Children of the Universe


"The Homecoming"

Chapter 36

XXXVI

As the new granilith glided smoothly back across time and seven galaxies toward Antar, leaving streaks of starlight along its path, the group talked about Kryys and the other children, unaware that Shaqor, Dan, Diane, Jim, Kathleen, Zorel, and Ceelya had found the others already and rescued them from the fairytale planet of the Hjity.

But it was Kryys who commanded their thoughts at this moment.

"You know…" Michael said pensively, "We went to the year 7,278, and we know now that that was a mistake, because Kryys actually got there 40 years earlier, in 7,238. But we could still go to 7,238 and rescue him and bring him home. He would be… what? Thirteen years old?"

No one answered immediately. Finally, Maria broke the silence…

"But do we have that right now, Michael? I mean… he has a son who is grown and married. Kryys was married himself, and his wife died. He's the President of… of all of Earth. Can we rightfully change these things? I really want to bring him back, too. God, you don't know how badly! But I don't… I don't know if it's right. Can we just undo his whole life? …Pretend that it never happened?"

There was a long silence. No one had an answer for Maria's question. At end, it was Liz who spoke…

"I don't know if it's right or wrong, but there are different ways one can look at it. What if we had gone to 7,238 in the first place? We never would have known what was in Kryys' future, and we would have brought him home. Would that have been wrong?"

"No, of course not," Michael said.

Maria shook her head, too, but clearly, she was still bothered by the question.

"Another thought," Liz said, "…if we did go to 7,238 and rescue Kryys now, the future that we just saw would never happen. Can it be wrong to change something if it never happened yet?"

Liz was grasping at straws, but more than that, she was exploring the puzzle that is "time" and its moral implications. She wasn't sure what she actually believed. But she thought that the questions should be explored. It was a mental exercise… but it was for Kryys, too.

"Besides," Liz continued, "Maybe Lieutenant Jasper screwed up Kryys' future, and by going back and rescuing him, we might be correcting it. Maybe Kryys was intended to have a whole different future. Isn't that why Michael and Max rescued us after Earth was destroyed?"

The others were listening, but there was no absolute answer… none that any of them could provide anyway. Certainly, Max and Michael had not debated the "right or wrong" of changing time when they saved the World and brought Liz and Maria and the others back to Antar; but then, the option was to leave them all dead, since Kivar had destroyed the Earth, and that option didn't appeal to Max and Michael at all. The case of Kryys now seemed more complicated… excruciatingly complicated.

"Couldn't there be a problem with changing time," Kyle asked, "when it was positive? I mean Kryys' being President and fixing the threads of time, Jasper's getting arrested… Those were all good things."

"But did it ever happen really?" Liz asked. "If you think about it, we're on our way back to our own time now, so what we just experienced with Kryys and his whole life there has not happened yet. It's in the future… from where we are now and from where we are going…"

"I'm getting a headache," Maria said sadly.

Unfortunately, all the justification in the world wasn't enough. The logic of Liz's arguments was clear and undeniable, but so was the feeling that there was something more… time sometimes did not seem logical, at least once it had been manipulated. And Lieutenant Jasper had manipulated it.

Kryys existed in another time now -maybe even belonged there- precisely because he had repaired the threads of time there. That very act was an act that belonged in that future time. Kryys himself explained it at the table when they were dining earlier… If he had never existed in that future time, how could the threads of time have been repaired, since it was he who repaired them? Once he fixed the timeline, he should never have been there at all, since he was not of that time; but if he had never been there, the timeline could not have been fixed. It was a paradox. Any way one looked at it, Kryys got left behind in the future when he repaired the threads of time.

Maria sighed.

"Let's find Taz… and Mareeya… and Jiba and Drel. Then we can think about what is right for Kryys. I guess he's fine for now… he's the president, he's got a son and a daughter-in-law… We don't know about the others… They may need our help."

Everyone realized that Maria was right. There was nothing that could be accomplished by beating themselves up, at the moment, over something that didn't seem to have a solution. They would return to it later. There were others to think about.

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A scant few hours later, the new granilith maneuvered itself gracefully into the Jantoo-Bandy laboratory through the open sliding roof and came to rest on its anti-gravity repulsor lock system. Michael passed his hand over the handprint on his side of the console, and the engines settled into silence. He looked at the others and smiled slightly. It was a tired smile, one that carried with it some joy but also an overbearing burden. The others returned the same smile, and everyone headed for the ascension chamber to disembark.

The group transported down together then hopped into a waiting, open-top, lab hover car. Once the car had cleared the new granilith, Max touched a symbol on his wristband, and the ship settled to its usual long-term resting height, about three feet off the floor. The car then proceeded to the other side of the lab, where Varec and several other scientists were waiting for them.

Alex thought to himself that Varec seemed terribly happy to see them; but he didn't know why this should strike him as at all strange. After all, Varec was always glad to see them when they returned and always happy. But something struck Alex as being different this time. He just couldn't say what.

"Welcome back, Zan! Michael! Alex! Isabel! Kyle! Maria! Liz! Jeliya…" Varec went down the line, welcoming each one back in his usual friendly and thorough way. Then he motioned to someone waiting out of sight. They watched as several individuals emerged from the darkness into the light. Isabel gasped as she recognized Mareeya walking toward them with Ceelya. From the very beginning, Isabel had tried to maintain a certain stoicism in the face of what she knew in her heart might be disaster. She did not wish to be destroyed emotionally if Mareeya was not found alive; indeed, she had not thought that she would be so affected when they finally found Mareeya -assuming they found her, of course- but suddenly, without the least warning, tears simply began to flow from her eyes, and she sobbed uncontrollably as both Mareeya and Ceelya put their arms around her and Alex, whose eyes were not very much dryer.

"Mareeya… How? Where? Omigod! Let me see you… No… just let me hold you!" Isabel cried through the tears. Isabel had built a dike to hold in her feelings. No longer needed, the dike had broken, and the flood came pouring out in a torrent.

Tess, like everyone else at the moment, was watching Mareeya and Isabel when she noticed two more children emerge from the dark. They were younger than the children of any of the others of the group. It had to be… It could only be… Drel! …and Jiba! Tess ran across the remaining distance between them and, dropping onto her knees, scooped them both up into her arms, burying her face in Jiba's hair as her tears ran down Jiba's face and shoulder. Rayylar was right behind her. Tess kissed Jiba then Drel and hugged them both to her, rocking them from side to side.

The only one still missing was Taz Valenti. Kyle and Jeliya looked around in anguish, waiting to see if Taz would be there, too. Then another boy walked out. It was Zorel Guerin. Kyle and Jeliya's older boy, Rayyn, who had been found before they left, was with Zorel… and with them was Taz. Zorel smiled, and Taz ran into Kyle and Jeliya's arms.

If anyone had walked into the lab at that moment, they would have thought that some major disaster had just occurred given all the tears that were flowing. There wasn't a dry eye in the whole lab, even among the scientists who were watching.

It was homecoming.

---------------------------End of Chapter 36