By David C. Daoust
Suzanne found herself back in the lab, back in one of those conversations. By ‘one of those’, she means a conversation that really only ever makes sense to Dakota. The good doctor had just spent the past half hour telling Suzanne, how she has interacted with the past.
Mind boggling to say the least, she wasn’t sure how serious she should take any of it. Suzanne was still puzzling through Dakota’s interpretation of theories on time travel, when Dakota, suddenly, and cheerfully, announced that it ultimately did not matter. And she was surer than ever, that whatever she did to the past, was exactly what she had done to the past– these things were completely immutable.
“So…” Suzanne started, fully aware this is the part where she usually tries to sum up what Dakota just explained, in maybe an over simplified expression, and then jam a question at the very end. All with the hope that Dakota would believe she understood, at least some of what, Dakota expected her to absorb. This time, however, Suzanne was at a loss for words…
“I know it’s weird, but we’re passed the hard stuff,” Dakota said with kind of a half shrug, “I mean I fixed all the problems that you faced back then, and now, really, it is all smooth sailing… probably.”
“Probably?” Suzanne pressed as she noticed the downcast eye and barely noticeable twitch at a dark thought, yet expressed. She knew Dakota was holding back.
“Well, yeah,” Dakota faltered, allowing the darker thought a chance to be heard, “Its just, it seems kind of weird that I can look into, and effect, yesterday… yet, as far as I can tell, I am not being interacted with by tomorrow…”
“What does that mean?” Suzanne asked.
“Well… and I don’t want to freak you out… but…” Dakota took a breath, seemed to puzzle through the best way to say it, “there is no ‘tomorrow’…” She said simply, though then quickly explained, “Either something goes horribly wrong, or, and let’s hope this be true… maybe tomorrow, exists outside of the Everywhere…”
“Meaning we make it out this place before tomorrow?” Suzanne asked.
“Well, there is no sun or stars,” Dakota, for some reason, suddenly felt the need to explain her own jargon, “the only marker for tomorrow and yesterday, would be the collapse that eventually hits. This forces the jump, that leads into the next pocket or ‘time period’. A time period, which I have just been referring to as the next ‘day’, despite- seemingly, having these time periods, feel, weeks apart.
“So, what are you saying?” Suzanne asked, unimpressed.
“There is a chance, we don’t make it to the next pocket…” Dakota informed, “we may not make it through the collapse this time, which would explain why there is no ‘Tomorrow Me’ explaining how to make it through…”
“So, wait, we’re going to die here?” Suzanne asked, much more impressed.
“Or, I mean, the first thing…” Dakota felt the need to try and reassure, despite how bleak she just depicted the possibility, “Where we manage to pull ourselves… and everything in here, with us, back out into our normal reality…” Dakota posed, and then after a moment of contemplation tacked on, “ending the pocket chain for good.”
“Didn’t you just say the hard stuff was over?” Suzanne was not happy. “What part of any of that would be ‘smooth sailing’?”
“Oh, well the third option is that I did not help me in the past tomorrow, because I did not help myself now…” Dakota rolled her finger back as she explained simply, “So, I mean, I figured that was a better take on the perplexing situation… but, you know, you pressed for the other ways it may happen.”
“I did?” Suzanne was perplexed, “When did I…?”
“Okay, so I changed my mind on my own, mid-conversation,” Dakota seemed to catch up with what she was saying, compelled to backtrack a bit she explained, “I was planning to just not mention the other possibilities, because… I mean, who knows what tomorrow is going to bring?”
“I’m starting to think you are mad,” Suzanne said softly, then asked, “You know that, right?
“Well, I don’t blame you… I may well be,” Dakota said as she led the way up onto the holostage in the middle of the lab. “Come on, I think I finally got these ‘temporal pockets’ mapped out.”
Suzanne followed, silently joining her sister on the device as the blank hologram enveloped them.
“I have a pretty large array of pockets already sorted,” Dakota said as she called up a holographic list of icons, each titled with some cryptic jargon that Suzanne was not privy to, “Thousands even… It was a little tricky figuring out when was when, but I managed to measure some of the degradation going on in the surroundings…” with this Dakota gestured, triumphantly, to said cryptic jargon.
Suzanne still had no greater understanding of it. This did not seem to faze Dakota.
“Some of the pockets are still rough estimations, especially when the humans all start to look, so… similar to themselves… or maybe, ‘so, alien to us’? Either way, it is a lot harder to tell at that point, especially without extensive studying of the time periods.”
“One thing I can say for sure,” Dakota began, turning fully to Suzanne to express the enormity of the value she was about to drop on her, “They have been here for a really long time… long enough that they started to evolve to their environment. Actually, to an extent, I may have to say- ‘devolve’ with their environment. Generations of humans existing within ‘pods’ has altered their physiological development. Add in that their young are so infused with technology, that these hardships are all compensated for- by the tech; There was really no need for their own physiology to overcome them. Thus, when the children started to develop differently… for example, they probably started to walk later and later in life. At this point, the technology, or Ergos, however it went, stepped in, gave them flight. Which ultimately, did not help them regain those natural abilities. Abilities we take for granted.”
Suzanne had heard Dakota’s theories about the civilization of children living in the city center. Allowing Dakota to rehash, tended to give Suzanne a chance to think, and maybe gain a greater understanding of ideas she was already trying to process.
“Except, I would imagine, their brains. Their brains are far more advanced than most. And I would chalk that up, to them only ever using their brains past a certain age,” Dakota was clearly musing to herself aloud at this point, though she then explained, “The children are only allowed to be separate individuals for the first thirteen years of their life. At which time they are considered old enough, or, mature enough, to be fused with the rest of them in the Uber-brain. Other ways they evolved however… I imagine, their black eyes helped with the stark white skies, and the pale skin, probably helped them take in as much arklight as they could… People overlook the effect of not getting enough sunlight, even in the ancient past.” Dakota shared some of what she’d learned from her look into the ancient past, “Fact is, nature doesn’t care what color your skin is, just that you receive the right amount of light.”
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