by David Nell
Marie had laid out breakfast, but she was nowhere in sight. Dr. Hull watched Andrei eat then led him around his Old Montreal palace. Andrei drifted along through massive rooms of grand and simple beauty, realizing Hull's wealth ran even deeper than he imagined. Most of the rooms Hull never used, and sat furnished like museums of generations-old royalty. Sleek railings, sparkling fixtures throwing clean light down wide hallways, fine art from distant cultures – Andrei recognized Hull had been given much of his wealth, rewards for his contributions to science. Hull spoke constantly but Andrei heard none of it, wondering instead how many of Hull's great scientific achievements were simply the relay of alien intelligence.
The beauty of Hull's place should have impressed Andrei, but the idea of owning objects now seemed hollow. The gold will be destroyed with the grass, Andrei thought, and this man who values objects is the unwitting agent of death. A stream of contemptuous urgency rose in Andrei's gut. "Where is the egg?"
Dr. Hull stopped and looked at him. "For a man who can travel through time you seem like you're in a terrible rush."
The weight of the situation descended upon him. "The world will end if we don't change something."
"You can see the egg when my research team has analyzed it. Now explain to me how time travel is possible. And why I should believe you."
Dr. Hull took Andrei back to the small office with the kitchen, now piled high with dozens of books, the latest in mathematics and physics. Hull sat in a chair and pulled out a pipe and tobacco.
Andrei sunk deeply into a chair, seeming to sink deeper as he looked across a pile of textbooks at Hull. "I can't explain all of time travel to you. There's too much that I don't understand. It would be a waste of time." The futility made him feel light-headed.
"Once again," Hull laughed and crossed his legs, knocking the pipe against the heel of his loafer, "we've got time. Now let's start. Don't worry, I've been told I'm a quick study."
"We can't just use the egg for more time whenever we want. Coherence...does something to..."Andrei leaned forward, hands on the table, finding it hard to swallow.
"I should say," said Hull, "you hardly seem like the type that could invent something so technical." Hull slid a physics text beneath Andrei's face. "Try to focus. Let's begin with quantum physics as I know it."
"I can't," Andrei put his palms on his head to stabilize his thoughts.
Hull snapped his pipe against the computer. "You will." He gritted his teeth, eyes intent until Andrei resigned and opened the first book.
Hull composed himself into an air of skepticism as Andrei took a deep breath and began. Extrapolating from his memory of scientific knowledge, Andrei strung together addled years of theory, speaking slow and deliberate. Hull fired divergent questions on everything. Andrei seemed to speak in slow motion, one point after another until hours later a wave of lethargy came over Andrei so compelling that he was asleep before Jean-Claude and Marie got him back into bed.
Limbs of darkness seethed over Andrei until he woke to his dread, amplified. He knew he must force Hull to show him the egg. With the egg he could prove time travel by going one harmless minute into the future. But once again Hull escorted Andrei to breakfast and coffee, and immediately back to the small office for another day of lessons. Andrei's thoughts retreated from him like apparitions in the corner of an eye.
"So, where we left off yesterday."
"No, just, let me show you."
Hull squinted one eye and punched the intercom, summoning Jean-Claude. Hull stared at Andrei for twenty seconds until he arrived.
"Jean-Claude if Andrei doesn't do what I tell him, you will shoot him again."
Andrei looked at the stillness in Jean-Claude's eyes. Rubber bullets aren't fatal, he thought. But I am his prisoner. And in my condition, fighting would be useless. Andrei slouched back in his chair.
Hull smoked his pipe and listened to Andrei explain the Transient, interjecting frequently, causing digressions to explain the supporting science. Once again nausea and torpor crept over Andrei and he returned to bed.
With Marie's help, Andrei crawled under the blankets. Through the haze of his own thoughts, he tugged Marie's sleeve. "Have you been married?"
She turned away but Andrei held on.
"I could have been," he said. A darkening ache ebbed from his heart. "But it won't matter. If he won't help me."
Marie peeked nervously at the door where Jean-Claude waited just outside. "Are you with her now? The young you from now? Are they together?" She obviously knew more about him than she let on.
The younger version of Andrei from this time was attending university, busy with as many pretty, self-absorbed girls as possible. Andrei loathed his earlier self. "Hull does not love you."
She pulled away from his grip. "Please, stop." She looked at Andrei's face with a quiver in her eye before fleeing out the door.
He wanted to follow, but sleep claimed him. In the dark his fears materialized. The information he had given to Dr. Hull was at least twelve years ahead of this time. If Hull decided to give the technology to the squams...then they could go back...
Andrei woke in a cold sweat, utterly confused. He blinked, drifting into consciousness, and saw Marie's face in the darkness. She was frightened.
"Breakfast is coming," she said.
Andrei rubbed his eyes, heart rate rising.
"Is it true?" She gripped his shoulders.
Andrei realized it was before dawn. Marie had snuck to his room.
"It's all true," Andrei said.
Marie put her hands together, shaking. "He drugs your food, to keep you here."
Andrei sat up and breathed deeply. His thoughts were muddled, but not nearly what he had felt these past few days, weeks, who knows? He took Marie's hands in his and looked in her eyes. "Thank you. Now go so you aren't caught."
She nodded, wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, and left. Andrei got up and crouched near his door, adrenaline consolidating his will. After two minutes of silence with his ear to the door, Andrei left his room.
Slow and silent, Andrei walked past the small office down the slow-curving hall. He kept tight to the inner wall past plain-looking doors, and soon noticed a hum. There is some kind of large machinery down here, he thought. Is this curve getting tighter? He felt like he was walking an inward spiral, as though trapped in a particle accelerator. The hum became a rumble and he noticed the floor descended a slow grade. The hairs on his arm stood up. Why do I feel so strange? This hall is definitely a spiral. Dread quiet came over him as he continued, walking now in a continuous turn. Yet inward he walked, inward and down. Finally the hall ended in a door of solid lead.
Andrei put his hand on the latch and waited. The latch was massive and ran into a locking mechanism that was disengaged. A drop of sweat fell from his forehead and landed on the latch beside his hand. He looked at the tiny dark splatter. More sober than he had been in days, everything still had an unreal feeling to him. He heard the hum but nothing else.
When he pushed the latch a sharp hiss issued from the door and wind blew his face dry. Andrei pulled the heavy door open and entered. A large, convex rubber membrane blocked the hallway. Cool air rushed down at him from a grate in the ceiling. He pushed at the membrane and it split in the middle, flapping around the opening. He realized it was a rudimentary airlock, with two levels of positive pressure to keep foreign elements out. Then why was the door unlocked? On the other side he stretched the membrane back together and it sealed itself perfectly. On the other side was another lead door. Andrei somehow knew this would be unlocked as well.
When he hauled the door open a blast of terror raced down into his bones. Dr. Hull sat with one leg crossed over his knee, calm as could be. Two huge lizard-beings hunched inside a glass chamber, seeming to twist a three-dimensional hologram in a new weird direction, parts of it luminescent. Noticing Andrei, the squams extinguished the hologram and even themselves. Now they peered from shadow, half here, half not-here, beady eye
s gleaming, almost smiling from broad, reptilian mouths.
"Relax," Hull said, and stood. He walked toward Andrei, hands spread in a way that meant, 'keep calm'.
The dark reptiles stared at Andrei from the chamber. Andrei couldn't look away. Dr. Hull touched Andrei lightly on the shoulder and turned him to walk around a large display of security monitors. Andrei realized Hull had seen him coming, must have been watching him walk down the hall towards this...in-between place, communication chamber, where he finds evil knowledge. Andrei's heart unfroze and thumped as Hull guided him around a large computer table. When Andrei turned from the squams to round the table a surge of fear made him look back, desperate to keep watch on those dark eyes.
"There's nothing to worry about, my boy," said Dr. Hull. "Everything is very civil, you see. Have a seat. Maybe you can help us with a couple questions."
Andrei fumbled onto an armrest and let himself down into a chair. Hull sat across from him and smiled. Andrei wanted to kill them all, but knew there were more squams out there, more than he could know, hovering beyond perception. Suddenly Andrei felt a molten knot in his gut as his brain registered the holographic display they analyzed. My work...Hull was sharing the technology of time travel with the squams. The last hope was being given to the enemy. He hated and pitied Hull. "Why?"
Hull folded his hands. "We need them! They brought us up from primitives. Without them human beings would have remained stupid for ever."
But it doesn't make sense.
"You killed us," Andrei said flatly. "Everything you have gained, you will lose, before or after you die."
"But I have lived! And I have been given so much," with a wry grin over his shoulder toward the chamber. "Their technology unlocked everything! You want to cut that off."
Andrei sat back, mind fizzling. "How long have you been working for them?"
"You mean how long have they been working for us."
Andrei squeezed his eyes shut and bent over, brain short-circuiting.
"Now that we have the egg, the squams have always watched over us, guided us through history, you see. Our progress was inevitable thanks to them. And to you."
No...
"And fortunately for human beings, there have always been an elect few, such as myself, working with them to ensure perfect continuity in human development. It appears you arrived right on time." Hull smiled and twisted his moustache.
"It's impossible," Andrei managed. His brain was a cloud of chaos. Separate timelines now...or one expression of time in multiple dimensions? Was our destruction ensured because I came back to stop it? Is it all inevitable? Andrei felt his sanity slipping away while dark snakes chittered to each other in the corner.
"It's not impossible," Hull said. "It's reality. It all happens at once, and there is nothing you can do about it." Dr. Louis Hull looked to his confidants in the chamber. The reptiles obviously communicated with Hull in a language Andrei could not hear.
Andrei's gaze floated past Hull and the chamber, past the computer into the dark corner where a dull reflection gave away the egg. It was open and on. The thought of a squam sitting in his seat chilled Andrei. He stood automatically and walked to the egg. He ran his hand along the smooth, dry surface. This is my accomplishment. Its power goes beyond anything humanity has ever known.
When he turned, Dr. Hull was pointing a gun at him. "Get away from it."
Andrei knew this gun would not shoot rubber bullets. And he knew Hull could get away with murder – nobody investigates murder victims from another time.
Freedom and inevitability. Everything and nothing.
Andrei jumped into the egg as a loud bang deafened him. He closed the hatch, ears screaming everything into the background. On screen Dr. Hull raced for the egg in panic. Andrei typed a three-digit code. His predestination flashed across the display – a time, a place, and The Transient, preprogrammed. Andrei gripped his stomach and laughed as the world outside the egg slowed to a garish tableau. He saw little reptilian eyes widen in a slow flash of surprise. A warm feeling spread from his stomach and Andrei realized he was lucky he hadn't been shot through the heart.
Blood flowed for an hour, then oozed for a year, then stopped. The world around him disintegrated, but it didn't matter. Andrei was coherent.
I am dying. But here I am. Dying, and everything is fine. This sweet light and...nothing. The world falls from me like a dream I don't care to remember. I could stay like this forever. The world would only block the light – the speed and the light that encompass it all.
On the threshold between silence and sound there was the faintest waver. Slowly, it warped, changed pitch, and was broken. Then it rang out again. It was the quietest of sounds, but alone against muteness it stood out like an escapee in a searchlight. It was familiar, like something out of the past, and grew louder until Andrei recognized it was laughter. It was a child's laughter, and it wasn't alone. A murmur flooded in behind it and with a heavy heart Andrei remembered that he was bound back for the world.
When he made the machine he asked himself where and when, in all of history, he would want to go. Without a war and the threat of extinction, without urgency, if he could go to one place for the pure joy and wonder of it, where? When? He had provided the computer with a default time and date, and now he had arrived.
Sliding the egg open he stepped out into a beautiful woods on the edge of a sprawling field glistening a luscious green spectrum in the sun. Across the field a short grey building backed onto a small playground where children laughed and screamed outrageously.
Andrei looked down at his hand clutching his stomach. He was only beginning to bleed, the red hole magnifying itself through the fabric of his shirt. Andrei walked out of the woods toward the school. He laughed. The inventor of time travel is running out of time. He was dying, but not yet. The gut shot, he heard, was a slow and painful death, drawn out.
The children, who did not see Andrei, dispersed, were picked up by parents, or trotted off in groups as he crossed the grass. When he reached the building it looked vacant. He walked through the door, straight to room six.
When he turned into the room she was bent over, brown hair cascading over shoulders and back, applying a Band-Aid to the scraped knee of a sobbing girl with Down's syndrome. Words caught in his throat and Andrei backed up, but Sophie turned and saw him. An interval of confusion crossed her face before she realized who it was. As a smile began on her lips her brown eyes widened at his blood-soaked lower half. Sophie shrieked and the girl with the scraped knee dropped her jaw. Sophie raced for Andrei and pulled him into the room. Andrei turned his head and saw the gruesome trail of blood he had left down the hall.
"Abby run to the principle's office quick and tell Mrs. Farnsworth to call nine-one-one. Quick now, like three bunnies!" Sophie swiped her desk clean with her forearm and laid Andrei down. "Are you shot?"
Andrei smiled and nodded, staring up into her eyes.
"Let me see." She pulled his hand away and tore open his shirt to look at the gore. "Oh...I..." She had no words, but applied pressure with one hand and swung her seat cushion under his head. She looked into his face, which was still smiling and detached. "You're supposed to be in Siberia!"
"Look," he said, "look at my eyes." He pulled her face close and her gaze fell into his. "I was there for years. I have come back through time."
Her eyes tried to pull away but couldn't. He saw a struggle on her face before she resigned, mindblown. Something in his voice was absolute, beyond doubt. "How?" shaking her head.
"Do you remember the IIS summit? They knew it was possible then, but I did it first. Tried to get to Hull, to sever contact. I hoped if they didn't get our fusion it would help." A chuckle shook in his belly and daggers of pain leapt across his nervous system. But Andrei didn't care. He looked up at Sophie, sunlight whitening her face. She looked like the mother of all mankind.
"Tell me, Andrei, I don't know what you're talking about. Please." Tears rolled gently down her face.
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Abby appeared at the doorway and Sophie whipped around.
"Misses Farnsworth isn't there. I called," Abby said.
"Oh good girl Abby, I love you. Find us some blankets and water, sweetie."
"I love you too Miss Hague," and off she ran.
Strange joy surged up in Andrei as he watched the girl run off. His head bobbed, room whirling around him. Writing on the chalkboard, wooden shapes in a pile on the floor, and a big printed alphabet waved at him from the Universe. Andrei absorbed it and was suddenly filled with desperate hope.
He grabbed Sophie. "We have to get outside, to the woods, right now. Help."
"No, stay put!" She tried to force him back down but Andrei sat up anyway.
"If we don't go now it will end. You have to come with me." Despite the wound, Andrei surged forward and pulled Sophie with him. "I don't have time to explain."
Shuffling across the yard, his blood ran anew. He was stark white but his eyes were far beyond it all.
"I saw the reptiles end our world. I tried to get to Hull but he gave my technology to them. Now they'll exist through our whole history. When they master fusion, that's it. They'll use us as an energy source."
Sophie was pulled along, crying and confused. She thought he was losing his mind, and she wasn't totally wrong.
"By the time I made the machine you and most of the world were dead. I was alive because I was in the middle of nowhere. They started with major cities, New York, Tokyo." The lawn swerved underneath him as darkness encroached on his periphery.
Fear made her almost as pale as him. When they reached the woods she was in shock. She barely reacted to the black egg.
"If I die now, that's it. It's over."
"Andrei please..."
"I'm not insane. I love you. I can bring you through and show you what it is like to leave the world. We have to."
