Part 4
I could feel my breath shake as I turned the black diary over in my hands. It was a simple leather-bound notebook without any markings or distinctive features I could see. As anxious as I was to read what my dad had left for me, I couldn't help feeling trepidation at the contents. I just couldn't reconcile the memory of my dad, a quiet stoic man who was always there for his family, and the mysterious person who had known how to create our settlement and left cryptic notebooks behind in case he died. More than any of these things, however, I felt the sharp pain of nostalgia and loss. I missed my dad more than I could ever describe. It felt like my rock, or my guardian was washed down the river that day, and not a day went by I didn't wish I could talk to him. With no other way to procrastinate, I took a deep breath and opened to the first page.
Dear Daniel,
If you are reading this diary then something has happened to me, most likely my death. First, I wanted to tell you how proud of you I am. I cannot begin to describe the utter joy I have felt watching you grow into the man you've become. It has been my privilege to call myself your dad, and the greatest testament you could pay me is by being the wonderful person I know you are. I know that in my absence, you will step in and do whatever necessary to protect your mother and sisters. They may not think it, but they need you and you need them, so look out for one another.
I could feel tears flowing down my cheek as I read my dad's sharp, precise handwriting. "I miss you dad" I said softly to no one in particular, "and I will protect the others with my life."
I know I haven't always been forthcoming about my job or my past and for that I do apologize, but I hope you can believe me when I say that all of it was for a reason. There are things about my past, and yours as well, that you will need to know, but I wanted to protect you as long as possible. Consider this diary as a sort of fail-safe or back-up plan in case I wait too long. The first thing I have to tell you is probably the hardest: biologically speaking only, you are not actually my son. Make no mistake, you are my son, in every other way possible and I make no distinction between you and your sisters. I love you all just the same, and I know your mother agrees. It may take you a while to fully accept this, but the fact that you didn't come out your mother's belly makes you no less our son and I love you.
I closed my eyes and let the sunlight bathe my skin as I felt my world crash around me. I had always looked up to my dad, proud to call myself his son. I never cared that he didn't like to share details of his work or his past, it was always enough to me that he was the solid, dependable person who people knew they could count on. My eyes were flooded with tears as I reread the last sentence, and though I wasn't quite ready to accept it yet, I knew that he was right.
Your mother and I kept this from you growing up for two reasons, first we loved you and wanted to protect you. Second, your origins are more special than you can imagine, and the less people knew the story, the less chance of you being harmed. The true story of you origin starts well before you were born.
In high school, I was recruited by the military for a special project. I was young and idealistic and jumped at the chance to leave home and have adventures. Over the next several months, I was trained as a solder and eventually assigned to a secret facility outside of Colorado Springs. This project was top-secret and kept completely off books, and all of the members had no official connection to the US government. A scientist who I only ever knew by the code name Winston, oversaw the project and its purpose was to explore a recent discovery that had the potential to shake up every aspect of human existence. Winston was a brilliant physicist, and in the course of his research he discovered the existence of the alternate realities we know from the Awakening. I will spare you the scientific details, but with enough resources he was able to create a portal that allowed us to travel to different realities.
You are probably wondering why the Awakening caught everyone off guard like it did when we had discovered the scientific basis years before it happened. The answer to this question is, as always, human nature. The top priority of the military committee that oversaw our operations was to find a way to militarize this discovery, with the secondary goal of finding a way to monetize it. I was part of a specialized group of solders tasked with making some of the first voyages to these new realities and reporting on the military and civilian applications of whatever we found. Again, the science is a little beyond me, but the portal Winston developed was only capable of traveling to the reality that was most closely aligned with ours. The official name for this place was a long scientific designation that described its molecular alignment, but we called it Omega One. For four years I acted as a glorified guard while the scientist and engineers developed the portal. During this time, I met your mother, fell in love and we had Steph. I couldn't tell her what I did for a living, obviously, but she didn't care to know.
When the portal was ready, I was one of the people chosen for the maiden voyage. Our first couple of trips were simple out and back missions, just to prove the portal worked and observe any side effects from traveling. Eventually, the pressure for results grew as it always does, and our missions became more ambitious. Three months after our first trip, we were assigned an extensive scouting mission in Omega One. Our job was to visit a settlement we had found to assess the population, technology, and culture of whoever lived there. When we got to this settlement, what we found was a society at war. Our company ended up in the crossfire of two alien factions bent on destroying one another. That is where I found you son, in what looked like a birthing chamber in the palace of the faction that was destroyed. It felt like divine providence that I should find you amidst all the chaos and conflict of the war-torn settlement. I lost a lot of friends that day, but the only thing that got me through it was a need to protect and save you. I knew that if I told my superiors about you, they would stick you in a lab somewhere and run experiments on you for your entire life, so instead I smuggled you out of the facility and took you home to your mother.
As I read this section I had to stop, overwhelmed by my thoughts. I was from another world, another dimension, I thought to myself, unable to fully grasp the concept. The very idea seemed ludicrous; I had been a normal kid growing up. A small voice whispered in the back of my head, reminding how I was never brought to a doctor for physicals growing up. How my mother had performed all medical care personally at her office. With everything that had happened, ludicrous seemed like the designation of our times.
I had assumed that given everything that happened with our mission the entire project would be cancelled but as a society we never learn. Instead, I was given a week's mandatory leave and told in no uncertain terms to shake it off. A week later as they opened the portal, they found something waiting. I don't know what it was or how it did what it did, but before I knew it everyone in the lab was dead. I managed to survive by hiding in an air vent above the lab, powerless to help my friends being slaughtered below. I knew that our only chance was to close the portal, so I enacted the labs built in self-destruct procedure. This procedure was intended as a fail-safe in the event a foreign government managed access the project. In addition to wiping all data, this fail safe also destroyed all equipment and facilities. I barely made it out of the vents, but the portal, and whatever came through it were gone.
There was obviously no salvaging the project now with all of our data and infrastructure gone, not to mention anyone capable of recreating it, so the committee buried the whole thing. As the sole survivor and only witness to everything I was sworn to secrecy, given a military pension for the rest of my life and told in no uncertain terms that my life and credibility would be destroyed if I even mentioned it again.
I had held out hope that I might be able to get you back to your people, but when the project shut down, I knew that wasn't possible. So, I forged birth documents, and to the world you became my second child. Your mother came up with an elaborate destination birthing story to explain to everyone how they missed your birth and just like that you were our son. From the eyes of the government, the project had failed, and without the portal the threat was gone. There was nothing left to do but move on and eventually everything was forgotten.
Maybe it was PTSD or something I gained from my time in Omega One, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was coming. Now officially unemployed and discharged from the military, I decided to dedicate myself to preparing for the coming confrontation. I recorded everything I had learned and everything Winston had guessed about Omega One in an attempt to re-create our lost data. I also gained invaluable survivalist skills, the same skills that allowed us to build our outpost. For the last twenty years I have spent my time doing whatever I could to get you ready for what is coming. The fact that you are reading this means that both I am gone, and that you have survived. My dearest hope is that I have done enough to give you a chance to make it.
I have a few final thoughts to tell you before I end. First, it was my choice to delay giving you this journal, not your mothers. She obviously knows some of your background, but I trust that she kept her promise and did not read this diary. She was instructed to give you this when you passed the boundary, or when you went further than a day's walk from our home for the first time. Second, I have left a sort of digital guide that explains everything I know about parallel realities and the Awakening. The instructions for how to access this guide are written out below. I couldn't risk letting your story fall into the wrong hands, which is why this physical copy is the only place it has been recorded. Last, what you choose to tell the others I leave up to you. Like I said your mother already knows some of it, she was there at the beginning, but what you choose to share is your decision. A word of fatherly advice, tell the others. We are only as strong as our support system around us and I know your mother and sisters love you as I do. I know they can help you carry this load if you let them.
I hope you can forgive me, and recognize that all I did was out of love for you and your sisters. I wish I could be there in person to help explain everything but know that I will always be there with you. You carry in your memories and feelings the essence of everyone you have ever loved or has ever loved you and in that sense, I am and always will be with you.
Love,
Dad
I closed the book, and leaned my head back, allowing all I had read to wash over me. Memories of my dad kept popping into my head in an unending assault. The two of us backpacking in the summer before high school, him patiently explaining algebra homework I was struggling with, him surprising all of us with a trip to a water park when we were younger. On and on it went as I sat with my eyes closed, feeling the last rays of sunshine from the slowly setting sun on my skin. As I sat there thinking about my dad and what he had written, a particular phrase stood out and kept running through my head.
It may take you a while to fully accept this, but the fact that you didn't come out your mother's belly makes you no less our son and I love you.
As I thought about the man who had always been there for me, through triumph and failure, I knew he was right. He was my dad, regardless of anything else, and in every way that mattered I was his son. I could almost feel the tension leave my body at the exact moment I truly accepted this fact. A warmth from the fondness of memory, followed by the familiar pang of loss washed over me in succession. "I miss you so much dad" I whispered to no one, before finally opening my eyes and standing up.
The sunset was spectacular. Blends of red orange and yellow light bathed the mountain tops as the sun inched lower in the horizon. I looked through the looking glass and swept it across the landscape, checking for anything unusual, but found nothing. Letting out a resigned sigh, I turned my attention to the house. I couldn't see anyone from my vantage, but the signs of activity were there. Smoke was slowly rising from the chimney and the lights were on in the kitchen and living room. I guessed that no one had come to change with me at mom's instance. She would know that I needed time to read and process everything dad had left. I swung a leg over the railing and climbed down.
