"The time has come to gather up your thoughts/For you have said your piece" --Def Leppard "Overture" _On Through The Night_ 22 DECEMBER 1999 13h54 BROUGHAM COMPLEX Brianna entered the computer lab. In it, she found the object of her search-- Jason, perched on a chair in front of PCzilla, idly fiddling with it and the other associated machines. "Hi," she said as she neared. He looked up and smiled. "Hi," he answered back, then turned away from the screen. "Still snowing?" "Yeah. Still bored?" "Yeah. Not like that's a big surprise, though." "I know, I know." It had been a normal occurrence over the past few winters. The 'unexplained phenomena' jobs dropped off markedly over the snowy season. Plus, nobody wants to go out adventuring so close to Christmas. Earlier in the month, or after the holidays, a trip to investigate the mysteries of Jamaica would surely be welcomed, but over the holidays, they tried to keep close to home. Bri' continued: "Look at it this way. Now that we're quite comfortably in the black again, we can afford to have an 'off season'." Jason smiled as she wrapped her arms around him from behind. "Yeah. I suppose that's true." He looked at the clock. "Is it time yet?" "Um.. they should be here any minute." "Okay, whatever." They were talking about Brian and Gina; the foursome alternated each Christmas between Brougham and Atlanta, and this Christmas, it was Bri and Gina's turn to come to Brougham. They were scheduled to arrive by light-gate sometime that afternoon. Jason looked up to the girl hugging him from behind. "I'm sure we can find some way to occupy the time before they get here." She grinned back at him. Suddenly, the lift at the end of the hall rose of its own accord, disappearing into the ceiling. Jason and Brianna looked at each other knowingly. Momenarily, the lift returned, with Brian and Gina aboard, loaded down with suitcases and gifts. "Hi!" Bri' said, rushing over. Jay got up and headed in the general direction. Brianna hugged the two guests, babbling about how great it was to see them. Jason waited and shook Brian's hand, then gave Gina a hug for good measure. "How ya doin'?" he asked. "Oh, fine," Gina responded. "Slightly bored due to the lack of action, but otherwise, everything's shipshape." "Haven't replaced any other internal organs with computers?" Jason said with a smile. Brian laughed briefly. "We didn't REPLACE anything, Jay. You KNOW that." "Yeah, yeah, I know," he nodded. "I was just being stupid." "It's really quite a fun little implant, Jay," Gina said. "You'll never know what it's like until you try it." There was a pause, as Gina seemed to focus her attention on Brian for a moment. Then she turned to Jay and said, "Brian tells me you've never really liked the idea of getting wired up." Jason looked at Brian, who raised his eyebrows in response. "To me, it's a foreign object inside my head, Gina," Jason told her. "Tell you what, let's make a deal. In one year, if the technology improves to the point where I feel safe with it, I'll go ahead and do it. Okay?" "Fair enough," she nodded, grinning. "And just so you don't forget, I've recorded the last ten seconds and I'll keep it in a safe place." Brianna laughed politely as Jason rolled his eyes. Just then, there was a calm tone in the air, as if someone was running their finger around the edge of a wine glass. In actual fact, it was the phone ringing. "Stay where you are; I'll get it," Brian said. Though he didn't move a muscle, the holographic projector in the center of the lab sprung to life and displayed two people. Jason shook his head and faced the projector so that his image would be sent to the caller. "Hi," he said brightly when he realized who it was. "How's things?" "Not bad, not bad at all," Mitch said. She and her significant other, Valsen, were online from their living room. She smiled. "How about you?" "Well, we're bored out of our heads; it's snowing bigtime down here, and Bri and Gina just arrived.. other than that, nothing's going on." Mitch grinned. "How ARE the chipheads?" "We heard that," Brian and Gina's voices came over the line, having been inserted by the couple electronically. "I have pity for you, Jay and Brianna," Valsen declared. "People who have new implants are terribly hard to deal with for the first few years." "I've noticed," Jason said. "We'll figure something out." "We're going to mail over our gifts in a moment," Mitch said. "Do you have yours ready?" "Sure do," Jason nodded. He walked into the lab proper and, under the watchful eyes of Mitch and Valsen's life-size images, picked up several wrapped packages and placed them on a circular pad in the corner. "Ready," he said, facing them again. "Okay, hold on.." Valsen bent out of camera range for a moment, typing on a control pad. The presents on the transporter pad vanished, and in a few seconds, several different ones appeared. "Sure beats the hell outta the Pony Express, doesn't it?" Mitch remarked. Christmas came and went, and everyone was happy, and got what they wanted. Packages from the other family and friends arrived just in time; there were ones from Jay's family, Brian's family, Jay's brother-in-law and sister and two-year-old nephew, Gina and Brianna's parents, and Cheetah and Stripe, as well as ones from numerous other friends. It was the first time ever that the Brougham complex came close to being crowded, with all the gifts piled under the tree. Brian and Gina were staying through to the New Year, which the four were going to celebrate as the start of the new millennium, regardless of how others viewed it. As Jay put it, 1990 was the beginning of 'the nineties', so 2000 would be the start of the 21st century. He said two other things about it: The calendar should've been zero-based anyway, and will the real estate giant now change their name to Century 22? The dinner on the 25th was nothing short of incredible. Jason had (using his friendly connections with Asrial, no doubt) scored all of the traditional holiday food one would eat while on Salusia, and he and Brianna had spent two days cooking it all. Not that it was big; there was just so MUCH of it. Partway through supper, for no reason at all, Brian burst out laughing. Bri' and Jay looked up to see Gina looking over at Brian and grinning. "Good joke?" Brianna said politely, yet with the underlying meaning quite conspicuously out in the open. "Sorry," Bri managed a moment later. He turned to Gina and said aloud, "We'll stop it for the duration of our stay here." "Okay," Gina nodded after a moment. Brianna looked at Jason, who sighed, smiled, and continued eating. 27 DECEMBER 1999 Jason turned away from the window as he heard a knock on the door. "It's open," he said, turning back to the scene before him as he pushed the door open button on the control pad in the wall. Gina stepped through the doorway as the door slid into the wall; she walked away from it, and it closed, seemingly of its own volition. "Hi," she said. "Hi," he nodded at her reflection in the window as she approached. "Whatcha doin'?" "Oh, just watching the world go by." He was standing in what had formerly been the library and/or retail space of the building. Now, it was a library again, of sorts; several chairs and stacks upon stacks of books lined the room. He stared out the picture window at the snow-covered view. Years before, or in other realities, had the streets been as deep with snow as they were now, places would be closing down; now, on present-day Earth after Jay and his friends had helped return Tolum and its technology to the world, most vehicles used anti-gravity systems, and deep snow was hardly a problem at all. "What are you thinking about?" Gina asked. "All the things I've done and seen," he told her. "I started out this journey as an ordinary fighter pilot fighting what was then World War Three. THAT was stopped by the crash-landing of an alien ship on Earth. I thought THAT was weird enough at the time, but if anyone had told me then that I'd soon be considering that to be one of the least unusual things that happened in my life, and that my life would be about thirty-five times longer than I could've ever expected, well.. I just don't know how I'd've reacted." "Did you ever think about writing your memoirs?" Gina asked out of the blue. Jason supressed a chuckle. "Several times." "What's stopped you, then?" "Mostly, the sheer volume of it." "Can't remember it all?" "No.. actually, exactly the opposite. I remember everything that's ever happened to me. Two problems. A, where do I start, and 2, once I start, it'll take me the rest of my life to tell my story. There's a lot of memoirs to write in a 3300-year life." "May I make a suggestion?" "Sure." "Don't take this the wrong way, but what if you started with the day you arrived here with us, wrote about what's happened since then, and then went on backwards from there?" Jason looked at her, and she got the feeling that he'd soon be angry and accuse her of trying to reduce the majority of his life to an 'if-I-have-time' sort of recollection. Then, he did something she never expected. He smiled and said, "That just might work, yaknow." "Can I talk with you for a bit about Brianna?" Gina said a few moments later. "Sure," Jason nodded. "What about?" Gina took some time to answer. When she did, she sighed. "I feel responsible for her well-being, since I, well, created her. I KNOW you two have been getting along really well together, but I just felt I needed to get some things off my chest." Jason said nothing, letting Gina continue. "She's quite special to me," she said. "I care for her a lot. Sometimes, I feel like I get a bit of a thrill out of her unorthodox behavior on a job. Maybe it's because of how she came to be--maybe I'm feeling like she's doing the rambunctious stuff I never get the chance to do. But while I'm thrilled, I'm also SCARED for her, too. She takes a lot of risks. I'm worried that one day she might go too far. I love to see her have fun, especially because of the way her life started out, but she never thinks of the consequences of her actions. ..And so, I'm asking you, a veteran in combat, space travel, and countless other things, to keep an eye on my baby sister, and make sure she keeps her wits about her. Please." "Hey.. you know I'd always make sure of that," Jay said in a comforting tone. "You can always rest easy knowing I'm watching over her. Or, at least watching her--can't watch OVER someone a foot taller than me." After Gina finished laughing, Jason said, "Now.. my turn." "Brian?" Gina asked. "Yes," Jay nodded. "Don't get offended if I tell you something you already know here, but"--he rolled his eyes, smiling at the irony of what he was about to say--"watch out for his moods. Sometimes he can get even more obnoxious than me. Just let him vent, and he'll calm down in due time." He wasn't finished. "But when I say 'let him vent', don't equate that to 'leave him alone'. If you do that, you might find YOURSELF alone. The best way to keep him sane is to do everything he does. If he starts ranting, agree with him and see his point of view. You'll find it's easy, and more often than not, he's right." Jason blinked and shook his head. "God, I feel like I'm preparing a young one to leave the nest. I don't know why, but over the years, it always seems like I'm the leader. Not of Brian, mind you--but of something. Ever since my Robotech days." "Well, don't worry about that any more. We all work as a team. Now, and always." He had to laugh; Gina had unwittingly used Mitch Scott's trademark phrase. "Yes, now and always," he agreed. "All of us." "Bri'?" Brian called out, climbing the stairs up to the living room of the house. "You wanted to talk?" "Yeah," she nodded. "Come in." She slid over on the couch. "Is everything okay?" he asked as he sat down. "Couldn't be better," she smiled. "You're wondering why I want to talk with you and not with Jay, right?" Brian nodded. "I've heard Jason's take on life a few dozen times. I want to hear how YOU figure life has treated you." "Oh." He thought for a moment. "Can I ask why?" "Oh, Idunno.. I just think of how incredible your lives must have been.. gallivanting around the universe and all that. Sometimes I wish I'd been there." Brian had to think about it for a moment. As he spoke again, he smiled. "Yeah, I guess after all was said and done, we had a fair amount of good times. But it wasn't all Star-Trekky exploration of the universe in a state of peace and tranquility, you know. There were some pretty rough spots along the way." Brianna nodded and smiled as well. "Bri, you know me well by now. I LIVE for 'rough spots'." "I know you very well," he laughed. "Like a sister, Bri'." She was silent for a moment, then: "That was the other thing." "Hm?" "Gina." "Oh." A pause. "What about her?" "Don't EVER let her give up her passion for adventures, okay? I mean, I have her memories from when I was born. Maybe that's what made me say what I just did, about wishing I was back with you guys in your past times. Inside all of us Diggerses is an intense desire to explore the unknown. I see it in the Lows and the Burgesses, too, but in Gina and me, and to a lesser extent, Brit, there is an overriding passion to come up with answers for all the bewildering questions. Even though Tolum unlocked a lot of the mysteries of this planet, there're still countless others to be found. The way I see it, SOMEONE'S got to be out there doing this, and it might as well be us. So I'm asking, no matter what you guys decide to do with your lives, please make sure you two--and my nieces and nephews"--she grinned--"never forget to always keep searching for answers." Brian nodded, putting a hand on Brianna's shoulder, and looking up into her eyes. "Rest assured, it'll never end, Bri'. I feel certain that if we're still around when the last mystery of Earth is solved, Gina will have the lot of us helping her build a ship that we can take out into deep space to start searching all over again." They both laughed. The twenty-eighth of December saw Jason once again staring out of the windows of the fire hall, watching even more snow descend upon the already fifteen- centimeter-deep blanket all over the city. He, and Bri as well, were reflecting on the fact that 28 December had been a significant date in history several times over for them. The destruction of the SDF-1, a few thousand years back. Jason's first wedding, to Aileen. The day each year that Jason remembered that there was only a month left before Mitch's birthday and he hadn't gotten a gift for her yet. That got him off on a tangent. He wondered if Mitch still thought of the relationship they'd shared for centuries. Now THEIR story was definitely one for a book, he mused. They spent countless years as acquaintances, friends, and lovers. Every time they'd become separated, they'd always kept thinking of one another. Until this time. Jason had been 100% certain that there was another Mitch out there roaming the universe, as a starship captain, and had considered her lost to him. So had she, Bell had told Jason. And so, Jason had had no qualms getting together with Brianna. When he had brought Mitch back, though, from the core memory cube, he was worried that she'd be upset over his relationship with Brianna. It turned out that she was not, and he felt relieved, yet uneasy. It was the same feeling he'd had when he'd first conjured up the CI version of Mitch, worrying about how she'd react when she saw that he was married to Kylie. He laughed inwardly when he remembered things that happened thousands of years previous, relatively, as if they were yesterday. Certainly, no one else on Earth had the right to claim their lives were as interesting, except maybe Bri and Mitch. He branched off on another tangent again. He had been basically happy in his life, all things considered, despite the occasional bad instances. Perhaps that was why he'd managed to live so long, the fact that notwithstanding all the bad times he'd had in his thirty-three-hundred years, he'd remained in generally good spirits. He thought once more of Mitch. She was with someone who cared for her at least as much as Jason had (and still did), and it obviously made her happy. That, in turn, pleased Jason, and he no longer felt guilty for bringing Mitch back after having hooked himself up with Brianna. he decided, His thoughts went to Brianna just then. He realized that if he were asked to compile a list of things he'd experienced and rate them according to how he felt about them, many of his experiences since he'd met Brianna would be very near the top of the list. He felt like he belonged here, more than he ever had in any other place before. And so, New Year's Eve rolled around, and the four of them gathered on the roof of what had once been a firehall. From their vantage point, they could see the celebrations all over their corner of the city of Toronto. In any case, they all stood around watching the crowds in the streets of their community. Loud parties were here and there, and for a change, the weather was cooperating. "D'ya realize," Jason said out of the blue to Brian, while looking up at the stars, "that this is our last time through the 20th century?" "Yeah, I'd thought of that," Brian said after a moment's hesitation. He looked to Gina, who was on the other edge of the roof, pointing out things in the night sky to her sister. He then looked back at the stars and said quietly, "I thought I'd do something at midnight to make it worth my while." "Hey, you too?" Jay grinned. "Let's do it together." "Okay," Brian answered, understanding and smiling as well. The time came to be 23:59:01 on 31 December 1999, and Jay cleared his throat and motioned for the girls to come over. He looked to Brian, then back at the girls, and began to speak. "Thirty-three hundred years or so ago, two guys managed to get tossed into a very turbulent period in the timestream together--at the same time. From then on, they kept on doing things together--fighting for the same causes, thinking the same way, and even jumping dimensions, all the time sticking together." Brian picked it up. "We've thought long and hard about this, now that we're mortal again, and have realized that we're getting one last chance to enjoy the best part of our lives." Jason dove in as Brian seemed like he was about to break down--even though Jay himself wasn't faring much better. "We've decided, again together, and we hope you will concur, that we'd love to start off the 21st century--this last time around--by asking you to be our wives." The explosions resonated all around as everyone all over ushered in the new year, the new decade, the new century, and the new millennium. Brianna and Gina looked at each other with faces that wore blank gaping looks and were lit by colored flashes of light as the fireworks went off around them. Then, at the same time, they laughed out loud, almost crying, and rushed to embrace their respective fiances. << Def Leppard "Hysteria" _Live: In The Round / In Your Face_ >> THE END ..?