sideways from eternity

fanfic > kenselton hotel saga > adventures of the keanuspawn

And Eternity in an Hour

Written by Anakin McFly

He could stay here forever:

Fall down into the lull of lowered voices, shed aside all convictions and responsibility, shut his eyes and shut his mind to that other world--that other world with the people all waiting for him, that world he has so long called his home--to let them suffer, let them die, let them fade into oblivion... and to comfort himself with thoughts that they had never lived. Ignorance is bliss. It tempts him to forget.

He feels the others looking at him but does not raise his head to meet their gaze. He does not want to see their pity. It makes him uncomfortable and self-conscious. Instead, he occupies himself with the half-empty glass in his hand, watching the light play gold upon the surface of the liquid, and tries to make this moment of respite last as long as it possibly can.

He wants to remember everything.

He doesn't really know why, realising the futility of storing memories that would be gone by this time the following night. Perhaps they might survive death, but he has his doubts; and yet his mind lingers on the warmth that suffuses this room, and the hushed conversation from those who wish not to disturb him, and the remnants of aroma from that night's dinner, and the grain of the wood that makes up the table on which his forearm rests. Good things. He leans the side of his head against the wall and shuts his eyes. Good times. He fills his mind with them, pushing aside images of death and apocalypse and despair and failure to find a way out.

"D'you want to go outside for a while?"

He opens his eyes to meet the other pair, calm and steady and understanding. He gives a slight nod and gets up from his chair to follow him. They move past the others, his head bowed, and then out into the sharp coolness of the night. The door to their wooden outpost shuts gently behind them and emits a beep of red light.

They trudge through layers of fallen leaves, the brown and red and gold of daytime turned to shades of grey in the uncertain moonlight. For a moment he looks up at the stars with quiet subdued desperation: stars so familiar and yet so alien, repeated in their twinkling patterns throughout their part of the multiverse. Perhaps arranged differently here, or short a star there, in a supernova that came too early, in a life that ended too soon.

They reach the still waters of the lake and he falls into a hesitant stroll along its side. Sand and small stones tumble away beneath his shoes with every step. He wants to ask what happens when you die. But his tongue is numb with denial, and he cannot bring it to form the words. So he slides his hands into his pockets and concentrates on the swish of water onto land. They walk on in silence, giving in to the sanctity of the subtly foreign night.

The glow of light from the outpost fades into trees and darkness. Finally he gets up the courage to speak, and his voice comes out in a low whisper:

"I'm scared."

Perhaps in another presence his fear might have been cause for shame, but he knows that the other will understand and will not mock. He was him once.

He takes in a deep lungful of air, crisp and fresh and cold, and tries to steady his nerves to the rhythm of his footsteps.

"I've got to do it," he continues quietly, when no response comes. "There's no other way."

Six days ago, noon at the outpost: "Of course there is," Conor said after a swig of beer. "Leave them. Stay here. Pretend they don't exist. Huh... What do you owe them, anyway?"

Advice from someone halfway through their alcohol stash was not the most reliable.

"Look at it like this, 'k?" Conor said later, when drink had yet to rob him of coherent speech, slamming the sides of his hands down on the table. "There are an infinite number of universes out there. In an infinite lot of them, all those people die. In another infinite lot of them, all of them survive. In another lot, everyone dies. And... and that's including you. ...So. It's just... one world you're being so concerned about. One out of billions. Screw them. It won't matter in the end 'cos we're all gonna die-" A pause. "Did the room just move?"

"There aren't an infinite number of universes," Eddie corrected, Conor grabbing wildly at the table as he lost his balance on his chair. "There're only a finite amount of possibilities, and even fewer of those are logically possible and can exist. Some of those outcomes would be more likely than others."

Conor pulled himself back into a sitting position and held tightly onto the table, looking dizzy. "Hey, Ed. I don't think you're helping him."

"Hey, Conor. I think you're drunk."

A waft of wind from over the lake sends dead leaf fragments dancing around his feet.

He almost regrets saying anything. It sounds like a complaint, or a plea for comfort--to be told that it was all right and he didn't have to do anything and he could stay here and live and everyone would still be all right and that the future he saw would somehow not come to pass, demanding that he give his life for the sake of many. He wishes he didn't know the future. He might have been happy now, or at least hopeful, not busy with a mind furiously trying to block out thoughts of what those last moments might be like.

"No matter what choice you make," the other finally says, not looking at him, "...you'll always have my respect."

He doesn't feel worthy of it, not when every other thought is telling him to run away and just forget. Surely there has to be a reason for him knowing. A warning, perhaps. A selfish warning, but everyone died eventually anyway. In the grand scheme of everything, in the near-infinite universes of the multiverse, in the billions of years each encompasses, what meaning is there in the decades of a human life?

Less than that in the millennia of many human lives.

Three days ago, morning at the outpost: He stood outside it watching the dark transform to dawn and shielded his eyes from the rays of the sun and felt guilty about spending his last moments away from the home that no longer seemed like one.

And he thought about how he was the only one there who knew about the things that were to come, and if he strayed from the path, they would not know, and put no blame upon him.

And he thought about forcing a new future, a better future, in which everyone lived and there was no more war and no more death and no more need for sacrifice, where the sun would shine again and peace would reign and life could be, for just one moment, beautiful.

And then he stopped dreaming.

The lake is too huge to circumnavigate, and eventually they stop and watch the waves flush out the beat of ancient time, alone in the strip of land that stands between the forest and the wet.

He does not have such things in his world. Not really. So he closes his eyes and savours the touch of the bracing wind against his face, the air so full of life and vigour that it humbles his own into insignificance... and he feels that, perhaps, it will be all right to die.

Two days ago he woke up screaming from wild dreams of white-tiled rooms and twisting tubes and blinding pain and soulless men who knew his name. Then the grimy walls of waking life came into focus before his eyes and calmed him, slowing his ragged breaths, and she was there to comfort him.

You don't have to sacrifice yourself.

I can't let them die. Not when I could save them.

There may be another way.

I watched it happen. I've gone over it so many times. It's the only way.

Sometimes he hates it, hates knowing the future, and how it's chained the last hours of his life to existential misery. Even the honour of sacrifice--whatever honour he might have gained from it--has been tainted with foreknowledge and forethoughts of backing out, contaminated with his cowardice and human instinct to survive, become a thing of shame and noble obligation rather than something worthy of respect.

She grasped his hand. And for a moment they were real, and it was the only reality that mattered. There was no one else but them, no other world but this, the future still an open ambiguity.

But illusions always end.

One day ago, night at the outpost: They raised glasses and solemnly toasted his name and he felt his stomach do a funny flip inside and wash him over with a crippling despair.

The soft plunk of a stone into water wakes him from his memories to watch the ripples spread and disperse in crude, clichéd representations of time. The other lobs another stone and sends it hopping after the first, his movement controlled, contemplative, with a foreign familiarity to the swing of his arm.

He crouches down himself and palms the ground. His fingers guide small stones into his hand, and he gets up and tosses one into the lake.

Words are for another time. They lose themselves in the rhythm and splash of the silent conversation, and when it feels late, and the stones run dry, and their hands are caked with sand and gravel, they start the slow walk back.

Five hours ago, captive in his thoughts. He flipped idly through magazines dog-eared with years whose titles and images still strained loudly for attention. There's a tabloid, and a celebrity interview. What do you consider your vices?

And he thought: escapism, and wondered if it was cause for shame. To neglect one's world in favour of another, to abandon one's duties for the sake of hollow dreams; to yearn for the glow of a foreign sun to bask him and immerse him in a scene not built for him, to pretend he was a part of that other place even if just for that one moment...

What should he know of night-time strolls on strips of beach with dark woods watching, or of visible stars twinkling in points of silver bound to the midnight sky; what did he know but creeping dullness in open cubicles laid in rows, of buildings rising stiff and same with blackened windows all opaque, with rote and laws oppressing thoughts and sorting them in ordered rows; what right has he to run away.

But the glow of the outpost grows steadily ahead with its welcoming warmth spilling out into the night, and the guilt he feels gives in for just this one moment to quiet tranquillity.

And in the silence his mind settles on the right thing to do; that he has to do. There's a story he needs to finish. A prophecy he needs to fulfil. A world he needs to save.

It will be all right to die.

Most of the others are gone by the time they arrive. There's just Alex sweeping up something that broke, and someone else--he can't tell who--asleep or passed out on the couch.

Alex stops sweeping when they come in. "You're leaving now?" he asks, as though it were any other day.

"Yeah."

"Right." Alex puts the broom aside and hesitates in the awkwardness of farewell. "Good luck," he finally says. And softer: "Goodbye."

He nods, pauses, looks down at the floor, not meeting his gaze. "Bye."

There must be something about teleportation etiquette that says it is rude to do so in front of people. He turns to leave. Alex goes back to ridding the floor of broken ceramic.

He gets a final hug on his way to the door and decides he doesn't mind the sand getting on his clothes. He returns the favour and the wordless goodbye; and then he grasps the door handle, pushes it open to the darkness, and steps out alone into the alien chill.

His fingers play out the settings for his destination.

He waits for one more second of eternity.

And then he presses the button, and fades away home.



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