by C. C. Kelly
Now he would remedy that drive, a subtle change. He would make a small deviation from the expected. The results were calculated and predicted. He knew that fate, destiny and coincidence were not minor forces to be tampered with, and that the certainty of any outcome was always shrouded. But the science was sound. The plan would work. He was confident. Heisenberg could kiss his ass.
He glanced back, noticing the couple getting up to leave, giggling and laughing hand in hand. He watched Rachael’s curves in her tight business skirt as she locked arms with his younger self and walked down the sidewalk to the Hotel La Strata.
Yes, he had been a fool, he thought again.
Not because she was beautiful, but because she was a metaphor for all the things he could have had, if he had known what he knew now. The most important aspects of life were not contained in spreadsheets, ledger balances or even complex computer modeling software. All of the artificial intelligence in the computing world was trivial compared to the power of that simple connection between two people, binding them, compelling them to love each other. A simple thing taken for granted by so many. He knew, however. He was painfully aware of what he had denied himself — a wife and the opportunity to rejoice in a childhood he never had through his own children.
His progeny were AI automatons, military targeting drones and super-conducting lasers. He had taken his superior mind into many evil places, the darkest corners best avoided. And he had succeeded. He had come, conquered and been rewarded with quiet praise, respect and, increasingly, with fear and extended solitude. Eventually, he came to be imprisoned within his own laboratories. He had become a security risk, no longer allowed the pleasure of open spaces or human contact. His working budgets, however, were as close to unlimited as conceivable, and his privacy and latitude for research were unquestioned.
He had made many men rich and powerful, satiating their dreams for glory and conquest. They were more than content to allow him the luxury of pure research, so long as he turned out new and improved methods for destruction. In reality, he had created the new paradigm of modern warfare — death from above with an option to buy. And although he was safe inside his subterranean bunker, away from the smells and charred remains of victory, he was still aware of how his discoveries were utilized and the consequences.
But today, he would change that reality. He glanced at the front entrance of the Hotel again then to the clock across the square — one hour now. Again the doubts assailed him. No, this was the only way. This had a higher purpose, a higher calling, a destiny of greater magnitude. For was it not destiny that allowed him to make this obscure discovery? Was it not destiny that allowed the development of the machine in secret? And was it not destiny that allowed him to actually embark upon this mission, this mission of mercy?
He faced an imperative; he must save humanity from the evils of his own doing. He would not become the scientist of repute in the underground lair — no, he would not be Merlin for Pendragon. He would not create the mist; he would not lie down with the dragon — not today or ever again. He thought about the paradox and laughed.
He looked at the hotel yet again and waited — forty-five minutes until his new life began. Thinking back, he remembered how Rachael looked to him through his much younger eyes on this day so long ago. She was up there now, yearning for him. He smiled and felt that wave of déjà vu again.
He noticed that as the clock wound down he had begun to tremble, a slight waver in his until recently dead nerves. He had certainly never shed a tear for the people he had destroyed. And while he had not launched the orbital platforms, nor had he targeted the arrays, and neither had he encoded the firing sequences — he was still responsible for the murder of three billion people. Murderer didn’t seem to quite convey the proper magnitude. But he would take it all away and restore the lives stolen. He would make amends.
And even as his mind spun he began to doubt his ability to liberate himself from the impending evil. The years of projections ran through his mind. He had seized upon this course with unwavering intent, but now that the hour was at hand, waver he did. The clock told him he now had fifteen minutes to make his choice. He had to decide to walk away or change his life. He began to sweat in the cool breeze, feeling the weight of the moment upon his bent shoulders. He was a bitter, lonely old man, with only a wasted life of evil to his credit.
Finally, the tears did begin to fall down his wrinkled cheeks. But even at this very late hour, they were only tears of self-pity. He hated himself, and his passion for his mission returned — the passion that had gripped him during the initial testing, fabrication and final assembly, the passion and hatred that had driven him long into the night working for this moment.
His tears slowed and dried in the sun. He looked again at the sky and then at the people passing by, all the futures that might now be allowed without his influence. He mulled his choice over again. A family would have been nice. A nice, simple research job at a university would provide for a family, and he would be happy. But no, the ambition and the need for acceptance, the hated drive was there — a visceral, evil compulsion to achieve that could never be extinguished. He would never stop; the permutations always remained the same. He always raced down the same road to death. No, he had chosen correctly or, rather, he had no choice at all.
He sat up straighter — the time had arrived. He waited, glancing anxiously toward the revolving glass doors. Finally, he saw his younger self emerge through the glass portal wearing that remembered self-satisfied grin on his face. He waited for the couple to come closer, basking in each other’s momentary joy. At last, as they approached the bench, Rachael stopped to look at a flower vendor’s cart. The old man stood up, blocking the sidewalk. He reached into his jacket and began to pull out the ancient automatic pistol.
“Doctor Sorenson?” the old man asked.
“No. What? Excuse me?” the smiling younger man asked, glancing from the old man in the sunglasses and then back to Rachael, confused and completely unaware of the rising weapon.
“Goodbye, we’re all free now.” The old man leveled the gun as the young man turned back to stare. Doctor Sorenson the Old pulled the trigger.
It was a heart shot. The younger man looked incredulous — the look of a man stricken down in the prime of his life, and then he collapsed. Doctor Sorenson looked down at his own young corpse bleeding across the sidewalk. He was oblivious to the chaos around him as people ran from the scene to call police and rescue services, screaming and pointing. He ignored their cries of alarm.
He laughed out loud, thinking of the science fiction writers who always prattled on about paradoxes in time travel. Well, here he was — still alive — and there he was, too, dead in a pool of blood fifty-six years before. He had not winked out of existence. He had committed suicide, not murder, though certainly not in the traditional sense. He pondered how long it would take his keepers to notice he had left his laboratory through a different door.
Pointless thoughts, he mused — this was a one-way ticket. He pushed his sunglasses down his nose and then bent down to look at himself one last time. He was so young, so healthy and so full of potential, if only — if only.
Then he saw a shadow fall across the sidewalk and he looked up, expecting the police, but it was Rachael silhouetted against the crowd. He saw, for the first time on this return trip, he truly saw her face, her eyes — her emotions. She was staring, her face raw with shock, horror and incomprehension, a look that was shared by the older couple beside her — his parents.
He stared with confusion, then with growing comprehension. What had happened here? What had changed?
And then, trying to pull away from Patty and Thomas — could it really be his parents? — both arms jerking wildly to escape, was a toddler — a child with thick blonde hair and piecing blue eyes, screaming over and over, “Daddy!”
Sometimes in the Light
Sharlle leaned heavily onto his walking stick and stood upright again, leaving the last tomato
to dangle alone on the vine. He looked up at the large glowing sun that illuminated the sky into an iridescent shroud of azure. Even the clouds paid homage this day to the sun god, leaving its pilgrimage across the sky unblemished. Sharlle turned from the sky and leaned his tanned and leathery face into the breeze, his long beard tickling his neck as it laced around his worn and faded collar.
He glanced back at the tomato, the last of the growing season. He smiled to himself and turned to slowly make his way back to the temple, his shelter from the night, his home. He studied the small conical building as he drew near. It stood only twenty feet high and was fifteen feet at its base. The sloped stone walls rose to meet the steel tendrils of a crown that reached into the sky like fingers atop the building. The smooth and brilliant white reflective coating of the stone had worn away long ago, leaving only small patches of glitter in the cracks and joints. What an amazing sight the building would have been in its glory under the watchful eye of the sun on this fine day. But the building was very old now, as was he.
Sharlle again wondered how old the building was. Had it looked like this when he had first encountered it? But that memory was as faded as his tunic, but he dreamed sometimes of seeing it when it was younger, surrounded by trees, wandering walks and fountains.
The temple spoke to him upon those occasions, telling him stories in his dreams and what it once was. Sometimes the building was the center point of a grand plaza that garnered attention from all whom passed. People came in brightly dressed silks and flowing robes to see the structure and walk its perimeter. The temple was special for them, as it was for himself, and they sat on beautifully carved marble benches and discussed the arts and philosophy, lounging in the splendor of intellect and achievement.
Other dreams woke him in the dark morning hours, images of the pyramid dripping with dark thick rain and emanating fear and solitude from its very core. Citizens of the city that surrounded the building lay in dark shallow still pools, women and children lying quietly in the night, unmoving. The pyramid was a force for anger and fear — destroying the elegant marble benches and fountains. Sharlle would wake shivering, pulling his meager bedding tightly around his tired body, frightened, as though a child, at the horrific images that pierced his mind. Why did the temple show him such images? He did not understand many of them; he only knew that sometimes they frightened him.
He cringed slightly as the worst of the dreams came unbidden into his mind. He shook them away and stopped in the tall grass field that separated the building from the small vegetable garden lower down the hill. He again settled his thoughts on the lone tomato, nearly gleaming under the sun — celebrating its ripeness with the most intense red of its short life. Sharlle turned back to his garden and then gripped his walking stick as he slid cautiously to the ground, pulling his legs up to cross them. He leaned forward and held his walking stick across his lap and scanned the horizon. He wondered if somewhere below him, under the soft grass and rich soil, graceful paths of stone and colors wandered around the hill, maybe near the clear brook that ran along the side of the hill, a landmark for better times and a reminder of possibilities. Maybe the brook was what was left of one the fountains?
The blue of the sky came down in a softly lightening wash to break against the bright green of the tall grass prairie. As he absently caressed the wood of his staff, long since worn smooth, he briefly tried to remember where he had acquired it. He could not see a tree from horizon to horizon — a field of green under a sea of blue, unblemished and unmarred except for the temple behind him up the hill, himself and the small vegetable garden that cradled his last tomato. He had trouble remembering a great many things lately, or at least he thought it was only lately that his memories had grown dim.
He wondered how old he was as well. He vaguely recalled something called ‘seasons’ that marked the passage of time. Days growing longer and shorter, rain and winds, frozen rain heaping upon the ground in piles, but here on his hill it was always pleasant and mild. Each new day was the same as the last, sunny and always the soft breeze to tickle his neck.
He looked down to see his hand was now smoothing his long, gray beard. He watched the grasses wave under the gentle guidance of the wind, tracing small patterns in the field — a gentle rustle joined with the babbling of the brook. He would sit sometimes and just listen to the soft delicate sounds of his hilltop home, as he did now.
As he listened, Sharlle examined his small garden. It was becoming smaller with each planting. He tried to remember how large it was when he first planted it, but he could not recall. Perhaps the garden was already here when he had arrived, planted by another keeper, but he could not recall seeing anyone here before, although he knew he had. Or was that a dream as well?
Normally his dreams took him under the uneasy calm of sleep, a time of duplicitous thoughts and misleading streams of consciousness, but occasionally the dreams would take him during the day, leaving a void in his afternoon or morning. But then he had trouble separating his dreams from memories. Daily routines were often forgotten as well, only to be unknowingly repeated.
The building always seemed to be central in these dreams, either in the center of the images or as a backdrop for some other story of people long since returned to nature. He knew these people were a part of his past, the history of this place. Sharlle also knew that they were not mere dreams, but rather memory fragments, visions — glimpses into his and the temple’s history. These visions connected him to the temple, or rather the temple connected the visions to Sharlle, as the lone tomato below was attached to the ground through the vine — circuitous and indirect, but attached just the same.
He decided he was tired today. His thoughts were wandering more than usual, about the temple and his relationship with it. What was its purpose? He thought he should know, and somewhere deep inside he felt that he did know once, but that memory had joined the others on their quest for — for seasons, perhaps, he mused.
He felt his tunic flapping lightly in the constant gentle breeze, ruffling against his knees. He glanced down at the frayed hem. I should get a new tunic, he thought, as though a common enough daily decision, but then he could not understand why he would think such a thing. There were no more tunics. There was no cloth, no means to sew a new tunic. But he had acquired this tunic somewhere, from someone. He knew his mind was fragmenting, like the gleaming shell that once coated the temple, but he was quite certain he had never learned to sew.
Sharlle pondered again how he came to be in this place of beauty and contentment, but for all his longing to understand, to know — the memories were beyond his grasp. And then, a flicker of an image, an insect fluttering near his mind’s eye, once, long ago he had talked to someone here. Someone had kept him company, someone — special.
It was a man he recalled now, a very tall man who would block out the warming morning sun as he stood near Sharlle and spoke with him in soft comforting tones. An image of sitting in this very field came to him, his new and colorful tunic wrapped around him, dragging in the grass. Was it the same tunic he wore now? If it was, it got smaller.
Sharlle tried to focus on the face of the man that hung in shadow in the bright glow of the cool morning. He tried to see the man’s eyes. He should know this person. He was connected to him as well — like the temple, but the images would not remain fastened, like a train that became uncoupled, each car drifting further apart from one another on the same track.
The image struck him, resonating.
I remember going for a train ride, he thought.
He was a small boy and had sat near a window looking out across the wondrous spires of a sprawling city of gleaming white and glass.
Sharlle started at the image as it struck him like a jolt. Trains? Cities? Had he really been there, or was it yet another dream he was confusing with reality? No, he could remember the fabric of the seats on the train; they had the look of rough cloth, but were smooth like glass to the touch. He asked his father how they did that. H
is father had leaned across the aisle between the seats and whispered to Sharlle that it was magic and grinned.
He had a father?
The train was connected to him as well. The images began to filter through the old corroded sifter of his grasp on reality and grow. He suddenly felt the sense that he was waiting.
He saw himself standing on the long, crowded, steel-decked platform, waiting to board the sleek form of the train, waiting for the doors to slide quietly open so he could get a glimpse inside the machine. His father bent down to lean in his ear and explain how fast the train was and how quickly they would get to — to New Chicago.
That was a place; he was sure.
He recalled staring out of the train as it shot across the prairie, whisper quiet and smooth, like it was gliding on air — like the birds in his dreams did, riding elegantly on rising thermals. That prairie was not unlike this one today. Were they the same prairie? Was this expanse of grass and sky very large? He had never left this place to explore beyond his hill. He did not know if the prairie was large or not, but the fields of green from that day long, long ago was very large indeed. He had watched the grasses and the clouds throughout the day as they had made their way — home?
Sharlle smiled to himself. He was having many memories today, but then his smile turned to a grin as he wondered if he had these dreams every day and merely forgot about them upon waking anew.
He bent over and plucked a blade of the long field grass from its resting-place and twirled it in his hands, studying it casually. The blade was elegant and beautiful, long and gently curved, simple in its functional form and yet complex under the fibrous skin. My father was like this, he thought, simple yet complex. The temple was like that too, simple of function, yet complex in its life. The temple was connected to many things he thought — many places he suddenly recalled.