Temporal Contingency Page 5

  “We’ll be setting you up with a self-destruct mechanism if you decide to go that route,” Karter said. “Which is honestly much less of a hassle for everyone.”

  “How thoughtful of you,” Lex said. He continued. “Option 2, undetected exfiltration to a location where employee will remain undetected until time of departure. As a benefit to employees, the following portions of the southern hemisphere are known to have gone without significant analysis for the indicated time periods… You plan for some insane stuff.”

  “And now we know why,” Karter said. “Now let’s take a look at the ship that’ll make this all possible.”

  He tapped the control for the hangar bay door and it slid open. Lex, in spite of the confusion and dread that had dominated his mind thus far, couldn’t help but feel a dash of anticipation. In his heart he was and would always be a “ship guy.” For as long as he could remember he’d thrown himself headfirst into his fascination with them, collecting magazines, joining online groups, and plastering his walls with posters. It was why he’d become a racer. It was why he’d become a freelancer. It was therefore half of the reason he’d gotten into so much trouble in his life, and the whole reason he’d been able to get out of it. Karter had proved himself time and again to be a virtuoso when it came to ship design, so the thought of a custom ship from him was enough to momentarily push aside the heavy concerns of the day.

  That moment passed quickly.

  “That’s it?” Lex said.

  “Yep. The model is provisionally called a chronopod, and I’m calling this specific one the Lump of Coal,” Karter said.

  The ship sitting in the hangar was not what one would conjure to mind when picturing the sort of ship that would save humanity from the end of times. It was tiny, for one. The whole ship was barely the size of the cockpit of a standard vessel. There was room for him, and he could see a small cargo notch cut out of the bottom, but the rest of the ship comprised thrusters, sensors, and emitters. It didn’t even have an exciting shape, trending roughly toward spherical.

  Its entire surface was matte black, something it had in common with the SOB. Even the cockpit window had a dull coating. Every centimeter of its exterior was littered with minute details that were difficult to distinguish thanks to the paint job. Thin wires or tubes ran in a complex pattern over the exterior panels. The heads of some sort of field emitter were far more prevalent than one might find on a typical ship. Normally they’d be used for defensive shielding, but this one had three times as many as would be necessary to protect a ship this size.

  “Uh… I’m gonna be honest. It looks more like an escape pod than a ship,” Lex said. “And the name isn’t exactly giving me the savior-of-the-universe vibe.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Let’s see your chronopod and we’ll compare.”

  “The design constraints dictated the form factor of this vehicle,” Ma said.

  “And the constraints were tight,” Karter said. “First and foremost, the whole thing had to fit inside the operational volume of the transporter. We monkeyed with it, but expanding that volume as far as we did was finicky enough. Getting it any larger would require a fundamental rebuild. Once we got that hammered out, we had to design for stealth. You’re going to the past, so any interaction you have with anyone or anything could potentially produce severe consequences, up to and including the unraveling of reality. Ideally you’ll be so far from society you won’t need this stuff, but we can’t be sure you’ll end up right where we want you to, so I’ve built in a third-generation cloaking device. Should be more robust than the one Silo and Garotte were using. I’ve also included a mental cloak for an extra layer of vehicular protection—though it isn’t great for that—and you’ll have a portable version if you decide to leave the ship—which you absolutely should not do. The whole thing is built for maximum resilience. It’s practically indestructible and has very loose tolerances on all mechanics to prevent jamming and absorb misalignments. The electronics are EMP hardened and fortified, with triple redundancy. With the exception of the two cloaks, everything about this can be built and maintained with fifty-year-old technology, though applied in some more modern configurations. That’s not only to permit repair, but to assure that any hunks of this ship that might get blown off and found by locals will at least plausibly be debris of a timeline-appropriate ship. Down here we’ve got the slot where the GMVD will go, and behind your seat is a fairly hefty fusion bomb for if you screw up badly enough to have to self-destruct.”

  “Won’t be using that,” Lex said.

  “Again, it would make the whole thing a lot easier and safer to do, but if you end up killing yourself, we’ll have a really hard time knowing if the mission was accomplished,” Karter said. “To that end, since this is pretty important, you’re not going to be doing this solo.”

  “I’m not?”

  “No, I’ll be sending Ma along with you, as well as Ma.”

  “… You’re sending Ma twice?”

  “I will be generating two instances of myself,” Ma said. “The first will be installed in the chronopod’s systems and will serve as a mission monitor, adviser, and autopilot. As a backup, we would like to once again temporarily utilize Squee as a wetware platform.”

  “Oh, wow. You’re going to install yourself in the funk again? I’d have thought you had enough of being organic after the last time.”

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures, Lex. And there were aspects of the experience that were fruitful and enriching. Would you and Squee be willing to allow this?”

  “It doesn’t matter if he does or he doesn’t, we’re doing it,” Karter said.

  “I don’t mind, and I’m sure Squee’s fine with it, but… why so insistent?”

  “We have not found temporal displacement to be a gentle experience,” Ma said. “As you no doubt noticed as it applied to your slidepad, even a minor offset has drastic but temporary consequences on electronics. Our limited tests with organic tissue suggest less pronounced but nonzero effects are felt by biological organisms. This mission represents, by a large margin, the greatest amount of mass we will have displaced, and the largest overall displacement. Axiomatically speaking, it is better to be safe than sorry.”

  “And that’s that,” Karter said. “Understand?”

  “I… I think I’ve got it… but…”

  “Out with it. If we wait for you to fill in the gaps on your own we’re going to be here until doomsday, which is precisely what we’re trying to prevent.”

  “You say there’re two options, either there’s exactly one world or there’s an infinite number.”

  “Yes.”

  “So if I want to get back to this universe instead of some other one, and with the problem solved, it seems to me I can’t just go do this and get back without appearing to have changed things. I have to literally not change anything.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “So if this is going to work… then it has to have already worked. We have to be already living in the world where I did all this stuff. And we aren’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because if we are, then why would we be sending me back!?”

  “Because that’s how things got the way they are.”

  “You mean to tell me those robots I’m going to go change are at this moment already changed. And I’ve already frozen myself and I’m already waiting to be thawed out. And I have been since before I was born. And if that’s not the case, then this whole mission has zero chance to succeed.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Can’t we just go check Big Sigma and see if I’m there? Wouldn’t that at least let us know if I pull it off?”

  “Absolutely not,” Karter said. “Right now the cat is in the box with the poison. It’s alive and dead at the same time. If we go look for you before we initiate the temporal offset, then we collapse the waveform and kill the cat, and we need the cat alive.”

  “… I feel like there’s some sort of met
aphor in there that I’m missing. Or else you’re doing some weird stuff with house pets,” Lex said.

  “He is referring to Schrödinger’s cat. At the moment your successful and unsuccessful completion of this task exist simultaneously, and the final outcome cannot be determined until it is measured,” Ma explained. “Because we are attempting to manipulate causality, it is preferable to avoid observing cause and effect any further out of sequence than we already are. It is for that reason that Karter fetched you personally and that our communication on the topic has been happening exclusively while out of contact with the rest of the universe. We must avoid any possibility of discovering any evidence of your success or failure in this mission prior to your departure in order to ensure there remains the possibility that you will have already succeeded. Altering an outcome by measuring it is a known quantum property.”

  “… My head hurts,” Lex groaned.

  “Things tend to get sore when you don’t exercise them enough,” Karter said.

  “Or when metal-skulled lunatics head-butt them.”

  “That too.”

  Lex took a breath. The whirlwind of information had been pushing his anxiety and concerns aside quite effectively, but the moment of respite was enough to bring reality rushing back to him.

  “I’ve got a few questions,” he said. “First, why did you come and get me for this?”

  “Who else would I get?”

  “I don’t know, Silo?”

  “I want to alter the past, not blow it up.”

  “Well how about—”

  “Listen. We made a list of all the people who have a proven track record of outmaneuvering these robots in unarmed vehicles, and yours was the only name on it.”

  “Wait, unarmed?”

  “Like I said, I’m not interested in blowing up the past. And I certainly don’t trust you running around thirty years ago with my weapons. Trust me, I’m not thrilled at the idea of leaving this in your hands. As far as I can tell, you were born without the hunk of gray matter necessary for critical thinking and data retention, but you’ve filled in the gap with hand-eye coordination and an unquenchable adrenaline addiction. Plus, and this is coming from a guy who doesn’t believe in luck, you are the luckiest man I’ve ever met.”

  “You do indeed routinely defy statistical expectation in both positive and negative terms,” Ma conceded.

  “Fine… but tell me this. What happens if I refuse?”

  “At some point in the future all of human society will be consumed by an unstoppable robot horde because of your cowardice.”

  “Which also happens if I fail,” Lex said. “With the possible alternative of erasing reality.”

  “No, in those cases humanity would fall thanks to your ineptitude, not your cowardice.”

  “Additionally, the consequences of a single-world paradox could also occur if you succeed, but in a manner not suitably undetectable,” Ma said.

  “Yes, okay. Thanks, Ma,” Lex grumbled.

  “You are welcome, Lex.”

  He cupped his forehead and tried to regulate his breathing. It had been a bit of an emotional roller coaster since he’d arrived, bounding back and forth mostly between anger and fear. But now he was feeling something that he’d felt far too many times before. It was a very specific emotion that didn’t seem to have a name of its own. He was terrified both of what needed to be done and what would happen if it was left undone. But he was also certain, with every fiber of his being, that he had to do it, if for no other reason than he couldn’t bear to see this weight drop onto the shoulders of another. This was his duty, whether he liked it or not.

  “I’m going to need some things,” he said. “I need a simulator, or else I have to take that ship through its paces. If I’m going to be outrunning a horde of GenMechs, I’m going to need to be able to feel what that thing can do. I hope you gave it some power.”

  “It’s pretty low on thrust, but the weight is so low, the acceleration and maneuverability is bordering on psychotic. Ma will set you up with a simulator. Anything else?”

  “Fix my slidepad and give me a few minutes to myself.”

  “Oh…” Karter said with a slow nod. “Need to blow off a little steam before you step into the trenches. I can respect that.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Sure it isn’t. Ma get him to the training module, format his slidepad, and get him a bunk,” Karter said. “I’m going to go get the capacitors charging. It’ll be a few hours. Make sure you clean up after yourself, Lex.”

  Lex sighed as Karter stepped out the door. He heard a bleep from his pocket and retrieved his slidepad to find it booting up again, no more visible evidence of its former glitchy performance.

  “Thanks, Ma,” he said, slipping it back into his pocket.

  “You are very welcome, Lex. And as Karter lacks the emotional maturity to show the proper level of gratitude, on his behalf and the behalf of the rest of the space-time continuum, let me offer my profound thanks for the risk you have agreed to take.”

  “I’d like to say I’m doing it for all of humanity, Ma. But if I’m honest, there are maybe ten people total I’m actually doing it for. And Karter isn’t one of them.”

  “I understand. And I am curious who precisely makes up that list,” Ma said.

  He grinned and shook his head. “Now’s not the time to discuss it.”

  “Again, I understand. Follow the blue line to the training module.”

  #

  Lex lay in a cramped bunk and stared at a half-finished letter on the screen of his slidepad. The training module was straightforward, nothing he’d not done a dozen different times. Despite its high-tech accoutrements, Karter’s Lump of Coal handled pretty much like a single-seat recreational ship. After running through a few simulated obstacle courses and figuring out which settings produced the optimal balance between performance and survival, he set off to the station’s troop quarters. The barracks wasn’t all that different from the medical bay; beds barely large enough to accommodate a moderate-sized human being lined the walls, but instead of an operating table in the center, there was a third set of beds. Each one had a tiny hatch at one end for storing personal effects. At the moment, the one at Lex’s feet hung open, stuffed to capacity with his civilian clothes, which after he’d showered had been replaced with the specially designed flight suit Karter had provided.

  The inventor, for all his brilliance in a variety of fields, wasn’t one for fashion. It looked like a dark gray slightly thick jumpsuit with a rougher than average texture. There’d been some discussion of the various features of the suit, but he’d only half paid attention. He’d have Ma run through the key points again when his mind was more focused on the mission. Right now he was grappling with something that had never come easily to him.

  Squee had plopped herself onto his chest and split her time between nuzzling his neck and attempting to snatch his slidepad to play with. That hadn’t made his current task any easier, but even without the little scamp’s interference he doubted he’d have had much luck making progress.

  “… Ma?” he said, after seven straight minutes of staring into the middle distance had failed to magically produce the profound insight he sought.

  “Yes, Lex,” came the immediate reply from a nearby intercom.

  “How much longer until the mission is ready to launch?”

  “T-minus fourteen minutes, seven seconds,” she said. “In four minutes I am afraid I shall have to begin Squee’s procedure.”

  “What’s this going to be like for her?”

  “She will, as before, be sedated prior to the procedure. Her memory to that point will be downloaded and stored, and following the mission, I will be sedated and her memories reestablished. The experience will be a unique one, but it can most accurately be compared to sleep. As before, some memories may persist, but they will likely be no more impactful upon her than a particularly vivid dream.”

  “Yeah,” Lex said, stroking his pet
’s ear, which had a small but noticeable notch missing. “Let’s hope that’s the only impact.”

  “May I inquire as to what seems to be occupying your time?”

  He pocketed the device and picked up Squee so that he could shift to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. The funk wriggled free of his grip and climbed to the back of his neck, draping its massive fluffy tail along the side of his face.

  “Usually when I have to save the world… man, this sort of thing happens often enough that there’s a ‘usually.’” He shook his head. “Usually I don’t have this time before, you know? I have to make a snap decision, so there’s no thinking of the consequences besides the big doomsday scenarios.”

  “I would suggest that it is a healthy and desirable tendency to focus one’s attention on the primary consequences of a scenario such as this. In this specific instance the worst-case consequence is negative enough to supersede all other concerns.”

  “I know, but what I mean is… look, I’ve been writing letters. I’ve got one to my folks, a couple to some buddies from college and from my racing days…”

  “Intriguing. My records of our interactions do not contain significant mention of your parents. I had interpreted this to be evidence of a poor relationship, or perhaps their prior demise.”

  “Nah, they’re still kicking. They actually moved to Earth for Mom’s career. They’re looking for a place to retire—look, that’s not the point. The point is, I’ve got this last letter to write, and I just can’t get the words out.”

  “Is it correct to assume that the intended recipient for this correspondence is Michella Modane?”

  “Yeah. How’d you guess?”

  “Based upon prior observations, any signs of significant emotional anxiety are likely to be the direct result of Ms. Modane and your relationship with her.”

  “Great. I’m sure that’s healthy.”

  “My analysis of psychology and relationship dynamics suggest one’s romantic partner is quite frequently a source of natural friction. I would perceive your difficulties to be typical. What task regarding her have you found to be the source of difficulty in this instance?”