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Zander
Unfortunately, the hole we jumped into exited us from the brain. Game over, restart, do not pass go, do not get the eternal soul of a dying star.
We landed right back to the front of Nimien’s labyrinth home. The labyrinth around us had no sign of trees or plants anywhere, the walls pure white and slightly reflective. Clean, polished, cared for.
So not only had we been thoroughly ejected, we’d ended up earlier in the time stream than we should have. Probably part of whatever trap Nimien had concocted. I raised my fists.
“Where are we?” I asked. And then, tagging on a line I had wished I could say in a more exciting context, “When are we?”
Blayde punched my shoulder. “Not funny.”
“I felt that.” Our eyes met, widening like a pair of stars practicing synchronized supernovae.
“We’re still in my head,” said Blayde. “This has to be a memory.”
“You’re not driving?”
“This must be the last thing I remember, the first thing I forgot,” she muttered. “Oh look, here I am now!”
Blayde—another Blayde, a younger Blayde, with bright green buzz-cut hair and an Altruan tuxedo shoved over her labyrinth uniform—rushed up Nimien’s hill. Her hand went right through me as she pounded on the door.
That was... mildly unsettling.
“Fina-frashing-lutely,” she said, spinning on her heels and tossing something down the hill.
I looked up and gasped because who was trotting up behind her but me, looking the same as I looked right now, uniform and all.
“That’s not a word,” he said, ducking from whatever she had thrown. He frowned as he caught up with the rest of us. “And yay, hooray, we found the genie. Do you think we each get a wish, or do we fight to the death again? I’m getting tired of the death matches.”
“Because I always win,” Other Blayde said gleefully. “Now smile. We have to look our best for all the victory photos.”
“Do you think they can see us?” I whispered to present Blayde. It was hard not to be nauseated by the sight of this other me: younger, I knew that, but he didn’t look it. His frown was disconcerting, though.
She shook her head. “We’re simply watching. It’s just a projection.”
“Right.” I nodded.
“Your hair looked like crap.”
“Says the one who looks like she stuck hers in a vat of radioactive waste. Wait, mine’s the same?”
“Exactly. Well, at least we’re on the same page.”
The door flew open and out burst Nimien, his arms held wide. He wasn’t the youth who had kidnapped us or the Eternal who’d greeted us with tea. Here, he might have been in his mid-forties if not for the unbearable curse of time and space. And he was, thankfully, dressed, though it was as if a toddler had picked his clothes—an Arduinian toddler, meaning color was a sensation best experienced through phalanges.
“Blayde!” he said, smiling so wide you would fit a few tesseracts in there. “And Zander! Finally, I’ve been waiting lifetimes. Well, don’t just stand there, come on in! I’ll put on a roast. Do you like roasts? I know fireslug isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but ever since I drilled into this structure’s core it’s been a non-stop delivery service of fried slug. I honestly don’t have enough place for them; they just keep spewing—”
“Greetings, wise man.” Blayde bowed low, seemingly oblivious to his ramblings. “It is an honor to meet you.”
“Wow, you’re hilarious.” Nimien twirled. “Please, do not extend my torture. I know we have a lot to talk about now that you’re finally here, but have you at least brought me any news from the outside? I got my hand on the Fireslug Gazette, and it’s as dull as their sorry excuse for porn.”
“Sir, it is wonderful to finally see you in person.” Zander bowed deep, seemingly intentionally deeper than Blayde had. She even scowled at him.
I cringed. What an ass.
“We have heard so much about you.”
“Oh, shit snacks,” said Nimien. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
“We have read of you in the ancient histories... well, they’re not that ancient here, I guess. We’re time travelers, you see.”
“Yes, I know that.” He scowled. “Hate that. Guess we haven’t met yet after all. My mistake. Come on in anyway. The roast is ready whether you want any or not.”
“We apologize, kind sir, but we are in a bit of a hurry.” Blayde tried to keep her voice from sounding bossy, but this version of Nimien knew full well what she was getting at. “We were wondering if—”
“Well frash me sideways three ways until Sunday,” he said under his breath. Past us didn’t seem to notice, which was weird, it being Blayde’s memory and all. “In thousands, maybe millions of years of running this labyrinth, never once has someone come just to keep me company. Always in a rush, you are. Well then, scratch the slug. Let’s get to the wishes, since that’s what you’re here for?”
“Thank you.” Blayde nodded. “Our request is simple. Probably easy for a man of your talents. We wish for a complete memory wipe.”
“Wow, she seriously thinks she’s a master manipulator?” my Blayde scoffed. “She’s so heavy handed I see fingers in the air.”
“A complete...?” Nimien’s face broke into a grin. “But that means—glowworms above, this is perfect. Just perfect. You want your memory wiped. You, too, I suppose, Zander? It’s never just the one of you. Oh no, you’re so codependent the last time you were apart atoms hadn’t even considered joining up as molecules yet.”
Other me nodded. “I could do without the sass, but yes.”
“Look,” said Nimien, “I could find you an amazing counselor. Did wonders for me. And trust me, if I’ve learned to cope with my trauma —”
“Our whole lives have been a series of traumatic events,” Blayde interjected.
“It’s how we started out. Running from our past, but then our past grows and we run faster and faster,” my past self said dramatically. Oh, please. He could have thrown his hand back on his forehead, and it would have been less dramatic.
“All we want is a clean slate,” said past Blayde. “If we can forget these terrible years, maybe we can turn our lives out for good.”
“Fine, fine.” Nimien pinched the bridge of his nose. “Easy stuff, children’s play. I’ll just force you into your subconscious, and from there you can do all the work. Cleaner job than I could ever do.”
“You sure that’ll work?” Zander asked skeptically.
Nimien shrugged. “If it doesn’t, we’ll try something different. I’m here until the end of days. Though can you help me with these dead fireslugs first? I can’t keep track of where they’re coming from, and I’ve lost my appetite for them.”
The memory disintegrated, leaving us in a pitch-black void. The void was oddly soothing, smelling of eucalyptus I think, with candles at foot level. Soft chanting rose from all around us, gentle and far away.
“Where are we?” I asked. “Is this another memory?”
“I think this is the space between them?” said Blayde, kicking over a candle, which dissolved into the nothing. “Ah, it must be my center.”
“Your what now?”
“You know, when you’re supposed to center yourself?” she said. “Well, I find that too time consuming, so I centered a crumb of myself, and I just call in for a chat whenever I need to find my center. She must be here somewhere.”
The chanting stopped and a flashlight flickered on from far away. “Sup?” asked the woman holding it, a version of Blayde with hip-length hair pulled up into spheres who was lying reclined on the floor.
“Sup, Centered Blayde,” said Blayde. “Kumbaya and all that.”
“Your blood pressure’s high,” said the other Blayde. “I’m worried the next time you get stabbed you’ll make a real mess.”
“It’s all good; it’ll be an extra distraction. Like a squid or a Malthusian or an ogvok with silly string.”
“Right on,” said Zen Blayde, lying back into the dark. “Have a nice stay.”
The flashlight turned off.
“Centered you scares me a little,” I said. “She’s so... grounded.”
“Yeah, whatever. Next memory?”
“What? We just get to see them best hits style? I thought we were getting them back. Do we have to watch them all?”
“I don’t know how any of this works any more than you do,” she said, shrugging. “Hold on...”
The void shuddered and changed. The nothing beneath my feat turned soft and plush and gross. Shelves burst through, rising high, building walls and a ceiling around the two of us. When it was finally done, it looked oddly like a Starbucks.
“Is this... are we going to wait out our brain thing in a generic coffee shop?” I frowned. “Wait, you hate Earth.”
“This isn’t Earth.” She waved her hands around. “Or a coffee shop. It’s a Zyrtruskian holo-cinema.”
“Good memory?”
“More like... improvised filing system,” she explained, hopping over the counter and activating what I initially thought was a milk throttler. “Everything is moderately sorted. This one seems important—”
Instantly, we were flung from the void into a screaming spaceship. The crew ran around with their arms flailing, which was impressive considering they must have had at least a hundred each.
And there on the bridge—Blayde. In her silver-gowned glory.
“Ah, yes,” the Blayde beside me said, smiling. “I won karaoke fair and square that night. No one warned me they were allergic to high C.”
In an instant, we were back in the Starbucks. Blayde, still smiling, shook the milk throttler and looked inside it again.
“Hold on tight,” she said.
She waved her hand in the air, and we were in the hallway of what had to be the most luxurious hotel I had ever seen. Penthouse, of course, red carpet and all. Beautiful Pyrina stretched outside the window.
Past Blayde strode up the hallway, wearing skin-tight silver leggings and tank top, her hair tied up behind her neck, leaving her long bangs bouncing lightly upon her forehead. And she was furious. She marched with such a powerful stride that I had to move out of the way, afraid she was going to bulldoze right over me, ghost or no ghost. She walked directly to room 59801, rapping on the door, not waiting for an answer before shoving it open, throwing the do not disturb sign to the ground in anger.
We followed her into the suite beyond, and again I was shocked by the beauty of the room. The glass ceiling opened up to a cloudless sky, so blue that one could swim in it. The room was elegantly furnished, white sofas set every which way across the open space, and my heart dropped as I saw the various articles of clothing strewn across the floor and chairs.
“Oh, please no,” I muttered, and Blayde snorted.
Still, we followed her fuming past self storm across the room. She threw the door open wide, which let a loud scream escape into the sitting room.
My face went red as an entire contingent of what I think were cheerleaders screamed in harmony. Beautiful humans and Strobiniums with less fabric between them than a lens cloth, all reeling from the sudden sunlight, which had made things a whole lot less sexy than they had been a second ago.
And in the middle of all the hair, arms, and tentacles—apparently—was me.
I cringed so hard I might have snapped my face.
Past me was sitting in the middle of the planet-sized bed with a roll of something steaming hanging out of his mouth, seemingly unfazed by the panic around him. The others were rushing to grab their clothing, a scavenger hunt that had more than a few guests shouting as they collided.
“Don’t forget your souvenir photos,” he muttered, leaning back against the headboard. “I’ll autograph them next time. Anything you leave here becomes mine, and if you see me wearing it, I’ll be owed a compliment.”
“Wow,” said past Blayde, tossing him a jerkin from one of the chairs beside her. Or, well, she tried to. What had appeared to be a jerkin turned out to be a Jagran, which blushed sky blue as it fluttered out of the room.
“You could have been more polite to Isgurt,” said past me, breathing out a cloud of green steam. “He was still recovering from this morning.”
“It’s 6 am.”
“Ah, maybe yesterday morning, then. Maybe I should call a doctor.”
He sank deeper in the bed, arms wide at his side, seemingly oblivious to Blayde, who stood beside him, scowling.
“I thought better of you,” she said, finally.
“No, you didn’t. You hoped better of me, but you expected exactly what you found.”
“Oh stars above, you have a wife?” asked a lingering guest.
“Worse,” Blayde snarled. “I’m his sister.”
“How is that worse?”
“Out.” Blayde ordered, pointing to the door. She squealed and rushed out, casting one last, terrified look at Blayde, before she ran into the sitting room, pulling her gown over her head. Past Blayde crossed her arms, leaning against the doorframe as she stared at past me.
“Put some pants on. We need to talk,” she ordered.
“What’s so important that it needs pants for?” he snapped but got up and found some pants anyway.
“Come on, I thought you would be more excited to see your sister, since it’s been seven years and so on.”
“You’re not my sister,” he said, refusing to make eye contact. The door to the hallway slammed shut, and the room was thrown into silence.
Not... not my sister? I stared at Blayde, the real Blayde, my Blayde, and her face was white, so white I wondered if she had become a real ghost. A hand covered her lip.
“I’m as good as. Since when has that bothered you?”
“Since you barged in and ruined a perfectly acceptable moment.” He scowled, throwing himself back on the bed.
“Oh please. You didn’t even know her name.”
“Does that matter? She’s the empress of the Alliance.”
“That stupid club?” she scoffed. “Please. If they’re still standing in a decade, I’ll eat my foot.”
“Still, she’s an empress—I mean, I think. My translator sometimes calls her president, but it’s way less impressive. The Blayde I knew would have been impressed.”
“The Blayde you knew?” she said angrily, glaring. “People change in a decade, Zander.”
“Six.”
“What?”
“Sixty years, Blayde.” he said with a sigh, pushing himself up on the bed. “You’ve been gone for sixty years.”
“Time travel.” She scowled. “It’s bound to happen. It’s normal, if only you’d—”
“Oh, wait, you’re pinning all this on me? Me? Oh no, come on. You’re the one who abandoned me. The one who wanted time apart, who ran away. You’re the one who threw me away as if I was nothing. Tell me, how is that family working out for you? Little Baby Blaydes. You were preggers when I last saw you, weren’t you? So, how’s—”
He stopped. Long streaks of shimmering tears ran silently down Blayde’s face. His expression changed instantly.
“Your partner—”
“The child,” she admitted, her voice a low murmur. “He—”
He was by her side in a second, hugging her close to him as her tears turned to sobs, sadness overflowing. He held her tight as she hid her face in his chest, his arms keeping her in this tight, comforting embrace. She was crying and it wasn’t going to stop, her emotions held in for so long that they simply had to explode.
My Blayde covered her eyes. I pulled her into my arms, an embrace that was long overdue. Had it been a kindness of me, pretending Miro hadn’t told me the truth, seeing her silence as a plea for ignorance? Or was this another in a long line of mistakes, leaving the hard things unspoken as if they’d never happened? My shirt filled with Blayde’s tears, and I knew that it was.
“I’m sorry,” past me said calmly. “I had no idea—”
“I know.” She nodded. “I’m sorry too. I’m sorry I left; I’m sorry I pushed you away. I should never have—”
He lifted a hand to stop her. “It’s been so long I can’t even remember what we were fighting about in the first place. Why did we leave?”
“I won’t throw blame,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed under the weight of it all. “I am as responsible as you. Whatever you did never justified the way I treated you. Will you ever forgive me?”
“Of course. But it’s not easy. I forgot what it was like traveling with you, forgot how to live with you. I wish I could just forget it all. Everything.”
“Our past is too painful. So much heartbreak. So much pain.”
“I want a clean slate,” he said, gazing longingly out the window.
“So do I.” She nodded. “But, if you could have it...”
“Have what?” he asked. “The clean slate?”
She took a deep breath. “I can’t live with his death in my mind. I want it gone. I want to forget. Everything. From the beginning. Start fresh and new. If you could have that—have your memories wiped so that you could start fresh—would you?”
She stared at him with wide, pleading eyes, and he nodded, slowly.
“Part of me thinks it’s cowardly. But there’s too much in this mind of mine. I need it gone. So yes, if I had the chance, I would wipe it all and start over. I would.”
“I think we can. On the planet, you know, with the Miro? You met them.”
“The guys that look like they come from some off-Alliance perfume ad?”
“Yeah. They protect an old temple with a legend. It speaks of this wise man that grants wishes to those who solve the labyrinth he’s trapped in. I say we run it. We ask him to wipe the memories. We wake up, and a new life is open for us. Free of our past. Open and full of promise.”
Instantly, Zander reached over to grab his shirt, pulling it over his head as he continued to speak. “Coordinates?”
“Took me years to track them down, but yes, I have them.” She tapped the side of her head. “We’re good to go.”
“How much will we remember? We won’t wake up as hopeless babes, will we?”
“We’ll ask the wise man to make it so we’ll have no idea anything’s missing. We’ll know who we are, and we’ll know how to fight.”
“We’ll need to prepare some things, though. We’ll need to make sure that we won’t question things, that we don’t—”
And with that, everything faded into darkness once more, and we were once again in the in-between space, Blayde’s eyes riveted on where the past version of me had been standing mere seconds before. I sighed heavily, trying to take in everything I had seen.
“This is... a little unnerving.” I said, but Blayde’s face had gone blank. She stared into the darkness, fear filling her whole body. She trembled as she watched something I could not even see.
“Oh, no, please, no...” She shuddered.
“What, what’s happening?” I asked, but it was useless.
“Please, no, don’t show me that.”
“Blayde, calm down. You’re going to be okay”
“No, no, please no, you can’t.”
“Blayde,” I snapped, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her lightly. “You need to snap out of it. Nothing can be so bad that—”
“Reelaiah,” she said, pleadingly. And then, I knew. I stepped back.
“You can stop it, Blayde. You don’t have to watch it—”
“I can’t.” She sobbed. “I can’t stop it.”
“Focus, you can do this.”
“No, no.” Tears were streaming down her face. “I can’t control it. I have to...”
I slipped my hand into hers giving it a tight squeeze.
“I won’t pretend that this is okay,” I told her. “But I’ll be right here, every step of the way. We can do this. You can do this.”
“You promise?”
I nodded. “Of course. I’m your brother. “
“You sure about that?”
I snorted. “Who cares what a memory says? Of course I’m sure. I’m here, Blayde.”
“Don’t let go,” she begged.
“Never.”
“Never let me go.”
“Never again.”
“Don’t let me fall,” she pleaded, as light rose and we found ourselves in the sand of Miro’s planet once again.
“I never will.”
I cried with her, our tears drowning out those of a world losing their child.
