Bubbles emerged from the depths of the water for some time. They had mostly stopped by the time the last girl was gone, and they were left gazing at still, blue water. The few clouds in the sky were clear in the lake's reflections. Light from the bright sun bounced and danced on the water's surface. The reflections and refractions made it quite difficult to see what lay beneath. If there was anything left there at all.
"It is curious that we are still here," Robert said, struggling to be heard over the storm. The waves buffeted the little rowboat, nearly knocking him overboard on more than one occasion. He did wish his sister would assist him in rowing, but it seemed futile to ask.
"Here?" Rosalind echoed, still gazing down at the lake. "Or there?"
"Both," Robert offered, and followed her line of sight. The sunlight on the water made him shield his eyes to look properly. The bubbles in the lake had stopped. Unfortunately, the storm had not. He sighed and leaned back to put some more weight into his stroke. Rain and seawater alike dripped down his face, his rain hat utterly useless. "Or neither, if you prefer. I would have imagined that, because it is all over, we would no longer be in this state."
Rosalind turned to him, resting her chin on one hand. Her normally impeccable hair was plastered to her face, her hat as pointless in the storm as his own. "Interesting. There is no real reason to say 'it is all over,' I think. After all, the idea was to prevent anything from ever happening in the first place."
"Precisely," said Robert. "The end and the beginning are very much the same."
"That depends on where you start."
"It depends on when you end."
"Wherever you start or end, you loop back," Rosalind said with an air of supreme boredom. "I suppose it doesn't depend on anything at all."
"In either case, we should no longer be stuck in his state."
Rosalind blinked at him in surprise, pausing in her digging. She leaned on her shovel, peering at her brother with concern. "What do you mean by 'stuck,' brother? If anything, we are freed from the bonds of time and space themselves. We are the very antithesis of 'stuck'– unless, that is, you are implying that we are 'stuck' together."
"Of course not," Robert said. "I meant that in our freedom from the limits of time and space, we do seem to be quite unable to return to their embrace if we so desire."
"Is that what you desire?" Rosalind feigned hurt. "Is it so horrible, to remain in an eternity with me?"
"Is it an eternity, though?" Robert countered. "We do not seem to age, but neither do we proceed forwards in time without our own efforts to do so. Who knows if we shall begin to age, eventually? Or even die?"
"Only time will tell," Rosalind said with a shrug.
"Or will it?" Robert asked, and tugged his oars back again.
"Only time will tell if it will."
"I suppose it must," said Robert. "Though not in a particularly linear fashion."
"It is more circular in nature," Rosalind said. "Though not precisely that either. But I do believe I understand your reservations. If he had died at the lake–"
"–He would not have absolved himself of sin. Had he not absolved–"
"–He would not have commissioned the city. Had he not paid for my research–"
"–You would not have discovered my world."
"Your world. You are speaking in space now."
"I was always speaking in space. And time."
"However it goes, had I not discovered you, you would not have taken the child, or come into my world."
"We would not have ever met," Robert corrected. "Which makes this very conversation quite the paradox."
"I feel as if we have had it before," Rosalind said with a sigh. She raised her foot to rest on the shovel as well, sending the spade deep into the dirt.
"We almost assuredly have," Robert confirmed, "Or will do."
"Well," Rosalind continued, getting back to the matter at hand. "Perhaps you would feel better if we went to see that our efforts were not in vain."
Robert plunked a couple of melancholy notes on the piano, considering it.
Rosalind hummed along, a song neither of them really knew existed or not. Perhaps they were inventing it, though neither was particularly creative in that fashion. Perhaps it was simply plucked out of the infinite possibilities, a strand of information with no origin. An ontological paradox.
Rather like themselves, so it seemed.
Flames roared around them as they walked. Sirens wailed on the city streets, people cried for help, but there was nobody to hear. High above the city, the Lamb laughed maniacally, clinging to the window frame of her father's asylum as she watched the destruction she had wrought. Tears streamed down her face, her laughter mixed with sobs, blood streaming freely from her nose.
She looked up at them as though they were expected. Perhaps they were. Perhaps they had been here many times before– or would be, eventually.
"Did he save her?" the Lamb choked out through her tears.
"Perhaps," Rosalind said shortly. "It is what we are trying to ascertain."
"In the short term, he did," Robert offered, by way of consolation.
"In the long term, perhaps not."
"In the nonlinear term…"
But the Lamb had stopped listening, gazing with empty eyes at the destruction below. Birdsong was audible over the screams and explosions, a screeching call as her warrior returned to her waiting arms.
Robert tossed his sister the rubber ball with a touch of irritation. "That was hardly promising," he said.
"Don't sulk," Rosalind chided him. She threw the ball back. "It's quite unbecoming. It was only one possibility."
"A possibility that is still possible," Robert reminded her, "When it should not be." He paused to wave at the passing gondola. The people inside waved back politely.
"We do not know what should and should not be," said Rosalind. "That is the whole point."
"Then perhaps we should not be thinking of our own timeline," Robert suggested. He shook his umbrella open and held it in front of him, allowing Rosalind to step out before him. "After all, if this is all nonlinear, we should not be following the path as if it were a line."
"Think outside of the box," Rosalind clarified, "Or, rather, the cage."
"We must see what we haven't already seen before if we intend to learn anything new."
"It is more difficult than you make it sound, brother, given that we often learn what we will learn before we ever considered learning about it."
"More nonlinears," Robert agreed.
Something small and warm collided with Robert's leg. It stumbled away, into the table of the market, knocking a small selection of fruit to the cement.
The small girl giggled nervously. She smiled, first at Robert and then to the inattentive shopkeep, all quite sheepishly. "Sorry!"
A much larger person came running from the same way the girl had come.
The girl gasped in delight and ducked under the table. "Shh!" she urged them all, finger to lips as she watched him jog to a stop and look around. She immediately began crawling down the line of tables, as silently as a six year old girl was able.
He seemed very concerned, not dressed fit for the rain, quite bedraggled. He walked over to the table, but was unsuccessful in gaining the seller's attention, as he was haggling with another customer. The man sighed and turned to them instead, the sheepish look on his face quite similar to the girl's smile.
"Did you happen to see a little girl come runnin' through here?" he asked.
Rosalind's eyes didn't even flick to the table. "We have not."
"Ugh, thanks anyway," he said. He sniffled, stuffy from running in the cold, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. It left a light red streak across the skin, before it was washed away in the rain. The man jogged off again, unaware it was the wrong direction. "Anna? Anna!"
"Somewhat more conclusive," Rosalind said. She leaned back on the safety rail as they ascended. Columbia was falling away below them, brilliantly shining in the sun. The distant sounds of music and cheering reached their ears, and a large bunch of balloons– the size of pinheads from their distance away– floated away into the sky.
"Somewhat," said Robert. He leaned back as well, settling next to her. Someone was waving to them, down on one of the streets below. He and his sister waved back.
"You sound displeased," Rosalind observed. She dropped her hand, as the two people below they had been waving to were now quite gone. "Shall we continue onwards?"
"Or backwards."
"Forwards," said Rosalind firmly. "There comes a time when one must be sure of one's decisions. Wandering aimlessly has never been something I aspired to."
"A pity then, that wandering seems to be our fate for the foreseeable future– or past. But that is precisely why we should have a direction in which to go."
"My thoughts exactly."
This time it was Rosalind who was jostled, as a man stumbled into her. A drunk, by the smell. He muttered something that may have been an apology, but likely was not. He staggered away, one hand on the alley wall to keep himself upright.
"Wait!"
The owner of the other voice came from over their shoulders, in a doorway of golden light in the dark streets. The first man shouted curses as he continued, derogatory terms and gestures accompanying his exit.
A third voice sighed heavily. "Forget the tab tonight, Al, I'll cover you. Go after your brother before he fucks something up and hurts himself."
"Thanks, DeWitt, you're a good man."
"If you say so."
The second man looked about ready to argue, but the sounds of his brother shouting abuse around the corner encouraged him to sprint out after him. "Jerry! Jeremiah, wait for me, you damned drunken fool!"
Rosalind quirked an eyebrow. "Interesting."
"You folks want a drink, or what?" The remaining man leaned against the doorjamb. "You missed the performance, but I could maybe convince my girl to do an encore. For a price."
"We are here on different business," Robert said.
The man frowned. He pushed the door further open, spilling light into the alley. "You look familiar," he said. "Do I know you from somewhere? Don't owe you money, do I?"
"Absolutely not," Robert said.
"The debt has been wiped away," Rosalind added, loftily not smirking. "You never owed us anything."
"You do not owe us now," Robert corrected, "Though you may have once."
"Right…" The man drew out the vowel, brow furrowed. "Well, you may as well come in outta the heat. Seems it doesn't even cool down at night these days."
"We shall have to decline," Rosalind said with a polite nod. "My brother and I were only passing through."
"Sure," the man said, privately relieved. He didn't point out that the bar was at a dead end, and the only entrance or exit to the alley was back the way they came. He waited a few moments in the open doorway for them to leave, but the pair seemed more concerned with their quiet, unintelligible discussion.
"Father, there's some police out front to see you– either you're in trouble again or they're after Mr Fink. Did Albert get him out okay?"
The man flinched, though it wasn't so much at his daughter's news than a twinge of pain in his head. "Damn summer allergies," he muttered to himself. He wiped the blood from his nose away on his sleeve. "I gotta take care of this. Good to see you again, I guess."
The door shut behind him, casting the alley back into darkness.
"I wonder if that will happen every time," Robert mused, twirling his pen. "I suppose we represent a world not meant to be remembered."
"It is curious," Rosalind agreed, and turned a page of her book. "You intend to keep testing this hypothesis, then?"
"It is less a hypothesis and more a concept. But either way, data must be gathered."
"It seems almost cruel."
"Hardly," Robert scoffed, though he was aware that she could tell he was lying. He took a mouthful of cotton candy to cover for it. Rosalind pulled him aside to look at the shooting gallery; despite the fact that no money exchanged hands, they left the stall with broken wooden targets in their wake, and a large, overstuffed doll over Rosalind's shoulder.
"What next, then? Is there any point to lingering? What good will it do to keep obsessing over one aspect?"
"What harm will it do?" Robert countered. He paused at the entrance to an alley. He could hear shouting from farther down it, his own voice protesting and the man's desperate pleas and demands. Robert and his sister turned away without lingering. This wasn't a variable, after all. Some things always stay the same, and Robert would always choose Rosalind.
"What harm indeed?" Rosalind said with a hint of melancholy. "What harm or good does anything do, when infinite impossibilities continue to exist?"
"The story has ended," Robert said, staring again at the lake. It was still now, its mirrored surface undisturbed. "Before it ever began. And yet–"
"–It starts anew anyway," Rosalind finished, watching the man walk away, reborn. "Our actions have served no purpose but to create yet more directions."
"That is why we remain."
Rosalind turned to look at her brother. Behind her, the ocean stretched farther than one could see, though its surface was crossed and crossed again with paths, wooden docks that did and did not exist, pinpricks of light in the sky and looming towers of light.
"We remain because we are not moving forward," she said. She walked past him with her nose in the air, self-sure as always. He followed, his posture identical without his awareness, and they paused at the tower door. "If choice is truly infinite, we may as well make one."
"Perhaps we already have."
"We always will be," Rosalind said with a smile. "The presence of choice is a constant, after all. That tense I am quite sure of."
"Still," Robert said, peering through the small window. "There is no harm in looking back, sometimes."
Through the glass, a bassinet sat in the corner of a mostly empty room. Soft cries were issuing from it, and inside, the door creaked open. A man stepped in, bleary eyed from sleep.
"Anna? Is that you?"
"It is good to know," Rosalind acquiesced, "That our experiment did result in some good. The creation of a world with none of the strife of our own."
"It's 'our' world now, is it?" Robert teased.
Inside, the man was singing quietly, his daughter in his arms. She was still now, and one hand with five perfect fingers reached up to bat at his face.
"Our world, or lack thereof."
"Our worlds," Robert corrected. "After all, if we do not belong to any, perhaps they all belong to us."
"This one does," Rosalind decided. "We created it, after all, however indirectly."
"It was quite direct," Robert disagreed. "But I think you are right, sister."
"Oh?"
"There is not much point in remaining. At the very least, we know we have created a world where they will be happy."
"Ignorance is bliss," Rosalind said.
"And they will know nothing of us. Nor of what could have been," Robert said.
In another time, a man stopped on the street to blow his nose, and scowled when the handkerchief came away bloody.
"Daddy, your nose is bleeding!"
"I know, honey," Booker said, annoyed. He looked down at his daughter and smirked to show he was okay. "You know, I never used to get bloody noses until you were born."
Anna stuck her tongue out at him. She looked across the street, where Booker had been looking before he blew his nose. There were two people stopped outside their house, chatting, dressed impeccably in the best styles with perfect hair and posture. They were gesturing slightly at each other as they talked, out of Anna's earshot. Despite their stiffness and formality, she thought they looked very companionable.
"Daddy, who are those people at our house?"
"Hm?" Booker asked, distracted as he did his best to quell the bleeding. He followed his daughter's gaze and laughed shortly. "What, them? They show up from time to time– friends of the family. They're practically your godparents, always giving you presents and stuff. Guess it's been awhile since they've come by, you must've been too young to remember."
"Presents?" Anna said, brightening.
"Sure. They gave you your necklace, remember?"
"Necklace…" Anna murmured. Her hands clutched at her bare throat; she must have left it at home.
"Aw shit, come here Anna, now your nose is bleeding too." He crouched down to wipe the blood from her face with the clean edge of the handkerchief; Anna tilted her head obediently, distracted. "Must run in the family."
When Anna's face was clean, her 'godparents' were gone, but neither of them noticed.
They remained at the window for some time, each leaning against the wall on either side of the glass. The low, ever so slightly off-key voice drifted between them. Having all the time in the world– or none of it– it was nice to simply stop and appreciate the simpler things.
"You are right, sister," Robert said at last. "It is good to know."
"If we squander our chance to move on, we truly shall be 'stuck,'" Rosalind said. "We have infinite worlds to see. Do you truly wish to remain here?"
"No," Robert agreed. He stepped away from the wall, and the waves crashed onto the dock at his feet. Above them, the lighthouse loomed, sending brilliant beams of light into the neverending distance.
Rosalind followed, always perfectly in step, and they both walked across the wooden walkway to the tower door. Robert rested his hand on the doorknob. He held the door politely for his sister to pass through, to endless words unknown, but she stopped on the precipice.
"That song," she said, turning back towards the house.
The man inside was sitting now, on a cheap wooden chair, his daughter resting in his arms. His eyes were locked on her face, a warm smile gracing his own as he sang his lullaby.
Rosalind frowned, listening closely. "That song will not be written for another twenty-seven years."
"I know," Robert said with a sigh. "But it's close enough."
Rosalind chuckled once at that. She stepped up the short stairway to the lighthouse and accepted her brother's offered hand. The door shut behind them and, after a long, quiet moment, the light in the tower went out.