Second Paradigm (20 page)

Over and over he struck at non-corporeal opponents, lashing out and striking down his doubts as though they were enemies standing in front of him, barring his way to resolution.

As his movements quickened, the man re-emerged who had trained Wanda Garret, as well as most of the other agents in the modern Time Corp, to fight using basic and temporal combat skills. His tempo sped up, the dance becoming more and more intricate. Quick sidesteps through time made it appear as though he had several bodies, all seamlessly flowing through the stances, fighting side by side and using each other’s movements to create perfect symmetry.

The dance reached a climax, moving so fast that all of the multiples of Arbu appeared as one blurry man, moving faster than the eye could track.

Reality snapped and once more he was a single man, standing at the ready, focused in poise and in spirit. Sweat poured down his face and chest, but his breathing remained steady and slow, not showing any signs of exertion.

Relaxing his mind, will, and body, he stepped back off his mat, bowed to the invisible opponent, and then turned around and walked into his house. A solution had presented itself to him; now he had a course of action. And because director Arbu was a learned man who happened to be fairly wise, he took a hot shower and then went to sleep, in order to be well rested when he started his journey.

2001 A.D.: Denver, Colorado

Alex watched Garret sit in his car with interest. He seemed to be fighting some internal demons, which gave Alex a greater scope of understanding regarding the man. Perhaps he had realized that there were some factors that he missed, or perhaps not.

Alex suspected that he was readying himself to be in the same room as his dead wife without breaking. Regardless, Alex’s course of action remained unchanged. Focusing his will on the immediate area, he spread his senses outwards until he found the Hazer he had placed across the street.

Once he had located it, remote activation was simple. He ran a diagnostic, making sure that time had not decayed it. All systems checked out as fully operational. He smiled to himself and walked back to his car.

Like a fine wine, he could taste epic events unfolding, and it was exhilarating. Time for him to start preparing for his role. He turned around and glanced to the courthouse a block away. He could make out James Garret walking inside. Good. Garret was right on time.

Turning back to the black sedan he favored in this era, he popped the trunk open and started suiting up with his gear. He had a small list of items he needed for this task.

The first was a small air filter and tank, entirely self-contained. The design was a compact modification to standard SCUBA gear that had been created for U.S. Special Forces in the late twenty-second century. It provided about five hours of breathing in any situation. He slid the small tank into a special holster he had designed. The holster hung under his right arm and was obscured by his coat.

The second object he slid to its rest under his other arm. It was a Desert Eagle fifty caliber, modified to fire tranquilizer rounds. He had replaced the firing mechanism with another Special Forces design, one with an electro-thermal sequencer. The rounds it held were modified as well, from a twenty-fifth century recipe that knocked out the target and left them down for about two hours.

These were the third and final materials he pulled out of the trunk, loading them into his pistol and readying one backup clip. Though if it came to needing a second clip, he was probably already well past the point of being screwed. He pulled his black canvas duster across his chest, snapping it taut across his shoulders, and then took a deep breath, relaxing himself.

His timing would have to be perfect. Otherwise, he’d have to risk additional paradox to replay the events. As he scanned the visible areas around him, he spotted an old man watching him and talking to himself. The man looked like another part of the homeless population so prominent in this era, but better to be safe than sorry.

Alex had his computer run a quick scan and the man showed no anachronistic technology. Good, not another piece of the equation. He already had too much to keep track of right now. Any more could throw a wrench in the plan.

The grungy old man smiled at Alex and then walked to a full trashcan, which he started rooting through and pulling tin soda cans out of. Alex laughed at his own paranoia. Then he spotted the agent walking out of the courthouse. Wanda Garret, not just a well-trained Time Corp agent, but one of the very best, was right on time. Alex grinned. If only the rest of the universe had been trained to keep such a tight schedule.

Blues shifted to purples in the sky as Alex accelerated time and walked over to Wanda Garret. He tracked her movements, following a couple of feet behind her as she moved. She crossed the street, then stopped and scanned the area before entering the building she had chosen to be her sniper’s roost. His first system went well, she missed him standing in front of her in accelerated time.

He grinned to himself and walked to a nearby coffee shop on the Sixteenth Street Mall to kill a few minutes of the trial. If he showed up too early for Wanda’s shot, he would increase the odds of her being able to detect him.

At the coffee shop, he stopped in the restroom to relieve himself; best not to have the jitters. He froze as he walked past the mirror. Streaked along the left side of his jaw was an ugly black and red bruise. He turned to analyze himself in the mirror. Nothing had happened to him to explain this. He sought his answers of his computer.

Computer, is this physical bruising a result of the procedures you performed on me in the fortieth century?

‘Negative. I believe it is a result of you having broken one of the laws of temporal physics and traveled ahead of your own subjective time. My data is showing that pieces of your body are aging to match up with the future time you visited. No data is present to explain why this did not occur while I kept you asleep in the future.’

Alex waved his hand.
Easy. I was still there.
Alex thought about the answer for a moment, connecting the mental dots.
I believe I see. If my understanding of this phenomenon is correct I will essentially begin randomly aging in a much-accelerated fashion, as pieces of my body catch up and die. To all outward appearances I will appear to have leprosy. Is this summation correct?

The computer responded, ‘This is a correct summation. I have also run several thousand resolution scenarios, and I have not yet found a cure to this for you. With your permission I will continue to divert a piece of my processing power to curing you.’

Alex grinned at his marred reflection.
Permission granted. This does mean, however, that I will have to change my plan in dealing with Wanda Garret. I will need your assistance in setting up a compound and situation in which she will be a forced captive for a ten-year period. Also, this scenario must contain the ability for her to read information I leave for her on a computer. I no longer have the time to personally oversee her tutelage. The scenario is also restricted to her point of origin in twenty-seven seventy-three for her and James’s subjective reasons.
His mind spun, calculating all the possible scenarios as fast as he could.

There was nothing for it; he’d need to have a facility to take Wanda to. Frustrated, he threw his paper towel in the trash and then stretched his will. He arrived in a beautiful, lush countryside, greener than any other era he had visited. Planet-wide environmental controllers kept the time verdant and optimized for species balance. Alex breathed, enjoying the freshness of the air, then stared at the stack of materials at his side. He had no worries about being caught here, since the Corps wouldn’t be looking in their own time for him. The real pressure was his weakening body.

Alex had pushed himself forward in time to the twenty-ninth century in order to build a secure compound capable of containing the world’s best Time Corp’s agent. Not an easy task, but with the aid of construction bots, the whole process took him less than a week of his subjective time, during which the bruise across his jaw grew to about twice its original length.

He spent a lot of time reflecting on interrupting his mission to do this, but he couldn’t find a way around it with his newfound condition. Over the course of the week he also discovered similar bruises across his chest, back, and legs. The infection of temporally maladjusted cells grew too quickly. At the rate they were spreading, he wasn’t even sure if he could finish what he had to do.

But, never one for melancholy thoughts, Alex enjoyed the countryside and time he had while wrapping up the intricate jail. He found no small irony in the fact that the woman he wanted to imprison was at the same time training for the mission he would be interrupting.

Once the compound was complete, with a renewed sense of urgency, Alex jumped back to the early twenty first century to capture Wanda Garret.

He reappeared in the same spot, both spatially and temporally, which he had departed from. Walking back out of the restroom, then out of the coffee shop, he headed towards the spot that Wanda had chosen. Jumping ahead and being forced to do so much between moments here in the past had thrown his sense of timing off by a small fraction.

He hoped he wasn’t walking onto the scene too late. As he rounded the corner that would place him in her line of visibility, he phased into accelerated time while slipping his oxygen tank on.

Glancing to his right, he saw that a crowd was already beginning to form around the courthouse and that Wanda’s target was in the crowd. Cursing under his breath, he sped to the building with her sniper roost, and up the stairs.

His timing was, by sheer stint of luck, immaculate. Her back tensed up, lining up the shot as he walked in. Positioning himself between the room’s light and Wanda, he pushed himself into the fastest accelerated time he could. Purples shifted to deep reds outside the window. He glanced to the crowd outside. She was almost perfect on her shot, despite the Hazer. He cursed to himself and pulled his pistol out. Sucking in a deep breath and lowering his oxygen mask, he braced himself. He phased into standard time flow, casting a shadow over Wanda right as she started pulling the trigger of the tripod-mounted pistol.

Wanda tried to pivot to assess the threat behind her. Her pistol slammed back against her shoulder then spun out of its tripod and went sliding across the room. Alex smiled. That could not have gone any better for him.

Screaming and sounds of panic came from the direction of the courthouse. Alex had his Desert Eagle pointed straight at her face and he could see her eyes looking straight up the barrel of it, trying to penetrate the shadows that meant her death. He felt her try to slipstream to safety and blocked it. Alex deactivated the Hazer and, using his peripheral vision only, scanned the scene out the window. At a cursory glance it looked like everything had gone well. As Alex stared down at her he winked and grinned. “You missed, Wanda.”

She gasped in recognition after he spoke. “Alexander Zarth. Pleasure to finally meet you. Though I would have preferred a less … intimate setting.”

Alex chuckled, “The pleasure is all mine,” and pulled the trigger. Wanda slumped back as he holstered his pistol. Scanning the room, Alex picked up all of her effects and tools, then he grabbed Wanda herself and hopped forward in time to the prison he had built for her.

***

Relativity Synchronization:
The Eleventh Cause

2045 – 2044: Introductions

Chris crept towards the door of his room. Staying silent wasn’t easy with the rubble or the creaking of stressed floors with every step. The damage to the building was extreme, at least in appearance, but nothing seemed to be actually falling apart, just threatening to.
I shouldn’t be up here,
he thought.
It’s not safe.
As on edge as he had been for the last three days, he welcomed the prospect of violence. A smile flitted across his lips. Maybe not safe wasn’t that bad.

So much for only appearing damaged.
Chris stopped and stared. The hallway at the top of the stairs ended in a drastic drop-off of about thirty or forty feet and Chris was momentarily glad his room was at the front of the hotel. Still, he noticed an odd slant to the floor as he approached his door at the end of the hall. Heavy damage scarred the door and it hung at an odd angle in the frame.

Obviously, the entire structure was a lot more unstable than it appeared at first glance. Chris gave up moving silently as he got closer to his door—the whole hallway screamed in agony with every footstep he took.

Unlatched and cracked in several places, his door hung askew in the broken frame He pushed it open with the barrel of Jameson’s gun; it fell with a crash into the room, ending the illusory facade of a working structure.

It also put an end to any element of surprise he might have held. And there he was, calmly looking at himself over folded hands, sitting in the old desk chair in the middle of the room. Chris felt dizzy for a second, staring at a much healthier and less battered version of himself.

Or, at least, the figure in the chair
looked
like Chris. Staring at that figure, sitting there, he shook his head to clear it of the dizziness. He was clean-shaven and dressed the same as Chris, but his clothes weren’t dirty, and he didn’t look as tired as Chris felt.

He walked over to his doppelganger and pressed the gun to its forehead. “Who are you, really, and what are you doing here?” Chris thumbed back the gun’s hammer and tried to look as menacing as he could. Had he been able to see himself, bloodstained, battered, and clothes torn asunder, he would have been proud of the deadly image he was casting.

The other Chris smiled, “You almost had it, back when you moved the PolCorp thug to blow away his partner. That’s the key; it’s not about thought as much as willpower. Thinking about a mechanical puzzle wastes time. Solving it with your hands … well, that solves it.”

Chris lowered the hammer on the Glock and put the gun away. There was no one on earth that could know what had happened at Jones Drugs. No one but himself.

“I’m listening,” he said. He was still being wary, but doubt was niggling at his mind. Could it be that this doppelganger was a future incarnation of himself?

The other Chris nodded. “Good, because I’m going to tell you a lot of things that aren’t going to make sense. You need to hear them. We overthink everything and in this case it is crucial that you learn how to master your abilities. Before you accidentally destroy yourself, and everything around you, with them.”

“So … as ridiculous as it sounds, you’re me from the future?”

“Yes.”

“So how did you learn how to … master what I—we can do?”

“The same way you’re about to. I told me.”

“But why would …” Chris began and stopped, starting over with a more coherent question. “But how is that possible? How did you learn in the first place? How did the future self ever learn from itself? Knowledge can’t exist because of itself, just introduced between different versions of us. That makes a loop with no exit and no entrance. Paradox should destroy the universe, shouldn’t it?” Chris trailed off, missing the words to describe what he was thinking, his head spinning with the implications.

“The words you are looking for are bootstrap paradox. But a bootstrap paradox doesn’t actually exist in a nonlinear, and frankly subjective universe. Things don’t happen in order, we just perceive them in order. You only think a bootstrap paradox is created because you think one then the next. For me, subjectively, teaching you how to do this
is
my next effect, creating a cause for another chain, before I move on to a next effect, and so on. Your main problem is thinking of time in terms of ‘past and future.’ All that is perception—and relativity is wrong when you look at it from outside the universe. It locks you into a mindset based on point of reference. Think instead of it this way: however fast you appear to be going to me does not matter. Relativity doesn’t determine actual motion, just the rules of perception surrounding it.
Your
speed is dictated by
your
acceleration. Just so, with time. Your interaction is based on your timeline, me by mine.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Chris stared at his future self. “I mean, I’ve theorized about a unification between the relativistic and quantum universes, but who hasn’t? To just say that it is the difference between perception and …” he trailed off.

The other Chris shifted in his chair, settling his elbows on the armrests. “That was true in the late nineties. Physicists were just discovering the very basics of the universe. Time,
all
time, is happening, well, all the time. There is no past and future, everything
is
. I learned how to maneuver through time from myself because that’s how it’s always happened. There is no beginning or end. Time is the present. Past, future, those are only concepts of reference created by the human mind to attempt to contain the infinite so it doesn’t drive us insane.”

“You’re right,” Chris said, scratching the back of his head. “It doesn’t make much sense. So people actually exist at, or in, all times?”

“No,” the future Chris said with a sigh. “Look, Chris, you are everything you suspect yourself of being, and you are none of them at the same time. And in this you are not alone. You are different from the others, but you’re not alone. Here, look at it this way: people go through life and they make their decisions, and the path they take through time bends and is malleable because of the decisions that come before them, and the decisions that they make themselves.”

He continued, giving Chris only a second to digest this. “It’s all about choices. Time is not the journey from beginning to end, but the choices that are made, and those that could be made, along that journey. When their path ends, that’s it. That is when time ends. For them, at least.

“All this is static, creating the ‘flow’ we think of as time. But, when people who have, in the future, started to experiment with time, it changes the whole thing into a dynamic structure. And since we are messing with time—it has always been dynamic.”

Chris took off his burnt coat and scratched at some of the holes in it. “I need more. Give me an example. I think I’m starting to get it but … this is not my specialty in physics.”

“Okay.” Smiling at his bedraggled duplicate’s expression, Chris went on. “First off, let’s get this straight. No one knows this branch of physics. It’s more based on intuition than anything else. Here is your example though. Let’s say there’s an old lady walking across the street. She gets hit by a bus— that’s the end of her function and cycle. Now, let’s say there’s some person walking behind her, and he
pushes
her in front of the bus. Same thing … poor old lady. All right? Okay, so now let’s say someone travels back in time and pushes her in front of the bus. Now time has been tampered with. The old woman’s timeline fragments. There’s the one where she is killed and another that plays out the natural course of events.”

The future Chris paused again, briefly, to allow the past self to catch up mentally.

“On top of this, the moments before her death were altered as well. That means that the branching of reality starts pushing into the past as well, fragmenting what has already happened. See, people can’t go back in time to change events, all they can do is create alternate time-lines where what they want to happen, happens. The original timeline exists, too. The static structure exists as a background noise, affecting probability—but the new course of events is changing how the dice roll.”

“So?” Chris didn’t understand the significance. “Why does this actually matter? History continues on. It’s not like there is an energy behind the process that could hurt anything. Time changes. Right?”

“Wrong. Chris, what happens when three people change the same moment? What about four people? Or even six or seven people? To make a long story short, this sort of thing is making a mess of the way time interacts with the universe. A big,
big
mess. Think, Chris. Temporal Physics dictates
one
set of points, each with the given value of ‘present.’ Now, instability and alteration have created multiple sets of the given value present. And precisely because this is NOT a straight motion line, but rather one point with a shifting value, ALL of time has been destabilized.”

“So what does this have to do with me?” Chris felt a growing fear in the pit of his stomach as his intuition started unlocking the mystery. The spark grew, in part because he suspected that this had everything to do with him. “I didn’t kill my own grandfather or something, did I?”

“Like I said, you’re different. If someone from the future were to kill you, you would die the same way you would if anyone else killed you—
all
of you would die. You—we, can only exist in one timeline, no matter what happens. And even I have no idea why. I suspect it is because we invented time travel and that action is the base catalyst that must exist for everything else to happen. And unfortunately, people are messing with our timeline.”

“So other people can be in fragmented timelines, some in which they live and some in which they die … But we can’t? We’ll deal with the other people thing in a minute.”

“Exactly. Go back to the old lady. Let’s say she had a lot of people she was close to, grandchildren and such. Their lines would become fragmented too—their lives would play out twice, at the same time, but mutually exclusive. One where their grandmother is alive and happy and one where she was killed by the guy from the future.”

“What do you mean, mutually exclusive?”

“I mean that the granddaughter in the line where the grandmother dies will never know about the duplicate self where the grandmother lives past the point of fracture.”

“So why does it cause a problem, then? Us?”

“Because that’s not how things actually work, it’s how they should. Two major problems exist. The first is that as more and more timelines stretch the fabric of time there have been … overlaps. These overlaps most likely exist because of us. An action which creates our death alters all timelines, and in a bad way. We are the force that created time travel, so what happens when history starts to fracture both forwards and backwards around us? What happens when a set of circumstances comes about that we cannot have created time travel in?”

The future Chris took a deep breath. “The second problem is thermodynamics. Entire universes are being created, essentially, with zero energy expenditure. Where is the matter coming from?”

“Sorry, but what is that supposed to mean? You think that we are tied into the second problem as well as the first, I assume.”

“Look, Chris, ironic as it may be, I don’t have time to explain all this right now. Remember what I told you: it’s not about thinking; it’s about
willing
it to happen. You will understand the rest of this soon enough.”

“But wait. You said I was different, that I couldn’t exist more than once. So how can you be here?” Chris fondled the gun under his coat.

“I didn’t say that. I said you could only exist in one
timeline
. We are both the same person, in the same time stream. The other … again, I base it off the assumption that since it was we who created time travel, and by forming an interaction with the system, we defined the whole of the system at the same time. But, I’m not one hundred percent on that. Sorry.”

Chris nodded, but said nothing, absorbing all the information.

“Now,” said the other Chris, “I am going to ask you to do something you’re not going to like.”

Chris waited.

“You need to take what I’ve told you and teach yourself what you already know—how to master time. Remember always that past and future are only human perceptions and you are
not
human. At least not in that way. The rest you will understand soon, as I promised.”

“What am I?”

“You already know the answer to that. Or rather, you’ve been told a lot of lies that come close to the truth in order for you to piece it together. So really, you will know soon enough how to separate those out.”

Chris nodded slowly and looked at his double, waiting.

“After you have mastered your ability to pass through the barriers of time, you must go back to the end of your trial and shoot your past self.”

Chris stared. “Wait a minute. What? You mean when I was shot, it was …?
I
was the gunman?”

“Yes. Congratulations, we are the gunman on the grassy knoll. It is crucial that events play out the way they did, or we would most likely go through life without ever realizing our potential. And if we do not realize our potential, then the rest of the world is screwed. Too many external factors are acting on this situation. But first, before the assassination attempt, you must come back here, and have this conversation.”

“With me, er—you. Me.” Chris shook his head.

“That’s right. You
need
to do this, or … well, imagine what would transpire if I hadn’t shown up.”

Chris imagined stumbling around in a world he didn’t understand, trying, and failing, to use abilities he was barely aware of.

“You have everything you need, Chris. It’s now only a matter of time.” The future Chris grinned, stood up, and vanished. There was no puff of smoke or flash of light. He didn’t even blink out of existence. It was more like he had never been there and it took Chris time to notice.
A hologram?
Chris thought, but it wasn’t. Charlie had seen him come in.
Why not show up in the room?
Chris wondered, but brushed it off. He would know soon enough.