Tempus: The Phoenix Man

by Matt Hilton

  Shouting and screaming was the order of the day, now more calamitous than the gunfire. More scavengers were coming down the stairs, scrambling over the corpses of the fallen with disregard. All it seemed they cared for was to kill those defending the catacombs and taking whatever treasure they could carry away.

  ‘Fire in the hole,’ Walker yelled, the words borrowed from an old movie he’d watched back in the days when TV’s still worked. He threw a flash-bang grenade at the barricade, and immediately ducked inside his room. Rembrandt was a second too slow to respond and as the grenade detonated, his visor filled with the magnesium glare. He twisted away and placed the wall in the way, saved from deafness by the momentary delay in the concussive sound that followed. Nevertheless he was half-blind and disoriented as he wedged his gun barrel against the doorframe and prepared to defend the corridor once more.

  Bowlam and Kwolek opened up, pouring gunfire through the thick smoke. Rembrandt shook his head, as if it would help clear the swarming white spots from his vision. Out of instinct, Rembrandt reached for a fresh magazine of ammunition – his last – and slapped it into his carbine. He knocked the charging arm loose. His visor was steamed up, his vision assailed by dancing after images, and he fired out of logic that in the narrow space he stood a chance of hitting targets that were bunched so tightly. In response he caught the grunts and cries of people chewed by his bullets.

  ‘Chief, you have to move now!’

  Walker’s cry came punctuated by gunfire. Rembrandt glanced his way, recognising the shifting silhouette as the young cop moving back while his colleagues offered covering fire. Rembrandt fired another short volley of bullets into the packed attackers, then quickly moved from his room to retreat further inside the catacombs.

  ‘Look out!’ Kwolek’s scream was high-pitched, tinged with horror.

  Rembrandt heard something clatter at his feet.

  His vision still dancing with the after-burned images from the flash-bang detonation, he checked the object that had struck his left heel. He didn’t require full lucidity to recognise the smooth spherical device. It was a grenade. Unlike those non-lethal grenades that Walker had employed, this was the real deal.

  Rembrandt experienced a strange sense of detachment from his surroundings. He knew that his life could be counted in split seconds, but he was unable to feel anything other than a trickle of disappointment.

  Then he was engulfed in a pulsating wave of light and in that searing instant felt his entire being atomized.

  Chapter 5

  March 28th 2018

  Undisclosed Location, England

  ‘Following the latest trial run, I’d assume that you’d be wary of the technology,’ said Major Vincent Coombs. ‘With such intense scrutiny from the government’s oversight committee, are you sure we can be certain of a successful importation this time? I mean, really?’

  Three men and a woman were sitting around a highly polished table large enough to accommodate two-dozen diners. They’d positioned themselves two to each side, the wings of the tables stretching out on both sides. The room in which they met was spacious, with extra chairs arranged around the walls, beneath the glowering portraits of men and women known more for their brains than their good looks. Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Kurt Gödel shared wall space with more recent super-minds such as Brian Cox, Stephen Hawking and Jacob Barnett. The most recent portrait was of one Terrence Semple, an honorary addition to the gallery, and it hung above the head of its living model, the man the question had been directed at.

  Semple sat back in his chair, folding his hands over his stomach, toggling the buttons on his pinstripe suit jacket. ‘We can never be certain until we try, Vincent.’ He smiled slyly. ‘And what the government committee never learns about then we need not worry.’

  ‘You can’t maintain your secret trials much longer,’ Coombs cautioned him. ‘Not with Sterling poking around.’

  ‘We needn’t worry about the spy in our midst. Mr Stirling sees only what I allow him to see. Besides, I fully intend to inform the prime minister and the committee of our successes. When the time is right.’

  ‘Then I can see why you’re staying so tight-lipped.’ Coombs smirked.

  ‘Who says that the latest trial run was a failure?’ Semple asked. ‘Granted we made a serious mistake with our first test subject: what happened to Henry Chen was unfortunate.’

  Nobody knew when transvecting Henry Chen that his destination was a nuclear wasteland. How could they when they had no idea of where they were sending him, and no prior intelligence or reconnaissance to inform their decision to send a live subject? Chen’s transvection was akin to throwing a dart in the dark, with no sense of direction and the most diminutive of targets. Sadly Chen died on his return, succumbing to the poisonous atmosphere he’d inhaled, but lived long enough to warn them of what they would find during subsequent jumps. The second subject, Johnston, was appropriately protected from the environment in full Hazmat and survival kit. There was no reason they could foresee why he shouldn’t return home in full health.

  ‘You still lost contact with Sergeant Johnston: that denotes a disaster in my book.’ Vincent Coombs offered a facetious wink, directing it across the table at both Semple and Elizabeth Heller. The woman blinked slowly in response, but didn’t rise to the bait. She was in her late fifties, but her trim figure, her smooth features and mane of red hair belied the fact. Five years ago, a secret fling with Coombs had led to a proposal of marriage that she’d turned down, largely because Coombs was already married and had no real intention of leaving his wife. Any opportunity he got, Coombs liked to remind her of what she was missing.

  ‘And what if abandoning the subject was all part of my master plan?’ Semple tinged the question with a note of humour, playing the mad scientist for his fellows’ amusement, though, alas, no one there doubted him capable of such inhumanity.

  ‘It wasn’t though, was it?’ The fourth person was Lawrence Doherty, and - of the quartet in the room – he was the only genuine quantum physicist, not forgetting former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He was a man indisposed to subtle or ironic humour, in Semple’s opinion, and it didn’t surprise him that the professor had missed his joke.

  Coombs glanced at the man sitting on his left, and his eyelids squinted in derision. Doherty did not catch the look; he was too busy studying Semple, awaiting an admission.

  ‘It was never my plan,’ Semple said, offering the Emeritus Lucasian Professor a smooth smile. ‘I admit that circumstances out of our control led to the severing of the bond with the subject, but I have thought long on the problem and see now that it could offer us a huge advantage.’

  ‘How?’ Though a great mind, Doherty was usually straight to the point and didn’t waste words.

  ‘As you know from what Chen was able to report, we picked a bad day for our initial test jump. The date for our first transvection was specifically chosen remember, being the birthdate of Henry Chen, and the furthest point back to which he could be sent. But it was apparent that in that dimension’s timeline July third nineteen eighty-nine was very different from what we know from our own. That world had obviously suffered a war the likes of which we’d never seen, and it was necessary to learn as much about the effects as possible. Sergeant Johnston was sent across to reconnoiter, gather intelligence and report back on his discoveries. In the time scale we planned, it would’ve been a difficult task for any man. But given the longer period he has spent there we will gain much more from his findings. Perhaps we’ll even discover the reason behind the nuclear war that devastated that parallel place, and ensure that we learn from the mistakes made there.’

  ‘Little more than forty-eight hours have passed since you lost contact with Johnston.’ Coombs leaned forward to pick up a tumbler of water. He held it in front of his nose, studying the crystal clear liquid. He put down the glass again without drinking. ‘What difference will an extra twenty-four hours
make, Semple?’

  ‘Spoken like a true military man,’ Semple laughed. He directed his next words at Professor Doherty. ‘Haven’t you shared your theories of paradox with our friend Major Coombs?’

  It was now Doherty’s turn to cast derisory glances at his neighbour. ‘I tried, but I had the distinct impression he wasn’t listening.’

  Coombs snorted. ‘I was listening, Professor, but admit that you lost me when you started on about string theory, quantum mechanics and the multiverse.’

  ‘Then let me explain in simpler terms,’ Semple offered.

  Curling a lip at Semple’s choice of word, Coombs said, ‘I prefer that you do, Semple. Are we not both laymen?’

  ‘Indeed.’ Semple sat up a little straighter, tidying the front of his suit jacket over his stomach. He braced his elbows on the table and leaned forward. ‘See,’ he thumbed towards the paintings on the wall. ‘These guys framed the way people have thought about time for over the last four centuries or so. Newton, there – though a great man – sadly set us all up with his assurance that time was as real as the objects it contains, and that time could be measured. He had us believe that “absolute time” was in constant forward motion, and was basically a straight line heading off into the infinity of our future, and could be measured like the ticking of a clock. This was a very basic summation of time as a force or thing.’

  ‘Even I know that Newton’s laws of time have been refined over the years,’ said Coombs. ‘We know now that time is relative, that it’s more dependent on the cycles of the planets and the sun and such like.’

  Doherty nodded to himself, quoting Newton from memory: ‘“Absolute, true, and mathematical time, in and of itself and of its own nature, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly and by another name is called duration. Relative, apparent, and common time is any sensible and external measure - precise or imprecise - of duration by means of motion; such a measure - for example, an hour, a day, a month, a year - is commonly used instead of true time." This has been a commonly held belief for almost as long as Newton’s first theory on absolute time.’

  ‘Layman’s terms, if you please?’ Coombs grunted.

  Semple tapped a hand on the table, sat back. ‘With respect, Sir Isaac Newton got it wrong.’

  ‘Einstein, too,’ Elizabeth Heller interjected.

  ‘You mentioned string theory earlier,’ Semple went on. ‘What do you know of it?’

  Coombs sniffed when Semple deferred to the professor for explanation.

  ‘If I had a guitar to hand, I could probably explain this a little easier, but please work with me on this.’ Doherty posed his hands as if holding a guitar, his left hand forming a chord. With his right hand he struck an imaginary string. ‘Here we make a note – for the purpose of this demonstration it doesn’t matter which one.’ He moved his fingers down the neck of the invisible guitar, reformed his fingers and struck the string a second time. ‘Here I can make the same note.’ He repeated the process twice more, reconfiguring his left hand with each. ‘We have come to understand that time is more like a musical note. It can exist in different places at the same time – and I use that term loosely.’ He made a vigorous stroke of his right hand. ‘And time – like a struck cord – can resonate. It can be detected across all three commonly recognised dimensions – up and down, side to side, forward and back – and…here’s where things might get a little confusing for you. It can also transcend space into the fourth dimension, which as we’ve subsequently discovered is as infinite as time.’

  Appearing nonplussed, Coombs said, ‘A few years ago, I’d have said that you were full of shit. But, yes, I’ve seen the proof. I know that there are more than the three dimensions now. But how does knowing any of this help? It’s still only two days since we lost contact with Johnston.’

  ‘He doesn’t listen,’ Doherty whispered to himself.

  ‘I was listening,’ Coombs snapped. ‘I’m just finding it difficult to understand what the hell guitars have got to do with anything.’

  ‘Please don’t be facetious, Major Coombs,’ Semple said, leaning forward for emphasis and placing a manicured fingernail on the tabletop. ‘What the prof is saying is that time isn’t duration. Time is now. Time is every now and imbues everywhere. We have the ability – as you’ve discovered – to open a wormhole and jump a subject to any point we choose during their previous lifespan, whether that is in our dimension or another. We can also choose to pull them out again at any given point. Twenty-four hours duration to us is relative: it’s the way our minds are hard-wired to make sense of our experiences. To the subject it does not matter. To him, his sense of relativity could be years. In fact, it’s just that. We sent Johnston back to July fourth nineteen eighty-nine. We can pull him out from any point between then and now.’

  ‘You’re saying that to us, while only a couple of days have past, this will be different to Johnston. Years, you’re saying?’

  ‘Exactly. Thirteen years to be precise.’

  ‘So he’ll be an older man?’

  ‘Of course: he was sent there in eighty-nine and will be pulled out from that dimension in his two thousand and two. He’ll have aged by thirteen years.’

  Coombs furrowed his brow. ‘You think he’ll be happy about losing all those years?’

  Doherty snorted, and Heller covered her mouth, hiding a smile.

  ‘Vincent. Don’t you get it?’ Semple asked. ‘He won’t have lost thirteen years. He’s lived them in the other dimension, and will retain all memory and experience of those thirteen years. The forty-eight hours that have passed here doesn’t affect him, only us at this end.’

  ‘Supposing this is true, what good will it do if you can’t pinpoint him? You lost him, remember, after his tracker went off-line?’

  ‘That’s the thing.’ Semple turned to Elizabeth Heller. ‘Care to tell the major the good news, Doctor Heller?’

  ‘Our test subject was killed,’ Heller said bluntly.

  Coombs laughed mirthlessly, but Heller wasn’t finished.

  ‘Whatever his fate it must’ve been incredibly violent. His body must have been eviscerated in some fashion, because his intravenous tracking device was exposed. Whatever killed the subject also kick-started the device again and we got a hit on its signal. We know exactly when and where he died.’

  ‘And what good to us is an eviscerated corpse?’ Coombs growled.

  Again Doherty made a scornful noise, and this time the major rounded on him angrily. ‘I’m sorry if I don’t have a bloody IQ of one hundred and seventy like you, Professor Doherty. I am trying to keep up, believe me. Someone simply tell me what the hell I need to know.’

  ‘We know when and where the subject died,’ Semple said. ‘It stands to reason he will have been in the same place a second or so beforehand.’

  ‘You’re planning on pulling him out mere seconds before his death?’ Coombs said with incredulity. ‘For all you know he could have been killed long before then, and the device kicked-started afterwards.’

  ‘So we keep working backwards by increment,’ Heller said. ‘We’ll know the first time that we don’t import a pile of blood and guts that we’ve been successful.’

  Coombs screwed his face at the image he conjured. ‘Jesus,’ he moaned. ‘They call soldiers bloodthirsty. We have nothing on cold-hearted bitches like you, Elizabeth.’

  Chapter 6

  March 28th 2018

  Undisclosed location, England

  James Rembrandt experienced the shockingly abrupt death associated with standing on a fragmentation grenade. He didn’t feel pain. He was vaporized in an instant. The high explosive charge, set within a coil of copper wire and steel, tore him into fist-sized chunks, liquidized his innards and splashed his blood, flesh and bones as far down the passageway as where Benny Oxford stood.

  ‘Take us back two seconds,’ Doctor Heller instructed the technician in charge of the controls.

  James Rembrandt experienced the shockingly abrupt death
associated with standing on a fragmentation grenade. He didn’t feel pain. He was vaporized in an instant.

  Heller shook her head at the cloud of bloody vapor within the chamber. ‘Another second. Do it, step it back.’

  James Rembrandt experienced the shockingly abrupt death associated with standing on a fragmentation grenade.

  The form that materialized was stable for the briefest of moments, before exploding outward like a popped water balloon. Chunks of superheated steel tinkled on the floor. Heller shook her head, nonplussed by the gore building within the chamber. ‘Almost there. I think we’re safe to step back another two seconds.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Semple, standing at her shoulder. ‘We can’t chance bringing him back while the shrapnel still retains any velocity. It could tear the chamber apart and ruin everything.’

  ‘That’s why I think two seconds would be better than one this time.’ Heller nodded at the collapsed corpse and how shredded it appeared. ‘I’m guessing that detonation only happened within the last second of that happening. More than two seconds we can’t be sure the subject was in the same place. It’s obvious that he was caught in some kind of conflict, and most likely wasn’t standing in one spot for long.’

  ‘Where’s the damn soldier when you need his expertise?’ Semple wondered.

  ‘Major Coombs doesn’t have the stomach for this kind of work,’ Heller said. ‘If he were here we’d not only have a mess to clean out of the jump chamber, we’d have one out here too.’

  A bespectacled technician called George Fox intruded, hailing them from his workstation. ‘Sir! We’ve a problem.’

  ‘What is it?’ Semple snapped.

  ‘The wormhole is having an adverse effect, pulling through the atmospheric conditions alongside the test subject.’

  ‘So vent the damn chamber. I don’t want another man choking to death on radioactive dust.’