Earth2: Robin-a-Tumble Story: SHARDED

Dedicated to J. Madison Wright who portrayed such a spunky True

[Teaser]

Morgan Martin stomped away from the camp. He was fuming, muttering to himself. "Those people have no sense whatsoever. They have no idea of the possibilities this planet offers. And they never listen to sound advice. I told them we should check out that cavern at the top of the hill. But no, that Adair woman wants to move, move, move. She's always pushing us so hard. And then that Danziger character. That man is as stubborn as a... as a..." He couldn't think of a proper comparison for the mechanic.

Well, forget about them. He was going to make sure that he and Bess would be better off once they would return to the stations. No more groveling in the face of Level 5 bureaucrats. No more tiny cubicles to live in. No, all that would be different when they got back. And his father- too bad the man would be long death. It would have been worth all the trouble this planet could throw at him just to see his father's face upon discovering his son had it made!

He wasn't really watching where he was going and unexpectedly found himself caught in a dense bush, large thorns tearing at his clothes and skin. Ouch, that hurt!

Suddenly he stopped trying to break free. What was that? He heard noises- twigs creaking, a branch snapped. Someone or something was with him here in the brush.

"Oh God," Morgan thought to himself. "I sure hope it's not one of those creepy Grendlers again..."

[Part 1]

By: Nicole Mayer

The more intently he listened, the more aware Morgan became that whatever was in the bushes with him was just as aware of his presence as he was of it. Panic began to well up in Morgan; he was almost petrified with fear. He drew in a deep breath. So did the other. And then there was nothing but silence for several long moments as neither dared to breathe.

Morgan felt something tickling his nose. As luck would have it, a small insect was merrily buzzing through the thorns, which so cruelly trapped Morgan, almost taunting him with its freedom. Morgan couldn't even get an arm up to his face to brush it away.

By now, Morgan was turning purple with the agony of not breathing. He couldn't take it anymore. He - had - to - breathe.

A huge gust of air expelled itself from Morgan's lungs, spiraling the bug far away, and Morgan had nosily sucked in another breath before he realized that in breathing, the other would have been able to hear him.

"Stay calm, Morgan," he coached himself, "whatever it is it hasn't eaten you yet. Maybe it's just stuck like you are." Yet the breathing that came from the other side of the bush was ominous. Remembering his earlier thoughts, Morgan was overcome by a sudden sense of the universe laughing at him. Just as he'd been dreaming glorious thoughts about returning to the space stations and telling everyone what a great man he'd become, Morgan had gone and gotten himself stuck in a thorny bush with a would-be assassin only a few feet away.

More than anything else, Morgan found himself wishing that he was in VR and it was only a simple matter of removing the gear to get out of this situation. As it was, there was very little he could do. Somehow, his whole body had become surrounded by the wicked looking thorns - his earlier struggling had only made his predicament worse. His only option was to call for help, something he didn't dare do with that thing on the other side of the bush.

Yet the thing wasn't sounding too scary anymore. Morgan recognized sounds of struggling similar to his own and just as Morgan mustered up the courage to say a simple, "Hello," the thing groaned.

Morgan yelped. He couldn't help the instinctive reaction. Moments later, an echoing yelp came back to him. Morgan yelped again.

They went on like that for a good five minutes, yelping back and forwards, before Morgan recovered his senses enough to try and think rationally about what was going on. Morgan had become a lot braver since crashing on this planet and it was silly for him to be having a yelping competition with someone who was just as stuck as he was! Remembering his earlier courage, Morgan finally made a recognizable sound.

The other thing fell silent for a moment, and then replied with its own hello that sounded just as unsure as Morgan's. That meant it was human. Morgan didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe it was a penal colonist. Maybe it was a radical biologist. Maybe it was a Terrian who had somehow acquired the power of speech.

Yet the masculine voice sounded vaguely familiar. Morgan frowned, mentally running through everyone who was part of Eden Advance. Maybe it was Cameron who was stuck in the bush with him - no one heard Cameron speak very often so Morgan could be forgiven for not instantly recognizing the other man's voice.

"So you're stuck too, huh?" asked the other unfortunate being. Morgan nodded vigorously (or as best he could considering the thorns around his head) until he realized that he couldn't be seen.

"Yes, I'm stuck," Morgan admitted. "I think every time I try to get out I just make things worse."

"I'm having exactly the same problem," came the reply. "Um - I think I can see a bit of your arm, though. Maybe I can untwist it for you."

Staring hard into the foliage, Morgan realized that he could see pieces of the other person too. One of his hands was fairly close to a piece of clothing belonging to the other person. "I think I can maybe get to you," Morgan managed as he strained to reach it. Carefully pushing aside a large thorn, Morgan managed to unhook what appeared to be part of the man's shirt. "There, you should have a bit more movement," Morgan said.

"I'm getting somewhere here," said the other man. Leaves rustled in front of Morgan's face. "Nearly there, almost..."

And suddenly, the bushes were parted and the two men could see each other, face to face. Morgan let out a horrific yell. His yell was echoed equally by his counterpart. Then each of them, shocked, raced out of the thorny bush the way they had come, not caring about the scratches that were tearing through their skins.

Still screaming, Morgan fled the bush, only glancing back once to see a ponytailed man running in the other direction.

The other Morgan yelled all the way back to camp, only glancing back once to see his identical counterpart running the other way.

[Part 2]

By: Leontien Bosch

Morgan came running into camp and didn't see the amused look on some of the faces of his friends. He heard someone vaguely mutter, "Morgan was playing in VR again," but his mind didn't register it completely. He came to a full stop near Bess, who was talking to Alonzo and Devon.

"Bess, Bess!! You never know what I saw!" he said when he was breathing fairly normal again.

Morgan looked at Alonzo for a minute but didn't bother to answer the pilot's stupid question.

"Bess, I was walking through the woods and I got caught in these bushes. The next thing I know I'm hearing sounds next to me. Anyway, at first it was this Grendler, but when I got free from the bushes, I looked who was in the bushes. I saw..."

Morgan was interrupted by a scream coming from the edge of the camp. When he turned around he saw himself running in his direction. The other Morgan said exactly the same things and Morgan noticed that no one seemed to noticed him anymore. It was as if he wasn't there.

Morgan looked around and tried to get Bess' attention. It didn't work; she just didn't see him. There it was again, that same scream and he saw another Morgan running towards him.

"Oh no. What is this, it seems like everything is stuck, like time is stuck at this point. Like a watch without batteries," Morgan said to himself, because no one else saw he was there.

[Part 3]

By: Sue Sadler

He didn't know where the voice came from, but if there was one thing Morgan knew how to do well, it was run from perceived danger. If there was any heroics to be done, then they were best left to Danziger or Devon.

Before his conscious mind had processed the information, his legs were taking him away from the camp and the Terrians.

When his body collapsed bonelessly beneath him, he realized nothing had pursued him. The Terrians were obviously more interested in the camp.

"Temporal images of yourself. With you and the original, there are four of us so far and unless we figure out how this happened, we are going to keep sharding. And the further away from the original, the shorter the time the others and this world can react to us."

The other Morgan sighed. Then pointed down. His legs were pierced by a bush. "It's like becoming a ghost gradually. You're out of alignment with objects so you can't interact with them. The more permanent an object, the more contact you can have with it."

The voice in his head again. An accompanying noise. Intense. Like it would destroy his mind. Then whiteness. Blinding whiteness. Then nothing...

[Part 4]

By: Melanie McManama

"Did everyone just see what I saw?" He had only to glance at Bess, who stood motionless and white-faced near him, to confirm that he wasn't actually going crazy. Or at least he wasn't going there alone.

"How did Morgan get from beside Bess to the edge of the camp without moving?" wondered Mazatl.

"And where did he run off to?" Julia demanded. "He didn't just vanish that time!" Involved in their own debate, the five of them failed to notice the changes taking place in the rest of the camp.

A few yards away from them, True blinked and looked around for her father, wondering wildly where everyone to her right had gone. Even that side of the camp seemed to have disappeared.

Suddenly, three Terrians sprang from the ground, and True was struck by the most curious sense of déja vu. The Terrian in front voiced a long, ululating trill.

True turned and looked up at her friend. Up? No, that wasn't right. This tall young man before her couldn't be her bratty little playmate. "Uly?" she croaked, knowing somehow that she was right. She glanced to her left to see Bess, Baines, Mazatl, Julia and Alonzo staring at her with frozen expressions of shock on their faces. She waited for them to ask what had happened to Uly, but none of them made a move. At all. Not even a blink. They were like statues, True realized.

"True, listen to me -- we don't have much time. Or I should say, we have too much time!" The curly-haired young man grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her attention back to him. "Something calamitous is happening, but you can stop it if you act quickly."

"They exist in a different time shaft," Uly replied cryptically. "It's much slower than the one you an I are in. They're fine, but they wont be for long if you don't listen to me!"

The tone of command in his voice made Uly snap her gaze to his face. Though she was used to his childish demanding, often couched within whines, she had never heard her him speak with such authority; it was disorientating. "Uly, what's happening?"

"A spider tunnel has collapsed," he told her speaking quickly. "It actually happened twenty years ahead of the time you think you're in right now. But the consequences are at the cusp here and now, where you exist. Only in this time, in this place, can the devastation that will become be halted.

"Twenty years from now, a spider tunnel in this very location will be damaged by the planet's movement. In the future, this area is uninhabited and no one was affected. But the ripple traveled backwards, and Morgan Martin stumbled upon it just a few moments ago in this time. His presence acted as a prism, and there are now dozens of temporal shards. Each time Morgan refracts, things get worse. You have to stop it before it's too late!"

Now True recognized the tone of command her friend had used; she ought to know it well, because he sounded just the way his mother had when issuing her endless orders. True felt an odd sense temporal vertigo.

"Can they do anything?" She motioned to the three Terrians standing off to the side.

Uly shook his head. "Because they exist outside of time, they cannot affect its course. They are helping me by allowing me to travel backwards a third time, but I can't stay long. The problem must be fixed here and now."

"Three times?" True felt her mind whirl and briefly glimpsed a time Uly spoke of. He was sick with something, and she was with him and his mother, a graying Devon Adair. And she was older herself -- no longer a little girl, past even a teenager. She wanted to ask Uly more about it, but even as she opened her mouth to speak, she saw the mature version of friend began to fade from sight.

"Find Danziger!" Uly shouted faintly, his dark eyes frantic. "Find your father. He... knows..."

And he was gone. True suddenly felt as helpless and afraid as she had when the Terrians kidnapped her friend that second night on the planet. She had lost Uly a second time. Or was this the third? she wondered.

"True?" A deep, gruff voice called from over a small hill to her right. She recognized that familiar bass, and hurried toward it.

"Dad!" she called gladly, relief making her giddy. Her father was here, and there was nothing he couldn't fix. Together they would get to the bottom of this chaos.

"True-girl!" Danziger called as he topped the hill and the girl felt her knees fold in the middle as she sat down hard. The breath she had taken to return his greeting escaped her trembling lips in a surprised woof of air.

"I've been waiting for you a long time, True," Danziger cackled as he hitched himself down the hill.

"What are you doing down there?" The wrinkled, wizened ex-mechanic boomed down at her. "Did you fall down? Break your hip, if you're not careful." He rubbed his own in illustration. "Fragile things when they get old and brittle; not that you'd know anything about that, eh?" He cackled wildly at his own wit, and True heard the hollow echo of madness in that laughter.

He had waited for her all these years, with nothing but this moment and the awful knowledge of what was to come keeping him company. And it had driven him a little insane.

"Dad," True began carefully, "the Terrians said you would know what to do to stop the temporal sharding."

The elder Danziger nodded slowly, peering at her through eyes whose blue had been clouded with cataracts. He stroked his grizzle-stubbled chin reflectively yet said nothing.

"I'm thinking!" Danziger roared, shaking a bony fist at her. True instinctively stepped back out of his way, glad he wasn't wielding a cane. "It was a long time ago," the old mechanic muttered defensively. His knobbed and gnarled fingers plucked absently at his lips as he struggled to recall the important message that senility had stolen from his memory.

"I've got it!" he shrieked elatedly, startling his daughter again. "You have to remove Morgan from that focal point above the spider tunnel. And you have to do it before he gets there!"

"How can I do that?" True cried. "It's already happened!" She bit back an insane urge to add, And I'm just a kid!

Her father had always had a lot of faith in her own capability, though, and time had not dulled that conviction. "Not if you reach across time," he told her confidently. "You are standing in the shard closest to him; it has to be you, True."

"This doesn't make any sense," she railed. "Where is he and how do I reach him?"

"He will be in that brush just beyond where the camp used to be," Danziger motioned in the direction. "Or maybe he is in the brush. Or was. I don't remember which one it's supposed to be -- maybe all three!" He grinned, showing a mouthful of missing teeth.

True blanched back from the empty jack-o-lantern grin. She moved hesitantly in the direction her father had motioned.

"Stay in your own time shard until you reach him," Danziger cautioned. "Or you may end up stuck in the wrong one."

"How am I supposed to know where the time refracts?" True felt her head spin trying to out-think the paradox.

"Pay attention to your surroundings," was his advice. "Cross over when you reach Morgan. You're close to him; it may only take you a few months, or even just days to get to him." He was lowering his time-ravaged frame to the ground as if preparing to bunker down for rest.

"Aren't you coming with me?" True felt a twinge of fear as she contemplated doing this alone. A decrepit, half-mad Danziger was better than no Danziger at all.

"Can't," Danziger shook his head and closed his eyes. "My job is done. I've waited 53 years for this moment. I've waited 53 years to rest. And you made it... just... in... time." He sighed with weariness and drew another breath, perhaps to say more. But no words were spoken. The breath never came.

True stared at the slumped, motionless frame of her father, and despite her sense of unreality, a deep sadness washed over her. "Dad," she whispered brokenly. She started to go to him and then hesitated. The Terrians, and Uly, had told her that time was of the essence. Literally. If she wanted to help her father-- to help all of them -- she had to fix the time rift. She had to set things back to the way they had been. Or would be, she amended. It had better take less time for her to find Morgan, because trying to think her way around the paradox of it all would drive her insane within a week.

She trudged toward the direction Danziger had indicated, praying that his aged memory had been right.

[Part 5]

By: Emily Foster

True marched down the small hill and up a larger one with a sense of purpose. As she crested the hill, she was amazed to find an identical one before her. Wanting to get this whole temporal sharding mess over and done with as quickly as possible, she began to jog, then to run in earnest. In the time it took for her to run down the hill and back up again, the suns had risen and set three times. Wondering if she was causing even more fracturing by going so fast, she slowed her pace.

By the time she reached the top of the next hill a different sight greeted her. Below her in the valley was a small, rough hewn house and a slightly larger barn. A horse grazed nearby. A primitive fence surrounded a vegetable garden, which was being tended by an obviously pregnant woman, her long curly hair pulled away from her face. Splitting wood in front of the house was a man, his back to True, with a long braided ponytail. Two small children with curly hair played tag nearby. It was a peaceful, idyllic setting.

Stopping to watch the children play, the man turned slightly. True recognized him as Morgan. An older, calmer Morgan. But it was the bureaucrat, nonetheless. Clearly, this was not the Morgan for which she was searching.

She watched for a moment longer with a small, satisfied grin on her face before proceeding down the hill toward them. She didn't want to interfere in their time frame, but she knew she mustn't stray from her intended path. As she neared, they began to fade; by the time she reached the bottom of the valley, they had all but disappeared.

So this is the future for Bess and Morgan, True thought. She was glad that at least some of them would find happiness on this planet. Not unless I can find the original Morgan before it's too late, she reminded herself.

Trudging onward, she topped an identical hill. This time the pleasant home and barn had been replaced by an austere, forbidding gray building with no windows surrounded by laser fencing. Guards with MagPros were posted at each corner of the fortress-like structure. A smaller, no less foreboding building stood to one side. From it came a man dressed in a gray uniform followed by an older woman in her fifties or sixties. The man motioned to one of the guards, who entered the large edifice only to return moments later followed by three undernourished, bedraggled people.

Their clothes were worn and tattered, their hair unkempt. They kept their heads down. They were ushered to the uniformed man, the leader, no doubt. He turned to the woman beside him and barked, "Proceed with the examination of the prisoners, Dr. Heller."

True gasped as she watched Julia roughly perform a cursory examination of the first prisoner, a man approximately the same age as the doctor. As she lifted the man's head to look into his eyes, True winced. Morgan! What had he done to end up in a prison like this, she wondered.

The exam done, Julia moved on to the next prisoner, a woman with badly tangled short hair. As her eyes were examined, too, True was shocked and saddened when she realized it was Bess. None of this made any sense to the young girl.

Who, then, was the third man? Did she really want to know? The exam quickly revealed his identity - Alonzo. Julia showed no compassion toward any of them. When she was done, she signaled the guard to return them to the prison. She turned toward the leader.

"They are healthy enough to make the trip to the capital. They should survive long enough to be executed," she declared.

Not believing what she had heard, True decided to leave this version of the future as quickly as possible. There was no way she was going to walk down the hill toward them for fear that they would see her and imprison her as well. She determined the best route to take, then went well around the site, hoping that she would not get too far off her path. She doubled back as soon as she felt she was safe.

Disheartened, she trudged up and down identical hill after identical hill. The suns rose and set with amazing frequency. She had no sense of the passage of time. She began to doubt that she was on the right course. Finally, exhaustion won out. She stopped under one of the trees on top of the hill and closed her eyes, intending to rest for just a few minutes.

When she opened her eyes, everything was blurry. She could hear voices in the distance, whispering, "She's coming around. She's waking up." The voices were familiar, but she was having trouble identifying them. As her vision cleared, she was surprised to discover who was hovering around her.

[Part 6]

By: Nicole Mayer

Six identical Morgan Martins crowded around the unconscious girl, with identical troubled expressions on their faces. "True?" one of them said.

"Morgan," she replied automatically, and then sorrow crossed her face. "I'm too late," she realized. "I had to find you, I had to find all of you, before you sharded but you're already in six pieces and I can't go back!" The final words were said in desperation as she struggled to sit up.

"No no no, True, don't give up," soothed one of the Morgans. "You're the only one who has been able to see us."

True wanted to burst into tears. "You don't know what's been happening," she said, her voice trembling. "I watched my Dad die. I saw horrible things. And the only way to fix it was to stop you!" The 'you' was directed at her six worried protectors who exchanged glances.

"I guess that would be me," one of the Morgans muttered, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, True, I never meant this to happen." He paused and True stared at him, confused. "I'm pretty sure I'm the Original Morgan," he offered. "But these others - they're me as well."

"Only in a worse state of flux," chimed in Morgan. True stared at the man in dismay, noticing that his middle was quite transparent. Glancing at the rest of the group, she soon became aware that all of the Morgans, including the Original, were in various stages of invisibility. One Morgan had almost faded out altogether.

"It's getting worse, True!" burst out Morgan. "We just keep splitting and I think each split makes us even weaker!"

She stared at the six men, her eyes wide and frightened. They didn't know what was going on, only she had seen the horror, which could result from the anomaly. Morgan six flickered in and out, and uttered a low moan. "Help him!" True ordered, an idea growing in the back of her mind. She hadn't been able to find Morgan before he sharded, but what if she could somehow put him back together?

It was the only thing True had left to try. Despite the efforts of two Morgans, the sixth was still hovering with a shadowy outline, a tortured expression on his face. "We can't lose him," she said, struggling to her feet. "If we lose even one of you then there's no hope of reconstructing you before it all happened!"

The Morgans either side of vanishing Morgan were now also looking decidedly paler than before and to her horror, True noticed that the landscape itself was becoming insubstantial. Time was being sucked away by forces unknown, and soon, even this small fragment would cease to exist as chaos and multiple timelines reigned. "Stay together!" she almost screamed in desperation.

Her words had no effect. True reached out to the central Morgan, trying to grasp his hand and pull him back into her reality. Yet as she touched his ethereal fingers, a wave of cold poured over her body and she felt herself almost drifting, losing contact with this point in time and reality itself. She tried to scream, but wasn't sure if the sound was coming out.

"True!" Voices were shouting her name, but they were so far away and she was ever so sleepy anyway and it would be so nice to just give in to the river that was tugging at her mind and fade, fade, fade into the nothingness… She felt one last tug at her hand and remembered that she was supposed to be doing something, but the pull on her arm was in the wrong direction from the peace so she shoved it viciously away and succumbed.

"True!" Morgan shouted desperately but it was too late. She had faded completely away, but in doing so, had transferred the vanishing Morgan back into stability. His counterparts were equally whole, for the moment, but their pocket universe of time was fast collapsing.

"She gave her life for us." Morgan realized, his voice tinged with sadness. "But she was our only hope."

"No, you moron, she saved us!" interrupted another Morgan, possibly the Original. They were becoming unsure of who was who. "She told us the only way out of this, that we have to recombine."

"How is that even possible?" A cold wind tugged at the shirt of the Morgan who spoke and he shivered, seeing nothing beyond their small perimeter, which consisted of a few trees and a bush. A particularly dense and thorny bush…

"Oh no, there's no way I'm getting in there again," the other five Morgans said at exactly the same time. They then proceeded to exchange wry glances. The ground trembled.

The six Morgans moved closer together, unsure of how to do this, but knowing it was their only hope. "I don't want to die," three of them muttered under their breaths.

"You won't die," said the other three. "See, our thoughts are recombining already, we're going to become one person and none of us will really die."

"Uh... guys?" A Morgan stumbled, falling forwards as the others caught him. "I really don't feel too good..." A rift beneath him opened up and began to pull at him, and before he knew what had happened, Morgan was missing half of his leg.

Morgan did so, and the six of them hobbled together in a tight group towards the bush, exceedingly aware that with each passing second, another part of their world just vanished into time. "How are we supposed to get back together?" shouted four Morgans.

"Hold on!" replied the other two, and the six men embraced in a tight pack, trying to become as one, hoping and praying it would work even as they felt some of themselves fading. "We lost Morgan!" one shouted, and then there were only five. And four. And three.

The ground around the bush vanished, and now there was nothing left but the bush itself which the remaining Morgans pushed themselves deeper into. "Hold on!" one shouted. The wind screamed, time twisted, and then everything was dark.

It would have been worth all the trouble this planet could throw at him just to see his father's face upon discovering his son had it made!

Morgan stopped short, suddenly feeling extremely confused, and then noticed a nasty looking bush mere inches from his face. If he hadn't stopped when he did, he would probably be in the middle of the bush and quite stuck.

So, he found himself wondering, just why did he stop? He'd been fuming about life on this planet but come to think of it, it wasn't really that bad. He had fresh air, a wonderful wife, and all the time in the universe...

And then he saw the crumpled figure lying on the ground just a few short meters away. He gasped as he recognized True Danziger. What was she doing out here, anyway? His heart beating wildly with fear, Morgan raced to her side and very gently probed her wrist. There was a pulse and no obvious signs of attack, but the girl was quite unconscious.

"True?" Morgan tried, but he wasn't a doctor and didn't really know what to do. He suddenly wished for his gear but that had been left back at camp when he'd stormed away. How trite and silly it all seemed now. Reaching back into his memories of the basic first aid lessons Julia had given them all some months ago, Morgan checked over True as best he could before he determined that it would be all right to move the girl. He wasn't leaving her out here alone, and for some strange reason, he felt as if he owed her his life.

Of course Danziger went absolutely ballistic the moment he saw Morgan Martin carrying his unconscious daughter into camp but it wasn't long before Julia took control of the situation and hustled both Morgan and True off to the med-tent, promising a report as soon as she knew what was going on.

Unfortunately, Julia didn't exactly have a reasonable report to give. Her scans showed that True was unconscious from possible sensory overload and her cells showed the slight resonation Julia recognized from her own trip through spider tunnels some time ago. Yet as far as Julia knew, there weren't any tunnels in the local area.

True uttered a small moan and Julia was instantly at her side. "Hi True," she said softly. "You had us all very worried."

"That too," True said, and it seemed as if she was shying away from the doctor. "Where's my Dad?"

"He's outside waiting for you to wake up." Julia moved closer, performing another scan with her diaglove and feeling relieved to note normal readings. "You're in the med-tent, True, and we've been on this planet for fifteen months now." Gently stroking True's hair, she added, "I wish Devon and Yale would decide on what calendar to use."

True slowly nodded as a smile crossed her face. "I want to see my Dad. And Morgan. And Uly. And..."

She told them her story, but not everything. There were some things True didn't care to remember. She didn't know if they all believed her or not but Alonzo and Uly seemed to, and her father had made some comment about the horror of six Morgans so True knew that they didn't think she was crazy.

However, they had all decided that she should rest after her ordeal, so she was still in the bed in the med-tent and Julia still hovered by her.

"Are you feeling okay?" Julia instantly replied, lifting a hand to the girl's forehead. True pushed it away.

"I'm fine, I - I just have to tell you something. About what I saw. About the future." She swallowed hard as the chilling memory crossed her mind.

True vehemently shook her head. "It was too horrible. I saw you, Julia. You were in at a prison camp or something and you, you sent Bess and Morgan and Alonzo to their deaths."

"What?" was Julia's immediate reaction, but then her face smoothed into a caring smile. "Listen to me, True. There's no guarantee that anything you saw today is going to happen. You said that time fragmented, you saw different things, different futures for people. But we only have *one* future, True, and that's because of what you did when you helped Morgan." Another reassuring smile. "I know that your future will be a good one, True. You don't have to worry about bad things happening because I *promise* that I will always look after everyone in this group. I promise."

True nodded dully. But in her heart, she knew she could never fully exorcise the images from her mind until such a time had passed. And even then, if they all lived on into old age and were happy and healthy, she still wouldn't be able to get the image of her own father out of her mind. Nor would she forget Morgan and Morgan and Morgan…

She caught sight of the original Morgan walking past the tent and called him inside. A new bond had been forged between them and True wanted to talk to him. "Hi," she said simply, and then stared at Morgan intently.

He looked the same as ever, but there was something a little bit off about him. Almost as if... "Morgan?"

"I'm fine, True, thanks to you, I guess. You're the one we're worried about. How are you?"

"Fine," she answered automatically, and then she realized the truth. She wasn't looking at the Original Morgan, she was looking at Shard number 2.

Disclaimer: the E2 Robin-a-Tumble stories are based on the Amblin Entertainment/Universal Television series Earth2. All characters are owned by the original creators. The Tumble is only for fan purposes and does not have the intention to infringe on any copyrights.