Second Paradigm (11 page)

“Your … grandmother?” Chris asked. “That explains the striking resemblance.”

“Yes, I know. I look exactly like her. Everybody who sees her picture says it.” She looked at Chris with a scrutinizing gaze, bit her lower lip, and stuck out her hand. “I’m sorry. My name is Mary. Mary Frost.”

Chris looked at her hand the same way he had looked at the PolCorp mini-gun the night before, then took it and shook it. Her firm grip startled him. “I’m Geoffrey Garret. I was doing a little research on the project your grandmother was working on. I … I’m a scientist.…”

Mary looked at Chris, a glint in her steely blue-gray eyes. “Garret?” She looked at him,
through
him, for almost a minute. It felt to Chris like an eternity that he was locked in her gaze, unable to look away. “I was looking for a Garret, actually, but I don’t think you’re him.”

“I doubt it,” Chris said, trying to mask his relief. “I haven’t been in the city too long.…”

“Oh no?” She smiled, like a cat that had no intention of killing the mouse, just to play with it until it’s dead.

“Well, no. I’ve only been around here for a couple of days.…”

Mary leaned in close to Chris without warning, one hand cupping around his neck, and ran her tongue along the edge of his ear. Chris tried to pull away from her, but her grip, soft though it was, was solid as granite. “I know who you are,” she said, looking into his eyes, inches from his face. “I know what you are looking for, and you will find your answers.”

He shuddered. “That’s not possible. Look, I don’t know what you think you know, but you’re wrong.”

She leaned in closer until her lips were brushing against his ear, “It is you who are wrong. You, to whom the truth will be revealed. You see, I know what you are, Chris,” she whispered before pulling back and looking at him once more. “Anyway, don’t trust Jameson. He’s a liar and worse. If you let him in,” she tapped a finger against Chris’s temple, “he’ll try to twist you and then destroy you. Meet him if you must—but be wary. Know that he is evil.”

Mary Frost turned and walked casually away, her body swaying under the glowing red fibers of her clothing. As she reached the door she turned one last time to look at Chris. “See you around,
Doctor
.”

Chris sat and stared blankly at the computer screen for a long time. He desperately wanted to go back to the hotel and think out what had happened, but there was too much still he needed to know. He reached back to the keyboard and reactivated the screen, typing in “time travel theories.”

Over a million hits came up. Skimming over them, most looked like either links to fiction sites or to science sites that needed a password to enter. Shaking his head, Chris tried again with a new search string: “time phenomena and travel—public domain, facts.”

This time there were only a few hundred thousand. Most looked to be hack sites reporting supposed “slips in time,” but skimming through them, Chris saw nothing that compared to his experience of the night before. There were several public theories on manipulating time as well, but all seemed to be based on various crackpot ideas—which Chris could see were faulty—or facilitated by the use of some unwieldy device. It seemed that in this day and age anyone could publish an article and have it posted as “fact.”

Sighing, he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his brow.
What else would be a good search string?
He hesitated for a moment and tried “control time, spirituality.” He could still feel the presence of that
place
that he almost reached last night in his hotel room. The first hit was titled
The Evolution of Gods, Using Kronos as an Example, 1972©
. Chris went to it, laughing at himself.

It was a history of Kronos, the Greek god of Time, written by PhD. Historian Patricia Fahey. It followed the evolution of the deity from its origin as Zr’van, an ancient Iranian god of time, said to be the creator of all the paths which lead to the crossing point into the beyond. This place was described as a “void, filled with all things,” named the Cinvat Bridge.

The article continued to describe, from a theologian’s point of view, how a god must adapt and change to the society that worships it and the world it lives in or become obsolete and perish. Its underlying tenants seemed to be the evolution of thought itself—growing and changing to match the society it dwelt in or the alternate path, fading into obscurity as it became outmoded. This becomes apparent, Fahey explained, when looking at classical gods that later become saints, the Egyptian to the Greek, or, as in the example cited, the Iranian to the Greek. The failure of the gods to do this, Fahey wrote, is the reason why religion begun to fall out of popularity with the majority of Western Culture for the first time ever. Even the rise of Christianity supports this theory as religion grew toward faith and away from a pantheistic belief structure.

Chris shook his head, laughing to himself as he finished the article, but something in the back of his mind made him go back to the first section of the thesis again.
A void filled with all things
, he read again, trying to remember something—a dream …
A void of bright darkness and roaring silence, filled with pores to let the substance of time into the physical universe …

“Sir? Mr. Garret?” the voice shattered his musings, making him lose the idea about to be birthed.

Chris looked up in annoyance at the man standing behind him. He wore the blue vest of the P.N.T. employee, and his nametag said ‘Dwayne.’

“Yes?” frustration carried across in his voice.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Garret, but the P.N.T. is closing for the evening. We open again 7a.m. tomorrow. You’re more than welcome to come back then.”

“What? You must be mistaken—I’ve only been here a few hours.…” he trailed off as he noticed that the view through the windows showed nothing but darkness and the cacophony of vehicles had faded to a distant whisper.

“Well, you were gone for most of the day, but you never signed off your terminal. I didn’t even see you come back—we were beginning to think you ditched out on the bill. I was getting ready to transmit your papers over to PolCorp when I noticed that there was renewed activity at your terminal. Rather lucky for you, sir. Even if you had paid they would have had to run you in if I had completed the transfer.”

Chris looked up at the clock. It was five minutes to midnight. Lights were already shutting off in the building, and as he looked around, a harmonic chorus of “Goodnight!” rose from the terminals as pretty Asian faces nodded goodbye with a little regret in their eyes, before they winked out.

“I … lost track of time. How much do I owe you?”

“Five hundred and ten dollars, sir. I’m sorry we need to charge you for all the time you weren’t at your terminal. Had you signed off …”

“It’s no problem. My fault, I should have remembered to sign off and wrap my bill the first time I left.” Chris pulled six hundred from his pocket and handed it to Dwayne. “Thanks for your time. Keep the change, Dwayne.”

He decided to take his time walking back to the hotel. Stopping at an all-night convenience store at the base of the bus station tower, he wandered around and ended up buying a pack of cigarettes.

He couldn’t remember if he had ever smoked them before but it seemed like a good time to start. Desiring nothing more than the feel of an open sky above him, he walked the unfamiliar streets of the city for close to two hours, lost deep in thought. He didn’t make it back to his hotel until after two in the morning. With the light from the waxing moon streaming in behind him, the lobby seemed an eldritch place, somehow separated from the bright lights and fast-paced world outside its front doors. He stopped, enjoying the quiet mystique of the moment; entranced by this vision of the world he had come from.

“Looks like you had a rough day,” Charlie said wryly.

The words broke Chris’s reverie and snapped him back into the moment. But the connection had already been made and ideas were starting to queue up in Chris’s mind. As preposterous as the thoughts flooding his mind were, it relieved him to be starting to piece together answers. A few more questions and he knew that he would have all of the pieces that he needed to figure out who and what he was.

Chris walked by the front desk without responding, silence the only sound he was capable of making at the moment, lost his thoughts.

“Hey, you OK, buddy?” Charlie peered at Chris. “You need anything? You don’t look so good man.”

But Chris still said nothing, and went upstairs to lie sleepless on his bed, thinking of a time, memory, and a place called the Cinvat Bridge.

2873: Yuri Yakavich’s Hunt

Endless letters and words scrolled in front of Yuri. Time streamed by his tired eyes as he analyzed history for the telltale signature of Alexander Zarth in Christopher Nost’s era. Blank again. He rubbed at his eyes. He had gone through some of these files so many times that he could about cite them from memory.

History surrounding major paradoxes was always problematic to delve into from a researcher’s point of view. Time Corp was very hesitant to send in observation teams because of the off chance of a further paradox being created. The old theory about the act of observation changing the observed dominated the methods of thought that held sway with the current administration.

This meant that Yuri had only the standard historical trail to work from, and that, unfortunately, included all of the background static created by standard progression of time. Trying to find someone like Alexander Zarth at the nexus of a paradox was a lot like trying to find a specific needle in a needle factory storage bin. In the middle of a city built out of needles. Yuri chuckled to himself at the mental imagery.

Although the one thing that Yuri had going for him was that he was an incredibly lucky man. Several times before he had managed to pick Zarth out of the background and pinpoint him for various field agents. Once you do something enough times, it starts to become reflex, almost like a habit. But this time it seemed like someone was actively masking Zarth’s presence from his searches. It was disquieting how well it was being done, too.

Yuri knew that Zarth was there as surely as he knew his own name. But his supervisors were running out of patience and Yuri knew that reviewing the information available to him for a thirtieth time would yield the exact same results as the previous twenty-nine. All of these pressures had been building up on Yuri, shaping his thoughts and guiding him in a cycle of hopelessness.

Yuri’s sour frame of mind continued as he walked into Director Arbu’s office. Under the pressure he felt, it was understandable that he was about to make a mistake large enough to change history.

Director Arbu sat behind his desk, scanning files on his computer. He was an older man, in his mid-sixties, but still in excellent physical shape. Shaggy silver hair, streaked with a few remnants of his original black, framed a scarred but strong-featured face.

A retired warrior, seasoned and battle hardened, Arbu had very little patience for incompetence. His piercing gaze caught Yuri as he looked up from the monitor in front of him and smiled. “What progress have you made, Yuri?”

Standing stiffly to attention and speaking with an air of complete sincerity, Yuri lied. Meeting Director Arbu’s steel gaze, he said without blinking, “Sir, I believe that I have found the trail that will lead to both Alexander Zarth and the renegade Dr. Garret. It is in nineteen ninety-seven and focuses around the mission of Lucille Frost. As I have not pinpointed either’s exact location, I would like to request that I personally handle this mission.”

Despite the highly irregular request—he had to hope that he could sneak it through without Arbu figuring out why he tried to get a field placement—he kept his gaze steadily exuding honesty and determination. If this did not work, then Yuri would be forced to take a much more difficult path.

Director Arbu leaned back in his plush synthetic leather chair and studied Yuri for a moment. Yuri felt the gaze opening him up and reading his mind. He felt the bottom of his stomach crash down as he knew what his boss would say. Director Arbu sighed. “Agent Yakavich, let me be blunt with you. You are our best intelligence agent and risking you in the field would reflect poorly on my judgment. Requesting this also reflects poorly on your judgment. Obviously, you are frustrated and too tired, which is why I think you are suggesting pitting yourself against a criminal and a renegade who are both more highly skilled than yourself.”

Yuri braced himself. He had one gambit to play, and even though it would probably not work, he had to try to use every card at his disposal. “I have to respectfully disagree, sir. I would like to remind you that five agents before me have failed to apprehend the criminal after I pinpointed his location for them. They were unable to complete the task of finding him. Based on that one fact. I would feel safe saying that there is no other agent more qualified than myself to deal with this situation. Perhaps a field team would be in order to support me, sir? Since I would agree that my field skills are not the best.”

Leather squeaked as the director shifted in his chair to lean forward. He placed both of his elbows on his desk, clamping his hands together and staring at Yuri over the knot they formed.

The silence stretched long enough to make Yuri uncomfortable before Arbu broke it. “Yuri, you are tired and foolish. Five field agents failed, yes? And each of them had better control and much higher combat skills than you. If you were to go back, we would lose you. That is a statement of pure and simple fact; please, do not bridle at it. I will assign the task as I see fit. Thank you for your report. You are dismissed from the operation.”

Slack jawed, Yuri stared at his superior. He was being taken off the case. Not only had he failed to get assigned, but also Director Arbu had read him so well that he had chosen to remove Yuri for his own safety. “I see, sir. Thank you.”

Yuri turned around and walked out of the office with clenched fists. As he walked down the hall away from the office he came to a decision. It took him less than ten minutes to prepare himself and illegally travel to the twentieth century.