The Gatespace Trilogy, Omnibus Edition

by Alan Seeger

  Then one woman stood up and shouted down most of the others. Once she had the attention of everyone in the room, she announced that she had the perfect suggestion for someone who would make a better leader for the people than any of what she called “the fatcat windbags on that stage” — and Brad’s mouth dropped open when she turned and looked at him and said, “I say Brad Lord should be our new Mayor!”

  “What…? Uh… no! I don’t have any experience dealing with leadership!” Brad sputtered. The idea was crazy.

  “I dunno, Brad,” said Thunder. “People’ll listen to you. Plus we could get whatever we need if you were in charge.”

  Brad looked at him sternly. “Shut up, you idiot,” he said. “Don’t encourage them.”

  The hubbub got louder as more people in the crowd, primarily the younger set, seemed to consider the idea. A rock star as their mayor? Not a bad idea.

  Those of grandparent age, however, scowled at the idea. “Might as well have Mick Jagger up there,” said one man.

  His wife uttered a low, cynical laugh and said, “Jagger’s your age, honey.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t move like he can.”

  “Too bad,” replied his wife.

  CHAPTER 75

  2016

  There was a crack of thunder, a crackling sound and a now-familiar green swirl as a Gate opened before them.

  Out stepped an old man with snow white hair. The old man’s face seemed familiar to most of those present, but to one man he was Dad.

  Sam looked as shocked as anyone ever had. Then his face broke into a huge smile. “I knew he wasn’t dead!”

  Steven Denver hugged his son, then walked over to the overstuffed sofa that occupied one side of the room and sank down onto it, resting his weary bones.

  Rick glanced at Stefanie, Terry and Sarah in an effort to see if any of the rest of the team recognized him. Terry looked over at Rick. “It’s the Greatfather,” he said.

  Rick looked around at the others and smiled. He walked up to Steven Denver and extended his hand.

  “Mr. Denver,” Rick said, giving him a firm handshake, “I enjoyed your Gatespace book so much. Please, tell us all how you came to discover the Gates even before we did at ChroNova?”

  CHAPTER 76

  2016

  “So,” said the man with the snowy white hair, “You read my book, Gatespace?”

  “Yes, I did, Greatfather. I liked it a lot.” answered Rick.

  “Oh, come on, now, please,” the man replied. “We’re all friends here, am I right?” He looked around the room. “And we’re all going to work hand in hand to put things back the way they should be.”

  Heads nodded all over the room.

  “Then I want you all, every single one of you, to call me Steve,” he said.

  Rick looked at him and smiled. “Steve,” he said. “Would you tell us your story?”

  Steven Denver, author, political philosopher, and traveler of time and space, smiled like a kid getting his first kiss from a girl.

  And he began to explain things to them.

  CHAPTER 77

  2016

  …I must have talked for two hours straight.

  What’s that? Oh… yes, I’m sorry. For those of you reading this story after the fact, I should have explained things to you from the start. I’ll tell it to you much the way I explained it to the people who were in the room that day:

  I am Steven Clark Denver. They call me the Greatfather now, although I find that title pompous, ostentatious and more than just a little bit embarrassing.

  The people who gave me that title have no idea that I am aware of so much; of virtually everything that has gone on in their circumstances over all the centuries of time. Somehow, I suppose perhaps with the repeated interaction that I had with the Gatespace, it seems as if I left a little piece of myself embedded everywhere I went in this creation; Montana, Granite City, Centra… eventually, I traveled through the Gatespace hundreds of times to hundreds of places, always meeting new people and learning new things; and then on top of that, there was the Dup Shimati.

  In the year 2060, at the age of 91, although medical science had greatly added to my health and longevity, my body still had become aged and fragile, and I knew that I was near the end. I decided to enter the Gatespace, perhaps for the last time, whether to remain there forever in the suspension of the green void or to emerge at some point and finally die, I didn’t know.

  Much to my surprise, as I allowed myself to drift through that great nothingness, I happened to come near to one of the distant gates, what ChroNova refers to as the “remote gates.” As I peered out, I happened to be in the right position to be able to see a vast scene which seemed to be nothing but blackness. As I watched, in an eye’s blink, a burst of pinkish light overwhelmed me, seeming for a moment to even illuminate the depths of the green void which was the Gatespace, and all the floating, lost things within it.

  It seemed that lifetimes passed as stars and galaxies appeared to take shape before my very eyes; what should have taken billions of years transpired in what seemed to be only minutes. That was when I realized that, in fact, I had beheld the birth of our universe, hundreds of millions of years in the making, which had passed for me in what seemed like the passage of an hour or less.

  It wasn’t long after that I found myself drifting toward another Gate. I was surprised to find myself being gently retrieved from it by a pair of odd, blue-skinned creatures with long, spindly arms which were perfectly suited to the task. They drew me out onto what seemed to be the shore of a sea covered with lavender sand, although in fact there was no sea, only the sand. They brought me to a third being, who sat before a large device which seemed to be a great, complex computer of some sort. This being was tall and seemed to be more or less humanoid, despite the fact that it was multi-limbed and beaked and covered with feathers, quite birdlike in appearance.

  He turned and seemed to smile, and began to speak to me. Much to my surprise, it spoke understandable but heavily accented English. The being began to explain and clarify the things I had just witnessed. The Big Bang? Yes, that was what I had watched take place. That particular Gate that I had been looking through apparently had somehow been affected by the stupendous amounts of energy released by the event and had perhaps been damaged or otherwise compromised in some way, causing it to store and replay an image of the event continuously ever since, displaying it every eighty-six minutes or so as we measure time on Earth.

  Anzû — for this is what the creature gave as his name — explained that we were on his home planet in a star system very far from Earth, in another galaxy altogether, in fact. He had found the nearby Gate a number of years ago — I got the impression that he meant many thousands of years — and found that he was able to slowly propel himself within it by means of opening his large, birdlike wings and flapping them slowly as best he could, a process not terribly unlike my use of the fire extinguisher to propel myself through it.

  He had, in fact, visited Earth dozens of times, finding much later that he had given rise to many legends of birdlike creatures and gods throughout human history, including the winged god from Mesopotamian mythology which, in fact, bears his name; the angels of Judeo-Christian and Muslim theology; and the god Horus from Ancient Egyptian mythology, among others.

  Then, as if this experience wasn’t enough, Anzû completely blew my mind when he revealed that the machine he had created was not only able to access the Gatespace in a manner not unlike the ChroNova HOT6 which I learned about some time ago, but allowed him access to what he called “all the pages of the Book of Life,” meaning the thousands or perhaps even millions of worlds contained in the Multiverse.

  He had opened the doorway to the Infinite, an uncountable series of universes, with new ones forming seemingly at random intervals like yeast cells budding off one another. The most powerful computer systems on Earth could never keep up with attempting to catalog the data needed to map its entirety, and neither could Anzû. H
e knew only that they were out there, and that this machine could connect to them.

  In Mesopotamian mythology, the Dup Shimati or Tablet of Destiny was described as a clay tablet inscribed with cuneiform writing and impressed with cylinder seals, which, considered as a permanent legal document, gave the god Enlil his supreme authority as ruler of the universe.

  The Sumerian poem “Ninurta and the Turtle” describes the theft of the tablet by Anzû, and explains that whoever possesses the so-called ‘tablet’ rules the universe. He explained to me that the tale was full of literary license, as he had never stolen the Dup Shimati; he found it, essentially abandoned, here in this very spot.

  There’s only one thing: it’s not a clay tablet at all; it’s a computer — a computer constructed from clay fused into silicon, and it doesn’t make you the boss, it gives you a boarding pass to travel anywhere you like in the multiverse.

  All this time, Anzû has been talking, but I’ve only heard half of what he’s been saying. I shake my head to clear my thoughts.

  “I’m sorry?”

  The beaked mouth seems to smile, if you can call it that.

  “I know this is all a little difficult to comprehend,” Anzû says, “but what I am saying is that I am tired. I’ve been alive for more than ten thousand years, as you measure time. I wish only to put my head beneath my wing and enter my eternal rest.”

  I stare at his face in disbelief. “If I understand what you are telling me,” I say slowly, “you intend to give me control of this… this machine? The Dup Shimati?”

  “You are the only one for it.”

  “But I can’t… I, uh… I’m just a man,” I say.

  “And I am only a khaliṝ,” he replies, using the term for his birdlike race. “You have learned how to deal with the bewildering experience of traveling from world to world, from time to time. This has been your training, your breaking-in period. Now it is my time to hand you the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. And it is my time to lay down my head and become one with what lies beyond.”

  A panel on the front of the machine lights up with a pale, green glow. Anzû directs me to place the palm of my hand on it, and it seems to scan me.

  Next he asks me to take a seat in front of the machine and places a bowl-shaped object over my head.

  All at once I feel my head begin to spin as though a billion thoughts are passing through my mind at once. The sensation lasts for just a few moments, then passes. Anzû and I exchange a look, and he spreads his great wings and flies away to a nearby mountaintop, presumably to find solace and rest forever.

  I know what I must do.

  CHAPTER 78

  2016

  “And so,” said Steven, “I think you understand now just what needs to be done, am I right?”

  Looks were exchanged around the room.

  “So,” said Rick, “what you’re saying is that we should basically undo everything that we did?”

  “Destroy all the achievements that we’ve made?” said Terry.

  “One simple act,” said Steven, “that will resolve this war that’s taking place across a battlefield of eight hundred years.”

  “Okay,” said Rick. “Tell us what we need to do.”

  “That’s the thing… I don’t think that you can do it,” Steven replied, indicating Rick, “or you, Terry, or Sarah. It needs to be a person who is not directly associated with ChroNova, because they need to be able to come in and covertly make these changes, or at least prevent Rick from making the breakthrough that he made, without you actually knowing that a specific intervention is taking place.

  “Here’s what the Dup Shimati indicates has to take place: someone comes into the picture on the day that Rick makes the initial discovery that led to the development of the HOT6. Through whatever means, you prevent that breakthrough from occurring. It was literally a one-in-a-million chance of it happening, according to what you’ve said in the press — excuse me, what you will say in the press in a few years — so it shouldn’t be difficult to disrupt that and make it so the HOT6 is never created.

  “From there, it’s simple. Without the HOT6 technology, there’s no BirdBrain attack on my house. I never go exploring in the Gatespace and lose fifteen years of my life with my family. Rick never goes back to 2000 to find college girl Stefanie. Nigel never comes to recruit Terry and Sarah to the Time Team, because there is no Time Team. Geoff and Janelle never betray the rest of you, and Nigel doesn’t die — in either timestream — because there is no Chinese nuke attack and Sgt. Wilkerson never has the means of making the attempt on Lincoln’s life.”

  Sarah stared at him with a deer-in-the-headlights sort of look. “You literally know everything that’s been going on.”

  Terry gave him a slightly goofy grin. “You could make a mint as a fortune teller. Call yourself… I dunno, ‘Truman the Psychic’ or something.”

  “Truman?” said Steven.

  “I don’t know; it just kinda came to me,” Terry replied.

  “And so you’ll never write your book about the Gatespace,” said Rick sadly. “That’s too bad. I really liked that book a lot.”

  “Well, here’s the thing,” said Steven. There will still be a strange green whirlpool in the air, a mile and a half or so behind my old house in Montana, because that wasn’t created by a HOT6 or anything like it. The STAMINA anomaly was something that is exceedingly rare in nature — a spontaneous rip in space-time. According to the Dup Shimati, they only occur once or twice a year in the entire length and breadth of our universe. So that’ll still be there. I’ve made arrangements for things to be taken care of, though.” He smiled.

  “Greatfather,” said Calliope, “what did you do?”

  “I took a page from your book, Callie,” he replied, “and popped into my old house on the morning that all of that took place, and left two things: a note telling me that there was a strange green whirlpool up on the hill behind the house and to stay the hell out of it, and left myself a copy of the first draft of Gatespace.”

  “So you’re gonna be your own muse, huh?” Calliope grinned.

  “Something like that.”

  “But what about the Chinese?” said Terry. “What’s to prevent them from launching the attack if we don’t go back and deal with Xue Ang-Mu?”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” Steven said. “It was the Council of Five that put Xue Ang-Mu up to developing the plot to begin with. Take away their ability to travel back to 1960, and all their plans come apart.”

  “So the attack never happens,” said Rick.

  “The attack never happens. Nigel is not killed. Of course, since he can’t travel back in time, I’m afraid you’ll never meet him. I believe he winds up a professor of European History at some college in the UK.”

  “Awwww,” said Sarah. “I’m gonna miss him.”

  “Well,” said Steven, “no, actually, you won’t, because you’ll have no memory of ever having met him.”

  “What about the rest of us? Can you tell us where we’ll wind up?” asked Terry.

  “Pretty much the same,” Steven replied. “Your work at ChroNova will go on, but without that once-in-a-lifetime eureka! moment, you may never find the secret of accessing the Gatespace. It’ll still be out there, all around us, really, just on the other side of a gossamer veil, but it’s possible you may never know.”

  “Well, what about you?” asked Rick. “If none of these other things happen, you’ll never wind up meeting Anzû… won’t that keep you from being able to intervene in the first place?”

  “Ah, but that’s the beauty of it,” Steven said with a smile. “None of it will ever have happened, so none of this will be necessary at all.”

  CHAPTER 79

  2016

  In the end, it was Calliope who was tapped for the job of infiltrating ChroNova and preventing the invention of the HOT6. Steven explained that he couldn’t tell her exactly what she needed to do in order to set things right; he only knew that she had to prevent Rick’s breakth
rough from occurring.

  The group of seven, each of whom had now traveled through time multiple times, sat down to discuss the various options that Callie would have.

  “Can she just destroy whatever equipment they’ve — we’ve — developed?” asked Sarah.

  “That’s one possibility,” said Steven.

  “I could go back years before, and kill Rick when he’s still a little kid… kill his parents, even,” Calliope teased.

  “Hey!” Stefanie said in mock outrage.

  “I’d prefer that you not take it to that extreme,” said Rick.

  “Ahh, okay. If you insist,” said Callie with a grin.

  “But seriously,” said Steven, “let’s try not to resort to murder.”

  “I’ve got a plan,” said Calliope.

  CHAPTER 80

  2016 – A few months earlier

  For four years, Rick and the other researchers at ChroNova had been chasing a new sub-atomic particle which controlled how time flowed. He theorized that there was a particle which, if it spun one direction — the standard direction, he visualized — everything was normal and time went forward as it usually did. If, on the other hand, the particle was somehow made to spin in the opposite direction, the flow of time could be reversed.