THE MOMENT
"Alright, Chat, everyone say hi to Billy!" Jubilee introduced the young man to her camera drone, and the audience watching. He wore a black suit and an orange tie; both he and Jubilee were outdoors surrounded by a plain of beautiful orange and white flowers under an orange sky. "Officially known as, Vanilla Billy, La Muerte from the Void Court," she added as he smiled at the camera.
"Thank you," he said. "It's an honor to be interviewed by THE Sunstream Jubilee," he added.
"Thanks for making time for me," Jubilee giggled. "So, before we start talking about the wedding, everyone wants to know more about you, and your predecessor. Gaia told us about Peppermint, do you want to share anything about Vanilla?" Just saying her name was enough to give Billy a wistful expression as he stared into the hovering golden orb sharing his reaction live. He gave a faint shake of his head, almost afraid to disturb the memory too much.
"She was.. wonderful...," he said. "Everything that Ballisea wasn't, and more. For your viewers that don't know the full story, Ballisea considered Vanilla a sister. Back then, they were very nearly equal in power; but, Ballisea has only gotten stronger... and in giving her soul to me, I diluted Vanilla's control of time."
"What's it like having that much control over time, like you do? Most Muertes out there can only control time on a single Earth; but, you're tapped into the true timestream of the mutiverse. You can reset the multiverse any time you want; do you ever get bored enough to want to do it?"
"No," Billy shook his head. “Vanilla could have reset everything and she did several times. But, things are different now that Sharp Development established SST and the Council of Courts, no one of us can make those changes on our own. That’s why we need a vote.”
“SST is Sharp Standard Time,” Jubilee looked at the camera as she answered one of the questions from her viewers.
“Have you ever wanted to?” she focused on Billy again with the new question. “Is there anything you’d want to change if you could still reset it? One of my viewers wants to know if you’d bring Vanilla back.”
“There was a time when I would have…,” Billy answered with a nod. “...but, that was before I met her. She taught me a lot before I gained her power; and, now, I am Vanilla. She’s in here..,” he put a hand to his heart. “...in my soul. Going back to change anything would change who I am now, and it’s impossible to say if that version would be better or worse.”
“Whoa, that answer raised a lot of eyebrows…,” Jubilee said. The chat stream was routed through the nanos in Jubilee’s eyes and Billy couldn’t see the questions flying by. But, she had enough experience to kind of parse them out. “Okay… a lot of them are asking what Vanilla taught you. You implied you wouldn’t go back and change things; but, you also said Vanilla did it more than a few times. What’s that about?”
“Those were different situations..,” Billy chuckled. “Vanilla wouldn’t have chosen it for herself; but, those were the days when Ballisea got bored easily. She was the one who insisted on the reset every 15 billion years or so. And, as part of the Void Court, she had to… I have to follow Ballisea’s orders. But, it was also different because she wasn’t trying to change any one thing; it was just a big way to shake things up and start all over again. She wasn’t chasing a specific outcome, it was more about new adventures. Even though she had mastery over time, she never took it for granted. She had a great philosophy about it and that was what she taught me.”
“You guys, calm down!” Jubilee eyed the camera with a smirk. “We have to talk about the wedding too! Look, we’ll circle back to it if we can,” she promised, and turned back to Billy. “Before we change topics, they’re asking for a taste of that philosophy. Now, obviously, you spent a lot of time with Vanilla and learned a lot more than we can cover now. But, can you put together a few words for us?”
“I’ve had plenty of opportunity to think about it..,” Billy chuckled with a smile. “Time is always moving forward. A Muerte stopping time on one Earth doesn’t keep the others from moving forward. Even resets don’t change the nature of time. The easiest way to think about it is this: ‘The years start coming and they don’t stop coming.”