Another
Green World
Traveling high speed north toward a massive amusement park
on an early morning in mid to late August he passed upon and
stopped for a wosieur who climbed in beside him, commenting
upon his vehicle.
"Wear this hat." White hard-hat with ITT-FLYGHT printed
in gold flake. Real deep etched gold, and why not?
"Join me on a journey? Good works planned for the punters'
edification."
She looked at him, blue eyes locking upon his own, returning
the challenge by a "Love to."
"Love, too much." He placed his fingers lightly under her
chin. Kissed her and held her as if steadfast where she knew
no boundaries and smiled as if to say. Too much.
She placed her hands on the back of his neck and squeezed.
"I missed you!"
"Like the plague."
They had mutual thoughts of behaving like savages but made
mutual promises instead as he turned to face northward and
activated the repulsion drive Sped breathtaking speed overtook
and hovered causing almost accident but for his momentary
blank upon unsuspecting in this case because said person was
clearly not up to the task of digesting that which did not
yet exist.
Mustered courage which made him feel mortal as he framed
the question mostly done as an exercise.
"Who?"
"Yes, that's the one but would you rather not know the when
of it?"
"I always sieurage to find that out in time."
"Not this time, sieur creature."
"Oh femme, must you?"
"I must nothing, lover, but what must you?"
"I tried."
"Yet again, and to no effect. Did you ever consider the
nature of your problematique?"
"How obvious. Naturally, like eating when one is hungry,
I have done little else."
"You are third past beyond and a deadline looms."
"I'm feeling a bit phlegmatic at the moment."
"Not a bit interested in the point of origin?"
Locking faces, he grabbed a momentary deep kiss and returned.
"Firsts are often fraught with mistakes. Later ventures build
later ideas, better rules and are more successful. Let it
serve as a sobering example to the kosmos."
"Oh that name? It's not your decision to take, moment. You
must."
He thought about the answer that he had framed but remembered
to whom he was speaking. He would have liked to have said
`I've done with that.'
Instead he found himself saying.
"By what measure?"
"Turn back time."
"If..."
"Don't be a fool sieur"
"Six years."
"That gives you three."
"Usual dispensations?"
"As you wish, so be it."
* * * * * * *
They went north toward the square mile of cars with a fake
mountain in the middle. Caravans and campers disgorged sleepy
eyed travelers who had come from a distance to lose coins
in the pursuit of what was extraordinary.
He turned to she.
"Let me drop you over there. Join that milling group and
I'll swing around and pick you up in style."
She laughed as she poked him in the ribs.
"Mindful be you of the mundane."
He powered the repulsion drive to full and set the controls
for the heart of the sun. Time turned back six years and he
was already in the past to begin with. His eyes de-tuned and
he caught the massive, undifferentiated sunspot, focusing
at 44.1 megacycles.
His husieur body creaked under the strain of deep freeze and
non husieur atmosphere. He grazed a satellite and laughed as
he realized that he had just wiped out television reception
for millions.
So sieury sets.
As he descended down to earth, he reflected upon turning
back time. Yes, he thought, among them there were at least
enough people worth living for, and intervening for. He smiled
wanly, as he knew that intervening directly would probably
not make much of a difference to how things unfolded. Even
chaos time and its coefficients had little effect on the unscalable
rules that governed time's passage.
Why did femme care? Her tone and warning suggested something
other than her disinterested self in matters of earth. Why
had she come? Why the vote of interest by those so usually
disinterested? Questions.
He swerved down, played UFO come to life He drew to a stop
amidst astonishment to collect femme
"Being childish?" she smiled.
"I feel like it. You who order me to turn back time call
forth from me the most amusing feelings."
She slapped him hard across the face before climbing in
beside him. "Let's leave feelings aside for the moment" she
smiled as if to.
He donned the hat which bore a representation of seven letters,
in an inverted "L."
"Yes, Flyght. But let me ask you. If all is successful,
do I get a companion trip?"
"Did you trip the switch?"
"I did. Back when I placed Aquarius on hold."
"That was a risk."
"I'm still pondering that one. I saw the face of a new age
and decided it could wait indefinitely for the work of repair
to be done."
"No cataclysmic change. Perhaps the Aquarians could survive
anaerobia."
"That would be a first, femme, and I was not willing to
toss away such a chance."
"What is your plan?"
"Discovery?"
She looked afraid, momentarily.
* * * * * * *
They cruised the park, an attachment on the rear of the
craft sweeping detritus cast off by the park's visitors. It
was suitable cover, since the repulsion drive bore a resemblance
to a service vehicle to begin with.
She commented "these people are quite happily engaged, I
see."
"So sieury of them too."
"Clean up time, sieur"
"How charming."
"Don't pretend that you did not know the risks."
"I knew the risks quite well, but I have always tried to
maintain a distance from the consequences of husieur affairs."
"How convenient," she smiled.
"Inconvenient, in truth."
They disembarked after reaching a quiet glade to the northwest
of the park. A spring fed brook offered relatively pure water,
yet unspoiled by the urbanity due south east of them.
"Who are you, femme?"
She looked clouded.
He began the story that he guessed at:
"Some time ago, I discovered what I thought might be your
name, the true one."
femme looked increasingly wary, as if an animal caged.
In his grasp, unable to escape, femme welled tears. She
began to look not so much the wosieur of deep self possession,
more a creature of mortal fear.
"And still I ask, now. What is your name?"
femme grabbed sieur and held him in a grip that matched his
own in force. She pulled him to the ground and tensed. She
whispered at first, then cried "I am afraid.
"I am afraid. I'm afraid."
sieur felt a an emerging and deep sense of fear well up from
deep within him as the ghostly edifice of his own psyche emerged
to match her fear. "Don't be afraid. Be calm." He repeated
it several times, to almost no effect. femme was rising in
hysteria and as the rising wave of anxiety engulfed sieur, he
attempted to break free.
He thought quickly. He was sleeping. 'This is a dream'.
She would be beside him in bed and would help wake him. He
struggled to rise against the weight of femme and breaking
a hand free attempted to strike himself across the face, mostly
missing, but sieuraged to connect sufficiently to raise his
layer of consciousness one step higher.
As he rose toward a waking state, it dawned upon him that
he had no mate at the moment. There was nobody to help him
escape the death grip that he found himself in. He was alone.
He found himself not at all tempted by the surrender, and
he suspected that femme counted on as much as her spirit loosened,
allowing him to surface, alone.
He lay, exhausted, asked himself why he occasionally slept,
knowing full well that it was his only route to those others,
his own kind, who existed in form and substance only in his
dreams.
He implored the Kosmos to help him find a mate to keep him
on the side of the living during such future, and irresistible
encounters with death.
And to offer promise to his own set of private dreams, where
he most wished to be, and with whom. He had to find a method
to intervene; he had to supply a method to survive what had
become contorted times.
Contorted times. Elastic time.
He rose off the pallet and grimly acknowledged the certain
reality that for him at least, time would play itself over
again. And again, if he failed.
A sobering thought, he thought.
©1994 (from Zero She Flies)
