Light comes up like the rising sun, falling across their legs, their torsos, their faces. I gasp. The one on the far right is clearly female. Her hair is dark, as is her skin. She’s wearing some sort of white tunic and a heavy gold necklace that lies across her collarbone and upper chest. The only things about her that look anything other than human are her eyes. They’re luminescent, as if lit from behind, and I don’t have a word for the color—not blue or gray or brown or green, but an incredible mixture of all and none.
Beside her is a man with long, graying blond hair and a thick beard. His shoulders and chest are muscled and broad, his arms enormous. He’s draped in shaggy furs. I half expect him to raise a massive hammer and roar that he is Thor, god of thunder. His eyes, like hers, are an eerie color I can’t identify. Too bright. Too deep.
On the far left is a thin, bent form wearing a dark robe with a cowl that’s pulled up over his head, the edges falling forward to hide his face. At least, I think it’s a him. . . .
I glance at Jackson. He’s staring at them, his expression giving nothing away.
“What do you see?” I ask, not sure why I do. I just get the feeling that the figures I’m seeing can’t be real. They’re too convenient, too much like something out of a movie.
“I see three women. One’s holding a spindle, one a measuring rod, and one a pair of shears.”
“Wha—” I look back toward the three figures and see nothing but the shadowy forms that first appeared on the shelf. “You saw the three Fates,” I say to Jackson.
“Because Mr. Shomper was talking about them in English.” He shrugs. “Last time, I saw three characters from a game I was playing. What do you see?”
“Cleopatra, Thor, and a monk.” I turn back to the three figures, anger and frustration making my tone sharp when I ask, “Why pretend to show me your faces? Why not just say no? How am I supposed to trust any answers you give me now?”
“You saw what you expected to see. We have already told you that we are the collective consciousness of those who came before. We have no true form now.”
“What did you look like when you were alive?”
“We looked like you.”
“Like me specifically?” Of course not. I hope they’ll miss the pinch of sarcasm in my tone.
“Like you. Like humans.”
Which explains why the hazy forms on the shelf and those in the endless rows of the stadium appear to have human forms, even though I can’t make out details of their features.
“Why teenagers? Why summon a bunch of unskilled kids to fight? To die? Why not adults? Why humans? Why not whatever”—I wave my hand, not sure how to express it—“whatever you are?”
“You are what we are. Our progeny, our hope. There are no others. We were the last of our kind, and you are what we salvaged, the promise for the future.”
There are no others. The horror of that assaults me. Complete genocide at the hands of the Drau. I say nothing because there’s nothing to say.
“Teenagers are ideal,” the Committee continues, smooth and unemotional, oblivious to the magnitude of what they have just imparted. Or maybe not oblivious. Maybe just accepting because there is no changing what has already been.
“Wait,” I jump in, my pulse too fast, my palms slick. “You can make us jump through time, forward and back. Why don’t you just go back and stop the Drau before they ever came to your planet?”
“You are here. You exist. We do not. We are gone.”
I try to understand that. I try to get how they can go back and have Richelle die seven months before she actually died, how they can make her live and fight for seven months after she was killed, but they can’t go back and fix things before the Drau destroyed their planet. I shake my head. My brain hurts. It’s impossible to make sense of this. But maybe that’s the answer. Maybe this whole getting pulled, jumping through time and space thing is so complicated that despite its advantages it has huge limitations as well. Or maybe their simple explanation, the statement that they are gone, is all it takes. They’re gone. They don’t technically exist. They can’t go back.
“Okay,” I say, holding up a hand, palm forward. I angle another glance at Jackson, wondering if he’s asked all these questions in the past, when he was first pulled, if he understood the answers any better than I do. He’s frozen in place, completely unmoving, not looking at me. Why won’t he look at me?
I swallow and go back to my original question. “Why teenagers?”
“Children are too young, too small, too weak. Adults have brains that exhibit fully formed neural connections. What you call getting pulled is far more difficult for them. Teenagers have valuable adult characteristics, but their brains are not yet fully wired in a set pattern. Adolescence is a time of profound growth and change for the human brain. The prefrontal cortex does not reach maturity until the middle of the third decade of human life.”
“You’re saying that a teenager’s brain is better than an adult’s? Don’t hear that often.”
“For the task at hand, yes. The adult response to a specific stimulus is generally more intellectual, more of a learned response. The teenager’s is more instinctual, and that is your strength.”
I turn to Jackson. He’s watching me, his expression taut and edgy. “On the last mission, you told me to close my eyes right before the flash, but I already knew to do that. You told me to get down, but I was already dropping. I have the same instincts you do.”
Beside her is a man with long, graying blond hair and a thick beard. His shoulders and chest are muscled and broad, his arms enormous. He’s draped in shaggy furs. I half expect him to raise a massive hammer and roar that he is Thor, god of thunder. His eyes, like hers, are an eerie color I can’t identify. Too bright. Too deep.
On the far left is a thin, bent form wearing a dark robe with a cowl that’s pulled up over his head, the edges falling forward to hide his face. At least, I think it’s a him. . . .
I glance at Jackson. He’s staring at them, his expression giving nothing away.
“What do you see?” I ask, not sure why I do. I just get the feeling that the figures I’m seeing can’t be real. They’re too convenient, too much like something out of a movie.
“I see three women. One’s holding a spindle, one a measuring rod, and one a pair of shears.”
“Wha—” I look back toward the three figures and see nothing but the shadowy forms that first appeared on the shelf. “You saw the three Fates,” I say to Jackson.
“Because Mr. Shomper was talking about them in English.” He shrugs. “Last time, I saw three characters from a game I was playing. What do you see?”
“Cleopatra, Thor, and a monk.” I turn back to the three figures, anger and frustration making my tone sharp when I ask, “Why pretend to show me your faces? Why not just say no? How am I supposed to trust any answers you give me now?”
“You saw what you expected to see. We have already told you that we are the collective consciousness of those who came before. We have no true form now.”
“What did you look like when you were alive?”
“We looked like you.”
“Like me specifically?” Of course not. I hope they’ll miss the pinch of sarcasm in my tone.
“Like you. Like humans.”
Which explains why the hazy forms on the shelf and those in the endless rows of the stadium appear to have human forms, even though I can’t make out details of their features.
“Why teenagers? Why summon a bunch of unskilled kids to fight? To die? Why not adults? Why humans? Why not whatever”—I wave my hand, not sure how to express it—“whatever you are?”
“You are what we are. Our progeny, our hope. There are no others. We were the last of our kind, and you are what we salvaged, the promise for the future.”
There are no others. The horror of that assaults me. Complete genocide at the hands of the Drau. I say nothing because there’s nothing to say.
“Teenagers are ideal,” the Committee continues, smooth and unemotional, oblivious to the magnitude of what they have just imparted. Or maybe not oblivious. Maybe just accepting because there is no changing what has already been.
“Wait,” I jump in, my pulse too fast, my palms slick. “You can make us jump through time, forward and back. Why don’t you just go back and stop the Drau before they ever came to your planet?”
“You are here. You exist. We do not. We are gone.”
I try to understand that. I try to get how they can go back and have Richelle die seven months before she actually died, how they can make her live and fight for seven months after she was killed, but they can’t go back and fix things before the Drau destroyed their planet. I shake my head. My brain hurts. It’s impossible to make sense of this. But maybe that’s the answer. Maybe this whole getting pulled, jumping through time and space thing is so complicated that despite its advantages it has huge limitations as well. Or maybe their simple explanation, the statement that they are gone, is all it takes. They’re gone. They don’t technically exist. They can’t go back.
“Okay,” I say, holding up a hand, palm forward. I angle another glance at Jackson, wondering if he’s asked all these questions in the past, when he was first pulled, if he understood the answers any better than I do. He’s frozen in place, completely unmoving, not looking at me. Why won’t he look at me?
I swallow and go back to my original question. “Why teenagers?”
“Children are too young, too small, too weak. Adults have brains that exhibit fully formed neural connections. What you call getting pulled is far more difficult for them. Teenagers have valuable adult characteristics, but their brains are not yet fully wired in a set pattern. Adolescence is a time of profound growth and change for the human brain. The prefrontal cortex does not reach maturity until the middle of the third decade of human life.”
“You’re saying that a teenager’s brain is better than an adult’s? Don’t hear that often.”
“For the task at hand, yes. The adult response to a specific stimulus is generally more intellectual, more of a learned response. The teenager’s is more instinctual, and that is your strength.”
I turn to Jackson. He’s watching me, his expression taut and edgy. “On the last mission, you told me to close my eyes right before the flash, but I already knew to do that. You told me to get down, but I was already dropping. I have the same instincts you do.”
