Wow, it has been a long time. Have you given up on me, guys? I promise you, I will finish this fic, so please be patient! I wanted to wait to post this chapter, as I may have to edit it a bit more as the next chapter unfolds, but I simply couldn't keep you wating any longer.
To all those who waited so patiently, thank you- you are my inspiration and my reason for writing. Misc:
Please see the end of the fic for some "feedback" feedback and other info. Please don't forget to leave a constructive, humorous, kind, or really, any other kind of comment.
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Chapter 11
Time.
For centuries, man had pondered about, invented under, and co-existed with this elusive entity.
Now as she sat in the glow of the screen in front of her, Cynthia Vortex could do nothing about the time that past by her- however fast it was moving, it continued to move, paying no attention to the droop of her shoulders or the strands of hair jutting out from her head. It paid no mind to the incremental movement of her body, back and forth: rocking softly between pain and numbness. It did not heed the tears that were beginning to dry, untouched and unfettered, and it certainly did not halt for the thoughts her mind could finally attempt.
Still, it felt to her as if all the world was stopped- halted in her mind by the feelings that gripped her now. Why else did the moments passing by seem like hours?
He stood over her, waiting, as only a person or computer in servitude could, awaiting an order or plea- whatever she may need.
But this was not enough to stir her from her thoughts. She had watched him die- and as helpless as she was to bring him back, she was just as helplessly lost to the images of his demise, playing over again in her mind.
Her mind- it whirred and clicked, fueled by pain, gaining speed, but no clarity, with every thought. "I watched him die." This basic thought, basic truth, stung her again as she said it to herself. She could not compute more than this, and so she repeated it, willing the reflection to finally settle in her mind. "I watched him die." Every breath she was taking felt somehow foreign, and all at once, she realized she felt a stranger within her own body. "I watched him die." She said once more, and this time, the echo of the sentence in her brain opened the floodgates of thought within her.
She leapt from her seat, surprising Fred. With her eyes strangely fixated on nothing in particular, she grabbed the wrench she found below her hands and began to tighten its grip upon a nut. "I watched him die." She replicated, with every turn of the wrench. "I watched him die." One more turn of the wrench. "I watched his last laugh." Again she turned it. "I watched his last words." Again. "I watched the explosion that killed him." Again the nut went around, and the frankness of her words did nothing to aid the clarity of her thoughts. Without meaning to, she continued to herself out loud, each sentence echoing the movement of her hands. "I watched his last breath."
Suddenly, the wrench slipped from her hands.
She didn't notice.
"Why?" She asked, not moving her eyes from the fixation that griped them.
"Miss Vortex?" Fred asked, a statement in confusion, rather than a question.
"Why?!?" She screamed, turning in rage toward him. "Why Jimmy?!? Why?!?"
"I do not understand, Miss Vortex."
She didn't notice the tears forming at her eyes- they had become as familiar as breathing to her now. "All of my life" she said, closing her eyes, finally, against the pain of past and future, "he was the hero. He was the one who saved the world…."
Fred waited, transferring her words to some unknown data base as she wept silently for the words that came.
"Why did he have to die? Why couldn't…why couldn't I have saved him?"
"Saved him?" Fred asked, encouraging further elaboration.
She tried to open her eyes to him once again, but the blurry form before her held no answers. She shut them once more. "All those times he saved my life…why wasn't I there this one time? This one time?!"
Fred continued to watch her, intrigued in some vague way by the logic of the human mind.
Finally, she was able to look at him once more. The anger for herself, for the moment, burned in her eyes with her words. "I know there was nothing I could have done…but at least I could have died with him."
Fred, shocked slightly by this morbid thought, took pause. He watched her as she drew in a breath, turning from the spot in which she stood.
She walked away without a word, toward the cot she had become accustomed to.
Fred, about to resign himself to rest mode, turned after her with a final thought: his computer mind obligated to correct and adjust, the words came automatically calling after her.
"You would not have died."
She stopped, unsure of the meaning of his words, and only slightly less unsure she cared. "What?" She asked softly, not turning from her spot.
"You would not have died, Miss Vortex. You could have engaged the parachutes."
She fell silent, and in the moment that followed, the words that fell from his so-called mouth reached her stomach with a sickening thud.
"Or the anti-matter floatation device. Or the auto-correctional guidance system. Or the crash field generator."
As the words multiplied, her nausea grew, culminating in the words that vomited from her mouth. "I could have saved him-" she whispered, trying to hold back the vertigo from encasing her body. "I could have-"
Suddenly, a thought hit her- slapped her- its' sting resonating in her soul.
Had she been in a contemplative mood, she might have pondered this realization- that a thought, a single, unremarkable thought could resonate from her mind downward- traveling the winding staircase of her spine until it has coursed every circuit within her body.
But the thought in itself was all that consumed her.
"Why-" she started, afraid to continue, for the question itself was too strong a taste for her mouth, and the answer, perhaps, more than she could stand to think. Again she tried. "Why didn't they work?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why didn't they work?" She asked again, unable to shift her mind beyond this single resonating thought. "Why didn't they work, Fred?"
"Miss Vortex, you are not being clear in-"
"Why didn't they work?" She asked again, pacing toward him with a finality that might have frightened a creature capable of such emotion. Reaching him, she leaned forcefully toward him, and, had he been capable of touch, he would have felt her warm breath upon what might have been his skin as she continued. "Why? If he had all these things to save him, why didn't they work?"
The final word hung in the balance of the moment, suspended by the anger resonating from her.
Fred, obviously confused by her question, tilted his head at her word before answering. "There is nothing to indicate, Miss Vortex, that they were not operational."
She shook her head in anger. "Of course they weren't! If they were, he would…" She stopped just in time to catch the hiccup of a sob at her last words. "…he would be alive." She finished at last.
Once again there was silence, waiting patiently for a word to come forth. She was shaking, although, from anger or grief, Fred did not know.
"Fred," She spoke at last, freeing the dawning realization that was too explosive to contain- "Something is wrong here. This was not an accident- it couldn't be." Her words drifted forth, softness echoing the blazing anger looming within her.
"Certainly not." Fred said, and the certainty of his words ran down her spine, an ice-cold sensation.
She turned to him again, question written obviously upon her face- but upon Fred's face, there lay a perfect picture of pure confusion.
"What do you mean?" She asked, carefully weighing her words against his face.
"Why, Miss Vortex, why do you think I suggested that you would have to engage an emergency system?"
Seeing the look of confusion growing on her face, he continued.
"Did you not notice? The clips from the crash indicated several minutes of clip intervals all showing no movement from James' body. I am therefore operating under the assumption that he became unconscious just before the fall."
"….unconscious." She repeated.
"Well, yes. Please, allow me to show you."
As the screen flashed once more with clips, silent this time, the meaning of his words attempted to pierce her mind, to infiltrate her thoughts.
"…unconscious." She thought once more, weighing the implications within her. "But that makes no sense! How can you be sure?" She asked, senses frayed and broken as the words tumbled out.
"As you can see," Fred narrated, as the ghastly clips again played out before her, "the clips are fragmented." The picture froze suddenly, and the grim outline of Jimmy's torso and hand, resting upon the seat, filled the screen. The ship's controls loomed over the overcast sky, metallic glare reflecting from them.
"Observe the sky." Fred encouraged, as he re-wound the tape once more. "Can you see the outline of the sun behind the clouds?"
Managing to nod in approval, she concentrated upon the orb.
"Freeze-frame fast-forward mode indicates" He continued, as the screen flashed in obedience to his words, "the passing of too significant a time to be inconsequential. Do you see how the movement of the ship-"
"-In relation to the sun is wrong- I see it." She said, strangling the words from her body, wrestling some kind of sense from the emotional baggage weighing her thoughts down. And then- she ground to a halt.
This was the moment.
Her mind, at last, twisted and conformed- reaching out to find the point of construction. The moments- the hours- spent in calculation and reason, in logic and paradox- everything she had, and had been- it came to this one moment. The spinning vortex of her life, wild with emotion and fear and sadness, stormed over her consciousness with a rage- and finally, finally, the eye of the storm settled over her weary mind.
Suddenly, everything was so perfectly clear. Seeing as with newly opened eyes, she sat in the chair before the computer.
"If the data had simply indicated that James was unconscious during the fall, I would have, of course, contributed the lack of safety system discharge to his having been struck by an object during the explosion we witnessed. But-"
"But the tape is wrong."
"In a sense, yes."
"In every sense." She said robotically. She felt the sadness within her- the voice that had been screaming pain for the lifetime she had begun since his death- now turn into a sinister burning. Her mouth filled with the bitter taste of anger, her eyes flashed upon the screen as if to reach out and destroy the object of her hatred.
Sadness was secondary, and it bent and subjected itself to the commanding call of her rage.
"The tape was doctored." She spit out. "I don't know how I could have missed it before- look! In this clip here," She said, fingers flying over the keys as her mind flew toward the answer, "the sun is at, what, six o'clock position?"
His emotionless eyes watched the screen in response.
"Look- there- the next second, it's at an eight, maybe, eight-thirty dip!"
"Yes. Not even the lapses in time between the clips account for that kind of a difference, Miss Vortex."
"How is this possible, Fred? We're watching the footage taken straight from Goddard's hard drive- I took it out of him myself. There wouldn't have been enough time to manufacture a video in between the crash and when they found…the…body. Someone would have had to plan- to...to..."
The realization came to her fast and hard, and the boiling rage in her expelled it like so much vomit from her mouth. "So. This wasn't an accident- it was a murder."
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After-note:
MidnightSuburbia; ccs4ever; mysticofthepen: Thank you so much- your proddings, encouragement, and yes, even your death threats were the key to my inspiration.
Zergplex: You know, I did think that more people would get it faster, but I guess it was like 40 percent of readers got it right away. In any case, congrats for the puzzle-solving skills!
Spuffyshipper: you would think so, but actually, I think for me it's more of an outlet for all the angst I can muster- my stories absorb my negitive emotions like a sponge. Thank you for the comment!
acosta perez jose ramiro: You are a constant source of inspiration and encouragment. Thank you.
WereWolve'sGang; Dannyphantomsgf and DarkDannysgf; badwolf1; pokey: Thank you for the lovely comments!
Knight of Caeli; And FOREVER: Congrats! You decoded the...um...code! .;
heartsyhawk: "It seems like it was just out of thin air that the malfunction started. Poor Cindy." To spawn a Yoda quote: "As they seem, not all things are." Stay tuned, and thank you for your comment.
And now, the question on everyone's mind: So, just where have you been?
Erm, yes...so sorry for disappearing! As I've said before, I'm the type of writer who tends to write in spurts, then disappear into the depths of nothingness until my creative side gets too smothered and needs an outlet. I will always return- until the end, I will always come back- to, hopefully, take you on this crazy roller coaster- into the blackness of space, and down into the depths of the entwined hearts of these so-called 'star-crossed lovers'.
Now, if that wasn't an over-dramatic foreshadow, I don't know what is.
Anyway, I can't say thank you enough to those who have stuck it out and come back to the story- and also to those who may be discovering it for the first time.
Ladies and gents, I'm back.
Your faithful writer,
-Roseredd
(Also found at roseredd dot deviant art dot com, with no spaces, of course)