Part two.
You may be beginning to get an inkling of what is going on. Just maybe. Maybe enough to wonder. To follow. To quote “He”: “Maybe it’s even true. I did kill her. Maybe I am mad”
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“Regardless of her shortcomings Princess A may be the most influential woman in the universe.” Reginald Dubois. Doctoral Thesis in Ancient Earth History – “The position of Princess A within the fabric and her association with its unravelling” – submitted to Committee June 21, 3567, Gargt University Two. Planet Gargt.
Earth. 3205 Victims study. Earth timeline.
If someone finds this I hope they can make sense of it. I hope they understand it. I hope many things. One of them being that I might live to see the day again. The traveler is close behind me and I am afraid this time he will end me. Then I will be the victim. Perhaps it is best if I just use that as my name. Probably less confusing than explaining the myriad that I am. Just call me the victim, or call me A., that was my first name and the one this version of me still carries.
I was born on this planet a very long time ago. Almost 1400 years ago. A long time to live. But I dont live linear. I dont live as this victim - not all the time. I have lived as a princess and as a pauper, as the most powerful and dangerous person in the universe and as a simple academic, all - for the purpose of simple understanding - at the same time and only I, the victim, know it. I have been cursed with the freedom to move physically through what most inhabitants of this universe call “time”. It may seem wonderful to any who have not had to live it, but its not. Mostly for that what I leave behind – a copy of myself – they have no idea that I even am, or that they never really were. Every time I travel I leave a copy of myself – and so does the traveler as he hunts me. I have seen my death and the end of me, and I have accepted it – I have watched the copies of me die a multitude of times. Once you have died once, twice, thrice – it gets easier. But never so easy that you want to accept it. I fear though that he will find me this in this time and we will finally annihilate each other. What then will come to pass has been written and discussed in a thousand doctoral theses on a thousand planets scattered across the universe – and none of them knew or know what really is going on.
Let’s get one thing straight before I go on at all. Time -as we paltry humans, trapped by it – does not really exist as we believe it does. Dne – as we paltry N’Hai N’Hai, trapped by it – does not really exist as we believe it does. Its more like a big ball of wool that someone let a kitten play with. Tangled. Torn. Ending – but not ending. Frayed but still useful. That’s the best I can do – and I live this shit daily. Maybe its right that he will kill me. At least 36.25 percent of the theses being and have been written propose to that idea. Personally, for reasons you may or may not fathom, I am against it.
You probably would like to know who I am? What my motivations are? What plans I had as a child? Why not start there. As I said before; I was born – this iteration of me that has been plaguing the universe for far too long (15.78 % of the doctoral theses) – the year Napoleon Bonaparte abidicated as Emperor of France. 1815 for any of you uncouth villains who have never read history. One day before the summer solticise. The longest day. I was born as a Russian princess who had already lost her lands and possessions months before her birth. I was born to be the lover of the man born exactly twenty four years before me – the man who I now call only the traveller – the man who will kill me. Through centuries we have loved and and hated and lost one another. In many forms – but not this final one. The traveler is still older than me, perhaps wiser (45% of doctoral theses) but he was not always my enemy. In fact I know he felt as I felt that warm summer day here on the steps of this very chateau.
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Earth. 2001. House of Margret Zeit. Earth timeline
“That’s it” Samuel said “Shit. “
He set the paper down beside himself. Margaret realized she had put a hand in her lap as she listened to Samuel read and quickly removed it.
“I do hope the rest is in here somewhere! Damn! “ he swore “is the old bugger going to fuck her or not?”
“Samuel!” Barked Margaret
Samuel just looked at her, perhaps like W had looked at A.
“That’s what they want isn’t it? Both of them?” He reached for his coke and drank from the bottle. Margaret always found that disgusting but it reminded her of David and that reminded her of sex and she felt that familiar heat between her thighs.
“I am assuming he’s a lot older than she is and he is probably this lieutenant general guy. And he’s probably married to this Madame. So we’ve got the picture but no sex. And it was looking so good”
Margaret looked at her wristwatch.
“Oh Samuel you only have 15 minutes before your cello lesson. You’ll have to put that away now. “
Earth 2019. Earth timeline.
Samuel looked at himself in the reflection from the darkened computer screen. He had been 15 when he first opened that red dispatch box from his great great great great grandfather. He had had so many plans and so many dreams. The box sat beside his left hand- as it always did - his computer open and the screen filled with different pages of the same notes and photos that were tacked or taped to the wall behind it. He was now 33, he had spent 18 years trying to solve the mystery of that box and now he thought he had.
Samuel slowly removed the golden pin holding the dried newspaper articles to the paper the General had written. In between the three articles there was an envelope. His hands shook slightly as he opened it. Too much Cola, he thought. Inside was a single sheet of absolutely white paper. He wondered how it had remained so white after so many years. He unfolded it.
New York Harbour.
June 12 1862
I am absolutely certain Sir
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Earth. 3205. Landing Platform Paris.
“Dr. Malaica?”
She turned. She had been hurrying towards the gates, ignoring the other passengers and the crowds waiting for them. Trying to get as far away from that Lander as quickly as possible. She had two reasons for that; one was that she hated Landers and the inevitable smell, and the second was that she wanted to get to the crime scene as quickly as possible. She should have thought they would have someone meet her.
It was a young girl, probably not much older than 20, her hair cut short and pulled back over her ears as was the fashion on earth at the moment. Malaica’s hair was a tangled mess and she didn’t even want to think about what she looked like.
“Yes?”
The girl blushed.
“Im here to get you and your luggage and bring you to the chateau. We will be using the Paris-Stuttgart tube, have you ever been in a tube before?”
Malaica nodded. “A small one we have on Pesces 4, not like the ones you have here on earth.”
“Will you need a sedative?”
“I shouldn’t” she said “I‘ve got my pippers. I’ll just pop one and that should be fine.”
The girl looked at her palm, reading the words that transcribed across it. The Senate definitely didn’t want Dr. Malaica using pippers. They wanted her in tip top intellectual shape all the time.
“I am afraid I can’t allow that Ma’am” the girl wasn’t blushing anymore and her manner had changed “The Senate requires you to be in perfect form and you yourself know what the let down of pippers is like”
Malaica nodded. The girl held out her hand – the same one the message had played across – and Malaica took the small black vial out of her pocket and gave it to her. There was no use resisting. If she had said she didn’t have them on her they would never have believed her and she wasn’t feeling quite up to a body search.
“Sedative?”
“I will try it without.” Malaica breathed the words out through her nose as she practiced bin ventra, the ancient Pesces meditation. It was working. Her mother may have had many shortcomings, but the teaching of bin ventra wasn’t one of them.
The girl nodded. If the Professor wanted to tube without a sedative then it was her prerogative. She herself wouldn’t risk it. The tube would only be 17.5 minutes from end to end – but tubing without sedatives was hell.
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Earth. 3205.
Malaica followed the girl as they went around the long lines waiting for the flu and identity checks. 800 years and a bit and they still checked. Just last year there had been a bad outbreak on Gatga. Over a million dead within weeks. Malaica had never liked the ear probes but they did work – it had been lax controls that had permitted the outbreak on Gatga. The other passengers scowled and some started to verbally complain but the phalanx of SP officers that swept in beside her stopped it.
She let them carry her bags and followed the entourage onto the walk. It sped them off towards the tube terminal. She kept on practicing bin ventra and could feel her nervousness subside and the calm begin to take over her body. When it worked – which it often didn’t for her – it was a fantastic feeling. The old women on Pesces 5 swore that “she” herself had found bin ventra before her death. Malaica let them believe it but was certain it was a myth. If “she” had created as many things as she was supposed to have done there would have to be 75 hours in a day. Only uninhabitable planets had such low spin, and Pesces 5 wasn’t uninhabitable. In fact Malaica thought it might be the most comfortable planet in the universe. Knowing that pippers – red and purple – grew in the wild there might just have something to do with that contemplation. She was certain from the reaction of the girl who had picked her up – who was obviously part of the SP – that she wouldn’t be enjoying the blissfulness of a pipper while she was on earth. It was true that productivity – in all sectors – on Pesces 5 was only 70% of that in the rest of the universe – but happiness and contentment of the planets population was almost 95%. Malaica was certain that the 5% negative were from the few on the planet who didn’t enjoy pippers.
It took them longer on the walk, almost 20 minutes, then it would take in the tube. By the time they arrived Malaica was already in state two and had to be helped into the tube carriage. She let the attendants strap her in and then breathed the last deep breaths exactly as her mother had taught her. Consiousness as we know it left her. The feeling was almost as ecstatic as a purple pipper. She could feel everything around her, the straps holding her onto the fake leatherette of the tube couch. The soft moist air being blown onto her face as they closed the lid of the capsule. The walls of the tube. The very fabric of time itself. The N’Hai N’Hai within her, that so often slumbered, awoke in joy and she felt the oneness that so many sought. She could see what awaited her at the chateau already and she wondered again what time really was. Was that a fountain pen? An ancient, priceless fountain pen? Lying on the desk? She let the bin ventra take her deeper and she felt the walls of time dissolve. It was confusing. She could see forwards and backwards in jumbled shards, like looking through a bottle that was breaking, as it broke. She felt like she was multiples of people and that she had seen and lived multiple lives. It was better than pippers. Much better. It had to be the acceleration of the tube together with the bin ventra. She had never seen these types of things before. It fascinated her and she wondered if Kiera had been as remorseful as she felt her to be in her vision. Was she seeing reality or was she creating it?
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“When they made me Minister, they made me something more than human. I had more power than any woman before me, and perhaps after me, had or ever will have. In reality Lillian had made me even more powerful than she was. There are women who drool at the thought of that power. I was terrified of it.” Personal Diary Emira. Dated 2445. Released from containment 2758.
Senate Spaceliner. Approach to Betaen 6. 2799. 2 weeks before the explosion.
“What are you reading?”
”I’m reading the green notebook, the annotated version from Wellson and Riconta. It’s quite interesting. I like it. I can see what an academic fight was going on between them and Ezes’ group, actually kind of funny to read sometimes. Especially after the revelations in the „Inspector Recalls“ publication. Poor Wellson, he was so wrong. Strange that he never saw it on his timeline, then again an hundred years is a bit long.”he smirked „I‘m happy if I can see a good three days in the future“ He put it down on the table beside him, turned to look at her “Can you remember any of the stuff we learned about He and She and home? You know the school stuff?”
Kiera shook her head. “School was a long time ago. Never was interested in the old human - new human stuff until university. Then I spent every waking moment my first-year learning about the three. I was so glad I wasn’t an old human.”
“Me too” he said. “But the poems He wrote aren’t half bad.” He sipped at the water glass “Not as good as Wellson and Riconta would have you believe, but not half bad”
“When you are finished, let me read it.” she said “haven’t read a love poem for a long time.” Kiera walked behind his chair and tousled his hair as she did so “He was the one who wrote the numbered poems right?” She stopped by the viewport and looked out into the blackness “67, the one that starts with sienna hair?”
Eric flipped through the pages and started to read to her.
“Poem 67. My love has sienna hair. That smells so sweet” he read in as monotone a voice as he could manage.
Kiera threw a napkin from the breakfast table at him. They hadn’t let the orderlies in to clear the table.
“I prefer the erotic poems” he said
“You would” she said, laughing. Then she stopped.
“The jump”
He put down the book. Nodded. Stood up and walked beside her. Took her hand. They connected with the others on the ship. Checked their parameters. He could feel the agreement. On the bridge the navigator typed in the last equation and hit the button.
It was the same feeling as always. The adrenaline rush as space and time melted together and they moved. As quickly as the rush washed over them it left. Outside the window they could now see a planet.
There was a knock on the door.
“Yes?” She said
“Comle, we are in orbit around the planet” there was a pause “Do you have anything we need to perform before they prepare the Landers?”
Comle she thought. The common term for Command Leader.
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Space Liner. 2 weeks before the explosion. 2799
Eric looked at her and knew her thoughts without probing. Kiera was worried about Earth. About what would happen at the meetings about to take place. What she might have to choose to do. She kept him far away from the internal workings of the government, and even farther from some of the difficult decisions she had to make, but he knew enough about what was going on. He tightened his grip on her hand. She tightened back and turned and smiled at him. Kissed him on the cheek.
“I have to get ready now” Kiera said “I of course have to shuttle down in a special Lander.” Even as she said the word she knew she had capitalized it. But why? Why did they always write the word Lander with a capital L? It made no sense. One of those arcane carryovers from the before time.
He let her hand go and walked back to the reading chair. Sat down and picked up the book.
“Like honey in the sun. On summer morn…” the slipper caught him full on his right cheek.
“Hey!” He laughed at her, picked up the slipper and tossed it back. Softly. No one could ever throw a slipper at the Comle. Never. Not even her consort.
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Mars. 2459.
I hadn’t been off the prison Lander more than 15 minutes when the girls surrounded me. Hadn’t even been officially marked and numerated and all those things they do to prisoners. She had a lot of clout, the one who stopped me, waving the other prisoners to hurry by. I should have thought something was wrong but I was still handcuffed and a guard stood at each end of the tube from the platform to the administration room, so why should I worry? I was also lucid - which was kind of a first. This episode wouldn’t help me stay that way.
“You’re 487?” She spat at me. She was blonde. Quite pretty if she hadn’t had a deep look of loss etched onto the planes of her face. I wondered for a second what could have caused her so much pain? Had she killed someone she loved as well? I would find out thirty seconds and a broken nose later.
I nodded, 487 was the number they had given me.
Her elbow crashed into my nose, splintering the bone and causing a gush of blood. Her three henchwomen just watched and the two guards noticed nothing. Then she karate kicked me in the ribs, both sides. Making sure she broke a few. But not too many – I wouldn’t be a good plaything if I had too many broken bones.
“That’s for your fucking wife” she said and spat on me where I was lying on the floor, trying to wipe the blood from my face with my handcuffed hands. “I am so fucking glad she’s dead”
Something got into me then. Something I hadn’t thought I could do. I kicked out at her legs and caught her on the shin, knocking her over. Then I managed to get the handcuffs around her throat and twisted. A kick to my head from a guard put a stop to that. But – who the hell was I? I didn’t do things like that. Then again I also didn’t murder girlfriends on strange planets – but I was in this gangway being beaten for just that reason.
The guard pulled her up and I was happy to see I had bled all over her shirt.
“Why?” I managed to spit out.
“Hope 2.” She said and started to cry “Hope 2”
I had heard of Hope 2. Everyone had. It had finished the rebellion before it started. A horrible thing that should never have happened.
I staggered to my feet, unsure if it were the ribs on my left side or my nose that pained me more. I licked blood from my lips with my tongue and slurred
“What the fuck do I have to do with it?”
She stopped crying and started to laugh. Buckled over, slapping her knees laughing until she cried again. Her henchwomen just kept staring at me. I didn’t like the look they had but I would soon learn what it meant and it would take me over a year after they let me out of my padded cell and a few more broken bones to learn how to stop it. She turned to the guard who had helped her up.
“He doesn’t know” she wiped the tears from her cheeks “Doesn’t know.” Then she wiped her lips with the back of her hand and hit me again. I went down. And then she had a small syringe in my upper arm and all of them, even the guards, raped me. One after the other. I know – how do you rape a man, especially one who has a broken nose and broken ribs? Fuperone. A couple of milliliters in an average size man and he keeps it up for at least three hours – regardless how the rest of him feels and regardless how often he ejaculates. The rape drug. Women can be really inventive when they need to have children to get out of prison – especially if they get a boy – and of course it scars and lives – then they are set up for life. Really inventive.