Pain brought Lila back to consciousness—not the searing pain of injury, but the aching, deep-seated pain of having been rearranged at the molecular level in some essential sense. She did not move, not wanting to open her eyes, not wanting to find out in which world they were. Something did not smell right—not the recycled cleanliness of the station, but something natural, layered with aromas that her brain was not quite able to interpret.
"Lila?" Edmund's voice, close and anxious. His fingers touched hers, and he flared along their connection in a manner that took her breath. The time bond remained, stronger than ever, but it was different now. Where it had once been a lifeline stretched across the centuries, now it hummed with the resonance of two instruments exactly in harmony with each other.
She woke up to impossibility.
They stood in a garden—but not of the sort she could ever have conceived. The vegetation was both familiar and foreign, as if someone had taken the vegetation of Earth and let it grow for a thousand years in some different direction. Roses bloomed in fractal spirals, petals cycling through colors impossible. Trees hung heavy with fruit that glowed with soft inner bioluminescence. And the sky.
"Good Lord," grumbled Edmund, following her eyes upwards.
There were three moons hanging in the afternoon sky—one silver as Earth's moon, one a red which could only be Mars, and one crystal that seemed to refract the sunlight into rainbow waterfalls. But that was not the impossible thing. The impossible thing was the ring.
A massive ring encircled the planet, clearly artificial, segments of it rotating at different speeds. It had gaps in its structure, and through them Lila saw the stars—but they, too, were wrong, constellations she'd studied as a child rearranged to create new patterns.
"Where are we?" she whispered.
"When are we?" Edmund responded.
She hadn't had a chance to answer before footsteps crunched on the gravel path alongside them. They stood still, Edmund's hand reaching instinctively for the hilt of a non-existent sword, Lila's hand darting to her wrist where her station comm unit wasn't. But the individual who came out from behind the hedge brought both of them to a sudden halt.
It was Lila. Or, to be precise, a version of Lila—older, her black hair streaked with premature silver, dressed in an outfit that seemed to be some amalgamation of Victorian and high-tech materials that flowed and shifted when she moved. She moved with a confidence the current Lila had never possessed, and when she smiled, her eyes had a depth of knowledge that came from years—decades—of living.
"Finally," the other Lila answered, her voice rich with harmonics that suggested some kind of vocal enhancement. "You're sooner than forecasted—the models were forecasting six months, subjective time."
"What—" Her voice cracked. She coughed and tried again. "What is this place? Who are you?"
"I'm you, of course. Or, rather, I'm what you'll be." Older Lila's gaze shifted to Edmund, and her smile softened with a love that made current Lila's heart miss a beat. "Hello, Edmund. You're doing very well for a man who has just ridden a time storm. This one is always the worst."
"First time?" Edmund struggled, though Lila could feel his confusion through their connection, mirroring her own. "Madam, I must confess I am utterly confused. You're speaking as though we have known each other, and yet I know I would remember meeting an older version of—" He gestured in frustration between the two Lilas.
"You haven't met me," older Lila had said. "Not yet. Time isn't a line here—it's more of a garden. Things grow in all directions, loop back on themselves, form new patterns. You've landed in what we call the Convergence—a place where a number of timelines converge without quite joining."
She waved her arm around them, and Lila couldn't help but notice that the garden stretched out in impossible directions. There were paths up into the air, other gardens hanging upside down from them. In the distance, she could glimpse buildings in impossible shapes—buildings that seemed to exist in several states at the same time, their walls changing between solid and clear.
"Since your escape from the rift," older Lila continued, "you created a paradox. Not a destructive one—we learned how to avoid those early on—but a creative one. Your being together in time created the things that cannot be. This place, this entire reality, grew from that point. We've been tending it for thirty-seven years, subjective time."
"Thirty-seven years?" Lila staggered on shaking legs, Edmund's hold around her waist the only thing keeping her upright at all. "But we just—the station, the Temporal Oversight Committee—that was minutes ago!"
"For you, yes. But time here is different. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower, sometimes sideways." Older Lila's expression grew serious. "The Committee is still a threat. They exist in many timelines, trying to weed out what they see as anomalies. But here, where the Convergence exists, we've learned to defend ourselves. We've had to."
There was a deafening rumble above the garden, yet when Lila looked up, the sky was blue. Older Lila's face twisted.
"Again, they're testing the limits," she complained. "Becoming bolder. We'll have to get you inside before—"
The air in front of them tore apart, and three individuals in environment suits strode through—the same suits from the station, but with additional armor and arms covered in temporal energy.
"Temporal anomalies detected," the main character replied in the same warped mechanized tone. "Dr. Lila Reyes, iteration prime. Captain Edmund Hartley, temporal displacement subject one. You will be rectified immediately."
"I don't think so," older Lila said calmly. She raised her hand, and a shimmering area appeared in the air around her. "You have no jurisdiction in the Convergence. This is an independent timeline."
"All timelines are under the authority of the Committee," the figure replied. "Your resistance has been noted and will be—"
They never had the chance to finish the sentence. Edmund, moving with a speed even Lila was not prepared for, grabbed a branch lying on the ground and used it as a sword. By the time it hit the helmet of the figure, however, the branch had altered—the Convergence time energies crystallizing the weapon and breaking the visor like glass.
The face retreated, and for a moment Lila glimpsed the face behind it—human, but somehow off, features misplaced and smeared as if they existed in multiple states at once.
"Temporal agents," said older Lila once more, even as she flicked her hand and the ground beneath the other two people melted, trapping them. "They've been modified to exist in multiple different timelines simultaneously. It makes them stronger, yet also makes them weaker. They can't survive here without their suits."
Actually, the target Edmund had struck was beginning to dissolve already, his form drifting like smoke. The other two thrashed in the liquefied earth, their suits crackling as they went out of commission.
"We have to go," older Lila said. "This was a scouting mission. There will be others, stronger." She gazed at Edmund. "Can you get her? The temporal displacement is hitting her harder than it's hitting you—her attachment to her home timeline was stronger."
Lila wanted to demonstrate that she was capable of walking alone, but when she tried a step, the world spun. Edmund grasped her when she would have fallen, lifting her with the ease of years spent pulling rope and freight.
"Go on," he said to her matter-of-factly.
They strode through the garden at a pace just short of a run. Lila, in Edmund's arms, gazed at impossible scenery whizzing by. She saw other people—some human, some clearly changed, some that could not be human. Some nodded their heads to older Lila respectfully, but the new ones received questioning glances.
"Are they all time refugees?" Lila asked.
"Others were born here—yes, it is possible, although the genetics are complicated. We have some voluntary residents, scientists and adventurers who came to study the Convergence. We've built something special here, Lila. A place where the past and future blend, where the impossible is normal."
They approached a building that seemed to have formed rather than been built—walls of glittering crystal filled with inner light. The doors opened as they reached them, and the interior was half-Victorian house, half-advanced science lab, half-something else.
"Welcome to Hartley House," older Lila smiled, mysteriously. "Yes, we did name it after Edmund. He wanted something different, but I got my way. I usually do, after the first ten or so years."
Edmund made a sound which could have been either laughter or incredulity. "A decade? Madam, we have known each other for an hour, at most."
"A century's hour," murmured older Lila. "A world-making hour. But you'll see it for yourself soon enough. First, though, we must stabilize your temporal signatures before the displacement syndrome worsens. And then." She stood in the doorway, looking over her shoulder at them with a face that was half sympathetic and half resolute. "Then we have to prepare you for what's next."
"Which is?" Lila was able to say, though talking was becoming increasingly difficult. The world kept on attempting to crumble into equations, her heightened sense struggling to cope with a reality that operated according to other laws. "War," declared older Lila bluntly. "The Committee has decided it is too dangerous to proceed with the Convergence. They're gearing up on a hundred timelines, hoarding supplies and arms we're just beginning to understand. In six months—your six months—they'll strike in a full-fledged attack."
She led them in, where the impossible design continued. There were rooms that led into other rooms that could not possibly have occupied the same space. There were stairways that went up and down simultaneously. And all over, Lila saw glimpses of lives that had been lived—photos that transitioned like film, books written in languages that would not yet be invented for centuries, objects that could only have been from Edmund's time blended indiscriminately with technology that exceeded anything on her station.
"This is our bedroom," older Lila said, stepping through a door into a room that was snug in its clutter, clearly lived and loved in. "You'll be safe in here while we stabilize you. The temporal shields are most resilient in the private quarters."
She helped put current Lila on a bed that adjusted automatically to cradle her correctly. The instant Lila's head came to rest on a pillow, exhaustion washed over her like a tide. But there were too many questions, too much that failed to compute.
"Hold on," she said, fighting to keep her eyes open. "If you're my future self, then you remember this. You remember being here, afraid and confused. So you know what comes next."
Older Lila smiled wistfully. "I remember variations on this. But every time is different. Every choice gives rise to new forking. The Lila I remember greeting when I arrived here—she was not just me. And you will make choices I did not, create futures I never knew. That is the beauty and terror of the Convergence. Nothing is predetermined. Anything may happen."
She began to leave, hesitated. "Edmund, you must remain with her. The first night is. difficult. The timelines will try to pull you home where you did belong. But if you hold on to each other, if you believe in the connection, you'll stabilize. You'll become rooted here, anchored. And then the real work begins."
"What work?" asked Edmund.
Older Lila's face hardened in a determined expression. "Saving every timeline that ever was or ever could be. No big deal."
She stepped out, closing the door quietly behind her. Amid the sudden stillness, Lila heard the beating of her own heart, heard Edmund's concern through the bond. But underlying it all, she felt something else—a vast web of potential emanating out of this instant, timelines branching and rebranching like the fractal roses in the garden.
"Edmund," she whispered.
"I'm here," he said to her, squeezing her hand. "I'm not going anywhere."
"I can feel it—the pull she was talking about. My timeline is pulling me back. Like gravity, but sideways, trying to pull me back to the station, to the point I was at before I made the rift. If I let go, if I don't fight the pull."
"Then we fight it together," he declared bravely. "I've weathered storms that attempted to drag my vessel to the ocean floor. This is merely another type of gale." He sat down next to her, carefully, maintaining a propriety distance but never releasing the hold of their fingers. "Tell me about the mathematics. Assist me in understanding what we're fighting."
She did. Stuttering through, resisting the displacement syndrome that threatened to reduce her to quantum probability, she described temporal mechanics as best she was able. And he listened, asking questions that showed he understood more than she would have believed. The connection between them assisted—she could show him concepts straight on, disclose to him the patterns of the equations in her mind.
Time was distorted. Seconds turned into hours, hours turned into seconds. Lila could have sworn she saw alternate versions of them in the room—older, younger, versions who'd taken different choices. They glowed like ghosts, here and yet not here.
"Is this madness?" she exclaimed in one of her lucid moments.
"If so," Edmund replied, "then I would rather have it than sanity. My life was rational—king and kingdom, wind and ship, duty and honor. But it was a small life. It was a limited one. This." He gestured at the impossible room, at the reality-bending view outside their window. "This is frightening and wonderful and more than I ever dreamed life could be."
The tug grew more urgent as night fell—or what passed for night in a world in which three moons danced through the sky in paths that defied orbital laws. Lila arched, half of her present in the Convergence, half of her struggling to withdraw back to where she had begun. The pain was exquisite, as though she were being torn asunder at a molecular level.
"Wait," Edmund stated, his voice strained. His own battle, she got—the 19th century pining to reclaim its son. "Look at me, Lila. Hear my voice, our connection. We're here. We're now. We're real."
"Real," she said once more, and tried to believe it. But the math in her head was screaming that this couldn't be done, that they were violating principles so fundamental that reality itself should shatter before it would permit them to be.
That's when she knew.
"Edmund," she whispered. "The Convergence—it's not merely a point where timelines meet. It's a point where impossibility becomes possible. Where paradox is resolved through new realities. We're not violating the laws of physics—we're defining new ones."
"Then write them well," he answered with a trace of his usual smile. "Make them beautiful."
The tug came to its climax. For a moment, Lila was in three locations at once—the bed in Hartley House, the lab on New Carthage Station, and elsewhere, a null point between worlds where nothing could ever be. The pain was beyond description. She felt Edmund's scream, his hand locked on hers to the point of pain.
And then, like a fever breaking, it passed.
They fell onto the unfamiliar bed, panting, still themselves but altered. The time bond between them was no longer an odd connection—it was part of them now, as natural as the air that they breathed. And when Lila gazed out at the impossible buildings that rose around them, it did not hurt her head. She could see the sense of it, the lovely impossibility that enabled it.
"We did it," she whispered. "We're actually here. We're now part of the Convergence."
"God help us," said Edmund under his breath, but there was an undernote of awe. "What have we become?"
Before Lila had a chance to answer, alarms wailed through Hartley House. Combat red lights replaced the regular illumination, and the sound of running feet pounded against the corridors outside. The door burst open, and older Lila stood there before her in what looked like battle gear made of crystallized time.
"They've located us earlier than we expected," she replied tightly. "The Committee's launching a full-scale attack. All hands to defense stations." She looked at them, seemed to make a decision. "And that means you two. This will be your first lesson in time war."
She tossed each of them something—something that looked like a cross between a weapon and a musical instrument. "Harmonic disruptors. They'll respond to your intent, but be careful. When it's Convergence, intent can reshape reality."
And another blast, closer now. Lila saw figures writhing in the garden—Committee troops in those ecology suits, but there were hundreds of them, advancing in rank. Above them, the air was splitting, showing the rift between realities.
"What do we do?" Lila asked, finding her fear give way to determination.
Older Lila smiled like a warrior. "We show them what it means to threaten our home. Welcome to the Temporal Resistance, younger me. Don't die on your first day—I remember it was very inconvenient."
She ran into combat, leaving Edmund and Lila staring at each other, holding strange weapons, ready to battle a war that they'd barely begun to understand.
"Ready!" declared Edmund, and in answer, in spite of everything, his eyes had a sparkle of excitement. The British naval man had found a new sea to conquer, new battles to fight. "No," Lila agreed, standing up. The harmonic disruptor hummed softly in her hand, syncing itself to her emotions. "But that never stopped us before." They sprinted towards the sound of shattering reality, willing to fight for a home they had experienced but a day, in a battle that spanned all of time. Behind them, unseen in the turmoil, stood someone observing from the shadows—an officer in an unfamiliar uniform, one that neither would ever know, with symbols that would never exist for a hundred years. They utilized a communications device that operated in seven dimensions at once. "They've stabilized. Both test subjects are now in the Convergence timeline. On to Phase Two." The figure vanished as a second explosion rocked Hartley House, and the struggle for the impossible began in earnest.