Reconception: The Fall

by Deborah Greenspan

  People might get a little angry at him when they found what he’d done, but Morgan was way ahead of them. He’d already lined up a few of the most malleable and aggressive of his followers to act as his protectors when the time came.

  The big news in the habitat, that a tribe of people were actually living outside, troubled him not at all. Why should he concern himself with a few degenerate natives? Of course, many of the undergrounders were insisting that the so-called mountain people were civilized, but what did they know? He’d been outside. He’d seen the blight, and he knew better than they how bad things were up there. He wouldn’t let a couple hundred genetically inferior people holding on for dear life change his plans.

  Jersey, at last free of Morgan, drifted away from the group and back to his lab where he surveyed his time traveling apparatus with joy and relief. Everything was as he’d left it, ready for the first experiment. The machine was enormous, taking up most of the lab, and requiring huge energy resources to send very small masses into the past. At first, he’d wanted to build one big enough to send a human being—him—back in time, but that would have taken more power than the habitat could muster. And, there was also the question of safety.

  Time travel was possible because of the existence of a higher dimension within the multiverse, which Jersey was calling the Logos. This Logos is composed of thought, and contains the original, unchanged patterns of the universe, those that were conceived at its birth. Within it, all things are as they should be. It is Plato’s ideal—the perfect universe. Everything that exists in four-dimensional space-time tries to conform to its pattern in the Logos.

  But ordinary reality can be, and is, influenced by the forces within it. The universe is fluid and responds to the free will of intelligent life. Whenever we make a choice that is different than the one we would make if we were conscious within the Logos, we change the evolution of our reality and its future. Because of the existence of the Logos, accessible from any dimension within the multiverse, this free will can also operate outside of linear time.

  It had long been thought that we could not go back into the past because of the paradoxes that would occur if we were to change the past and affect the future. But the Logos made such travel possible. If we were to go back into the past and kill our father, for instance, we would still exist within a universe accessible to the Logos to go back into the past, although we would disappear in the future of our original reality.

  This made it very dangerous to travel in time, because changes in the past could drastically affect the present, and Jersey’s caution in choosing an inanimate object to make the trip, was justified.

  For his purposes, the existence of the Logos had other ramifications. Because it is a higher, non-material dimension that has access to all space/time points in our dimension, all that is necessary to travel in time or in space is the means to penetrate the Logos. Jersey’s machine used this dimension as a kind of shortcut.

  While traveling with Morgan, he’d had plenty of time to think this procedure over and actually doing it at last felt rehearsed. Carefully, he placed the quartz crystal he’d decided on as his first time-traveling object into the chamber of the machine, threw the switches and watched the computer displays. The results were instantaneous, and Jersey grinned as he observed the piece of quartz suddenly appear embedded in the polished stone floor of his lab as if it had been there for nearly one hundred years. In fact, if he hadn’t seen it appear with his own eyes, he would probably recall that it had always been there.

  “I did it!” he hummed, doing a little dance around the lab. “I did it!”

  Evie adjusted Teller’s pillow and smiled into her dark eyes. “It’s amazing how quickly you’ve recovered,” she said.

  “What did you give me?”

  “Hmm, that’s the thing. By the time we got back here, you’d already passed the crisis. The antibiotics had little effect, and the only hope I had was here in this lab. Your leg was festering; gangrene had already begun. But you showed us.”

  “I guess that those of us who have survived, have done so because we’re strong.” Teller’s smile was weary.

  Evie sat down next to the mountain woman and took her rough hand in her own smooth ones. “Teller, I thought you were going to die. I would have done anything to prevent it, but there was nothing I could do. I think you’ve taught me to believe in God.” She laughed at herself, but Teller didn’t laugh.

  “And don’t forget Goddess,” she whispered.

  In the hallway Evie spotted Eagle heading toward the Quad and hurried to catch up with him. “Hey,” she smiled, “where are you going?”

  “To get some of that tasteless crud you call coffee. Do you want to come with me?”

  Evie took his hand and walked with him. “Teller’s doing so well; I think she’ll be able to travel in just a few more days. I know you want to go home.”

  Eagle stopped walking and looked into her eyes. “And you and Garrett? Will you be staying here?”

  “Only if we have nowhere else to go.”

  A slow smile lit Eagle’s eyes and spread to his mouth. He squeezed her hand and nodded.

  “Eagle? About what happened at the river ....”

  He put a finger to his lips. “Shhh ... I know you were overwhelmed. And after being in this place, I understand your reaction to nature better than you can imagine. You and Garrett ... you’re meant to be together. We can forget what never happened.”

  Evie looked into his eyes and nodded. “Thank you for being so wise.”

  They were laughing when Jersey Lipton came around the bend and bumped into Evie.

  “Jersey!” she said. “I’m so glad to see you. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your trip Outside. What did you think of it? I mean, besides getting lost.”

  “Lost? Oh yes, that’s right. Morgan said we were lost.”

  Evie looked at him curiously. He wasn’t the type to dissemble. “Weren’t you?”

  A kind of spiritual agony gripped Jersey’s soul at the look in Evie’s eyes. He wanted to tell her what had really happened, but he was afraid of Morgan and what Morgan would do. Instead of answering he grunted and tried to push past Evie and her friend.

  “Wait a minute, Jersey!” Evie took the older man’s arm and wouldn’t let him pass. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Nothing is going on. Well, no, that’s not quite true. I’ve just done something incredible. After fifteen years of research, I’ve sent an object into the past! I’ve broken the time barrier! Evie, can you imagine the possibilities?”

  Evie looked at the physicist with mounting apprehension. His excitement had an edge to it that she’d never seen in him before. Not that they’d ever been close, but he had been her neighbor for all her life. “That’s wonderful! Oh, I’m being so rude. Jersey Lipton, this is Eye of Eagle of the Mountain People. Eagle, this is Jersey. He’s a physicist.”

  “Who’s broken the time barrier. Wow! That’s quite an accomplishment.”

  “Mountain People?” Jersey responded. “What are the Mountain People?”

  “Oh Jersey, it’s so exciting! There are people who live Outside. Eagle’s people are just one group of many who have managed to survive the holocaust of the 21st century. They have a wonderful culture.”

  Jersey staggered and leaned against the wall. “There are people Outside? I didn’t see any sign of people!”

  The anguish in his voice echoed off the walls of the hallway.

  “What is it?” Evie took his hand and looked into his eyes. “What’s happened?”

  A tear escaped the physicist’s eye and rolled down his craggy cheek. He shook his head from side to side, trying to regain his balance and his perspective. “Morgan.” He whispered. “Morgan intends to destroy it all ... and I’ve given him the means.”

  Morgan had almost completed the uplink to the satellite when the noise in the hallway outside the lab interrupted his intense concentration. Was that shouting? Annoyed, he got up and opened
the door. The shouting came to an abrupt halt as he faced the livid blue eyes and pointing finger of Evelyn Chandler.

  “You. Stop what you’re doing,” she ordered.

  Morgan smiled. “And what would that be?”

  “Don’t play the innocent with me, Morgan. I know you, and I’m telling you if you don’t stop what you’re doing ... now, you will be in more trouble than you have ever imagined.”

  Her words, so threatening from one so small and powerless, made Morgan’s smile grow even brighter. And although Garrett Walker and that mountain creature stood on either side of Evie, ready to back her up with physical force, Morgan knew that as long as he reacted quickly and decisively, he would remain in charge. Evie’s words hung in the air, but instead of answering, Morgan signaled to his contingent of armed guards. Seven guns were cocked and brought to bear on the three activists.

  “Things will be changing around here, and one of the first changes will be in our system of government. From now on, I’m in charge. This is my lab. This is my hallway. You three can evacuate this space immediately, or I can have you held prisoner until some later date.” Morgan felt enormous, as if he’d left his body and become the habitat itself. At last, there would be no more manipulation and persuasion, no more games. From now on, he would rule by force.

  One of the guards stuck a gun in Garrett’s back and prodded him to move down the hall and away from Morgan’s door. Evie started to speak, then thought better of it as the other guards followed the first, jabbing a gun into her side and urging her to retreat.

  She had one last look at Morgan’s triumphant eyes before the door to the hallway was slammed in her face.

  They had no guns, but they did have intelligence. Their contingency plan should Morgan refuse to hear them had already been worked out, and before the dust of that confrontation had settled, Evie, Garret, and Eagle were racing down the corridors of the 4th quadrant, heading for the secret door that would lead them outside.

  Most of the habitat was hidden beneath the ground, but satellite communications were not. The dish, of necessity exposed to the sky, was accessible to their desperate attack. Climbing the hills and cutting the wires to the antenna took only minutes. Then they set to work removing parts of the hardware itself. Garret pulled out a circuit board and crushed it under his foot while Evie and Eagle ripped into the innards of the directional array.

  East USA Habitat: 2128

  “Morgan’s resourceful,” Garret worried, “He’ll find replacement parts somewhere.”

  Evie nodded. They’d done considerable damage, and hadn’t left the scene until one of Morgan’s guards had taken a shot at them, but Garret was right. The habitat had redundant systems for everything, and plenty of parts that could be jury-rigged to do what Morgan wanted to do. “Well, at least we’ve slowed him down.”

  “And we’ve bought ourselves a little time. But what can we do? He’s got guns. He’s got people. We never had a clue what he was up to.”

  “Nobody did ... Oh Garret, all those people ....”

  Garret took his head out of his hands and looked at Evie. “Listen to me. We don’t have much time: two weeks, three ... and in the end, we’re still going to lose. Because he’s got a power base that he’s been building for years. Now that he’s been outside, he’s got the weapons to enforce it too. Evie, he’s going to do it. And there’s nothing we can do to stop him.”

  Eagle, entering the lab, heard the last of this speech. “Well, there’s something I can do,” he stated.

  Evie looked at her lab, at the experiments concluded and those underway, and wondered how it had all gotten so suddenly out of hand. They had been doing so well, first with superfood and then with homo superior. Oh, she knew it was hubris, but it could be done. So she and Garret had done it. They had engineered the DNA that would grow into highly adaptable and long-lived human beings, as well as the plant that would support the growth and development of the embryos. But now, even if they wanted to go ahead with it, there would be no single uncontaminated spot on earth that could be their garden.

  She stared at Eagle as he pulled a long knife from the belt crossing his back and studied the blade in the light. “What did you say?”

  “I said there’s something I can do, and I intend to do it.” Slipping the knife back into its sheath, Eagle looked intently into Evie’s eyes and then Garret’s. Without another word, he left the lab.

  East USA Habitat: 2128

  Violence was unknown in the habitat. For nearly a century the people who lived there had done so in peace. So the quick burst of machine gun fire that erupted in the Quad went unnoticed at first. Initially, people thought it was some kind of equipment breakdown, and it wasn’t until they saw the blood and the bodies that they realized that something new and terrible had found its way into their peaceful home.

  Three men with guns had taken to following Morgan around from place to place, and when Eagle approached him, they had been on guard. The Mountain man looked as if he had something to say, but then he suddenly drew a knife from the sheath at his back and lunged at John Morgan’s throat.

  East USA Habitat: 2128

  Eagle knew that he was making a last ditch stand, but there really was no other way to get near Morgan who was always surrounded by guards. That’s where Teller came in. Though somewhat weakened by her injury, her recuperative powers were amazing, and she had been as ready as he to act against Morgan before he could repair communications and launch his weapons.

  Although Evie and Garret had tried to stir up the other inhabitants of the habitat, they were too passive to be effective. There was no one else equipped to take action.

  The plan was simple. Eagle would attack Morgan, and while the guards were protecting his front, Teller would hit him from behind. She was dressed as one of them, and barely noticeable except for her dark complexion and flashing eyes.

  Teller moved toward the center of the crowd where Morgan, drunk with power, was holding court. He’s foolish not to keep his back to a wall, Teller thought, and then moved to take advantage of this weakness. She was in place when Eagle pushed his way toward Morgan as if he meant to speak to him, and then without warning aimed a blade at his throat.

  Before it could penetrate, the machine guns were spitting bullets into his fragile flesh. But Teller didn’t stop to watch. She leaped forward, her knife extended, and slammed it into Morgan’s back. It slid off one of his ribs and missed the heart, so she pulled it out again and was poised to ram it into him again, when the guns came up and tore her to pieces.

  East USA Habitat: 2128

  One of the habitat’s greatest strengths was its medical technology, and replacing Morgan’s injured lung with one grown from his own DNA template was simple. Within two weeks of being stabbed, he was recovered enough to demand that a computer terminal be brought to him.

  As he established the uplink to the newly repaired satellite dish, and sent out the codes that would release the bombs, he whistled. The world was his now, and no one, least of all some degenerate mountain people, could ever stand in his way.

  The Mountain People didn’t see the missiles sail overhead, but others did. And still others saw the blinding flash of mushroom clouds blossoming in the distance, one after another, as the bombs exploded the New Mexican desert, cracking the underground granite like a rotten egg and spilling its poisons into the wind.

  The Mountain People did begin to worry that something might be wrong when the fallout carried on that wind rained upon their fields two days later.

  Eagle’s and Teller’s bodies, covered in shrouds, rested on two tables in their lab. Evie was speechless with grief and guilt, thinking over and over that she should have found a way to prevent what had happened. She couldn’t give voice to these thoughts yet, but she could see that Garret was struggling with the same feelings.

  Her eyes were red from crying and hurt from staring into the nothingness of their future. “Garret,” her voice was barely a croak, “Garret, why is he still
alive? I want to know why these good, generous people are dead, why the whole world is ruined, and that ... that madman is still alive?”

  Garret just shook his head, as stunned as she at what had happened. “I don’t know ... I just don’t know ... Oh Evie. What do we do? Tell me what to do.”

  Evie didn’t know either. All she could think of was how much she’d come to love Teller. How brave she’d been, how strong and beautiful—a warrior queen. And Eagle. How kind he was. How wise. And their people—the children! People like these deserved to live, not be cut down by such as Morgan. It defied reason and taunted faith.

  Her eyes lighted on the gene gun, a helium powered high-tech instrument that had done irreparable harm in the bad old days, but might do some real good now. And then it came to her. “Their DNA, Garret. They’re ideal. They’ve already proved they can survive.”

  He didn’t smile. “What can we do with it, Evie? The earth is dead. Morgan pushed his little buttons and destroyed everything!”

  She knew that. But there was something else. Something Jersey had said ... Then it came to her. “Garret, he’s got time travel! Jersey Lipton. He can send our spores into the past.”

  In an instant, he put it all together as she had and came to the same conclusion. There was no other hope for them or for the future of the earth.

  East USA Habitat: 2128

  While recombinant gene technology had once been a painstaking procedure, the science of 2128 was sufficiently advanced to make it a simple task to insert the DNA from one organism into the reproductive nuclei of another. Once the decision was made it was just a matter of aiming the gene gun at the seeds they’d already developed and bombarding them with Teller’s and Eagle’s DNA. They’d also done a little tinkering, eliminating the possibility of disease, and turning on the genes that fostered intelligence and cooperativeness and that lengthened cell life.