Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

stood on dusty ground, beside the crystal waters of a canal. A
malevolent sliver of red sun poked above the horizon, but the air was
still and pleasantly cool.
    ’So I lived through it.’
    ’Sort of,’ said Chem.
    ’Earth has gone,’ Mela said. ’Sent off into the future. But Mars
is still here.’
    ’My parents - ’
    ’They are coming.’ She looked more serious. ’It will be difficult
for them. For you.’
    He looked at his hand. ’I’m a Virtual.’
    ’Yes. You’re a Virtual.’
    ’My mother won’t be able to touch me. My parents will feel as if
they have lost me.’
    ’And you have lost them. But you have found us.’ Impulsively she
reached for his hands - and held them. Her palms were warm and
soft.
    He smiled. ’I told you I’d come back,’ he said to Chem.
    Chem grinned.
    ’You took your time,’ Tod said.
    ’Listen,’ Mela said. ’Can you hear them?’
    Symat glanced around. ’Hear what?’
    ’Not outside. Inside.’ She tapped her chest.
    When he listened inwardly, he could hear a distant murmuring,
voices merging like a sea. It was the Conclave, the community of
minds that spanned Sol system and now embraced him, a community of
which he would be a part for ever. ’Yes,’ he said. ’Yes, I hear
them.’
    ’So what do you want to do now?’
    ’I don’t know - ’ A child’s shoe hit him in the chest.
    Tod had thrown it. ’You can save the world, but you can’t catch
me!’
    ’Oh, yes?…’
    The four of them ran, and their laughter echoed from the banks of
the drying Martian canal.
     
    So Earth died but did not die. So Symat died, but did not die.
    I did not die, of course.
    How could I die? I had completed this project, but I have
completed projects before, and history just keeps on piling up,
whatever I do. So here I am, in the dark, alone.
    Waiting for what comes next.
    I remember so much, yet so little. I have seen mankind rise and
fall - quite a story! But what stays with me are the faces, the
endless torrent of faces, from Symat the ragamuffin whom I loved, to
Symat the idealistic messiah-boy whom I bred to die. Each face
blossoms like a flower and fades to dust, leaving me alone once more.
Each face is a betrayal. Yet they are all I have.
    Sometimes it feels as if it has all been a dream, from the instant
I put Gemo Cana’s pill into my mouth. Perhaps in a moment I will wake
to find myself under the shining domes of Conurbation 5204. And then,
with my cadre siblings, I will run, laughing, in Sol’s yellow
light.