“Can you tell us who the Architect is and what it wants from us?” I asked.
“That memory is fragmented. I do not remember who the Architect is, but I do know that he wants you to survive.”
“Survive? Survive what?” Chou said.
“I do not know.”
“Then vy did the Architect choose us?” Freuchen said. “Vy vould the Architect choose me? Or Meredith? Or any of us?”
“Your wasted potential,” Silas said, as if those three words were self-explanatory.
“Wasted potential?” I repeated back to him. “That makes no sense at all.”
“Please, explain what you mean,” Freuchen urged.
The robot repositioned himself, his eye-bar slowly moving to each of our faces in an equivalency of eye-contact. “Each of your lives was cut short; whether by your own hand, as the result of an accident, or by some other event. With your death, everything you would have ever achieved was lost. It is that wasted potential which drew the Architect to you. You were chosen because of your probability for achievement, or for your specific knowledge, or the skills which you possess that would prove useful in ensuring the continued success of humanity.”
“I knew it,” I said, throwing a smile at Chou. “There is a plan, and we’re all a part of it.”
Chou leaned in. “But how could the Architect know what our potential was? That suggests it possess some way to observe or predict what we could have achieved.”
“I’m sorry, I have no data available on that.”
“Oh, shit,” I said, with a sudden understanding of where Chou was going with her line of questioning. “There’s really only one way the Architect could know what our potential was.”
With a subtle nod, Chou encouraged me to continue.
“It had to have had something to compare our lives against. A version of us whose potential wasn’t wasted.”
“Yes,” said Chou, a smile parting her lips.
In my excitement, I grabbed both of Chou’s hands in mine. “You were right about Edward. You’ve been right all along. Parallel universes. That explains it. Not only are we not from the same time, we’re not even from the same universe, are we?”
Chou nodded, her smile widening. “I believe that is correct.”
Freuchen looked completely perplexed. “Vat on Earth are you talking about? How can ve not be from the same universe? Vat other universe is there?” He sat down hard and began to caress his temple with one meaty hand.
I crouched down beside him. “I know it’s confusing, but I’ll try to explain,” I said, placing a hand on his knee and squeezing gently. “When Wild Bill first brought us to the garrison, I was sure I knew Edward from somewhere. It was only later that I realized I did know him, or rather, I knew of him.”
Freuchen’s brow furrowed but he did not interrupt me as I explained it all.
“Are you saying that our Edward is an imposter?” Freuchen asked when I was through. “I do not believe you.”
“No, no. I’m not saying that at all. Our Edward is Edward. But the Edward I read about in my time, the one who survived the war and went on to become an esteemed poet, is also Edward. There’s a theory that suggests there’s not just a single universe, but an infinite variety of them. That, for every choice you make, another version of you makes a different choice and creates a new off-shoot of that universe. And while both versions of you share a common past, at the point they diverge, they branch off into their own, unique version of the universe.”
It would be easy to look at Freuchen and think that because of his size he was not a smart man, but that would have been a grave underestimation of him. Behind that humongous beard and the bear-like frame was a sharp mind. “You mean that the Edward Hubbard you say you knew from his poetry books is our Edward, but also not him?”
“In a way, yes,” Chou said, taking over the explanation. “The Edward from Meredith’s universe shared our Edward’s life exactly, right up until Meredith’s Edward made a choice that saved his life, sending him down a different path and creating a new version of the universe. An alternative version.
“Perhaps in Meredith’s timeline, her Edward delayed leaving the trench to reconnoiter the enemy’s position a minute later. Perhaps he was on some other battlefield that day, or the task was given to another unlucky soldier. Whatever the reason, Meredith’s Edward made different choices and lived. He is Edward and also not Edward. Do you understand?”
Neither Chou nor Freuchen noticed the quiet gasp of realization that slipped from between my lips. I understood now exactly where my life had diverged; the asshole in the Ford F150. That night, if Oscar and I had left the party just a minute earlier or later than we had, we would never have been t-boned by the truck. And if that accident had never happened, then Oscar would still be alive, and I would not have set off down my own dark path that led to me sitting here with this bizarre group of reluctant interdimensional time-travelers.
Freuchen said, “It is enough to make your head spin. I have always understood that the mechanics of our universe ver complex, it vould seem that I grossly underestimated just how complex.”
“Look on the bright side,” I said, leaning against Freuchen, “it also means that in some of these alternate universes, we’re alive and happy, and living normal lives. We probably have families. And in one of those lives, we achieved something so astounding that the Architect came looking for us.”
Freuchen smiled a sad, enigmatic smile. The idea was, I am sure, as appealing to all of us as it was to me, that there were other versions of us out there who were happy, successful, living their lives in blissful ignorance of the crazy reality of our multiple existences. It was… comforting.
Freuchen broke the silence. “Vile this answers one of our questions,” he said slowly, his voice a low rumble, “it also creates others: vy vould the Architect choose to contact us ven ve ver staring our mortality in the face? Vy not simply ask the question ven ve ver safe in our beds? Or choose a version of us that vas never in peril to begin vith?”
Chou sat cross-legged in front of us. “I believe I understand why.” She gathered her thoughts then continued. “Although we all originate from very different times, we do all share one commonality: after we died, our bodies would never have been found. I would have drifted for eternity through space. Meredith’s body would have been carried by the tide out to sea. Edward would have remained buried beneath the battlefield. And you, Peter, you said you would have frozen to death, lost in a blizzard. Our stories all end the same way.”
“But that still doesn’t explain why the Architect would wait until we were about to die. Why hold out until then?” I said.
“If the Architect had taken us at any point before it was sure our lives were over, it could have changed the course of the timeline. It had to be certain its actions would leave the timeline unaltered. The only way the Architect could be certain of that would be if it contacted us at the exact moment our lives would have ended if it had not intervened.”
“It does make a fantastical kind of sense,” Freuchen said, nodding in agreement.
I wondered just how long it must have taken for the Architect to find a version of me that met whatever criteria it had judged us by. How many timelines must it have searched through? How many lives had it observed? And what kind of an intelligence could be capable of such god-like feats? It was at once awe-inspiring and absolutely terrifying.
“Yes, yes. I see it now,” Freuchen said, his enthusiasm gathering steam. “And by the same logic, your theory also explains vy the Architect did not harvest us from a universe vare ve ver not destined for an early demise.” Freuchen was following Chou’s logic better than I was, apparently.
“How so?” I asked, uneasy with his choice of words; the idea of having been harvested was… creepy.
“Consider the shockwaves that vould have reverberated through your friends’ and relatives’ lives if…” He made an explosion with his fingers. “Poof! Suddenly you are no more�
�� vanished… gone vithout a trace from a vurld vare you vould have lived a full and productive life. It vould irreversibly alter the chronology of that universe into one that vas never meant to be.”
Chou nodded in agreement.
Freuchen kept going, on a roll now. “Imagine for a moment all the people you vould have met, talked to, befriended, loved, all the ripples of influence that your presence vould have made over the course of your natural life. None of those things vould ever happen if the Architect meddled in a timeline vare our lives ver not destined to end prematurely.”
“But if there are infinite timelines, why would altering one of them have even mattered?” I said, my mind trying to grasp all of the implications.
Chou answered. “It would only matter to an ethical intelligence.”
There was a long pause as we allowed that information to sink in.
“You mean the Architect chose us because it cares about us?” I said, slowly.
“Not necessarily about us as individuals,” Chou explained. “But it suggests that the Architect is concerned about humans as a species and will carefully consider the effect its actions would have on us and humanity in general.”
Chou took a step closer to Silas. She reached into her pants’ pocket and pulled something from it, held it in her closed fist. When she unfurled her fingers, she held the remains of the mechanical bug she had killed that first night. “Can you tell me what this is?”
Silas swiveled his upper torso to face her and leaned down to inspect the bug. Gently, the robot lifted the remains from Chou’s hand and held it close to his eye-bar (whether this was an affectation to mimic a human response or whether he really needed a closer look, I have no idea).
“Fascinating!” Silas whispered. “I do not recognize this unit. It appears to be a beautifully crafted mechanism designed specifically for surreptitious observation.”
“You’re saying that thing was designed specifically to spy on us?” I said.
“Yes, I believe so.”
Silas placed the broken bug back into Chou’s hand. “How did you acquire it?”
“During the first night we arrived,” Chou said. “It attempted to infiltrate our camp. Why would you say it is designed to spy on us?”
“There would be no need to have it mimic an insect unless it was designed to blend in and avoid detection. As you can see from my own appearance, the Architect does not seek to disguise his creations.”
“If it’s not a tool of the Architect then who is it spying for?” Chou continued.
“I can only surmise that whoever is responsible for interfering in the Architect’s plan must also be responsible for that exquisite mechanism.”
“Are you saying someone is vurking against your master? Against the Architect?” Freuchen interjected.
A lightbulb suddenly lit up in my head as I made a connection that had been right in front of us. “The message Silas gave me, it warned about an ‘external entity.’ Maybe that’s who made the bug.”
“Then our suspicions ver correct,” Freuchen said. He snapped his fingers loudly. “The message also mentioned ‘agents of chaos.’ That could explain the two men who murdered your friend and I believe may vell have done the same to you and your companions if Vild Bill had not found you.”
“Murder?” Silas gasped, as though he had been startled. “That is impossible. The Architect anticipated that there would be confusion after the great transference, but efforts were made to ensure that your natural human proclivity to strike out during times of stress was abated for several days.”
Freuchen stroked his huge beard as he answered. “Vell it looks like vatever ‘efforts’ you’re talking about came to nothing, because if our friend Vild Bill had not found Meredith, Chou, and Albert, they vould surely have been killed too. Vat do you have to say to that?
“It does not make sense.”
“It does if you include this mysterious entity from the message in the mix,” Chou said. “But why would they target us?”
“Maybe it’s because I was the one who was going to receive the message from the Architect?” I said. “But that would mean that this other entity knew about it ahead of time. None of this makes any sense to me, either.”
“This other… adversarial entity,” Freuchen said, “it seems apparent that it does not share the Architect’s good vill toward us.”
Chou nodded. “Just the opposite. It appears to have its own agenda. And how we factor into that agenda, if at all, I do not know. But it is obvious to me that it does not share the same ethical values as the Architect.”
I said, “So the Architect has our best interest at heart, but we don’t know what it wants from us. And this other entity—what did you call it, the Adversary?”
“The Adversary seems an appropriate name for it, yes,” said Chou.
“The intentions of this Adversary are completely unknown to us,” I continued, “but it does appear its agents are willing to kill on its behalf, assuming our theory is correct.”
Freuchen leaned forward, stroking his beard. “It seems that venever ve unravel vun mystery it is immediately replaced by another that is just as perplexing.”
“Silas, what do you say about all of this?” I asked the robot.
“I wish that I could confirm or deny your theory. I know that there was a plan. I was created to help educate you as to its purpose, and assist you in achieving its goals, but that is as much as I can remember. I am sorry. Please, believe me when I say that this is almost as frustrating for me as it is for you.” Silas seemed honestly broken up about it.
“That’s okay,” I said, “it’s not like it’s your fault. But is there anything else, anything at all that you can tell us about what the Architect wants from us?”
“I am sorry, but no.”
Chou said, “Silas, if you don’t know who the Architect is, can you at least tell us where he is located?”
That question hadn’t even crossed my mind. I hadn’t given a thought that the robot might hold the key to the whereabouts of the Architect.
“Regrettably, I do not have that information.”
Well, so much for that idea, I thought. There was a brief period of silence.
“I have a question,” Freuchen said. His voice had grown quiet. “Can the Architect send us back?”
“Back? To where?” Silas asked.
“Back to our planet. Our home. Can this Architect, if ve find him, can he send us back to vare ve came from?”
“I am sorry, but, no, I do not believe that would be possible.”
“But you said the Architect brought us through time to here… varever here is,” Freuchen continued. “If he brought us here, vy can’t he just reverse the process?”
“The exact process of how your translocation was achieved is unavailable to me. But I know that the procedure by which the Architect brought all of you here was not truly time-travel, it was something… else. What that mechanism was, exactly, is lost to me. I am sorry, but there is no going back.”
“Vell,” Freuchen said, a note of exasperation entering his voice as if he already knew he would not receive an adequate answer in this ongoing exercise in exasperation. “Can you at least tell us vare ve are exactly? What name should ve call this planet of yours?”
Silas’s eye-bar tilted in a display of surprise. “I apologize. Had I not made it obvious? This is planet Earth.”
You could, quite literally, have heard a pin drop for what seemed like minutes.
Freuchen finally broke the silence. “But that cannot be. The sun? The moon? How can this be Earth?” His voice was tremulous, only just above the volume of a whisper.
I suddenly realized that of all the questions we had asked so far, we had missed the most obvious one. I asked it now: “Silas,” my own voice barely under control, “When are we? What year is this?”
Silas’s eye-bar swiveled in my direction. “As I cannot account for the exact period of time during which I was deactivated, I cannot calculate
with any degree of accuracy what—”
Freuchen leaped to his feet and strode toward Silas until he was eye to eye-bar with the robot. “For the love of all that is good, vould you just give us a straight answer you metal monstrosity!” he hissed.
“The year is approximately 420,353,745; plus or minus several hundred years, allowing for my period of inactivity.”
“What?” I sat down. Hard. When I lifted my eyes again, my two friends looked to be in just as much shock as me.
“How can that be?” Freuchen said. “How?” His eyes drifted to Chou and me as if we might hold the answer.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, my eyes dropped to stare at the tufts of grass between my feet. I suddenly felt very, very tired. “Holy. Shit.” I managed to lift my head and look at Silas. “Half a billion years?” I whispered, my voice trailing off into an unrecognizable squeak that would have sent any nearby dogs into a howling frenzy. “We’ve been brought half a… bill… billion years into the future?”
“Approximately,” Silas said brightly, obviously happy he could finally give us an actual answer to a question, blissfully unaware that he had just delivered a hammer-blow to all three of us. It felt as if a cord I didn’t know I was connected to had been stressed beyond its breaking point and suddenly snapped. And now I was… adrift. I felt incredibly vulnerable, which was strange when you consider everything else that had happened to me since my arrival here. Could I even call it an arrival when I had, apparently, never even left Earth? But this new information from Silas only served to ram home how distant my old life was, and, even though this was still my planet, how very, very alien this Earth was.
“But if this is Earth, vare are all the other humans? The countries and civilizations? All our great vurks and vunders?” Freuchen’s voice trailed off.
“I have no data available on that, Peter.”
Chou, who seemed the least affected by the latest news, said, “Silas, why do you refer to us as Candidates?”
The Paths Between Worlds Page 21
