10. Epilogue
Jassia and her husband sat below a tree, a good distance away from the caves. Half its branches had burned from a badly aimed shot, the other half blossomed and cast a nice shadow.
“I must tell you something,” said Jassia, looking away.
“Again?” her husband asked, smiling. He reached for her warm hands.
No, don’t let him charm you. It just … hurts. But like Ardex wrote: no new beginnings without ends.
“I’m in love with someone else,” mumbled Jassia. “And I want to continue with him. And that’s not your fault. You’re sweet. You’re kind. And I know you’ll make someone else very happy, but—”
His smile faded as he stood. For just a second, Jassia cringed, afraid for a hit or a kick. But no, he’d never hurt her, she knew that.
Only disbelief remained, and an anger that never really surfaced. “Then what is the problem with me!?”
“I want to do things, every day, as much as possible. I want to try and experience. If I like someone, I dive on top of them. I can’t do that if I’m glued to someone else. How can I ever promise to still love you five years from now? That marriage rule is silly. We must forget all those rules from before we crashed here. Only then our society can progress!”
Her husband wavered. His face showed a different emotion every heartbeat; his one foot wanted to walk away, his other wanted to walk to Jassia. In the end, his hand flew to Jassia’s face, but only for a kind touch of her cheek.
“Dear, progress towards … ?”
“Nothing specifically.”
Jassia stood too. Her heart finally dared beat again, and a held breath flowed out of her. She was certain he’d take the news well.
She gave him a final kiss and a warm embrace, while they both mumbled they’d miss each other and said their goodbyes. Her husband kept saying he wanted nothing but to see Jassia happy, so if this made her happy …
Of course she’d miss this, at least a bit. She was almost about to propose a relationship with both of them. But that would go too far, she felt that.
Then she smiled at her ex-husband.
“A journey to nowhere, with all our heart.”
Tibre lay on the cold rocks to cool himself after an intense match of Rockball against his children—and grandchild. Jassia and Piponre had made quick work of it, but he couldn’t complain. That energetic puckle already beat everyone else at their own game! He was the first of a next generation, and hopefully a great leader for the future.
The leader Tibre hadn’t always been, but tried to be now.
His father-son relationship with Piponre had ended. As it had with almost all his children. A new relationship, though, perhaps even more beautiful, had started between them.
He kept the truth behind the Linecave to himself. Nobody else needed to know how often they’d already crash landed somewhere and tried to build a civilization again. Him and the bear, of course, who slept, ate, and walked holding that light that never went out.
Any other wreckage that Tibre found was given to Jassia and Piponre. They’d made many discoveries about how they worked and how they could copy that. Jassia had recently succeeded in making her own lightbulb, which worked using another one’s battery. She had also installed something in her cave that she called a door, which automatically opened when someone came near. Which the children obviously saw as a fun game to play all day.
They wouldn’t build their spaceship in five years, no, and not even in fifty years. But the leaps and bounds they made now were far larger than if nothing had ever landed on their planet.
And that’s life. That’s the addictive part of life: always a bit of progress, always a bit of influence to shape the future.
Those scientists in the memories could well be right. The universe will end some day, time will end sometime, and then everything will be dead or frozen.
Still, living beings keep trying. Try until the day they’re so smart, understand so much of the world and technology, that they might just survive the end of time. Or at least never have to die or hurt again.
But, well, without endings, how can anything new ever start?
And sometimes Tibre didn’t succeed. Those days, his thoughts returned to the meaningless of it all. He thought about the space battles that raged every day above their heads, just to protect the Dwellers. The same ones that had eventually killed that wolf—an alien race that hated humans with all they had.
But then he merely needed to look outside. He merely needed to do. Like playing with his children or feeling Piponre’s intense happiness at being a father. And sometimes he walked so far that he stumbled on statues of himself, made by praying animals.
And if they could understand those animals, they’d hear them talk about the “human gods”. About how some were glad they came and how they took care of them, and others were mad they had so much power and sometimes ate them. How many thought the humans were magical and all had their own powers, while other animals thought humans should have shared those powers with the animals. Some felt that a first conflict was brewing …
Maybe one day they’d find the translation device that wolf used. And they could live harmoniously with those animals. Nobody could predict the future, but the Dwellers would certainly go out every day to discover, explore, and try to reach new heights.
Maybe Tibre would lose his faith one day again. Maybe in a week, a year, he’d give up for good. He’d scratch another line into the Linecave, and after 729 attempts, the Dwellers of Holed were done.
But it was not today.
Still Tibre was a hero, dear reader, that is what I know for sure. Mankind desperately asks the universe about the meaning of life every day; the universe responds with nothing but eternal silence. The only conclusion is that life has no meaning and no purpose. There is nothing else in that cold void, nothing outside of this moment on earth. Those who know that, and still wake up every day and try their hardest, are absurd heroes.
And so it was that life continued …