by M. D. Hall
The absurdity of this statement hit Jon on two fronts: it never occurred to him that beings this emotionless could like anything as esoteric as music; and how could Alf seriously expect him to believe he had attended concerts hundreds of years ago? He stole a glance at Jane, who maintained her uncanny impression of a statue.
Alf continued. ‘Individually, their music is sublime, together their compositions exceed much that I have heard, which is no small achievement.’
‘I'm sorry, but it isn't possible that you heard them together. From what I know, Mozart and Beethoven met only once, if at all, when Beethoven was a teenager, and I’m not aware of them composing together, and even if they did meet, Bach was long dead by then…and I’ve no idea why I’m getting involved in this insane discussion!’
If he felt insulted, Alf hid it well. ‘I facilitated a meeting between them when they were each at the height of their powers. It was necessary to correct Ludwig’s hearing, but at least he had the benefit of knowing the music of the other two, whereas Johann possessed no knowledge of the works of his fellows. Once I provided each with the full canon of the others’ work you can imagine the effect.’
Jon shook his head. The thought that this might be a strange and frightening dream, came back to him. On the brink of Armageddon, he was having a conversation about music! Things had progressed beyond strange, to the surreal, but if it was a dream there was no harm in following the thread of this imaginary strange character. ‘Facilitated a meeting?’
‘I extracted them from, what you might call, their timezones and returned them when we were done. They got on tremendously well, the ideas flew and they were as enthusiastic as children. Of course, I explained to them that following the meeting they would each be returned to their true existence, with no knowledge of what had transpired. They did not mind at all, and even offered to write some works for me, which I accepted. When I attend their concerts, naturally they do not recognise me.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Because I wanted to.’
‘You can’t just turn up and take people away!’ Jon heard himself exclaim.
‘Why not?’ The response was as impersonal, as it was blunt.
‘Because, it isn’t…right!’
Alf simply looked at him without saying anything. Having those emotionless eyes regarding him made Jon very uncomfortable, so much so, he had to avert his gaze.
A long period of silence was broken by him asking a question that just popped into his mind, making him wonder whether he, or one of the beings opposite, was its source. ‘Surely they were missed?’
‘They were with me for six months as you would measure it, but no time elapsed where they had been, because they were outside normal space-time. Wolfgang was about to take a sip of red wine when he came to see me. Upon his return, he was still raising the glass to his lips, and his companions were none the wiser.’
Once again, Jon was confused. ‘How is that possible, how can you travel backwards in time?’
He noticed the first sign of, what might have been emotion on Alf’s face, as an eyebrow was fractionally raised. ‘Time travel as you put it, is an oversimplification of the process. There is no travel either forwards, or backwards,’ Jon’s face must have reflected his utter confusion, as Alf added, ‘but it will suffice for this discussion. A number of races visit previous timelines. No harm can be done, as it is not possible to alter history. If anything is removed it will return to the precise moment and place of its origin, either naturally, or by design.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’
‘Let us say, a man steps into a road and is fatally struck by a vehicle. One consequence of this man’s death is that he is not in place to prevent a disaster, that will cost the lives of thousands. Let us also say that in an effort to save those lives, you have the power to step into that point in time, and snatch him from the path of the vehicle. In so doing, you take him out of normal space-time. Unfortunately, for your plan, he must return to the exact time and place of his extraction. You may, if you have the technology, keep him for some weeks even months, but he will return and all that you did would be for nothing.’
Alf must have considered the explanation sufficient, as he moved on to another topic. ‘You have been told of the danger you face, however, it is important that you know of the reasoning behind the decision to target your people.’
‘Why?’ Jon asked. ‘Isn’t it enough that I know what they intend to do?’
‘There is little we can do for you, but the knowledge I would impart may help you in your task. I can help you understand, if you will let me. It would involve me implanting thoughts into your mind. No more information than is absolutely necessary will be imparted, and your confusion would leave you. The process will not alter your mind, but simply facilitate understanding,’ he then uttered the reassurance, ‘there will be no residual effects.’
Jon knew that if these beings were capable of spiriting him away from his bed, to goodness knows where, and travelling through time, they could harm him if it suited them. The fact that they were asking permission, convinced him his brain would remain unscrambled. Anyhow, he thought, Jane has already tinkered with my mind without causing any problems…at least for now. He looked at her for assurance, he had only met her minutes ago, or was it longer? He had lost all track of time, yet he felt, bizarrely, that she would not let harm come to him.
Her look conveyed nothing.
‘Fine,’ he replied, ‘feel free,’ and closed his eyes.
‘That will not be necessary,’ Alf assured him.
He opened his eyes. ‘It didn’t work, nothing happened.’
‘Tell me about the Tellans.’
Without any effort, information flooded into his consciousness. He knew about the turning point in the war between the Te and Balg - the name given to the Tellans, by the Te - as well as the true nature of the Te nemesis. He also knew of the decision of the Supreme Council to invade his planet. The history of the Te, and what motivated them to act as they did, was laid before him.
Part of him sensed that critical knowledge was being withheld. When he tried to picture the people who inflicted defeat upon the Te, he failed. They were important, that much he knew, and not just because of Gallsor, but why they figured so prominently, remained just out of reach. No, that was not right, he seemed to know that the answer was planted deep in his subconscious, to be revealed later when, and if his hosts deemed it necessary. He felt uncomfortable. Maybe what’s being kept from me isn’t for our benefit, he thought. Are we minor, expendable players, in a much larger, and impossibly complex strategy? He looked, in turn, at each of his hosts. ‘What can I tell you about Tellans? Not much, but that doesn't come as any surprise to you, does it? There’s something you’re not telling me. The story about the composers and time travel, why did you tell me that, what’s it got to do with the Te and my people?’
‘There is more we have to show you,’ Alf replied.
‘Has it anything to do with time travel?’
‘Yes.’
‘It isn’t about the past, is it?’
‘No. I can give you the information as before, in a manner you will understand, but there is another matter we must then discuss.’
Jon nodded, but this time did not close his eyes and, at once, he understood why travel was, as Alf put it, an oversimplification. Stepping into the past was relatively straightforward, as it is already fixed at whatever point a traveller might choose to visit. The future was a different proposition, altogether. He knew the future has many possibilities, that are determined by events between the present, and the chosen point in the future. Some events would have no material effect upon the macro universe, but others might have monumental consequences. As none of the events are certain, the future is capable of being many things at the same time, depending on the myriad of things that can happen in the allotted time span. The number of variations would increase as the visitor ventured further into the future;
what was experienced would be less coherent.
The visitor would be exposed to a kaleidoscope of futures, none of which would be determined. Some of the data invading the senses would be relatively stable, for instance, star systems are not frequently affected by short-term chance encounters, or events. Any incoherence would be a consequence of the acts of biological, especially sentient life forms. He also knew that it is impossible to interact with the future, for instance Alf could not remove a person, as he did with Bach et al; any visitor to the future would merely be an observer.
I wonder how my house would look in a hundred years, he thought.
Alf was looking at him, with his head tilted fractionally to one side, is he listening in on my thoughts? ‘There’s something you’re not showing me.’
‘You need experience to fill the gaps in your knowledge. Simply knowing, is not enough. I think the area around your home, twelve years from now, would be a good place to start.’
He was listening in, thought Jon.
‘Will it be safe?’ he looked at Jane while tapping his head. ‘I know the images and noises will be too much for me, and I’m not too excited about going mad.’
‘Do not worry,’ she replied, ‘much of what you would otherwise experience will be filtered out. It is important that you sense the underlying threat.’
With no further discussion and no sensation of movement, he found himself standing somewhere else, Alf being the only solid and tangible object in sight. As he expected, it was as though they were in some kind of transparent bubble, a natural effect of time incursion, according to his basic crash course in temporal mechanics. What unnerved him, was the complete lack of sound and the absence of what should have been an overwhelming number of images. Instinctively, he knew his companion was responsible.
He looked around to get his bearings. They were surrounded by flickering grey images, tantalisingly close, but insubstantial. The images had to be people, but they were just too vague and ephemeral.
Beyond the grey images were darker, more tangible shapes, which he took to be buildings, only some of which were changing shape. Then, he recognised the silhouette of his house, it held its shape for only a split second before being replaced by a larger building in the style of the villas he saw during his tour with Jane. That image remained for only a second before it was replaced by…nothing. The nothing remained for several more seconds, before his house returned for another, transient visit.
Now that he had his bearings, he recognised the houses of his neighbours, intermittently moving in and out of sight, sometimes briefly replaced by another building, sometimes moving straight on to the nothing.
Glancing down at his feet, he saw rather than felt the ground changing and was unsure whether his suspension above ground was down to Alf, or a natural phenomenon. Either way, it added to the sense of total isolation that came with being an observer. At times the ground was smooth and solid, as befitted a tarmac road; this state coincided with the image of his house. However, the road did not remain constant. When his house morphed, the ground briefly took on the texture of a well-tended lawn, albeit in grey, before it too was replaced by nothing.
The nothing frightened him, and prompted a look at Alf who spoke for the first time since they arrived. ‘It is time we moved on, I suggest another three years, in the same place.’
Before Jon had the chance to reply, the scene before them changed. Neither his house, nor its replacement, were visible. He looked around, above, below and behind. There was no building, there was no ground and no fleeting people images. They were suspended in space with only stars in view. The Earth was gone. Then, for the briefest of moments, something appeared before them. Unfortunately, the sighting was so brief, it was impossible to make out what it was. He waited for a couple of minutes and it appeared again, still too fleeting to make anything out. Concentrating on the point where the image was most definite, he waited. When the flicker next appeared he thought he could make out the mound upon which Clifford’s Tower was built in the High Middle Ages, and which served as a backdrop to his house. So this is still Earth, he thought, with relief.
He turned to where he knew the substantial and real form of Alf would be. His guide looked at him, and said. ‘Let us move forward another fifty-one years.’
The scenario before him appeared unchanged. ‘I thought we were moving forward?’
‘We have, be patient and watch for your landmark,’ Alf replied.
Doing as he was bid, Jon waited and watched for the flicker, but it did not appear. Where before, the image of space without the Earth was persistent, it was now constant. Alf spoke again. ‘It is midday, in late May,’ adding, as if reading the doubt in Jon's mind, ‘trust me.’
Jon nodded slowly, and wondered where this was taking him.
‘Now,’ the Custodian continued, ‘please point out your Sun to me.’
He followed his instructions, knowing that he was floating opposite the place where, moments before, the front of his house used to be, and that his house faced east. He estimated the Sun would be above and behind him, slightly to his left.
Turning, he held up his hand to shield his eyes, but found nothing. He withdrew his hand and scanned the sky, not just where he expected the Sun to be…the whole sky. There was no Sun. When he was satisfied he had missed nothing he looked back at Alf. ‘I don’t understand.’
His guide spoke again. ‘Now, let us take a look around the solar system,’ once again, Jon felt no sensation of movement, although he thought he saw subtle changes in the position of the stars. After about three minutes Alf asked. ‘Tell me what you saw?’
‘Saw? I saw nothing, we haven't been anywhere.’ Alf said nothing.
Once the words were out of his mouth he knew, he was again being too simplistic. The Custodian would not need flashes and bangs to signal what he was doing. If he said they were going to look around the Solar System, then that is what they did.
Then the horror of the situation hit him full on, there was no Solar System, everything was gone!
Alf was not finished. ‘Do you remember the ritual your father introduced you to, on your sixth Birthday?’ The question was so inappropriate at a time when he had just seen a future, with no Solar System, that he was about to make his thoughts known, Custodian or no Custodian…
It was then that he realised what Alf meant. Soon after sunset on his sixth Birthday - after his friends had been taken home - his dad took him outside, and without saying anything, led him into the middle of the park, adjoining their house. Pointing into the sky he told his son to follow his finger, before proceeding to describe the stars found by the six year old. It was the constellation of Gemini, the twins. Most of what his dad told him that day was forgotten, but every year, on his Birthday, they repeated their walk and each time Jon learned something new. This only stopped when his dad suffered a massive heart attack, a few weeks before his son’s fifteenth Birthday.
With that firmly in mind, he looked around to find his old friends, and of everything he had seen, this sight shocked him the most. He remembered his dad talking to him on his ninth Birthday as though it was only yesterday. ‘The myths I’ve told you about those two are fun, but the truth is far better…’
He then told Jon about the age of the Universe, and about Castor and Pollux, in particular. Wrapped up against the chill that sometimes came with May evenings, he could listen for hours to his dad telling him about the immense ages of the stars, and distances that could only be measured in the time it took for light to travel. One memory in particular stood out, as he floated with Alf sixty-six years in the future. ‘Even though they seem to be side by side, one of the brothers…’
‘You means stars, Dad,’ the young Jon corrected.
Robert Tyler smiled at his son. ‘One of the stars, Pollux, is thirty-five light years from us, while Castor is…’
‘Fifty light years away,’ beamed the nine year old.
‘You know what that means?’
�
��If Castor died tonight, we wouldn’t see it until I was fifty-nine!’
It was that recollection that horrified him now. Looking at the constellation, the two brothers were gone. He knew it made no sense to be more concerned with their loss than the planet that was his home, and the Sun that made life possible, but he had grown up believing Castor and Pollux would always be there, except he now knew they would not, and that whatever was going to wipe out his Solar System, would go on to destroy every star system within fifty light years.
He was back in the present with Alf and Jane standing in front of him.
‘You are shocked,’ it was not a question, but a statement from Jane. ‘Take a little while to collect your thoughts.’
After his experience, he was unsure whether he was capable of coherent thought, and it would be some time before that state changed. Then, as before, he felt the panic recede, it was nothing palpable, no tingling or ringing to herald intervention by a higher power, but it was unmistakable, they had calmed his mind and he was too relieved to feel aggrieved at the intrusion.
Jane continued. ‘Tell us what you learned from your visits to the three time periods and,’ she added, ‘please start from the beginning. We would not like the entire conversation to be dominated by the last images you saw. It is important you have a rounded picture of what it all meant.’
He fought the urge to rush to the end. ‘I think I understand,’ he slowly began. ‘During the first visit, there was nothing tangible.’
‘You are, in part correct,’ replied Alf. ‘You must have noticed some images were darker and more present, than others?’
‘Yes.’
‘That signifies that the future portrayed by those images is more tangible than the future of the fainter, more intermittent images of life forms, which by their very nature, are less constant than buildings and even more fleeting when compared to rivers and mountains. In the short space of twelve years that passed, there were myriad possibilities that could affect life forms, even in the tiny area that constitutes the environs of your home. As we moved forward in time, I think you will agree, the images became more certain, clearer if you will. That is because there were no life forms in the persistent image, and any that would be present, in the moments the Earth reappeared, would not be there long enough for you to notice.’