Gentle, sorrowful eyes, beneath the matted tangle of her blonde hair. The strands were flung carelessly against her brow, gone muddy-coloured with moisture, and John swept them away with a shaking hand.
This is not what was supposed to happen.
"Promise me," she murmured, hand reaching up to caress his own, now cupped at the side of her face. She was so, so frail, the loss of blood too great for anything more than just waiting until her death. Why hadn't he brought her to a clinic? Why did she demand she birth the child at home, as her mother and so on?
At this moment, John hated the little wailing thing the midwife cradled in her arms. More than anything.
"Promise me," Mary repeated, steel in her tone. John ripped his eyes from the weeping pair and to his wife, where her beloved fierceness was making itself known. He mustered a quirk at the corner of his mouth at the sight. Her eyes gentled.
"Don't… don't hate your son. He's… you, isn't he? You both… need each other."
John nodded, cradling her hand between both of his and pressing it to his mouth. "Of course, of course. Little Wilbert of Cambridge will grow up just fine."
Mary could still muster up her 'are you fucking kidding me' expression, even on her deathbed. "We… decided on Benjamin, you arsehole."
John couldn't help but laugh at that, though it choked off pathetically when her eyes began to lose focus. "Of course, anything. I promise."
"Al… Alcubierre drive," She muttered, hand twitched softly in his grasp. Her other wrung weakly at the sheets. "It's… done. The formulas, the instructions, it's…"
Ever the scholar. "I'm no scientist, love. I could never build such a device, something that-"
She interrupted him with a firm squeeze to his hands, meeting his eyes just one last time before they glazed over forever. Her voice shook with meaning.
"You're destined for greatness, my prince. And it's time to show the world exactly how great."
John awoke not to a bang, but a whimper.
A wet heat clouded at his neck, small cries striking at his skin like lightning. Hands clutched at his shirt, twitching and tensing, and feet kicked at his legs under the covers. His paternal instinct kicked in, alerting that his son needed him. Another (louder) cry, (painfully) close to his ear.
A nightmare. Right, then.
John rolled onto his back, and scooped the small child to his chest. It was only hours after he had tucked his son in the first time, it seems, as the moon was still low in the sky. "Shush," he murmured, running a hand through sandy, unkempt hair, colour alike to his own. "Ben, it's all right. You're safe."
"Da..." the five year old weeped, his voice vulnerable with age and full of fear. John gently shook him awake, careful in the knowledge of how he himself handled nightmares (as Ben and him were more than a bit alike). The struggling ceased, and eyes flung open to scan the room quickly. They landed on John, then filled with tears as the boy threw himself around his father.
"Daddy," he sobbed, tears wetting the cotton of John's shirt. John sighed lightly and held Ben even closer, rubbing at the boy's back and up into his hair. "The angels, daddy!"
John was confused for a moment, then groaned in understanding. "Ben, it's just an old TV show, love. There are no angels to be afraid of."
"In the garden!" Ben refuted, legs curling up into John's lap. His hands were restless at the nape of his father's neck. "The stone angels. I blinked! I didn't mean to a-and they're…" He fell into hysterics once more.
If Mary were alive, she would be furious that John would decide to show their son that particular episode of Doctor Who.
As it was, though, there was only one thing to do. Something even Mary would allow. "C'mon, Ben. There's something I want to show you."
Looping his arm under his son's bum to keep him at his chest, John took them to the kitchenette. While Buckingham Palace was home to the queen, there were many different living quarters for servants and guests alike. One of these so-called 'apartments' was where John and Ben resided, near the back of the grounds that overlooked the gardens. He powered on the keypad to the fridge.
"Ice cream…" John murmured, feeling Ben whip his head to the screen in interest. "Chocolate milk… Strawberries… Pumpkin pie… Oh! There it is." John padded in the option and quantity, and ding! Out came a pristine branch of broccoli, made from chemicals and food dye.
"Perfect!" John exclaimed. "Well, relatively speaking."
He felt Ben squirm in his arms, objections already on his breath, but John only laughed in response. "No, love, I'm not going to make you eat it. I think you'll enjoy this."
Dropping both his son and the vegetable off at the table, John ducked into the spare room and began to rummage in the closet. Hooked around the corner, hidden underneath a pile of old blankets and moth-eaten clothes, was the safe.
He really needed to invest in something less obvious. Or a revolving bookcase.
Cradling the device in his hands, retrieved from the touch-scanning safe, he brought it gently to the table. It was sleek and modern on the bottom, a control panel that was about the size of his shoe. Atop it was a softball-sized sphere, made of a clear and hard material that, John knew for a fact, was very difficult to obtain. He powered it on, and the screen danced to life.
"Woah," Ben breathed, reaching out a finger to a particularly bright button. John nudged his hand away.
"Ah, Ben, no touching. This is some dangerous stuff we're dealing with here."
Ben looked up to him with wide eyes, cobalt blue and full of understanding. "Like the shark in Jaws?"
John grinned helplessly. "Yeah, exactly like Jaws. Now, first thing's first, we let it calibrate."
Ben nodded, as if understanding the concept. They both watched it scan, the levels and codes jumping across the screen, ensuring that the device was empty. When finished calibrating, the sphere split into neat segments, opening itself to the room.
Wordlessly, Ben handed his father the stalk of broccoli, eyes transfixed to the machine. Setting it into the unenclosed segment, John selected the option 'depressurize'. The sphere reassembled itself.
"Dad, what's it doing?" Ben whispered, as if speaking loudly would cause it to stop. John played along.
"You hear that windy sound? It's pushing out all of the air inside of it, like a reverse vacuum. See how it's raising up the broccoli? The vacuum is rushing out of all sides, equally distributing-" He glanced a look at Ben, his confused gaze and small nodding to pretend as if he understood. "It's making the broccoli feel like it's in space."
"Oh!" Ben exclaimed, face lighting up. "Do you mean like flying around?"
It almost pained John to leave it at that, but he nodded. "Yes, like flying around."
When the sphere was as depressurized as it could get without destroying the branch, the broccoli… changed. It didn't vanish, per say, but it suddenly didn't exist anymore. The broccoli was pitch black, a tree-shaped tear in what is known as space and time. It was now negative, now a tear in space and time that simply couldn't exist in this universe.
"It changed colours!" Ben nearly yelled. John shook his head.
"Not exactly." Opening the sphere, the branch suddenly disappeared, earning another gasp out of Ben. The universe had marginally stretched to fill in the gap, as it was an impossibility that nature's laws had to eradicate. "Well, now it's good as gone, as the universe isn't fond of the existence of negative mass." John held his lip in his teeth, biting back a fierce smile at, once again, proving that his late wife wasn't just rambling on about nothing.
The Alcubierre Drive was real. And it brought the world a step closer to teleportation.
"Do another one, another one!" Ben cheered, clapping his hands onto the table in excitement. John sighed.
"Tomorrow, Ben. It's late, and your Grandmother wants to take you on a playdate in the morning with your friend Gavin. You wouldn't want to let her down, would you?"
His son shook his head rapidly. "Of course not! I love Nana!"
The queen of the last monarchy left in the world, being referred to as Nana. Terrific.
"I know you do, sweetheart. So, if you want to make her happy, you should get to bed right now. Okay?"
Ben slithered out of his chair, dropping to the floor. "Yes sir!" He began to run out of the room, but he turned on his heel suddenly and jumped into John's arms. He planted a kiss on his father's cheek. "Goodnight, daddy!"
John squeezed back, nudging his on kiss onto that familiar upturned nose. "Night, Ben. I'll get you up in the morning."
When he was alone, John powered off the machine and stretched his muscles, ever careful of his bad shoulder. The muscle was heavily scarred, zigzags of lightning flesh wrapping around from the end of his collarbone to the shoulder blade behind. The entry and exit wounds were similar, the former just being a larger section of silvered scar tissue than the latter. He couldn't raise his arm straight up with there being a dull, restricting pain.
But, the wound wasn't exactly something he liked to think about, so he digressed.
The flat was quiet, save for the soft sounds of the sprinklers out in the garden, and the even softer ambience of London in the foreground. The grass here didn't need water to survive; synthetic grass hardly needed anything. But the water brought out the vibrance in the dye, during the night before the sun's harmful rays could strip it away during the day. Sometimes, at observations such as these, John wished he were born a few centuries earlier, before the virus was released and before overpopulation was such a grave issue. When the plants were authentic, when the world was rich with culture, and especially when there wasn't a huge split in the middle of Earth's people.
Clones and Artificial Intelligence. Human Copies and Robots. There were so many stories on the concept before it was a reality, deemed a ridiculous notion to the public. Science fiction movies of deadly robots, dystopian dramas with evil clones. It was all through the lens of Hollywood, much more deadly and romanticised than the tame, almost bland actuality.
Despite that, and despite the knowledge that the world today was infinitely better (imminent death for the planet aside), John couldn't help but wonder. His life in the 20th century. Curling up with Mary to watch the new Star Trek episode, watching her love for the concept of teleportation come to life. Being drafted into one of the century's many wars, something that John believed he would have enjoyed, if in a morbid sort of way. Adrenaline, danger, brotherhood. Living on the cusp of death, feeling it reach for him and never letting it have the satisfaction.
Well. John surely had some demons he needed to work through. But, for now, being Ben's father was enough for him. Standing up with another stretch, John picked up the device and cradled it carefully to his chest. Turning off the light to the kitchenette as a he went, he made his way back to the spare room.
Only to be stopped by a pair of vice-like hands, tightened around his biceps to halt him.
"Bloody fu-" John exclaimed, nearly dropping the generator. That only made him grasp it closer, his forearms strong and his hands careful. He was hit with an earthy smell, not filthy, just the scent of a clean body that had trekked through a forest. The grasp at his arms was unrelenting.
John's eyes trailed up to meet mirrored ones, above gallow cheekbones. His knees collapsed beneath him, and the hands were suddenly his own support. "Harry," he said breathlessly.
His sister gave him a grin, only her eyes were sad. "In the flesh."
Harry… was different.
Her and John both were, to be honest. Intentional twins through cloning were unheard of, though in theory it was always possible, if more difficult to split the embryo into two different sexes. Harriet was born first, John second, making them the only direct descendents of the queen. Also making Harry the crown princess of England, the only monarchy left in the world, which she took pride in and loathed at the very same time.
And that left John, Duke of Cambridge, to pursue whatever he wanted to. He was Sector A, the separate and all-powerful district in charge of creating laws and enforcing them. While no one was ever forced to learn their Sector's trade, it was always time-consuming to apply for a transfer. Thankfully, John didn't have to make that choice, only having the option at his fingertips and nothing holding him back.
Which led him to choosing Sector 1, Medical Facilities, and becoming the top surgeon in his field. Something he felt gratified to have achieved. Though, like Harry, it was also something that he wished he had never attained, given the consequences.
Setting the kettle on the stove, his movements mechanical, John turned back to his sister and truly observed.
She was unmistakably older, age taking its toll on her features, though John was sure that he didn't exactly look like the epitome of youth himself. There was something off about her, a sullen pallor to her skin and a gauntness against her bones. Her clothes were comfortable and somewhat boyish, and her boots were meant for trekking lands much harsher than the palace floors. With her features drawn, with her hair cut short and womanly figure covered in thin muscle, Harry looked like…
Well, she looked like John.
"So," John began. After locking the front door and making sure Ben was nice and tucked in, he decided to do the British thing and handle a life-altering surprise with a cuppa. Pulling out the box of English Breakfast and setting aside a couple of teabags, John leaned against the counter and smiled tightly. "It's been a few years."
Harry snorted, taking another bite of her second sandwich. "We're both thirty-six, John. I left when we were twenty-one. Fifteen years is a bit more than a few."
John exhaled heavily through his nose. "Fine. It's been fifteen years, Harry. You gonna tell me where you've been?"
Harry's eyes turned solemn, and John half-expected her to ignore him. But she nodded, slowly, and finished the sandwich. The kettle whistled behind them.
As John prepared the tea, he spoke. "Do you remember Grandmother's tea that she would give us every Saturday morning? She still had tea leaves from before the virus escalated, naturally grown. Near the end of the supply it began to take on a dusty taste." He smiled mirthlessly, dipping in the bags to seep. "What I wouldn't give to have just one left."
Harry groaned. "That blasted tea. It was some sort of ceremony, every morning. Mum dressing us up in… floofy clothing." She made a face at the thought, but accepted the tea graciously. Taking a sip, she eyed her brother over the rim. "When did the old hag die, then?"
John ignored her choice of words. "Few years ago. She got to see her first great-grandchild, though, which was always her plan."
Harry's eyes widened. "Great-grandchild? Are you saying… Is little Johnny a dad, now?"
John huffed, letting the tea scald his mouth. "You really don't have to call me that. I insist."
"So it's true?"
"Yes, Harry, it's true." John leaned back, folding his hands over his stomach. "Six years ago, I was arranged to marry… well, her name was Mary Morstan. I know, I know, arranged marriages aren't something I would usually agree to, but… I was in a dark place." He avoided her gaze, and leaned back up to brace his elbows on the table. "She was my light, if you can forgive me for using crap rom-com analogies. She was from Sector 3, an English teacher. She was originally brought in because the Royal School needed a replacement, but our mother really, really loved her. As did I. We soon married, and had a son thereafter. She… passed away during childbirth." He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. "He's five, by the way. My son, Benjamin. He's brilliant, fascinated with antique movies and has a fierce love for dinosaurs. Like me, at his age, which makes sense considering."
Harry listened with rapt, attentive eyes, a small smile forming on her face near the end. He didn't want her condolences about Mary, so she didn't offer any. It was uncomfortably quiet for a moment, until Harry nodded towards the device. "What's that, anyway?"
John opened his mouth, as if to speak, but he changed his mind and only shook his head. "Later, I'll show you. As for now… I think it's time you tell me what you've been doing for the past fifteen years."
"Hmm." Harry finished her tea and leaned back in the chair, kicking her feet onto the table. John wrinkled his nose, but set his own tea down as well. She cleared her throat, and began to speak.
"... John, do you remember Clara?"
"Hey, you."
John looked up from his miniature hover-trains, startled. A girl, petite and roughly his age, loomed over him with her arms crossed. John wrinkled his eyebrows. "Me?"
The girl plopped down next to him, clothes clean and informal. Her long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and freckles dusted along her nose and cheeks. Her eyes were wide and full of emotion. "You're the only one out here, aren't you?"
John frowned at the sarcasm in the girl's words. He didn't like bullies. "I guess. My name is John."
She scooted closer, eying the toys. "I know who you are. You're the prince, and your sister Harriet is the princess." Her accent was western, her words more enunciated than how John would say them. She stuck out her hand. "The name's Clara. My dad is the newest security guard to live here in the palace, and your mom said that I could come too."
John shook it immediately, as that's what gentlemen did. "It's good to meet you, Clara. Would you like to play trains with me?"
Clara grinned, and at that moment John decided that he wanted to see more of her smiles. "I thought you'd never ask!"
A few years later brought them to eleven years old, where Clara was teaching John how to carve a spear out of a branch with a pocketknife. She blew one of the wood shavings into John's upside-down face with a laugh. "This is how the ancient people would hunt for food, y'know. They would pop out of their hiding place and stab whatever they were trying to kill."
"That's not true!" John exclaimed, swinging from the tree at the knees. He was dirtying his good shorts, and he didn't care. "They would use guns, or bow and arrows!"
Clara rolled her pretty hazel eyes, closed the knife and slipped it into her pocket. "I meant ancient, ancient people. Before guns and arrows even existed." Her smile grew sad. "My mom taught me all about history, she loved it. She would force me to watch old documentaries with her, and she would always let us cuddle up under the same blanket and eat ice cream. Before she died, y'know."
John slid down from the branch and flipped over, as this seemed like a conversation he should be having right-side up. He ran his hand along the spear, where Clara had smoothed it down. "My father died too, but it was before I could remember. Er…" He cleared his throat, fingers scratching at the nape of his neck. "We could, um, do those things. Under the blanket, ice cream, old documentaries. If it would make you feel better."
Clara just smiled.
Even more years later took them to age fifteen, with Harry tagging along this time. Her and Clara didn't seem to get along, and John was all too happy with playing the buffer.
"... I'm only saying that these robot-freaks aren't human. Literally. And mum wants me to have dinner with one!" Harry huffed, angrily kicking a stone further into the garden. Usually clones and AIs preferred not to mix, but the crown princess was nothing if not a good chess piece in the game of politics.
Clara was practically boiling the air around her, she was so angry.
"They can't help that they're not like you! And even so, they have feeling, wants, desires, the whole nine yards! And, if you ask me, they're just as human and just as unnatural as clones, anyway."
"Yeah, well, I didn't ask you," Harry grumbled under her breath, but Clara caught it. She pushed at the Harry's shoulder, and an angered Harry pushed back even more forcefully. John tried to cut in, if only to protect Clara, but the girls were soon a writhing, glowering tangle of limbs. Harry had Clara's arm behind her back, but Clara's other hand was wound painfully into Harry's hair. The air was tense, as was John.
And then, suddenly, the mood changed.
The glares ceased, and the grips loosened into something almost akin to an embrace. Clara's hands went from gripping to gentle, running through the sandy hair with infinite care. Harry's eyes focused onto the girl in front of her, and she whispered, "Oh."
Clara's answering grin was breathless, and John was just happy that the two were becoming friends.
And finally was the year they were all twenty-one years old. Clara and Harry were the closest of friends, and John… John knew that he was in love with the girl he had met when he was seven. And tomorrow, at the ball mum's holding at the palace, he was going to let her know.
"Why isn't your grandma the queen?" Clara asked suddenly, bare toes wiggling in the dirt. Her pretty white sundress was stained with grass, and her straight hair brushed freely at her shoulders. John wanted to tangle his fingers in it.
"My grandfather was the king long before he met my grandmother. But, a king needs an heir, and he was keen on a daughter. Since switching the gender of a clone embryo was unheard of in those days, he let himself become arranged to be married. To my grandmother. So, at one point, she was the queen." John tossed a stone back and forth between his hands, something absentminded to do as they walked. "My mother was born, and eventually met the man of her dreams. Around this time, the king died, and grandmother didn't think she could represent the monarchy herself. So, she passed on the title."
Clara nodded, and turned to John with those open eyes. They were hiding something. "Would… Would you ever do that, John? Let yourself have an arranged marriage?"
His eyebrows furrowed, but he shook his head. "No. Well, I don't think so. It's too binding, like you're just a puppet waiting for another one to tie into your strings. It's unnerving."
Clara nodded, but she still seemed troubled. "If you were in love with someone… and your parents didn't approve, wanting to arrange your marriage instead, would you let them? Or would you find a way?"
John stepped out from beside her to face her instead, causing them to stop walking. Her face was drawn, melancholy, and he didn't like that one bit. He had made a vow to always make her smile, after all.
"I would fight tooth and nail," John said honestly, eyes searching. He licked his lips. "I wouldn't let them try to control me. I'd give it everything I'd got to make them understand that."
Clara's answering grin was like the sun, eyes shiny with unshed tears. "I believe you, John."
He would have cherished that smile more, John was sure, if he had known that was the last of hers he'd see.
"Clara, you say?" John mused, blinking rapidly through the onslaught of his thoughts. "Now, there's a name I haven't heard in a while."
Harry nodded, a tight smile on her lips. "You remember how she left? Her father, caught-"
"-stealing from the queen's jewelry," John finished. "Yeah, I remember. He had moved up to head of security just a few months prior. It was easy to get access. Everyone thinks he took Clara and the loot back to their family in Sector 5."
Harry nodded, slowly. "But…?"
His eyes flickered over his sister, pondering. "But I don't think that's what happened. Another wave of people were transferring into Sector 15 at the time. It would be smart to disappear into the crowd, and he was well-trained. That's what I would have done, if ever in such a position."
Harry clucked at the back of her tongue. "Bingo. Mum was arranging for me to marry some droid from Sector 10 or whatever, so it was the best time to split. I followed them."
John cocked his head, suddenly much more awake than before. "Really? I never heard all of that before. I just thought you were going through your rebellious phase that never really ended."
Harry smirked. "Well, yes, that's the other half of it. I know this'll break your little heart, but I gotta tell you, bro; you never had a chance with Clara."
John still felt a sting of that remembered sorrow at Clara's disappearance, but he huffed out a snort instead. "Oh, really? What makes you say that?"
Her face was unbearably smug, and her voice was full of condecision. "The fact that me and her have been, how you say, intimate since we were all sixteen."
John froze. And suddenly, like a burst of fireworks behind his eyes, everything made sense. He groaned, pained, and dropped his head into his hands. "Oh my god, Harry."
"Yeah, she's said that to me a few times herself."
"Harry!" John warned, though still careful with his voice as to not wake Ben up. He ground the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, very and suddenly tired. The first half of his life was all a lie. Bloody fantastic. "Just get on with the story."
It took her a moment to compose herself, but soon she was back on board. "Anyway, we joined the team involved with building the Deep Space Explorer. It took awhile to get the hang of, me longer than her, but it was good work. Harder than anything I've ever had to do, but I enjoyed the challenge. It was soon clear that Clara was smarter than we all thought. As in, she's a fucking genius in the flight simulations. Which brings me to the next part.
"Last month, the crew was chosen. She got pilot, I got nothing. You've gotta understand, Johnny; this was the girl I threw my life away for. She was all I wanted, all I needed, and now we were going to be split up in the worst way possible? No, not gonna happen. I saw… that the ship's doctor was an empty position. I had heard about your doctoring exploits while I was gone, so…" She ducked her head, her voice going shy. "I wrote down your name."
"You what?" John nearly bellowed, reminiscent of whenever he was scolding Ben. He wasn't even angry about the name thing, just the sheer stupidity of the plan. "Don't you have to get a physical done before being allowed to board a fifty trillion dollar spacecraft?"
She grumbled something under her breath, turning her head irritably. "Are you going to let me finish?"
John nodded a bemused affirmation, crossing his arms at his chest. She growled something else, most likely a string of curses, but continued.
"Anyway, since you're Sector 1's golden boy, you were immediately accepted. I nailed the interview, though I had to punch myself in the throat to get my voice deep enough. God, that hurt, but I was able to pass off as you with a cold. Then the need for a physical came to light.
"Originally I was going to fake the documents, but Clara (who had no idea what I was planning to do) wanted me to go to the doctors instead. Said I had a sickly colour to my skin, and that she was worried. I can't say no to her, so I went to one of the doctor's off-site. I figured, at this point, I could copy whatever document the doctor made, and just change the gender. The plan was foolproof." That same sad look came into her eyes at that moment, and John suddenly understood.
"They found something."
Harry nodded, and John could tell her lips were tightened to only hold back the trembling. "Cirrhosis. I did a lot of partying when Clara was off working her pretty arse off, and a lot of drinking as well. My liver just decided to give me the old 'fuck you', it seems. So… I left. Clara always did say the alcohol was gonna come back to bite me in the arse, and I couldn't face her after that. I came straight here, though I had to cut through the garden to avoid the guards." She spread out her hands, presenting herself. "Tada."
John wasn't satisfied. "Yeah, but why did you come to me? Hell, why did you come back to Sector A? You know that this just makes you crown princess again, and eventually queen. And I know that's not exactly at the top of your list."
She shrugged, eyes thoughtful towards John. "Cirrhosis is treatable. And it's not like I'm getting on the Intrepid anyway." She gave a smile, and cocked her head challengingly. "You are."
John blinked, slow and precise. "Come again?"
"Look, Johnny, face the facts. You're accepted to be a part of something great, something that a lot of people would kill to join. I can't go, but you can. So, why don't you?"
John barked out a laugh, incredulous. He could feel his eyebrows at his hairline. "Why don't I? Because I'm not a bloody cosmonaut! You had a reason to join, but I don't. It's not Clara won't be coming back, it'll just be a couple of decades. Hell, you could de-animate yourself until then if that's-"
"She's not coming back."
John could barely hear her, she was so quiet. "... what?"
Harry pursed her lips, withdrawing her features once again. "The DSE Intrepid. The world's fifty trillion dollar spacecraft. They decided to tell the public the fake plan, the one that says they're coming back. But in reality, they're not." Her voice was striking, fierce. "They're taking thirty-eight people off the planet, and letting the rest of us suffocate."
"No…" John protested, but Harry was dead serious. And (brutal) honesty was her strong suit. "They said… that they cracked the code. To lightspeed, and beyond that to warp technology. They can't…"
"They lied. Plain and simple. Light speed isn't even possible, Johnny. E=mc^2. According to Einstein's principle, traveling at the speed of light would require there to be both infinite energy and mass. When involving a finite hunk of metal floating through space, traveling at that speed is physically impossible." She ran her hands tightly down her thighs, wiping off the clamminess. "They're gonna board the Intrepid, stay awake and do their jobs whilst still in the observable universe, but you know what they're gonna do when we can't see them anymore? They're gonna cut off the frequency to Earth, as if there was a technological malfunction, and lie down for the long sleep for nearly five-hundred years. By the time they even make it to Kepler, they'll be the last surviving people of their kind."
"And…" John swallowed thickly, overwhelmed. "And why do you think that I'll be a part of that? What could I do that could change its reality? Cor, Harry, I have a son. I have responsibilities, I can't just-" He closed his eyes, tensing his jaw. He stood, ignoring the spasms in his thigh, and Harry followed suit. "You… you can take a shower in my room. We're the same size, I suppose, so I'll leave some clothes outside the door."
Harry, uncharacteristic of her, knew when she needed to back off. With a small nod and lingering eyes, she slid off her jacket and boots, and made her way to the master bedroom. With an aggrieved sigh, John picked up the articles and dropped him off to the front door, because that was so difficult.
Back in the kitchenette, the device sat. John had the nagging whisper of an idea, tugging at his brain, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to indulge it. Fragmented thoughts rolled across brain, like captions to a movie.
When mass is turned negative, the universe stretches to fill in the shape.
"... if you don't reimburse us for Walter Galls' death, your dear John of Cambridge here won't have any DNA left to clone."
Shaking, weak hands.
Taking an early retirement before he kills someone else.
Ben coughing when he was born, the air too thin now for humans to naturally breathe.
Alcubierre drive…
"You're destined for greatness, my prince."
"And it's time to show the world exactly how great."
John knew what he had to do.
Darting into the master bathroom, uncaring of the occupied shower, he nearly yelled Harry his answer. But his frantic eyes landed on a burst of colour; a drawing in crayon, taped on the mirror.
John and Ben, in the crude shapes made by a child's fist. Smiling and holding hands underneath the big tree in the courtyard. The tree that used to be pink and alive, full of plums and stretching its branches to the sky. Now, it was a hunk of rotting wood, black and lifeless as if it were charred.
And that wasn't the end of it. Someday, all of the trees would be like that. All of the plants. Everything, lifeless and burned from harmful UV rays that would soon be at full capacity. Only a moment outside would cause a skin cancer development, not to mention the destruction of the livable atmosphere. The earth would be just another rock floating through space, meaningless.
And this was all going to happen within a lifetime. Within Ben's lifetime. A startled yelp brought him out of his reverie.
"John, what the hell!" Harry nearly screeched, scrambling the shower curtain around herself. Her eyes were wide, body still shaking with surprise, but John was probably as calm as he'd ever been. He took a deep, steady breath, and met her eyes.
"When do I leave?"