******
In the darkness of her quarters on the night of the Sea Wolf’s planned raid, Laina seemed to be rocking. She felt a sensation of dizziness and confusion. She focused her vision on anything she could discern in the darkness, but all she could see were those dim circles that materialized in the blackness.
To Laina, the rocking felt as if she were adrift on the ocean. The sensation brought back some brief images of her last time on Earth, traveling the seas—a very, very long time ago. A time when she was actually free to walk the city, visit the pubs, interact with her friends and family, and even sail the oceans. A time when she did not have to look over her shoulder and wonder if the friends she confided in were really out to kill her. A time when she was an honorable member of society, and not a criminal.
But the sensation could not be real—she was on a spaceship, not the ocean. It was a lucid dream perhaps… or the whiskey she drank before collapsing into bed.
Then Laina realized she was on her side—and it was uncomfortable, as she preferred her to lie on her back. Her mind commanded her body to turn over, but it did not respond. As she shut her eyes, sudden panic filled her as she realized that she could not move her limbs—was she paralyzed?
She opened her eyes. A world engulfed in bright light and flame replaced the darkness. Within the light, she could see debris of twisted metal floating, motionless as if frozen. She tried to tilt her head to get a better view, but only her eyes responded to her will. Using her limited view of her surroundings, she tried to take in the scene.
Laina realized that the brightness was from a fire or explosion that engulfed everything around her. However, the debris and fire should have been moving—instead all of it was paused in mid-motion. Her vision drifted to the wall where most of her paintings had hung, but she saw only flames.
A few seconds later, she began to feel her chin involuntarily tilt downward and her back arch forward very slowly. To her horror, she could see debris and fire piercing through her body—yet she felt no pain.
With the new view, she witnessed the macabre scene of her death. The fire charred the flesh almost completely off her body, to reveal blackened bone underneath.
In that moment, Laina knew she was dying and that these would be the last thoughts she would have. It was all surreal to her—she did not try to figure out what happened in those last moments, nor why. She would accept her fate.
Her thoughts instead reached out to the husband she had lost. She pictured them together, as they were in those happy years: smiling, dancing and laughing together. It brought a sense of peace over her as she waited for the inevitable silencing of her death throes, but the scene would not end.
Laina began to realize that that although everything seemed completely still, the scene around her in fact did creep along slowly, as if through a slow-motion playback of a movie.
Her body began to tilt slowly on its own, allowing her a better view of everything. The flames and debris began to creep away from her. She noticed that the entire scene lacked any color; everything was black and white and seemed to lack any fine details. It was as if the entire thing was a very poor quality video being played back to her.
As the experience continued, she could see the fire retreat away from her and the debris disappear into the walls. When the debris and fire finally vanished, she found that she was in her quarters.
The feeling in her body returned and she could move her limbs again. She looked down and could see no burns, no exposed bone, no fire consuming her—she was in her nightclothes unharmed.
Suddenly, everything went dark and she was out in a black space, with nothing around her at all. She floated aimlessly in the black void, finally able to move her limbs. Swimming around in it, she attempted to gain some control over the situation.
Laina looked into the black silence and wondered if, perhaps, all those missed opportunities to go to church with her family were a mistake—was this hell… or purgatory?
She tried to focus her sight on something—anything—near or distant, which could define exactly where she was. As hard as she tried, she saw nothing. Just Laina alone in the dark… forever. To be haunted by her thoughts, her regrets. Eventually, she knew, these thoughts would devolve from sane coherence to insanity. She would lose her mind, alone, in the dark… forever. This would indeed be hell.
“Is this the end?” Laina said aloud.
To her surprise, a voice—a female voice—came back to answer her: “Yes, in a manner of speaking,” the voice said. “But not the end you are referring to.”
“So… am I dead?”
“You were dead a moment ago,” she said. “But at this particular moment, you are sleeping in your quarters.”
Just then, she could see her surroundings slowly change. Stars began to materialize, a nearby star gave off a bright luminescence, and a hazy gray planet began to form against the backdrop of space. Floating nearby she could make out the metallic, disc-like shape of the Sea Wolf. Within the cracks of its hull, she could see bright ignitions of flame erupt and vent out into space.
A small fleet of warships encircled the Sea Wolf, pelting her with munitions. They looked like they could have been Enforcement ships.
Closer to the planet, she could make out the remnants of a small ship convoy, with a group of smaller attack fighters engaged in a melee of their own. Oddly, she noticed that again everything lacked any color whatsoever; everything was still black and white.
“What is this?” Laina said.
“It is a decoding of space-time, as it will conclude in one hour and twenty minutes. I apologize for your death; I had to play it back for you at the end of your computation.”
“Death? That was real? I really died?”
“If this stream of events is allowed to continue, then that would be the conclusion.”
“Who are you? How are you able to do this? And why?”
“I know you have many questions. Unfortunately, I do not have many coherent answers. In fact, your linear thoughts might bring some order to the chaos of non-connected realities that I see.
“To answer your first question, I do not actually have a proper human name, but as I interact with humans I have come to be called Chorus. I reproduced these events by latching onto the relevant stream of realities within the entropy that formed my own end. It brought me to you in this snapshot of now.
“And the last question, why: I do not have enough time to answer that one completely. Let us just say that our destinies have intertwined and it is critical that we interact to preserve the future. What is your name this time?”
“This time? Uhh, my name is Laina.”
“Hello, Laina,” Chorus said. “I am sorry for this, but your future is part of a set of events that could shape the future of many things, the least of which is your death and mine.
“As I said I do not have much time, so you must listen carefully. If this set of events were left to unfold on their current inertia, you will wake up in one hour, in your quarters, just in time to watch yourself die as your ship is annihilated. However, I have introduced a calculation of my own into the entropic soup that will allow you to wake up minutes before this event.
“I do not know precisely how much time you will have, but once you wake up, you must not engage the convoy until after the other pirates have taken the cargo. If you do not do this, you and your crew will die; and I will be forced to destroy everything and repeat the loop.
“This is all you need to know for now. I hope that this time you succeed.”
“What? Wait a minute,” Laina said. “What do you mean this time? What pirates? What the hell are you?”
The scene around her began to move in reverse. The fires around the Sea Wolf subsided; the ships encircling her disappeared into the stealth shroud. The destroyed convoy was intact and moving backward along its course.
“I am releasing you to the present,” Chorus said. “If all goes well, we will so
on meet.”
The entire scene went dark and Laina’s excited thoughts and questions became hazy. Before losing consciousness, the voice reverberated into her thoughts.
The voice was… familiar to her—someone from a long time ago, it seemed. However, before she could make the connection, she began to lose her lucidity. Then Laina fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.