember, the next hop is almost immediate,] James says.

I nod. Then I Mergewalk.

For a few seconds, we’re in Armageddon. It’s every bit as bad as R-3109, but unlike there, there’s nowhere to hide this time. The only advantage we have is that, from the moment we land, I’m already Mergewalking a second time—away from the second infinite war reality I’ve been in today and into our first ‘final’ destination. Into Provisional Reality EXT.

◄▼►

Location Unknown, Provisional Reality EXT - Time Unknown

- - - - -

I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.

Provisional Reality EXT…isn’t. It isn’t a reality, that is. It’s something, but it’s both more and less real than Reality 404.

Alice and I land on a pillar. It’s about a ten-foot boy ten-foot square above nothing—the same exact nothing that existed under the ghost ship’s sand, in my Mindscape, and in Li Mei’s empty reality. The pillar’s made of something, but it looks and feels like nothing—just a different kind of nothing.

The nothing presses in around us. It’d be oppressive and overwhelming if it wasn’t for the only things in this reality.

Merge portals.

Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. More. Reds and blues and swirling black and orange gates. Colors I’ve never seen and can’t imagine.

[Stability 5/10]

I can’t help but look at them. Some swirl and change. Others stay still. They barely move, so stable they’re almost frozen. There’s not a single surface in Provisional Reality EXT that’s not a merge portal—with the possible exception of the platform I’m on. It’s utter chaos.

[Stability 3/10]

Something shifts in my mind. The chaos becomes more pronounced in some places and less pronounced in others, and bit by bit, the…reality…of this reality starts to shine through. All the merge portals—the tens of thousands of them everywhere—are active and connected. The body reality, the God in the Machine’s—even the magma elemental’s Hellscape. They’re all part of this. Provisional Reality EXT, and Merge Prime, don’t actually exist. Not here.

This is just a…

…a what?

Game board? Map? Hub? It’s hard to say. In Knights of the Apocalypse Three, ‘character selection’ takes place in the Grand Hub. So does map selection, where the team votes on which mission to clear. The main feature is a single room with a couple dozen ‘magic’ portals.

This reminds me of that, but on a grand scale.

[Claire, if you’re done gawking, we’ve got a job to do, right?]

“Right.”

The bomb’s in my backpack. We’re at the destination. This reality of portals and thinnings is where we need to be. And time’s running out. I check: twelve minutes, give or take a few seconds.

Perfect.

It takes a few minutes to set it up. We could just drop it off, and it’d work just fine. But in the end, Alice and I want to stall here. We want to eat up time. The less time we give our enemy to react, the better. Merge Prime doesn’t seem to realize we’re here. Given the chaos of ten thousand merges, that makes sense. But it also means this is the place to stay.

Until we have to leave.

The timer ticks down. Two minutes. One. Thirty seconds. I turn to Alice. “Now.”

“Now.” It’s not a question. It’s confirmation. She reaches up to her ear, presses a button, and de-powers her aug at the same moment I do. And just like that, James is cut off.

Mergewalk has been really useful, but I’ve been playing James this whole time. It would have been way easier to go to the Halcyon System’s reality first, then hit R-20 into the immediate Mergewalk to Merge Prime’s origin. But I needed him to forget my capabilities for just long enough to spring my trap.

I grab Alice’s wrist and Mergewalk one more time. This time, I’m aiming for the Halcyon System.

There’s no turning back now. The mission is all that matters—that and defeating all of Reality Zero’s threats. All of them.

But only the threats. The protectors need protecting, not attacking. And if this doesn’t work…I can’t throw away our best chance on a prayer, no matter what Doctor Twitchy thinks.

“Drop it,” I say.

And as we leave, Alice drops her backpack.