The Complete “Tibbo’s Pages”

3. Tibbo

I’ve failed. I found another job to do while I wait for Kat, but I’ve failed it too.

I came back to the vault to wait for her here. It’s been so long since I saw her. I can’t move as well anymore. I left my pages at the places where we met. If she finds them, she can find me.

Why doesn’t she come?

I thought I had another job I could do while I waited. I found something else hidden in the vault. There are a few secret panels under the computer screens. I moved one and found some tools and equipment. I moved another one and found them. Four frozen babies in round tanks. The smallest one was as big as my hand. They must have been stored to be adjusted later.

I thought I could wake them and raise them with me here. I wouldn’t be alone. They wouldn’t have to become what I was. We could all wait for Kat together.

I failed with the first one. I think I woke him too fast. He cried a lot suddenly, and then fell silent. I put him in the ground outside the town.

I tried to be more careful with the other three. I got everything I thought I would need, the oxygen to breathe, the food and nutrients, the warmth. I thought I had everything.

I don’t know what went wrong. That’s the worst part. I was minding them carefully. They were waking. I saw them start to move. Then something broke. There was an alarm, and flashes of fire. Glass shattered. I rushed to the babies, but the first one was dead, burned by the fire. The second was cut by the glass. The last one lay in the midst of the glass, still breathing. I scooped her out without thinking. The glass cut my fingers, but it didn’t get her. Her cries were so small I couldn’t hear them.

I went back to the freezer where the babies had been stored. I didn’t want to put her back. I was close to having someone again. But she couldn’t survive out here, not when I didn’t know what she needed to live. I put her back and froze her again.

I’ve tried to figure out another way, but I don’t dare risk it till I’m sure. I’m wearing down. I can’t move, and my fingers haven’t healed. It’s hard to write these words.

I hope whoever reads this will be able to do better. I hope you can help this last baby. Wake her. Take care of her.

And please name her Kat.

*

4. Fibbin “the Wizard”

I still remember breaking through the door and seeing the room: the table in the center like an eerie metal altar with a human skeleton lying across it, the last page in its hand. I had already collected the rest of Tibbo’s pages and assumed this must be him. The note confirmed it. I buried him outside the town.

I knew I had to listen to his last request, but I wasn’t sure I could do it. I was a crackpot technologist, not a pediatrician. But when I looked into the tank and saw the baby there, I determined to try.

It wasn’t a perfectly sanitary process, but I managed. At the end of it, I stood there in awe, a mad tinkerer in the remaining wreckage of an evil experiment, holding in my hands a sixty-year-old newborn, my baby girl, my Kat.

Sometimes I wonder if I should tell her. Sometimes I feel guilty when she runs into my arms and calls me daddy, not knowing that I’m little more than a midwife. Tibbo should have been her father. He was a better man than I’ve been.

But I can’t tell her. Where could I start? The most I can do is read her the story and hope she senses it’s true. Please forgive me, Tibbo. Forgive me for taking your child. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to tell her.

Perhaps one day you can have her back.

The End