by Al K. Line
"Seriously? What? You believe all that? It's impossible, it doesn't sound even remotely plausible. And what about him?" said Dale, pointing a finger at Hector.
Placing Blame
47 Years Future
"Well?" Dale knew the conversation was far from over.
"What about him?"
Dale couldn't believe she wasn't seeing the obvious. "If all that is true and the what? the Universe simply couldn't cope and got rid of the mass of confusion to timelines and reality itself, history and all that, then how come he's here?" Dale pointed a finger at Hector accusingly, although he was beginning to feel a little guilty about keeping the old guy tied to the chair for so long. Maybe they should untie him? It wasn't like he could do much to them, he was far too frail and weak.
Dale could see the cogs turning as Amanda ran through things in her head, trying to work her way up to the question.
Good luck with that, this is proper mind-bending stuff now.
"Okay, spill it Hector. How come you are here at all if what you said is true?"
Hector stared at them solemnly, as if what he was about to say could be any more monumental than what had already been said. "I am one of the last men on earth as I hold the burden on my weak shoulders. I am still here as it was me that brought about the end. My company provided the one element that nobody else could produce, the one thing that made the Hexads function. Without me none of it could have happened, so I guess I am left behind, for my sins," he admitted.
"And you tried to blame us!" shouted Dale. "It's you that is to blame. You did it." Dale jabbed a finger into the old man's bony chest. He recoiled like he had been shot.
"How dare you touch me!? Don't you know who I am? I'm the one trying to stop this. I'm the one trying to put things right. I'm the richest man in the world; I owned whole countries, entire continents. People did anything to own a Hexad. I could have crushed you like little bugs. And you dare to jab your finger at me!"
Dale had heard enough. "How's that working out for you old man? How are your billions doing? Nice being a despot is it? All that's gone, you said so yourself. You're to blame, not us. You. Let's go, this is getting ridiculous. My head is spinning so fast I think it's going to shoot right off my shoulders."
"Where to? But first I need to ask one more question anyway," said Amanda, staring around the well-appointed but fake room.
Dale sighed. "Fine, go ahead."
"Why this room? What's it all about?" She leaned forward eagerly — it had obviously been bugging her. Dale had totally forgotten about the strange room within a warehouse they found themselves in.
If he looks at us like we're idiots one more time I swear I'll—
"You don't know where we are, do you?"
Dale was getting a really bad feeling all of a sudden.
"I wouldn't have asked if I did," said Amanda.
Hector let out a raspy cough before saying, "This is the only safe place left. We're in The Factory. Where the Hexads were produced. This 'fake room,' as you call it, is the only safe place left. Nobody can find me here, it's deep, deep within the bowels of the institution. It's coated in the very material that allowed me to make the Hexads in the first place. Nobody can see into it. Only Laffer could come here, as he was told of the location. If anyone else tried to locate me they would never succeed."
"And what is this material that allowed the Hexads to actually work?" Dale wished he hadn't asked, the questions could go on for eternity.
"I wondered when we'd get to that," sneered Hector, "but that is something I will never tell. I cannot."
"Why not?" shouted an exasperated Amanda. "I thought you wanted this all to be over? What difference does it make now?"
"Just in case you two do succeed, or fail, it doesn't matter now to me, this was the last play of a man that won't live to see it either way, but just in case it makes a difference and leads to something even worse happening then I will never tell. And, finally, I am ashamed. I thought what I gave the world was worth the personal price I have paid. It was not. I was so very wrong. So wrong."
Amanda let him loose; the questions had to stop. It was no use, they had heard enough, and Hector seemed to be visibly shrinking before their eyes, getting weak from so much talking and from sitting for so long tied to the chair.
It was a bad idea. The second he was free he opened a drawer in his desk, pulled out a Hexad and just before he disappeared Dale caught sight of a zero flashing angrily on the domed top as a bony hand pressed down on it weakly. He was gone.
"Well, that cleared a lot of things up," said Amanda cheerily.
"Are you out of your mind!? Cleared things up? It's confusing as hell. If he was right, about all of that, then it means that once this whole mess is over, and hopefully put right, then we go back to living our lives but in ten years we have to pretend like we don't know what Hexads are, let the police have them, only for them to be stolen, and then send one back to us, keep one of them for ourselves, somehow allow the world to know about them and get the plans Online and—"
"Yes, yes, I know all that, I was here you know? But at least it will give us something to look forward to," said Amanda with a wink. "And at least we will have stopped it from happening."
"But we won't, will we? It will still have all happened. Whatever we do now we still have to let it all play out or none of this will have happened. Stands to reason. It all has to happen, there's no escaping it."
"Oh, you and your paradoxes. Look, let's just go and save the world, stop this from happening, and it will all turn out okay in the end."
Dale had to give it to her, she was always an optimist. It was what he loved about her and what he found infuriating at times. How the hell could they stop it if that meant that they had to do things in the future to ensure it happened just so they could go back and stop it? It made absolutely no sense.
Dale decided to simply save the world. It would be less confusing and anyway, if Amanda said it would turn out all right then he was sure it would.
He was an excellent liar, even to himself.
Nasty Surprises
47 Years Future
There was one Hexad; one jump remaining. Searching through the fake room they unearthed nothing of interest, neither of them expected to if they were honest, but it seemed like the right thing to do. They talked about where Hector might have gone, concluding that it didn't matter, he'd obviously given up, probably as he didn't have long left anyway.
Once the room was checked they decided that rather than use their remaining jump yet, they would take a look at the world they found themselves in, taking advantage of the fact that nobody was chasing them — no deranged giants, there were no lumps of flesh landing, and maybe they could have a little less confusion too. Maybe.
The story had been fantastical but it did make sense in a kind of perverse way, but it still left an awful lot unexplained: like what the elusive thing was that actually allowed Hexads to function, why they were to be in their garden anyway in the future — which also meant they wouldn't be able to move house for ten years even if they wanted to — and not to mention the question of why exactly people in the future that invented them hadn't done something equally messed-up themselves. They must have simply been a lot more intelligent, but not so intelligent that they managed to stop the chaos that was the result of Hexads becoming available to the populace. What would the far future be like if this happened? How could there be a future where Hexads were invented if there were no people any longer? Dale assumed that there simply had to be a way around it, as if they were never invented, well, none of this would be happening.
God, he hated time travel. There was no glamor, no fun to be had, just confusion compounded by more confusion.
Oh, and there was the matter of the strange Caretaker too, but that seemed pretty normal now in comparison to the day they'd had thus far.
They walked through the huge warehouse, silent in their socks, and made it to the far end, where the doors slid ope
n easily on well-greased and silent rollers, only to be greeted by another similar space. On and on it went, twisting and turning through corridors, rooms large and small, seemingly climbing ever upward through sloped floors or short groups of steps that led to who knew what, little of it making sense.
Finally, after endless rooms, some empty, others containing masses of equipment way too esoteric looking in nature, and other rooms they could only peer into through the glass, off limits without the correct means of unlocking them, they came to a door. Dale opened it, revealing a sight that would haunt him and Amanda for the rest of their lives, setting them firmly on a path that would see them do anything in the world they possibly could to ensure that such a future never came to pass.
There was no way Dale was going to let happen what had happened here. No wonder Hector had taken what remained of his life: if Dale had got his hands on him after what he'd just seen then being mangled into a pulpy mass of flesh as you hurtled through space and time would have seemed like a nice way to go in comparison.
What Price Freedom?
47 Years Future
"Dale?" said Amanda, staring at him through red-raw eyes full of questions and despair, tears still streaming down her face.
"Yes?"
"Why would he do that? How could he do that? I don't understand." She grabbed him tight, hugging him like he could take away the vision. He wished he could; he'd do anything to take the burden onto his shoulders and his alone. He couldn't.
"I don't know, I wish I did. But I promise you, look at me Amanda." Amanda lifted her head, hair soaked, and stared into the eyes of the only man she had ever loved. "I promise you that I will not let it happen. That will not happen. He was messed up. He kept it all there, as a reminder of what he did I guess. I don't know what he expected to happen, some kind of a miracle."
"What are we going to do Dale? I can't take this."
"I don't know honey, but we will stop it. We will."
They'd wandered around the vast complex, Amanda lost to a world of grief and confusion, Dale repeatedly saying they should go home, Amanda refusing until they'd seen everything. So they walked, and they walked, and the horror and the terrible nature of The Factory and Hexad production was revealed to them. On and on it went, through countless spaces as large as cathedrals, impossibly complex in nature, full of machinery alien to the pair, the cost of such an undertaking obviously astronomical. But what would be a few billion from the first few sales of Hexads compared to the amount that must have been earned once they were available to the masses and sold for a fraction of the cost, but still a price that would put people into debt for eternity?
The enterprise must have been huge, involving hundreds of thousands of people, but it had been done and it was easy to understand why.
What would you give if you could travel back and visit a lost one? Try to save a wife, husband, mother or father from death? What would you sacrifice if you could go back and save your infant if all it meant was that you picked up the phone a minute earlier and dialed for an ambulance? You'd give up your life, you would certainly give up every possession that you owned, probably your very soul. After all, you could change the past, right? Win the lottery, become a master criminal and know you would get away with it. Jump away before capture or simply appear and then disappear from a room containing jewels worth millions. Anything was possible and people would have done almost anything to have the chance.
Dale knew he would sell his own soul if it meant he could take back what they had seen, the 'secret' that made such things possible.
Eventually they had made it outside, the stark, sterile and clinical lab interiors replaced by more welcoming areas that were clearly where the public were allowed to come, eventually leading out into well-appointed open spaces full of benches, fountains and opulence displayed with lavish abandon to clearly wow those wondering if they could possibly afford a Hexad. The paved areas finally gave way to expansive parkland that spread out in all directions, interspersed with ancient monuments that Dale was convinced were too like the scenes they had wandered around at Machu Picchu to be anything but exactly where they were. Untold wealth could buy you anything it seemed, even humanity's most precious history.
The whole site was different to how Dale remembered it though: larger, and he didn't doubt for a moment that yes, men really did move mountains — the cost was probably negligible to Hector compared to how much he earned from his terrible Factory.
The cool, clear mountain air gave a little clarity, but it couldn't replace the nightmarish visions of the interior.
They sat at the base of a building built by people that were now lost, just like everyone else, and Amanda cried until there were no tears left.
How could Hector have accused them of such an atrocity? Was he blaming them for allowing him to be so greedy, to do such unspeakable things all in the name of wealth and power? There had to be answers somewhere, there simply had to be. Dale was going to find them and put a stop to it, he'd put a stop to it all.
Paradoxes, changing the past and the future, none of that meant anything anymore. It didn't matter that it seemed impossible — he'd do it anyway. Not for the billions that no longer existed, not for Hector, not for The Caretaker, not for the future people that had invented such devices in the first place. No, he'd do it for Amanda, the woman he loved.
Amanda held onto him tight, tears finally spent. Dale stared off into the distance, face hard, resolute.
He wearily pressed the 1 on the head of the Hexad. They vanished.
They were going home.
Time to Act
Present Day
Ten years had passed since the day they had first discovered the tin and life had become changed forever. A single day had altered them irrevocably. Nothing felt the same when they returned, and nothing had since. The spent Hexad was locked away securely — neither of them had looked at it even once.
Dale had thought the whole experience would fade, that he'd have to check on it every so often, just so he knew he hadn't gone mad and made the whole thing up and that really he was in a psych ward somewhere. But he didn't, neither of them did. It had happened all right, and they would both give anything to ensure it hadn't.
Gradually life had returned to a semblance of normality. They worked, they drank, they maintained the garden and eventually got serious and turned it into a stunning, tranquil oasis full of bright flowers that smelled delightful in the summer and chased away the demons with their purity. They fed the birds, mowed the lawn, grew vegetables and kept chickens. Generations of squirrels got the better of Dale until he finally gave up getting annoyed about it and just put out the bird feed on a more regular basis, happy to admire the garden as he did so. Dale promised to clean the car every weekend but never did, and they waited, waited for something terrible to happen, for reality to warp and something inexplicable to fall from the middle of a room and send their lives into turmoil once more.
It never happened.
So over the years they settled down into a normal life, never able to put the past behind them but carrying on regardless — what else could they do?
They kept the house, as they knew they had to, until finally the ten years were up. More. It had been ten years and three months. Each day they'd expected to get some kind of a signal, something to tell them that the deadline was up and they had to do what they had both been dreading, but it never came. The days just passed in a fog of anticipation and dread, stomachs tied in knots, guts churning with sickness at the thought of what their lives would be once they did what they knew they had to.
Dale was pushing forty now, Amanda had just had her birthday and took the milestone better than Dale had expected. They were different people now, truly feeling like adults.
Amanda walked into the kitchen and jumped as Dale popped the cork on the champagne.
"What's the occasion?" He could see it in her eyes: she knew.
"It's time. I can't stand this for another day. Time to ge
t pissed and talk nonsense then go out into the garden in the morning and dig up our future." Dale poured two glasses, the alcohol bubbling over the sides. He got a cloth and wiped it away, busying himself so Amanda could accept that their fate had arrived.
"Okay," was all she said.
Dale turned and looked into her eyes. "You sure honey? I don't want this either, but if we wait any longer I think I'm going to... I don't know, but I can't stand the waiting for one more day."
"Me either. I keep expecting something to happen, but it won't, not until we make it. So let's do it."
Amanda grabbed a glass, Dale did the same.
"Cheers."
"Cheers."
They got absolutely hammered.
D-Day
Present Day
Dale woke up to a splitting headache, a dry mouth, an urgent need to pee and a sickness in his stomach that had nothing to do with the alcohol consumed the night before. He opened an eye carefully, wary for stray beams of sunlight that would burn through his head and out the other side.
"Ah, water," he croaked, grabbing the glass gratefully from the bedside table. He gulped it greedily, water trickling down his chin, dripping onto the covers.
Amanda was gone, her place next to him cold, pillows plumped and arranged neatly. He smiled at the thought of how many times she'd had a go at him for not making the bed if he got up last — it must be quite a few by now as twenty years was a lot of time to be told off by your partner. More than twenty now, although the last ten felt like they'd been a dream, nothing but anticipation for a future that was to come yet had already happened thanks to the perverter of time that was the Hexad.
Dale got out of bed, dutifully plumped up his pillows and made the bed, had a pee, washed his face, brushed his teeth and then got dressed.
Amanda was in the kitchen. He half expected to find her in the garden, shovel in hand, digging up the border, a border that they hadn't touched in ten years for fear of unearthing something they knew they really didn't want to unearth, but had. They'd already done it hadn't they? That's what had made that single day so long ago actually happen. Dale cleared the thoughts from his mind — it never ended well, all that was to be gained from such mental gymnastics was a headache worse than the one he already had.