The Tesla Objective

Epilogue

The lead driver of the military convoy performed a perfect U-turn and began doubling back. He led the other support Humvee up the icy incline, and thought he had to hand it to these people.

Hiding out up in this remote wilderness, with only one snowbound road up the side of a dangerous cliff, was not a bad choice. He hadn’t been sure why initially, just as they were closing in, the mission had been called off and he was sent to turn around, but then the call came to resume operations and acquire the targets.

He ascended the hill, following the hairpin turns and grinding up with little problem despite the several inches of snow. And as far as missions went, this certainly was a piece of cake.

The targets. He laughed to his colleague, and was tempted to jump on the Com and talk to the others behind him, throwing some sarcasm in about sending in the elite forces to capture two infants from a doting old grandmother, but in this age, who was he to question?

A sudden, stabbing pain roared from the back of his head, simultaneously with a flood of images and feelings and vision upon vision. Friends, lovers, his mother — as a child, and his own kids, grown and sickened and dying, and…

He screamed and let go of the wheel. Some basic part of his training kicked in and he motioned for his mate to take the wheel, but there was no response, only screaming from the passenger seat — and from his Com, he realized eventually, in between the fits of his own howling and pleading.

He never saw the next turn or even realized he had stomped on the accelerator in an effort to drive out the flood of visions.

The Humvee went soaring over the edge, through the shattered guardrail. During the plunge, he was so caught up in the kaleidoscopic onslaught of psychic visions he didn’t have the luxury to enjoy the beauty of the electro-magnetically-enhanced aurora forming a shield-like pattern above.

A mile up the road, the ground leveled and a bisecting trail, covered with snow, led the way into a pine-shrouded valley where a single home rested, chimney puffing smoke into the frigid sky, below the pulsating colors in the winter sky.

A lone light burned within, but outside, beyond the open door and at the end of ragged footsteps, lay an old woman, gasping out her dying breaths into the snow.

The man who cast no footprints lingered near the woman and tenderly knelt beside her during her last moments before he stepped into the home.

And the babies, asleep in their respective cribs in front of the crackling fireplace, stirred, turned and opened their eyes, fixing them on the newcomer.

“Dada,” one of them said.

And the flickering figure that cast no shadow bent toward them in a gentle, longing motion.