The Temporal Key

by Adam Benson

  At long last a relative balance had been achieved. The Temporal Sciences Center had finally developed a stable balance that included a ship with a large enough living quarter and amenities to keep a crew alive for up to five years in a wormhole. The conditions were still cramped, but they were livable. The ship had enough power to run all their systems in this time, and for a further two years while they were deep in the past. The wormhole they could generate was roughly eleven meters across. Thus, a ship with a diameter of only ten meters was built. It wasn't spherical, but rather more disc shaped, being only about six meters tall at its apex. It had two decks inside. The decks were separated by an artificial gravity plating that went through the center of the disc. It was the same gravity plating that was used to shield the hyper-fusion coils, but at a significantly decreased density. While they were in Earth's gravity field, both decks shared the same dimensions of up and down, however, while they were in the wormhole, or in space the lower deck was designed to be reversible, allowing what had been the ceiling to become the floor. Beds could morph from either the ceiling or the floor, depending on which way "up" was. Tables would change their height to accommodate the change in direction, and chairs on the lower decks hovered anyway, and would follow whichever direction "down" was.

  Over the last few centuries further innovations were made in engineering, power generation, navigation and wormhole creation. It was around this time that the Temporal Sciences Academy opened and became the sister to the Temporal Sciences Center. It was there that new recruits were trained and initiated into the society of time travelers. Archaeologists and historians who ventured backward in time to learn everything that was ever knowable about the universe.

  While time travel to the past became a common place affair, travel to the future was consistently wrought with problems. Sometimes, what should have been an easily predictable future would simply not be there when the researchers arrived, thus leaving them permanently stranded in a non-existent future with no way to return. It was everything about the future that would fail to be at the suggested location; space, time, Earth. Nothing existed there. As it turns out, the future is always unwritten, even from the past. The only difference being that when you travel to the past you take with you a record of the present which in turn gives you a defined road map with which you can return. But an unknown future is always unwritten, and since the future is just as much about choices made as it is about the position of the universe, leaping to a point in the future where the decisions made weren't what you predicted, means that the universe you thought you were leaping forward to simply wouldn't be there. This was a terrible place for time travelers to be stranded in, because how does one navigate home from a place that doesn't exist?

  As the future is always unwritten, even when you travel back in time, ways had to be developed that would allow the time travelers to keep track of how their actions in the past were affecting the present. In other words, they needed a way to keep track of their own time while in the past. A very clever solution was created that took advantage of techniques that were invented in the earliest days of time travel. Since the size of the hyper-fusion coils had diminished significantly over the millennia and the amount of power that it took to create a micro-singularity (a wormhole large enough for only a single atom) had comparatively dropped off to nearly zero, a device was created that took advantage of this ability in conjunction with a quantum entangled particle that remained in the present. Thus, the two particles that were connected via quantum entanglement could communicate with each other from past to present through the micro-singularity. This allowed them to use a simple quaternary code to communicate simple data back and forth through time to keep track of their own time. The device was called a Temporal Key and every ship was equipped with one.

  The Temporal Key was quantum entangled with the Universal Database. The database was often represented as a four-dimensional geometric shape. This allowed them to superficially compare their own record of the Universal Database with the actual database to see how much the four-dimensional shape had changed since they left. The fewer changes, the more intact their own timeline remained. The system worked flawlessly, but the micro singularity could not be kept open indefinitely. One of the drawbacks was that it could only be connected in short bursts in approximately one kiloChron increments. It was just enough to make a comparison, and in the long run, that was all that was needed.

  By Dayk's time all these technologies and devices had become commonplace to the Temporal Sciences Center. His own ship, the Chronis, was connected to the present using its own Temporal Key. It held at its center its own Temporal Core, which was surrounded by sixteen hyper-fusion cores. It was this ship that had taken him back over two and a half million years into the past, and it was this ship that crashed under mysterious circumstances just a few kilometers outside of Corona, NM in the year 1947.

  The Locals Return

  The sun rose quickly in the grassy desert of New Mexico in July. The far-away sound of cicadas began droning on in the morning light as they swarmed around just outside the dead zone. Pillars of light began streaking through broken sections of the Chronis' hull, slowly warming the dark interior. Thalia awoke to a beam of light stabbing her in her right eye. It was a foreign experience for her, having lived her entire life in completely controlled conditions. The hot air made her skin feel sticky and made the rebreather she was wearing feel uncomfortably glued to her face. She woke up sore and groggy, with achy muscles, and wanted nothing more than the beam of light to get out of her face and let her go back to sleep. That's what she got for choosing the top bunk. Laying there forcibly awake she began to realize how hungry she was and dropped out of the bunk and started making her way out of broken crew quarters.

  "Are you getting food?" Came a voice from behind as she started crawling through the broken section of hull. She stopped in her tracks and looked around at the lower bunk. Dayk had woken up but hadn't moved or even opened his eyes.

  “Yeah.” Thalia moved groggily out of the hull and into the open field. If the sun had been piercing from the bunk, it was nothing compared to how bright it seemed outside. She staggered off around the wreckage to what was left of the galley.

  Dayk crawled out of the bed and started making his own way out of the ship toward some breakfast. As he came into the morning light, he saw Thalia sitting on a rock just a little distance off, eating some emergency rations and staring off toward the sparse tree line. When he approached her, she handed him something wrapped in some packaging. “Dry, bland ration?” She asked him as he took it from her.

  “Thanks.” He unwrapped it and took a couple of bites. Dayk grimaced at the taste of the bar while he chewed it down. “I guess it beats starvation,” he said as he picked up a container of water near Thalia’s feet and took a good drink to wash it down.

  The breeze changed and suddenly both Dayk and Thalia caught the scent of death starting to permeate the air. It was a sickly reminder of the work they had cut out for them for the day. Three of their fallen comrades lay dead around them, with the natural order of decay beginning to take its turn in the circle of life.

  "We've got to get them sealed up first thing. I think we got everything secured last night,” Dayk said. "I want to start with Amikes." He choked up a bit when he said it. "I don't like the thought of leaving him there... the way he is right now." He said. "We'll get Fossor cut off the hull and sealed up after him, and then..." Dayk paused and looked over toward Nocta’s body with anger and confusion. "Nocta can rot in the sun for a while for all I care." Dayk's eyes began to well up with tears. He wasn't sobbing, but he was obviously in pain.

  “Dr. Dayk!” said Thalia.

  "Sorry. I’m just…” He looked back at her and relaxed his gaze. “Come on." He said, collecting himself. "Let’s finish these rotten bars and get to work. We don't have long, and we’re going to have a long hike ahead of us."

  "A hike?" Thalia asked. “Shouldn’t we stay with the ship?"
<
br />   "There’s a nearly eighty percent probability that we’ll have to make it to a place called Roswell. Most of the fragmented history tells us that a primitive military took the ship there, and if the Paleo-Causal Origin hypothesis is historically accurate, this may be the starting point.”

  “And that’s what you believe the anomaly is?” Thalia asked.

  “We’re not sure, but it’s the best guess we have so far. In any case, even if the hypothesis is wrong, but the ship still gets taken there, then that is where our rendezvous will be." Dayk told her. "Unfortunately, the information we have is very fragmented."

  "That’s all we have to go on?" Thalia told asked with a hint of distrust in her voice. "There isn't a designated coordinate for the rendezvous?"

  "Time travel rescue isn't easy." Dayk said. "We research the past to clarify the details of history. When we get lost back in time it's no simple task to coordinate the rescue, since it's the fragmented details that we came back to investigate in the first place," he said as he started walking back toward the ship.

  “Come on. We have some terrible work to attend to."

  Thalia set the water down and then followed Dayk back to the ship where they crawled into the broken cargo bay and made their way back toward the engineering section to where the body of Dr. Amikes still lay. It was darker than it had been yesterday, but their enhanced vision let them see easily in the pitch black of the ship as they made their way. When they arrived at the engineering section, Dayk tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

  "Dhregh. I guess I really didn't think ahead when I jammed this door shut," he grumbled.

  "You did what had to be done. We wouldn’t be here if you hadn't,” Thalia said as she examined the broken over-ride console.

  "Well, that's true, but it doesn't make the door any easier to open."

  "This thing’s dead,” she said as she turned her attention away from the override. “Well, at least Nocta got it opened a little bit. That gives us a head start." Thalia said as she started looking around through the environmental systems, scouring over the controls and pipes that lined much of the system.

  "What are you looking for?" Dayk asked her.

  "Well, there might be a long enough section of sturdy piping that we can use as a pry bar. This is one of the few systems that might have something like that." She replied, continuing to look through the machinery.

  "Smart thinking." Dayk started trying to help, rummaging through the piles of debris collected on the floor near the Temporal Core.

  “Aha! Waste water recycling system! The main input line is metallic polycarbonate, about a meter long, and comes out easy for cleaning,” she said, crawling back out of the mechanism with the pipe in hand. "This will probably do the trick." She said. They pushed the tubing through the gap in the door and began trying to pry it open. With a heavy whir suddenly grinding behind the bulkhead, it began to move, and they opened it enough to push through the rest of the way.

  The smell of death and chemicals in the engineering section was overwhelming and permeated into their rebreather masks almost as soon as they squeezed inside. Looking across the room they could see that Dr. Amikes body had been ripped around the collapsed bulkhead during the blast, and he now lay more mangled under it than he had been before. Dayk trembled in the doorway for a moment. I need a Chron. He thought loudly. Thalia put her hand on his shoulder and nodded her head.

  Dayk stepped over to his fallen comrade and knelt beside his crushed body. “Oh, my friend,” he said quietly with tears streaking down his face, collecting on the corners of the mask. “I’m so sorry it had to be you.” He grabbed Amikes hand and gave it one last squeeze. “I wish it had been me instead of you, Amikes,” he said quietly. Dayk couldn’t control himself and he burst out with agonizing sadness, wailing over the body of his friend.

  “Doctor,” Thalia said gently as she came over to him. She put a hand on Dayk’s shoulders and squatted down beside him. “I’m so sorry,” she said after a moment. “He was the best of all of us.”

  “Yes, he was,” Dayk agreed through his tears. He sighed deeply as he pulled himself together. “He’s been my best friend for over one hundred years, and this is going to be so hard without him." He looked over at Thalia and then back down at Dr. Amikes, as though he was trying to decide who to talk to next. “Alright,” he finally said, “let’s get him out of there.”

  Thalia stood up and help Dayk back to his feet. “I’ll find a way to lift that bulkhead if you want to head back to the infirmary and get the…uh…” she hesitated, not wanting to seem insensitive.

  “Yeah,” Dayk said. “I’ll go grab the body bags.” He gave her a weak smile and then took one more look at Dr. Amikes. “Oh, this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.”

  “It’s alright, Dr. Dayk. Once we get him back to our time, you’ll have a chance to do this properly.” Thalia consoled him as best as she knew how.

  “Yes,” he said flatly. “I’ll be back in a few hectos.” Dayk squeezed his way back through the door and went back through the environmental systems and the cargo bay until he was outside again with crawl-space access to the upper deck and the infirmary.

  The ship's infirmary held a number of morbid necessities, which included five hermetically sealable and highly preservative body bags. The ships had to be equipped with provisions to handle almost any contingency, because once they leaped backwards in time there would be no other support for them. Dayk never expected that he would need to pull three of these body bags from the infirmary storage, yet, there he was opening a sealed container that he had previously only thought of as ballast.

  Dayk left two of the three bags just outside the ship as he made his way back into the engineering section to help Thalia pull Amikes’ body out from under the collapsed bulkhead. “Hey,” he said as he squeezed through the door. “Did you figure out a way to raise that bulkhead?”

  “Well, it’s not very elegant, but I think this might do it,” she said holding up a contraption she had rigged from parts around the room. “If it works, we’re only going to have a chron or two to pull him out. I can’t imagine that this thing will hold the weight for very long.”

  “What do you need me to do?” he asked.

  “Ok, I’m going to throw this fiber cable over that conduit up there, and then I’ll connect it to this servo and activate it with some power from one of the micro-coils from the galley,” Thalia said as she tossed a length of fiber cable up and over some loose conduit.

  “And you think that’ll work?” he asked without much confidence.

  “Like I said, we’ll only have a chron or two to pull him out.”

  “Alright,” Dayk said. “I’ll grab his hands and wait for you to give the signal.”

  “Just a few more chrons, and I’ll be ready,” she said pulling the fiber cable as tightly as she could and tying it off to the actuator arm of the servo. She connected the small power coil to the input of the servo and then got in a position to activate it. “Ok, on the count of three. One, two, three!” she said as she activated the device. The servo whirred to life and started pulling the fiber cable against itself and the bulkhead. The make-shift machine grumbled under the strain it was never intended for and suddenly the bulkhead budged. Dayk was pulling on Dr. Amikes’ wrists, but the power was not enough to lift the bulkhead.

  Fearing eminent failure, Thalia jumped to her feet and started trying to lift the bulkhead herself. Between her and the makeshift pulley system the bulkhead suddenly groaned loudly and lifted it up only about a centimeter or two. Dayk pulled Dr. Amikes’ body out from under the bulkhead just as the servo gave way and collapsed with a grunt of smoke and a spark from its side.

  “You weren’t kidding!” Dayk said as the thing came down.

  “Yeah,” she smiled back, “to be honest I didn’t really think it would work. At least I won’t have to archive the power coil,” she said lifting it up to examine it. “It completely burned itself out.” She to
ssed the coil into the pile of debris that was collected around the base of the Temporal Core.

  Dayk grabbed the body bag and shook it open. He laid it beside Dr. Amikes and opened it up. They lifted him up and put him into the bag, and then Dayk looked at his crushed face one last time before he pulled up the seal on the bag. As soon as he locked the controller the bag vacuumed all remaining air out and tightly sealed itself around Dr. Amikes’ body.

  “And that’s it,” Thalia said with detachment.

  Dayk sighed deeply again, “goodbye my friend.” He choked back a tear and forced a smile as he looked up at Thalia. “We’re going to have to force that door open a little further to get him out of here,” he said.

  “It’ll be easier from inside,” Thalia replied as she walked over to the door.

  Suddenly, the perimeter alarms started screaming telepathically in their minds!

  Alarm 5 picked it up, out by the road. Dayk said telepathically as he quickly snapped to high alert.

  Thalia opened her palm and scanned the area. Her hologram zoomed out from their position until all the perimeter alarms could be seen. Alarm 5 pulsed its telepathic signal from just beyond the rock outcropping and the farm road that approached from the north west. I don’t see anything yet, Thalia replied as she continued to scan outward.

  An amber-glowing vehicle appeared moving in from beyond the hologram. There’s someone coming! Thalia exclaimed. Single primitive… looks like the same one as yesterday.

  Dhregh! Dayk thought. We still have two bodies out in the field. We need to take cover away from the ship. Dayk said as he opened his own hologram.

  What do you think he’s going to do? Thalia asked.

  The truck stopped about thirty meters away from the herd of sheep that continued to stare in their direction from across the way. They watched intently in their holograms as the figure left the vehicle and started walking up the hill toward the sheep.