by J. M. Preiss
"Well, for one I didn't bypass the login."
"Ok," Mason trailed off.
"I used my information," Jacob said.
"Maybe this isn't as far in the future as we expected," Mason said thoughtfully.
"Maybe. Let's see what," Jacob stopped talking as a program started running on its own. "I didn't do that."
A hologram sprang to life next to the mainframe. It was of a man with graying hair and glasses. He wore a lab coat and simple slacks. His face had a dower look on it.
"Lieutenant Brown and Captain Smith, I hope that you come across this message. The fact of the matter is, we don't know if you even survived transit. The beacon sent its burst of data and cut off as planned, but there was something odd that we noticed in the preliminaries. We thought nothing of it until the first pass was done on the data."
The hologram of Doctor Jenkins started to pace. "I don't know if civilization has survived that long. This message might even be in vain, but we have to try. Fact of the matter is, you went over one thousand years into the future. We don't know exactly what went wrong. Going over the math, everything checks out. The only thing that we can think of is that we were not precise enough."
"We sent out another team, but they were lost as well. They went even further into the future than you did. With that, we are shutting down Halcyon and reporting it as mission failed. I am sincerely sorry, but we knew this might happen."
The hologram winked out.
"Wait, that's it?" Mason guffawed.
"What was that all about?" Hector asked.
Jacob sighed and shook his head. He disengaged his helmet and ran his fingers through his hair. "That," he pointed at the mainframe, "was our death sentence."
"I don't understand," Hector said.
"We have no way of going home, Hector," Mason said. "We knew it might be a one-way trip, but this confirms it."
Another program started running on the mainframe. Another hologram sprang to life.
A man in a black cloak and hidden face stood before them.
"Ah, gentlemen, how pleasant to see you," the man said with a deep, resonant voice. "You have caused me a lot of trouble, but I must commend you on making it this far."
"Strange recording," mumbled Mason.
"Oh, Mr. Smith, I am not a recording. I assure you of that. I am very much real," the man said. "Now that I know who you exactly are, I must apologize for my earlier actions against you, but you were an unknown entity that needed to be eliminated. Knowing where you are from, I can see that you will actually be an asset."
Jacob narrowed his eyes. "And why would we want to help you?"
"Quite simple," the man said. "I can get you home."
Mason laughed. "I've heard better liars in a church."
The man held up his hands. "I am being totally honest, Mr. Smith. Of course, I highly recommend you take this offer."
"You don't intimidate me, buddy," Mason said.
"That is not my goal, but I must inform you that your only hope of leaving that facility alive is in my possession." The man made a motion.
Two men clad in full armor spun into the doorway and covered Mason, Jacob, and Hector with their pulse cannons.
"Uh, guys, we've got company," Hector said as he lowered his rifle to the ground.
Mason and Jacob spun around and raised their weapons.
"Please, gentlemen, lower your weapons and join me in Chicago." The hologram winked off.
Jacob cautiously lowered his rifle to the ground. Mason sloughed off the pulse cannon and tossed it onto the ground.
"Come with us," one of the men said.
Jacob put his hands on the top of his head and shrugged to Mason and Hector.
"Looks like we don't have a choice."
Mason grumbled while Hector fell into step behind Jacob.
Chapter XXXIII
Jacob, Mason, and Hector were lead to what Jacob remembered to be the barracks of the facility layout, but it didn't have any bunks in it. Instead of bunks, there was a set of stairs that led down to a platform. At the platform was a tram that was waiting for them.
"Get in and sit down," one of the armored men said.
Jacob didn't feel a reason to argue, so he did as ordered. Mason and Hector followed suit.
The tram shot off down the rail. The tunnel was dark, so the ride had nothing to look at for the first thirty minutes. The tunnel opened up into a cavern.
All over the walls of the cavern were lights and girder work. In neat rows, stacked on top of each other to the ceiling, were strange pod looking objects. Jacob guessed that there were tens of thousands by the time they reached the end of the cavern and entered another dark tunnel.
The tram continued to speed along for another thirty minutes until if slowed and entered a station. It came to stop at the platform where multiple armor-clad men were waiting. Jacob, Hector, and Mason were taken from the tram, secured using wrist binders, and marched to an elevator near the station.
The elevator shot up the shaft at a great speed. Mason and Jacob shared looks while Hector blanched at the speed with which the elevator appeared to be going.
Rising up the shaft, it entered a windowed tube, and the occupants were treated to the first view of Chicago.
The great city had seen better days. Buildings had collapsed and snow piled up to unknown heights. Tramlines were severed in multiple places. Out of all the buildings that could be seen, not even one was free of damage.
The elevator entered a normal shaft again and slowed to a stop a few moments later.
Hector was dumbfounded by what he had seen, and he needed a shove from one of the armored men to move forward out of the lift.
They were marched down gleaming halls of metal and composite materials to a grand door. It was ornately fashioned metal with emblems embossed on it. Jacob didn't recognize any, and when he looked to see if Mason did, Mason simply shook his head.
The doors slid open silently, and they were ushered into a room with giant windows that faced east and overlooked what was left of the once great city.
"Much time has passed," said the deep, resonant voice from behind a turned chair.
They stopped in front of the desk that was in the center of the room, and the chair spun around to reveal a man in a standard issue Reactionary Force suit.
He had close-cropped hair that was stark white. His face was wrinkled and rough from a life that had been hard. There was something about the face, but Jacob couldn't quite place it.
"I must say, that unit has come a long way, but it is a shadow of what he should be," the man said.
Jacob and Mason looked at each other. Jacob raised his eyebrow.
"Kill him," the man said and waved in Hector's direction.
"Wait, what?" Hector looked shocked.
One of the armored men raised his rifle and pulled the trigger. Hector slumped to the ground with a smoking hole in the back of his head, the shocked look forever frozen on his face.
"What do you think you're doing!" Mason shouted.
The man dismissed Mason's outrage. "While I am quite fond of how that one looked, there were so many defects."
"Why did you kill him? He was doing nothing to you," Jacob said calmly.
"I told you, I didn't like him," the man explained.
"You aren't making any sense," Jacob threw back.
"No?" The man stood up and walked over to the window.
"Project Halcyon," he began. "A valiant effort to stave off disaster, but it failed." He looked over his shoulder.
"That is the story that is passed down generation by generation here in this desolate landscape. Indeed, you did fail your mission, but that is obvious to you. What you don't realize is just how badly you have failed."
"Then explain it to us, you maniac," Mason growled.
The man barked out a laugh then narrowed his eyes. "Gladly." He paced in front of the large window.
"The story is true, you know. Halcyon was a mission to stave off disast
er. You see, Doctor Jenkins and the others had learned of a similar program to their own from the future. Halcyon was not their brainchild as they led everyone to believe. They were approached by an envoy of my benefactors, me to be precise, and taught how to build the facility. We trained them on the science and the math to allow them to make Halcyon operational. What we did not tell them was that Halcyon could only make a connection with this time when it was fully activated."
The man turned to face them. "They bungled it!" he shouted. "You were supposed to arrive here in Chicago along with information on the completion of the program."
"Why didn't you just look it up in a history book," Mason spat out.
"Ah, Mr. Smith, but we did," the man chided. "There is one interesting thing about history books though when you mess with time travel, they change. All of history, for that matter, changed with the introduction of Halcyon to your time period. Whole cities crumbled before my very eyes. Mass starvation, death on a global scale, and the nuclear winter that followed spoke volumes for how things changed. If only we had calculated for everything, disaster could have really been averted."
The man sighed and walked back to the chair. "History was altered to become a cosmic joke of what I remembered. I went to sleep one night," he raised his hands, "and when I awoke, everything had changed. That was over two hundred years ago."
Jacob and Mason gawked.
"You're lying," Mason managed. "There is no way you are over two hundred years old."
"No," said the man. "I suppose you wouldn't believe that would you."
He started to pace again. "I'm much older than two hundred years; let me assure you, Mr. Smith."
"How is that possible?" Jacob asked carefully.
"Now that is the right question. How is any of this possible is what you should be wondering though. How did the past change to make all of this for nothing? I suppose I can answer your simple question though. Perhaps it will allow you to fathom just what you have caused."
The man stopped and stared at Mason and Jacob. "Don't recognize me, do you? While a bit painful, I understand. I would have not been much more than concept by the time Halcyon was activated, so you never would have seen me."
"You are talking, but nothing you say is making any sense. Out with it already!" Mason yelled.
"Be calm, Mr. Smith," the man said. "There is no reason to get so worked up. Please, if you would be so kind, examine your friend that is lying on the ground."
Mason growled, but Jacob looked closely at Hector.
He was lying in a pool of blood that had spread out from the head wound. It had spread a good distance by now, but there was something odd about it. It wasn't coagulating. It dawned on Jacob.
"He isn't real," Jacob said in realization.
"Come now, Mr. Brown, that hurts," the man said while placing his hand over his heart. "He was very much real. At least, he was as real as anyone today is."
"What do you mean?" Jacob asked with a confused look on his face.
"Exactly what I say."
Jacob felt a chill run down his spine as he realized the implication.
"Autonomous Intelligence," he said.
"Autonomous Intelligence," the man echoed.
"What does AI have to do with this?" Mason asked.
"Mr. Smith, aren't you smarter than this? No matter," the man waved dismissively. "I shall explain."
Clearing his throat, he stopped pacing again. "Perhaps you will understand how I am so old as well. The AI program was not artificially enhanced by Halcyon. That one was really created in your time. I was the first of my kind. I was born into a world of wonder and awe."
Mason had a blank look on his face.
"Is it really so hard to believe, Mr. Smith? I assure you, it is all accurate, but I figure you need proof."
He raised up his shirt and pressed in on his chest. A panel recessed and slid up revealing a glowing power cell.
Mason's jaw dropped. Jacob stared silently. The man closed the panel and lowered his shirt.
"That's right, Mr. Smith. I am the first AI. The first of a generation of wonderful beings that would inherit the world from your nearsighted kind." He spat out the last words as if they were poison.
"You caused the war," he stabbed a finger at Jacob. "Your kind destroyed my world!"
Jacob shook his head. "You are making no sense."
"No? Then perhaps I should enlighten you some more." The man slapped his hand on the desk and a hologram popped up. It was of a strand of DNA.
"The eugenics program. It was the downfall of the human race. The overzealous caste that arose saw themselves as better than their peers. They were correct of course. They became a powerful faction in my world. We did not account for their ambition in your world however. They started the war by trying to capture Halcyon."
"No," Jacob said.
"Yes," the man shot back. "We did not anticipate just how many would rally to their cause. The world became fractured and global thermonuclear war resulted. Billions were lost in the fires of the stars that were born for instants and then vanished. Fusion devices peppered the landscape and rendered everything ashes. Even the last of the unmodded holdouts was not safe. The moon was shattered when the combined force of the eugenic faction came to bear on it."
"Humanity as you knew it no longer exists," the man said as he sighed. "When I awoke more than two hundred years ago into this desolate world, I was the only one left. All of humanity had retreated to underground caverns full of cryogenic units to sleep out the nuclear winter they had created in their lust for power."
"I set about my work," he said as he began pacing. "Fitting work at that. In my time, I was known as Adam, the first man created by the biblical God. Who better to create the new human race?"
"New human race?" Mason asked with a confused look on his face, the fire drained out of him.
"Precisely. Humanity had waned. They were but a glimmer of their previous self, huddled up in caverns awaiting their demise. Since the war occurred in your time, the AI program was never completed. I was truly alone and had to start from scratch, but I was successful."
"Successful with what?" Jacob asked this time.
"Giving birth to a new race of beings," Adam said. "I first created three intelligences; you know them as the Elders. They aided me in the creation of civilization. I then created the first progenitors of this new race. They set forth and tamed the wilderness, founding settlements. After the second wave of AIs were created, I decided it was time to reintroduce humanity to the equation, but this time would be different. This time they would be ruled by a caste capable of determining the right course of action and averting any future disaster because of their greed."
Adam pointed at the DNA strand. "I did not account for the eugenics program properly. They had intermingled with the surviving unmodded, and it was impossible to determine who had been tainted. Model societies ended up crumbling into putrid messes. I believe you have been to one. Marland is my biggest failure."
"Mark rose up and cast out the Elders and the AIs who sought for protect them from themselves. They have devolved into nothing more than whimpering idiots that fear Cago as they call it," Adam said as he sighed.
"Why are you telling us all of this?" Jacob asked.
"It's quite simple. You are going to fix it."
Jacob blinked.
"One of the unseen factors of travelling through the Halcyon Gate, that is what we called it, is that causality wraps around you and morphs into something we never predicted. It protects you from time itself. Rather than have history affect you retroactively, say make you disappear if you cause the death of your parents before you were born, it keeps you on a straight path. Time is a straight line, it always moves forward, but it is only observed as a straight line by the observer in that frame of reference," Adam explained.
"That is why I am still here despite the AI program never having occurred. This fact will allow you to alter the past and save the future," he said.
>
"And what if we refuse?" Mason asked.
"You act as if you have a choice, Mr. Smith. Let me assure you, the only choice you have is whether you die now or then."
"We'll do it," said Jacob.
"Ah, a brilliant man," Adam praised. "I see now why Doctor Jenkins chose you for the mission. Yes, you will do it."
Mason looked defeated. "What exactly are we doing?" he sighed.
"You will be traveling through the Halcyon Gate once more, but this time you will actually be going to the past. You will be traveling to the year two thousand and twenty. This is when the eugenics program was first created. Your mission will be to stop it from ever happening."
Lisa would never exist then, Jacob thought. How can I do this? He shook his head. It was this or death. Sorry, Lisa, he thought mournfully.
Closing his eyes in defeat, Jacob shook his head. "Mission accepted."
"Good," Adam said. "Let's begin."
Chapter XXXIV
The Halcyon Gate was much different from the one in Jacob's time. It was smaller and much more advanced.
"How did the Gate survive?" Jacob asked as they were marched into the room.
"The Halcyon Gate becomes independent of normal time once it is activated. Even if Chicago was completely destroyed, this building and the surrounding area would still exist in its state from when the Gate was first opened," Adam explained.
Lights on the gate flashed, and a low hum started to build in the room.
"Startup sequence initiated," boomed a voice. It was the same voice as the one from Repose.
"Primary safeties disengaged," said the smooth voice. "Targeting information for Halcyon Gate confirmed."
"Initiating Gate opening," said the high-pitched voice. "Five minutes to Gate activation."
Adam motioned for the restraints on Mason and Jacob to be removed. He handed them each a device that looked like a watch.
"These will allow you to return to this time when your mission is completed," he explained. "If you arrive before your mission is completed, you will die. If you do not complete your mission and come back, you will die. All choices lead to death save one. Complete the mission and I will allow you the choice of staying in this world or returning to your own time."