I replayed that scene over and over again, standing with them in the darkened upstairs room as they giggled and hid, looking down at Cindy and me talking in the yard. I think she’d been on the verge of telling me and was planning on bringing them all out as a big surprise.
Ricky’s funeral had been an emotional tidal wave for her, and she’d been trying her best to reach out to me, but I hadn’t let her. She’d wanted my help to somehow extend their lives, but I had shut her down before she’d even been able to ask.
My anger had cut her short, as it always had.
I found myself going back and replaying, over and over again, one scene in particular, just before the first Ricky’s death. He’d been a wizened old man at that point, bent over and leaning on his cane as he came out onto the back porch of the cottage, the door squeaking on its hinges as he exited. Two of the girls came running past him as he closed the door, Georgina squealing as she was chased by Brianna.
Ricky wobbled unsteadily as they flew past, but he smiled at them. I smiled at them, too.
“Come sit down, Ricky,” said Cindy, getting up from the great old oak table we had sat at together not so very long ago.
Time was a funny thing—even as I traveled through it freely back and forth to view what had happened, it was frozen now, my life as immobile as an insect caught in amber.
As I replayed the scene, sitting with them at the table, a wasp buzzed by angrily on its way to a nest under the eaves. Cindy took Ricky by the arm, carefully easing him into his seat and sitting down across from him, her hands on his hands across the table, looking into his eyes.
“I don’t know how much longer this old body is going to last, mother,” Ricky said, matter-of-factly. Tears spilled down Cindy’s face.
“Don’t cry, mother. What’s there to be sad about? It’s a beautiful day.” He rocked his old head back to look up at the perfect blue sky and smiled. “What a beautiful day to be alive.”
9
I learned that we’d acquired Ricky-Two right after the first Ricky had died. I guessed it was an attempt to fill the gap that had appeared in her life. The rest of them soon passed as well, and it had all just become too much for her.
Watching reruns of this family that I had, but never had, I was filled with an indescribable sadness. But maybe, just maybe, Cindy had gotten what she’d wanted. Did living a full life, in a few short months, make it any less? Did I feel any less sense of meaning in my life, having watched my children grow up and grow old and pass before my eyes so quickly?
It was all very hard to say.
What I could say with certainty was that Cindy’s family flatly refused to allow me to have access to her DNA for the purposes of having children, which I’d petitioned for in case anything else went wrong.
“Rick,” her father told me, “I know Cindy loved you, more than we could understand after you kept leaving her alone for each new tour of duty. You nearly killed her each time you went back out.”
“I know, sir—”
“She begged you for children, and now you’ve.… ” He tried to stay calm, but his voice trembled. “This is an abomination, man! What in the world are you people doing out there?”
They didn’t ask to move Cindy from Atopia, as this remained the one place where they could still hold out hope. The future was approaching fast out here, and maybe there was a way we could fix what had happened.
“So you have no ideas left, doc?”
“Commander Strong, we’re going to have to refuse any further meeting requests until we have something new,” said the doc’s proxxi. “It’s one thing to play with the inputs and outputs to the brain, but the actual place where the mind comes together… it’s a tricky thing.”
Jimmy was with me, trying to help out. “Why don’t you just take it easy, Commander? I’ll keep you posted if we can figure anything out.”
So I left it in their hands. Apart from watching reruns of my family, I spent a lot of my time floating back up on the edge of space, following the UAVs in their lazy orbits high in the stratosphere around Atopia, looking down at the storms that threatened to crush and destroy it.
They could figure it out without me. I had other things to do.
Sitting near the top of the bleachers, the drama of the Little League game was spread out before me. Tensions were running high at the bottom of the ninth inning, and everyone held their breath as the final hitter came to the plate.
Nervously shifting silhouettes far in the outfield cast long shadows in the last rays of a late summer sunset. I squinted into the sun, trying to make out which kid was which, then turned my attention back to the hitter.
Strike went the first pitch. Then strike again went the second. Hushed silence as the pitcher went into his windup.
“Strike three!” thundered the umpire, and the field erupted in pandemonium.
“What a great game!” said the man standing beside me. “You got a kid playing?”
“I sure do,” I replied as my boy scampered up the stairs through the departing crowd. Leaping into my arms, he squealed in excitement. “We won, Dad!” He looked up at me. “Why are you crying, Dad? We won!”
I wiped my face. “You sure have your mother’s eyes, you know that?”
Ricky smiled without understanding. Drying my eyes I took his hand, and we walked down off the bleachers, across the infield, and into the dying sunshine.
TIME DROPS
Part 3:
Vince Indigo
1
Identity: Vince Indigo
In the thin air at the edge of space, I could feel more than hear the steady beat of the UAV’s massive propeller dragging me onward toward my death.
I’d been able to see this moment coming for a long time. The tight compartment I was in had never been meant to fit a human. I shifted uncomfortably, feeling the cold metal pressing against me through the thin pressure suit of the improvised life support system I’d rigged up.
I shouldn’t have tried to escape.
Alarms signaling the start of the slingshot weapon’s test fire rang out across the multiverse spectrum. They would have canceled the test if they knew I was hidden up here in this thing, but in my desperate bid to erase my tracks, I’d cut myself off entirely from the communications networks—concealing what I was doing, and even why I was doing it.
It was a gamble that hadn’t paid off, as the UAV’s control system signaled the start of a system malfunction that I always knew was coming. It lurched sickeningly off to the left, cutting and sliding through empty space, turning inexorably back toward my doom.
In the near distance, the boom of the slingshot began, thundering as it demonstrated its fearsome power to the world. My heart was racing, my breathing ragged and shallow. For days, weeks even, I had been able to see this exact moment arriving, yet here I was, unable to prevent it.
The awful growl of the slingshot grew and began rattling the delicate cage of the UAV’s body. The cold metal pressing against me warmed, and then turned hot as the acrid stench of molten plastic burned into my lungs. I gagged, shrinking up into myself, terrified.
Engulfed in roaring flames, the UAV pitched over, its metal and plastic skin coming apart in great fiery gobs as it disintegrated, offering me up into the emptiness—spinning, falling, and burning as my wings fell away. In my last instants of life, I caught a distant glimpse of Atopia, a cool green speck between the flames, her siren song calling me back toward the endless seas below.