“The ship?” Lili was the first to find her voice, shaking though it was in reaction to Jared’s statement.
Jared took another shaky breath of his own. “Just try to remember, though the visions are clearer, they’re still not chronological, and I only get pieces at a time. I have no way of knowing when anything I see actually happened,” he attempted to remind everyone. “Or even if it has actually happened yet, for sure.”
“Yeah, your visions are completely useless, like us being able to breathe here and then Lili getting pregnant. Duly noted,” Ian scoffed and then added a question. “So what did you see?”
All their eyes turned his way awaiting his answer as Jared swallowed hard again, attempting to find any way at all to even attempt to describe the pieces he had been shown. “I think it’s already happened, since it has been three months and all…”
Kyle just shook his head. “Visions of the past? How is that useful?”
“I don’t know, his visions of the future, what he could see of them,” Lili forced herself to add, “have been right. Maybe seeing the past means we’re supposed to do something about it, in that future? And the vision is just trying to tell him that?” she added her own speculation, attempting some hope.
“Before we try and decide that, can we get back to what did you actually see, anyway?” Ian interrupted impatiently.
Jared took another breath. “If it is the past, which I think it is,” he repeated, “then the ship isn’t in the sky anymore, after all,” he confessed quietly, his eyes moving automatically to Lili’s expected upset at the statement, as she was by far the closest of them all to what little family or friends they had all left behind on that ship.
“Not in the air, like how?” she managed to choke the question on all their lips out.
“How?” he asked, not really needing clarification as much as he needed to work up the strength to tell her of the things he didn’t honestly want to have to admit, himself, until the visions gave him no choice, that was.
“Like landed a few miles off and looking for us? Or something worse?” she whispered.
“If it landed a few miles off…I would be able to reach it,” Kyle interjected, casting his eyes toward the shack where his LU had been left with the rest of their more valuable belongings, as he had not much use for it anymore.
Jared simply looked down in concession, answering Lili’s earlier question by his silence alone. “So, something worse it is,” she sniffled as she turned away.
“Again, I say, what did you actually see?” Ian repeated with his usual lack of patience.
“No, you wouldn’t be able to reach it, not through the computer anyway. Not anymore,” Jared chose to attempt his own answer by answering Kyle’s statement first.
“Did it like blow up, or what?” Lili asked, the tears obvious in her voice.
“Not exactly,” Jared managed more quietly.
“Not exactly?” she asked with further upset, finally turning back.
“I mean,” he attempted again, “that Kyle couldn’t reach the computer cause it, like died.”
“Died?” Kyle asked with a raised eyebrow, all of them looking a bit thrown by that statement.
“How the hell does something that’s not alive, die?” Ian asked bluntly.
“It wasn’t alive…before,” Jared answered, trying to find the way to put the vague images into words at all, let alone in the midst of all their current emotional distress.
“What the hell does that mean?” Ian exclaimed, forcing himself to stay seated, rather than beginning the pacing that usually followed the frustration that always came when either Jared or Kyle tried to explain things in that unclear way that they both seemed to be experts at lately.
“That’s why I know that this happened, or will happen, sometime after we left the ship. It, the computer, it was different when we were up there. When Kyle ran it. It was just a computer, then,” he shook his head. “Then, after we left the ship, something changed.”
“Something? That’s specific,” Ian scoffed as Kyle just narrowed his eyes speculatively and Lili continued her failed attempts at remaining calm.
“So Serena did something?” Kyle interrupted once more. “She brought the computer to fucking life? Is that what you’re actually trying to say?” Kyle scoffed more loudly, shaking his head with his own disbelief.
“Maybe.” Jared answered, though once he saw their looks of disapproval at that answer, he added, “Possibly….Probably,” he finally finished more quietly.
“Probably?” Ian and Lili retorted in continued disbelief.
“I mean think about it though,” Jared began with another breath. “Kyle got it to do things no other computer could do. He treated it like it was a lot more than a computer. And then it was left in the hands of someone, who by all logic is just as intelligent as Kyle, and most likely a lot more powerful than him, or even me.”
Kyle swallowed hard, trying to force down his own pride at being dubbed inferior to anyone else, even though, his own theory had already stated that possibility. Though it was a slightly different story once the idea went from possibility to fact.
“So, you do think that she brought the computer to life somehow, after all?” Kyle repeated.
“Something like that, but different,” Jared attempted.
“And the vague keeps coming,” Ian muttered.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“It just, it seems like she sort of made it part of her?” Jared shrugged as they all just gave him further looks of disbelief. “I know how it sounds; believe me, but the things I saw, it was like the computer was an extension of her. Her mind, her brain, her wants and her desires,” he attempted to explain in any way he could, considering the nature of his vision at all.
“And it died?” Kyle finally added after another long moment. “Guess she wasn’t too successful then, huh?”
“I don’t think it was the computer that died,” was Jared’s only response.
“Well, that’s kind of the opposite of what you just said,” Ian growled, anger inspired more by a lack of logic to anything that Jared said, rather than by Jared, himself.
“She was successful. She made the computer part of her and then…it died with her,” Jared breathed the words rather than spoke them, but forced himself onward. “And, since the computer was the only thing that was keeping the ship in the air…” he just shook his head, eyes downward once more.
Then Lili took a deep breath to force back more tears in response to that statement, before adding her own. “So computers coming to life, aside; you’re saying the ship just fell out of the air?” she shook her head, pleading with him to give her a more hopeful answer than that.
“Apparently it wasn’t too far from, somewhere, when that happened. I’m getting it crashed, somewhere,” he repeated the word pointedly.
“Crashed?” she whispered, another stifled sob as she turned away, Jared’s worried eyes staying on her, wishing that he had even had the chance to ‘spare’ her this vision, though the timing of it had made that quite impossible.
“Somewhere?” Ian repeated.
Kyle just shook his head. “This most likely happened right after we left,” he attempted to add his own interpretation. “I mean if it crashed at all, it would have had to have been near a planet to crash on, right? That’s only logic,” he added pointedly.
“Logic?” Ian scoffed again. “I’m thinking that’s more endangered than our own fucking species right about now,” he mumbled.
“Fine Ian, don’t believe me. But you wanted me to tell you, so I did,” Jared shook his head. “And that’s all I can do.”
“Please. Computers coming to life and then dying with the person who supposedly made them that way? How do you find that logical at all?” Ian returned forcefully.
“About as logical as visions, and telekinesis, and us being able to live here at all. About that logical,” Jared returned, though spoke every word under his breath.
Kyle shook his head. “Ok, you said that it became part of her, and her desires, etcetera. Taking the vast leap to say that that all is true, how does that lead to Serena, and in turn, the computer, dying?”
“Apparently her wants and desires weren’t exactly popular with the rest of the ship, with Miranda,” he added more quietly, his eyes staying on Lili again as she turned back at that statement.
“What does that mean?” Lili swallowed hard.
“If Serena wanted to do something Miranda didn’t approve of, my dad would’ve stopped it,” Ian put in.
“If he could’ve,” Jared added quietly.
“If she had that much control over the computer,” Kyle began thoughtfully. “No one could have stopped her…except maybe us,” he added with another hard swallow.
“Well if this is all true, I guess we know why we got stranded here after all,” Ian stated, trying not to sound accusing, though his eyes couldn’t help moving to Kyle, and particularly Jared.
That was when Lili looked up through her own tears, coming to the conclusion none of them seemed to have wanted to say, themselves. “Well someone up there stopped her and killed the ship, and probably everybody else on it, just to do so.”
They all looked down at the sound of her words. Though, if they were willing to believe in any part of Jared’s vision, they had to accept that Lili’s words were most likely accurate after all.
“And who do we think could have done that? Could’ve been powerful enough to take her down?” Kyle finally asked, trying not to concentrate on the rest of the likely casualties right then, as none of them wanted to let in that kind of grief without first trying to make some sense of it.
Jared swallowed again. “Serena was older than me, and she didn’t know about her powers before. And when she did get into the computer and found out about them, that was when they most likely manifested completely. Just like mine started to get stronger the more I learned about them.”
“Your point?” Ian pressed after waiting a moment for Jared to continue.
Jared took another deep breath. “We’re conveniently forgetting that me, Kyle and Serena aren’t the only ones. There were four more teenagers like us on that ship, and another thirteen children who were going to become like us. Hell Tyler is older than Kyle even,” he added, referring to the seventeen year old who had been left behind, as well. “Imagine if they all found out what they could eventually be able to do, and if their lives were suddenly in danger by someone who was basically just an older version of them all?” he posed the theory. “I know what I do when I think my life or someone else’s,” he glanced at Kyle, “is in danger.”
Lili swallowed again as they all thought on his words, not positive if they were a theory or a part of the vision. However, if any of the vision was true they would have to accept the rest of his statements as well. “So you think they all somehow found out about their powers then?”
“Well, Miranda, Charles, and the science team, they all knew about us,” Kyle reminded.
Ian just shook his head. “And if Serena really did want to stage a coup, or a takeover, or whatever, don’t you think she would’ve taken out anyone who could expose the real secret of the E-children? I mean, Miranda and Charles might’ve been able to put up a fight. But a bunch of lab geeks? No offense,” he added with a glance toward Jared.
“Yeah, I think I’m in a different category now, anyway,” Jared scoffed, and then added a more serious note. “But yeah, I’m sure she did take out the existing science team,” he stated, trying to pull more details of those visions back to his conscious mind.
“Your dad?” Lili breathed as she easily caught the meaning behind Jared’s last statement.
“Maybe, somewhere inside he actually did care about trying to save us, me,” Jared whispered, not allowing himself to look up and expose any of those suppressed feelings about his own father right then, as he was sure that the man was just one of the many people who none of them would ever be able to see again, after all.
“Still,” Kyle began with his own breath, trying not to think about his own estranged parents right then either, “you think they all sacrificed themselves to stop her?”
Jared sighed softly. “I’m thinking they probably didn’t know that it would mean that. I’m sure none of them were positive of exactly what would happen when they tried to get control back. Remember, they were missing a psychic,” he added with his own slight sniffle. “Not to mention, me getting this vision when it’s most likely three months too late to even do anything to help any of them. Yeah, real useful,” he scoffed with his own bit of guilt coming through despite the fact that, as stated, he had no way of honestly knowing what was going to happen to them, at least not until it was too late.
Lili shook her head again. “Then why are you getting this vision, now?” she whispered.
“I wish to hell I knew,” Jared returned, his voice breaking, his hazel eyes remaining downward.
That was when Ian spoke up. “You said it earlier though, Lili. There must be a reason.”
“Care to share?” Kyle asked as he looked up at Ian.
“And like you said Kyle, if it crashed at all, it must have happened when it was near a place where it could crash. And if it happened right after we left the ship…I know where my vote lands for the possible crash site.”
“You think…you think it crashed somewhere on this planet?” Lili returned, the words barely leaving her lips.
“Well, if it did happen right after we left, then it had to have happened sometime during our three lost, or should I say stolen days,” Ian pointed out.
“Yeah, I’m thinking we may have noticed a ship falling out of the sky if we had been awake,” Kyle agreed.
“So,” Ian swallowed as he looked back toward Jared, “if it did crash here, and you’re seeing this now…I think the answer is obvious.”
“It is?” Lili asked softly.
“We’re supposed to find it, and whatever or whoever can still be salvaged: That’s what I think,” Ian finished softly, but pointedly.