What Was What Next Evermore
Matthew Ryan Fischer
“Gareth?” the voice asked. Gareth didn’t answer. “Come in...
Gareth, are you there?”
The voice in his ear was talking. He knew what that meant. He was
running late. He had blown a deadline and failed to check in. Someone on the
other end was getting nervous. Gareth knew he should answer. But he didn’t. Not
yet. Gareth was busy. He knew if he checked in, he would be told to move on.
And he wasn’t ready to move on. So he kept his mouth shut. Even if it meant the
voice on the other end was getting more and more testy.
Gareth had read science fiction stories as a boy. Books, comic books,
movies, television shows. Whatever he could get his hands on. He liked the idea
of the unknown. He loved the idea of space and someday going there. “Mystery in
Space” was the title of one of comics he regularly read. Or something similar
enough. Rocket ships and alien worlds to explore. And monsters. Always space
monsters. That looked a lot like Earth lizards. There was that other comic as
well. “Time” something. Or something “…in time.” Maybe it was a time master. He
couldn’t remember. Eleven-year old Gareth would be disappointed by that. Eleven-year
old Gareth would be disappointed by a great many things.
Gareth had dreams. He was like everybody. He had dreams. He had
wanted things. He had ambition and hopes and thought he could work hard and get
them. But they were dreams. Dreams were what he thought about. Without a plan
for execution, without a plot of steps and a path, all they were, were dreams.
Gareth had plenty of dreams. He just didn’t have enough goals.
As a child Gareth dreamt of being a hero. A few years of growth
and added focus and Gareth decided he wanted to be an astronaut. Gareth was no
astronaut. He was no explorer or cosmic hero. Gareth was a scavenger. Salvage
on a good day. Wrecker on an average one. Thief on far too many.
Gareth was a crow, picking at carrion, sucking the waste marrow of
the universe. He took whatever he could find and was barely better than a
beggar or a bum. He was organized and was sponsored and equipped, but more
often than not, he felt like a bum. Take that, eleven-year old Gareth. Take
that right in the teeth.
“Gareth? What are you doing?” asked the voice in his ear.
It was taking too long. Gareth was going to get in trouble. And
staying silent was just going to make things worse. Fuck, he thought. He wished
he was smarter. If he were smarter, he could have had an excuse handy and he
wouldn’t have to admit what he was doing.
“I’m digging through the rubble...”
It was an honest enough answer. It was in fact literally what he
was in fact doing. He assumed they knew about it. He assumed there was no point
in hiding what he was doing. He wasn’t quick or clever and he told the truth
when his better instincts told him to lie. He was sure he was going to get in
trouble either way. But suddenly, the voice on the other end didn’t care about
his delays. Suddenly the voice cared about other things.
“Rubble, what rubble? What’s your current location? Are you on
task?”
“I’m on target. Just a delay.”
“Delayed? By what? You’re not near anything. There’s not any
rubble—“
“There’s not supposed to
be any rubble.”
“There’s not. No record or any crash or explosion.”
“Check your sensors, check your logs. I hate to be the one to
break it to you, but there’s plenty of rubble. Something crashed. Something
big.”
“That’s not right. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Right, wrong, is, isn’t. What will be will be. Doesn’t change
what I’m looking at.”
“Patch me into your signal. I want to see what it is you’re
looking at.”
Gareth hated being filmed. It was invasive. It felt like a
violation of trust. Like he was going to do something against the rules or take
something extra for himself that he wasn’t supposed to be taking. Gareth knew
he broke the rules all the time, but it didn’t change the fact that he hated
when he had to be on record.
Then the Earth shook. Just for a second. Just for a moment, the
rules didn’t apply. A little earthquake. A little release. Everything upended,
but it was only for a moment. Nothing to worry about. Instantly forgettable.
Just enough to remind him that the world was still a dangerous place, even if
it usually had a way of hiding that fact.
“You guys record that?”
“What happened?”
“Just something seismic. Nothing much really.”
“We’re not registering any activity up here. How bad?”
“Shake rattle and roll it was not. Just enough to make me feel a
little light.”
“Yeah, we’re still not seeing much of anything.”
“Maybe I ate something funny and my blood sugar is fucked. Just
a—”
Gareth’s voice trailed off. He was distracted. Little earthquakes
or stomach aches meant nothing. He had something else on his mind. Gareth saw
something he wanted. It was shiny and gold and it looked small enough for him
to hide before heading back up to the ship.
“How about that video?” the voice asked.
“Yeah, yeah… I’m on it.”
Gareth tugged on the gold, but it was attached to something – a
chain. He gave it another tug, but it didn’t want to snap. He pushed aside the
dirt and rocks and dug into the wreck.
Then he stopped. It was strange. It was wrong. Gareth just stopped
and stared. The gold was attached to a chain which was attached to another.
Gareth wasn’t sure what. It was humanoid, but not human. The skeleton was
wrong. There were too many bones, extra structures, but it was also missing
parts, lacking digits.
Gareth smiled. Now this was really something. This was going to be
something very very neat. It was a mystery. The eleven-year old inside was
suddenly very very happy.
“Hey Tasha-- you’re going to want to see this…”
The alarms went off. That was never a good sign.
“Gareth, I’m going to need you to hold on for a minute.”
“Is everything—”
Tasha shut off communications. She looked around for signs of
danger or distress. The alarms were still blaring, but there was no immediately
obvious threat. She turned to Tommy.
“What is it?”
“Energy surge…”
“What type?”
“Unknown, but familiar.”
“Work on it. Origin?”
“There doesn’t seem to be one. It’s just there.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere, sir. Like a pulse. Growing. Something big is coming.”
“Radiation levels? Is it dangero—
The universe blinked. It was dark and then it was light and in
between it blinked. It was there and then it was nothing. Skipping in and out
of existence.
Ripped and torn. Stretched and shattered. A collision of energy.
And explosion of space. There was nothing and everything, all at one. The new
and old charging in at the same time, broken little bits. Catastrophe of the
grandest scale. A cosmic reshuffling of the deck.
There was nothing.
Darkness.
Desolate darkness. The void. Entropy. Atrophy. What was was gone
and what would be had yet to begin.
One universe shuffled off, its coil unraveling. One universe
splintered and left reeling.
A blur. A hot mess. Spinning and seeping and realigning. Pulling
itself back together again.
What was gone was gone. What would be was just beginning. What had
come before was lost, evermore.
Cold. The universe was a cold and lonely place. Creation could be
an unforgiving bitch sometimes.
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