by J D Cortese
What Dhern kept calling “the disturbance” had been like an explosion of space-time, and it compressed the military ship they’d once called Faith with unfathomable strength. Parts of it had resisted; others turned into paper-thin wads of its components. As they scavenged the field for the cabin, many of the larger fragments were only partially visible, as if they were peeking into the world from a spirit afterworld.
It was Tysa who found the cabin, partially submerged in a prehistoric slab of rock. Only an edge was visible, a bubble of green soap from the still-alive energy barrier.
“Guys,” she hollered, perched on the glaciation rocks. “Come here. I can see someone inside.”
Sarinda cleaned tears with the back of her hand and ran toward the rock, followed by the swirls of air that carried Dhern. The swirls gained over her and were the first to reach the slanted face of the rocks.
Dhern was worried for his friend.
Opening the cabin took them time that was painfully precious, while they only had a partial view of the cockpit's occupant. Dhern was having trouble resetting the lock codes Faith had used.
"Is he alive?" Sarinda asked for the third time.
...Yes, a miracle, but he's okay.
“How about Faith?” Tysa asked, still on the surface of the rock, and pacing on the decline like a restless toddler.
...I can't do much for her...too many sections and fragments to reintegrate her consciousness.
“But you said…” Sarinda started talking but was stopped by a coughing fit.
...What happened here exceeds my knowledge...they couldn't have produced such a time-shift.
...There was something else affecting the process, and whatever it was, its power is beyond my understanding.
…These days have been full of humbling events…I have a lot to learn.
Sarinda tried to control her cough. Her lungs were still congested by the dust, the effort, and the crying. “Can you...?” she got to say.
The side window of the cabin blew open, in a hundred broken pieces ejected by an emergency mechanism. Tysa ducked to avoid a fast-moving circular support that spun near her.
...I'm done.
“Come, Sarin,” Tysa yelled, jumping on the invisible surface of the cabin's boundary. “Let's get him out.”
Sarinda climbed to the fuselage and helped Tysa to remove layers of some pasty yellow material that had been deployed by Faith before the crash. At least ten fallen trees around them testified about how harsh the crash had been.
Agdinar was there, unconscious.
Before either of the friends could get in and try to move him, Dhern, like a bluish fog, surrounded his old friend and, being the friend he was, became lightning as it shock Agdinar with a flash of energy that restarted his body.
...I'd like you to stay away...I need to...
“What's that?” Tysa yelled, this time loud enough to startle Sarinda.
“What do you mean?” Sarinda said, trying to make sense of the person she saw within the threads of yellow substance. He was moving and she was trying to reach his hand, touch it.
...You should stay out of this.
Then, she saw it.
His right hand, and the arm, weren't there.
Agdinar was touching his face with his left hand, dazed and oblivious to that loss. But what was more shocking to Sarinda wasn't him losing an arm, or his lack of pain and reaction to having a limb severed.
What had stopped her and froze Tysa's index finger in midair, was seeing the stump that the enormous wound had left.
Several lighted streaks, worms of light, and wandering masses of flesh morphing into muscles and bones, hung out of the wound. They didn't belong to any human anatomy of their world.
Neither the arm lost nor what it had left behind were human.
Incomprehension kept Sarinda and Tysa completely still, unable to turn away.
Their friend, who had sacrificed so much and loved them so dearly, was not human.
...We need to talk—
Dhern's thought ended in silence.
The sun was finally coming up.
Epilogue
Sarinda and Tysa were still trying to disentangle a shocked Agdinar from the airbag-like material; his legs were trapped deep in the yellow mess. Sarinda finally gave up, sitting near him and cradling his head on her shoulder. He was slowly coming to his senses.
Dhern was in no rush to tell them the story he'd promised. He finally looked at Agdinar, seeking his eyes as much as a bluish shadow could. There was care loaded with sadness in Dhern’s stance as he cradled Agdinar’s body.
...I'm sorry about this.
“No, you're not,” Tysa said. “You have been lying to us—to him—from the very beginning.”
“Let him talk,” Sarinda said, her eyes on Agdinar's slouched head.
Dhern was now visible almost as a person, with just his outline a little blurry. He kept his eyes on the ground, which gave him an air of humanity.
...We can't say anything that harms a human.
“But this,” Sarinda said, trying not to look at her downcast friend, “is this a person or a machine?”
...I beg to differ. He is both.
…His body is not human, but the mind is the same he had when he was...
“You mean he's dead, don't you?” Tysa interrupted, almost yelling at Dhern.
...He's still a human, in the future.
“For an intelligence with superhuman power,” Sarinda said, “you're a clumsy speaker.”
...Touché. I have been parsing how to tell you the truth. Even for me, that's not easy.
“Just tell us,” Tysa said, “and stop avoiding the point.”
...You're right. The simple truth is that we have never traveled back in time.
Agdinar looked up. His left eye was bruised purple, which added to the strangeness of the moment. He spoke with his most angry voice. “What? Dhern, what are you talking about?”
...We had a lot of trouble moving conscious, thinking humans back in time. People got crazy, truly so, and we almost abandoned trying in the thirty-fourth century.
“But the First Traveler,” Agdinar said, his voice recovering a normal range, “she did travel back, to this century.”
...She certainly did, but she wasn't a simple human...Alantha was a hybrid, so perfect that we have never been able to duplicate how she...
“So, what you're saying,” Sarinda interrupted, “is that you sent back computers with a human mind?” She was now the one getting angry with their ghost.
...You have earned some bonus IQ points for that.
“Stop your being-funny program,” Agdinar said. “Are you saying that the Watchers are only downloaded minds?”
...Yes.
“But we grow,” Agdinar said, looking at his left hand as if he could see through its fingers. “We get older.”
...That's why we put you periodically in stasis. To change your bodies according to a program of normal aging, while controlling your memories.
…You already know that you have been around for many, many years.
Agdinar had another flash of the Overseer near his hibernation bed, and of the many rooms where he had been hooked up to nano-medical machinery. So many that they merged into an immense hospital with a single patient.
“Let me get this straight,” Tysa said. “All these people above us are just machines with minds attached?” She looked up to the clear skies of the early morning. Now they all knew—maybe also all the New Yorkers still trapped in the city when the burst happened—that the sky contained another world, a threatening one.
...Not exactly.
“Not exactly?” Tysa said, her irony mixed with true anger.
...Many of the Watchers are just androids, artificial consciousness.
“What a mess,” Sarinda said.
...As for the humans...there are...there are...
“Dhern,” Agdinar said, “please say it.”
“It looks like the shadow ran out
of words.” Tysa couldn’t resist saying it, but her voice betrayed exhaustion.
...Sorry again. There are about 140,000 humans left in our time. The rest of the Watchers were built here, like our cities.
“This is hard to take,” Agdinar said, trying to stand but being held by Sarinda's arm. “There's another me, a person, five thousand years in the future, living his own life?”
...Well, no. Your body has been in stasis, for some time.
“Some time?” Sarinda said, raising her sight from Agdinar.
...Fifteen hundred years.
“Oh, my god,” Tysa said.
“But, I guess,” Sarinda said, “we can go and get your true body, bringing it back.”
...No.
“Are you sure?” Tysa said. “You seem more like a dummy today.”
Dhern raised his face, and he was now smiling.
...My IQ is a healthy 287 points, but sometimes it is not enough to deal with you humans.
“We, the stupid humans,” Sarinda said, “we’ll figure a way to go and pick him up.”
“Sarinda,” Agdinar said, now mostly out of the yellow shroud of safety material, “I know Dhern, and if he says...”
“It should be possible,” she said. “It has to be possible.”
...We can send people back to our own future time, even conscious people. But nobody has figured out a way out, as you said, from the future to the past. Not since we caught the Sigma12Tau wormhole in flight.
“We will,” Sarinda said, trying to prop Agdinar up, so he could stand. He was shivering in the cold of the morning.
“Sarinda,” Agdinar said, looking up to the invisible city, “we have to accept...”
She stopped him from talking with a kiss.
“We have to,” Sarinda said, as she moved away from Agdinar.
“Your people are going to come and attack us, aren’t they?” Tysa said. “We better hide.”
...There's time. The space-time bubble has damaged a lot of the Towers' instrumentation.
…They're using all the energy to keep themselves invisible.
“So, we are free,” Sarinda said.
...For a while. One of our cities, over Sydney, has unmoored and it's coming to support New York.
...We may have three months before...
“I know what you're going to say,” Agdinar interrupted, pointing to the city around them. “We might have stalled the Second Descent, but not avoided it. When they get here, they will destroy New York.”
...Unfortunately, you're correct.
“Don't worry,” Sarinda said, grabbing Agdinar's sole hand. “We will find a way to the future.”
...I doubt it.
“We will,” Sarinda said. “There's always a way.”
“Hey, look there,” said Tysa. “Someone is coming.”
“It’s two of the Watchers,” Agdinar said. “Those are my friends, the Watchers I kept in touch with. I guess they’re also giving up on the Towers.”
Vaxeer and Bethlana had found them, and they waved from the edge of the park. Sarinda waved back. Agdinar reached toward her with his good arm. He trusted that she was right, and they would be able to find his body. His real human body.
Agdinar looked again at his Watcher friends. They were still trying to move through the wreckage, and their silver suits shimmered in the early morning. He knew that they would need a lot of help to prevent again the final Descent.
Coming fast from the ocean, the wind bathed them in cold that could freeze a soul.
And in the empty city, it started again to howl.
Origins and Acknowledgments
This is a book that grew in the sidelines of a historical novel. It owes a huge debt to the time I spent wandering New York while researching Argentina’s past at the basement of Bryant Park’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Public Library.
I can only tolerate so much microfilm viewing, and my escapades took me to the city’s many art museums. Visiting the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), I was entranced by a Sigmar Polke piece depicting a guards’ tower in a Nazi concentration camp. It was called “The Watchtower” and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. When I left the museum, the skies were intensely blue and cloudless like New York would only give us a few times each year.
And I thought: What if the skies are not empty? What if someone is watching us, like the Nazis did, but we cannot see them?
At that precise moment, this book was born.
Everybody has a favorite conspiracy theory. Since childhood, mine has been that the UFO’s are us coming back in time to watch humanity. I am also obsessed with time—and time travel—and have never given up on my dream of humanity’s conquest of time. Years ago, while dining with my son and now true physicist, Alejandro, we theorized a workable time machine only to later discover that Kurt Gödel had postulated the same spinning universe where it could work. I still believe in our ingenuity, and if given enough time we will find a way to travel the roads of time. This trilogy explores several ways to travel through time, both forward and backward, and it would make a guess about what time ultimately is.
Another theme in Watchtowers comes from my belief that our time is being shaped by a fight between Promethean and anti- Promethean forces. Our Promethean drive to help those in need, to freely give our knowledge and talent—e.g., through countless sites in the internet and the work of thousands of NGOs—is constantly countered by anti-Promethean forces that oppose immigration, foster xenophobia, question science, and worry excessively about who owns technology and ideas. I have been always fascinated by the play Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus and read it in many translations—I am thankful for and love most the one by David Greene. This passion led me to wonder about the missing parts of the Prometheus trilogy, and to obsess—and many times get disappointed—by modern, weakly-built trilogies. In building this series, I have taken a more integral approach to the trilogy.
An early draft of this story was overhauled by a wonderful young adult author, Jen McConnel, and the first part of the book owes a lot to her. And the book’s short prologue comes from a synthesis exercise at one of the (many) writing workshops taught by Alice Osborn I have attended. I am also privileged to live in North Carolina, one of the most exciting states for an American writer, and chapter-length excerpts of the book’s draft were shared and discussed by Durham’s long-standing writers’ group—led nowadays by Jonathan Giles—and by the Raleigh’s Cameron Village writers—led back then by Laura Rose Shank. Several of our state’s excellent writers agreed to read a prepublication copy of the book: Tracie Barton-Barrett, L. C. Fiore, Padgett Gerler, and Alice Osborn.
My daughter Carina Cortese—a voracious reader, playwright, and increasing also a New Yorker—helped immensely with her city’s dystopian reshaping. Although we have argued several times about my use of colors rather than numbers for NYC’s subway lines, this is my book and I have always seen them in beautiful multicolor. I wish the future would agree with this quirk of mine but not with the rest of my designs for the Big Apple. I also want to thank Daniel Basmajian, who translated my descriptions of the Watchers’ military air-vehicle (also known as Faith) into drawings that capture its beauty, like the one gracing the book’s cover.
Even with the quality input of so many, any and all mistakes remaining in the present form of The Watchtowers (EarthWatch) are my responsibility. A book is ultimately a personal vision of reality, and this one is deeply mine.
Finally, there would be no vision of the future and no books without the constant support of my wife, Laura Voglino. She is not only the first to read my drafts, but the one who would see what experienced writers don’t. To be such a great reader is a rare skill, and I am very lucky to have her always in my corner.
So please, keep reading. Read this books and others, read as much and for as long as you can: our future would be much better for that. And if they are watching us, the Watchers might decide to leave us alone.
About the Author
J. D. (Jorge) Co
rtese is a scientist and educator by training, and a writer out of a passion for communication. He has written regularly for a widely-read scientific newspaper—The Scientist—and served as at-large editor for educational magazines and large publishing houses. Winner of awards for both science and teaching, he is also the recipient of the prestigious award of The Writers’ Workshop of Asheville for literary fiction.
After extensively pinning a world map, the author and his itinerant wife have found a home in North Carolina’s Durham. His two children remain closer to New York, a city he misses as much as Buenos Aires, Shanghai, and Paris. All these places keep appearing in the dream worlds of his stories, as much in the now as in distant futures. When not at his desk writing, he feeds his two lifelong passions, photography and table tennis.
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