‘Not exactly, no.’
The founder’s smile broke so suddenly across his face that everyone was taken aback by its appearance.
‘Ha. The irony of it all. The Paradox stands before us! This will keep Eddington’s department busy for centuries!’
The colonel smiled and patted Josh on the shoulder. ‘I knew you were special, boy, but this really is quite outstanding.’
Caitlin turned to Lyra. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’
‘Of course, silly. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise,’ Lyra said smiling.
‘The problem now, of course, is what is to be done with you?’ the founder said to himself.
‘Well, I believe investiture would be a good place to start — don’t you, my lord?’ suggested the colonel.
The founder seemed to be lost in thought. ‘What? Yes. Of course, we must invest him at once. Notify the dissignator.’
The colonel went off to a speaking tube in the wall and began to shout into it while plugging one finger in his ear.
Caitlin was staring at Josh in a way that was starting to make him uncomfortable.
‘Can you please explain what is going on?’ Josh asked her. ‘Did he find out who my father is or not? Can someone please get me out of this thing?’
Caitlin looked across at the founder, and he waved his hand as if to invite her to answer the question. Sim stepped forward and unbuckled the straps that held Josh in the frame.
‘Kelly tried to find your father — it’s standard procedure to review your lineage — but when he followed your timeline he found an anomaly.’
‘What kind of anomaly?’
‘A paradox loop, a line that goes forward rather than backwards as you would usually expect.’
‘So you’re saying my father was, is, from the future?’
She nodded. ‘Hence the title “Paradox”. You shouldn’t exist, but you do.’
‘And this has never happened before?’
‘No, Josh. We have been waiting a very long time for someone like you,’ replied the founder.
‘But what does that even mean? How does that make me any different to you guys?’
‘Since the inception of our Order we have known that time travel beyond the present was a distinct possibility. Something that goes beyond the dynamics of the continuum. Some have tried to deny that a Paradox could exist, but we’ve always been more open-minded. You were predicted, Joshua — more than a thousand years ago.’
Josh was confused. His head was still pounding from being suspended upside down for so long, and now they were telling him that his father — the imaginary being that he’d spent so many years wondering about as a kid — was from the future. It was a concept that his befuddled mind refused to accept.
Caitlin took his hand and looked into his eyes.
‘What the founder is trying to say is that there is a very strong chance you can travel beyond the frontier, into the future.’
‘What the —’
‘They’re ready for you now,’ interrupted the colonel. ‘Follow me.’
67
Initiation
As they walked, Caitlin explained that the initiation was usually a grand affair, steeped in traditional and ceremony. When they entered the Grand Hall, it reminded Josh of a church they’d gone to when they buried his gran — except the mourners weren’t dressed like a grand order of wizards.
There were pews on either side of the central aisle, which led up to a raised dais. Walking slowly down the scarlet carpet, Josh saw that the symbol of the snake eating its own tail was emblazoned on banners and columns on both sides of the hall.
The founder led the way, followed by the colonel. Methuselah, Sim and Caitlin stayed beside Josh as the rest of the extended family followed behind.
An old woman stood on the dais dressed in robes that shimmered like the sun on water. In one hand she held a staff, in the other a finely carved wooden case just bigger than a shoebox.
The woman’s hair was woven into long dark braids streaked with grey; a golden symbol had been woven into the end of each braid — she reminded Josh of Medusa with her hair of snakes.
The old woman began to tap out time with the end of her staff, and he found his steps matching the beat. Like a metronome, the rhythm of the sound brought order to the proceedings. The audience grew silent and watched as the entourage marched in deference to the beat, making their way slowly towards her.
When he reached her, Josh could see that the top of her staff was crowned with a snake holding a sphere, and that the box cradled against her breasts had a similar mark. Her face was masked by a golden veil, but he could see a dark pair of eyes studying him as he approached.
‘I am Moirai, Aisa, Diké — the Goddess of Fate,’ she announced dramatically to them all. ‘You shall know me as Destiny, as Chaos and Calamity. I am your beginning and your end.’
As one they all stepped away from Josh, leaving him standing alone before the masked goddess.
‘Who brings this soul to the continuum?’ she asked, waving the staff over his head and bringing it down on his shoulder, forcing him to kneel.
‘I do,’ answered the colonel, stepping forward to stand beside Josh.
She lifted the staff away from Josh and handed it to an attendant.
‘Time is a river. It flows through me like water.’
They all repeated the incantation solemnly.
‘I am the navigator, the weaver, the guardian. I shall not shy from the consequences of my actions.’
Again the assembled repeated her words. As they did so, she brought the box up towards Josh’s face.
‘Behold the engine of the infinite. Within lies your past, your present and future. Do you pledge them all to the service of the continuum?’
She nodded to Josh as if to prompt him to repeat the words. As he did so, the circular symbol at one end of the box irised slowly open to reveal a dark hole.
The colonel took Josh’s right arm and guided his hand into the hole. At first Josh tried to resist, afraid of what might be inside. He guessed it was going to be a snake, but he knew this was some kind of test and that the colonel would never do him harm.
The inside of the box felt unusually cold. As he tentatively spread his fingers in search of the contents, he found that it was much larger than it looked from the outside. A familiar prickling sensation began to spread over his hand and up his arm; his mind began to sense the lines of energy as the darkness reached out of the box and took him.
It was pitch-black; he searched blindly for any point of reference in the formless void that surrounded him. The feeling of solitude and emptiness was overwhelming — isolated from any stimuli, he could feel his senses desperately scavenging for some kind of input.
‘Do not be afraid,’ said the disembodied voice of the goddess.
Her tone was like a mother calming her child — a deep, soothing, reassuring sound laced with maternal benevolence.
A small glimmer caught his eye and he felt the warmth of something under his hand. He looked down and found that he was touching a small black cube that glowed slightly where his fingers touched its surface. The cube was floating in a dark viscous liquid, like black mercury, in a shallow bowl. The dim light cast out in a small umbra around the bowl, encasing him and the column on which it stood in a sphere of pale blue light.
‘Behold the continuum,’ explained the voice.
Sparks of light issued from his fingertips spreading out across the surface of the cube. Like embers they glowed and died as they travelled along its sides, their trails igniting symbols and glyphs of ancient equations. Lines of power began to trace between the glowing symbols and as the number of lines multiplied, the lattice seemed to grow and spread outwards until it enveloped him and the space around him.
Suddenly Josh was standing in the middle of an intricate web of lines and symbols that revolved around him like a thousand galaxies.
‘The continuum: the culmination of twelve thousand years of wor
k. A model of every branch of history, every correction, and all of the possible futures contained within one beautiful and ever-evolving algorithm.’
As Josh focused on the swirling matrix, he recognised various markers and symbols; he could make out the centuries and the notes, the annotations and formulae that had been tagged to the various branches. Every change, every choice was marked with a series of numeric symbols and references as to who had sanctioned the action — it was a beautiful, intricate structure of infinite scale, it made him wonder what it was all for.
‘The continuum must be maintained if humanity is to survive,’ the voice of the goddess responded — as if aware of his thoughts.
His eyes were drawn to the clusters of timelines, like knots in the fabric of the lattice. There were key dates: world wars, the fall of empires and major events that attracted the most attention and generated more possibilities. He could see a pattern to their frequency, they were becoming more regular as the timeline approached the present.
The present itself had so many strands converging on it that it looked like a frayed rope end. As he watched in awe, he could see some of the possible futures weaving together into the main trunk while others were discarded, separating and dying off like a dead tree branches.
‘Tomorrow can never be known entirely. We who study the past must use it to forge the foundation of a better future.’
He turned slowly round, taking in the size and complexity of the model. There were so many layers; information hid microscopically so that detail was only revealed when you focused on a particular area of it.
He shifted his attention to the earliest part of the timeline, searching for the period in which he and Caitlin had been lost— the Mesolithic. There was no record. The first date, the datum point, was a simple symbol with one line branching out from it. Year zero was only twelve thousand years ago. Josh knew that there was something else before it. As he pushed his consciousness past the date, it expanded, and other symbols appeared.
‘Enough!’ commanded the voice, and the timelines emanating from the cube contracted and the lights went out.
‘Open your eyes,’ she whispered.
He could feel her breath on his skin. She was close, and the hand that had been inside the box was now being held by another.
He blinked back the intensity of the light as his eyes acclimatised to the vibrant colours of the real world once more. His arm was still tingling, and he looked down at it to find the snake tattoo now burned into his skin. The goddess released his hand, and he lifted his arm closer to his face, tracing the already healed scar tissue with his fingers. There was no pain, just a fading warmth as if something hot had been lifted from it a few minutes before.
The tattoo was different to Cat’s.
In the centre of the circle made by the snake’s tail was a small dot, like a tiny island. He turned to Caitlin and showed her the anomaly.
‘It is the mark of the one,’ she whispered quietly.
The goddess stood before him. The box had disappeared, and she was holding the staff once more. He saw her eyes widen at the symbol on his arm. She went down on one knee and touched her free hand to her forehead
‘The continuum has selected a chosen one. May all the paths of time bend before him.’
Josh wanted to laugh, to tell them to stop messing around, but saw in Caitlin’s expression that they were all taking this very seriously
‘Quite,’ said the founder, breaking the reverie. He was obviously finding the over-dramatic performance a little too much. ‘Now that all the formalities have been dealt with, I believe there are quite a number of people who will be wanting to talk to you, my boy.’
68
Golden Hour
Lenin was strapped to a hospital bed surrounded by machines. His head had been shaved, and an array of wires were taped to his skull.
Professor Fermi was making the final adjustments to one of the machines and checking the various monitoring devices. This was to be his epiphany, his moment of glory — after so many years of researching he had the proof he needed to demonstrate the potential of his research. A group of very influential people were watching from the observation booth, a mixture of high-ranking officers from the military and various other government departments.
He turned to the large glass window and signalled to one of his assistants to switch on the mic and start the video recording.
‘Welcome, ladies and gentleman. Thank you all for coming today.’
He walked over to one of the larger machines, a white ring-like torus with an object suspended in the central field. As he neared, a blue glow began to radiate from the edges of the ring.
‘This is a quantum field generator, a research project I have been working on for some time. You will have read in the briefing notes that this is a unique device, similar in power to the Large Hadron Collider, but with a considerably smaller footprint and energy consumption.’
He could see some of his guests were amused by that remark.
‘So, the question on your minds is — what can this do for us? I hope you don’t mind if I answer that particular concern with a practical demonstration.’
The professor motioned to another of his assistants, and a series of medical diagnostic interfaces appeared on the displays beside him. They were paired to screens in the observation room.
On one of the monitors, the observers watched as a guard walked up to Lenin’s bed, took a gun from his jacket and shot Lenin directly in the chest.
The observers seemed unconcerned, and Fermi explained: ‘As you can see from the diagnostics, our patient has suffered a severe gunshot wound to the chest, his organs are in the process of shutting down due to blood loss and the prognosis does not look good.’
A remote camera moved over Lenin’s body, pausing at the site of the wound. X-ray images overlaid the video footage as the professor continued.
‘As you can see, the bullet entered just below the heart, and pierced one of the lungs. The doctors inform me the patient has less than a ten per cent chance of survival, something that under the Injury Survival Scoring system would be deemed as unsurvivable.’
Fermi moved to Lenin’s side, pulled back the bedsheets and picked up a device from the tray beside his bed.
‘In any medical emergency, time is always seen as critical factor. Any battlefield surgeon will tell you that the first hour is the most important and can be the difference between life and death. I believe they call it the “Golden Hour”?’
Fermi activated the device and the lights dimmed momentarily as the light from the quantum field generator flared.
‘No need to be alarmed — the energy levels contained within the unit are carefully regulated. Now observe the wound closely.’
He ran the handheld device, which resembled a glowing magnifying lens, over Lenin’s wounds. As he focused the light on the edges of the flesh, small flickers of energy glistened over them.
‘Time doesn’t have to be our enemy. By accelerating it in a localised way, we can encourage the body to heal more rapidly.’
The video feed from the camera focused on the wound as it began to close; the skin and tissue knitted together at an incredible rate. Those in the observation room stared in amazement as the wound healed in a matter of minutes.
Lenin’s vital signs improved almost instantaneously; both pulse and blood pressure monitors registered a return to normal levels.
‘This is just one of the ways quantum distortion could revolutionise our world — troops healed and back on the front line in under an hour — imagine the effect it would have on morale. They would be virtually invincible!’
There was a round of applause from the observers, although Fermi had already turned away from them. He knew that he had just secured the extra funding to make this project a reality.
He powered down the quantum field generator. Josh’s watch sat floating in the middle of the torus. He carefully plucked it from the magnetic fields that were holding it in
place and put it in his pocket.
Lenin groaned as the anaesthetic began to wear off. Fermi motioned to the medics to attend to him. He was still comatose, but his signs were stable. They pulled out the bed from the wall and wheeled it into the corridor and down to a waiting ambulance.
Fermi turned back to his audience. ‘Now, I believe drinks are being served in the executive suite. If you would be so kind as to meet me there, we can discuss terms.’
69
Retirement
Josh walked into the kitchen and put the basket of freshly picked vegetables on the worktop. They were still caked in mud. He took each one and washed the dirt off under the tap, scrubbing at their surface until they were shiny.
The colonel had shown him the best years from which to harvest: the farms and allotments of the 11.900s were his particular favourites. There was a different pattern to life back before the First World War. It was hard to describe — there was a sense of innocence back in that era. The people he met there were almost like children. They were kind and trusting, and their doors were never locked — mainly because they had nothing worth stealing. Josh had spent days wandering through the countryside of Kent in 11.902 without any idea of where he was going, and had been overwhelmed by the kindness and hospitality of the people that he met.
They had no comprehension of what was happening beyond their village, no television or internet to show them the terrible things that war could do — nor did they seem to care. It was a simple way of life, slow-paced and stress-free.
There was a shout from the study and Josh walked in to find his mother and the colonel in some kind of deadlock. The colonel was clutching a small stack of newspapers tightly to his chest, while his mother was wearing an apron and a pair of rubber gloves and was wielding a large black rubbish sack.
‘Mrs Jones, I must insist that you leave my things as you found them!’
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 34
