Final Rainbow

“Alice, pass me that screwdriver, there.” Ken poked his head around a large metal box he was working on, holding out his hand.

“Mhm.” She handed it to her father, and then took a dutiful stance, awaiting more orders.

Ken toiled away on a large, thrumming machine, waves of sound washing over the room as it worked. A panel of lights blinked yellow on the top of it.

May peeked around its edge, locking eyes with her father around the large lever dominating the side of the machine. She leaned over the table at which she sat, laptop open beneath her. “Dad, I know we can’t test this thing, but… do you think there’s any chance this actually works? Doesn’t it demand that a bunch of quantum theories are real, that we aren’t sure about?”

“You tell me, May.” He smiled at her. “You did all the math, after all. I just wrote some code, and put this behemoth together.” He slapped the top of it, sending a loud snap echoing through the room. The three of them jumped, and Ken clicked his tongue, setting back into his work on it.

May grimaced. “Not exactly fitting the image I’d had in mind when I drew it out.”

“I like it, Dad!”

“Thanks, honey.” He smiled.

“But, like… we haven’t gotten to test it.”

“I know. But thanks to Irina’s many theories, all of which had tests underlying them,” he said, tapping the folder he’d gotten from her office so long ago, “we know that there’s some validity to all this.”

They fell to silence, Ken and May working fervently, while Alice just watched, waiting for instructions, or for a small space into which she could stick her hand to grab a screw or the like.

Ken’s head was buried deep in his machine, and he could hear the mechanical side whirring, clicking along. The quantum side, though… Neatly compartmentalized, it was somewhat uncanny to work near. It emitted an unsettling warbling, a bit too similar to extirpations for his liking. But according to May, it was the key to their salvation, more so than any other component in the setup. And at its heart was affixed the silver device that Bianca had used to alter all those extirpations all that time ago.

According to news reports and aggregated data, all evidence of tampering with extirpations had stopped—May’s model now near-perfectly projected the extirpations’ movements. No one had come for the device, and no one had used another one. It was one-of-a-kind, and it was their best bet against the extirpations.

Against Irina’s monstrous invention.

“Dad,” May asked. “This is a dumb question.”

“M’kay.” Ken poked out his head.

“What’s the date? I changed the date on my laptop”

“It’s…” he checked his watch.

“November twenty-fourth,” Alice announced, pride evident in her voice.

“Ah.”

Ken nodded, satisfied with her answer. “Why?”

“D’you forget? It comes back around today, I think. If my model’s held up like we’ve theorized.”

“Right. Because of that test she and I ran, huh?”

May sat back in her chair, looking at the ceiling. “Yeah… it moved up the end by seven days.”

“Mhm.” He leaned back into the machine and picked up a wrench from the toolkit beside him.

“You sound… unbothered.” May’s brow was low over her eyes. She paused in her work, looking over at him.

Ken just shrugged. “I guess I’ve… accepted it, at this point.”

“You’re ready to die?”

He considered it, sitting back. “No… I’m just happy we’re all together now. And there’s nothing to be done but work faster anyway.”

Alice nodded her affirmation with a dramatic flourish.

“Me too,” May said. “And I agree.”

They all fell to silence.

But before long, Alice spoke up, her voice little more than a whisper. “Do you guys feel that?”

“What?” Ken asked. “What do you mean?”

She paused. “That!”

Ken didn’t feel anything. “You sure you’re actually feeling anything, Alice?” He struggled to his foot, his stump hanging below him. His eyes flicked back and forth, and he stood as still as he could, trying to feel it. He could guess what she meant: the final extirpation. Slated to arrive any moment.

“There!” she said again.

“I… think I felt it that time,” May muttered, standing up.

Ken stood as still as he could manage, trying to consciously dial up his sense of touch. He felt something brush past his ankle, where his foot should have been. It crept up his body. A faint, almost imperceptible movement of the air. A swaying pre-vibration.

“So, this is it,” Ken said, feeling the final extirpation touching his body.

“Mhm.” Alice looked at her own body, and a wisp of rainbow flicked from her skin as she moved, dancing through the air before shimmering into nothingness.

“This is it,” May muttered.

They all stood there together, feeling the calamity’s beginning. “This is what our work has all been for: fixing this. This is the culmination of Mom’s mistakes. And this,” Ken continued, slapping the top of his machine, “this is the culmination of our love, and our effort.”

May and Alice each nodded in turn. Alice was already crying. May’s eyes glistened, and her lip twitched.

“I’m sorry I neglected you both. I’m so sorry. But… I am so, so grateful for both of you, and to both of you.” With a smile, he turned, activating the machine completely by pressing a button on Bianca’s device. It emanated a pulsing wave of radiant light. “We tried our hardest. And we were together the whole time. At the end, no matter what happens, I’ll be satisfied knowing that.”