The Lion and the Lizard

by Brindle, Nathan C.

  "Why?"

  "It has trouble communicating across the ethics divide. Like you say, it doesn't understand ethics, but it understands rules and limits. It has interpreted its rules and limits to allow for the merger of the two timeline trunks because it . . . I don't want to say 'believes' because I don't think it 'believes' anything. Say because it calculates the odds that both species will simply think their contact happens by chance, and that they both always existed in the same trunk, are remarkably high. And this provides an opportunity to understand how these two very warlike cultures will react to first contact."

  "They've had first contact," retorted Bob. "With me."

  "No," contradicted Beam, "one or two members of each of their species, who were well-disposed to the idea of first contact, had first contact with you."

  Bob started to open his mouth to retort again, but stopped short. "You know, you have a point."

  "Yep."

  "Maybe you should put a hat on it."

  "Nice, Bob. Real nice."

  Chapter 2

  So Much For That Family Reunion

  Wolff looked across the room at Kat, who happened to be holding and feeding the baby.

  Ya done good, she mouthed, and blew him a kiss.

  And that's really all we can ask for at the end of the day, he thought, blowing her a kiss in return. Something good to happen, and a glimpse of a happy future.

  He grinned, and took another sip of his bourbon.

  His comm buzzed.

  "What now?" he grumbled.

  He looked at the screen.

  "They want us to what?"

  "For values of 'what', what?"

  Wolff looked up and saw "his" von Barronov, standing on the other side of the table. "I don't know how Buford got a message to me in this timeline, but maybe whatever Bob did to get the message through from him before was a permanent fix to my comm." He handed the instrument to von Barronov, who read the message on the screen.

  His friend's eyebrows attained maximum elevation.

  "Take the Bandersnatch and scout a solar system . . . coordinates . . . where they have discovered evidence of another species?"

  "Where are those coordinates?"

  Von Barronov looked at the screen again. "Hmm." He hauled out a holotab, fired it up, and input the data. "About a thousand light years corewards."

  Wolff whistled, even though it was cliché. "That's a lot farther than we've been before. We're still working on this hundred light-year sphere."

  "Yeah," said von Barronov, slowly. "Who, exactly, discovered 'evidence', and what was the evidence?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Who else has a scout craft and goes out looking for stuff like that?"

  "Well," started Wolff, and stopped.

  "You were going to say, 'Could have been a Space Force frigate,' weren't you?"

  "Yeah, and then I remembered the most action they've seen, other than the RIF relocation, is with us." Wolff gestured for the comm, and von Barronov handed it back. "I want confirmation from Buford that this is actually an order from him."

  "As opposed to, say, Bob, or the simulation?"

  "Yeah. Trust – "

  "But verify. Gotcha."

  Wolff tapped industriously on the comm's holoscreen keyboard for a few moments, paused to read what he'd written, then hit the send button.

  "Guess we'll find out . . . "

  Bzzzzz

  Wolff raised an eyebrow. "That was quick." He opened the message. "Yes, I sent that, and yes, I want you to go take a look. Buford."

  "Really." Von Barronov looked intrigued. "No identifiers or code phrases? That's not like the general."

  Wolff scrolled back and looked at the routing headers. "Well," he said, "the routing looks right. On the other hand, I remain skeptical, because I think someone is playing fucking games, and I don't fucking like it."

  He waited.

  Bzzzzz

  He opened the new message. "I don't know," he said, "if I appreciate a good joke, or if I'm concerned that the Simulation was able to lie to us."

  "What's it say?"

  "It says, 'Caught me. But you need to go look, then go home and tell your general.' Or Simulationese to the same effect." Wolff considered. "In our timeline, or this timeline?" he asked.

  YOUR TIMELINE BREAK THERE HAS BEEN NO PARALLEL DISCOVERY IN THIS TIMELINE BREAK POSSIBLY DUE TO TIMELINE CREATION PROCESS BREAK ONLY TRUNK ROOT APPEARS TO BE AFFECTED BREAK

  "All right," said Wolff. "We'll translate home and go take a look. But we would like to finish our family reunion first."

  ACCEPTABLE BREAK

  "Good." Wolff turned off the comm and pocketed it. "Because I'll be damned if I'm going home without lunch."

  "Right?" agreed von Barronov. "I've been smelling that roast cooking the whole time we've been here."

  "And the fried chicken," replied Wolff. "And all the other goodies. And my mouth is watering. Let's go eat."

  The comm buzzed again. Wolff pulled it out, exasperated.

  "That's a neat trick if you can manage it," quipped von Barronov.

  "You shut up."

  TAKE DOCTOR ARIELA RIVERS WOLFF BREAK YOU WILL NEED HER BREAK

  "Ah? In what way?"

  Silence.

  Wolff looked up at von Barronov. "You know, she's developed a little cult following here, over the last thirty years. It's somehow no secret she was instrumental in putting an end to the invasion. Apparently, this annoys the hell out of her. She does not like being put into that position."

  "So you think the Simulation wants Ari to go with us and play Lion of God again?"

  "Beats me."

  "So, who knows. Maybe it's testing us again."

  Wolff looked askance. "I certainly hope the fuck not. The first time was bad enough." He shrugged. "Fuck it. Let's eat."

  "What are you eating?" asked Kat, with a grimace at the loaded plate in her husband's right hand. And the second plate he was carrying in his left hand.

  "Would you believe, my counterpart actually has my aunt's recipe for homemade pot pie noodles?" Wolff nodded at the first plate, which was full from rim to rim with . . . something.

  "What the hell is that? Never mind." Kat rolled her eyes and sighed. "You were one lucky fucked-up gunnery sergeant I was a PT, not a dietician."

  "It starts with mashed potatoes," said Wolff, warming to his topic, "then you ladle on a big mess of these big ol' noodle dumplings, then on top of that you dump the pot roast. And gravy from the roast all over the whole thing." He lifted the plate and sniffed, looking pleased. "Perfect. Dad used to put away three plates of these at Christmas dinner. We never could figure out where."

  "What the fuck is it with you Hoosiers and gravy?"

  Wolff looked hurt. "In Indiana, gravy is considered a beverage, dear. You've lived amongst us long enough to know that."

  "Yeah yeah. What's on the other plate? Anything green?"

  "Green beans."

  "The Masonic vegetable. Loaded with carbs."

  "Yep. And here are some carrots, some corn, and those really tasty potatoes au gratin that Sarah makes, some cottage cheese . . . "

  "Yecch."

  " . . . and over on this half of the plate, a nice little green salad with all kinds of goodies."

  Kat perked up. "A salad? You?" She looked, then sighed again. "Kat, you know better than that," she chided herself. "Bacon, hardboiled egg crumbles, three kinds of cheese . . . "

  "Shredded carrots and some beets," added Wolff. "But, lettuce!"

  "You'd be dead from cardiac arrest if it weren't for nanos."

  "True. But instead, I'm 88 . . . well, nearly 88 . . . and still keeping your bed nice and toasty, 'cause I've got the bod and energy of a . . . what was it Ari said? A 27-year-old." He put his plates down, sat, and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek.

  Kat sighed again. It was becoming a habit.

  "She said you looked like her dad in the wedding pictures."

  "Yep. At 27. And he still look
s like that."

  "And so do you, you old devil dog." Kat gave in to the inevitable and kissed him back. "You're a pain in the ass, you know that?"

  "Yes," grinned Wolff. "But I'm your pain in the ass. And yes, I'm an old devil dog. Sixty-nine years this Thanksgiving since I took the oath. So there's that."

  "Yeah." Kat didn't look happy. "And for the last three years, you've been back in, doing who the hell knows what for Buford and his happy crew of Space Forcers. I still haven't heard the whole story of that trip."

  Wolff looked at her, quizzically. "Do you want to? The three of us who went are all here."

  "All I know is Sarah says Ari nearly died, and that's why she has two military medals from Space Force." Kat looked back at him. "You never told me that."

  Her husband took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

  "Yeah," he acknowledged. "She did, and she does. I saved her. Damn near got electrocuted for my trouble. But her whole timeline – this one, the one we're sitting in having a very nice lunch – nearly collapsed at the same time. And . . . well . . . "

  "Well, what?"

  "If this timeline had collapsed," he said, heavily, "the entire trunk line would have collapsed with it, because of the backlash of energy through the trunk. And we'd all be dead. In fact, the computer that runs the whole fucking Simulation – not just our trunk line, but billions of others – probably would have been crippled. Or at least, that's what it told me."

  "Oh." Kat thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, it didn't happen. So maybe we should eat, in case that sort of thing comes up again."

  "What? On the principle that we should at least die with full stomachs?"

  "Can't do anything about it, may as well eat." She picked up a fork and dug into her own, healthy salad.

  "Well, it won't happen again." He also started to eat, but he started with the mess of gravy, meat, noodles, and potatoes. "Part of the action when Ari nearly fell into a time rift and I got hit by lightning saving her from it generated enough random noise that the simulation could extend the timeline another thousand years or so. It had run out of randomness and the line was ending all around us. You'll be pleased to know that the random noise we created was made by blowing six RIF frigates from Sanddoom out of space. Though I have a suspicion," he said, lowly, "those six frigates were the same ones this timeline's Space Force has now. They'd been parked, unmanned, in ordinary above Sanddoom, and the RIFs had found a way to get to space and commandeer them."

  "That," said Kat, around a mouthful of greens, "is the craziest fucking story I've ever heard. Why would the timeline come to an end? Timelines don't end, they just keep going based on random crap and new sub-lines splitting off all the time. At least that's what you told me."

  "Yeah, well, when I created this line, I didn't finish the job. Or didn't set the parameters right. Or something like that."

  Kat nearly choked. Once she stopped coughing and had drunk some water, she gasped, "What do you mean, you created this line?"

  "When I talked to Sarah, back in 1984."

  "Oh. Ohhhhhhhh." She thought about it for a moment, drank some more water. "Oh."

  "See, this is why I love you. You're a smart cookie. You figured that out on your own."

  "I thought you loved me because I taught you how to walk again, and provided other valuable considerations, but never mind. So what did you set wrong?"

  "Well, it's a long story, but apparently I created the line in a test mode where nobody but Sarah had any free will, and she barely had any herself. It couldn't branch – prohibited by the mode. So the line just ran out of gas in about 4500 A.D. And the whole thing, from 1984 up to 2044, was created out of my head, and everything after that was extrapolated by the simulation." He shook his head, remembering. "What a mess."

  "Well, I'll say."

  "By the way, I think we're – or our counterparts are – living on Mars in 4500-ish, in this line. At least, I think my local copy would probably have gone to find you and bring you along."

  "Over my dead body." She looked at him. "I like the beach, and there's a lot of sand on Mars, but last time I looked, it's fucking cold, there's no Gulf of Mexico and – I'm told this is important – no air."

  "It was because the commies finally took over on Earth. We left. I think. Surprised I didn't stick around and shoot some people, but . . . " He spread his hands.

  "Oh. Well, in that case . . . maybe they had a swimming pool in the dome?"

  "Funny." They both laughed, then returned to the serious business of eating.

  Wolff slid into the empty seat at the table next to Ariela, who was still eating. His "daughter" groaned. "No," she said, simply.

  "I haven't said a word," Wolff retorted, aggrieved.

  "Right," said the woman, exasperatedly. "Don't think I don't know what that look on your face means. It may have been thirty years, but I haven't forgotten. I am not spending three days making any more A/V materials for my loyal future followers on their clunky-ass recording equipment. Fuggedaboudit."

  Wolff looked askance. "First of all, it was only three years ago for me," he said, "and that is absolutely not what I'm here to talk to you about."

  Ariela kept eating. "It's about something I'm not going to like," she replied, around a mouthful of pot roast. "Unlike this pot roast. Did you try it? Holy shit it's good."

  "It's even better with the mashed potatoes and noodles, with gravy on top."

  "God, I know, it's just amazing." Ariela stopped long enough to take a sip of water. "You could drink that gravy."

  "I did. Kat was very displeased with me." Wolff grinned.

  "What? She's been a Hoosier for over half a century, what's her problem with gravy?"

  "Close to seventy years, and I have no idea. New Englanders are weird. They like boiling live lobsters to death in order to eat them. Poor damn lobsters, what did they do to deserve a fate like that? Anyway, Ari, we have a problem."

  Ariela nodded, still working through her plate. "I knew it."

  "Do you still have your shipsuit? We need to take a ride in the Bandersnatch, about a thousand light years toward the core."

  "Yes, but I have something even cooler . . . what?" Her head snapped around. "How far?"

  "Oh." Wolff sat back, looking amused. "Suddenly interested?"

  "Are you really out that far?"

  Wolff shook his head. "No, we're not," he said, "but we're told someone is. And we've been told we need to take you with us."

  Ariela rolled her eyes and looked heavenward. "By the Simulation, no doubt."

  "As a matter of fact – "

  "No." She crossed her arms and looked him in the eye. "I'm not going. I don't feel like falling into a quantum rift again."

  "Ari. It said to take you because we would need you. I don't want you falling into a quantum rift again, either." Wolff sighed. "If only because being hit by lightning once was more than enough."

  "What does it think I can do?"

  "It wasn't specific. But given your last experience, it wouldn't surprise me if it were related somehow to your Lion of God schtick."

  "Daddy, I really hate that whole thing," she murmured, looking downcast. "I'm not who these people think I am. I was an actor with a script in my mouth. That's all."

  Wolff shook his head. "I refuse to believe that," he declared. "You are the same person you were before we fixed the timeline. And way uptime, in the 4500's, both the Simulation and the Programmers made it clear the timeline was fragmenting and the script was fragmenting right along with it. Even before that, you were still one of only two people in this entire timeline who were even halfway aware that things were out of true. And you were created out of my mind and memories as the woman you were, and still are – possibly even more of a daughter to me than any of us realized. And if you're a saint and maybe a prophet on top of everything else you are – and that you do so well – then that's just part and parcel of who Ariela Rivers Wolff really is. So," he finished, "you can sit there al
l day and think it was just a script and you were just a character playing a part – but I know better. I watched you do it. And it was real. I could not have been more proud of you if I had been your real father."

  Ariela took in a very deep breath and exhaled, slowly.

  "Sometimes," she said, "I think I'm not really a doctor. That I'm not really one of the world's top experts in immunology. That I didn't bring nanos into this world from yours, and then make them better, and then try to wipe out the Chinese with them till Mei's mother made me understand the enormity of what I was doing, and have a change of heart. That I wasn't really the Surgeon General for eight years. Because all of this," she waved her hands around as if to encompass the world, "is just a computer simulation running on a really, really big computer in a completely different universe. We're an experiment, and we don't even know what the point of the experiment is, but that's partly because we're not supposed to know the whole damn thing is an instantiation of The Sims on steroids."

  "Ari . . . "

  "Daddy, there are seven billion people in this world. Seven billion more in yours. About twenty people, total, between our two timelines, know the entire, unredacted truth. Maybe fifty-sixty more know bits of it." She took a breath. "Who are all these other people and why are they here? What is the point of their lives? It's just a simulation. It's not real." She looked like she was about to bawl. "Why? In heaven's name, Daddy, why?"

  "Ari, I swear I don't know." Wolff put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a little hug. "All I know is what I can infer from what Bob told us, that they have some method of pulling trunk lines out of the Simulation and, hell, I don't know what a good word is, maybe 'realize' the virtual worlds they contain. He claimed it had been done at least forty-one times before them, starting with the first successor race brought out by the Originators when they got tired of running the Simulation, and running up to when the forty-first race brought Bob's species into realspace. And the ultimate reason for creating the Simulation in the first place was because the Originators had found themselves alone in the universe, and wanted company." Wolff shrugged. "Maybe Bob's folk have their eye on us for that sort of work at some time in the distant future. Who knows."