“In his preparations for his assimilation of the collected consciousness aboard his ship, he had purged his own deepest memories, even those that might have informed his inherent morality. His thirst for power was so great that he gave up nearly every part of himself to make room for it.”
“He tried to absorb all the knowledge of everyone you had ever met all at once?” I ask.
“The results were catastrophic. We had collected that knowledge from a hundred timestreams over multiple millennia. Those memories and experiences were connected like threads in time. Threads he was pulling. By attempting to channel them all into a single time and place, he damaged the ship’s core and the source of its power. The reactor couldn’t recover from the damage. The rest, as you know, was devastating to the universe.”
“What kind of reactor could create a super-massive black hole?” I look around the room, searching for the real limits of the ship among the visual displays of stars. True to form, the ship reveals itself to me, its ribs and panels appearing from the darkness. Then it shows me an image of its luminescent core, dangerous, but beautiful.
“The ship is powered by an advanced form of Alcubierre drive. You may have heard of the concept.”
“It sounds vaguely familiar. Bit fuzzy on the specifics though.”
“It’s a method of warping space-time itself.” Melchior takes control of the room’s imagery, the walls vanishing again into a bright blue sky. The ship’s interior now resembles a grass field. I imagine this is how Iowa or some other Midwestern state might look on a summer day. Despite the ship’s main controls being disabled, it seems the Eternals have seen fit to leave the basic meta scenery functional. Melchior has summoned something to his hand and I recognize the soft, red shape as a water balloon. I stare at the balloon, transfixed, not sure what miraculous thing he is going to do next.
“Are we having a water fight?”
“I’m going to teach you the rules of reality.”
“Right now?”
“You have another more pressing engagement at the moment?”
I glance around the sealed room. “Well, no.”
“Imagine that the rubber of this balloon represents the fabric of space-time.” Melchior holds up the water balloon. “On one side, a world of air; the other, a world of water. Two distinct universes. Now imagine that the membrane is vast—has no ends that we can see. Picture it extending from one infinite horizon to another.” He runs a finger over the taut surface of the balloon, then forms his fingers into an “okay” symbol, using his thumb and index finger to squeeze the top end of the balloon, causing it to bubble out. “When we attempt to draw the elements from another reality into ours, we can’t. The membrane won’t permit it. What we do get, however, is this pressure from the other side.” He uses his other hand and presses on the bubble of water between his fingers. “Despite being another reality, it can exert a force here. This is the nature of the Alcubierre drive. Except it uses pressures not just from one universe, but from many.”
“Doesn’t the other side have to lose something in this equation? Law of conservation of energy and all that?”
“Indeed, but as we pull pressure this direction, pressure elsewhere bulges into their reality. Space-time is very elastic.”
“The universe puts up with that? Doesn’t it need to compensate somehow?”
“The ship compensates. We can’t store all of this tension indefinitely. It must be expended and returned. But when that happens is up to us. Provided we don’t exert too much pressure.”
“What happens if you did?”
“The same thing that happened to Adarvan. He attempted to channel too much energy at one space and time and the Alcubierre drive ruptured. By the time we realized what he’d done, it was too late. The ship and everything around it was vaporized. It left nothing but a hole.” Melchior squeezes the water balloon until it bursts. I jump back involuntarily, but the water is gone as quickly as he made it appear. I remain dry and untouched.
I stare at Melchior’s empty palm. “So that’s what created the black hole.”
“Yes. The hole now equalizes the pressures between the various universes that were formerly connected.”
“Like a big cosmic drain?”
“In a sense. The pressure equalizes, and the sub-matter elements that were vaporized end up in the membrane, fused into the fabric of reality.”
“So Zurvan—or Adarvan—what happened to him?”
“His body from that moment is gone. Along with the rest of the planet. But his consciousness became trapped. We knew he was somewhere other than our reality, because he no longer interacts with time as we do. But we’ve had messages over the centuries. Threats, and entreaties to release him. He’s not gone. It seems these followers of his believe they can retrieve him from the Neverwhere.”
“Is that possible?”
“Nothing physical would ever come back. Nothing has the power to retrieve matter from a black hole, if matter even can be said to exist in such a place. What the Eternals are trying to do, is not return the body of Adarvan, but his consciousness.”
“What good will that do with no body to put it in?”
“They’ve found his body. Likely a younger version of himself.” He places a hand to the wall of the ship as if he can feel its thoughts. “They are taking us back to find him now.” Melchior sighs and looks upward.
The ship is changing around us again. The field has dimmed from midday sun and is now fading though twilight back into a star-filled nightscape. Billions of stars come out on display. I look for any sign of constellations I know, but wherever this view is from, it’s not home.
I don’t get any sensation of being aboard a ship. No sense of movement. No sound of engines or vibration.
“Why are we not floating around in here? Some kind of artificial gravity?”
“Not artificial. The ship’s engine actually contains so much inert gravity that we need to use much of its own power just to keep from being destroyed by it. Since it’s tapped into multiple universes, drawing vast amounts of power from them, we wick off only the smallest amount to run the ship. The rest counteracts itself and keeps us from tearing a void in space-time.”
“Seems like a dangerous place to live.”
Melchior smiles. “No one has ever called the Magians cowards. Truth be told, the technology is very safe when used properly. We’ve spent centuries mastering it. Adarvan was a tragic and catastrophic exception. These Eternals, however, don’t know what they are doing. If they succeed in their attempt to resurrect Adarvan, they may repeat his failure, rupture space and time again, and create a second black hole.”
A crack of light appears in the wall as a door is opened. A pair of strong arms hurls the somewhat ruffled-looking Doctor Quickly through and closes the door again.
Doctor Quickly manages to keep his feet. He straightens his jacket and brushes the sides of his pockets, patting them in turn to check their contents.
“Benjamin. I see you’ve had about as much fortune as I’ve had.” He wanders over to stand by me and extends a hand toward Melchior. “Doctor Harold Quickly. Are you a fellow captive? They are starting quite the collection.”
Melchior extends an arm from his cavernous robes and returns Doctor Quickly’s handshake. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Doctor. I wasn’t sure I would encounter you in this lifetime.”
Doctor Quickly nods. “So much to see, I would imagine.” He glances around the room.
“She’s okay,” I say, predicting Doctor Quickly’s next question. “They’ve got her locked up on her own.”
“I suspected as much. Keeping us from pulling any more tricks.” He rummages in his pockets. “Not that we could. They took nearly everything in my—ah.” He pats at his chest and finally locates his glasses. Slipping them on, he studies the view of the universe around us. “Fascinating ship. Simply fascinating.” He turns to Melchior. “I saw the way it moved on the meta radar. It has incredible speed. It’s an A
lcubierre engine, isn’t it? It’s has to be a manner of time warping technology. And the way you jump. Anchoring to comets. The brilliance of it . . .” He trails off and stares at the star field as if in a trance. “Just spectacular.”
I turn back to Melchior. He seems to be regarding Doctor Quickly with amusement.
“You said the Eternals could potentially create another black hole. What would happen then?”
Melchior’s face grows serious. “Adarvan ended the timestream he was in by creating a black hole so powerful that it is capable of sucking up anything in its vicinity, even across time. It’s sitting there right now, absorbing every possible future of the earth, because every possible future of the earth has it passing through that region of space. There is no chance of escaping it. It occurs too soon and it’s too big. It eventually swallows most of the Milky Way Galaxy.
“The black hole is so wide that the only human beings who could survive it would have to possess at minimum, the engine technology of the twenty-fifth century, but even using that, they would have needed to leave earth ten thousand years ago to make it to safety. The only people capable of managing that are time travelers. Hence, the true importance of our mission.”
“The Eternals really believe they can change things by bringing Zurvan back?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps he is merely promising them an escape. With this ship they could potentially travel farther into the past and then leave the Earth to survive and get clear of the black hole. But without proper use of the Alcubierre drive, they’ll only duplicate his error and that would be irreparable. He was pulled into the Neverwhere by an incredible force—a rupture in space-time connected to multiple parallel worlds. He’s also stitched to the Neverwhere in far more ways than any one person. When they try to remove him, they’ll be pulling out every soul he took with him as well.
“If the drive on the Starfire Epiphany can’t contain the strain on space-time they cause, they’ll blow a black hole in the deep past just like he did in the future and humanity will be truly trapped. Even we Magi won’t be able to travel far enough back in time to escape and preserve the knowledge we’ve collected. Time travel or not, the history of human civilization will be squeezed between inescapable black holes. Two devastating bookends for our story.”
“Wouldn’t people prior to Zoroaster survive? Humans existed prior to that point.”
“I suppose, theoretically, if any time travelers have made it farther into the past than when the event occurs and—assuming they discovered the danger before being consumed by it—they could potentially keep going back far enough in time to escape to the stars again. But in order to save the human race at that point, they would need to teach early Homo sapiens or more likely Homo neanderthalensis, how to build complex spacecraft—and do so thousands of years before they could even figure out farming.
“Not to be insensitive, but personally I’ve never known a Neanderthal to have an epiphany of thought that was especially worth preserving. As noble a cause as that might seem in theory, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for anyone to take it up.
“The Magi are the last great effort to preserve the essence and knowledge of mankind’s civilization. We’ve been doing so diligently for thousands of years using multiple incarnations of ourselves. The work is almost complete. But if the Eternals rip another hole in time by resurrecting Adarvan, it may have all been for nothing.”
The view around us shifts to the front of the ship. Our course is already converging with that of the comet Borisov C/2014 Q3. We are approaching the wake of its tail.
Doctor Quickly takes a few steps forward. “You must have a durable anchor system. Something that withstands the elements. A way to reappear without being fused to the comet’s tail matter.”
“It’s a pod,” Melchior explains. He points to a rough-looking gourde-shaped object coming into view within the comet’s tail. “The pod will open to receive us, then purge all other contaminants. We’ll anchor to its interior and have a safe place where we can relocate the ship through time.”
“You can go anywhere the comet goes,” Doctor Quickly says. “Jump the entire ship to anywhere in the comet’s lifetime where the pod is intact. It’s incredible. How many comets? How many options do you have?”
“Thousands,” Melchior replies. “We have them scattered through the Oort cloud. More comets than we’ll ever need, most likely. Some of the comets will deteriorate, but the pods will detach to find new ones.”
“But the technology required to complete that . . . the engineering and the intelligence required to master the time travel involved . . . It would have taken centuries of thought or a mind so powerful—” Doctor Quickly pauses and looks up at the sky. “Ah. So that’s what they’ve been up to . . .”
I don’t have time to question him because the door opens again and a cluster of shrouded Eternals enters the room. They’ve donned their robes again. One of the Eternals, a young man around my age, seems to be shivering in little spasms.
Elgin leads the procession. His companions are carrying the portable gravitizer they stole from me. They set it in the middle of the room and step away. Two more Eternals position themselves behind me.
“The time has come to prove your usefulness, Doctor,” Elgin says. “You will show us how to use this equipment properly and turn my remaining crew into time travelers.”
Doctor Quickly’s eyes linger on the shivering young Eternal at the back of the group. “That machine was not designed for living organisms. It requires a much more delicate process than with inanimate ones. If you use that improperly, it could kill you.”
“Then I suggest you find a way to make it work safely for us, Doctor. For any one of my men that dies, I’ll be killing one of yours.”
Strong hands grab me from behind and I feel the press of something cold and metallic at my throat.
Doctor Quickly grimaces as if the blade is pressing into his neck. “This equipment isn’t sufficient.” He gestures toward the canister at the side. “The reservoir of gravitites is nearly depleted. Whoever you’ve been using it on, you’ve exhausted most of its supply. Even if I could use this equipment to infuse you, there aren’t enough left there for even one person, let alone your entire crew.”
“Give me solutions, Doctor. Not excuses,” Elgin says. “You’ve created time travelers before. You will do it again. If we need more gravitites, we’ll drain them from the bodies of your companions if need be. Or perhaps from your daughter.” He holds up Mym’s degravitizer. He gestures to one of his men by the door and he opens it. Two more Eternals enter, shepherding Mym between them.
“Ben!” Mym calls as soon as she sees me. Her two guards restrain her and keep her from rushing to me.
I move toward her instinctively, but am jerked back by the Eternals behind me. The blade nicks my throat. A trickle of warmth runs down my neck from the incision. “Stay still,” the man with the knife snarls.
“Stop this,” Doctor Quickly says. “Removing gravitites from living tissue is even worse. You don’t have the technology. We shouldn’t use this. If you were to return me to one of my laboratories . . .”
“There is no more time for requisitions, Doctor,” Elgin says. “Make it work.”
Melchior interrupts. “The ship has a supply of gravitites. We’ll donate them if you do not harm these people.”
Elgin shifts his glare to Melchior. “I don’t trust you, Magi. Or your ship.”
“The Epiphany won’t harm you. You have my word.”
Doctor Quickly sighs and rubs a hand across his forehead. “Okay. If we have to use this equipment, I need to at least prime your men internally before we work on the external elements. We need gravitized food.”
“Food?” Elgin says. “We can raid the stores of the Magi. They have gravitized food in abundance aboard. That is simple.”
“Yes, but not just normal amounts of gravitites. We’ll need to infuse them to at least a hundred times that concentration level. We can use wat
er if we have to, but solids give more time for absorption. We’ll get the gravitites absorbed in the bloodstream and—listen, my daughter has a great deal of medical training. If you permit us, we could start gravitizing blood infusions and make sure that safe practices—”
“I’m sure you’d love to have a chance to inject us with needles,” Elgin sneers. “It would be easy to poison us, or—”
“Let them do it to me first.” Longcase walks through the door and begins rolling up a sleeve. “We have the boyfriend.” He leers at me. “I’m sure she understands that if she harms us, the pain will be inflicted tenfold on him. And I won’t have it said that I lacked the courage to act when Lord Zurvan required it of me.”
Mym’s eyes narrow and it’s clear from her expression that she might love to poison him anyway, regardless of his threats.
“We have a medical bay. It’s near the kitchens,” Melchior says.
Elgin gestures to one of his henchmen and Melchior is led from the room. Doctor Quickly works to set up the gravitizer in a better configuration. I would help him if I could, but the knife remains firmly against my throat. Mym is looking across the room, her eyes locked on mine. Staring back at her, I experience a sense of calm I haven’t felt in a while. I’m still frightened for her, but I’m relieved to simply be in the same room with her and see her alive. I realize the sense of calm I’m feeling is because my other self, at least for this moment, seems to be feeling exactly the same thing.
“Let’s get you to work,” Elgin says to Mym. “Time is of the essence.” Mym looks away from me and complies, moving toward the door under his guidance. She casts one final glance back and I try to give her a reassuring smile. She disappears around the corner with more of the Eternals following her.
Doctor Quickly glances up at the Eternals holding me. “Benjamin’s mechanical abilities would make this go a lot faster. Would you mind allowing him to assist me?”
The two behind me converse in rapid whispers, weighing Elgin’s desire for speed against the need to keep me secure. They must decide I’m not a threat, because I’m finally released and shoved forward. I stagger a couple of steps, then make my way over to Doctor Quickly, taking a knee next to the machine.
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 157