Pete Cawdron - Feedback

Jason ran on blindly, but he was running around the center of the UFO, not away from it. If he wanted to escape, he should have run toward the walkway. His mind felt drugged and lethargic, still reeling from shock.

He climbed into the shattered dome on top of the vast creature.

Immediately, the alien animal responded to his presence. Light began pulsating out from the center of the craft, running in ripples across the immense hide in much the same way as a cuttlefish displayed a variety of colors. The soldiers were thrown backwards, as if hurled outward by a massive electric shock.

Jason got his first good look inside the vast cavity that was the head of the creature. That the beast was organic was not readily apparent because the outer skin was transparent, like a massive windscreen. From the outside, the central dome had appeared dull grey, but from inside the view was clear. There were controls, at least they looked like controls. Row upon row of lights lit up on a bank in the craft, but the far side of what could be mistaken for a cockpit had an earthy feel. Severed roots and crushed rocks lay in complex matrices, interlaced with each other, connected by thin, sinuous veins. The contrast between the two hemispheres of the dome was stark, giving the impression that they didn’t belong together.

The rear half of the alien skull appeared to be sectioned off. A series of hurriedly scrawled formulas scarred the wall. These were the most advanced calculations he’d seen. They were complete. He recognized several portions from the photographs he’d seen in the RV.

The creature throbbed and pulsated. He could feel her lifting into the air. Outside, scaffolding fell away, crashing to the ground. Soldiers were yelling and firing, but where Jason was, there was only silence. They appeared to be acting out some part on a stage without any sound to accompany them.

Jason turned back to the scratches on the rear wall. He fought with his legs to stay upright as the craft swayed in the air.

Lachlan was right. What seemed like a single strand of time to Jason was in fact a time stream that repeated thousands and thousands of times. Each time the outcome had been the same. The only difference was those etchings. Among the chaos, they were all that mattered. They were the fleeting efforts to steer a new course.

You can save her

You can save all of them

These were messages he’d left himself.

The scratches outside had been from previous iterations of both him and Lily as they fought to understand what was happening to them time and again, but inside this dome, the only handwriting was his.

Standing there, he realized he had a plan. Jason still hadn’t quite comprehended what that plan was, but he knew why he went back in time. He couldn’t run. He was always going to go back for her. He had to save her. That’s what this was about: love.

Jason had gone back innumerable times out of his love for Lily and her father. And he had a plan, he knew he had a plan, a plan that had been formed over thousands of cycles, a plan carved here on the walls of this vast creature, only he had to figure out the messages he’d been sending himself.

The animal continued to pulse, increasing in its frequency and the brightness of the light it emitted.

“I know,” Jason said softly. “I understand the pain you’ve been in for so long. You want to be set free, too. I can do this. I can change this. I can bring about the end. Stay with me, my old friend. Together, we are going to change this and bring you release from the torment and pain.”

Jason stepped back, his eyes focused on the back wall, intently wanting to understand the message he’d sent himself.

He knew in past iterations he would have turned because he would have wanted to see the spectacular sight of the creature bursting through the dome over reactor one. He’d have relished the vision of time and space warping around him and the majesty of traveling a wormhole through space-time, but to escape he had to ignore all that. He had to knit the threads of a plan being passed down through time. The answer was right there in front of him, he just had to see it, he had to see it just as he had in times immemorial.

You can save her

You can save all of them

And that was when it struck him. Finally, he understood. He’d never seen these words. If there had been photos taken of these words, they never made it to Lachlan. Perhaps they hadn’t been deemed important, but for some reason this message only ever reached him now, although portions of the calculation lower down made it back to him in the RV.

Jason closed his eyes, picturing the photos scattered on the floor of the RV. They’d fallen out of sequence, scattered in a seemingly random pattern, but they’d formed coherent words.

fe ED b A ck

d E st R oY

Opening his eyes, he ran his fingers over the thick hide of the animal as it rose thousands of feet above the Earth, readying itself for a jaunt into the past.

There it was. He recognized the letters, if not the order.

fe fe fe fe ck b ED A ED ck A

To anyone else, these letters would be nonsense, but the first three fe 's were there as markers, slowly lining up those two letters over several iterations so they appeared in precisely the right spot within the photograph. Whoever had taken the pictures must have resolved never to show him anything that appeared unsettling, or they hadn’t seen any significance in these letters and so ignored them, but either way, this was the only means by which he could talk to himself across the gulf of time.

Each of the letters was part of a multi-iteration attempt to warn himself of what was to come.

E d R st oY

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.

ctor 1 Rea

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.