The Shores Beyond Time Read online

  “What do you mean?”

  “An AI of this size and advancement no doubt has the power to learn, analyze, and reflect. It may even have what we would refer to as a consciousness.”

  “Yeah, I think it does,” said Liam, thinking of Iris. “But I still don’t get why that is a bad thing. You have a consciousness, and you’re benevolent.”

  “I did not say it was a bad thing. I merely stated that it was noteworthy. In humans, as you know, as in nearly every living entity we have observed, benevolence is perhaps less common than self-interest.”

  Liam gave JEFF a side-eyed glance. He was reminded of something Iris had said: At some point, you must make the choices that best suit your needs for survival. That is the case for every living being. Liam had thought that sounded kind of selfish, and yet Iris hadn’t been describing herself—she wasn’t a living being . . . was she?

  They had passed through the airlock and were now making their way along the main corridor. Liam stayed near the wall, keeping a wary eye out for officers, but the hall was deserted. They took the elevator to the hangar deck and emerged in the wide, silent space.

  The Styrlax ship was parked near the airlock. Phoebe was sitting on its stairway, arms across her knees. He waved, and when she looked up and saw him, she grinned.

  Liam smiled back—but paused outside the elevator. The two Artemis officers were sitting on a cargo box nearby, looking at him. “Hey,” Liam said, looking from them to Phoebe and back. “We were just going to talk before they left. We, um, we spent a lot of time together getting here.” Liam’s face began to burn. “You know, before—”

  “Uh-huh,” said one of the guards. The other was smirking. “Go ahead,” the guard said. He looked back down at his link and began typing busily, and Liam imagined him sending some sort of jokey message about the two kids to other crew members.

  He hurried toward Phoebe, who left the stairs and angled toward the next ship over, the Cosmic Cruiser they’d returned from Dark Star in. When Liam caught up to her, he was glad to see that they were out of view of the guards.

  “Hey,” she said. “I’m glad you came down. I was starting to feel like we’d never get a chance to talk again.”

  “Me too,” said Liam.

  “Hi, JEFF,” said Phoebe.

  “Good morning, Phoebe. Or should I call you Xela?”

  “That’s nice of you, but you can stick with Phoebe.”

  “Oh,” said Liam. “I’m sorry I never asked you that.”

  Phoebe rolled her eyes. “Relax. It’s no big deal. I was lying to you and wearing a disguise.”

  “How are things going down here?”

  Phoebe shrugged. “Seems like the powers that be have it all figured out. It’s weird because they’re, like, proud of me, sort of, for saving them, even I think for finding this place, but then every second they also want to be sure that I remember I disobeyed them. I think I liked it better when they were in stasis.” They shared a brief smile before Phoebe continued: “They say we need to leave before your fleet arrives. Everyone’s resting now, and then we’re shipping out. Back to Telos first, to check in on the rest of our people. Then who knows where.”

  “I can see my future,” Liam said. “Life on this new Earth. It looks pretty good.”

  “Lucky for you.”

  “I asked my parents if you guys could live with us there, but they were like, there’s no way.”

  “We were silly to ever believe that it would work out. Our races are enemies. Meanwhile, you guys get your own planet again, probably in even better shape than Earth was before the sun changed.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  Phoebe’s expression darkened. “And you’ll never have to think about what you did to Telos, or even think about us at all, because you’re in another universe. One that doesn’t have a Telos in the first place. It’s like we won’t even exist anymore. Like we never even did.”

  “But we won’t be in your world either.” That wasn’t quite what he wanted to say, and yet hearing Phoebe’s words was making his already spinny state even worse.

  “You will, though,” Phoebe replied. “Whenever we remember all of us who died, you’ll be there.” She rubbed at the crux of her arm where, Liam remembered, the three circle tattoos were beneath her thermal wear.

  “We have people who died—”

  “Liam, stop. Don’t compare what we did to what you did. And you didn’t lose anyone. Not a brother. Not grandparents. It’s not the same and it never will be. Ugh, it all just makes me hate you guys all over again.”

  “I’m sorry.” Liam’s insides were revving. Everything felt tight! And he hadn’t managed to say anything close to what he really wanted, what he needed, to say. “You’re not, um . . . you’re not going to never be for me. I’ll always remember you.”

  A silence passed over them.

  “I miss you,” Phoebe said, “and we haven’t even left yet.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I kinda wish we were still on the Cosmic Cruiser. Life was easier when it was just us.” She smiled briefly at Liam. “I’m kidding, but . . .”

  “I know what you mean.” Liam looked at her standing there, arms crossed, like she was already a universe away. Should he just say good-bye and leave? No, this couldn’t just be . . . it. He blinked and remembered the mountain he would someday sit on, the view of the setting sun in the watery atmosphere, how he’d remember her there. . . . “Hey, I have an idea. Want to go see it?”

  Phoebe eyed him. “See what?”

  “The new Earth. I want you to see it. Or, I want to see it, you know . . . with you. That way we can both remember it like that. Together.”

  Phoebe half smiled. “How exactly are we going to do that?”

  “Um . . .” Liam looked around. “We could take a skim drone or something.”

  “And I remember when I used to be the one with the risky plans. Are you sure it will work?” She peered at him. “You haven’t already like, gone and seen what happens, have you?”

  “Oh, no . . .” Liam hadn’t even thought of it, but now he wondered why he hadn’t taken a look. He could, he supposed. . . .

  “Good,” Phoebe said. “Because that would be weird. I don’t want to be living some script that you already know, or whatever.”

  “Yeah,” said Liam. He’d never thought of it that way. More like just getting reassurance. And yet maybe he didn’t want to go through his last moments with Phoebe while already having, if not lived through them, seen them. Maybe he just wanted to be here, now.

  “I especially like this plan because of how much it will piss off our parents,” Phoebe said.

  Liam grinned. “Okay, cool.” He looked around. “These Artemis skim drones are older models, but I could probably—”

  Phoebe squeezed his arm. “We have something better than that. Come on.”

  She led him back to the Styrlax ship and around to the rear. Liam saw the guards look up at them and then back down to their links.

  “Wait here,” said Phoebe. She ducked over to the stairs and disappeared inside.

  A few silent minutes passed, the loudest sound seemingly Liam’s pounding heart.

  There was a whir and a large panel of the Styrlax ship began to lower, making a ramp from the hangar floor into a cargo area. There, in the belly of the ship, was Liam’s skim drone.

  “No way,” said Liam.

  “My parents patched it up after we left it, and used it to steal him.” Phoebe pointed to JEFF’s head. She held up space-grade suits, draped over her arm. “The ones your parents used to board.”

  Liam climbed the ramp and peered into the skim drone cockpit. “Hey, buddy,” he said, tapping the canopy.

  “Boys and their machines,” said Phoebe.

  Liam opened the canopy. He reached in, powered it up, and checked the battery level. “Eighty-eight percent. That should work.” The battery had been damaged at Delphi, but JEFF had repaired it, and the last time he’d used the drone, rescuing
Phoebe and chasing the starliner, it had held up pretty well. “JEFF, can you calculate how far the trip to the new Earth is?”

  JEFF’s eyes flickered. “It is only a few kilometers from here to the portal. I have no way of calculating the distance from the doorway to the planet itself.”

  “We can’t actually, like, land or anything,” said Phoebe. “Can we?”

  “No. The battery definitely wouldn’t last through reentry and takeoff.” That was exactly what Liam had been imagining, maybe even getting to some mountaintop like he would someday visit in the future, but he’d kind of known that was unrealistic. “At least we can fly through and see it. That would still be worth it.”

  Phoebe glanced at the stairs up from the cargo hold. “Not sure how long we have before someone notices. Of course once we’re gone, who cares if they find out. What are they going to do, ground us?” She passed him a suit. “Our biggest concern is probably whether your computer girlfriend will be jealous of us sneaking off.”

  “She’s not—she’s busy with her systems, so I don’t think she’ll even notice.”

  “I thought she was scanning all of us, all the time.”

  “Well, yeah.” Come to think of it, Liam figured she would definitely notice. But why would she care? In theory, she already knew this would happen. . . .

  Phoebe’s mouth scrunched. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Does it seem weird to you at all that this thing is just making you a new world, like, for free? I mean, not like you’d pay for it, but you know . . . what’s the catch?”

  An immediate answer formed on his lips—Iris wants to help—but instead, he thought of what JEFF had said and felt unsure of the answer. “I think that’s its function. Why is that so hard to believe?”

  “You’re saying you really think her entire purpose was to sit here and then make a brand-new universe for whoever happened to come along? A machine that can cross universes and destroy stars . . . is just like basically a help kiosk in the VirtCom?”

  “No, but . . .” It wants to show me the higher dimensions, he almost said. Except that made it sound like Dark Star was all for him . . . and now who was being selfish?

  “And I still don’t understand: If that was Dark Star’s intention all along, why not let you see that future when we got here? Or tell you about it. Hey, new time-traveling friend, I’m busy making your people a new home. Why make us sweat it out?”

  Its processing disrupts— Liam almost began to counter, and yet he felt a wash of uncertainty. Why hadn’t she just told him?

  “And like, what if that wasn’t what you wanted? I mean I know it is, but, doesn’t feel exactly like a choice, does it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t really know what I’m saying. I should probably stop raining on humanity’s big day.”

  “It’s okay,” said Liam. This conversation had caused a fresh stir inside, because hadn’t this worry that Phoebe was expressing been there, even if just a little bit, all along? “Sometimes I do feel like Iris is just another person telling me what I should do.” That didn’t feel quite accurate, but that was part of it. . . .

  Liam handed JEFF to Phoebe. “Can you hold him? I’ll be right back.”

  He pushed away from the moment and slid along his timeline, to before their parents had arrived, all the way back to just after their initial trip over to Dark Star, as Kyla had been walking him and Phoebe back to their compartment. He pushed into the moment and right out of himself, separating from his timeline as he had to visit Mina on the Scorpius. He steeled himself as the wind kicked up inside him, and he stepped onto the walkway just behind his earlier self.

  One of the nearby compartments had a green light on its controls, a sign that it was empty. Liam opened the door. It hissed, but not loud enough to alert his past self or the others. Liam ducked inside, closed the door, and listened. A few moments later, he heard Kyla walk by, returning to the bridge. Now came the hard part: he had to sit there for nearly an hour. He reset his link and waited, trying a few games in the retro VirtCom, like Mina had, his insides spinning the whole time. He felt like he was missing yet more of his last moments with Phoebe, even though he wasn’t at all. But he still had a creeping sensation that even though he wasn’t losing time with Phoebe, he was losing something. Was it energy? Literal minutes of his life? Sure, no time would have passed when he returned to Phoebe, but he would be an hour older. And the hours, as the numbers on his arm showed, were starting to add up.

  Finally, his link registered the right time, and he stepped back out onto the walkway and approached the door to the compartment where his former self was. There was a shimmer in the air, and the chronologist materialized, arriving to take Liam and Phoebe over to Dark Star to investigate.

  “Oh, hello,” he said, seeing Liam. “I was just on my way to see you.”

  “I know. I’m here from the future.”

  The chronologist blinked.

  “Listen, can you meet up with us later?”

  “Will I want to?”

  “I don’t know. It will be after we return to this compartment the second time. In about ten hours. After that, I’ll go down to the hangar and meet up with Phoebe. She will lower the cargo hold of the Styrlax ship, and right after she does, can you come meet us? I need your help with something.”

  The chronologist regarded him for a moment, like he was thinking it over. “I will find you then.”

  “Thanks.”

  Liam pushed away and returned to himself, in the Styrlax cargo hold next to Phoebe.

  “Okay,” he said, trying to smile like his trip was no big deal.

  “It’s weird when you do that,” Phoebe said. She’d placed JEFF’s head on the skim drone seat. “There’s this one second where you’re kinda blank, like you’re there but you’re not. Where did you go?”

  “Hello.”

  The chronologist had appeared at the base of the cargo hold.

  “Hey, that’s my trick,” said Phoebe.

  “I have not seen one of these ships in a while,” said the chronologist as he walked up the ramp, his many legs clacking on the metal. “Where did you get a Neefaren cruiser?”

  “You mean Styrlax,” said Phoebe.

  “Well, the translation is tricky.”

  “They helped us escape Telos,” said Phoebe.

  “Ah.” The chronologist produced his orange crystal. “I will have to make a note of that in the long count, if and when I am able to return to my office.”

  “Couldn’t you head back through the portal now, if you wanted?” Phoebe asked.

  “I could,” said the chronologist. “However, there are many aspects of this place that I still need to investigate, not the least of which is my inability to perceive my future.”

  “You still can’t see the future?” said Liam. “I can.”

  The chronologist peered at him. “When did that change?”

  “When that portal opened to the new Earth. Iris said that once she made it, the interference lifted.”

  “May I observe your future?” asked the chronologist.

  “Um, sure. How do you do that?”

  He held his crystal toward Liam, clicking its top and bottom. It separated at its equator, bright light poured out, and the hemispheres spun and made a humming sound. “Fascinating,” said the chronologist, studying the light. He clicked the crystal closed. “You must be very pleased.”

  “I guess.” Liam glanced at Phoebe, thinking of their conversation. “You don’t see any of that? Humans on the new Earth and all?”

  “I do not, though this may be because my future does not include this Earth. Still . . .” He trailed off.

  “You don’t totally trust this place either,” said Phoebe. “Do you?”

  “Normally, I would not need to rely on something as three-dimensional as trust, but in this case . . . No, I do not totally trust this station’s intentions.”

  JEFF’s words a
bout intelligence flashed through Liam’s mind again. “That’s actually why I brought you here,” he said. “You know how it’s scanning us all time?”

  “Very much so.”

  “Is there a way that you could hide us from those scans while we take a trip?”

  “You think she’ll be jealous,” said Phoebe, “like I said.”

  “No, I just . . .” Liam didn’t quite know how to put it into words—in fact, didn’t want to think too much about it, in case Iris was monitoring his thoughts right now. “I just would like to be unobserved, you know, in the moment alone. So what do you think?”

  “What is it you are planning on doing?” the chronologist asked. When Liam explained their plan to see the new Earth, he said, “I might counsel that such a course of action is needlessly risky—”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing. I’ve kind of had enough of other people or computers or even you telling me what I should or shouldn’t—can or can’t do.” Liam realized he might well sound childish, but his heart was pounding and he didn’t care. He motioned to Phoebe. “In an hour or so, she’s going to be gone forever. We just want some time on our own. Please?”

  The chronologist consulted his crystal. “I can program my recorder to create a space-time dilation around you, which will make you at least somewhat invisible to scanning.” He rotated his orange crystal between his fingers—nine on each hand, Liam noticed, plus a small digit protruding from each thumb, same as the first chronologist. The crystal flashed twice and then began to pulse rhythmically with mellow orange light. “There.” He handed it to Phoebe. “That should do the trick.”

  “Thanks.” Liam began pulling off his pressure suit and sliding on the space suit. A thought occurred to him. “You set that up pretty quickly. Have you been using the crystal like this already?”

  “Quite a bit,” the chronologist admitted. “There is much to explore on this ship, and I prefer to make my inquiries in an unbiased manner.”

  “What have you found?”

  “So far only empty rooms,” said the chronologist. “I am still most interested in that strange cylinder down in the Dark Star hangar and the signals coming from inside it. I have revisited it multiple times, but so far, I have not been able to gain access like your captain.”