Par-Cell remembered that it has all happened before.
Everything. All of existence was running a continuous cycle, and at the same point in the life of the universe, the Ascendant rose on their planet Top, and then Par-Cell was born to roam the prairies of Aeternus and the halls of it’s libraries and then she was there at her present, just as she was preparing for sleep and she startled up from her pillow.
How many times has she lived the same life? Made the same choices? Is she the same person that existed in each iteration of the universe that came before? And why? Why was this the state of reality; the same thing over and over again? Why did the universe blast into existence only to fizzle out and then do it all over again?
Par-Cell was filled with questions in the dark of her room and then she thought about what would happen tomorrow and then the next day. And then she saw when it happened.
A being that is most closely identified as a rhinoceros with a single horn but seemingly bipedal, abused a magic in pursuit of Top, a force powerful enough to push early planets that Top hid behind to evade detection. This was the first manipulation of the repulsive force and it caused the rapid expansion of the universe. It was one of many attacks waged against the Ascendant and it went unnoticed as the source, but after her realization, Par-Cell saw it and knew it.
She knew that it meant nothing to know, but suddenly she was reminded of a previous time she remembered, in a different iteration of the universe, and even when she destroyed the Quinspace rhinoceros, there was some other Quinspace being there to kick the repulsive force into overdrive.
She had a sad realization in her bed, in the dark. Par-Cell had tried many things in previous universal life cycles to correct the mistake of the Ascendant, and nothing worked. Nothing prevented the arrival of the Ascendant in the distant past and nothing prevented the rapid expansion. She even managed to stop the Ascendant from traveling back in one universal life cycle, but it seemed that an Ascendant ship still arrived in the distant past to cause the rapid expansion and the Ascendant were still prematurely doomed. Par-Cell realized that the transient nature of the Ascendant home planet must have cause the duplication of their ship across the multiverse and when they make the decision not to travel back, a parallel version does and an Ascendant ship still arrived in the past as it would have if Par-Cell had not intervened. It became an impossible problem to solve, a knot in the timeline that could not be undone.
Par-Cell was horrified that her family had dared to meddle with universal forces. She realized that she had been working so hard to undo the problem because the Ascendant had been the true enemy all along and she wanted to erase their blunder from the timestream. The only solution that Par-Cell saw was an impossible one. She had to stop the Ascendant in every parallel of reality where it was possible for them to travel back to the distant past. The ramifications of that dizzied Par-Cell. She became aware of the future, that the Ascendant are important to the flow of the timeline and their absence could doom sentience in the universe.
But all of that only mattered if Par-Cell accepted it as real. If she believed her senses, that were nothing like the senses of the Commander in the Quinspace.
Par-Cell sat in contemplation.
5.3
By the time the planet Top went lightspeed in the Quinspace to avoid the being that was pursuing it, Par-Cell knew that her memories of previous universal life cycles were more than just a fantasy and everyday she noted the small differences in her reality and her recollection. Occasionally she would inhabit her third self to spectate, but that happened randomly over the course of her meeting with her team that was working to undo the time jump. Par-Cell knew that whatever the team did would be unsuccessful, and she mostly watched herself brainstorm and give all of her efforts to finding a best solution that still had very little odds of achieving the goal of undoing their mistake.
There was nothing to be done. Not yet anyway. Par-Cell remembered that everything that had transpired so far in this universal life cycle had occurred because she had not chosen to intervene in anyway. Everything that had happened so far was the course of events that had happened since the first time the Ascendant decided to make their jump to the distant past, in whichever past universal life cycle that had occurred. Par-Cell remembered that she had analyzed the timestream, as much of it as she lived and could piece together from the cosmic awareness that she had apparently gained and knew little of knowingly accessing, and she knew that there would be a moment in the future, well after their time jump but before the emergence of the Ascendant in the universe, when there will be beings in the universe capable of forming a society to rival the intellect and the longevity of the Ascendant. If brought together at the right time, a society will form, more secretive than the Ascendant, who will be able to either prevent or correct the Ascendant blunder.
It was an embarrassing admission of helplessness that no member of the Ascendant would agree to, Par-Cell knew that the Ascendant code of handling all problems and conflicts internally would make the notion of forming a smarter society to undo their mess would be considered an abhorrent solution. But Par-Cell had apparently been working through unknown universal life cycles and nothing had worked to undo their mess. The only hope was for Par-Cell to shape the mission of the Ascendant, that became taming of the Quinspace beings with the hope of using them to reverse the rapid expansion. Par-Cell would influence the Ascendant to remain in the Quinspace and understanding its connection to A-space, or the normal physical realm.
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