Goggles and the Tears: Chapter 32

 They stepped through into a pastoral scene down on the surface of Earth. It seemed to be a river, with several people in holy robes gathered in prayer, and singing “Will the Circle be Unbroken”.

 “Wait a minute, I know this place,” Booker muttered. “I was here, it must have been twenty years ago. Right after Wounded Knee. I was looking for...”

 “What’s Wounded Knee?” Alyx queried.

 “Sounds like an Ind- no, Native American title,” Gordon suggested.

 “Come on now, time’s a-wasting!” A blind man who seemed to be the preacher called from the center.

 “Why were you here?” Elizabeth wondered.

 The preacher continued, “Are you ready to have your past erased? Are you ready to have your sins cleansed? Are you ready to be born again? Take my hand!”

 “Yep, definitely a baptism,” Alyx figured.

 “No...no, I don’t want to,” Booker pushed away the man’s hand as he backed up.

 “But you already did, didn’t you?” Liz argued.

 “Uh, what pertinence does this scene have any to do with--” Gordon asked.

 “Shh, let’s just watch,” Goggles warned.

 Booker sighed and gave in to the offer, took the preacher’s hand and the man declared, “Are you ready to be born again?” Booker answered, “I am.” “Do you hate your sins?” “I do.” “Do you hate your wickedness?” “Yes.” “Do you want to clean the slate, leave behind all you were before, and be born again in the blood of the Lamb?” “Yes.” “Jesus, wash this man clean...Father, make him born again...Lord--”

 Booker pushed the preacher away as he yelled and struggled, “No no no wait – Stop it! Stop it! No, Get off me, GET OFF!”

 “What are you doing, DeWitt?” the blind man cried. Then suddenly, the whole crowd vanished, leaving the refugees, Booker and Liz still remaining.

 “You didn’t go through with it,” the latter pointed out. Booker, taller than she was, glared at her and grunted, “You think a dunk in the river’s gonna change the things I’ve done?! Let’s get out of here. These doors of yours, they’re...they’re all tears, right? Well, open one up! Open one to Paris, I want to be shut of all this!”

 “Damn right, I second that!” Gordon cheered.

 “Not until we find Comstock,” Liz returned the statement.

 “What?

 “Huh?”

 “Uh...I...”

 “COMSTOCK’S DEAD!” Booker shouted.

 “No, he was here. This way,” Liz led on.

 Goggles felt another chill run down his spine and he caught up, warning, “No, wait, Comstock’s not the culprit! It’s SHODAN, you hear me? SHODAN’s behind this!” He suddenly tripped and fell face-first on the grass when the neural interference hit him again, and this time, along with another nosebleed, he just glimpsed his own hands phasing in and out of existence like a hologram.

-----

 Everyone climbed a hill to a shack with double doors on it. Goggles caught up, just after the psi-noise wore off again. When they stepped through, this time they entered the cabin of a space shuttle flying towards what seemed to be an axle-shaped space station.

 “I know what this is, that’s Citadel Station, where SHODAN’s existence and ensuing chaos all started, forty-two years ago!” Goggles exclaimed.

 Everybody sat down and strapped themselves into various seats. Goggles saw through the viewport that this station wasn’t alone. In fact, along the rings of Saturn, duplicates of Citadel lined the entire planet’s circumference along its rings. The station’s lights blinked and pulsed slightly out of sync with the others, just like the lighthouses in the previous spaces.

 “We’re in...what is this?” Booker asked, bewildered.

 “Don’t ask, man. This is way after your time. Like, centuries,” Goggles advised.

 The ship passed through a force field and docked gently. Elizabeth directed the crew to file out. Armed guards didn’t look at them; When the refugees, Booker, and Liz entered an automated door, the scene changed again.

 All of a sudden, they were back in Booker’s office. He immediately asked Robert Lutece who stood at the front door, “And what of my debts?” Robert repeated his mantra in a complete deadpan tone, “Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt.”

 Booker whipped around and explained to the others, “This is the man who hired me to find this girl.”

 “Really?” Liz retorted flatly.

 “Yes, the girl for the debt.”

 “Okay, sounds logical. Find an orphan for money, that’s not a crime...is it?” Alyx raised an eyebrow.

  As if on instinct, Booker stepped through a side door and found a baby in a crib...his only child. “Wait...wait, this is wrong. What is this? There was no...there was no baby. I remember...no, there was no baby! And if there was, I sure as hell wouldn’t give it over to this guy!”

 Without warning, Robert Lutece was suddenly behind him, blocking the door.

 Elizabeth stood in the corner and stated in monotone, “Booker, you don’t leave this room until you do.

 “Oh, yeah? Says who?” Gordon yelled from behind Robert.

 “DeWitt, time is running short. Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt,” Robert warned.

 “Go ahead,” Liz nudged.

 “No...”

 “You can wait as long as you want, eventually you’ll give him what he wants.”

 “NO! Don’t do it, don’t hand over this kid to some creep just because you’re in debt!” Gordon called. “Everybody makes money somehow, but this doesn’t have to be a solution to it!”

 “How do you know all this?” Booker asked again.

 “I can see all the doors, what’s behind them, and behind one of them, I see him,” Elizabeth answered.

 “Comstock,” Booker acknowledged.

 “Wait, what about SHODAN? Don’t the two of them have a connection somewhere? That creep is far, FAR crueler than whoever this Comstock was!” Goggles cried.

 Gordon chimed, “Seriously, don’t do this; you’ll just repeat history, if that constants and variables theory is true!”

 The two ignored those pleas. Booker turned to the crib, picked up the innocent baby, looked it solemnly in the eyes for a moment, then handed it to Robert and said, “What choice do I have...”

 Robert nodded and stated, “The debt’s paid. Mr. Comstock washes you of all your sins.”

 Then the door slammed shut. Booker felt a sting of realization and anger in his chest, and charged through the door, only to find himself back in the boat again, where he began this giant adventure of his. “Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt,” Elizabeth repeated as if it was a statement to be ashamed of. The Luteces were still rowing the boat, shrouded by their raincoats and hats.

 “There was no baby! The deal was: I go to Columbia to get you!” Booker cried before fizzling and bleeding again. “No...I remember...what I remember.”

 Robert sighed, “Oh dear, now we’ve upset him.” Rosalind commented, “I don’t expect this next bit will do much for his mood,” 

-----

 Goggles and the others were still in Booker’s office, and the only way out was the door with the sign. When they stepped through, they were back in front of the lighthouse, but this time it was just one, and they could see a rowboat with people on board coming up to a dock far below.

 “What’s going on?” Mjolnir asked in a concerned tone.

 Goggles’ internal computer beeped, “Research complete!” before throwing up an analysis window in his HUD, reading: “These two strands of hair, although from two different people, are in fact the same man. [DeWitt, Booker, ] Readings indicate each strand originates from a different version of the man from....[ERROR: TEMPORAL PARADOX DETECTED. REPORT CORRUPTED]” Goggles was disturbed by the last part of this report. Pretty advanced if it knew exactly what kinds of paradoxes could affect computers, and the fact that this was ultimate proof that Comstock and Booker really did share a connection between universes. He had to remember to tell Booker and Liz this crucial information soon.

 Booker and the girl stepped out of the boat and charged up the steps. Goggles could hear Booker saying, “...We can just go on with our lives, we don’t need to-”

 “Dead? You mean, like Chen Lin? Like Lady Comstock? No.”

 “We can just go to Paris, leave this all behind.”

 Elizabeth argued, “No, Booker. Comstock may be dead here, but he’s alive in a million, million worlds. It’s not over because the Prophet is dead. It will only be over when he never even lived in the first place.”

 Goggles shook his head, grumbling “You just. Don’t. Get it.”

 The soldiers stopped Booker at the door of the lighthouse. Goggles warned him, “Wait, Booker, don’t do this. I have solid evidence that you and Comstock are the same. It says so by your DNA signature, my research software told me.”

 “What’s DNA?” Booker asked bluntly.

 Goggles tilted his head slightly, since he couldn’t roll his eyes, and replied, “Basically, it’s the substance in your blood that tells everything about you from the inside out.”

 “So?” Booker just shrugged.

 “‘So’?” Gordon almost laughed. “It means you’ll just be killing yourself if you keep going this way.”

 Goggles replayed the video feed from when he saw SHODAN try to override Elizabeth’s place. “Like I said, Comstock’s not the problem. How many times do I have to say this? We need to recover that bomb we left in Emporia, pinpoint where SHODAN started exploiting Tears, and set it off there so that none of this will ever happen again.”

 Booker pushed the soldier’s arm down, grunting, “Look, I don’t know, and I don’t care who this SHODAN is. Machine or not, that’s your problem, not mine. The man I was looking for before...you people came along was a madman. A racist, xenophobic, loopohole-abusing schlock! So I’m going to end him if it’s the last damn thing I do! You freakshows do what you like, but I want to see this through to the end, so stay the hell off my back. Got it?”

 “Well,” Goggles pocketed his PDA while thinking some things over.

 Gordon pointed out, “It’s never a good idea to mess with someone else’s history,”

 Elizabeth spoke up, “But he doesn’t remember some his own history. I’m trying to help him fix that. Like the twins once said: ‘The mind of the subject will desperately struggle to create memories where none exist.’”

 “Oh, that’s rich. I think our memories are intact, thanks,” Gordon scoffed.

 Goggles had to remember to ask Delacroix to plug his wiped memory back in when this was over.

 “Follow if you must, but cut the stalling and get the fuck out of my way,” Booker demanded. Then he decided to open the door. This time, they entered a gloomy alley in what looked like New York. Robert was looking towards a shimmering circular portal in a brick wall, and a strange man with a dark beard stood before the portal as well, clutching the baby. Booker yelled, “Hey! The deal’s off, you hear me? The deal’s off! I want her back!”

 But Robert was occupied with his twin on the other side, who was warning him that the portal had to be closed within seconds. Remembering that the men in armor were beside him, Booker muttered to Goggles, “Stop them, you have the weapons!”

 Ignoring the hypocrisy of this DeWitt, and worried about killing people in the past, Goggles reached for his laser pistol and fired several shots at the pair of men. He missed a couple of times, but managed to land a couple of zaps on the bearded man. Neither Mjolnir nor Gordon wanted to fire at all, but noticing this paralyzed him to some degree, Booker made for the man and tried to pry the infant out of his grip. He punched and pounded that guy’s head and tore at his clothes, but with one leap, the man was through the portal after Robert, and just as it slammed shut, the baby stared back at Booker for a split second. Then, like a tree branch, its pinky finger snapped off as the space-time rift closed, leaving the amputated infantile appendage lying bleeding on the ground. Booker fell to his knees, banged on the wall and cried, “NOOOO!!!”

 “That...that...oh my God...” Alyx was at a loss for words.

 Goggles, who had been filming the event with his artificial eyes, retrieved the severed finger and showed it to Elizabeth, saying, “This, that’s how you lost your finger? A portal cut it in half?”

 “Yes, and more came with it...so much more...” Elizabeth’s figure fizzled in and out with that of the much taller humanoid form of SHODAN. “Oh God...what just happened?”

 “I have a bad feeling about this,” Mjolnir warned.

 Booker clutched the wall, cried, “Anna...Anna, I’m so sorry...what have I done?!” Then he calmed down, got to his feet and asked, “That man, that was Comstock, wasn’t it?”

 “No...it was...”

 “Come on, spit it out already!” Gordon insisted.

 Elizabeth answered, “I can’t tell you, doctor. He has to be shown.”

 “Forget it, we already know. He’s just stubborn,” Goggles pointed out.

 “But why did you give her away? That girl...Elizabeth?” Alyx asked with fear.

 “Her name was never Elizabeth...it’s Anna. Anna DeWitt,” Booker replied while starting to tear up. “This scar is all I can remember of her, and it brought me nothing but trouble,” He showed them the faint tattoo on his right hand.

 Anna picked up, “And you lost yourself, until that man came to your office,” She paused while the scene changed back to Booker’s office with the refugees in tow, “Now...it’s all happening again...Then 20 years later, he came back, to bring us together again...for one last chance at redemption.”

 Goggles asked, “So where do we go from here? We need to get that bomb!”

 “I can find it, we just need to create a little contingency first,” Anna ominously replied before opening a new tear, this time to a rocky shoreline with Robert in his raincoat and hat, waiting for them. The group filed through, but Booker fell to the ground and started fizzling in and out of existence again, twitching and flailing more violently than before.

 “Now what?” Gordon pondered.

 Everyone watched as Booker mumbled more pleas of sorrow. Rosalind looked at the scar on his hand and asked, “Do you suppose he branded himself as some sort of penance? Don’t see the point. What’s done is done. What’s done...WILL be done.”

 They watched him mumble other strings of words, eventually forming into that all-too-familiar mantra. Robert smiled, “See? He’s starting to put his story together.”

 “Hm, you’re quite fond of this theory of yours.”

 “Oh, isn’t that nice,” Gordon mumbled while looking at Robert. The twins were dragging Booker up the shorelines by the shoulders as they talked. The refugees had to back up along with them.

 “He’s manufacturing new memories from his old ones,” Robert deduced.
 “Well, the brain adapts,” Rosalind added.

 “I should know. I LIVED it,” Robert punctuated.

 Goggles moaned while watching, “Oh man, I don’t feel good. I think all this space-time displacement is giving me a headache or something.” He recalled Rosalind’s last conversation with him, and mumbled, “Right, dead here, alive there. Of course.” His Psionic transceiver implant was picking up voices from various timelines again, somehow.

 The twins let go of the man, Anna came to his side and said, “Booker, wake up. This is where it started.”

 Booker got to his feet, and groggily answered, “I sold you. I...sold you.”

 “To your credit, you did try to weasel out of the deal,” Rosalind added.

 “This is all Comstock’s fault. What if I went back, killed him before he did any of this?” Booker wondered. “That’s the only way to do it, go back to when he was born, and I’ll smother the son of a b*tch in his crib.”

 Goggles stopped him, “No, DeWitt. Don't you understand what I've been saying? Comstock isn't the culprit!”

 “Yes, he is.”

 “No, he’s not!”

 “Yes! He! IS!”

 Trying to avoid an endless argument, Booker raised his Sky-Hook as a threat, but the laser rapier sheared the entire rotary mechanism clean off. Then, withdrawing the sword, the soldier held up right hand, balled it into a fist, but then lowered it again and said, “You know what? Fine, if you won’t take no for an answer, then go ahead and do what you want. I won’t try to stop you.”

 “You’re serious?”

 “You have my word, I have all my guns safely stored away,” Goggles stepped back while holding up his hands. Turning about for the remaining personnel to continue on, he grumbled, “It’s your funeral, asshole.” He shuddered, understanding just how much this place was taking its toll on everybody. First Gordon who tries to leave but can’t, then Booker who won’t admit that he doesn’t have to screw with his own past. What next?

 Gordon came up to the soldier and queried, “Hey, I have to ask, why the hell are we following this guy’s timeline, anyway?”

 “DeWitt won’t get it through his thick-ass skull that we shouldn’t be looking for ‘Comstock’. And what the crap is this about Anna making a ‘contingency’?”

 “Maybe Liz went mad with power over space-time? I’ve seen that before.”

 “Probably. She sounds like a whole other person...wait...oh. my. God, I hope I’m wrong!” Goggles gasped before racing up the stairs to the lighthouse.

 Trying to recall the time-travel shenanigans, Gordon thought to himself, “If I had to guess, before ever meeting us, whatever Booker’s been through makes him think that Comstock’s worse than SHODAN. Not that I’d know anything about that.”

 He made a half-frustrated, half-confused expression, then looked at the two people in raincoats still standing behind, and said to his group, “You all go on ahead. I think those...twins might know something.”

 As the remaining refugees ascended the lighthouse steps once more, Gordon raced over to the Luteces and demanded, “Hey, both of you! I don’t think you gave us what we needed to know, back in that...space with my employer. Mind telling me what’s missing here?”

 “It’s so obvious, you’re living it right now, the answer’s right in front of your eyes,” Robert laughed.

 Gordon fired his shotgun point-blank at Robert’s head, but all that did was cause him to flicker for a moment. He snarked, “Puh, shotgun. Crudest weaponry ever crafted, in my opinion.”

 “If you’re intent on killing us, at least try to do it properly,” Rosalind rolled her eyes.

 “Oh, so you’re Time Lords, too? Just like that G-Man?”

 “Time Lord! Ha, what a name for someone scattered across space and time! Ha ha ha!” Robert laughed.

 “Psh, y’know, I once asked myself if reality is breaking down as long as I’m alive. The time period I came from basically proved me wrong because I had people on my side, but what Eliza- um, Anna showed me is starting to bring that back around. What do you think of that?”

 “Sorry to deflate your ego, doctor, but reality has nothing to do with one person, that’s quite obvious,” Rosalind pointed out.

 “Yeah, I figured as much. It’s been a long time; I don’t really care if someone proves me wrong about something, not now, anyways. But what about DeWitt? What’re he and the girl up to? And why is he so damn stubborn about all this?”

 “They’re trying to keep something from happening,” Robert started.

 “When – like your friend claims - really it’s not the source of the problem,” Rosalind added.

 “They’re looking in the wrong spots, and it’s already starting to take hold.”

 “Things get set in motion,” Rosalind claimed.

 “How would one know how far back to go?” Robert warned.

 “Far enough...” Gordon paused to fit the pieces together in his head. Although he wouldn’t admit it, that theory was valid: While the memories weren’t new, enough evidence had been seen to allow better clarity... “You’re right, it is the big picture that matters, isn’t it?”

 “As a matter of fact, you’re correct,” Robert affirmed. They bounced fragments of a sentence back and forth, “It is up to you what matters more, Dr. Freeman.” “Your part in the play,” “Or the play itself.”

 “And in this case, DeWitt thinks it’s his part that matters, right? I KNEW something was up!” Gordon realized with a snap of his gloved fingers.

 “Make sure to let the man know,” Robert finished, as Rosalind added, “I fear he already has the wrong idea by now.”

 “Thanks, I’ll try that.”

 In a flash, they were gone, and all that was left to do was enter one more door...he hoped.