Chapter 36

Four years later...

Earth time: Friday, April 24, 2037 9:25 PM Central Daylight Savings Time

Aina time: day 0 of 1442 H.E. 2:00 PM First day of summer and the Festival of the High Sun

Cindy walked into her bedroom at her arctic home and saw Jim lying naked in a very awkward position on the bed. Cindy herself was feeling terrible, weighed down with an enormous burden of sadness and despair, and she took off her clothes and lay by Jim's side. They stared into each other's eyes for a moment, and Cindy realized Jim was in even worse shape than she was. He looked completely lost.

She cleared her throat. "I feel as if I've been hit by a train, but you look as if you've seen a ghost."

"I feel as if I am a ghost."

Cindy smiled and tried to get Jim to smile back. "A friendly ghost? Can I call you Casper?"

Jim just shook his head. "Cindy, are you real? Am I real?"

"Sorry... Jim, what's up?"

"I... I can't talk about it..."

"... Okay..." Cindy sat up on the bed and pushed Jim into a straight prone position. He allowed his body to be moved without comment, and Cindy began to caress his butt, kissing and running her hands down his butt cheeks and the backs of his thighs. In all their years together, they both knew this was one of Cindy's ways to ask Jim to have coitus with her.

Jim sighed deeply. "Cindy... I just can't..."

"It's okay..." Cindy continued the caresses. It suddenly occurred to her she didn't understand Jim's last comment, whether he was re-affirming he couldn't talk to her, or he was declining her offer for sex.

She thought about offering a mind-link contact. That would bring instant and total clarity. In all their years together, Jim had never refused to link, and she had never refused him. But Jim looked now so completely lost and lacking in self esteem, Cindy did not want to press him to share his innermost thoughts. She chose instead to continue her kisses and caresses of his butt and thighs, repeating her desire and request to be mounted. She allowed the back of her hand to slide very lightly back and forth across the soft skin of his scrotum. The quiet minutes drifted by...

"I came from the Earth monitoring room," Cindy whispered at last.

"Ah... What an absolute mess. I surprised you still have the guts... More death and destruction?"

"Yeah... The Army of the Allegheny has surrendered. The Battle of Pittsburgh is almost over..."

"Surrendered?! But all the men will be killed!"

"They know! They did it to save the lives of the women!" Cindy sobbed. "And we did nothing! I feel like shit!"

"What could we do?! The time loop dictates the Women's Freedom Movement must win the war. It would be impossible to stop this! Truly impossible!"

"That doesn't make it less painful! I FEEL LIKE SHIT!" Cindy screamed and threw her body down next to Jim, slamming her fist into a pillow.

Jim reached up and gently stroked her head. They both said nothing for a long while. Jim finally sighed and whispered, "So Pittsburgh has fallen."

Cindy shrugged. "Just about. The Equalists still have some irregulars in the center city, down at the point by the three rivers, but their position is hopeless. And it's not just Pittsburgh..."

Jim nodded. "Yeah. The entire Ohio Valley is now wide open to the WFM First Army. The Equalists are sitting ducks. Their northern front is collapsing too. I think the WFM Third Army will push them out of Canada completely by summer."

"Yes... There's no escape for them. They'll be encircled, probably somewhere in the American Midwest. The Equalists are warning they'll use their atomics if the WFM pushes for complete extermination."

Jim shuddered, "Hell... Think they will?"

"Yeah... This time I think they will. I think I would..."

"It won't save them. Just for revenge?"

Cindy gritted her teeth. "Why not?"

Jim sighed. "And yet, the time loop implies the WFM wins. Somehow Earth survives intact..."

They settled into another long spell of silence. Cindy returned to asking Jim to couple with her, stroking his penis and giving his shaft quick, light jerks with her hand. She reached over and kissed him and laughed without humor. "I saw you and Isabelle monitoring Aina this morning. I take it your observations were more pleasant?" Jim shuddered and said nothing. Cindy was suddenly alarmed. "Hell! Something bad happen on Aina too?"

The arctic home of Jim, Cindy, and Isabelle now had extensive facilities for monitoring events both on Earth and Aina. Radio signals from Earth could be picked both from their arctic home and their connection in West Virginia.

On Aina, Jim was delighted several years ago when the Hopewell connected the lower levels of Spirit House to their internet servers at Sparta. Mayoni's trick of phased- shadow handshaking to steal data was openly described on the Aina web, and Jim and Isabelle had used the technique to be a hidden presence on their internet. Anything loaded onto servers connected to the Aina web was available to them.

"Not exactly Aina..." Jim whispered and then looked at Cindy. "You deserve to know. Isabelle and I were watching the noontime news report on Aina. They were showing a replay of a big fountain dedication this morning, where they're going to build Athens. Such artistry! It was very beautiful. Isabelle was really enjoying herself. And then she noticed that the sys-ops at Sparta had loaded another hundred terabytes of their Earth data onto their web..."

"Yeah. Go on..."

"Isabelle started downloading some new movies for us. I started going through the new archives. We finally have access now to news reports from August 2009."

Cindy's ears picked up immediately. "Wonderful! I always wondered what the world thought of my disappearance! Did I get much press?"

"As a matter of fact, quite a bit. With your family's wealth, the police were sure you were kidnapped. The FBI traced you to Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, and then you just vanished!"

"Yeah! I sure did!"

Jim frowned. "Gosh, I wish I could talk to A'moth again. It's been four years now. She and I had a theory. She had a safe house at Pine Bluffs. We think she might have teleported just as bolt of lightning hit nearby, in August of 2009. Our conjecture was that chance coincidence deflected enough temporal torsion from her jump to twist open the Nebraska channel for you. You and Havika entered Antelope Freeway simultaneously, Havika the instant before Aina reset of the time-loop. The coincidence is unbelievable..."

Cindy smiled. "I remember all this. I don't believe it! Isabelle once said nothing is a coincidence inside a time loop."

"She did say that, didn't she? Issie and I are still arguing the subtle points of that..."

"But it wasn't really Antelope Freeway at first, was it?"

"No, that was Havika's idea. He understood the physics of what was happening, how a quantum shadow channel could skip and reenter the time loop out of synch. He thought up the design for the Freeway to give us some time to adjust. Things were so fluid back then..."

Cindy looked puzzled. "Fluid?"

"Easy to push around, easy to dream the structure, the reality..." Jim sighed. "At least I used to think so. Remember Charlotte?"

"Of course! And when we have a daughter for real, that will be her name, right?"

"Sure."

Cindy had a playful look on her face. "... and Charles for a boy!"

"What?! Are you joking?"

Cindy laughed. "Yes!"

"Great! Because my heart is set on Benedict!"

"What?! Oh!!" Jim playfully stroked Cindy's labia. They both laughed for a while. "I remember Jim, how we used to be able to change our ages, within the dream..."