Chapter 26

2128 A.D.

Gilda Rasmussen thought back to the first time she had met Sharra all those years ago. They had all been so young then. Now? Now she was the last survivor of her friend group, and the last of her generation in the family. At eighty-seven years of age, she was getting up there herself.

The priest at the altar in the front of the church droned on as she finished the Prayer for the Dead, then started on the Remembrance portion of the service.

“Sharra Anderson was forced onto a path she very much did not want to follow. She told me as much two years ago when she joined the church, seeking absolution and relief from the guilt that had plagued her since her efforts to try to save humanity had ended up ushering in the age of cannibalism in the country and ultimately across the globe. She didn’t do it because she thought it was the right thing to do. She did it because it was the only way to save the human race from descending into barbarism.”

Gilda thought back to the memoir that Sharra had released some three years before (as a result of someone leaking her name two years before that), detailing her involvement in setting up the PCA laws and working through the implementation during the Melville Administration. She had done it to set the record straight, but it hadn’t been very effective, since people generally believe what they believe and won’t change it no matter what. Sharra’s memoir had been received with equal parts fascination and a certain sense of horror. Luckily, she had not named names, but her work had come out in what some had called a last-ditch grasp for forgiveness and absolution. Personally, Gilda thought it was probably more to set the record straight, since the public perception of what happened behind the scenes and who worked on the Dark Times movie project was clouded with, frankly, an entire pasture-worth of bullshit.

A person a decade or more younger than her slid into the seat next to her, followed by two younger people, a man and a woman both somewhere about forty years old, interrupting her musings.

She turned to smile at them and received a smile in return from the mother?, but the two younger people just stared at her briefly before turning away, obviously recognizing the famed director but wanting to avoid intruding.

The mother looked vaguely familiar, but Gilda just couldn’t place where she might have met the younger woman. With a mental shrug, she turned back to the service for her dearly missed friend Sharra, but her memories started to stir once more.

Gilda shook her head slightly. Sharra had never shared with her that she felt guilty about bringing regulated cannibalism to humanity, but that was just like the Sharra that Gilda had known. She never let her feelings out. Dang woman had been told for years that she needed to seek help from the qualified therapists and psychologists in the employment of the various governmental agencies she worked with back then. But she never listened.

‘Then again, neither did I, most of the time,’ Gilda thought to herself. ‘I never sought help after what happened to Amanda. Although, I still have no idea what that was.’

Unbidden, her memories went back to that last day she had seen the incredibly beautiful, talented, kind, caring, compassionate actor whose last role had brought monumental change, and ultimately (the western world had agreed upon this), through her Ultimate Gift to humanity, as the Nobel Prize committee had stated in their special notice acknowledging her sacrifice, had saved humanity from barbarism and the fall of Western Civilization.

Gilda had fled from the filming of the scene, angry at herself for being a coward and for abandoning Amanda to face her fate alone. She had turned behind a portion of the set and couldn’t go any further, hunched over and weeping in the deserted, darkened sound stage next door to where they had been filming, only to feel arms around her once more as a person embraced her, holding her tight and aoothing her as she broke at last.

Gilda had reached out and wrapped her arms around whomever was trying to comfort her, only to recoil as if she had been slapped because the nude female that was holding her could only be one person.

But Amanda had held on tighter and wouldn’t let her go, whispering in her ear that it was going to be alright while rubbing her back gently.

“How can you say that!? You’re not supposed to die! The character can die but the star isn’t supposed to die!” Gilda had sobbed as she wrapped her arms around Amanda.

Amanda had smiled as she gently rocked the older woman in her arms. It felt right, comforting someone this way. She imagined a warm aura of love and soothing peace emanating from her and flooding through the celebrated director, easing her suffering and calming the raging storm inside her as she tried to gain control of her emotions.

“It’s going to be alright, Gilda.” Amanda spoke in an almost whisper as she tried to comfort the older woman that she had come to adore during filming. “I will be your tiny little Amanda Star up in the sky, just to the right of the North Star. Your own little star, bringing you safely home through any storm, no matter how fierce, with which the world tries to assail you. Jist know that even if you can’t see me through the clouds, I am always there for you, looking down and being the anchor, you can always count on to guide you through,” Amanda had whispered.

She had left the direction of the scene to Sharra and had gone back to her hotel room to drink herself into oblivion. Amanda herself had told Gilda to do it after seeing the toll being on set was going to take on the woman she wished was her mother.

“I will be alright. I know you love me and support me. And I love you, Gilda. Never forget that. I wish you were my flesh-and-blood mother. But that’s okay. I love you just as much, or even more, as if you were. It will all work out as it should.”

So, Gilda had left. And she demanded that she never be told what happened to that beautiful young woman She was lucky that Sharra was such a quick study in directing and had known exactly what Gilda had wanted to be done.

‘Maybe that’s why Sharra never seemed to get over what happened back then.

When the service ended, the woman next to her turned and spoke to her.

“I don’t wish to intrude, Ms. Rasmussen, but I would beg you for a few moments of your time, if you would indulge me. In private, please?”

Gilda considered the request, then nodded. Whatever the younger woman wanted, she had the time to waste. She was rapidly approaching her ninetieth birthday and hadn’t worked behind the scenes for nearly twenty years now. When Sharra had retired Gilda had stuck it out to finish one last project she had in the works, then she had hung up her director’s hat as well.

They walked out of the main hall of the church, an anachronism in an age that had solidly rejected the hatred and intolerance some fifty years before that had lain hidden inside the core philosophy of western religion for nearly two thousand years like a dormant virus.

A small meeting room was found near the main entrance, and the four of them walked in and found seats.

“What can I do for you, Ms...?”

“I’ve always loved your work, Ms. Rasmussen. It was an honor to work with you on a project all those years ago. I just wanted to know how you are doing, and to introduce my twins Craig and Kara to you.”

Both younger adults nodded and smiled gently at the director, but they didn’t speak. This was clearly their mother’s moment.

Gilda was about to speak some pleasantry or something to them, when Kara’s appearance registered, and her mouth fell open as a rushing sound crashed through her mind.

She stared, then turned to look at Craig, and she saw a very familiar face there, as well.

Something wet was on her face, like she had stepped out in the rain, and she wiped away the tears that were coming from her face.

She turned back to the mother and saw an impish smile on her face.

“What’s your name!?” she suddenly demanded.

“My name? It’s Taylor Stáirse McLaird. Stáirse means Starchild in Irish Gaelic. Fitting, don’t you think? The person who chose it was such a silly, romantic young girl at the time.”

Gilda’s eyes widened then narrowed as her thoughts raced.

“Prove it.” It came out in a flat tone, guarded against the growing but still-impossible suspicion that lurked inside.

“Someone once told you the Amanda Star, just to the right of the North Star, would always bring you home again. Did it work?”

Tears suddenly blinded Gilda as she lurched to her feet and pulled the younger woman into a hug, only to hear her gasp in pain. She let go of her hug and stepped back, fearful that she had hurt the younger woman, but she only smiled back at her.

“It’s fine. This old body has seen a lot of mileage, and not all of it was fun. I still have pain from an old accident I was in some twenty years ago. I’ll be fine.” A hand went to her side on her ribs as Craig stepped over and helped her stand for a moment, a gentle frown on his handsome and so familiar face directed at his mother. He sent her a gentle smile of reassurance once Taylor was okay and she had waved him off.

“I’m fine. Craig. It wasn’t that bad.”

Gilda stared in obsessive fascination, trying to see the features she once knew, and that had haunted her dreams from time to time, although not always in a bad way. Gilda had often wondered herself what had happened at the end, and it appeared that she was about to find out.

“You have a lot of questions, I bet. Where do you want to start?”

Gilda had the first one out before she could even think to stop herself.

“Are you really Amanda Mickelson?” She slapped her hand over her mouth and turned to stare at the twins as she realized that her kids might not know, but Amanda just laughed.

“They know. They’ve known for a few years. It was quite the conversation, you can imagine. I was content to let that older me be dead and eaten, but in their teen years they started to ask a lot of questions about whether any of their father’s relatives were still alive after he was killed in action in some classified mission overseas.

“At some point, they both had to watch Dark Times in school. That was a moment for them, let me tell you.”

Gilda nodded. Dark Times was probably the most watched film in history. It was required viewing for all teens in school (not just in the U.S. but in fifty-one other countries that also had strong English language requirements in them as well, all of which had their own PCA and PMB systems in place) before they turned eighteen and reached an age when the females in each generation would become eligible for selection. Making it required viewing made the transition from citizen to selectee more understandable, presenting the facts and realities of the why and how in a way that was efficient and less problematic.

The film was also accompanied by a special twenty-four-minute short film that explained the origins of the film and how the statistics were deliberately lessened, and why that was done, to make the impact when the reality hit much more effective.

Amanda’s sacrifice as an actress was also talked about, explaining how filming the movie affected her and going into the reasons why she did what she did. It also included a few short clips of her in person, discussing her reasons why she felt being selected and actually processed was the only way for her to not suffer any further.