Ron was the first to retrieve his jaw from the ground. "Captain, we've just passed Weird Factor 12," he murmured. Next to him, red hair nodded in agreement.
Dressed in the normal trashy school outfit Kim recalled so well, Bonnie splashed through the shallow creek toward them until she was only a few feet away from the stunned pair. Bonnie smirked, reached out a manicured finger, and gently lifted Kim's jaw until her mouth closed with a click.
"Where did you... how are you..." Kim's brain, already stunned by the contradictions Ron had forced her to acknowledge, was stuck in first gear. Coherent sentences seemed like far too much effort. "How? Why?"
"Oh, that's not what's gonna fry your noggin. I'm the least of your issues right now, Kim." Bonnie imperiously strode past the pair and plopped onto the cement pad, back to the now-open door. "Besides, I'm not really the Bonnie you knew. There are a lot of things going on, and you're right on the verge of diving face-first into a giant puddle of confusion. I don't need your synapses to seize up, you might as well ask your stupid questions now so we can get to the important stuff."
Ron found his voice. "You're not Bonnie?"
The newcomer rolled her eyes. "Here we go. Listen to what I said: I'm not the Bonnie that you knew. That doesn't mean I'm not Bonnie. Sheez. Next dumb question."
"She's Bonnie enough for me," Kim muttered. Then, in a louder voice, "Aren't you dead, then?" That idea still conflicted with the Bonnie she went to high school with. The Bonnie that sat across from her, feet dangling in the gently flowing water.
"Yes. Gonna make it a perfect triple?"
"Why are you here?" Ron managed.
"Ding ding ding! We have a winner. Three perfectly stupid questions in a row." She stood abruptly. "Before we talk about me, I'm going to say something I hate saying: let's talk about you first.
"I'm going to say something and you're going to say the first thing that enters your mind. And don't make me time you with an hourglass - I mean the very first thing. July 20, 1969."
Kim answered immediately: "First moon landing."
"Out of how many moons does Earth have?"
Ron's turn. "One, of course."
Smirking that special grin, Bonnie pointed up to the morning sky, where two small whitish crescents floated, and another large crescent moon hung near the horizon. "One little two little three little moonsies," Bonnie singsonged. "What year is it?"
"2010," Kim and Ron answered simultaneously, thoroughly discomfitted.
"Uh huh," Bonnie said without explanation, to the annoyance of the others. "When was the first time you two... did it?"
Ron opened his mouth and gaped, doing a passable guppy imitation. Kim turned nearly as red as her hair. "We... we're waiting until we're more mature," Kim finally stuttered.
To their amazement, Bonnie started howling with laughter, gales of amusement rolling through the little creek valley. Startled birds flew away in droves as Bonnie bent double, caught in a huge belly laugh, until she tipped over backwards into the creek, still howling. "Oh, that's perfect. I had no idea you'd gotten so puritanical." She wiped her eyes and stood up dripping. "Oh, I needed that. Thanks."
Now more angry than confused, Ron rounded on the chuckling Bonnie. "Excuse me, miss know-it-all, but who died and made you queen of everything? What are you trying to say?" This set Bonnie off on another gut-buster of a laugh.
Finally, her glee subsided and she faced the irate pair. "You have no idea. Oh, this is so perfect. I so wish I had a recorder right now, I'd be famous." She looked at Kim, then Ron, and finally decided to explain a little bit. "In the whole history of humankind, there are those stories that get made into huge cultural icons. You know, like that Helen of Troy woman who was almost as beautiful as me, and Beowulf, and aliens abducted my cousin and probed his bits type of thing. Stories like that. But the most famous love story ever was how this one chick traveled back in time to supposedly rescue the human race but it was really all just a plot to get her geeky loser boyfriend back from another planet, and they finally got together and lived happily ever after except they couldn't have children because they were sterile immortals. Even though they were remembered as lust monkeys."
Two jaws dropped. Both were sure they'd never heard that story, but it was so familiar somehow...
"Anyway." Bonnie stood and twirled, and when she faced the other two she was completely dry. "I've had my giggles. Time for the serious soul-probing to get underway." She strode toward the dark entrance. "Let's go, kids." Bonnie descended into the gloom.
With a wordless glance, Kim and Ron followed and the door silently slid into place, leaving the creek to chuckle to itself.
Ron's eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light coming from the ceiling. Shelves lined the narrow concrete hallway,crammed floor to ceiling with stuff, dusty and long unused. Some of it was recognizable, like a spacesuit (but of a much sleeker design than Ron remembered ever seeing) and a handheld computer, but other things were completely alien to his eyes. Their feet kicked up dust, and they went past spiderwebs broken only the night before by Ron's solo inspection. Bonnie trotted ahead as if she knew what everything was, and was bored by it. Kim and Ron lingered over this and that, whispering guesses at what a particular item might be, until Bonnie cleared her throat irritably.
The long, sloping corridor ended in a circular room where larger objects were placed around the periphery. A full knight in shining armor stood just opposite the corridor, flanked by a floating 12-foot-tall metallic teardrop and, for some reason, a blue British police telephone booth. Other less identifiable things were scattered haphazardly around the large, high-ceilinged room.
It was all strange to Ron, but he somehow knew that behind the phone booth was another corridor. Kim seemed to know it also, and both peeked at the darkness behind the call box. Ron decided it was like being on a movie set of a book he'd read years before.
Ron kept his voice low in the gloom. "Who owns this stuff, anyway?"
Bonnie twirled and smiled a condescending grin. "Finally, a halfway intelligent question." She pointed at Kim, then Ron. "You do. You collected it all."
Kim ran a finger over a globe that was covered with a thick layer of dust. "This stuff is ancient. How could we have collected it? We're just high schoolers."
Another chuckle from Bonnie. "Sure. And just how long have you been seniors?" Neither had an answer. Their assumptions had been shaken too deeply to give any easy answers. Kim now knew what Ron was concerned about - that what they knew wasn't real, somehow. Or it wasn't everything.
Somebody had messed with their minds.
Bonnie saw the clench of Kim's jaw and grinned again. "You're starting to get it, huh? That the little life you've been leading isn't what you thought it was. Sure, you're a senior... just like you were last year. And the year before that. And the decade before that. But you haven't always been a senior. I bet if you try hard, you can remember things..." She brushed some dust off a flat tablet and handed it to Ron, who took it gingerly.
"Hey! My autoscribe! I used to use this!" Ron enthused, shaking dust off the object. It remained inert, power long drained. But Ron continued running his hand over the flat device. "This was sure handy on the ol' Magellan voyages," he said softly.
Kim threw him a look. "Magellan voyages?"
"Yeah, all those years between the stars, just the few dozen of us on the ship... good times, good times," Ron muttered, completely absorbed in the little tablet, until his head drifted up. "What was I saying?"
Kim started seriously wondering about Ron's mental state, and was about to try to snap him out of it when she saw a small five-pointed metallic star sitting on top of what looked like a filing cabinet without drawers. Mesmerized, she picked up the blunt star and turned it over, shaking off dust. Touching each of the ends in turn almost hypnotically, she held it in her palm and watched a blue light coalesce into a starfield in the air above her hand. "My star charts," she whispered. "I know this thing. I used to spend hours with it, mapping stars and planets." She paused. "Centuries with it." Her hand dropped and the light winked out.
She fixed Bonnie with a thousand-watt glare. "We're immortal!"
Golf clap.
Kim continued, "We spent centuries, lifetimes, going places and doing things." Bonnie nodded. "Ron and I, together." Thumbs up this time. "And then we... we come back home and forget it all? I don't buy it. Somebody did something to our memories! Somebody messed with us! Somebody made us think we're back at the beginning, back in Middleton!" Kim continued working herself into a fury, and Ron began clouding up as well. Both rounded on Bonnie.
"You know who did this! Tell us!"
Bonnie's face had an incongruous grin in the face of Kim and Ron's combined ire. "Ooh, you're gonna love the next part. I know I will." She held out her hand, and for the first time she touched Ron's and Kim's fingers. A small electric-like shock went through both, coursed up both Kim's and Ron's arms and behind their eyes. Slightly painful, it was like a numb limb waking up again. Senses the pair had forgotten they had sizzled awake; when Ron blinked, it felt as if he had two sets of eyes, one set looking out, another looking in.
Slowly, with awareness expanding like the petals of a blooming flower, sophisticated wetware installed in both Kim and Ron's bodies shook itself awake for the first time in millennia, and the pair saw their long, long lives unfold. Dementor's anagathic spray, the near-collapse of human civilization that followed, centuries of reconstruction, millennia of healing the earth, the desperate gamble to whisk Kim back in time, her home-built starship that brought long-lost Ron back from his far-off exile... it all flowed back into their minds, the unseen wall keeping it from their conscious minds breached in a billion places. They stood for minutes, absorbing it all, and reviewing the much longer span that followed.
The original Bonnie, awakened with Brick after five hundred centuries to repopulate earth; her brood of offspring that expanded to fill the planet, the solar system, the galaxy; the long years spent by the older, sterile humans as they watched short-lived children of Bonnie create new civilizations and races, make new discoveries, conquer new worlds and ways of thinking. Kim and Ron and the rest of the ancient immortals nurtured and were in turn honored and protected by the younger, far more powerful and fearfully intelligent descendents of Bonnie, who continued to grow and evolve with each generation.
There was more, much more. The long, lonely years after mortal humankind, whose lives were lengthened by science and what seemed like magic, discovered and achieved what they considered the next step in evolution, leaving their living ancestors to watch a suddenly empty galaxy.
Loneliness of a few hundred thousand childless humans, who eventually migrated back to their ancient home world to live day after day, with no hope of following the younger mortals to wherever they had gone. They felt gnawing futility at mere existence, futility enough to spur the effort of bringing a new dawn of humanity to life through gene banks left from earlier efforts. The joy of raising yet another new culture, guiding young mortals through life, helping them fulfill whatever destiny they sought. Until they too eventually migrated to another type of existence out of view of their elders.
Three times was the human race reborn. Three times they chose evolution, to leave the unbelievably ancient immortals to their own devices. After the third cycle, the elders were unanimous.
No more.
What handful of humans remained retreated to their nursery, the original solar system, whose sun had swollen through time and mortal interference to become a red giant. Earth was moved to a new orbit around the largest planet, which was imploded into a small white star to keep the planet warm and bright. The final handful of humanity retreated to their re-creation of the dawn of time, to the Middleton that was still fresh in many of their memories; unchanging bodies and unchanging minds still favored surroundings familiar when originally exposed to the immortality spray of Professor Dementor.
Long centuries and millennia dulled the huge interval between their early mortal lives and their present. Through mutual consent, days flowed one into the other, weeks, years, eons flowed past, and the past was no more than yesterday for most of those left. Unbelievably long lives were filtered, filed, forgotten, and life continued in an easy, day-to-day daze. The last five thousand immortal humans gathered in a small town and went no further, content to avoid the pain of their forgotten past.
Slack-jawed and vacant eyed, Kim and Ron stood for long minutes, absorbing the immensity of their past fed into their eyes and minds by long-dormant wetware, reviewing their self-imposed exile from the truth. Bonnie, impatient, finally went up and snapped her fingers under Kim's and Ron's noses. "Chop chop! No navel gazing, you'll have time to dive into your own little pity party later. But now I need your eyes on me. Helllooooo!"
"Whoa."
"Whoa times a google," Ron replied to Kim.
Bonnie planted herself in front of the pair and grinned. "Gosh, that was fun, wasn't it? Finding out how much you've been lying to yourselves? What better time could you ask for?"
The snarky tone brought Ron and Kim back to the present. Ron narrowed his eyes. "So what's your angle? The original Bonnie died a long time ago after re-starting the human race. You can't be her... unless you travelled in time...?"
"Wrongo, loser. Read my lips: I'm not that Bonnie. That Bonnie lived a long and fruitful life, was revered and documented by her many descendents, and is dust. But there was enough collected about her, and enough genes left through her descendents that had her original matriarchal genome, that anyone with sufficiently advanced technology and need could reconstitute her. So voila, here I am."
"'Sufficiently advanced technology'?" Kim asked.
"See, she gets it," Bonnie told Ron. "Yep. As they say, the prodigal daughter has returned. Immortal humanity certainly doesn't have the smarts to make someone as perfect as me, so who's left?"
Bonnie looked straight at Kim. "Hi mom, I'm home."
Five minutes later Ron's voice was hoarse from shouting, and Kim's was starting to fail as well. Bonnie had no problems making herself heard above the ruckus.
"Yes, I'm one of the descendents of humans. Or at least a creation of human descendents. They didn't just disappear, you know."
"But how?"
"You wouldn't understand even if I used baby talk. But does anybody know what Clarke's Law is?" Bonnie's air of superiority was unmatched.
Kim thought for a moment, then said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology would appear to be magic?"
"Close enough. Just think of me as a magical being, and you'll be fine."
Ron mumbled, "Yeah, but does she melt under a bucket of water? Or do I need a golden bullet to kill her?"
"Don't get tetchy, Stoppable. Believe it or not, I'm here to help you, even if you don't think you need it. I mean, look at you... you could barely remember your own names. Pathetic. It stands to reason that any of my descendents would be superior beings."
Kim moaned. Great. Bonnie's superiority complex now had something behind it. Wonderful.
The dusty surroundings took on a new meaning for Ron and Kim as they looked around. Each object now fit into some definable niche, some special memory, although sometimes the memory had to be tickled by wetware before it was apparent. This place was old.
Bonnie noticed them looking around at physical memories of their past. "Like any of this junk matters. Leave it to ancient immortals to sentimentally cling to a rotting past. You'll never find us new-and-improved human types doing that."
Although he hated to agree with Bonnie, Ron felt the dust cloying his throat. "Let's get some air," he said, and took Kim's hand before leading her back up the corridor. Bonnie tagged along behind, running a finger along dusty shelves and tsk'ing every few steps in disapproval. The morning air was a nice change from the dark gloom below, and both Kim and Ron felt their spirits lift.
"Now you're going to get to the why you're here part," Kim told Bonnie.
Bonnie perched on a rock and looked at Kim, who had instinctively nestled into Ron's embrace. "Lovebirds," she mocked. "OK, fine. My turn. See, we - and by we I mean the descendents of mortality, the three waves of evolved humans that went... somewhere else - we've been working on a project, but it turns out we need a little something from some ancestors. So we've been watching to see if anybody comes out of their navel-staring trance, which Stoppable here finally did. And it took you long enough, sheez."
Ron laughed. "Lemme get this right - you, all powerful lords of existence, the all mighty Sons and Daughters of Bonnie - you need our help for something? Hoo hoo, the shoe's on the other foot now, isn't it?"
Bonnie looked uncharacteristically embarrased. "Yes. We need three of you to help out. There isn't a lot of time.
"We're going on a little field trip."