Wrong Side of Time

by J. J. Green

  “Any ideas?” asked Dave.

  Carrie shrugged. “Swim? Maybe there’s an exit to the surface further down, or maybe the river flows under a mountain into a cave where we can get out.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that. You know I’m still not a very strong swimmer, and who knows where this river goes? What if it flows into a tunnel with no air space where we can breathe? Or the liquid gets sucked up into those channels that run through the mountains. No, if we swim we’ll probably drown.”

  “Well, we’ve got to do something, and quickly.”

  “I’ve got an idea.” His head dropped a little, lengthening the shadow it cast on the wall behind him in the light of Carrie's torch. “I don’t think you’ll like it though.” He looked away as he continued, “The way I see it, we’ve done all we can. We’ve tried our best, but we haven’t managed to find the Liberator, and there are far too many placktoids for us to defeat them all. The whole population has come here from the future. They must be in every mountain.”

  Carrie didn’t like the sound of where this speech seemed to be heading.

  “We’re stuck here. Trying to get out is almost certain death, and no one’s going to benefit from us dying. But there is one way out. And we’ve got more than two and a half hours to take it.”

  “No.”

  He sighed. “I thought you’d say that. But what choice do we have? We have to give up and open the gateway back to our time.”

  “We were sent here to do a job. Everyone in the future is depending on us. We can’t just give up and chicken out.”

  “It isn’t chickening out. I’m just trying to be realistic.”

  “No, you aren’t. You’re imagining the worst like you always do.”

  “And I’m always right.”

  Carrie stood up, her lips tight. “Not this time you aren’t. Not this time.” She went to where Harriet was lying at the edge of the river. The robot hadn’t moved all the time they’d been there. It seemed as though she had dragged herself to the bank with the last of her energy and was now irretrievably broken. Carrie held out her hand. “Give me her tools.”

  “Why? What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to put them back inside her.”

  “What’s the point?”

  Carrie let out a gasp of frustration. “Just give them to me. Does everything I do have to have a reason? I want to put her back together, that’s all. Maybe it’ll make a difference. I don’t know. And give me the one you stole too.”

  Dave had begun to gather the robot’s tools from the sand. He’d taken them out of his jumpsuit when he’d got to shore. He paused as he picked up one. “Huh?”

  “Don’t act all innocent. I figured out how you got out when the robots sealed you in a tomb again. You stole from Harriet the tool that can break through the material, didn’t you? When you were examining her and I fell asleep. That’s why she went off, isn’t it?”

  Dave sighed. “I didn’t think it mattered. I thought it would come in useful in case we got sealed in again.” He placed a handful of tools on the sand next to Carrie. “And when the robot left I couldn’t stop her and replace the tool.”

  Carrie tutted.

  “But it worked out in the end,” Dave went on. “I might have run out of oxygen by the time you got to me.”

  “Hmpf. If Harriet hadn’t gone and left us you might not have been captured in the first place. We’re lucky she decided to help us anyway and went and got our bags back from under the placktoids’ noses.” She was trying to match the tools to their corresponding slots in Harriet’s central mechanism. After several tries, she finally found one that seemed to fit. She slotted it in place. “Bingo.” She picked up another tool.

  Dave knelt next to her and angled his torch to give Carrie more light. “I don’t know. It’s strange, isn’t it? This robot...” Carrie gave him a look. “...Harriet, I mean. Why does she behave differently from the rest? She’s helped us escape from the placktoids twice now. She got us our equipment back. What’s made her do it all?”

  “I’ve been wondering about that too. I think she’s developed a kind of moral code. We saw what the placktoids did to the other robots, and they’ve probably been doing the same all over the planet. Those robots are Harriet’s...I don’t know...friends and relations? We haven’t harmed a single one. I think she’s decided we’re the goodies, and she wants to be on our side. Maybe she hopes we can stop what the placktoids are doing.”

  “You keep talking about her as if she’s still working.”

  “There you go again.” Carrie rolled her eyes as she stubbornly slotted another tool into place.

  “But why was, or is, she even like that?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think it’s a kind of evolution. The Creators, whoever they were, have been gone for millenia from the look of things, leaving these robots to look after the mountains. Goodness knows why. Somewhere there must be a place where the robots can replicate themselves or they would have all worn out and broken down by now. Gavin told us they had a fixed lifespan, so they need replacements. But they’ve been replacing themselves for so long, there must be errors in transmission of the construction blueprint from one generation to the next, like mutations in genetic code. My guess is that Harriet here is a mistake. Something went wrong when she was made, and whatever the mistake was it’s given her the ability to learn and behave independently.

  “She’s learned English from listening to us. I’m sure of it. I think she must have heard me saying we needed food and water. Maybe she didn’t know what food and water was, but she’d seen the placktoids take our bags—yours from the tunnel when you dropped it, and mine when we were captured—and she guessed that there was something we needed from them. So, despite the fact that you stole one of her tools...” Carrie paused as she was fitting a tool and glared at Dave “...she went and got them for us.”

  “It’s an interesting idea. And her behaviour does bear it out, I have to admit. Shame it had to end here really, isn’t it? If she could have passed on her advantages so all the robots had them, they might have stood a chance against the placktoids.”

  “Yeah.” Carrie couldn’t find the right spot for the tool she was holding. She tossed it down on the sand and rested her arms on Harriet’s shell. “I hope she isn’t dead. Hey, if we can get her going again, maybe we can explain that’s what she needs to do, and we can send her off to do that. Then we can think about going back to our time. It would be something.”

  “Hmm. If she can pass on her knowledge and abilities to the other robots—” Dave gaped. He breathed in so sharply he made a whooping noise and he stared, wide-eyed at the lifeless robot. “If she can pass on her abilities to the other robots, it means she must be...”

  “What? What do you...” The penny dropped, and Carrie leapt to her feet and stumbled backwards into the shallows of the river. “No, it can’t be. It can’t be. She doesn’t look anything like that machine we saw in the placktoid creation story. No, no, no. Not Harriet.” She stared at the robot’s bent shell and half-complete tool mechanism. Her face was stricken as she turned her gaze to her friend.

  She fell to her knees, barely feeling the cool liquid that soaked through the trousers of her jumpsuit. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “We can’t do it.”

  “I’m sorry, Carrie, but we have to. It has to be her. She’s unique among the rest of them. And this isn’t only about a robot that’s helped us. The entire future of the galaxy is at stake.”

  “But we don’t know for sure.”

  “You’re right. We don’t. But we can’t afford to take a chance either.” He put a hand on her arm. “Carrie, it’s only a machine.”

  She threw off his hand and leapt to her feet. “No,” she shouted, even though what Dave had guessed made sense. It explained so much, not least why the placktoids hadn’t been able to find Harriet at first. Over the centuries their image of their great saviour had changed, taking on epic proportions. They hadn’t been expecting to f
ind a small, nondescript robot identical to the rest.

  “I don’t care if she is the Liberator. I’m not going to let you kill her.”

  Chapter Twenty-One – Battle of the Buddies

  Dave wouldn’t destroy Harriet without her agreement, Carrie didn’t think, at least not until the last minute, when they had to choose between returning to their own time or living out a miserable, short existence on an alien planet thousands of years in the past. But for the last half hour he’d been wearing her down with rational, logical arguments, and he wouldn’t stop until she gave in. She had no sensible reply to his statements.

  “But it isn’t certain she’s the Liberator,” she said, continuing to play for time, hoping a reason for sparing Harriet would pop into her head.

  Dave rubbed his neck, sending exaggerated shadows sliding over the rock face behind him. “We’ve been over this so many times. It adds up. She’s different from the other robots, and she wants to help them. She must want to save them from their inevitable deaths too. And it explains why the placktoids didn’t hit us with their lasers when we were with her. They’ve finally realised she’s the Liberator and they didn’t want to risk damaging her. They must think she’s still important in their plan to hasten the development of autonomous, thinking robots.”

  “But she doesn’t look anything like—”

  “Carrie, creatures from mythology frequently don’t look anything like the things that inspired them. You’re too smart not to know that, as I’ve already said.” His tone was strained.

  “But what if, what if...” The germ of an idea was forming. She frowned as she tried to grasp it. “What if Harriet had nothing to do with giving the placktoids immortality? We’ve seen how they’re bending them to their cause. The High Commander is manufacturing new ones. What if the change was nothing to do with the Liberator? Maybe it’s a weird time loop thing. You know, like they’re their own grandfathers.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a well known time theory. It says time already exists from the beginning to the end, and we can’t change anything. It’s already set.”

  “Then what are we doing here? We can’t change anything.”

  “Us deciding to come here is part of it. We don’t really get to choose, or we think we do, but the choice is inevitable.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. The point is, the placktoids of the future might have been the cause of the change in the placktoids of the past.”

  “But then why wouldn’t their history show that? Why have they created a mythology showing something entirely different?”

  “Because it was so long ago,” Carrie replied. “Stories change over time, and don’t forget that the placktoids have culture. It isn’t like they’re transmitting data from one generation to the next. The information’s been affected by their beliefs, attitudes, values and so on.”

  Dave’s eyes narrowed. “You’re leading me down a rabbit hole, aren’t you? Whatever you say, it doesn’t matter. We have to destroy the robot to be on the safe side.”

  Harriet was lying on the sand next to the arguing friends. She twitched. She lifted a centimetre off the sand and dropped down again. Her lid moved, as if she were trying to close it.

  No, not now, thought Carrie. Please. Harriet twitched again. Her lid lifted and dropped and rose again. It closed but the seal wasn’t complete. The metal was too bent out of shape.

  They looked at each other in silence. “I’m sorry, Carrie,” Dave said. “We’re running out of time. I don’t have a choice.” He stood and went towards his bag, which was lying open on the sand. His intent was clear. He didn’t make it far. Carrie threw herself at him and flung her arms around his thighs, rugby-tackling him. They both landed face downwards with a thump.

  “You’re not doing it,” she exclaimed in a muffled tone. Her face was buried in the back of Dave’s legs. She was gripping them like a vice.

  “Let me go.” He struggled against Carrie’s grasp. He kicked and wriggled, but she clung on. “I have to do it.” Giving up on Carrie releasing his legs, he began to pull forward on his elbows, dragging her along with him. He inched closer to his bag.

  “No,” shouted Carrie, jumping up and racing forward. As she passed her friend, he shoved her to one side, sending her into the rocky wall. “Ow,” she exclaimed. So he wanted to play rough? She pushed up her sleeves to her elbows.

  Dave had reached his bag and was looking inside. Carrie kicked it out of his hands. It flew across the bank and landed perilously close to the water, its contents spilling out.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” yelled Dave. “Our only way home is in there.” He ran towards the bag.

  Carrie darted forwards and stopped between him and his bag. She took her Bagua Zhang stance. “Even if Harriet is the Liberator, she hasn’t done anything yet. She hasn’t changed the other robots. They aren’t evil like the placktoids. We don’t have the right to destroy her when she hasn’t done any harm. This plan was wrong-headed from the start. We can’t destroy sentient beings because of what they might do.”

  Dave hesitated. His arms dropped to his sides. “Carrie, I can’t fight you. You know I can’t.”

  She held her hands steady. “Well you’re going to have to try if you want to kill Harriet.” Behind her, the robot was slowing regaining power. She hovered a metre or so above the bank.

  “What do you want me to do, Carrie? We have to save the galaxy from the placktoids, even if it means destroying the thing that’s helped us.” Carrie didn’t move an inch. Dave gripped his hair and let go. His face became grim. “All right. If that’s what you want.” He made his hands into fists and held them up in a boxer’s stance. He had folded his thumbs inside, next to his palms.

  Carrie rolled her eyes. “Come on, then.” She would have to be careful not to let him get a punch in or he might break his thumbs. She skipped forward and pushed his hip with the sole of her foot. He stumbled back. Dave made small circles with his fists and lowered his head. Carrie bit her lip to stop herself from smiling.

  Her friend jabbed with his right. Carrie ducked under the blow and wrestled him. She hooked a heel behind his leg to unbalance him and held onto him as he fell so that he wouldn’t hit the ground too hard. In less than a second she had him pinned down. He struggled a few moments before giving up. He sighed. “That was easy, wasn’t it?”

  Carrie nodded.

  Her friend relaxed on the sand. “So, what are you going to do? Hold me here until the deadline’s passed? It won’t matter. As soon as I get the chance I’ll destroy her. I have to.”

  He was right. Carrie turned to the hovering, battered robot. “Go, Harriet. Get away. Fly away and don’t come back.” But the robot didn’t move. “Go away, please. Now, or he’s going to destroy you. Don’t you understand?” Still Harriet made no movement. She seemed to be watching or waiting for something.

  “She doesn’t get what you’re saying. She won’t leave, so you might as well give up. You’re going to have to release me eventually,” said Dave. “You’re going to get thirsty or hungry. You can’t hold me here forever.”

  Damn that robot. Why wouldn’t she leave? Before, it had seemed like she could understand what they said. She must know what was going on. So why stay when her life was in danger? Carrie was missing something important like she always did. Like she had at work, when Dave had told her to watch what the managers did, not listen to what they said. But Harriet wasn’t doing anything. What did it mean?

  She had it. This would make Dave listen. She relaxed her grip on her friend. He immediately wriggled out from under her and went to get his weapon. “Wait, Dave. Please, wait.” She put herself between him and the robot and held up her hands.

  He pointed the weapon at the ground. “Carrie, I’m sorry, but—”

  “You said to take notice of what people do, not what they say, didn’t you? Look at her.”

  She stepped to one side. His gaze went to the hovering robot.

  “She knows w
hat we’re saying,” Carrie went on. “I’m sure of it. I don’t know how much she understands about the placktoids and why they’re here, but she knows what you’re going to do. And she isn’t leaving. She could go now, or she could fly at you and knock you into the water, but she isn’t. I don’t know what she did that made the placktoids evolve as they have, or if she had anything to do with it. But she isn’t malicious. She selfless. She understands she might have had something to do with what happened to her species, and she’s willing to let you kill her to prevent it. Doesn’t that tell you she can’t be responsible? Or at least that she’ll do everything in her power to prevent it, even losing her own life? How can it be right to destroy her?”

  Dave’s hand fell to his side. “You’re right. I should take my own advice. She can’t speak, but her behaviour tells us all we need to know. It would be wrong and stupid to kill her.” He slumped down. “Then what do we do?”

  “We go after the creatures we know are evil. Like the High Commander. If we get him we can stop him from creating evil robots. Maybe the time loop theory is correct. You never know, when we return to the present, there might be no placktoids, or they might be kind and gentle like Harriet.”

  Her friend snorted. “Huh, I’d like to see that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two – A Slippery Trip

  Carrie checked the briefing device. They had one hour left before they would have to open the gateway to their time. Sitting opposite her, in Harriet’s open lid, Dave was looking nervous.

  “Are you sure she can carry us both?” he asked.

  “That’s the third time you’ve asked me that and the answer’s the same. No, I’m not sure, but it doesn’t matter because we’ll find out soon enough when she starts to lift off.”

  Dave didn’t look convinced. “What happens if she can carry us for a little way, but then her power gives out and she drops us in the river?”

  “Stop worrying, won’t you? If we’re too heavy for her she won’t try it, I’m sure. Now, have we got everything?”