Empty Planet

by Lynette Sloane

  “Who from?” I asked her. “The previous owners are long dead. I studied Law remember, and there’s no legal owner to this property. In the UK the crown would normally assume ownership, but as all concerned have been dead for nearly two hundred years, and there’s no government to claim any taxes, it’s my legal opinion that you are the new legitimate owner of the said locket.” I looked up at Gab to see what he thought. He peered at us through the doorway, shrugged his shoulders, and walked away, disinterested in my find.

  “It will probably disappear in a temporal adjustment when we get back,” Gemma added.

  “Well if you were to go to the same shop in natural time you would still find the locket in the glass display case. The only problem would be if the shopkeeper subsequently sells it. Your older version of the locket would disappear as it wouldn’t have been in the shop for me to find today.”

  “Yea, as I said, a temporal adjustment. Hey, if I were to buy the locket when we get back I would have two for the price of one.” She laughed.

  “Now that’s a real two for one offer,” I said, putting the locket around her neck. Then pondering on my limited knowledge of temporal paradoxes and displacement added, “No Gem, the older version would still disappear.”

  “Oh yea … blast.”

  I wasn’t interested in looting the shop and becoming rich in natural time— temporal adjustments permitting—there were far more important things to be concerned with, nevertheless, I did hope to find one more thing.

  “You coming now?” Gemma asked, looking up at the last piece of roofing hanging precariously above us.

  “Yea, you go ahead.” As she made her way back across the rubble and out the side of the shop, I reached back inside the display case and pulled out another small plastic box.

  She stood outside the shop looking back in at me, “Steve, for goodness sake, come on,” she said, exasperated. As she spoke the remaining part of the roof crashed down into the shop and a cloud of dirt billowed out through the shop front and side door space.

  Gemma yelled, “Steve!”

  Fortunately I was unhurt, as the roofing hadn’t hit me. I pushed some rubble and a roof beam out of the way, then scrambled out of a hole in the sidewall coughing, dirt particles in my mouth, eyes and up my nose.

  I could see Gemma’s relief. She checked I was all right and helped me brush the dirt off my clothes and hair.

  I looked to see if Gab was nearby. He wasn’t. He had wandered off a little further up the street. Unable to contain my excitement, I leaned towards Gemma and spoke softly, “This is something for Anna.” I took the small plastic box out of my jacket pocket and opened it so Gemma could to see inside. It held a gold ring with a solitary half carrot diamond. “I don’t know how long Anna and I have together, but I want to make her happy. I have to make the most of whatever time we have.” I put the box back in my pocket and zipped it up.

  We continued walking in silence, my mind set on Anna and what I would be asking her this weekend—instead of working out a way to see if Gab might be a candidate for rejoining the programme.

  After scrambling over and around bushes, brambles and thick, established vines for about three hundred metres, we came across a wide, flat area between the large, derelict buildings. In the centre stood a large cenotaph engulfed in creeping ivy, dwarfed by several large oak trees growing behind it.

  Gemma crawled through what might have been an overgrown hedge and made her way over to the cenotaph. She pulled a little of the ivy away from the lower part, uncovering some writing carved in the stone. I joined her, helping to pull off several of the larger pieces so we could see what it said.

  Gemma read: ‘In memory of the men and women of this city who willingly gave their lives fighting for freedom against the oppressors in Two Great Wars …’ Then followed dates and lists of the names of hundreds of soldiers who had fallen in battle during the First and Second World Wars. Gemma pulled more ivy away from the inscription revealing a few less professionally engraved words.

  Someone had clearly added their own historical record, ‘In memory of the human race and the last remaining men and women who bravely lost their fight against the virus sent from another world. We believe we were the last.’ It was dated June twenty ninety-three.

  Amazed, I exclaimed, “They survived another ten years. Not everyone died within days of the super-virus outbreak! Like this one, other pockets of humanity probably survived for a while, but it got them in the end.”

  “How do you know it got all of them?” asked Gemma. “Their descendants might still be here. The thought made me shudder and we all looked around to see if anyone was watching us. If some people had survived it would have been wonderful, but at the same time, their descendants wouldn’t have known our world, and they mightn’t be friendly or understand our presence. The Earth was now a very different place and we didn’t belong here.

  Gemma turned to Gab who had just rejoined us and had been silent since leaving the library.

  “Earthsong is a worthy cause, but would you really kill any Jumper who wasn’t a member?” she asked him.

  “I believe in what it stands for, but in truth I don’t know if I could. I am an accountant, not a mercenary. On the other hand, any war brings out the fighter in us and moves the goal posts of morality. If I had to,” he paused, “if my life depended on it, maybe I could. Are you testing me?”

  “No. I just wondered because I feel the same. I could fight an enemy but don’t know if I could kill in cold blood as we’ve been instructed to.”

  “So you haven’t killed anyone yet?”

  “No,” Gemma answered. I hoped she hadn’t given herself away.

  I quickly joined in the conversation, “I have. I had to kill my best friend.” I remembered David taking his last gasps of life; the memory felt like a knife through my heart. “I hope I never have to do anything like that again.”

  Gemma gently touched my arm and brought her index finger up to her lips, indicating that we should be quiet. She pointed further down the street where a woman was walking in our direction. We ducked down, hidden from sight by the uncultivated hedge. I recognised the lady as Alison, one of the Primary Jumpers on the same mission as Gemma and I. Alison was very slim and wore a mid-length cotton gypsy dress, her long strawberry blond hair loose and flowing down her back.

  “This is your chance,” Gemma whispered to Gab. She waited until the Alison was about fifteen metres away then slowly stood up and walked towards her.

  The woman looked startled and recognised Gemma, but said nothing.

  Gemma spoke, “The Earth will sing.” Alison seemed taken aback, knowing that Gemma was also a Primary Jumper. Although she spoke quietly Gab and I could still hear her.

  “What do you mean? Why are you messing about?” Gab and I edged a little nearer to Gemma so Alison could see us.

  He whispered to me, “I don’t think I can do it. I can’t kill anyone, not like this anyway,” then stepping forward a few metres and addressing the slim lady he asked, “Why don’t you understand? You are clearly not an Earthsong member. You realise we have orders to kill you?”

  “But you’re not going to are you,” she answered, sensing his apprehension and pushing a wayward section of her layered hair behind her right ear. “Why don’t you return to the programme? You can help repopulate the world with a race of people who respect mother earth.”

  “These two would report me for not doing my job,” he said, gesturing to Gemma and me. Before anyone could make any comment about this, he winced and rubbed the back of his neck saying, “We’re going back.”

  Gab faded from our sight, pulled back into natural time.

  I looked at Gemma and Alison saying, “Well done ladies.”

  Two more Primary Jumpers, both well-toned Jamaican men, were making their way towards us: one from a building overlooking the remembrance square, and one from the direction in which Alison had just come.

  “My partners and I could see you talking to
that man and thought you could do with some help,” she said.

  The taller of the men spoke, gesturing to his friend, “We’re trained marksmen. Samuel and I could have taken the rebel Jumper out before he even raised his handgun.”

  While we were still talking, a vortex appeared next to us, so one by one we stepped through it back into the safety of Section Headquarters, the ladies leading the way with me taking up the rear.

  As I stepped back through time I noticed a young man running towards me from behind the cenotaph. It was too late to step back to him as I was already standing in the vortex room, and my view of the future was dimming, but I was in no doubt as to whom the man was. This man wasn’t descended from any virus survivor. He was my father. Stranger still was the fact that he looked to be in his early thirties, while the father I knew, the father now standing besides me, had the appearance of a man in his seventies.

  Chapter 14

  All Primary Jumpers reported for debriefing. Section was very interested in finding out which of the rebel Jumpers were unfaltering in their beliefs, and which could be persuaded to rejoin the programme. Both Gemma and I thought Gab belonged to the latter and I was very pleased to find out he renounced Earthsong a few weeks later and rejoined us.

  Section didn’t disagree with every Earthsong belief, many of them were commendable, but while it was true that mankind had ravished the earth and nature had suffered greatly, killing Jumpers, or anyone else, was very wrong.

  I waited until Dad and I were alone at home that evening to broach the subject of why I’d seen his much younger self as I’d left the one hundred and ninety year jump.

  He looked back at me, immense relief in his eyes, and shouted excitedly, “Yes! Yes!” Then trying to regain his dignity he added more quietly, “I’ve been waiting for years for this moment. Vanessa said that your body is building a very good tolerance to temporal stress, so you’ll only have to wait a few days until your next jump. I have a mission for you.”

  “Which involves travelling back to the same time,” I commented. Dad nodded. “What were you doing there? Are you a Jumper?”

  “No, I’m not a Jumper,” he answered. “Before the jumping programme began, Section only experimented with travelling into the near future. Incidentally, we haven’t yet been able to travel back to a time before the vortex technology was developed and we made our first jump. We call this zero hour. It seems history has been sealed. Anyway, in the same way that some people have a natural immunity to certain diseases, a few of us are able to jump a short way into the future and back again.

  “Section asked all it’s employees to volunteer for the temporal genetic test. As I’d always been intrigued with the possibility of time travel I jumped at the chance.” I groaned at Dad’s unintentional pun.

  Dad gave me a ‘sorry about that’ look then continued, “I scored the highest in the test so was immediately accepted onto the programme. My first jump showed us a great disaster had befallen the human race. We had no idea what it was so Section instructed me to continue jumping and glean whatever information I could. They hoped I would discover something that would enable us to completely avert the disaster.

  “On one such jump I met your friend, Carla, who invited me to join her leadership team and gave me her web address. I returned to my natural time knowing I was several years too early to use this source of information to help our cause: Carla, the first-born Jumper, hadn’t even been conceived. However, as the years passed, I was able to accommodate her request … but physically I paid a very heavy price for jumping.

  Dad paused so I asked him, “Is that why you look older than Mum did? I know you’re only fifty-three.”

  “Yes, I felt more and more unwell each time I returned to natural time. I regularly suffered nosebleeds, migraines, nausea and a felt a progressive weakening in my muscles. If Section had known about this they would have stopped me from jumping and replaced me, but it was my discovery and I didn’t want anyone taking it from me … so I didn’t tell anyone. That’s what pride does to you.

  “C thought we weren’t going to learn anything more from the future, so called off the jumping programme, and, knowing how strongly I felt about it, he forbade me to jump again … but I wanted to try one more jump. Convinced that this would be the jump that would give us the answer to what had annihilated the human race, that night I stayed back at Section until most of the senior personnel had left, then programmed the vortex interface when no one was around. This broke every rule in the temporal science rulebook.

  “Although I’d planned to stay in the future for a while, in natural time the whole procedure would only take only a few minutes. I set the return vortex to auto and covered my tracks so no one would know what I’d done.

  “I successfully lived in the future for several months, taking and analysing samples that would hopefully give us the answer we were searching for. On the day scheduled for my return I packed my data and was climbing out of my temporary hideout—the easiest way was through an empty window space and down a large oak tree—when the return vortex appeared on the ground below me. I must have miscalculated; I wasn’t expecting it for another two hours. I knew it would only remain open for thirty seconds so I quickly climbed down the tree, as I had many times before, and dropped off a branch onto the ground below. Unfortunately, in my haste I landed awkwardly, pitched forwards and hit my forehead on a large stone, knocking myself out. When I awoke the vortex had closed, effectively trapping me in the future with no one knowing my whereabouts … then you saw me as you were leaving the one hundred and ninety year jump.”

  “So that’s how you got that scar,” I said, looking towards Dad’s forehead.

  “Yes, but I have much more to tell you. When I got back from that last jump I aged rapidly, in much the same way as Jumpers do when they don’t jump. I can still use a parallel vortex to jump from one place to another—keeping within the natural time frame—but if I were to jump through time again it would kill me; I’d die of old age. I’ve had to resign myself to looking around twenty-five years older than my biological age. I should never have jumped so far into the future; it was very stupid of me. Being the only Non-Jumper who could travel that far made me feel indispensable and I wanted to be the one to save humanity. However, I think time has given that job to you and David Franklin.”

  “You make me sound a hero, but I’m not,” I said. “I killed my best friend. Why do you say time has given me that job?”

  “You found David, he told you about the disaster, then you brought him back through time … and he, I hope, will save the human race through the antibodies his blood.”

  I was sorry for Dad, but felt too awkward to hug him—we had never had a touchy, feely relationship—so instead I merely asked if he wanted a cup of tea, pathetic I know.

  He nodded, the look in his eyes telling me his mind was still in a far off place, remembering and regretting so many things. I empathised with him, realising this thing—this whole temporal jumping, anti-virus, end of humanity thing—had taken over his life long before it had taken over mine.

  I made us both hot drinks and brought them into the living room where we sat one on either side of the fireplace, facing each other. Dad took a sip of his drink before continuing his story.

  “I majored in genetic science at university, graduating with a PhD, which is why Section sought me out and asked me to work with them. They needed to create a group of people who could survive, and, in fact, thrive off the effects of temporal stress. Certain high-ranking politicians gave the go ahead to use zygotes created through IVF for this new procedure. These zygotes were selected from every ethnic group and were genetically altered just after conception and before implantation into the womb. The parents, however, were always ignorant of our part in this.”

  I cut in, “Don’t you think the parents had a right to choose whether or not to be a part of this? And what about Mum; did she know about me being genetically modified?”

  “This was, and
still remains, a very highly secret procedure, of which only a small number of people have knowledge. I’m afraid your Mother didn’t know about it. Charlie was conceived naturally but we tried for over three years to have you. When her doctor said it was impossible for your Mother to have another baby, C told me he would arrange for her to have IVF as long as the resulting baby was genetically altered to be a Jumper. He was doing us a great favour.”

  “Your mother and I got what we wanted, the other parents had the baby they’d longed for and Section had the beginnings of a team of people resistant to temporal stress. Unlike their peers, these parents never had to worry about their child being ill, and were blessed with children who excelled at sports and had incredibly high intelligence quotas. That had to be good. Incidentally, each Jumper baby was tagged at birth so we could keep track of him or her and monitor their progress.” Dad noted my expression. “We inserted a chip into their heal. You have one too.”

  “Section was concentrating on two projects that they collectively referred to as ‘the programme’. The first, to find out what the disaster was and try to prevent it from happening, and the second, to create a super-race who could travel into the future and repopulate the earth if the first project failed. You of course are one of the super-race.”

  “And there are about forty thousand of us,” I added. Even though I was aware of some of what my father had said, my head was reeling from the rest of his revelations. “And getting back to what I saw earlier today, you want me to travel into the future and bring you back.”

  “Yes Steve. You have to remember that from my perspective all this has already happened, but you still need to play your part or I might be stuck in the future forever, and then you would never have known me and I wouldn’t be talking to you today. Incidentally, if that were the case, you and Gemma would have been killed when the Dam collapsed, as I wouldn’t have been there to save you. Do you follow?”