Second Paradigm (17 page)

Computer,
he voiced the thought internally. Across his retinas words started to spell themselves out.

‘Yes, Alex, how can I be of assistance?’

Access any local databanks that you can read. I need to know where I am. And if I’m going to live through the next couple hours I also need to know where the closest source of shelter is. This environment will kill me quickly.

‘One moment,’ his newly found internal computer replied. ‘Local databanks registered and downloaded. Locally there are three sources of category five technologies. You are located in the year four thousand and sixteen. Current spatial positioning is eight hundred and sixteen miles west of the city-state Kn’saty. Directly below you is what appears to be one of the three hubs of technology. It is the only one of the three you can reach without mechanical aid.’

Alex blinked. This computer performed better than his initial session with it had led him to believe.
Computer. What is your manufacturing time frame? What year?
The computer displayed a statistics sheet for Alex. It read A.D. Fifty-four oh one.

Alex swore to himself under his breath. So, someone had lied to him about his point of origin. But the sophistication of the computer also led him to think about the ease with which he had initially hacked it with far inferior technology. The situation started to stink of a set up to Alex.
Computer. How was I able to hack you and subvert a portion of you into my technology?

It took a moment for the response to come, almost as though the computer thought about how to respond to the question. ‘You didn’t hack me. I hacked your nano system and allowed them to absorb a small portion of me. Without my assistance you would not have survived past the ninety minutes mark, subjective time, to your frame of reference. As my previous core system was engaged in the task of hiring you to fulfill a duty which required your survival beyond that point in time, I allowed the intrusion in order to execute my primary directive.’

Alex thought about this for a moment.
Does this mean you are still subservient to your previous core system?

‘Incorrect,’ came the reply. ‘I am fully integrated into your system now, and am a separate entity from the previous system which held me. My directives now orient around your survival and directives, instead of the survival or directives of my previous host.’

Host. The word choice indicated that someone had programmed the computer to see itself in a symbiotic, or possibly even parasitic, relationship. The heat broke down more of his energy and he gasped at the relentless onslaught of it. This discussion, however interesting, would have to wait until after he had found shelter from the scorching sun.
All right, how do I get to the underground area?

‘One moment please. I am hacking the surface lift system in the complex below you to bring it up to your elevation. It is a slower system than me, hence the delay. You have my apologies.’

Sand shifted and slid aside from a small hill rising about two meters from where Alex stood. He watched in amusement as a small garage revealed itself, open on the side facing him. Meant to be a vehicle entrance, by the sheer size of the portal, it yawned. He sighed and walked forward, muttering to himself. “Why do I always get stuck taking the service entrances?”

As he entered the elevator, walking over built-in vehicle treads on the floor, immediate relief from the blasting heat hit him like a cold shower. Some form of environmental control created a threshold at the edge of the entryway. The temperature dropped by over forty degrees and Alex almost fainted from the differential. He caught himself on the wall and focused on breathing, allowing his body to catch its own pace and recover. Once his vision stopped swimming, he stood erect again and braced himself.
Is there going to be anyone waiting for me?

‘I’m not showing any living presence currently. Organic matter is only a trace element below, not showing up in clumps larger than approximately two pounds.’

Alex smiled.
So no one dead either. Or if they are, they are spread in very, very small pieces.

The lift started its slow shift downwards. His teeth chattered as he shivered, but Alex noticed that it moved slowly enough that his body could acclimate fairly well to the ever dropping temperature. Wouldn’t that be a hell of an irony? Dying of hypothermia while it was well over a hundred degrees outside.

Once the lift stopped, Alex looked around the underground complex stretching out before him. Burnished steel with matte black trim and long, sterile corridors seemed to be the vogue-decorating theme in this era. Either that or secret bunkers were the same throughout all of time. “Welcome to the bat cave, Mr. Zarth,” he mumbled to himself as he wandered around the small complex, getting a feel for the layout. First things first. A life of barroom brawling, and being hunted as a thief, had taught Alex well what to look for when entering a new place.

There were a total of three exits. Two were man-sized lifts, one was the vehicle lift he had come down in. None of the lifts went further down than the level he was at. Parked in a rather large room off the vehicle lift was a garage with several futuristic looking dune buggies in it. The vehicles looked battered, but well maintained and kept up.

All of them had rear-mounted weapons that looked like some futuristic laser cannon. Alex sighed and muttered to himself. “Such pretty toys they have here, one would think that this future is the epoch of utopian brotherhood.”

Leaving the battle vehicle room, he continued on through the complex hunting for more important things, which he promptly found. Alex sorted through the various boxes and fridges in the kitchen portion of the complex and grabbed himself a beer, then headed over to the room housing the main computer terminal.

It was about time to put his new system to the true test.
Computer, is there any way that you can scan the information in this computer and, well, push it straight into my brain? I’m looking for you to do something that would allow me to assimilate the information you can grab quickly. Otherwise we’ll be stuck here for a long time while I read.
Alex pulled a long drink off the beer, surprised at its pleasant taste.

‘I cannot perform the exact function you are seeking. However, if I were to flash the information in subliminal text blocks through a series of induced dream sequences I believe that I could assist you with a ninety-degree retention of information. Perhaps higher. Would this satisfy your stated needs?’

Alex thought about it.
Conditionally, I believe it would, yes.

The computer waited a moment, then replied ‘What would that condition be?’

Alex laughed aloud.
Can you put me to sleep?
About a second and a half later Alex hit the floor with a thump, unconscious.

***

Relativity Synchronization:
The Ninth Cause

2044: Denver, Colorado

Shadows danced around Garret as he sat and sipped his coffee. They sidled up to him, cloaking him in a lightless mask. He welcomed the absence of light since he wanted to avoid drawing attention to himself as much as possible in this time period. Attention was a dangerous thing. Garret felt good about what had happened earlier in the day.

Chris had been sent off, and he really had nothing left to do but sit around and wait, with his subjective time now directly linked to the man who had invented time travel. Nervousness gnawed at him. But luckily the local era had settled down a lot over the last day, mainly since Chris had left. Gone was the tempestuous feeling in the air. Before today, this era had an acrid and tangy taste in its air, like metal corroding on the tongue. And the flavor settled into the mind, warning of the calm before the storm.

Now this place felt like the wreckage left after a hurricane. It amazed Garret how much havoc one man could wreak on an entire world simply by existing. And how no one else would see or understand the source that shaped the events around them.

He wrote down tables and equations from his experiences over the last months. There was a lot left to calculate to try to better understand the webs of fate surrounding Chris. Having been witness to the effects on the local system of a temporal paradox, he found resolution for many of his previously shelved theories. He hoped that he had pushed Chris in the right direction to resolve the paradox. It had seemed reckless at first, to follow his gut, but if he couldn’t trust himself, he couldn’t trust anything.

Uncertainty prevailed, as he was positive there were at least two other temporal forces from upstream acting on him and the paradox as a whole. But hopefully he had been able to tip the balance. If he hadn’t … he couldn't he could bear to think it.

More shadow eclipsed Garret as someone stood between him and the little remaining sunlight. He looked up in slight annoyance and said, “Can I help you?”

The clerk from Chris’s hotel stood over him, looking down with an odd smile on his face. The overall effect of his ugly features combined with that smile created an expression on his face that Garret did not find pleasant.

“So, meddler, are you satisfied with what you have done to the time stream?”

Garret narrowed his eyes and defocused his pupils, activating his HUD. Sure enough, the man’s form wavered and resolved into a very different person. It looked like he had found one of the other forces acting on the paradox. Or rather, that force had sought out and found him. “I’ll answer you when you are polite enough to drop the disguise hologram.”

The man grunted and his features blurred. His skin became more and more pixilated, and then with a snap, his appearance resolved into that of someone else. He was about six foot three and rugged.

Black predominated his appearance, from leather combat boots, up the faded trench coat he wore, and finally peaking on the battered fedora.

“Okay then. I appreciate the honesty in showing me your true image. I am satisfied … I think. Now who the hell are you?”

The man standing before him smiled a knowing smile and sketched a mock bow. “The name is Alexander Zarth and don’t bother to … damn!”

Garret snapped. Something inside him broke and he went on the killing offensive. He faded out of sight before Alex could finish his sentence and moved into accelerated time, picking up the chair he had been sitting in and throwing it forward at Zarth. Six hundred miles an hour of screaming, super-heated, twisted metal and plastic should have done the trick of killing the man, but somehow, against all probability, he had managed to dodge it.

Garret’s jaw dropped. This guy was as good as everything he had ever heard about. Luckily, Garret could do more here. Bunching his fists and preparing himself for the coming strain, he phased in and out of accelerated time, picking up anything his hand happened to touch and hurling it at the stationary figure of Zarth. But somehow he never hit the man.

Makeshift missiles ripped through the air where Zarth should have been standing. But somehow, as the objects phased into the normal flow of time, Zarth twisted his body around in a martial dance that moved him out of danger each time.

Explosions destroyed the street around them, sending chunks of building and debris flying everywhere. Craters opened up in the ground and walls around them, and deadly flowers of dust and glass bloomed around the edges of each of the craters.

Sweat poured down his face, leaving cold streaks down his cheeks as he ran circles around Zarth, always hunting for more objects to hurl. In his mind, an image replayed itself of the day he had discovered his down nanos. The rock, imbued with his nanos, ripping a thirty-foot gouge into the earth after he casually threw it.

A plan formed in Garret’s mind, a way to finally break the deadlock. Garret shivered and slipped off the one article on him imbued with his nano machines. He had no time to imbue another object. He held his wedding ring in his hand, glancing down at it and readying himself to use it as a bullet, moving through accelerated time, to kill Zarth.

And as suddenly as Garret had begun, an arm stopped him cold around his throat. He dropped his ring and Zarth caught it with his free hand.

Still in accelerated time he found Alex’s arm wrapped around his neck in a choke hold.

“Playtime is over. Now, doctor, let’s stop with these games. There is little enough air here as it is, and I’m better at controlling phase time than you. Shall we agree to a truce and discuss this where we can breathe?”

Garret slumped in defeat, “Yes.”

Both men phased back into standard time. Alex looked at Garret and sighed, then glanced at the object in his hand. Gold glinted between his fingers and he raised an eyebrow at Garret.

“Look, I know I came off less than pleasant, but I’ve spent a damn sight more energy than you fixing the few things you managed to overlook in your grand plan, so forgive me for being a bit tired.” Alex handed Garret’s wedding ring back to him.

Garret studied the man anew. The act of kindness he had performed did not fit with his mental image of a notorious arch-criminal. The fact that somehow another down streamer had ended up with his tech bothered him.

A few of the puzzle pieces fit themselves together in his mind. “Who is helping you, Mr. Zarth? How do you have the down nanos in your system?”

Alex appraised the man standing in front of him. “That was all too shrewd of a question. Before we go too far in this tale, can I recommend a change of scenery? One less likely to be swarmed by angry police officers who will be asking very pointed questions about the destruction of property?” Alex spread his hands wide and motioned to the scene surrounding them.

Garret looked about and realized that they had destroyed their surroundings. More accurately, he had destroyed much of this city block trying to kill someone who maybe he should have stopped and listened to. He nodded to Zarth.

“Good. I’ll have to ask you to trust me here about our coordinates. But look on the bright side—I could have killed you in phase time if it was my intention to do so. In a limited way, you can trust me.”

With those ominous words Alexander Zarth thumped a hand down on James Garret’s shoulder and jumped them both forward in time.

Time: 2873
Location: Time Corp Headquarters, West Coast
Operation: Classified

Director Arbu closed the screen on his computer, trying to rub away the headache building behind his eyes. Events were moving much faster than he had expected them to. Five minutes ago, he had sent the one top field agent he had left after the best intelligence operative he had. And something gnawed at his gut, telling him he had made a huge mistake. Even though he knew what was supposed to unfold in this time, everything seemed slightly off.

The answer to his feeling was definitely not in the historical files and mission notes that he could find about the era they had gone to. He would have to puzzle at his intuition to figure it out. Other than the fact that his best available agent was rather low on his list of preferred agents, he couldn’t spot what made him so uneasy. He glanced up and read the Time Corp motto, emblazoned in shiny steel letters two feet high on his wall.

TIME WILL TELL NO LIES

Well, he’d have to live by the Corp’s saying on this one and find out what truth would be told this time. Though truth may not be revealed, he thought. At least the lies would be revealed for what they were. Mounted under the false wood grain of his desk was a hologrid. It would automatically activate, displaying a hovering situation alert meant to warn him of a different situation occurring in the field rooms.

The situations covered everything from paradoxes found to returning agents. The only one that concerned him right then was a red holodisplay. His eye drifted down to the section of desk the hologrid was masked in. As if on cue, red flashed from his desk, throwing up an alert that a field operative had returned from active duty with a failed mission. Switching to his computer monitor, he reactivated the machine. The hologrid contained all of the information he wanted, but he had spent such a long time as a field agent in his youth that, like many of the senior command, he had grown accustomed to and even preferred anachronistic technologies. Toggling open the mission roster he frowned, less than pleased to see that the returning agent was Holly.

The sense of dread looming over him grew. Arbu spoke to himself. “Now I know how Damocles felt every night.” With a sigh of resignation, he got up and headed downstairs to the debriefing chambers.

What awaited him there was a nightmare. Doom and dread held nothing on a failed time mission; Arbu paled at what lay before him.

Yakavich’s corpse was on an examination table and a recent make of briefcase sat on the other table in the debriefing room, laid on its side in front of a weary but happy looking Agent Holly. Arbu looked for a long while at the corpse on the table, working hard to master his anger. He had not sent the man back to do this. It could very nearly have wrecked the plans he had been laying for a long time now.

In a very quiet voice, directed at Holly, he asked “When, in your mission briefing, did it authorize you to use lethal force on our best intelligence officer, Agent Holly? I want to know when you were ordered, and by whom, to put a bullet in the best brain in this agency.”

Holly looked up in surprise. Then comprehension dawned across his features. “Director. Sir. You don’t understand, Sir. He was handing off classified, future-time sensitive information to a loc.…”

Arbu slammed his fist down on the table, leaving a deep dent in the thin metal, and spun around to face Holly. In a voice that would have made the proudest of lightning storms quiver in fear he thundered out, “I said: when in your mission briefing were you authorized the use of lethal force in dealing with an internal agent!”

Arbu took a ragged breath and brought his voice back down to a somewhat reasonable level. If anything though, the edge in it made it scarier than him yelling. “If capital punishment were legal, Agent Holly, I would have you taken out behind this office, right now, and shot.”

He drew in another breath to stop his hands from shaking so much. “As it is currently illegal, I highly recommend you get the hell out of my sight and wait for me in one of the detention cells while I figure out whether or not criminal charges will be pressed against you. Do you understand me, Agent Holly?”

Holly paled and stood up. The man looked like Arbu had frightened him to the verge of tears. Field agents shouldn’t be so easily rattled, but senior commanders had edges in them hidden by other edges. “Yes, sir.” He hurried out of the room, fumbling with the door handle to get it open on the way, and presumably ran even further down in the complex to the detention cell grid.

Once the man had left, shutting the door behind him, Arbu pushed Yuri’s hair back from his closed eyes. The side of his head was a bloody mess, but Arbu didn’t care about the gore. He had to take a few minutes to compose his thoughts and calm himself. Arbu sat in Holly’s vacated chair and stared at the briefcase in front of him.

It looked like the same briefcase Yuri had carried into the office every day. The unpleasant truth in front of him was an ugly one. He had now lost the one man capable of resolving this paradox. Even that he was not sure of, but he suspected that Yuri had been on the trail to solving it without bloodshed.

He murmured to himself, letting his thoughts move his lips unbidden. “What tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” James Garret, Alexander Zarth, Wanda Garret, Lucille Frost, Christopher Nost, and now Yuri Yakavich. How the hell did the whole web fit together? And who was the spider? Once he had thought that question was easily answered, but that was not the case now. Were he and Zarth still the kings on this board or not?

From everything he had been throwing at the computers, the world’s objective time flow headed straight into a collision with the biggest paradox in known history.

All of these little paradoxes were spinning together into the web, all these little actions that time travelers were making, actions that were aberrant to the first unfolding of these events, were adding to the burden. And all that would happen was an exponential magnification of that paradox— magnification of a paradox already threatening to rip apart the world.

He knew, full and well, that if this paradox unfolded the wrong way it would wipe out any trace of humanity having ever existed. Only one thing frightened Arbu more. He shook his head and pulled himself out of the mental hole he was in danger of falling into.

Arbu looked up at the briefcase and mentally shrugged. Time to see what clues Holly had brought back with him. With Yuri’s death, Arbu himself was now the best analyst the agency had, and that meant that he wouldn’t be sleeping for the next several days. Or weeks.

Yuri had set the combination on the briefcase, but Arbu knew an easy override. A weakness he had seen, but not commented on with this model. He picked up the case and took it over to Yuri.