Maybe it seems wrong to you for him to keep those particular playgrounds to himself, but I don't see anything wrong with it.Maybe it seems wrong to you for him to keep those particular playgrounds to himself, but I don't see anything wrong with it." Fawn glanced over the control panel to her left and typed a few commands. "There." "What did you do?" "I accelerated the temporal differential. We're going through time, Oenone, through the second half of the universe." "How high did you set it?" "A couple of billion to one, I think. Not sure. As high as it would go. Forward time travel... you never did discover how to go backwards." "Ken thought it was impossible, even though he knows he did it with you." "It is impossible. I suspend the rules completely." "Where are you taking us?" Oenone asked. "I thought there was nothing to go to." "The universe has two halves," Fawn started. "The expansion and the contraction. The contraction had been going on for a short while when we met this morning, as the few burning neutron stars just didn't have enough energy to keep the expansion going. Except for you, me, and the fusion plant bank downstairs, the universe is dead, Oenone. Heat-dead. A static three-degrees Kelvin all the way across." She paused. "We're going to the end of the cycle, Oenone, and to it's beginning again. We're going to the Big Bang." Oenone shivered. "I don't want to go there." "I know. But it's the only place to go, Oenone. It's you, me, this rock, and dust-- there is no place else to go." "Maybe I'll follow Ken instead. See if there's anything beyond this universe, this life." Fawn smiled. "It's nice to have that kind of option." "What do you mean?" "I have to go there. |