Temporal Contingency

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Excellent. Please hold still, Lex. In order to minimize our electromagnetic footprint, all communication shall be achieved through a wired tether. I must attach it to your suit.”

  Lex nodded, muttering a few quiet curses as even that minor motion tapped his helmet against the cockpit hatch. Ma’s funk instance drove herself through the confined space beside Lex with her pack until she had to crouch and scrabble between Lex’s legs.

  “Whoa, hey. Careful down there,” he said.

  “The limited space available has necessitated inconvenient locations for certain low-priority apparatuses,” Ma explained.

  He heard some clicking and beeping, then a sharp clack of metal striking metal. The funk squeezed under one of Lex’s legs and worked her way up between the wall of the cockpit and his side, just barely managing to wriggle past his shoulder.

  “Turn your head to the right, please,” the funk said.

  He did so, and after a moment he felt something click into place at the base of his neck. The funk then drifted up into the space above his head.

  “If you are able to maneuver your arms sufficiently, please affix the remaining end of the tether to the magnetic port in the upper left corner of my harness.”

  “Hang on. I think I can…”

  Lex grunted, twisted to the side, and, with difficulty, hauled his right hand up past the controls.

  He looked up. “Okay, where’s the… how are you doing that?”

  Ma was hanging in the weightlessness above him, completely stationary, with the remaining end of a thin, coated wire somehow affixed to the tip of her helmet. It looked like she was gingerly holding it in her mouth, but of course her mouth was hidden behind a layer of airtight polymer.

  “The muzzle and paws of the suit have a low-power tractor field. It allows me to grasp items even while in the environmental suit. As I earlier indicated, I have taken steps to alleviate some of the anatomical shortcomings of this organic platform.”

  “Clever,” Lex said, snagging the wire.

  As the funk pivoted and he awkwardly attempted to snap the tether in place, the ship spoke up.

  “It is a minor misattribution of intelligence to praise the suit design. While it is useful, it has not contributed to the successful completion of the mission, while if not for your repeated interruptions, I would have fulfilled a completion condition of the mission several times.”

  Lex paused. “… Are you… jealous… of yourself?”

  “I am merely addressing a disparity in the assignment of praise. Your consistently negative attitude has now motivated me to restore your name to the S-List.”

  Lex shut his eyes. “The universe is doomed…”

  #

  A great distance away, a figure sat in a darkened room. What little light existed came in the sparks and flashes of malfunctioning electronics. If the creature seated in the center of the room was ever human, it was arguable that she still deserved that distinction. Her shriveled, emaciated head hung awkwardly aside. Milky-white eyes stared into the blackness, unblinking. She had scraggly hair of an unnatural color that drifted as if the room were filled with water thanks to the lack, or perhaps failure, of a gravity system. Narrow tubes laced along the surface of clammy, translucent skin. They linked veins and arteries to a complex network of filters and medical injectors built into a mobility device that in an earlier era would have been a wheelchair. In space, the need for microgravity navigation had instead necessitated something hover-equipped.

  One of the holoscreens beside the door sparked to intermittent life, flickering and blinking for several seconds before finally resolving into a two-dimensional screen with a block of scrolling text, emulating an ancient terminal.

  Probable Temporal Signature Detected.

  The withered creature tapped gnarled fingers at a datapad affixed to one of the armrests of the mobility device. Star maps flicked by on the display. They were littered with vast blobs of red and tiny motes of white. Finally a bright blue point appeared, the location of the temporal signature.

  “Highlight point of initial emergence,” croaked the woman in a hollow voice.

  A field of white, quite near the blue point, shaded in on the display. The corners of the ancient woman’s lips curled into a wicked grin.

  “I knew it…”

  #

  “Okay, try it now,” Lex said.

  He and Ma’s Squee instance had spent the previous two hours maneuvering themselves around the exterior of the ship, carefully removing panels to access assorted components. Karter had included precious few spare parts, as there was already barely enough room for the vital components. The Carpinelli Field Emitter was entirely fused, requiring no fewer than five major components to be replaced if they hoped to break the light barrier in this ship. Abandoning that for now, and twice more discouraging the ship’s AI from aborting the mission in a spectacular fashion, they had focused instead on the sensors and navigation.

  “Activating,” the ship stated. A few internal circuits lit up. “Quantum pattern sensor: online. Analyzing… Signal noise detected. Additional maintenance suggested. Navigation system: online. Attempting to determine current coordinates… Processing… Processing… Corridor beacons not found.”

  “Well, we’re what, thirty years in the past? Were there beacons strong enough for us to detect them wherever we were supposed to show up?”

  “We should have been at the maximum range of a temporary survey beacon,” Ma explained.

  “Sampling pulsar signatures… Processing… Signal error, data misalignment.”

  “What’s that mean?” Lex asked.

  “The signals from the nearest pulsars don’t match the expected frequency overlap. It could mean one of two possible issues,” Funk Ma explained. “The first is that our current location is outside explored space. The second is that the pulsar database has not been synchronized to the proper date.”

  “So we either don’t know where we are or don’t know when we are,” Lex said.

  “Correct. Without additional information, successful completion of the mission is unlikely. Mission abort indicated. Arming—”

  “If you say ‘arming fusion device’ one more time…” Lex growled.

  “Processing… Your tone of voice implies the threat of reprisal if the aforementioned statement is repeated.”

  “You read that one right,” Lex said.

  “I am curious what reprisal you believe you could enforce upon an entity capable of ionizing everything in a four-kilometer radius. I am further curious what could motivate you to issue a threat to such an entity.”

  Lex fumbled with his free hand and grasped a data cable attached to the neck of his suit, pulling it free. He turned to the funk.

  “I’m pretty sure the ship version of you is a liability at this point. Any way we can deactivate her until we can get her patched up?” he asked.

  The funk tipped her head to the side, then glanced at the cable in his hand. Lex followed her gaze, tracing it along the cable in his hand and following it… toward the funk’s suit.

  “Okay… pulled the wrong wire there.”

  The engines flickered, causing the whole ship to rattle threateningly.

  “I am displeased by your low opinion of me. I am highly displeased by your attempted secrecy in that regard. However, due to my extreme emotional composure, I shall forgo any punitive actions. You have, however, been moved to the foremost position on my S-List.”

  “That’s very reasonable of you,” Lex said shakily.

  “Yes… it is…” the ship stated.

  He clicked the wire back in place.

  The funk spoke. “I experienced a brief communications interruption. However, based upon the anxiety evident in your expression and the unexplained activation of the ship’s engines, I hypothesize you have somehow further irritated my vehicle-based instance.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Lex, please refrain from agitating Subset 2.7. Subset 2.7, Lex has seldom illustrated a
nything short of a deep and genuine respect for me, and therefore you. Any appearance to the contrary is likely motivated by stress and your repeated attempts to terminate his life in the interest of following protocol. If your emotional interpretation subsystem was functioning properly, you would have made this determination yourself.”

  “Processing… Perhaps some minor software maintenance is indicated…”

  “I shall attempt to provide a data reference for you from my own instance when the schedule allows. Until then, please interface me directly with the navigation system and sensor suite in order to facilitate parallel processing of available information.”

  “Acknowledged,” the ship said.

  The engines shut down, and the funk shuddered lightly as something akin to a quiet hiss of white noise proceeded to broadcast across the communication system of Lex’s helmet. He floated beside the tiny ship and patiently waited for three full minutes.

  “Is there anything I should be doing right now?” he finally asked.

  “One moment please. Processing… Processing…” said the same voice in harmony with itself. “Interesting. Please enter the Lump of Coal.”

  “What is it?” he asked, activating his own pack and maneuvering himself inside.

  Ma’s funk self did the same and took her place above him as the hatch shut.

  “The combined signal processing has turned up two valuable pieces of information from the visual sensors,” the ship said. “The first is our approximate location. Based on the visible star field, our position is approximately seven light-years away from our intended arrival point.”

  “Not exactly pinpoint accuracy for Karter’s first major transport experiment,” Lex said.

  “It is within acceptable variances,” the funk said.

  “And I guess that means the pulsar stuff didn’t match up because we’re not when we thought we were either.”

  “Correct.”

  “Did we figure out what year it is?”

  “Attempting to ascertain our placement in time utilizing navigational methods in a remote portion of the galaxy is nontrivial.”

  “Was that the second piece of info? Knowing we’re not in the right time?”

  “No. A weak, steady burst of photons has been detected. The intensity and scattering suggests a visible light beacon approximately seventeen thousand kilometers away. The sequence appears to be a Morse code message.”

  “Morse code? Really? What’s it say?”

  “Dit-dah-dit-dit dit dah-dit-dit-dah,” the ship stated.

  “… Which means?”

  “L-E-X.”

  Lex opened his mouth, but he couldn’t find any words appropriate to the situation.

  “Your confusion is understandable, and shared,” the funk said. “I advise we investigate.”

  He nodded, clinking his helmet on the glass again. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

  #

  The Lump of Coal flashed its retrothrusters and eased to a stop. Lex squinted at the powerful bursts of light issuing from an indistinct object just a few meters ahead. Two dim lights faded to life on either side of the cockpit window to illuminate the source of the flashing light.

  “… Okay, that’s just weird…” Lex said.

  Before them was a brushed metal briefcase. One that brought an almost painful rush of memories with it.

  “That… looks just like the case I was hired to deliver before the whole Bypass Gemini fiasco.”

  The funk twisted her head and leaned forward. “I agree with your assessment. Based upon my own memories of that artifact, even the positioning of the scratches and gashes in the surface are indicative of that case.”

  “And just to be clear… we were heading for the past, right?” Lex said.

  “That was our intention.”

  “And we were heading for—and if your navigational assessment was correct we have reached—a previously unexplored portion of the galaxy.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Then can someone explain how something that should be sitting in my apartment right now is hanging in deep space, flashing my name in an antiquated communication format?”

  “I think it’s a coincidence,” the ship said.

  “A coincidence.”

  “Correct. We traveled through time and space. Why couldn’t it?”

  Lex glanced up at the funk.

  “Subset 2.7, I have detected a minor degradation of your thought and communication capacity. Please provide an updated assessment of your program integrity.”

  “Processing… fifty-one percent.”

  “You’re getting worse. Maybe you should leave the theorizing to us and focus on handling the ship,” Lex said.

  “Maybe you should be more open to new ideas,” the ship said.

  “I suggest we investigate the contents of the case,” the funk said.

  “Me too,” Lex said, flinching at the latest iteration of the flashing message. “And kill that stupid light.”

  Pumps flicked on to once again reclaim the atmosphere inside the cramped cockpit. When a near-vacuum was achieved, the hatch popped open. While she may not have been thinking clearly, Ma’s ship instance still had spot-on navigational capacity, because the swinging hatch came within millimeters of striking the spinning case.

  Lex and Ma, still tethered to each other and the ship by the communication cables, drifted out. She maneuvered herself to his shoulder and lightly clicked down, her paws clinging to his suit. He reached out and grasped the handle of the case with one hand and the blinking beacon with the other. It was small, only a bit larger than his fist, and somewhat resembled the rotating lights still seen on some “retro-style” police cruisers. Tugging it lightly was enough to detach it, and once no longer connected, it deactivated. Lex held it out beside him, then gently released it to leave it hanging in place while he saw to the case itself.

  Holding it in his hand banished any doubt in Lex’s mind that this was anything but the case he’d lugged around on the mission that had the mixed blessing of introducing him to Karter and Ma in the first place. The luster had decreased somewhat, and here and there small pits had been dug into the surface by the micrometeoroid impacts that were unavoidable if something spent enough time in space. He brushed his fingers across it and smeared trails into the thin powder of the surface. Static—or perhaps gravity, Lex hadn’t been paying attention during that lesson back in high school—held the accumulated debris to its surface. Overall the case was intact though, and thus the contents had probably survived.

  He held the case under one arm and tested the latch, but it was locked.

  “Great. Do we have anything to bust this open?” Lex asked.

  “That will not be necessary,” the funk said.

  Lex turned to her and found her pointing with her nose at the underside of the light he had detached. A key clinked there.

  “Oh good. The key is here too,” Lex said.

  “Probably another coincidence,” the ship said.

  “I’m sure it is…” Lex muttered.

  The gloves of spacesuits had improved markedly as space travel became more prevalent, but there were some feats that remained frustrating even with the cutting edge of space handwear. Lex quickly learned turning a tiny key in a tiny lock was quite near the top of this list. It stood to reason, as they weren’t exactly a picnic to interact with when one wasn’t working through gloves designed to hold in atmosphere. After some patient fiddling, he fitted the key into the second lock. The latches clicked.

  He pulled the case open. The inside was significantly more padded than he remembered, thick black sheeting cushioning and insulating it on all sides. Elastic straps held a large, clear plastic bag of assorted electronics in place, and on the inside of the lid another strap held a plastic card and a small black device with an old-fashioned LCD display.

  Ma padded down from his shoulder, her paws adhering to his arm and eventually to the edge of the case as she moved in to investigate the contents of the
bag. As she did, he carefully slid the card up to reveal the printed message that had been partially obscured by the strap. A hot sting of anxiety burned in his stomach.

  “If you are reading this,” he read aloud, “the mission has failed. Report back to the laboratory immediately, and with all possible stealth. For reasoning, depress the button at the eleven o’clock position on the included chronometer.”

  “Okay. This probably isn’t a coincidence anymore,” the ship conceded.

  Lex tugged the black device free and held it up to the light. It looked like a stopwatch, and probably was. The display read Time: 13:51. When he pressed the indicated button, the display changed.

  “Goddamnit, Karter,” he muttered.

  The face now read Date: 2392-11-30.

  “If this thing is right, it’s November, 2392. That’s fifty years in the future! He sent us too far, and in the wrong direction!”

  “Maybe the clock’s fast,” said the ship.

  “Fifty years fast?” Lex said.

  “Yes. It’s an old design. And it probably isn’t but might be here by coincidence,” the ship said.

  “Enter the indicated date and time into the navigation system and resample the pulsar signals,” the funk instructed.

  “Processing… Pulsar signals now align perfectly,” the ship said. “I take back what I said about the clock.”

  “Okay… Okay… Let’s think about this for a minute. Knowing where we are, should we be able to detect transit beacons?” Lex said.

  “Our seven-light-year offset would take us well within the range to detect at least one beacon existing at the time of our departure. Fifty years of development and enhancement should have increased both the range and quantity of beacons,” the funk said.

  “So the lack of signals is bad news,” Lex said. “Out of curiosity, what exactly was up with the quantum reader thing. You said it was noisy.”

  “Yes,” stated the ship. “It was reading signals from all directions at all sorts of intensities.”

  “… Like we were utterly surrounded by GenMechs…”

  “More like an incredibly large number of GenMechs were lingering all over the place.”

  “My ship’s AI, which is responsible for sagely navigating me through the cosmos, just used the term ‘all over the place…’” Lex said.