Io Deceneus: Journal of a Time Traveler (The Living Universe)

by Florian Armas

  “I am not in a position to advise the Chancellor, I am only a traveler.”

  “Do you know Sumael?” My answer had fallen on deaf ears. He must know something. Scorylo? I don’t think so. That evening in the inn.

  “I heard the name once.” Maug? He had heard the name too.

  “Strange, no one told the police.”

  “He stopped the fight, the police asked about people causing problems.”

  “Yes, the police asked only for them; they never asked about The Sun's owner either. Neither did I.” He met my eyes. Should I yield? I kept his gaze for a few seconds, then looked away. “You asked, in fact you were the only one who asked. No, you and your fellow, Batranu. Why was this question born only in your minds?” His eyes moved away, like giving me the liberty to think. You definitely know who is behind The Moon too. I bet that you are the puppeteer.

  “We are new here; we have the benefit of having no knowledge about the local environment.”

  “Political environment.”

  “Political, social, all kinds.”

  “Then you have a good eye. I am always on the lookout for good eyes, the Kingdom needs them.” You need them. I tried to answer, his hand gestured to stop me. “Let me think; you killed two Munti when coming here, you saved another one, you let Duras live in a ‘death for death’ duel and saved a Baramunti here. Quite an interesting mix of events. Some people are not happy about you saving Munti soldiers or Baramunti. What did they call you? Traitor? They can be dangerous.” You are well informed, and offer me protection. He stared again, his blue eyes deep into mine; I confronted his gaze. “There is some pressure for a Baragan to head the Military School. You are the best fighter we have it seems, you have good ... political eyes, maybe too good, and an interesting sense of justice. Have you anything to say? Apart from being a traveler.”

  “I am a stranger. Strangers are loved today and hated tomorrow. I can teach cadets, I am not sure about other things.”

  “Strangers ... loved today and hated tomorrow.” He massaged his chin, undecided. The moment passed quickly. “I like that. Thank you for your advice. We will talk again.” He dismissed me. So abruptly; did I go too far with the love and hate? He is also a stranger, he should understand...

  Leaving the office, I bumped into Airan. “Here you are; the King is asking for you.”

  “You have many suitors today.” A thin smile played on Garon’s face; the tone of his voice carried a slight hint of bitterness.

  The King’s chamber was full: the Queen, Altamira, Batranu. Airan is not here. Strange. No, he is too close to Garon. He entered his office after delivering the message. Double game? He is a simpleton. Shut up!

  “I am glad you were not hurt by those angry people. The mounted police finished their unauthorized demonstration,” the King started. “We always grant authorizations. Why did they act like this? And those shouts.” Did you ask Garon? Or the Magister? “Are people so unhappy with our Baramunti citizens?” Wrong question. It is not about people, it is about rulers. Rulers? Are Garon and the Magister ‘unnatural’ too? We never considered this. You did not consider many things. “Of course you cannot have an answer after a few weeks here; you know many things but not this.” He stopped talking and went to the window. “Wonderful day, you can see all the valleys to the mountains.” I bit my lip so as not to laugh. “The Sun and The Moon,” he was still looking outside as if afraid to talk directly to us. “The papers are as different as the things in the sky.” Glad that you observed something, unfortunately you are wrong; they are the same. Now, this is curious, they are the same in trying to obtain different goals. The same school ... the same school... Something to check. “I forced myself to read them, terrible effort. Mostly The Moon.” Wrong again, both are terrible but The Sun plays your tune ... for now. Wake up Mr. King! Next time, they might both write against you. “Do you have papers in the south?” Now we play the game.

  “Yes we have ... one, very small, weekly.”

  “Are you the owners of that paper?” Not again! You will ask now how we guessed about their bad influence; focus on the things around, you don’t need much experience, only to ask the right questions.

  *

  We were vying for admission to the Library Society of Dava, and I could hardly stop myself from laughing: Batranu, an eternal student at the tender age of 168. He felt my amusement and frowned at me, smiling. “Wait for the results before poking fun at me.” The tests were hard, very far from: make your choice from three options below, there is only one correct answer, if you don’t know the answer fill one check box anyway, you have a 33% chance of being correct, thank you very much. I struggled with literary composition, history, geography, no automatic spelling, no backspace deletion, no easy corrections, and the blue-violet nightmare of the ink falling on almost-finished pages, destroying everything in its way. I broke more than ten quills, and dreamed of having a computer.

  When things ended, what could be a better connection with our previous student life than burning our entrails with alcohol in the fashion of the good old days? There must be equilibrium between the burned brain and the rest of the body and the local cognac was perfect for this. “Very different from your school exams,” Batranu paid me back for my jokes about the eternal student.

  “When my grandmother was still young this system was used for torturing unwanted candidates.”

  “You don’t need to go back so far; thirty years ago, our western system was similar. We threw out a good way of learning which had formed a lot of scientists in the past and replaced it with yes-and-no questions that even a kid could answer, one belonging to that period, of course.” He struck a chord with this, I was myself a hybrid, part product of the old system, part the result of the new one. He was right, things changed, and that change did not bring good news. “That system was producing graduates accustomed to think and to ask questions when something went wrong. People educated to think cannot be fooled easily. Now...”

  “The Wall,” I whispered, seeing Pink Floyd’s writing on the wall, coming from another life still fresher than ever. My mind went in tune with the song, and long rows of kids marched, in recruit boots, all in line, going nowhere. I saw them in low-paid jobs, and shook my head. “Not even this. The robots will replace them; they have no future.”

  “What future?” Batranu was lost.

  “Your Calhoun’s rats future. Our western civilization is destroyed.” Our? There is no more ‘our’.

  “They are not my rats, but I agree with you. In twenty years we will be completely surpassed by the east, still producing old-fashioned graduates in almost everything.”

  “And you will see the money-laundering elite running, like fleas, to catch the train there. I hope they will be cleverer than us. Let’s no longer spoil the cognac.”

  *

  “Do you have a Patents Office?” I wondered. Any help? I asked Ency. I made a note. Wonderful. A Connecticut Yankee visiting King Arthur’s court smiled at me from a faraway book.

  “It took us a long time to gather all the old and still existing patents together in order to be able to grant new ones, and we will never be sure that duplicates have been completely avoided, but here we have it,” the Magister’s proud baritone voice answered. “Talian will be glad to see you again; he is the head of the office,” Altamira continued, pushing open a heavy door that creaked loudly against our intrusion. The Magister left us to pursue his other duties.

  “Greetings, strangers from the wild, and welcome to my small kingdom of intellectual property.” Talian appeared from behind a large column. “If you want to enjoy the great boring history of the Patents Office, I am yours. Unfortunately, you cannot register a new invention today; the office is closed on Fridays for work on documentation analysis. No wonder everybody calls my office the leniency agency. Please help yourselves.” He opened a basket of cakes.

  “I suppose this is the main reason for people visiting the place,” I laughed, my mouth full of the sweet-bitt
er taste with an unknown aroma.

  “Well, we have some fun from time to time. Three months ago, one ‘clever’ company filed a patent request for the biggest thing in the beauty industry at this moment: mini-mirrors. Their mirror-pad is perfect and a must-have for anyone wanting to be accepted in high social circles, but they wanted to commission a geometrical form, a rectangle with round corners.”

  “And of course you granted the patent to them.”

  “Of course, we granted them the prize of the best office entertainers of the year after all the papers mocked them for such a shameless request. We are waiting now for someone trying to patent the wheel. If we hate anything here it is patent trolling; profit should be innovation-driven, not lawyer-driven.”

  The office was organized in a similar way to those on Earth, but the benefits deriving from the patents were handled differently. The patent could not be sold, only rented for royalties, and the owners had no right to refuse any request when not using it themselves, and even this restriction was limited to four years. The Patent Office usually calculates the royalties in a fair way.

  “Why not simply allow selling it to the highest bidder? This would encourage innovation.”

  “We discovered that in time the patent owner will gain more if the money is distributed in tranches over a longer period, but this became apparent only after a while, at the beginning the scientists grumbled, of course. What made us rethink the process was the famous ‘indestructible glass’ case.” He stopped to check if we knew about it – Ency was useless again. “We had frail glass before; twenty per cent of the glass inventory had to be replaced each year because of broken items. Then a breakthrough came, a glass as hard as stones are. The big players gathered to buy the patent, with the intention of never producing that glass. Never had this happened before. We stopped them.” Talian’s voice was suddenly proud. “No one should be allowed to harm the society for profit. They mumbled, oh, how they mumbled about the economy losing jobs. They speak of jobs and people, they think of money, their money. Money should go where innovation is, not where money is. We came up with this new law; and, guess what? We stopped patent trolling – no more lawyer driven blackmails of innovative companies. Some lawyers lost their jobs, not a big deal, there were already too many. We need engineers and teachers, more than we need lawyers.”

  I left the office in a bitter mood. If I could transfer this mentality to Earth. If I could ever return to Earth... Why the hell do I have to turn everything around Earth? That is your world. Was. Would our lawmakers dare to enact such an advanced law? In your dreams, yes.

  *

  “You owe me a story,” Scorylo broke the silence. I owe you nothing. You need him. Okay, I need him. His house was not far from our residence. “We cannot meet in the inn,” he had told us the evening before. “You are now ... well-known personalities, so please enjoy the hospitality and privacy of my house. My wine comes from the same sources that supply the royal cellar.” The same supply ... is this proof of your cover? Drink his wine; make him drink more…

  “I know, it’s bad for your business.” Scorylo half smiled at my half joke. “Thank you for the invitation, I hope you have lower prices than the inn.” I ignored his smile.

  “That remains to be seen.” Yes, that remains to be seen.

  “The Desert Brothers story.” He raised his glass to meet my words. You know Talian’s version, and you trust him, I guess. An outside view can spot things hidden to insiders. Tell him the full story, with the second attack … no SAT-mines. Bloody SAT-mines, they filled my thoughts for a moment.

  “Interesting story,” he said, thoughtfully, when I finished. “I did not know about the second attack. They were really motivated.”

  “Ready to die for whatever reason was behind their action,” Batranu pushed him, and for a while, no one said anything.

  “When did the first ‘unnatural’ appear in Dava?” I broke the silence. You have something in your mind. You are not quiet for nothing.

  “Two years ago.” ‘Death to Munti!’ Ugly sounds resurfaced ... the first step towards the war predicted by Houston? The Magister must belong to Faction two. Bastards! Don’t shout, think. You can use the Magister’s actions in your favor. “I am trying to find a connection between things happening here and your attackers.” Me too. “I don’t believe in coincidences, but I can’t see anything. Your sudden apparition is a singular event no one could foresee. There is no knowledge about Ardava here, apart from its being an insignificant spot on some old maps. No offense please, it is a small place by our standards.” What about Travelers? Should I risk a question?

  “The Magister is behind The Sun,” Batranu interjected. “Who is behind The Moon?”

  “I never said that,” Scorylo objected.

  “Maybe this is the right time.” I met his eyes while talking; he confronted me: black intelligent eyes.

  “The Moon’s owner is a most elusive person.” Good enough, no more denial about The Sun.

  “As elusive as you are?” He did not answer. “I know, it is good for your business. Is the Magister preparing a war against the Munti?” I pushed further.

  “War? The last one was a thousand years ago. No one is stupid enough to start a war with the Munti.” Is Houston wrong about the war? Was. Then why the hell am I here? Things moved slowly to jokes, gossip; the wine was good and the host agreeable, maybe too agreeable. The evening passed quickly.

  A gust of fresh wind through the door washed some of the alcohol vapors from our brains. A cloudy sky with a drowsy moon was telling stories about nightwalkers returning home. Thank God the road back is short. “There are some rumors about postponing an important wedding; Scharon’s childish behavior after the duel it seems. Have a good night gentlemen, I am always honored to host such pleasant guests.” The door closed.

  *

  Batranu was officially declared the newest member of the Library Society. “The jury is still deliberating on your papers,” the Magister stated in a bland voice. What the hell? I kept my mouth shut. A day later, I received a note asking me to present myself to the jury for further discussion regarding my mathematics. “Man, I have the same results as you.” Batranu shrugged his shoulders, in a mute answer.

  The Magister chaired the jury in his capacity as president of the Mathematics Association. “Quite an interesting paper,” he said. “The results are correct, but we don’t know what ‘n!’ means. We need a reference to show the correctness of the method, or a demonstration.” Factorial numbers … you don’t know them. Ah, the beauty of being with one leg here and one leg still on Earth. They used factorials ... in the past, with a different symbol of course, Ency whispered to me. Another two days and I was declared a member of both The Library Society of Dava and the Mathematics Association, one step closer to the powerful Magister. Not bad. Should I move into the library? No, Batranu can keep an eye on things there. But it is nicer to work with books than training cadets how to kill people. And? Nothing. Batranu is better trained for this job.

  “Congratulations,” Altamira smiled at me. Now you talk. She had kept me in the dark with the math probe.

  “Thank you. Now I am free again to do nothing.” My voice was a little bitterer than I intended. I have to press, so many promises with no effect.

  “This is a long-term game,” Batranu had told me the evening before.

  “Way too long. Why are they not able to make a simple decision?” The Military School was still without a commander.

  “Maybe because it is not simple. Whoever proposes you for that job will have to give something in exchange; the main issue is the free place in the Council, not the school.”

  “We need help in the library,” she brought me back from my memories. I am not talking about the library. Why are you playing with me? I am sure you know what I meant. “The park of the castle is our little wonder. Have you ever gone there? I walk under the trees whenever I am in a bad mood.” I met her eyes and got lost in their green liquid depths.
/>   *

  Talian ushered me in late in the evening; the Magister wanted to talk to me. “That was quite a remarkable demonstration, it will open a new field of research in mathematics.” I am sure you did not call me for this. Don’t act like a child, play the game as it is.

  “A moment of inspiration,” I lied without shame. Play the game as it suits you.

  “You have many skills.” And you too, I am not a fool, you know. “Where would be more helpful? Teaching mathematics or teaching cadets to fight our enemies?” You already know. “If I had my wish I would keep you here. Ah, if we could have it both ways...” What the hell do you mean? “What do you think?” I need something clever now. You need to cheat a little. Only a little? Give him what he wants. What does he really want?

  “I would be glad to help in both ways.”

  “I would be glad too, unfortunately...” He waited quietly for a while. Let him make the first step. “Our position is somewhat awkward. Baragans excel in everything except military skills, a curse and a blessing at the same time. You are Baragan too; I think you understand what I mean.” Of course. I nodded to him in acceptance of the facts. “You are the exception we need to fill the gap between us and Munti, and I think you are an ambitious young man.” More than you think. “The ways of politics are rarely straight; you need someone to open the gates for you.”

  “I am not accustomed to politics, and I am sure I need help from more experienced people.”

  “This will calm the people in the street.” The ones stirred by you and Sumael. My answer was ... good.

  “I was sad to see so much unhappiness on the streets here.” Around twenty, and I had to run from them. You don’t have too many adherents, but I suppose they are enough to grease the wheels. I hope.