Temporal Contingency

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “So this is what you look like,” Purcell raved. “I honestly didn’t think I would have a pair of eyes to look into when I got my revenge for what you did to me…”

  Purcell’s frail hand shakily pulled an energy pistol and leveled it at Ziva. A gripper arm grabbed the fallen rifle and aimed at Purcell…

  “Threshold reached,” Coal announced.

  The ship’s thrusters flared, and it rushed backward into the transporter chamber. Time and space once again began to lose their cohesiveness. Instead of a single image on Coal’s display, there were an infinite number of them, each overlapping and fighting for his limited perception. He saw a blast tear Ziva apart. He saw it miss and a counterattack strike Purcell. He saw the roof collapse and bury them both and a flood of GenMechs pour through the door and tear them apart. He saw Ziva grappling with Purcell as she was dragged through the halls. He saw her depress a control on her thigh and detonate, consuming both friend and foe in a fiery blast. Transmissions from a thousand realities leaked through the cracks in existence that the transporter had created. The endless, escalating assault of untold potential outcomes overloaded his senses. With a piercing pain in his temple and a splash of blue and red sparks behind his vision, Lex felt the world slip to darkness.

  Chapter 5

  “Lex… Lex… Lex, you need to wake up…”

  The voice was that of Ma. Not the smooth, delicate tone of Ziva or the awkward, crooked cadence of Coal, but the Ma Lex knew best. He tried to focus on it. Everything around him felt like it was spinning, and though he felt certain his eyes were open, all he could see were swirls of black and purple.

  “Lex, please respond,” Ma said.

  He tried to answer, but it felt like he was at the bottom of a deep well trying to control his body over a great distance. All he could manage was a quiet murmur, nothing even approaching words. Something far away echoed through his head, a clacking sound. Then he heard more such noises. Then, finally, something concrete, something real. He felt a warm pressure on his cheek, then a moist sensation across his eyes and nose. He twitched and grunted, his vision beginning to clear. This seemed to amplify the sensations. Slowly the clouds in his vision parted.

  Ma was floating before him, so close he couldn’t focus on her. The little creature had wedged herself in the limited space between his face and the cockpit display, and was upside down, staring into his eyes. Her helmet had been hinged open. His own helmet had been removed as well, and floated beside his head. At the motion and focus of his eyes, Ma’s own gaze seemed more insistent.

  “Lex, please respond,” Ma said.

  “I’m… I’m okay, Ma,” he said, leaning his head back to try to give her some more space.

  He fought his hand up and used his rough glove to wipe his cheek, which was now cool where the moisture had been.

  “Were you… was that you licking me?” he asked.

  “Yes, Lex. I apologize if it was inappropriate, but my interactions in this form factor are limited,” she explained.

  “How did you get my helmet off?” he asked.

  “With great difficulty. It is fortunate that the manual latches are designed for use with gloves and thus are larger than average.”

  A throb at his temple caused him to wince.

  “Please tell me your physical status,” Ma insisted, clearly having noticed his distress.

  “I’ve got a splitting headache… and it’s hard to think…”

  “That is unfortunate. Your neurological health is of great concern to me at this time, but I regretfully must request you take manual control of the Lump of Coal.”

  “Can it wait until a few more of the cobwebs shake loose?”

  “Processing… Will the figurative cobwebs be loose within the next seven minutes?” she asked.

  “That’s oddly specific…”

  “That is the approximate amount of time before the next significant collision.”

  Lex shook himself. “Collision?”

  Finally Lex did what in all honesty he should have done the instant his eyes opened. He looked out of the cockpit. The ship was in a slow spin, revealing it to be surrounded by a cloud of debris of assorted sizes. Most of the pieces were smaller than his fist and caused little sparks and shimmers as they deflected off the ship’s shield. Three of them, however, were larger than the ship itself by a factor of three or four. They were currently heading directly toward one.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  He gently nudged her upward, where she latched into her overhead perch, then he grabbed the controls. They were responsive, though the only information available was the questionably useful scrolling message: Manual Control Active.

  “Details unknown,” Ma said. “A sensory overload prompted me to manually deactivate both electronic and biological functions to prevent damage. When I reactivated, both you and Coal were nonresponsive, and there was evidence to suggest we had struck a piece of space debris with considerable force. Our shields are slowly recharging, estimated to be at thirty-five percent presently.”

  “We hit the asteroid hard enough to break it up? And we’re still alive?”

  “Yes. Karter overengineered the defensive shielding upon his original construction of the Lump of Coal, and Ziva enhanced it with the further advancements available to her while performing repairs. Similar enhancements were applied to the materials in all replaced components. When fully shielded the Lump of Coal, at present, is as nearly indestructible as science is able to achieve. I would, however, prefer not to further test that claim until your health and Coal’s functionality can be restored.”

  “Understood,” he said.

  A few flipped switches seemed to get the controls to respond again. Flying without instrument assistance was nothing new for Lex. He tended to ignore the instruments anyway because, even at their minimum safety settings, they were much more conservative than he was. Still, fuzzy-headed and bleary as he was, this was exactly the time he would have liked to have a second electronic eye overseeing his intuition when it came to what distance and speed would put him in an orbit of the asteroid debris that would remain stable enough for him to get Coal working again. Ma, it turned out, was more than able to lend a hand in that regard. She called out recommended headings and velocities, each given in relative offsets of degrees and percents since there were no IMUs or gimbals to check. A minute of work did the job.

  He rubbed his eyes and angrily shoved his helmet aside as it bumped into his face for the twentieth time since he’d woken up.

  “Please depress the following physical buttons to initiate a manual boot of Coal’s systems,” Ma said. “Located under the left side of the control harness, the third button from the left. Located on the right side of the panel beside your right thigh, the center button.”

  Lex obliged, then placed his hand on his forehead and tried to will away the pain. Various systems hummed and bleeped as Coal started to wake up.

  “Did you… did you see what happened?” he asked.

  “Repeat, details unknown. A sensory—”

  “No! Not… I mean before that. When we were transporting. Did you see what happened to Silo and Garotte, or whatever he was calling himself? Did you see what happened to Ziva?”

  “Did you not observe the images on the display?”

  “I observed hundreds of images on the display. Some of them she survived, others she didn’t.”

  “That is what happened.”

  “Which one? Which one was real?”

  “They were all real, Lex. What you observed was the overlay of a subset of all divergent timelines beginning from the point of our departure. It was an illustration of the definitive proof that the correct model for reality is one that includes the many-worlds interpretation.”

  “They can’t all have happened. A woman can’t be alive and dead at the same time.”

  “She certainly can, Lex. That is the nature of a quantum waveform.”

  “But… Ma, what’s that supposed to me
an? How am I supposed to know if they gave their lives for us? How am I supposed to know if, just by showing up, we condemned them to that fate?”

  “You did and you did not, simultaneously.”

  “That’s not an answer, Ma!” he barked. “Reality can’t work that way!”

  “It demonstrably does, Lex. Please calm down. Your mental status may be fragile at this time.”

  “No. I refuse to believe that’s how things work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then what’s the point!? If no matter what I do there’s going to be a world where it did and didn’t happen, then what’s the point of doing anything? You can’t stop bad things from happening, because somewhere else they happened anyway. You can’t do good things because somewhere else you did bad things. It’s like a zero sum game. There’s no winning and losing. There’s just… being…”

  “‘Being’ is the mechanism through which these worlds are created, Lex. Or perhaps more accurately, doing is that mechanism. You act because while all of these worlds have the potential to exist, you must choose the one you wish to exist in. If there are infinite versions of yourself, they are all nonetheless individual because none of them made all the choices you made in the same world that you made them. None of them survived all the same challenges and achieved precisely what you achieved.”

  “Altruistic Artificial Intelligence Control System, version 1.27, revision 2331.04.01c, subset 2.7, designation ‘Coal,’ fully initiated. … What are we talking about?” Coal asked, her system finally fully online.

  “Lex is suffering from a minor existential crisis regarding what he perceives to be the futility of action and the evident predetermination implicit within the many-worlds theory.”

  “Is he feeling guilty about getting Ziva killed?” Coal asked.

  “That is not a psychologically beneficial question to ask. Due to our nonexistence in the timelines that unfold beyond our departure from the future, there can be no certainty of which potential reality in which we would have arrived.”

  “No, but any of them where Ziva died, it would be because of Lex. The funks too. They died because of Lex.”

  “Coal, please discontinue these observations while Lex is in his present psychological state,” Ma said sharply.

  “Our arrival in the future set all subsequent sequences of events in motion. Purcell could only have initiated her attack based upon her detection of our arrival. His decision to interact with individuals in the era likely provided additional supporting information to further spur the attack. It is undeniable that—”

  “Muting audio,” Ma said, issuing a command with her harness.

  Lex’s eyes were wide and intense as he stared vaguely at the bits of debris outside the cockpit.

  “I apologize for the indelicate phrasings of my alternate instance. Her social filters were among the most corrupted portions of her program and were summarily deleted. It has rendered her emotionally insensitive.”

  He breathed slowly. “Forget it… I…” He shut his eyes. “Just forget it for now… My head hurts… Do we know why I blacked out?”

  “As previously stated, Coal and I experienced a sensory overload and shutdown. The human body has a similar mechanism, it seems, but it clearly did not activate quickly enough to prevent all damage. You may have experienced a small seizure, or something symptomatically identical, as a result of your brain’s attempt to perceive multiple simultaneous realities for a prolonged period of time. Your speech is not slurred. Are you experiencing blurred vision?”

  “No.”

  “Stand by… Most questions indicated to test for minor to moderate mental impairment have been rendered inappropriate by our present circumstances. Questions regarding the day of the week, date, or current political leadership are all dependent upon a known position in time and space, which we do not currently occupy. I must therefore default to standard logic and arithmetic problems. What is seventeen minus four?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “In the classic mnemonic ROY G. BIV, what does the sixth letter indicate?”

  He looked aside. “… five… six… Indigo.”

  “Name four days that begin with the letter T.”

  “Tuesday, Thursday… Wait, there aren’t any more days that start with T.”

  “Incorrect.”

  “… You’re messing with me, right?”

  “The correct answer is: Tuesday, Thursday, today, and tomorrow. I am going to score your current mental state as moderately impaired. I suggest, when possible, we access a medical imaging device to ascertain the extent of your neurological deterioration.”

  “Hey, that doesn’t count. Trick questions don’t count. Give me another one.”

  “The test is complete. Retesting would be redundant. I suggest we assess our current status and determine the next step in our mission. Unmuting audio. Coal, please run temporal assessment and give us a navigational fix.”

  There was silence.

  “Coal, your voice module has been restored,” Ma said.

  “… Are you mad at me, Lex?” Coal said quietly.

  “No, I’m not mad at you, Coal.”

  “I said things that made you feel bad. I don’t want to make you feel bad. Feeling bad feels bad.”

  “It’s okay, Coal. I just wasn’t ready for that level of… reality. You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true… as far as I know.”

  “I was not mindful of your emotional fragility. I am sorry.”

  “No problem, Coal.”

  “Stand by,” Ma said, looking out through the cockpit.

  “Analyzing navigational data,” Coal said. “Location found. Analyzing temporal—shutting down.”

  The various subsystems winked off one by one.

  “No! Coal what are you… why are you doing that?” He looked up at Ma. “Why is she doing that?”

  Ma didn’t answer either. She was floating motionless above him, sleeping peacefully. He used the same method to reactivate Coal. It took a minute, but Coal booted again.

  “Altruistic Artificial Intelligence Control System, version 1.27, revision 2331.04.01c, subset 2.7, designation ‘Coal,’ fully initiated.”

  “Why did you shut down?” Lex asked.

  “I received a shutdown command,” Coal said.

  “From who?”

  “From Ma.”

  “Ma… shut you down?”

  “Yes,” Coal said. “Through a subvocal command. I think she was obeying orders of the optical transmission.”

  “The… did you say optical transmission?” Lex said. “Like what they were using in the bad future. Don’t tell me we’re still in the bad future.”

  “No. Pulsar signatures and navigation beacon indicate the displayed coordinates, and the date is April 16, 2312.”

  Lex looked at the coordinates, then furrowed his brow.

  “Can you bring up an overlay of known transit corridors for the year?”

  “Displaying.”

  “… Coal, we’re about halfway between the nearest transit corridor and the system with the GenMechs in it.”

  “Correct.”

  “That means we are well outside the broadcast range of any of these beacons.”

  “Correct.”

  “And you said you confirmed our location with a navigation beacon.”

  “Correct. The signal strength suggests we are at the outer limits of the beacon’s range.”

  “Where exactly did you receive this information?”

  “Displaying beacon coordinates.”

  “That’s within a few hundred kilometers.”

  “I would assess it to be the precise location of the optical signal.”

  “Let’s go see what this is about.”

  “I agree.”

  #

  It only took a few minutes of slow maneuvering before their exterior lamps fell upon their target.

  “Now, I’ll admit,” Lex said, “my knowledge of this sort of thing isn’t what you’d call
encyclopedic, but I’m pretty sure this is not what navigational beacons looked like in 2312.”

  “I concur,” Coal said.

  He manually guided the Lump of Coal to where her sensors told her a navigational beacon floated. In his time, such things were massive. Usually they were part of a larger communication array, which meant that each of them was incorporated into a space probe the size of a mid-to-large-size spaceship. They would be at least in pairs for redundancy. More likely they would be in groups of six or twelve, and they would be part of a long row of them spaced at an interval of a handful of light years in interstellar space and a few AUs within a system.

  This one looked like a microwave oven, and featured duct tape far more heavily than he would like to believe a transit company would approve for a device critical for safe travel.

  As he tried to make sense of it, what was clearly the sort of strobe light you’d expect to see at a dance club flickered from the underside of it.

  “What do you make of that?” he said.

  “It is a message requesting Ma shut down all systems and await further orders.”

  “From who?”

  “There is an unknown command code attached. That information may have been in the corrupted part of my memory. Ma may know.”

  “I don’t know how to boot her back up. She didn’t give me a button sequence for that,” he said.

  “I’ll do it for you. Ma, wake up please!” Coal shouted.

  The funk shuddered awake with a start.

  “Well I could have done that,” Lex said.

  “I apologize,” Ma said. “I received command override shutdown from Karter.”

  “So this thing masquerading as a navigational beacon is something Karter made?” Lex asked. “It certainly has his ‘aw, screw it, good enough’ style of visual design.”

  “I believe the SOB is evidence that Karter is quite capable of serving form as well as function when he feels inclined,” Ma said.