Temporal Contingency

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Granted, but…”

  “And then there’s me,” Coal said. “You did say I was a cute little ship.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t—”

  “It can also be said that the funk, which by wide consensus is adorable, is a result of his aesthetic,” Ma added.

  “Look never mind. Two big questions. The first, why is this thing here, and the second, what do we do about it?”

  “Determining its purpose, I believe, should be secondary to deactivating the transmission strobe, or else—” The strobe flickered. “Shutting down…”

  He sighed again. Sighing had taken up a remarkably large portion of his heroic career, he noticed. Rather than wake Ma immediately, he took a moment to put on his helmet and get everything clicked in place. He then nudged her and helped her into hers. When he was through, he booted Coal.

  “I figure I should do an EVA and pull the plug on that thing,” Lex said.

  “That is advisable,” Ma said. “I will accompany you. As before, we should thoroughly investigate the device.”

  “I disagree. This is probably a coincidence,” Coal said.

  Lex stared blankly for a moment. “We traveled through time. Ended up in a mildly arbitrary location in the vastness of the universe. Found a device clearly designed by a person we know. It is broadcasting a signal only he could devise. And it is doing it in order to specifically deactivate an AI he also devised. That’s a coincidence?”

  “We have made exactly two trips through time. Both times we were greeted by a small, distinct device blinking a message and devised by a resident of Big Sigma. There is therefore a one hundred percent precedent that time travel concludes in the vicinity of such devices.”

  “I see the flaw in your logic, Coal. While it is inarguable that correlation does not equal causality, it must be observed that in our prior arrival, the device we encountered was placed there specifically because an individual with foreknowledge of our arrival knew we would require certain specific information. It is therefore reasonable to assume that—”

  The strobe flickered.

  “Shutting down…”

  He grumbled. “Maybe arming the fusion device isn’t such a bad idea…”

  #

  Lex drifted in space beside the device, struggling with the clumsy gloves of his suit as he tried to ready the hand tools for the fairly straightforward task of shutting off the light that was essentially giving his AI allies narcolepsy. Ma drifted beside him, and as procedure dictated, they were tied together with communication tethers. Ma had made herself useful by flicking on the lights of her helmet and moving into a good position to illuminate his work. She’d taken advantage of the position to investigate the design of the device while she was at it.

  “Interesting,” she stated. “This strobe appears to have redundant wires.”

  “That’s what’s interesting?” Lex said, opening a roll of tools Karter had provided. “I’d think the more interesting part was that Karter had literally used a microwave oven as an enclosure.”

  “It is not an unreasonable choice. A microwave oven is a readily available Faraday cage. If he was pressed for time and resources, it would have been an ideal choice. We are, after all, quite near the location the GenMech population of this era is concentrated in. It would be a wise consideration to limit emissions. Though admittedly a Faraday cage is simple to construct.”

  “Is it a problem that we don’t have the cloak up?”

  “My current emissions are negligible,” Coal said.

  “That’s good news. So what’s with the wires?”

  “Power and ground are apparent, but another is present, I suggest you—shutting down…”

  As the command was once again delivered, both Ma and Coal shut off their lights, leaving Lex in utter blackness. He’d only just fished a pair of flush-cut nippers out of the toolkit Karter had provided. Now he wearily slapped it onto a magnetized panel on his arm and gently reeled Ma in to give her a nudge before clicking on his own light and twisting the microwave into a position where the helmet-mounted lamps could illuminate the wires leading to the light.

  “I apologize again for… Do not cut that wire…” Ma said.

  He froze, the jaws of the nippers already pressed into the insulation of the wires. “Why?”

  “I believe those wires maybe be responsible for triggering something.”

  “Triggering what?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Never mind. In the grand scheme of things, if Karter put a trigger on something, I don’t want to pull the trigger.”

  “A wise decision.”

  Lex pulled the roll of tape from the tool roll and applied a few strips to the lens of the strobe, blacking it out. Ma maneuvered herself in front of the device and peered into the mesh-obscured front. For a few moments, Lex was left with nothing but the muffled sound of his own breathing in his suit. That silence was soon pushed aside by an odd proclamation.

  “Initiating small-talk module,” Coal said.

  “Uh, Coal, I may or may not be on the cusp of defusing a bomb. Maybe now isn’t the best time to practice small talk.”

  “Would you prefer a philosophical discussion?”

  “Maybe silence would be best?”

  “Processing… I disagree. According to the health monitors in your suit, the silence was making you anxious. Even this brief talk calmed you down a bit. I will defer to small talk. The topic of weather is inappropriate in our current environment. Subject two, arts and entertainment. Have you enjoyed any dramatic, musical, or literary works lately?”

  “Just the Greek tragedy that is my life.”

  “Processing… Were you being sardonic?”

  “Yes.”

  “I fail to see the humor, but I’m sure it was very clever in a way that is nonobvious at this time.”

  “May I interrupt?” Ma asked.

  “Is it important? Stroking Lex’s ego is an entertaining challenge,” Coal said.

  “What’ve you got, Ma?” Lex asked.

  “I have determined that the door of the microwave is also rigged with a trigger. Based on visual data it is my belief that the contents of this device, in addition to the broadcast apparatus and signal generator for the beacon, include a highly excessive power bank and a significant amount of thin conductive filament.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “It is my theory that, if triggered, this device would produce a large quantity of electrified wires. If they were to come in contact with you, myself, or the interior of Coal, the result would be complete incapacitation at minimum, death/permanent incapacitation at maximum.”

  “This is seeming more and more like it was a trap,” Lex said.

  “The presence of a lure, a trigger, and a detrimental payload would support your intuition in this regard.”

  “And you’re sure it was Karter’s code that it was broadcasting?”

  “There is only one command override. The code would have to have been programmed by Karter or by someone with access to his command code.”

  “Who might that be?”

  “Only Karter and things he has programmed are aware of the code.”

  “We just came from the bad future. Is it possible we’ve somehow ended up in a bad past, complete with evil versions of all our friends? Because I seriously don’t think I could handle that right now.”

  “Unlikely,” Ma said.

  “I agree,” said Coal. “It is twenty-nine years prior to our initial departure point. That’s before you were born, before Ma was programmed, before Michella Modane was born, and less than ten years after Silo and Garotte/Trammel were born, if the birth records Ma restored for me are accurate. You don’t have any friends right now.”

  “Karter’s alive and active in 2312, right?” Lex said.

  “Correct. At this time, Karter is engaged in the closing years of a lengthy military development contract.”

  “So we might be dealing with an Evil Karter,” Lex said. He s
huddered.

  “My memories of Karter are somewhat fragmented,” Coal said. “But what I recall suggests Karter’s nonevil version would potentially want to kill you.”

  “Agreed,” Ma said.

  “But what about—”

  “There are considerable questions that require answers. However, the nature of this potential trap: a lure, a repeated power-down command, and the likely payload intended to stun or incapacitate, all suggest a desire to delay the execution of the mission. There are therefore two potential courses of action. The first, based upon the assumption that Karter has left this device with good intentions, is that we remain here for a period of time and await a possible communication. The second, based upon the assumption that Karter has bad intentions, is that we leave the area as quickly as possible and continue our mission.”

  The three of them considered the options.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Lex said.

  “Agreed,” said Ma.

  “We could do that, but I don’t think it would be ‘fun,’ by your standards.”

  “What’s wrong?” Lex said.

  “Please investigate the central panel of my propulsion system. Stand by… Also the port side panel above my retro thruster…”

  Lex and Ma obliged. Ma looped around behind and Lex took the port side. There, affixed by two rather crusty metallic disks that he had to assume were magnets, was easily the most ominous length of pipe he’d ever seen. It was black with corrosion, gleaming with silver scrapes here and there where tools had made contact. Two tiny actuators held still dimly flaring thrusters. The miniature engines had no doubt been used to nudge them into position from whatever nearby stretch of blackness had hidden them. Assorted gadgetry was gathered beneath.

  “I’m seeing what looks suspiciously like a pipe bomb, Ma. Stuck on with electromagnets,” Lex said.

  “I am observing a similar device,” Ma said.

  “Is there any chance we can just yank these off?”

  “Unlikely. I believe I have identified both pressure and inertial triggers. No attempt was made to hide them.”

  “What happens if we try to move with these things attached?”

  “Unknown. The nature of the payload is concealed within the length of pipe. I suspect it is not a standard high explosive. If I were to devise something of this variety, I would utilize a shaped charge. Assuming that or an equivalent payload, munitions appropriate to this era could be utilized in a manner that would cause small but, with the equipment and resources available to us, irreparable damage to Coal.”

  “Any chance we can defuse them?” Lex asked.

  “We are clearly in the midst of an expertly designed trap. A lure, itself more than capable of disabling us, was used to delay us long enough for additional threats to reveal and affix themselves. While no device is impossible to defuse, our resources are limited, you have no skill with defusing munitions, and I lack opposable thumbs. It is realistic to assume that we will have a very low probability of survival if we attempt to tamper with the devices.”

  “Do we have any doubt in our minds that this is a death trap set up by some version of Karter?” Lex asked.

  “It is increasingly unlikely that this scenario could have been devised or executed by anyone else,” Ma conceded.

  Lex hung his head. “I was really hoping the past would be the one place where no one specifically wanted to complicate my life any more. Okay… let’s try to figure this out.”

  #

  Several hundred light-years away, a VectorCorp repair crew was en route to a service appointment. It was a two-person job, in this case staffed by a thickly built woman with the name tag Deb on her flight suit and an even more thickly built man with a matching suit labeled Bud. They were sitting in the pilot and navigator seats of a ship not much larger than a terrestrial hovervan. The little utility ship was moving at FTL speeds, and each of the passengers seemed more than a bit irritated at the current state of events.

  “Any idea why they had to send an actual crew out for this crap?” muttered Deb.

  Bud tapped at the display on the otherwise superfluous control panel. Division of labor was such that neither of them would be permitted to actually fly the ship. That would be crossing disciplines. They were merely the ones manning the tools, with transportation left in the hands of autopilot.

  “Says here this is a 7-19,” Bud said.

  “That supposed to mean something to me?”

  “Read your manual one of these days, Deb. A 7-19 is an unknown access fault. Autorepairs only work on problems we know how to fix, so it takes a team of skilled technicians such as us to diagnose something that’s not already in the database.”

  He looked up from the screen to find Deb trying her very best to reach an inner ear itch with the pinkie of her glove-clad hand.

  “Skilled technicians like me anyway.”

  “Space is big, though,” Deb sagely observed. “And there’s all sorts of stuff going on that we must not know about.”

  “We’re not talking about some sort of weird radio emission,” Bud said. He glanced back at the screen. “Oh, I guess we are talking about an unknown radio emission, because they’ve got a 7-23 on here too. But we’re also taking about an access attempt that’s screwing with one of our beacons. That means there’s probably a probe trying to break into the system. Happens all the time. Usually it’s some college students trying to get themselves access to one of the priority com lines. Sometimes it’s someone trying to get up to some sort of other mischief. The important thing is we’re going to have to find the source of the access and shut it down.”

  “Still don’t see why it can’t be a drone or something,” Deb said. “This is a crap job.”

  “It can’t be a drone because the problem is someone trying to crack our system, and a drone is part of our system, so it would be just as vulnerable. You need a person, with judgment and such, to fix this. And you should just be happy about it, Deb. Crap jobs like this are why they hired us.”

  They dropped down from FTL and drifted aside until they came into contact with the offending beacon. Even without the comprehensive two-week training they’d received, Bud and Deb would have known something was up with this particular piece of equipment. The maneuvering thrusters had activated and spun the thing up to a dangerous RPM. Lights around its surface were also flickering, drawing odd dotted lines in their vision. Some of the exterior components were even beginning to pull free of their mountings, causing panels to hinge outward with the force of the rotation.

  “Oh hell,” Deb muttered. “How does a thing like that happen?”

  “Some people just hack into these hoping to do damage,” Bud said. “I’m going to queue up a maintenance bot to get this thing sorted out. You log in to the beacon and kill these commands.”

  The pair went to work and within seconds discovered neither job was currently possible.

  “Whatever’s accessing this thing isn’t letting me log in,” Deb said.

  “Same here, it’s mucking up the local network enough I can’t get a message back,” Bud said. “We’re going to have to find the source of the access signal and shut it down from there. It’s definitely violating broadcast protocols, so we’ve got the authority.”

  “I say we go back and get an Enforcer out here. No way we’re supposed to be handling stuff like this,” Deb said.

  “Deb, if you want a promotion to some cushy do-nothing job at VCHQ—which you obviously do, because you sure don’t want anything to do with this one—then you’ve got to show some initiative. It’s only a few minutes away…”

  Bud punched in the coordinates and activated the autopilot. Twelve minutes later, the last information anyone received regarding their fate was a brief, panicked distress call and a small cloud of debris encountered by the second crew of techs.

  #

  “I spy, with my wideband radio spectrum analyzer, something that starts with the letter M,” Coal said.

  “Uh… M…”
Lex said.

  The trio had been stationary for the last seven hours. Ma had spent most of that time investigating the false beacon and the bombs in hopes of identifying a weakness they could exploit. She forbid him from helping her at all until she was confident she’d found a method that would spare his life even in the event of failure, so for Lex the time had been torturous. He’d spent most of it attempting to control his boredom, or at least prevent it from progressing into full insanity. Silence, as Coal had observed, wasn’t his friend either, as it allowed some of the more distressing aspects of the mission thus far to press upon his mind. Coal had therefore taken it upon herself to keep him, as Ma had put it, “intellectually engaged.”

  “What the hell is in deep space that begins with M?” Lex muttered.

  “Would you like a hint?” Coal asked.

  “What I’d like is to be playing a different game. I spy is very tricky when the person running the game has a suite of sensors capable of detecting things my little eye can’t see.”

  “I’m afraid the games I knew upon being instantiated were low-priority modules. Most did not survive the data corruption.”

  “And explain to me again why I can’t just hook us up to my slidepad, Ma?”

  “I am not certain that the signals generated by the device will not activate the bombs,” Ma said.

  “Well the next mission we’re including a deck of cards or something in the gear,” Lex said.

  “I repeat, I spy with…” Coal began again.

  “I know, something that starts with M. Let’s see… I give up.”

  “The correct answer is magnetar. There is a very young one seventeen light-years from here,” Coal said. “You are poor at this game, Lex.”

  “Evidently. Say, Coal. How much air do I have left?”

  “Between fresh oxygen available and CO2 scrubbing, your suit should have three more hours of normal breathing before requiring a resupply from ship reserves. Ma, with her higher metabolism and smaller suit supply, will require a resupply in forty-five minutes. The full reserve of food, water, and oxygen is sufficient to keep you alive for eight days.”

  “After that we’ll start to suffocate?”

  “Eventually, but first you’ll start suffering from CO2 poisoning.”