Paul Hughes - Broken - A Plague Journal

i met her again after two years at the first performance of his i’d seen in two years. the last time i saw him was with her. a month separated their physical and metaphorical deaths.

Writing histories into existence, writing men and women into life…

the most difficult part has been convincing myself that i’m not the focal point of these destinies, that i have no right to ascribe my ownership of these histories. i’ve been selfish and vain to assume that i linked anything together.

Alpha and Omega.. and Delta. How could I have forgotten that strand?

i’m not the focal point of history, but a simple man swept along within it. i don’t deserve to be the intersection of life paths; i’m just paul. just paul.

Maire. The name tasted like blood.

i am ugly in every way. i am bitter and selfish. i could take pills, but they’ll never help. i am incapable of love. i’m sorry. i’m so sorry.

“Don’t—Just stay back.”

West grabbed Benton’s elbow to stop her forward motion. She looked into his old gray eyes with cold precision.

She activated the panel above her right forearm. Blade shielding retracted from her hand and she—

“Stay shielded!” Paul shouted back from the impact crater. “I don’t know if it’s still active.”

Blades slid back into place.

Frost surveyed the frozen plane. “What are we dealing with here?”

“Silver.” West’s grumbled answer.

contained multitudes.

and I felt like weeping, knew that I couldn’t, forgot about it for a while.

what have i done?

Knowing that each time I put pen to paper, each time callused fingertips traced lightly over plastic lettered keys, a world began, a world died, knowing that each time I thought too much, that each time I woke from a nightmare, a daymare, knowing, just knowing that it was real, it was blood and bone, the gasp of terror or lust, the cry of pain or release of

I knelt next to the mark her body had made in the earth. In the Earth.

Imagine a bipedal alien, cold eyes and flowing hair, jettisoned from a galaxy whose death she’d guaranteed, thrust into the veil of black between galaxies, caught in the wake of a vessel: a glorified photographer, an artificial lover, a traitor with two broken hearts. Imagine the impact of a body, a body and the snow, ice, the wind between then and now, and silver.

I knelt by the human-shaped crater, dragged armored claws over the compressed snow. Ice. I carved faint paths across its surface.

I could see the silver crawling. Merging, diverging, coalescing. Still very much alive, still very much a threat. She’d been here recently.

The husk of Task’s vessel had stopped smoking. A path of footprints and blood stretched to it, around, to the caves beyond.

I stood. Melting silver dripped from my claws, puddled and danced across

“Frost?” Paul returned from the crater, holding his right hand before him. “You shielded?”

“Shielded? I—”

“Have phase armor on?”

“No, but—”

“Shift up. Just a little. Have something to show you.”

She flickered into the shift. Lazy light spilled over Benton and West.

“What is that?” She reached out to touch Paul’s silvered hand.

“Don’t.” The light from the shift bent toward his hand, shivered.

“But what—”

“Silver.”

Paul reached to finger the release mechanism at his neck.

“Don’t—!”

The helmet hissed and released, retracted into his clavicle armor. The silver leapt. He exhaled, closed his eyes.

Benton gasped as the silver blackened, fell to the packed snow in lazy swirls of ash.

Paul cleared his throat. “Adam, what’s your wife’s name?”

West blinked. “What?”

“What’s her name?”

Eyes narrowed and jaw clenched. “Abigail.”

“Right. Frost, what’s your West’s wife’s name?”

She looked from West to Paul, confused. “Patra.”

“Any children?”

“Two daughters. Twins.”

“West?”

“One son.”

“And therein lies the problem.” Pasts and futures intertwined in the knot of an impossible present. “How’d Abby die?”

West blinked. “In childbirth.”

“Right.” Paul flicked the last of the silver from his claws. “Judith and Judas, Patra and Abigail, West and West. Frost, have you ever met her before?” His outstretched hand indicated Benton.

“I don’t think so.”

“You wouldn’t have. She doesn’t exist here. West does, though…”

“What’s this mean?”

“Maire’s breaking through. She’s achieving Delta point completion.”

Paul’s cardiac shield began to beep. Benton rushed to his side, looked over the monitor. “They’re locking on to our signal.”

“Save these coordinates.”

“Done.”

“We’ll be back, Frost. As soon as we can. We’ll bring reinforcements.”

“But what if—”

“Just wait for

and all was static, shimmer, shift as the three soldiers of the Judith faded from the plain of snow and silver.

Frost, alone now, palmed her communications panel. “Get me Commander West.”

A formation of Judas Muj fighters screamed through the sky of perpetual winter.

“Great timing, Jud. What happened with our insertion?”

“Call it a short circuit. We don’t know yet.” An army of Judith technicians plugged, unplugged, analyzed, removed armor, placed nitrox masks over gasping mouths.

Paul felt the ache of reality begin to pound once again in the place behind his eyes. “There’s been a few developments. Do you have our output coordinates?”

“They’re locked. Rest for a while. I’ll debrief you after you’re reloaded.”

“Sounds like kink.”

“You wish.”

Paul smiled, sighed as he leaned back into the reload chamber. Technicians removed his armor. They slammed the chamber door shut above him. Through its clear metal cap, Paul observed Benton’s already-reloading figure in the oven next to his. Cutting lights moved in to flay her. His eyes crawled from peaceful, sleeping eyelids to gentle philtrum to supra-sternal notch, the placement of her nipples, the indentation of navel and the soft southern path to the pudendal cleft. Flesh flew away in the thinnest strips as the spinning whiteness recycled her body. Skin, fat, muscle, bone were removed and then rebuilt with untainted code from the Judith ocean. Hairless. It grew. Muscles toned. A wash of freckles, a mole, a scar. Breath of life and her eyes opened. She caught his gaze and threw it not ungently back.

He closed his eyes and felt his layers of offense and defense stripped from him by harsh, beautiful, sensual light.

“Feel better?”

“Like a summer’s eve.” He toweled tousled hair. “You’re looking better.”

Judith leaned against the chamber entrance, arms folded. She looked over the flesh constructs: the aged West, the hairy author, the ripe smoothness of Benton, brutal cardiac shield scar painfully visible above and between hanging breasts. She self-consciously suited up under the feminine gaze.

he has good taste

Paul reached out. so does she. now stop ogling her.

fair enough. “What’d you see?”

schlick of armor closing over his arms, legs, chest. Cardiac lock. “Your favorite one-hearted psycho is bleeding through into the Whenstream.”

“Fuck.” Judith slumped. “You’re the author. What’s this mean?”

“It means

two distinct universes colliding, splintering both along that fault to history-sized fragments: rupturing, rending, riving, splitting, cleaving. It meant that two distinct universes that I’d written into existence were merging into one.