Gravewalkers: Dying Time

by Richard T. Schrader

  “No thank you, Carmen,” he declined more politely than was his usual. Her lovesome behavior was more than enough surprises for the moment. “You could check my messages for me though. If I have anything work related, I’ll need to know.”

  “A Doctor Kine messaged that he would like to see you at your earliest convenience,” she reported. His messages were available in her own inorganic parallel mind which was in constant contact with the data interlink. “Doctor Kine is awaiting you in the Sector Eight engineering laboratory.”

  Critias recalled the appointment, “Grand Marshal Wayne told me something about that. It sounds like another wild goose chase to me. They have gone after a patient-zero before thinking that after they cut it up they will be able to kill the rest of them. I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  “Vain hopes are often like the dreams of those who wake,” she quoted with a wink while she unzipped her flight-suit down to her navel. Carmen revealed that she had nothing on underneath besides her desire for his searching hands. “If it is a futile venture, then it wouldn’t be any harm if you got there a little late.”

  The Sector Eight engineering labs were deep in the bowels of the station, well out of the way of anyone who didn’t work there. Critias arrived later than he would have liked, but Carmen’s uncharacteristically self-motivated infatuation for his intimate embrace had done its work upon his schedule. The massive doors opened themselves to let him enter a circular chamber that contained huge machines related to high-energy physics experiments with their high-voltage power cables and armored pressure hoses of coolant that stretched across the floor haphazardly enough to trip over.

  Doctor Kine was a striking figure of many ambiguities. His most apparent contradiction was his age. Doctor Kine was clearly a man of senior years, perhaps in his sixties and yet if he was that old his vigor and physical fitness had to be profiting from salubrious gerontological therapies. The doctor’s white hair was long and shaggy like a man who rarely interacted socially with the general community or had any interest in fads of fashion. Doctor Kine gamboled out from behind one of his exotic apparatus that steamed from the liquid nitrogen that pumped through it. He tinkered with his unfathomable machines with the lightheartedness of a schoolboy and judging from the way he carried himself, the doctor was as pleased as if he had just patented the invention of his career.

  “It is so good to see you again,” the old man came forward to shake hands. “You won’t remember me yet. My name is Doctor Kine, Cornelius Kine to be exact. This is a truly glorious day, one that I have devoted my life to bringing to fulfillment.”

  The man’s flimsy grasp on sanity did not disappoint Critias’ expectations, “Have we met, doctor? I don’t think we have met before and it seems unlikely to me I would ever forget if we had. I do recall you contacted me recently while I was down at the Chicago ERC. You had no message to convey, only an inquiry as to my current whereabouts.”

  “Yes, my call down to the planet,” Kine acknowledged; “even I found it difficult to believe that so auspicious a moment could just come upon me so unexpectedly. We have met before in a manner of speaking. I find that normal terminology is inefficient when it comes to these matters of temporal causality. Perhaps it would be more accurate for me to say that you will be meeting me before I have already met you. In any case, we will be meeting one another more than once.”

  “Temporal,” Critias guffawed. “What are you planning now? Can you perform some sort of mad super science that teleports me into the future so I can see how they finally solved the infection problem?”

  “Heavens no,” the doctor laughed at the preposterous notion. “It’s impossible for you to travel to the future again unless it’s one second at a time like everyone else. No, my friend, as far as your physical matter is concerned, the future has not happened yet. The past however has already established itself as fixed events. Travel to the past is theoretically possible or at least it was just an unproven observation of mine until I recently proved it as actual science.”

  Critias tried to get some clarity, “You’ve sent someone back in time? I find that exceedingly hard to believe, Doctor Kine. Were it not for this impressive laboratory and the fact that you have the backing of Grand Marshal Wayne, I would think you have gone mad.”

  “Actually, I haven’t sent anyone back in time yet,” the doctor confessed, “but I assume it will be easy enough to send you. With your help, I now have a clear understanding of how I already did it in the near future. Bringing you back from the past to this time was exceedingly difficult, requiring many years of experiments before it recently worked more or less by accident.”

  Critias was not as confused as he would have preferred to be, “You brought me back during an experiment recently? You brought me back from a voyage to the past, without ever sending me there in the first place?”

  “Exactly,” the doctor praised him. “You’re sleeping in a secure medical lab a few floors above us as we speak, that other future you I mean, from the past.”

  Critias clung to his incredulity, “And you’ve spoken to this other me?”

  “Oh yes,” the doctor beamed with youthful excitement. “I would introduce you to yourself, but unfortunately, you’ve already informed me that was not what happened when we met this time, which is my now, when we were the same now for the other you who perceives this now as your past even though this you will still have to experience that now as your future. It’s all quite simple when you think about it.”

  Critias thought he had the lynchpin on the issue, “If I’m already back, why would I need to go now?”

  The doctor reminded him, “You already went now and it was you that told me to send you. You told me what equipment you needed and you even had useful insights into how I accomplished it all. You’re about to watch me do it, which is how you were able to explain it to me after you already came back. If you will just relax and trust me, this will be entirely safe and nearly painless as you said so yourself.”

  Critias indulged the man, “So I go back in time to change history?”

  “Not at all,” the doctor patted Critias’ shoulder. “You were there already as a happened fact of our current history, only for this you, it still remains part of your future. Think of it as a wormhole with one end fixed in the past when you arrived there long ago, and for that reason alone, it will be possible for me to open this end here and now. The doorway has been traveling here for centuries since before you were even born. Think of it as your destiny, which it is.”

  Critias wanted to test the logic, “And if I don’t go now?”

  “You will willingly,” Kine assured him, “but for the sake of argument, I suppose we discover what happens when you actually do change the past and cause a paradox. You’re not going back to change history with a paradox because it is you going back now that is preventing one. We are only here now, because you were already there then. You see?”

  “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, doctor,” Critias told him honestly. “How do we know that my going back like this doesn’t cause the Outbreak in the first place?”

  Kine explained, “Because you won’t be going back that far. The infection has already ravaged the world in the time when you arrive.”

  Critias saw no use in arguing about things he could not understand. He was sure that Grand Marshal Wayne had sent him to Doctor Kine to cooperate and so that was what Critias would do. “When do I leave then? Do I have time to make preparations?”

  The doctor led Critias to the machine that would send him, “Everything you need will be there waiting for you. You step into here, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Critias climbed into the center of a confining focal point of flux generators then asked, “Why are things ready for me?”

  The doctor began typing commands into one of his computer interfaces, “I’ll start sending all of the equipment you require after you go so that it arrives before you. There is nothing to worry about; you already made it
home safely. All you need to do is enjoy the ride.”

  The selected machine was huge and intimidating for all its weighty complexity especially when Critias stood in the middle of it with all the comforts of being at the center of a circular firing squad. Mammoth superconducting magnets encased Critias within an extreme electromagnetic field. That field captured an infinitesimally small quasi-dimensional hole that had been on its way for centuries to arrive just in time for the doctor to bombard it with charged hydrogen atoms that he detonated with a fission laser. Atomic energy expanded the hole to the size of the encompassing field where Critias vanished in the whirlpool midst of it.

  Chapter 3: Dying Time

  When Critias awoke on his back, he stared upward at a dirty ceiling with a rusty pipe that ran across it. Underneath him was an inflatable mattress from a crash survival kit. The dim light came from a single florescent lamp upon a cargo crate, both of which had originated in his time. Upon glancing around, Critias counted a dozen more crates in stacks around that dank and cluttered cellar.

  “Swell,” Critias said as he sat up then rubbed his aching head. He had no idea where he was, when he was, or what he was supposed to be doing there. He examined the labels on the crates then thought aloud, “At least I have supplies.” The crate markings showed one contained weapons and another held his mechsuit. There were crates of science equipment he didn’t know how to use. In total, he had enough food and gear to survive for the time being.

  Something bumped above the wooden ceiling of his chamber that caused some dirt to fall. Critias moved quietly to the weapons crate then opened it to remove his teslaflux pistol, which he loaded with ammo. By the time that he had it ready, a trap door in the ceiling lifted open from above then a human figure dropped down through that hatch using a stack of crates to stand on. After the person quietly closed the hatch and then climbed off the boxes, they stepped into the cold light shed by the lamp.

  Critias saw that it was his android Carmen. So relieved, he asked her, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “You’re awake,” she said pleased. “You arrived unconscious and have been asleep for several hours. I was concerned you might have suffered some form of brain damage. I had some problems myself. The transposition temporarily traumatized the neorganic portions of my brain. The ride gave me such a headache.”

  He put his pistol down on a crate, “You were in bed the last time I saw you, which was incredible by the way. Now you’re here with me. I guess you have met that mad scientist Doctor Kine.”

  The insinuation wounded her in ways she never would have displayed before, “You thought I would abandon you?” With a depth of conviction that contained much in the way of hidden meaning, she said, “I had to follow you.”

  Her disappointment in his expectation was so apparent that it urged him to remedy her injury, “Actually, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be seeing right now than you. Can you tell me where we are?”

  Carmen smiled with adoration when he said he valued her company so highly then she took a handheld scanner from an open medical kit. She used the device to check his vital signs, “We’ve arrived at a period of history the scholars refer to as the Dying Time, about forty months after initial Outbreak. Infection is already systemically global. I estimate there are perhaps only one hundred thousand human beings still in existence, hiding out in various doomsday bunkers. Well over ninety percent of them will die within the next twelve months.”

  The name didn’t make much sense to Critias, “If nearly everyone is already a screaming cannibal, why do we call this the Dying Time?”

  Satisfied with the healthy results of her medical scan, she said, “I believe that the name came about in regard to the survival bottleneck that this stage of human extinction represents. About this time, those groups who still survive inside elaborately prepared doomsday bunkers have exhausted their stored supplies of fresh water or food, if not both. Though they remain secure within impregnable walls, they will soon die anyway from lack of sustenance and frequently from violent internal conflicts resulting from their social declension into barbarism. Obviously, many of these groups will venture out to try foraging new supplies, only to have the ghouls hunt them down for food or turn them. Their circumstances would be mortiferous enough to justify calling this the Dying Time even under the assumption that watchers are not real, for if they are a legitimate predatory threat, they will have to worry about those as well.”

  Critias was no expert on Earth history, but everyone in his time remembered King Louie as the reason humans still existed at all. He was the great savior of mankind, a man of myth and legend as much as flesh and bone. He thought it obvious that he should begin there, “Where does King Louie fit into this Dying Time?”

  “King Louie not only survives in this age, but expands his dominion,” Carmen told him as much as he already knew. “Every human being alive on the space stations and oceanic platforms are a descendant of his leadership. Records from his time are thin, but it’s certain that the other few major groups of successful survivors join up with him while the rest perish in the apocalypse becoming infected themselves or food for them. You can ask King Louie about all this yourself when we meet him; that’s why we’re here.”

  “Hard for me to believe that they can survive dirt-side with only primitive technology,” Critias reasoned his thoughts aloud. “Not when in our time the ghouls are still kicking our asses.”

  She pointed at a set of crates, “Their technology is about to become a lot less primitive after you accomplish our initiatory objective.”

  Critias gave his attention to her scientific equipment crates, “What is it we’re supposed to deliver to them?”

  Carmen explicated their prize cargo, “We have in our possession an unassembled Epsilon-R technical android. That is clearly the most valuable technology in our possession. Protecting it should be your highest priority. While they might be able to reverse engineer a lot of advancements from our other equipment and weapons, the android will already comprehend the scientific principles involved in their outright manufacture.”

  “That much makes sense,” he agreed. “I don’t think even all the space stations have their own Epsilon-R. So we assemble this super arrogant egg timer then drop him off at his new home with the great King Louie.”

  She cautioned him, “Assembling it would be unwise since the Epsilon-R is extremely capable intellectually, but nothing compared to me in hostile environments.” She bent down to pick up an old aluminum frying pan from among the junk that littered their shelter. While she held it out with one hand, Carmen punched a deep dent into the center with her other hand balled into a fist. “My skeleton is grade-five titanium and this is the Epsilon-R’s face.” She handed him the distorted frying pan. “The minimal combat stress tolerances of that model make it vulnerable to irreparable damage from even a minor impact to the head. Were we to activate it now, the infected may destroy it before you can make delivery.”

  “I see,” he understood, “so he can’t be used rough the way you can.”

  Carmen flashed passionate adoration at him in reference to the sexual pun, “That’s true.”

  He eyed her with returned suspicion that she behaved strangely. The company of a bi-polar combat android made him uneasy. She had always been obedient and mostly cooperative, but never genuinely affectionate and that made him nervous. For the time being, he thought about how they were going to move all the crates without a gunship to fly to their destination. Distance was a factor, so he asked, “Do you know where we are?”

  She did, “I arrived three days ago and began moving everything down here for safety as it arrived after me, including you. This location is rural farm country hundreds of kilometers south of the Chicago city where Colonel Walker will eventually build that reclamation center. King Louie’s survivors are in another metropolis to the west of here, about fifty kilometers.”

  Critias shook his head at that unpleasant description, unable to believe King L
ouie was not only surviving, but also doing it in a major city where the ghouls were always at their worst. He hoped aloud, “I don’t suppose we have a marshal gunship outside?”

  “No, but the world in this era is nothing at all like the one we are from, aside from the obvious fact that both have a major problem with all the irate infected. One of the first things you may notice is that some of the ghouls in this time are still wearing pieces of human clothing. In this period, the buildings, technology, and vehicles are still usually functional and in abundant supply. Three more centuries will have to pass before your ancestors’ civilization decays to the decrepit condition that we are familiar with.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Critias saw many advantages in having equipment everywhere that hadn’t rotted away to scrap. “That means that old fashioned Earth food still exists in cans like the stories tell. I always wanted to try some of that.”

  As Carmen moved close to him, she wore a peculiar new expression that seemed to say that she waited for him to say something important. “We have another four hours until sunrise,” she informed him. “Go make yourself comfortable and I’ll bring you the cans of food I already found in a building nearby when I was exploring this area.”

  She used a microwave flamer from the weapon crate to heat him a can of condensed chicken noodle soup. For dessert, she opened a cherry pie filling in syrup that she seemed to enjoy as much as Critias did, just by watching him.

  Critias met the dawn on the surface with Carmen by his side. The summer morning breeze was cool on his face with the visor open on his mechsuit. The land was flat in all directions with lots of tall grass intermixed with immature corn, soybeans, and wheat that grew wild.

  Carmen wore her usual blue flight-suit with an additional marshal’s pistol belt while she carried her bightstaff. She stood and let her violet hair feel the wind like cat’s whiskers as she asked, “The Earth is still so beautiful, isn’t it?”