Ryan Time

by Craig Robertson

  “There's actually another aspect that concerns me more,” Sachiko stated. “Tank, too, I think. It's this. If what I'm saying is actually the case, the Andromeda galaxy was intact less than a month ago. Yet, everyone in this room believes it to have been that way for a very long time. I'm worried we live in a universe where we may not believe what we hold to be an obvious truth.”

  The room was quiet a while. Finally Tank spoke up. “There's no way around that, kiddo. It is what it is.”

  “But, what of that which we think we know can we believe? If we can't independently confirm a fact, I say it's now in question.”

  “To an extent, yes,” brooded Aron. “Many astronomical tenets we hold as truths may need to be reassessed. Most physical perception, however, will remain sacrosanct. The strong nuclear force is still the strong force. It has no time variant. Chemical processes remain completely credible.”

  Sachiko shook her head. “Sure, some … hell most things are probably immune to whatever this non-time process is. But, I'm not comfortable living in a world where my ability to believe what I believe is out the window.”

  “Your belief doesn't change reality,” Noami said very distantly. “Your belief is as powerless as your ability to change things outside yourself.”

  That's when it hit Sachiko. After Naomi spoke, she polished off a bottle of beer. An Amish girl who drank? That was odd. Maybe she had a tale to tell. Wait, an Amish physicist girl who drank. Yeah, some whale of a tale lay below the calm surface. Somehow, odd wasn't as welcome as it used to be, in the World According to Sachiko.

  Over the next week, Sachiko kept a close eye on M 31. She developed what she termed the streak-to-crashing ratio, or STCR. She couldn't believe what she observed to be the length of the streaks. So, instead, she relied on the ratio of the length of the eleven o'clock displacement to the length of the void moving through the galaxy in the five o'clock direction. If the ratio stayed the same, the two events had to be coupled. If, on the other hand, the streak seemed to remain constant, while the STCR increased, changing the ratio, the two observed regions would not be related, in any way.

  One way she tried to document any change occurring in M 31, besides simple observation, was to digitally subtract the galaxy's brightnesses. That was a time-honored tool in astronomy. She took a digital image of the galaxy on day 1. Then she subtracted the digital image on day 2, of the identical area. If there was no change at all, the resultant image would be totally black, or blank if you will. That's how she discovered the tunnel, in the first place.

  “You see it right here?” she asked Tank, as her finger pounded the screen.

  “No, sorry. I think your eyes are tired.”

  “No,” she chided him. “Go turn off the lights and put on your glasses.”

  “Glasses? I don't wear glasses.”

  “Yes you do. When no one's around, you wear readers.”

  “I do not.”

  “Such a guy. They're in your inside coat pocket. Come on, this is important.”

  Maybe it was because he got to dim the room first. He returned with his readers on.

  “Here, this thin line right in the galactic plane.”

  “Okay, maybe I do.” He whipped his glasses off and stuffed them in a side pocket. Probably crushed the innocent glasses. “What am I supposed to make of it?”

  “I looked at lots of old images, especially the Hubble ones.”

  “And?”

  “And this smaller, before unidentified, tunnel has always been there.”

  “Then it's no big deal.”

  “You're still fixated on the glasses aren't you?”

  Tank shifted uncomfortably. “Not in the slightest.”

  “Because, Professor Sherman, remember our new rule? Don't believe anything you see or know.”

  He thought quietly a few seconds. “What's it's STCR?”

  “You guess.”

  “This is not a game show. This is serious academic research.”

  “Guess.”

  “It's streak-to-crash ratio is not changing. If it was, you wouldn't have that smug look on your face.”

  “I never look smug. I'm too nice.”

  “Maybe you used to be, but y'ain't anymore.”

  “It's not changing. But, one more thing to keep you awake at night, the STCR of the two voids and the tunnel are not the same.”

  “Crap.”

  “Yes, crap. The tunnel is getting longer quicker than the new eleven o'clock region.”

  “So the tunnel is growing faster that the crash? Please say no. No, Tank, the little tunnel is not getting longer faster than the crash section which has to be expanding at or near the speed of light. Practice saying that before you say another word.”

  “Tank,” she rested a hand tenderly on the back of his hand, “I'd rather not start lying to you now, this far into our relationship.”

  He jumped to his feet and dashed for the light switch. “Damn it, Shaky, you're going to get me fired, killed, and then killed, again. A married old goat like me in a dark room with you, and you're saying that crap. If someone heard, it'd be curtains for me.”

  Sachiko smiled as evilly as she could, which wasn't much. “And, in so doing, opening up a tenure-track position in this department.”

  “You witch. Keep your black magic away from me.”

  They both had a good laugh.

  “This … this is serious, Tank. Bad serious.”

  “I realize that, kiddo.”

  “Here's the facts as I see them. A month ago, the center of M 31 vanished because it's time was eaten. The timeless mass crashed away. A wide streak of non-timed matter headed south, and continues to do so, to this day. Something smaller, at the same moment in time, moves off in a separate, seemingly unrelated direction.”

  “Don't forget the recording to Mars and the bugs,” Tank said in a hush.

  “Bugs? What bugs?”

  “The bugs I just read about in Nature, and was coming here to tell you about.” He handed her the latest copy of Nature. “Page 1132. On the Unexplained Disappearance of Mosquitoes, Fruit Flies, and Mayflies in the Great Lakes Region of the United States.”

  She swallowed hard. “What's their bottom line?”

  “That the populations of these rapidly reproducing, short-lived critters are inexplicably down to nearly zero over the last month.”

  “So who says massive gamma ray bursts aren't good for something. I hate mosquitoes.”

  “I'll get the team together at my place tonight. Six okay?”

  “What happened to seven like last time?”

  “Too long to wait. Be at my place at 5:30.”

  Noami couldn't make it. She told Tank she had a really bad cold and didn't want to risk passing it on to Aron. Yeah. That would have been considerate, if she actually was ill. Sachiko'd seen her in Starbucks that morning. She was on her phone, so Sachiko didn't interrupt. Noami sure looked and sounded good then.

  “So, along with mercurial time, you now want me to accept that the Earth was hit by a massive gamma ray burst that no one, but no one, noticed or recorded? I must be too old to imagine large things any longer,” proclaimed Aron most dramatically. “Plus, since we're making old Albert twirl in his grave, already, even if this is all true, how could the gamma rays get here so quickly? Hmm? M 31 is over two hundred million light years away.”

  “I have the recording I played, the one I sent to Mars 1,” Sachiko responded.

  “Oh, so now you own the transmission?” blustered Tank.

  “Shut up, Sherman,” Sachiko snapped.

  “This is how she talks to her supervisor?” teased Aron. He couldn't contain a big grin.

  “The times have a'changed, my friend. Please feel my pain,” replied Tank.

  She stuck her tongue out at the both of them.

  “You know what this implies?” asked Graham. “If we took a gamma burst, Lord only knows what damage will show up in time. We need to alert the authorities.”

  “And te
ll them a mystical gamma wave passed through us that modern science missed, because to us it never happened?” challenged Aron.

  “It's looking to be the truth,” replied Graham.

  “Here's the first thing a rational mind will challenge you with, Ms. Jones. If the galactic core disappeared with a gamma burst, but it never happened, because it's time never was, how is it the burst reached Earth? Why didn't it, too, never exist?” Aron was completely serious in his query.

  “My recording, too, right?”

  He nodded his bloodhound-skinned head.

  “Here goes. My transmission to Mars 1 was in route when the event happened. The fact that I immediately perceived history differently, did not alter that fully-autonomous broadcast.”

  “Or the gamma rays created by the event itself,” added Tank.

  “But they never happened,” appealed Aron, arms outstretched.

  “No, they did happen. It only seems like they didn't, because when they became non-timed, they reset to zero in our appreciation of them.”

  “Why must physics always be so elusive. It mocks us, you know?” remarked Aron.

  Graham took a deep breath. “Here's one for you, Sachiko. You've been up most nights observing. That means you've also been ruminating on it. What do you see happening?”

  “I'd rather not say.”

  “That is a privilege you cannot have, Ms. Jones,” Aron responded in his lowest tone. “We are here to listen. You are here to speak.”

  “One month ago someone flew into M 31 and fired a non-time pulse at the supermassive black hole. The non-time pulse continued off as the observed streak. Then they turned their ship into the galactic plane to harvest more time.”

  “I think that is a very reasonable assumption, young lady,” said Aron. “Whether it is the truth or fiction, who can say? But why do you say it so sadly? You have made the greatest scientific observation in history.”

  “How many other local galaxies have donut hole centers?”

  “Most,” shot back Graham. “All but the small fry, really. We all know that. What's your point?”

  “I'm seeing a swarm of locusts,” she replied as she started to cry. “A heaven full of fucking locusts.”

  “My dear,” said Aron leaning toward her. “Calm yourself. What are you so upset about? This is not the end of the world.”

  She looked up from where her face had been in her palms. “Well I think it just might be. How's that hit you?”

  “Shaky, easy,” said Tank. “There's no need to bite Aron's head off.”

  “I think a swarm of aliens have swooped down on our local galaxy cluster. They're eating the time out of everything.” she sniffed revoltingly. “One last question. In our local group of galaxies, which one still has a large central supermassive black hole?”

  No one said a thing. They all knew the answer. Just one. Our own Milky Way.

  SIX

  Body Maker-lop dangled by his spindly legs from the ceiling of the time-storage area, the ship's closest equivalent to a bridge. The few others on duty, Communication Maker-zizz, Vector Maker-nom, and Time Storage Maker-baker worked below, more conventionally. They had tasks to ply, and the controls were oriented by the ship's long forgotten builders in a manner that required the crew to man their posts as if they were still on a planet with positive gravity.

  “Time storage maker,” sang the body maker, “have we completed the assimilation of the central singularity?”

  “Yes, body maker. Time acquired and stored, by agreements past.”

  “How full is our bottle?” That was slang for how full the time containment unit was.

  “Nearly seventy percent, body maker.”

  Body Maker-lop pumped his pencil thin arms, twice, and launched himself into flight. He spun, he flipped, and he cackled. Finally he came to rest on the deck, directly beside the vector maker. “You are assimilating tubules of time, according to agreements past?”

  “Yes, my body maker. I am able to intake the typical concentrations, as we spiral out toward the galaxy's limits.”

  “I demand an estimate of our time belly fullness, by the time we arrive at galaxy's end.”

  The vector maker looked down. That was a disagreeable request to fulfill. To give an exact, honest, response would be to risk immediate recycling. Lies could lead to a much worse fate. Why did body makers worry about what body makers worried about?

  “Sixty five percent, if the density hold true to norms.”

  “Bah,” screeched the body maker, and he slapped the poor servant of the clan on the side of its head, very hard. Trickles of time oozed to the outer layers, and a few drops spilled toward the floor. The body maker lunged for them. But he was too slow. The droplets struck the deck, and instantly disappeared. “Fool,” howled the body maker. “You waste time to the ship, not the clan. How could you be so remote from utility?”

  “But, body maker, you struck me. You caused me to bleed time.”

  Being right wasn't nearly adequate, in this perverse society. “Yes, and your incompetence caused me to strike you. Clearly, the fault is yours. I should—”

  “Body maker,” interrupted the communications maker, “We're being thought of by aliens. Their ships approach us in vast numbers. Their transmissions pelt us.”

  “Can you make their language understandable to me?”

  “In agreement. They say we are headed toward the singularity at the center of their galaxy. They warn us to alter forward movement, or they will attack us.”

  The body maker clamped all his thin poly-articulated arms together and spun with joyous abandon. It emitted a high pitched chirping cough as it danced. “So the same as every time. So stupid, yet so bold. They are like scankarkee defending their mud puddles.” It danced onto the control platform, and cackled some more.

  “In agreement. Action course requested.”

  “Distance to their fleet?”

  “Their vector with coincide with ours in one hour.”

  “Let us all dance for an hour, then. We dance to know the joy of annihilation. Come, clan, dance.”

  And they all danced, wherever they were in time or space. Near and far, future and past, all the clan danced and shouted, crackled sound, and the body maker secreted three new clan forms and they consumed time and then they danced and sang with the whole.

  At the end of an hour, Tremoult Bar, the Gax Vrelferian commander, knew he must commit to a full assault. There had been no response to any of his hails, and no course changes from his shots across the hostile's bows. “Order of the Day One. I repeat, engage order of the Day One, now.”

  The fleet fanned out into its predetermined attack formation. Ten light ships accelerated from the tips of the enormous wing configuration that was traditional in Vrelferian warfare. Medium ships slipped into formation off the light ships, inside and just behind them. In the center of the wing, Death Hinge, Gax's massive flagship, took up its position. Eighty trillion tons of displacement large, Death Hinge was unparalleled in its power and armament.

  “Fire controllers begin assault in three … two … one. Light ships fire. Medium ships fire. Death Hinge fire.”

  In a containing crossfire, plasma bolts erupted from the tips of the wing formation and flashed to the center. As much energy of destruction was unleashed as a normal star radiated in a year. Then, automatically, hyperdrive fusion-tipped missiles sallied forth. Some ships then remained in real space while others dropped into warp space to elude a counter attack. Those ships were to reenter real space on the far side of the targeted ships.

  “Switch to attack formation Victory Three,” shouted Gax.

  His ships snapped into long columns and continued to accelerate at the enemy.”

  “Master at Arms report,” yelled Gax.

  “Ah, I have no report yet, lord.”

  “What? The plasma would have struck home in half a second. Report, damn you.”

  “The plasma either dissipated or was absorbed by the enemy ships, Lord. No impacts
observed. No damage inflicted.”

  “Missile strikes?”

  “Due in five seconds.”

  Gax wrapped two tentacles around a crossbar and squeezed down as hard as he could. After ten seconds he called in a panicky voice, “Report.”

  “Missiles unaccounted for, lord.”

  “How can they be unaccount—”

  Gax would never finish his query, nor learn the truth. A thin stream of time energy touched Death Hinge and it never existed. In a flash, the entire Vrelferian armada and six hundred thousand Vrelferians sailors … never existed. Well, due to what passed for Body Maker-lop's twisted, perverse sense of humor, two of the big ships “survived.” One was sent to the time of the Big Bang. The other was forwarded seventeen billion years into the future. It did not believe either would survive. It didn't care. It was having fun. Scattering toys in time was such a joy.

  One matter was certain. All the Vrelferian ships were, most decidedly, out of time.

  SEVEN

  “Have a seat, kiddo,” Tank said to Sachiko as soon as she appeared in this doorway.

  “You sound in the dumps today, Tank. Midlife gotcha down, again?”

  “No. I'm ailing from the life-lessons that were just recently pounded into my thick head.”

  “You're relatively young, Tank, you'll bounce back.” she smiled encouragingly, to lighten his mood.

  “No, I am not, and not anytime soon.”

  “That doesn't sound too good.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “It isn't. For one thing, I can't believe I didn't see the missing galactic centers as a clue.”

  “I am sort of more obsessed with all this than you. That's why I saw it first, that's all.”

  “No, but thanks for the ego boost. When do you think the rest of the big galaxies in our group lost their centers?”

  “Recently. Probably sometime this year.”

  He tossed a stapled-together review article across the table to me. It was titled Mechanisms of Galactic Formation. Where's The Central Mass? “I wrote that ten years ago. It was my first big review article. I felt so smart. Remember it like it was yesterday.”