Escaping the Pyre, Part 1
by Jayel
During the long months the Eden Advance Team had spent trapped in the mountains, Yale had longed for the sight of flat land, an open plain their vehicles could traverse without groaning, a world laid out before them like a map where progress made toward New Pacifica could be measured in straightforward kilometers.
But after three months of rolling steadily across this longed-for plain, he was no longer certain they were moving at all, and the sight of a mountain rising in the distance would have seemed like the foothills of heaven. Every day dawned on the same vista, the sun rising behind them to cast a mellow, golden light across an endless sea of grass. We know there's an end to this plain in the east, he mused, watching this miracle once more with a still-appreciative eye. Surely we'll find an end in the west eventually.
The sounds of the rest of the Eden Project waking and coming to life behind him brought a smile to his face in spite of the disheartening sameness of the view ahead. Progress across the continent may have been slow, but as a community of souls, Eden Advance was moving forward in leaps and bounds.
Dr. Julia Heller lay absolutely still on her back for as long as she could stand it, hoping to make her stomach stop doing flip-flops by sheer force of will. But mind over matter only works when all minds are in agreement, and Valentine Solace was of a mind to make his/her mother sick. She sprang up from the cot and lunged for the indignity of a handy bucket, dumping Alonzo out of bed in the process.
"Sorry," she muttered when what seemed like everything she had eaten the day before had completed its unscheduled journey back up her esophagus.
"It's okay," Alonzo said soothingly, picking himself up and trying to regain his bearings. "Can I get you anything?"
"No," she groaned, pushing the bucket away and leaning her face against a convenient table leg. "Go away . . . "
"Okay, okay, I'm going," he promised, trying not to smile. He hated for her to be so miserable, but he couldn't help thinking she was cute, even in her current shade of green. "Can I at least get rid of--"
"Take it!" she ordered, rolling onto her back and dragging the blanket from the cot over her head.
Alonzo picked up the offending bucket and took it outside, careful not to take too deep a whiff of the contents. "Wasting food again, I see," Wolman joked, coming by as he washed it out. "Hang in there, man. She's got to get better sometime."
"I hope so," Alonzo said with a grin. "She's starting to figure out this is all my fault."
Wolman laughed. "You think she's mad now," he said. "Wait'll she goes into labor."
Morgan Martin was still asleep. Sound asleep. Dead to the world. "Morgan honey," Bess cooed, tracing the outline of his lower lip with one finger. "It's morning."
"Yes," he agreed, rolling over and rooting deeper into the pillow.
"Everyone's going to be up soon," Bess complained, snuggling closer against his back and sliding her arms around his waist.
"That's true," he admitted, halfway back to a dream about cheese blintzes with strawberry sauce. He could almost taste . . .
"Morgan!" Bess insisted, sliding a hand down his stomach. "Wake up."
His eyes popped open like shutters. "Bess, cut it out," he ordered in a not-terribly-convincing tone.
"Why?" she teased, climbing on top of him.
"Aren't you worried about the baby?" he protested weakly, parts of him responding in spite of hunger and sleep deprivation.
"Julia told me we can't possibly hurt the baby by having sex," she said, punctuating with a series of tender kisses all over his worried face.
"Really?" he managed to squeak.
"Really," she asserted, capturing his mouth with hers. She broke the kiss with a soft smack of saliva. "She also said it was perfectly natural for my sex drive to be running a little high now that I've entered my second trimester."
"Oh," Morgan said, his heart sinking as everything else seemed to rise. "That's great, sweetheart . . . Did she happen to mention what's going to happen to me?"
Devon Adair had made a remarkable recovery in the three months since she'd emerged from cold sleep for the second time on this odyssey to New Pacifica. But she wasn't well enough to control two rowdy youngsters who seemed determined to do each other a mortal injury before breakfast. "Ulysses Adair, stop chasing True and put your boots on," she ordered, catching her son in the third turn of his fourth lap around the tent. "And True, stop teasing Uly."
"Sorry, Mom," Uly said, settling on the cot to wrestle with his bootlaces.
"Sorry, Devon," True echoed, though Devon noticed she couldn't resist sticking her tongue out at Uly just once more before retrieving her hair brush and bringing it to Devon to have her braid redone for the day.
"It's all right, but we need to hurry and get moving," Devon said, brushing the little girl's long blond locks. "Yale saw some yellow leaves yesterday, and we've all noticed how chilly it's been the past few nights."
"Is it going to start snowing again?" Uly asked.
"Not any time soon," Devon answered, fervently hoping she was right. "But we need to reach some sort of shelter before it does."
"Dad said yesterday that he hoped some of those eco-terrorist convicts made it this far west and built some more of those domes," True offered helpfully. "Otherwise we're gonna freeze."
"I'm sure he was just teasing," Devon said, hiding her annoyance. She could certainly respect Danziger's desire to be perfectly upfront with his daughter, but it could be extremely inconvenient. Why frighten the children before they had to?
Still, she had to admit Uly and True seemed anything but frightened, and she smiled in spite of herself. Danziger might be a pessimist, but somehow he managed to make everyone feel like things would work out somehow. Especially her.
If John Danziger had overheard this thought, he probably would have laughed. Just then he was feeling none too brave. Turning back toward camp, he could see Yale surveying the terrain ahead, but everyone else seemed to still be in their tents. He figured he had maybe half an hour before someone came looking for him. Just enough time for a fix.
A stand of scrawny trees growing among a scattering of gray boulders provided at least a modicum of privacy, and he reached into his pocket and took out his VR gear. Taking a deep breath, he slipped it on his head.
Eleanor--not the fragile, comatose creature he'd left on the stations but the vibrant, beautiful woman who'd conceived his daughter--suddenly appeared before him. "Hiya," she grinned. "Did everything work out all right?"
"Eventually," he answered around the lump in his throat. The image was weak--this holo program had never been the best, and it had been through hell over the past three decades. But she still broke his heart just standing there. "Devon's okay, and we're on our way to New Pacifica again."
"That's great," she enthused, but he could tell she really didn't care. This program had been recorded in the early days of their relationship, when he was still just one of several station drones panting after a piece of her . . . heart, he scolded himself. This was, after all, the mother of his child. The programming wasn't sophisticated enough for her character to have evolved naturally or developed any sense of time, so talking to her was really no more effective than speaking into a journal recorder--nothing that hadn't mattered to her when the holo was done mattered to her now, although she could remember facts. And sometimes just seeing her face and hearing her voice was enough.
"I am really missing you," he said, forcing himself to smile.
"I miss you, too," she replied, stepping lightly into his arms. This was part of the original program, and the sensations were sharper, more focussed. Painfully focussed--he could actually taste her lip gloss when she reached up and kissed him. She rested her head against his breastbone and squeezed him tight around the waist. "You worry too much," she soothed. "Didn't you just say everything was okay again?" She drew back and took his chin in her tiny hand. "John, I want to help," she urged, her forehead drawn in frustration. "You just have to tell me stuff--"
"Nothing's wrong, Ellie," he promised, pulling her close again. "Like you said, everything's okay." Planting a final tender kiss on the top of her head, he reached up and flipped off his gear.
"I can fix that thing, you know," a familiar voice spoke up from nearby. Turning he found Tara Donahoe sitting cross-legged on one of the boulders, regarding him with what may have been amusement and may have been simple interest. "Sorry for eavesdropping," she said, getting up with her own VR gear dangling from her hand. "But technically I was here first."
"You shouldn't be wandering around out here by yourself," he groused, annoyed. Danziger actually sort of liked Tara, and he certainly thought she had gotten a raw deal from Reilly and his EVE, but she had a nasty habit of turning up at the worst possible time.
"I'm not worried," she replied. She held out her hand, and he found himself handing over the Eleanor program. "So who is she?" she asked, seeming to weigh it in her palm.
"True's mother," he answered gruffly. Not for the first time he wondered just how much access this harmless-looking little biological anomaly had to the brain data of the Eden Project-- weren't they all supposed to be connected somehow now? "She died in an accident back on the stations before True was born."
"This is a crummy program," Tara remarked conversationally. Her eyes were no longer focussed on his face, and he realized she was scanning the tube in her now-glowing palm. "The VR version of an old-timey snapshot. You got anything better?"
"Just something a friend of mine recorded for True right after the accident," he answered. He had fought Alex tooth and nail over that-- recording a comatose Ellie had seemed disgusting at the time, a ghoulish mistake. But later, when he'd finally shown the program to True, he'd been forced to admit Alex was right. "Look, I'm not really interested--"
"Are you sure?" Tara pressed, her eyes snapping into focus again. "I mean, if the other recording picked up brain impressions, I could use it to make her seem more real."
"She's real enough to me already," he said, taking the tube back.
Tara smiled and nodded. "You're probably right," she admitted. "VR is a crutch. Believe me, I know."
"You and Morgan," he laughed, immediately regretting it when he saw her face. He and the rest of the group had seen that fragile smile a lot over the past three months. Tara had made a lot of progress--working through her grief, Yale called it. But the slightest mention of Val could still send her into a black depression that lasted for days. And as usual, he had blundered into a sensitive area like the proverbial bull charging Wedgewood. Women are mine fields, he thought with an inward groan. "So you have a VR recording of Val?" he asked, trying and failing to sound casual.
"Not an official recording, no," she answered. "Can you believe it? I spend my whole life doing these stupid programs, and I never get the one person I really care about on a tube." She popped a tube out of her gear and held it up between her fingertips. "But I remember him," she said, studying it. "And somewhere in my head is an after-image from when he stumbled into me that first time, like Magus . . . all I have to do is find it."
The whole concept of Tara as supercomputer always made Danziger nervous, particularly when the one discussing it was the lady herself. "Tara, honey, have you talked to Yale or Julia about this?" he ventured.
"Of course not," she snapped, popping the tube back into her gear. "They'd just say it was unhealthy, that I need to move on--Yale says I have to let Val go, like I have a choice about it, like he gave me a choice . . . " She stopped, pressing her fists to her temples. "I'm sorry," she said, her eyes closed. "I didn't mean to dump on you, it's just . . ." She opened her eyes and looked up at him, giving him the look that always made Wolman drop something and stumble over his own boots. "When I saw your program, I thought maybe you'd understand."
"I do understand, sort of," Danziger said, more uncomfortable than dazzled but soft-hearted enough to feel compelled to comfort her somehow. "I mean, why else would I be out here in the middle of nowhere accessing a holo of a woman I know's been dead for thirty years or more?
"That thought did occur," she answered, smiling. "A bad holo, at that. Look, why don't you at least let me take a look at it, just to see what I can do?" Her angelic smile broadened into a devilish grin. "Maybe I can even bump her reality factor up enough to make her tell you it's okay to be in love with Devon," she said, giving him a sidelong glance.
Hey, kiddo, this is why half the Eden Project hates your pretty guts, he almost told her. "You're jumping to conclusions again," he said instead.
"Yeah, right," she teased. "Look, I promise I won't damage the original programming, and I won't ask you any questions about her or Devon or anything else. Just let me give it a try." She held out her hand. "Please?"
His eyes narrowed, but he couldn't really be angry with her. "On one condition," he said at last. "That while you're working on my project, you leave your own memory banks alone."
Her smiled faded. "Is that a bluff?" she asked petulantly. "Look, Danziger, if you don't want me playing with your toys, just say so--"
"That isn't it, and you know it," he said, finally finding the right tone--talk to Tara like you talk to True, the tiny smart section of his brain advised. "I just know that the more time you spend picking yourself to pieces trying to put your husband back together, the worse shape you're going to be in physically. And unless you've forgotten, almost all of us have a stake in keeping you healthy." This was true--Julia had said as much, wondering aloud why Tara wasn't recovering faster from the burns and cerebral scoring of her battle royal with EVE, and now he knew why. The woman was killing herself trying to resurrect her dead husband.
She didn't answer for a long time, and just as she opened her mouth to do so, True and Uly came running through the woods. "Dad, come on!" True demanded. "We've been looking all over for you guys."
"In a minute, True-girl," he called back. "Tara, what do you say?"
She held out her hand. "Give me the tube," she said. "But be ready, Danziger. She's going to knock your socks off."
End of Part 1
Story Notes:
This story is a continuation of/sequel to "Kamikaze" and probably won't make a lot of sense to anyone who hasn't read that magnum opus. Sorry . . . . As always, comments good or bad or both are more than welcome.