by Jack Heath
‘No,’ King said. ‘Use it.’
‘Use it? For what?’
‘To send yourself back in time.’
Stunned, Six said, ‘Why?’
‘Two years ago, you couldn’t ?nd the warhead that Sammers stole,’ King said. ‘By the time you got there, it was gone. Now the question is, was it missing because you went back in time and took it? Or because someone else did?’
Sammy’s eyes were wide. ‘You’re right!’ he said. ‘Six can steal the nuke in the past, and bring it to the present – then we don’t have to search the whole City for it!’
Sammers spoke inside Six’s head. Little child? They sent a mere infant to halt the work of God?
He shivered. ‘That’s crazy,’ he said. ‘I can’t redo a mission in the past.’
‘Why not?’ King said. ‘Allich has a working time machine. You know where the warhead will be, and when. You have all kinds of information you didn’t have the first time around.’
‘But even if I knew how to use the machine,’ he said, ‘the Tower is a fortress. And this time there’s no party to gatecrash. How would I get in?’
‘Pod-drop,’ King said. ‘Should be strong enough to penetrate the roof. We have a pod-equipped jet at the Fallena airport. Kyntak could pilot it.’
‘I don’t know the codes for any of the doors inside the building,’ Six said.
‘I think I can help you there,’ Sammy said. ‘The security system is designed to keep people out, not in, right? So all the master controls are on the inside?’
Six nodded.
‘So just choose any old numbers you want, like your birthday or your bank PIN. Then, when you’re in the past, you can reprogram the doors from the inside so they’ll accept those numbers in the future.’
‘How will I get out again? Won’t there be guards?’
‘No guards, no cameras,’ Sammy said.
‘Why?’ King asked.
Sammy winced. ‘That’s complicated.’
‘Try me.’
‘Let’s say Allich sees a walrus with a euphonium appear in the machine,’ Sammy said, ‘If that happens, she knows that at some point in the future she will have to find a walrus and a euphonium and send them back in time. Because if she doesn’t, someone else will. And she doesn’t want anyone else to have access to her machine.’
King said, ‘But if she doesn’t monitor what comes out …’
‘Then she can put in whatever she likes,’ Sammy finished. ‘Right. She gets to keep her free will.’
‘So you think there’ll be no cameras and no guards,’ Six said.
‘Yes. Near the machine, that is. And I imagine there’ll be a passageway that leads directly from the machine to the outside of the building,’ Sammy said. ‘So time travellers can leave unobserved.’
‘Why can’t I enter through that passageway?’
‘Because it’ll have one-way doors at both ends.’
‘Okay,’ Six said. ‘I pod-drop into the Tower. I use the machine to go back two years. I walk out through this passageway. I sneak into the building Sammers has seized. I steal the nuclear warhead. Then what?’
‘You go back to the machine, and send yourself back to now,’ King said. ‘That way the warhead won’t even exist in between then and now. We don’t have to worry about anyone else getting hold of it.’
‘How do I get back into the Tower?’ Six asked.
King and Sammy looked at each other. Then they turned back to Six.
‘Improvise,’ King said.
‘Remember that two years ago her security wasn’t as full-on as it is now,’ Sammy added.
Great plan, Six thought. Just great. ‘And after I’ve “improvised” a way in and used the machine,’ he said, ‘then what?’
‘Bring the warhead back here so we can dismantle it,’ King said. ‘You should be able to get out using the same passageway.’ He looked at Sammy. ‘Right?’
‘Right,’ Sammy said. ‘There are a couple more things you should know. One: the machine might make mistakes when it’s recreating you.’
Six’s eyes widened. ‘What? What kind of mistakes?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sammy said. ‘But think about the time-soldiers for a minute. Even if they only exist for a few hours, their hair and fingernails get longer, they lose flakes of skin, the cells inside them age and a few of those cells die. If the machine replicated the soldiers perfectly when they were sent back in time, then they would already be a few hours older than they should be. And then they’d keep ageing, getting older and older each time they went back. But that’s a paradox, because in reality the transmission only happens once.
‘So instead, Allich’s machine must be slightly inaccurate. It replicates its subjects with errors, cancelling the paradox. My point is, when you arrive, you should examine your body and make sure there are no visible alterations. But there probably won’t be, because you’re not going to be in a loop like the soldiers are.’
‘What about the side effects?’ King asked. ‘Repeating words, staring sideways?’
‘Same deal,’ Sammy said. ‘Six won’t be in a loop, so they shouldn’t be an issue.’
‘What do I do if there are alterations?’ Six demanded. ‘Errors in my body?’
Sammy shrugged. ‘Go to a hospital, I guess.’
Worst mission ever, Six thought. ‘What else do I need to know?’
‘Two: avoid meeting yourself in the past,’ Sammy said.
That hadn’t even occurred to Six. ‘Why?’
‘Because if you had ever met another version of yourself, you’d definitely remember it. You’ve never met another version of yourself, have you?’
Six thought of meeting Kyntak in the Lab. And then Sevadonn, out on the street. And then the clone, locked up in Vanish’s basement.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘it seems to happen a lot.’
‘Not clones of you,’ King said. ‘Yourself.’
‘No,’ Six admitted.
‘There you go,’ Sammy said. ‘So meeting yourself would create a paradox. Which means that it won’t happen. Which means that if you try to make it happen, something will stop you. Maybe a piano will fall on your head, killing you instantly. Or maybe one will fall on fourteen-year-old Agent Six’s head, erasing his memory of meeting you. Whatever it is, it’s not likely to be good. So avoid yourself. Got it?’
Walruses, euphoniums, falling pianos, Six thought. Sammy must watch a lot of cartoons. ‘Anything else?’ he asked.
‘Just one more thing,’ Sammy said. ‘Have you ever heard of the multiverse theory?’
Six nodded. ‘The idea is that there’s an infinite number of universes, side by side, each slightly different so that everything that is possible exists in one of them. Right?’
‘More or less,’ Sammy said. ‘I think the theory is a load of crap, but until an hour ago I thought time travel was impossible too. So when you arrive in the past, check that you’re in the right universe. Otherwise there’s no point going to steal the warhead – it may not even be there.’
‘How do I find out?’ Six asked.
‘When you arrive in the past, you’ll probably be wearing or carrying something that’s at least three years old. I’d suggest tracking down the same object in the past, and making some kind of mark on it. Then check if an identical mark is on the version you’re carrying.’
‘And if there isn’t,’ Six said, ‘then I’m in a parallel universe?’
‘Probably.’
‘So what do I do then?’
‘Come right back,’ Sammy said. ‘A version of the multiverse theory states that the universe is constantly splitting into all of the various possibilities. Every time anything happens with an element of chance, any time a coin is flipped or a dice is rolled, every possible outcome is created in a separate reality. If that’s true, then the longer you stay there, the further away you’ll get from the reality you know. So go straight back to the time machine and come back to the present, or else you might find
yourself in a universe without King, me, the Deck, or anything else you recognise.’
‘Aren’t the lives of people in a parallel universe worth anything?’ Six asked. ‘Shouldn’t I try and save them from the nuclear warhead anyway?’
‘No,’ Sammy said. ‘Remember, that City has its own version of Agent Six defending it. You thought it would be hard avoiding yourself in the past when both versions of you are in the same building – try it when there’s three of you.’
‘Is that it?’ King asked.
‘That’s it,’ Sammy replied. ‘Good luck, Six.’
Six said, ‘First we have to get the agents out of here. Are there any explosive charges in the cell block?’
The tunnel was dark, and smelled faintly like burnt toast. Six couldn’t resist touching the wall with his fingertips as he walked.
Metal from another time. Metal from a year that was supposed to be gone forever, but was now back, and felt as real under his hands as anything else he’d ever touched.
After leaving the machine, he’d sneaked around the facility for a while, reprogramming every door he could find so it would accept Ace’s birthday as an entry code. He didn’t know how many he’d have to go through on his way back. Then he’d gone back to the machine and started searching for the passageway Sammy had hypothesised.
Just behind the transmission chamber there’d been a hatch in the floor. Beneath the hatch there was a ladder. And at the bottom of the ladder, there was a hulking tungsten door, with a release button on the inside only.
A passageway with a one-way door. Sammy had been right.
After walking through the tungsten door, Six had jammed one of the shock batons into the gap to stop it from closing all the way behind him. King had told him to improvise a way back into the facility, and this seemed like his best bet.
Six’s footsteps seemed loud in the darkness. The tunnel carried the sound all the way back to the ladder, and then forwards to his ears again so there was a disturbing delay. It sounded like there were two people down here – he kept having to stop to reassure himself that he was alone.
The past. He was in the past. No matter how many times he told himself that, the reality of it wouldn’t register.
Right now, Six thought, Vanish is still inhabiting the body of that rugby player. Kyntak is working security for the Lab. Ace is in the second last year of her medical studies. Nai doesn’t even exist yet. And a fourteen-year-old me is sitting in his office at the Deck, typing up a mission report, unaware that his next mission is only hours away.
And Straje Sammers is on his way to a ChaoSonic bunker, escorted by his team of twelve, looking for the last nuclear warhead in existence.
Six’s gut instinct was to go to the bunker instead of CVHQ. He still had time to stop Sammers from killing the ChaoSonic scientists and getting his hands on the nuke in the first place.
But he couldn’t, because he knew it hadn’t happened that way. Sammers had gone to the bunker, he had killed everyone inside, and he had taken the warhead.
The thing that really boggled Six’s brain was that Sammers could only do all these things because Six had never even tried to stop him. And Six hadn’t tried because he knew he would fail, because he hadn’t tried, because he knew he’d fail, because he hadn’t tried …
Cause and effect had been twisted in such a way that Six was completely helpless, yet entirely responsible.
The second door was up ahead. Six jogged the last few metres and hit the button. With a rumbling crunch, the door unlocked itself, and Six pulled it open. Then he stepped out onto the street, and left his other shock baton in the jamb to keep the door from swinging all the way shut.
The air smelled noticeably better than it had in the future. The City was already staggeringly overpopulated, but over the next two years it would grow more and more crowded until it started to collapse under the weight of its own citizenry. All those people eating and driving and shopping and running their air-conditioners until the smog made the air outside almost unbreathable. But the change had happened so gradually that Six had hardly noticed.
The street with the door in it was a narrow, trash-filled alleyway behind the Tower. Six allowed himself a little cautious optimism – it was not likely that someone would stroll past, notice the door was ajar and walk in, letting it fall shut behind them.
It was night-time. Sammers wouldn’t get to CVHQ until six hours from now. But there was no time for Six to rest. He had things to do.
He ran into the darkness.
It took Six a few seconds to remember the code to open his front door – he changed it every time he left the house so that if anyone had watched him enter they couldn’t break in next time he left. The code had gone through almost a thousand combinations in the past two years.
Then he had it: 5152. He punched in the numbers, and the door clicked open. He stepped inside.
It was strange how little his home had changed – he could almost forget that he had travelled through time. Same lasers on the floor, same books on the shelves. The only obvious reminder was that his living-room window was intact. He and Ace hadn’t driven a motorcycle through it yet.
Even though her home was only a few blocks east of his, and she may have been there right now, Ace felt a very long way away.
Enough reminiscing. Six ran to his bedroom and rummaged through the cupboard to find his boots – the same ones that he was wearing. When he had them, he took the left one out to the kitchen. Grabbing a broad knife from a drawer, he carved off a chunk of the heel. Then he took out a permanent marker.
What should he write? What was an appropriate message to himself in the future?
Six scribbled something on the exposed rubber inside the sole, and then took some glue from another drawer and stuck the chunk back into place.
He rested the boot on the kitchen bench so the glue could dry. Then he took the identical boot off his left foot.
His palms were sweaty. If the markings he’d made weren’t there, he could be stranded in a parallel universe. Or he might not have travelled through time at all. He might have been sedated in the chamber. The Semtex might not have gone off. Allich could have removed it. Someone could have replaced Six’s front window, changed the code on his door. This might all be a colossal prank at his expense.
He examined the boot. He’d never noticed before, but there was a fine seam in the heel.
Six started sawing into it with the knife. This shoe contained a message that he’d been unwittingly carrying for two years, eight months and twenty-one days, but one that would nevertheless be delivered a few seconds after it was sent.
He peeled off the rubber, revealing his own handwriting, faded and smudged. It read:
Testing, testing. One two.
‘I’ll be damned,’ he whispered.
The magnitude of what he’d done finally hit him. He was a copy of himself, standing in his own kitchen as it had been two years, four months and twenty days ago. He could see the future just by sifting through his memories – everything that would happen to the real Agent Six for the next two years, and plenty of things that would happen to other people.
If only he’d been following a sport, or playing a lottery. He could win a fortune, hide it, and then use it to rebuild the Deck someday.
Six felt an overwhelming desire to go see Grysat, and Agent Two. He even had the urge to track down Methryn Crexe and Sevadonn – the malevolent ghosts of his past, who could perhaps be forgiven or at least better understood.
But he couldn’t save anyone. He couldn’t change anything. He couldn’t even meet any of those dead men, because they would remember him later, and that would change every interaction he’d ever had with them.
Six looked at his watch. Just over five hours to beat Sammers to CVHQ.
There was one old friend he could easily track down. Someone he could talk to without worrying about altering the past and creating a paradox. Someone who could even help him get into the building Sammers was
about to invade.
Six picked up one of the two left boots. He thought about taking the one from the past, as the heel was attached and the glue was already dry – and then, with a jolt, he realised that doing so would completely screw up the continuity of history.
He glued the heel back on the boot from the future, and took the other one back to its partner in the cupboard. Everything must be precisely as I found it, he thought. Fourteen-year-old Agent Six will notice even the slightest difference when he returns.
He put on the boot from the future, walked to the front door, and left. He had an old friend to meet.
Six placed another strip of duct tape over the pane of glass, making a big asterisk shape. He couldn’t see any pressure sensors in the frame, but he was about to find out if they were there.
He glanced around again. The shadows were fixed in place. No noise disturbed the gloom.
Six rammed his elbow into the centre of the asterisk, and the glass cracked into six crooked triangles with a plink. The tape hid the fractures, and Six was able to grab the centre and pull the pane out. It folded like cardboard in his hands.
There was a metal grille behind the glass. Though he hadn’t been able to see it in the dark, Six wasn’t surprised. She would never be so careless, he thought, as to protect her work with only an ordinary window.
He took the screwdriver out of his pocket, and wrapped his hand around the pointed end. He grunted as he bent the metal, twisting the blade 90 degrees. Then he poked it through the grille, near the right-hand side of the frame, and used it to bend the screwdriver another 90 degrees.
Now the screwdriver was hook-shaped. He scraped the point around the inside of the frame until he found a screw. Then he started turning it.
Nothing to it, he thought, as he heard it clink to the floor inside.
A minute later he had several of the right-hand-side screws out. He couldn’t get his hooked screwdriver back out to do the left, so instead he started kicking the grille where he’d already weakened it.
It came loose. Clanged to the floor inside.
Six remained still for a moment. Listened. Had anyone heard him?