The Paths Between Worlds

by Paul Antony Jones

  “That is your official designation, assigned by the Architect.”

  “Yes, but candidates for what?” I said.

  “I have no—” Silas began, but I cut him off.

  “Available data on that,” I snapped, finishing his sentence. “Yes, we get it. Well, can you at least tell us how many candidates there are?” I said, expecting the same answer.

  Silas processed the question then said, “There were one billion nine-hundred-million five-hundred-thousand-and-eighty-nine candidates who agreed to be relocated here from their home timelines.”

  My mind reeled again, trying to take in the enormity of the number. It was staggering. I had grown used to the idea that this little island was all there was. That we were it.

  Obviously, there couldn’t be that many people on the island, which meant they had to be elsewhere. The distant coastline I’d seen from the beach was the only logical place. It had to be part of a larger landmass or continent; large enough to accommodate almost two-billion temporal-gypsies, all so very far from home. Two billion people thrown together with no direction, no answers, and no understanding of who or what had brought them here.

  It sounded to me like a recipe for disaster.

  The first few days on this island had been insane, but now I counted myself lucky to have arrived here rather than the mainland. I could not begin to imagine the chaos that must have been magnified a million times across the mainland. How could anyone possibly be expected to build from that? How would we make it?

  And yet… the kindness I had witnessed in my time here; the drive to begin over, to build something worthwhile from the ashes of destruction seemed… unstoppable. I’d come to realize that the will to succeed, to create something bigger than ourselves was a basic drive woven deep within the very fabric of our humanity.

  We had all been given a second chance. A chance to try again. To make something… better.

  And so what if the Architect was awol? Who cared if there was no roadmap to follow? And as for the Adversary; well, it wouldn’t be the first time humanity had come face-to-face with a tyrant intent on subjugating all of us to his will. Throughout the history of our race, we had confronted those same trials and beaten them, time after time.

  There were two billion humans on this planet. Two billion hand-selected souls who shared the same drive and determination that had brought our species to dominance over every other living thing on this planet. This was our chance to build that brave new world that had haunted our species’ dreams for millennia. To rescue humanity from whatever fate had swept it from our rightful home.

  The Architect had chosen me. Had told me that I was the one it trusted. And if our theories were true, then the Architect knew more about me than I did. So, who was I to question its choice?

  Still, the fact remained, somewhere out there, amongst those two billion strangers, was the key to all the mysteries: Candidate 1.

  “Ve vill need to be on our vay if ve vish to be back at the garrison before sunset,” Freuchen said, breaking me free of my thoughts.

  “If you are sure there’s nothing worth salvaging from the habitat then there’s no reason we should remain here any longer,” Chou said. “Silas, do you think you have sufficient energy to make it approximately three miles through the forest to the beach or should we wait?”

  “If we leave soon, I will make it.”

  “The sooner ve are on our vay the better. All this standing around is making my feet itch,” Freuchen said. He kicked dirt over the smoldering campfire, then said to the robot. “Follow us.”

  Seventeen

  The second dead man had vanished from the beach. All that remained to show he’d ever existed was a lone shoe and a shallow indentation in the shale starting where his body had lain and ending at the edge of the forest.

  “Did something drag his body away?” I said, not wanting to hear I was right. My mind flashed back to the saber-toothed tiger that had stalked us over those first two nights.

  Freuchen bent over, picked up the shoe then dropped it quickly when he saw the foot still in it. “Something big, for sure,” he muttered.

  “And hungry,” Chou added, scanning the forest. “Best we keep moving.”

  “No argument from me,” I said. Despite having the giant robot as a deterrent, I couldn’t shake the thought that whatever had dragged off the decomposing body of the man was following us, camouflaged within the trees.

  “Many animal genera were brought here by the Architect,” Silas said. “A wide variety of species from Earth’s timeline were needed to ensure an adequate food supply and maintain the biological fecundity of the planet. These include carrion eaters.”

  “Oh-kay,” I said, “Well, thanks for that reassuring tidbit, Silas.”

  “You are welcome, Meredith.”

  The first body we’d passed was, however, still there. We smelled it long before we saw it, thanks to a breeze that set the forest rustling and the stench of decay wafting in our direction. After two more days in the sun, the dead man was evidently too far into the decomposition process to draw larger carnivores and had, instead, attracted birds, crabs, and a mass of insects that now treated the rapidly decaying cadaver as either food, a new home, or both. I gave the body as wide a berth as possible, covering my nose and mouth with a hand while trying hard not to repeat the embarrassment of losing my breakfast again.

  Silas, on the other hand, appeared to be completely immune. He walked over to the body and knelt next to it. “The number of candidate deaths is disturbing,” the robot said. “Losses were expected during the Great Transference, but those were anticipated to have been due to shock induced by the translocation of candidates from their timeline to this one.” He leaned in closer, his eye-bar scanning the corpse. “Losses of this nature should never have occurred; it was all but impossible. Provisions were made by the Architect to reduce fatalities to as close to zero as possible.”

  “What kind of provisions?” Chou said, also seemingly unperturbed by the stench of the dead man.

  “Some minor adjustments were made to your bodies to ensure the release of elevated levels of key chemicals such as serotonin, and oxytocin upon your arrival.”

  “Wouldn’t that bring on a sense of well-being, happiness?” I said, being somewhat of an aficionado on highs until a couple of days ago.

  “Yes, Meredith, along with feelings of closeness for your fellow candidates,” Silas replied. “This would help mitigate the shock of your arrival long enough for my fellow SILAS units and I to educate you on why you had been chosen and to help assimilate you into your new home.”

  “Figures,” I said. “Well, we certainly didn’t feel anything like what you described during this Great Transference. In fact, it was the complete opposite. Almost everyone panicked. But we definitely feel something like it every night during the Aurora.”

  “Curious,” Silas said. “I wish I had access to more information on the subject.”

  “Is there anything else you can remember? Anything at all?” Chou said.

  “No, that is as much as I am able to recall. I am sorry.”

  Noon had come and gone by the time we reached the estuary. I was pleasantly surprised at the feeling of ‘coming home’ that blossomed in my chest at the idea of reaching the garrison and once again seeing the people who I now called my friends. And it had been oddly quiet without Albert. The kid had grown on me.

  “Ve should take a break,” Freuchen suggested, stopping to lean against a tree and empty several pebbles from his shoes.

  “Oh, God, yes please,” I said. We’d been exposed to the full force of the sun for the last couple of hours, so fifteen minutes dangling my sweaty feet in the river sounded delicious.

  “Very well,” said Chou, “but remain close by.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll stay within screaming distance,” I said, only half-joking.

  Freuchen excused himself and headed for the privacy of a row of trees to do what he had to do. I walked to a cluster
of boulders just a little further upstream, perfectly positioned in the shade of six coconut palms. I splashed cold water over my face and washed some of the sweat from it. I stripped off my shoes and socks, rolled up my jeans and dipped my feet into the water, and leaned back. Through half-closed eyes, I watched Chou climb atop a large boulder that reminded me of a giant turtle’s shell, where she watched over us like some mother duck guarding her ducklings.

  In the distance, semi-obscured by haze and clouds, the monolith guarded the horizon. My eyes drifted from it to Silas.

  I watched him climb nimbly down to the riverbank, then wade out into the fast-flowing water, his eye-bar moving back and forth, searching the water for something. Eventually, he reached down, lifted an object from the river, scrutinized it, then placed it in a metal pouch on his hip. A few more minutes passed, then he stooped down again and pulled a second object from the water, held it in his hand and examined it closely. Apparently satisfied with whatever it was, he put the second object in his pouch and waded back to shore. He sat down on the river bank and took one of the objects he'd collected from his pouch and held it in front of him. It looked like a flat piece of rock or wood, I couldn’t tell. The robot raised his other hand, pointed an index finger at the object, and I saw a bright beam of light emanate from it. It was a laser, I was sure. Silas’ hand moved in a blur for several seconds back and forth across the object. Then the light went out and Silas, seemingly satisfied, placed the object back in the metal pouch on his waist. He got to his feet, looked around and began to walk to where I lay watching him.

  When the robot reached me, he stood for several moments, his eye-bar moving back and forth across the scenery. “It is so very beautiful here,” he said.

  “It’s almost paradise,” I said. “All it needs is a Tiki bar, and I’d die happy.”

  Silas’ eye-bar tilted oddly as if he were assessing whether I was joking or not, then he said, “May I ask a favor of you, Meredith?”

  “Of course.” I propped myself up on both elbows and gave him my full attention.

  Silas reached into his pouch and pulled out a flat, gray piece of rock about eight-inches wide by four.

  “It is slate,” Silas said. “I would like to give this to you now, to ensure that you know what to do tomorrow.” He offered the rock to me.

  “Okay?” I said, taking it from him, puzzled as to why he would want me to have it. I flipped it over and saw rows of finely inscribed markings neatly etched onto its smooth surface. The markings reminded me of a upc barcode like you’d see on something you bought from a store, except this was much longer, easily several thousand tightly packed lines long. The code took up about half of the available surface of the one side of the piece of slate.

  “What is it?” I asked, wondering at how perfectly the lines had been etched into the slate’s surface.

  “In anticipation of the memory loss I will undoubtedly experience when my battery is exhausted, I have inscribed all pertinent information of the events leading up to today onto the slate in machine-readable code. It includes your names and everything you have told me, and that I should trust what you tell me without question. It will save us all time, I believe. I will update the slate on a daily basis until I am able to find a more permanent solution to my memory loss.”

  “Wow!” I said, honestly impressed. “What do I need to do with it?”

  “When you reactivate me tomorrow, simply hold it in front of my eye-bar. I will automatically recognize it and assimilate the information.”

  I nodded at the robot. “Will do.”

  “Thank you, Meredith.” Silas dipped his shoulders in acknowledgment.

  I leaned back against the rocks. The clouds that had earlier obscured the monolith had moved on, so now most of the huge mega-structure was visible. It was hard to look at it without feeling uneasy; it was just so massive. But it was also beautiful. The reflected sunlight shone like a distant beacon.

  A sudden realization hit me like a slap across my face. I jumped to my feet.

  “Are you okay, Meredith?” Silas said.

  “I’m fine,” I replied, then, “Come on. We need to talk to Chou and Freuchen.” I jogged to where Chou stood on her rock, casually chatting with Freuchen.

  “The collector,” I said, not waiting for them to stop talking. “What if it’s not a person?”

  Both of my friends looked at me quizzically.

  “From Silas’ message: You must travel to the collector immediately and locate Candidate 1.” I pointed over their shoulders to the monolith.

  “Oh!” said Freuchen. “Vell, I suppose that vould make sense, vouldn’t it?”

  Chou took a few moments before she replied. “It is the most prominent landmark. But why not one of the three others?”

  I took a moment to consider her question. “It’s the only one of the four that we can be certain is located on land.”

  Chou nodded slowly.

  “It vould be the logical place to start looking, at least,” Freuchen said, with a dip of his chin. “If you could get off the island, at least.”

  I felt my mood drop a little. He was right. I would have to find some way to get to the mainland. But if the Architect was as smart as it appeared to be, and if it wanted me to locate this Candidate 1 so badly, then there had to be some way for me to escape the island. I just had to find it.

  Chou stared at the monolith for a while, then said, “Time to move on.”

  Together we set out on the final trek back to the garrison.

  We retraced our original path up the river, crossed from one bank to the other, then continued following the river through the woods toward home, chatting happily amongst ourselves.

  The acrid smell of woodsmoke wafted downwind to us; stronger than I remembered from the garrison’s campfire, but still a welcome reminder that we were almost home. But as we drew closer to the garrison, I noticed more smoke, a lot of it, reaching between the trees like ghostly fingers. I felt a moment of unease, then we stepped out of the forest and into the garrison’s clearing, and for a brief moment, I felt a distinct sense of relief.

  “Stop,” Chou said suddenly, throwing up an arm to bar our way. “Look.”

  The feeling of relief evaporated as I caught sight of what had brought Chou to such an abrupt stop. Edward’s cabin was nothing but a smoking ruin, and most of the lean-tos had been reduced to little more than splinters. There was no sign of anyone working in the camp or the forest. The garrison was deathly quiet. Deserted.

  “No, this cannot be,” Freuchen hissed and ran toward the camp.

  “Stop,” Chou hissed. “Whoever did this might still be in the camp.”

  Freuchen ignored her.

  Chou exhaled a long sigh then motioned we should follow too. By the time the three of us caught up with Freuchen, he was circling Edward’s cabin.

  “I do not see any bodies,” Freuchen said, turning to look around the remains of the camp.

  Edward’s cabin was a smoking ruin; a skeleton of blackened logs and ash-gray burned planks. But here and there, a few pieces of the outer walls remained untouched by the fire. There was something odd about one of them.

  “I think these are bullet holes,” I said, running my fingers over several missing chunks that had been gouged out of the wood.

  Freuchen examined them too, then walked away from the cabin, his eyes scouring the ground. After a minute, he bent over and picked something up from the scorched grass. He bent over four more times in quick succession. “You are correct, Meredith,” he said, holding out his hand to show us five brass bullet casings.

  “Oh no,” I heard myself say. “Why would anyone do this?”

  No one answered me, but Freuchen said, “There are a lot of tracks leading tovard the north gate. I think whoever is responsible for this has kidnapped all of our friends and spirited them away.”

  “Why though?” I said. “What could they possibly want with them?”

  Chou shook her head. “There are many possibili
ties. None of which are good. We will need to locate our friends quickly if we have any hope of freeing them.”

  “How long do you think it’s been since whoever did this left the garrison?” Chou asked Freuchen.

  “It’s difficult to be sure, but I vould say no more than a few hours judging by how the cabin is still smoldering.”

  Chou nodded. She looked skyward. “We still have several hours of daylight left. I would suggest we gather whatever supplies we can find and follow their trail immediately.”

  “I agree,” Freuchen said.

  Five minutes later, we began to follow the trail of footprints through the north gate of the stockade. We had refilled our water bottles and found a few scraps of food, including several salmon bricks left behind in the ashes of the campfire.

  “Vell, at least they vill be easy to track,” Freuchen said, nodding at the ground and a muddy furrow that marked the route where our friends had been marched away, presumably in single file. “They should be slower than us, too. So as long as ve keep our pace up, ve should catch up vith them quickly.”

  “Let’s move,” Chou said, she began walking briskly in the direction the tracks lead.

  “Look, there,” said Silas. He pointed at several sets of footprints laid down parallel to the deeper tracks of our people. “There appear to be four others walking alongside the main group; two at the front and two more at the rear.”

  “Guards,” said Freuchen. “So ve know ve are not outnumbered.”

  The tracks continued north initially then curved west, back into the woods, in the direction Wild Bill had found us. We were about to cross from the clearing into the woods when Silas came to a halt. He raised himself to full height, and his torso moved slowly left then right. His eye-bar moving rapidly as though it were scanning the forest.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “There is a single human. Approximately fifty-seven feet in that direction.” He sliced the air with a gold arm at an angle away from the tracks we were following. “They appear to be in some distress.”