The Chrysalis of Eternity

Today is ours: why do we fear?

Today is ours: we have it here;

Let’s banish bus’ness, banish sorrow:

To the gods belongs tomorrow

- Cowley

The public address system summoned all colonists to the assembly area for a final briefing before disembarkation. This would be the last chance for them all to get together before the chaotic shuttling down to the surface in relays began.

Brad stood frozen. He searched inside himself for Linda, but she wasn’t there. A dark, gaping hole where she’d nestled for the last two standard years was all he felt. Devastated, he stood trembling with emotion, lost in a crowd of seething humanity.

He recognised instantly that he was standing in an alleyway of the massive USSS Armstrong, the first human colonial expedition on its way to Alpha Centauri A.2. He was back in the year 2222, and the ship had arrived at its destination. They’d left Earth in 2075, and they’d all been awoken after one hundred and forty seven years in suspended animation. He was oblivious of the throng pushing by as people made their way forward to the designated assembly area. He couldn’t think straight – an overwhelming grief consumed him. For the third time in his life he had lost his love – his lifelong partner and best friend.

He felt his knees giving, and leaned against the outer bulkhead for support. Slowly, his vision clearing as he struggled to gain control, he became aware that a tall, well-shaped female with dark, russet-streaked hair was standing with her back to him in the middle of the alleyway, being jostled and shoved by the crowd trying to pass, looking as lost as he felt.

He sucked in his breath, holding it as he edged towards her, recognising the curve of her back, the firm buttocks revealed by the form-fitting one-piece GSA uniform she wore. With powerful emotions rocking him, his hands trembling, powerless to call out, he moved closer.

“Linda,” he managed to croak when he reached her. She swung around and her face lit up.

“Brad!” she shrieked, throwing herself at him, knocking him over onto the velcro-carpeted deck. She smothered him with kisses as he struggled to reciprocate, gasping and trying to speak at the same time. He couldn’t believe she was actually here – on top of him as it happened.

“Lin – good God girl, it really is you!” he shouted when he finally found his voice.

She pulled him to his feet, ignoring the ribald remarks of the passers by: “Hey Brad, can’t wait until you get down there, then?” and “there’ll be plenty of time for making babies when we reach the surface, you two,” followed by a few others less complimentary.

“Brad. Oh God, it is real. I thought I was dreaming – having some nightmare flashback. We’re on the Armstrong again, and this time the planet’s empty, as it’s supposed to be. No Petersen, no colony down there, no City or anything else.”

“This is un-bloody-real,” Brad muttered, looking around at the crowd, now thinning as most had already reached the area where Captain Bud Kronen was about to give his final address to the people already dividing up into scheduled departure parties. Linda looked at him with big eyes.

“Love, is this how it ends – or rather begins then? Tin-kelto must have succeeded in wiping out all the alien life forms – we were out on the Rim and everything eventually reverted to the timeline formed before there was any alien interference. This is how it should have been all along – the first colonial expedition to another world – and we’re finally really a part of it. No massive disappointments, finding a failing colony already existing down there – no battles with a despotic ex-mayor – no returning to Earth and the rehab centre. But also no Misra, no Joseph or Carmen or the rest of our family. There’s nothing to keep us apart, ever again. Love, we have that all ahead of us, but not along the same path as before at all.”

“Also no Tin-kelto, no Herre Sigurdsson, or Kahana or any of the population on this planet, and the thousands of people we’ve met over the last couple of years,” Brad observed. Linda looked at him with a serious expression.

“It’s sad, isn’t it? But they did exist – how can they not be anywhere now? Maybe the timeline we were in is still there – maybe in some parallel timeframe or universe or whatever you want to call it, they’re all still doing what they were doing when we left. What do you think?”

“Jeez, talk about déjà vu. I suppose we should be used to changes like this, but Lin, this one is more than I ever could have hoped for, you know that? To have you here again, not just inside my head.” He held her close, hugging her to him with all his might.

Laughing, she pulled away and gazed into his eyes.

“I love you, husband.” She looked down at herself, taking in the full curves of her body.

“Not a little old grey-haired lady any more, hey?”

Brad paused, holding her at arm’s length, drinking in the sight of his vivacious wife. He looked into her dark eyes again and smiled.

“Lin, when you died, a huge part of me also died, there and then. When I found you inside my head, I was almost knocked out. Hell, there were times when I thought I’d gone bananas or was schizophrenic – talking to an imaginary woman in my mind.” He chuckled. “There was a guy on Phoenix who thought the same thing, remember?”

They both laughed, a happy, carefree sound filled with relief and joy.

“One thing that worried me out on that Rimworld was whether I’d have to live through whatever I did to become a General, or Cunnel.”

“Might have been fun, my love,” Linda chuckled.

“I doubt that very much. The Rimwars, from what we saw of them, were not a good time to live. That planet – I have no idea where it was – seemed the end of the galaxy in more ways than just distance. It was grim.” He smiled at her, overwhelmed to be in her physical presence once more. He reached out to touch her, making sure that she was really there.

“Lin,” Brad was serious for a moment. “Tin-kelto and Kahana and all the rest of the gang – all the hundreds of millions of colonists on eleven thousand planets scattered across the galaxy – we’re assuming they don’t exist now. But here’s a scary thought - were they ever really there, or was this all some hellish dream while we were in suspended animation for the last century and a half?”

“Both dreaming together? And could we communicate like this?” Linda smiled at him knowingly, her dark eyes looking deeply into his.

Brad felt within himself, focussing deeply. He could feel untapped power growing somewhere inside, but he didn’t know how to use it. He stood up straight and concentrated harder, and suddenly he was seeing the planet they knew as Misra, their adopted home world but as yet unnamed, spinning slowly down below them, all green and blue and empty, waiting. The long, yet to be named continent of Murra was clad in a fine coat of green and brown; there were no Caretakers to conjure up a desert to claim its verdant slopes and steamy tropical coastal jungles this time. It was as it should have been when they first arrived, brave pioneers ready to take on the most monumental task mankind had ever initiated – the colonisation of a new world.

“This means it never needed terraforming at all – the Caretakers only turned Murra into a desert after the colonists arrived – they didn’t work on the planet initially. It really was always just an empty world waiting for us,” Brad realised. Linda nodded, wide-eyed. She was seeing through his eyes, and it scared her.

Brad concentrated harder. He watched as the planet shrank and the nearest star system contracted until he was looking at a cluster of stars. They shrank too, until he was staring down at the spiral nebula – the whole galaxy from a distance, just as it appeared from Prime out in the Magellanic Cloud. He felt immensely potent for a few seconds - in control of the whole universe. It was a powerful experience, and as he shook his head to clear it he felt a slight tautness at the back of his neck. With a start he realised the implant was there – he felt the tiny raised profile of it.

“Well, Lin, that’s the final proof. If none of that existed, how could I have this tiny chip at the base of my brain?”

Linda smiled. Her mysterious blend of allure and mischief combined, as always, to excite and tantalise him, but this time there was an element of awe.

“Don’t question it, my love. If it was there in you, it must remain so, I suppose. But don’t change a thing about yourself, please. I love you just the way you are, OK?”

“God, I love you, woman, but I’m beginning to wonder if I am just the way I was. I felt really strange a few moments ago,” he said, reaching behind and patting her rump, as the public address system kicked into life again.

“Agricultural Heads of Department report to Shuttle Bay Number Two immediately. Come on, Brad and Linda – they’re waiting for you,” the voice of Ensign Yuen Lee chuckled.

“OK, OK Yuen, we get the message,” Brad grinned as he reached for his wife. Linda turned to kiss him as they both started towards the after section of the huge vessel.

“Come on love, we don’t want to get left behind,” he joked.

“I’ll pick up our bags from the cabin first love, and-”

Linda turned, holding him back by the hand. “No, I’ll come with you. I want to wear my Vila do Pescador brooch; this is a very special occasion you know. Although it’s the third time you’ll be arriving on this planet, it’s only my second,” she giggled. “It’s everyone else’s first,’ she added.

Laughing like schoolchildren, they raced each other along the empty corridors and down to the shuttle bay, ready to begin the adventure of their lives as part of the first human colony on another world.