As someone who'd wasted a great deal of time and energy attempting to shape a world I remembered based only on a memoir, written histories and family mythology, I was used to paradox. Where to intervene? Had I done this before? Is that why things worked out the way they had? Or would one tweak, or one tweak not done, undo everything?  Could I bear to watch someone I loved endure pain?  Again?  It had been nearly paralyzing at times.

Still, as I've attested and proven, I'm very good at the denial of my emotions in aid of pragmatism. How else could I have the utter bloody-mindedness to think I could overthrow the Unity and remake the Universe? Not to mention giving serious thought to the killing of my own children?

The Unity. An overmind, one which was, or so we were led to believe, benevolent and welcoming. Well, except to certain types of miscreants not to mention us malcontents. For what wasn't pointed out was that troublemakers were mind-wiped or otherwise shuffled out of the mix to preserve the Grand Design.

One thing not mentioned in polite company about the Unity, was the whole eugenics thing.   Painted as all well and good, an attempt to bring forth more and more humans with operant mental abilities, Earth humans suddenly found they had to seek approval to reproduce. My parents rebelled. They refused to accept the rules, conceiving my brother, the one would would become Saint Jack the Bodiless. My mother and I went on the run, hiding in the few wild places left on Earth, until Jon was born, because once he was born, then they'd have to allow him to exist. Jon, my brother and best friend. The one I'd kill in an intergalactic pissing contest.  Too bad, as someone once said, that it wasn't I who'd been born with the birth defects rather than Jon.

One of the escape valves for those who found Unity and the Polity unacceptable, which came about entirely serendipitously, was a one-way Time Gate to the Pliocene Era. Those members of humanity who were criminal or seen as intractable were, once the Time Gate came to the attention of the authorities, offered a one-way ticket to the Pliocene as an alternative to a mind-wipe. We were too civilized to just kill our broken ones. Oh yes.

But other misfits - those with primitive urges, those who rejected Unity, those who could not adapt to the new universal order,  they saw the Time Gate as a refuge, even if the rest of the Unity saw it as Exile.

Of course the authorities wouldn't let anyone with operant abilities escape through the Gate. No, they had to stay for the good of mankind, for the good of Unity. Lucky duckies they.

I, and my fellow rebels, on the run from the entire Universe when our rebellion failed, attacked those protecting the Gate and forced our way through. It was, really, our only hope of escape. Thus began my endless lifetime.

But I was talking about paradox and his bride uncertainty.

Some claim the past can never be changed, that it is immutable, and the fact of the present is the proof that this is so. But then if we did change the past, would we even know it?  And given that, and I knew for a fact my father would now never be born, because after my interference with things my grandmother died in childbirth in this reality before he was even conceived, doesn't that prove that the past can and has been changed?  Or am I merely alive in a different time-stream where Abaddon, Marc Remillard, just never existed until I stepped into it wholly formed as it were? I grin as I compare myself to Venus rising out of her shell (a comment made once about me when I was exiting my CE Rig).  But I digress (as always).

And that brings up the whole question of what I've done and what I haven't done.  Sins, reparations, whatever.  Did I go to the Duat Galaxy with Elizabeth or was that erased when I erased my grandmother? Did I even show up in the Pliocene, or is it just that I imagine I did all that, or that I did all that elsewhere/when? Perhaps I haven't really lived for longer than humanity has existed and it is all some complex delusion.

You can see why I'm confused with regard to, well, most everything.  What might not be quite so clear is how depressed I am.  Whether or not it turns out that what I've done in an attempt to mitigate and atone for my baser actions has been erased, I'm a restless man with no history of my own. Not even Dinah can help me with that.

My one bright spot to focus on, is that Kalket still exists. I'm sure Morrigan is thankful for that, not to mention his dragon Ione. Kalket, you see, is the child of a mix of Human, Firvulag and Tanu genes. Helluva nice guy, whose parents' union was quite possibly the only good thing, or at least the best thing to come out of the entire Pliocene Exile. So what does his existence tell me?  It gives me no reassurance regarding Duat, although he remembers, as do I, our intervention there.  But at least someone else remembers that life.  It isn't my mind alone.

-------------

Some few nights later I once again pondered the vista opening out before me on Aaru's observation deck. I was alone, my bond to Dinah shut down to minimal, as she was deeply asleep. Even the bond to Cola was dormant as the great dragon, curled up with her twins, rested.  The children, all back on Earth, had to concentrate their own private metaconcert to reach me, even Christopher couldn't do it unaided. At the moment he wasn't, so I was as alone in my head as I ever was.

Aaru, for those who don't know, is a Cephei. She is a member of a race of immense creatures as old as the universe. She rarely speaks of herself. She is a sentient creature who has deigned to carry us frailer beings protected inside of her out into the stars.  Just as one of her race once took the Firvulag and Tanu to Pliocene Earth.

I learned of that not long after we arrived in the Pliocene, but at that time found it of little interest, since the Ship had died, giving up his life for the rebels he had carried. I quite often these days rue my single minded dedication to the stars back then and my neglect of what the presence of the aliens on Pliocene Earth might have actually meant.  There you see? I can admit to fault and ignorance. Quite easily.
 
I was startled out of my reverie by a distinct sense of amusement I felt around me. Since I was alone on the Observation Deck and in my head, it had to be Aaru herself who found me so worthy of ridicule.

-Hardly that- she said to my mind.

-What then?- I asked.

-Intransigence- she replied.

I ruefully agreed. I'd been like that even as a baby.

-Someone would speak with you, friend Marc- Aaru thought at me after a time.

Since I try to be as available as I can to anyone, I was a bit surprised by this request.

-Invite him, or her, aboard- I replied.  -Safe?-

She mentally shrugged. -Not quite safe. Hostile. Unable to come aboard-

I've never been known for my self-doubt.  -I will open my mind to this being-

When I did so, I felt an immediate gut-wrenching contact.  It hit me full on mentally.  I have no idea whether or not my body remained safe in my chair. I was too busy dealing with what was happening to my mind; it was in danger of disintegrating under the mental assault. My consciousness went reeling into a void so black and empty that time ceased. I ceased.
 

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