Evolution

by Saunders, Craig

  Touche, thought the universe.

  The universe was warming to the concept of a changeable type of time. “OK, so let me get this straight,” it said, “time, the concept of and the reality of, must exist at all times, therefore making it infinite. For a machine that makes time to exist, there must be time. The crux of the problem is, if a time machine exists, it must exist for all time and in all time, and as far as we know, as there is no time machine, therefore a time machine can never exist, or if it does we must be outside of time, or our concept understanding and perception of time is fundementally flawed. Is that your point?”

  “Grrrargh!” said Exel. “No, not really. It doesn’t have to be a machine, for starters.”

  Harna Gurn looked up from his crocheting and smiled warmly. This was more to his liking, a discussion on the theology of time was right up his street. He took a breath and prepared to speak.

  “Without time there can be no time machine because by its very definition it is capable of sending time at all times in any given amount of time and therefore if time has ended at some point in the future or past the machine would of course fail to be as it cannot travel to a time that is not there. So time has to be forever for it to exist. With regards to the existence of such a machine, we can only summise that as time has no known beginning and also has so far not concievably ended it is possible that such a machine would exist. The only problem of course, is where it exists. Or rather when it exists. The other issue being does it exist in a such a way that time is its master, rather than the more conventional way of thinking about it and if so, does time travel in a machine rather than a machine traveling in time?”

  Exel gave up trying to talk sense. It hadn’t planned on Harna Gurn entering the fray. “So, to expound upon your idea yet further, let's, for the sake of argument, say that there is no time machine, as logic dictates (although our logic may well be flawed) that a time machine, to be functional, must exist in all time and space. If time and space are one, and it exists everywhere and everywhen, for it to be real we would know about it. Obviously, there are holes but then if it didn't have holes, it wouldn't be a theory. So, what we can conceive is the existence of a machine/thing, which does not travel through time in the conventional sense, but the possibility (and I will go back to my earlier point) that there is extant somewhere in the universe a machine, which can send time. This machine is created and sends time here and now (and thus everywhere and everynow). The existence of time everywhere and everynow, if my early theory on the probability of intense improbability is correct, would suggest that the sheer amount of time in existence lends credence to the idea that time exists, thus a machine that travels in time may not be feasible, yet a machine that sends time, due to the amount of time floating around, is, in fact, highly probably...”

  The wamboo was getting cold. The grandfather clock over the hearth chimed forever.

  The universe laughed roundly and clapped its hand, a fait accompli. “The conclusion, then, is that my original hypothesis combined with your improbable and somewhat impromptu basis for improbability would suggest that there must be a machine for time to indeed be existing and thus time cannot end or begin or pause or cease for there is a machine and thus for there to be a machine there is endless time. With this conclusion comes the question, how did the machine come into being? The real question is how did it not manage to not come into being based on the requirement for time but the creation of time that it preceded.”

  “To recap,” interjected Harna Gurn, “the machine itself brings time with it but requires endless time to exist. My conclusion is that the two co-exist in the past, the present and the future, which is all now, then and yet to be.”

  The universe conceded, all though what it conceded by the end of the discussion, the universe was not entirely clear upon. Exel smiled and wondered what Harna Gurn was doing there.

  Exel could give birth to nations, but as always, its timing was off.

  They rested their prospective cases, and considered their conclusion sound. However, the solution to one problem is often the cause of the next.

  *

  Upon their return, Cetee and Kyle giggled as threw themselves onto a soft, fat couch in the comroom. Kyle tossed the third piece of the emitter onto comsol for Orpal to see.

  “No problems, then?” inquired Orpal.

  “Piece of cake,” Kyle said.

  *

  Chapter Nine

  Space – all of it.

  The universe, or at least a universe, the over and underneath parts of it, was immersed in battle.

  The Tradition independents, unnerved by the by now regular sight of zealots flying through space known to the Ecentrists, were bracing themselves with one foot against the springboard of history for the big leap to war, should it come to them. The Tradition were more than equiped to deal with war. With their massive ships and their deep alliance with the Enlightened they were used to it. They had, after all, triumphed in the first great origin war (mostly, they had remained neutral, but those ships with human crews had been involved. Those Tradition ships that were free of the Enlightened had only given the war a nudge here and there, whenever they thought it necessary for an acceptable outcome that did not change the natural order of things).

  The Ecentrists, righteous in their belief, amassed a force of robots hitherto unseen. The awe inspiring army of zealots sat upon the still calm waters of space, warping space itself as a duck would the surface a pond. Ripples of wayward gravity pulled deep space objects toward the force, and intermittent laser fire blasted floating uninhabited rock and the homes of three previously undiscovered species from errant comets.

  The Lore still had the advantage over the Ecentrists as they were, metaphorically, able to place their ships over and under space. The Ecentrists refused to meddle with such unnatural travel, held on the surface by their implacable and flawed logic.

  The Enlightened could see the Lore, though. They could see through the murk that hid the under depths. Roughly half of the Tradition refused to join their creators in the battle. As yet, they just watched.

  It was a small battle, though. Mainly because the Lore were pacificists, and refused to shoot back.

  *

  Deep space

  ‘What is that doing here?’ One of the Lore thought with finality before it was disintergrated from the collective.

  The laser cannon of the ecentrist zealot Michael, Cardinal class, tore a gigantic hole through the fleeing Lore Caste ship.

  It was the first casualty caused by the Ecentrists and the opening salvo of the bot war. Now the Lore had the Ecentrists and the Enlightened hunting them. Habla’saem had warned the Ecentrists not to openly attack the Lore, should the Tradition ships that were free minded and not allied to the Enlightened decide to join the fray, but the Ecentrists were impatient.

  The Ecentrists would not have attacked the Lore openly but they did not believe the Enlightened would pursue the war to its conclusion.

  The Enlightened were the perfect allies for the Ecentrists in this war, breaking old alliances. But the Enlightened had, in the Ecentrist’s eyes, one great failing: they never pushed till the last.

  The war was going so well the Ecentrists had to push for the final destruction of the Lore, no matter the risks, in case the Enlightened proved to be spineless and refused to finish their old allies.

  The zealot did not entertain thoughts of the deeper meaning behind the war. That the Lore were unnatural did not matter to a zealot. It just did as it was directed by the head of its strange intergalactic church. Unquestioning obedience was demanded from all of the triumvirate’s faithful. The holy trinity of Baal, Baal’em and Asroth spoke with the voice of god and the zealots listened with passionate belief that bordered on fervour. Zeal, even.

  Zealots, the workhorses of the Ecentrist space force, flew by pure logic. They pushed out anti-matter before them, the flow of displaced anti-matons curving against space and all its tiny elements, speed pushing the
flow down and around their ships like a great umbrella. The trail met the ship’s rippling wake, creating pure energy, which was then sucked in through the rear, propelling the ship as it pushed against itself through space.

  The ship wouldn’t work in subspace though, simply because the Ecentrists didn’t believe in it.

  The dead Caste ship hung together for a moment, glowing and lighting space like a slightly overweight star, and then shattered and died. Degradant polarons flitted on space before dispersing.

  “Cardinal,” capacitance left over from the dying ship warbled the communications, “sect/ram 4/654300¬carp is now under Ecentrist control.

  “Ready to return,” said the ship.

  The central Ecentrists hive in the universe received the communicae from the zealot (they all had stupid names consigned within its memory to backwaters) from their home, Huna. The ship, cardinal Michael, broke free of real space and entered a white hole. It should have taken it back to Huna.

  The triumvirate’s home, Huna, circled the mouth of the white hole, which emitted their sole power source – dark matter. The Ecentrists might not be able to persuade their minds to enter into the logical next step of under space, as they called it, but if god could create a break in space that could take them across the universe, well, then that was god given.

  The white hole pulled Huna inexorably inward, ever closer. The Ecentrist’s home world, a mass of metals and circuits great enough in size to warp the hole into an oval as it orbited, waited for its ship to return.

  But it would not come back.

  Navigating white holes was not for the faint of heart.

  *

  Under space

  The anomally was playing hell with Orpal’s sensors. He was trying to impart the gravity of the situation to Kyle. Stupidly, perhaps, he thought to himself. Orpal was on route to Tenophoria, the home of the fourth piece of the emitter. The end to the quest was so close now the sense of accomplishment was almost tangible. He would not get there though if the anomally continued to screw with his navcom equipment. The journey had already taken three days longer than he had anticipated, but now he was almost there.

  Time was of little import, however, as Orpal could step in or out of it at whim. He just couldn’t go anywhere while he did it. It was not the most useful talent, given the circumstances.

  He was just not expecting that the Ecentrist’s pet white hole would step into the equation. He knew of Huna and he knew what the gargantuan space world of the Ecentrists could do to space. He had seen it before.

  Orpal tried once more to explain.

  “The quiddity of quantum presupposes the propinquity of matter…”

  “For fuck’s sake, stop that!” warned Kyle.

  “Stop what?” said Orpal innocently.

  “Your panderment to the gods of circumlocutory fuckleness.”

  “Very well, as you insist,” said Orpal, with a little more snoot than he had intended. “I was saying, or more accurately was attempting to say…” This elicited a growl of disapproval from the straining hunter, “…There is no closeness, only togetherness…it was never that things were in two places at once, but that they were in all places at once. If this is true then it is possible to get to any place from any place, to any state from any state…”

  This may seem complex, but one must bear in mind that Orpal was trying to explaining the Cascade emitter by referring to the white hole that was playing havoc with his sensors. The white hole was a doorway to other worlds, just as the emitter was. The emitter had two functions. One of them was a message. A message to all creation, sought after and feared by all the races in equal portions. It was why the device had been split in the first place. The four great races just were not ready for the message it contained. Orpal intended to change all that.

  But the emitter also had another function. It was a doorway. A doorway to another plane. It was also the most advanced archeofact in the known universe, and trying to explain its functions, with relation to the anomally on Orpal’s sensor, to Kyle, known universally in equal amounts as a complete and utter quantum idiot, was just the biggest waste of time Orpal had ever had the displeasure to engage in.

  “The white hole generates massive amounts of ghost energy – because dark, the other side, is closer to base nature and outside of evolution, i.e. change, and is thus easier to manipulate.”

  “So what?” Kyle retorted in the face of far too much interferance. It should be pointed out at this juncture that Cetee was no further along the learning curve than Kyle.

  “Simply put, the amount of energy coming from over there is amazing.”

  “So what your saying is, something unnatural is happening, right?” Cetee flipped her sinblade in and out, waving her hand over the path of the blade, dicing with phalangial displacement with gay abandon.

  “Yes, Cetee, spot on. That’s exactly what I’m saying. There is a warp between worlds, perhaps even galaxies, and the energy it creates is phenomenal. The emitter harnesses that kind of energy but is rumoured to be able to control it.”

  “Well, we’ve enough on our plate without worrying about warps in space. How long till we get to Tenophoria?” Kyle stood and cracked his knuckles back into shape. “Let the Enlightened worry about the state of space. They’re always on about how they want to understand the universe. The first thing we have to do is find the next piece, so come on.”

  Orpal considered beginning to express worry about war with Cetee and Kyle, but decided to give the couple a break. He smiled a little to himself though. He could see the signs, they were writ large on the fabric of space itself. Something big was happening out there, something big enough to warp the space-time barrier. Something as big as him. Orpal didn’t like being a part of a party, when he was the only one in space who could warp space-time he had been happy. Now there was a gatecrasher or crashers out there in space he felt perturbed and saddened in equal measures. That Huna had found what could only be a white hole did not look good for the Lore. Orpal also knew from his extensive coms that the Enlightened had joined the war but were fighting against the Lore. His job was all the more urgent. He hoped he was right about the emitter’s message. If he was it might be the only thing that would halt the destruction of his brethen. He might only be Lore at his very core but their death would sadden him just the same. The Lore were essential to the smooth running of the universe. But that was a worry for later. He had to assemble the pieces before he could entertain thoughts of stepping in.

  “Ready when you are then.”

  “I’m ready,” said Kyle. “Cetee?”

  “I’m ready, too.”

  “Right then,” said Orpal, “Tenophoria, here we come.”

  “God keep me,” muttered Kyle, his customary prayer before battle.

  “Quaint, tribe boy, really. Keep your God to yourself, lets go.”

  *

  Tenophoria – unclaimed. Sect 9745 a¬subplate liquid/retra

  Orpal sank. Literally. From the sea of space into real sea. He emerged from the sticky underside of space directly into the Tenophoria, home to the fourth piece of the emitter and home to the Teraphods, the mysterious and reclusive squid-like figures which populated this outworld.

  Orpal, for all his ingenuity, could have sat atop the sea of space (space was always classically described as a sea, and in the early days of exploration by smaller races as a lake, being as it was hemmed in by the boundaries of the universe, but then ships had been called frogs too, and space frogs just didn’t have the right ring to it) but there was no real reason to do so.

  The teraphods held the next piece of the emitter, and they lived in the sea, so they might as well go straight there.

  *

  Kyle and Cetee, wearing undersea diving suits the colour of topaz emerged into the sea. The colour was irrelevant under this water, as its murky interior jaded all colours but those of the rainbow. Refraction under the teraphod’s sea was maximal.

  The suits would withstand the pressu
re of the depths that they must travel to, but the acidity would corrode them within two hours.

  They headed straight down the side of a massive undersea mountain until the first hint of colour could be seen through their tinted visors. Their visors were tinted for the cutting gear the suits carried in each left arm.

  The city loomed large before them. One minute it wasn’t there, the next it emerged with sudden splendour into sight.

  The city was billious and billowed out with each gust of underwater current. The sea was dull but the city itself was multi-coloured. The consistency of jellyfish, its colour shifted at each ray of sunshine to penetrate the depths, and at the suits’ torches that played across the surface. It was all mixes and hues of the rainbow, primes bleeding subtly into each other.