One Second Per Second

by S. D. Unwin

  “Asmus,” Gallie says. “Have they found your Center?” Asmus is nursing his bloodied nose but still has enough wherewithal to look at Gallie in contempt. A short, threatening shake from Mack is all it takes.

  “They haven’t got in. They can’t without me,” Asmus mutters.

  “If we can get there, we can accel–” Gallie begins.

  “Fuck you,” is what it sounds like from Asmus although the bloodied gurgle gives it comic effect.

  “Do we need him to get into it?” Bruce asks.

  “Yeah. Biometric access.”

  “Well I can cut off his face or whatever body part we need,” Mack says.

  “Not sure how it works,” I say, but not rejecting Mack’s idea. “There’s also an underground passageway that’d get us out of the building, if we can get to it.”

  Asmus wriggles free of Mack’s grip in defiant irritation. “Look, let’s talk sense here my excitable friends,” he says. “This is way too much drama for the circumstances we’re really in.” He takes a couple of steps toward me and places a hand on my forearm. “Joad, let’s talk.” I look down at his hand just before everything changes.

  FIFTY-ONE

  I’m in a sepia hologram. We’re in the same room and everyone is standing where they had stood an instant before, but they have the faded red-brown hue of an antique photograph. I turn my head and I have the sense of a thousand small adjustments rather than a fluid motion. There’s a profound familiarity to this, like a deja vu but an overwhelmingly intense one. Everyone is frozen still. Everyone except Asmus, who removes his hand from my arm and takes a step backwards. He’s grinning.

  “We need to have a few words,” he says, and the acoustics of his voice are close and deadened, as if spoken in a bubble.

  “What have you done?” I hear myself ask, but the words seem to come from somewhere distant.

  “Your curiosity excites me, Joad” he says. “The first time is a wonder.” I turn in an uncountable number of minute motions to look at Gallie’s face and frozen into it are the beginnings of suspicion. “Can you guess what’s happening? Can you?”

  “You touched me,” I say feebly.

  “Yes, I did. Because we must speak Joad. Just you and me. You’ll understand.”

  “Time’s frozen?”

  “Yet you and I aren’t frozen, are we?”

  “No.”

  “So what do you make of that?” he asks. “Think it through, Joad. No rush. Time is not pressing. Literally.” He grins. Then he waits. “Tee time and Tau time. Rings any bells?” It doesn’t and I shake my head in a series of tiny adjustments. “No. You never had much of an interest in my work, did you? But now you do, I think.” He seats himself and dabs his nose with a handkerchief soaked in sepia blood. “I’ll start you off because I know you need it. So why should space have three dimensions to it while time has but one? Seems unfair, no?” He pauses and then grins. “And as it turns out, it’s untrue, too.”

  “Tee time and Tau time are two time dimensions?”

  “They are, Joad. Quite perpendicular to one another the way left and right are perpendicular to up and down.” He holds up a small disk the size of an old-fashioned pocket watch that’s smooth and without markings. “Tee time I’ve frozen, and it’s Tau time through which you and I are now in motion.”

  “Tau time,” I echo, dumbly.

  “Yes. As you see, it lacks some refinements of Tee time: more discrete, less continuous–a quantum effect I don’t have time to explain. Plays with the light spectrum a little, too. But perfectly functional. It has most of the things you’d want out of a decent time dimension.”

  “And that little device gets us into Tau time?”

  “This? It’s really no more than an accelerator. Turns out that if you can sustain a backwards accel accurately enough to precisely offset forward Tee time, then Tau time shows itself. A discovery in your future–mine, too as a matter of fact.”

  I try to affect irritated nonchalance at this revelation, which is impossible both because of its dizzying implications, and the fact that I’m now moving around inside those implications like a sequence of drawings being flicked to create motion. He jumps up as if suddenly inspired to action. “Come with me. I want to show you the world in Tau time.”

  He walks and I follow him as my suspicion is trumped by awe. We walk through a sepia version of things, along the hallway, down the staircase, navigating the frozen soldiers. We step outside into a photograph: one of a landscape dotted by tents, campfires and troops, all frozen. The sky is aflame in red, like a sunset from horizon to horizon.

  “You see me as a villain, Joad,” Asmus says. The acoustics of his voice are unchanged by the outdoors, as if this is the sound made when people speak within a photograph. “But what am I really doing to deserve that?”

  “Well, let’s start with you having fifty TMA staff trapped here.”

  “Ah, yes. Well, take them. Take them to wherever they want to be. Although, granted, at this moment I’m not one hundred percent in control.” He opens his arms at the encamped army. “But I will be soon. That’ll happen.”

  “And there’s the matter of your vandalizing the timeline,” I say.

  “Oh Joad, we’ve had that conversation. You can’t accuse someone of screwing up something that’s already completely screwed. Vandalism is about destroying something good, beautiful, desirable. There’s no vandalism here. Maybe if we try to change the timeline often enough, then something good will come out the other end. Play the odds enough and you might win. No?”

  “And that’s your strategy is it? Chimps on typewriters? Maybe the chaos will in the end produce something good?”

  “Come on,” Asmus says. “Let’s check out the barn.”

  Outside, it is a frozen Ramuhalli at the well pump that’s producing an image of water. We enter and but for sepia hues, the scene is familiar. Bodies strewn on hay. Knots of TMAers in conversation. I see strands of straw immobilized in mid-air, captured in Tee time during their fall from the loft.

  “See. They’re all intact,” Asmus says. I look around to count faces–Jenn, Chen, Bisset, Wagner–as I follow Asmus out of the back door. We walk toward the tree line. “I have a proposition for you, Joad.” I see the spot where Gallie and I sat together to discuss, plot, make love. “Are you curious what it is?”

  “Tell me, Kasper. What’s your proposition?”

  “Join me,” he says. I let these words float in the deadened air between us.

  “Join you.”

  “I know I’ve been impulsive at times.” He nods toward the barn. “And in my quieter moments, I do consider the merits of regretting that. But I want you to look past it.” I snort. “I know, I know.”

  “Join you in what?”

  “My work.”

  “Your work.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of making the world a better place?”

  “Of at least creating the opportunity.”

  “By trying out every history until there’s one you approve of?” I ask.

  Asmus surveys me for a moment as if deciding on the best course for his argument. “The world has no resemblance to the way you comprehend it, Joad.”

  “I understand, so you’ll keep vandalizing it–”

  “No. That’s not what I mean.” Asmus strokes the small, disk in his hand. “I mean the very physics of it.”

  “Tee time and Tau time? I’d say you’ve demonstrated that pretty well.”

  “No, no. Not even that. Just adding a dimension is neither here nor there. Not in the scheme of things. That’s just one more dimension added to a list we already had. I’m talking about a grand reunderstanding of things. Do you remember something you once said to me when I was the youth and you were the sage? You said, ‘the universe and its physics are imbeciles’.”

  “Okay. That’s the sort of thing I would have said.”

  “Well Joad, based on your understanding of the universe, you had a sound point. The problem is ... you
r understanding.”

  Asmus leans against a tree and dabs his nose. “The big guy is quite a jackass,” he says.

  “You happen to be right,” I reply. “But he just redeemed himself.”

  “So, let’s call it vandalism,” Asmus says. “It isn’t, but we’ll save that conversation. So vandalism changes the timeline: makes a different history, a different future. I know your opinion of temporal logicians, and from where you started out, it’s a fair one. Idiots all.” I nod in a thousand small movements. “But we’ve come a long way since then. Ideas emerged. Theories formed. And mostly validated. And like most ideas in temporal logic they started out with your friend the great Prasad.”

  “What theories?” I ask. I normally wouldn’t believe a syllable that Asmus emits, but I think these are matters about which lies would be sacrilege, even to him.

  “As I said, with an act of ‘vandalism’ the timeline changes. What that means is that the universe in its entirety snaps instantly to a new structure–a new complete history, a new complete future.” I nod. “Tau time plays a role in the transition but you don’t need to understand that for now.” Even in the incomprehensible environment of this Tau space I see smugness on Asmus’s face. “Now listen to what I’m about to say carefully. When the universe makes that instant transition, all conscious perceptions of it make the same transition.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning all memories of the past, all comprehension of the present, and all assessments of the future line up with the new reality–in an instant. You see, you shouldn’t think of the universe as a place, or even as a collection of alternative places. Think of it as an experience–as billions of experiences of anyone or anything capable of having them. Maybe that picture’s not quite right, but it’ll get you closer to the truth than where you are now. If there’s a change to the timeline, that just means all those experiences snap to that change.”

  “No,” I say. “That isn’t true. Bess and I have different memories–different pasts. In one I was with Bess for only hours, in another, years. You know that.” Then I think of the park in Risley. For me it had replaced a strip mall that had been there hours before, but for the kids playing in it, it had always been there. We had different pasts. Asmus is plain wrong.

  “And how do you explain it, Joad? Why did someone else’s memory snap to the new timeline while yours didn’t?” Prasad had asked me that same question. I had no answer then and I don’t now. “I know the answer,” he says. “I’ve known it for a while.” Asmus pauses dramatically. “You see, Joad, it’s you. And it’s me. And it was Mancini before the idiot got himself shot up. I knew it the moment you turned up in my humble abode.”

  “Knew what?”

  “Well, this is one time I can’t really fault you for being dumb, for not figuring it out. You are dumb, but understandably so in this case. This is the kind of thing you have to be told. You just don’t have the facts. So let’s take a step back ... tackychemistry ... the three magical chemicals. The little buggers that started it all.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, this is interesting. It turns out that analogs to those chemicals, in micro quantities, are produced by human glands.” He pauses. “Let that sink in, Joad.” He pauses again. “Is it sinking in?”

  “Yes, it’s sinking in, Kasper. Consider it sunken-in. Just tell me.”

  “And for some fraction of us, I’m guessing a small fraction, the chemicals are produced in just the right proportions–the Goldilocks effect. Are you ahead of me yet? You should be ahead of me.” I don’t give him the satisfaction of a response, and I am not ahead of him. “Those chemicals create a highly localized tachyon field.”

  “And–?”

  “And for those lucky few, their memories are immunized against the new timeline. To the extent they snap to the new reality, their memories don’t snap with them. They retain their old timeline.” I look around myself, buying time to absorb this. “And when I saw you react to Elizabeth for the first time, I knew right then that you were one of us. That you remembered your life with her.” I kneel down on the grass to avoid falling. “You see how important that is don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say without thinking.

  “You can’t compare histories if you don’t remember them.”

  “No.”

  “And that’s why I need you on my team,” he says. “You know, at one time I wanted to take you and make you suffer a little along with the others. Then I wanted to kill you because you were the one that got away. I do tend to ruminate over these things; you know, whip myself up into a frenzy, and maybe I got it a little out of proportion. But then when I discovered your gift, I became a little ambivalent to be honest. So, you see, I’m just a man with human foibles–I can get confused, torn. You have to give me some slack, Joad. Anyway, I realized it would have been a monstrous shame to just kill you. And now I’m seeing what should have been obvious to me much sooner. We need to be partners, you and me.”

  I look up at him and there’s nothing but sincerity on his jowled, sepia face, looking like an antique photograph of a long dead relative. Could there be a quark of truth to this? To think that words emitted from Kasper Asmus could possibly be anything but lies is itself an act of insanity. Yet ... I believe him. Or at least, I think he believes himself.

  “The scientist in you has only one option, Joad. You can’t walk away from this offer–to learn and understand more about the nature of things in one week than in your whole mediocre career. Jump on this.”

  “I need to get back to the mansion,” I say. The missile. I can’t be here with this lunatic.

  “You’re worried about Galois and your little band of brothers? It’s sweet that you care about such small matters.” He smiles warmly. “But there are a few things I need to make happen first–things that’ll leave Penrose in no doubt who’s in control. Once that’s all figured out, we can get your little team taken care of.” Asmus reaches up and runs his finger along a leaf frozen in mid fall. “Now, are you with me, Joad Bevan?”

  “What do you want from me?” I ask.

  “Good question.” He strokes the small accelerator disk with his thumb. “First thing, let’s accel forward a couple of days. By then Penrose will be extremely anxious to talk with me and willing to accept terms quite favorable to us.”

  Us! I feel a pang of disgust.

  “So we’ll simply saunter up, in full control of the situation, and talk business.”

  Then my neck turns cold as what he had said catches up with me. Accel forward two days! The day of the strike, always assuming it hadn’t happened before.

  “No!”

  “No?”

  “We need to make sure Gallie, Zhivov and the others are safe. We need to get right back there, in the now.”

  “You’re such a worry wart, Joad. That’s not going to work in your new job. Believe me, your friends are going nowhere with the Continental Army guarding them. They have no chance of getting out of there.” Then I see his thumb beginning to trace out patterns on the accel disk. “Trust me.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  Tee time has returned and I’m looking into a cloudless, blue sky. I’ve lost my bearings. We’re on open ground and now I see the mansion ahead. But the camp has gone and there’s not a soul, not a tent, not a campfire remaining. I turn back to see Asmus. He’s surveying the landscape and looking confused. Then he tells me to follow him. I feel my heart thudding hard against my rib cage. I look up again to scan the sky knowing that if I were to see anything it’d be too late. I begin to run toward the mansion. Everything I care about is in it. I run faster shouting “Come on!” to no one. The mansion is a couple of hundred yards ahead of me. No sentries outside, neither goon nor soldier. I hear a distant whistle that becomes a scream in the instant it takes me to look up. Something dark passes over me at unfathomable speed and I look ahead to see the mansion become a haze of gray, orange and red. A sack of anvils swings into my chest as I feel the ground drop from beneath m
y feet.

  Silence. Absolute silence. I open my eyes to dense, swirling points of light that slowly part to reveal patterns of shifting black and blue. My heart pounds soundlessly. I focus enough to see thick black smoke passing over me in waves. I try to move but feel white hot bolts being driven into my ribs. I take a breath, grit my teeth and push myself up onto my elbows. Ahead, there’s no vestige of a building or of any structure: just flames and billowing smoke. I grit my teeth hard and look toward the barn. Two walls remain standing. No movement, no sign of life. Is this how I go? I would never have guessed it.

  It’s a wonderfully silly ending.

  I see movement near the barn and squint at it. A horse mounted by a bluecoat emerges from the tree line. Then another, and then around them, foot soldiers walking out tentatively without formation. There are tens, then hundreds of them emerging. From between the soldiers bursts a figure running directly toward me. As the figure gets closer I whisper “Gallie.” My elbows give way and with an unbearable jolt of pain I’m on my back again. No time seems to pass, or maybe I lost consciousness, but now she’s kneeling by me, her face above mine and her hair touching my cheek. She’s mouthing words I can’t make out and I smile. Then I see Zhivov above her grinning down at me. “Such a pinhead, Toad,” is what he mouths. I stare up at him and then blackness comes in from the edges.

  FIFTY-THREE

  I’m not dead is my first thought. My field of view is white. I feel my hand being squeezed and I move my eyes from the white to see Gallie.

  “What?” is the thing I say and I wince with the effort it took. She smiles at me.

  “What?” she repeats. “You’re okay. Banged up, but okay.” I swallow and even that hurts. “You’re bruised with a few cracked ribs. That’s all.” I look down to see bandages wrapped around my chest.

  “You got out in time,” I whisper.