Obsolete Theorem

by Stan C. Smith

  He bared his teeth in a bolup smile, a smile Skyra was beginning to understand. In fact, whenever he smiled like that she felt a warmness within her chest. She tried to imitate his smile, which made him laugh.

  He said, “Well, we may be stuck here. I don’t know anything about hunting or living off the land, but maybe you could teach me and my team. Maybe we could start a new life here.”

  She studied his face—his small eyes and thin lips. “Yes, Lincoln. We will start a new life. Maybe you will put children in my belly.”

  His tiny eyes widened. “Well, that’s… um… I don’t know.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “You’re messing with me. Aren’t you?”

  Skyra didn’t know what messing was, but she understood anyway. She bared her teeth. “At-at-at-at.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, okay. Sure. I’ll put children in your belly. Hundreds of them.”

  Skyra heard a strange sound and froze. It was a low rumble, almost like distant thunder, but it seemed much closer.

  “Did you hear that?” Lincoln asked.

  Skyra turned and ran up the next hill with Lincoln just behind her. The tall trees didn’t allow her to see very far in the direction of the sound, but now she could hear more sounds. Some of them sounded like animals growling. The foul smell was even stronger here.

  Lincoln pointed. “That hill’s taller. Maybe we can see from there.”

  They made their way among the cactuses and trees down the slope, across the low valley, and up the taller hill.

  Skyra began sensing danger even before they got to the hilltop. She was now sure the sounds beyond the hill included growling creatures, and she thought she heard a man screaming. Her instincts told her to turn back, but Lincoln was now well ahead of her, and he was not slowing down.

  Lincoln stopped suddenly at the hill’s summit, and she came to a stop beside him. She stared, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. Before her was a vast valley. Brown smoke was rising from countless spots across the valley. Each spot was a mound of something—objects that had been piled upon each other and set on fire. More of the objects were scattered across the ground for as far as Skyra could see.

  “Good God,” Lincoln said. “Those are bodies. Thousands of bodies.”

  Skyra looked down the hillside at the nearest of the objects. Lincoln was right, they were the bodies of men, and maybe women too. Scattered among the bodies were strange things made from the wood of trees, some of them blackened and still smoking. A growl drew Skyra’s attention. She spotted a pack of wolf-like creatures, tearing at the flesh of several of the bodies and snarling at each other.

  She scanned the valley and realized some of the bodies were not men or women, they were creatures the size of aurochs. Many of the bodies—both creatures and people—were being consumed by swirling flocks of birds and more packs of wolves.

  “How can there be so many bodies?” Skyra whispered. She had never seen so many people—alive or dead—during her entire life.

  “This is a battlefield,” Lincoln replied. “There’s a war going on here.”

  “Difo-kha-melé!”

  Skyra dropped to her knees and crawled behind some brush, pulling Lincoln with her. The voice came again, shouting words she did not understand. Another sound became louder—a rumbling, rattling sound. It was coming from the base of the hill, just out of sight around the hill’s edge.

  Two large creatures came into view, followed by two more. The creatures were tall, with thin, knobby legs and strange humps on their backs. They were tied together with leather straps, and they were dragging a wide, flat object made of wood, which moved upon turning circles of wood. Men and women were walking beside the creatures and beside the wood object dragging behind.

  As the creatures approached along the hill’s base, Skyra studied the men and women. They were short and broad, with large eyes and thick brows. “Those are nandups,” she said.

  “Nandups!” Lincoln whispered. “How could nandups be here?”

  Skyra stared at the nearest woman walking beside the creatures. The woman wore black garments fastened around her waist with a leather strap. Several weapons hung from the strap, including a strange khul with a broad, shiny blade. Dirt and scars covered her face, but there could be no doubt she was a nandup.

  Skyra felt Lincoln grip her arm. She glanced at him then followed his gaze back to the creatures and wooden platform they were dragging. Dead men lay upon the wood, their bodies bloodied and their arms and legs tied down with straps. One of them raised his head, and Skyra realized the men were actually alive. She squinted as they drew nearer. The men tied to the platform were bolups.

  Lincoln gripped her arm even tighter. “What the hell have we done?”

  There’s more to this story!

  Lincoln gripped her arm even tighter. “What the hell have we done?”

  Good question! What exactly have Skyra, Lincoln, Virgil, Derek, and Jazzlyn gotten themselves into? They survived their ordeal 47,000 years in the past, but what are they facing now that they’ve jumped back to the present?

  Obsolete Theorem is the first book in the Across Horizons seres. If you enjoyed this book, you are definitely going to love the next book in the series, Foregone Conflict.

  Foregone Conflict will be released in summer 2020.

  In the meantime, if you haven’t read my Diffusion series or my Bridgers series, be sure to check them out.

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  Author’s Notes

  I love science and science fiction, so I spend a lot of time thinking about bizarre questions related to such things as time travel, alternate universes, unusual creatures, and much more. Below are some of my thoughts related the concepts in Obsolete Theorem. These are in no particular order, and they may not cover everything you’re curious about, but if you’re at all interested, here you go.

  What the heck is Lincoln’s Temporal Bridge Theorem? First, let’s look at the logic of time travel (or the illogic, if you prefer). Traveling to the past is one thing. Our past is linear—what happened actually happened. But the moment you arrive in the past, say 47,659 years ago, you start a new sequence of events that will lead to a completely different future. It is simply not possible for the same future to occur again, so it is simply not possible to jump back to the same future you had originally jumped from. Why? Because the future is not pre-determined. Things happen randomly every millisecond that change the course of history. Even if you are careful to have minimal impact on the environment while you’re in the past, random events will result in a completely different future. So, there are infinite possible futures. If you tried a thousand different times to jump back to the future, each time you would end up in a different future, and you could never return to the same future you originally left behind.

  Lincoln understood all this. He understood you could never get back to the future you left behind, but he wanted a mathematical model to provide proof. Lincoln is a brilliant scientist and mathematician, and he developed the mathematical theorem that proves that jumping to the past creates an alternate universe. His theorem proves (at least mathematically) that the moment his drones jump into the past, they are in a different timeline (a different universe). Because the drones end up in a different universe when he sends them back in time, obviously there is no way they could have any impact on his own timeline. This is why he is so incredulous when one of his drones is found in his timeline (universe). According to his theorem, such a thing should not be possible. Whe
n people discover his drone beside Skyra’s skeletal remains, they assume his theorem is flawed. Thus the title Obsolete Theorem.

  Is Lincoln’s theorem really obsolete? That’s the real question, isn’t it? If his theorem is correct, then Ripple’s remains should not exist in his universe (for the reasons explained above). At first, upon discovering Ripple’s remains, many people conclude that Lincoln’s theorem is incorrect. Even Lincoln himself begins to doubt his own theorem. At one point in the story, Ripple even tells Lincoln the theorem is flawed. But, as Lincoln is discovering, Ripple is capable of deception. Ripple tells Lincoln his theorem is flawed so that Lincoln will believe he is capable of saving his original world. Ripple knows that if Lincoln believes it is possible to save his original future, he will be willing to help save Skyra (and Veenah). Later, Ripple admits that Lincoln’s theorem is, in fact, correct. Perhaps his theorem is not obsolete after all.

  So, how did Ripple’s ancient remains end up in the same timeline? Again, this question gets at the heart of the entire issue. Remember, when you jump back in time, you instantly create a new timeline (universe) when you arrive in the past. There’s only one way someone (or something) could jump back in time and then jump forward to the same universe where they started. This could only be possible if that person (or drone) had the capability of jumping (bridging) at will between alternate universes. Not only would the person have to be able to jump at will to a different universe, the person would also have to be able to jump to a very specific universe—the exact same universe they originally left behind. Sheesh… that’s a tall order. As it turns out, though, Lincoln has developed a way for his drones to do this very thing. Ripple was equipped with a U-jump Module (U-jump, a whimsical name Lincoln came up with, stands for universe-jumping module), basically a piece of machinery that allows the drone to jump back to its own original universe. Soon after Skyra and Ripple were buried under falling rocks, Skyra died. Ripple then created a message that would survive tens of thousands of years (scratched into Skyra’s femur and into Ripple’s own shell). Ripple set its internal clock to wait 47,659 years and then activate two functions. First, trigger the U-jump Module to transfer Ripple and most of Skyra’s skeletal remains between universes—back to Ripple’s own original universe. Second, trigger its location beacon so that it would be found, which would then result in the message eventually being shown to Lincoln (especially since Lincoln’s name was included in the message).

  Can you give me a brief explanation of Ripple’s motivation for doing all this? Lincoln, sometime in the fourteen years after we meet him in Chapter 2, decides to give his drones more autonomy so that they can make their own decisions. Therefore, Ripple was coded with intelligence and the ability to devise and carry out plans that the drone decided were likely to help humanity (regardless of the timeline). Ripple then took these abilities to the extreme (I’ll let you decide whether Ripple is a rogue robot or not). Ripple carried out its duties of measuring environmental data and then sending that data back to Lincoln during the 19 minutes the portal remained open. After the portal closed, Ripple was left in the past (which is in a different timeline, as we have discussed) to eventually “die” and decompose, with the ability in the meantime to come up with ways to be helpful. Ripple encountered Skyra and soon recognized that Skyra was genetically remarkable. Ripple already knew Lincoln was genetically remarkable, so the drone hatched an idea—somehow get Lincoln and Skyra together in the past. Ripple’s plan is based on the drone’s assumption that the two would produce remarkable offspring. Since this was at a time when humans and Neanderthals were already intermixing (mating together), Ripple concluded that infusing the populations with Skyra-Lincoln hybrids would result in a much different future, filled with remarkable beings. According to Ripple’s plan, Skyra and Lincoln’s offspring would spread their advantageous genetic traits throughout the world, resulting in a global population in which their traits are found throughout all of humanity (I am using the word humanity here to refer to a population of Neanderthal-human hybrids, with the best features of both species).

  Why had Lincoln never previously tried to jump to the future? Because jumping to the future is meaningless. As I said above, the past is linear… what happened actually happened. But the future is uncertain. Millions of random events occur every microsecond, and every one of them impacts the future. If you jump one year into the future and then jump back to the present, the future you briefly saw cannot possibly come true because random events will not lead to that particular future. You could jump one year into the future a million different times, and every time you would see a different future. The possibilities are infinite, and therefore each of those million different futures is meaningless because it will not happen again. For this reason, Lincoln has never been interested in jumping to the future. The past, on the other hand, is interesting to Lincoln because those events actually happened, and understanding the past can actually benefit humanity.

  Is this why, when Lincoln’s team jumped back to the present, they found the present to be nothing like their original world? Exactly. You cannot jump forward in time to the same world you jumped back in time from. It’s impossible.

  What the heck is going on in this present world they all jumped forward to? That’s an excellent question. As expected, the present world is completely different from Lincoln’s original present world. They are at the site of Lincoln’s research campus in Arizona, but the campus isn’t there, and the desert plants look different. Everything is different. This will be the setting for the second book in the series, titled Foregone Conflict. Lincoln and Skyra do not know yet what is going on there. What they do know is that Neanderthals did not go extinct in this world, and they know Neanderthals and humans are at war with each other. Hmm… this may be a very unpleasant place to be.

  Lincoln’s team not only jumped back in time, they jumped from Arizona to Spain. How is that possible? They did it this way because going to Spain would not put the team any closer to their destination. Lincoln explained a bit of this in the book (Chapter 4). Jumping back in time is actually the least complex part of time travel. The most complex part is placement, or jumping through space. You must understand that Earth is moving really fast. As it rotates on its axis, the surface at the equator is spinning at 460 meters per second (about 1,000 miles per hour). So, even if you jumped back in time one second, you would have to jump 460 meters back toward the east in order to appear in the same room you jumped from. But that’s only one small part of Earth’s movement. The planet is also in orbit around the sun, moving at 30 kilometers per second (67,000 miles per hour). Not only that, but our solar system (including Earth) is revolving around the center of the Milky Way galaxy at 220 kilometers per second (490,000 miles per hour). As if that weren’t enough, the galaxies in our part of the universe are moving at 1,000 kilometers per second (2.2 million miles per hour) toward a huge, dense region of space called the Great Attractor.

  Um… are you starting to see how difficult it is to calculate placement if you are jumping back in time only one second? Now imagine trying to calculate placement for jumping back in time 47,659 years! The calculation is staggering. As Lincoln said, we may someday discover deep space is littered with the frozen bodies of time travelers who failed to properly calculate placement.

  So, time travel is only possible if your time machine is capable of instantaneously sending you through space to a very specific location that could be billions, or even trillions, of miles away. In other words, time travel is the same thing as space travel. This is very, very different from jumping between alternate universes, as the characters did in the Bridgers series. Bridging between universes does not require movement through space—you simply bridge to the exact same location but on an alternate version of Earth. Fortunately, Lincoln understands all of this, and he designed his T3 with the capability of processing immensely-complex placement calculations.

  It is worth pointing out that Lincoln has very specific interests. He
is interested in sending his drones into the past to learn about Earth’s history, but he is not particularly interested in traveling to other planets. Space travel would certainly be possible with the T3—as I said above, you can’t have time travel without the ability to travel through space. At least for now, though, Lincoln is only focused on using the T3 for time travel on Earth (and at the moment, of course, he is preoccupied with survival). Hmm… I wonder if his interests will broaden later on…?

  Would it really be possible for Lincoln to “put a child in Skyra’s belly?” We know beyond any doubt that humans and Neanderthals interbred. After all, almost all humans today have Neanderthal DNA in their genetic code. In fact, when I got my DNA results back from the ancestry-analysis service I used, it stated that I have more Neanderthal genetic material than 98% of the population of people who have used the service. So, I myself am proof that Neanderthals and humans mated and produced offspring. In general, non-African modern humans have 1% to 4% Neanderthal DNA. People of direct African descent have less because Neanderthals evolved and lived exclusively in Eurasia—only those humans that migrated north out of Africa could have mated with Neanderthals.

  Interestingly, DNA analyses of Neanderthal remains in Siberia show that humans and Neanderthals were already interbreeding as long ago as 100,000 years (Skyra lived 47,000 years ago). This was the first evidence showing human DNA in Neanderthals rather than showing Neanderthal DNA in humans.