The top hatch opens up, and for the first time in days, I feel the warmth of sunlight. It's wonderful. It's incredible. I want to drown in it. Has the sun always felt this good?
The tunnel of darkness around us begins to fade. A clear blue sky shines through. It's been so long since I've seen a sky so bright.
I lean from the passenger seat to look.
I cannot find words. I don't know what I'm looking at.
The earth and the sky are one and the same. There is nothing below us, no solid earth to land upon, but only a pale haze that stretches into eternity, mirroring the sky above. This is what I'd pictured heaven to look like, though this scene frightens me. If we were to fall through here, the descent would last an eternity.
In this vast, bright emptiness, a gargantuan structure hovers in midair. There is no way to tell whether the architecture is from a far future or made by beings of entirely alien origin. It is a grand palace made entirely of glass--or a transparent material resembling it. Jade green pillars hold the walls aloft and a crystalline dome encloses the top. A glass staircase stretches from the front entrance, down and down before it vanishes out of sight into the haze below.
It's like the world's biggest greenhouse.
Blain brings Adam 1.0 to a halt.
“Welcome to the Archive of Time.”
✧✧✧✧
The tall glass doors swing shut behind us as we fly through the entrance. The inside of the palace is somehow even vaster than seemed from outside, but the emptiness is dizzying. The walls are lined with shelves up to the ceilings, lined with books, all bound in black, identical from the outside, no names upon their spines.
“All the events from the beginning of time to the end of everything are stored within those pages,” says Blain. “And that means everything. From great world-changing catastrophes and wars to the fates of every single living creature, no matter how small and insignificant. These halls are infinite, these walls unbreakable.”
Adam 1.0 comes to a smooth stop. I step out, but my limbs are not my own, my voice comes out small and meek as I turn around, looking around myself, though my eyes don't seem enough to truly comprehend what I see before me.
“Who made this place?” I ask. I picture a civilization from the far future, whose wisdom and knowledge and technology is far beyond our comprehension. Those who have seen the end of times and lived to tell the tale.
Blain leans back where she sits, eyes up at the ceiling. With a trembling hand, she clutches her side.
“Those who came before us,” she says quietly.
“You mean before the time you are from? 25th century?”
She shakes her head. “Before everything. Beings of an order much higher than us humans. Time travel in my era can only go so far. But the creators of this place, they saw into the future we never could. They saw the ultimate end towards which we are all headed, and here within these walls, they left behind their wisdom for us, if we ever become deserving of looking upon it.”
I turn and look at Blain. “Can I find my own future here?”
“...Yes.” Her face is like stone as she speaks. “I would advise against it. What you see here is more of a curse than a treasure. Once you look into your own future, you will never be the same. It can prove too much and even drive you insane--because you cannot change any of it.”
There are beads of sweat on her brow and her words come with laboured gasps--something I notice only now. Something selfish in me ignores the signs.
“Tell me how to do it. I just want to know if I'll ever be able to go back home,” I say.
I lie. I want to see it all. The future of my family. My hometown. My friends. Here in the hall of cursed knowledge, I'm overcome with an indomitable hunger for it.
“There have been great leaders in my time who have taken their own lives after a single glance into the future of humanity,” she warns me. “Don't do this, Reagan. We'll get out of here after Medusa goes away, alright?”
The shelves upon shelves upon shelves are swimming in my vision, my own fate, just within my reach. I could look through all those unnamed books if it came to that. I could look all eternity. Time seems warped here at this place.
There are hurried footsteps behind me, and a hand closes around my wrist, pulling me back.
“Don't--” she begins, but doesn't get any further. She sinks to the floor with her hand clutching her side.
It's as if I snap out of a trance.
“You alright?” I try to hold her up, but she seems to wilt in my arms and we both sag to the floor, her head in my lap.
“Do I look alright?” she snaps.
She looks like she's been through hell, but that's just how she looks normally. But once I unzip her jacket, I notice the giant bruise on her side, deep red with patches of purple, spreading all the way to her abdomen.
Blunt trauma. It doesn't look good for her.
“Any chance this archive of yours has the cure to this?” I mutter, and my hands tremble as I help her out of her jacket.
“No need, I've got it,” says Blain in a rasp. “There's a box under the seat. Go get it.”
I get it. It's a strange thing, with no lid or locks. It's just a solid white cube.
With unsteady fingers, Blain taps a pattern into its side, then pushes open the lid that holds it seamlessly shut. White smoke spills out of it in swirls.
Inside, there are a set of syringes the size of pistols, filled with a formidable looking, acrid green liquid. She pulls out her belt and tightens it around her upper arm, veins standing taut like ropes. She hands me one of the syringes. It's freezing cold.
“All of it,” she says. “Pin me down if I try to resist.”
She doesn't resist, but I swear her screams reach the ceiling.
✧✧✧✧
By the time she falls silent, the bruise has begun to recede. Her breathing steadies and color returns to her face. The medicine works wonders, but it leaves her drowsy.
“You feeling better now?”
“Much,” she mumbles, tired eyes drooping close. “Sleepy.”
“Sleep, then.”
“And leave you to go snooping around this place and fuck up your life?”
“As if it isn't already fucked.”
“Touché.”
A shadow passes over us as the sunrays are obscured for a moment.
A great fleshy mass hovers just outside the glass walls.
Medusa has found us.
“Even if the walls are strong enough to keep her out, we'll probably starve to death,” I say.
“What a way to go.” Blain shifts her head in my lap and looks up at me. “You must promise me one thing, Rey.”
A nickname? She really chose the worst moment to go all mushy on me.
“Don't talk like you're about to die.”
“No, I'm about to have the best sleep I've ever had in decades,” she says. “Just promise you won't go fooling around when I'm asleep.”
I wait before I answer. By the time I come up with one, she is already fast asleep. I'm spared from having to lie to her.
Our doom, Medusa, waits outside, perfectly still, patient, looking oddly serene in the bright sun. She has no today, nor tomorrow. I wonder how long this creature has been living like this, preying upon clueless travellers in the tunnel of time. Does she even feel hunger? Or does she simply feel the urge to consume, an artificial instinct instilled in her by her creators to wage war and death?
Guilt and anticipation crawling in the pit of my stomach, I bundle up Blain's jacket, slowly move away, and place in under her head like a makeshift pillow. Her bruise is almost gone. I hope her dreams are pleasant.
YOU ARE READING
No Way Home ✓
Science FictionA bottle of whiskey. A lonely bridge. A decision, foolishly made. However miserable her life may have been, twenty-two year old Reagan did not want to put an end to it--not really. But in a drunken attempt of doing so, she creates an infinite loop...
