The Prometheus Project (11 page)

Both kids listened in fascination to the Teacher. It was able to explain things in a way that made them simple to understand.

“After the nano-robots have finished building the city, a number of them remain to carry out maintenance, cleaning and repairs.”

“Boy, I would sure love to have a few thousand of those things to clean my room,” said Regan. “Except that they do kind of give me the creeps.”

“The Qwervy will be sorry to hear that,”
thought the Teacher playfully.
“They actually like the little things. You know, they could easily program them to look like tiny, pink teddy-bears if they wanted to.”

Fascinating, thought Ryan. Was there anything the Qwervy
couldn’t
do?

“So how can the city be so much bigger inside than it is outside?” asked Regan, turning to another subject. “And we were on an entirely different planet after going through a doorway in the zoo building. How is
that
possible?”

“I’m afraid you wouldn’t be able to understand the exact mechanism behind it. The Qwervy can tap into other dimensions and can link one world to another.”

The Teacher scanned their minds carefully once again to find a better way to explain how the cities were arranged.
“You are familiar with the Internet, correct?
” Not waiting for an answer the Teacher continued.
“The Internet links computers, and the information inside of them, together in a huge and complex web. Ryan, can you tell me how you navigate on the web?”

“Sure. It’s easy. The information on the web is laid out in web pages. Each one has its own address. And most web pages contain links inside of them to other web pages. By clicking on a link, you immediately travel to the other web page.”

“Good. So think of this city as a web page in a massive Internet. Only this one connects planets, not computer information. The doorways you walked through in the zoo were links. Links to other worlds. And each of these worlds are also linked to other worlds. In this way millions of planets are linked together.”

“So it’s not a World-Wide-Web, it’s a Universe-Wide-Web,” noted Ryan.

“Exactly. Instead of surfing web-pages, the Qwervy surf planets.”

“Incredible,” said Ryan.

“Do they ever come here?” asked Regan.

“I’m afraid not. Only the few Qwervy responsible for checking on Earth’s progress. This planet has restricted access. Surfers can only come to planets that don’t have intelligent life or are populated by mature species that are active members in the web. Hopefully someday you’ll be ready to become part of this galactic community, but you aren’t yet.”

“But how do . . .” began Regan before her question was interrupted by the Teacher.

“Sorry to interrupt, but I’m afraid we’re out of time. Your brain cells are not reacting well to my presence. If I stay in contact with you much longer I will overstimulate your brains and cause permanent damage.”

Ryan realized that his brain
did
feel as though it were about to explode. The painful side-effects of the mental connection to the Teacher were accelerating rapidly.

“If you would like me to contact you again, there may be a way, but I will need your permission.  I will need to take a perfect and complete copy of your minds. When our connection is broken I can analyze these copies to try to find a precise telepathic frequency that your brains can tolerate. But there is no guarantee I will succeed. The brain of an intelligent being is almost infinitely complex.”

“It seems worth a try. But why do you need our permission?” asked Regan.

“Because in order to succeed I will need to explore every last thought and memory you have ever had. I will come to understand the true essence of your personalities far better than you can imagine. Some beings feel that this is too great an invasion of their privacy.”

Ryan glanced at his sister and raised his eyebrows. “The fact that you could have done this without our permission or knowledge, but didn’t, makes me think our privacy will be in good . . . ah . . . hands,” finished Ryan awkwardly as he realized the Teacher didn’t have hands.

Regan nodded beside him. “Go ahead,” she said.

The Teacher announced it was finished taking the copy almost before they knew it had begun.

Ryan’s head was filled with searing pain, yet he didn’t want to end the connection in case the Teacher failed to find a way to connect again. It could surely help them. It seemed to know everything.
Seemed to know everything
, he thought excitedly. “Wait!” he shouted. “Don’t go! Do you know what happened to our parents?”

The Teacher had been a moment away from leaving their minds. Only the pleading and the urgency in the boy’s voice could have halted its departure for even an instant. It made a decision and searched key parts of Ryan’s memory in less than a millionth of a second, knowing it risked causing brain damage in its young visitor. Instantly the Teacher knew the risk had been worth it! It fully understood the significance of Ryan’s memories immediately, even though he did not.

“You have to go to your mother now! You only have two hours, so there is no time to waste. She’ll die from being hit by that generator if you don’t hurry up and stop it.”

The Teacher calculated that it was rapidly nearing the point at which the risk of damage to the children was becoming too great and it would be forced to end the connection no matter what.

“I don’t understand?” said Ryan in confusion, his head feeling like a swollen balloon about to burst. “Are you saying you know how she disappeared, and where?”

“She didn’t disappear,” corrected the Teacher, “you—”

And with that, their connection with the Teacher ended abruptly.

Chapter 22

The Answer

“No!” screamed Ryan, an act that caused additional daggers of pain to plunge into his head. “You
can’t
go now! What did you mean?” he demanded.

There was no answer. The Teacher had been forced to leave and would not re-connect soon—maybe never.

While Ryan was just able to withstand the searing pain inside his head, Regan was not. She fell to the ground, gripping her head in agony. Luckily, the immense pain lessened with each second they were no longer connected telepathically to the Teacher. Ryan knew the Teacher had done the right thing. They couldn’t take it in their minds any longer, but the timing couldn’t have been worse.

Now what? It had told Ryan that they could somehow save his mother but they would have to hurry. But where was she? The Teacher had seemed to know and must have assumed that they did also.

The blinding pain in Regan’s head had lessened considerably and was now equal to just an ordinary splitting headache. “Did you hear that, Ryan,” she whispered. “Mom’s still alive!”

“But she won’t be for long if what the Teacher said is true,” said Ryan. “And it said that we could do something to save her. But where is she? Where are the other scientists? And how can we save her if
they
can’t?”

“Are you sure it wasn’t malfunctioning?” said Regan. “It wasn’t making any sense there at the end. It said that mom
didn’t
disappear. We know that that’s wrong.”

“Things aren’t always what they seem in this place,” said Ryan. “Let’s assume that everything the Teacher said makes perfect sense—if only we could understand it. And if that’s true, then Mom will die in a few hours if we don’t figure out what the Teacher was trying to tell us.”

“Then we’d better get started.”

Ryan nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s suppose the group
didn’t
disappear from the room. Then why didn’t we see them?”

“Invisible?” offered Regan.

“Maybe. But I think that counts as disappearing. So let’s assume that they were still in the room and easy to see.”

“Then how could we possibly have missed them?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it,” said Ryan. His mind raced through the possibilities. He had to think! Their mother’s life was at stake. “The only way is if
we
weren’t in the room,” he said finally.

“But how can that be?” said Regan. She paused in thought. “Unless there were two identical rooms in the building and we somehow came back to the wrong one. I guess it’s possible. That would explain why we didn’t see any trace of equipment or people.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” said Ryan. “Anything is possible in this city, but I’m sure we came back to the same room. And this wouldn’t explain why the entrance to the city was missing.”

“The Teacher said that Mom will die from being hit by that generator if we don’t hurry up and stop it,” said Regan. “The Teacher used those exact words.”

Ryan nodded.
Hearing
things telepathically made them easier to remember.

“So what does
it
refer too?” said Regan. “She’ll die from being hit by the generator if we don’t stop
it
. Stop what? Stop her bleeding?”

Ryan shook his head. “No. You would think
it
would have to refer to the generator. This is the only way the sentence would make any sense. But that would mean the Teacher really
was
malfunctioning, because of course we can’t stop Mom from being hit by the generator. That has already happ—”

Ryan stopped in mid-sentence. The only way the Teacher’s words made any sense was if it had not already happened. If it was going to happen, but had not happened yet. But if that was the case then . . .  

“We traveled in time!” whispered Ryan, his eyes wide.

“What?”

“That’s it! I’m sure of it,” continued Ryan. “We traveled in time. Why not? We went through a doorway and found ourselves on another planet. Why couldn’t we have gone through a doorway to another
time
?”

“Like the one we went through when we were leaving the soccer-ball shaped building,” said Regan excitedly. “Remember how those three doorways suddenly appeared when you knocked into that podium thing, and we went through the middle one.”

Ryan’s heart raced. What was she talking about? He remembered there being three doorways when he had expected only one, but he had no idea they had appeared suddenly from nowhere after he had hit the podium. He must have been too busy recovering from the impact to see this happen. But that would explain a lot. “The podium must have been some kind of control panel. I must have accidentally hit the controls to open a time doorway. When we ran through it, we traveled back in time. To a time just
before
Dad broke into the city.”

“That would explain why the entrance was gone!”

“Right. And also why the scientists and equipment and nano-robots were gone when we got back to the room. The Teacher said that Mom didn’t disappear, and I bet I know what it was about to say but didn’t finish. It was, ‘Your mom didn’t disappear—
you
did’. Nothing happened to
them
. Something happened to
us
.
We
disappeared—back in time.”

“So we can still stop the accident from happening!”

“Exactly. And the Teacher said we only had a few hours. So we’ve almost caught up to the time when this whole thing began. In two hours, the generator will fall on her.” He paused. “We traveled back in time a little over a day. When we first checked for the entrance to the city and it wasn’t there, we left. I’m guessing if we had just waited an hour or so we would have been there when Dad first broke in.”

“That would have freaked him out for sure,” quipped Regan.

Ryan laughed. “Can you imagine? He succeeds in breaking through an unbreakable force-field he’s battled for almost six weeks, and when he walks through, surprise,
he find his kids already inside
. At that point, if we just innocently said, ‘Hi Dad, welcome to the alien city’, I’ll bet he would have passed out.”

Regan grinned at the picture her brother had painted. “This situation really is incredible,” she said. “This means there are
two
versions of each of us right now. Our younger selves are probably talking in the woods right now, discussing plans to investigate Proact.”

“Very, very weird,” said Ryan.

“So I guess we do know exactly where to find Mom,” said Regan. “Back at the building we were in. She must be there now! All we have to do is go there and warn Mom about the generator before it falls. Then she’ll be saved!”

Instead of celebrating, Ryan was deep in concentration. “It might be that easy, but let’s think it through carefully,” he suggested. “Time travel is very tricky. So what happens if we warn the group about the falling generator and explain about the nano-robots so they aren’t afraid of them?”

“Ah . . . we save the day?” offered Regan.

“So what effect would that have?” asked Ryan, and then answering his own question said, “I guess it would change
everything
that happened next. The two of us won’t be running out of the building like we did before—the other versions of us won’t even
be
in the building yet. So the younger me won’t run into that podium in just the right way to activate the time doorway . . .  ”

“So we’ll never get sent back to the past,” whispered Regan, catching on.

Ryan scratched his head. “So we—the versions that did go back in time—will never have existed.”

“But if we never existed,” complained Regan, “how did we save the day in the first place?”

“Good question,” said Ryan. “This is why Dad says that time travel is impossible, because it leads to impossible situations. For instance, what if you went back in time and killed your father when he was a boy—before you were born?”

“Then you would never be born.”

“But if you were never born, then how did you kill your father?” said Ryan. “And if you
didn’t
kill him, then you
would
be born, and then you
could
go back in time and kill him.”