Anachronist

by Andrew Hastie

  ‘Silence!’ came the booming voice of the founder. ‘The boy has invoked the rite. Call for the Grand Seer.’

  Lyra was sitting quietly in the corner of the bench, trying not to look at anyone, when Caitlin came and sat beside her. The court was adjourned while they waited for the seer to arrive, and everyone was busy discussing the accused’s unusual request.

  ‘You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you, sister?’

  ‘It was his only option, Cat. I looked at all the other ways,’ Lyra replied, flicking through her notebook. ‘I have them all here somewhere if you want to see?’

  ‘No, Lyra, that’s fine, but the rite is a very dangerous route to take. He will see everything.’

  ‘He will see what you see.’ Lyra looked directly into her eyes. ‘He’s a good man, yet there is more to him than you think.’

  ‘More of what exactly?’

  Lyra’s eyes flashed. ‘Wait and see . . .’

  The colonel walked out to see Josh on the pretence of giving him a glass of water. A couple of court attendants had dragged a dusty old wooden rack into the centre of the floor and were busy trying to remember how to assemble it.

  ‘So this Rite of Scrying, it’s not some kind of medieval torture, is it?’

  The colonel smiled.

  ‘I did wonder if you knew what it was when you asked for it. Not many have ever heard of it — let alone used it. I think you have confounded the prosecution.’ He looked over to Dalton and his mother, who were in the middle of a heated argument. ‘What an earth made you choose it?’

  ‘Just something Lyra told me once.’

  ‘Ah. Do you remember talking about it or did it just pop into your head at a certain moment?’

  ‘Just popped in — like I’d forgotten it.’

  ‘Implanted memory. Very smart young seer that Lyra. She apparently thought it was your best chance of escaping this farce.’

  ‘What will they do to me?’

  The colonel scratched his beard, mulling over the answer. ‘Edward Kelly is the founder’s chief scryer, basically a very powerful seer — Lyra is one of his pupils. He’s more than a little mad, believes he can commune with angels. Too much reaving, if you ask me.’ The colonel waggled his finger near his temple.

  ‘And this rite is going to show him I’m innocent?’

  ‘Oh no. He’s going to read your entire timeline from beginning to end. It’s a rare talent. Not something many of us have ever seen, to be honest. Although I have read reports that it can be quite uncomfortable for the patient.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Still better than being non-existent.’

  ‘You think? Will everyone else know?’

  ‘No. It’s just you and him. At the end, he’ll declare you innocent or guilty. It’s a pretty medieval approach, as you say.’

  The attendants came over and escorted Josh towards the wooden frame.

  ‘So why the need for this?’

  ‘Stop you from hurting yourself — that and he likes his subjects to be inverted.’

  ‘What?’ said Josh as they began to strap him in.

  ‘Upside down.’

  Edward Kelly was definitely the craziest-looking man Josh had ever encountered.

  He walked into the courtroom wearing a long cloak made of dark feathers and a mask that resembled a long crow’s beak. He proceeded to strut round the circle drawing a thin line with salt or chalk dust around the outer rim of the star. As Kelly walked, he would randomly jump on to one foot, turn and mutter some strange incantation at an invisible entity and then return to his task. When the circle was complete, he removed the mask and shouted at the top of his voice: ‘Transit umbra, lux permanent!’ and then began mumbling some incoherent gibberish as he removed his gloves and feather cloak to reveal a sombre suit of dark velvet.

  The attendants cranked the wheel and rotated Josh a hundred and eighty degrees until his head was level with the table that Kelly had placed before him. A large glass sphere was put between them so that Josh could only see a distorted view of the scryer’s face. His eyes were entirely black.

  ‘Relax, my young one,’ he whispered as his hands stroked the surface on the opaque globe. ‘I am the winter to your summer, the night to your day. You are but the wind, and I am a nighthawk who rises upon it.’

  The words were soothing. Josh felt the man’s mind reaching into his own. It was a soft, gentle sensation, as if he were half awake, and yet he could still sense the world around him.

  ‘The line must be true. There is no time for dissembling. I must pierce the skein of your many-coloured mind and follow the river of memory,’ the scryer continued in a high sing-song voice.

  Josh felt his memories surrender to the questing consciousness and surrendered as the man routed through his past.

  Kelly worked quickly, like flicking through a book. He skipped over parts that Josh would have thought important and dwelt on the tiniest of incidents, like a naturalist studying a moth.

  He stopped at one early memory, the beach holiday from which Josh had kept the photograph. There was something unusual about the memory, something in the background. He examined it from many angles, but Josh didn’t have time to work out what it was before Kelly was off again, digging deeper into his early childhood.

  They reached his earliest memory and left his timeline altogether. Josh watched as Kelly moved to his mother and followed her back, through her pregnancy and all the suffering she’d endured during it. He wept as he watched his mother pull herself out of bed every day to go to work, knowing that part of her pain was the undiagnosed MS that would worsen because of him.

  ‘Now to the father,’ murmured Kelly.

  Back still further into the first days of his conception, when she was a happy young woman, a student at the university with a bright future.

  Then darkness.

  ‘No. That is not the way. Things do not wind thus amongst the clockwork trees,’ said Kelly, looking up from the glass and staring directly into Josh’s eyes.

  ‘Are you a chameleon? Jackanape? Changer of lines? We shall see . . . What doth thy future hold?’

  The scryer sat down again and pulled once more at the fabric of Josh’s timeline. He separated out the strands of his life and looked into his futures. There were many loops and knots within it, and the scryer became quite frustrated at the number of dead ends and blind alleys with which he had to contend.

  Finally, exhausted, he collapsed on to the table and released Josh from his mental control.

  ‘No more! Bring me wine and peppermint!’ he demanded, slamming his fist down on the table.

  The attendants stepped forward and rotated Josh into an upright position, but didn’t remove his bindings. They handed Kelly a large cup of wine and a bowl of sugary white sweets. He popped two straight into his mouth.

  ‘So, seer, what is your verdict? Is he guilty?’ asked the founder.

  ‘As guilty as the North Wind,’ Kelly said with a hysterical chuckle. The audience laughed, enjoying the sideshow.

  ‘Then innocent?’

  ‘No more so than a virgin’s kiss,’ the madman replied, amusing the crowd again.

  ‘Then what say you, fool? No more of your riddles.’

  ‘He is the one. The strange attractor, the paradox,’ Kelly said, and slowly he put down his wine and got to his knees before Josh.

  The audience went deathly silent.

  The founder stood up from his chair.

  ‘State your case clearly!’

  Kelly got to his feet and adopted the same pose of the founder: his hands on his hips, and his head held high.

  ‘He is of tomorrow, the forbidden country. He is from the future.’

  As Kelly spoke, he began to dance a jig, singing a song to himself.

  ‘Please escort our learned colleague to his seat,’ the founder ordered the attendants, ‘and have the court cleared.’

  There were various catcalls and protests from the benches as the crowd was usher
ed out of the room.

  Caitlin walked over to Joshua as the attendants cranked the wheel until he was upright once more. Her face streaked with tears. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he whispered, ‘not so sure about Kelly. He’s off his rocker.’

  Caitlin laughed. ‘He just saved your life, you idiot!’

  The founder threw back his hood to reveal the head of an old man with a grey beard and short white hair. His eyes were a vibrant shade of blue and shone with intelligence — Josh found it hard to hold his gaze for more than a few seconds.

  The chamber was cleared of onlookers. Only the colonel, Caitlin and her extended family were allowed to remain. Dalton and his mother had to be forcibly ejected after protesting that Josh has somehow fixed the outcome and that Kelly had finally lost his mind completely.

  The council of six had split up and gone their separate ways, although Josh did spot one or two of them having a quiet word with each other before disappearing into the exodus.

  ‘Have you any idea what has just transpired?’ asked the founder. His voice seemed less threatening now Josh could see his face.

  ‘Not exactly, no.’

  The founder’s smile broke so suddenly across his face that everyone was taken aback by its appearance.

  ‘Ha. The irony of it all. The Paradox stands before us! This will keep Eddington’s department busy for centuries!’

  The colonel smiled and patted Josh on the shoulder. ‘I knew you were special, boy, but this really is quite outstanding.’

  Caitlin turned to Lyra. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’

  ‘Of course, silly. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise,’ Lyra said smiling.

  ‘The problem now, of course, is what is to be done with you?’ the founder said to himself.

  ‘Well, I believe investiture would be a good place to start — don’t you, my lord?’ suggested the colonel.

  The founder seemed to be lost in thought. ‘What? Yes. Of course, we must invest him at once. Notify the dissignator.’

  The colonel went off to a speaking tube in the wall and began to shout into it while plugging one finger in his ear.

  Caitlin was staring at Josh in a way that was starting to make him uncomfortable.

  ‘Can you please explain what is going on?’ Josh asked her. ‘Did he find out who my father is or not? Can someone please get me out of this thing?’

  Caitlin looked across at the founder, and he waved his hand as if to invite her to answer the question. Sim stepped forward and unbuckled the straps that held Josh in the frame.

  ‘Kelly tried to find your father — it’s standard procedure to review your lineage — but when he followed your timeline he found an anomaly.’

  ‘What kind of anomaly?’

  ‘A paradox loop, a line that goes forward rather than backwards as you would usually expect.’

  ‘So you’re saying my father was, is, from the future?’

  She nodded. ‘Hence the title “Paradox”. You shouldn’t exist, but you do.’

  ‘And this has never happened before?’

  ‘No, Josh. We have been waiting a very long time for someone like you,’ replied the founder.

  ‘But what does that even mean? How does that make me any different to you guys?’

  ‘Since the inception of our Order we have known that time travel beyond the present was a distinct possibility. Something that goes beyond the dynamics of the continuum. Some have tried to deny that a Paradox could exist, but we’ve always been more open-minded. You were predicted, Joshua — more than a thousand years ago.’

  Josh was confused. His head was still pounding from being suspended upside down for so long, and now they were telling him that his father — the imaginary being that he’d spent so many years wondering about as a kid — was from the future. It was a concept that his befuddled mind refused to accept.

  Caitlin took his hand and looked into his eyes.

  ‘What the founder is trying to say is that there is a very strong chance you can travel beyond the frontier, into the future.’

  ‘What the —’

  ‘They’re ready for you now,’ interrupted the colonel. ‘Follow me.’

  67

  Initiation

  As they walked, Caitlin explained that the initiation was usually a grand affair, steeped in traditional and ceremony. When they entered the Grand Hall, it reminded Josh of a church they’d gone to when they buried his gran — except the mourners weren’t dressed like a grand order of wizards.

  There were pews on either side of the central aisle, which led up to a raised dais. Walking slowly down the scarlet carpet, Josh saw that the symbol of the snake eating its own tail was emblazoned on banners and columns on both sides of the hall.

  The founder led the way, followed by the colonel. Methuselah, Sim and Caitlin stayed beside Josh as the rest of the extended family followed behind.

  An old woman stood on the dais dressed in robes that shimmered like the sun on water. In one hand she held a staff, in the other a finely carved wooden case just bigger than a shoebox.

  The woman’s hair was woven into long dark braids streaked with grey; a golden symbol had been woven into the end of each braid — she reminded Josh of Medusa with her hair of snakes.

  The old woman began to tap out time with the end of her staff, and he found his steps matching the beat. Like a metronome, the rhythm of the sound brought order to the proceedings. The audience grew silent and watched as the entourage marched in deference to the beat, making their way slowly towards her.

  When he reached her, Josh could see that the top of her staff was crowned with a snake holding a sphere, and that the box cradled against her breasts had a similar mark. Her face was masked by a golden veil, but he could see a dark pair of eyes studying him as he approached.

  ‘I am Moirai, Aisa, Diké — the Goddess of Fate,’ she announced dramatically to them all. ‘You shall know me as Destiny, as Chaos and Calamity. I am your beginning and your end.’

  As one they all stepped away from Josh, leaving him standing alone before the masked goddess.

  ‘Who brings this soul to the continuum?’ she asked, waving the staff over his head and bringing it down on his shoulder, forcing him to kneel.

  ‘I do,’ answered the colonel, stepping forward to stand beside Josh.

  She lifted the staff away from Josh and handed it to an attendant.

  ‘Time is a river. It flows through me like water.’

  They all repeated the incantation solemnly.

  ‘I am the navigator, the weaver, the guardian. I shall not shy from the consequences of my actions.’

  Again the assembled repeated her words. As they did so, she brought the box up towards Josh’s face.

  ‘Behold the engine of the infinite. Within lies your past, your present and future. Do you pledge them all to the service of the continuum?’

  She nodded to Josh as if to prompt him to repeat the words. As he did so, the circular symbol at one end of the box irised slowly open to reveal a dark hole.

  The colonel took Josh’s right arm and guided his hand into the hole. At first Josh tried to resist, afraid of what might be inside. He guessed it was going to be a snake, but he knew this was some kind of test and that the colonel would never do him harm.

  The inside of the box felt unusually cold. As he tentatively spread his fingers in search of the contents, he found that it was much larger than it looked from the outside. A familiar prickling sensation began to spread over his hand and up his arm; his mind began to sense the lines of energy as the darkness reached out of the box and took him.

  It was pitch-black; he searched blindly for any point of reference in the formless void that surrounded him. The feeling of solitude and emptiness was overwhelming — isolated from any stimuli, he could feel his senses desperately scavenging for some kind of input.

  ‘Do not be afraid,’ said the disembodied voice of the goddess.

  Her tone was like a mother calming her chil
d — a deep, soothing, reassuring sound laced with maternal benevolence.

  A small glimmer caught his eye and he felt the warmth of something under his hand. He looked down and found that he was touching a small black cube that glowed slightly where his fingers touched its surface. The cube was floating in a dark viscous liquid, like black mercury, in a shallow bowl. The dim light cast out in a small umbra around the bowl, encasing him and the column on which it stood in a sphere of pale blue light.

  ‘Behold the continuum,’ explained the voice.

  Sparks of light issued from his fingertips spreading out across the surface of the cube. Like embers they glowed and died as they travelled along its sides, their trails igniting symbols and glyphs of ancient equations. Lines of power began to trace between the glowing symbols and as the number of lines multiplied, the lattice seemed to grow and spread outwards until it enveloped him and the space around him.

  Suddenly Josh was standing in the middle of an intricate web of lines and symbols that revolved around him like a thousand galaxies.

  ‘The continuum: the culmination of twelve thousand years of work. A model of every branch of history, every correction, and all of the possible futures contained within one beautiful and ever-evolving algorithm.’

  As Josh focused on the swirling matrix, he recognised various markers and symbols; he could make out the centuries and the notes, the annotations and formulae that had been tagged to the various branches. Every change, every choice was marked with a series of numeric symbols and references as to who had sanctioned the action — it was a beautiful, intricate structure of infinite scale, it made him wonder what it was all for.

  ‘The continuum must be maintained if humanity is to survive,’ the voice of the goddess responded — as if aware of his thoughts.

  His eyes were drawn to the clusters of timelines, like knots in the fabric of the lattice. There were key dates: world wars, the fall of empires and major events that attracted the most attention and generated more possibilities. He could see a pattern to their frequency, they were becoming more regular as the timeline approached the present.