He gritted his teeth and said, with only the smallest quake in his voice, “Then she will also remember that I am willing to die to set things straight!”
“Says who?” I smiled sourly.
“Says the enemies of the Time Wardens. You see, I tried doing this alone. And I can't.”
There was something really odd in his voice when he said those words. I sat up in my chair.
“The Masters of Time cannot have enemies,” I said slowly. “They would just go back in history and kill their enemy's father, whoever he is.”
“You have seen things go into the mist. Things can come out as well! Men, miracles, messengers! Whole worlds emerge from the mist as they pass from being impossible to being inevitable. That includes the first world holding the original version of this city.”
I squinted as if against a strong light. “What kind of baloney is that?”
“You've got it all wrong. The purpose of time travel is to forgive and heal. It is to make our past crimes fade away, into the mist of nothingness. But it has been turned wrong here, corrupted by these so-called Time Wardens. They are rebels, a gang of criminals, who abused the machinery of time travel over which they were given stewardship. They use their powers to indulge in their past crimes and to evade consequences. So this has become a city of lies built on a foundation of nothingness. But if, one by one, each Master of Time, even before he is elevated to the position, turns away from the evils he has done and will do, and sponge them out of the pages of history, then this city of evasion will become a city of salvation!”
I wanted to believe him. The Masters of Time certainly acted like a gang of crooks.
“How could you possibly know this? Where did you hear any of this?”
He leaned forward, his eyes burning. “Because old me is only one version of me. He is going to turn into a Time Warden, and he'll be no different from any of them. Dressed in a mirror, with a crown and no face, and wrapped in a robe of mist. As cruel and remorseless as history itself.”
“And the other version, he is the one from the other timeline?”
“Yes. He is the one who sent me to you. They have crowns of gold, and their robes are solid black, as black as midnight, because the past good they have done can never be changed. Their city is green rather than gold, and time travel is only used to punish the penitent among them. They do not rule time.”
“Anarchists, eh? They just leave all the flatliners alone, do they?”
“They are not the Masters of Time but of Eternity. There is no beginning to them, nothing that can be edited away. They have followed the tradition of the first Moonshot, expanded into space rather than time, and their version of Luna glitters with cities and cathedrals and tabernacles whose light you can see from Earth. You may have seen that Moon, the Moon in the heavens in the timelines where America did not lose hope. The closer the Emerald Towers come to being real, the less real these proud Towers of accursed gold become, and the clearer and fairer shines the cities of Luna.”
“You know—must know—I don't believe you.”
He smiled and leaned back. “I don't care if you believe me now or not. I think you will, eventually. The other me, the Master of Eternity who comes from a world of a bright moon above towers of shining green above a fruitful world of green grass and green forest–he told me you were the man.”
“What man?”
“The man who sees the downfall of the last of the Masters of Time. I was told to come to you because you are a man who is not afraid. And because—sometimes—you listen to your conscience.”
I shook my head. “You were told a fairy tale. It's some sort of Chronocrat trick. If old you is about to become a Time Warden himself, then my guess is some other Wardens, unfriendly Wardens, who, for reasons you will never know, have decided to sweep your seventh-row pawn off the board before it turns into a Queen. I don't know what version of yourself visited you when, but if you were visited by a time traveler, then you can be sure it was a Warden.”
“He was an honest and decent man.”
“An honest and decent Warden? No such thing. The whole point of giving you the girl, giving you power, tempting and corrupting you, was to make you the kind of man who thinks like a Time Warden. If this anarchist guy who says he is their enemy were real, he would not use time travel. Who thinks of changing the past rather than changing himself when he has a problem?”
“He has hardened memory. He will remember this version of events when he becomes real, but I have to die before he can become real. That is my penance. I suffer, I die to myself, and then I am renewed and reborn in a parallel timeline where my sins never took place. They are blotted out of all history books. All I have to do is die.”
“You are crazy. I don't believe you.”
“I am not paying you to believe me. Will you take the case? Because, if you don't–for the love of God, man! The Time Wardens gave her to me! Just like you'd give someone a pet cat! They'll just give her to someone else if I keep away from her, and I cannot keep away from her anyway. The temptation, it's too much! It's like a sickness. So you know what will happen if you allow me to live. Look, even if you don't believe me, will you take the case for her sake?”
I have to admit that I sat there thinking and scowling at him for a moment or two. Out of habit, I reached under the drawer where I keep my spare cigarettes, and was surprised to feel something meet my fingers. As soon as I touched it, I felt the tinkle of mist around my hand, and I remembered spending yesterday reading a memo to myself, from a version of myself who I was pretty sure did not exist and never would.
Look, I have my principles. I never take cases from Time Wardens, and I don't help time travelers kill themselves. Never.
Except this time I would.
I stood up. “All right.”
Because I could swap cigarettes with nearly anyone in this quarter of the city, and get nearly anything I needed. Ammo, food, booze. A big breakfast and a square dinner.
He stood up. He looked me in the eye. He must have known exactly what I was thinking. “It seems you are no better than me, who uses women for sex, and no better than your friend who eats men for food. I am just a meal to you.”
I sighed. “Well, since you put it that way, and since you are planning on erasing your memory tomorrow–”
And I hit him in the face hard enough to knock him backward over the chair and onto the floor.
PROLOGUE TO A NEW BEGINNING.
Memo to Myself
Written in Eternity, sent to the date Day Three Thousand And Twenty-Six Personal Subjective Time.
I am leaving these papers under the bottom drawer rather than taking your pack of cigarettes.
About this time tomorrow, a man destined to be a Time Warden is going to hire you to kill himself via time paradox, or that is what it looks like. Looks can be deceiving.
He is going to tell you a fairy tale about a city that is Beyond the City Beyond Time, a City of Emerald Towers whose spires soar above a green world or gardens and arbors and forest rather than above any emptiness of mist.
He is telling the truth. He kills himself, but he does not really die. There is a real version of him that comes from a timeline where time travel is only used to cure past crimes, not to get away with them. That timeline leads to a city, this city, where the Proctors do not kill people except as an act of voluntary punishment, after which they are brought to life again as new people, people whose sins are only memories of events that never really happened.
That is what you really are, Jacob. You are not an assassin. They—the fallen Masters of Eternity—they twisted your past and tried to make you into something you are not. They changed this city of paradise into a Valhalla, and sent back agents to choose among the dead for historical figures to people their museum and amuse them. That includes their old bosses and old coworkers. Hardened memory does not remember anything for you if the whole time before you were ever born is changed. But they could not change you.
That is where your sense of justice comes from, your willingness to listen to people confess their wrongdoings to you, your willingness to take people as they are without passing judgment.
So go ahead and take the case. Punch him in the eye if you want, but take the damned case. When his alternate version becomes real here, he will be unfallen and forgiven, a pilgrim rather than a mere traveler through time.
As will you. As will we all.
—Yours, Jacob Quirinus Christoforo Frontino, S.J.
Tower of Final Forgiveness,
Transmetachronopolis
P.S. Make sure I come into existence, Jake. Don't screw this one up.
Books by John C. Wright
CASTALIA HOUSE
Awake in the Night Land
City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis
Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth
THE GOLDEN AGE
The Golden Age
The Phoenix Exultant
The Golden Transcendence
WAR OF THE DREAMING
Last Guardian of Everness
Mists of Everness
CHRONICLES OF CHAOS
Orphans of Chaos
Fugitives of Chaos
Titans of Chaos
COUNT TO THE ESCHATON
Count to a Trillion
The Hermetic Millennia
Judge of Ages
OTHER NOVELS
Null-A Continuum
FANTASY
Awake in the Night by John C. Wright
Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright
A Magic Broken by Vox Day
A Throne of Bones by Vox Day
The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day
The Last Witchking by Vox Day
Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day
The Altar of Hate by Vox Day
The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale
The World in Shadow by Theodore Beale
The Wrath of Angels by Theodore Beale
SCIENCE FICTION
Big Boys Don't Cry by Tom Kratman
The Stars Came Back by Rolf Nelson
City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright
QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day
QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day
QUANTUM MORTIS The Programmed Mind by Vox Day
CASTALIA CLASSICS
The Programmed Man by Jean and Jeff Sutton
First On the Moon by Jeff Sutton
NON-FICTION
Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright
Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander
TRANSLATIONS
Särjetty taika
Uma Magia Perdida
Mantra yang Rusak
La Moneta dal Mercenario
I Ragazzoni non Piangono
QUANTUM MORTIS Тежина Смрти
QUANTUM MORTIS Un Hombre Disperso
QUANTUM MORTIS Um Homem Desintegrado
QUANTUM MORTIS Gravidade Mortal
QUANTUM MORTIS Der programmierte Verstand
Grosse Jungs weinen nicht
City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis Page 18
