Each of the letters was part of a multi-iteration attempt to warn himself of what was to come.
There was destroy.
Jason leaned close, studying several small scratches in the shape of v’s and ^’s. Instantly, he understood what he was telling himself. He’d previously calculated where the edge of those photos had been. He’d already mapped out where the final words should go. This was it, this would be the last iteration. With this, he could end the cycles.
Jason held up his pickaxe, looking carefully at the markings and remembering the sequence in which the photos had fallen. Quickly, he scratched two words into the wall, using all the space he felt was available.
Reactor 1. That was the missing piece of the puzzle,the final portion of the plan. He went back over the R, making sure it stood out clearly. This was what he needed, he was sure of it.
Jason thought back to his state of mind in the RV after they struck the branch on the road. He remembered how he’d wondered about these words, and he remembered the conversation he and Lachlan had, the discussion about the three reactors.
Would this message work?
Would Jason believe someone was talking to him across the vastness of time itself?
Would Lachlan believe in this ad hoc message across the ages?
He knew Lily would.
What would they do?
Would they destroy the dome?
His only hope lay in that Learjet punching its way through the dome over Reactor 1 and destroying the time machine.
Would the blast kill the creature?
He’d seen Mercy scratched on the side of the craft, and now he understood why. Standing there in the cranial structure of the beast he knew it desired release, yet another message from its scarred hide.
Was that what this was all about?
Was that why this astonishing animal continued to loop over and over within space-time? Was it seeking release?
The alien had been injured. From what he could tell, almost quarter of whatever made up its brain had been destroyed at some point in the distant past. As best he understood what he’d seen, this magnificent animal was on the verge of being brain dead. It had suffered for far too long. Yes, he thought, Reactor 1 completed the message he’d been trying to send for thousands of years. Reactor 1 would bring about the end.
A cold wind swirled into the open cranial structure of the vast dark beast.
Jason turned, but his vantage point had narrowed.
The pickaxe in his hand looked magnified.
He dropped the ax and staggered forward, his mind reeling from the physiological change that had been thrust upon it.
Thoughts he’d had just moments before were lost to him. There was something he needed to remember, but he couldn’t grasp what had seemed so important just seconds before. A few, brief flashes of memory lit his mind, that of a woman dying in his arms, and an old man with a mutilated hand, but beyond that his mind was blank.
Jason’s clothes were too big and baggy. He reached out a tiny hand. steadying himself against a bank of flashing lights, looking out into the darkness.
Clouds raced by.
The alien creature banked to one side.
Wind howled beyond the cockpit.
Dawn broke in the distance. The sun peeked over the horizon as the massive craft crashed into the sea, sending up a wall of spray.
Cold sea water flooded into the fractured cavern, washing over Jason and causing him to choke. He spluttered, struggling to swim against the inflow of water flooding the vessel. Frantically, he kicked with his legs, freeing himself from his oversized, baggy clothing and pushing toward the surface.
The craft slipped quietly beneath the waves.
Jason swallowed sea water. Struggling and coughing, he fought to stay afloat, but he was sinking beneath the waves. Suddenly, a hand grabbed him, hauling him up into a rough wooden boat and he turned, seeing a familiar, friendly face, a face he’d seen thousands of times before.
Jason smiled at the aging North Korean fisherman.
He’d escaped, yet again.
Epilogue
The lights in the airlock dimmed as the pressure dropped, slowly forming a vacuum in the chamber. Jae-Sun could feel his spacesuit flex slightly. The pressure within his suit hadn’t changed, but the dropping pressure around him forced the material to take shape, swelling slightly.
The interior of the airlock was white. Various touch panels indicated readings from inside and outside the lock. A green light came on, signaling that a vacuum had been established, matching that outside the vast exploration craft. The lighting inside the lock remained dim, ensuring the astronaut’s eyes remained accustomed to the low light outside the spaceship.
The iris on the outside of the airlock opened, beginning as a tiny dot and spreading to more than twenty feet in diameter, which was more than enough given that there were only two astronauts preparing to exit. Normally, this lock handled up to fifteen astronauts at a time, including construction equipment.
“You are clear for EVA,” a disembodied voice said over the radio com link.
“Roger that,” Commander Lassiter replied from opposite Jae-Sun.
The young man grinned from behind his glass faceplate, smiling at Jae-Sun. Such excitement was contagious. For a moment, Jae-Sun could almost pretend he was a young man, but four hundred and eighty seven years were taking their toll on his aging frame.
Even with gene therapy and rejuvenation sleeps, there was only so much the cells of his body could endure. He wanted to make five hundred, and why not? It was more than just an arbitrary number, it was his life. Jae-Sun was a bio-geneticist before switching to complete a double PhD in physics. He was one of the first to undergo live gene reconstruction in the twenty-first century. There was no known upper limit to the therapy, but his body still aged, just far more slowly. By the twenty-fifth century, he had the appearance of a sixty year old under natural aging.
Lassiter gestured to the old man, signaling for him to leave the airlock first.
Jae-Sun stretched the fingers on his right hand and his spacesuit responded effortlessly, following his every impulse. He twisted his hand slightly, adjusting his orientation and rotated to one side relative to Lassiter. A jet-propelled equipment case mimicked the motion of his suit, staying several feet behind him and off to one side.
Jae-Sun lined himself up with what he thought of as vertical on the distant asteroid. The equipment case aligned itself with Jae-Sun so that it remained behind him to his left, exactly as it had been in the airlock. The white cube was a meter square, but Jae-Sun, even after all these years still thought in imperial measurements. To him, it was three feet square, and some. The dials and gauges covering its six faces were overly large, having been designed to be easy to operate with thick gloves, but this was no ordinary instrument array.
Lassiter followed him out of the airlock.
“Keep the Excelsior on station in this orbital path,” Jae-Sun said over his radio.