Date: Tue, 17 Sept 2002
From: "rodlox" (rodlox@hotmail.com)
Subject: Rememberance
~~~~~~~
title: rememberance
authors: rodlox
fandom: Babylon 5
summary: alternate history
archive: ask me first (gok can archive)
characters: Lyta, Zack,
spoilers: Thirdspace, the "in the next 5 minutes" episode (Secrets of the Soul)
rating: PG - PG-13~~~~~~
"If Byron asked me to, I would walk barefoot into Hell, and with a smile on my face. What could you possibly say in the next five minutes that would change that?" Lyta asked Zack.A war raged in Zack's mind, and one combatant slipped past his lips before he could stop it: "I'd try to say something, Lyta, but we agreed not to discuss it."
Lyta didn't look like she remembered. "What are you talking about, Zack?"
"You don't remember?" Zack asked, wondering if Byron had wiped it from her memory.
"Remember what?"
Zack sighed. "I'm sorry, Lyta, but it's nothing I can say in just -" looking at his watch, "four minutes."
"Four -"
"You said five, and one passed while we were talking." Zack's link beeped just then, "Allan," he said into it.
"Chief, we've got a situation in Red Sector," the tiny voice said through the link.
"I'll be right there," Zack told it. To Lyta, "Can I get a rain check on those minutes?"
"I doubt it," Lyta said, short with him for not explaining.
Zack looked tired and sorry, but he said "Bye," and headed off towards Red Sector.
Lyta watched him go, then headed herself towards Brown Sector.
~~~
IN BROWN SECTOR:
"Everyone's busy it seems," Lyta remarked.
"We have things to do," Byron said. "Plans to make and undertake."
_"Our mistake," the Vorlon in Lyta said. "And now yours. The error is compounded."_
"Did you hear that?" Lyta asked Byron.
"Of course," he answered, believing Lyta was asking him if he'd heard his own delightful voice.
"And?" Lyta asked.
"And it was just something I said."
Feeling somehow insulted by Byron, and not a little unnerved by the feeling that he hadn't heard that voice, she turned way from Byron, Lyta left the room, heading down the corridor for nearly an hour. She'd left Brown Sector a while ago, and was now just outside the Methane Section of the Station. Lyta sat down at the corner of one intersection.
_"Our mistake. One of many," the Vorlon in Lyta said. "So many."_
Lyta put her head in her hands, and just sat there.
~~~.JUST OUTSIDE THE METHANE SECTION, LATER:
_"Bottom line is...I like you. I've liked you ever since you got here. And I know things have been tough on you lately, and...and I know I could do right by you," Zack in her memory said, pausing. "There's something about you...frankly, that I'm nuts about. So, uh...I think it would be great if, you know, maybe I could see you once in a while."_
"Zack wouldn't say that," Lyta murmured to herself.
"Are you in the presently occupied?" a vodor asked. Lyta looked up to see who was carrying a portable translation device like that vodor.
The alien wasn't particularly tall. Like a Vorlon or a Gaim, it was inside an Encounter Suit. Unlike either of those species, it was less than four feet tall. The suit it wore was perfectly spherical, a change from the masses of humanoids who populated much of the Station.
"No," Lyta answered truthfully. She'd met spherical aliens during her period of employ under the Koshes, but they weren't as sociable as this one.
"We propose an employment of you in nearness future," the vodor asked, implanted on the surface of the semi-metallic sphere.
"What do you want?" Lyta asked, knowing better than to look for eyes. Even without the suit on, there might not be any to see.
"Discussion. Interview. Facilitate telepaths." It - they? - paused. "Any price permissible."
Lyta stood on. "Where would you like to conduct this discussion?" she asked, figuring that things couldn't get too much worse.
"Followed," it replied, and led her into the Methane Section, where its quarters resided.
~~~~.INSIDE ITS RESIDENCE IN THE METHANE SECTION:
The door closed behind them, and the little alien's Encounter Suit opened up. Out came a collection of ball- and donut-shaped aliens. Lyta recognized that it was a commensial-symbiotic organism...a flesh-and-blood cluster of creatures-creature which was nearly as alien as the Koshes.
"So," Lyta asked, "where do we start?"
_The Zack in her memory said, "you don't owe me one, that's for sure. I think, uh, I could care for you. You've been through a lot. I guess I just want to do for you...”_
"In answers to your questioned," the donuts said, "We do hear the voices. Found within you, we moved & incited them."
Lyta swallowed nervously. That was what was so strange about the alien - even beyond its biology - it was a chronopath!
_"and theres a big gap between us and the kind of life you lead that maybe I could never understand -- well, maybe I could understand it. Well...maybe I could try. You're the kind of person that makes a guy want to try," Zack said in her memory._
"Why are you doing this?" Lyta asked the chronopath.
"Facilitating. Remembering," it answered. "Learning."
"Learning what?"
"One mistake. One of so so many," the Vorlon in Lyta said.
"You're trying to get your hands on Vorlon technology, is that it?" Lyta asked, mostly accusingly.
"Unneccessary," it replied as calmly as ever. "Our ability renders technology superfluous."
"Then why are you so interested in Vorlon mistakes?"
"To have avoided them. Sight held limitations in vision, telepathy, and us. You are a facilitation in enhancing our bypass of limitations."
"You're limited?" Lyta asked, trying to remember those long-long-distant lessons on Mundane religions...wasn't precognition held to be an aspect of the Divine and those touched by It?
"To greater extents than yourself, Lyta Alexander. A cusp you sit sat upon. You can be divine and wrathful...or mundane and contented. Your choice to have had."
"Is it too late for me to decide?" Lyta asked. "In your posture of the presently, it was not. Within the next few days, the cusp crumbles into either-or. One or other."
"I see," Lyta said softly.
The cronopath reared up as much as it could. "This interview is ended. You were dismissed. Credits deposited into your account. Your days to be enjoyed."
"Have a nice day," Lyta replied as the room's door opened for her.
~~~~.JUST OUTSIDE THE CRONOPATH'S QUARTERS:
Lyta stood there, feeling one further memory:
_" I wanted to, uh...you know...I wanted to ask you, uh...do you want to go out sometime? I don't know, get some dinner, maybe catch a vid?"_
Lyta headed down for Zack's office, complete with an answer: Yes.
~~~~.
end.