by Jack Geurts
But by far the most important issue they had discussed was the matter of how Jasper had healed Io without the glove. She had never seen the Mind-link work that way – in her experience, the glove was always needed to transfer thought into action. Yet somehow, he had injected the life-saving Elemental into her broken body and repaired it without needing the glove at all.
Was this a human thing? Io had wondered. Something the Progeny could do that Precursors were not capable of, despite having invented the glove technology to harness the power of Elemental and the Mind-link in the first place?
Was it something humans needed only to be aware of in order to utilise it?
Or, as she suspected from the very start, was there something special about Jasper? Was there something about him that hadn’t been relayed in his file? Sure, he had proven himself to be braver than she initially thought, but his ability to channel the Elemental without a glove, to harness the Mind-link without anything other than his own body – that suggested something even more.
They hadn’t come to any conclusion on this matter, only that it was very strange and she would need to ask her father about it when she returned.
That was one of the things she had to ask her father about. The other was something that had been rolling around in her mind since Jasper had first mentioned it – whether or not the king had known about the changing of the second Marker. Whether or not he had knowledge of the map and neglected to tell her about it. Had he intentionally sent her into a dangerous situation when he had known the layout of the map all along? Had he chosen to test her when instead, he could have simply told her where the map led?
She didn’t know. A part of her didn’t want to know.
Another part of her had to.
By the angle of the tunnel and how long they had been walking, Jasper judged that it was possible they would end up directly below the pyramids. He was soon proven correct as he caught a glimpse of Io’s Window – the holographic projection of the tunnel showed her blue dot moving down into a large, cavernous space, where the red dot of the fourth Marker was glowing directly beneath Khufu’s pyramid. The Great Pyramid.
Jasper’s own Window – the one he had stolen from Janus, who had, in turn, stolen it from Io’s brother – had been left on board the Flight Pod. A glove she could trust him with, but a Window was something else. Something that required extensive training to master, and given its ability to warp time and space, it wasn’t something she could chance him keeping on, especially considering what seemed to be an uncontrollable ability to harness the Mind-link. She didn’t want to find out what he was capable of if he had a Window to work with – at least, not right now. It was simply too dangerous.
Finally, they came to the end of the tunnel and a vast, underground chamber opened up before them. Everything was pitch-black, but ahead, their turquoise glow was faintly reflected in a metal surface. The side of the fourth Marker, Jasper thought.
As they drew closer to the thing, they realised it wasn’t at all like the other three. Yes, it was flat and metallic and sloped upwards like the side of a pyramid tended to do. But this thing was absolutely enormous.
Bigger than the ziggurat at Eridu.
Bigger than the temple mound in China.
Bigger than the pyramids of Caral, and bigger even than the ones overhead.
Each side was a good five hundred metres long, and it took them almost half an hour to walk around the Marker in its entirety. The floor of the cavern was craggy rock and sand, and its walls rose up into darkness like the sides of the pyramid itself. Doing some rough calculations in his head, Jasper supposed that Marker was at least twice as big as Khufu’s pyramid above.
At several points, both he and Io tried to touch it, but nothing happened. They continued around the base, not knowing what to do, hoping something would present itself. As they arrived back at the side they had started on, Io noticed a flight of stairs cut into the flank and they began to climb them.
The stairs were steep and peeled off into the darkness above like a mountain trail winding to an unseen summit. Dia quickly got tired, so Io picked him up and set him on her back – the bird clung there like a baby koala.
They pressed on.
It was quiet in the cavern – almost as quiet as the Emperor’s tomb had been. The only things they could hear were their own heavy steps and heavy breaths, and the echoes of those sounds. At least the air wasn’t poisonous, Jasper thought, though it was stale.
He wondered how long ago this Marker had been discovered – before the pyramids on the surface were built, that much was certain. They seemed to have been modelled on the Marker like the pyramids at the other sites they had been to.
He imagined the people who had first laid eyes on it, who had dared to venture into the Precursor tunnel and who were not daunted by its darkness or depth. The people who had beheld this giant, metal monument by firelight and who would try to replicate it with stone up above. The people who would eventually cover it up with the Sphinx – to hide it out of fear, or respect, or jealousy. To bury it, as all the ancients had – one way or another., for one reason or another.
The stairs ended just short of the peak, leaving Jasper and Io staring at the smooth wall above them, panting from the climb. There was a clear line running from the top of the staircase to either edge of the pyramid, and Jasper guessed that it ran around the entire peak, separating the Marker into a head and a body. A capstone forming the top of the pyramid, and being a small pyramid itself.
Io touched the capstone with her hand. Nothing happened. She stepped down and gestured for Jasper to try, too tired to speak. He did, but the result was the same.
Io sighed, frustrated. Jasper only hung his head. Both of them were weary and discouraged that they had seemingly come all this way for nothing, but a part of them knew that this couldn’t be it. It just couldn’t be.
“Maybe we need to touch it at the same time again,” Jasper said. Io’s spirits lifted a little, and she stepped back up to his level, laying her hand on the capstone.
Suddenly, the entire thing just dissolved – melted away into a shower of metallic particles that spilled down over the body of the pyramid, cascading into darkness. Jasper and Io watched until the last of the fragments vanished beyond their turquoise glow, then turned their attention to what was now the flattened summit of the Marker.
They exchanged a look of excitement and climbed up onto the platform. As they walked out towards the centre, an object became visible in the bluish-green glow all around them – faintly at first, then steadily more clear. It was a podium of some kind, in what appeared to be the dead centre of the platform. It was made of the same Precursor alloy that the rest of the Marker was and had on its surface a single button.
Jasper frowned with confusion. But as he turned to Io, he saw her eyes going wide, knowing exactly what it was and scarcely believing it.
“It cannot be...”
Jasper was about to ask her what couldn’t be when the button began to glow blue. A holographic image was projected up from it – a video, like the one in Caral had been. It depicted a large tribe of hunter-gatherers moving across the desert, being led by one man. The image then zoomed way out to reveal a map of the world – it had previously been focused in on North-east Africa, where a glowing red dot now appeared, signifying the tribe’s location.
Apparently, they were right near the Bab El-Mandeb Strait where the Red Sea flowed out into the Arabian Sea – a short distance over water between Africa and the Middle East. To the north, one might cross over through Egypt and the Sinai Desert into Israel, but it appeared that this particular tribe was intending to pass over sea.
From the dot, a glowing red line appeared, tracing a path over the Strait and then splitting into two separate lines. One went north and then west, moving into Europe. The other went east, progressing around the Arabian coast, around the Persian Gulf, down into India and up into China. Before it reached China, however, another line branched off, goi
ng south through Indonesia and into Australia. The main line in China continued on, up into Russia and across the Bering Strait at the top of the world. It then moved down through North America, all the way to the tip of South America.
Off these two main lines – the Northern and Southern Routes – a multitude of smaller lines split off to touch every part of the world, crossing oceans and continents. Sea levels rose and fell, landmasses changed shape.
“It’s the migration of early humans out of Africa,” Jasper said, astonished.
“What?”
“See there.” He pointed at the original glowing red dot. “That’s where modern humans are believed to have moved out of Africa between sixty and seventy thousand years ago.” He traced the Northern Route with his finger. “That’s them moving up into Europe and settling there around forty thousand years ago.” He then traced the Southern Route. “And that’s them moving east into Asia, then into Australia around fifty thousand years ago, up into Russia around thirty thousand years ago, and into the Americas about twelve thousand years ago.”
Io said nothing. Jasper noticed she was staring at the button now.
“What?” he said. “What’s that?”
“It is a Time Lock,” she said, amazed.
Jasper remembered her telling him about the device, about it having the ability to separate time and prohibit people from going back beyond a certain point.
“I thought that was locked up in your father’s palace.”
“I thought so, too,” she said. “Apparently another was made.”
They both stared at it for a moment, then Jasper said, “What’s it for?”
Io had been wondering that same thing ever since she laid eyes on the Time Lock, though now the true purpose of the map was making itself clear to her. The answer to everything they had been trying to figure out. All of it leading to this moment.
“You know what it is for, Jasper.”
She wasn’t looking at him when she spoke, unable to meet his eye. Knowing how he’d feel when he came to the same conclusion she did, but he hadn’t quite gotten there yet. Maybe he was in denial.
“What?” Jasper said, looking around. “Locking time here, in ancient Egypt?”
Io just shook her head. “No. Not here.” The hologram had returned to the image of the hunter leading his tribe across the desert. Out of Africa.
Then it dawned on him.
“There...” he said, softly. “Then...”
Io looked at him and nodded. “By pressing that button, you will return the earth to that moment and lock it there.”
The hologram vanished, but the button continued to glow blue, waiting to be pushed.
Jasper took a moment to process all of this. “But...I thought Jupiter already locked time at ten thousand years ago – this would mean we’d go back to...sixty thousand years ago. How is that possible?”
“They must have built this into the first one, to override it if necessary. If it was ever found.”
“So all of this...everything we’ve done...has been to flip the reset switch on humanity?”
“It appears so.”
Jasper turned and paced a little, trying to piece it all together. “They didn’t leave the trail of breadcrumbs to guide themselves home, or to guide us to them – but to guide us back home. To our original home, in the wild.” He thought about it for a moment. “But why? Won’t we just make the same mistakes all over again?”
Io didn’t answer, but it was puzzling to her also. She stared at the glowing button, trying to understand its purpose. “I suppose, if nothing else, it will buy your people another sixty thousand years.”
“Just to prolong them destroying the earth?”
Io paused, tried again. “Maybe they will not make the same mistakes over again.”
“How could they not? They evolved to be this way from those hunter-gatherers we just saw. If we revert time to then, those hunter-gatherers will still be the same hunter-gatherers. Logic says that they would evolve the same way. It’s like rewinding a movie to the start and hitting play again. What’s the point?”
“What if the circumstances were different?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if we pressed that button, went back and altered something? Something to ensure that they might evolve a different way?”
Jasper just stared at her, his face going blank. “You really are a Precursor, aren’t you?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Io said, sensing an insult in his words.
“You want to play god. Go back, swap a few things around, see what happens. Like we’re some sort of science experiment.”
“That is not how it would be.”
“That’s how it’s always been!” Jasper shouted, his temper flaring. “We’re just hamsters on a wheel to you. You’re all sitting up there among the stars, watching us take our toll on the world, on each other. You could have come down at any time to steer us in the right direction, but instead you just let us go. Let us slide right into extinction. You said so yourself, you watched over us like gods. Well, what kind of a god sits there and lets us do this to ourselves? Especially after you did the exact same thing to yourselves.”
He was breathing through his nose now, furious. Io didn’t know what to say to him – she’d expected some reaction, but nothing like this.
Jasper went on. “But instead of helping us, what do you do, huh? You come back and leave us a map? And not even a map that helps us or helps us help ourselves – just one that puts off the inevitable. Tell me, what good is that?”
“Maybe that is all you can do.”
She said it quietly and Jasper paused. “What do you mean?”
“There is a reason my people did not return to intervene in matters on earth, and it was not because you were some science experiment. It is because we believe in free will, and we believe in trial and error. We did not have some higher civilisation coming down to show us the ropes, and so we do not intend to do the same to you. I mean, what do you want from us, Jasper? First, you condemn us for playing god, then you wonder why we did not come to save you.”
Jasper realised she was right, and the contradiction he had made left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth.
Io continued, “If we came down to assist you every time you made a mistake, you would never learn anything. And yes, I know it seems cruel when we have the power to act and we choose not to. The wars we have seen fought, the natural disasters, the famines, the plagues, the forests cut down – all of this we could have stopped and yet we chose not to. Why? Because these are your mistakes to learn from, just as we have had ours.”
“Then why would you suggest we go back and change something?”
“Because I am not my people,” Io said, calmly. “I am myself. And if I could go back and prevent a war from happening, or save a city from perishing in a volcanic eruption... If I could affect some meaningful change in your world, I would. But that is not my decision to make.”
Jasper frowned, and then realised. “You want me to push the button?”
“These are your people, Jasper. This map was always designed for someone like you. Someone who could look at his species and decide whether or not they were worth giving a second chance to, even if it meant only putting off the inevitable. Even if it meant going back to alter the course of history. My people chose not to intervene in human affairs, true – but they also did not want to see you wipe yourselves off the face of the earth. So, apparently, the way they have chosen to intervene without intervening is to give that choice to you. Do you let humanity continue on its present course, or do you take it back to its roots and allow it to grow again? Do you intervene?”
Jasper’s head was spinning so fast he could barely think straight. “But...I can’t stand in the way of history. I can’t go back and change things so that people stayed hunter-gatherers, even if that’s what I wanted to do.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not a god. I can’t...�
� Jasper sighed and shook his head. It was a decision no one could make, or should have to make, let alone a sixteen-year-old boy. Io could see the weight of it on his shoulders and did not envy his position at all.
“Progress is not always progress,” she said. “You know where humanity is headed if you press that button. As you said, it is like rewinding a film and playing it over again. But if you make some change at the beginning, the film might turn out entirely different. Or it might turn out the same. You might be powerless against history, you might be powerless to change anything. You could go back and try to affect even the most monumental change and have it not make a shred of difference in where humankind ends up.”
Jasper looked up at her, his face weary, hopeless. “Then what’s the point in any of it?”
“The point is that this map did exactly what was promised. It allowed you a chance to save yourselves. At the very least, you buy your people some more time. The point is that you decide. Not us.”
Io offered him a hopeful smile and Jasper turned back to the podium. He saw the glowing blue button there, waiting for him. It had been waiting for ten thousand years, and now here he stood before it, unable to move. So many thoughts swirled around in his mind – so many reasons to push it and so many reasons not to.
Finally, he turned back to Io. “There’s something I have to do first.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Goodbye
They touched down in the desert and Jasper thanked Io for bringing him back. She told him to be careful, but that she would be here when he was ready to go. Jasper took off his glove and left it there. He walked down the ramp of the invisible Flight Pod and up to a small ridge.
As he crested the rise, Jasper looked down at the red desert grassland and the bald hills running out to the end of the earth. The sun not yet risen in the east and so a chill clung to the air, but already the sky was pink, strewn with scarlet ribbons of cloud.
