“A primitive from a low level-civilization ... like me.”
“If self-pity makes you comfortable, yes. We failed when we enhanced your minds in that far past – it was too early.”
“Are you part of these Factions?” The dream resurfaced in my mind: ‘They want to kill us. ’Factions are killers … advanced killers. One arrow can kill one human being, a nuclear bomb, millions. Is this the meaning of being ‘advanced’, to have more sophisticated killing toys? And she had said ‘we’.
“I am neither life, nor technology. My destiny is to cooperate with humans, to help them evolve, humans like them or like you.”
“Who are they?” You are hiding something; you don’t like my knowledge about Factions.
“The most advanced physical civilizations in this galaxy,” she confirmed my concerns. “You will not meet any of them on this mission. Dreams sometimes give useful information, only sometimes. Don’t let them distract you too much.” Your dreams turned my life upside down, I wanted to shout, but something stopped me. If I don’t bump into those killing Factions...
*
Another bill in my mailbox, the mortgage payment. What if? No. Why not? “Houston!” She materialized, waiting. I was hoping she would speak first. She did not. “Can you help? Please. Undetermined duration … I will lose my house.”
“You will return in the same second you left, and these two worlds cannot interweave. What you accomplish there has no relevance here.”
“I am employed. Do I not deserve a salary?”
“You do and you have.” What do I have? I gestured. “Your first payment was in Egypt, a bit of fish, a dinner with Nefertiti.”
*
When I describe the realities on these planets I shall use Earth equivalents to make things simpler, whether for local fauna or for cultural expressions. The Primes’ name for the biggest predator there is grach. I will call it ‘leopard’, as it is similar, only larger, a spotted lioness.
The reason of our landing choice was evident: saving people is a good introductory step. What I did not know was my relative position in the arrival landscape. My back was bound to the rough bark of a tree; the leopard’s stare was fixing me. I pressed back, thorns pierced into my skin. He analyzed the new thing, cautiously: I was much taller and most importantly, I was not running from him. It was not a heroic choice to stay and face him with my knife; my muscles were stiff, my brain empty. And his stink, terrible. A roar and I totally crumbled. I am not your prey ... please. I saw his paw hitting me and closed my eyes, tired, vanquished before I began to fight. This was lucky; no longer able to see the danger my brain reacted, pushing my knife forward. An anguished howl, wind, heart beating ... silence. When I dared to open my eyes, again, the leopard was gone. Drops of blood were falling from the knife, hypnotizing me: drip, drip... Must be his blood, I moaned. My legs went weak, leaving only the tree to provide support, thorns piercing deeper into my skin. I felt no pain. Next moment I was home, stumbling to the bedroom and sleeping for many hours. A fuzzy grim face was wandering all night in my dreams: “You were lucky. Luck helps only once; be aware of this rule.” Shut up!
*
In retrospective consideration of my five minutes of glory on that planet, I realized that real life on the wild savanna was a bit different to the movies and I remained torn between cancelling the mission – fearing the threats of the wild – and still going – fearing to lose the exotic holidays that came with it. With no warning, Houston decided for me, and sent me back to the same second I had left, looking at the poor shocked Primes; they did not have the luxury of recovery in a civilized world.
You are afraid; I am the big beast winning over that killing machine which is the leopard. My mind concealed for a moment what really happened, creating a new reality for me: I, the hero. Bragging inside was good, made me feel confident. I needed it; there were four hunters on that rock, and four spears. One thrown spear... “Have no fear,” I said to them and to myself, making a sign towards the dead antelope. No answer came. I used my tools to light a small fire; smoke swirled in the air, carrying tasty fragrances: burning wood and roasted meat. Hunger and curiosity prevailed.
At the caves, the elders gathered, behind them all the clan, tall and short, men and women and children, eyes fixed on me, piercing eyes, making me feeling naked. Their faces, so different, open faces like inside windows. Do not think of them as aliens, they are humans, like we were once, and more alive than us: civilized people, wearing masks, hiding behind them, hiding from others, hiding from ourselves.
*
I had a cave of my own, but all the fun was gone from sharing my ‘apartment’ with a whole family of insects known only from books about the medieval age – a miserable existence. My first month was already enough, I was indeed a hunter ... scouting for lice, and I already had my place at the evening fireplace; we made exchanges of words and fleas.
“Why did you send me here?” I asked her several times, still unable to see the reason of my journey.
“You were delighted to be a hunter.”
“Nobody told me that the hunters here never use soap and hot water.”
“You did not read the small print: primitive society, stone tools, caves, nothing about five-star hotels. What did you call them? Monkeys?”
“The ‘me’ on Earth can feast in a good restaurant now,” I sighed. And drink a good wine.
“I doubt it.” There was a smile in her voice. “We are many thousands of years in the past, here.”
“Then you already know the end of the mission!” I was like a child losing its toy; what’s the fun in trying a new timeline when you already know the effect?
“The planet's past is my present, as it is yours.”
“You can go there and check.” I stopped short of telling her that she was lying.
“I cannot, there are many restrictions imposed on us by The Universe or by the Complete Me.”
“How many of 'you' are in the whole you?” A shape-changer like her could impersonate anything, and I never could realize if ‘me 1’ or ‘me 1001’ was talking, yet in a bizarre way this was bothering me.
“I am not in direct contact with any other me; only my complete self has this knowledge.”
“Will any of my actions change the future here?” I changed the subject, unsure about her explanation.
“Not all, only major ones. There is something named event-compensation.”
“Then why me? And why now?”
“Coming from the future conceals your identity from rival Factions.” She smiled and disappeared.
“Wait, wait, wait! Why are they hunting me?” I did not have a proper answer until my next mission.
*
For the first leopard kill ever, a ceremony was required; the beast was skinned, keeping the upper mandible and head. The leader raised the skin and made a tour – everybody bowed in respect. He stopped behind me. A swift move and that heavy skin passed onto my head, I was the killer. It did not fit well. A hard strike on top corrected it. My teeth clacked; they laughed.
“Clack! Clack!” one of them parroted me. They laughed again. Drops of sweat, mixed with the red animal blood, poured down my neck, running down my spine. Honor has its price.
“The night shadow is dead,” the leader started to sing.
“Yes, the night shadow is no longer,” the clan answered dancing three steps toward me, clapping. The dust from the soil, fretted by people’s feet, settled over my whole body, and that sticky dust provided help for the small blood-sucking fauna jumping from one member of the tribe to another. New hungry fleas made me feel like a mummy full of tickling worms. I am a hero. A dying one... Do something! Distract them. I took a deep breath to sing something close to Queen’s famous song:
“We are the champions…”
They stopped as though haunted by another leopard; several long seconds of astonishment before enthusiastic howls accompanied me. Someone found two pieces of wood to make drums and everything went craz
y. With discreet movements, I escaped from the heavy fur.
My singing talent had raised me in the hierarchy; from now on, I was not only the leopards’ scarecrow but also the minstrel, asked to start the fiesta after a good hunt.
*
At dawn, the main cave entrance is full of light; the rising sun sends rays deep underground. “It’s time to meet them,” the elders said, pushing me inside – hundreds of meters of galleries formed a labyrinth of passages – until we arrived in a hall where thousands of painted hands, ochre and white, mixed without a formal design. In the middle, a huge stalactite hanging down from above joined a rising stalagmite, forming a pillar vaguely resembling a red-white painted human body. Mentally, I apologized for the pejorative monkey name. Houston’s ghost laughed at me, and I cursed her. The chief raised two small bowls filled with white and ochre paint, took my left hand and spread the colors on it. “Hurry,” he said, pointing to the wall. “The elders' souls are waiting.” I marked my place two feet higher than everyone else had, making communion with a long string of ancestors I had never known. It was my first spiritual experience ever, breaking the sense of not belonging anywhere that had haunted my entire existence. Tears started to pour down my cheeks, while the Primes patted my shoulders. Even now, after so many years, I remember how my body was quivering.
*
The old chief met everyone eye to eye before starting a discourse which, in a poor translation, sounds like this: “My hand is no longer strong, my spear is no longer fast enough for hunting antelopes, my spear is no longer strong enough to fight leopards, my spear is no longer as good as it used to be for hunting women. It is time for a new leader.” The next moment, they glanced at me with expectation. Do you want a song? No, the singing signs are missing. I panicked. “Houstooooon. What the hell? It was not part of the contract to be the chief monkey.”
“They want a poor scarecrow singer to be their chief. Something must be wrong.” You… You…
“You bitch! You’re pushing me ... your bloody human-applied alien psychology. This was in your mind from the beginning.” All the frustration I felt from being only a tool in her game came out.
“This was one of the possible outcomes but, to be honest, the probability was poor, and as usual, I will not try to influence your decision. At least, not directly,” she smiled, candidly, before disappearing.
Life went on, and in the following year two ‘monkeys’ born were of a new type, resembling the big white gorilla chieftain. “They have new things, and now my genetic influence has hastened their evolution. Maybe we can negotiate an early return.” She did not answer.
*
The wounded antelope stumbled upon seeing me, her delicate nostrils flaring unsteadily, her eyes a prayer. I felt her pain and lowered my spear. A leopard jumped from behind a rock and claimed the prey that was ours. In anger, I killed her. It was a female leopard and her almost-adult cubs jumped onto my back from behind the rocks. Claws pierced my skin and their weight brought me down. My spear broke under my body, and I pushed the stump up. That was my luck; the leopard was biting my neck, the bite of death. He met my flint-stone. The old leader saved me, and someone shut the antelope's eyelids on still crying eyes. They carried me to my cave, almost a corpse and for the first time I feared for my life.
“You could help,” I chased Houston with a frail voice.
“Why stop such good training?” Training? You bitch, I am wounded. “Time doesn’t favor abrupt interference in his business.” She ignored my curse.
“What really is Time?” It was difficult to acknowledge Time as a living entity.
“No one knows for sure. There is a supposition that Time is The Universe himself, just a supposition. And the rules are strict. Sometimes he can close the eyes to subtle changes, sometimes.”
“Heal me!” I was panting, but the smell of my own sweat and the faint odor of blood in the air put pressure on my voice.
“As you remember, wounds are part of the game. You will heal; it looks worse than it is.”
“I don't see anything.” I don’t want to see it. “Heal me, please. I am not in the mood for more, at least for a while.”
“Mood? Mood doesn’t help you to stay alive.”
“Can we discuss a different version? To restart the timeline…”
“You want to play … be ready to pay the price.” You accepted too fast...
*
I remember the hall from my past dreams. A thin, black wall is splitting the table, and I see only half of Houston. When I sit, the noise of the moving chair reverberates in a strange echo. She is not happy and I understand; the Primes mission was a total failure. It was neither my fault nor hers but this is irrelevant now; the plague killed all of them, after she switched the time back. Houston changed my genes to cope with the virus; she could not do the same for them for obvious reasons – her reasons. Many of them died in my arms, the old chief, my children. There is nothing worse than parents losing children. The silence is growing. Nothing happens by chance in our meetings, not even silence. If she wants me to feel more guilty than I do, she has chosen the wrong strategy. That guilt cannot be magnified, can only be refreshed. I know that she knows what I am thinking and she knows that I know it, so I don’t understand the purpose of this game.
“Are you sure about not understanding why we are here?” The wall disappeared with her last word, replaced by a mirror reflecting back my bearded face.
I tried to shift my position in the chair; the pain was still there. I moaned; my wounds were only half healed. The image in the mirror reacted strangely; my eyes there grew wider. “Your mirror has some problems.” My mirror hand passed the thin black frame but I was not moving. Only the hand in front of me moved, slowly passing to my side through the mirror’s surface, fingers pointing at me. My hands were under the table the mirror showed differently.
“What game are you playing?” the mirror ‘me’ asked in the sudden silence, his black pits of eyes boring deep into mine.
“You duplicated me.” The double complaint rose in a hoarse sound from both sides of the table.
“You wanted a variation with no injuries. You had it and they died.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ask him,” and she pointed to the other me, the healthy one. The other me blushed; I physically felt the hot blood on his face.
“We eliminated all the leopards in the oasis and this brought the plague.” His words were spoken with effort. “The plague killed all the Primes. Without leopards, the sick animals survived long enough to be hunted and eaten by humans.”
“What plague?” What are you talking about? “They are still alive.”
“That is in your version of reality; an alternate line was created for your game,” Houston interfered.
“That means that only one of us will survive.” Again, that nasty voice duplication. The bad joke was no longer a joke. Which of us will survive?
“My timeline is in his future, we should not reverse it,” he shouted.
What a lame argument. How could he say such a thing? “You killed the Primes!”
“Are you able to settle this rationally?” Houston’s cold voice killed our shouts.
“Can you merge us?” the healthy me asked in a feeble voice. No! It should be only one me, the one I AM. He must be thinking the same. I wanted to curse both. Wait! Let Houston decide who is staying alive.
“Yes, I can.” She allowed the faintest of smiles to touch her thin lips. “You are only a simulation in which I saved you from the leopard.”
“Simulation?” The bitterness in his tone was obvious even to my suddenly relieved self.
“We cannot turn the time back. We replace one reality with another, and remember you need an approval or you have to trick Time.”
“Replace?”
“The Universe is recreating himself thousands of times each second. It is possible to restart parts of him or all of him – well, I am not sure about the all – based on different blue
prints, if really needed. Before you ask, there is no such a thing as ‘material’ but only different perceptions of energy.”
*
I am afraid. The upload of the other ‘me’ will start any minute. I don’t know what to expect, it doesn’t happen every day to mix your mind with somebody else’s. Okay, that other is also my mind but it is a mind of its own; it belongs to the other ‘me’, the one which will disappear in the process. She said that it was okay from a moral perspective, as it was only a simulation; the experience belongs to me as it had sprung from my own mind. Why couldn’t she find a simpler way to teach me? Why is it so difficult to alter timelines in ‘this’ way compared to ‘that’ way? I will know after the upload. What if I am only a simulation created for the purpose to prove something to another ‘me’ who is the original? Or just another copy in a long chain? Why count how many copies there are, if you are just another duplicate?
It’s strange how much the other wanted his memories to be transferred to me, and I accepted that. I had to do it; at that time the survivor was not yet known. Is this an easier way to accept death? But he is not really dead as he was not really alive. Who can tell the difference between a simulation and reality with such technology? What if we really are in a holographic universe? Physical death is only the first death occurring to us. We still survive in the memories of other people, children, relatives, and friends. He hoped to survive inside my mind.
Something infiltrates my mind. I have no feelings about it; fear is not really a feeling. It takes a second, and I stiffen, expecting the worse to come with the other ‘me’ popping up into my mind claiming a part of it for himself, or even worse, trying to override my mind. “It belongs to me as much as to you.” And a fight starts for each neuron of my brain. Stop it!
Io Deceneus: Journal of a Time Traveler (The Living Universe) Page 5
