The Chimes at Midnight Friday June 1, 4:09pm
None of us thought it'd end like this. I guess, if we thought it'd end at all, we imagined some Third Power attack that permanently disabled our link. All our attention was focused on them, on keeping safe. But, like the man said, this is the way the world ends: not with a bang but with a whimper. Our government, headed by our beloved leader Earlywine, is cutting the funding to the Centre for Reality Research. It makes a sort of sense, I'm not going to say that it doesn't. Mysterious goings-on and unexplained deaths might be interesting for me to investigate, but they're hardly reason enough to keep spending millions of Lecks on a link to Earth, not now the Cube's been found. "These," as my father said to me the other day "are the political realities". I couldn't think of anything to say in response.
I didn't have to. He said it all for me.
"There just aren't the resources to keep this enterprise going, Violet. I'm sorry to disappoint you."
I bit my lip and willed myself to keep looking him straight in the eye, not to let my gaze fall to the floor as I used to when I was a child.
"We'll still be monitoring events on Earth. You'll still get your Earthology feeds."
"But, we won't be able to talk to them?"
"No. We'll still be watching them, though."
Sometimes my father can be downright sinister.
And I keep thinking, now, what was it all for? What does all of this actually amount to? Yes, we found the Cube and saved the world and all that heroic stuff but now that's done... what was it? And I think, maybe it's the journey. Maybe the Cube was never a destination. Maybe it was always meant to be a journey.
There are so many people missing, so many who fell along the way, that it seems almost callous to enumerate the things we've learned, the things we've done. I wish they were here too. But this is how life is: never just one thing, always mingled, the pure emotions we hope for always tainted by something else.
So, we've been all over this world, and all over yours. We've saved lives, we've solved problems. I've had a year long relationship with a mass-murdering psychopath, which was certainly unexpected. (I saw him recently, at Fletcher Prison, it doesn't matter why I was there. "Not 'mass'," he said to me, still smiling the same wolfish smile, "'mass' is more than ten, surely.") We have battled wrongdoing and witnessed evil. We have gone farther and seen further than I ever thought we would.
As for me?
I have seen the stars at twilight in a world not my own.
I will never be the same.
I hope the same is true of you.
The journey isn't over yet, for any of us, but this is as far as we go together, for now. Ding ding, last stop, all change please. But I hope we'll meet again. It has been a privilege to travel with you, an honour to be your friend.
I've sat staring at this post for hours, trying to work out what to say. I think that's about as close as I'm going to get. Kurt, Scarlett and I are going out to see an Earth play tonight at the Majestic: Henry IV part two. It seemed suitable: a play about endings. None of us are now the things we were. Kurt and Scarlett have their own last posts for you, you can find them here and here. And then, late night poker this evening, I think. Time to give Nipper's boys a chance to win back a few of their lecks. Life goes on. It always does.