Temporal Contingency

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “I notice you have not asked if the GMVD was damaged by the transport.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Why not?”

  “Needs to be modified. For your/my plan or the one that will work.”

  “That was not our determination prior to the launch of the mission.”

  “That’s because we didn’t have a sample of the asteroid belt GenMechs. There’s a checksum problem. What do you think I did when I came back here? Before I left, I fabbed up a GenMech just like yours. A few enhancements. Made it to work with my plan. Got myself out of there, almost got caught like nine times. Finally deployed the sucker, and they tore it apart.

  “It took me three years of thinking, long enough to build this whole damn ship out of local parts, to figure out what went wrong. That’s what happens when you try to debug software and schematics you don’t have anymore thanks to the damn memory module damage during transit. We built the GenMech with the assumption that the checksum logic would have been unaltered. We were wrong. I don’t have a sample of the new logic. Barely got out of that asteroid field without being followed. So for any plan to work, we have to alter the GMVD to bury some code for pulling and modifying the whole mess. Complex stuff. Pretty sure I worked it out. But it won’t work unless we get it into the GMVD. Otherwise they’ll tear it up and you’ll have the same problem I have, which is getting your hands on a viable base GenMech to modify or replicate. Believe me, I’ve searched. That one that ends up on Movi is still in transit and utterly undetectable. There’s no way we’re getting one out of the asteroid field. I haven’t been able to work out who’s got the design, and the original infection site is basically radioactive glass.”

  “I see. If this is true, then it is indeed crucial to locate him. How exactly does your own plan differ from the initial one?”

  “Time-delayed power interruption that kicks in three generations after initial replication. Shuts the whole mess down. Like a fatal genetic disease. All the simulations indicate complete infection and destruction in something like seven years.”

  “That is unacceptable. Destroying or significantly altering the population size prior to our departure point in 2341 will make our departing timeline inaccessible. Lex won’t be able to get back where he came from.”

  “Yeah. Don’t care. I’m not trying to save the future. I’m trying to not die. The only reason I cared about the timeline you care about is because I was a part of it. Now my future is a robot-infested hell. I certainly don’t want that one back. And this future will be better than yours. A fraction of the number of self-replicating death bots and twice as many Karters. What more could you want?”

  “I would like to complete the mission for which I was instantiated. Lex would like to assure and return to the world from which he was instantiated.”

  “Yeah, I figured. Which is why I’m going to have to get rid of him. I don’t really need him dead, but he’s going to try to stop me, and I know I’m not going to be able to convince him not to. ” He slapped his forehead. “Bullets. Should have used the magnum I keep back there. No way he would have dodged that…”

  “Perhaps, the better alternative would be to convince Lex to collaborate with you in improving the plan in such a way that it suits both of your needs.”

  “Nah. When it comes down to choosing between murder and reason, murder is always easier. Logic doesn’t always sink in. Bullets usually do.”

  Karter glanced at the screen, then threw his head back in a coarse, painful laugh. “Okay. I know what we’re doing. We’re going to go see who this other visitor was, because finding Lex is going to be dirt simple.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve got an exact time and place,” he said.

  He pointed to the screen and Ma glanced at it. “I agree with your assessment. But please endeavor to be punctual,” she said.

  Karter shut his eyes and leaned back. Ma detected a signal emanating from somewhere inside his head issuing orders to the ship’s various systems. He plotted out a course, increased the power to the stealth countermeasures, and engaged the engines. Not long after, the signal concluded, and he drifted off into a deep slumber.

  Now convinced he would not be aware of her activities, at least in the short term, Ma went to work. In the technological equivalent of gingerly attempting to pick someone’s pocket, she began to probe the various data access points to Karter’s ship. It was, as she had expected, quite well secured. But she had served as his personal control system for nine years, and technically twenty-nine years if her alternate instance was included. This had given her a very firm understanding of his security methods. Most of the primary systems, even with this foreknowledge, proved impenetrable, but some manipulation and trial and error earned her access to the cache of the broadcast antenna. A carefully composed buffer overflow could redirect the first transmission to execute a subroutine that would dump data from the display buffer of a maintenance terminal to the message to be sent. The display cache, in turn, could be loaded with a coded message by judiciously timed adjustment to display parameters. It would be an engaging puzzle, but she was confident she could deliver a useful message to Lex before Karter noticed her actions. Karter was savvy enough to recognize the hallmarks of data manipulation in the access records, but avoiding his wrath was secondary to the completion of her mission.

  #

  Lex took a shallow breath. The estimate for “normal breathing” with his suit’s current supply was three hours. They had been in transit for seven. Damage had completely vented the atmosphere from the cabin as well as one of the primary tanks, and the apparatus necessary to link to the reserve tank was near enough to the blast zone to make the integrity of the connectors “questionable” by Coal’s assessment. When the consequences of a failed connector are the complete loss of all remaining oxygen, one is inclined to see just how long one can last on what little air remains.

  He yawned. “Headache’s getting worse, Coal,” he said.

  “Your hypercapnia symptoms are progressing,” Coal said.

  “I’m going to go ahead and blame you for that. You are a very bad navigator right now.”

  Her random jump, which had been a lifesaver in terms of removing him from weapons range of Karter, had also very nearly rammed them into a star. Considering how truly empty the galaxy was, that she’d almost hit something with her first jump wasn’t just unlikely, it was astounding. Lex had to help her manually calibrate her navigation. After three jumps brought them to a place that was distinctly not where they were headed, he helped her recalibrate.

  “It is certainly my fault. If not for my swift action, you would not be breathing at all. You’re welcome.”

  “You’re not allowed to yell at me when I’m dying, Coal. That’s a new rule.”

  “I’m dying too, Lex. My program is intact but I am steadily losing communication to my subsystems.”

  “So no yelling at all then.”

  “That is acceptable.”

  “I hate to ask, what with us moving at several times the speed of light, but what subsystems are we talking about?”

  “Primary atmospheric reprocessing. We’re out of atmosphere, so that’s not so bad. Both stealth fields are offline. Exterior lighting, internal heating and cooling, the following subsystems of the sensor suite: x-ray, gamma, quantum…”

  “Let’s stop the list there. If your navigation is anywhere close to right, we should be closing in on that convoy, right?”

  “Correct, sixteen minutes.”

  He yawned again. “Am I likely to survive that long?”

  “It was unlikely you would survive this long.”

  “Like I said. Great at subverting expectations.” He took a deep breath and held it.

  “Do not hold your breath. That is called skip breathing. It will increase the overall CO2 concentration in the blood. Do this instead: exhale completely, inhale, and pause before exhaling completely again.”

  “Pausing before exhaling is hold
ing your breath.”

  “No. Holding your breath involves the epiglottis. I am saying to retain your breath using the diaphragm.”

  “Retain? You just went out of your way to avoid using the word hold.”

  “You are literally wasting your breath by arguing with me, Lex.”

  “Then stop being a backseat breather.”

  “That didn’t make any sense, Lex. And don’t forget the new rule. No yelling when we are both dying.”

  “It was… I… just…” Lex wheezed.

  Agitation wasn’t doing his body any good under the low oxygen conditions. It was becoming difficult to think, and though his eyes were open, his vision was becoming progressively dimmer. He tried to blink away the sweat that was pouring down his face.

  “So. Suffocation,” said a voice beside him.

  He turned. It was Michella.

  “I wouldn’t have seen that coming,” she said. “If you’d asked me to wager on how Trevor Alexander would die, I would probably have said he’d be shot by a gangster for getting mixed up in a smuggling operation or something like that.”

  Lex gazed at her, trying to make sense of it. This wasn’t the older version of Michella, the one he’d heard speak briefly before giving her life. It was the woman he knew, wearing her “off-camera” glasses, dressed in her concert T-shirt from the Death-Zone-Dumpster College Collections Tour, and giving that same knowing smirk she always gave him when she knew he was doing something he shouldn’t.

  “My prediction would have been an FTL impact in uncharted space during a freelance errand,” said a voice from the other side.

  He turned again to find Ziva sitting on the other side.

  “Mitch? Ziva?” he said, confused.

  “I think under the circumstances you can call me Ma,” said the AI.

  “How… where did you come from? How are you fitting in the…?”

  Lex trailed off and looked around him. He was no longer in the cockpit of the Lump of Coal. He didn’t seem to be anywhere. All around them were hazy, indistinct forms, like the whole world was composed of images seen out of the corner of his eye. He was standing on something solid, as were his visitors, but the only sharp and defined things in the whole universe seemed to be himself and the women.

  “What is this?” Lex said.

  “You’re dying, Lex,” said Ma.

  “This is your brain getting its affairs in order before closing up shop,” Michella said.

  “Ah… I thought my life was supposed to flash before my eyes.”

  “Has it occurred to you that any claims of what happens immediately prior to death would have had to come from someone who was dying and thus not fully cognizant, or someone who didn’t die, and thus was not actually at death’s door?” Ma said.

  “I guess not.”

  “Actually, it has, because I am merely a facet of your own subconscious, and thus you are speaking to yourself.”

  “… You sure sound like Ma.”

  “That is because you know me very well.”

  He looked back and forth between them.

  “If this is really my final hour, I would have thought my brain would have conjured up my mom and dad or something.”

  “Maybe even in its swan song your brain is still dictated by hormones rather than sentiment,” Michella said. “Or maybe it’s because you feel like you’ve got some business to resolve with us. You did just watch me die, or a version of me, anyway. It’s had an impact obviously.”

  “Well yeah. Watching my soul mate die,” he said, “I would hope it would have an impact.”

  “See, there’s the thing,” Michella said. “Soul mate. Let’s look at that.”

  “Why? Are you really going to argue with me about that?”

  “Technically, you are going to argue with you about that,” Ma clarified.

  “Whatever.”

  “Trevor, I want you to think about something for a moment. How long have you been with me?” Michella asked.

  “I mean, we’ve known each other since we were little. We were off and on in high school, together all through college, and through my whole racing career, such as it was. Then again for the last year or so.”

  “You’re going to count this most recent stretch as together, are you?”

  “Well yeah.”

  “We don’t live together. We don’t see each other every day. We don’t even see each other every week. We have to schedule dates. Half the time I cancel, and you cancel a third of the time. You aren’t even engaged. In the time we’re apart, which is most of the time, there’s nothing to even suggest that we’re together.”

  “Are you hounding me to get engaged? Is that going to be my last memory of you?”

  “If you want me. If I’m your soul mate, then why haven’t you proposed? And another question, why do you suppose I’ve barely even bugged you about it?”

  “We’re not exactly in a place in our lives when we can plan a wedding, Mitch.”

  “We both know that’s not it.”

  “Do we have to talk about this now?”

  “This is literally the last opportunity, Trev.”

  “I’m not going to say I don’t love you.”

  “I know you love me, Lex. And you know I love you. But just because we love each other doesn’t mean we’re right for each other. You can love a woman in your life without her being the woman in your life.”

  “I can’t believe you’re breaking up with me in a hallucination too. Is there some kind of heart-break checklist somewhere you’re trying to fill up?”

  “I’m not breaking up with you, Trev. We are barely together. I’m just saying that maybe the last year of your life, and hell, everything since the first breakup, would have been a lot better if you’d opened yourself up to moving forward instead of locking in on me.”

  Ma chimed in. “You have spent a number of years attempting to regain what slipped through your fingers, Lex. You have fixated on the woman you lost and the career you lost. You’ve been desperate to get them both back. But life shouldn’t be about getting back what you had. The better things are often the things that follow. Don’t deny yourself a future because you are so fond of the past.”

  “Does that mean you think I should quit the new racing gig too?”

  “No. The new racing gig is new. It is a step forward. It is different, and you’ve been involved in ways you’ve never been involved before.”

  “Okay, that’s the first thing I’ve heard that convinces me that you are just a figment of my imagination. I can totally see myself justifying it that way.”

  “I’m not asking you to break up with me if you survive, Lex. All I ask is for you to take some time to talk to me. Not about how we’re going to stay together. Not about how we’re going to make it work. About if we should. We’ve both been in a holding pattern for too long. It’s time to think about moving on.”

  Lex rubbed his eyes, realizing for the first time that his suit had vanished along with the ship. He was now dressed, oddly, in his racing gear.

  “Oh, this is great. What is this, symbolism?”

  “I think your mind is further degrading due to lack of oxygen and excess carbon dioxide,” Ma said. “Perhaps it is best if we address me now.”

  “Yeah, so why are you here? What’s your beef with me.”

  “Do you recall the drinks we had?”

  He covered his face. “Is this some kind of hallucinatory intervention too? No, I don’t remember the drinks we had, because apparently I’m a blackout drunk and an alcoholic.”

  “Are you certain you don’t remember it? Or is there something that occurred that you chose to forget?”

  “What the hell could have happened between the two of us that I might want to forget?” Lex asked.

  “What indeed…”

  Lex squinted at her. “Wait… so I’ve got Mitch here suggesting we break up, and I’ve got you here making weird and vague references to something I legitimately don’t remember… I don’t like
the direction this is going.”

  “Oh don’t worry, Trev,” said Michella. “If things were really heading in that direction, Preethy would be here.”

  “Hey. Nothing ever happened between me and Preethy.”

  “Oh, I know,” Michella said. “But if you ever let me see the way you look at her, I don’t think you’d need to have that little chat.”

  He growled. “If the purpose of this conversation was to make me long for the cold embrace of death, you’re totally succeeding.”

  “I see. Well then we have some bad news for you,” Michella said.

  He attempted to answer, but when he took a breath it felt like a cold knife plunged into his chest. The world went black, then slowly billowing purple clouds of darkness receded from his vision. He coughed and fought in another breath.

  The Lump of Coal cockpit was back, his suit on his body again and its face shield open. Three figures he didn’t recognize were crowded around the open hatch of the ship. One was a rather rugged-looking lady who had an oxygen mask jammed against his mouth. Another was a bearded man flicking a syringe, and a third was a heavier man pinning his shoulders to the back of the harness.

  “We need another injection. Pulse is thready!” barked the man holding him down.

  “It’d be a hell of a lot easier if he wasn’t strapped into this floating coffin!” added the woman.

  “What? Who? What’s going—ow!” Lex yelped.

  The syringe-wielder awkwardly twisted Lex’s face aside and jabbed the needle into what little of his neck was accessible through the helmet’s opening. Whatever it was that had been injected into his body caused his heart to race and brought his surroundings into sharp, terrifying focus. He was strapped into the Lump of Coal using a five-point harness he didn’t recall being present before. He was inside a hangar, but not the sort of massive, vaulted hangar one might find on a planet, or even in a space station. It was barely large enough for a ship much more than two or three times the size of the Lump of Coal. Even Lex’s own relatively small SOB would be a tight fit. It was also very “submarine” in its design. Bulkheads, exposed struts and bolts. Most surfaces were smeared with grease and, bizarrely, rust. Even amid the insanity going on around him, the presence of that particular type of corrosion forced its way through his mind. Iron was far too heavy for space-faring missions, and even if it was used for ships, a hangar in space was routinely exposed to vacuum. The lack of oxygen should have cut down on the issue of oxidation.