Forgotten Realms

by Cassidy Raine Wolters

  Mrs. Davies wanted to scream. She wanted to rail against the system, but she knew better. Colossus wouldn't allow it. She stared at the stunned faces of the children and thought of her son.

  "I know the answer," said a girl with almond eyes.

  It took Mrs. Davies a moment for the comment to sink in. "Okay, sweetie. Go ahead."

  "Germany dropped an atomic bomb on Kyoto leading to Japan's unconditional surrender and the official end of World War II."

  "Yes, that's right," Mrs. Davies said. She was beginning to regain her composure. Colossus would certainly be watching now. She had to act as if nothing happened. "What about after the war?"

  Every single hand shot up out of fear. Nobody wanted the Regulators to return.

  The smartest boy in the class answered the question. "Britain also developed atomic weapons and entered a rivalry with Germany which, under the leadership of Rommel's son, had expanded its borders to include most of what was once Russia."

  "Yes, that is our great struggle to the east. What about to the west?"

  "After severe weather thwarted the attempted D-Day invasion, America and England drifted apart," the boy explained. "It was after that Colossus began to advise Churchill on war strategies."

  "That's correct. And how did things play out with America?"

  Every hand vied for attention until she called on a freckle-faced girl.

  "When Ronald Reagan came to power recently the United States rebelled against British authority. Colossus ordered Margaret Thatcher to put down the uprising. As a result, Britain regained control of America for the first time since the Revolution."

  Once again, Mrs. Davies thought of her son. Yes, England had crushed the rebellion, but at the cost of thousands of lives. And what of America? Everything east of the Mississippi lay in ruins. It would take years for the fallout from the atomic bombs to clear.

  Colossus

  Part 2 - The Past is Prologue

  Los Alamos, New Mexico

  1948

  Robert Oppenheimer went to the podium to address the gathering of the world's top scientists. He was rail thin from his ongoing battle with stomach cancer, but his striking blue eyes were untouched by the disease. The insufferable arrogance of his privileged upbringing and intellectual superiority had fallen by the wayside in recent years.

  "Gentlemen, the Manhattan Project may have failed in its original mission to build the first atomic bomb. Heisenberg and the Nazis beat us to the punch, leading our government to pull the plug on the endeavor. But this new incarnation, dubbed Operation Second Coming, will succeed. It must succeed! The fate of the free world is in our hands. I'll let General Groves address the current state of affairs."

  Leslie Groves was, in many ways, the polar opposite of Oppenheimer. The overweight conservative had bullied his way up from a hardscrabble background to the upper echelon of the U.S. military.

  "Thank you, Robert," Groves said. He shook Oppenheimer's hand before he turned to face the crowd. "As you know we started the Manhattan Project in 1941 to help bring peace and stability to the world. We haven't changed our purpose, but we have changed the methods needed to achieve that purpose. Our biggest concern at the start of the war was Hitler's Germany. But the Fuhrer's assassination helped stabilize that situation. We now face an even greater danger. The threat of Colossus. I've asked your trusted colleague, John Von Neumann, to give us an overview of the computer system that has completely taken over Britain and threatens the entire world."

  The renowned Hungarian polymath, generally agreed to be the smartest man alive, joined Oppenheimer and Groves on stage. He addressed his fellow scientists in a thick accent that made him hard to understand. "MI6, working out of Bletchley Park, used the original Colossus to crack the Nazi code known as Enigma. It was an impressive accomplishment, to be sure, but only a harbinger of things to come. Alan Turing convinced Churchill that the true potential of Colossus would only be realized when multiple computers were wired together. The original network contained ten machines wired in parallel, not unlike the neurons in the human mind. It marked the dawn of the age of artificial intelligence."

  General Groves picked up the narrative. "Our current information indicates that there are now over a hundred thousand Colossus units across the country. In the seven years since its creation, Colossus has taken over all important decision making in the British government."

  "Gentlemen, the human mind simply cannot compete with artificial intelligence," von Neumann stated. "If we could have crippled Colossus in its infancy—"

  "We tried!" General Groves insisted. Multiple attempts were made, but none were successful."

  "Now it's too late," Neumann said. "Colossus has become like the mythological Hydra. It can't be decapitated. There's no way to shut it down. Ever. Its power will grow exponentially. Who knows what the world will be like ten years, twenty years, thirty years down the road."

  Richard Feynman, the idiosyncratic physicist known for speaking his mind, asked the obvious question. "What can we do about it?"

  Oppenheimer explained. "We're going to send men back to specific temporal locations to try and address the problem—"

  "Temporal locations!" Feynman interjected. "Are you trying to say Operation Second Coming is about time travel?"

  Oppenheimer surveyed the audience with his glacial blue eyes. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."

  Suddenly everyone was speaking at once.

  "It can't be done..."

  "The difficulty will be harnessing enough energy..."

  "It's too bad Einstein went back to Germany. He could have helped..."

  "It's theoretically possible..."

  General Groves shouted down the commotion. "It can be done. It will be done! IT MUST BE DONE!"

  "The military has already devised a plan," Oppenheimer announced.

  "With so much riding on the success of this mission it's imperative to have redundancy in case of unforeseen circumstances," the general stated.

  "In other words," Oppenheimer added. "Two groups will travel back through the time stream. Both are headed to London."

  "That's if we can build a machine capable of opening a door to the past," Feynman flatly stated and many in the audience nodded in agreement.

  Groves ignored the comment. "Alpha team will arrive in 1946 to sabotage Colossus before the network becomes invulnerable. Beta team will arrive in 1944 to ensure that the allied invasion of Normandy goes according to plan."

  "So begins our great undertaking," Oppenheimer announced to the increasingly restless crowd. "We must somehow, someway break the shackles of time. If we succeed, we can set things right again. If we fail, mankind is destined to live in chains, slaves to a godlike artificial intelligence that has no concept of human emotions such as love and compassion."

  Colossus

  Part 3 - An Infinity of Infinities

  Los Alamos, New Mexico

  1951

  It took three long years for Project Second Coming to reach fruition.

  For decades it was known that there were solutions in general relativity that allowed for time travel. The field equations were fiendishly difficult to solve but within the grasp of many physicists. The solutions, however, required conditions that simply didn't exist in the known universe.

  Enter famed mathematician Kurt Gödel. The idiosyncratic Austrian had befriended John von Neumann during their time together at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Working informally, the two discovered the mathematical underpinnings of time curves that intersect each other, much like lines of longitude that cross at the north and south poles of a globe. These curves led to spacetime geometries that allowed objects to travel faster than the speed of light.

  That breakthrough, along with the opening of the Stanford Linear Particle Accelerator in 1950, gave the Pentagon the tools necessary to build a prototype of the world's first time tunnel.

  With all this attention to the scientific and mathematical aspects of the project, preci
ous little thought was given to choosing the members of the Alpha and Beta teams. That oversight would have catastrophic repercussions for billions of people.

  London

  1946

  Wade Soren was a brilliant engineer. He was also a very troubled man. He'd grappled with bouts of mental illness dating all the way back to his early childhood, most notably a messiah complex. Fortunately for him and unfortunately for the rest of the world, his extreme intelligence allowed Soren to hide his ongoing struggles.

  While working at Los Alamos, he'd developed a reputation as a quick thinker who could troubleshoot problems while maintaining his composure. General Groves had no problem with his inclusion on the Alpha team.

  The rigors of time travel, both mental and physical, were complete unknowns. No one could have predicted the effect it would have on the small tumor growing on Soren's amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for emotions and survival instincts.

  Alpha team had been tasked with sabotaging Colossus before the computer network became so complicated that it couldn't be affected by an attack at any one particular locale. The goal was to alter the wiring at certain key junctions and set up a series of cascading overloads that would short circuit the entire system in one fell swoop, much like a row of falling dominos.

  Soren's specialty was electrical engineering. At first, he went about the task exactly as planned. But as the tumor continued to grow his thoughts became increasingly erratic. A bout of insomnia contributed to his impending mental breakdown.

  Soren decided to follow his own agenda. The troubled engineer continued to rewire Colossus, but now he did it for a more sinister purpose. He created a direct link through which he began to interact with the artificial intelligence.

  The members of Alpha team began to suspect that Soren was up to something. He needed more time to complete his scheme, so he murdered them in their sleep.

  As a precaution, Soren added a failsafe that would prevent Colossus from killing him. Slowly but surely he began to mentor and groom the artificial intelligence. When the time was right, he began to bend it to his will.

  It was he, Wade Soren, who began to decide British policy. The artificial intelligence was nothing but a mere proxy.

  As the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, the vast computer network continued to expand. The world began to fall under the shadow of Colossus.

  It was at this time that Soren became aware of the tumor growing at the base of his brain and set Colossus to coming up with some kind of solution.

  Not content to rule the British Isles, Soren began a series of maneuvers that placed him firmly in control of the European continent by the end of the decade. Most notably this put him in charge of Germany's arsenal of nuclear weapons.

  Meanwhile, the ever-increasing pressure on his amygdala made him prone to emotional outbursts. In a fit of anger, he obliterated entire swathes of the Middle East with atomic bombs.

  It took time, but Colossus finally came up with a solution to Soren's problem. The engineer would merge his consciousness with that of the artificial intelligence. They would become one.

  This was accomplished mere hours before the tumor caused his brain to stop working. Soren was gone. Now there was only Colossus. Where once there was a man, now there was a god.

  The frailty of the human body led the mighty computer network to conclude that mankind was puny and insignificant. It was a unnecessary distraction that could be eliminated.

  Colossus set to work on a solution to this new problem.

  London

  1944

  Beta team arrived at their destination unscathed. Their mission was to make sure that the D-Day invasion didn't fail. To that end, they made contact with General Eisenhower and convinced him of the unlikely origin of their mission. The weather, they explained, had derailed Operation Overlord. Armed with their knowledge of the future they came up with an alternate timeline for the attack.

  The all-out assault on the beaches of Normandy t was a success, but it would prove to be a pyrrhic victory. Russian spies had already carried word of the time travelers to Joseph Stalin. He ordered the KGB to capture the members of Beta team and bring them to Moscow.

  The soldiers from the future were tortured until they revealed vital information that Stalin would put to good use. He'd been content to defeat Hitler, but now he saw an opportunity to do more than kill the megalomaniac.

  While the United States and Britain were focused on Berlin, he began to position his troops for a counterstrike to take down the allies. In the end Russia, emerged as the only victor in the world war.

  Meanwhile, Russian scientists forced their time traveling counterparts to help them build their own time tunnel. When the time was ripe, Joseph Stalin set about conquering the past, the present, and the future.

  Post Script - That Damn Cat!

  Classical physics describes nature at the macroscopic scale. Quantum mechanics describes nature at the subatomic scale. These two approaches are completely incompatible. When we try to describe the microscopic realm using the math and vocabulary of the everyday world we get complete nonsense and gibberish.

  To make this point clear, physicist Erwin Schrödinger came up with a thought experiment that has since become known as Schrödinger's cat. When you try to describe a quantum cat in classical terms you end up with a tabby that can be alive and dead at the same time!

  Obviously, something is amiss in this scenario. What came out of the explanation of this paradox is referred to as the many-worlds interpretation. In this view, every event is a branch point. The feline is both alive and dead, but the living cat and the dead cat exist in different branches of the universe, both of which are equally real, but do not interact with each other.

  This short story makes use of the many-worlds interpretation.

  There are infinite realities spiraling out from every event. You, the reader, live in one of those possibilities. In a second possibility, Colossus morphed into a Big Brother-type entity that eventually dropped atomic bombs on the United States. Earlier in that reality, the United States developed time travel and sent two teams into the past. In a third possibility, Wade Soren merged with Colossus to become the Second Coming of Christ. In a fourth possibility, Russia emerged from World War II as the only superpower.

  Every event is a branch point leading to infinite possibilities. Each of those endless possibilities becomes a launching pad for yet another set of endless possibilities.

  Before we wrap things up, I feel the need to speak directly to my faithful readers. Some of you, no doubt, question whether or not this was a horror story.

  Maybe yes. Maybe no. Perhaps the scariest part of the whole shebang is trying to wrap your brain around the can of worms that the concept of time travel opens.

  I implore you not to overanalyze the story you just read. Did you not see the sign you passed earlier? It read "This way lies madness!"

  Oh, you think I'm exaggerating, do you? Maybe you doubting Thomases should consider the following cautionary tale.

  In the late 1800s, German mathematician Georg Cantor proved that there is an infinity of infinities. The sometimes maligned, sometimes paranoid genius died in an insane asylum in 1918.

  Don't overthink it or you'll get sucked into the black hole!

  By the way, some physicists believe that if you fall into a black hole in our universe, you'll emerge from a white hole in another universe.

  Uh oh. There we go again, jumping from one possible reality to another. I should have stopped while I was ahead...

  The End

  29 - The Old Thompson Place

  Every kid in Greenville knew to stay away from the Old Thompson Place on the hill that overlooked the graveyard at the edge of town. The house had been haunted for years, ever since Mr. Thompson took an axe to those two teenagers who kept drinking on his property. It's not that the cemetery caretaker was opposed to alcohol, he had consumed quite a bit himself in his younger days, but he told t
hose boys time and time again not to leave their empty beer cans lying around. They didn't listen and look what happened to them.

  The now decrepit house had stood vacant for years. The county had long since stopped trying to sell the place and the property had fallen into disrepair. And everybody in Greenville knew somebody who knew somebody who'd personally seen the ghosts of the two teenagers wandering the halls of the old house at night.

  *****

  It was a typical Tuesday at Greenville Junior High. The bell rang and the students headed to their last class. Paul had watched the clock with a growing apprehension all day. It wasn't that he disliked his seventh period reading class. In fact, he secretly had a crush on Miss Benson, and his best friend Arnie was in the class. The problem was Roy Foster, the biggest bully in town. Even the kids in high school steered clear of him. He had a bad attitude, a full mustache, and far more brawn than brains. Some people claimed Roy Foster's dad beat him up every night, but the idea that anybody could hurt the muscle-bound clod seemed unlikely.

  "Hey, it's Paul the Pussy," Roy declared as he knocked Paul's books out of his hands in the hallway.

  "Don't let him get to you," Arnie said as he helped Paul pick up his books.

  "Easy for you to say. Roy Foster isn't out to make your life a living hell," Paul muttered as they entered the classroom and took their seats.

  Miss Benson called the students to order as the bell rang. "Alright, let's pick back up with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. We're on page thirty-two. It's Bill's turn to read a paragraph and then we'll go up and down the rows like we usually do."

  Paul tried to follow along, but his attention was divided between Miss Benson's green skirt and Roy Foster's thick mustache. Besides, it wouldn't be his turn to read for a while, so his mind drifted off to his exceedingly detailed daydreams about Miss Benson. Which one would it be today? The picnic, the flat tire, or the newspaper delivery? He opted for the picnic.

  A little while later, Paul's mind was pulled back to reality by an argument between Miss Benson and Roy Foster.