Bubble

The woman stood in front of the wounded man. In her hands she grasped the newly-fired stengun. Her eyes were like slits, her teeth bared. She was undressed, bruised, dirty, and approached him slowly crouching like an animal.

The man in the camo smock lay awkwardly propping himself up at an angle against some fallen, moss-covered branches. He was breathing difficultly. His smock had a large, dark stain on it. Blood.

They faced each other in silence.

Then she spoke.

"Who are you?"

The man didn't answer. He looked away, giving the impression that he'd rather she simply shot him. She considered it for a moment; but was curious for answers.

She asked again.

He snapped a ferocious answer.

"Same as you, more or less."

She looked puzzled.

"Flotsam!", he added.

She let the answer sink.

"Why?", she asked.

"I don't know. Something to do with our brains. We're too intelligent but not enough at the same time. It's a sort of joke."

She didn't understand.

He coughed violently. Blood. Then he drew a deep, rattling, sigh.

"Blast...I'm full of lead."

"Yes."

"We can't comprehend it quite...only pretend we do. That's why we're here now. We don't belong. Obviously. Even you must have understood that by now."

"No, I don't unserstand that. How did we get here?", she asked, worriedly.

He sneered.

"Who knows?"

He spat and cursed.

His voice was annoyed and weary.

"Silly...silly buggering, I suppose. Nostalgia for the never was. Pipe-dreams for worlds that don't exist. Like rewriting history for a confederate victory or something.."

"Con..what?"

The woman sat down, cross-legged, stengun still pointing at the man. She still didn't understand.

"No", the man said, "why should you? The confederacy was a short-lived political fiasco in olden days. But even as it disappeared dreamers pined for what may have been if it had survived; thus a new direction, and alternate world, a new bubble in the froth."

"You mean we cancel contingency by creating realities?"

"Yes. But it's because we're stuck in an arrow of time."

The woman let it sink.

"But...but, then how did we get here?", she asked, quietly.

The man sighed deeply again.

"Haven't you been listening? I said we were an intelligent species, and therefore can't really accept irreversability. You were here to reverse irreversability. I was here to stop you. Why doesn't matter."

"But you failed", she said.

"Yes.", he answered, and expired beneath a Triassic tree.

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