Stephen Baxter - Transcendent

Again Alia looked oddly crestfallen, as much as I could read her small face, her apelike body language — as if she was actually jealous of Morag. “Yes,” she said. “It was the Witnessing.”

As a Witness she had access to my whole life. She could dip into it at will, like a random-access file. She was naturally drawn to the key events of my life — and for her, that meant the times invested with the most emotion, the most joy, the most pain.

She said, “We are so far apart in time we don’t always communicate very well. Not in language, in symbols.” I thought of our failure to decode her speech; I knew that was true. “But emotion comes through,” she said. “Raw, powerful emotion can punch through species barriers, even through time. But Witnessing is always leaky…”

The Witnessing was a muddling-up of future and past. She talked about her information surfaces again,

her holograms. All that Witnessing had damaged the holograms, somehow: it had worn holes in the fabric of my life. And through those holes I glimpsed other times, other places.

“Like the pages of a much-loved book,” Rosa said. “So worn through by a tracing finger they become transparent, and you can read the next page.”

At an intensely Witnessed moment you could get leaks, she said, traces of events from other times in your life showing through. And since Morag had been associated with the most intensely joyful and painful moments of my life, and it was those instants that had been rubbed through and linked up, what I mostly glimpsed was her. It was as if all my life with Morag had been joined together in a single eternal moment.

Alia said, “I’m sorry I can’t explain it any better.”

Rosa nodded, as if satisfied. “So Witnessing muddles future and past. I wonder if this rationalizes away every ghost story in the past — the few which were not simply delusional.”

Alia said to me, “In fact Witnessing is supposed to be neutral. You aren’t supposed to perturb your subject. Not many people know it has this kind of effect.”

John laughed. “So even in the far future we are polluters! If you need a good compensation lawyer, Michael—”

“Shut up, John.”

Rosa said coldly, “And since from Michael’s perspective you are a creature from eternity, from outside his life altogether, your intrusion has damaged his whole life.”

Alia said, “But Michael’s case was special.”

“How?”

“Because I am here. I had to push hard to break through, to be here. The distortion of your timeline was — exceptional.”

Rosa murmured, “Michael, what are you thinking?”

I shrugged. “I thought I was seeing Morag. I always imagined she wanted to come back to me. I’m disappointed that it was all just some jerky time-traveler fuck-up from the future. I’m pissed that it was nothing but you all the time.” I spat the words at Alia. I wanted to hurt her.

Her face crumpled further. But she said earnestly, “Michael, she was there, in the hauntings, the visitations. Yes, I was the Witness. But what you saw was her. And the revenant, the flesh-and-blood resurrection — that was Morag, too, Michael, in every way that it could be her.”

“Ah, yes,” Rosa snapped. “The revenant. And why was she brought back?” She used her sharp exorcist’s voice again. “You told me your name, but you have yet to tell me the full truth. What is your purpose, creature?”

Alia turned to me. “You are special, Michael Poole,” she said. “You must know that by now — it is true, whether you like it or not. You are truly a pivot of history, in this age, and your name is known into the far future.”

“Here we go,” Tom said, and he linked his hands behind his head. “The really nutty stuff.”

I turned away. I really, truly, did not want to hear this. Maybe every kid dreams that she is special, that her name will be known forever. It’s just a fantasy, an expression of adolescent yearning and uncertainty, something you grow out of. But now this Alia, this strange being from the future, was saying that for me, Michael Poole, it was so. It was as if every paranoid, grandiose dream I had ever had were folding down into this moment. But I did not want to be a fulcrum, famous for all time.

Gea said, “To be clear, you believe that Michael’s great contribution will be the hydrate project. The Refrigerator.”

“Yes. But there is more.”

“What else?”

“The restoration of Morag was part of it. I have more to ask of you, Michael Poole, a grave responsibility… You will see.” She glanced around at us all, our bewildered, angry faces. “But this is not the time. I will return.”

Rosa snapped, “When?”

But Alia would only speak to me. “When you call me, Michael.”

And she disappeared. There was nothing left but the chair where Morag had sat, with the little vials of wine and salt, and a small heap of crumpled, abandoned clothing.

We all sat back. Tom blew out his cheeks. Sonia was wide-eyed, silent — delighted, I thought, full of wonder.

John seemed angry, resentful. “I wish they had left us alone. These future ape-people, whatever they are. This is the Bottleneck, for God’s sake. Don’t we have enough to do without dealing with the future as well?”

“I imagine we all feel like that,” Rosa said. “But we may not have a choice. It is precisely because this is a time of crisis that Alia has come here. It seems we are important enough to merit visitors from the future — or at any rate, Michael is.”

John said, “I don’t want to know about the future. I don’t want to think of my life as just an archaeological trace, locked in stone. It’s my life. It’s all I have.”

“I understand. But it can’t be helped.” Rosa stood. “This has been a long session. I suggest we break, sleep, eat. We will talk tomorrow.” She eyed me. “And then you will summon back your admirer from the future, Michael.”

“If I must,” I said.

“I think you do. For it appears you have a mission. How exciting,” she said dryly. And, with a flourish like a stage magician’s, she vanished in a mist of pixels.

That night I lay down in my room, alone for the first time since the bombing. Morag was gone — if she had ever been there at all.

The exorcism and all that had followed had been a roller-coaster ride for me. I was battered, bewildered, and resentful at everybody: Rosa for setting the whole thing up, Alia who had somehow engineered all this with her “Witnessing” from the far future — and Morag, for returning into my life in such a remote and agonizingly incomplete way, and then leaving me again. None of which was fair, of course. Shit happens, I told myself, even such astounding shit as this. Even Alia wasn’t to blame. She might look like a stretched orangutan, but I had seen in her eyes, in the way she looked at me, that she was a person, fully conscious, fully formed emotionally. She was no doubt a product of her times and her society, just as I was. And I had seen, inexplicable as it was, that she was fond of me. It was as if I had developed a crush on Wilma Flintstone. What a joke.

As I drifted toward sleep, exhausted, my thoughts softened. It was in just this sleeping-waking condition that I had had so many glimpses of Morag in the past. But I knew that this time she would not come to me.

The next day I woke feeling drained. When I ordered the curtains to open, they revealed a day that was harsh even by Alaskan standards, with a sky like a steel prison roof clamped down over Deadhorse.

I had a sudden, sharp memory of a contrasting morning on Florida, a winter’s day full of bright cold sunshine, when I had gone out, at age ten or so, to fly a kite or a Frisbee or a water rocket or some damn thing. I could hear the boom of Atlantic breakers kilometers out, smell the sharp salty brine, feel the texture of the sand under my feet and on my skin. Every sense open to the max, I was fully locked into the world, and I never felt so alive, so joyous. But even then, I think I knew I wouldn’t always feel this way. I would age, my eyes would glaze over, my hearing clog, my fingertips crust over with dead flesh, and my body would become like a space suit, insulating me from the world. I knew it even then, and I dreaded it. And in time it had come to pass: this was my reality, my own aching, aging body, a face like old leather, a head stuffed with cotton wool.