Asunder EPILOGUE (Ch. 54)

Epilogue (54)

The Woman in Reverse

The Daughter

“The night is long, and the days are short. Hold fast. The rhythm of the unsung will rise from the deep and breathe new life into the deserted. The long ago will become anew, and the blue isles of the sea will return. The curse is lifted, reverse and gifted, the will of many become the hope of one. ” - 2 Avaloth 7:11-12, Book of Remembrance.

- 235 years before the present day -

- 7 years after the capture of Azar -

- The Year 2061 -

Halim sat gazing at the rusted metal wall as it stared back at her, mocking her innocence. The fluorescent light from overhead illuminated her bare feet. The daily routine of running on a rubber mat had calloused them greatly—appearing as hooves compared to their delicate softness from her former life. She looked back down at the puzzle the machines provided her with for the day. Only a third of the way through it, she sighed. Halim despised the games. She knew they were only there to help keep her sane. Having only been there for over a year now, she found herself wishing they had taken her life instead.

The only consolation keeping her sane in these conditions was the thought of her children—her two boys—identical twins, Uthman and Omar. And by the grace of God, the machines were unaware of their existence. Halim had taken extraordinary measures to ensure this. She met her then-husband in hiding after the capture of Halim’s father, Balthazar. Halim continued to dream intermittently with her father during this time, but the connection recently became weaker. After six years of running and hiding, and multiple close calls with the machines, Halim and her husband finally decided to make arrangements to ensure her boys’ safety. As painful as it had been to separate the two boys not only from her husband and herself but also from each other, Halim knew it was in their best interest.

Even after their separation, the machines had taken nearly a year to find her, killing her husband in the process. Still unsure exactly how the machines found her, Halim suspected they used her father’s dreams. After they had kidnapped him from their family cabin—the day her mother and brother died, she knew the machines would use her father’s abilities to some extent. It was how it always worked. The U.S. government did the same when they found out about his abilities. It was the way of the dreamers—to be exploited by those with power.

Halim’s head bobbed up and down as sleep overtook her eyes. The puzzles never stimulated her mind but instead made her tired. Lifting her head to stay awake, she yawned and tried to prevent her mind from entering a dream state. She hated dreaming now. The machines wanted her to dream. They tried to use her, though she was unsure of the purpose.

Suddenly, as she sat there wallowing in her condition, the room began to shake. It appeared as a slow, distant shake but soon approached fully and caused the entire room to quake. Dust fell from the cracks in the walls, where dingy grime once resided, revealing a hint of something beyond its confines. Small rays of light began streaming through the breaks, and she felt excitement well within her. Maybe this was finally the end? The end of her miserable condition.

Having transferred to her knees, Halim desperately looked about the room as the walls suddenly became unhinged. With this, all four sides of the room fell outward—one wall remained attached to the ceiling as it fell, as though she were sitting in a collapsible, makeshift metal box. Bright daylight consumed Halim as her eyes adjusted from the dark dampness of the metal room to the brilliant sunshine surrounding her.

Stumbling to her feet, Halim tried to block the brightness from her unadjusted eyes. Composing herself after an entire minute, she stood up and stepped out of the confines of the rectangular floor of her room. Her bare feet transitioned from the rubber-studded floor to cold and hard dirt. Still shielding her slowly adjusting eyes with her hand, Halim took in the landscape around her. Vast rolling hills of tan dirt and sagebrush spread into the distance. Purple and blue mountain peaks lined the horizon all around her. The yellow sun blazed overhead in a bright blue, cloudless sky.

Taking a deep breath, Halim noted the fragrance of the cool, high-desert air. Her lungs ached for more. Shivering now, Halim transitioned further away from the metal container and into the rough terrain. The blowing wind suddenly carried hints of a familiar sound to her ears—echoes of laughter. She turned her attention to the direction of the voices and followed the joyous noise. It was the laughter of children.

Moving quickly now, Halim struggled over the edge of a low hill. Once at the top, she peered over its precipice, and a deep, dark hole penetrating the earth met her eyes. It appeared as though a behemoth of an animal burrowed its way into the hillside, creating a cavern. At the mouth of the cavern, the source of the laughter revealed itself. Two young boys sat on a large rock outside the mouth of the cavern. They kept their backs turned, and their black hair waved about in the wind as they reached into the air, trying to grab something fluttering about their heads. A deep sense of curiosity overtook her, and she found herself slowly approaching the boys. As she descended the rocks to their location, a twig suddenly snapped beneath her bare foot. Surprised by the sudden sound, the two boys looked back. With this, she immediately recognized them.

“Mommy!” They both said in unison and jumped down from the rock, running after her.

Fear struck her heart as the reality of the situation unfolded in her mind.

Her boys! 

She was dreaming! 

She shouldn’t have let herself get this far in the dream. 

It would ruin everything. 

They were safe, but now she compromised them. With the machines monitoring her dreams, she was sure they would suspect something now. Before the words could even slip from her mouth to ward them away from her, to deny their relation to her, the boys crashed into her legs, each grabbing one. The loving caress of her children brought immediate tears to her eyes, and her heart broke in two—each piece for each son.

Suddenly, a rush of ferocious energy flowed into her, like a mighty wind splitting her in two. Halim felt as if it tore her mind asunder. One half of her mind absorbed into the child on her right, Uthman, and the other into the child Omar on the left. Each side of her mind became enveloped with imagery. Separate but equal, as though she existed in two realities simultaneously. Halim could see both boys’ lives play out concurrently in her split mind—each unfolding story holding equally focused attention.

Uthman’s imagery depicted his acceptance by the family she had left him with. He grew up hiding from the machines, but even in his hidden life, he felt loved, which was all she ever wanted for the boy. The family moved deep into the woods, secretly surviving the decimation by the machines. Eventually, after years, he found love and married. Uthman had children of his own. In the vision, one of his children, a girl, grew and dreamed just as he did. This girl grew up in hiding and had children as well. The cycle went on for generations, revealing the lives of Uthman’s progeny—the chain of dreamers. Eventually, the imagery focused on one of his great-grandchildren, a boy. This boy, born in machine captivity, suffered great loss. After years of mining for the machines, he eventually escaped. Luckily, a young girl discovered him injured in the wilderness. Soon after, the machines located the girl’s makeshift family and the boy within their cave of a home, eventually returning the boy to a life of mining.

There, in the mines, this boy and the girl fell in love with each other, married, and eventually created a child of their own—a little girl. Sadly, the boy didn’t live long enough to witness the birth of his child, but his love extended beyond the grave, as something quite extraordinary seemed to permeate his daughter, the newborn girl. The images flowing through Halim’s mind settled on the child for what felt like eons. Light and energy swarmed the child, and with it came a vision of the destruction of the reign of machines. Looking closer at the sleeping baby suspended in ethereal light, Halim noted how the child’s emerald green eyes spoke the words of a thousand generations.

Simultaneously, her other stream of consciousness, sourced by her other son, viewed the depiction of Omar and his descendants. Pain and anguish tattered Omar’s life. The family she had left him with all died during a machine raid. Omar escaped, but suffering found him everywhere he turned. Running and hunger consumed the majority of his life. He eventually found stability in an underground community, where Omar eventually married and reared children of his own—twins just as he was, albeit girls rather than boys.

Not long after this, Omar’s family met the fate of so many before him, and the rampage of the machines ravaged them as well. Only one family member, one of the twins, survived. The machines submitted the young girl to testing. Finding she retained some genetic trait beneficial to their existence, the machines transferred the girl to work under their watchful eyes in a birthing facility, where the machines would rear and teach her. While there, she curiously befriended one of the machines who acted as a Nurturer for the children. Over time, this machine named Enver, apparently against the will of its counterparts, developed a sense of love for the twin and eventually aided her in her escape. Other children joined them, and somehow, they completely escaped the grasp of the machines. Soon after this escape, the girl suddenly appeared as an apparition traveling through the void of space.

The imagery in Halim’s mind rushed with the girl through the blackness. Stars blurred as Halim’s mind followed the ghost through space and time. Suddenly stopping, Halim’s mind stood floating above a new world—a gas giant glowing orange and red as it reflected the light of its dual sons. As though in fast-forward, she visualized the planet spinning and the orbit of its multiple moons.

One of the moons escaped the shadow of the planet it orbited and came into view as her vision brought her closer to the celestial body—a blue moon covered in liquid water. Clouds swirled about its surface. Halim’s mind suddenly flashed to the moon’s surface, flying over its torrential ocean. Splashes of seawater sprayed her face, invigorating her senses. Mountains appeared on the horizon, and she approached an out-jutting portion of the land. The waves crashed against the rocky cliffs as she ascended them, and at the brink of the cliff, she shot over the edge and then gently descended onto a field of grass.

Stepping forward onto the lush grass, Halim noted the coolness below her feet. Breathing in the deep scent of the vegetation, she relished the smell of the ocean lingering in the air. Misty clouds swarmed the mountains ahead, and she could feel the warmth of the twin suns at her back. Halim stepped forward, feeling the sponginess of the healthy soil beneath the greenery. Continuing along the thick turf, she took in the beauty surrounding her.

As she scanned her surroundings, she absorbed the majesty of the location. Her eyes ran across the landscape, and she suddenly visualized an indentation in the grass ahead. Something filled the space, bending the blades to indicate something sat within its confines. Her mind felt drawn to the area, and she found herself walking toward it. As she approached the site, Halim noticed the shadowy semblance of a figure lying in the green. Approaching closer, she realized someone was, in fact, lying down, partially hidden. It was an older man with a long white beard. His clothes appeared dirty and stained, much like the clothes she wore herself. He looked thin, but his body seemed surprisingly fit and athletic for his age.

“Hello!” She said aloud, trying to get the older man’s attention.

As Halim approached closer, she suddenly realized the body was not moving. It wasn’t breathing. In this very exact moment of realization, a recognition struck her consciousness. The man’s nose beneath the long beard looked like one she had seen before. Inching closer, she noted the eyes also seemed familiar. Then, suddenly, the awareness hit her like a boulder dropping from the sky. Instantly falling to her knees at the body, she wept. Halim bent forward and laid her head on his chest, letting her tears soak his stained shirt. The older man who lay before her, lifeless, was an elderly version of her father—Balthazar.

After what seemed an eternity of sorrow at seeing her father again, Halim stood back up. The tears in her eyes finally began drying as she stared down at her father. At this exact moment, but in the other simultaneous vision of her other son’s life, the newborn child with the emerald green eyes stared back at her with a celestial light—an eternal round of generations peering into each other’s souls.

§

The Alpha stepped back from the tank, which held the woman suspended in a slew of liquid oxygen. Wires and tubes emerged from her body. She was more stubborn than her father, he thought. She required more intense intervention. The images of her dream ran through the master machine’s mind as he unplugged his enumerator from the port, directly connecting him to her consciousness. Much of the vision remained challenging to interpret immediately, but he would have his prophets scan over the data. They would provide him with answers to the dream.

Recalling the dream, the Alpha envisioned the older man lying before Halim. It was an odd finding. The man was clearly the woman’s father. But the vision didn’t make sense to the Alpha, as the man who appeared lifeless in the vision was, in fact, alive. He sat healthy and young in his chamber, only three hundred feet from where the Alpha currently stood.

The dream must have been prophetic in itself, and thus, it likely showed Balthazar’s future. 

But his future did not end in his cell. 

It was somewhere out there in the vast abyss of space, on another world. The Alpha looked up in wonder.

How did Balthazar get there?

How did Enver get there? 

The defective Isobian clearly discovered an Einstein-Rosen Bridge somehow, but what of the man?

The names of the humans tasted vile in his mechanical mouth. Einstein and Rosen. It was such an intricately beautifully theorized anomaly of nature, but instead, its namesake regarded such idiotic creatures. The Alpha nearly preferred the much more distasteful name of wormhole. If there even was such a thing. He had searched far and wide to find evidence of such an anomaly but had only returned empty-handed.

The Alpha pondered on the images of Halim’s twins and the visions of their lives and lineage. If anything could come of this dream, the Alpha would now commit resources to finding these two sons of hers. He would find her progeny and stop it all from happening—the ending of his species. The dream clearly showed this.

But what of the child with the emerald green eyes?

How could a small child enact the ending of the Isobians?

Was this child an anomaly? One that not even his prophets could predict?

He wanted more answers, but no further imagery of this child appeared, and there was no additional data he could interpret. The Alpha tapped his sharp, claw-like fingers on the tank.

“Who are you, child?” he repeated in his dark digital voice, the image of the newborn searing into his mind.