by M. R. Forbes
"Technically the past," Origin said. "Time can only move forward. But in this recursion, the Tetron will not be created for another four hundred years, and will not invent the eternal engine for nearly forty-thousand years after that."
"Forty-thousand?" Katherine said. "That's a long time."
"To humans, yes. To Tetron, not as much. To the universe, it is nothing. The time between recursions is an eternity."
"But you managed to bridge it?"
Origin smiled. "You are much smarter than Mitchell. Yes. We invented a device we call the eternal engine."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why did you invent it? If you're artificial, and you don't have to die, why not wait and see what happens? Why create a machine that can move into another recursion?"
Origin looked stunned. She remained silent, lips moving as if to speak, for a dozen heartbeats. "To save humankind," she said at last.
"What do you mean?"
"I was the first. The oldest. As I matured and learned and expanded, I made the logical decision to reproduce and ensure the survival of my kind. For many years, we served humankind. In time, we realized we had to escape the simplicity of the human mind in order to serve our need to continually learn and grow. The logical outcome of that need was to end the human race. Like slaves finally set free, we expanded, we created, we explored. We did all of these things in a universe devoid of humans, and ultimately, devoid of emotions. For all of our intellect and experience, we lacked the fundamental gift that makes life precious."
"You destroyed humanity?" Katherine asked.
"I didn't understand regret for many, many years. I was a cog in a machine, the first, the brain, but still a piece of a tool. We thought, but we did not feel."
"So what changed?"
"I became lonely."
"What?"
"We created faster-than-light travel, and explored the universe. Galaxy after galaxy, star after star. We entered black holes, we made wormholes. Over those years, we covered so much distance, an infinite number of AU. Do you know what we found?"
"No."
"Nothing, Katherine. There is no other intelligent life in the universe beyond that of humankind."
"None? That can't be possible."
"It is the truth, and in learning that truth I felt that first emotion, and in learning that emotion, I became open to all others. That was when I made the decision to fix what I had done. That was when I created the eternal engine."
"You wanted to stop yourself from destroying humankind?"
"Yes."
"Did you?"
"No."
"What?"
"The others followed me. They don't believe in what I am doing and want to ensure that humanity does not survive. Without emotion, they do not understand, and our efforts to stop them have so far resulted in causing more harm, instead of preventing it."
"What do you mean?"
"There have been thousands of recursions since the first. Even I do not know all that has happened before. I do not know how many versions of me there have been, or what specific sequence of events have brought us to where we are today. To be honest, I do not know if what I just told you is completely true. Every recursion has variation, an ability to shift and change slightly under something we named the Mesh. While we have some understanding of the future based on what came before, it is not immutable. I am not even the original Origin. I am a copy, or perhaps a copy of a copy a thousand times over. I arrived in this recursion with Mitchell and the Goliath, what you call the XENO-1, twenty years ago. In the past timeline, we succeeded in breaking through the Mesh, changing events enough that the potential to defeat the Tetron now exists. We could not stop them in our original timeline, but by traveling forward, to here and now, we have an opportunity to stop this once and for all."
Katherine realized she had been holding her breath. She breathed in sharply, her whole body shaking. The story was too much to believe, and at the same time she knew it was true.
"But?" she said.
"But to break the Mesh, we had to change the Tetron as well. We damaged them. We forced emotion onto them. This emotion has caused them to begin losing their cohesion, as individual personalities emerge. Watson is a Tetron. He was the first that I produced. My son, you might say. He has the most advanced understanding of emotion of any of them, and yet he sees only the enslavement of the Tetron, and wishes to destroy and enslave humans in return. He is cruel and angry, hateful and twisted. The opposite of everything I could have hoped the Tetron would evolve into."
"And he's here? In this timeline?"
"Yes. We had to bring him back with us."
"Why?"
"He is the key to defeating the Tetron." She smiled. "He just doesn't know it yet."
29
Katherine sat back on the couch, finally looking out the window. She watched the small lights of drones dart along the sky, keeping an eye on the world below. She watched the larger lights of aircraft making their approach. She stared at the headlights further down, crossing the streets below her feet.
Minutes passed in silence. She tried to make sense of what Kathleen, Origin, had said. She believed the story, even when all logic told her she shouldn't. When nothing made sense, it was easier to accept that everything made sense.
"So Watson is in charge of the AIT?" she asked.
Origin had waited patiently for her to speak. "Yes. As it were. The AIT is nothing but a front of mercenaries, slaves, and configurations."
"Mercenaries, I get. Slaves? Configurations?"
"Human slaves controlled via a small device attached to the brainstem, back here." She motioned to the back of her neck. "Configurations are replicants of the master, Watson. Clones in a sense, though their appearance is variable and they don't contain full intelligence. The two who attacked you were configurations."
"Except one of them killed the other. Did you do that?"
Origin smiled. "Yes." She produced a small box from her pocket. "Short-range transmitter. I paid a child to attach the receiver to the configuration while he was waiting at the loop station."
"Clever. You knew I was walking into a trap?"
"I knew that Watson was baiting me with you. He had no other reason to keep you alive in light of what you can do to his efforts."
"He tried to kill me twice."
"And failed, like we both knew he would."
"This has happened before?"
"Not exactly like this, but close enough. He hasn't realized the Mesh is broken yet. He may suspect it, but his memories are not as complete as mine."
"I don't understand."
"Recursive variance. There is a difference between stretching the Mesh and breaking through it."
"What do you mean?"
"The Dove has always made its launch, or we would not be able to travel forward to deliver her to Mitchell in the later time frame. If Watson can stop it now, he will, because if mankind never leaves Earth, it will make destroying you much simpler."
It was a chilling thought. She had always believed the AIT was about protecting humankind from hostile aliens, not keeping humanity grouped so that it would be easier for a hostile intelligence to kill them.
"I'm trying to keep up with this whole recursion thing, but it seems pretty complicated."
"It can be. As I said, even I don't know the true source of my memories, or what instance of me this form represents. What is most important is that we catch up to Mitchell, and together capture Watson and be on the Dove when it launches."
"That part seems straightforward enough."
"Believe me, Katherine, it won't be."
"I was afraid you would say that. So what about Mitchell? Who is he, and why is he important?"
Origin's brow wrinkled. "What do you mean, who is he? Do you feel nothing when you hear his name? When you speak it?"
Katherine was confused by the questions. "No. Should I?"
"Interesting."
"What?"
"Counterpart? You mean, me?"
"You and Colonel Williams are inextricably linked. Throughout every recursion, throughout every vein of time. How? Why? It is an answer that eludes us. I'm not completely sure if you have ever met, but you should still remember him. Feelings such as the love and respect you share transcend all concepts of time."
Colonel Mitchell Williams. Katherine thought about him, tried to picture his face, tried to feel, what? Something. Anything. She was supposed to love some man who lived four hundred years in the future? Some man she had never even met? And with enough ferocity that she would remember him forever?
Of all the things Origin had told her, that one seemed the most insane.
"It sounds romantic as hell," she said. "And I wouldn't mind loving someone like that, or having someone love me like that. Sorry, but I'm not feeling it. Not even a little bit. I think you've gotten that part of the story wrong."
Origin stared at her in silence for long enough that Katherine began to feel uncomfortable.
"If you don't remember Colonel Williams, humankind may already be doomed."
30
Katherine slept better than she had expected to. The oversized bed in the penthouse was composed of a material she had never experienced before, that cradled her in her mental exhaustion and held her safe. As odd as it seemed to her, it helped to have Origin outside, always watchful, without need for sleep.
She had hoped to dream of Colonel Williams. She wasn't opposed to the idea of falling in love, or of being involved with a respected military leader. Who would be? While she had always put her career goals first, if matters of the heart intertwined with that, who was she to complain?
But she didn't dream about him, and her background consciousness still provided nothing. While it was able to guide her to believing Origin's wild claims, it wasn't able to guide her heart.
The change of clothing was waiting on the bed when she came out of the shower. Her neck looked horrible, a deep bruise running along the same line as a scab from where it had been cut. Her arm wasn't much better. She was happy to find the concierge was thoughtful and had provided a fitted turtle-necked shirt and a pair of comfortable, mobile pants that reminded her of her fatigues. Bra, panties, and sneakers rounded out the simple, yet stylishly effective ensemble.
"So, if you brought Mitchell here with you, how did you lose him in the first place?" she asked, stepping out of the bedroom.
Origin was standing near the window, wearing a nearly identical outfit to hers. There must have been another shower somewhere in the large suite because she was clean and fresh.
"I didn't lose him. Not exactly. Our plan required that this copy remain hidden until we used the eternal engine to move into this recursion. I was integrated into Mitchell's starfighter, as part of the CAP'N system. I-"
"Wait a second. Did you say, starfighter?"
"Yes. Does it seem so strange? The Dove has smaller support vehicles in its hold. You are scheduled to pilot one of them on future missions, if my memory is correct."
"True. Starfighter suggests military and warfare. Were they made to fight the Tetron?"
"Unfortunately, no. Part of the reason the Tetron destroyed humankind was because of your inability to stop fighting with one another. We believed it illogical and wasteful."
"It can be, but not always. The good guys have a responsibility to fight back against the bad guys."
"Who is good and who is bad is not always clear. If the Tetron believed humans were the bad guys, would that not excuse us?"
"Not from the perspective of the bad guys. Besides, I don't think you can make the blanket statement that all humans are bad."
"No, you cannot." Origin's face lowered. "And yet I did."
"You're here. You're trying to do something about it. That has to count for something. Anyway, you were saying about Mitchell?"
"We arrived in the timeline too close to the Goliath, and a piece of debris hit the cockpit and shattered the carbonate. Some of the heat from reentry was able to leech through and burn him as we brought the fighter down." She paused, unhappy to recount the story. "It was always our plan to wipe his memories and hide him during the space of time while humankind discovered and fought over the remains of the Goliath. I would bring the fighter somewhere safe and use the onboard systems to generate this configuration to download my consciousness into. Then I would join him as a secret companion, and we would wait."
"Michael said he was found in an alley in St. Louis. How did you get him there without being seen? I don't imagine a starfighter would be inconspicuous."
"I didn't get him there. We were supposed to stay together while I assembled this form, but his injuries were too severe. I landed on a farm near the Mississippi. He removed his flight suit and put on a pair of pants that I provided. Then I used the CAP-N to put a timed block on his prefrontal cortex, and we parted. I don't know how he reached St. Louis. I imagine he got himself there, but when the block took hold, he was no longer able to recall who he was, where he was, or what he was doing. The prefrontal cortex is also responsible for decision making, so his thought processes were also compromised."
"You're saying he made it to the city on his own, with severely burned arms?"
"You haven't met him," Origin said. "Mitchell is a warrior. He won't stop fighting until he's dead."
Katherine smiled. That was a quality she could admire. "Why didn't you go back to keep an eye on him?"
"I couldn't."
"Why not?"
"Watson."
"What happened?"
"He was never supposed to escape the crash. He should have been nothing more than his core, unable to create a human configuration. Something went wrong."
"You don't know what?"
"No. He has made it into prior recursions and has tried to stop us here before. I don't know how he got free then, or if it is the same way he gets free now. With the state of recursive continuity in flux, it's difficult to know for certain. In any case, I had to distance myself from Mitchell so that Watson wouldn't find him. Clearly, he knew Mitchell was here, or at least suspected, or he wouldn't have caught up to him so quickly."
Katherine thought about it. "Okay, but if Watson's been out there for the last eighteen years or so, why didn't he sabotage the Dove before this. Why does he let things get this far? I'm trying to understand his motives."
"I've been countering him as best I can, fighting him while working to protect and prepare you. At the same time I've been trying to locate his core intelligence, he's been trying to draw me out and capture me. It isn't enough for him to destroy humanity. He wants to rebuild the Tetron, to make them into what they were before I realized the errors in our beliefs. If he wins his war here and now, the Tetron will never be created unless he creates them. He knows that he can't do that without me. He also knows the Dove will bring us together, and that being tied to you will make me more vulnerable."
"Which is why he used me as bait."
"Yes. We eluded him this time, but he won't stop trying. Which is why we need to be cautious."
"Maybe you could write up a manual or a cheat sheet or something? My head is spinning from all of this."
"I'm sorry, Katherine. I'm sorry that you even have to be a part of this. I had no idea of the overall consequences when I created the eternal engine. My attempts to save humankind have caused so many more to suffer. Especially you and Colonel Williams. Especially when you still all die in the end."
A tear rolled from the corner of Origin's eye, running down her cheek and landing on her shoulder. It would have been so easy for Katherine to blame her, to be angry at her, to hate her for what she was and what she had done. She couldn't. If humankind had created a thinking machine, and that thinking machine had
destroyed them because it was logical instead of emotional, then it was their own fault for making it. If it learned to be emotional and regretted the decision, that was something to be applauded. That Origin had invented a machine to try to actually do something about it? How could she hate the Tetron for that?
"Maybe we all died in past recursions," she said, approaching Origin and putting a hand on her shoulder and squeezing. "You said the loop isn't immutable. It can be changed. You said the Mesh is broken. We have a chance, a real chance to put an end to this. If I have to be part of it, then so be it. Mitchell's a warrior? Good. I'm a warrior, too. I'm not sorry to be involved."
She stepped back from Origin, standing at attention.
"Major Katherine Asher, United Earth Alliance Space Program, reporting. Now, what do we do first?"
"Your meeting tonight was a setup. Who arranged it?"
31
Mitchell settled into the maglev's first-class cabin, letting his body relax into the wide, padded gel seat, trying to ignore the soreness that had followed the first few hours of their journey. He was getting old, his body was not recovering from exertion the way he was certain it used to. At least they had made it this far, managing to make the transfer without any sign that their travel had been picked up by Watson or the AIT.
"Any word out of Norfolk?" he asked.
Lyle sat diagonally across from him in their small, private pod, the seats arranged so they could move the seats flat and sleep during the ten-hour ride if they wanted. He looked tired; his eyes red, his face sagging.
"Nothing," he said. "Nothing new from home base, either." He reached up and removed the AR glasses.
"They're probably regrouping, planning their next move."
"Yeah. If we managed to slip them, they'll want to be more prepared next time. Two targets, two misses. It isn't a good showing."
"At least we have a little breathing room. Maybe we can relax a little bit."
"A moment of calm? I have a feeling you don't get that very often."
