what did you ever do to deserve this? in all probability, something terrible.
"Don’t forget: you brought this on yourself."
If the text that had just appeared on Catalina’s comm pad made her jump a little, no one noticed. The people around her were all focused on their own workstations, speaking into microphones to each other, to the control ship in orbit around the planet, and to recording devices, for posterity. Future citizens of the Silver Millennium would want to know exactly what happened on the day they first powered up the Time Gate.
Once she was over the initial shock, it was a welcome distraction from the fact that everyone on the planet would be dead-or worse-within five minutes.
Was the text meant for her? she wondered.
Yes.
She knew it, as instinctively as she felt and knew the flow of time.
She glanced up. A woman stood in front of the Gate, still, taking readings with an electro-chronometer. Four minutes left.
Who sent it?
I did.
Of course. Her intuition had an actual basis: the shadow of her own thoughts upon the time stream. She knew it was meant for her because she’d sent it herself.
From the future.
The last of the scientists were clearing the area around the Gate. Their faces were a blur. Already she was forgetting the lives and identities of the people she’d worked with over the past year, and it was probably for the best. Three minutes left.
It had to be from the future, because she didn’t actually remember sending it. If she could remember, it would be in the past. What she was feeling was too strange to be memory. Was it the reverse, the opposite of memory?
No, the inversion of memory.
The control room went dark but for a few glowing screens and instruments. She could feel the spark of anticipation in the air, even over the growing hum of electricity. Two minutes left.
Why would she send such a text to herself? From the future? It sounded like a castigation, but it couldn’t be that. Why bother? If there was one thing she knew to be consistent about herself across the timelines, it was that she wouldn’t put forth the effort without a purpose.
It was a warning.
The Gate began to light up. The countdown began. T minus 60 seconds.
A warning against what? Against creating the Time Gate? No, she wouldn’t have sent it so late then.
T minus 30 seconds.
Maybe events wouldn’t play out quite the same this time around? No, she could feel the current of the time stream, just as swift and deep as when she’d first discovered the anomaly of the Gate’s creation. Everything was playing out as it always had, and always would.
T minus 10 seconds.
For the first time that day, she looked up at her colleagues and hoped to meet someone’s eyes. She needed a catalyst for another spark of intuition, the reassuring variable of another intelligence.
All she could see were stark planes of light across cheekbones and foreheads, outlines of humans in the dark. Even their instruments were dim, now. Only the Gate was glowing.
T minus 5 seconds.
Brought what on myself?
But time was rushing by too quickly. All she could do was feel, because if she stopped being aware of the weightlessness and crushing heaviness and loudness and stillness that filled her mind and her lungs, she would be swept away completely.
T minus 4.
3.
2.
1.
And suddenly she was buoyed out of the stream by an echo of loneliness, wide and empty and as long as the infinite arrow of time.
And everyone else around her was swept away as the Time Gate exploded like a supernova.
And she realized what the message had meant.
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