Paradox Alley

by John Dechancie

  Prime raised his glass. “I propose a toast. To life.”

  “Hear, hear,” Sean said.

  I inhaled the bouquet. While I was at it, I smelled the wine, too. What I got was the sense of a late-summer day … ripe fruit fallen in the orchard, warm breath of flowers, bright sun declining over the garden gate, the arbor heavy with grapes, fresh-cut hay fields, dreaming the afternoon away … like that. Odors familiar yet exotic, somehow. More than odors; an ambience. An experience.

  I drank the wine and drank in the experience. There was a taste, too. It was fruit and flowers and dew-laden sprigs of wild mint; it was a dash of crushed cinnamon, a twist of lemon, a drop of honey. It was many things.

  Presently, Darla said, “I’ve never … ever tasted anything like this.”

  “I’m so glad you like it,” Prime said, beaming. “It is very good isn’t it?”

  “Ambrosia,” John murmured, staring into his glass.

  “What is it called? Does it have a name?” Zoya wanted to know.

  Prime squinted one eye. “I think… well, a free translation would be ‘Earth’s sweet breath of summer.’ ”

  “How appropriate. How lovely.”

  “Where does it come from?” Yuri asked.

  “The beings who produced this wine were very much like yourselves, and were excellent wine makers. Possibly the best the universe ever saw. As I said, they were very much like you. In fact, they were your descendents, over two million years removed from your time.”

  “Two million!” Susan gasped.

  “Yes. They were still human—very human. And they still remembered Earth, apparently. No doubt they visited that most ancient home of humankind.”

  “Where’s Carl?” Lori broke in loudly.

  Prime looked at her, his expression tolerant: “He’ll be here any moment. You shouldn’t worry so much, my dear.”

  “Two million years in our future,” John said. “Very difficult to believe. But you speak as if that time were long past … to you.”

  “Yes it is,” Prime said. “It was quite long ago. But time, to us … to me, means very little.”

  “Who’s ‘us’?” I asked.

  Prime drank, sat back. “I have been thinking of the appropriate word or phrase to use. Something handy—short, concise—which would impart the meaning without too much distortion. In your language there are a number of words. But I have chosen the Culmination. That is what we are. What I am. You may refer to us the Culmination.”

  I usually jump at the chance to ask obvious questions. “The Culmination of what, exactly?”

  Prime gave me a level, sober look. “Life. Consciousness. Process. Mind. Will.”

  I quaffed the rest of my wine. “Stuff like that, huh?”

  Prime laughed silently, his grin broad. “Yes. Stuff like that.” He looked around the table. “Please, do begin. We can talk as we eat.”

  “Are you God?” Lori said.

  “What is God?” Prime answered.

  “Huh?”

  “Can you define the word?”

  “Well, you know…”

  “Precisely, now.”

  Lori chewed her lip, then said, “You know. The guy that made everything.”

  “Guy?”

  “Person. The person who made the universe. Everything.”

  “Made?”

  She got a little annoyed. “Created. The person who created living things. That guy. The one you pray to.” She rolled her eyes. “You know.”

  “Do you pray to God?”

  Lori was suddenly uncomfortable. “Sometimes. Not a lot.”

  Prime smiled a little impishly. “I’m teasing you. I knew what you meant. And the fair answer to your question is precisely this: I don’t know—yet.”

  “That’s a funny answer,” Lori complained.

  “Nevertheless, it’s the only one I can give before I explain some things to you. And that will take time.” He reached for a small loaf of bread and tore off a piece. “I suggest we eat first.”

  “We’re still a little concerned—” I began, then heard a noise to my right.

  It was Carl, being led into the dining hall by a glowing sphere. Impossible to tell whether it was the same one that had ushered us around.

  “Carl!” Lori got up and rushed to him. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Where the hell were you guys?”

  “Where the hell were you?” I asked him.

  “Jeez, after I got to the top, I waited and waited. When you didn’t show I took off and scouted around. Got lost.”

  “We couldn’t have been more than a minute behind you.”

  “Yeah? It seemed a lot longer than that. I thought you guys weren’t coming up.”

  “But you saw Darla and me on the ramp. Didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I couldn’t figure. I thought the ramp stopped or something and you were stuck. And I couldn’t figure a way to get back into that shaft and look down.”

  “Well, you should’ve stayed put,” I told him.

  “Sorry. I didn’t go very far at all. I mean, all I did was step out of that round room. And all of a sudden I was, like, lost. It was really weird.”

  Carl did the chair routine. “This place is screwy,” he declared after he had settled in.

  “Any explanation for Carl’s confusion?” I asked Prime.

  “Well…” Prime had taken up a long curved ladle and was dishing himself some of what looked like shrimp casserole. “You may recall that I mentioned some architectural anomalies associated with this edifice. You will find that within the confines of this building, the properties of time and space are somewhat different from what you might normally be accustomed to. Now in most areas the effects are slight, but here and there the curvature increases, and things might seem a bit strange until you have made certain psychological adjustments. The effects are the by-products of all the different technologies in and about the place.” He poured himself more wine. “For example, that conveyance you used to come up. Time flows a trifle faster when you ride it—meaning that the trip is actually longer than it seems. Not by much, mind you. I suppose Carl may have grown a little impatient. Anxious, probably. Your arrival may have seemed unduly delayed. Am I right, Carl?”

  “Yeah, I guess I was pretty jumpy.”

  “Well, there you are. And you may have lost your way by entering an area where the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line, if you get my meaning.”

  “Not really.”

  “Suffice it to say that this building would be difficult to negotiate one’s way through even without the spatiotemporal distortions.”

  We had all started digging in. I helped myself to a serving dish piled with what looked like steak tartare.

  “I hope this fare is acceptable,” Prime said. “Given enough time, the kitchens here can produce some very good food indeed. All of this was on rather short notice.”

  I remembered something and looked over at Ragna and Oni. “What about—”

  But the alien couple had found food they could eat.

  “This is most excellent,” Ragna said, smiling through a mouthful of mush. “Quite like the food of which we are having at home. In fact, it is most exactly like that of same. Uncanny!”

  And George and Winnie were munching green shoots with pink, pulpy heads, and were enjoying them.

  I asked, “How did your cooks manage to come up with native foods for these guys—or us, for that matter? Pretty neat trick, short notice or not.”

  “I hope I won’t spoil your appetites,” Prime said, “by telling you that everything on this table has been synthesized.”

  “That’s amazing,” Yuri said. “The stuffed cabbage tastes quite authentic.”

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  Conversation lulled as the feeding got serious. I wolfed down steak, noodles Romanoff, broccoli with cheese sauce, chicken curry, artichokes in lemon sauce, two baked potatoes, a few spiced meatballs, a pile of mushro
oms in onions and butter, and half a roast glazed chicken. That took care of the main hunger pangs. There were other dishes which didn’t look familiar. I asked Prime about their origins.

  “Other times and other places,” he said. “For a little variety. Try them.”

  I did. Most were excellent, some were so-so. All were fairly exotic.

  By then I was stuffed, and had to turn down the boysenberry torte and the lemon-cheese soufflé. Well, I had a smidge of the soufflé: It was light and fluffy. Very good. Everything had been superb. Good. Too goddamn good, and I couldn’t figure it out.

  I couldn’t figure out Prime either; which wasn’t surprising. He had told us almost nothing yet, and I was impatient. I’d been watching him, and he had dug in as heartily as any of us. His gusto didn’t look fake. Maybe he was human.

  “Where’d your cooks get the recipes?” I asked.

  “There is not much we don’t know—even relatively trivial things like food preparation techniques of antiquity. My ‘cooks’ ”—he chuckled—“all this was done by machines. We merely supplied the data.”

  “Your technology must be fantastic.”

  Prime leaned back, wiped his lips delicately with a pink napkin.

  “We have no technology,” he said.

  5

  I REGARDED OUR host. If there were any revealing emotions to be read in his face, they were encoded in expressions I couldn’t scan. I recalled what he’d said concerning his humanity. At times I could see that spark, that small part of him, glinting somewhere within those purple-flecked eyes. I thought I could, anyway, now and then. Most of the time the mask covered everything, presenting its blandly pleasant face to us. I couldn’t conceive of what was really behind it, the essential part of what he was. Something alien, surely; an impenetrably mysterious presence. The shadow of something vaguely frightening lurked behind the one-way window of his personality.

  “Huh?” I replied to his last statement.

  “I said, we don’t have any technology. That is to say, the Culmination possesses no original technology. All that which we have at our disposal has been bequeathed to us by the great scientific and technology-creating cultures of the past.” With a sweep of an arm he went on, “This edifice, for example. It’s a technological wonder in itself—a self-maintaining, self-defending fortress. It is at least a half-billion years old—”

  “Half-billion,” Yuri gasped, almost choking on his brandy. He cleared his throat and said, “Surely you’re joking.”

  “Oh, I assure you I’m not. The dust of the race that built it lies compressed in geological strata, along with everything else they ever built or accomplished. They are but a memory a faint one at that. But this structure endures. This is not its original site, of course. It was relocated several times in its long history, until it was finally brought here to Microcosmos.”

  “For what purpose?” Sean asked. “What is Microcosmos?”

  “An artificial world. Its original purpose was manyfold. I suppose a handy way to think of it would be—”

  “Wait a minute,” I broke in. “Are you saying that Microcosmos isn’t yours either? The Culmination—whatever that is—didn’t build it?”

  “No. Microcosmos itself is a relic of a time long past.” Prime refilled his wineglass as he continued: “As I was saying, it would be easy to think of it as, say, the site of a long defunct institution of higher learning—an amalgam of university, library, museum, research center, and so forth. This conveys at least part of its original function. The rest is not easy to grasp, since a distinct element of recreation went into the original conception behind it. Also, it served some sort of religious purpose, strangely enough. What that was would be hard to put into terms I could easily convey to you. You are free to research the history of this place, if you wish, though I must say I wouldn’t place a high priority on it in terms of what you should be doing here—”

  “Exactly what—excuse me for interrupting again,” I said, “but …uh—”

  “Quite all right,” Prime said. “Please go on.”

  I had availed myself of the same bottle of brandy that Yuri had found among the half-dozen containers of spirits on the table. It was a quality product, and although I couldn’t identify it, it wasn’t especially exotic. Just good booze. I took a slurp from my snifter and said, “Exactly what are we supposed to be doing here? We’ve hauled from one end of the galaxy to the other, left Terran Maze far behind, and come to road’s end. What next?”

  Prime settled back in his chair, wineglass in hand, elbow balanced languidly on the armrest. He crossed his legs, and the act struck me as so humanly natural that it allayed my fears just a little.

  “Doubtless this isn’t the first time the question has occurred to you. In fact, you’ve probably been dying to ask it. And I will answer it, in time. This is but one of many opportunities we will have to sit together and talk. We have a great deal to talk about, believe me, and we won’t cover it all in one session. What I want to do today is to sketch broad outlines for you. Provide a sweeping perspective. But I also want to give you some kind of preliminary answer to that overriding question. You are here because we want you to participate in an undertaking which very possibly may be the greatest, most momentous, most significant ever attempted … quite literally … in the history of the universe.”

  I said, “Yeah, but do you give green stamps?”

  The overwhelming silence of the place hit me then. I cocked my ears. Nothing stirring. This place was dead, dead and old.

  Prime laughed. “That was a marvelously witty and very irreverent comment. I quite enjoyed it.”

  “Jake, really, ” Susan admonished in a whisper.

  “No, I did,” Prime said, apparently having overheard. “And you might be surprised to know that I understood the reference.”

  I said, “You did? Explain it to me, then. Sam uses the expression all the time. I never understood it. In fact, Sam told me he didn’t quite get it either. Picked it up from his dad.”

  “Sam is … your father?”

  “Was. The on-board computer that runs my truck is programmed with some of his personality elements. I call him Sam, too.”

  “I see.” Prime brought two fingers up to caress his cheek, and mused, “That might be a possible problem…”

  “What might be?” I asked after a brief interval during which Prime had given the matter some thought.

  “I beg your pardon? Oh, nothing. Artificial Intelligences are beings, you know. Depending, of course, on how advanced they are. There is a certain threshold of self awareness… He trailed off again, then came back. ”Excuse me. We seem to have gotten sidetracked.”

  “I suppose,” Liam said, “the next obvious thing is to inquire as to the nature of this undertaking.”

  “That’s what will take time to explain,” Prime said. “I can only say that the concept, once you understand it, will thrill you—perhaps frighten you—to an extent to which you have never been thrilled or frightened before.” He looked around. “Yes. If and when you come to understand what it is, you very well may want no part of it.”

  “Will we have a choice?” I asked.

  “Yes. Most assuredly.”

  “And if we choose not to participate, will we be free to leave?”

  “Absolutely. You are free to go at this moment, if that is what you wish.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But we have a problem. Where the hell are we? And how do we get back to where we belong?”

  “You will be guided back to your point and time of origin—”

  A look of shocked, fragile elation sprang to everybody’s face.

  Prime looked around and laughed. “I see that meets with your approval.”

  Susan gazed at him in unbelieving wonder, her mouth hanging open.

  She swallowed and said, “You’d take us back? All the way back? I mean to where we live? Where we belong? We’re lost, completely and totally, and if you mean only that—”

  “I thought as
much. Yes, back to wherever you want to go. That is no particular problem.”

  I thought Susan would faint. Instead she began sobbing quietly. I put my arm around her.

  “Is she upset?” Prime asked.

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “I understand. What I was going to add was, as to the location of this place—this world-construct—I can only say that describing exactly where we are would be problematical with regard to finding some conventional frame of reference.”

  “When are we?” Yuri asked.

  “Well, at this point, we are outside of time altogether. We are moving, though, with respect to the frame of reference of the universe at large.”

  “What is our velocity?”

  “I’m afraid the notion of velocity here doesn’t really apply.”

  “But, as you said, if we’re moving with respect to the frame of reference of the universe—”

  “I’m sorry. That phrase was an oversimplification.”

  “Are we moving faster than light?”

  Prime frowned, then gave a short ironic laugh. “I don’t seem to be much help. Do I? Forgive me. There seems to be a problem in expressing in concise terms some of things I want to relate. I do have things to do here and about, and I must leave you before long, so it’s not really a problem in communication, but one of time. You will come to understand it eventually, I think, but we’d best delay any involved explanations for now. Let us merely say that this world is outside of space, outside of time, but is on a journey of some duration nevertheless.”

  “Another aspect of the time element interests me,” Sean said. “Namely the perspective from which you’re speaking. Your point of origin is obviously some time in our future. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our remote future, I take it.”

  “Very remote. Some ten billion years.”

  I took a long swig of my brandy, then slowly reached for the bottle.

  “You all look stunned,” Prime said.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s impossible,” Yuri said quietly. “But I must say I can’t believe it.”

  Roland, who had been listening impassively all the while, shook his head. “You simply don’t look, act, or speak like a … like a man from ten billion years in the future. In fact, the very notion of the existence of human beings at that point—”