Stephen Baxter - Transcendent

“I suppose they won’t.”

“I thought you’d want to see him one last time…” Drea leaned over the tank. “This is a time in his life after his encounter with the Transcendence. At this point in his lifeline, he remembers you, Alia.”

If he remembers anything at all, Alia thought uneasily, after his shattering self-sacrifice. “I grew up with Michael Poole. Through watching his life, I learned about mine. He was always a constant friend, even though he is half a million years dead. And then, through the Hypostatic Union with his son—”

“You touched him.”

“In a way. The Witnessing worked, you know. I got to know Poole, and I became a better person for it. I think so anyhow.”

“I think you loved him, didn’t you? Perhaps you still do.”

“But he never loved me, Drea. There was only ever Morag.”

Drea said earnestly, “It’s best this way, that it ends.” She trilled a few notes. “Every song must end — and indeed an ending, if it is exquisite enough, is part of the beauty of the song itself.”

But, Alia wondered, as she stared at Michael Poole’s empty face, must the ending of this particular song be quite so bittersweet? She felt huge forces gathering, as if the cosmos itself were focusing on this point-event in space and time. “It’s going to happen soon.”

Drea clutched her hands, watching her face with concern.

The Transcendence whirled around her, great clouds of anguish and determination. In a moment immense invisible muscles would flex — and a wave of difference would wash around the arc of the universe, from the furthest future and seamlessly into the deepest past. The universe would come apart, closed chains of cause and effect shattering, and when those chains knitted themselves up again, everything would be subtly different. And the powers the Transcendence had taken to itself, the power to meddle with the deepest past, would be put aside forever.

But in these last minutes, those powers still existed. And suddenly she knew what she must do.

Alia raised her face to the blue sky of Earth. Through the muddy daylight she thought she could see the Transcendence, the necklace-chains of minds, the drifting bergs of memory. “Do this one last thing,” she pleaded. “Spare him! Spare Michael Poole!”

Maybe it would work out for him this time. At least this way there was a chance. And after all, what was the point of being a god if you couldn’t perform the occasional miracle?

Spacetime flexed — she felt it, deep in the core of her being. And Drea gasped.

Alia looked down. The Witnessing tank was no longer clear; the image was broken, turbulent, like a pool of water stirred up with a stick. But in the last instant before the link collapsed forever, Alia saw Michael Poole turn toward the door, and stand, a look of shock on his face.

As Morag walked into the room.