Final Destination, Chapter 17: August 24, 3094

The fifty of us who inhabit it will continue to work in our fully-equipped laboratory, where we’ll develop a spaceship that uses this new wormhole drive that Dr. Braxton has been secretly developing. Once it is working we can use it to travel to another star system, where we can sell the technology to dying worlds and become rich beyond our wildest dreams.

The best part of all is that we will at last be rid of all those other people, clamoring and shouting and trying to save us all from the wrath to come. I have become so sick of their lack of tolerance, and it will be great when they’re all gone at last.

We are going to survive, and that makes me very happy.

Posted by Arnold Brandon on March 15, 2815

The folks on Larson’s Folly were shocked to see us enter their airspace and land. They had called for help a year ago but they never expected to actually get any. We could have told them that we were coming if their receiver had been working, but it wasn’t so we just had to hope that they’d be ok until we got there. They all were, except for fifty of them that we just could not find. I don’t know where they had disappeared to, but I hope they’ll be ok.

During the evacuation, Dr. Durant asked how on earth we could have answered their call. I told him that during the past decade we’d made the same discovery he did, only instead of using it to build a wormhole transporter (which was a good idea, by the way) we used it to build a wormhole drive. It’s not a really efficient one, but it was good enough to make a pretty decent starship. Once we got their call we headed out, and it only took us about ten months to travel the 40 light-years between our home and Larson’s Folly – and that, my friends, is really moving. There’s no way you could do that without wormhole travel.

We did look at their transporter while we were here, and we tweaked it a bit and actually got it to work. Durant was right; they really were just off a little bit on their basic parameters, which I don’t think could be helped, judging by the archaic computing equipment they have here. We decided to leave it intact and working, just in case they ever came back.

When I asked them where they wanted to go they told us that they would be glad to go back home with us if we would be willing to have them. I told ‘em that would be fine, and they were glad to hear it.

So today we’re moving out! This is the last message we’re leaving behind. If you’re looking for us, you’ll find us at the coordinates to this message.

Take care, one and all!

Posted by Captain Jeff Newcomb on March 26, 2815

Our new home has been a good one. Captain Newcomb’s people have been very generous; they have given us a large continent entirely to ourselves, and we have put it to good use. We have built new cities on it and have started a new civilization. Our relationship with Captain Jeff Newcomb’s people has proven to be mutually beneficial: they have shared their wormhole transporter technology and we in turn have supplied them with the zero-point-energy plants they need to power them. Together we have set out to explore the galaxy – but our results have been disappointing. We have found many devastated planets but so far no inhabited ones; the civil war that raged more than two hundred years ago appears to have killed everyone and left only ourselves as survivors. There may yet be others who have survived, for the galaxy is a large place, but that hope is beginning to fade.

We were surprised to learn that any part of Larson’s Folly still survived – in fact, so certain were we that the entire planet was vaporized that we didn’t even think to check for seventy years. When our astronomers did point their megascopes toward our former home they found small bits of rock – and, of all things, this research station.

No one really knows how this station survived when everything else was vaporized. Charlie (whose mental condition has not improved with age) tells us that the base was on the opposite side of the planet where the shockwave hit, and perhaps this is so; still, I don’t know why it was permitted to survive. All of it is not intact, but a lot of it is and some systems are even still functional.

Enough of that. My thoughts today, as I walk these halls as a very old man for what will likely be the last time, rest on Brandon – and Flora.

When I left the planet I had no idea what had become of Arnold Brandon and the others that were missing. We searched high and low for them before we left on the Dolly May but they could not be found, and we eventually just had to leave. Now, thanks to Charlie, I know why I could not find them.

None of us had any idea what Brandon was up to in those final days. We thought he killed Flora but we didn’t know why. None of us knew about his secret hideaway or his plans to survive at the expense of everyone else. It all makes sense now – a certain kind of tragic sense. Brandon murdered Flora in order to save his life, but he ended up only killing himself and his friends. Had he not murdered Flora he might still be alive today.

What Brandon did not realize was that everyone will die eventually. Yes, we did survive the destruction of Larson’s Folly, but our time will still come. The long life I have been blessed with is rapidly approaching its end, and I know I will soon be going home to be with my Lord. None of us actually escaped death; we just delayed it, for death is still coming for each and every one of us. Some of us are ready to die and do not fear it, but others are not.

Brandon was content to live as he saw fit and ignore death, not pausing to consider what was coming. Was their life after death? Must all stand before God and give an account of their life? He didn’t really care; he wasn’t interested in what would happen to him in those endless ages of time that he would spend as a dead man. Such a short time is spent alive and such a very long time is spent dead, and yet those who seek to know their final destination are few indeed. Brandon was content to ignore the question and bet his eternal existence on a vague feeling, and he will spend eternity reaping the consequences of that decision.

There are so few that spend time seeking the answer to matters that will affect them forever. Yet there are those who not only seek the answers, but find them and take great comfort in them.

It is time for me to go; the group is waiting on me to finish this entry so that we can return home. The transporter in the wormhole lab works fine; it can no longer track our planet, but once the coordinate is entered one can simply step across it onto our world. I do not expect to make another trip back. My work, however, is done: Larson’s Folly is dead, but its people are safe and will remain safe for a long time to come.

Posted by Dr. Henry Durant on March 26, 2929

Flora had to go, of course: she was getting close to figuring out what we had been using Charlie for. If she found out what we were trying to do, it would cause a real mess: people would see it as an attempt at saving ourselves at the expense of everyone else (when in fact it was just an attempt at saving a few people instead of letting everyone die), and it would have created a real mess. Flora couldn’t be permitted to keep poking around.

So, late last night – it was after 10:30pm – she and a friend of hers wandered into my cafeteria. They had been up late working on a problem relating to the wormhole transporter, and they wanted to get a bite to eat before retiring for the night. The two of them wandered over to the counter, and I served them what they ordered. No one else was in the cafeteria, and that made it even easier.

I knew I had to get a poison that would work fast: I wanted her to die instantly so that there was no chance of her being revived. A little research turned up just what I wanted, and it was easy enough to slip it into her drink. She would notice the taste, of course, but by that time it would be too late. She would be dead within seconds.

I stood behind the counter and watched them as they walked over to a table, sat down, gave thanks for their meal, and started eating. They were laughing and joking, unwinding after a hard day’s work. Then Flora lifted the cup and drank it.

I watched her every move. She must have been really thirsty because she took a long drink (far more than enough to kill her) and the drug hit while she was still gulping it down. She changed; her hand relaxed, allowing the glass to slip out and shatter on the floor. Her friend jumped up to help her, but Flora had already slumped out of her chair and onto the floor. She was dead.

But she didn’t die right. When we took out Cornell, you could see on his face that he knew he was dying: just as the poison gripped him you could see in his eyes the terrible fear – horror that he was dying, and terrible hatred toward the person he knew did it to him. He knew he was dying and it terrified him, and it was immensely satisfying watching him go into the darkness.

With Flora it was different. As her glass was falling to the floor her gaze strayed into the hallway (the last move she ever made) and her eyes widened. It was as if she had just caught sight of someone she had waited all her life to meet and she just couldn’t wait to introduce herself – only there was no one in the hallway. Nobody. I didn’t see any fear on her face; it was almost as if something else had her attention and she didn’t even notice that she was dying.

After she hit the floor, she stopped breathing, and her friend sounded the alarm. People came running from all directions, and doctors were there within minutes and pronounced her dead on the spot. She was cremated the next morning – she wanted to be buried, but we cremated her over the protests of her friends and relatives to make doubly sure that she wasn’t coming back. Her ashes have been scattered and there is now nothing left of her.

So why does she still haunt me? Why do I feel like she is still alive, just out of reach?

Posted by Arnold Brandon on December 31, 2814

Created by Dr. Anna Braxton on December 1, 2814 AD.

Purpose: Creation of a spaceship capable of traveling faster-than-light by the employment of a wormhole drive.

Status: Based on tectonic readings and scans from the starship Dolly May, it is clear that this station was destroyed in the breakup of the planet on March 28, 2815 AD. The crust of the planet shattered in unexpected ways and the base would have been completely pulverized, killing any who were in it at the time. The base, therefore, has been classified as closed.

I watch with great dread as he opens a great, thick book filled with many names. The names are read aloud, and those whose names were found in it go through a gate and are seen no more. When the last name is read the book is closed – and I am still standing there, along with many others.

At this point I feel myself falling. Words from the one who sits on the throne are thundering at me and I do my best to shut them out. Blackness begins to overcome me, and I can see nothing. It is getting warmer…

…and then I wake up, screaming and shaking in fear. I don’t know what it means and I don’t want to know what it means. But I am scared and I wonder what is happening to me. It must be just a dream.

Posted by Arnold Brandon on March 17, 2815