*** Continued from previous part. Holly used a condemned time machine to follow her husband and daughter into the future, but they went further than she could have guessed. ***

∞

In the world Holly had come from, she could not walk through solid walls.

The alien must have technology she could not begin to fathom. When she stretched out her trembling hands, expecting to encounter freezing concrete, her hands encountered a cold liquid instead. A waterfall. Maybe the illusion of a wall had been projected onto it.

She stepped through as quickly as possible. It felt like stepping through a torrential downpour. Her clothes were soaked, and her teeth chattered from the cold.

Yet she couldn't help staring in wonder. Bioluminescent coral glowed everywhere, between cascades and pools of water. The huge alien looked comfortable in this watery grotto.

"Pick up the suit on the floor," it said in its singsong voice. "You must wear the suit or you will die."

A plastic wrap floated on the watery scum of the floor. Holly picked it up. When she shook out its folds, it looked like a trash bag, although it had the consistency of tough rubber. She examined it, trying to figure out how it might protect her.

"Put it on," the alien's voice said. "The suit will inflate and protect you."

Holly stepped into the transparent bag. When she pulled it up to her shoulders, the open edges began to cling together. Air hissed into the bag, and as it inflated, the opening knitted together. She ducked her head and fought against claustrophobia. "How do I know I won't suffocate in here?"

The alien's voice was intimately close. "Without the suit, you will die."

"Okay, but ..." All questions fled her mind as murky liquid splashed into the grotto. The water level rose in a flash flood. The rubbery bag formed an airtight seal over her head. Her ears popped from the change in pressure.

"We made a habitat for humans," the alien voice said. "I will take you there."

Water surged upward, knocking Holly off her feet in her inflated air bubble. She tumbled within the bubble, carried into a seemingly endless space, spinning until she lost track of direction. Up or down, right or left, might be anywhere.

Something yanked her at high speed in one direction.

I'm safe, I'm safe, Holly repeated in her mind, yet she didn't feel safe. Dirge-like moans sounded in the distance. Slow, gloomy clouds of silt obscured cliffs all around her. Crusty rocks hid multi-hued lights, as distant as skyscraper windows. She floated in an undersea alien city.

The alien appeared to be towing her, bubble and all, through the murky ocean. It pumped ahead like a chubby squid, bioluminescent spots rippling between the wires along its body.

"Is the whole world covered in water?" Holly asked.

"Yes," the alien's voice replied. "Humans made this world best for us. They departed eons ago. Will there be more late arrivals like you?"

Eons ago. Peering at a nearby cliff, Holly realized that it was the bent frame of a ruined skyscraper, bumpy with coral. This had once been Baltimore. National Laboratory had been in a tree-lined office park, which must have been replaced by a booming downtown. And now? All the trees and cars were gone. Everything was ossified, decayed, and crushed by tons of liquid.

The alien's voice spoke with patience as deep as the ocean. "Will there be more late arrivals like you?"

The first time traveler, Dana Thuan, must have surprised the aliens. They wouldn't have had time to set up an air bubble suit, a greeting room, or a puppet human. Dana would have appeared at the bottom of a cold, dark ocean. Alone. Twenty-four years old. She must have drowned, thrashing, silvery bubbles rising from her mouth in a death scream.

"Oh no."

"Please explain," the alien's voice said. "Will there be more late arrival humans?"

Holly prayed that no one would be daring enough to follow her. Let Sheila and everyone else stay in the twenty-first century. "Keep your greeting room open," she heard herself say.

Dana must have made a mistake with the algorithm, catapulting herself too far into the future. Holly guessed that she would never see her daughter alive. Greg Noble, the technician who had followed Dana an hour later, had certainly perished as well.

The only other human alive in this era was Quoc Thuan.

∞

She found Quoc sitting amidst an array of machine parts, in a cave with multiple rooms connected by crusty tunnels.

The inflatable bubble protected her as water drained away, running down walls. She stepped out of the bubble and stepped through puddles, her clothes uncomfortably damp. Then she stepped through the wall and into the room with her husband.

"Quoc?" she said.

He seemed to be building something with machine parts, but when he saw her, he stopped. His gaze was unreadable behind his eyeglasses.

Did he miss holding her at night? Did he miss their weekend strolls through their gated neighborhood? They were both eight years older than the last time they had seen each other, but the only change she noticed in Quoc was a little more silver in his hair.

He got to his feet and cleared his throat. "Why did you come here?"

Holly had been prepared to melt into his embrace. Now she froze. "I came to find you."

Maybe he was just concerned for her, but he sounded cold. Perhaps he suspected that she was a puppet. "And Dana," she added, although that was a painful topic, like opening a wound. "I know she's not here. But I came to find her, too."

Quoc approached Holly slowly, studying her as if he expected her to vanish like a mirage.

"I never stopped missing you," Holly told him. "People kept telling me to move on with my life. I went through grief counseling. But I was certain you were still alive. Yearning for me." She searched his face for any hint that would confirm her dearest hopes.

Quoc reached for her, then pulled her close. His skin and hair smelled the same as she remembered, an earthy musk. His body fit against hers in the same cozy way.

Yet something seemed wrong. Before he'd pulled her close, she had glimpsed his face, and it was expressionless. His skin looked as smooth as a rubber mask, like the puppet that had greeted her earlier.

"Quoc?" She pulled back to study him.

He averted his gaze.

That simple gesture of shame—or simulated shame—was enough to terrify Holly. She backed away fast. "Tell me you're real," she said. "Please say you're real."

"I'm real." He sounded like someone commenting on the weather. "Holly, let's just be silent together for a moment."

He squeezed her hand as she began to protest. With his other hand, he trailed his finger in the air, as if scribbling. Glowing dust appeared wherever his finger moved. Humans are all around us, the glittering words read.

Quoc waved his palm. The words vanished. He wrote anew with his finger.

We went nano and quantum. Uploaded to nanobot cloud.

Holly examined the skin of his hand, hardly able to believe it. She studied his deep brown eyes ... and saw nothing familiar there. He had the detached gaze of a scientist assessing an experiment.

The striations in his irises glowed briefly, like miniature lightning. The striations rearranged themselves into a spiral, then returned to normal.

More glittery words appeared in midair, this time without his guiding finger. Aliens spy in this cave habitat. Do not show a reaction. Quoc never taught the aliens to read and write in English.

Holly spun around, aware that surveillance cameras might be hidden in the coral walls. Ocean aliens must be watching her and Quoc ... or her and the thing disguised as her husband. They were like zoo animals. A breeding population.

Glittery words coalesced in front of her. The Quoc you see is a human-designed biomechanical puppet, operated by many.

Quoc allowed us to upload his mind to our wireless cloud network of nanobots.

We uploaded Dana and Greg as well.

They are with us.

Holly pushed her fist into her mouth to prevent a scream. Her husband continued to observe her as if she was a machine part ... only now she knew that both her husband and her daughter were dead and alive at the same time. Quoc had lived here for a while. But when quadrillions of nanobot humans offered him a chance to die and be reborn among them, Quoc would have agreed. He lived for scientific advancement. He treated his own life like an experiment. Why live in solitude, at the mercy of alien colonists, when he could move on?

Quoc hadn't been satisfied with a normal life in the suburbs, either. He'd always itched to move on.

Mom. Glitter sparkled in the air. I am here.

Now Holly wondered if the Aeon Hyperbolic Chamber had malfunctioned, or if Dana had purposely leaped millenniums ahead just to see the future. Quoc would have done that, too. Only Holly was different. She only wanted to be with her family.

You can be with us. Be with your family.

The cloud-humans must have read her thoughts.

If they were the size of molecules, then they could fit just about anywhere. Holly imagined a vast network of nanobots monitoring every electrical pulse that fired across her neurons. They would map out patterns and piece together the encodings of language. The mechanics of how such a thing was possible must be staggeringly complex.

Their Quoc Thuan puppet seemed all but flawless. Holly pressed herself into his arms, inhaling his familiar scent. The warmth of his body was realistic. Nanobot cloud-humans must be a million times more technologically advanced than the oceanic aliens.

"What's behind those eyes?" she said, hoping. Maybe Quoc was still human in every important way. Did he remember how to trail his fingers lightly along her waist, the way she liked?

He only squeezed her arms gently. Words coalesced in the air, glittering and then breaking apart like cobwebs. False Quoc is operated by a large team.

It takes many.

She should have guessed. The human body was a very complex machine. They had mentioned "quantum," which implied that each cloud-human was more than the sum of its nanobots. The nanobots must share multiple processes; an aggregate wireless network that supported many individual minds.

They no longer existed in one place at a time. They probably overlapped, sharing thoughts with each other.

Glittering words appeared before her eyes. Yes.

"We knew you'd follow," the false Quoc said. "Mom. Wife." The robot caressed her cheek.

They didn't need to ask Holly to join them. She was so lonely, and they were family. All she wanted was some preparation. "Will it hurt?"

"Never." The false Quoc settled against the rocky wall, inviting her into his arms. She snuggled against him. Cloud-humans probably never felt pain. They had no nerves, no biological bodies.

Correct. The glitter formed a word, then broke apart.

Ribbons of glitter skimmed across her skin, exploring every inch of her body more thoroughly than anyone else had ever done. Her nerves began to tingle. The glitter must be crawling into her veins, into her organs, replacing her cells with artificial replicas.

As she lay against the strong chest of her simulated husband, she knew that her life was about to end. A biomechanical robot would replace her human self, to be operated by a team of cloud-humans. A rebirth would happen. The new version of Holly might live forever, able to explore the universe with an approximation of her family, but she would lose many of the things that made her human.

Her nerves began to die. As she lost sensation, she leaned up and kissed Quoc on the lips, even though it wasn't really him. She yearned to feel it.

I am the last human, she realized.

Her hearing and vision began to fade, replaced by a new awareness. Instead of listening to the ambience of water dripping, input filled her at lightning speed.

Instead of seeing the shape of her husband in the shadowy cave, dazzling imagery inundated her mind. Faraway worlds. Other people's thoughts. Cloud-people were not constrained by the limitations of eyes and ears, and they could exist in many places simultaneously. They had no sense of space, no sense of time passing. Instead of touching, they substituted an abstraction of touching.

Quoc and Dana welcomed Holly with minds swifter than buzzing flies, without any need for words or touch. Greg Noble was with them, too.

All four of them were unique among the cloud-people. They remembered what a family was supposed to be. They alone remembered what pain was, and how it felt to touch another human being.

But only Holly mourned the loss. She would mourn for eternity.

*** Please let me know your thoughts in a comment! Or vote. ***