[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 16] Where Time Ends
Night never came to Proto Dome.
The gray light outside remained fixed for hours. The three of them could measure time only by how quickly the battery in their lamp dwindled.
Lucca lay on the floor with Robo's chest open before her. She spliced the severed wires they had brought from the factory, straightened dented shafts with a small hammer, and routed power around burned-out circuits with salvaged parts. Every movement of her swollen wrist shortened her breath, but she never set down her tools.
At first Marle handed her whatever she asked for. Before long, she could find screws and wires of the right shape before Lucca even pointed. Crono held Robo's heavy arm aloft and kept the joint fixed in place.
“If I connect this wire, power will travel from his chest to his head,” Lucca said.
“But it'll also activate the damaged memory sector. If it overloads, I'll have to disconnect it again.”
Marle looked at her.
“Would it be safer to give up the memories?”
“He could still function.”
“But he wouldn't be Robo.”
Lucca held the end of the wire without moving. When she had first awakened him, all that mattered was whether the circuits connected. Now she had to consider what would remain after they did.
“You're right,” she said.
“Building a different, safer machine isn't a repair.”
She did not bypass the memory sector.
A spark jumped from the final connection. Robo's fingers twitched once, but his eyes remained dark. Lucca lowered the current and raised it again. Nothing changed.
Marle laid a hand on his dented chest plate.
“Do you remember your name?”
There was no answer.
“Not R66-Y. The name we gave you.”
A very slow turning sound began inside the machine.
Blue light entered one eye and vanished. The second time, it remained a little longer. Robo's head shifted toward the sound of her voice.
“Form of address... Robo.”
Marle smiled and wiped at the corner of one eye.
“And us?”
The blue eye passed over Marle, Lucca, and Crono in turn.
“Marle. Lucca. Crono.”
Lucca sank back onto the floor. Exhaustion engulfed her before she could find words for her relief.
“Next time, don't try to talk your way through six of them by yourself.”
“I calculated the probability of successful dialogue incorrectly.”
“That wasn't a calculation problem.”
Robo tried to sit up, but Crono pressed a hand to his shoulder.
“Not yet.”
At the two brief words, Robo stopped moving.
“I will wait.”
He turned only his head toward the open isolation door. In the darkness beyond it, a blue vortex erased the boundary between wall and floor.
“The conditions for your return have been fulfilled.”
Marle asked, “What will you do now?”
“My former administrators no longer exist. The other units of my series in the factory have ceased operation. There is no mission remaining for me in Proto Dome.”
Robo opened and closed his hand. One repaired finger moved a little later than the others.
“I chose to assist your return. I have not determined a purpose beyond it.”
“Then we'll find one together.”
Marle answered without hesitation.
Lucca checked Robo's circuitry one final time and closed his chest plate.
“None of us knows how to stop Lavos, either. You're not the only one without a clear destination.”
Crono held out his hand.
Robo looked from it to his own metal hand. Carefully regulating his strength, he took Crono's hand and rose.
The four of them stood before the open door.
The Gate was more unstable than the others had been. When Lucca brought the Gate Key close, the needle on its crystal plate traced circles instead of pointing in a single direction. Even though Proto Dome's power had failed, the vortex sustained itself.
“I can't confirm that it's connected to our time,” Lucca said.
“But if we stay here, we don't know when it might close.”
Marle looked at Robo.
“You'll probably feel very dizzy the first time.”
“Dizziness is a disturbance of the sense of equili—”
“It'll be faster to experience it than explain it.”
Crono stepped into the vortex first.
Marle and Lucca followed. Robo crossed the threshold last.
The instant the fourth body touched the Gate, space made the sound of something tearing.
The light that normally flowed in one direction folded inward from every side. Crono reached for Marle's hand ahead of him, but the distance between them suddenly stretched. Lucca's cry split into a high voice and a low one. Robo's metal body scattered into a trail of overlapping images.
The sensation of having ground beneath them disappeared.
Crono did not feel himself falling. It felt instead as though the world were falling away from him. The scent of the forests in 600 A.D., the bells of the Millennial Fair, the cold dust of the ruins—all swept past without order. He reached out, refusing to lose anyone, and someone else's hand met his fingertips.
He did not let go.
The next instant, all four of them spilled onto a stone floor.
There was no wind. There was no ceiling.
A space like a small plaza floated in the middle of a black void. A single old streetlamp cast a pool of golden light. Nearby stood a burning brazier and several pillars. Beyond the edge, lights shone like stars, but none of them moved.
Marle was still holding Crono's hand. Across from them, Lucca clung to Robo's arm and caught her breath.
“What year is this?”
Lucca checked the Gate Key. The needle had stopped completely.
The old man seated beside the brazier lifted the brim of his hat.
“If you're asking for a year, you've come to the wrong place.”
He spoke with the ease of someone who had been sitting there from the beginning of things. Beneath his low hat, his eyes looked drowsy, but they missed nothing about the four arrivals.
“This is the last shore time leaves behind as it passes. Gates that lose their destination come here to rest for a while.”
“Who are you?” Marle asked.
“If you require a name, call me Gaspar.”
Lucca approached without lowering her guard.
“Why did we fall here?”
Gaspar counted them on his fingers.
“One, two, three, four. Too many beings entered the same Gate at once. Time is like anything else—when the road narrows, it flows toward the place with the least resistance. Put four or more through a single Gate and they are usually swept here.”
“How do you know a rule like that?”
“Sit in one place long enough and you see a great many ways to become lost.”
Gaspar pointed to the shining pillars around the edge of the plaza. Different landscapes wavered within them. A mountain beneath falling rain, a brilliant forest, the rooftops of a stone-built village—each appeared and vanished in turn.
“Every era whose Gate you have touched leaves a trace here. From now on, it would be safer for three to travel while the others wait here.”
Robo asked, “Who created this place?”
“I'm not certain whether it was created at all, or merely what remained.”
Gaspar offered no further explanation. Lucca was about to press him when a small laugh came from the closed door at the far end of the plaza.
“Are you going to leave your guests standing there all day, old man?”
Beyond the door lay a round chamber. The walls and floor were made of the same gray stone, blurring all sense of direction. A short creature stood in the center. It seemed to have borrowed something from a rabbit, something from a goblin, and something from a child, yet it was none of those things.
“I am Spekkio, and I have watched battle for a very long time.”
He walked once around the four of them. His gaze passed in turn over Crono's wounded hand and empty hip, Marle's bandages, Lucca's swollen wrist, and the newly joined plate on Robo's chest.
“Your weapons are broken and your bodies worn thin. Yet the currents within you are only now beginning to wake.”
Lucca narrowed her eyes.
“What currents?”
Spekkio pointed a finger at Crono's chest.
“A force that opens the path first, like lightning.”
He turned to Marle.
“A force that joins and sustains, like water.”
Before Lucca, he snapped his fingers.
“A force that changes the shape of things, like fire.”
Last, he looked at Robo and tilted his head.
“And you already carry a power made by human hands in place of nature's current. Your road is different, but you are not empty.”
“Are you talking about magic?” Lucca asked.
“Names are conveniences invented for those who learn.”
Spekkio instructed them to circle the chamber three times along the wall. Lucca demanded to know what principle such an action could possibly serve, but standing still had changed nothing.
Crono moved first.
On the first circuit, there was only the sound of footsteps. On the second, the temperature of the wall began to change. By the third, Crono's fingertips tingled, cold mist appeared in Marle's breath, and faint heat lingered wherever Lucca's feet touched the floor.
Spekkio clapped his hands.
The air in the chamber divided into three currents.
Blue radiance raced up Crono's arm. It did not burn his wounds, yet it shone through to the marrow of his bones. Startled, he opened his hand. A small arc crossed between his fingers and vanished.
Clear droplets gathered around Marle. The water had formed from empty air. It flowed over her bloodstained bandages and cooled the heat beneath them. The wound did not close completely, but its throbbing eased.
A flame blossomed in Lucca's palm—a fire without oil or wick. Instinctively, she shook her hand, but the flame would not fall. When her concentration loosened, the light scattered into the air.
“I don't understand the principle.”
Lucca spoke between breaths.
“An excellent beginning,” Spekkio said with a laugh. “Far better than believing you understand a power you do not.”
He did not grant them greater strength at once. Creating a thing once and wielding it precisely in danger were not the same, he told them. Power was no substitute for judgment, nor could it erase exhaustion.
Crono felt the lingering current in his fingertips and thought of the cracked sword. A new power did not undo the broken blade, their wounded bodies, or the cost of their mistakes.
The four returned to the plaza.
Gaspar placed another piece of wood in the brazier. The flame moved, but its smoke drifted in no direction.
“Your way home is there.”
Within the pillar he indicated, the rooftops of a village in 1000 A.D. came into view. It was not Leene Square, but the sunlight belonged to the same age.
Marle watched that light, then looked back. Not far away, another pillar shimmered gray with the image of Arris Dome.
“We'll be able to see whether the people there kept the seeds alive.”
Robo answered, “And we can continue searching for records concerning Lavos.”
Lucca folded the Gate Key and put it into her bag. It was no longer merely a tool for forcing open a single door. It had become something that could point them home among many ages.
Crono stood between the pillars.
On the morning of the Millennial Fair, there had been only one road: from his house to the square, from the square to Marle. Now different ages stood open on every side, and none of those roads would return them only to where they had begun.
He stepped toward the light of 1000 A.D. The other three followed.
What they had found at the End of Time was not an answer.
It was the chance to choose again.
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