The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

I am eighty-five years very old. I was the last Hiebim on this planet when the terraforming began. That’s when I met the Jewels. Or they met me. Perhaps that was always the plan.

“They kept me alive. Guided me safely around their construction zones. Told me to keep walking. As I long as I did, they entertained me. They showed me the universe beyond this world. Even beyond this universe. I have walked the circumference of this planet four times. My isolation has been my punishment.

“But I see how the pieces fit together. I understand the grand scheme better than anyone. Even the great god, Brother James. And each footstep has led me here. The fire. The log. The fish. You. Me.”

James put down the plate. “The algorithm?”

“Causality. Yes. My paths were always limited, but yours were limitless. Our meeting was not certain until you made the right choices. But each time, the paths narrowed. When you destroyed the Shock Units. Killed your brother. Brought down SkyTower. Built an army. Manipulated the war on Earth. Designed the refractors. Survived Tamarind. Captured the Pynn woman. One choice in any other direction, and I’d still be walking.”

“And me?”

“Ah, yes. You. The real reason we’re here. Always about you. Never mind that I’m going to die tomorrow. I was forgotten generations ago. Even a god doesn’t recognize me. Very sad, I suppose.”

The old man cast his gaze into the fire, and his eyes reflected the same fury roiling from James’s pistils.

“I die tomorrow, James. You will die soon after. Both of us will face the end we deserve.”

21

J AMES THREW HIS FISH INTO THE FIRE, much to the consternation of the old man, who warned him to stop acting like a child.

“I’ve had enough of this,” James shouted. “I don’t know why the Jewels are treating me this way, but …”

“But what, James? Are you going to stomp away now? You’re not only in denial. You have the disease of all men who rise to great power: Your narcissism unleashes your insecurity. And before you say another word, I will iterate once more that I am not a Jewel of Eternity. They taught me about the universe, but I have reached my own conclusions. I am not here because they forced me. This is simply the end of my path. I saw it, I embraced it. And tomorrow, I am going to die.”

“Why? Can you see the future?”

“No. At least not in the way you or the Jewels do. No.” He took a large bite of fish and chewed slowly, as if appreciating each morsel. “I will walk out into the lake tomorrow. I will continue to walk until the water is above my head. I will not come back up.”

“You would drown yourself? You’re mad.”

“No. I’ve made a choice. Also, I don’t know how to swim.”

James saw the shades of a wry smile.

“If you can’t see the future, you don’t know what will happen to me. I do not respond well to fear tactics.”

“I’ve heard. But, as with all men of great power, fear is a central tenet of your campaign. I know because I invested heavily in it for decades. Even succeeded at times. By the end, those tactics produced nothing more than pyrrhic victories. Still don’t know my name?”

If the man was Hiebim as he insisted, James should have been able to deduce his identity. Yet something blocked his ability to see across time and space. He closed off all other distractions – including the hybrid collective mind – yet his vision didn’t extend beyond the fire.

“Enough games, you old bastard. Tell me.”

The cook flipped over the fish and picked at the other side.

“My name is not as important as what you and I share in common. What if I told you I was a very angry boy? What if I told you I suffered devastating loss? What if I decided to seek revenge against a foe so powerful that victory appeared hopeless? What if I chose a strategy painted in the blood of my enemies? What if I vowed to destroy every Chancellor in the Collectorate? And what if I raised two sons in the midst of my war and trained them to follow in my craven, bloody footsteps? And what if my vengeance killed more than two million people? I wonder, James: Does my story seem at all familiar?”

The old man finished his speech by filling his mouth full of fish and looking up at the stars. More pieces of James’s memory fell together.

“It was you,” he said. “You were the one on trial at the Fall of the Chancellory. I forgot. When Ignatius … when he showed me those events … how The Father rose from the real Ignatius Horne and reunited with the other Jewels … I forgot you were there. You were being tried for war crimes. You started the Hiebim Civil War.”

The old man shrugged. “Start isn’t accurate, but I’ll leave that verdict to history. Yes, James. I was there. Ignatius Horne was my defender.” He pointed north. “It wasn’t more than thirty kilometers from here. Messalina. Beautiful city. Gone now. Pushed aside for terraforming. Like all Hiebim history, I gather.

“I could tell you my name is Trayem Hadeed, but you’d miss the point, James. What matters is this: All I fought for and lost has been reduced to ghost stories my people tell on the colonies where they resettled. For a short while, I was the most influential indigo in the Collectorate. I even brought down an Ark Carrier; not on your grander scale, but I got their attention.”

He looked forlorn, his eyes drifting to another time and place.

“And then, James, they got my attention. My boys died because my need for blood could not be quenched. They’ve disappeared entirely from history.