The Indestructibles (Book 3): The Entropy of Everything (16 page)

      "Because I saw it in a dream, once," she said. "And when I had nowhere else to go, I started building my dreams."

      He placed a hand on Natasha's shoulder.

      "If you succeed, if you save this miserable place, Doctor Silence, please don't leave without saying goodbye," she said.

      "I promise," he said.

      "I need a better goodbye than the last time," Natasha said, in a voice not much louder than a whisper.

Chapter 33:

A cage made just for me

      The fallback location was a battered strip mall just outside the City.
It had taken all night for the entire gathering of heroes to regroup there, arriving on foot and under cover of darkness.     Whispering's wolves arrived first, bounding their way across the overgrown landscape of the City's dying corpse. Others trickled in after that, Finnigan leading a belligerent future-Kate. Several members of the werewolf tribe hobbled in with fast healing injuries and burns sustained from the bombing.

      Younger Kate and Titus arrived early, but Kate didn't feel much like talking, retiring to a dark corner in the veterinary clinic where everyone was huddling and scavenging supplies. Titus shrugged off her silence and she watched him join Emily and Annie who stood next to the machine that housed both Neal's artificial consciousness and the data drive with Broadstreet's stolen information. Neither seemed to be functioning.

      "Can I make an ironic joke about their fallback base being a vet clinic?" Emily said.

      "No," Titus said.

      "Not even a little joke?" Emily said.

      "Please don't," Titus said. "You know I don't like it when you pretend you think I'm a dog."

      "But the sad faces you make are so funny," Emily said. The blue-haired girl turned her attention to the strange box, not unlike an exposed computer, where the AI who formerly controlled their entire flying Tower headquarters now lived. Emily poked around inside the machine, muttering to herself.

      "What are you doing?" Titus said.

      "Fixing Neal," Emily said. "Whispering said he was damaged in the explosion. We're having trouble getting Neal talking. And the whole 'playing the data recorder we desperately need' thing isn't working."

      "Since when do you know how to fix computers from the future?" Titus said.

      Emily stepped back and put her hands on her hips.

      "Are you saying I can't fix Neal because I'm a girl?" Emily said.

      "I'm saying you're overselling your skills," Titus said.

      "Because I'm a girl?"

      "Because you're a pathological liar," Titus said.

      "I'm a genius, yo. I know things."

      "Yes you do," Titus said, his tone becoming frustrated. "But Em, you have never, not once, even pretended to try to fix a computer."

      "You're jealous I'm stealing your job," Emily said, smirking. "Now give me my sonic screwdriver and let me get to work."

      Titus glanced at Annie, who shrugged right back at him.

      "Don't look at me," she said. "I don't know what she's capable of. I certainly can't fix it."

      "Titus! I need a hydrospanner and a portal gun," Emily said.

      "I don't know what either of those are," Titus said.

      "Further proof I know things and you don't," Emily said.

      Kate felt a wash of warmth flow over her and looked up to see Jane sitting down next to her. Her own Jane, from the past, the young one who didn't glow all the time. Kate turned away to continue watching girl-genius and werewolf argue over the broken computer.

      "How are you holding up?" Jane said.

      Kate grunted.

      "We haven't talked much since we got here," Jane said.

      "We don't talk much in general," Kate said.

      Jane nodded in agreement. She looked over to where Solar was speaking with the scarred future version of Titus. They seemed to be discussing something important, emphasized with sharp hand gestures. The elder Jane pointed to another room and Whispering waved his massive, clawed hand in that direction in a dismissive fashion.

      "Wonder what they're arguing about?" Jane said.

      "Me," Kate said. "Future me. They're talking about her."

      Jane turned and looked at Kate too quickly for Kate to avoid eye contact.

      "What's wrong?" Jane said.

      Kate glared at her.

      "What?"

      "Why are you asking me what's wrong?" Kate said.

      "Because you're the closest thing I have to an actual friend anymore, and you look more upset than you usually are, and I'm worried about you," Jane said.

      Again, the glower from Kate. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say," she said.

      "What, worrying about you?"

      "That you have no other friends," Kate said. "All you have are friends."

      "No," Jane said. "Emily and Billy look to me to lead. Doc's a teacher more than a friend, even though he says we've 'graduated' or whatever. He's still a mentor. Titus and I have never really warmed up to each other. Not necessarily in a bad way, but we just don't talk. You, on the other hand, never need anything from me. You don't need me to save you or lead you. You're just here, and I trust you with my life. And I think that makes you my friend."

      "Sometimes you're as weird as Emily," Kate said.

      "Maybe," Jane said. "Doesn't make what I'm saying untrue."

      Kate shuffled around, changing positions to rest on her sit bones. She looked at Jane uncomfortably.

      "I am so disappointed in myself," Kate said, finally.

      "What?"

      "With my future self," she said. "I'm a failure here. I failed."

      Jane scooted around to face Kate directly.

      "She was blinded. That doesn't make her a failure."

      "It's not that she's without sight," Kate said. "Look at her. Watch her. That's a defeated woman. She gave up striving to be better. She's stopped trying. I can't live like that."

      "You won't have to," Jane said. "This isn't our future. We make our own."

      "I won't be like that, Jane," Kate said. "I will not let anything ruin me. I need to be better than her."

      "You will be," Jane said. "Have you talked to her about it?"

      "Talked to myself?" Kate raised an eyebrow.

      Jane shook her head in response. "Why would future you be any less guarded than regular you?" she said.

      Kate sighed, just the slightly out of character exhalation before catching herself.

      "Something else happened," she said. "Losing her sight made it worse, but something else went down before that. I don't care what timeline we're in, I don't quit like this."

      "Do you want to know what happened?" Jane said.

      Kate's mouth quirked into a nonchalant, sarcastic smirk. "I suppose we'll find out eventually," she said.

      Emily's cheers of victory from across the room interrupted them. "Fixed it!" she shouted, flinging a piece of plastic across the room.

      "I do not understand what happened," a voice, decidedly feminine and not the customary voice of Neal, chirped out of the computer.

      "You didn't fix it, you ripped a piece off!" Titus said. "That's not fixing, that's breaking."

      "Is he talking?"

      "Pardon me," Neal said. "Something seems to be amiss."

      "You made Neal a girl!" Titus said.

      "Then not only did I fix it, I improved it!"

      "Why do I sound like this?" the AI said.

      "It's okay, buddy, we'll get your old voice back," Titus said.

      "But only if you decide you don't like this one," Emily said. "I think it suits you just fine."

      "What happened?" the computer said.

      Jane popped up onto her feet and offered a hand to Kate, who accepted. Together they walked over to the crowd gathered around the well-worn casing where Neal's consciousness lived.

      "You got blowed up," Emily said. "Like, ka-boom. Pretty bad."

      "Not that bad," Titus said "You took some damage. Girl Wonder over here just contributed some ancillary damage though."

      "Clearly, he didn't need that piece," Emily said.

      "Why does everything smell like pancakes?" Neal said in the most weirdly bewildered voice Kate had ever heard.

      "What?" Emily said.

      "See! I told you he needed that piece! Now everything smells like pancakes," Titus said.

      "You say that like it's a bad thing!" Emily said. "I wish everything smelled like pancakes. And maybe bacon. Pancakes and bacon, I'd wear that as a perfume."

      "Enough, Emily," Jane said, breaking up the argument between the blue-haired girl and the increasingly agitated werewolf.

      "Would you, or would you not prefer everything smell like pancakes?" Emily said, pointing dramatically at Jane.

      "You're going to have to give me an either/or option there," Jane said absently. "Neal?"

      "Yes, Designation: Solar. Query: There are two of you?"

      Jane cracked a smile, barely able to refrain from laughing at the sound of Neal's new female voice. "I'm sorry. This isn't funny. Neal, we need a look at the rest of Broadstreet's information. What else did he give us?"

      They were joined quickly by Solar.

      Kate noticed the two Straylights walking in the front door casually, late to the party.

      "Right away, Designation: Solar Two."

      "I hope you're okay with being Solar Two," older-Jane said.

      "Whatever helps tell us apart," her younger self said.

      Schematics came to life on screen, a large sphere furrowed with complex linework. It reminded Kate vaguely of the Epcot Center dome.

      Broadstreet's voice started to speak. Kate watched both Janes flinch, just slightly.  It was apparent they were not yet done grieving over the man's violent death. She looked around the room and saw the werewolf pack appearing mournful also. Broadstreet must've been a friend to them as well.

      This is why we can never get attached to people, Kate thought.

      "I was able to locate plans for a power source, a generator of some kind," Broadstreet said. "I don't know exactly what it does or how it works, but maybe some of your people can figure it out. Whatever it is, Bohr's been working on it for years. It seems to be his most important project."

      "Hey Nealette, freeze frame there?" Emily said.

      "Designation: Who are you? Designation: Strange Girl, please do not call me Nealette."

      "Whatever," Emily said. "Hey Jane, can I change my superhero name to Strange Girl?"

      "I'd rather you didn't," Jane said.

      "Whatever," Emily said. She studied the hologram, intuitively turning it with hand gestures and using her fingers to zoom in. She looked uncharacteristically serious as she took a closer look.

      "Are you messing with us right now, or are you actually searching for something?" Titus said.

      "Be quiet, Fido," Emily said. "I'm working here."

      Titus glanced at Kate.

      She motioned with her hands as if to say, let it go.

      "This is weird. It's like a Dyson sphere, but different," Emily said.

      "A Dyson sphere?" Jane said.

      "It was a hypothetical megastructure that would surround an entire star, capturing its power output," Emily said. "The mathematician Freeman Dyson first wrote about it, but he was actually upset that they called it the Dyson sphere. I think he was angry that a theoretical idea would be remembered in his name."

      "Why would someone build a structure around a star?" Titus said.

      "Dyson's idea was that we'd eventually need to maximize the energy the sun puts out in order for us to survive," Emily said. "Me, I think we'll have some sort of self-inflicted extinction event before that ever happens, but, y'know."

      She continued to look at the design, flipping the sphere around with her hands.

      "Anyway, it's so theoretical it shows up mostly in science fiction, so I'm surprised you don't know what I'm talking about, Titus," Emily said.

      "I actually do know what you're talking about. Have you been stealing books from my room again?" Titus said.

      "I knew what you were talking about, too," Billy said, joining in on the conversation.

      "You lie, Billy Case," Emily said. "I gave you that Charles Stross book and it ended up as a paperweight."

      "No it didn't," he said. "I used it as a coaster."

      "Whatever. It's . . ." Emily trailed off, her hands falling to her sides.

      "No comeback?" Billy said.

      "Shut up, Billy Case," Emily said. "This isn't a Dyson sphere."

      Jane put a hand on Emily's shoulder, eyeing the holographic image, trying to figure out what Emily saw that spooked her.

      "What's wrong, Em?" Jane said.