Free City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

carpeted in plush red, until she came to the tall doors leading into the library.
    The doors opened with a whisper of hinges.
    To either hand, rows on rows and shelves on shelves of books rose up in the moonlit gloom. Wheeled ladders clung to high shelves. Overhead, balconies led to even higher shelves lost in the high-vaulted darkness.
    At the far end of the room, windows two stories tall shimmered in the moon, their diamond-shaped panes embracing starlit pines beyond. The slanting silver light fell along the long table which stretched from door to window.
    To either side of the tall windows, glass cabinets and shelves held old swords, busts and pottery, racks of ancient coins, stone arrowheads, strange rusted shapes of metal. Standing to either side of these cases, near doorways opening left and right, were manikins, garbed in embroidered jackets, faded with archaic dust, or wearing lace point dresses from another age. One manikin was outfitted in scale mail, plumed helm atop, with hoplon and tall spear nearby; another wore the once-bright uniform of Napoleon’s Hussars, a rusted sabre dangling at its side.
    Catherine came slowly forward, her footsteps silent on the carpet. The smell of old books and old leather was around her. She pulled her fiancée’s long buff coat, which she still wore, more closely around herself, and she shivered.
    There seemed to be an extra manikin standing near the museum, one dressed in a long vestment of metallic pale fabric, whose color the dim light did not reveal.
    Catherine stopped. The woman in the metallic dress turned, and shimmers rippled up and down her dress front. Her face was thickened and lined with age, her features overpainted with makeup which could not hide the sagging lines of dull bitterness beneath.
    Her hair was like a young woman's hair, lustrous and piled in intricate shining folds. It was neither dyed, nor was it a wig, it looked like real hair somehow made to look young by some art or method unknown to Catherine.
    Next to the other woman's ears hovered two small ornaments, like earrings, except that they were not attached by any means Catherine could see. As the older woman turned her head, the floating ornaments kept station, turning as she turned.
    “Mother?” Catherine asked.
    “I hadn't remembered that I said that when I first saw myself. I suppose I look that old to you; pain ages a person, you know. Pain and disappointment.”
    The older woman looked carefully at Catherine. She whispered to herself, “I could never have been so young and innocent…”
    Catherine said in a tense, hollow voice, “You are my future self.”
    “The family picks their wedding nights to bring their prospective brides to see themselves. It's the one date no one ever forgets.” Sarcasm edged her tone.
    Catherine stiffened. Her stomach felt empty. “I don't think I want to hear what you're here to say.”
    “No, you don't. I've come to tell you not to marry Lee.” The old woman's eyes narrowed, glistening with cynical wisdom. “You don't want to live through the fights, the reconciliations, the false hopes, the betrayals, the divorce. Just the bother of finding a church that permits divorce will leave scars, memories that don't die and won't shut up. ”
    “This can't be true! I love him…”
    Lines gathered around the corners of the older woman's mouth. “If there wasn't something he loved more, it might have worked. If he had been willing to work at it. Or even given an inch, just half an inch.”
    Catherine shook her head. “I don't want to believe it… Wait a minute. If I listen to you, you'll eliminate yourself!”
    “That's not how it works, dear. My world will change for the better. Perhaps I'll remember how it would have been, if I want to, like remembering a bad dream. I'm not that different than how I would have been had I not married Lee; I'll survive.” The elder Catherine laughed, a small, sad hiccup. “Of course, that's what he always says. He always