Of Crimson Indigo

The roar of a double sonic boom rattled the old woman's nerves, alerting Crimson to the truth of the matter. She was in planetfall, trapped in an alternate reality, faced with the prospect of her companion having a nervous breakdown. Her host had grown old in an instant; her body fading from the luster of its youth, while her skin wrinkled discoloring in the course of a moment. The beauty of her face withered into a pale, drawn shell capable of shattering a mirror. And, if that wasn't bad enough, there was an incongruity about her existence, as if she was a disembodied spirit. She had no more control over her symbiotic companion than she had over her own body. They were simply traveling companions, drawn to one another like adversaries facing off in the middle of a dirty, mid-western street. Yet, her condition wasn't permanent. She could feel it … she had to survive long enough to figure out what was happening to her, make adjustments for her host's old age, and find a way to restore the past. Needless-to-say, the days quickly passed into months, and Crimson couldn't help but placed the blame for her dilemma squarely on the shoulders of her beloved Indigo, holding him in contempt. She loathed the man with every breath, cursed him even in her sleep. Every time she imagined the past it was a miracle he existed in her thoughts at all. The symbiont was determined to deliberate a solution, put an end to the bounty hunter the first contract she could. She fancied the thought of it; even envied her counterpart's naiveté about the subject. There had to be some speck of information that eluded her on transcending universes; at least, something to reunite her with the past she remembered. Crimson knew it was only a matter of time before Krydal's eyes would glaze over. There was nothing in her foreseeable future to stop the aging process, and there was only so much protection her exoskeleton armor could do to compensate for the loss of her motor skills. Krydal's vision was fading through the range of blurry to cataract blindness. The symbiont had to do something to get them home and soon. Otherwise, her host would go blind, and eventually die. Krydal loved the idea of sitting in the wreckage of an old ground hauler and staring out at the rain. It was the perfect ritual for an old woman, but the vehicle was showing signs of rust, disintegrating twice as fast as her exoskeleton combat armor. The temporal zone obviously moved in cycles, crossing the convergence in waves of distortion just beyond where Krydal propped her feet up on a hunk of twisted metal, sipping on the canister of Terra-root tea, she had collected earlier in the day. The rainy season was a constant reminder of her predicament; she was outside the normal patterns of life, imprisoned in the body of a withering old woman. The symbiont hated the idea of it, but she had no choice but to continue. Her survival depended on her companion. She needed to give her host a reason to exist; even appease her lifestyle with the germ of an idea that could blossom into a full-fledged obsession. Keeping the old woman active was just as important as keeping her elderly companion productive. She had to put some life back in her step. The old lady's trek across the temporal zone took her to the edge of the convergence each and every day. It was like a recurring memory, always complacent like a record skipping a beat, returning to the point of origin in order to start over again. She believed in God, even the reality of the universe being alive somehow. There were signs. Small hand-like foot prints in the sandy contours of the reddish-orange soil. Apparently, someone else had taken refuge in her little sanctuary, even attempted to plant the seeds of life on the barren streets of her uncultivated imagination. For some ungodly reason, Terra-root was the most abundant thing on the planet; at least, on her side of the boundary. She often dedicated a few words in hope of finding a savior. Yet, the futures remained unobtainable, if not impossible to cross. She encouraged the wind, watching the long branches of the Terra-root bush float in the morning breeze. How they kept equal distance from the edges of the boundary, remaining visible between the layers was anyone's guess. As far as Krydal was concerned, the universe had deliberately disposed of her. Displacing her to stand in the fury of an artificial future, manufactured out of the nightmares of some unseen generation of trespassers she could only feel the presence of. The gray haired assassin had no recourse but to jot down her memoirs: a last will and testament to the absurd she kept hidden in a tattered journal made out of scraps of cloth and weathered bark pulled from a Terra-root bush. The cosmos taunted her as if she existed in two places simultaneously. Understanding the consequences of her existence was a daunting task; even ridiculous. The thought of her facsimile on the other side of the boundary, managing to excavate tiny bits of treasure from the remains of her life with her beloved Indigo was more than the elderly corporate runner could fathom. Fifty-eight years had passed since the incident drove her to the brink of madness. The unbearable loneliness sent her into a pattern of reflection that quickly ended in a crazed mishmash of biotechnology and living matter, which kept her mind active and her human side alive. She wondered if the voice in her head was some safety mechanism meant to keep her mind occupied. It was possible her existence was manufactured in some unfathomable dream state. She believed Indigo's life continued to resonate beyond the boundary, but she was wrong. The Firehawk was gone; her crew lost in an irreversible accident that blinded her to the truth. The future had reset itself; twisted her existence in an altercation of both time and space that deposited her on the most godforsaken rock in the universe––the planet Sodin.