He smiled again. “Yes, we want you to help us. That’s correct. We’re in trouble. Things are bleak.”
“How bleak?” Spider said.
“Well, since you ask…” the old man said, “This gets kind of involved, and there’s quite a lot to take in, but I’ll try to be brief.”
“Oh good,” Spider said, not looking forward to the presentation at all. “An info-dump!”
The future Spider smiled wryly. “Now, now. No need to be rude.”
Spider grinned for a moment, despite himself. “Sorry.”
“Okay. Where to start?”
“You said this is the ‘End of Time.’ My first thought, I have to say, is, ‘Bullshit!’”
The old man laughed. “Yeah, that’s right.” He nodded a moment, remembering, then turned more serious. “Thing is, though, it’s true.”
“Yeah, but what does it mean? I mean, how can something like time have an ending?”
“You’d be surprised,” he said. “Maybe even a little alarmed.”
“Ooooh,” Spider said. “I’m all scared.”
Ignoring Spider’s sarcasm, Soldier Spider explained that the “End of Time” was a term of convenience.
“Well, to give you some idea,” he said, “matter is long dead. There are no galaxies, no planets, no rocks or stray moons. No stars, either. All there is, is space itself. Wait, that’s not precisely true. There are ‘things’ still eking out a sort of existence, things adapted to this environment, if you can call it that, and if you can call their agonizingly slow metabolic activity ‘life.’ Anyway. The thing is, the entire fabric of space-time is flinging itself apart, faster than the speed of light. It’s kind of hard to visualize.” Spider told him he was right about that, and asked about the Einsteinian idea of things not being able to reach the speed of light.
Soldier Spider looked bleak. “He was right. But I’m not talking about things moving through space-time; I’m talking about space-time itself. It’s not covered by that rule.”
Spider had thought about this, as much as he could, and said, “So if there’s not much here, what’s the big war about?”
And his future self sighed. “What’s it all about? It’s about many things. It’s complicated.”
“Try me,” Spider said, not in the mood for evasive bullshit.
“I don’t remember being that dubious when I was you.”
“Things change.”
Uncomfortable, Soldier Spider launched into an explanation. “There are two main problems. One is more tractable than the other. The more tractable problem concerns the other Zeropoint operation, which is, possibly, putting it too simplistically. Um,” he grasped for words. “In a near-infinite set of parallel realities, most are dominated by a Zeropoint organization bent on gaining full control of all of history, with the aim of making it easier for the Vores to—”
He’d heard of the Vores. “And they are?”
“Nobody is quite sure exactly what or who they are. We know that they are, at minimum, organic machines, parasites of a type, stuck on the outside of the universe — you have to imagine the entire universe — really, the entire manifold, I suppose — as a very complex hypersphere, as seen from a higher-dimensional viewpoint.”
Spider began to regret asking for an explanation. “‘Higher-dimensional viewpoint.’ Right.”
“So you’ve got these things feeding on the substance of the universe itself, eating it, and shitting out entropic waste… Uh, Spider?”
He was doing his best, but it was not easy. “You’re saying there are things literally eating the universe?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Why would they do that?”
“We don’t know if they’re conscious, or intelligent creatures. For all we know they could be mindless, self-replicating Von Neumann machines. What’s important is that they’re consuming the order of structured matter and energy in the universe, and spewing out chaotic energy and gas and whatnot into that higher-dimensional space. Other creatures in that realm, which is otherwise cold to the point of absolute zero and pretty bleak, they are drawn to this source of energy, which shows up like a huge burning star to them, and they come and feed on that, and next thing you’ve got a whole bloody ecosystem going, all dependent on these Vores for sustenance. And the more the Vores multiply, the more this bizarre ecosystem grows and expands.”
Spider was thinking about the vents on the deep ocean floor, spewing hot, chemical-rich materials, and drawing in all manner of strange, otherworldly deep-sea lifeforms, none of which ever saw the light of day, evolving and growing and developing deep in the hot darkness at the bottom of the sea. “All right,” he said, nodding a little. “So far so good.”
“You did ask, Spider. It knocked me for a loop, too, when I heard about it.”
Spider wished he wouldn’t keep referring to “his” past that way. It was easier for Spider to deal with Soldier Spider if he could keep from seeing the old bastard as a future version of himself, with all that that implied about his own future choices and beliefs. He said, “How long have these things been at it?”
“Eating the universe?”
“Yeah.”
“Dunno, to be honest with you. Long enough. Long enough to make certain the universe is flat, that it will keep expanding indefinitely.”
He had heard something about the “flatness” of the universe, that it had to do with whether the expansion would ever stop, and start to reverse itself, ultimately squeezing down into a so-called Big Crunch. The key question involved the quantity of mass and energy available in the universe: if the total was greater than a certain value, the universe would slow and reverse its expansion and go crunch; if lower than that value, the expansion would spread out forever. Were the Vores aware they were changing the ultimate fate of the universe? Or were they just eating because they could, and there was plenty of available food? Did it matter? Spider thought, no, not really. He couldn’t imagine being able to do anything about them.
What did concern him, now that he could, sort-of, picture the whole thing, was that, given enough time, the Vores could work their way from the distant future down to his own time. The very idea of “the future” was disappearing. Even as the fabric of space-time flung itself apart at unthinkable speeds, it was disappearing; the sheer size of the universe was contracting: that “complex hypersphere” containing the entire manifold would be dwindling slowly away. The future was not what it used to be.
“All right,” Spider said. “I can kinda see it. Kinda.”
“Good.”
“And then there’s you guys, countless versions of Zeropoint, all spread across all the different timelines, only most of you are bad guys?”
“Not so much bad guys as guys with very different aims.”
Spider swore. “Good grief.”
“You need to understand this,” Soldier Spider said, making a big point of it.
“Why?”
“Because, like it or not, this is your future. I am you.”
Spider held his head, resting his elbows on the desk. “It’s kind of a lot to take in, all at once, you know.”
“Can’t be helped.”
Spider sighed, well aware that he had not merely been shanghaied here, but that he was also being set up for an exciting career in some unimaginable military service. Though exactly how you might go about fighting “things” stuck on the outside of the universe — his mind boggled more than a little at the idea — while you were stuck inside said universe, he could not say. Of course, he also realized that if he were to ask such a question, this future version of himself would only be too pleased to tell him. “Well, Spider,” he imagined his future self telling him in his best sarcastic tone, “first you need to take this fantastic super-scientific, mega-powerful Blat-O-Matic, see, and you basic
ally use it like an oxy torch to cut a hole in the wall of the universe, and then you climb outside, and well, then you just need, say, a giant atomic-powered chisel thing, and you just pry the Vores off the outside of the universe like they were so many barnacles…” The idea was amusing, and distracted him for a moment.
“You were thinking about the Blat-O-Matic just now?”
Spider, fed up, said, “Oh, fuck off.”
“Sorry. Just, you know…”
“Yeah. Remembering. I get it. Just stop it, all right. It’s annoying.”
“Sorry, Spider.”
Slightly mollified, Spider thought he should cooperate, even if only a bit. “So, big scary Vores are, um, eating the universe. Horrors! But then you’ve also got these other guys, these Zeropoint fellows, who are opposed to what you’re trying to achieve, and they’ve got their own plans. You’re down to just this one ship. I’m guessing they have more than that?”
“They have millions of ships, spread across countless timelines.”
Spider coughed. “Millions, did you say?”
“We don’t have an exact figure. It’s a bloody shitload, basically.”
He nodded. “Ships like this one?”
Soldier Spider turned glum. “Nah. Their ships are really cool.”
This was not what Spider was expecting to hear. “‘Really cool,’ huh?”
“Hence the, er, one of us, and the millions of them. They’ve been wiping us out pretty methodically. If we hadn’t managed to implement the flux-proofing when we did, we’d have been stuffed.”
“Shit.”
“It gets better. The opposition, they seem to know every move we make, usually before we make it.”
“So you’ve got a mole?”
“Or something.”
“Is anybody missing? I mean, on a ship like this, wouldn’t you miss someone if they just vanished?”
“Not everyone in our branch of Zeropoint is on this ship.”
“Ah,” Spider said, not much wiser.
“Cross-time intrigue. Big fun,” the older Spider said.
“So,” Spider said, getting impatient. “You tell me all this stuff about the End of Time, bizarre critters literally from beyond time and space, and a war between different parts of the same organization for, I suppose, all the marbles that have ever existed, in every possible universe.
“I wouldn’t be quite that flippant about it,” Soldier Spider said.
“No, I suppose not. But I’m not you. Not yet. I’m still me, and liking it that way. I don’t want to be you. I don’t want to sell myself out. Obviously, at some point, yeah, fine, I can see that I do somehow reach that point, but right now, no. Not sold. And, to be really honest with you, starting to wonder where I fit in with all this craziness.”
“You’re here, Spider, because we need you. Yes, you. Nobody else but you. Not me; you.”
“Uh-huh. Yeah. I got that, thanks. Still not seeing anything—”
Soldier Spider interrupted. “You want to see something that might justify your being here?”
“Yes, please! Absolutely!”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m real sure, yeah.”
“It doesn’t occur to you that this is the sort of conversation where the oh-so-cynical one winds up wishing he hadn’t been such a wiseguy?”
“It doesn’t occur to you that I just don’t care, and would really like to just go home and fix stupid busted time machines?”
Soldier Spider got up. In that spec-ops gear, he looked a lot bigger than Spider realized. And he had a look on his face, a very definite “fuck you!” look, that Spider matched with one of his own. “You. Come with me. I’ll show you something that might just get your attention.”
At this, hearing the tone in Soldier Spider’s voice — the softness, even what had to be vulnerability, Spider started paying attention to what was happening here. Something, he saw, was wrong, more wrong than he thought. He felt a trickle of cold fear in the depths of his belly, a dread that he was going to get his wish.
Soldier Spider led the way out of the cramped cell and into the rest of the ship.
CHAPTER 14
His future self led Spider out of the interrogation room, and showed him through what he gathered was a very limited section of the Masada. Spider was surprised at the tight confines of the passageways, through many of which they could move only sideways, and crouching. Here and there they found what Spider guessed were lower-ranked crew intensely cleaning surfaces, walls, fixtures and fittings that looked already clean. The older Spider explained that “humans constantly shed skin cells, hair, eyelashes, and you don’t want to know what else, and it all builds up, to say nothing of bacteria. Leave it long enough and everything stinks and you wind up with infectious diseases laying people out. So, we clean, and we clean again, from stem to stern.”
Temperatures varied greatly in different parts of the ship, too, Spider noticed. Where the interrogation room had felt more-or-less room temperature, at least as he understood it, other areas were surprisingly cold — he could see his breath in some places — and others unbearably warm. He tried asking why, but was told to just keep moving, they were short on time.
At length, they squeezed into a larger room that was more familiar; it looked to Spider like the procedure rooms he remembered from the Perth City Mortuary, all very clean, cool, and with an array of steel dissection tables, each with grooves and drains. Along one wall was a row of four square doors. In one corner was a collection of sophisticated machinery Spider did not recognize, but whose purpose he could guess. And on one dissection table, covered in a white sheet with only her badly damaged head showing, was the body of Spider’s sort-of ex-wife, Molly Webb. Spider gasped. He couldn’t help it. At first, standing there, staring at her, he thought he must have been mistaken. That wasn’t Molly. Molly was in Bangkok. She was fine. He spoke to her just the other day.
He took a step closer, and then another step. His legs felt weak. He felt cold all over. Glancing at Soldier Spider, he saw that his future self looked much the way he felt, or maybe worse. Soldier Spider had a hand over his mouth, and his eyes closed.
Then Spider was there, standing close enough to Molly’s body to touch it. He could see that it was Molly. He said her name, as if trying to wake her up, but she did not respond. “Molly, come on,” he said. “What’s going on?”
Trembling, he touched her face. It was cold and hard. “Oh God,” he said, starting to get it. “Molly…” He covered his mouth; his eyes began to tear up; his throat tightened.
Spider looked up at Soldier Spider, who nodded, and moved around to join Spider. One arm around Spider’s shoulders, he led Spider out of the room. A technician in surgical scrubs drew the sheet over Molly’s face.
In the chilly corridor, Soldier Spider explained. “Molly was coming back from her trip to Bangkok. You were supposed to have met her at the airport, to pick her up, but you didn’t get there in time. She took a taxi home.” At this point Soldier Spider paused, closed his eyes for a moment, and took a breath. “On the way home, there was an accident, and the taxi crashed. Molly and the driver both died.”
Spider was speechless. He wanted to say so many things, but couldn’t. At first he suspected that Soldier Spider and his Zeropoint buddies had for no doubt bizarre reasons arranged for that taxi to crash. Another voice in his head wanted to question whether that really was Molly, or some kind of android replica. Maybe, he thought, the real Molly was just fine somewhere, and wondering why Spider couldn’t pop round to fix her toilet.
“She never…” It was hard to speak without breaking down. “Told me I had to pick her up.” He wiped his nose and his eyes on his sleeve.
“That’s true,” Soldier Spider said, “from your viewpoint.”
“Oh, shit,” Spider said, seein
g where this was going.
“The thing is, and this is hard to fully accept. I know I found it just about impossible—”
“Just stop with that right now, all right?”
“Sorry.”
“Can you bring her back? You said yourself this is the End of Time, right? Surely—”
“Not the way you think—”
“But there’s a chance?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Well, start uncomplicating it right now you treacherous bastard.”
“The problem,” Soldier Spider said, “is that we are in the shit. One ship against millions. We’re low on power, life-support, able-bodied crew, you name it. The ship’s flux-proofed, but only the outer hull, it’s all we can manage like this. We’re hanging on by our fingernails. The other team, though, Dickhead’s team, they—”
“Dickhead? Dickhead McMahon? My Dickhead?”
“The same. Mr. Zone-of-Control himself.”
“What?”
“Long story. But listen to me—”
“What the fuck could Dickhead McMahon have been up to?”
“Trying to win the universe, same as everyone else. Trying to commune with the Vores. Trying, in fact, to kill us.”
“But that’s… That’s nuts!”
“And yet, here we are. Now, listen to me. I need your help.”
Spider thought his head might explode. It was too much. He paced up and down the corridor, trying to think, to make sense of everything, talking to himself, going over and over everything he knew, or thought he knew, trying to make everything fit together. Again and again, he came back to the one thing he cared about above all else. He said to Soldier Spider, “Is she really dead?”
“She is. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“And she’s dead because of me, because I let her down?”
“Indirectly, yes.”
“Okay. Send me back.”
“Not just yet.”
“What now?”
“I need you to do a job for us.”
“Fine. I’m in. Just send me the hell back there.”
Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait Page 17
