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

“Kal Carver killed you. I saw the smile on his face as he ran away.”

“No. No, I dreamed it. Why are you …?”

He pivoted to Aldo, who stood silent, listening to Maya’s story.

“This can’t be. Shit. I was right. This is heaven. We were killed.”

“It’s not heaven,” Aldo said. “It’s Messalina. Or what’s left of it. And as for you, Cooper, I’m trying not to jump to assumptions.”

“Maya?”

She grabbed him as he wobbled.

“Michael, remember the jokes you’ve told about escaping death? How people try to kill you, but you always walk away? You’ve called yourself a human whack-a-mole. Yes?”

“Sure. I’ve had all these close calls but …”

“Michael, hear me. Kal Carver killed you, and he wasn’t the first. You have died before – in this universe and the other.” She placed a hand over his heart. “It’s all there, Michael. At some level, deeper than you’ve dared to go, you know this is true.”

“No. It’s luck, Maya. Dumbass luck. It’s …”

“Sweetie, people can’t kill you because you will not stay dead.”

He read Maya. He found no deception in her eyes, no manipulation in her heart.

“You’re saying I’m what? Immortal? That’s impossible.”

“In your case, yes. You weren’t genetically altered by the Bouchets, like those children in Salvation. You cannot be killed, Michael, because you shouldn’t exist at all. Not in this universe. Yet you do, and that paradox has changed everything that is and will be. You are not just immortal. You are the impossible future.”

45

I MMORTALITY. ETERNAL LIFE. Michael used to think these concepts were cool, but they were reserved only for God and kickass sci-fi movies. No. I am a survivor. I make my luck. Nobody just becomes immortal. The idea defied logic, not to mention the key principle of life: All things die. All things. Yet here he stood, his memory crystallizing. There was no ricochet. The flash peg smashed into his skull. A kill shot, like so many he delivered as an assassin for the Solomon resistance and as a soldier holding off Mongol fanatics.

“I should be dead. I was dead. I don’t know what to say.”

Maya smiled, acknowledging the breakthrough. Aldo raised his hand, like an ambitious student interrupting the instructor.

“If I might enter the fray,” he said, “I think you’re overlooking a very important question, Michael.”

Michael’s mind was numb, trapped inside a fogbank. “What?”

“How does Maya know these things? The instant I stood over your body, I realized were you dead. But Maya insisted you were going to be all right. ‘It’s not what you think,’ she said. ‘He’s going with us,’ she said. And now she talks of a paradox and an impossible future. I think the first question we need to ask: Who are you?”

Michael stepped back. Every instinct agreed with Aldo.

“He’s right. I mean, you just told me I’m immortal, and it doesn’t faze you in the least. You already knew. How, Maya? Who are you? Is that even the right damn question? What are you?”

She didn’t change expression, giving no outward hint of fear or anger at being discovered. Her smile suggested relief.

“Michael, Aldo, my name is Maya Fontaine. I was born in Marseilles to Solomon parents. Eight years ago, I joined the equity movement. Last year, I met you, Michael. This year, I met you, Aldo. I have done my best to support you both. I’ve never lied to you. This is who I am.”

“Except for the bits you ain’t telling us,” Michael said. “How did you know what I was, when I didn’t have a fucking clue?”

“That’s where my story becomes more complicated.”

Aldo moved closer, laser pistol in hand.

“I’ve spent most of my life reporting to people who played games with me. I’m done. Understand? Out with the truth.”

She swiped a hand through her hair and gazed away, as if wondering where to begin.

“I can’t tell you precisely when it happened because I wasn’t aware of the presence for some time. Not consciously. My best guess would be in the first months after you crossed the fold, Michael.”

“When what happened?”

“For a time, I was inhabited by another intelligence. A sentient being. Benevolent. Inquisitive. Generous. A being who showed me more about life and the universe than I ever imagined.”

“One of them?” Aldo asked.

“Yes. A Jewel of Eternity. More specifically, a piece of one. They don’t define themselves in corporeal terms like we do. Chancellor scientists captured many of them drifting in space about fifty years ago. They captured five, but there are thousands. Some segments were later fused with human DNA to create the hybrids. The staggering power of the Jewels turned those hybrids into Berserkers.

“The rest of the Jewels remained hidden in Chancellor off-book facilities or moved about the universe on their own. You’ve seen them, Aldo. Here. Thirty-eight years ago. You watched from your Ark Carrier. The fire that wrapped around this planet? Five Jewels reuniting at a moment they long saw coming. They rendered the brontinium inert, seeded the planet, and waited for the evacuation to end. Then they went to work.”

“They did all this?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it was time. It was always going to be time.”

“And what sort of cudfrucking logic is that?”

“Aldo, the Jewels are very old. A million years, more or less. They know secrets about the universe we will never discover. They learned how to predict the future. And along the way, they played their part in pushing us to that future.”

Michael’s memories sharpened. A pattern emerged.

“The algorithm of life,” he said. “You told me about it on the viewing platform. How you believed the smallest choices formed a ‘greater math than we can understand.’”

“Yes. The Jewels mastered causality and its infinite paths. They saw the rise of humanity, the formation of the Collectorate, the Fall