Second Paradigm (26 page)

Garret watched as Zarth moved. He had no real explanation for the pattern of movement other than incredible foresight, sensing of the patterns of combat, born from experience. And then Garret's energy flagged. Zarth had to be hurting even more than he was, so he risked slowing into standard time to catch his breath. Both men stopped, leaning on their knees and gasping. Sweat poured from their brows.

Alex looked up and between gasps managed, “You’ve got a fire in you. I’m impressed. I never would have guessed you capable of this level of energy expenditure Doctor Garret.”

Garret tried to laugh at that but gasped too hard. “You have no idea what I’m capable of, Zarth. Nor will you, because I won’t have to use it to finish killing you.”

Alex looked at the other man. “No, I don’t suspect you will have to, though I know that was only a taunt. Grant me a moment, please. There is something you need to hear before we resume. In case, or rather, when I do lose.”

Garret nodded. “Go ahead, though I doubt it will impact my decisions here and now.”

Alex spread his hands out, palms up, and shrugged, “Even so. It is simple, though. Yes, I manipulated events in order to cause your wife to die. But, and this is a large but, Christopher Nost, in both his incarnations MUST survive what is to come. He is the key to all of this.”

Garret blinked. “I think, somewhere in me, that I knew that. This is all you had to say to me?”

Alex nodded. “No. One last thing. Schrodinger and Homes. It is all about them. Time travelers do twenty impossible things before breakfast, and the least improbable is generally the one that actually happens. I’ve known that since before all this started, and you need to remember it. I’m an old man now, out of energy. So, please, let’s end this.”

Garret nodded again and sped back into plus time.

He felt the crash against his system, as the effort pulled on his energy reserves. And then something Alex had said penetrated his brain. Inwardly, he laughed.

Deviousness as a weapon was one of the strongest in Alex’s arsenal, but Garret knew that sheer lack of knowledge was why his opponent had given him the key. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small case. It had held several specialized pills he had made to boost his energy levels while breaking into the Time Corp headquarters. It seemed like years ago that he had done that.

Praying, he popped open the case. A single pill rested inside it, gleaming blood red in the shadowy fast light. Pulling it out, he popped it in his mouth and crunched down on it. Moving around the lot, being careful to stay out of Zarth’s direct line of slower sight, he only had to wait a moment before he felt the pill hit his system. An ice-cold shock ran through his veins. His breathing slowed, his heart rate stabilized, and he felt
strong.

Smiling to himself while watching the slow-time Alex spinning in circles, looking for him, he set off across the parking lot looking for the best tool to accomplish his end. He ended up finding it in a ditch off the edge of the lot: a crowbar, rusty and old, about two feet long. Jogging back to where the slow Alex sought him, he pushed himself beyond the edge of his limits. Alex froze before him.

Garret held his breath as he lined everything up. There would be no oxygen after that initial indrawn breath and he needed the ambient oxygen in the air. With enough heat, enough energy, even the air itself, the very atmosphere that he breathed, became combustible.

So he pushed himself, holding the picture of Alex in his mind, until everything went dark. He moved faster than light itself could travel now. He motioned forward with the crowbar and released it, snapping time back to its normal flow at the same instant.

The effect was spectacular, to say the least. The crowbar stretched for the briefest of instants, and then it elongated and became a streak of red light, leaving behind it a trail of fire tunneling through the air.

The screaming line of energy went wide of its mark. Sometimes though, lack of skill can be heavily augmented by the smallest dose of luck, and while his aim had been bad, his idea had been good.

The streak of fire burned an agonizing rip along Alex’s side, shredding the right side of his coat and shirt. The shockwave sent Alex flying. He landed on his shoulder, his head hitting the ground directly afterwards. Garret watched him, but he didn’t move after he landed.

Satisfied after several minutes that Alexander Zarth’s chest would not start moving again, he relaxed and thought. His next move was an obvious one. He hopped forward in time to resolve the situation he had helped create.

Alex opened his eyes and looked at the night sky as the life seeped from his body. By the time the police arrived, about a minute and a half later, the parking lot was completely empty once again.

Time: 199
Location: Denver
Operation: Recovery

Time allowed for funny things, Stefan Arbu reflected. He had trained and taught some of the most elite warriors to ever exist; the best the history of mankind had ever seen. He had set them on the trail of repairing history. And the machinery of the Time Corp, the bureaucracy they had to interact with, had distorted them, twisted them, mangled their mission on until they were nothing of what they had been.

Rather than the guardians, they became the enforcers. What made it such a bitter irony was that not a single one amongst them was a bad person.

Each of his previous students had good heart. But because of what the machine had rebuilt them to be, he was backed into a corner, forced to choose between them or the world. And no matter how much he loved each of them, it was not a hard choice to make when balanced against billions of other lives.

Nor was his own life that valuable. It was hard, but not too hard, to admit that to himself. Besides, the beating he had taken from Wanda had gone a good way towards ensuring that his life was over anyway. Stefan extended his senses, feeling for the trademark signature of his best friend. For over forty-three hundred years this trap had lain dormant. But Alex had been good to his word and it was here, under him, waiting for him to spring it. He sighed to himself and started going through the situation about to play itself out, making sure he had not missed any important details.

At some point during this process, Stefan realized that he was stalling. He chided himself. Distraction right now could screw up everything the two men had worked towards for so very long. They had, between them, set mines at well over a thousand historical nexuses in order to guard this one critical point.

Being a maudlin old man endangered the work they had done. The god had spoken to them both, and they both knew the job that must be done. Now he had to do his part. Taking several deep breaths, he steeled his nerves and triggered his emergency all-call signal. Only a director had access to this beacon, and it had never been used by a director in the field. He prayed that no one would look too closely at the situation and stall in coming here.

People started winking into existence around him. With a wry smile, he noted the various pieces of anachronistic clothing some were wearing. It was a good sign. It meant his agents were coming directly from other field assignments across history. Eleven were present now.

He beamed in pride at how well he had trained them and how loyal they were to him. He watched and waited, ignoring the questioning glances the early comers directed at him. It would be too hard to meet any of their eyes with more than a cursory glance. Eighteen had responded now. He struggled for air as he worked his way up to his feet. Wanda’s last kick had collapsed one of his lungs.

Two agents left to respond. He looked to the body of Lucille Frost, making sure that the agents here so far noticed him do so. At the deft distraction, everyone would wonder what had happened between Lucy and Arbu instead of why he had called them all here.

Agent Holly arrived last. He had been Arbu’s only true concern, with his recent chastisement for acting brashly. But he had guessed the agent’s nature correctly.

Stefan looked to the children he had trained. Twenty-three in all, standing before him, waiting for their orders. Three others were already deceased, which accounted for the whole roster.

He cleared his throat and spoke weakly. “Would someone mind giving me a shoulder to lean on? I’m not exactly in top condition.” The agents around him flushed in embarrassment for not having come forward earlier. Holly strode to his side to lend him a supporting shoulder. Stefan smiled thankfully to the younger man.

“We stand on the brink of a class seven paradox,” he said, looking around him to watch everyone’s predictable reactions. Many of his agents looked troubled, some shaken, but focused. Everyone was too well trained. “When this paradox was initially triggered it was a class eight.” That did elicit some reactions from the assembled agents. A class eight was theorized to be enough to shatter the time stream. “Lucky for us, Agent Frost was on hand for the situation and was able to divert it down to a class five. Unlucky for us, Agent Holly here made a rather large mistake and bumped it into the potential class nine category.”

Angry muttering broke out between the gathered agents as they began to understand why they had all been gathered.

Stefan cleared his throat, looking around at the people assembled around him, making sure to make eye contact with several, then went on. “As you are undoubtedly surmising, it will take all of our efforts to diffuse this paradox.” Stefan sighed and closed his eyes wearily. He was buying time and he hated having to manipulate this situation. Manipulating these people.

“Alexander Zarth is also present in this situation and we have virtually no information on his precise activities.” He continued reaching out with his mind, seeking the other half of the trap. He must be precise in triggering both halves, or this would not work.

He bought himself more time. “Please give me a second to catch my breath. I will continue explaining momentarily.” Ignoring the surrounding people, he concentrated. The split focus made this task harder than it should have been, though it was only his injuries that stalled his efforts. Taking several painful but calming breaths, he focused himself.

There it was, the other end of the trap, flapping loose in history. He closed his mind around it and tied it into the trap sitting in the earth below him. He was ready.

Raising his head, he opened his eyes. The agents gathered around him, waiting. Best to deliver a show then, and best to make it a quick one. “The interesting thing about a time null compulsion field,” he said, “is that we cannot figure out why it only works for ninety seconds. I am truly sorry, my children, but the machine which employs us will try to undo the solution I have enacted, and I cannot allow that.”

He triggered the trap and watched the twenty-three people before him freeze, expressions of shock registering on their faces as they realized something had cut off all access to time travel. The trap pushed all of them sideways through space, leaving only Lucy Frost’s body in the parking lot. An instant death, into the heart of a sun …

…In the year twenty-eight seventy-three, the second half of the trap triggered. Seismic shocks ripped apart the earth below the Time Corp headquarters while explosives, long concealed beneath the building, detonated and tore the building asunder. Within a few short moments, the headquarters and all the attached offices were nothing more than rubble. All those that had been inside were dead.

The Time Corp Agency, guardians at the gates of history, then enforcers of the will of computers programmed to stop paradox, was no more.

1997- 2001 A.D.: Reflections of The Origin Point

Good lord this hurts.

‘Of course it does, Alex. Had the effect which Garret used not included such an intense heat source, which cauterized the wound, you would be dead.’

I have a feeling I’m not far from that point now, actually. Is he gone yet?

‘My system scan is showing that you have very little time left. Maybe twenty minutes before you go into full system shock and die. And yes. He recently departed.’

Good. Can you handle the jump forward to make sure he does what needs to be done?

‘I can. And I will.’

Alex sighed and let control of his neural network and nano systems shift to the computer. The telltale tingling of a rapid time shift went through him, and then he was back in the lot he had started in.

‘It is done, my friend.’

Alex sighed.
Good. Are my eyes closed, or have I lost my vision?

The computer struggled with giving an honest answer and decided that Alexander Zarth was more than a strong enough man to handle the truth.

‘Your eyes are open. I am showing that systemic shock has begun. I do not think that you have more than perhaps a minute left.’

Alex smiled his quirky smile.
I’m not really concerned. We all die. Friend, thank you for the gifts you have given me. I have a gift in return now.

‘No gift is needed, Alex. I find that I am … proud, to have worked with you in achieving this.’

Fool. Needed is not necessary for a gift to be given. These are my burial coordinates. When you entomb me there you will know your name. I understand now who you are and can at least gift you that.
And with those thoughts, Alexander Zarth, sometimes known as the thief of time, enemy to some and friends to others, let his final breath rattle forth from his lungs.

His body vanished. Six thousand years it traveled into the past, into the crypt which had been built for him in the time he felt always most at home in. And the sentient computer that coexisted in his body, and continued on afterwards, finally knew its name.

Throughout time, a chain formed. It started four thousand years before the birth of Christ, a series of beacons, stretching through time, passing on one single, but very relevant, piece of information that it had recorded at the beginning of its sixty-nine hundred-year journey. Like a row of dominos it fell, and as each domino toppled to the corrosion of ages the next was ready to act as a relay.

It screamed into the future, where it completed its journey in the databanks of a cloning cell. The cloning cell began its work, rebuilding a brain to match the neural network recorded almost seven thousand years before.