A/N: Merry Christmas 2014!
This is my first story in nearly two years. I've been slacking, clearly. But after a period of IRL aimlessness, I now might be going to school within the next couple of months, and with my future nearly assured, I'm finally in a good headspace, free from persistent distractions. So consider this story my long-overdue (Holiday) gift to my long-neglected readers. And know that with this, I'm back in the fan fiction business—for now, anyway.
I started work on this particular piece in 2013, but ended up shelving it in December of that year due to blockages. Now, a year later, in December 2014, I decided to take another shot at it. And with fresh eyes, I managed to resolve the issues and finally make something of this story.
How apt, that a piece featuring December would be shelved in December and finished in December. Not that this is a surprise. 'Tis, after all, the season for synchronicities.
I don't think most would consider writing a piece about December, that most coolest and raddest of dudes. He doesn't get enough love, though finding stories for him might admittedly be difficult. However, I think that I've found a good one. I hope you'll agree.
This piece was inspired by the series finale. With every piece I write, I seek to try something new. This time, I opted for a character study with emphasis on poignancy and resonance. It's a bit of a long one, best read in one sitting. So make yourselves comfortable.
But I ramble. Suffice it to say that it's good to be back.
Let me know what you think, if you care to. And have a good remainder of the Holiday season.
Enjoy.
XxXxXxXxXxX
The People Of This Era
XxXxXxXxXxX
Every now and again, December would lie down on the couch and close his eyes, doing nothing else for hours on end.
It wasn't for want of sleep. They had long ago evolved beyond the need for the process. But even if it served no productive purpose, December would lie on the couch and try to put himself in their shoes. The humans required sleep for bodily restoration and memory consolidation, and during this time, their conscious awareness of physical reality would cease for hours, after which it returned upon awakening.
To have one's awareness cease was something both unknown and unknowable to December, who had known perpetual consciousness from the moment he first emerged from his Gestation Pod to a point whole eras and Timelines later as he lied still on the couch, trying to imagine what it would be like to sleep, for one's consciousness to suddenly switch off.
Their awareness didn't switch off fully, however. Dreaming was another intriguing trait unique to the humans. In sleep, their brains reorganized and analyzed the sensory data acquired during waking periods, which manifested as dreams. Quantities of disparate information were computed in parallel, leading to experiences that often had no apparent logical underpinning. December had witnessed as much for himself. He once tried to read a sleeping human who was in the process of dreaming, but what he saw was without clear causality or structure or regularity, and it had unnerved him.
Lacking the need for sleep, December consequently lacked the ability to dream. His cortical implant regulated the processes otherwise achieved by sleep cycles. He could do something similar, though. If he chose, he could recall any memory, any thought, any experience with perfect clarity, closing his eyes to observe his own past as though he were watching a movie at the cinema. Such a capability passed as the closest his kind could get to authentic dreaming.
Twelve minutes into his session of elected lethargy, he chose to dream of Timothy.
As the mental footage played, it occurred to him that Timothy had been lying still on his back when December saw him last, much like December was doing now in his apartment. He had watched the boy's own awareness dimming like lights in an auditorium, his eyes closing to never open again.
The boy was there. Then he wasn't there. Yet even to this day, there had been times where December would wonder what it would be like if the boy was indeed still here.
But he was not. And in time, the rest of them would follow.
The thought distracted him enough to cause his eyes to open, giving view to the plain ceiling as rendered in the hues of his optical filters. He sat up and pivoted, shifting his feet onto the floor. Being an individual of significance, he'd been allocated a place of residence befitting his stature as both the head researcher in the Physics Department of the Ministry of Science, and the former lead scientist of those chosen twelve that had taken the first steps into the uncharted territory of Time.
Apartment 513 was nicely furnished. Leather seats, a round coffee table, a simulated fireplace on the back wall, a large viewing monitor set in the wall before him. Two balconies, cordoned behind sliding glass panes, lined the wall to December's back, where pots containing hardy plants sat stoic. There was a small chamber down the short corridor for hygienic maintenance and waste disposal, and another lined with storage units housing food, supplies, tools, and other necessities. There was no bedroom, though.
There were also possessions that served a purely aesthetic purpose. An abstract marble statue, sitting on a wooden shelf in the corner; a rectangular art piece, hanging lengthwise down the wall, uniform red garnished with a circle of white; a simple painting on a canvas, one chosen for its interesting textures. Many of his acquaintances had acquired various baubles to decorate their own residences, but it was less out of aesthetic appreciation and more from intrigue in these human creations, unknown in their native era. Over the course of his team's expedition, December had developed the skill of discerning the mystifying purposes of human creations. And, as a result, he began to infer the rules of aesthetic analysis, allowing him to determine which things were more pleasant to observe than others.
He had therefore chosen these artworks not out of curiosity or novelty, but because he derived value from gazing at them—from mapping their geometries, weighing their proportions, analyzing the ratios of their molecular composition. Humans knew this value by the name of beauty, with things possessing this quality termed as beautiful.
Even the word beautiful was beautiful, December thought. A self-referential, axiomatic principle. And as a scientist, and before then a mathematician, he appreciated axioms more than most.
The people of this era were beautiful. Timothy, too, had been beautiful. At last, he recalled thinking, a single word that could accurately encompass how he perceived them.
No... how he felt about them. Even now, after all this time—after what had happened to August, and to September, and to April after him—December would sometimes neglect to account for the variable of emotive development.
He stopped the thought there. He could acknowledge that this development had subtly altered his physiology, triggering responses to key stimulus—the release of chemicals in the limbic system that altered his heart rate, engendered sensations in his chest, affected his breathing, excited his lachrymal ducts—but that was as far as he could go. As far as he dared to go. To go any further would risk these experiences seeping into his behaviour, risk betraying his anomalous condition. He had witnessed what befell those who surrendered fully to the whims of emotive development. He wasn't keen on following in their footsteps.
Even despite, on some days, thinking that maybe he should.
How long had August struggled with these experiences before he instigated his crusade against the inevitable? How long had September harboured his sympathies for the Bishops and their allies before he forsook his own kind? How long had April stayed his hand until he could no longer, choosing to terminate himself rather than act upon his impulses of aiding the Resistance, consequently exposing the condition shared by his former Science Team colleagues? How long before yet another of them succumbed?
Not for the first time, December desired that he wasn't burdened with this capacity for emotional capacity. Things would be simpler, then. Like they used to be. Before long-term exposure to human electromagnetic fields jostled loose archaic functions in their limbic systems. Before they had ever left the 27th Century, when December had not truly known what it was to be fazed or troubled.
They had observed the history of the Natives, whose name they later learned was "human". They were there every step of the way, walking in and out of sight in a non-linear waltz. They watched these humans develop, evolve, building their civilization one Planck Frame at a time—the civilization that would one day molt into the society of December's origin. But somewhere along the way, December was finding that despite himself, he was becoming more intrigued by them, more invested in the unfolding story of mankind. April had confided in December that he too was experiencing this effect, prompting December to wrangle the others. When everyone confirmed their nascent condition, they all agreed to tell no one of it—least of all the expedition overseers, who might think of the Science Team as being compromised, tainted, and therefore draft and train new members while dissecting and studying the old.
The incident with August risked unravelling everything. December had hoped that being stern with August would steer him from his dangerous course, but it wasn't to be. After the death of one of them, they had all vowed to never let the humans sway them from their designated purpose.
A vow September would brazenly shatter. A vow April could only keep in death.
Had it not been for the boy Timothy, December would never have come to understand, if only in part, what it was they sacrificed, and why.
It had been simple to study and understand humans from afar. To analyze their physiology and neurology. But how these processes gave rise to their many curious behaviours was something that consistently eluded the band of scientists. Not that it mattered, at first. Humans were the objects of academic study, and not much beyond.
It was in the year 1984 CE that this perception started to change.
Sitting in apartment 513 in the year 2036 CE, December, recalling that segment of his Timeline, looked to the viewing monitor affixed to the wall across from him. It had been fourteen days since he last watched it. Perhaps he should watch it again.
He held out his fingers, glowing as they activated the monitor from a distance. Still interfacing with the monitor's electromagnetic field, December was able to select a file in particular, which began playing on screen. As the titular Terminator arrived in its new Timeframe, the scientist recalled when he first saw this movie, and the human he had somehow ended up watching it with.
It was August who'd introduced him to the medium of cinema. The members of the Science Team were often scattered across Time, following up on various assignments relayed to them from their expedition overseers in the 27th Century. Yet they were also tasked in keeping an eye out for any notable or promising discoveries that arose during their travels. Cinema had evidently been one such discovery for August. December had inquired further on the matter after reading August's logs on the subject. What better way to understand humans, August proposed, than to observe the output of their minds? If the Science Team's mandate was to observe the beginnings of their kind, then charting the evolution of the human mind was as valuable as charting the evolution of human civilization as a whole.
And so, August brought December to view Back To The Future in the year 1986 CE of the Entangled Parallel. Following the screening, December had been under the impression that he was observing simulations of temporal theory, but August had noted that the humans merely considered it "entertainment".
September had appeared, then, to account for a mistake he'd made. The mistake that would set him on the path to cast aside the purpose and mission bestowed upon him by his people.
But that had not soured the moviegoing experience for December. Indeed, he would return to the theater again. Historian that he'd become, he decided to start from the inception of motion pictures. But while these archaic, monochromatic offerings were interesting, they were more difficult to grasp—as August had agreed, on the few occasions they went together. At least in Back To The Future, there were elements of familiarity—digressions on Space and Time, the future and the past. He thus went back to that era and found a new subject for his ongoing studies in entertainment.
In Boston of the year 1984 CE, December purchased a ticket to view The Terminator.
The auditorium was filled at half-capacity that day. He selected a seat in the back, granting him an optimal vantage. December then took out his notebook, starting a new entry for his observations. After jotting down data gained from sweeping the room with his binoculars, he readied himself as the lights began to dim.
The movie progressed, and he wrote down everything that he deemed significant. This was entertainment, and not a presentation of theory, December had to remind himself. But it was hard to imagine what value the humans might be deriving from inaccurate conceptions of temporal mechanics. And yet they clearly did, as evidenced by the reactions of his fellow cinephiles, whispering and laughing and jumping in their seats in concordance with what unfolded on the screen. There was even a couple pressing lips in the back corner. December wondered if they would copulate shortly.
"Whatcha writing, there?"
So engrossed he was in analysis that he hadn't notice the young male who had come to sit one seat over to his right. December paused his scribing. Prior to the departure of the Science Team, protocols had been drafted to determine appropriate conduct in Native eras, among them disallowing taking actions that might influence the past. As a result, direct dealings with humans was always a risky endeavour. Should he answer the boy's query? Considering the variables, he supposed that so long as he didn't divulge any sensitive information, conversation should not be out of the question. In fact, it may prove enlightening as to the subject of cinema.
"I am taking notes," thus replied the suited man.
"Oh," said the boy, not expecting so monotone a response. "You've seen this before?"
"No," said December. "This is my first viewing."
"So, whaddya think about it so far? Pretty cool, right?"
December swivelled his head. He estimated this male to be fourteen years along his maturation cycle. The boy was propping one foot on the vacant seat before him as he deposited popcorn into his mouth, a few morsels at a time. "You have seen this once before?" asked the suited man.
"Yeah. This is my second time." The popcorn crunched as he masticated. "I'll probably see it again, too. If I can manage it."
December blinked. "Why would you watch it again," he inquired, "if you have already seen it? You have derived all possible value from this film."
The boy's eyebrow rose. "Uh... I liked it so much the first time that I came to see it again?"
December held his gaze for a moment, then resumed observing the screen, not needing to look down to see what he was writing. The boy returned to spectating as well, but he kept darting glances at the strange man sitting nearby. After Sarah Connor drove off into the horizon and the closing credits began their scroll, the lights stretched back to life. As the moviegoers began to rise, signalling the conclusion of the entertainment experience, December opted to include some closing commentary.
"Pretty good movie, isn't it?" remarked the boy just as December finished his notes.
But December didn't respond. He wasn't sure he understood what the question meant. He instead sheathed his notebook and pen into his suit and rose. He glanced at the boy one last time before filing out with the rest, leaving his interlocutor behind.
He would return for a second time.
It was something about what the boy had said. December continued his work abroad, managing the operations of the Science Team. He would replay the movie in eidetic reconstruction, and still, he could not understand the fleeting value of entertainment. Could the solution indeed lie in repeated viewings?
December found himself in that same theater, in Boston of 1984 CE, four linear days since he'd been there last, prepared to observe The Terminator once again.
He had not expected to see the boy. But there he was, sipping on his soda in the rear quadrant of the room. His presence wasn't wholly improbable, given that the boy had expressed his intent to view the film a third time. This must simply have been the date he did so.
The scientist, occupying the same seat he had before, summoned his notebook and pen, started a new entry, made scans of the room with his instruments—preparing to extract anything he might have missed.
"I thought you said you've gotten everything out of the movie the first time."
December turned to see the boy having moved one seat over to his right, as he had four nights previously.
"I have... reconsidered," answered the suited man.
"Cool." The boy fell silent for a few moments, then raised his hand casually. "I'm Timothy, by the way."
December stopped, looking to Timothy. He did not think it would be wise to start revealing details about his person. In the end, he didn't respond, and Timothy lowered his hand, shrugging as he accepted the man's reticence.
The same scenes played on the screen, and December glanced at his notebook to find the page blank. He had already written the relevant information on the previous run. Hadn't he?
He flipped back to review the first Terminator-themed entry, and suspected that this was going to be a futile experiment. Yet Timothy seemed to be enjoying himself; even with this being his third attendance, he didn't seem unpleased to be there. December permitted himself to a brief, superficial scan of the boy's thoughts, visualizing the electric activity coursing through the limbic system. Whatever Timothy was experiencing was beyond him, for it was an experience December's kind had left behind.
"You… enjoy this? "inquired December as Kyle Reese explained the situation to Sarah Connor in the parking garage.
"What do you mean?"
"These ideas on travel in time."
"Oh, totally. This stuff is rad! And you must find it cool, too, if you're taking notes on it." He craned to peer at the page. "Though I guess you're drawing a bit of a blank."
"I admit… that I am having trouble seeing what more there is to the film, other than what I have already noted."
On the screen, the Terminator ambushed Sarah and Kyle in the garage from its police vehicle.
"Well, what do you have so far?"
December cocked back his head slightly, in what was the closest he could manage to balking. Sharing notebook observations with humans? He ran futures in his mind, calculating the potential impact of his words even as he spoke them.
"This film discusses Phase-Causal Systems. However, the information provided is insufficient. The film does not address how the Skynet-oriented System that spans the 1984 CE and 2029 CE Limit Points first began."
Timothy's features screwed. "How it first began? I thought it was supposed to be a loop. You know?" He traced circles in the air with his fingers. "Things happening again and again."
"Phase-Causal Systems can occur in nature under certain conditions, but they always have an origin at the fourth dimension. And the continua of such Systems do not occur in recursive progression, as you say, save for the observers involved. Otherwise, simultaneity governs the System, for there are no privileged frames of reference."
Timothy started at him for a few moments, blinking. "Wow, dude," he said. "You're really into this time-travel stuff, aren't you? You like a scientist or something?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Huh. Cool." Timothy sank into his seat a little. Sarah and Kyle tried frantically to elude the Terminator, exchanging bullets on the street. "What else did you write down?" he asked. "Any thoughts on the characters?"
"Characters?" repeated December. "I… am not certain."
"What about the special effects?" Timothy received no answer. "The soundtrack? The acting? The sets?" But again, the scientist was flummoxed. "Do you at least have an idea on what the movie's about?"
The man's hairless brows furrowed. "It concerns Phase-Causal Systems, does it not?"
"No, that's the plot," clarified Timothy. "I'm talking about the message, man! The themes. The whole point of the movie."
"The point? I do not follow." But seeing as Timothy was being forthcoming, December saw an opportunity for an answer, and so he said, "What do you suspect is the point of this film, Timothy?"
At this, Timothy smirked, and looked back at the screen. "It's not about time-travel," he began. "It's about a different kind of paradox. It's about the futility that comes from facing the inevitable. And the hope that, even so, you can change things anyway."
The boy did not break his gaze from the screen. December turned to the film as well, and decided to write down Timothy's words. What did they mean? He worried at the question for the remainder of the film's duration, staying until the last credit rolled, and for naught.
He found Timothy standing outside the building. They stood near one another for a few moments, the sounds of the bustling city all about them.
"So," he said, noticing December. "You have a review, yet?"
"I am still formulating a hypothesis."
"You'll get there, man. Take care, Mister Scientist." He shrugged in his worn coat, brought up his hood, then proceeded around the corner of the nearest alleyway, vanishing from sight.
December would see Timothy again, after the death of August.
While the interaction with the boy had not yielded any disastrous consequences, December didn't think he was any closer to cracking the mystery of entertainment. It didn't seem like Timothy's mind would be any easier to comprehend. This auxiliary pursuit of entertainment studies appeared to have run its course. So December pushed all thoughts of the boy aside, along with his esoteric words.
Which was for the better. For as a result of September's misconduct, the Science Team suddenly had much more work to do in assessing and managing the repercussions of Reiden Lake. Minds unbridled by extraneous preoccupations were of the utmost necessity.
When August allowed himself to be killed by one of their human proxies, all to make the case for the significance of Christine Hollis, memories of the cinema came rushing back.
He remembered when September dragged the body out of the vehicle, at the place where they all had gathered after the incident. In his native era, death was a fixture of existence, another fact of which to take note in passing. Yet the death of August was both surprising and distressing, for reasons December hadn't quite understood back then, when his emotive development wasn't as matured.
He tried to remain objective from that point on, more vigilant both without and within. Yet thoughts of August remained with him, surfacing unbidden—and with them, memories of movies, and Timothy, and his cryptic message. And every time, he would cast these memories aside. A thing unobserved was not reality.
And it remained so for the time they spent out of Time. When September went rogue following the Rewrite, December had ordered his colleagues to comb the Timeline for him, he who had allowed himself to be led astray by the humans. After they'd at last tracked him down, they opted to exile him from the Timeline to prevent any further incursions on September's part instead of outright termination, or sending him back to the future whence they'd came for the authorities to deal with.
It was December's decision to make, in the end, being the lead scientist of their crew. And from the beginning, he'd felt the responsibility of this operation more than any other. It was December who directed the operations of the Science Team, December who served as the bridge between the future and the past. His kind was fading, so in a way, their fate was in December's hands. Was it then not correct, then, not necessary, to act in the best interest of their species?
This mindset proved more difficult to put into practice, when the moment arrived. He had stood before September, surrounded by their fellows, pronouncing his verdict, his words imbued with a resolve that threatened to waver. When it was done, December had experienced the same thing he had in the passing of August.
And when they learned September had, somehow, found his way back, December experienced something new. A certain clarity, an ease of being. Looking back, he would say that he was glad.
But he didn't understand that, then. Question piled atop question. How many of them would succumb to these latent emotions before the end? Why did August and September both choose to risk their expedition over singular humans who otherwise had no significance, mere cogs in the greater mechanism?
Where once December held an academic interest in the pursuit of understanding, he now needed to understand.
So he decided to find Timothy again. One last time, he told himself, if only to see this through. Even if it was futile.
He returned to that Boston theater on the two nights adjacent to his prior visitation. But Timothy did not present himself. December then hopped forward a week, then two. He altered his strategy, investigating the circumstances of the boy himself. And his search, ultimately, led him to the month of his namesake, and on the marker, he saw the words.
TIMOTHY LAUDERDALE
1970-1984
REST IN PEACE
Timothy Lauderdale was an orphan, a boy who dwelt on the streets. His mother lost custody of him as a result of substance abuse and neglect, and young, he was placed into the foster care system, only to drift away, falling through the cracks, and became as December was—a wanderer, walking among the people, yet not of them.
And whenever he managed to scrounge enough money, Timothy would go to the cinema.
December learned this all as he investigated the boy's Timeline. The worn clothing, the physiological markers of substandard nutrition and sleep and health; he wondered how he'd missed it before. When it came to humans, there was much he often missed.
Timothy was gone, then. But there was no malaise, like there had been in the death of August.
There was something else. Something that surfaced within him whenever Irregularities formed in the Timeline, or when September had gone rogue.
The unshakeable sense that things were not as they should be.
He returned to the October Timeframe, walking among the people. Observing. Thinking. Thinking about what to make of it all. Thinking about why he'd even come back. He stopped at a street corner, watching the cars veer past. Maybe he should leave, if the road ends only in snow and stone.
"Well. If it isn't Mister Scientist."
The boy approached him, a smile of recognition on his lips.
"Timothy," said December, simply.
"Haven't seen you in a bit," said Timothy. "Catch any good movies in the past week?"
"I have not. Unfortunately."
Timothy may not have seen Mister Scientist in eight days, but for December, it had been nearly two years. The boy was identical to the eidetic photograph December had carried with him during that period. But seeing him in person again was, somehow, surreal nonetheless.
"Me neither," the boy answered. "You know, I'd offer to go with you, but I haven't saved up enough money, yet."
"It is alright," said December without a second thought. "I can pay for you."
Timothy's mouth parted, eyes widening in momentary surprise, only for him to snap back into his earnest disposition and eager smile. "Sure, Mister Scientist. Thanks. I'd like that. Same place as usual?"
December nodded, and the two were off.
They came to the alleyway nearest to the cinema. As they cut across, December spoke into the air.
"I was thinking, Timothy, that this time, perhaps we could watch a different movie. What do you think…"
December came to a halt as he realized Timothy had lagged behind. The suited man turned to see the boy convulsing on the ground.
At once, he was at the boy's side. In reading Timothy's brain, he determined the presence of an abnormal growth, the cause of the seizing. To his dismay, December realized that he lacked the medical equipment necessary to correct the anomaly.
So this was the day. The day Timothy Lauderdale's future was cemented. There was nothing December could do. The cemetery marker attested as much.
But no.
No.
Perhaps there was still time. Perhaps he could still make some kind of difference. Perhaps, in the face of futility…
He entered a state of hyper-attenuated time, and all went still around him. Gently, he cradled the boy in his arms, then went forth among the frozen cars and frozen people, the frozen clouds and frozen birds—into the city that lay beyond Time. He walked, step after determined step, to the nearest medical facility, where he resumed normal synchronicity, and where Timothy resumed his spasms, eyes rolling into his skull.
"The boy is experiencing seizures due to a growth in his paretial lobe," said December, preempting the paramedic inside the emergency department lobby.
The paramedic called for assistance as December transferred Timothy into their custody. In a disciplined whirlwind, they dropped the boy onto a bed and rolled him past the doors beyond.
Then, when no one was looking, December returned to the outside. He turned back to gaze at Boston General. Then, after a moment's consideration, he stepped forward and vanished.
Later that evening, December was sitting on a bench on the hospital grounds. The gravestone was still where he'd last left it, two months ahead.
And of course it was. It was all happening at once. He was not bound by linearity, but his actions left imprints in the continua of the Timeline. It had been futile from the start.
It was the fate of humans to die. To fade. Why had August saved Christine, if she was only going to die one day regardless? The boy would be no different, tumor or not. Why had he chosen to save him? Why had he chosen to get involved at all?
He looked up at the hospital once more. This marked the end of his long experiment. And by all accounts, it had ended in failure. He rose from his seat, adjusting his fedora. He would return to the currents of history, leaving Timothy behind, one human among billions to have ever lived and died—were living and dying, would live and die—and rejoin his colleagues in the work they have done for years beyond Time.
Timothy's sleepy eyes widened a crack. He turned his head weakly to find a hairless, suited man sitting at his bedside.
"Hey, there," the boy croaked.
"Hello," the man replied.
Even now, December wondered why he'd decided to circumvent conventional Space to enter Timothy's room. What he was hoping to find. He knew that nothing would come of this. Maybe that was why, he thought. There was nothing more he could lose.
"That was a pretty bad one, wasn't it?" said Timothy. "The worst headache yet." The boy paused, squinting. "You carried me, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"I remember. I think. It felt like we were going fast, but everything… around us seemed so slow…" Timothy regarded him with some suspicion. "You're not an angel or something, are you?"
"An angel? Why would you think that?"
"I don't know. You're kind of strange. And kind. Or maybe you are a scientist. Just from another planet. Or from the future. "
"From the Twenty-Seventh Century, in fact," affirmed December. "And I have been travelling in Time for a long time."
The bald man held up a finger, which flared for a moment with soft light, and Timothy seemed to light up as well, and he propped up his head.
"No way! Does that mean there are more of you? Do you have rules about changing the past? Have you ever fixed a paradox?" His head sank back into the pillow, eyes blinking. "Whoa. Sorry. Got dizzy there, for a second."
"You are rather perceptive, Timothy," noted December.
"Yeah, well. If you're gonna make it out there on your own, you have to know how to look at things. Someone told me that, once. Good advice, wouldn't you say?"
"Yes. I think so."
Timothy nodded. His eyes drifted to the other side, espying the ECG display frozen mid-sine.
"How come that thing isn't beeping?" he asked, pointing. "That's what it's supposed to do, right?"
"I brought you to a place where there is no Time. Like I did when I carried you to this hospital. No one will interrupt us. It is only us two, here."
Timothy surveyed the room, pondering the implications. "Oh, man. Very cool. Still, this is all going to cost a lot, isn't it? The medical bills, I mean. I… kind of don't have any money."
"It is alright. I can pay for you."
Timothy chuckled, which spluttered into a fit of coughing. They remained in silence, and as the silence prolonged, December's eyes widened when, for a single unbearable moment, he wondered if the end had already passed him by.
"I don't have long." He swivelled his head to his visitor. "Do I?"
December let go of the breath he was holding. "…No."
The boy let out a long sigh. "Well. It is what it is, ain't it? My only regret is that we never did get to catch that movie. Maybe next time."
December leaned forward in his bedside seat. "It is not too late, Timothy," he said with an urgency he didn't expect. "We can still make it."
"How do you figure that, Mister Scientist?"
"Close your eyes. I will show you."
Then December arrayed his fingers on Timothy's forehead, and showed him.
From his eidetic memory, he recreated the movie, shot for shot, sound for sound, precisely as he remembered seeing it in the auditorium, and channelled the memories into Timothy's awareness. And together, they watched The Terminator.
December let the movie play until the last credit rolled up on the screen, until the last note of the closing theme resounded. Until the last sparks in Timothy's neural circuitry flickered out.
When December ceased the shared connection, he opened his eyes and lifted his hand from Timothy's forehead, only to see the boy's serene face lined with singular tears. There was something on his own cheeks too, the suited man realized. He brought his hand to his face, and removed them to find damp traces on his fingertips.
He was going to move his other hand, but there was a weight on it. Timothy's hand was gripping his own. At some point during the visualization, the boy must have reached out to grab it.
And for a moment—a moment out of Time—December left it that way, grabbing back.
But he didn't stay for long. He knew he couldn't maintain that temporal state forever. And even if he could, there was nothing more to be done.
Alerted by the opening of a door in the hall and the subsequent sound of a flat-lining ECG, a nurse entered the room, finding the patient in his bed, is young eyes closed, hand hung limp over the side of the bed, and she called for assistance, wondering who might have opened the door.
That was the last December saw of Timothy. Some time after that, the Annexation began, and the Science Team members were called back into the fold, their long mission at an end.
In the year 2036 CE, after the end credits to the film on his screen concluded, December rose from his seat and peered out the window.
Hope and resignation before the inevitable. That was the paradox of which Timothy had spoken. It was a paradox that had defined the journey of his expedition from the moment they'd stepped into an era that was not their own.
They'd tried to correct September's mistake through the Rewrite, but September allowed Peter Bishop to remain. They'd tried to dissuade August, but he exchanged his life for another's. The Resistance waged guerrilla war against the Occupation, but they've hardly made a dent in sixteen years. Even the Science Team's efforts were ordained from the onset. The true purpose of the Science Team was only disclosed to its members after the Annexation was achieved. There was no hope for them in the future, so they'd laid claim to the past to try again.
Was that what hope was? To forestall the inevitable? To push back against the certainties of their existence, making room for fleeting things?
But fleeting things could never last. And yet there were those that struggled and fought and died for them. No paradox of Space or Time could ever have been said to be so vexing.
In the early days of the Annexation, December had asked himself what he should do. Should he join in the struggle, perpetuate the contradiction? The others had asked themselves the same thing, none more so than April, only got the paradox to take him.
When they'd subjected September to Biological Reversion, December, newly-assigned as the head of the Ministry of Science, watched the procedure unfold from behind a glass pane. December had shown "Donald" to his new living quarters, sentenced to become a citizen of the new order. Donald had said that even after all this, he would keep the secret of emotive development, and shared a secret of his own—that long ago, he'd taken his genetic progeny and hid him in the past, and that the progeny was still out there, somewhere.
December wondered whether Donald's hope had been eroded by the inexorable. By how he might never meet with his progeny again, lest he jeopardized them both. By how the original Fringe Division members, spearheading the early Resistance with September, have been lost years ago, presumed missing or dead.
And yet, despite all the odds, it seemed the old Fringe unit has resurfaced to carry on the fight. The paradox endures.
Outside, the skies were a cool grey, an increasingly common sight over the past sixteen years of the carbon monoxide production. More and more, this world was becoming more familiar, echoes of the home he'd left behind. And December noticed something else about this era, something he would never have spotted had he not undergone his journey. The resentment of the human populace toward their benefactors had, in time, influenced the limbic systems of the Captains of the Occupation and their subordinates. They too became resentful and indignant over years of gradual emotive development, which only made the efforts of the Resistance all the more difficult.
Hope. Sarah Connor had hoped that mankind would undo their error in the making of Skynet. December had watched the other Terminator films, prior the Annexation. Those ventures did not end well for Connor. For all the struggles of the fictional humans, Skynet remained.
It was as Timothy had said. Things are looping, repeating again and again. It had happened once before, when mankind sought to increase their intelligence at the cost of emotive perspective. It was happening now, as the future and past of mankind folded onto itself to forestall the inevitable. He knew how it would end. How it would always end.
But no.
No.
Even now, after all that had transpired. December still thought that perhaps things could change. Still had hope. It was a hope that whittled with Time, but it never truly went away, as much as he tried to suppress or forget. And it was Timothy who'd first implanted the seed of this hope, which had taken root in the years since he'd last held the boy's hand.
Once the Occupation began in earnest, December's routine did not fluctuate much. It gave him a lot of time to think. To puzzle over the enigma of Timothy Lauderdale, and why December had been so drawn to him. With the recent return of the Fringe unit, he thought he'd found, if not an answer, then the seed of an answer.
They were both orphaned cinephiles, the scientist and the boy. Maturing without parents, never knowing the love of another. Yet somehow finding beauty in a world where they were but cogs in the greater mechanism. Gears that would have turned, would continue to turn, whether they were there or not. And in the recognition of this axiom, the paradox was expressed in its clearest form.
It was the destiny of beautiful things to fade. Perhaps that was why they were considered to be beautiful.
He would appreciate the beauty of all things for as long as he could. That was all that was left for him to do, all he could do until they all walked into oblivion, the place where there was no Time.
December turned, facing the emptiness of his apartment. He wondered if he should go out to see what there was to see, or remain and dream for a little while longer.
There was a knock at the door.
December proceeded to answer. He didn't get visitors often, these days. For the briefest instant, in a hope he hardly dared to acknowledge, he thought maybe someone had come to ask him to catch a movie.
Steadying himself, he twisted the handle and opened the door.