"--Lavosh." Lucca was saying to her father, around a tuna fish and
tomato sandwich.
"Honey, don't talk with you mouth full." her mother gently reminded.
"Yesh, do ash your-" Taban said, pausing to swallow. "Nevermind."
Lucca obligingly finished the bite and proceeded as if uninterrupted. "You see, Robo had unknowingly been splattered by part of him, from the future. Apparently, he was struck by one of the needles Lavos is so well known for." Putting down the sandwich, Lucca leaned closer over the table, warmed to her favorite part of the subject. "What I guess must have happened is that Balthazar, the Guru who built the Epoch," she said, jerking her thumb out the window to the time machine/plane, "must have met Robo and put him where we found him. Which would explain why he wasn't completely ruined by the time we got to him. I'm not completely sure, though. It's the only explanation I have of it, without being able to tap into Robo's 'subconscious'"
"Subconscious?" Taban asked.
"Certainly. Well, not subconscious quite like a human brain, but on a neural net level, an AI system doesn't know about what it's component binary system is doing, anymore than you could tell me right now which neurons in your brain are active, and which aren't. So, it's sort of subconscious, only in rudimentary definition; being below his active ability to retrieve data. Fire/ unfired, on/ off, 1/ 0. It's all the same on one level."
"Ok. Now say that slower."
Lucca blushed, and coughed embarrassed. "Sorry, Dad. I was just thinking out loud, and I get really, really technical. In any case, it means that looking at the older portions of his neural net could tell me more about what happened then Robo could, if we asked him."
"I see. So go on, I'm interested."
"So, I found sliver of one of the needles in part of the hydraulic system that worked his legs, and I pocketed it. I had completely forgot to analyze it during the trip, or even in my spare time at the End of Time... huh, what a funny thought... wasting what's already been used up..." Lucca smiled at the temporal inconsistency, and unconsciously took another bite of the half-forgotten sandwich on the plate before her.
Taban looked stunned at the news. "Yes? And? Where'd you put it? The needle, that is."
Lucca smiled. "Turns out, Mom ran it through the wash with the pants I had been wearing at the time." Lara spun around, shocked at what her daughter had said. "Don't worry Mom. Actually, I could thank you. Aside for it being a squeaky-clean specimen, there must have been something in the detergent that opened the needle's coat, which allowed me to get at the still living cells inside. I have them all ready and spectroanalyzed and run in their entirety through my computer. You wouldn't believe how much information it took! Most people's information usually takes about a gig or two, but Lavos took up all of one of my hard-drives!"
"That must be some heavy-duty info. Had time to read through it?" Taban was entranced by his daughter's skill.
"Only a little. It just tells me what I already know; it lived, and then it died. Reading through it is reading through the programming code- version of a living being," Lucca said, sighing. Looking up with a second thought, she grinned. "No pictures, Dad."
Taban looked placated, then frowned and shook his head. "Uh, you said it died, right? Was this from before or after you changed history?"
Lucca looked up, paused just before taking a bite. Stunned, her mouth moved, but no answer was emitted. At some length, she started up again. "Well, considering this universe has only one timeline, and we altered time after we picked up Robo from the future, but then again, we killed Lavos in the time stream before we found Robo, but our subjective timelines-"
Lucca's mother held her forehead between her thumb and middle finger and walked from the room muttering, "Oh, this is the part where she makes my head hurt... Seriously, though, I'll be downstairs folding your laundry. Don't forget to bring it upstairs."
Taban laughed as Lucca rolled her eyes, and began to start in again. Sorting out pre-tampered with, tampered with and subjective timelines, they found the root of the problem only a few hours and sandwiches later.
"So, since I found the needle in him in our first travels to the future, but could it have changed to a 'tampered-with' timeline needle if we had beat Lavos without ever meeting Robo?"
"Ah, assuming Robo exists."
Lucca sighed and settled back into her chair. "That's right. I never found out what happenned after we sent him back.. well, forward... well, back home, I guess. After rescuing Crono's mom-"
"And his cat, as I recall."
"Yes, his cat too, we decided to call it quits, and keep the Epoch as kind of like a novelty item; our own personal aircraft, too."
"Whaddya say we go and visit him? See how the future really turned out?"
"Well, due to the laws of The Conservation of Time/Space, and the fact that we only have three seats in the Epoch, who else is going to go?" It took less than the space of a breath to come to a unanimous decision.
"Crono," they said in unison, over the kitchen table.
* * * *
Brief as his time was in the Middle Ages of civilization, Crono felt himself longing to be back. Times were simpler, if a little rougher. Since then, humanity invented bureaucracy and imperialism. One didn't need identification in those days, you were who you said you were. And you sure as Hell didn't need all of this... this... stuff, he thought, groping for the right words to express his position. He had been bumped, jostled, nearly hazed while Darius wasn't looking, and had clean uniforms, a few unloaded side-arms, boxes of ammunition, his unbelted sword (in it's scabbard), and various pamphlets, leaflets, tracts and offers shoved into his arms. The growing pile was ungainly, to say the least, and reminded Crono of how much he really didn't like doing this. A rather large part of him was also beginning to think this was really unnecessary to being a good swordsman.
Crono hadn't paid attention to much of what Darius said (mostly ordering around people beneath his position) and instead tried to find what he was hiding so deeply. The older soldier walked smoothly, but with a clipped, dictatorial pace, almost challenging someone to stop him. Nothing odd there. His hands were callused and rough to the touch. They were very revealing hands; worked raw by discipline, but understanding enough to know their own strength. It is said that one can judge a man's heart by his hands. Could another's heart once have been held by those scarred, bruised hands?
"...cleaning off the floor of the mess hall, washing the kitchen down, and scrubbing the tables. There, that is the list of your duties for tomorrow. I am giving you tonight as your last night as a civilian, and tomorrow I expect you here promptly at the break of dawn. Understood?"
Crono nodded mutely. This was becoming very reminiscent of his prison stay, except this time he was given time to say good-bye to his mother.
"Well, then, I'm going to bid you goodnight, and hope to- ahem, will look forward to your more permanent installment in our ranks. And so I bid you goodnight." Remember to come back, he barely kept from saying. Crono, taking this as his moment to leave, stiffly turned on his heel and walked down the hall, tripping every once in a while on the slightly scuffed castle stones.
* * * *
Heaping his new equipment on top of his desk, Crono 'whuffed' as he flung himself on the bed, hearing the springs squeak in protest. Oh, he would sleep tonight. He was going to have to, if he was going to wake up at dawn. ...What was that sound?
The door slammed open, smacking against the wall of the dining room downstairs. "Crono! We need you!" Lucca's voice resounded, which of course, was met with a stern reprimand by his mother, remarking on the hour and the tone of voice, and the- oh, how are you this evening, Taban? Crono rushed downstairs, eager for the kind of action Lucca was wont to follow her. Summing up their discoveries in her lab in a rather rushed manner, ("HeyCronoguesswhatturnsoutIfoundsomethingthatcouldbereallycool.We'regoingto thefuture. Wannacome?") and connived his mother into letting him go, convincing her they'd sleep when they got to the future. Running back upstairs to grab his sword, they leaped into the Epoch, and sped towards the light of that false dawn...
* * * *
THE FUTURE, 2029 AD
The first thing they all noticed about the future was that it was very shiny. They noticed other things as well, but the luminosity of it all struck them simultaneously, reaching 2029. Settling down in a strip of land that appeared created for the Epoch, Lucca brought the three-wheeled vehicle to a perfect landing, dead center of the strip.
A single form appeared on the tar horizon. A wheeled, tottering mechanical... robot! Machinery had at least survived in the new future, but had Robo, in his consciousness and memory? The 'bot came closer and announced, in a highly mechanized voice synth:
"LORD-TABAN, LADY-LUCCA-AND-GODSLAYER-CRONO, IF-YOU-WILL-FOLLOW-ME, PLEASE," the being droned.
"GodSlayer, now?" Lucca smirked, "Quite a title. Let's hope the people find the man fitting of it." Crono smiled meekly and swallowed quite audibly. Turning smartly as he had been recently taught to, he followed the 'bot.
* * * *
Doan watched their departure from the Epoch with hardly contained happiness. The televiser on the airstrip was microscopic enough to allow him to watch the group without being noticed while they were being herded towards his office. How many long years have I waited for this moment? Now, it seems as though thirty years were only yesterday... As the drone keyed the dome's open sequence, Doan had his back turned and was reviewing the message sent to him from Lucca, over a thousand years earlier. Encoded in a primitive form of programming language, the message was not even holographic. What could you expect from a person from her age, though? For all he knew of history, the programming language she used had not even come into use yet, and computers as he knew them simply did not exist.
"...crackle... coming with your saviors, in the year 2029, by our system of...fizzzst... Lucca, Crono the GodSlayer, and Taban, my father. We're only making a brief visit, but if you have any que- ...sssshkk... I can only hope this message reaches you. See you when we get there!" Remembering one final step, Doan spun his chair around and ran the zipcard through the slot. "I had almost forgotten about the Old Man..." Doan muttered to himself as the cardslot ran it's PIN dial-up. "Cret, would I have been in trouble if he was late for this. "
* * * *
"PLEASE-WAIT-HERE. DIRECTOR-DOAN-WILL-BE-ALONG-SHORTLY." The bot teetered, turned shakily, and wheeled down the long corridor in the direction the came from. It was a simple, plain hall. Nothing different, nothing even remotely interesting to look at either. Very cold, very sterile, the halls could have as easily been in a hospital as in the future.
Lucca sighed. "Well, that's comforting, too. At least we already know someone here. The only question is if he's the Doan who knows us, or another Doan who had been born in this new future?"
"Always a chance." Taban said, then started, rather violently. A though hit him with such full force that it nearly sickened him. "Lucca?"
"Yes, Dad?"
"Did I... I mean, do you think... that is... Am I...--"
"Dad, you're sputtering. Just say it, for Pete's sake."
"Am I the father you know- knew- am- uh... I mean... well..."
"Actually, Dad-" Suddenly they all heard the leisurely but anxious clip-clop of boots on the tile floor down the hall. The footsteps were uneven in pace, sometimes unhurried, sometimes quickened, but all the time coming closer to their position.
"Uh, h-hello? Director Doan?" Taban asked for the group.
"Yes, sir, that would be me," the man said, coming into view. "Please, though, just call me Doan. I have enough people here calling me 'Director' that I don't need more. Besides that, it just doesn't sound right." He laughed, a tight, nervous laugh. "Ahem, well, in any case, I'd like you to walk this way. It isn't very far, and there are some people that I know you'd like to see." Doan shuffled a minute, then, as if he changed his mind, came closer to Crono and ruffled his red, spiky hair. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"
Crono smiled, relaxed at the old man's suddenly eased demeanor, and followed his lead further into the dome, winding and twisting their way until he was completely lost as to where they were in the building.
Doan stopped at an apparently dead-end. The wall just simply curved around in a perfect U and went straight back the way it came. Doan pulled a chain with a card on it from around his neck. "Watch your eyes," he warned, then placed the card at the symmetrical center of the wall. The wall phased out of existence, letting the dome's UV filtered sunlight into the fluorescently lit hall way. The effect was an astoundingly bright burst of light, then, as their eyes, adjusted, they saw endless streets and houses, and beyond, a bustling city. Doan led them on to the hovering pad before them, and as it started to descend through the glass tube, he beamed,"Welcome, friends, to the future you created."
Lucca snorted loudly. "Ha, now you're just trying to be pretentious."
"Yeah, well, sort of." Doan said, and shuffled his feet, rather like a schoolboy caught cheating. "You see, I've been waiting for this for years, so I kind of have most of what I'm going to say planned out already, you know, on BleepMems back at my house, and I have the whole thing written out on my desk computer at my office... I'm just trying to come off as, well... well... a lot better off then you last saw me. That was pretty embarrassing, actually."
Crono smiled and reflected on the last time they met Doan. Shivering, huddled in rags, he was the Director of nothing more than a few people who had nearly lost the will to live in their dreary existence. Now, he thought, he's really a Director, head of staff and everything. He'd lost a world, and now gained it back. Wait, he started to think, that doesn't make any sense...
Lucca, too, was admiring the city, as if the future was one of her projects she happened to do really well. She would have loved to see its construction, see it raised like her father's friends would raise a house with sheer manpower alone. Not that she didn't offer them tools to do that sort of work, but oh well. Not everyone can appreciate genius in action.
The elevated pad slowed, then came to a stop, as the glass parted itself. The noise of the summer day outside could have replaced any in any other time. Children playing, people mowing lawns, neighbors talking, mothers calling... it was pristine, gorgeous. "These are the tail end of the suburbs, here." Doan began to explain, leading them to a personal transit unit. "Which is not to say they're the poor end. No, actually, these houses are comparatively expensive, mainly because this is the capitol city. Everyone wants a piece of the action, you see, but not too much. Guardia was a little like that, as I remember, before it-" Doan sudden stopped himself in mid-sentence. "I'm sorry. I really shouldn't say that. It's not my place to tell you things to come." He said, with his head bowed. A non-descript looking woman ushered them onto a raised monorail platform, informing the group that she was a part of Security, and flashing her badge. "I'm sorry for the safety measures. These people insist on keeping me in perfect condition."
"It's not like I couldn't find out for myself, you know." Lucca smirked, when the woman had moved further from where he was sitting. "Just gimme a few minutes with a hacking technique for the security, then just query the city's databases. Not a problem." Doan sighed and shrugged.
Natually, Crono wasn't listening to a word being said, and was trying to take everything in at the same time. The city was beautiful, he thought. There were trees lining the avenues, lush green grasses in the front yard of every house, two storied brick houses painted all different colors, two- wheeled, four-wheeled and six-wheeled vehicles were parked on the street in front. He could only imagine himself in one of those houses, playing by himself, or learning some new techniques, maybe even meeting friends like Marle and Lucca. One never knew; there could even be one of his decendants right here, oblivious to his or her ancestor's presence. The thought petered out of his mind as the monorail stopped at the station.
"Allow me to introduce myself, the woman said, taking her glasses off to clean them. I'm Staff Member 026 Sonja Blake, Security Special Divisions. My branch of Security is under jurisdiction of the Director's house staff. If you'll follow me, please..."
"Translated, you're his bodyguard, am I right?" Taban said, with the brusque flair of his daughter.
"Not his only one. I'm assigned to this mission personally, from Security HQ. I'll be your protectorate as well for the remainder of your stay. And please, just call me Sonja. I hate formal titles."
"Honey, don't talk with you mouth full." her mother gently reminded.
"Yesh, do ash your-" Taban said, pausing to swallow. "Nevermind."
Lucca obligingly finished the bite and proceeded as if uninterrupted. "You see, Robo had unknowingly been splattered by part of him, from the future. Apparently, he was struck by one of the needles Lavos is so well known for." Putting down the sandwich, Lucca leaned closer over the table, warmed to her favorite part of the subject. "What I guess must have happened is that Balthazar, the Guru who built the Epoch," she said, jerking her thumb out the window to the time machine/plane, "must have met Robo and put him where we found him. Which would explain why he wasn't completely ruined by the time we got to him. I'm not completely sure, though. It's the only explanation I have of it, without being able to tap into Robo's 'subconscious'"
"Subconscious?" Taban asked.
"Certainly. Well, not subconscious quite like a human brain, but on a neural net level, an AI system doesn't know about what it's component binary system is doing, anymore than you could tell me right now which neurons in your brain are active, and which aren't. So, it's sort of subconscious, only in rudimentary definition; being below his active ability to retrieve data. Fire/ unfired, on/ off, 1/ 0. It's all the same on one level."
"Ok. Now say that slower."
Lucca blushed, and coughed embarrassed. "Sorry, Dad. I was just thinking out loud, and I get really, really technical. In any case, it means that looking at the older portions of his neural net could tell me more about what happened then Robo could, if we asked him."
"I see. So go on, I'm interested."
"So, I found sliver of one of the needles in part of the hydraulic system that worked his legs, and I pocketed it. I had completely forgot to analyze it during the trip, or even in my spare time at the End of Time... huh, what a funny thought... wasting what's already been used up..." Lucca smiled at the temporal inconsistency, and unconsciously took another bite of the half-forgotten sandwich on the plate before her.
Taban looked stunned at the news. "Yes? And? Where'd you put it? The needle, that is."
Lucca smiled. "Turns out, Mom ran it through the wash with the pants I had been wearing at the time." Lara spun around, shocked at what her daughter had said. "Don't worry Mom. Actually, I could thank you. Aside for it being a squeaky-clean specimen, there must have been something in the detergent that opened the needle's coat, which allowed me to get at the still living cells inside. I have them all ready and spectroanalyzed and run in their entirety through my computer. You wouldn't believe how much information it took! Most people's information usually takes about a gig or two, but Lavos took up all of one of my hard-drives!"
"That must be some heavy-duty info. Had time to read through it?" Taban was entranced by his daughter's skill.
"Only a little. It just tells me what I already know; it lived, and then it died. Reading through it is reading through the programming code- version of a living being," Lucca said, sighing. Looking up with a second thought, she grinned. "No pictures, Dad."
Taban looked placated, then frowned and shook his head. "Uh, you said it died, right? Was this from before or after you changed history?"
Lucca looked up, paused just before taking a bite. Stunned, her mouth moved, but no answer was emitted. At some length, she started up again. "Well, considering this universe has only one timeline, and we altered time after we picked up Robo from the future, but then again, we killed Lavos in the time stream before we found Robo, but our subjective timelines-"
Lucca's mother held her forehead between her thumb and middle finger and walked from the room muttering, "Oh, this is the part where she makes my head hurt... Seriously, though, I'll be downstairs folding your laundry. Don't forget to bring it upstairs."
Taban laughed as Lucca rolled her eyes, and began to start in again. Sorting out pre-tampered with, tampered with and subjective timelines, they found the root of the problem only a few hours and sandwiches later.
"So, since I found the needle in him in our first travels to the future, but could it have changed to a 'tampered-with' timeline needle if we had beat Lavos without ever meeting Robo?"
"Ah, assuming Robo exists."
Lucca sighed and settled back into her chair. "That's right. I never found out what happenned after we sent him back.. well, forward... well, back home, I guess. After rescuing Crono's mom-"
"And his cat, as I recall."
"Yes, his cat too, we decided to call it quits, and keep the Epoch as kind of like a novelty item; our own personal aircraft, too."
"Whaddya say we go and visit him? See how the future really turned out?"
"Well, due to the laws of The Conservation of Time/Space, and the fact that we only have three seats in the Epoch, who else is going to go?" It took less than the space of a breath to come to a unanimous decision.
"Crono," they said in unison, over the kitchen table.
* * * *
Brief as his time was in the Middle Ages of civilization, Crono felt himself longing to be back. Times were simpler, if a little rougher. Since then, humanity invented bureaucracy and imperialism. One didn't need identification in those days, you were who you said you were. And you sure as Hell didn't need all of this... this... stuff, he thought, groping for the right words to express his position. He had been bumped, jostled, nearly hazed while Darius wasn't looking, and had clean uniforms, a few unloaded side-arms, boxes of ammunition, his unbelted sword (in it's scabbard), and various pamphlets, leaflets, tracts and offers shoved into his arms. The growing pile was ungainly, to say the least, and reminded Crono of how much he really didn't like doing this. A rather large part of him was also beginning to think this was really unnecessary to being a good swordsman.
Crono hadn't paid attention to much of what Darius said (mostly ordering around people beneath his position) and instead tried to find what he was hiding so deeply. The older soldier walked smoothly, but with a clipped, dictatorial pace, almost challenging someone to stop him. Nothing odd there. His hands were callused and rough to the touch. They were very revealing hands; worked raw by discipline, but understanding enough to know their own strength. It is said that one can judge a man's heart by his hands. Could another's heart once have been held by those scarred, bruised hands?
"...cleaning off the floor of the mess hall, washing the kitchen down, and scrubbing the tables. There, that is the list of your duties for tomorrow. I am giving you tonight as your last night as a civilian, and tomorrow I expect you here promptly at the break of dawn. Understood?"
Crono nodded mutely. This was becoming very reminiscent of his prison stay, except this time he was given time to say good-bye to his mother.
"Well, then, I'm going to bid you goodnight, and hope to- ahem, will look forward to your more permanent installment in our ranks. And so I bid you goodnight." Remember to come back, he barely kept from saying. Crono, taking this as his moment to leave, stiffly turned on his heel and walked down the hall, tripping every once in a while on the slightly scuffed castle stones.
* * * *
Heaping his new equipment on top of his desk, Crono 'whuffed' as he flung himself on the bed, hearing the springs squeak in protest. Oh, he would sleep tonight. He was going to have to, if he was going to wake up at dawn. ...What was that sound?
The door slammed open, smacking against the wall of the dining room downstairs. "Crono! We need you!" Lucca's voice resounded, which of course, was met with a stern reprimand by his mother, remarking on the hour and the tone of voice, and the- oh, how are you this evening, Taban? Crono rushed downstairs, eager for the kind of action Lucca was wont to follow her. Summing up their discoveries in her lab in a rather rushed manner, ("HeyCronoguesswhatturnsoutIfoundsomethingthatcouldbereallycool.We'regoingto thefuture. Wannacome?") and connived his mother into letting him go, convincing her they'd sleep when they got to the future. Running back upstairs to grab his sword, they leaped into the Epoch, and sped towards the light of that false dawn...
* * * *
THE FUTURE, 2029 AD
The first thing they all noticed about the future was that it was very shiny. They noticed other things as well, but the luminosity of it all struck them simultaneously, reaching 2029. Settling down in a strip of land that appeared created for the Epoch, Lucca brought the three-wheeled vehicle to a perfect landing, dead center of the strip.
A single form appeared on the tar horizon. A wheeled, tottering mechanical... robot! Machinery had at least survived in the new future, but had Robo, in his consciousness and memory? The 'bot came closer and announced, in a highly mechanized voice synth:
"LORD-TABAN, LADY-LUCCA-AND-GODSLAYER-CRONO, IF-YOU-WILL-FOLLOW-ME, PLEASE," the being droned.
"GodSlayer, now?" Lucca smirked, "Quite a title. Let's hope the people find the man fitting of it." Crono smiled meekly and swallowed quite audibly. Turning smartly as he had been recently taught to, he followed the 'bot.
* * * *
Doan watched their departure from the Epoch with hardly contained happiness. The televiser on the airstrip was microscopic enough to allow him to watch the group without being noticed while they were being herded towards his office. How many long years have I waited for this moment? Now, it seems as though thirty years were only yesterday... As the drone keyed the dome's open sequence, Doan had his back turned and was reviewing the message sent to him from Lucca, over a thousand years earlier. Encoded in a primitive form of programming language, the message was not even holographic. What could you expect from a person from her age, though? For all he knew of history, the programming language she used had not even come into use yet, and computers as he knew them simply did not exist.
"...crackle... coming with your saviors, in the year 2029, by our system of...fizzzst... Lucca, Crono the GodSlayer, and Taban, my father. We're only making a brief visit, but if you have any que- ...sssshkk... I can only hope this message reaches you. See you when we get there!" Remembering one final step, Doan spun his chair around and ran the zipcard through the slot. "I had almost forgotten about the Old Man..." Doan muttered to himself as the cardslot ran it's PIN dial-up. "Cret, would I have been in trouble if he was late for this. "
* * * *
"PLEASE-WAIT-HERE. DIRECTOR-DOAN-WILL-BE-ALONG-SHORTLY." The bot teetered, turned shakily, and wheeled down the long corridor in the direction the came from. It was a simple, plain hall. Nothing different, nothing even remotely interesting to look at either. Very cold, very sterile, the halls could have as easily been in a hospital as in the future.
Lucca sighed. "Well, that's comforting, too. At least we already know someone here. The only question is if he's the Doan who knows us, or another Doan who had been born in this new future?"
"Always a chance." Taban said, then started, rather violently. A though hit him with such full force that it nearly sickened him. "Lucca?"
"Yes, Dad?"
"Did I... I mean, do you think... that is... Am I...--"
"Dad, you're sputtering. Just say it, for Pete's sake."
"Am I the father you know- knew- am- uh... I mean... well..."
"Actually, Dad-" Suddenly they all heard the leisurely but anxious clip-clop of boots on the tile floor down the hall. The footsteps were uneven in pace, sometimes unhurried, sometimes quickened, but all the time coming closer to their position.
"Uh, h-hello? Director Doan?" Taban asked for the group.
"Yes, sir, that would be me," the man said, coming into view. "Please, though, just call me Doan. I have enough people here calling me 'Director' that I don't need more. Besides that, it just doesn't sound right." He laughed, a tight, nervous laugh. "Ahem, well, in any case, I'd like you to walk this way. It isn't very far, and there are some people that I know you'd like to see." Doan shuffled a minute, then, as if he changed his mind, came closer to Crono and ruffled his red, spiky hair. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"
Crono smiled, relaxed at the old man's suddenly eased demeanor, and followed his lead further into the dome, winding and twisting their way until he was completely lost as to where they were in the building.
Doan stopped at an apparently dead-end. The wall just simply curved around in a perfect U and went straight back the way it came. Doan pulled a chain with a card on it from around his neck. "Watch your eyes," he warned, then placed the card at the symmetrical center of the wall. The wall phased out of existence, letting the dome's UV filtered sunlight into the fluorescently lit hall way. The effect was an astoundingly bright burst of light, then, as their eyes, adjusted, they saw endless streets and houses, and beyond, a bustling city. Doan led them on to the hovering pad before them, and as it started to descend through the glass tube, he beamed,"Welcome, friends, to the future you created."
Lucca snorted loudly. "Ha, now you're just trying to be pretentious."
"Yeah, well, sort of." Doan said, and shuffled his feet, rather like a schoolboy caught cheating. "You see, I've been waiting for this for years, so I kind of have most of what I'm going to say planned out already, you know, on BleepMems back at my house, and I have the whole thing written out on my desk computer at my office... I'm just trying to come off as, well... well... a lot better off then you last saw me. That was pretty embarrassing, actually."
Crono smiled and reflected on the last time they met Doan. Shivering, huddled in rags, he was the Director of nothing more than a few people who had nearly lost the will to live in their dreary existence. Now, he thought, he's really a Director, head of staff and everything. He'd lost a world, and now gained it back. Wait, he started to think, that doesn't make any sense...
Lucca, too, was admiring the city, as if the future was one of her projects she happened to do really well. She would have loved to see its construction, see it raised like her father's friends would raise a house with sheer manpower alone. Not that she didn't offer them tools to do that sort of work, but oh well. Not everyone can appreciate genius in action.
The elevated pad slowed, then came to a stop, as the glass parted itself. The noise of the summer day outside could have replaced any in any other time. Children playing, people mowing lawns, neighbors talking, mothers calling... it was pristine, gorgeous. "These are the tail end of the suburbs, here." Doan began to explain, leading them to a personal transit unit. "Which is not to say they're the poor end. No, actually, these houses are comparatively expensive, mainly because this is the capitol city. Everyone wants a piece of the action, you see, but not too much. Guardia was a little like that, as I remember, before it-" Doan sudden stopped himself in mid-sentence. "I'm sorry. I really shouldn't say that. It's not my place to tell you things to come." He said, with his head bowed. A non-descript looking woman ushered them onto a raised monorail platform, informing the group that she was a part of Security, and flashing her badge. "I'm sorry for the safety measures. These people insist on keeping me in perfect condition."
"It's not like I couldn't find out for myself, you know." Lucca smirked, when the woman had moved further from where he was sitting. "Just gimme a few minutes with a hacking technique for the security, then just query the city's databases. Not a problem." Doan sighed and shrugged.
Natually, Crono wasn't listening to a word being said, and was trying to take everything in at the same time. The city was beautiful, he thought. There were trees lining the avenues, lush green grasses in the front yard of every house, two storied brick houses painted all different colors, two- wheeled, four-wheeled and six-wheeled vehicles were parked on the street in front. He could only imagine himself in one of those houses, playing by himself, or learning some new techniques, maybe even meeting friends like Marle and Lucca. One never knew; there could even be one of his decendants right here, oblivious to his or her ancestor's presence. The thought petered out of his mind as the monorail stopped at the station.
"Allow me to introduce myself, the woman said, taking her glasses off to clean them. I'm Staff Member 026 Sonja Blake, Security Special Divisions. My branch of Security is under jurisdiction of the Director's house staff. If you'll follow me, please..."
"Translated, you're his bodyguard, am I right?" Taban said, with the brusque flair of his daughter.
"Not his only one. I'm assigned to this mission personally, from Security HQ. I'll be your protectorate as well for the remainder of your stay. And please, just call me Sonja. I hate formal titles."
