All The Frail Futures: A Science Fiction Box Set

by J Battle

  Debois rose to his feet from the couch. Max and Sarah remained seated, and were forced to look up him.

  He began to stroll backwards and forwards as he talked, using an elegantly pink fingernail to make his point.

  ‘It was in the spring of 2081 that they first arrived in Earth orbit; a single ship, small and unthreatening.

  ‘They were allowed to land and discussions began. They were friendly and gentle and charming. They offered an instant cure for most forms of cancer. A little something added to the water supply and there you were; millions of lives enhanced and saved.

  ‘Of course we were suspicious, we weren’t fools. But gift horse and all that; the additive was studied and taken apart and retro-engineered. For years we hesitated, then we bit the bullet as it were, and 95 % of all cancers were eradicated in the space of 5 years.

  ‘They were heroes after that, welcomed all over the world. We were so lucky with the timing then, because another dozen ships appeared and suddenly there were enough of them to go around.’

  He paused then, checking that he had their full attention.

  ‘Only a few years later, they had another present for us. So generous they were. The gift of extended life. Just another additive to the water and active, vigorous human life could be extended well into a second century, even a third century was possible.

  ‘Of course we checked it all out. We weren’t so suspicious by then, but we still weren’t fools. The will was there to accept it and the politicians wanted their names associated with this wonderful opportunity.

  ‘So it was added to the water supply, across the whole world. No-one wanted to be left out, dying young whilst the lucky ones outlived them two or three fold. So everyone drank the water and waited for the effects; long life and health and happiness.

  ‘Within a year people had started to die. Slowly at first, not so obviously as to cause alarm. But the deaths continued, the rate accelerating. In the second year 100 million people died. By the sixth year, the Earth’s population had been decimated, with 95% loss of life.

  ‘More and more Grazers arrived, and this time they brought their males. They were staying for good, and they had all the room they would need.

  ‘And these are the creatures you want to let loose on the Universe again?’

  He paused for applause, but there was none forthcoming.

  ‘Surely they’re not the same now. You saw them, they live in primitive half buried huts; they eat the grass on the ground. They have no tools. They’re no threat to anyone.’

  ‘You are naïve to even think that. There is only one possible solution and it’s not revenge for myself I‘m looking for, it’s safety for everyone else. You can’t trust them, you really can’t. Jack, you have to destroy them all. You have no other choice.’

  Jack turned to Max, who was frowning and thinking furiously.

  ‘Do you have anything to say on this?’

  Max puffed out his lips and ran his hands through his hair. He gave Sarah a worried look.

  ‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ he began.

  ‘I’m sure there’s a lot you don’t understand, dear.’ Added Debois, still on his feet.

  Max ignored him.

  ‘Numbered One was hidden here by Jack right?’

  ‘Yes, of course. In case no-one explained this to you, that is what we are doing, apparently. Retrieving the copies of himself that he hid many years ago.’

  ‘That’s the point I’m making. Number One was hidden here by Jack and at some stage later, he left. The Grazers then followed him across the universe, searching for him on every world they came across that was occupied by humanoid people.’

  ‘If it really helps you to say the obvious, be my guest.’

  ‘Give him a chance Debois,’ said Jack. ‘I think I know where he’s going.’

  ‘Pardon me.’

  ‘Jack left the earth in 2042 and the Grazers arrived in 2081. How did all that happen in 39 years?’

  ‘Good point, well made,’ replied Debois. ‘It’s a question that has occupied historians for thousands of years.’

  He turned to Jack.

  ‘Well. Jack, here is you opportunity to put that question to bed. Can you explain the impossible?’

  ‘You know I’m not one for explaining.’

  ‘I think we deserve the answer, before we agree to destroy this world. If you’re too embarrassed to admit to more culpability, remember you are amongst friends. Well, if not friends exactly, at least none of us are going to be too surprised at what you tell us.’

  ‘I think we are digressing from the situation at hand. I have a solution that doesn’t involve destroying a world, or causing another wave of invasions, or mean we have to carry another bunch of unnecessary passengers.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Jack made no reply. He took up his position at the front bulkhead and brought up the 3D display.

  ‘You’d better prepare for take-off.’

  ‘But…’ Debois stopped as Number Seven walked across the deck and ducked through the hatchway.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ asked Max.

  ‘They wanted Number One, but obviously they can’t have him. They’re certainly not getting me. So they’ll have to make do with Number Seven.

  Chapter 37

  The heavy green sea washed sluggardly against the shore, the viscous liquid clinging to the grainy beach as the sea rolled back.

  There were trees just above the waterline, hardly flourishing in the sharp, ammonia filled air.

  Jack was swimming in the ridiculously buoyant water at a speed far beyond the hopes of any Olympic swimmer, though he still trailed a long distance behind his companions. They reached the shoreline well before him, but they waited for him to catch them.

  He’d never really considered how long he’d been with them, it was decades at least. During that time, he’d learned their languages and made steadfast friends, despite his alien nature. The J-Yen didn’t judge; they took you at face value. So much so that even the idea of telling a lie never occurred to him; not now that he was so far away from his fellow humans.

  After a few years of enjoying himself with the surprisingly playful J-Yen, he was finally introduced to members of their parent race, the Wayru. They were few in number and rarely interacted with their adopted children, or any other race.

  But they did show an interest in Jack and allowed him to spend time in their exalted company.

  They were small, dark grey, seal like creatures, able to flash through the thick slow water at incredible speeds. Jack never forgot the first time he was allowed to swim with a small shoal of them, swimming together through the whole long winter night, the Wayru restricting their speed to match his.

  Despite the honour he felt at being allowed in their company, their large glistening eyes made him feel a little uncomfortable when they stared at him; seeming to see all of his potential for failure.

  So he was more than a little relieved when they turned from him and allowed him to return to his more comfortable friends, the J-Yen.

  Perhaps he would have been happy to spend the rest of his life with them, if his nature had been less restless. But, when the time came to end this time of indolence and friendship, he was happy to receive the invitation from the Wayru to act as witness to their momentous progression.

  After many thousands of years of preparation and consideration, the Wayru were finally ready. On a day soon to come, they would leave their world and travel to a specially built habitat orbiting close to their bright white sun. And Jack would accompany them.

  In fact, they had even asked him to join them to them in their next stage of existence; they were really that generous. But he was so far from being ready that it would have been a joke to accept. His humanity burned through his artificial body like a banner to frailty; there were too many things he still had to get wrong.

  So he declined the offer, but he rejoiced at their wonderful future.

  �
��You should be aware that there may be some minor temporal phenomena involved.’ One of the Y-yen had warned him.

  ‘I’ll be OK.’ Had been his automatic response.

  Gathered together on the edges of reefs, on shallow shorelines, in the centre of the great, world encircling sea, they were ready to leave.

  One by one, using no apparent technology, they mini flicked to the habitat, leaving nothing behind but a plop as the air filled the vacuum caused by their sudden absence.

  When it was his turn, Jack took a moment to wave to his many J-Yen friends, not really having a clear idea of what was about to happen.

  Then he found himself torn from one reality, and dumped into the wet green sea of another.

  The habitat was tiny by human standards, but then there were only a few hundred of the Wayru, and they wouldn’t be staying long.

  The habitat allowed its orbit around the sun to degrade, getting closer and closer until it was finally caught in the death grip of the star’s gravity, and plunged towards its fiery centre.

  Inside, Jack was surrounded by a protective field, as the water boiled all around him. The Wayru gathered near him, lifting their bodies out of the water, supported by the vigorous movements of their tails.

  Then they started to pop out of existence, leaving nothing but a flash of steam behind as they sublimed.

  For that there was their purpose, on this little world in its headlong rush to destruction. To slough off the physical and become energy, to leave the mundane behind and grasp magnificence, to claim their godhead.

  When the last one had gone, Jack found himself outside the habitat, safe in his invisible cocoon.

  Then he flashed way from the star and was deposited back in to the cool, lazily choppy waters of the J-Yen world, watched over by a panoply of glittering stars.

  He lay on his back for a moment, trying to grasp what he had witnessed. What sort of existence were the Wayru going to have now? Were they restricted in any way by time, distance, reality?

  He was considering all of the possibilities when he heard a splash nearby. He turned his attention to the large white J-Yen closing in on him.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, using the gestures appropriate for his position, reaching out to squeeze the newcomer.

  ‘Who are you? What are you?’ The words were accompanied by cold unfriendly squeezes.

  ‘Surely you know me?’ he asked, suddenly worried.

  As he asked the question, the stars caught his eye. There was something different about them. He asked his AI to scan them.

  The answer came back almost immediately.

  The sublimation event had sent him back 500 years, to a time when he was unknown to his dear future friends.

  Chapter 38

  Turquoise was barely a gleam in the distance as they raced towards the flicker point.

  Debois was dozing on his couch, and Max was exploring the re-expanded ship, so Jack found himself alone with Sarah.

  ‘What were you doing all those thousands of years?’ she asked, breaking a long silence.

  ‘I wasn’t sat on a beach all that time, if that’s what you’re thinking. I travelled to distant galaxies and saw and did things you couldn’t imagine.’

  ‘But you came back?’

  ‘Yes, I came back once every millennium. And each time I left again, I left another replicant behind me.’

  ‘But that’s ten times, isn’t it? There aren’t ten replicants.’

  ‘No, not now. Some of them didn’t quite work out, so I had to dispose of them.’

  Sarah looked as if she was going to make some comment about the quality of the replicants he did leave in place. In the end, she didn’t.

  ‘When you went back 500 hundred years, didn’t you want to change what had happened?’

  Jack delayed his response, wandering how much he should tell.

  ‘Of course I did,’ he began slowly. ‘But time has a built in resistance to paradox. I wanted to save my family, of course I did, but I couldn’t get close enough. It’s not physically possible to change something that directly affects you. If I had stopped them from being killed, everything that led directly from their deaths wouldn’t have happened, including my being sent back in time to interfere in the first place. Time doesn’t like that sort of thing, so it actively prevents it. ’

  Sarah looked as if she was about to hug him, so he continued quickly.

  ‘But I did get the chance to make some changes, for the better, that didn’t directly affect me personally.’

  ‘Oh, do tell us all about it,’ said Debois, sitting up on the couch.

  ‘How long have you been listening?’ asked Jack.

  ‘You know me, Jack. Nothing gets past me. Especially when it’s a megalomaniac, who is about to admit how he distorted history to suit his own ends.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that was the case. I think the changes I made gave a real benefit to the world.’

  ‘Go on, then. Tell what you did to make the world a better place.’

  ‘Yes, Jack. Please tell us,’ said Sarah, in a softer tone.

  ‘You remember the Napoleonic wars?’

  ‘Yes, he lost in the end, defeated by the British at Waterloo, I seem to remember.’

  ‘That’s how it worked out this time. But, the first time, in the reality I was born into, Napoleon won, and subjugated Britain and the rest of Western Europe to nearly 200 years of French rule. In fact, as an expert on me, you’ll be surprised to know that my original name was Jean Russelle.’

  ‘And how did you save the day, Jean?’ said Debois, overdoing the accent.

  ‘I have an avatar I can use when the need arises and I used it to persuade a couple of generals to separate off a significant portion of Napoleon’s forces, just before they reached Waterloo. That was enough to swing the battle in Britain’s favour.’

  ‘And that was the best thing to happen, for the world, for Britain to win, and expand its own empire? Were there not some colonial issues?’

  ‘Of course there were, but those issues pale beside the atrocities undertaken by the French Napoleonic Republic in their 2 century reign.’

  ‘Anything else you want to tell us?’

  ‘Well there was this guy; you won’t have heard of him now, but he was quite big in the original 20th century, for all the wrong reasons. His name was Adolf Hitler. He tried to conquer Europe and practiced genocide, causing the death of 6 million Jews.’

  ‘And why have we never heard of him?’

  ‘In the first World War, he was a messenger, a runner between the officers and the forward lines. I shot him as he returned, just yards from safety. His death meant that the national socialist party he would have led failed in the polls, lacking such a charismatic leader. This allowed the brilliant Heinrich Schmidt to renegotiate the Treaty of Versailles early in the 1930s and get foreign soldiers off German territory. There was never a second World War, or a Soviet Block, or the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.’

  ‘If I had the energy I would leap up and salute you for the hero you so obviously are. Is there anything else you’d like to get off your chest? Any other heroic deeds?’

  ‘Well, you’ve heard of Robin Hood, haven’t you?’

  Chapter 39

  Returning to human space from the Andromeda Nebula, Jack was more than a little displeased to see what had been happening during his latest absence.

  To avoid confusion, it should be explained that the numbers later given to distinguish his replicants were not entirely accurate, as he had actually made a total of ten.

  And now the original Numbers Two, Three and Four were causing more than their fair share of trouble as they fought their way across the Centauri Systems. Planets had been devastated or entirely destroyed, and something very disconcerting was happening to Centauri B; it really shouldn’t be that colour.

  Jack felt that it was due time to put a stop to all of this.

  He found the three of them waiting for him on a tiny, airless moon orbiting
an extravagantly exotic gas giant with multi- coloured atmospheric bands and a set of achingly beautiful rings.

  He landed close to them; careful to keep his distance. His body possessed the latest refinements in terms of defensive and offensive capabilities and he imagined that he could quite easily deal with one or two replicants. But three might be biting off a little too much.

  ‘This has to stop,’ he commanded.

  ‘Join us, Jack. We are only doing what you programmed us to do, to ensure you survival. Just in our own way. If you join us, no-one could stand against us. We could be gods. ‘

  ‘This has to stop,’ Jack repeated, not in the least swayed by Number Two’s argument.

  ‘We will never stop, Jack. You know that, for we are all the same. So join us, you are already one of us.’

  ‘If you won’t stop voluntarily, then I’ll have to stop you myself.’

  ‘Really, Jack. One against three. You know you would fail. We would not want to destroy our progenitor, but that will not slow us in the least.’

  Without any obvious signal, the three replicants separated and moved closer.

  Jack took a step back and tried to detect the frequency on which they were communicating. He could sense it, but he was blocked from accessing it.

  Without any warning, he flew directly upwards, away from the moon and towards the multi-coloured giant planet.

  There was hardly a pause before they followed him, firing plasma pulses that were easily deflected by his shields. As he powered toward the planet, he felt its gravity field grip him and begin to claw him to its breast.

  He didn’t resist, in fact he accelerated, rushing towards the great gaseous body with a fatal eagerness, feeling its terrifyingly potent magnetic field ripple across his body.

  The three replicants were kilometres behind, trying to track his tiny body against the backdrop of the pulsing world below, all their sensors impacted by the strength of the magnetic field, their communication capabilities disabled.

  Number Three didn’t have a chance; one second he was racing downwards, desperately searching for his prey, the next second, his prey found him. Number Three’s fields were in place so he turned to face his attacker, convinced that he was safe against any blow Jack was capable of inflicting.