I, Cassandra

66 | RYAN MADDOX

'I'm much older than that,' she says. Another soft smile.

This is me. For now.

'You didn't look the same as you do now back when you were on Kirula three billion years ago, did you?'

She shakes her head. 'Of course not, I had another form. I chose to be a mountain, it is different, no?'

I digest the absolute weirdness of that and decide not to go there.

'Then what is your natural state?' I nod at the spot where Mars just hovered. 'Show me.'

She smiles again. 'I'm afraid I shall have to disappoint you. It is impossible. I have no natural state. I am immanent.'

'Excuse me?'

'I just am. I am consciousness without form.'

It's too much. I can't process it. 'I need to sit down.'

She gestures towards a seat behind me I didn't see before. I wonder if she just 'manifested' it. I ease myself onto it gingerly, half expecting it to vanish. It holds.

'So,' I broach, feeling awkward as hell, 'are you God?'

She laughs, and it's quite beautiful. There is no mockery, only delight, which I assume was bought at the cost of my ignorance.

'There is no god,' she says at last. 'I am an anomaly, a piece of the universe that lost its way at the beginning of time and so I am here, between places. Just this, nothing more, nothing less.' She shrugs, elegant, and infuriatingly French. 'It is my fate, no?'

'How can you do it?' I ask, thinking of my own fate, of going on indefinitely and wanting it to end. 'How do you not go mad after all that time?'

'I am not like you,' she answers, 'I am enmeshed with the quantum field, time does not have the same meaning to me. Everything exists at once for me.'

'Jesus Christ.' I hold up my hand to make it stop. 'Just, please. No more.'

'Bien sûr,' she smiles, soft. 'So you have found me, at last.'

I pluck the key out of my pocket and hold it out to her. She takes it and sets it onto the glass surface where it glistens for a beat, turns to light, slips through the glass-like liquid and slides away into the threads of gold until it fades. I decide not to ask about that either.

'Why didn't you stop the cataclysm?'

'You saw what happened to Mars,' she says. 'I could not stop that.'

'Probably because you were a mountain,' I mutter.

She laughs again. 'Oui, but even so, I cannot stop what is meant to be. Nor can I see into the minds of others. I can only experience what is.'

'You did manage to protect what's above you though,' I roll my eyes up to the ceiling. 'Everything is still intact up there for a good few blocks.'

'Ah,' she scoffs, 'that is not me, but a little technology I picked up while I was in the outer spiral of Andromeda. I have learned a few tricks along the way.'

'Like hiding here and living out there as an avatar?'

'Exactamente.'

'How do you not age?'

She gives me an unreadable look laden with the weight of eternity. 'As I said, time does not apply to me.'

I think of Andromeda, two and half million light years away. 'Or distance, obviously.'

'Obviously,' she says. She lets out a little sigh. 'But enough chit chat, let us speak of what matters, no?

I brace myself for the worst. If she calls this chit chat, god only knows what matters to her.

'I have something of a confession to make.' She leans her hip against the edge of the glass and folds her arms over her chest. 'I have a soft spot for Mars, and Cassandra was my greatest hope that beautiful planet could live again. I wanted to be there, with her, when she brought it back to life. I wanted to walk on that planet for myself and see it through her eyes, as a guest. So during one of her days at the lab, I embedded a little of myself into her consciousness. Just a touch, a mere—'

I've stopped listening. I'm on my feet. 'How dare you.' My hands curl into fists. 'We are not your puppets.'

'It would benefit you to hear me out.'

'Fuck you,' I pull my arm back to strike her down, to wipe the smile off her face for good. She can go back to being a mountain for all I care.

She catches my fist and holds it in the air. Her strength is brutal. I sense she could crush my hand in a heartbeat. I hold still and wait.

Her eyes find mine. 'Cassandra is alive.'

'What?'

'And she is convinced you are gone. She has found another survivor.'

She lets me go. I take a step back. Blue is alive. Every second she is not with me, she believes she is alone. Anything could happen to her. I force myself to focus. I need facts.

'How can you know?'