The Arc of the Universe

by Mark Whiteway

  Quinn sucked in air through his teeth. Cracked black callouses rubbed against the inner sleeves of his Nemazi mesh. They did not appear to be spreading, but resuming his Shade abilities could change that. Cautiously, like someone testing out an old sports injury, he invoked the image of the unfolded tesseract. It turned slowly.

  He reached out with his mind. Join the top and bottom and the sides without bending any of the edges. A fourth spatial dimension should appear. The shape began to fold inwards. Emboldened, he concentrated harder. Needle-sharp agony pierced his left temple. He winced. The pain subsided to a dull ache. He pushed on, and it gathered strength once more. Does Vil-gar really need my help, or is he merely a sadist who derives pleasure from seeing others suffer?

  As if it had suddenly taken pity on him, the tesseract collapsed in on itself and became a shining cube. Its sides rippled and then steadied. Smoke formed all around him, resolving into the inner surface of a shimmering sphere.

  A second unfolded tesseract, not of his making, appeared, followed by a third and a fourth. Quickly, they folded into cubes and merged with the first. The sphere expanded until it passed beyond the pod’s walls. As the combined blocks disappeared through the bulkhead, Quinn’s headache faded into memory.

  “We’re moving,” the operator said. “Pod has detached from the surface—I mean the construct—but it’s moving with us.”

  “I am adjusting gravity within the subuniverse,” Vil-gar said. “You’ll need to compensate with the ship’s artificial gravity.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Quinn felt no sensation of movement, and the screen’s brilliance appeared as uniform as ever, but his heart took flight in the knowledge that they would soon be free of the field. He knelt next to Conor. The boy’s eyelids fluttered. Quinn wished he had a pillow. Not long now.

  “Incoming transmission,” the operator announced.

  “What? Where from?” Rahada asked.

  “Somewhere outside the field.”

  “We’re in a subuniverse. How’s that possible?”

  “I have relayed it,” Vil-gar said. “It may be important. It will have been recorded at five times our speed, so you will need to slow it down.”

  The operator’s gloved fingers flew, making swift adjustments. “Ready.”

  The screen shifted, revealing the control area of the Shanata vessel. Horizontal lines swept across the scene like an old-fashioned movie. A robed Badhati spoke in a bass tone, giving Quinn a sick reminder of the duplicitous Tzurel. “Rahada, if you receive this message, know that help is on the way. We are launching a scout vessel into the anomaly. The Nemazi and the Harani female have joined the Shanata crew. We must preserve Quinn, the Shanata Kalahah, at all costs. Only he can turn back the AI scourge. Be safe, Rahada.”

  The screen returned to its all-pervasive brightness.

  “Clearly, they did not receive our previous signal,” Vil-gar observed.

  “Send a response,” Rahada barked. “Order them to turn back.”

  “Sadly, it will not reach them in time.”

  The pod operator’s voice chimed in like a death knell. “A second vessel has entered the time dilation field.”

  ~

  “Identify!” Rahada said.

  “It’s the scout,” the operator replied.

  Rahada muttered something under her breath. “Establish audio.”

  The operator shook his head. “No response.”

  “Visual!”

  At first, Quinn could make out no detail. Then he spotted a sleek dart amid the brightness.

  The operator shook his head. “Something’s wrong. I’m detecting a massive gravimetric spike. The scout is—” The ship detonated in a silent flash.

  The Osei recoiled, and the four Shanata stood, transfixed by the display.

  “What happened?” Rahada demanded.

  “The same thing that happened to us,” Vil-gar replied. “The device detected their entry and dragged them in. The only difference was that while the pod could only counter the effect with thrusters, the scout brought light-speed engines to bear against the pull. The more thrust the scout applied, the more the device countered the opposing force until gravimetric shear destroyed their vessel.”

  Quinn’s throat clenched like a fist. Vyasa, the first being from the Consensus who had reached out to him when he was trapped in the white room, and Zothan, whose life he had saved on Nemazi and who had returned the favour more times than Quinn could count—both had dedicated their lives to him. They deserved better than to be incinerated in a blinding flash.

  “How long until the pod reaches the event horizon?” Vil-gar asked.

  “At our present rate of acceleration, thirty-seven minutes,” the operator replied.

  Vil-gar turned to Quinn. “I will leave you now, Quinn. Remember, you must maintain this subuniverse long enough to escape the field, or you will fall back and be trapped here for the remainder of time.”

  And once again, he vanished.

  ~

  Good grief, not again!

  Rahada stared at Quinn. “Where’d Vil-gar go?”

  Quinn boiled over. “How the hell should I know? He’s like… like Rip Van bloody Winkle!”

  He drew only blank stares.

  “We’re decelerating,” the operator said.

  “What’s the cause?” Rahada asked.

  “Our gravitational constant is no longer falling. The device at the centre of the anomaly is starting to exert a drag on us once again.”

  Rahada turned to Quinn. “Can you fix it?”

  “What, you mean alter the gravitational constant? No, Vil-gar neglected to tell me how to go about that.”

  “Well, you need to do something.”

  Quinn briefly debated calling out for help again, but Vil-gar’s parting comment suggested no possibility of his further intervention. Looks like I’m on my own this time.

  “We’re continuing to decelerate.” The Shanata operator could not totally wring the panic from his voice.

  Quinn’s shoulders tensed. Shy glances from the others suggested they were waiting for him to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but he had no idea where to begin. Should I make like I’m trying, or just admit I don’t have a clue and get it over with?

  He opened his mouth, but before he could frame a response, the universe shifted. In place of the pod, he was standing in an antiseptic white corridor. Overhead, strip lighting provided an unremitting glare. Keiza. This had to be another of her re-creations. He had not seen or heard from her since the death of her Crockett persona during the Alamo reenactment. She would be lurking somewhere within this scenario. Maybe she knew a way out of their current predicament.

  Starting forward, he passed a framed print of sunflowers before encountering a frosted-glass door emblazoned in gold lettering:

  Pauline B. McAllister BC-PCM

  The name meant nothing to him. He passed by and turned a corner.

  Keiza’s past simulations had been drawn either from Quinn’s past memories or from fictional or historical accounts familiar to him. So far, this scenario appeared to fit neither category. He passed rows of doors with temporary nameplates. This had to be a medical facility of some kind. He read each of the plates in turn, but none of the names were familiar. Finally, he stopped before one that read in hastily scrawled black felt-tip pen:

  Ruth A. Allen

  It was his grandmother’s name. He turned the latch and entered. An elderly woman in a pink night robe sat in a recliner. Nestled in her lap were three balls of wool—red, blue, and yellow. On the table next to her was a book of patterns.

  Sunlight angled through the window’s net curtains. He remembered. He had been, maybe, nine. Every Saturday morning for weeks, his parents had dragged him along to visit “Nana” in the hospice wing of Eire’s only medical facility. She had arrived as a botanist in her early twenties as part of the original first wave of colonists, and performed vital work in helping to establish a viable community. Now in her ninet
ies, there were times she had difficulty remembering her own name.

  She looked up, and Quinn saw Keiza’s face. Her blank expression broke into a smile. “Coleen! You’ve come for your lesson, good. Sit right down.”

  Coleen was his aunt—his mother’s older sister.

  He dragged over a chair and sat opposite. “Keiza, we’re in trouble. I need your help.”

  “Yes, dear. Now, watch closely. You lay the yarn down and loop it like this. Then take the middle and pull it tight. You see? Now you tighten the loop around the hook.”

  Her knuckles whitened as her skeletal fingers worked. Was Keiza merely playing into his grandmother’s role, or was her lack of attention a manifestation of her injuries? The Alamo encounter had been a simulation, but it had mirrored what was going on in the real world—the Damise’s attack in the cargo bay. If Keiza’s mind had been affected, could he trust anything she said?

  She laid down her work, picked up the pattern book, flicked through its pages, and opened it near the middle. “There, this is what we need.”

  Quinn stared at the illustration of a spiral-patterned doily. Beneath were sequences of letters and numbers. “I’m sorry, I don’t have much time. I need to know how to adjust the gravitational constant. Can you help me?”

  “Yes, of course, dear. But you must listen.”

  This was going nowhere. He pushed his chair back and stood. “I’m sorry, I have to go now.”

  Her hand whipped out and grabbed his wrist with a speed that caught his breath. Her eyes shone as she held him in a death grip. “You have to listen! Listen, watch, and remember!”

  She vanished along with the room, and he was back aboard the pod.

  “Forward momentum has ceased,” the operator declared. “We are being pulled back towards the centre of the anomaly.”

  ~

  “Quinn!” Rahada said. “What are you doing?”

  He gathered his scattered wits. “I… I had contact with Keiza, the Elinare.”

  “Did she say anything that might help?”

  “I don’t know… maybe.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She took me back to an incident from my childhood, with my grandmother nearing the end of her life. She showed me a pattern with a bunch of letters and numbers.”

  “What were they?” the operator asked.

  Quinn was reminded of being grilled by an examination board. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t remember. I got to see them for a grand total of about three seconds!”

  “The pattern—do you remember it?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  The operator handed him an oval pad and a metal stylus. “Can you draw it?”

  Quinn accepted the pad and stylus, closed his eyes for a moment, and then drew the spiral doily as best as he could recall.

  He handed them back to the operator, who placed the pad in a recess on the control console. Quinn’s rough doodle appeared on the screen. The operator glanced at it and began tapping panels. “I’m running a matching algorithm based on our understanding of gravitational theory.” After several seconds, he shook his head. “Nothing. The computer can’t find any correlation.”

  “There must have been something else,” Rahada said. “Think, Quinn.”

  “I am thinking!”

  From the corner of his eye he spotted one of the Shanata moving behind him. Rahada drew a blade and hurled it past Quinn’s shoulder. Before he could react, he caught the flash of a weapon, and a beam burned a dark patch in the ceiling. A second Shanata drove a blade into the pod operator’s back. It glowed red, and he slumped against the console. The assassin extracted the bloodied weapon and held it over the sleeping Conor. As Rahada advanced on them, the Osei slithered away into a corner.

  Quinn raised a hand. “No, please no!”

  Rahada halted and addressed Conor’s assailant. “Why?”

  “Because you are weak,” the masked Shanata said in a withering tone. “Thanks to you, our people have become weak. Under the Agantzane, we crushed all who opposed us. Now we cow to our enemies. The Damise pulverised our world, yet you would have left them and their ship intact. That is why, as soon as you left, loyal Shanata aboard our vessel annihilated them, just as they deserved.

  “Now you stand with the human, Quinn—the Shanata Tamah. He and his allies smashed the blockade and expired dozens of Shanata at Nemazi. His path ends here. You and he will expire within this anomaly, and our people will find a new path. We will regain all we have lost.”

  Rahada tossed her blade aside and drew a baton-shaped weapon. “Move away from the human boy.”

  “You are no longer Shanata.”

  She pointed her weapon at the masked Shanata’s head. “Move away. Now.”

  “You do not understand,” he said. “You cannot—”

  Her weapon erupted in white fire, and the masked Shanata crumpled to the floor, a smoking hole in his forehead.

  She crossed to the console and eased the operator to one side.

  Quinn discovered he was shaking. “W-why did you do that?”

  “There was no time.” She studied the readouts. “We’re still moving backwards. Velocity is increasing.” She turned on him. “You have to do something!”

  He stared at the three motionless bodies. “What would you suggest?”

  “In this… this vision of yours. What else did you see?”

  “I don’t know,” Quinn replied. “She was… teaching me to crochet.”

  “Crochet?”

  “It’s a form of knitting, using a needle to weave fibres into cloth.”

  “Sounds rather… primitive.”

  Quinn felt his hackles rise. “Humans do it for recreation, as a form of relaxation, okay?”

  “Tell me exactly what she said.”

  “She told me how to perform a stitch. Then she said, ‘you must listen.’ She said it twice, and then she added, ‘Listen, watch, and remember.’”

  Rahada frowned. “Maybe the answer has nothing to do with patterns or shapes or symbols. Maybe her message was as simple as listen to what you’ve already been told, and do it.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Think back. Have you ever been told how to manipulate a subuniverse or seen it done?”

  At the complex on Pann’s third level, when they needed to return to the enclave, Vil-gar had piled tesseracts one upon another, and then…

  “The helix,” Quinn blurted out. “I have to find the helix.”

  ~

  Ignoring the pressure building at his temples, Quinn swept four-space with his mind. Somewhere beyond the pod’s cramped cabin, Vil-gar’s folded tesseracts would have fused together in a single, grand helix. I created the laws governing this subuniverse. I can change them. That was what Vil-gar had said. Quinn was not sure how, but he was now certain the helix was the control interface that governed the subuniverse’s operation.

  There! A brilliant beacon of light shone against the glowing sky. As his four-space vision honed in, it grew into the familiar helix shape. Vil-gar had announced he was going to alter the gravitational constant, and then…

  The end of his four-space tunnel swept over the shining construction. Can it be operated with a thought command? If so, might it be keyed to respond to Vil-gar alone? The little creature had left abruptly and without explanation, but he had urged Quinn to escape the field. So escape must be possible.

  At the complex, Vil-gar had caused the helix to contract. Is that the trigger? Quinn concentrated. The construction rotated slowly, scattering beams of light, but did not alter. Quinn frowned, redoubling his effort.

  Renewed pain gathered at his temples and clawed at the space between his eyes. He heard Rahada’s faint voice from the pod where his body still resided. “That’s it! You’re doing it! We’re slowing!”

  The helix pulsed as if in protest and began to shrink. Light from the surrounding sky grew more intense.
The event horizon—it’s rushing inwards just like before.

  “Moving forward again,” Rahada reported. “Velocity increasing.”

  He slowed the helix’s rate of contraction. The pain in his head smouldered like an angry ache, and the callouses on his arms felt as if they were on fire.

  All I have to do is keep going.

  ~

  The bubble containing the pod and the dolin breached the time dilation field’s event horizon, exchanging its stinging brilliance for comforting night. Inside the pod’s single compartment, Quinn relinquished his control of four-space and the bubble collapsed, dumping them back into the empty universe. He sagged to his knees. We’re out.

  Rahada dropped to her haunches beside him. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded. His head rang like an anvil, and his mouth was as dry as sand.

  The bodies of the three Shanata lay where they had fallen. His spirits lifted as he saw that Conor was sitting up.

  He crawled over to the boy. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m okay, Dad. We brought the dolin with us, right?”

  Quinn attempted a reassuring smile. “Everything’s fine.”

  Rahada stood over them. “If you’re sufficiently recovered, Quinn, I have something you should see.”

  He nodded a second time and, with some effort, managed to stand. The large screen showed a point of light shining in the black. She made an adjustment, and it magnified into a dart-shaped craft.

  Quinn squinted at the image. “That’s another of your Shanata scout ships, isn’t it?”

  “Not another one,” she replied. “The same one.”

  “You mean, the same one we saw enter the anomaly? The one that was destroyed?”

  “That’s right.”

  He shook his head. “You must be mistaken.”

  She pointed to a stream of unfamiliar symbols marching across the small screen. “Its registry is identical, as is its mass and configuration. It is the same ship.”