by Roger Ley
Abrahams laughed, “Yes, and Prince George marrying a Princess of the House of Saud was an interesting development. Apparently, he won’t say whether he’s converted to Islam, which probably means he has. Anyway, enough royal gossip, you’d know much more about that than me. Do you have any questions?”
“This will take some getting used to,” said Mary. “It changes my whole perception of reality.” Bringing people back to life and giving them another chance? Could technology really cheat death like that, she wondered? What other changes had the politicians made?
Abrahams leaned forward and looked at her intently. “You realize the political ramifications of this, don’t you? The world would be a different place if it weren’t for our interventions, but if the public knew about TA, there would be hell to pay. If anybody got wobbly and talked to the wrong people, our masters wouldn’t hesitate.” He continued staring.
“Wouldn’t hesitate to what?”
Abrahams didn’t reply. They sat in silence for a short while and Mary decided not to voice the question that had popped into her mind. This Martin Riley had died young, was his death an accident?
“Anyway,” said Abrahams, with forced cheerfulness, “let’s discuss your immediate duties. We want you to help us with a new technology we’re developing. It’s a spin-off from the science we use here. We want you to help us with targeting. Your job is to fly a drone to a specific point and wait until we tell you to, er, ‘bump out.’ Your drone will be emitting a signal that we can use as a target.”
“Target for what? Guns, missiles, laser beams?” she asked.
“Well, yes, all of those things. Anything, fired from land, sea or air anywhere in the world. From a particle beam weapon on one of the orbital platforms, to a sniper’s steerable bullet. It allows surgical strikes of any sort.”
Mary wasn’t convinced about the targeting job, it seemed insignificant in comparison with the TA project. She suspected that Abrahams hadn’t told her everything.
“Lunch,” said Abrahams standing up and smiling. “You’ll love the food here, be prepared to put on a kilogram in the first fortnight. Our cousins have never heard the phrase ‘portion control.’ ”
The weeks passed easily enough for Mary. Her job was simple; she flew her host to a given spot and sat there for a few minutes. Her sprite told her when she should bump out, and she would find herself back in the drone control room, with Sergeant Harbaugh sitting on the jump seat, at the side of her couch. The sergeant’s name was Ruth. She and Mary were soon on first name terms, as long as there were no other military staff present. After two weeks, Abrahams collected her from the drone control room, and took her back to his office.
“Now you have your feet under the table so to speak,” he said, “it’s time to explain the real reason for your recruitment. Until now you’ve been helping us to calibrate our systems. Everything’s gone well, and the powers that be are happy with your performance. They want me to put you more fully in the picture.”
Mary said nothing; she waited for Abrahams to draw back the curtain. Surely nothing could be more astonishing than Temporal Messaging?
“The thing is, Mary, you don’t mind if I call you Mary? The thing is Mary that we’ve recently made a breakthrough. After years of research we’ve found a way to manipulate individual wormholes and increase their size. We can send, not just information, but also small amounts of matter, as far back upstream into the past as we like. It takes a lot of power, and the masses are tiny, only a few thousands of molecules, not enough to see with the naked eye. As soon as they arrive, an equal amount of anti-matter spontaneously condenses out of the quantum matrix; it’s to do with the conservation of energy.” He waved his hands and shook his head dismissively, to signal that the scientific details were not important to his explanation. “As the two masses meet, they annihilate one another, releasing a flash of electromagnetic radiation. We call the process ‘Temporal Displacement’ or ‘TD.’ If we were dealing with larger amounts of matter, there’d be an explosion. Who knows, a few years from now…” He was distracted for a moment, but then continued. “With the help of a targeting signal from, say, a fly drone, we can place the puff of energy to within a millimeter. The thing is Mary,” she was getting fed up with his ‘thing is’ habit, “we’re ready for our first trial run.”
“You said it was dangerous to interfere with the past,” she said.
“Oh, we only send the packet back a microsecond. We could send them much further back, if we had a signal drone in place as a target. But that would be a retrospective TA and we’re not allowed to do that.”
“Why send them back a microsecond then, what’s the point?”
“Because if we don’t give them a temporal displacement they arrive and just sit there. There’s no need for the quantum matrix to react you see, so there’s no anti-matter, and no energy release.”
“Can you send the end of the wormhole into the future?”
“How could we do that? The future hasn’t happened yet,” he said.
Mary thought about this, but decided that she didn’t want to pursue it. “What will you use Temporal Displacement for?”
“We’ll use it to prevent some very nasty people from doing some very nasty things. We can target the release of energy accurately enough to make it happen inside a subject’s head. The effect is similar to a cerebral hemorrhage, a stroke.”
“Are you talking about assassination or execution Dr Abrahams?” Mary was shocked but kept her emotions from showing.
“What’s the difference?” he asked.
“A trial, lawyers, judges, juries, all that old-fashioned stuff, you know, democracy and the rule of law.” Mary’s voice was even and controlled.
“Look, you’re a military pilot; your superiors might order you to kill an enemy in the line of duty, this is the same as firing a bullet or a missile. You don’t go to court every time you press the button or pull the trigger.” He seemed surprised at her disapproval.
Mary was disgusted, she understood the logic, but these were the actions of a police state. She realized that she knew too much now, and had reached a point of no return. If she wasn’t careful a puff of energy might manifest itself in her own head, targeted by her replacement. A bloody rite of passage for a new recruit, a sharing of the tribe’s guilt.
Abrahams continued in a louder voice, “You don’t have to kill anybody. You just have to do the targeting; we’ll be pulling the trigger back here. The energies involved are far too great to be generated by a fly drone.” He sounded agitated.
Mary wondered if Abraham’s anger was a symptom of his own moral scruples and the helplessness of his own position.
“Who came up with the idea in the first place?” she asked.
“Well, actually, it was me,” he said. “I wasn’t planning on using it as an assassination weapon; I thought the applications would be medical or manufacturing. Unfortunately, our masters are currently only interested in its military use.” They finished their meeting and went their separate ways for the weekend.
Mary did a session in the gym, and later, in the evening, HoloSkyped Patrick for a couple of hours. She didn’t dare discuss developments at Langley, and he knew better than to ask. They had a few drinks, gossiped about friends in England and then spent some “private time” together.
The next Monday morning, the team was scheduled to begin targeting live pigs. The pigs lived in field ten miles away. A drone wrangler released Mary’s host from a car nearby and olfactory feedback made the herd easy to find. She reprogrammed her end of the interface to substitute the smell of cinnamon for that of pig shit, that way both she and her host were happy. It wasn’t difficult for her to pick out the pig with the blue paint mark on its back. She landed between its ears and moved to the small black cross that was marked there. Gripping the pig’s skin with the sticky pads on her feet, she used her claws lightly enough not to advertise her presence. A scratching session wouldn’t be helpful.
“They ha
ve acquisition,” said her sprite after a few seconds and then, “Packet arrival,” a moment later.
She released her hold, flew to a nearby post, and watched as the pig slumped to the ground, its legs sticking out in different directions. Its eyes were closed, it jerked for several minutes before it went limp. Mary’s view was being patched to the screens back at the TM lab.
“They say they’ll try a larger packet next time, and want you to pick out the one with the green marking.”
Mary sighed and complied. Another day, another dollar.
After the live pigs, came the human cadavers. The subjects were laid out in the pathology department at a hospital in Cincinnati; army doctors were there to perform autopsies after the TD strikes.
Mary found landing on the head of a corpse unnerving, particularly if its eyes were open. Each time she did, empathic feedback leaked from her host’s nervous system into hers. The flies liked the corpses, they liked them a lot. On one occasion, she had submitted to the urgent need of her female host to lay half a dozen eggs before, she returned it to its wrangler. The happy feedback made her more relaxed during the mission, but she spent longer in the shower afterwards.
Abrahams met her in the drone control room, after her third day with the corpses. She was sitting on the couch, still in her sensuit, feeling sweaty and unclean. Irrationally she worried that she might smell of decay. He appeared not to notice her discomfort and focused his conversation on the project, as always.
“The problem is Mary, that although cadavers are good practice for target acquisition, they don’t allow us to calibrate our packets for termination with minimum intrusion. We need to go live, if that isn’t a contradiction. Ha, ha,” he laughed nervously.
Mary scoffed, “Sounds like an acronym trying to get out there, Dr Abrahams, ‘Termination With Minimum Intrusion,’ TWMI? no it’s just not coming to me. How about calling it ‘Managed Unilateral Removal by Directed Energy Release,’ it rolls off the tongue so easily.”
Abrahams looked at her for a moment, then stood up and walked away, clenching and unclenching his hands as he passed through the doorway, and turned down the corridor. She sat on the bench as Ruth unplugged leads and loosened the straps of her sensuit. Mary’s emotions got the better of her.
“We’ll be using live subjects next, and I don’t think I can face it.” Mary stood and wept quietly.
Ruth put her arms around her, “We don’t have any choice ma’am, they’re not going to let us go, we know too much,” she whispered in Mary’s ear.
Mary was grateful that the sergeant knew when they could relax protocol. She laid her head on Ruth’s shoulder, and allowed herself a few moments weakness, before shaking herself and stepping back.
“Thanks Ruth,” she said. “It’s nice to have someone I can lean on, but then that’s your job isn’t it, part nurse, part technician?”
“And part friend,” said Ruth as she helped her out of her suit. “Maybe on Sunday you’d like to come to the service at the Mormon Church I go to, it’s not far. I could pick you up.”
Mary thought fast. “Actually Ruth, I’m a Buddhist. Sorry.”
Ruth shrugged, “Same God,” she said, as she picked up the sensuit and carried it to the cleaning locker.
Mary didn’t bother to correct her, she picked up a towel, wiped her eyes, and headed for the shower.
“Remind me what the date is,” said Riley.
“It is 2045 Martin.”
“Now this is very interesting,” he said. “Peter has found a way of manipulating individual wormholes. Even if he’s only sending a handful of molecules through one, he must have increased its size by several magnitudes, and how is he anchoring the upstream end? This is a step change.”
“The technical details do not concern us at the moment Martin,” said Farina. “What matters is that Abrahams accomplished this in the 21st century. It is far too early. It shows that his mind is as unique as your own, and the Commonwealth needs us to take a copy before the Realignment in six years. Any time from now would be acceptable.”
“But if we know the date of the Realignment, it makes sense to make the copy as near to it as possible. That way you capture all his research results before we all disappear.”
Farina nodded. “I wish to show you the use that your governments made of Temporal Displacement.”
Once again, the walls of the craft misted and then cleared.
Chapter Twenty-Six
USA, 2040s
They were volunteers, of a sort, prisoners from death row. The Government had promised to commute their sentences to life, in another prison, if they took part in a “simple medical procedure.” All the inmates on the “row” had signed up, they had nothing to lose. Three or four a day, they packed up their effects and sat on their bunks waiting for the call.
Two correctional officers led a shackled prisoner wearing orange overalls, into the white tiled room. They helped him into a chair and strapped him in. A small cross had been drawn on his newly shaved head.
“Sit still, it’s important you don’t move your head,” said the older officer as he tightened the straps. The second officer said something unintelligible and laughed.
“Shut the fuck up George,” said the other. They left the room and closed the door.
The prisoner warily looked around, keeping his head still. A pulse at his temple throbbed, sweat misted his forehead. Soft music began to play, and he relaxed as he got more used to his surroundings, his shoulders began to drop. His eyes turned upwards as he felt a fly land on his forehead. A few moments later the upper half of his head exploded, splattering the walls and ceiling with blood, bone fragments and brain matter. The body remained in place for a moment, its facial expression frozen in an expression of supplication, before it fell forward against its restraints.
The picture on the video link paused. “We need to calibrate the packet more accurately,” said Abrahams, shaking his head, “that was at least ten times more powerful than it needed to be. We didn’t have this problem with the cadavers.”
“Maybe the problem’s geographical Doc,” said Doug the technician. “We’re closer to the prison than we were to the morgue in Cincinnati, where the deaders were.”
“Well, we need to sort this out; we can’t keep making a mess like this, the Governor at Greensville has called me twice now to complain about it.”
Mary said nothing, she was horrified that the scientists could disassociate themselves from the effects of their activities. How could they sit and watch as they executed a man, without turning a hair? She wanted to run screaming from the room but instead she voiced her thoughts calmly.
“Should we be doing this, murdering people, lying to them first, and then executing them? How can this be legal?”
“I see it as collateral damage,” said Abrahams. “The courts have found these people guilty of murder, or worse, and sentenced them to death. We have given them hope against all the odds, and their deaths are unexpected and instantaneous. It’s mercy killing.” The other men in the room nodded their heads in agreement.
Sycophantic bastards she thought. “I’m glad that your system of ethics is so flexible Doctor.”
Doug turned to her, “Look Mary, as the saying goes ‘The Lord said “Let there be light” and the Devil did the fucking wiring.’ We’re just Satan’s electricians.” Everybody laughed except Mary.
“Well boys, perhaps you should get some funny lapel badges made,” she walked towards the door but looked back before leaving. “The thing is Peter, if they’re Satan’s electricians, what does that make you?”
The video restarted, a man of about thirty, wearing green scrubs with a hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth entered the room, pulling on blue vinyl gloves. He wore a surgical mask but had pulled it down below his chin to facilitate his habit. He took a plastic bag from a back pocket and placed it over the neck of the corpse, sealed it in place with surgical tape and left, puffing smoke as he removed the gloves, and threw them in a waste b
in by the door.
Two prisoners, wearing orange overalls, pushed a battered metal gurney into the room. Two more followed carrying buckets and brushes. Between them they unstrapped the corpse, lay it on the floor, zipped it into a body bag and lifted it onto the gurney. The first two pushed it out of the room, while the other two hosed and brushed the walls and floor, ready for the next recruit, from the legion of the damned.
Abrahams closed the link, and the virtual screen disappeared. The small group of scientists and technicians drifted back to their stations. Mary was already in the gym, trying to work the images out of her head.
Mary arrived home tired, but followed her routine, moving around the small apartment with a fly swat and torch, looking in light fittings and corners, as usual. Satisfied, and after changing into shorts and tee shirt, she ate her takeaway and sat down to watch the News. Two slow tequilas later, her eyelids began to droop, she crawled into bed and quickly fell asleep.
She woke, to find two men using the bedclothes to hold her down, a third pushed a pad over her mouth and nose. Mary smelled the chloroform, tried not to breathe and struggled against the sheets pinning her arms and legs. She lost consciousness and came to, strapped in a chair, in a white-tiled room, naked, and surrounded by her colleagues, who were smiling expectantly. Doug stepped forward and ceremonially drew a cross on her shaved head, bowed, and backed away laughing. She shouted at him to let her go. As she drew breath, she heard the buzzing of a fly and anxiously looked around for it. She fought to pull free from her bonds but the plastic cable ties cut into her flesh, blood ran down her hands, dripping off her fingers. Shaking her head, she shrieked and thrashed, but the buzzing kept getting louder. Her workmates laughed and pointed.
Mary screamed and screamed, and woke from her nightmare sweating and trembling. She reached across the bed for Patrick, but his side was empty, he was back at Waddington, thousands of miles away. She climbed out, shuffled to the bathroom and stared into her own bloodshot eyes for a moment, before opening the mirrored cabinet, and reaching for the bottle of sleeping pills. Shaking two out into her hand, she walked back into her living room and poured a shot of tequila to wash them down. She sat on the edge of the bed and stared into space for several minutes before climbing in. Next morning, she didn’t remember the dream, the pills, or the tequila, but her head pounded and she felt drained.