The others shrugged and went back to their stations. It was going to be a long night, and they would need all the caffeine and sugar they could get.
106
Lenin
All that was left of the founder was the physical shell.
Josh was aching to get back to the war, but there was no way he could leave him unprotected.
He studied the face of his father, noting the line of his jaw and the shape of his nose — it was strange to finally look at the person who had made him — quite literally. He’d no idea how the DNA device worked, nor did he really care. Just to know that it was this man was enough. Finally, that question had been answered, and he realised how much it had mattered after all.
Although right now he wasn’t pulling the best of faces. His freakish white eyes were beginning to disturb Josh, and turning away he noticed a flickering strip of light from a door to his right. He went over to it and looked through the grimy porthole.
Inside the body of Lenin was floating in a large glass tank. Like some kind of science experiment, he was a wizened, desiccated version of the man that Josh had once known.
The signage on the door read ‘EXSPEC X0001’, and Josh realised that it must be the original Lenin.
Taking one last look at his father, Josh opened the door and went in.
The chamber smelled awful, a pungent mixture of chemical preservatives and shit — somehow they were keeping him alive.
He walked around the glass until he could see Lenin’s face. He was sleeping like a baby, his arms and legs folded into a foetal position with tubes and wires plumbed into hundreds of different points on his body.
As he stared at the grey-haired old specimen, Lenin’s eyes snapped open, and Josh jumped back.
There passed a few seconds when neither knew what to do next. It took Lenin a moment to recognise Josh and when he did the despair in his expression made Josh look away.
Lenin was too weak to communicate with anything more than his eyes, but that was all Josh needed; he knew what he was asking for — to end it. He looked around the room for anything that could smash the glass or a way to shut off the power, but everything was broken, rusted shut or dead.
Lenin blinked, and his pupils flicked to the clones that were sealed into the pods outside.
‘You want to get out of here?’ Josh asked, realising what Lenin was saying.
Lenin blinked once.
Josh looked at the controls; they were frozen, the blank display having lost whatever power it used to have. The whole thing was a lump of dead glass and plastic, the systems that were keeping Lenin alive were obviously running on automatic.
Josh remembered the way they’d moved back three hundred years before, how new and shiny everything had been then. He took one more look through the porthole at the catatonic founder and knew what he had to do.
Bookmarking the temporal location on his tachyon, he opened the timeline of the control desk. Weaving through the timeline, he saw how Lenin had been left to rot in this tank — nothing more than a lab rat for over four hundred years.
Josh went back three hundred, just like before, and the room around him was bright and shiny once more — Lenin looked a little less decrepit, but not much.
The control panel lit up with symbols beneath his fingers, but he had no idea what they all meant. It took several attempts before he managed to find the transfer program.
‘You sure you want to do this?’ he asked, his finger hovering above the button marked ‘initiate’.
Lenin looked up, his eyes pleading for Josh to do it, and then, as if the stress was too much, his whole body began to shake. Josh knew that if it’d been the other way around Lenin would probably have just shot him. There were so many times when he’d wished Lenin were dead, imagining a life not corrupted by knowing him, wondering what it would have been like if they’d never met. He looked at things differently now. Lenin was the least most important thing in his life now. It was strange how something so huge could become so insignificant — it was like he finally had taken control of his life, or at least part of it, the bit that didn’t involve trying to save the universe.
As he watched Lenin’s seizure subside, he realised how long it was since they’d last seen each other.
Josh was eighteen now.
‘Happy Birthday,’ he said, tapping the glowing button.
Lenin flexed his fingers, studying the way they moved as if discovering them for the first time. His new body wasn’t much older than when Josh saw him last — the day he’d let Gossy die. That had been the worst choice he’d ever had to make, and yet the alternatives would have been far worse. Josh had seen the consequences of every possible scenario and none of them ended well. No one understood what it was like to witness the many different ways someone might die; it was like being cursed — choosing the “least worst” option didn’t feel the same as doing the right thing.
The right thing would have been to let Lenin die, to just switch off the machine and walk away, but there was part of Josh that couldn’t do that to him. No matter how badly Lenin had treated him, he wouldn’t let it end like that.
Lenin stepped out of the pod, his naked body rippling with muscle.
Josh smiled. This was a major upgrade for Lenin, who’d never looked as fit in his life — it was a vision of what could have been if he’d stayed off the drugs.
Lenin didn’t speak, but just nodded his thanks and walked out the door. Josh knew he had a score to settle with Fermi, and perhaps that was justified — then he remembered the number on the neck of the Lenin that had saved him from the operation.
As Josh opened the tachyon to jump back to the founder, he realised that, by releasing Lenin, he might have just saved himself.
107
The Wave
[Cobham, Surrey. Date: 12.018]
Michael Bates sat in the supermarket car park trying not to think about how he was going to tell his wife he’d lost his job.
This was his third in two years, and there was little chance he was going to get another one any time soon — there were only so many ways you could take ‘you’re not suitable’, or ‘we think you’re overqualified’. Redundancy was a horrible word, and no amount of sugar-coating was going to pay the rent.
He pulled out his mobile phone and tapped in her number.
She had cried when they had to sell the house, and the kids changed schools after they couldn’t pay the fees. Everyone blamed him for ruining their lives.
And now he was going to do it again.
The call failed.
He looked down at the screen; he’d run out of credit — it was the story of his life.
Outside people were getting out of their cars and staring up into the sky. Michael looked through the windscreen and forgot all about the phone and the job.
High above the supermarket signage, an army of hideous looking demons was riding giant flying serpents while behind them a tidal wave of futuristic cities was falling out of the sky.
108
Father
The founder’s breathing was weak and shallow when his consciousness returned to his body. The Lenin he used was still in the timesuit, standing motionless in the centre of the chamber, his expressionless face bruised and battered from the fight in Josh’s mother’s bedroom.
‘You nearly ruined my plan,’ said the founder with a weak smile.
‘Why?’ was all Josh could manage, staring at the trickle of blood that seeped from the side of the old man’s mouth.
‘Because,’ he began in a hoarse whisper, ‘you’re the only way to defeat the Nihil.’
Josh frowned. ‘Except I don’t know how!’
The founder coughed violently, and Josh could hear the blood bubbling in his lungs.
‘You live between two worlds: the past and the future — you’re a duality — the only one who can survive and live to tell the tale.’
‘And you created me with that?’ asked Josh, pointing at the DNA device in the Lenin
’s hand.
‘It will be the only way to defeat them.’
‘How? I don’t know what to do.’
‘My son,’ he said tenderly, ‘I have so much to tell you, but little time to do it.’
Josh reached up and put his hand against his father’s face. ‘Show me.’
The founder’s timeline opened to him, and Josh found himself in a vast network of intersecting timelines, like being inside the Infinity Engine once more, a four-dimensional map of all his chronologies.
WHO ARE YOU?
He could feel the weak presence of the old man’s consciousness guiding him towards a cluster of time. It was thousands of years ago, and not within their continuum, but a strange and alien one with structures that looped and branched in ways Josh had never seen.
THIS IS MY ORIGIN intuited the founder. MY WORLD
Suddenly Josh was surrounded by a crowd of robed academics. Each one taking turns to shake him by the hand. He realised he was experiencing one of Dee’s milestones. They were all congratulating him on something, speaking a language he couldn’t understand at first, but as the engrams embedded their words began to make sense.
‘Phenomenal work!’ said one.
‘Outstanding!’ said another, clapping him on the shoulder.
Josh turned to see a blackboard filled with formulae, reminding him of Heisenberg’s work in Germany.
TIME TRAVEL?
Josh asked.
QUANTUM DISTORTION.
The founder replied.
YOU CREATED A TIME MACHINE?
AND BROUGHT THE NIHIL.
Time accelerated as the founder’s mind took him forward fifty years.
They were in some kind of council meeting; everyone was shouting at each other, pointing fingers at Josh and calling him names. The long table was covered in reports and papers he knew instinctively said the same thing: that their world was coming to an end. It was their own version of an Eschaton.
HOW DID YOU SURVIVE?
Josh asked.
The events shifted again, and suddenly he was standing in a laboratory, the equipment nothing like anything he’d ever seen. It looked more organic like it was alive, but somehow he knew what it was capable of. The connection between him and the founder was filling in the gaps, passing him the missing information. They were quantum state machines, each one ‘grown’ from designs of their own making.
He felt the information flow between them increase, the founder moving hundreds of memories into his mind, downloading everything he could into Josh, without explanation or understanding. He tried to keep up with the fire-hose of information, but it made his head ache. Whatever he was gifting him would have to come out in its own sweet time.
109
Oglethorpe
‘They’ve broken through in 12.018,’ Astor said, marking the spot on the projector with a chinagraph pencil.
‘Deploy the twelfth,’ Sim instructed the two scribes, who hastily copied down the temporal coordinates into their almanacs, knowing that somewhere deep within the Draconian Headquarters a squadron of the Dreadnought elite would be scrambled.
Sim read the report as it came in from the field agent. It was a watchman by the name of Oglethorpe. He’d never met him, but Sim could tell from the shaky handwriting that he was scared. The details of the events were sketchy, but he mentioned there was a wave of debris flowing back through time with the Djinn as if objects were being dragged back from the future.
‘Second attack vector coming in. This time it’s from 7.800,’ reported Astor.
They’re coming at us from both ends, thought Sim, a classic pincer movement.
‘Doctor Shika is reporting increased activity in her specimens. She’s asking for assistance.’
‘Tell her to evacuate the Xeno department and join the Augurs. Send a note to Grandmaster Derado that we’re seeing signs of temporal backflow.’
110
Never Enough
Josh felt the darkness approaching, a creeping void at the edges of his consciousness, and he quickly disconnected from his father’s timeline.
There were tears in the old man’s blue eyes.
‘You can’t go,’ Josh whispered. ‘I need more time.’
The founder took Josh’s hand. ‘You’re ready. I’ve given you everything I know. The knowledge will present itself when you need it.’
‘But I’ve spent so long wondering who you were.’
The old man smiled. ‘You have so much of your life ahead of you, so don’t waste it worrying about things that might have been. I have often wondered what it would’ve been like to have a child, to watch them grow. I would’ve been proud to call you my son.’
Josh thought about all those nights he’d spent in police custody and smiled at the idea of Lord Dee coming to bail him out. It would have been interesting to see how he would have dealt with the social workers.
The founder closed his eyes. ‘Be true to yourself, Joshua,’ he whispered, and his breathing slowed until it stopped altogether.
Josh stood staring into the old man’s face, still holding his hand. There were a thousand things he still wanted to say, a million questions unanswered, but there was no point now — he was gone.
‘You would’ve been a great dad,’ he said, tears welling in his eyes.
The Infinity Engine sat in its case on the floor. The moment Josh’s hands came into contact with the case, a whole new set of memories opened in his mind. Instantly he knew all about the device, all of its functions, even how to make another one. The knowledge was there as his father had said, just waiting for him to unlock it.
He took the box and tried to lift the limp body of the founder out of the med-bay, but he couldn’t hold both at the same time — and he couldn’t leave either of them behind.
Lenin X9009 stood staring blankly out from his timesuit, and Josh realised he could use the powered system to carry the body.
He pulled the mindless clone out of the suit and climbed inside; it felt remarkably light to wear, nothing like the clunky suit of armour it appeared to be.
There were a series of sharp pin-pricks in the back of his neck and then the system came to life. Commands and data flooded his vision, and a calm female voice began to relate the pre-flight instructions — which Josh ignored entirely.
He scooped up his father’s body with one hand and the Infinity Engine case with the other. There was no way to weave from inside the suit, so he used his eyes to select the appropriate icon on the head-up display.
‘Temporal coordinates?’ asked the system.
Josh had no idea where he was going.
He walked out onto the main deck and chose the first tunnel he came to. Whichever point in history it was wired into had to be better than staying here.
The portal powered up as he approached and Josh could feel the energy pulsing through the suit’s shielding. It was nothing like the way the Order moved through time; he could feel the raw energy tearing a rift in the timestream, drawing power directly from the maelstrom.
Fermi had brought the Nihil to their timeline, just as the founder had done.
He watched the graphic displays on his visor as the fields stabilised; most of them meant nothing to him — except one.
In the right-hand corner a small icon was blinking — a pause symbol beneath a musical note.
‘Play.’
A question mark appeared.
‘The way you make me feel. Michael Jackson.’
The beat kicked in as he carried his father into the glowing disc of light.
111
Unabridged
[London. Date: Present day]
There’d been no word from Josh in over twenty-four hours. Caitlin messaged Sim, and his curt reply just confirmed that there were multiple breaches being reported and no sign of a let-up — which meant he’d failed.
Her parents had taken the Nautilus and a crew of Dreadnoughts to help rescue a unit trapped in 7.700.
Caitlin had chosen to stay
near the frontier. She’d spent the last seven years close to the present and went to the Chapter House with Alixia — it was the nearest thing to a home.
Alixia had intended to send her children with the others being evacuated to the Citadel, but they all refused. There was a glimmer of pride in her eyes when she reluctantly accepted their decision.
The house was unusually quiet when they entered through the back door. Lyra walked out of the study in her pyjamas, her hair a tangled mess, as if she’d just woken up.
‘Hey. Where have you been?’ she asked through a yawn.
Alixia hugged her tightly. ‘Have you seen your father?’
‘He’s with Rufius, fiddling with the Parabolic Chamber. They’re trying to reach the founder.’
Alixia combed her fingers through her daughter’s hair and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Put the kettle on dear, make Caitlin some tea.’
‘Okay,’ Lyra said, pulling a face at Caitlin as her mother rushed off. ‘What’s up with her?’
‘Er. The world’s going to end.’
Lyra tutted. ‘You have to have a little more faith.’
Caitlin had insisted they go via the library so that she could have one last chance to say goodbye and pick up a book.
It was the original copy of the Eschaton Cascade, the one her uncle had presented at the Royal Society all those years ago. Not the abridged version that had been circulated by the Copernicans, but the handwritten journal that Marcus had left on the lectern when he had been laughed out of the auditorium.
It looked like the work of a madman; his notes were written at different times and out of sequence, the diagrams and temporal formulae scribbled in corners of dog-eared pages.
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