“Not right now,” said the chronologist.
The light ballooned around them and the view of the Artemis began to fade. The doorway crisscrossed with lightning, the ship rocking back and forth as it barreled toward it.
“Where is she taking us?” Phoebe asked.
“To my office.”
Then they were gone, in a blinding flash followed by total darkness.
Liam felt a cold nothingness seeping into him and had a sense of traveling farther, this time, than ever before.
13
REGIONAL GALACTIC MANAGER’S OFFICE
8TH SECTOR—SPIRAL GALAXY 93—
GALACTIC SUPERCLUSTER 714
“Well,” said the chronologist, closing her version of the orange crystal. “That is a relief.”
“What is?” asked Liam, getting to his feet. He was covered in cold sweat, his head splitting with pain. He stumbled as he stood, and Phoebe caught him by the shoulder.
“I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d be able to transport you.” The chronologist studied the orange sphere as if she was reading it. “But it appears my theory was correct; your interaction with my chronometer has continued to alter your subatomic fingerprint since we last spoke. It’s affecting you, too,” she said, nodding to Phoebe. “Oh, sorry.” She pointed to Liam. “Can you give her your version of my crystal for a moment?”
Liam fished it out of his pocket and handed it to Phoebe. The two versions of the crystal started flashing in unison.
“Can you understand me now?”
Phoebe’s eyes widened. “Yeah.”
“Good. As I was saying, there was still some danger that trying to bring you here would tear you apart, but you seem to have developed a tolerance for it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that exposure to the timestream is making your subatomic particles behave, in very subtle ways, more like waves.”
“That doesn’t help,” said Liam.
The chronologist sighed. “You are starting to experience time differently. Have you been feeling all right?”
Liam shook his head. “Not really.” He turned to Phoebe, who looked nauseous. “You okay?”
“I think so.” She winced and handed him the crystal back, along with the watch, which had stopped blinking. “Where are we?”
“You are in my office,” said the chronologist.
Liam looked around and nearly screamed: they seemed to be standing on nothing, suspended in the center of a giant space shaped like an oval tipped up on its end. In all directions he could see out into the depths of space, except straight ahead, where a massive nebula shaped like an eye wafted and shimmered in purples and greens and blues. After a second, he was able to discern a sheen beneath their feet, a sort of crystal floor, or perhaps an energy field. This same slight reflection of light also indicated walls.
Around Liam, Phoebe, and the chronologist floated an uncountable number of luminous sparks all dancing in a slow spiral. The swarm of lights extended above and below as if, for them, the floor was not there.
And this was not the only room. To his left and right, this oval-shaped space was connected by narrow archways to more rooms of the same shape, curving out of sight, and each of them was filled with fields of glowing embers. In the nearest one, Liam saw another being similar to the chronologist—this one had a few more arms and was waving them around, which caused the points of light to move in great currents and folds.
“What is this place?” Phoebe asked, awestruck.
“The regional managers’ offices,” said the chronologist. “I know they appear connected, but they are actually each separated by hundreds of thousands of light-years. I am in charge of the sector that includes your home galaxy as well as approximately a half billion others.”
“What do you mean you’re in charge of it?”
“I help to compile the long count,” said the chronologist. “A complete record of what happens in this universe. We are its official observers and keepers.”
“Like, from the very beginning?”
“Yes, and from the end.”
“The end . . . ,” said Phoebe. “You know the future?”
“Well, future and past are a bit of a three-dimensional way of looking at things, but, to keep it in terms you would understand, that would be accurate.”
“And you also go around fixing problems like tears in the fabric of the universe and stuff,” said Liam.
“We mostly just watch and chronicle. Generally speaking, it is not our policy to intervene in the mechanics of the universe, except in cases when events may prove fatal to its entire existence.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if this universe collapses, we’ll all be out of a job. And also dead.”
“Aren’t you already dead? Back on Mars?” asked Phoebe.
“Ah, not yet.” The chronologist checked her version of the watch. “But I will be, very soon. In fact, I’m heading there right after this lunch break. Figured now was as good a time as any to get that data of yours, since apparently I will not be returning.”
“Time’s different for her,” said Liam. “What happened to us, back there? How did we end up on the Artemis?” He pictured the locked staterooms, all the people inside who had no idea of their fate, and those officers on the bridge, struggling to control the ship. Had they really been pulled through that doorway? “And how did you find us?”
“All excellent questions. I have some data here to analyze.” She waved her hand and the drifting lights swarmed out of the way. A map appeared around them, or something like a map. It hovered from just above the floor to just over their heads, three-dimensional, and yet Liam sensed that there was more to it; they’d seen a similar map in the chronologist’s observatory on Mars. Time, he thought now. The map also showed time. He could almost see it—but not quite.
The chronologist made a second waving motion, and a clear pedestal slid up from the transparent floor. A small black crystal reader sat atop it, as if it were floating in air. It looked just like the one Liam had found on Mars. The chronologist placed her version of the orange crystal into the curved depression and spun it. Streaks of light emanated from the crystal, and columns of scrolling data bloomed here and there in the map around them.
“Tell me what you remember before you ended up on that ship,” she said.
Liam explained about using the watch to see Phoebe’s timeline—this made the chronologist frown, but she didn’t interrupt—and then about the malfunction and the appearance of the doorway.
“Did the watch blink red?” the chronologist asked.
“Yeah.”
“And this door you went through was similar to the one that spaceship encountered.”
“A lot smaller, though.”
“And you say you traveled together? How did you accomplish this?”
“We kinda hugged,” said Phoebe.
The chronologist cocked her head.
“We tricked the watch into making a time field around both of us,” Liam added.
“The watch cannot be tricked. What is a hug?”
“It’s when you put your arms around each other, you know, like this?” Phoebe made a fake hug, her arms circling the air around Liam.
“Curious,” said the chronologist. She studied her crystal, and it glowed brighter, as if she was interacting with it in some way that Liam couldn’t perceive. Then she raised her arms and began to move them among the flittering embers. The sparks dipped and darted and whirled, creating a small space, and then a new light burned itself into existence between the chronologist’s thumb and the tiny finger protruding off it.
“What are you doing?” Liam asked, watching the light grow.
“I am adding an entry to the long count for ‘hug.’”
“You didn’t have that in there?” said Liam. “It’s a pretty important human thing.”
“Forgive me for saying this, but I am also currently creating an entry for ‘human.�
�� I will certainly add to it when I visit your system.”
“Do you have an entry for Telphon?” Phoebe asked.
“I did recently add one, yes.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“If it’s any consolation,” said the chronologist, “the entry on you two is quite long.”
“There’s an entry on us?” said Liam.
“Very much so,” said the chronologist. “Now, you say you employed this hug operation to use the watch—”
“It’s not an operation,” said Phoebe. “It’s just a hug.”
“I see.” She squeezed the little light again. “Participant in hug describes act as not an operation, just itself. You were saying?”
“Then we walked through the doorway,” said Liam. “We thought our bodies would still be on the cruiser, but the door seemed to transport us completely. Do you know what that was about?”
The chronologist finished blooming the ember of light and then, with a wave of her hand, ushered it off into the swarm overhead. “Remember how I told you that there was a weak spot in the fabric of space-time, near where we last met?”
“The one that made my two realities overlap?”
“You made your two realities overlap—the weak spot just provided the necessary conditions. Anyway, yes, that tear extends forward and backward through space-time. And this doorway you encountered is its cause. Well, technically it’s less of a doorway, more of a mathematical anomaly, a paradox held in multiple states that makes travel between universes possible. That ship you ended up on, the Artemis, ran into that very same door, many years before you did. And then you ran into it on your way back through time.”
“How could those two doorways be the same? Theirs was huge.”
“Remember, I told you it’s not exactly a door. I should have noticed it when we first met, but at the time I hadn’t even considered its possibility.”
“So does that mean the Artemis is now in a parallel universe somewhere?”
“If their ship was not destroyed by the transit, that is likely.”
“So why didn’t we end up in another universe, then, when we went through the door?” asked Phoebe.
“I believe you may have, briefly.”
“It did get really dark and cold,” said Liam. “And I thought I saw something, maybe like what the captain of the Artemis was looking at. A big ship, or a city.” The thought of it chilled him. “It seemed dead, though.”
“Indeed. I believe you initially transited the doorway; however, the interaction between it and the time field that my watch creates resulted in a malfunction that, in essence, spit you back out. When this happened, the watch found the Artemis as the safest place to put you. Again, the watch has many advanced features for protecting itself.”
“It thought it was safe to put us thirty years in the past?” said Phoebe.
“That is extremely close by, all things considered.”
“Last time we met,” said Liam, “you said that weak spots in the universe could cause realities to start collapsing.”
“Yes, and in the millennia since, I have—”
“Wait, hold on,” said Liam. “We met, like, yesterday.”
“For you, yes, but I’ve been extremely busy with our Inquiry. We have since confirmed the presence of these anomalous supernovas, like the one you described. At first we did not know what connected them, but we have recently discovered the bigger problem, which is the appearance of these doorways.”
“How many are there?”
“We have found evidence of six around the universe, including the one you encountered. There have so far been eight infected stars, all of which have been located in close proximity to these doorways, most of them near the one in my sector.”
“Does that mean the Drove are the ones who made the doors? And they’re using them to come to this universe and blow up stars?”
“That seems the most probable answer. The problem is, every time a door is activated, the tear in space-time around it gets worse.”
“So there might be one of those paradox cascades you were talking about?”
“Yes, the probability of this universe collapsing on itself and the others around it is increasing rapidly.”
“Does every star they pick put a group of people in danger?” asked Phoebe. “Like the sun did?”
“One other species was wiped out, that we know of,” said the chronologist, “but if you’re asking whether the Drove are targeting living beings, there is no evidence of that.”
“Then why are they blowing up these stars?”
“That is the next question in our inquiry.”
“Why don’t you just go through that doorway and find out?”
“It’s curious,” said the chronologist. “Our four-dimensionality makes us so fully bound to this universe that we cannot in fact leave it. You two have traveled farther than I have, in that regard. Higher levels of sentience do have their limitations.”
“But you—you’re trying to stop this from happening, right?” said Liam. “This isn’t, like, how the universe is supposed to end?”
“Correct. Up until recently, the most probable end of this universe was many trillions of years from now.”
“Have you been there?” asked Phoebe. “To the end?”
“Of course.”
“What is it like?”
“It was very dark, and very quiet.”
“And what about after that?”
“After what?”
“After the end. Of the universe.”
“Well, surely we don’t know.”
“But you know everything about the universe.”
“We know a lot, but as I said we are still part of this universe; therefore while we can travel through time, we cannot travel outside it, nor before or after it.”
“Didn’t you say words like before and after are three-dimensional words?” asked Liam.
The chronologist made a long sound, like a lonely breeze. “I am trying to speak your language. Time and space are intertwined. If there is no more universe, there is no more time. This, anyway, is our theory. No being can know everything, or they would cease to be.
“That said, we experience time the same as you experience the three dimensions of height, width, and depth. You can move in them, measure them, manipulate them. You can see the length of something. I can also see the time of it. And this perception has allowed us to craft technology for moving in time, just as you’ve built ships for moving through space.”
“We sort of move through time,” said Phoebe. “Seconds and days and years are passing.”
“Yes, but you only experience it through its effect on the other three dimensions. I experience time as a dimension itself. I am aware of my entire life at any moment, including my death.”
“That must suck,” said Liam.
“It has always been known, therefore it has never troubled me.”
“You’re okay with that?” said Phoebe. “With dying?”
“Well, these things happen,” said the chronologist. “Have happened and will be happening, at every moment of this universe. Every birth and death is a part of its intricate fabric, vital to the flow of energy and the long count. To take away a death is to deprive the universe of its function.”
“Which is?”
“To be what it is.”
“And that is?”
“This.” The chronologist motioned to the orbiting sparks, which fluttered in response. “This universe. All of it. Does it need to be any more than that?”
“I guess not,” said Phoebe.
“One of the unfortunate things about a life lived in only three dimensions is that you do not know how or when you are going to die. You’d be surprised how much easier things are, knowing how long you have and what part you play.”
“But if you know about your death,” said Liam, “why didn’t you know about the Drove all along? They’re the ones that kill you.”
“My experience isn’t fully f
ormed until I actually get there. No doubt you noticed that when you are traveling with the watch, you do not have the full experience of being in the future or past. Sounds, textures, the detail and intensity of things, it is all at a distance.”
“I did notice that.”
“That’s because those are three-dimensional details. You have to be in a moment in all four dimensions to fully know it. So while I may be able to perceive my future, I have yet to experience it. I am still a being made of matter and bound to this universe. I cannot change those fundamental laws.”
“So you’re solid, like a thing, like we are,” said Phoebe. “You were born and stuff.”
“I was. Nearly thirteen billion years ago, along with the first wave of stars in this universe.”
“You’re thirteen billion years old?” said Phoebe.
“More like a billion and a half.”
“I don’t— You know what? Never mind.”
“But why not go there and take a look?” said Liam.
“Go where?”
“To when you die. You could see what happens, or even prevent it.”
“That is possible, but it is not advisable.”
“Why not? Because it will it cause a paradox or something?”
“It’s more of a wellness thing,” said the chronologist. “Some of my colleagues have tried what you are describing: go see how you die, then change things to stop it, but then you just have a new death to go prevent, and on and on. It’s not a great way to live. Better to be a part of your moment. And in my case, why would I change it? You have, after all, brought me the very data I am going to get, as well as information about the Drove. If I don’t go and die, you can’t find my crystal. None of this happens, and I’d say this sequence of events is turning out pretty promising just as it is.”
“But there might still be a way to—”
The chronologist made a sharp hissing sound. “I understand that this concept scares you, but you must accept that this is how we see it. When we say, These things happen, we are expressing our wonder and appreciation for the universe as it unfolds, the causes and effects, no matter how large or small. Our ability to experience time only makes this more profound. And so, as a state of being, we prefer what happens to what could have happened.”
The Oceans between Stars Page 19