The Apocalypse Contract

CHAPTER 46 - SAMANTHA

Samantha entered the library, carefully balancing the tray of tea and cookies in one hand as she opened the door with the other. A manual door seemed a bit archaic in this rendition of a Star Trek inspired megaship, but then so did actual paper books in a digital world. The library door swung open rather than sliding with a woosh. Samantha liked that. The library was a comforting island of normalcy in an ocean of insanity. She needed that after all that had occurred in the last 24 hours. She took a moment to gaze down at the lower level where most of the bookshelves were arrayed.

She had preferred Castle Crow to the Wonderland exactly because it was more like the world they had left behind. Sitting in the courtyard with the grey stone walls of the castle around her, she could almost imagine she was on the vacation to Scotland she had always planned but never got around to taking. She could almost forget her life was a digital lie lived on a stolen alien starship. Almost.

Samantha had tried returning to Castle Crow after their miraculous escape. Sydney and Mel had purged the worm from the system, rebooting Mel's ship and reloading the island and restoring all the other digital travelers from offline storage. But Samantha couldn't bring herself to stay. She repeatedly caught herself glancing at the sky, looking for triangular shards of chaos. She kept expecting the ground to disappear under her feet. The Wonderland was weird, but the chaos had never touched it. It felt safe in a way Castle Crow might never feel again.

The others seemed similarly afflicted. By unanimous agreement, they had decided to meet at the Library rather than the Court of Mirrors.

"Hey Sam," someone called from the other side of the library, "quit your dawdling and get that tea over here before it gets cold."

She shook herself loose from her musings and walked over to her friends. "Here you go. Heaven forbid I deny the Queen of Crows her tea and cookies."

Mel grabbed a cup and a handful of cookies. "How could you tell it was me? I sound just like Sydney you know."

Samantha shook her head. "No, you really don't. Your voice might sound the same, but what you say always gives you away."

"She has a point," Roger agreed. "For two women with mostly the same memories, you have remarkably different personalities."

Mel grinned as she stuffed a banana walnut cluster in her mouth. "I'll take that as a compliment," she said despite a mouth full of cookie. "I'm definitely the fun one of the pair."

Sydney stuck her tongue out at her sister.

"Well, they are not that different," Peter observed.

Samantha thought back to the day she had first met Sydney, their brief conversation while installing her Internet connection. This Sydney and Mel were not only different from each other, they both seemed like a different person than the original Sydney from which they sprang. Was that just the passage of time? Or did the process of being digitized fundamentally change a person? Could she even be sure she was the same person she used to be?

Peter sneezed while sipping his tea, showering himself with the beverage. He slowly set his cup down, a look of flustered embarrassment frozen on his face. It was exactly the Peter that Samantha remembered from their time together on Earth. She felt her existential crisis fading.

Sydney was the first to laugh. "Pete, you're supposed to drink it, not snorkel in it."

He dabbed carefully at his face with a napkin, "Sure, make fun of the dead guy."

"If you're dead, then so are we," she countered.

"Hey, you still haven't explained that part." He finished wiping his face, then topped off his tea. "How did blowing yourself up save you from the worm?"