The Rule of Knowledge

by Scott Baker

  ‘Power requirements beyond what we are capable of.’ Power requirements. He spoke about power in all of his papers as well, so this didn’t help either.

  Shaun thought about the last quote in the message, and he stopped typing. ‘Bethany would be older by a day.’ Bethany? That was it! Bethany would be older by a day. He looked up at the screen and saw the paper entitled: ‘If I only had a DeLorean – WIS.’

  It was a title that referred to the 1980s movie Back to the Future, and was one of his oldest. What made this different though was the WIS: Shaun’s notation for ‘Women in Science’. He had written a version of this paper to send to a 2005 journal celebrating women in science. He had changed his regular Robert-and-Roy twins story to Bethany and Bertha, just to make it a little more girl-friendly. He opened the paper and hit print.

  ‘We clowe in fi minit!’ a voice called out to the occupants of the internet cafe. No one looked up, but the speed of finger-tapping increased noticeably. Shaun looked at his watch. Five minutes to four. It was Saturday and he was unlikely to find another place open around here.

  He entered his password. After several seconds his inbox opened and he could not help but smile. Of the forty-three new messages, he had been offered: fifteen pre-approved home loans, nine chances for penis enlargement and had apparently joined an adult dating service some time in the past. He clicked on the ‘New’ button and waited as the blank message window redrew painfully slowly.

  Finally he typed in the address of the only person he trusted besides Lauren – his brother, Tim. Nine years older, Tim had been lumped with his younger brother after their parents were killed in a car crash when Shaun was fifteen. Shaun had been sent away to boarding school and for a time the brothers were close. But they hadn’t spoken in four years now; not since that argument. Shaun knew, though, that Tim was the one man in the world he could count on if things got serious.

  ‘We are now clowe, you muss all leave now.’

  Shaun didn’t look up as the voice came from the counter. He tapped away frantically: ‘Tim, Long time. Sorry. I need your help. In serious trouble. Lauren’s dead.’ He paused. Typing the words, telling someone else, seemed to make it all the more real. He fought back the rising nausea and continued: ‘I’m in Virginia I think. Going to get up to DC then call you. I don’t want you to try to find me, and I wouldn’t normally ask – but I need money. Can you wire me some?’

  ‘You go home!’ the small Chinese man said, standing directly behind Shaun, who ignored him for just a moment longer.

  ‘Don’t call me, I will call you when it’s safe. Sorry, big brother, you’re the only one I can turn to.’ He clicked send.

  The small man began to shut down all the other computers as disgruntled customers, some in the middle of playing the latest 3-D shoot-’em-up game, others just surfing the web, began to complain.

  ‘You go home now! You get ow my shop. We clowe – you go home now!’ He was well practised at shooing people from the premises.

  Shaun looked up at the printer, where a girl with red-and-white stripy leggings and spiky green hair grabbed at every new leaf coming out of the machine.

  ‘Whose shit is all this?’ she asked in an angry Yorkshire accent. No one responded.

  ‘This yours, mate?’ she asked, grabbing a handful of the pages and thrusting them out at Shaun. He looked at them. Yes. He had beaten the frantic print rush that had begun when the man warned that the cafe would close in five minutes. Unfortunately for everyone else, his job was still going.

  ‘Yeah, thanks,’ Shaun said taking the pages.

  ‘Don’t fank me, mate. This ain’t your personal office, ya know.’

  Shaun shoved past her to collect the remaining pages spitting into the tray. ‘Actually if you have to know, it’s a detailed explanation on the nature of time and why it’s impossible to travel back through it, so get your ugly little—’ he stopped himself. That’s what his paper was about.

  Despite everything he had just read in the diary about The Facility and The Journalist Project, Shaun had once argued passionately that time travel was impossible. If anything he had read was true, then this paper was wrong. He was wrong. As the final pages printed, he grabbed a highlighter and left, his papers in one hand, the diary in the other.

  He sat against a closed shopfront, shuffling through the unnumbered pages. The spiky-haired girl had messed them all up and he basically had to read through the entire paper to get them in the right order. Reading his earnest words threw him back years in his mind. He remembered how long he had laboured over these ideas, testing and retesting his hypotheses, trying to crack it.

  ‘We actually move about in time every day.’ Shaun highlighted it and continued to read, losing himself in the world of his own thoughts again. It was so long since he had written the paper, it was as if someone else had written it, thinking exactly the same way he did.

  ‘… and because time is a tangible thing, it is affected by gravity the same way everything else is. Gravity makes time run slower. There is even a simple formula to measure how much time is slowed down by gravity. It is known as time dilation, and has been measurable for years: t’ = t/√(1–v2/c2).

  ‘So, as gravity is different throughout the universe, it follows that time runs at different speeds throughout the universe as well. Time on a massive star runs far slower than it does in empty space. But what we don’t know is how to measure this. To create a virtual field that generates enough artificial gravity so we could actually see these effects with our naked eyes would require an immense amount of power. Power requirements beyond what we are capable of producing today here on earth.’ There was the next line! Shaun again highlighted the paper, and scanned forward.

  ‘To further illustrate this point I shall again turn to our twins Bertha and Bethany, who have put their space suits on. Suppose Bethany stays here on earth and Bertha goes off to an imploded star with the same mass as our sun; each armed with a clock. The star has collapsed in on itself and shrunk inside its Schwarzschild radius, its “event horizon”, compressing into a tiny ball of enormous density. So, keeping in mind that a time warp involves “non-local” comparisons of clock rates, you can see looking at the graph below, when Bertha is six kilometres from the centre of the mass, her clock runs at half the speed of Bethany’s back here on earth. Supposing Bertha uses her powerful rockets to stay at exactly this distance from the centre of the mass for twenty-four hours (her time), and then goes back to earth (even though the space craft would not be able to travel faster than light, let’s assume for the moment that the journey to and from earth takes next to no time at all), she would find that forty-eight hours had passed on Bethany’s clock. Bethany would be older by a day, making our identical—’

  There they were, the next two lines. Shaun highlighted ‘The space craft would not be able to travel faster than light’ and ‘Bethany would be older by a day’.

  Shaun leaned back on the wall. It was getting cold quickly here, but he knew that this was the key to making contact with whoever had called him. He reached the last page; in the penultimate paragraph he found the line he was looking for: ‘Impossible to hold these worm holes open.’

  He stared at the line, remembering the frustration it had caused him. After exhaustive research, he had found that the universe contained fleeting worm holes, and that it was theoretically possible to artificially generate these tunnels in space–time – but then he discovered that they were as short-lived in their passing as they were tiny in their physicality. Shaun’s grand theory was that it may be possible to transmit radio waves through these worm holes, and therefore, hypothetically, send messages from one point in time to another, but he had found that truly it was ‘impossible to hold these worm holes open’.

  The irony, he thought when considering all he had read in the diary, was that it was this line of his text that the stranger had chosen to quote.

  Shaun looked at the highlighted text on his pages, and then noted the corresponding page
numbers: 12, 37, 21, 88.

  12372188. That was it. It was a weird sequence for a landline, and there was no area code that started with 123. Not enough digits for a cell phone.

  An address? Latitude, longitude?

  It’s not that complicated, Shaun’s brain informed him, knowing that the reason the man quoted the lines was so that he would be able to contact him. The safety of the code wasn’t hidden in its complexity, but in the fact that anyone else listening simply wouldn’t make any sense out of the random sentences, only Shaun.

  He looked down at the lines again. A phone number was the most logical conclusion, and Shaun liked logic. He took the four pages out with the highlighted lines on them and laid them out next to each other. From left to right he placed them in ascending order, fighting the wind to hold them on the spot.

  Shaun smiled, suddenly understanding. Counting from the top of the page, he noted the line number on which each quote appeared. Ten digits, the correct number for a cell phone: 34, 21, 29, 13, 22.

  Shaun looked at the sequence, thinking back to the man’s message. His voice had sounded a little funny, a little distant. Distant in the way that … Shaun suddenly realised it wasn’t a cell number.

  Shaun ran to the payphone on the corner, hoping he had enough change in his pockets. Just. He pumped it into the machine and dialled, following his hunch to add the international prefix before the numbers. He waited.

  A long silence. A series of beeps. A ring, foreign. Click. ‘Took your time,’ a voice said after a moment.

  ‘Ah … hello?’ Shaun said hesitantly. ‘This is—’

  ‘I know who you are, Dr Strickland. You need to listen to me. You have to come to Madrid right away. I think your life is in danger.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Shaun asked, suddenly paranoid and looking about him in the street.

  ‘I really can’t talk on the phone, they keep finding me, but I have information I know you’ll be interested in.’ The voice was stern, but not hostile.

  ‘How do I know this isn’t a trap?’ Shaun asked. There was a pause.

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘Then I won’t come,’ he said.

  The line went dead. Shaun stared at the payphone, more confused than ever. The guy had hung up. Just like that. Shaun checked his surroundings but could not see anything strange. This could so easily be a trap, but what else was there to do? He thought briefly of going to his brother’s house in Washington DC, but he could not endanger Tim. It had been a risk just emailing him but he needed the money, especially after the most expensive cab ride in history. Tim, now a Washington senator, had plenty of money and had often offered to help Shaun financially, but Shaun’s pride had never allowed him to accept.

  He had no pride now, though. They – whoever they were – had taken everything that he had ever cared about. They had taken Lauren, and now he didn’t much care about pride. He had nothing. Nothing but a desire to make them pay.

  He looked down at the book in his hands. All he had to go on was this diary. He had always believed that if time travel really were possible, it would have already happened. He would know about it. But there had never been any evidence. Nothing that claimed: ‘I am from the future!’

  Until now.

  There was no longer any doubt in Shaun’s mind that this book was old, and valuable. That smell could not be faked, nor the fact that it was sealed airtight in an animal stomach with a collection of other old texts. Then, there was the unusual way Shaun had come by it. Above all, though, he could not imagine that people would want something – want it badly enough to kill for it – if it had no value, if it were a fake.

  This phone number he had in his hands was the only clue he had, his only chance to find out what was going on and make those responsible pay. But then … what if? He gave himself a moment to dare to imagine that it was all true. That there was a secret facility somewhere that had mastered time travel and had sent people back in time to interview historical figures. This was the single most incredible thing Shaun could imagine, and he had indeed spent most of his life looking at the nature of time. But for a man to travel back through it? If someone had done this, then they had a solution, an answer that had eluded Shaun for nine years. This was someone worth meeting.

  He picked up the receiver and punched the numbers again.

  CHAPTER 25

  Shaun Strickland waited.

  ‘You need to come to Madrid now. Right now,’ the voice launched right into it. There was no ‘Thanks for calling back’ or ‘Welome to Mysterious Voices R Us, how may we direct your call?’ The voice had known he would call back, he was waiting.

  ‘Why Madrid?’

  ‘Dr Strickland, I don’t have time to explain everything, and it’s not safe to do so right now. Go to Madrid, catch the train to Plaza del Sol and head to the top of the stairs. You’ll find a man with no arms holding a cup in his teeth. When you see him, you ask him where the chicken is. You got it?’ The voice was serious.

  ‘Wait! What can you tell me about Graeme Fontéyne?’ Shaun blurted out quickly and immediately regretted it. There was a silence on the other end of the line, as if he had thrown a curve ball.

  ‘You have to get to Spain today, do you understand? I’ll explain everything then.’

  Shaun rolled his eyes at the lunacy of it. A man with no arms? Where is the chicken? This guy could not be serious.

  ‘Listen, you’ve got to give me more than that, I can’t—’

  The line was already dead. He dialled again. Beeps, then a voice in Spanish: ‘Lo siento, el numero de telefono no esta conectado …’

  Well then. Madrid.

  Shaun wasn’t even sure which town he was in – somewhere near Richmond, maybe – but he knew that the nearest international airport was still a hike away. Knowing he didn’t have enough money for another huge taxi trip, he decided to jump a train.

  Half an hour later, he stood on the railway platform. An old analogue clock hung under the iron roof of the station: it was five to six in the evening. It hung next to a dilapidated old sign, ‘Salem’. Salem was a town of about twenty-five thousand people, and right now Shaun wanted to make sure he wasn’t one of them. He had been told that Amtrak came through this way just on six every day, the only train service north-east towards Washington DC. The line headed through Richmond, which meant he could get a plane to Madrid. Why Spain? He wondered. Who was this guy?

  In the meantime, he had found another payphone and left a message for his brother about where he was going, promising to call again when he got to Madrid. Shaun had hoped to speak to his brother but hadn’t been surprised when the call went to voicemail; Tim never answered. Shaun had been furious at first when they stopped talking. He felt like he had lost a good friend.

  ‘He’s too important,’ he would say to Lauren as he hung up after another beep of the answering machine. ‘He’s way too big and important for me now.’

  Squealing, hissing air broke his train of thought. The huge metal snake that was the Amtrak express seemed to appear from nowhere. The train was long, six full-length passenger cars, with the engine at the front. Each car had two metal antenna that reached up to a crossbar, which in turn contacted the invisibly charged cables that breathed life from above.

  The doors opened, no one got off … not a single soul. Shaun stepped on and found a seat near the front of the carriage. Within the minute a whistle blew and the doors closed with a hiss. The snake lurched into life, beginning a chugging rhythm as it increased speed. Shaun looked down to his hands, not quite remembering pulling the diary from inside his coat. He opened it to the page he was up to. The trip was a few hours, so he began to read.

  CHAPTER 26

  Blue light. I saw blue light, felt it wrap around me, penetrate me. Then, piece by piece I felt every molecule of my body begin to break apart. The bonds that held the fabric of my existence were stretched, and I felt every nerve disassemble, every organ dissolve into an organic cloud, and even as I knew I was no longer a
physical, solid form, I could still think. I still had my mind. I was still me. Every part of me was sucked into a single point in space. Then I was gone—

  I awoke in my cell. I was covered in sweat. I patted my body, confirming that the horror of the dream was not real. I was a solid, yet painfully bruised mass.

  But I knew it was no dream. It was a memory, the kind that your brain blocks out from your conscious life because of the trauma, when even the memory of such pain is too extraordinary for the waking world.

  My next thought was of escape. My encounter with the lion had changed my mind about waiting to gain information. I decided that I could do that without being torn limb from limb.

  I was alone in my room. Malbool was nowhere to be seen. The horror of the day’s events returned to me. It seemed so wrong. Why would they lock the pit after I was victorious? If Tiberius had wanted me dead, he would simply have killed me. He did not need to watch me die in the arena. Indeed, it wasn’t in his interest for me to die. While I lived I made him money, gained him power and favour in his aristocratic circles. Why would he release a lion on me after I had already won my match?

  I reached into my bedding and pulled out the object I had removed from my thigh.

  It sat in my hand, a tall thin cylinder of some kind of metal, blue lights glowing faintly, making no sound. My fingers traced along the grooves in its surface until they each found a tiny dip. I held it as a musician might hold a flute, the tips of my fingers resting at odd intervals along the rod. Then I squeezed.

  Click! A faint humming sound started to emanate from the rod. Then, without warning, several small compartments flicked open. I stared at it. So familiar, so much time following this exact routine. I knew that this was the single most important piece of equipment in my mission, not only because of the sound and images it could capture, but also because of the technology it contained. I knew that it could never be found, not for more than two thousand years, and only by those who would know where to look, who knew where I had been told to hide it. I was a long way from that place. I was a long way from where I needed to be.