October 14, 2002 |31|

James shifted the package of electron microscopes from his left arm to his right as he approached his daughter, sitting cross legged against the wall. Their eyes were closed, but he could see the REM beneath their tiny lids. He stared at them in wonder. Serafina had told Martha and him about their ability to commune with the distant future, but he'd never seen it in action. Is this that?

He set the package on one of the lab tables and the tiny sound echoed in the silence of the gleaming workshop. Two months earlier, Serafina had directed them to this property on the outskirts of Los Angeles County at the edge of the California Grapevine. It included a defunct RV repair shop they could convert and six acres of open property, offering privacy that would come in handy down the line.

The door opened behind him as Martha entered the shop. Recognition flashed on her face and she came to stand next to James with the same curiosity. "Are they?" she whispered.

"I think so," he whispered back. James had only found out about Dr Tanaka, Rosa, and the rest of Project Savior a lifetime ago after 261 in the dark. Now, his daughter was talking with one of them by virtue of their magnificent and mysterious brain. He assumed rousing them from the trance was unnecessary if not harmful. But before he had the chance to try, Serafina opened their eyes and inhaled sharply.

"Oh, hey," they said, blinking their eyes and rubbing the sides of their head. "You're here too, Mom. That's good."

"Hey sweetie," Martha said. "Was that... Were you..."

"With Rosa?" James added.

"Mm-hmm," they answered, pinching the bridge of their nose.

"Nice," he said. "How is she? How's the Northwest Quadrasphere doing?"

Serafina stared at their father for a moment. "Not well."

"Oh, right. Stupid question."

"Common mistake," they said as they got to their feet. "In fact, they only have a couple of days left until their ability to phase between universes is compromised. Granted, it only takes a few minutes for them to log a single lifetime of ours so there's still time. But... it sounds like Rosa and most everyone else in 2235 is losing their will."

"I can only imagine," Martha said with empathy James knew was sincere. It hadn't been that way for long. She'd been apoplectic at the thought of Dr Tanaka conspiring to sentence their daughter to immortality. His remorse a lifetime ago in her apartment had seemed so sincere and his plea for them to procreate, so genuine, that the idea of it being a manipulative scheme was the ultimate betrayal. But after Serafina's repeated assurance that Rosa and the rest were entirely caught off guard – and that the idea of a child was only meant as a desperate attempt to inspire Martha and James to reinvest themselves with the future – she came to sympathize with their desperate plight, teetering on the edge of extinction.

And yet for all of Serafina's lives, standing on their parents' shoulders and grasping technology from the distant future, it was still a mystery as to how or why they were what they were. Genetics was their best guess – that Serafina had inherited the condition from Martha and James. But we weren't born with it. We didn't inherit the condition from our parents. It's like two people with the same tattoo birthing a child with said tattoo. But perhaps that was the wrong metaphor. Perhaps Martha and James were victims of radioactive fallout passing their altered DNA along to their mutated child. Metaphors referring to my daughter as 'mutated' will be rejected out of hand.

"Well then, let's get to it," James said. "No time like the present."

"So to speak," Serafina said. "But there is one last thing we need to discuss before we can start in earnest." They walked to their workbench and picked up the cap.

"What's that?" Martha asked.

"An offer," Serafina answered.

"I... don't get it," James said. "But I'm here for it. Cryptic Serafina is my favorite Serafina."

Serafina chuckled, then held the cap up toward Martha. "Mom? Care to take a look." As she took the cap cautiously, Serafina said to their father, "Sorry. She figures it out a lot faster than-"

"Holy crap," Martha announced.

"What is it?" James asked.

"It's shrunken," she said, tilting the cap to scrutinize every angle. "But wearable?"

"Mm-hmm," Serafina confirmed proudly.

"Hello?" James persisted.

"But shrunken!" Martha repeated incredulously. "How the hell do you generate enough power?"

"If we're precise enough, we only need a small fraction-"

"Okay!" James interrupted. "I apologize for being so slow. But I would like to know what the heck is going on. Could you please explain it to the idiot in the room?"

"Sorry, dear," Martha said. "You're not an idiot. Of course, I'll explain."

"Use small words," Serafina teased.

"Serafina Quinn!" Martha snapped, half-jokingly. "Be nice to your father." Then she turned to James. "It's... our chamber. From Berkeley..."

"Our chamber..." James repeated, caught up at last.

Berkeley... Outside of his love for Martha, it had been the focus of his existence for roughly twenty lifetimes – understanding, diagnosing, and hopefully one day curing his immortality. At the University of California at Berkeley, he'd used their labs, Martha's genius – somewhat underhandedly – and his ability to roll-over innovations from one life to the next to come tantalizingly close to a cure. But then she returned – and remembered me! – and he hadn't given it a thought since. "But it's..."

"Shrunken," Serafina finished.

"But how do you..."

"Get enough power? Well, first we flipped our vectors to flow with the gravitational force..." They looked at their mother. "Thanks for that."

"Oh, right. That," Martha said, then looked at James with a copious mix of emotions in her eyes. He remembered that day and that death like it was yesterday – lying on the sidewalk, life draining, the anguish on Martha's face as she fought through the pain of losing him to speak the words and give him the power to set himself free. Presently, Martha swallowed and said, "I got to sit with that epiphany for a solid two minutes before my world exploded."

"You guys were close," Serafina said. "More than close – you guys were there. I have no doubt you would have cracked it in the next life. Then Dad would've been at peace. Mom would never be integrated. I would never exist. And humanity would cease to exist in the 23rd century. Dr Tanaka didn't care for that scenario, so he intervened, and here we all are."

"I see," James said. "And so the offer you're presenting us is... peace?"

"Eternally," Serafina confirmed. "But it has to be your choice. I'll answer any questions you might have, but I don't want to influence your decision. And I won't be offended if you say no. I promise."

James and Martha looked at one another. How do we even begin to debate this? Martha knew, turning back to their daughter. "Do we have any proof of efficacy?"

"Theoretically speaking, the science is air tight and I can lay it all out for you if you like. Practically speaking, Rosa's given confirmation."

"Really?" James said. "How can she do that?"

"Well, my timeline is separate from the one the two of you share. They intersect in this particular lifetime – Mom's twentieth and Dad's two hundred sixty-second. Then they separate again. At the end of this life, Rosa can advance to my next life – where you two are the same, but I'll be starting my thirty-second. She can also advance to your next life – where you'll be twenty-one and two sixty-three, respectively, and where I'll never exist.

"But for the lives in which you take the offer, your timeline disappears in the next. No life twenty-one. No life two sixty-three. It's just gone. The only new timeline she can access is mine."

The evidence was convincing. Then again, proving the absence of something was tricky. How could they know, beyond a doubt... Of course, that never stopped him in Berkeley. If he trusted the data then, why wouldn't he now?

"Have we ever turned the offer down?" he asked.

"Since the tech was made available... Once," Serafina said.

"And?"

"And life twenty-one and two sixty-three were back up and running."

"Is there..." Martha said. "Is there a reason it has to be this life?"

"No," Serafina said. "No, you guys could recreate the tech in the next life or... a hundred lifetimes from now, if you want. You'd have to go back to the lab. I wouldn't be there to help you so it might take you a little while, but you could probably get to it over the course of a lifetime – maybe two, if you're rusty."

"So we would devote an entire life or two in hopes of dying for good, all while mourning the death of our daughter?" Martha said. "Sounds like a hoot."

"And not to brag," Serfina said. "But this cap is clean. The procedure takes less than ten minutes with zero side effects. Rosa helped, but it was a lot of trial and error on our end before we had your brains properly mapped."

James thought back to the decades within dozens of lifetimes spent inching toward the cure, while here, his daughter had slapped it together in a couple of weeks. They're simply amazing...

But he couldn't shake the thought – one that had popped into his head the second the offer was made. It had been sixteen lifetimes since she'd returned and over two hundred since he'd fallen in love with her. I'm not sure I could bear it if-

"What if you died first?!" Martha blurted, tears welling suddenly.

James took her in his arms, seeking and offering comfort in equal measure. "That would be wonderful," he said, sniffling back his own tears.

"Shut up. I'm serious."

"So am I," he said and released her. "I don't know... How could I live without you?" The thought of it made his ribs clench.

Then something changed in Martha's eyes. She turned to Serafina standing alone and reached out her hand. They walked to their parents and held up their arms. James picked them up by the waist and set them down on the lab table to sit between their parents.

Martha's implication was clear as well as correct – per usual. They'd signed up for heartbreak and loss the moment Serafina was born. He put his arm around his daughter and Martha did the same. How could I live without either of them?

Martha caught his eye, then nodded slightly. He nodded back. "Alright, Ser-Bear," he said. "Offer accepted."

"Okay, we can do it tomorrow," Serafina said. "That way, you can sleep on it."

"I feel certain," Martha said. "Oddly enough."

"Me too," James agreed.

"Be that as it may, you can still change your minds. It is imperative. This has to be your decision." Serafina locked eyes with Martha and then James for emphasis and then softened. "But since you feel so confident, I will say that mortality suits you."

"How's that?" James asked.

"It's hard to quantify, but you're just... better. I think when you're immortal, there's always a little part of you that thinks oh well, no biggie, there's always next life. Don't get me wrong, you're both brilliant and talented paragons of virtue, but you've been operating without the OG of human motivation. Even greater than maternal or paternal instincts, the fear of death is the driving force of the human condition."

"Never considered that," Martha said. "Do you think you'll ever... take the offer?"

"Some day. After we succeed or... after we don't. Until then, I'll keep the light on."

After a silent moment, Martha asked. "So how does one commemorate their last night as immortals?"

"With pizza, obviously." James said.

"Yay!" Serafina said, then stood on the table and climbed onto his shoulders. "Great idea, Dad!"

"Does anyone even deliver all the way up here?" Martha asked.

"Exactly four pizza joints deliver all the way up here, but only one of them's any good."

"Now I'm impressed," James said as the three began to leave the shop. "Communicating across time and granting us eternal peace is all well and good, but hooking us up with the legit pizza joint... Well, I'm one proud papa."

"And if I order pineapple?" Serafina baited.

"Then I have no daughter," James said with comic gravitas.

Martha picked Serafina off James' shoulders and set them on the ground. "Quick, I feel a diatribe on deep dish coming. Let's make a run for it."

As James watched them scramble out of the workshop, he felt the love coursing through his body and said an atheist's prayer that he'd go first.

Author's note:

Well that certainly changes things. 

Someone runs a red light... Struck by lightning... Assassinated while introducing a presidential candidate at the DNC Convention... There are so many ways to die! It's anyone's guess.

This will be the last part of chapter 10. Thank you so much for reading!!!