Helene Island Geocache #11

Ailith,

I remember that you used to love video games. I did too. Do you remember the courage we felt, the huge risks we took? Because we knew that, whatever the outcome, we could always go back to the file we’d saved and do it all again. But even though we knew that, there were times when, for a split second, you forgot and felt that pure horror as you watched yourself plunge to your death or accidently murder your allies. I know that’s what you’re feeling today. That you wish you could stop the game and take it all back. But you can’t. And you need to forgive yourself, because if you hadn’t stopped Tor from carrying out Ethan’s orders, every one of us would have fallen, and our timeline would have ended, forever.

Pax.

Fear curled around my heart, and the voice inside me that had been silent for so long drew a deep breath and sighed.

“Can I speak with Pax alone, please? In the meantime, you two need to get everyone together. Not all the androids, just Will and those who want to come. And I know Lily and Ryan are…grieving right now, but they need to come too. Meet us back here.”

Fane and Tor ignored the sharpness of my tone and left without a word.

“It’s good to be back, isn’t it?” Fane whispered to Tor when he thought they were out of earshot.

“Sit down, Pax.” I dropped to the ground at the base of the tree and yanked him down beside me. “What do you mean, we’re not going to win?”

He rubbed his arm and looked at me reproachfully.

I didn’t care. “Tell me exactly what you mean. Don’t leave anything out.”

“We won’t win.”

“We won’t be able to hold Ethan off?”

“No, we will. Several times, and not just him. But we’ll have to keep doing it. The fight will never end. If we finish it now, they will think we can’t be beaten, and they’ll leave us alone. Eventually, they’ll forget we even existed.”

“But why? Surely nobody but Ethan has an interest in us.”

“Any of Ethan’s people who leave the island will tell others about us, about our weaknesses. Then more will come. They’ll be afraid of us, as they were before. We’ll represent everything they feared before the war. They’ll remember. We’ll become a legend, a myth to scare children. A threat to be defeated.”

“But they’ll have survived, Pax. That was what we wanted. We can leave, disappear.”

His eyes became glassy. “Then the plague will come. We’ll stop it, but they’ll blame us. And they’ll keep coming. They’ll whittle us down, one by one. Then another plague will wipe them out completely, everywhere. One we can’t stop. And we’ll have failed anyway.”

“Wait. A plague?”

He blinked. “Well, not a plague in the traditional sense. But it will be a plague to them. The fallout caused mutations…new life. Things humans haven’t seen before. New viruses, new—”

“You’re sure? There are no other paths?”

“There are no other paths. Not for them.”

“What about the rest of the world? If people survived here, surely they must have survived elsewhere?”

“No. We were…lucky. The devastation was much greater in the rest of the world. We shouldn’t have survived. Any of us.”

“So we’ve failed, Pax.” A bleakness settled over me, the first real hopelessness I’d felt since I’d woken up. “You told me once we were the only ones who could prevent a future where humankind didn’t survive. No matter what we do, the human race is doomed.” The words cut as I spoke them, and I covered my mouth with my hand. What do we do now? Everything we did…everyone who lost their lives. For nothing. All of it was for nothing. For a moment, I wished I hadn’t survived.

But Pax wasn’t finished. “This one is. But I’ve been able to see farther and farther into the future, and the path… I think we’ve been on the wrong path for the right reasons.”

“I’m confused.”

He looked at his hands. “We’ve been trying to stay on a course to preserve the human race, right?”

“Yes. To avoid the future you saw… The red mist.”

“I think I was wrong. What if we aren’t supposed to avoid it? What if we need to go through it?”

My temples throbbed. “Pax, just tell me in plain language.”

“There is another way. It’s not certain, but it’s the only chance we have.” What he told me next would change the future of humankind forever.

***

I sat in stunned silence while we waited for the others. Could Pax be right? Could it be possible? I’d felt the truth in it.

What other choice do we have? If Pax was right, and the survivors of the Artilect War kept trying to destroy us, we could never carry out the rest of his plan. And humankind would indeed be over.

If only there was some way to know for sure. I trusted Pax, but I knew from own powers how subjective their meanings could be. Although I’d never been one for faith, I pressed my forehead against the trunk of the tree. I needed a sign, something to help me believe this new path was the right one.

The tree.

The tree.

A lone tree in a meadow, on an island, surrounded by an emerald-tinged sea.

Protect the tree. Defend it at all costs for at its base was the means of our survival, the only means left to us on the path we’d taken.

We stood together, back to back.

My fingertips, pressing into the earth, grew roots. Not the gossamer strands of springtime, but thick ropes lined with poison-tipped thorns. They snaked through the soil, erupting up through the soles of everyone on the island.

Red mist descended. Gods and monsters meeting at last. The harvest had begun.

Then it was done, and the sky split open, the ash parting to reveal a single-celled sun, dividing, replicating.

Buildings rose out of the emerald sea. People, places, things. The seeds we’d held dormant for so long needed to grow.

Doubles rose where the originals had fallen, one after the other in rapid succession, like an echo.

In my hand, I held another, a smaller version of my own. She clambered down the trunk to claim her crown.

She had to be strong in this new world, though she was but a single blossom in a wasteland. Because, of all the seeds we’d planted, she was the first, the most important.

Omega was coming.

I’d been wrong. The seed wasn’t me; it was Omega, whoever she was. I was merely— “I’m the gardener,” I interrupted.

“Of man?”

“What?”

“Are you the gardener of man?”

The gardener of man. It echoed through my mind, and something inside me shifted, uncurled.

Fane had been right all along about who I was. And the tree, this tree, was where it would all begin. This was my sign.

I made my decision and changed the world again.