Chapter 33 snippet

Kind of starts to give a feel for who-or what-Kate Almir really is...


Opening her eyes, she saw a gray mist before her. As she watched, she saw the woman from her dream appear. Wearing a blue uniform, the woman’s right shoulder bore a patch. A symbol of a flag, with red and white stripes, the left corner full of a blue sea with white stars drew her attention.

What in the world is going on? Kate thought, pinching herself to make sure she wasn’t asleep.

“You’re not asleep,” Brown said as she approached.

For the first time, Kate noted the NASA uniform the other woman was wearing. Wasn’t that an old earth space agency? Yeah, they were, the National Air and Space Administration, funded by the former United States of America! How did all this tie in?

“If I’m not dreaming,” she said, snorting. “Then why are you here?”

“Because we need to talk,”

Kate stifled a laugh, looking at the other woman. They needed to talk? About what, she wondered. Were they going to discuss how she was losing her mind? That wouldn’t be a very long, or pleasant, conversation to say the least!

“I don’t know what you want to talk about,” she said. “Since you’re a figment of my imagination.”

“Oh if I was,” Brown said. “Then things wouldn’t be so deathly important.”

Sighing, she sat her head in her hands. Of all times to start losing her mind, she thought, snorting. Everyone and their brother wanted her dead, and her psyche was trying to take a vacation. Was there anything else that could possibly go wrong?

“This can’t possibly be happening…” Kate said, groaning.

“This is real, Katherine,” Brown said. “And the sooner you realize your role in this, the better you will be.”

“If this is real,” Kate said. “Why am I speaking to you? And better yet: who the hell are you?”

“As I said,” Brown said. “I am you, yet I’m not you.”

“That doesn’t answer ****,”

Brown shook her head as she sat down beside Kate. Reaching out, she touched the side of Kate’s face. Kate jerked back from the other woman’s touch. That was real, she realized, looking at Brown.

“It’s all real,” Brown said.

“If this is all real,” she challenged the other woman. “Then what is all this about?”

“A part of a test, Katherine,”

“‘Katherine,” Kate snorted. “No one calls me that.”

Brown surprised her with a laugh. A heart sound, it soothed Kate’s nerves. Taking several seconds to pass, Brown looked at her with the same blue eyes. It was disconcerting to see her own eyes staring back at her, Kate mused, and now she knew how people feel when she gave them that stare!

“You’re very willful,” Brown said. “Very much like myself.”

“I know your name,” Kate said. “But who are you really?”

“I was a astronaut in the twenty-first century,” Brown said. “And on the moon I made a discovery that would have changed the world.”

“What happened?”

“I was hunted down and killed due to it,” Brown said, simply.

“Why?”

“It’s not time for you to know,” Brown said.

“You show up in twenty-first century clothing, looking like me,” she said, chuckling. “Telling me you were hunted down, and you want me to believe you. I swear I’ve got to be losing my mind!”

“You are not losing your mind,” Brown said. “You and I are one; we will be until the end of time.”

“How can that be?” Kate asked. “You’ve been dead for three hundred years!”

“Time isn’t a constant linear line,” Brown said.

“I don’t understand,”

“Think back to your physics,” Brown said.

“Time runs through different dimensions and we all fill the same space.”

“Huh?” Kate said. “Speak English,”

“You and I will be one until the end of time,” Brown said.

“That doesn’t make any sense,”

“It doesn’t,” Brown said. “Because you don’t know who-or what-you are.”

“Then enlighten me,” Kate said, fire in her eyes.

“You, as were I, are part of a wave, a warrior caste that appears in man’s periods of need,”

“Ah,” Kate said, sarcasm dripping. “You’re trying to tell me that I’m supposed to save everyone’s life!”

“That’s right,”

“Honey, I’m busy right now trying to save my own!” Kate chuckled without mirth.

“Just because you don’t believe something to be true,” Brown said. “Doesn’t make it less true.”

“Why do you say that?” Kate asked, staring into the other woman’s eyes.

“Because the truth remains whether or not you believe in it or not,”

“Lady,” Kate said, sighing. “I don’t know who-or what-you are but this is serious: If I don’t survive this encounter, then the entire Galaxy will be plunged into a evil darkness it may never emerge from.”

“Ever wondered why you’re the one who is in the position to save them?” Brown asked.

“Frankly no,” Kate said. “I’ve been too busy trying to stay alive to think about it.”

“It’s because you’re chosen,”

“I’m chosen?” Kate found herself laughing in cold, cynical waves. “Honey…I’m just a former gladiator slave.”

“As were we all,”

“Huh?” Kate looked at her funny. “What are you getting at?”

“Each of us have come from very humble beginnings,” Brown said. “It’s the way of our line.”

“‘Our line,’” Kate parroted. “You say that like I belong to it.”

“You do,”