Pathspace

by Matthew Kennedy

Prologue

  A New beginning

  “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”

  – Albert Einstein

  It wasn't the beginning of the end. It wasn't even the end of the beginning.

  The collapse of Earth's technology, the Fall that we blamed on the Tourists, had happened. You could call it an end, of sorts. It was an end to the world that was, a world that might never return. Had millions, maybe even billions starved? Certainly. Had the globe-spanning networks of commerce and communications died, when alien technology failed? Undoubtedly. Had all the nations splintered into tiny kingdoms and city states? Of course.

  But was it the end of humans? No. We could live without the technology of the Ancients. Just not as well.

  Older technologies resurfaced to take the place of what we had lost. As automobiles failed, horse populations rose. Vacant hardware stores were replaced by a new generation of blacksmiths. Pharmaceutical companies perished, herbalists took their place. Everywhere, low-tech alternatives that predated the Age of Machines filled the gap left by vanishing infrastructure.

  The question was not whether we would recover, but how, and how long it would take. There were those like the former Honcho of the Lone Star Empire who dreamed of restoring our former glory by eliminating the alien technology, and rebuilding our technology without it. They sought to unify the splintered nations by conquest.

  They were not always successful.

  But there were also those who knew that the Fall was not caused by the alien technology, but by our failure to replicate, develop, and maintain it, once the aliens left the solar system. And it took a while, but long-term exposure of humans to the alien tech caused, in some, the development of the very abilities whose lack had caused the fall.

  Once they manifested, these abilities, though rare, were frightening to many people.

  Some of these wonder-workers were killed, out of fear.

  Some obtained the protection of local rulers.

  A few of them gained safety by becoming the local rulers.

  And a few, very few, had the foresight to pass on their knowledge, to take on apprentices, and even, in some cases, to begin to set up schools to teach their discoveries.

  Wizards were among us again.

  And that was a new beginning.

  Chapter 1