Chapter 35
Outside is a sea of blackness punctuated by bright dots, stars, planets, galaxies, light years away. The space where I am sitting is white.
Alone in this outpost, I feel energized and empowered by the boundless possibilities lying before me. The view is foreign and familiar at once.
I’ve been here before, this used to be home, or something I could almost call home. I stand up and approach the window. From this new angle I notice there’s a ship secured to the walls of the station.
It’s my ship.
It’s the ship I had seen myself rediscovering with my brother and Arthur in a long gone time.
For how long have I been alone in the empty space? How did I readjust to other humans after this isolation, exhilarating and crushing at once?
As I ask myself these questions I press a button, instinctively, without knowing why.
“Arthur will answer the call in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 seconds. You will speak to Arthur in 0 seconds,” a female voice clearly enunciates, and Arthur’s face appears on the window. His room, as white as mine, is an oxymoron against the infinite blackness of space.
“Why did you not call me earlier?” he asks.
“Because I just got here…I don’t fully remember, or know…” I begin to fumble.
“Do you want to see me? There’s something I must show you,” he tells me.
“Yes, I do want to see you. I really do,” I say, meaning every word, and Arthur steps out of the image.
“It’s this easy?” I ask, laughing and crying at once.
Arthur observes me inquisitively.
“Are you feeling fine?” he asks.
I wonder if he recalls nothing of what happened to me, to us. The question burns on my lips, but I wipe the tears away and smile.
“I’m fine. What did you want to show me?” I ask.
“I happened to tune on a frequency shifted by 3.2 eons from our current frequency, and I found something that puzzled me. It seems to concern us. I’d call it a clever prank if only I didn’t have the feeling that it’s actually true,” Arthur starts and pauses.
“Come on Arthur, don’t play the mystery man,” I reply impatiently.
“Ok,” he says, producing a pin-sized device from his pocket.
He places it on the bench and says, “Frequency ‘o’, 3 dot 2 dot shift dot eon dot local.”
The light of the room dims, and the iced whiteness of the walls turns into a mellow cream colour, and an instant later the room is populated by a scenery of the past. My past. Our past.
I see myself holding a flag dominated by an owl, surly, huge, his long claws tight on a book I remember seeing.
Arthur is beside me, and Matt and Wilhelm, and a crew of no more than a hundred soldiers, some mounted, some on foot.
A cloud of dust materializes from a far-away distance, and I wait.
I am not afraid but tense, knowing I should not trust who will meet the other Iris I am seeing. I’d want to ask the other Iris what is happening, and for an instant she seems to sense my presence and looks up at the sky.
The cloud thickens, becomes larger, and at last I see the face of the enemy. I smile carelessly before recomposing my face into an expressionless mask.
Ludwig is carrying a flag dominated by two swords, larger than my owl, crossed over a book sliced in half.
Beside him is the queen, the woman who once married my father the king and who was never my mother.
Behind them is an army of no less than a thousand soldiers, all mounted.