Any sufficiently advanced technology
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke
We found the room without any trouble. No might-or-might-not-be enemies, no bullets, no fighting.
But “room” was most definitely the wrong word for the almost unfathomable space that gaped open in front of us, dwarfing our bodies and perhaps our minds.
As in our Hall, the two halves of this base were equally large. And where the warrior’s side of the bases were filled with terrain training areas, some stretching hundreds of feet long with alpine or desert, urban or jungle environments for war games and exercises, the control side of the bases housed the arcane machinery that manipulated spacetime and thrust men and women across galaxies and millennia.
This was more than a room. It was inner space like I had never seen before. Or, at least, as far as I could remember.
If Jonas was right, I had once understood all of this well enough to build and use it. And if my hopes would be realized, I would somehow be able to remember or re-learn at least some of that knowledge. I consoled myself with a reminder that we did not need to remember how everything worked. I would settle for the knowledge of how to work it.
The door from the corridor had opened into a raised landing from which the entire mechanical area could be viewed. The landing was near the ceiling, and from it metal steps descended in five flights to the floor, sixty feet below. A humming, pulsing sound filled the area, not loud but incredibly deep, resonating in our bones, almost subsonic. For possibly half a mile to the front and to our right, massive structures connected by pipes and uncounted leagues of wiring stretched. In some the machines seemed to plunge deep into the floor and earth, as if to suck from the very planet’s core the energy needed to transpose mind and matter across the ages. In others the metal of the machine seemed to become translucent, transforming into bright, coruscating flows of energy that seemed to disappear and morph and reappear, capturing our eyes and threatening to warp the fabric of our minds.
We stood there for some time, surveying the room. Finding anything in this maze seemed impossible, a fool’s task.
“If there is something here for us,” I said to Livia, “it must be somewhere we can find by thinking it through. It cannot be something we have to search for … we would never find it.”
We started quartering the area visually, trying to simplify the task, looking for something, anything, that might be a clue to where or how Jonas had secreted a message. The far corner caught my eye. We could not see the machinery there — it seemed to dip down and become lower than the nearby engines. But on the wall behind, a strange pattern of lines and shapes caught my eye. The pipes and crenellations of the machine, on and partially embedded within the wall, were not random there. Something connected in my brain.
I shook my head, trying to remember. That pattern meant something to me, I was sure of it. Or a former me.
“If only I could remember!” I almost shouted at Livia, the world, myself, slamming the heels of my hands on my temples. She came to me, held me, and I clung to her.
“I want to remember,” I whispered.
Lifting my head and looking to that corner again, I could not figure out what it was that the pattern meant, or signified. But somehow I knew the answer was there. Our answer was there, if it was anywhere.
Running down the stairs three at a time we headed off in that direction, often losing our way among the towering machines, almost deafened at times beside the noisiest of them, but always catching another glimpse here or there of a wall, a corner, a shape remembered from our overhead survey. As we passed through the guts of this fantastic apparatus I had doubts that I could ever have built, or been part of a team building such a monstrosity, with complexities upon complexities upon complexities.
But did you think it was easy to move matter and mind between millennia and parsecs, I asked myself.
It was like a thought from an alien mind intruding into my consciousness, and I wondered if it was a piece of old me coming back. The question made me think, and wonder if it was not the case that the physical part of time travel was harder than the metaphysical. Because of course, eight thousand years ago, the earth was not where it now is.
The earth moves around the sun, yes. And the sun moves around the black hole at the center of the galaxy. But our galaxy itself does an intricate dance with the other galaxies in the Local Group, and group also was moving in complex arcing curves as all the other mass in the universe exerted its influence — tiny at distance and greater, very occasionally, when galaxies collided.
And I realized that part of the real magic of this science was travel faster than the speed of light, and I was in awe. And I realized that this very realization was another part of me returning to myself, and I wondered what this place was doing to me.
When we finally reached the corner, I knew what it was.
“Livia, you remember the computers that we accessed in the control room, back at our home base?”
She nodded.
“Hundreds of years ago, people used to access computers via physical devices into which they could tap commands and data.”
Raising her head to the corner wall in front of us, I pointed. Now, from this angle we could see, here on the wall, built into the structure of the room itself, a stylized image of an old-fashioned QWERTY keyboard. Jonas had laughed at me, I recalled now with a glimpse of a memory, for using my hands and fingers for interfacing with a computer, preferring instead to simply think to it, using an interface embedded in his brain.
He preferred the immediacy, the speed — almost everyone did, I think. Somehow, I had wanted a level of distance between me and the machine.
“I never got that implant,” I told Livia. “I wonder if you did?”
Rounding some more shapeless masses half-embedded in the floor, we finally came to our destination. It had taken us over half an hour to navigate this immense space. Door to desk, I thought with a wry grin, this must be the largest office in history.
Because in the corner of this room which could contain the palaces and entire government buildings of any nation of any time on earth, was a small wooden desk. On it was an ancient screen, an old-fashioned keyboard, and a little oval device my suddenly growing memory told me was a mouse. I sat down at the leather-covered chair behind the desk and tapped the space bar in a gesture that seemed both entirely normal and utterly strange.
As I sat I remembered Jonas, and I remembered a man outside the gates of Ur, and I remembered being called a tool, and a fool.
“I do not want to be another man’s tool anymore,” I told Livia. It was the first time I had openly said that I no longer believed that Hermes was a god, or that the people in the city of the gods were actually gods.
Livia shivered at the revelation, but nodded.
“We are not pawns for others,” she said, slipping her hand into mind. “And we must know the truth.”
The screen came to glowing life. Centered on it was a box, with a blinking line at its left side. I put my hands over the keyboard as if for the first time, and typed, first slowly, then with increasing confidence, as if my fingers were remembering something my brain did not.
AND PROTECT.
The box disappeared, and in its place was my face, and a waving hand, frozen in time. Superimposed over the image was an triangular icon. Dimly stirred by memories, I grasped the mouse, moved its on-screen avatar to the icon, and clicked.
“Hello,” a stranger on the screen who was me said. “If you’re seeing this, things are not good. Although, in a way I hope you’re seeing this … otherwise things might be even worse.”
I tapped the icon again to pause the video, and looked at Livia in astonishment. She looked back at me, equally bewildered, then grabbed the mouse from my hand and clicked to start the video again.
“I don’t have a lot of time, and I don’t know what you don’t know, Geno. It seems cra
zy odd to be calling myself by my own name, by the way — hopefully I will return safely in a few days and be able to wipe this recording like a bad dream.
“I and those who agree … Jonas, Livia, others … were trying to bring the best of our city, the city of gods as we so foolishly called it, to others throughout our time and our space who are suffering, weak, and ignorant. In doing so, we brought out the worst in those who opposed us. Hermes, for example.
“They took our first base away from us, painlessly, bloodlessly, legally. But I fear they will take this second base from us with violence if we do not give it up, if they can find its secret location.
“I am going back to the city now, to reason with them, to speak to them. Livia, Tonia, Kin and others are also going. Our goals are peace, time, discussion. But we have heard reports that some of ours — Drago and Lind, at least, and maybe more — may have already been waylaid by Hermes and others, and have had their minds … altered. Those who have met them say they are just pieces of their former selves, that they’re missing memories, and that even their opinions and beliefs have been changed.
“If that’s true, it’s already a great violence to human beings, and to our party, and a great violation of the laws and principles of our city. But I find it hard to believe that Hermes would go to such lengths. I’m going to talk to him and reason with him. We knew each other and worked together for many years. I think I can make him see reason.
“If I don’t make it back, we’ll know for sure that they have ill intent, and this base will become the home for the hopes and dreams of our group. We’ll never be able to go back, perhaps.
“But if you are here, there is something of me left. I’m leaving this so that hopefully … you can find your way back to being me. I’m leaving all my knowledge on this ancient computer. I’m confident that only you can access it, with a password that I’m hoping against hope I … you ... will remember. And oh, by the way, good thing you didn’t have someone else sit down here. There are biometric scanners in the chair, the desk, and the wall. Anyone who’s not me … you … but got this far, well, the computer would have melted down and the person would have gotten a pretty serious case of sunburn.
“I have to go. Just one more thing … about us, and about our plans. Maybe we were naive. Maybe we were stupid. Maybe we just wanted so much to believe in our ability to help people, to make things better, and maybe it’s not truly possible. But we have the best of intentions, and we truly want to help. We didn’t deserve this. We don’t deserve this.
“If you’re watching this, you’re me. Or, at least part of me. I wish you the best … the best of everything.
“Goodbye.”
With that, the me on the screen reached forward, touched a control, and stopped recording. And I turned to face Livia, bursting with emotions and questions and anger and disbelief. She looked back at me, the same feelings mirrored in her eyes.
“So our whole ‘lives’ have been a lie,” she said, finding her voice first. “Hermes waylaid and mind-raped us when we went to talk to him.”
“And,” I added, “Our former selves were cosmic do-gooders, insanely intelligent but unbelievably naive, trying to save others and not caring about the consequences to themselves and their neighbors. Which means that Hermes seems not to have lied about people trying to change the past.”
Livia nodded at first, but then lifted her chin. “We don’t know that yet. We don’t know what they thought about causal connections to today, or ripple effects of past actions, changing the past. We don’t know that they didn’t take precautions.”
Nodding slowly, trying to keep an open mind, I started to dig into the content of the old computer. We found a file on the home screen labeled Read Me First, opened it, and started reading.
“Geno,” the file started, “Before you do anything else, find the shielding mechanism and ensure it is on. Look on the wall, to your right, for a large screen. You’ll find it under Defenses.”
I got up from the chair, walked to the wall and right, and a part of the wall lit up — becoming a control screen. Livia searched through the menus, found Defenses, and tapped it, popping up an option labeled Shield. She tapped it too, then found a control, which was currently Off. Tapping the wall a third time, the control switched to On, and we heard a new note in the background hum of machinery surrounding us.
“Good,” the file continued. “Now you’ve isolated this space and made it impossible for Hermes to use the recall mechanism in his base to snap you back via the s.Leep pods.”
We continued reading for a long time, trying to understand our history and our past, learning about this machine that we were inside, and the project that Livia and I had once established. Often I felt that I was just scratching the surface … old or original Geno, it seems, had been in too much of a hurry to put down enough detail for us to really understand everything in depth, so he had included an assortment of files and documents and histories of correspondences, all of which were very hard to tie together in a consistent, coherent whole. More than that, however, much of the documentation was technical — details about the machine, and how it worked, and how to work it — and I was just not really understanding.
“I think there are parts of my brain that are just gone forever,” I said to Livia. “I really have no memory of these technical details, and I don’t think I will ever understand them.”
Tired, I rested my aching head in my hands, thereby saving my life.
The ancient little computer exploded as a thick laser beam sliced right through it, superheating some of its glass and plastic and metal. I ducked farther, just in time to see the wall behind my head vaporized as another bolt passed right where my head had been a second before. Diving down the ground, Livia and I narrowly avoided a third bolt which took out the chair.
“Who …” Livia mouthed as we crab-crawled to cover by the nearest bit of cover. I poked my head around the corner, pulled it back to narrowly avoid another blast.
“Probably some enemy we missed,” I guessed. “We have to go reason with them … probably two or three on the stairs where we came down.”
I looked around. The computer with the knowledge that we so desperately needed was a shambled mess. The desk and chair were shattered and burning. And a good chunk of the floor was melted and deformed. There was nothing for us here anymore. With a pang of regret I pulled Livia to her feet and we ran through the alleys and corridors of this immense machine, to a conflict with people who wanted to kill us, whom we had attacked and murdered, and who were our true allies.
Knowing something more of the layout now, we made quick time, checking whenever we had a clear view of the stairs and door to make sure the attackers were still there. Dodged more than a few laser beams on the way, we eventually made our way to a safe spot about a hundred meters away from the base of the stairs.
“If I were them,” I whispered to Livia, “I’d have put at least one person in hiding down here, so that if our attackers were running to the stairs and up them, we could take them out from behind.”
“Yes,” Livia answered, already scanning the area as best she could without revealing our location. “But where …”
We pulled back two or three times, slowly rotating around to different positions, being extremely careful not to risk detection from above. The third time, Livia halted, stilled me with a hand on my shoulder, and inclined her head. I followed her gaze, and saw just the faintest edge of a boot, high over our heads on a tall bank of machines. The soldier there must be lying in wait on top of the rack, facing the stairs, with a weapon aimed at the base of the landing. If we approached, we would die.
“Careless,” I whispered.
Together we climbed the stack. There were plenty of footholds on the way, and we made good time in spite of our need to stay hidden from the staircase … and silent. A minute later I slowly eased my head above the top corner, right behind the sentry.
Our placement was as perfect as my timing was bad. I w
as indeed right behind the sentry, and could have either taken him out or subdued him, whichever was quickest and quietest, except for the small problem that he was right at that very moment engaged in a silent sign language discussion with two soldiers at the top of the staircase. Who of course, immediately saw me.
I had no appetite for killing any more. If everything that Livia and I were reading and hearing was true, these were our people, our friends, our allies. I stood up in full view and lifted my hands to show I was not holding a weapon, that I was in some sense surrendering, and that they should not shoot. The next few seconds stretched out for about ten minutes.
The two soldiers on the staircase immediately raised their weapons. I yelled don’t shoot and started to drop behind the corner. I saw their trigger fingers start to squeeze, and I knew that gravity was not going to pull me to safety below the top lip of the machine before the speed of light carried super-energetic coherent photons into and through my body. Just as their fingers completed the motion, the sentry in front of me, who had been wondering why his compatriots were aiming weapons right at him, heard me shout and finally clued in there was someone behind him. Raising up slightly, he turned his head to look.
I saw his eyes widen as they latched on to mine, and then they disappeared as pink and grey mist exploded from a now-shapeless mass above his neck when both beams intersected in his brain. I continued the fall and landed, three feet below the highest point of the machine, covered in wet slime.
Livia looked at me, aghast, as I furiously wiped my face to clear my vision, then shouted, almost screamed, at the men on the platform.
“Don’t shoot! I am not your enemy!”
The only response was an angry laugh and a laser bolt angling down, just missing our bodies. Risking her life, Livia poked her head above the top, whipping back down again just in time to avoid another blast.
“One is staying at the top to cover us and make sure we don’t move. Another is running down the stairs to get us from below!”
No Other Gods Page 26