Chapter 13: The Legend

I watched them run. Three flew, two ran, and three riding on one of the runners. Mechanically succinct. Greymon wasn't running optimally. His body was tired, and so its motion was imperfect. Eighty-six percent of his maximum speed, which was just enough to keep up with Garret, who was still moving almost optimally. It was rare to see anyone actually running fully optimally.

"Caleb?" the voice came from behind me. I ignored it. I wanted to see what happened to them. Of course, they couldn't see me. I was too far away. Eight and two thirds of a mile away, to be exact. They were running or flying respectively, rushing along the road despite not being pursued. They couldn't know that though. They had to assume the pursuit, because if it was actually there they'd be better off running. With no visibly comparable penalty for running and a serious penalty for being caught it would be foolish not to.

"Caleb, I know you can hear me." I still ignored the voice. It wasn't relevant to me at the moment. I could watch and she would wait for me while I watched, because she wanted to speak and I really did not care. She would wait for me to finish watching so that she could talk to me.

Shadow led them. He blended into the dark sky much better than the others and thus was the best candidate for doing so. He flew higher than everyone, locating any possible problems and guiding everyone else. It took two hours and sixteen minutes for them to return to the wormhole and enter it safely. They were pursued, but Shadow was the only one who ever saw the pursuers. They did an excellent job of avoiding the pursuit of the village which came much too late and the scramble pursuit of the base. Overall I'd call they're escape from the planet rather easy.

"There, they're gone. Will you listen to me now?" the voice said behind me. I turned back to face her. As per usual she was drifting a few feet off the ground, her eyes glowing very faintly. It was a signal that her mind was running. It was levitating her.

"What do you want?" I asked. I hadn't expected her to appear here.

Mew just looked at me now. I suppose she thought I should know. Resigning herself to the fact that I didn't, she finally spoke. "Why in the world did you do that?"

"What exactly did I do?" I asked her. I understood now. This was merely argument for the sake of argument.

"Ha ha, very funny," Mew replied sarcastically. "Why did you suddenly decide to warn them about that pillar?"

"For Blitz of course," I replied. "Is that all you came here to ask me about?"

"No," Mew said immediately. She didn't want me to leave yet.

"What then?" I asked.

"I was kind of hoping you'd seen the truth by now," Mew explained.

"The truth? And what truth exactly am I supposed to see?" I asked.

"That we have to finish it this cycle. This time there's a legitimate chance to, and we have to take it," Mew replied.

"I believe you know my position, and it holds constant here," I responded.

"When did you actually start to care anyways?" She demanded. She was clearly becoming frustrated.

"When I found out the truth. The prophecy. I don't like damning souls to hell," I replied, turning back away from her.

"You don't know that for a fact," she retorted uselessly.

"I'm certain enough. Fate is unavoidable, Mew. Eventually it will happen, and there simply won't be a choice. You know it as well as I do," I replied.

"Point me to when it will happen, then," Mew demanded, rotating her body so that her head faced directly at me.

"You know I can't. Chaos Theory only allows prediction up to the first decision, at which time a period of deliberation will affect the result in an infinite number of ways," I told her.

"You are an idiot," Mew told me before darting off into the sky. I just turned away from where she had been. Far away, the soldiers were still unable to find Shadow's group. They never would, either. They didn't know how to open the wormhole. Bored with this, I instead looked north.

An aurora was forming, the columns of light already visible in the northern sky. The clouds there had retreated. They left an open path of sky for the aurora to build up in, a masked reminder of the sun's terrible wrath. It is a manifestation of the solar wind. The sun constantly gives off waves of charged particles which bombard their surroundings. This solar wind would normally sweep the atmosphere right off of the planet. However, planets that support life have a natural defense mechanism, that being a core made of iron. This iron core turns the planet into a giant magnet as it spins, which in turn creates a magnetic field. The magnetic field shields the planet and its precious atmosphere from the devastating power of the solar wind. However, sun flares, seen from the planets as sunspots, temporarily increase the flow of the solar wind. Some of the solar wind is then able to penetrate the magnetic field and approach the planet. As these powerful ionized particles drop through the atmosphere, they emit light which manifests itself as an aurora. It is a warning of the sun's burning fury and the violence with which the universe conducts itself.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

Sixteen hours and forty-eight minutes later I re-entered the bridge of the Gyros. Sablin was at the controls. She was watching carefully but not really doing anything. The ship was in neutral anyways. Izzy sat next to here. He was watching me out of the corner of his eye. I suppose I couldn't expect less. I wanted to see Gaustal again. That was my only reason for being here. Of course, at the moment he was sleeping. I could see that from the bridge. I had decided to wait here for him to awaken.

I stood slightly right of the center of the room and facing the window. I had my eyelids closed. That by no means impaired my vision. My eyes still moved and saw through their lenses. They rolled in all directions completely independent of each other. Their colors would change as the lenses shifted within each one. The lenses are also independent of each other. With these eyes I could see everything that happened within an eighty-meter radius of where I was. I could see in any direction. I could see through anything. I could analyze anything. I could instantly understand anything in the sense of physics and logic. I still can.

I was surprised to find Kari awake after only seven hours of sleep. With how long she had been awake and all the running she had been doing her body should have remained asleep for nine hours and thirty-one minutes unless interrupted. She had not been interrupted either. I had to stop and ponder this occurrence for a second. Its explanation did exist. The explanation was not within the immediate realm of visible physics. That is why I did not see it at first. It was her light crest. The energy from the crest had allowed her body to recover at a greater rate than normal.

She was exploring again, this time the dormitories. I watched as she wandered the hallway. She seemed rather clueless until she came upon a slightly opened door. Her mouth moved. 'Hello? Anyone here?' is what she asked. There was nobody there. The room was empty. She peered inside. I knew what she would see. I knew even without observing the room form here. It was my room that she was walking into. I turned around and walked out of the bridge.

She entered the room and turned on a light. That action struck me as odd. I had never turned on the light in my own room. I had never needed it. She stepped forward. The room was very blank. There was a bland bed where I slept perhaps once a week for a few hours if I was on the ship. There was a simple desk where I had some sheets of paper lying out. As was natural she went to the papers first. They were the only interesting thing in the room and so it was only natural that the curious sentient mind would be drawn to them. She picked one of them up. By now I had reached the room. She hadn't heard me coming down the hall. She was too distracted by the lack of objects in the room. She heard me walk into the room. She also heard and saw me shut the door because she spun around and dropped the paper back onto the desk.

"Oh, I'm so s-," she froze up upon seeing me. It wasn't all fear this time though. She was certainly afraid. Something else was there as well though. Her fear had slid aside and made room for her to genuinely feel sorry about being caught snooping in my things.

I said nothing. I walked toward the desk without so much as a glance directly at her and picked up the sheet of paper that she had been reading from. I knew which one it was. I knew what was on it. She didn't know though. Even if she had read the entire thing she wouldn't have understood it.

"How much of this did you read?" I asked her, not taking my eyes off the page.

"I, uh, just the first line," she stuttered. I turned to look at her.

"You shouldn't show so much fear. This applies especially much when there isn't an immediate threat present," I told her. She seemed to calm down again. Her fear of me becoming angry at her was still present in the back of her mind. It was only natural that it be there. I figured it would fade in time if this journey were to continue. "This shining city built of gold," I read the first line. "Have you ever seen such a city?"

"A city built of gold? No, I haven't," she replied.

"Would you like to see one?" I questioned.

"Well, I guess I would. It would be pretty neat," she replied. I had distracted her from her fear. Now she was daydreaming some silly fairy tale of such a place.

"I'm sorry, but that city no longer exists," I told her. "Not really anyways."

"What do you mean it doesn't really exist?" she asked me.

"I mean exactly what I said. Don't bother trying to understand it. At least not yet," I explained.

"Um, Caleb," she had spoken to me using my name for the first time. That was a good sign in some ways at least. "Are you mad at me for not running away?"

I watched her for a few seconds. I wanted to try to read her emotions. She actually was sorry that she'd broken our agreement. "I am not." I closed my eyes. It was a behavioral signal. My eyes never really close. "I have decided that it was ultimately a result of fate. I think that neither of us have any responsibility for your being here right now."

"What do you mean?" she asked. Her look gave away her confusion.

"Gaustal's voice surprised you and curiosity forced you to remain and find out why he had addressed me as he did. There was no conscious choice in the matter."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked again.

"It's simple Kari. We have almost no control whatsoever over our lives. The vast majority of our actions are predetermined by the programming of our minds and by the perceptions that come to us from our environment. As I said before, you did not actively choose to stay. In fact, your brain probably told you to run, didn't it?" I knew that part was right before she gave her response.

"Yeah, I guess it did, she responded. "But isn't that just predetermination? If that were the case then according to that time circle thing wouldn't the universe always repeat exactly as it happened the last time?"

She was smarter than I gave her credit for. That concept generally took a while to grasp and then even longer to grasp why and when it isn't so. Mew still disagrees with it slightly.

"Not quite. There are choices occasionally. When the balance between decisions is perfectly even in our heads then we enter a deliberation state. In that state is when we can actually choose one side or the other. These choices are rare though. In your young life you've probably made no more than fifty of them," I told her. Her eyes got wider in surprise.

"I must have made more than that! That would only be, like, four decisions a year," she protested.

"I said they were uncommon, didn't I? Early in life, especially before one turns six years old mentally, there simply are no decisions. So really you've only been making decisions for about seven years, Kari. That would be closer to seven decisions per year."

"Still, that's really hard to believe. What kind of decisions are they?" she asked. She seemed a little worried about this concept and I couldn't blame her.

"Some are important, some are very mundane. It could be a career decision. It could be a decision of what to watch on TV. It could be deciding to eat another peanut. It's hard to locate decisions sometimes. I can tell you of one that I watched very carefully for my own reasons which might interest you."

"Okay, sure," she replied. I briefly considered stopping. It might shock her somewhat. In the end I decided to go on.

"Do you remember a day a long time ago, when you were about eight years old? Gatomon came into your apartment and crawled up on your couch. When you turned around she was surprised and lost her nerve."

"I do remember that," she replied, smiling a little. "I thought it was kind of funny."

"You might not in a second. If you recall Gatomon was working for Myotismon at the time. She was convinced that you were Myotismon's target and she was correct in guessing so. She entered that room with the full intent of killing you."

"But then she decided not to?" she asked innocently. If only things really were that simple.

"No. That was not the critical decision. You were watching television at the time. Earlier in the day, your father had been watching it. He made a decision as he was. He decided on one channel over another. That channel had a higher than normal standard volume, so he lowered it." Kari's face wrinkled up in confusion. She just couldn't put the pieces together. "Later that day you sat down to watch TV. You knew that Gatomon was following you, but you didn't hear her moving within the house. You heard her as she approached you on the couch. If your father had selected the other channel, the TV's volume would have been higher. The channel you switched to would have been just loud enough that you would not have heard Gatomon. You wouldn't have turned around and Gatomon would have finished what she had entered your apartment to do in the first place."

Her mouth hung open slightly. Being eight at the time had made her far too immature to question what Gatomon had been doing on the couch with her claws outstretched. That revelation was only a passing shock though. It was the fact that I had just told her that a decision about what's on TV had saved her life was what made her head swim.

"So I, I . . ." she stuttered.

"In each occurrence of the universe in which you existed your life or death at that time was determined by what would otherwise be seen as an entirely irrelevant decision. I don't mean to startle you, Kari, but it was not that way with some of the previous occurrences." I watched as she sat back on the bed, no longer even aware of her surroundings. I wondered about something just then. For a second I thought that perhaps it was the idea that Gatomon could have killed her and in fact had in previous existences that was surprising her. "To be fair, not all of the past universes happened like that. Nor was I so lucky. There were pasts when I didn't make it through certain things." I wanted to give her some kind of hope now. I actually was starting to feel bad for her. It tightened my resolve against Mew as well. "Actually, Kari, this is the first time that all three of us have survived to this point. You, me, and Mew."

She looked at me again. Some of the shock was coming out of her eyes at least. Once again I had succeeded in distracting her. "Who's Mew?" she questioned.

"Mew is that purple and pink thing that saved you from me."