The Temporal Key

by Adam Benson

  “Oh Dhregh!”

  “Dr. Thalia, it’s not what you think,” Dayk said as he turned around to her.

  “We changed the future, Dr. Dayk! I’m not a navigator, but I know that the Temporal Key isn’t supposed to do that!” She dropped the tool in her hand and started pacing around the wreckage. “Dhregh! Dhregh! Dhregh! How bad is it? Is the future still… there?”

  “Thalia, listen…” Dayk said. He dropped the cube into his pocket as the hologram disappeared. “We knew about it before we left,” he said in a confessional tone.

  “What?!” She exclaimed. “How could you have known about it? What is this? Did you know we were going to crash, too?”

  He hesitated. “Yes… kind of… There was also a known chance for casualties.”

  Thalia stopped pacing around and stared at him with her jaw dropped. “What!?”

  “Dr. Thalia,” Dayk said as he stood up and faced her. “Look, some things are above your grade. We would have told you ahead of time, but this mission had details that were need to know only.”

  “Need to know?!” She fumed, “I could have been killed! People were killed!”

  “They knew the risks.”

  “I didn’t!” She yelled. “I wouldn’t have accepted this mission if I’d known we were going to crash! Did you know who was going to die?”

  “Dr. Thalia, you were told when you accepted this assignment that it might come at great personal risk, and you…”

  “Yeah, but this is different! This isn’t personal risk, this is a catastrophe, and now we’ve changed the future on top of it!?” She yelled.

  “Thalia, you’re a junior scientist, and you accepted this mission despite being told that it carried a high level of personal risk. We told you everything that we could tell an inexperience scientist without jeopardizing an incredibly delicate temporal anomaly, and besides, you survived, didn’t you?” Dayk said

  “That’s not the point!” She yelled back. “Everyone else is dead, and we would have been too if your secret plan had worked out!”

  “Thalia, there’s no secret plan, there’s just…”

  “Then why was Captain Nocta trying to kill us? Huh? Was that why we crashed? Was the crash on purpose?”

  Dayk looked at her as his own internal struggle started agreeing with her, “I have no idea why Nocta was trying to kill us, and I have no idea why we crashed. Neither of those things was part of the projection.”

  “You said you knew about the crash!”

  “We came back to investigate a crash that’s been recorded in history for over two and a half million years. We had suspicions, but no way to know for sure if it was us that crashed.”

  “So, then what? If you knew about the crash does that mean Temporal Rescue will be back here sooner?” She asked.

  “No. Temporal Rescue won’t come for one megaChron,” Dayk told her.

  “But we don’t have any shelter, most of our tools are dead…. We’re totally exposed here. How are we supposed to survive for ten days like this? If you knew about the crash, then why do we have to wait?” She asked.

  “Because we didn’t know when the crash was going to occur, and we didn’t even know for sure if it was going to be us that crashed. Standard procedure means that Temporal Rescue doesn’t come back until the official end of the mission. Our mission was one megaChron, so we wait until then,” Dayk said.

  “We changed the future! We don’t know if they’re coming or not now!” She said.

  “Thalia, we didn’t change the future. Not the way you think we did, anyways,” he said calmly. “Temporal Rescue will still come.”

  “Then what was going on with the Temporal Key?” She asked emphatically.

  Dayk sighed as he considered what to tell her. “Dr. Thalia,” he started. She stared at him eagerly waiting to hear what came next. “Given our current situation, there’s a few things that I might need to tell you.”

  Aldartal

  The city of Aldartal lay deep in a thickly arborous valley in the country of Myr’kiwidu which lay on what remained of a sub-continent that was once called India. The land had changed, and the people had certainly changed. War and peace, extinction and evolution had shaped the entire Earth into something both familiar and completely unrecognizable. It had become a lush and rich garden that thrived everywhere, with a new breed of nature that covered the Earth with the descendants of genetically engineered plants and animals.

  Technology and nature had become symbiotically interwoven, and it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. Technological mega-cities were grown as much as they were built, using species of trees that had evolved from genetically engineered varieties designed to grow synthetic plastics, medicines or any number of other industrial materials. They could support incredible weight and form unique structures, and still collected the sunlight for their energy and swayed in the breeze. They could grow circuitry and bio-chemical computing systems, metals, fabrics, or use them to produce any number of gasses or chemicals.

  Cities of differing kinds existed all around the world. Some buildings floated high above through the jet streams, continuously circling the globe, while others were built on tall spires that grew out and above the forests like massive artificial flower buds. Some cities found their way to the depths of the oceans, or floating along its surface, and others were strewn throughout the solar system, mining moons and asteroids, or doing research deep in the atmosphere of gas giants.

  On Earth, roads had become a thing of the past. Most of their place to place transportation was handled by an advanced teleportation network that would quickly and easily move them from place to place, almost anywhere on the planet and to a few places throughout the solar system, with little more effort than a thought. Some places, like Aldartal, kept their own private, and highly secure teleportation networks separately from the main interplanetary network, which only allowed authorized personnel the ability to teleport into or out of the city. The secure network was necessary, because Aldartal was a city that protected a very old, and very powerful secret.

  For almost three thousand years this fortified city had been home to the Temporal Sciences Center and its sister institution the Temporal Sciences Academy. The city had grown up around what was the original location for the world’s first real time travel experiments, and it was here that time travel was born under lock and key.

  The Temporal Sciences Center was, at their core, a benevolent society, not only studying the past and sharing their historical research, but also maintaining the integrity of natural time to the best of their ability. Greedier parties could not be trusted. A government with temporal control could sway politics to their will, a military could alter the outcome of conflicts, and businesses could cheat the past to their own gain. Thus, a highly specialized private military, known as the Elite Guard, was created to serve the Center and protect the secrets of time travel. They served no other entities or military, their positions were held for life, and retirements were more than luxurious. Being such a prestigious city, Aldartal attracted many applicants, but had their pick of only the best of the best to protect them. The Elite Guard were employed to do everything from guarding entrances to piloting temporal ships. They were privy to the Center’s secrets but shared in very little of the science. They were deadly well trained and were a dangerous adversary for anyone who dared to take secrets from the Temporal Sciences Center.

  Members of the Temporal Sciences Center had unrestricted access to every technology and amenity. Their telepathic abilities were enhanced to restrict access to secret data or conversations, and they were granted unrestricted access to the teleportation network into and out of the city. Most of the scientists had been there for centuries, having exceedingly long lives, but their numbers were constantly growing with new blood every few years or so. The city regularly bustled with a mere ten thousand inhabitants, scientists and Elite Guard.

  The city and the Center, though intertwined, were also separated
by layers of access. The city itself was nearly circular with the outer most ring being residences, restaurants, shops, clubs and other social gathering spots. Beyond that was forest, with a hundred-meter gap between Aldartal’s secure teleportation network and the main interplanetary network. Within the residential ring of the city was the Temporal Sciences Academy, which was primarily classrooms and labs for various experiments. The labs were also the first layer access into the Temporal Sciences Center, as much of the experimental work was done with the students’ assistance. Many of the labs functioned both as working and learning environments, but it was the center of the city where the actual time travel took place, and it was there that only full members of the Temporal Sciences Center could enter.

  The Navigational Probabilities Lab was a deep subterranean lab, dimly lit, with four glowing multidimensional shapes floating like orbs at its center, and a host of consoles and Navigational Training stations around its perimeter. The four luminous orbs were constantly changing their shapes as new data was added, or proposed changes were made. One of the four shapes represented the universal database, which was a collection of all knowledge acquired throughout history. By representing the world's collected knowledge into a definable shape, they could quickly and easily see what would happen to the past, present and future if they changed some details. Two shapes were test shapes which projected the result of the current universal database, with proposed changes made to the timeline. The last of the four was a record of the database as it looked or would have looked at the time that they were projecting to. These shapes were all laboratory copies of the real multidimensional shape which was known as the Temporal Keyhole Device. The Temporal Keyhole Device gave scientists a small window into their home time period, by allowing them to monitor changes to the future, while they were in the past.

  Dayk was the first to arrive in the lab, and the dim lights raised subtly at his arrival. He stepped up to the main workstation and brought up some calculations that he had been running. He didn’t display the information but had it at the ready. Before he finished, teleportation flashes began depositing five other people all around him. They all arrived within a few chrons of each other, and the Director of the Temporal Sciences Center wasted no time getting things started.

  “Excellent. You’ve all arrived,” the ancient Director Ca’aury started as he positioned himself at the head of the small group. “I’m sure most of you are curious as to why I asked you to meet me down here in Navigational Probabilities,” he smiled slightly and gave them a moment to acknowledge. Most of them smiled in reply. “Well, as you know, this lab is in an isolated field environment. Very good for getting rid of external noise and studying the fabric of space-time, but very bad for getting other signals in and out, which makes it very good for keeping secrets. Doctors, what I’m about to divulge to you is currently being held under the strictest confidence. I must insist that you lock your thoughts and memories for the duration of this meeting and keep all of this to yourselves.”

  “Isn’t this a little irregular, Sir?” Dr. Amikes asked. “Science is about the free exchange of ideas.”

  “Yes. It is.” Director Ca’aury smiled. “Agree to my terms and you’ll learn why I’ve asked.”

  “The Center’s by-laws do allow for inter-departmental secrecy,” Said Dr. Harbr’oon.

  “Well, I’m not saying no, it just seems a little peculiar.” Amikes said.

  “What does it matter, Amikes? Just lock your memories and hear him out,” Dr. Fathal said impatiently.

  Dr. Amikes nodded politely and motioned for Director Ca’aury to continue.

  “Alright, Doctors. What do you know about the Paleo-Causal Origin Paradox?”

  “I know it’s been debunked for centuries now.” Dr. Fossor spoke up.

  “Yes, but what is it?” Director Ca’aury asked him.

  “The hypothesis that an accidental contamination by a time-traveler in the distant past, could inadvertently lead to his own creation. Which, then preordains that he will at some point go back in time and then accidentally, or purposefully, contaminate the past to facilitate his own creation.” Dr. Fossor answered.

  “But that is a conundrum in and of itself, because, if the only way to invent time travel was to go back in time and give yourself the technology, then you would never be able to invent time travel.” Dr. Amikes interrupted. “It’s cyclical and so it cancels itself out. And besides, if that hypothesis was true, we would see evidence of it in the timeline, and we don’t. The timeline as it stands now is over ninety-nine percent pure, natural history. Every ripple that we have ever made has been accounted for, and none of those events are anything near as temporally cataclysmic as accidentally causing your own creation.”

  “That is all well and true…” Director Ca’aury started to say.

  “If someone had tampered with the natural flow of time, whether benign, or malicious we would have seen evidence of that two thousand years ago!” Amikes continued.

  “Well, you are certainly correct, Dr. Amikes,” Ca’aury said with a pleasant smile. “However, about five years ago, I ask Dr. Dayk here to do a little research on the subject, specifically where it involved certain obscure references, we found in the Malaysian Database…”

  “Director, that Database is over nine hundred years old! We’ve learned everything we’re going to from it, and since you found it, we’ve recovered over one hundred other databases with just as much to offer as the Malaysian. None of those has any direct evidence of a temporal cataclysm of that nature.” Dr. Fossor said, agreeing with Dr. Amikes about the nature of the paradox in question.

  “Everything in there is either popular art, propaganda or direct manipulation. I must agree with my colleagues. If there was anything in there, we would have seen it by now,” Dr. Amikes added.

  “In the Malaysian Database…” Ca’aury continued, raising his voice, “yes, there are many artistic, and cultural references, but those images do look a lot like us, which does raise the question of tampering, and while that’s…”

  “That’s coincidental. The fact that many of those ancient artistic creations resemble us, is not direct evidence of contamination. They merely resemble us; they are not accurate facsimiles of us.” Dr. Fossor said. “And again, where is the temporal evidence?”

  “We should see a deviation in the timeline.” Amikes added. “When anyone has traced the origins of those stories and pictures, they always wind up being nonsense. There’s always been a logical…”

  “I found something.” Dayk suddenly spoke over everyone.

  Everyone turned and looked at him.

  “I found an anomaly.”

  “You what?” Dr. Amikes said with some alarm.

  “Director Ca’aury’s right. I found a spike. You say we should see evidence of a cataclysmic event in the timeline, well… I found one,” Dayk said.

  “Now, Dr. Dayk. You can’t just stumble upon a temporal cataclysm. That kind of temporal change would be massive.” Dr. Fossor said.

  “And it is.” Dayk replied.

  “Then why hasn’t anyone discovered it already. If it happened in the past, then we should already know about it!” Amikes argued.

  Show them. Ca’aury said telepathically to Dayk. Dayk nodded and then turned to the workstation. With a gesture and a thought, he opened his research onto one of the test spheres in the middle of the room. The sphere reset itself and began projecting Dayk’s proposed trip back through time over the rest of the universal database. As the simulation continued an anomalous bubble pulled from the surface and hovered, undulating about thirty-five years into the future. When the bubble had resolved itself, a green mathematical arc appeared, plotting a temporal trajectory around the bubble of time and then back down into the core of the database’s spherical morph. The graph formed a three-dimensional Mobius twist that did a figure eight with a tiny top loop in the future and a large deep loop back into the past.

  “It is a major cyclical anomaly, centered
around an historical event.” Dayk announced as everyone looked at the projection.

  “This can’t be right!” Dr. Amikes said.

  “This has to be a mistake.” Dr. Fossor agreed. “I’m sorry Dr. Dayk, but did anyone check your math on this?”

  “His calculations are accurate.” Director Ca’aury defended.

  “How deep does that go?” Dr. Fathal asked, pointing to a loop that drove deep into the sphere.

  “That loop is approximately two point five megaSines,” Dayk said.

  “Two and a half million years?!” Dr. Harbr’oon said. “That’s middle homo Sapiens!”

  “This is centered around an event?” asked Dr. Fathal looking intently at Dr. Dayk.

  “Yes,” Ca’aury answered, “and that’s not the interesting bit. The event seems to coincide with the dawn of the atomic age.” Ca’aury said.

  “Sir, are you suggesting that something we do is going to trigger an early start to the atomic age?” Amikes suddenly looked very concerned. “That could mean that…”

  “No, Amikes,” Dayk cut him off, “there’s evidence to suggest that our event took place after the first fission experiments took place.”

  “Dr. Dayk that evidence gives a margin of error of only nine solarSines,” Director Ca’aury said. “Across a period of over two and a half million years, nine years is a little too close for coincidence.”

  “Yes sir, but that’s not the event that triggered this,” Dayk defended himself.

  Dr. Amikes let out a sigh of relief. “Then wait. What kind of event are we talking about?”

  Dayk gave Director Ca’aury a troubled look before he looked back to his comrades. “It’s a crash.”

  “Whose crash?” Fathal said.

  “We don’t know. The database eludes to an ‘alien’ craft crashing in the desert, where indigenous people of the time stumbled upon it. I did a simulation of a one of our ships going back in time to investigate a possible alien crash, which coincides with a temporal paradox in our timeline and in a projected future.” Dayk said.