All the Space Between Us (A Deathless Series Story)

Episode Twenty-Nine: Ghosts

"What is it like to be from the stars?"
-Toben

"It's like being wrapped in a cool, dark blanket, crawling toward any light you can find."
-Galaxy

TEMPEST

The four of us sit in what Galaxy calls a coffeeshop. The streets and shops and world are filled with people, and I honestly have never felt more awestruck and horrified in my entire life. I want to cry, because the world is still so bright and clean and whole. But then I remember that in five days it will all end, and that knowledge is so great a burden that I can barely sit here and act normal as Galaxy instructed us to do. Instead, I'm looking around, tears dripping down my cheeks without permission. A little girl in line with her mom waves at me, and I suddenly can't breathe.

"Tempest, you okay?" Galaxy asks. "If this is too much, we can go back to our place where the rest of the Janus crew people live with me."

"No," I say, shaking my head, and turning back to the table. "I'll be okay. But you're sure all of this ends in five days?" I take a long sip of my coffee, sweeter and more delicious than any coffee I've ever tasted in my life.

"Positive," she says. "Remember? I lived all of this already. Well, sort of. I lived it from space. Right now, I am traveling to Janus. Well, you know, my body from this dimension. I guess the one that becomes Galaxy. That's what you said my name was, right?"

"What is your real name?" Neo asks.

"Michelle Aubry. It makes sense that I wouldn't remember who I was though."

"How does that make any sense?" Yuri asks.

"Well, two of the same people shouldn't be able to exist in the same dimension, so maybe when I came here, it erased who I was in your dimension to compensate for the duplicity."

"That's not what it sounded like when the woman on Janus told us about it," I say. "It sounded more like something got lost in the transit, like your soul got lost."

"Okay, so, let's talk this out," Michelle says, sitting up. "Here I am as myself in this dimension, but what Tamara, that's the woman on Janus, forgot about is that we are actually in the same dimension, just a different time. Our portal on Janus was designed to travel through time, not through space like the one you used to get between your spacecraft and Janus initially. So right now, at this time, there are two versions of all of the Janus crew who came here, one on Earth and one in space. But this can't happen, there can't be that overlap, and Roberts didn't account for that. So our bodies so to speak got kicked back to our time, but our consciousness is still stuck here."

"How is your consciousness here without a body?" Neo asks.

"This is going to sound bizarre, but I will show you that it's not," Michelle says. Then, she stands up on her chair and starts screaming at the top of her lungs in the middle of the coffeeshop. I look around to see how the people around us are taking this, but no one reacts. It's like she's not even here.

"Why aren't they saying anything?" Yuri asks.

Michelle sits back down, laughing. "It's like I'm a ghost. All of us from the crew are, but look," she says, gesturing to the little girl who had waved to me earlier.

She is still looking at me while her mom waits for her coffee, and when I turn, she waves again. 

"They can see you three," Michelle says.

"How?" I ask.

"Simple: You haven't been born yet. You don't have a body here, so you came through in tact. Once your bodies are born, though, who knows what will happen. I don't know if you'll cease to exist and suddenly become ghosts like us, or what, but that will be crazy."

"I can't believe this."

"Oh, I know Yuri, it sounds crazy," Michelle says, "that's why I warned you. But it's the truth. That's why it's actually amazing that somehow the three of you came here."

"Explain why, but slower, please. Remember, you just revealed yourself to be invisible here except to us," Neo says.

"We wanted to come back in time and stop the end of the world," Michelle says, "but consciousness can't do it by itself. We have been able to sort of make suggestions to people that we have learned they've taken to heart, but that's not enough. For example, I was able to stand by this one woman and just for hours, I said, 'Prepare for a nuclear holocaust,' over and over. Eventually, she googled how to prepare for a nuclear holocaust, and started to order stuff online. Once we learned we could do that, we started targeting some of the scientists and government officials we know are on the list to go into the bunker once the bombs go off. We have been trying to get them to change their ways, but it hasn't been enough. Everything is already in motion. But now you three can actually interact with people in this space. You can actually make changes. You three can save the world."

"Sure, but we can't just do that, right? Wouldn't that cause a huge ripple effect?" Neo asks.

"Of course, but this time it would be for the positive. You would save all of those lives."

"And then we'd never be born," I say. "There's no way my parents would have ever found each other without the world ending."

Michelle shrugs. "Then I guess you'd be able to live in this timeline forever."

"Right, but what if we want to go back to our time? What would happen to us then?"

Michelle laughs. "You're not going back to your time. There's no way to get back. We all learned that the hard way."

"But we are different," Neo argues. "You said so yourself."

"Listen, if you can find the portal to return, go for it, but it doesn't exist, period. Roberts left that part out. I don't think he ever intended for us to return. This was a suicide mission."

"So, our only option is to save the world?" Yuri asks. "What if we can't do that? What if we are a bomb?"

Michelle laughs.

"He's serious."

"You're a bomb?"

Yuri nods.

Michelle swallows hard. It's only now that I realize she's the only one of us without a coffee to swallow. I guess consciousness doesn't need to drink.

She shifts in her seat. "Then maybe we can use you to our advantage."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Well... now we have weapons too."

"That would mean that Yuri dies, you understand that right?" I ask, angered by her tone.

"This was a suicide mission, Tempest," Neo reminds me. "I don't think she cares."

"It's about saving the world, Tempest," Michelle says. "You're stuck here now. You might as well put yourself to good use."

The weight of all my knowledge pins me down again, and I can barely stop myself from crying. I look to Yuri and place my hand over his. "What do you say?"

He nods at me before turning to Michelle. "Tell me what to do."