by Patrick Lee
"I created you?" Travis said. "I sent you… back to 1989?"
"Yes. For two purposes. First, to position your present self here and now, so that you would intercept Paige's message to herself. Second, to arrange events such that you would still become a member of Tangent, as in the original timeline-though a few years earlier in this case."
The coiled logic of it settled over Travis. Then, even through his confusion, he sensed a flaw in what the thing had told him.
"You're wondering how I'll be created now," the Blackbird said. "This time around, you won't join your brother's business. You won't become an AI designer. You won't know how to build me. So how will I come to be?"
Travis waited for it to go on.
"Humans call this problem the grandfather paradox. They get tied up thinking about it. What happens if you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he meets your grandmother? Do you cease to exist, having prevented your own birth? No. Your arrival in the past becomes your birth, even if it means being born fully grown, with a head full of memories of a childhood that may never end up happening. It's no different in my case: I may have once been built by Travis Chase, but my arrival in 1989 became my creation, superseding the other. The grandfather paradox is a fallacy. I exist. It's that simple. And now I've done what I was sent to do, so I'll be shutting down. Permanently."
"Wait," Travis said. "Tell me what happens in my future. What happens to turn me into… whatever I'm going to be? Can I avoid it?"
He heard the Blackbird laugh softly inside his head, as if it found that idea absurd. But it didn't say so.
"I'm not supposed to talk about that."
"But I don't understand," Travis said. "Did the other-did I… want to reset everything, and have a second chance? A chance to not become someone bad?"
"The Travis who sent me didn't consider himself bad. Does anyone?"
Before he could ask anything else, the Blackbird flared bright in his hand. Bright enough to make him look away. He saw his own shadow projected on the wall, enormous and terrible. Then it vanished. He looked at the Blackbird again. Dark and dead in his hand.
"Travis?"
Paige. Behind him at the entry to the dome.
In his other hand he still held the note. It was in front of him; she hadn't seen it yet.
He could show it to her. Tell her everything. Start off on the right track, find some way to prevent whatever it implied.
Her footsteps came toward him across the concrete.
He folded the paper and slid it into the waistband of the transparency suit, the bottom half of which he was still wearing. It vanished there half a second before Paige came around to meet his eyes.
He reacted as if he'd just become aware of her. As if he'd been gazing at the Breach, lost in it.
Lying to her already, before he'd even spoken.
She saw the Blackbird in his hand. Her eyes narrowed, confused.
"Did you take off its key?" she said. "It's dangerous even without it-"
He held it up to the light, showed her the cellophane-like key still attached to it.
"It's dead," he said. "Shut down after I killed Pilgrim. I don't know why."
She held his eyes, stared deep into him. If she saw through what he was saying, it didn't show. She moved closer. Her eyes softened. Her hand touched his arm.
"Hey," she said. "It's over. Whatever it was, it's over."
He nodded and managed something that wasn't entirely a frown. She folded into his arms.
Over her shoulder, he found himself staring into the Breach. Blue and purple like a bruise, reaching away to infinity. He considered the track of his future, another path leading somewhere he couldn't see. Leading to something that would remake him into a man Paige wanted dead. Something lying in his road, out there in the darkness, years and miles away from this moment. Waiting.
"It's over," Paige said again.
He held her tightly, and hoped she was right.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-1e46bf-1390-5c4d-a8a6-4abe-a534-f86c89
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 01.01.2011
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