Vor: The Playback War

by Lisa Smedman

  Alexi used the toe of his boot to dig the vodka bottle out of the snow. Already the hydrofluoric acid was beginning to opaque the glass. The bottle held only a centimeter or two of growler saliva. Not enough to . . .

  To what?

  Alexi brought his heel down on the bottle, breaking it. As the acid sizzled out into the snow he dropped his pack in the snow and fished the first-aid kit from it. There was little inside that would help, but at least he could cover the burns to Juliana’s hand with a little gauze.

  “What were you doing?” Alexi asked.

  Juliana’s face was pale with pain. “The crystal,” she gritted through clenched teeth. “It’s silicon. Hydrofluoric acid will eat through it. If we shear off part of its hardware, maybe its programming will . . .”

  “It wouldn’t have worked,” Alexi said. “The crystal wouldn’t allow it to.”

  He paused. That had been an odd thing to say. How could he be so certain? Raheek had said the silicon crystal was like a gigantic computer chip, and if there was one thing Juliana should know about, given her university education, it was computers. But somehow he knew her idea had been doomed to fail.

  “Here,” he said. “Let me help you with that hand.”

  He bandaged her hand carefully, taking care not to brush his fingers across the fresh blisters. When he was done, Juliana cradled her injured hand against her chest. But when Alexi offered her his arm, she drew back from him with an angry grimace and shoved her left hand awkwardly into a pocket.

  “You did that on purpose, Sov,” she spat, drawing her Pug pistol. “Don’t touch me again. Let’s move out—I want to find out what the alien is up to. And stay in front, where I can see you.”

  Alexi did as he was told. He wasn’t too worried; he still had his AK-51 slung over his shoulder and Soldatenkof’s armored jacket would protect his back. He didn’t think that Juliana would be able to aim very well with her left hand, not with her injured hand throbbing. But he kept his hands where she could see them as they wound their way through the forest, not making any threatening moves.

  Raheek was waiting for them near the tetrahedron. Alexi shivered as he passed into the triangle of shadow it cast. He had the overwhelming sense of a blank face staring down at him, watching his every move and preparing to squash him like a bug.

  When they were close enough to touch the tetrahedron, Alexi reached out and slid the palm of his hand along the wall of crystal. It was smooth as glass, without even a hairline crack in its surface. And yet it had fallen in a fireball from the heavens and landed on Earth with the explosive force of a nuclear warhead.

  An explosive force that it had directed back in time, through the Otherwhen . . .

  Where had that word come from? Alexi jerked his hand away from the surface of the crystal.

  “So,” he asked Raheek. “What happens next?”

  A wave of déjà vu rushed up at him, making his head spin. He had said those exact words once before. He had done all this—exactly—before. The forest, the crystal, Raheek . . . the only difference was Juliana. She shouldn’t have been there. And there should have been a grave, just there in the forest.

  Like a man in a lucid dream, Alexi sleepwalked through the same conversation he’d had with Raheek, sometime in the Otherwhen. They spoke of psychic powers, of Alexi’s great-to-the-power-of-twenty grandmother who had been a fortune-teller. Of souls, and ghosts and duty. Ghosts came and talked to Alexi while Juliana stared in white-faced horror. And then Alexi and Raheek spoke of death, and of souls walking through a void. . . .

  It all happened in fast-forward, like the proverbial life that flashed before a dying man’s eyes. Except that it wasn’t Alexi’s whole life—just a small slice of it. A slice he’d viewed once before . . .

  Time suddenly jerked back into its normal speed, leaving Alexi’s mind spinning like a top. As the déjà vu feeling gradually wound down, he heard an aircraft droning through the sky. And in that instant he knew that he was going to die. No matter which path he chose.

  “Do it,” he said. “Take my soul and push it into the void. Throw me inside the crystal. If I’m going to die, I might as well die a hero.”

  Raheek protested, as Alexi knew the alien would. “It is possible to place your soul inside the crystal. But I am not convinced that it would have any effect. The mystic energy burns in you, but the flame is very small. How can one tiny intelligence possibly affect something as large as this?”

  “Chaos theory,” Juliana said.

  Both Raheek and Alexi turned to look at her. She stared up at the crystal with a thoughtful expression.

  “Computers operate on the principle of serial processing,” she said slowly. “A computer can process information several thousand times faster than the human brain, but the flow of information through the system as a whole is highly regimented. A single error has a snowball effect; there is no margin made for self-correction. If we interrupt that data flow by sending into the crystal a human consciousness with its chaotic, parallel processing, the errors it induces could be catastrophic. The entire operating system could freeze up.”

  Raheek digested this a moment before speaking. “This is much more than just a computer,” it reminded her. “It was built by a highly sophisticated alien race. The bombs that were encountered previously have demonstrated the ability to react to outside threats of varying natures. They seem to be capable of both self-awareness and learning.”

  “But they’re made of silicon,” Juliana insisted. “Here on Earth, silicon is made into a computer chip by doping it to endow it with either a negative or positive charge and then layering it like a sandwich to create millions of on/off switches. The flow of electricity through the system must follow specific paths. The bomb’s programming must be the same. Which means it operates using a binary system—not a parallel system, like the human brain.”

  Raheek remained unconvinced. “Alexi is suggesting that his soul be sent into the crystal, not his brain.”

  Juliana threw up her hands in exasperation. “Everything in the human body operates on chaotic principles. Even when our hearts are beating at a constant rate, the heartbeat itself is not perfectly regular. What makes you think the soul won’t be chaotic, as well?”

  Alexi tipped his head to listen. The droning noise was getting louder. Wrapped up in their hypothetical argument, neither Raheek nor Juliana had noticed it. Alexi had the overwhelming feeling that death was just a few thousand meters overhead. . . .

  “Quiet!” he yelled.

  Both the alien and Juliana fell silent.

  “We’re running out of time,” Alexi said urgently. “And the theory doesn’t matter. We already know it will work.”

  Both Juliana and Raheek asked the same question at once: “How?”

  “My memory lapses,” Alexi said. “You must have noticed—both of you—that at times I’ve appeared disoriented and confused, that I’ve forgotten where I was or what I was doing. I thought they were blackouts—memory losses caused by fatigue, or drunkenness, or some new symptom of toxic or radiation poisoning. But now I know what they were.”

  Alexi slapped a palm against the tetrahedron. “My soul is inside the crystal, even as we speak. I’ve always been inside it, ever since it entered Earth’s atmosphere—from the moment I saw it in the sky over Vladivostok. Somehow, I’ve been using its time-distorting mechanisms to jump around in time.”

  “Impossible,” Raheek said.

  “You’d get stuck inside a paradox,” Juliana added.

  Alexi tapped a finger to his forehead. “There’s one other human element you forgot, Juliana: free will.”

  He paused and thought for a moment. “And there’s an even more obvious clue,” he added. “If the crystal’s a bomb—and not only that but a smart bomb, capable of self-defense—how come it hasn’t gone off yet? Why is it just sitting here, when at this very moment . . .”

  Alexi suddenly had a flash of déjà vu. Of silver-suited paratroopers falling through the sky. N
ot in Tomsk 13, and not Juliana’s squad—but here. Now.

  He grabbed Raheek’s arm with one hand and Juliana’s good arm with the other. He forced her hand up until the Pug pistol was pointed at his head.

  “Raheek, get your magic ready. It’s time to hurl my soul into the crystal. And Juliana, as soon as Raheek’s ready, shoot me.”

  They both stared at him, as if transfixed. Just beyond the triangular shadow that the tetrahedron cast, Alexi could see a circular shadow growing against the forest floor. . . .

  “Do it!” he yelled. “Now!”

  Raheek gestured yes with its hand, then immediately began to chant. The alien stepped back from Alexi, gesturing as it did so. A spiraling vortex of energy formed in the air between human and alien. Alexi stared into it, feeling the haunting call of death.

  “I am ready,” Raheek said.

  Alexi stared at Juliana. The Pug pistol was pointed unwaveringly at his head, but her dark eyes were blinking. He hoped she didn’t miss.

  “Go on,” he whispered. “Isn’t this what you always wanted? Vengeance for the death of your lover—up close and personal?”

  Juliana shook her head. A tear trickled down her cheek.

  The pistol barked flame . . .

  And in that same instant Alexi’s consciousness was pulled forward into the swirling vortex that Raheek had created. Even as the paratroopers touched softly down behind the alien and leveled their assault rifles at it, Raheek cupped Alexi’s soul in one lavender-colored palm and tossed him, as softly as a dream, into the crystal.

  30

  A lexi was drifting, flowing, swimming lazily through a space that had no sensation, through a time that had no duration.

  So this is what it’s like to be dead, he thought.

  There had been a brief burst of pain as the bullet tore through his forehead, and then all of the sounds around him had begun spiraling inward as darkness closed in on him. His consciousness had tugged gently free of his bloodied, collapsed body and stared dispassionately down at it. And then it had begun fragmenting apart. Bright sparkles of light, disassociating from one another . . .

  Something scooped up the tattered fragments of consciousness and kneaded them back together like a baker working dough. Lavender-colored palms, strong blue fingers. Then, like a double-jointed pitcher hurling a ball, those hands had whipped the spark of consciousness that was Alexi against something hard, smooth, unyielding . . .

  A patch of darkness opened—a hole into the Otherwhen—and he was inside.

  Alexi found himself flowing like water through a canal with walls of smooth glossy stone. The walls were vibrating, and as Alexi tuned in to those vibrations he could feel the bumps of individual atoms as he slid past them. They were clustered in fours, each a tiny tetrahedron. And then in fours, and in fours again—regimented, precise, like the hardware of a machine.

  He joined the flow of electrons as they worked their way through the crystal from atom to atom, moving along at precisely defined angles and lines. Moving in perfect time, like a clockwork.

  Except that this clockwork was not built to measure time, but to bend it until it broke. Inside the crystal, Alexi could feel the individual threads of time being pried out of their normal weave, then snapping as they lost their coherency. So far, the effect was contained within the tetrahedron—within the individual atoms of the silicon crystal. But it was straining to expand. . . .

  A flaw in the mechanism held the effect back—a random element that had corrupted the process. The steady flow of electrons, the precise angles of deflection and movement from one atom to the next, was being thrown out of kilter. But what was that flaw? And where?

  Rounding a corner, Alexi suddenly was confronted with the answer: He had been there before. And before. And before. It was as if he was looking into a mirror that was reflecting the surface of another mirror, set parallel to the first. Those mirrors reflected all of the possible nows that had, did, or would exist for Alexi. The blurred reflections of all of these possible nows stretched back to infinity, creating a folding that the crystal was unable to correct. . . .

  Knowledge blossomed in Alexi’s consciousness: The fact that he was inside the crystal was the only thing that was keeping the time bomb from going off. His very presence had introduced an element of chaos to the mix. He was the butterfly that caused a hurricane of skewed programming and thwarted effect. All he need do was stay inside the crystal forever—until the end of time—and the bomb would never go off.

  Alexi contemplated the seemingly infinite number of reflected nows that could have been. In one of those sequences of nows, everything had gone smoothly. There had been no death, no wounds, no confusion, no jumping about in time. Raheek had found Alexi in Vladivostok, the Zykhee crew had repaired their ship, and they had made it to the impact site in time for Alexi’s soul to enter the crystal before it had a chance to explode. But that thread had been lost among the myriad possibilities that could be.

  Why?

  Intuitively, Alexi knew that the answer was linked to the fact that the bomb had thrown the explosive force of itself striking the planet back in time to the year 1908. That must have been some sort of defensive mechanism, a way of cushioning the impact so the crystal was not damaged by the landing.

  Alexi mused on that thought. If the bomb was capable of hurling explosive force back in time, was it also capable of freeing itself of an irritating “bug” in its programming by hurling that irritant back to another time?

  For the briefest of moments—the tiniest fragment of time imaginable—the flow of electrons paused.

  Alexi suddenly wished he hadn’t had that thought. In the instant that the electron flow paused, he had the overwhelming sense that something was watching him, listening in on his thoughts. Absorbing them into itself. And that presence was malevolent in the extreme.

  A realization dawned: He was not alone inside the crystal.

  He was not . . .

  The electron flow Alexi had been flowing along with suddenly sped up. Alexi was swept through a series of impossible angles that seemed to fold in upon themselves. He raged against the flow, but could do nothing to stop it. Then, at the center of the angles, a tiny tear appeared in the fabric of space-time: a wormhole. Alexi’s consciousness was squeezed, compressed, compelled—and squirted through that tear. He found himself . . .

  Back in Vladivostok. In a ruined building, on his knees, searching for his glasses. About to die.

  Yes, he could see it now—literally, because he had found his glasses. The approaching heavy-assault suit, the flare as a rocket launched from its shoulder, the needle of death streaking toward him.

  Even though he was in the moment—inside his body as it recoiled in horror from the whooshing rocket—he felt as though he were watching it all from a distance. He felt no emotion as his body was blasted nearly in two and hurled across the ruined building. Was he having a near-death experience? Had he become a ghost? But that wasn’t right. His death lay far in the future, in a now when Juliana shot him. That was when his soul had left his body and had been hurled by Raheek into the crystal.

  The crystal . . .

  Even as he watched himself die, Alexi could still sense the crystal all around him, could feel the flow of the electrons that coursed through it. The awareness was deep, at the subconscious level. Some essential, invisible sliver of Alexi—the core of his soul—remained inside the crystal and was watching the Alexi of this other now go into shock and begin to die. . . .

  And notice a “falling star” in the sky above Vladivostok: the fireball that surrounded the crystal that contained Alexi’s soul.

  The part of Alexi that was inside the crystal could feel the friction and heat produced by its descent through the outer atmosphere. But that didn’t make sense. How could Alexi be inside the crystal at this point in time if his soul had yet to be hurled into the crystal by Raheek? That event lay far in the future.

  Then Alexi realized what the answer must be. Had that par
t of Alexi that remained inside the crystal still been wearing that body, he would have used its mouth to laugh out loud.

  The crystal had sent him back in time—to a now in which he was certain to die. The crystal had concluded that, when Alexi died in that now, it would be free of him. If it had worked, there would have been no Alexi to kill the Zykhee and be granted leave in Novosibirsk and assigned to fight growlers in Tomsk 13 and survive to fly north in the helicraft and die and enter the crystal. Alexi would have died back in Vladivostok, and that would have been the end of it.

  But the crystal had made a fatal miscalculation. Only a tiny fragment of Alexi’s soul—his consciousness—had been completely ejected into the Vladivostok now. The rest of his soul had also made the journey back in time, but not in space. It remained inside the crystal—which in that moment was hurtling toward Earth, just beginning to fireball its way through the outer atmosphere.

  As a result, Alexi’s soul now occupied every moment in time between the battle in Vladivostok and the current now. He had only to send his conscious mind back to rejoin it, in order to escape.

  Alexi’s body died as the wounds he suffered from the rocket’s blast caused him to bleed to death. . . .

  And like a flat stone on water, he skipped his conscious mind back across time and space, back to the crystal and the current now.

  It hurled him back in time again like a petulant child. . . .

  This time, Alexi was able to tap into a tiny fragment of memory from the part of his soul that remained inside the crystal. Avoiding the ruined building that the rocket was soon to tear to pieces, he went down to the street instead. . . .

  Only to be killed by Soldatenkof.

  As he died, Alexi wrenched his consciousness free once more. . . .

  The crystal returned the volley. Back to Vladivostok, where the heavy-assault suit killed Alexi a different way, with a machine gun.

  Alexi yanked his consciousness back from his dying body a third time and was hurled once more by the crystal. Once again, he listened to the tiny voice that was a whisper from that part of his soul that remained inside the crystal, and avoided his own death.