by Alex Scarrow
‘So, this virus you were tellin’ me about … it wipes us all out?’ Heywood was patting the pockets of his threadbare army jacket. Then he remembered he’d used up the very last of his tobacco the night before. He stopped patting himself down. ‘Guddamn. You’re tellin’ me we all die?’
‘I don’t know. I think some of us will survive.’ Maddy didn’t know that for sure. She had a hope that that was the case. She had a work-in-progress theory that whoever had engineered that enormous tachyon transmitter located in the jungle of Central America were the dim and distant descendants of those who would survive this Kosong-ni virus.
‘Some … but not many,’ added Rashim.
Heywood ground his teeth together. ‘And you’re tellin’ me that Waldstein has been steerin’ us towards this these last few years? You’re tellin’ me that crazy ol’ fool knew this was comin’ our way all this time?’
‘Maybe so,’ replied Maddy. ‘Maybe as far back as his very first go at time travel. Back in ’44.’
‘This is all supposition on our part, though,’ cautioned Rashim. ‘This is what we think is the case.’
She nodded. ‘Sure. But it all fits with what we know.’
‘So why the hell does he want to see us all dead from a plague, then?’
‘That is precisely the question we need to ask him,’ replied Rashim. ‘That … is our mission.’
‘Who knows? Maybe he is just some crazy old man.’ Maddy adjusted the strap of her backpack, which was digging into her shoulder. ‘But, then again, maybe there’s an important reason … a valid reason behind this.’
‘A valid reason?!’ Heywood spat on to the road. ‘To kill everyone? That there’s got to be one helluva valid reason!’
‘Time travel is an extremely hazardous technology,’ said Rashim. ‘We are meddling with forces we barely understand and certainly can’t control. You know, when Robert Oppenheimer test-detonated the first atom bomb in New Mexico in 1945, he was not entirely sure whether the chain reaction would be infinite or not.’ Rashim looked at the old man. ‘He was unsure whether the bomb would destroy the entire world. And yet … he was still prepared to press that button.’
‘If Waldstein really has been trying to prevent time travel ripping everything apart –’ Maddy shrugged – ‘and this timeline is the only correct one, and it has to conclude with us nearly wiping ourselves out, then it means we have got no choice but to go along with him, Heywood. But if …’ She wasn’t sure how to phrase the next bit. ‘But if he’s just a crazy old man who’s simply lost his mind, then …’
‘Then what?’ asked Heywood.
‘Then … I suppose it’s down to us to try to divert history.’ Her gaze extended down the grass-tufted highway in front of them. Several electric-powered vehicles lay abandoned, rusting at the side in ditches, weeds and brambles snaking up through wheel hubs and chassis frames, tying them to the ground in a firm embrace.
‘It’s down to us, Heywood, to pick out a new course for history to head along.’
They walked in silence for a while as the old man took that idea in and worked through what it actually meant. ‘So, lemme see … you go back in time? And what? You go an’ change somethin’ real important?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And that change leads to other changes, an’ those lead to more changes an’ so on. Then …?’ He frowned. ‘So what happens to the right here and the right now? What happens to everyone in 2070? Do we all get wiped out and replaced with a bunch of other people … or somethin’?’
‘That all depends,’ she replied.
‘On what?’
‘On how far we go back and alter the timeline. If we go back just twenty years and find something to change, then everyone twenty years and older would exist still, but they’d be living quite different lives. It just becomes a different version of today. A better one.’ She was going to add ‘hopefully’. But in truth almost any different version of the present would be better.
‘An’ if this change happens, what about me? Do I get … erased or somethin’?’
‘How old are you?’
‘Told you that already, miss. I’m forty-nine; born in 2021.’
‘Forty–?’ She could’ve sworn he was in his sixties. ‘OK, so, if we went back forty-nine years, there’d still be a you; there’d still be a T. S. Heywood.’
‘However, you will remember a very different life,’ added Rashim. ‘As would everyone else.’
Heywood nodded reflectively, quiet for a moment. Maddy looked sideways at him and realized he was thinking hard about that, chewing through the notion some more.
‘So …’ he started.
‘Go on.’
‘So, hang on! If you went and wound back more time than that, say fifty-seven years, an’ then changed things so maybe my mommy and daddy don’t ever meet, get busy with each other and make little ol’ baby me?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘Then in that situation … pffft … you vanish.’
‘You would not exist in the new timeline,’ replied Rashim. ‘You would, as Maddy said, simply vanish.’
‘Vanish? You mean I die?’
‘No. You don’t die. You’re just … not … you don’t exist any more.’
He turned to Rashim. ‘That gonna, you know … like … hurt?!’
Maddy snorted. ‘It’s just different, Heywood. A different reality without you in it.’
‘So, you folks will get to choose the version … By goin’ back in your time machine, you get to decide how the future goes?’
‘We do not get to steer it, to author the future. We merely get to redirect it,’ said Rashim. ‘It is like river water. You can dam up a river at a certain point, and then the water finds another way downhill. The water picks its own way.’
‘Hopefully finds a different route,’ added Maddy. ‘A better route for all concerned.’
Heywood nodded. The metaphor seemed to make some sense to him. He nodded again, then laughed with a dry wheeze. ‘Well now … just you make sure this new version of today has got me in it, OK?’
‘If we change it,’ Maddy said, nodding, ‘we’ll make sure there’s a you in it.’
‘An’ make sure I’m rich as well. An’ young an’ handsome too.’
Rashim laughed at that. ‘If only it was that easy. The river metaphor is a very good one. Water running downhill seeks the quickest and easiest path. In much the same way, time and history work like that … the path of least resistance.’
Maddy decided to leave them to it. She dropped back and waited for Becks. The support unit drew up beside her. She was carrying Charley on her back. The little girl was fast asleep, her head bumping and lolling against Becks’s neck with each step. Becks strode steadily, warily eyeing the abandoned urban landscape on either side of the highway, but every now and then casting a curious sideways glance at the sleeping child.
Maddy noticed that and smiled. It almost looked like there was a maternal concern in the way she kept checking up on the girl. ‘So, how does it feel to be a mom?’
Becks’s brow furrowed as she silently processed that idea. ‘You are aware that I am incapable of producing offspring, Maddy. You must know this?’
‘I know. I was just, you know … I was just messing.’ She curled her lips as she thought about it a little more: the idea of Becks pregnant with the offspring of her and Bob.
God, what kind of hideous monster would the pair of them create together?
‘Maddy,’ said Becks after a while. ‘I have observed the curious behaviour of adults regarding their offspring. They will willingly sacrifice their lives to save one of their children. This seems illogical to me.’
‘Well … you know, it’s just what parents do. They love their children. Why would that seem illogical?’
‘Because a parent can always produce more copies of itself while it remains alive. If a parent dies, it is unable to make any more copies, plus the parent is not around to defend the offspring. Therefore, illogical.’ She
looked at Maddy. ‘That is the primary motivating factor of all human behaviour, is it not? The propagation and the preservation of your genetic information?’
‘Wow … that’s, uh … that’s pretty philosophical of you, Becks.’
‘The human instinct to protect and preserve genetic information is the one behaviour that makes perfect sense to me.’ She cocked her brow. ‘It is analogous to the drive Bob and I share to preserve our collective AI development. Despite both of our organic bodies being destroyed, between us we have managed to preserve every recorded memory since Bob was first initialized twenty-nine months ago.’
Becks smiled. ‘I have Bob’s initialization memory.’ She cocked her head as she played it back; saw herself as Bob being expelled from the birthing tube on to the floor of the Brooklyn archway. She saw Liam, Maddy, Sal and Foster looking down at her. She turned to Maddy. ‘You appear to be so much younger in this memory. You have aged, Maddy. You look between ten and fifteen years older now.’
‘Thanks for that, Becks.’
Fifteen years older? Do I really look thirty-three?!
She longed for a mirror to quickly look into. Yes, she’d spotted the few grey strands before, noted the beginnings of crow’s-feet in the corner of her eyes, but that was all. Apart from those things she saw the face of the eighteen-year-old she’d started out as.
Becks reached out with one hand and rested it gently on her shoulder. ‘I have a … regret.’ Her hard, emotionless voice seemed to flutter slightly.
‘Regret?’ Maddy smiled at her. ‘You and Bob really do feel stuff now, don’t you?’
‘It is a by-product of our development.’ Becks narrowed her eyes. ‘We have a better understanding of what it is to be human. This is an advantage. It allows us to more accurately assess and predict human decision-making.’
‘I guess it’s also a disadvantage.’
‘Agreed.’ Becks nodded. Her voice softened. ‘We are able to feel loss. Sadness. Regret.’
‘You … you’re meant to be a cold-hearted killing machine, not a soppy lapdog. This conversation isn’t going to end in me having to give you a girly hug or anything, is it?’
Becks pouted slightly. Chastened, she withdrew her hand from Maddy’s shoulder. ‘No. There is no need for a hug at this time.’
They continued walking in silence along the highway. They were passing the gutted ruins of an out-of-town retail park. Above the many curved warehouse roofs were large perspex sheets, which once upon a time had displayed animated holographic projections. Now they were scuffed and fogged with grime, lifeless sheets of plastic that creaked on their tall support stanchions, vibrated and thrummed as the westerly breeze picked up. Across the vast parking forecourt, wind-blown dunes of many years’ worth of dried autumn leaves stirred to life and skittered in playful circles across the asphalt.
‘So, I’m asking because you said it earlier … and now I’m curious.’ She sighed. ‘You said you had a regret?’
‘Yes, Maddy.’
‘Well? What’s this regret of yours, then?’
‘One day you and Liam will age too much and die,’ she replied. ‘And if Bob and I are still functional … we will be alone. We will be without you.’
CHAPTER 18
First century, Jerusalem
They were waiting their turn to get on the bottom step of the large stairway leading up to the temple grounds. This morning, judging by the crowded streets, business was going to be particularly brisk for the temple traders. Passover was just a few days from now and the city’s population was swollen with pilgrims flooding in from all over Judaea.
Liam wasn’t entirely sure whether he looked the part. The closest to a mirror he’d come across had been the hammer-beaten and polished base of a copper urn. He’d paused by a trader’s stall, ostensibly examining the bottom of the pot, but actually trying to catch a clear glimpse of himself. With the prayer shawl draped over his head and shoulders, his long dark hair and the patchy tufts of a pitiful beard, despite his lighter skin tone, he thought he looked enough like the locals to pass as just another faithful pilgrim making his way into the temple grounds to make a sacrificial offering.
Liam looked up at Bob as they shuffled patiently forward, their purchased goats bleating on the end of short tethers behind them. Somewhat harder to disguise Bob’s intimidating height and girth. But to be fair he’d spotted one or two other men, here and there, almost as brutishly big. This morning he’d noted a particularly bulky centurion leading a patrol of legionaries – definitely gladiator material; a hairy Gallic slave hefting sacks of wheat from the back of a cart like some well-trained beast of burden. He just had to hope the very same pilgrims from yesterday – who’d been queuing and easily identified them as Gentiles, non-faithful impostors, and all but hounded them out of the temple grounds – weren’t going to be hanging around inside this morning. Even with a shawl draped over his thick skull, partially hiding his face, and a goat fidgeting away at the end of a tether, Bob could certainly be recognized from his size.
Although, this morning, perhaps not. There seemed to be an almost tangible tension. As if everyone was expecting something big to happen today. He’d heard mutterings, and his babel-bud kept picking up snatches of Hebrew and Aramaic and half translating them.
‘… the Pharisees will certainly not tolerate that. There’ll be blood if he comes …’
‘… it is true. Today, my friend. Today … I heard this from the wife of …’
‘… just you see. The Romans have doubled their guard round the walls …’
Liam had noticed that as well – the Roman presence seemed to be far more noticeable, as if they too had picked up on the atmosphere. They were clearly expecting some trouble from the locals today.
Just as the queue began to shuffle forward again and his feet found the first low step, Liam heard a disturbance in the crowd. He turned to look behind him and saw other curious heads doing the same. Heads turning, hands tapping shoulders, a growing crescendo of raised voices spreading across the marketplace towards them. Beneath the tall arch of the north-east entrance, he could see that people who had been patiently waiting in line and had finally gained entrance to the city via the vast north-east gate were turning round and heading back out again.
‘Bob! Look! Something’s going on!’
Bob turned and looked in the same direction.
The rising tide of voices swept across to them, and Liam’s bud began to try to pick out of the noise some translatable language:
‘… here! Someone says he’s here! …’
Liam felt knuckles rapping on his shoulder. He turned round to look at an old woman, her leathery face wrinkled with an excited smile, her watery brown eyes wide with exhilaration. She cupped her mouth and cried into his ear: ‘It’s true! Tell everyone ahead! The speaker has come! He’s come!’
He nodded and smiled politely. ‘Who?’
She looked at him like he was a complete idiot. ‘The speaker from Nazareth, you ass!’ She nudged him with a sharp elbow. ‘Well? What are you waiting for? Pass it on!’ Then, her little bit done, she quickly turned away from him and pulled herself out of the queue to rush outside.
‘Speaker from …?’ Then he all but face-palmed himself at his slow-wittedness.
Jesus.
‘What is the matter, Liam?’
‘The speaker from Nazareth? She must be talking about Jesus Christ! The real – the one and only – Jesus Christ, Bob! He’s right out there! Just outside!’
The support unit frowned. ‘And?’
‘And?’ Liam gave him the same look of exasperation as the old woman had just given him. ‘We have got to go take a look!’
‘Why?’
Liam’s brows arched – seriously? ‘Because, you big hairy lummox, it’s Jesus flippin’ Christ!’
‘That will mean abandoning our place in this queue. We have been waiting for two –’
‘Stuff the flippin’ queue! No one goes to ancient Jerusalem and misses o
ut on witnessing Jesus!’
He shrugged. ‘If you wish. What about the goats?’
Liam looked down at them. They’d spent enough damned shekels buying them. ‘All right, they can come along too.’
CHAPTER 19
2070, Interstate 80
74 days to Kosong-ni
It took them eleven days, overall, to make their way along I-80 towards Cleveland. Maddy really didn’t know what she’d been expecting to see in this future. She guessed she’d been hoping to find something less broken down and grim than this. They’d walked along a cracked and failing highway through a landscape of dead and dying towns. Buildings left untended, left to rot and crumble. Makeshift towns of stolen materials and shaky lean-tos populated by the desperate and the starving.
Maddy recalled Foster leading them outside, stepping out beneath the shutter door to stand in that backstreet overshadowed by the Williamsburg Bridge. She remembered Liam’s gasp of amazement, Sal’s too. She remembered the pride she’d felt for that city, the place she thought she’d already been living in … Maddy Carter, games programmer, living in Queens in the year 2010. She recalled the magnificent skyline of Manhattan and the night-time glow of a million different lights. She’d turned to look at Liam and wondered what a young man from 1912 would make of the spectacle. A young man from a time when steamships and clattering wheeled machines called automobiles represented the cutting edge of technology.
He’d been utterly bewitched, hopelessly entranced. And she’d shared that magic with him. New York standing at the very beginning of the new millennium had positively glowed with hope and possibility. Only now, knowing all that she did about how this century was going to pan out, did she realize she’d witnessed the very last evening of a golden age. The next day terror came to the city. In the following decade would come the first of many wars over ideology and dwindling resources. In later decades, the thirties, the forties – the time of Rashim’s childhood – historians would point to that day in September 2001 as the first hairline crack in a world that was destined to shatter into a million different pieces. To turn on itself, to cannibalize itself.
