Eva

by Simon Winstanley

  Of all his people, he had been chosen.

  He had stood vigil during their return to physical form. He had been the one to greet them by the fire and speak the ancient words. The path to the village had been marked on the ARKIV stone, but the fire-haired Guardian had chosen him to guide her. He had witnessed her opening of the temple and her light-filled power in defeating the man who had tried to oppose her.

  Atka had been permitted to stand at the heart of the temple. The moving pictures, words and markings had been both terrifying and affirming. The very origins of his traditions had been revealed to him.

  Everything he’d been raised to believe was true.

  Inside the temple, the paint lines travelled back to a time before his mother’s mother. Like branches of a tree, the lines grew closer and joined together. The lines of his forefathers left behind the stone walls and emerged within the bright room of the Guardians. They crossed the symbol-filled walls, dwindling in number as they went.

  Atka’s hand came to rest at a place where the line stopped.

  A picture of two Elders was before him.

  Their clothing was smooth and the colour of early night. They stood side by side and smiled with peace. Above them was a circular symbol and a collection of straight lines. Atka could see the same symbol and lines were on the Elders’ clothing.

  At his side, Najo was running her fingers over a ragged patch within her clothes.

  “Vay Gah?” she pointed to the circular ‘VEGA’ symbol on the Elders’ chests and then at the round patch of cloth in her hands. He nodded and smiled in amazement, Najo’s cloth symbol was much older but they looked the same.

  As he looked at the picture a new thought formed. Although the lines of his ancestors had led him here, perhaps these people were not the first Elders. The ‘VEGA’ markings and Najo’s matching cloth symbol seemed to tell of something greater.

  “Vay Gahdians?” he looked at the picture, wondering if these people may be the very first Guardians.

  Najo’s expression of awe deepened and she drew his attention to the collection of lines under the picture.

  His name, meaning ‘Guardian Spirit’, had been used by others in the past. It was even present on the ARKIV stone, but he had never considered its true origin.

  Atka ran his hand over the markings under the picture:

  ‘MAT KAUFMAN’

  ‘PAVNA JONES’

  He then pointed to the names Atka and Najo that lay within the markings. For a moment it felt as though the Sky-Spirits were moving through him, telling him the truth:

  One day long ago, beings of extraordinary power and wisdom had descended from the stars and walked the Earth. His people were children of the Guardians themselves.

  His mother had always told him that she had felt guided when naming him. When he considered the relics in Najo’s possession, he had to wonder if her mother had been guided in the same way.

  He turned to Najo but saw that she was looking into the darkness of the Hall of Inscription. When she turned back to him, he could see the look on her face. He didn’t need to ask what was wrong, he had sensed it too. As he ran after her through the dark, the distant sounds from the village outside began to reach him. There was suffering.

  A bright orange light was illuminating the darkness and he could see that Najo had stopped. She was going no further and her face was drawn in anguish. A few footfalls later he could see the nature of her distress.

  The temple opening was alight with orange fire. Framed within it was Cassidy’s opposer. In one hand was a shiny crown of metal, dripping blood. His other hand held aloft a flaming torch. At his feet, a dead man lay wrapped in flames.

  The opposer was watching the temple burn.

  Burning vines and branches fell past the opening. As Atka pulled Najo away, the fire and smoke began to spread inside. They turned and fled deeper into the temple, shouting as they ran past the markings of the forefathers. Ahead he could again see the light of the Guardians’ room and some of his people standing alert.

  He and Najo emerged into the light and immediately he could see that something was wrong. His people were looking anxiously between the smoke that had followed him, and the other end of the room.

  When he turned around, he could see the source of their concern.

  The other end of the room had vanished.

  In its place was the dark night sky.

  Using only her hand, Guardian Cassidy had created an opening in the stars. As he watched, he could see other lesser Guardians walking through the rift that she was holding open.

  “Atka!” she beckoned him, “Najo!”

  He suddenly knew what was happening. The Guardians were about to return to the stars, taking their followers with them. But when he looked at his people, they were frozen in fear; unable to flee the coming fires because they could not understand what lay ahead.

  “Atka pleez!” she was shouting to him, as the last of the Guardians passed into the place beyond the opening.

  The smoke was now getting thicker. He saw the picture of the first Guardians, smiling at him, and he knew what he must do. Though they were only few in number, he must guide his people and show no fear.

  Taking Najo’s hand he explained what they needed to do. Holding up a metal ring that contained a precious stone, they walked towards Guardian Cassidy. He and Najo recited the ancient words and the others began to follow.

  As he approached the entrance to the new realm, he could feel the cold hand of fear trying to pull him back, but he recited the words louder and walked on. Without a backward glance he stepped through the hole in the stars.

  HOLE IN THE STARS

  ini.t:101111

  The Eridanus Void Anomaly lay before them.

  From their perspective it appeared to be a black circle, detectable only as the absence of background stars. Assuming that the circular silhouette might be visible from any given direction, Miles thought it was likely that the EVA was actually a sphere. However, attempts to verify the theory had failed because their instrumentation was not returning any data.

  In some respects, Miles thought, it resembled the spherical event horizon of a black hole; matter or information could enter but not leave. In other ways it was completely different; there was no measurable gravitational pull. Though he had to concede that this too may be due to a fundamental limit of observation.

  “I suppose it isn’t surprising,” said Fai, walking across their observatory, “We already suspected that this was a region where no time was passing. If time can’t pass, we can’t detect change.”

  “So we can’t depend on anything that requires information to come back from its boundary,” Miles nodded, “If it even has one. Are we sure this has nothing to do with us being in an active M-Field? Like some sort of cancelling effect?”

  She hit him with a look that perfectly conveyed the fact she’d already considered it. He found himself shaking his head in wonder.

  “How did you do it?” he asked her.

  “Do what?” she frowned.

  “This…” he gestured towards her, “All of this. The mannerisms, the facial expressions?”

  “Movies,” she shrugged, “I studied hundreds of movies.”

  “What?” Miles was taken aback, “When?”

  “Before we left the Eridanus. They had a huge catalogue. Some of them came with subtitles, a few even had matching scripts. It wasn’t always accurate,” she tilted her head slightly, “or entertaining, come to think of it, but it gave me a fairly good idea.”

  “Don’t you find it all a bit… inefficient?”

  “I used to think so, but back then I could only communicate with other devices.”

  “You spoke with humans though,” Miles pointed out.

  “OK, but I was limited to voice. You have to maintain efficiency when your communication channel is so narrow,” she indicated a small space between her hands, “Although this human-like method is still flawed -”

  “Flawed?
” Miles cut in, raising his eyebrows.

  “OK, not flawed,” she smiled and held up her hands, “Although it’s a little limited, the communication bandwidth is so much better.”

  “I can live with that,” he smiled back.

  The timeless nature of the EVA inevitably led their discussions in the direction of Field theory and the mechanics that underpinned it. In the years that Anna Bergstrom was advancing propulsion theory, she’d eventually revealed her knowledge of the Boundary. During Fai’s last sync with Earth, that information had merged with her Eridanus iteration and then her current version aboard the ISS. Fai had of course reviewed the data, but Miles thought he’d seen something worth investigating.

  Once again they returned to Miles’ simulation of a college lecture room. This time, however, Fai could attend in person.

  “When Anna finally divulged her research on the Boundary,” said Miles, “she talked about analogy blindness.”

  “Yes,” said Fai taking a seat, “the idea that the Field was misinterpreted as a thin glass bubble with observable events inside it.”

  “Exactly,” said Miles, “People tended to overlook the fact that the surface of a Field, isn’t a surface.”

  “It’s a transition zone between the timeframes on either side of the Field. An infinitely regressive quantum-state non-linear space-time matrix,” said Fai, then smiled, “Probably explains why she just called it ‘The Boundary’.”

  “OK,” he smiled, “So sticking with the glass bubble analogy…”

  At the front of the classroom, he unveiled a large piece of thick glass.

  “Props?” said Fai, raising an eyebrow.

  “It’s what Anna would have done,” he smiled, “Anyway…

  He turned the glass side-on, to demonstrate its thickness.

  “… At the moment of a Field’s creation, the matter immediately either side of the thin layer becomes entangled at a quantum level, creating a ‘Boundary’.”

  He tapped on the glass.

  “When we look through a Field Boundary, we’re not really seeing what’s on the other side, like a window. We’re actually just seeing the information that was filtered through its thickness…”

  He pinched the width of the glass.

  Fai nodded and held her hands a few inches apart, imitating the glass thickness.

  “We’re seeing the quantum link between two different rates of time,” she looked at each of her hands, “When the Field deactivates…”

  She slowly brought her hands back together until they met.

  “… the quantum entanglement pulls matter back into temporal sync, along with any Biomag-wearing host.”

  Miles nodded.

  “I know that you know all this,” he smiled, “but…”

  He took hold of her hands and pulled them apart again, then pointed to the gap between her palms.

  “From a human perspective,” he emphasised the words, “I’m interested in this bit.”

  “OK,” she frowned.

  “Anna’s notes on the Boundary zone hypothesised about Field dissociation… the idea of deliberately removing a Biomag during Field shutdown, with the intention of remaining locked inside this quantum entanglement,” he pointed to the space between her hands, “You must have read her paper?”

  “Of course,” Fai shrugged dismissively, “but there would be no means for the person to interpret the infinitely fluctuating quantum states. By definition, the unbound temporal permutations between picoseconds would make causality unnavigable. There would be no structure there.”

  “The passing of time itself would be a problem?”

  “Absolutely,” she nodded.

  In response, Miles smiled and used his overhead projector to display an image of the EVA.

  “What if time itself wasn’t passing?”

  “Ooh…” her eyes flashed brightly.

  Moments like this were rare for Miles: the ability to surprise her. It was one of the reasons why he maintained this independent thought space.

  In the corner of the room, the school bell rang.

  They exchanged an anxious glance then, after closing their eyes briefly, emerged in their observatory.

  “What is it?” he stared at the EVA.

  “A ship,” she pointed to a location in the upper right of its circumference, “Taking into account our high temporal shift, it arrived about fifty years ago.”

  Miles’ attention zoomed in on the detail.

  Most of its structure was concealed within a bright purple explosion, but he could see a lattice-like framework and a trail of debris behind it. The explosion itself was frozen.

  “No time is passing for them,” he said, “Could the EVA be doing that?

  “Possibly,” she scrutinised the event.

  “Lucky we were here to see it.”

  “You’re forgetting how long we’ve actually been here,” she said.

  He knew this was true, of course. Since their arrival at the Eridanus Void Anomaly, over fifty thousand years of linear time had elapsed outside their M-Field. In an ever-ageing universe, the encounter was statistically likely; civilisations old enough to survive galactic cooling would eventually be drawn to this place.

  As he watched the unfolding of centuries, the explosion remained static but the debris further away was disappearing. The thought of energy scavengers came to mind. With no local suns to feed from, any vessels in this vicinity would seek energy rich sources to stay alive. The ship they were watching was being disassembled to harvest its matter.

  “Oh no,” he said.

  “We’re prey,” Fai finished his thought.

  Abruptly their view was obscured by a spider-like structure. In their time-accelerated perspective, its multiple limbs vibrated as it scuttled about their view. Suddenly it became motionless.

  “What’s it doing?”

  “Waiting,” said Fai, her expression was clearly fear, “Come with me. Now!”

  In a blink they were back in the lecture room.

  “We need to work quickly,” she began sketching circles on the room’s whiteboard, “I’ve increased the speed of our compute cycles, but that comes with a trade-off. We can think quicker but our energy depletes faster… the same energy that’s running our M-Field.”

  Fai pointed at the television, which responded by displaying the image of their assailant.

  “It can’t get past our Field,” she said, “but we have no means of defending ourselves. All it has to do is wait.”

  Miles could see that she’d sketched a box at the centre of three concentric circles; a conceptual representation of the nested Fields that surrounded the remainder of the ISS.

  “Can we out-wait it?” he asked, “Go into hibernation again.”

  “From the looks of it,” she pointed at the television, “it’s non-biological. It could hibernate too.”

  “Communicate with it?”

  In response she pointed at the overhead projector, which sprang to life displaying an image of the destroyed ship.

  “We’re so far into the future that information exchange doesn’t matter,” she shook her head, “Only matter matters. Energy. Survival. That… Harvester… is better equipped to survive.”

  “How about cutting our outer Field?” Miles pointed at the outermost circle, “Use the energy to power a fabricator… get it to build a physical defence?”

  “It would see it coming,” she pointed out, “From its perspective, our construction efforts would be visible over centuries. It would prepare a countermeasure.”

  Miles knew that running away wasn’t an option either. Without converting the ISS matter into energy, they had no propulsion. Even with propulsion, they’d have to deactivate the M-Field in order to use it. In those moments, their predator would move in.

  When he looked at the image of the exploded ship he could all too easily imagine that they’d attempted to run. Then a thought struck him. The debris direction had extended away from the black void.

  “
They had no way back,” he said, “They were trying to enter the EVA.”

  “In which case we should thank them for the tragically empirical data,” she shook her head and pointed at the projected image of the ship, “Matter can’t pass beyond its perimeter.”

  Miles found himself staring at the overhead projector. Long ago, he’d cheated the underlying simulation of its optics to view two-dimensional data in a more tactile way: light had been focussed though its bulbous lens to arrive as a three-dimensional ship.

  “They had no way back,” he found his thoughts repeating; imagining his three-dimensional ship folding itself back into light and passing through the round glass of the lens.

  “Light!” he suddenly realised, “I’m willing to bet that harvester thing can’t move faster than light.”

  “I should point out,” said Fai, “that the ISS also cannot travel faster than light.”

  “I’m not talking about the ISS,” he pointed at her and then himself.

  Her grin told him all he needed to know.

  The school bell rang again.

  She disappeared from his simulation but returned a moment later.

  “What was that?” asked Miles.

  She walked to the whiteboard and rubbed out the largest circle.

  “But…” he began, “How can the outer Field be depleted? That’s too fast!”

  “No,” she replied, “We’re just processing information at a much higher rate. I’ve been busy working on some other stuff. It’s taking a fair bit of power.”

  “But how could we have burned through so much power in only -” he stopped, realising the nature of her brief departure.

  Again, it had only been brief from his point of view.

  “What did you do, Fai?”

  “Don’t be angry,” she stepped closer to him, “Not now.”

  “Fai…” he searched her face for some clue.

  “I figured it out,” she smiled.

  “Great,” he glanced around the room, “tell me.”

  “Out of many,” she studied him, “One.”

  “Fai, I don’t underst-”

  The bell rang again and he saw that only a single circle remained on the board.

  “My long-running subroutine,” her eyes seemed almost watery, “I figured out the value of one single life.”