by Brett Bam
“Are you my uncle? Or my grandfather?”
The dark man laughed coldly. “We’re closer than that Kulen.”
“You said you came through the sun. How could you do such a thing? Why would you do such a thing?”
“Ah, an intelligent question at last. Yes, why would I fall into the sun? What could prompt such an event? Was it done willingly do you think?”
Now it was Kulen’s turn to cock his head. “Yes, I think you did it willingly. I think you knew what would happen. The flare was your herald. Did you cause it when you came out of the sun? Is all this destruction because of you?”
The dark man was silent and a shadow fell across his face.
“You said that you came through the sun twice. This time, you caused a flare that nearly wiped out every person on that asteroid and polluted space with radiation across the whole solar system. But the last flare of that magnitude was a thousand years ago, the flare that killed ancient Earth. Was that you? Was that the first time you fell through the sun?”
The dark man was silent for a long moment, his expression one of granite and ice.
“You did it, it was you. You killed the world.”
The dark man lifted his face to the light. “Yes. It was me, although those were events beyond my control as you are about to discover. I have fallen through the sun twice, the first time was against my will, but the second time I fell with purpose. Both times it was a … sublime experience. Strange things happen in the core of the sun, reality is twisted and warped in many ways. So much occurs in there that is beyond human comprehension.”
“But you! You could you comprehend it?” shot Kulen.
“I am human, Kulen. As much as you. You still haven't figured it out? I came here from the past, and I went into the past from your future. I am from your future Kulen, from a time not too far away from now. Is that enough of a clue? Have you figured it out yet?” The intruder laughed again, and this time there was actual humour in his voice. “I remember the doubts very well, because once I was where you are now. I am you, Kulen. I am your elder self, from a future time. That's what happens when gravity is so great that time is twisted and folded. I fell into the sun with the machine wrapped around me and I made it through, out the other side. I came out first in the past, a thousand years ago. And then now, in the future. Which means that here I am in the present, with my own past self. I remember this moment because I have lived it before. I remember looking at myself as I said all these things, doubting the veracity of it. I remember thinking that the dark man was insane and dangerous.” as he said these things Kulen looked startled, the stranger had voiced his thoughts.
“This happened to me a long time ago. I know exactly what I have to do to get what I want. I’ve already won this fight.”
“You’re talking about time travel?”
“Yes, Kulen. Time travel! All things are possible! You have a journey to take, and it starts and ends here.” He stopped, took a deep breath and looked into the palm of his silver hand. “What I decide now will change the course of human history. This moment is destined to happen. It already has happened. I’ve already made this choice, and now I see how my choice will be for the greater good of all mankind. I remember this vividly.”
Dalys stood between Kulen and the intruder.
“You're mad.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Dalys.” Kulens voice was soft behind her. “I want to hear what he has to say to me. What would you do if your future self came back to set you on a path and tell you the secrets of the universe?”
“You don't actually believe that this is your future self, do you?”
“Dalys, I can plainly see that this is true. So can you.” He looked at the elder Kulen. And now he could see it, and he had no doubt. It was himself, his own elder self, tall and strong beyond his wildest dreams, and the glove was still on his hand, that had to count for something.
“How much older are you?” he asked.
The elder Kulen shrugged, “I don't know exactly, something like 250 years.”
“You're saying that you're two and a half centuries old?”
“Yes. That surprises you? This is the most magnificent machine every produced.” He held up his hand and the silver sparkled. “It is capable of performing miracles. It protected me on my falls through the sun. It became something more by our endurance. It has been welded to me in the depths of a cosmic forge. We died and were reborn together. It protected me and pulled me straight through the core of Sol itself. The ascent from the centre of the sun was long and arduous, but when I emerged that first time, I found myself in the ancient world a thousand years ago. The second time I fell into the sun I came out here, centuries later. This machine is capable of bending time and space. For it to lengthen my life is a simple trick.”
Dalys was astonished.
“You're a monster. You killed all those people. Billions have died because of your own actions.”
“Yes, that is correct. But it has already happened, and now the depth of my knowledge is essential. Billions have died, so that trillions can live. Both times I have emerged from the sun, I have changed the course of men, leading the way to a better tomorrow. Each change has led to the growth of new worlds. This time my emergence will mean another blossoming of mankind.”
“Yeah, I see a monster with a god complex.”
“I remember that you felt that way. It saddens me. I don't know how the future unfolds after all this. I only hope you find it in you to understand what I have done and why. Maybe then you can forgive me.”
“Why in hellfire would I listen to you?”
“Because you have no choice. I have been merciful and patient with you, but I also know that this can only end one way between us.” With a flick of his finger an invisible force picked Dalys up and threw her across the staging area. She landed safely enough, wrapped in her field, and by the time she regained her feet it was all over.
The younger Kulen flushed red with anger and ran forward to tackle the elder, his silver hand thrust forward. He remembered slapping the guard in the square, the way the man had fallen so quickly. He remembered the fight with Lutho, how he had proven strong enough then. He was enthused with a rage burning bravado. He would not submit to this man. It was a lie, a trick of the Protocol to take back what was his. He would stop running in fear, now was the moment to fight with everything he had, fearlessly the way Dalys fought. His attack was whip fast, but the elder man pivoted, spinning away too fast to follow. Then he reached out and grasped Kulen’s gloved hand with his own.
And this is what it was all about. This was the moment the elder Kulen had engineered. Their gloves glowed white hot with the anticipation of touching. When the younger and elder made contact, something fundamental shifted and changed, time slowed and stopped as energies previously dormant in the solar system surged and flowed. To Dalys’ human eye, the two figures disappeared suddenly from the Ribbontail. But, that wasn't right, they fell, sideways, through the hull and into space, gone in a blink.
Alarms blared, a red light flashed a warning, and all the air in the module flooded out of the suddenly gaping hole in the hull. The rush of wind was tremendous and Dalys was knocked off her feet. She was sliding across the deck toward the hole when the countermeasure finally sealed the breach. Dalys was engulfed in quickly hardening foam, her field engaged in capsule form as it swept over her. It stopped and only swallowed her shoulder deep. She let it settle and harden, and allowed pressurised air to refill the staging area. Then she deactivated her field and climbed up out of the foam, which had sealed the hull breach.
Dalys was alone.
Chapter 31
Kulen De Sol
When the two gloves made contact, something remarkable happened. They reacted to each other, energy and information flowing freely from one to the other and back again in a gluttonous orgy of sharing. Their mass and density increased exponentially, and they fell through the skin of the space ship like a
stone through the surface of a pond, suddenly too heavy and dense and filled with the matter of stars to withstand such a delicate vessel. They flew together across space, hands locked tight as if welded together. The younger Kulen was small and vulnerable compared to his elder self. Stars streaked across the sky and the sun grew larger and hotter. They fell in a long fast curve around the sun, spiralling inwards. Their speed was increasing, the stars were blurring and the sun was spinning madly.
Do you understand what is happening, Kulen?
You're going to kill me now.
The elder Kulen laughed silently in the vacuum.
I can't kill you, it's simply not possible. You're about to survive a fall into the sun, for Fate’s sake.
You're going to kill ME! Kulen was angry now. ME! The boy who has been chased and hurt his whole life. I never had a chance! And now you're going to end my little life and change me into the mass murderer who kills the world. I may survive, but this will change me, and the me I am now, will simply cease to be.
No, my younger self. You are a caterpillar and I am the butterfly. The sun is our maker.
Mankind was trapped and stagnating on that little planet before we came along. This is deeper and more profound than you can ever consider. There are many billions of humans here in this system living good and healthy lives, but soon there will be trillions upon trillions living on planets throughout this galaxy and beyond. I will give humanity immortality. I will give them the stars. I will give them an everlasting empire in heaven.
The stars swooped and they slowed suddenly. A space station approached. It was extremely distant and tiny to the eye, but it grew rapidly to fill half the sky around them before they slowed to a stop relative to it.
This is Mecca 2972. It is one of a long chain of space stations which necklace the sun. It is home to 350 million people. More than two billion people rely on this place for daily staples such as water and air. They are a scientific society determined to defeat death, and it seems they may have done just that. This place has the highest population of elderly people in the solar system, they have more than 120 million multi-centenarians. They see death as a technical difficulty, not an inevitable end.
They soared away from the station, the stars blurring again, and Mars loomed large in the sky. It was the night side, and lights scattered across the land like a tremendous planet-wide web, with large conglomerations of twinkling lights everywhere, linked by long straight roads filled with traffic of all kinds.
Look at Mars, busy and full. A planet conquered by us frail monkeys. How miraculous. They’re terraforming it you know? They’ve altered wide swathes of the ground soil’s chemistry to allow grass to grow. They atmosphere is thicker than ever, and the planet is slowly heating up. It will actually have blue skies and groundwater one day. A prairie paradise.
Mars vanished and they completed an orbit of the sun slightly above the ecliptic, gazing down at the settlements in the asteroid belt. They glimmered like diamonds on a velvet sheet. The places were filled with people and families, with young and old. A wide diverse tapestry of humanity which was breathtaking in its scope. They remembered the details of tremendous history, of pioneer struggles, of wars, of human moments which echoed forever across time, they remembered great leaders, and great villains. Everywhere, monuments to the dead stood next to the success stories of the living in the luxurious spaces they had built for themselves. Societies amongst the stone tended towards the grandiose, carved from the rock itself.
There are more people in the belt than anywhere else in this solar system. They breed there like rats in the dark, uncontrolled and as free of luxury as they are of law and order. It is still a place of miracles though, this area birthed the largest religion in human history and they survive endless aggression by Mars. The difficult environment has bred a new type of human. Tough and strong, able to survive trouble that would have killed a man just a few short generations ago. They are the strongest people in the Community of Man.
Saturn and Jupiter were next, and the variety of environments there was dazzling, the sheer bravery of those early settlers bore fruit in their works and the cities they built were remarkable. And there were people everywhere. Short people, tall people, caramel people, dark skinned and light, beautiful and ugly, fragile and strong, happy and sad, good and evil. The tremendous pageantry of humanity was played out across the entire solar system. It was life, gorgeous and rich, thriving and creating. Minds and hearts building family and home. Science and art blending technology, luxury and art into every life. It was marvellous, it was epic. It was a fabric of screams all its own. Joy and pain, sorrow and fear, happiness and love, triumph and tragedy. The thick veil of humanity was everywhere in this solar system, their actions influenced every part of it, and for the first time the younger Kulen saw the beauty of it.
Without your initial dive into the sun, none of this is possible. None of these people would be here. Can you not understand the importance of the loss we need to endure? Is it not worth paying the price if the reward is so high? They will eventually all be immortals with the same immense power we possess. We are the last man born of machines, but we are the first of a new kind of human. You are tied to that machine more deeply than you suspect. It is alive because you are alive. It is your essence, another aspect of you. That is why it listens to you, why it hears you and you hear it. It will die when you die. The end of your life will mean the dwindling of this marvellous thing. To avoid that we need to make more of them, to make machines like this which other people can use and control. You've already started this process. Every machine you sparked to life will have a mind of its own now. It will be sentient, a digital intelligence. The Ribbontail, the asteroid Gamaridia itself. These machines are alive now. You will need to know that on the other side. You will need to perform that same feat many times. You will give birth to a race of machines which will save what's left of mankind. In order to repair the damage we are about to inflict, you will be the father of the Protocol. You will create that which in turn creates you. And look what you will leave behind as a legacy.
The stars swooped again and the Earth expanded to fill the sky. The Worldstorm was dark and raging, the whole planet was covered in cloud, from pole to pole. They dropped into the atmosphere, silver hands still clenched tight. They streaked across the sky and the Worldstorm was massive below them. Their flight accelerated and they circled the planet. The elder Kulen’s glove grew hotter in the younger’s hand. Its radiated heat disturbed the clouds, like a great wind blowing. They dropped into the Worldstorm, piercing the clean air of the eye. Tornadoes of disrupted air followed their path, scarring the storm. They dragged heavily across the planet and wherever they went the clouds were torn apart, and dissipated in their wake. They circled the planet again, and again, swimming through the heart of the storm each time, cutting through the eye, until finally the Worldstorm abated.
Beneath the white, wispy remnants of the storm, the world was blue and green. Hidden beneath the blanket of cloud, and unbeknownst to humanity, the Protocol had finally completed its great work. The Earth was repaired. It was whole and healed.
Its magnetosphere was restored and its atmosphere cleansed of dangerous elements. Kulen looked, and far below he could see an amazing amount of detail. Animals walked free on plains covered in grass. Birds and insects fluttered through jungle trees, steaming in the sunlight. Rivers flowed across continents, they were filled with fish and snakes and frogs and they reflected sunlight like a mirror. Massive things swam in the oceans and he saw tremendous shoals of fish rising from the deep. The air was clean, the sky was blue and the clouds were white. It was the most heartbreakingly beautiful thing Kulen had ever seen.
Now mankind has the Earth again. There is nothing they cannot do. It is time for you to go.
The stars swooped again and the solar system pivoted on the sun, which grew massive and burning in the sky above their perspective. It was spinning rapidly because they were orbiting it at great spe
ed. Kulen found he could look directly at the sun. He could see its crenelated vastness in enormous detail. He could see the large prominences which blossomed outward from the surface in massive spinning vortexes. He could see the gaping holes of brightness which were sunspots, volcanic pits to the furnace below. He could see currents and storms which dwarfed every planet in the system. It was terrifying to be so close. But Kulen the younger was given no choice in the matter, he was towed along, helplessly welded to this madman who was to be his murderer. They dipped lower, below the level of the highest arches of magnetic fire which flowed through the sky around them. They passed beneath one, and its heat was immense, although they passed under it unharmed.
Better than unharmed, Kulen actually felt a little stronger, uplifted, energised. He relished the feeling, surprised that it could feel so good.
Ah, you're beginning to see. You're at the start of an understanding.
Please, don't do this.
It's okay Kulen.
I don't want this, please, take this responsibility from me. I just want to stay here, with Dalys.
Do not be afraid, boy. I want you to remember that anything I can do, you can do too. I remember this moment clearly, everything will be alright. Go well Kulen. And this time, don't drop the glove.
With that, the elder Kulen released him, and he fell into the sun.
Chapter 32
Dalys
Moments after Kulen fell
“What do you think happens to a boy who falls through the sun?”
Dalys jumped and turned around. The deep voice was startlingly close where a moment ago she had been alone. She was in the RHS and the Ribbontail was cruising. The decompression incident had not been a problem, it had cost a large amount of their reserves to re-pressurise the ship again, but now every system was operating smoothly. Nevertheless, operating routines drilled into her had her checking all the systems before increasing thrust. The ship was cruising and gravity was nil. She had started the RHS bearings set and put the room spinning to simulate gravity. She was sitting upright at her console running a diagnostic on her interface tattoos, engrossed in the intricate task, when the deep voice spoke suddenly behind her.
