Timekeepers

by Dave Weaver

  Dario caught his breath then continued more reasonably. “We have a clear record of all your actions apart from when you were sleeping and, strangely enough, when you first handled the portal, probably a connecting issue. However, whilst reviewing the material I found a longer gap, a time-lapse in your memory. It seemed like part of your consciousness had been switched off for a period. That’s why we woke you a week short of your recovery time. We want to know what happened in that gap. You weren’t asleep; it happened right in the middle of your conversation with Drucillus inside the Temple of the Gods. One moment he’s talking to you and the next you’re being led up a hillside to be executed. What happened in between?”

  Jack felt horrific memories return of his last hours in the Roman town.

  “I don’t know, it’s all blurred. I remember the Games and being marched to the Temple. Drucillus spoke to me although I can’t remember what he said then suddenly I’m being marched into the woods. They were going to kill me but I tricked them and ran. Then the spear got me.” He gave a wince at the incredible pain. “And now I’m here. Obviously.”

  “Look Jack, we’re not trying to accuse you of anything. God knows what you’re going through right at the moment. However, we do need to know exactly what happened back there as quickly as possible. We’ve never had this situation occur before. Quite frankly, we don’t know how to deal with it.”

  Jack asked the only question that really counted. “Can you get me home?”

  “We can try. You have no identity in this world and we can’t hide you away forever. And I guess we owe you one.”

  “Thanks for saving my life at least.”

  “Chrono saved your life.” Dario told him. “We had no choice in the matter. Are you sure you can’t remember what happened inside the Temple?”

  “Sorry, It’s like a hole’s been burned in my mind. Perhaps I was drugged.”

  “Do you think that’s what happened?” Lucas said sharply, glancing at his two colleagues.

  “I don’t know, maybe.” He was getting tired of all the questioning.

  “Well, we did a blood check on you and found nothing. We can run the results again with that in mind although it might be a bit late now.” The other two nodded in agreement.

  “You must be starving, ready for lunch?”

  “Brilliant!”

  “You might not say that when you see it.” Dario warned him, continuing oddly, “You might not like a lot of things you see here.”

  Chapter 10

  When they arrived at the large white hall that had the clinical appearance of a hospital operating theatre but was apparently the Centre’s restaurant, Jack found out exactly what ‘lunch’ consisted of. Joining a queue with other staff they proceeded past a line of dispensing machines brightly lit by moving images of clucking chickens, fish slapping in nets and herds of cattle roaming over dusty plains. Another machine showed images of rows of carrots, peas and lettuces ripening in the glowing sun. Pushing a button on each delivered a less than appetising disc through a small slot. They clattered onto Jack’s plate, a collection of yellows, greys, greens and browns.

  “This looks nice,” he said as they found a table.

  “Looks like crap, tastes like crap,” Dario offered as he spooned one of the offending cubes into his mouth, “but it’s got all the vitamins and nutrients of the real thing and it’s what we have to eat when we’re here. Helps show solidarity with the staff.”

  Jack looked around at the other members of the Institute, tucking into their ‘food’ with only slightly more enthusiasm than his fellow lunch mates. For a moment he thought he recognised the nurse from the treatment room but this girl had long black hair and, although her suit was similar, this time it was a bright red one.

  “Why can’t you all eat whatever you like?”

  “There are certain aspects to these things you don’t understand.” Came the gruff reply.

  “Try me!” He was annoyed at yet another secret kept back from him; he wanted to find out about this new world as quickly as possible.

  “Does he always ask this many questions?” Dario spluttered to Lucas, banging his spoon down on the table.

  “Looks like we’re going to have to get used to it,” the scientist replied with a wry smile. Jack got the distinct impression Lucas rather enjoyed his glum friend’s outbursts. The two men’s personalities seemed contradictory but there was obviously some kind of bond between them. “I was going to fill you in later, Jack, and we shouldn’t really be discussing this in public. Especially here.”

  Lucas fixed Jack with a penetrating look. “How many people do you see in this room?”

  By now Jack knew the answer would prove far from simple. Nevertheless he did a quick head count. “About sixty-five, including us.”

  “And if I tell you all but three of those people are actually completely different from yourself?”

  “Different? How do you mean?”

  “Different in both body structure and the circumstances of their creation. Notice I don’t use the word ‘birth’. Different, in that they were artificially designed and produced to perform specific tasks and duties for society. What would you say to that?”

  Jack gave him a startled look. “I’d say you’re crazy!”

  “Eighty years ago the Empire was in turmoil. It had become a victim of its own success; spoilt and morally weak. Its enemies and critics seized their chance. Worldwide revolution was in the air. There were popular uprisings in state after state as various ethnic groups renounced their citizenship of Rome. Then there were the long overdue global food riots as industrial acid rain and other pollutants contaminated harvests. Famine spread around the client kingdoms.

  “Science needed to provide the answers fast but first of all order needed to be restored out of chaos. The Roman young showed little interest in joining the forces to protect their way of life; they’d grown rich and lazy on the successes of their predecessors and most would have been useless in a fight. Rome dithered, trying to do deals to calm things down, but everything came to a violent head in the early two thousand and sixties. The Empire was about to fail.

  “Then a desperate plan was hatched, built on the scientific successes of the Ectogenesis Programme, a laboratory method of growing babies artificially outside of the human womb. It was originally created on a limited scale exclusively for the infertile and more elderly of the Empire’s elite. This programme was now modified to create a core of ‘soldier babies’. They were physically strong, brave and reasonably intelligent, but most of all they were both psychologically and chemically engineered to be steadfastly loyal to the Empire and carry out its commands without question. Because of the limited timescale, their growth pattern was accelerated. Within ten years they had reached maturity and been trained in the arts of both warfare and peacekeeping. Dispatched to the trouble spots under the command of veteran ‘Normal’ officers they ruthlessly put down any group that refused to bend to the will of Rome. They came to be known, and feared, as Ectogenetic Warriors, then EGs.

  “And it worked. As terrible examples were made the rest of the world took note and gradually the revolts and demonstrations ceased. But the client kingdoms were still hungry, still angry and frustrated. So the Empire initiated a huge food production programme, creating vast tracts of arable land in the industrially unspoilt regions of the planet to grow enough crops to feed all its citizens. To prepare and farm these inhospitable areas of jungle and desert, and transport the food to the cities, large quantities of manual labour were needed. No ‘Normal’ wanted to do it so the EGs were told to.”

  “Normal?” Jack interrupted Lucas.

  “You and me; these two guys.” He pointed at Atticus and Dario. “The EGs refer to regular-born people as Normals. They don’t intend it as a compliment.”

  Lucas paused for a moment then continued. “Anyway, now the genie was well and truly out of the bottle. An underclass of slaves had been created that could make our lives easier and everybody ben
efited. Throughout society Ectogenetic birthing was used to provide workers for the jobs that nobody else wanted to do; construction workers, refuse collectors, dangerous jobs in the nuclear plants, even prostitution. As they began to take the jobs of the poorer Normals, people grew resentful. They remembered the brutality of the EG armed forces a few years earlier. There were beatings. The Anti-EG Riots of two thousand and eighty-one resulted in the deaths of seventy-six thousand EGs. The World Senate was finally forced to act, declaring a limit to all future Ectogenetic creation.

  “An uneasy balance has been achieved that has lasted until the present day. EGs have certain rights in law but can never be full citizens of Rome; they can buy houses, hold jobs, get married and raise families. The men are sterile and the women infertile so these families are Ectogenetic clones of themselves. Each couple are only allowed one ‘child’. Before that happens (and the process can cost a small fortune) they must apply for a Family License at the Ministry of Security; something that can take many years of heartache.”

  “And they have to eat this muck. Normal food makes them sick as pigs thanks to their genetic programming so they eat this chemical crap while we dine off the sweat of their labour.” Dario seemed momentarily consumed by anger before the world-weary scowl returned. “But then, who the hell cares these days?”

  “The older generation of EGs accept these limitations as the price they have to pay for their security.” Lucas continued, bringing his lengthy explanation to a close. “But the younger one… All these people are brilliant scientists and mathematicians, the cream of the Padua Academy of Science where the EGs send their brightest young. Their genetic loyalty means the strictest secrecy can be maintained; even the security guards are EGs. They’re a great bunch individually but sometimes I wonder what they really think about us.”

  “Let’s hope we never have to find out,” Dario gazed across at the handsome young men and women silently eating their lunch tablets.

  “This is a cruel world you’ve brought me to.” Jack said to Lucas.

  “I know,” he replied with a humourless smile, “and I’m afraid you’ll find out just how much the longer you stay. We must find a way to send you back before anything else happens.”

  “Like what?”

  Lucas appeared not to hear Jack’s question. “Did you notice the similarities between them? You have primitive cloning in your world, I understand. This is slightly different but it’s a side effect of the In-Vitro programme; there were only so many original chemical templates created.”

  “You make them sound like machines.” Jack accused him.

  “Yes I shouldn’t put it that way. But to tell the truth we’re all a little scared of them.”

  “How do you mean?” Jack asked him.

  “That one day they’ll have had enough of us.”

  When the ‘meal’ was finished (it hadn’t tasted so bad, but then he’d been too hungry to care) Jack and Lucas were left alone again as the other two went back to their work. Atticus was in an even dreamier mood than he had been earlier.

  Lucas announced that he was going to show Jack the Central Control Room on the top floor of the Institute, the place where he’d first entered this strange world a week earlier.

  A lift shot them up through the centre of the building. The doors parted to show a large pyramid-shaped room. On three sides a railed off platform clung to the slanting walls. On it was a succession of workstations containing the same green box computers he’d seen before. Holographic readouts hung listlessly above each machine. On the fourth wall of the complex an enormous screen filled with dancing symbols jutted over their heads, dominating the room. There were no windows and little light apart from the spots focused onto areas where people were working perched on Lucas’s anti-grav seats. A few more strode purposely between floating displays seemingly comparing notes with their colleagues.

  Jack glanced up at the sharply slanting screen. ‘If we’re now at the top of the building,’ he thought, ‘was the whole place shaped this way?’ As if reading his thoughts, Lucas once again took it upon himself to explain.

  “We’re inside a pyramid. The spatial dynamics are conducive to our time signal and the inner walls are lined with a metallic compound to boost it.”

  Lucas motioned to one of the EGs. A blond-haired man physically somewhere in his mid-twenties joined them (Jack was unsure how the EGs measured their age). He was dressed in the same sleek white one-piece suit as his fellow EG assistants, their little gold T badges twinkling out like tiny stars in the darkened room.

  “Jack this is Paolo, our Head of Operations.” Jack shook the firm hand offered.

  “Hello Jack, welcome to the Control Room of WCTS. We’ve heard a great deal about you this last week. If there’s anything I can help you with please don’t hesitate.”

  “I’m going to show our guest around, Paolo. Could you light up the Capsule please?"

  “Certainly, Professor Stewart,” the young EG replied briskly.

  “His actual name is Paolo 32359D,” Lucas told Jack under his breath, “but they hate to use their full EG names in the presence of Normals. It’s a private thing. He’s a great lad, very good at his job despite the trouble he’s had lately.”

  What kind of ‘trouble’ Lucas didn’t specify.

  The Director pointed to the object dominating the middle of the floor. Jack had already been aware of its hulking shape in the shadows once his eyes adjusted in the gloom. Now it was lit up from beneath throwing a distorted shadow across the pyramidal ceiling.

  “There she is, Jack.”

  A cylindrical tube of clear glass, slightly taller than a man and about eight feet wide, rose up out of the ground. Lucas took a few steps towards it and, as he followed him, Jack saw that it was actually positioned exactly in the middle of a huge metal disc set into a cavity in the centre of the chamber’s floor and covered by a sheet of glass. There was a thin metal walkway with a single handrail just above this, connecting to the bottom of the tube via a large ring and linking it with the rest of the floor beyond the disc’s edge. Another sharp light lit up the inside of the tube and Jack could now see that it had a rounded door in its side.

  “You guys have a nice juke box,” he told Lucas with forced casualness. Lucas looked at him with incomprehension. “Okay, so tell me how it works.”

  Lucas began the explanation while walking around the edge of the disc’s gleaming surface.

  “This,” he pointed into the glass-covered cavity beneath his feet, “is the chamber, where we create the massive energy needed for the jump. There are actually two discs of a highly unusual metallic compound held in a vacuum, exactly calibrated, magnetised and spun at incredible speeds in opposite directions to create an intensified electric field. Now the Jumper, as you’ve probably guessed, is positioned inside the tube or ‘Transference Capsule’. When the field reaches peak the energy is released to a skin of highly sensitive electromagnetic membranes embedded in the surface of the Capsule. With me so far?”

  “More or less.” Jack replied. He was aware that he was being slightly sulky; he was feeling tired and suddenly depressed as the weight of his situation gradually sank in. He saw Lucas frown at his diffidence.

  “Okay, Lucas, but are you going to tell me you heat up the Transference thing with the Jumper inside it. Wouldn’t that fry them?”

  “We don’t heat up the molecules inside the Capsule, Jack. We speed them up to create an advanced electromagnetic wave so powerful it can rip space-time for an instant and project those molecules through a wormhole to a pre-plotted destination in the past.”

  “I never realised time travel was so simple.” Jack replied.

  “If I made it sound simple I apologise. It’s taken us most of our lives to get to here.” The scientist looked hurt. Jack felt guilty. The Centre had saved his life and yet he was acting the moody teenager. He was being shown around a bona-fide time machine! The very thing that the scientists in Jack’s own world deemed impossible. Perhaps
he should grow up a bit.

  “I’m sorry, Lucas, I’m still a little confused. It’s been rather a complicated day for me.”

  Lucas grinned at the understatement. “I’m sorry too, Jack. You must be exhausted and I’m dragging you around here boring you.”

  “I’m not bored! I just feel like my mind’s about to explode.” He gave Lucas a grin. “So, I appeared inside the Transference Capsule when Chrono brought me back from Fulchestorium?”

  “You certainly did. You can imagine our surprise! We knew the portal link had been reactivated, that Chrono had tried to jump someone with it twice already, the second time successfully. We knew both jumps were from the same time. The mainframe could read their vital body signs, sex and IQ but virtually everything else about them was a complete blank. You nearly died; it was touch and go for the first twenty-four hours. You made an awful mess of the Capsule.”

  “Sorry about that.” The two of them seemed to be on the same wavelength now. He pointed up to the giant screen of green and red hieroglyphics. “What’s going on up there?”

  “That’s the Jump-Board where we keep track of the Jumper after projection. It’s where we detected your presence for the first time.”

  Jack looked puzzled. “When you say ‘keep track’, does that mean you can communicate with them? I mean, how do you know when to bring them back?”

  “That’s a very astute question. No, we can’t communicate with the Jumper directly. They have to send us a pre-formatted signal to finish the jump. We call it a thought-code, an image chosen specifically for that particular projection programme, transmitted to us simply by concentrating on it for a few seconds. Chrono has a direct link with their mind so it takes the required action immediately.”

  “Where is this ‘Chrono’?” Jack asked. “I’d like to see it.”