by Brandt Legg
“The Terminus clock!” someone yelled.
Trynn didn’t dare look at it, but he heard someone say four days. He knew it would recover if they could find the issue, and if they couldn’t, then it would just be a quicker route to death.
They’d quickly moved through history to events in time previously identified as having the most potential for problems. At one point he’d seen a group of American Civil War soldiers go by the area and wondered if that could be it. “Check that!”
Then one of the scientists yelled, “I think it’s a placement issue.”
“It’s the Odeon chip,” someone else said, referring to a smooth, round, bluish-black stone, slightly smaller than a poker chip and nearly as thin, that was essentially a control center for the Eysen. “They placed the chip on the wrong side of a seismic shift.”
Trynn saw the data and immediately realized that somewhere over the course of the eleven million years, earth movements had formed a crack and changed the timing of the discovery. “I thought that had all been reviewed!” he shouted, frustrated, wondering what else they’d missed. But it had been an easy fix. They communicated with the insertion team to move the chip, and then the helicopters faded away, as if they’d never been there, and Rip’s jeep continued unabated to the dig site to discover the Eysen that would change his life, and hopefully save humanity.
The helicopters would return the following morning.
“A problem,” one of them said, bringing Trynn back to the Leonardo insertion. “Leonardo missed it. Someone else finds—”
“Not again!” Trynn barked, knowing there wasn’t enough globotite to do another insertion, and not enough time on either end. “Find it!”
Cardd made the discovery almost immediately. “It’s the Nostradamus overlap.”
“Will that seer ever stop haunting me?” Trynn snapped, his hands blurring in the air as he worked hundreds of simultaneous holographic controls. “Not losing this one,” he said, chewing on a Revon root.
Minutes later, Cardd announced they were back on track.
“At least for now,” Trynn said, taking a deep breath. “Now we wait and see if this genius can save us all.”
Fifty-Three
Grayswa sat on the high top of a StarToucher tree. He had spent hours meticulously climbing until he reached the oddly flat upper branches. Although his meditations did not require him to be in such proximity to the clouds, his methods could have been achieved anywhere—and many times were—but as he often said, “I love the clouds.” The Etheren’s most senior shaman told his followers, “Clouds remind us of the constant change that life is for all. Don’t just look at the clouds, dream them, feel them, experience the clouds. They will connect you to that change so that you can see it, expect it, and understand the change.”
As the clouds—stratus, cumulus, cirrus, lenticular—formed, collected moisture and dispersed, rained, evaporated—an endless cycle—moving through the air, capturing molecules, light particles . . . He called it the dance of winds and water. Fifty miles above earth, the highest ones, noctilucent clouds, a mix of ice crystals and dust from meteors, stretch above 99.9% of the atmosphere, kissing the edge of space like a wispy veil over the beautiful blue planet, a cosmic embrace. The knowledge of all this made Grayswa feel eternal.
Grayswa had a specific mission that day. He needed to reach through eleven million years of accumulated life experiences, events, and breaths. He often spoke of “the quintillion breaths” that had been collectively breathed by all humans to ever walk the earth, as if he were keeping track, but he suspected the number was even greater.
Grayswa was one of the few—or maybe the only one—known to be able to access and explore the Missing-Time. But on this day, he needed someone beyond those mysterious years. He was reaching into the far future. His ability to connect with those distant people counted on their receptiveness, whether they were meditating or dreaming, or otherwise in the right frame of mind. As he explained to some of the younger ones he taught: “You cannot make someone do something they do not wish to do, and you cannot give something to someone they are not ready for. And do not ask them to do something they are not capable of.”
“But why do they need our help?” he would inevitably be asked.
“Because theirs is a time of rigid constraints. They are unaware of the connections. They have forgotten . . . they think that they know and understand everything through what they call science, but it is like a child playing make-believe.”
Sitting in the breeze atop the StarToucher tree, the old shaman stilled his mind, preparing for the journey. It did not require as much work and technology or calculations as Trynn and his Eysens did, nor was the journey as long and arduous as Shanoah and the Imazes’, yet it had its own kind of peril. Traversing that amount of time, the vastness of millions of years, although not linear, still represented a great mass in which many things could go wrong.
Grayswa had once spent days in the spiritual gap trying to find his way, lost and tipping toward infinity. He had tried to do too much that time, reach too many people, venture too far. This day he would be more careful, although the stakes could not be higher.
He watched the clouds, letting his physical vision close. The clouds seemed to hug the area, a mist among the blue and green in which he floated, a mystical fog taking him. In his mind he soon saw other colors, and for a long time everything was colors and light as he crossed, relatively quickly, the millions of years after Cosegan culture . . . the beauty and brilliance of it, serenity and peace . . . understanding, emerging and merging with the stars . . .
And then he entered the Missing-Time and recalled his prior journey, trying not to concentrate too hard.
Never force things, he thought. Let go.
Even with his highly disciplined mind, he fought the feelings that he didn’t want to be there, the place he did not like, where he’d been nearly lost before. And finally, through great concentration and experience, he found his way through. However, the place where he arrived was not much better. The residents called it the 21st century. He absorbed the bitterness of it, the last desperate times of the human race.
How did it come to this?
Fifty-Four
The underwater lab had originally been an oceanic research center, and, as a result, large sections of the massive facility were windowed. Trynn often lost himself in meditative trances watching the marine life swim past the thick glass. It felt as if he were in another world, part of the ocean.
“I love how the ocean conceals an entire civilization,” he said to Cardd.
“It sure conceals our work,” the geeky youth muttered.
Trynn had named the facility High-peak to throw off his enemies. The oceanic research center had closed more than a thousand years earlier in favor of a much larger facility a few hundred miles away. But because of ingenious building practices, coupled with the advanced materials they’d used, the lab looked as if it had just been completed a few years ago.
Welhey had been instrumental in obtaining the location after seeing it on a Circle report. Had it been above ground, it would’ve been used for something else long ago, or torn down, its material recycled. But someone, centuries earlier, had decided it was simpler to cut off access, and it was soon forgotten.
Once the Nostradamus incident occurred and Trynn required secrecy for his operations, Welhey suggested the facility.
No one on The Circle, or at least on that subcommittee, had been around when it was decommissioned, and therefore it truly was officially invisible. Even the Arc had not been born until centuries after its closure. Just to be safe, Welhey made sure any mentions of the facility in the official mind crystal records were deleted.
While waiting for the Leonardo results, Trynn and another scientist wandered through to the Eysen making room. Creating the ‘magic spheres’ was a complex process. Trynn supervised an apprentice in the Eysen making procedures, which involved lasers and hundreds of rare earth, rare air, and rare space minerals. Ma
ny were obtained from asteroid mining, but the most important was globotite. It had no substitution.
“Special pressing machines work similarly to how coal is compressed into diamonds,” Trynn explained. “And the fact that it survives so long is mainly due to the hard crystal unibody sphere. These machines spin it, and we use the same formula as the formation of stars.”
“The insertion of a never-ending power supply, of course, relies on globotite and solar manipulations.”
“Correct,” Trynn said, hoping they would not need this Eysen for a far future insertion if Leonardo’s went right. “Without the Odeon chip, it needs constant recharging or exposure to light to work, but with the Odeon chip, we get the reactive interplay between the two, and it forms the perpetual motion energy producer.”
“And allows the Eysen to levitate.”
‘Yes.”
“I understand the mechanics of it,” the apprentice said, “but I’ve never been able to fully understand how it continuously updates. I mean, I know we can load it right now with all the information that has ever been, but how does it keep changing? How does an Eysen in the far future keep up-to-date?”
“The archaeologist has been asking that question ever since he found the sphere. His partner, Gale, has theorized that the Eysen somehow has access to what they call the ‘Akashic records’, from the word ‘akasha,’ meaning sky. Many people believe that all the accumulated knowledge and experience that has ever occurred, or ever will, exists in the ethereal. In some ways, she is correct. Once the link is established, it is unbreakable. And what is difficult to understand, even for us—and it is something I didn’t fully grasp until we began working with the far future—is that everything has happened already, even the things that haven’t.”
The apprentice looked at him, confused.
“To us, it hasn’t happened, but it has. That’s the part of time that is hardest to comprehend as we watch our linear lives.”
“But what if we change it?” the apprentice asked. “What if we do something in the far future that totally changes what happens? I mean, that’s what we’re trying to do, right? To stop the Terminus Doom?”
“Yes, but that’s already happened, too. It has occurred in every conceivable way, and that’s how we are able to change it. We are just simply finding another outcome that has already happened.”
“Trynn!” someone yelled from the hall. “We have a Leonardo result!”
Fifty-Five
Shank stood in Markol’s advanced Eysen lab, a place funded by The Circle and a data-share partner with the predictive league.
He whispered to Markol in such a way that it almost seemed as if he were yelling. “It doesn’t matter who is operating an Eysen in the future, they are all criminals. They are all threats. Do not ever lose sight of this.”
“Of course I know that,” Markol said, a faraway look in his eyes. “But we cannot forget the power of the Eysen. Those in the future, whether they are aware of it or not, are working with the benefit of all the knowledge in the universe.”
“Yes, but they are also subject to the Missing-Time,” Shank said testily, referring to the years between the Cosegan civilization and modern recorded history in Rip’s time.
“They are on the other side of the gap,” Markol said, pointing to a flow-course, illustrating in 3D holographic images the four thousand years leading up to Rip finding an Eysen. “It affords them a different perspective, and depending on where Trynn is in his communications with them, it could be well beyond that.”
“We cannot afford to take this chance.”
“I might say the exact same words to you,” Markol said, staring at his sponsor, suddenly defiant.
“You may be an expert with Eysens, but you have much to learn about strategy and struggle,” Shank said.
Silence fell between them for several moments until Markol walked into the floating images of Rip’s lab. “If I kill this archaeologist, we are sealing the final link to the future.”
“That is not true. We have the Imazes, and I remind you that they have been sanctioned.”
“Sanctioned?” Markol echoed, as if it hardly mattered, waving his hands through the long empty era, through Rip’s space and into the blackness beyond.
“Do you dare to defy The Circle? Have you so much arrogance?” Shank raised his voice. “Has your vast knowledge of science and technology blinded you to reality?”
“The Imazes have physical constraints. The Eysen does not.” Markol thought of the Etherens with their telepathic abilities, perhaps the freest of them all. The psychic solution, as some called it.
Might they be the ones to save us in the end? he wondered, and in his musings, Markol realized it was more than a curiosity, it was a desperate hope.
“I fear The Circle’s constraints and their fears could block the solutions and push us on an irreversible track in which the Terminus Doom comes even more swiftly . . . ”
Markol said gravely. “Inadvertently, their actions could extinguish our great light cities, destroy our Cosegan culture, and blanket the universe with the darkness caused by the absence of humanity, all for their mistaken decisions. Those physical constraints you speak of so carelessly are not so simple a thing. Surely you can also see that risk.”
“For more than a million years, Cosegans have traveled the stars,” Shank countered. “We trade and exchange with other societies who, like ours, have conquered the bonds of their home planets and enhanced life through the power of their minds. We have located the vortexes and portals which allow us passage into other times, different realms.” He swirled his hand around the top of his head. “Physical is only something we define.”
“I know this,” Markol said, his stance and tone softening. “But you are asking me to kill a man, a fellow scientist, one of our great descendants.” Taking another life was more than forbidden in Cosegan society—it was unheard of. Violence had been relegated to a place almost lost to memory, where disease and war once gathered. It would have been completely erased from history had the Cosegans not had a record of everything, and for one other reason—the Havloses. In the Havlos society, on the other side of the earth, humans clung to a more primitive way of life—at least by Cosegan standards. In truth, it actually mirrored humanity’s 21st century culture more than it did the mythically advanced Cosegan lands.
The Cosegans allowed the Havloses to continue their own experiment and took it as a warning that such a strange, foreign place, filled with greed and fighting, still existed. Competition for wealth and resources, war and corruption, rather than for the common good, enlightenment and advancement, determined the fate of the Havlos society. There was only limited exchange between the two hemispheres, as the Havlos and Cosegan cultures would be extremely disruptive to one another.
“The archaeologist doesn’t even exist yet,” Shank said slowly. “If we stop Trynn, then the man never will exist.” He stared at Markol as if this was all very obvious. “If we do succeed—and we must—then you killing him won’t really ever have happened. Don’t you see? The archaeologist either will, or will not, come into existence depending on the twisting changing fate, which in turn is dependent on our deeds.”
Markol nodded.
“So kill him.”
Fifty-Six
The Arc stood atop The Reach. She considered the Cosegan’s tallest occupied building to be a triumph, but there were plans for a much taller structure. “Building with light and sound truly knows no limits,” Jenso had told her. “We can live and work on the edge of space.”
The Arc liked that idea, and liked living and working higher than anyone else, not so much because she was better than them (although, in her quietest moments she believed that, too), but it was more the need to see everything, to always have every piece of information in her view, so that she could do what was best for her people.
Weals did not like it at the Arc’s office. He felt a little queasy being this high. However, these types of reports had to be deliver
ed in person. Weals had once been a guardian stationed undercover in the Havlos territories, but the Arc had plucked him from their ranks for her personal use. Back when news of the Terminus Doom first broke, she’d needed “unofficial intelligence,” and perhaps, “things done that The Circle would never approve of.” Weals, who, if the truth be known, was at least one-quarter Havlos, was perfect for the job. He wasn’t in it for the money, or his belief in the Arc, or even to save the world. Weals simply liked to spy, to cheat, to steal.
“I don’t know why,” he’d admitted to his brother once, “but I feel more alive in the dusty dark, on the sleazy side of things. Somehow, it’s just a little more interesting. Safer, even.”
“What do you have for me?” the Arc asked, not wanting to stand too close to him.
He handed her a light-slip which contained Trynn’s movements during the day. There were also notes on Markol, Shank, Welhey, Ovan, and several dozen other scientists and Eysen makers. She noticed Welhey had been making inquiries as to the whereabouts of Anjee, a noted scientist who had gone missing. The Arc would have to deal with that soon enough. The rest she would review after Weals left.
“Sennogleyne and Nashunite have been purchased in large quantities,” he told her.
She nodded, not surprised by the report. Sennogleyne and Nashunite were minerals required in Eysen making, but they were common enough that The Circle had no way to stop distribution. It had been her idea to track them, though. Unusual amounts would signal Eysen making or other illegal activity.
“Have you worked out the amounts?”
“It is enough for seven.”
That did surprise her, although she didn’t show it. “Who?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“Trynn.”
“And a location?”
“We’re still narrowing it down, but I’m certain he operates from the coast, somewhere in the Mistwave Forest.”
