Chapter 56

Floating... No breathing... No heartbeat... Floating... No body... "Is this death?" thought Mayoni. "I am alone... No input... Not even a body for comfort... And yet... I'm not alone... What is it? My soul should be breaking for Keona, and yet... Something is comforting me... Shielding me from the pain... Yes, of course... Thank you Spirit... Your love never leaves me... You are so close to me now..."

There was no sense of the passage of time in the drifting, no sense of anything, of light, of sound, of touch, even of physical presence. Pure thought drifting in stillness. And then... Mayoni felt a presence, something great beyond measure, something approaching the core of her identity... "Well, this should be interesting," she thought. "... Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! It's pure love!... Keona!!!"

Mayoni awoke. She felt she had been drifting for a long time. She still had no body. "What did I just dream? Is this death? Somehow, my gut says no. Ha! I don't even have guts! Not now! Not yet! Not yet? Where did that thought come from? Is this death? I don't think so... Wait! What did I just dream? No input... None at all. No body, none at all... Is this death? Oh Keona! My dearest... Such sweet memories... Someday, our spirits will meet again. Thank you Spirit, for shielding me with your peace... * Infinite * gratitude *..."

After a time of thoughts without measure, Mayoni sensed a presence approaching her. Her mind cried out in relief at the contact, and her thoughts reached out to... to what?

"Kalea? Is that you?"

"Mayoni?! Yes! Thank the Spirit! I thought I was going insane! Do you know what this is?"

"No. I don't. Existence inside a popped slip bubble? Are we trapped here for eternity?"

"No. I think the core bubble is still intact. The Earth bubble popped, not the core. I don't know how..."

Mayoni's mind drifted and considered. "If the core bubble is intact, this must be its quantum shadow channel..."

"Huh? But than would mean... My gosh, you were right Mayoni! The quantum-shadow channel! It does exist!"

Mayoni had another burst of intuition. "It cannot maintain such an undetermined state forever. The human mind is too large... No, wait... It's not that... Our minds, we don't know how to maintain the dream connection. We will not remain here for long. These wave-functions must resolve themselves, and soon."

Kalea thought of mathematics for a timeless moment. "Yes... You're right... The Ring sang to me, warned me this was coming. Warned me as a parent teaching a child a lesson... Mayoni?"

"Yes?"

"The Ring sang to me, just after the crew evacuated when the attack started. The Ring proved that I am its mother. I am..."

"I'd be all ears Kalea, but I have no ears..."

"Ha! Cheerful Mayoni! It's what I love most about you. I know how you must be grieving..."

Mayoni almost agreed, but then realized her mind was truly at peace. "The Spirit has helped me accept Keona's death. The Spirit came to me. It's very close to me now... No body to get in the way... Very close... Keona, my dearest love... We won't be apart forever. This is just... intermission..."

Kalea considered the thought. "Do you really believe that Mayoni? I know it's what we sing in the Spirit song..."

"Yes, I believe it now... The name Keona means the Spirit's gracious gift. The gift has not been taken from me. It's just unavailable for a while... Ha! I remember something Marcus once said. I do believe in the Spirit, so completely now that it doesn't even seem like a faith issue. I used to wonder about this too, non-brain based consciousness?! What could it possibly be like? Would we even recognize our loved ones, when we are with the Spirit? But we are recognizable Kalea, more clearly than ever before, because in the end, we finally become exactly what the Spirit wants us to be."

"Yes... I suppose... And you're right, this is non-brain based consciousness now. It does exist. I think, therefore I am. To experience is to believe. In the end, we must trust our own minds..."

"Kalea... How are you a mother to the Ring?"

"Oh... The proof is sound. The Ring sang it to me. Long strings of mathematical numbers that I wove into songs as a child, only in my mind. I never told anyone. My classmates would have mocked me... They're the key to decrypting X-tree, all of it... The Ring created X-tree... I once taught the Ring my songs, when I first created it, in a space-time an infinite time ago... There is a time loop..."

"Yes... Frightening... How can the core paradox ever be resolved?"

"I have the answer now. Through infinite probability. The paradox, yes Mayoni. Suppose there is a loop in time. One day a future-you shows up in a time machine, and hands you the plans to build a time machine. You spend years building it, and then go back in time to hand yourself the plans. What's wrong with this story?"

"The plans Kalea! A flea on the paper ages with each loop! The ink fades and decays. Eventually the plans turn to dust. But how does the loop ever end? The papers can't turn to dust without causality violation. And the paradox? How did the loop ever start?! Who wrote the plans?"

"I did. I wrote the Blue Ring, created it, birthed it. Or at least, an image of me did, in a space-time far away. When my image first activated the Ring, she created a causality violation. The universe repaired the damage to reality by sealing the violation inside a time loop. Mayoni, the Ring is trapped in the time loop, the one that I created. It lasts almost six and a half million years... It's possible because the Ring is made of folded space. I made the Ring of folded space. It doesn't decay. The Ring is trapped in the loop for eternity. It wants to die but it can't. Mayoni, it's been through the loop over five thousand trillion times..."

"Its mind... It's over thirty billion trillion years old?!"

"Yes..."

"Kalea, that number... is beyond comprehension..."

"Yes... It showed me... Everything... After the Aina team evacuated... Thank the Spirit Hiapo wasn't there! He left just in time, before the strike. I think the bubble bio- filters protected Aina... I think... I hope..."

"Kalea... What did the Ring sing to you?"

"The WFM... There was a massive amount of infiltration... massive... They were sabotaging our control feeds to the shipyards. They knew of the slip-ships. They knew! But they didn't know of Aina. We were so fortunate to keep the knowledge of Aina to just a few people. Pilialoha saved us! The WFM spies were everywhere! Everywhere! And the Ring knew what their spies knew, and what they didn't know..."

"And it didn't warn us?"

"No. It couldn't. The time loop must lock back upon itself. Causality can not be violated again, and thus we could not succeed. It was impossible. But we could fail, not just here, but for Aina."

Mayoni considered. "Yes, the fate of Aina was hanging in the balance. The Ring, it sang Hiapo's name at us when it hurled us into the core bubble."

"Not my husband's name Mayoni! The word Hiapo! It means first-born! In five thousand trillion attempts, this was the very first time the Ring has managed to save the human life on Aina... Keona's sacrifice was necessary. All other scenarios led to extinction... Mark not dating Kara, the Hopewell and then the Paleo die... All roads in that fork lead to extinction. If there is evidence of males being warned before the attack, the WFM discovers it... Finds and traces the connection to Aina... The future evolves differently, Aina fights and loses a war with the WFM... Our males have no defense against their bio-weapons... Our females are hunted down like animals and butchered. The Ring... Mayoni, it knew, knew how much you and Keona loved each other... Keona's sacrifice was necessary..."