Broken Dreams (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 5) (22 page)

He looked disappointed but took the seat. “I’m glad you feel better. You look great, not sick at all.”

“That’s very nice of you, even if it isn’t true. My hair feels matted to my head, and I’ve got mud under my fingernails. And I have a bun in the oven, and it’s not agreeing with me.”

He smiled with too much adoration for Mara’s taste, causing her to squirm. She made a show of adjusting her pillows, punching them, shifting them against the headboard, just to buy time to decide how to deal with this guy. He must see her as something other than his pregnant fiancée. “You need to understand one thing before we talk,” she said.

He gazed at her, looking too solicitous.

“Within a week or two, I will go back to the place where I belong, and the girl you are engaged to will return here. And you know the first thing she’ll ask when she returns?”

He shrugged and shook his head. “No. What?”

“She will ask you about me. Oh, she might be subtle about it at first, but she’ll ask you questions like,
What was the other Mara like? What did you guys talk about? Did she look different than me? What was it like to be around her?
What did you guys do when you were together?
But you know what she’s really trying to find out?”

“Whether I liked you more than her probably.”

“Not probably. So when those questions come, you better be able to answer them honestly—how you told me what the hell is happening here so you could get your Mara back as soon as possible. Understand?”

All affection seemed to melt from his face. He sat up a straighter and said, “I think so.”

“Great, now explain why there’s another person growing inside me,” she said. She shook her head. “No, that’s not right. I think I know why. Dad explained all the perpetuity stuff, so I get the motivation for wanting to have a child. What I want to know is
how
the child ended up inside me.”

“It’s the clothes, mostly the pants, but I think the vest is part of it too since its made of the same material,” he said.

“The pants and vest made me pregnant?”

He shook his head. “That’s not exactly right. The child is growing within the clothing itself. Think of it as a womb that you can slip on.”

Mara looked down at the leatherlike pieces on her body, aghast. “That’s even stranger than I expected, although I can’t recall
what
I expected. Why on earth would Mara make a removable womb? Not that it wouldn’t be appealing to a weary pregnant woman.”

“It’s kind of complicated.”

“Try me.”

“About a year ago, around the time Mara and I began seeing each other, she got frustrated because she wasn’t making progress on a solution to perpetuity—on how to make this realm continue beyond her life. She tried all kinds of things in the lab with the Chronicle, but nothing worked. She couldn’t find a substance that would bestow the characteristics of life to the stuff that makes up this realm. It looked hopeless until she began to dream.”

“Dream? What kind of dreams?”

“No, you don’t understand. She
dreamed
. It was miraculous that she dreamed at all. People here don’t dream.”

“Really? I guess that would be like dreaming you had a dream, or something like that,” Mara said. “What was the significance of dreaming? Why is that so important?”

“At first she was blown away by the fact she had experienced dreaming. Later she wrote down details of her dreams in a journal because sometimes she would forget them.” He glanced around the room. “The journal is around here somewhere.”

“I’ll look for it later. Go ahead. Did she tell you what she saw in these dreams?”

“Yes. The physical world. She started out in her receptacle, but she could leave it, walk right through it. After leaving the receptacle, she could see her biological body inside the tube. It was like she was a ghost, haunting the real world. For weeks she had the same dream every night, and each time she’d venture farther from the repository, out into the world. That’s when she realized the world she saw in her dreams wasn’t something created by her subconscious. That world had too many details to be faked. She ran across people she’d never met. Oregon City had buildings that weren’t there before she transitioned. Things looked different but the same—just the changes you would expect after being in a receptacle for seven years. She was crossing over into the physical world. It wasn’t just a dream.”

“All right. She could go from this realm into the physical one. Having moved between realms myself, I can wrap my mind around that,” Mara said. “What happened next?”

“Once she realized she was crossing over, she wondered if she could isolate substances there, substances she could bring here.”

“To make the wearable womb.”

Bruce frowned at her. “You are more sarcastic and skeptical than my Mara.”

“Do you find that appealing?” she asked.

“No, not really.”

“Correct answer. Now she wanted to get stuff from over there to over here. That doesn’t sound doable, but, given the circumstances, I have to suppress my innate skepticism and say she pulled it off.”

“She never doubted it could be done. Have you heard the Inception Tale?”

“Yes. Little Mara had a flower her father gave her, and, when she went into stasis, she infused the undifferentiated steam with life and created this realm. Right?”

“You don’t tell it with the reverence it deserves, but you’ve got the basic facts straight. The important detail is that the flower from the physical world was the catalyst for the genesis of this realm. So it was already proven that things from the physical world could be brought into ours. Follow?”

“That brings up a question. Do the plants and animals in this realm reproduce?” she asked.

“Yes, they do. If they didn’t, they would die out.”

“But the people can’t?”

“Not yet. You would be the first person to give birth here.”

“I’ve got news for you, buddy. I will not be in this outfit when it’s time for delivery—I can promise you that. Continue with your story. What did she do next?”

“Mara realized whatever she carried with her would cross over to the physical realm—be part of the dream, if you will. So she took sample containers with her, wondering if the reverse were true. After all, the flower her father gave her came from the physical world. It took several attempts, but she eventually discovered she could transport physical material into the container by visualizing it. That sounds crazy. Doesn’t it?”

“Not as crazy as you might think,” she said, “from my perspective.”

“She said something about matter acting differently there, something about it breaking up into tiny cubes, instead of steam like it does here. That make sense?” he asked.

“Actually yes.” She nodded to encourage him to continue. “She found a way to get things from there to here.”

“At first she’d come back with metal or plastic or glass, things she could experiment with in her lab. Over time she wondered if she could do the same with people—samples from people, like tissue samples.”

Mara grimaced.

“Just hair and skin samples, microscopic really. Just scrapings of those tiny cubes.”

“Pixels. She was collecting pixels from the physical realm.”

“What?”

Mara waved her hand, dismissing the observation. “Go ahead.”

“Over time she experimented with the Chronicle, imbuing undifferentiated steams from this realm with the physical samples she took from her own biological body.”

“And what happened?”

“Nothing. It didn’t work. After a few weeks of frustration, I made a joke about this realm not being big enough for another Mara, and she sort of got excited. After more research, she determined that replicating someone already here would not work. But creating a unique person might. So she mixed and matched samples, one from her body, another from mine. Eventually she had a living human embryo growing in one of those microcosms she visits using the Chronicle.”

“How do these clothes fit into the picture? Why didn’t she implant the embryo into her own womb?” Mara asked.

Bruce shook his head. “It wouldn’t work. Earlier she discovered that, whenever she touched the sample from her body in the physical world, there would be a tiny spark, and the sample would disappear.”

“That makes sense.”

“It does? She could never find the cause of the spark.”

“If you come into direct contact with your counterpart—or even your counterpart’s skin cells—the one out of place is blown back to where they belong. At least we think that’s how it works. I’ve never confirmed it,” she said.

“Wow. I should write that down. She would love to know that.”

“Since she couldn’t carry the baby herself, she came up with this wearable womb concept. How does it work?” Mara asked.

“I’m not sure, to be honest with you. Once she thought she was on the right track and that establishing perpetuity in this realm was possible, she didn’t take the time to explain the details. One day she announced she had solved the problem and that we were going to have a baby. That was the day before she disappeared.”

“Man, I’d like to know how this thing works,” she said, slapping her palms on the sides of her pants legs.

“She might have recorded the details in her journal. Like I said, it’s around here somewhere.”

“Okay. I’ll snoop for it. She’s got it tucked away somewhere in here or maybe in the steam lab,” she said. “You know, you guys got lucky that she came up with this odd wearable womb thing. If not, you might have lost the baby when she disappeared.”

The journal—more a book of notes and reminders than a personal diary—had been tucked into the corner of the dresser’s top drawer next to the closet. Mara took it out and slid the drawer closed. Tired of being in bed, she sat in the chair Bruce had abandoned when he’d finished filling her in and excused himself to return to the fabrication shop.

Flipping through the pages and scanning them, Mara realized her counterpart loved working in the lab as much as Mara loved her job at Mason’s Fix-It, only with much more seriousness and intensity. The difference was the gravity of their work. If Mara failed at her job, someone might not be able to make toast or shine their bowling ball. If her counterpart failed, her world may cease to exist. It made Mara feel frivolous in a way.

Twenty minutes later someone knocked at the door. Without looking up from the journal, Mara called for whoever it was to enter. Ping walked in, closely followed by Sam.

“Thought we would check in and see how you are doing,” Ping said.

Mara tapped the page she stared at. “This girl figured out how to bring new life—new human life—into this realm. It’s amazing the things she tried to get it to work.”

They sat on the edge of the bed, facing the chair in which Mara sat. “Your brother was worried and wanted to come see you.”

“Not so much worried as wondering what all the serious expressions and furtive whispering was about,” Sam said. “No one would tell me what was going on.”

“I’m pregnant,” Mara said, still looking down at the journal.

Sam’s face went blank. He turned to Ping, who nodded.

“Jeez, that Bruce guy doesn’t waste any time, does he? What are you gonna tell Mom? You know she’s not gonna be too happy if one of us comes home with another grandchild without warning,” he said.

Mara looked up. To Ping she said, “You know what this other Mara did? She created a whole new realm inside these clothes whose sole purpose is to gestate a baby. Can you even fathom that?” She tucked a thumb under her vest and pulled it out from her chest. “It’s actually a wearable womb, just like Bruce said. It took incredible ingenuity to invent this. She will actually do it, perpetuate human life in this realm. Their children will be unique individuals no longer tied to those bodies in the receptacles. They won’t simply be thoughts or dreams anymore.”

Ping looked dubious.

“What’s so crazy about that? She created this realm. You accept that,” she said.

“Yes, but, without Consciousness, there can be no life, not
real
life as you and I would recognize it.”

Mara held up the journal. “That’s just it. She learned to cross over to the physical realm, and she returned with samples of their bodies. Essentially she brought Consciousness into this realm, and she’s creating new human life.” Her face went pale.

Like a vulture smells carrion. That’s what Prado said.

Ping leaned closer. “What is it?”

Mara forced a smile and shook her head. “Nothing. Just a little wave of wooziness.” She shifted her gaze to her brother who looked confused. “What’s eating you?”

“You’ve lost your body. That’s another thing Mom will freak out about—you haven’t told her that you’re a robot. And how does that work? Do robots have babies?”

“I’m not the one who will be having the baby,” she said.

He flopped back on the bed. “Right. You’re pregnant but you’re not having a baby. Ping? Is this making any sense to you?”

Ping patted his knee. “I think your sister is telling you that she doesn’t intend to be in this realm long enough to deliver. Presumably her counterpart will have returned and will continue wearing the, um …”

“The womb,” Mara said. “She’ll come back, carry the baby to term and establish perpetuity for this realm.” She closed the book with a snap. “When’s dinner?”

“My counterpart said he would bring your dinner up in about half an hour,” Ping said.

She shook her head. “No, I’m going stir-crazy in this bedroom. I want to eat at a table like a normal person. Besides I’ve got a bone to pick with the other Mr. Ping.”

* * *

Almost two hours later Mara, Sam, her father and the two Pings sat around the dinette table in the kitchen, finishing up their dinner. During the meal Mara had explained as much as she could to her father about the other Mara’s efforts to assure perpetuity while Ping’s counterpart avoided eye contact with her.

“I can’t understand how she could get so far down the road with her experiments and not say anything. I’m a doctor for heaven’s sake. Did it ever occur to her that I might know a little something about biology and procreation?” Dr. Lantern said.