by Ike Hamill
“Yeah, I can try,” I say. I take a deep breath and exhale the smell of the ocean. I exhale the bright sunlight. I exhale the feel of the rocks beneath my shoes.
“Wait!” the chimp says. “Don’t do that. Not here.”
“Oh,” Vanessa says to the chimp. “You do talk.”
I don’t think she’s caught up with what I’ve already realized—the voice that came out of that chimp was Arthur’s.
“What are you doing?” I ask the chimp.
“Living,” he says. “Waiting.”
“But why? Why are you… like that?” I gesture towards his chimp-ness. Vanessa is leaning forward, peering at him. I think she has caught up now.
“How exactly would you have me?” Arthur asks. “Should I be on the run forever, like Benjamin? No. I would rather blow up that human form and let the bears think me dead.”
It takes me a second, but from the context I figure out that Benjamin must be the original black bear.
My eyes keep moving over this half-bald chimp. Even old and wrinkled, chimps are pretty imposing. Their muscles are meant for pure strength. There’s not much fine motor control implied by them, merely the ability to break and smash. I can’t find my brother in that form. The illusion only happens when he speaks. His voice is mangled a little by that odd mouth, but it’s unmistakable.
“What do you want?” Arthur asks. “You’re not even supposed to be on this planet. If you’re spotted it will only bring unwanted attention to me.”
“The bears don’t come near here,” Vanessa says. She scans the horizon. “They’re terrified of this place.”
Arthur doesn’t answer.
“I want to know about the simulation,” I say. “How did you create it? Is it a machine somewhere? How can I get to it?”
“It’s not one machine, it’s a network of machines. And it’s useless now.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because of what you did,” he says. He points one of those crooked, thick fingers at me. A chimp’s fingernail is like a tool. It’s meant for serious business. “When you shut down InAeturnum, you collapsed the potential. That machine relied on the delta between inter-dimensional variations. But from the moment the machine was activated, that relationship became symbiotic. Without the machine, the potential was lost. You invented determinism. There is no simulation anymore, only what will happen.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say.
“Do you believe that you have a past? Do you believe that a series of events got you to where you are right now?”
“Of course,” I say.
“Same thing.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I say.
The chimp raises his giant hands and lets them fall. He shakes his head and blinks his huge brown eyes. “You’ve learned to twist time, right? You’ve learned that trick somewhere?”
“I suppose.”
“Did you ever bother to go back twenty-thousand years or so to get a look at your ancestors?”
“No,” I say.
“Of course not. I bet you have a pretty clear idea of what they looked like and how they lived.”
I haven’t really thought about it much, but I do have a notion. Long ago humans hadn’t yet formed communities and societies. There were probably loose bands of hunters and gatherers. They probably followed herds of prey and slept in the trees. I’m guessing at this. I haven’t studied it. Actually, now that I think about it, my ancestors were probably a lot like chimps back then.
“Before the ice melted and the water swept everything away, humans had a society so complex that you wouldn’t recognize it. They had technology far beyond anything you could imagine.”
“There would be evidence,” I say.
He nods. “You’re right. Probably not the little day to day things, but maybe great big structures. The big monuments would survive even after the glaciers melted and sea rose. You’ve probably seen one or two of them around. But long after their satellites fell from the sky and their monuments had been raided and plundered, would you be able to really understand how advanced they were?”
I don’t have an answer. Then again, I don’t know what the point is.
“What’s your point?”
“People think linearly. I’ve been guilty of it. We see the progress we’ve made and we want to extrapolate that line. Anything before was simpler. Anything after will be more complex. But sometimes the line of progress takes a sharp turn.”
“What does that have to do with determinism?”
“Everything,” Arthur says. “Everything.”
There are no answers anymore. Questions just lead to confusion. I’m suddenly confused about why I even came here. Why did I bother to seek out my brother?
Thankfully, Vanessa remembers the reason. “The simulator—how do we access it?”
“I told you, it’s useless.”
“Then you won’t mind if we use it.”
Arthur shakes his chimp head and looks away. He seems to be considering the dark shape that looms under the surface of the ocean. “The only access point is in Australia. It’s at the ProNav office.”
Vanessa looks at me. I nod.
“You’ve already got credentials,” he says. “Do you know where the executive office is?”
I shake my head. I know that it’s in the “blue carpet” area. When I was working there, none of us were allowed in the blue carpet area. Arthur gives us quick directions.
“I can get us to the conference room,” I say. I start to breathe out the ocean air and the warm sunshine.
“Don’t do that here,” Arthur says. For an instant, he flashes his huge chimp teeth. “Go past that rock if you’re going to do that. It draws in the sea serpents.”
Arthur doesn’t look to the tentacled thing just off the short, he looks towards the deeper water. I get the idea that there’s something even bigger and scarier out there. That’s a chilling thought.
“Does Robert know you’re here?” I ask.
“Don’t tell him,” Arthur says. “I’ll get in touch with him when the time is right.”
“He knows you’re not dead.”
Arthur works his chimp tongue over his chimp lips. His eyes flash white as they dart around, looking for something solid to land on. “No worries,” he says to himself. “No worries.”
Vanessa touches my arm and we retreat. We walk the length of the rocks and then start to climb down to where they give way to sand. Vanessa scans the breaking waves.
“I don’t see it,” she says.
I don’t either. The big creature is gone. I hope we’re far enough away from the deep water. I’m going to create a fold right here, regardless of the sea serpents. I don’t want to spend any more time in reach of the tentacles.
As I relax and breathe away reality, I see the golden glow that marks the spot. I take Vanessa’s hand and walk forward towards it.
Somewhere in the distance, beyond the narrow space that I care about, I hear water splash as something breaches the surface.
Vanessa whispers in my ear. “Hurry.”
Chapter Forty-Four
* Forecast *
THE OFFICES ARE DARK. Overhead, only one out of every five lights is on. Everything is quiet. The place is as solemn as a graveyard at midnight. I keep my grip on Vanessa’s hand as I lead the way through the cubicles. We arrive at the door to the blue carpet area having not seen a single soul.
I wait and listen for a second.
“He said to go down the hall, take a right, and then left at the copier,” she says.
I nod. I remember. I wish I knew why I was so hesitant to go.
Vanessa gives my hand a squeeze and we continue forward.
There’s no big room, or massive desk for the thing. Honestly, I’ve had more impressive-looking computers on the kitchen table at my apartment. It’s just a tiny box, hooked up to a monitor. A keyboard and mouse sit on a platform below the monitor. Vanessa ducks into one of the offices and comes back dragging a cou
ple of chairs so we’ll have a place to sit.
“Do you know how to run it?” she asks.
I’m wiggling the mouse and hitting buttons, trying to wake the thing up. Finally, I realize that the monitor is shut off. When I find the power switch, the screen fades in to show us a pattern of pretty blue swirls. A box in the middle of the screen says “Authentication Required.” No amount of clicking or typing makes the box go away. I’m about to give up when I see the little tray on the machine. Vanessa has made the same realization. She finds a set of slides in the drawer under the machine and a little device to prick my finger. It’s a painful way to prove my identity.
I jab myself, squeeze a drop of blood onto the slide, and put the slide on the tray.
The screen changes immediately.
A diagonal line bisects the screen. Its width fluctuates. Moving along its length with the cursor, I realize that the line marches through time. The yellow dot in the upper-left corner marks today. As I pause on the line, a little date pops up to let me know where I’m pointing.
When I click on the line, a series of numbers jump out. Letter designations are supposed to give them meaning, I suppose. I don’t know what any of it means. I’m afraid this simulation is going to be useless to me. I’m starting to lose hope when I double-click a fat part of the line. The line curls into a circle and the circle expands into a sphere. Colors develop and we see the continents and clouds of a stationary blue planet. I realize that I can control the viewpoint with the keyboard and mouse. I can fly through this static picture of the world. As I dive closer to the surface, the detail expands. I can sweep out to see the whole world, or fly down until I’m at the perspective of an ant.
“When is that?” Vanessa asks.
I’ve zoomed in to a man, mid-stride on a city sidewalk. My geography isn’t great, but I think this is a city in China.
“Twenty years from now, I think. I didn’t pay close attention to the date.”
Out of curiosity, I hit escape. We’re back to the timeline. This time I’m more careful. I choose a particular day, ten years from now, and I zoom in on my own apartment. The viewpoint sweeps through the door and up the steps. Vanessa and I are mid-lunch in the little nook.
“We look happy,” she says.
I was thinking that we look old. I don’t say so out loud. I recognize the shirt that I’m wearing in the simulation. It’s hard to believe I’ll be wearing the same shirt ten years from now.
“Can you roll it forward?” Vanessa asks.
It takes me a couple of tries, but I find a way to start playback. On the screen, I blink and chew. Vanessa turns the page in her book. She loves to read at the table. I never understood the notion of reading while the person you’re with is just sitting there. A little conversation seems more polite, but it gives Vanessa such joy to sit and read, it’s hard to be mad. It’s comforting to see we’re doing the same thing ten years from now, but it seems unrealistic.
“I don’t buy it,” I say, stopping the playback.
“Why?”
“We know the world is coming to an end. Why would we just be sitting there?”
“Maybe we know there’s nothing to do about it,” she says.
We’ll see. I exit the simulation again and roll the mouse forward.
“What are you looking for?”
I think I found it—there’s a spot about fifty years from now where the line gets very narrow. I go past there and double click. The Earth that expands is black.
“Is it night?” Vanessa asks.
“It would only be night on one side,” I say.
“Of course,” she says under he breath.
I move our view around the globe. There’s very little contrast between the land and ocean. It’s difficult to see what’s going on. I exit out and move forward another chunk of years. I expand the view again. This time, just by chance, I find a small bright spot and zoom in. The little circle grows bigger in the display and Vanessa reaches out towards it. She touches the edges of the land and studies it with her lips slightly parted.
“That’s the East Coast,” she says. “Look.”
I am looking, but I’m not sure what exactly she has keyed in on. I’m focused on what’s in the center of the light area. Near the shore, there’s a structure with sharp, straight edges. As I zoom closer, I see that it’s a concrete structure. Inside, is a grid of regularly spaced buildings.
“Try here,” Vanessa says. She’s pointing to a control at the bottom of the screen. I hadn’t noticed it before. There’s a scroll bar along the bottom that has the same width variation as the initial timeline. Scrolling the marker, we’re rolling back and forward through time. If I go back, I see that the concrete building was previously covered by a solid roof. As we move into the future, we can see tiny figures moving around and the construction of gardens and parks. The concrete area is a contained city. Clouds pass between us and the city and I can see a disturbance in the pattern. It’s clear, but there’s still some kind of barrier that protects the top of the place.
“Go in closer,” she says.
I oblige. I drop our view all the way down to eye-level and pan around the people walking through the square. These are the citizens of what I have to assume are Arthur’s “Grids.”
“Wait! Go over there. Right there,” Vanessa says, guiding my navigation. She has me focus in on a young woman. “Doesn’t that look like Francine?”
“I don’t know Francine,” I say.
“From Higg? She was at your party.”
“Oh. I didn’t know anyone’s name.”
“But doesn’t she look like her? Oh, I bet that’s her.”
“This could be very far in the future. Wouldn’t Francine be very old.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Who knows, right?”
I’ve been waving my cursor at the image of the woman. I realize that there’s a little box up near her head that appears whenever I pass over her eyes. I click on the box and a menu drops down. With a few more clicks, we’re tethered to the woman and our viewpoint is following her as she walks through the Grids. Time is moving very fast, like we’re watching the video at ten-times normal speed. The woman interacts with nobody. She moves through the crowd on a path that gets her to a stairway without bumping into anyone else or waiting. She climbs tirelessly and makes her way through a door to a small apartment. Once there, she moves to a chair and sits.
“Did you stop it?” Vanessa asks after the woman hasn’t moved for a minute.
“No. She’s still blinking, see?”
The woman is sitting still. It’s like she has turned off her body.
“This is creepy. It’s like we’re stalking this poor woman.”
“It’s just a simulation. Think of it as a movie.”
“I guess. This whole place is too clean. Did you see any litter, or dirt, or even a wastebasket.”
I shake my head. I’ve had enough of this. We came here to find out answers. We wanted to know why this reality was inevitable, and why everyone seemed to be accepting that all the possibilities of the universe had been collapsed. There had to be something in this simulation that would point us in the right direction.
I grabbed the control and swung it back to the left. The display was still tethered to the woman. We watched her moving backwards through her life. She worked behind some desk, ate alone, and sometimes sat in the park or went to the theater. She grew younger and younger and then we watched her back naked into a metal pod.
“It’s a people farm,” Vanessa says.
Her description is apt. I was going to compare it to a cheesy sci-fi movie, but her description is apt. Our tether with the Francine woman is broken.
“Maybe it was Francine, but a new one, you know? Maybe they grew a new Francine.”
I keep moving backwards and we roll back until the people farm is just a big empty room. Before that, the walls come down and we’re on a slab. Before that, the basement and sub-basement are built and excavated. I finally recogn
ize this place. It’s the construction site that I visited. I pause on a view of the equipment and materials scattered around the muddy clearing. If I searched hard enough, I would find myself in an orange hardhat, eaves-dropping on some meeting. Of course, that assumes that this simulation took me into account. I still don’t have any idea of how accurate this thing is.
“What’s before this?” Vanessa asks.
I roll the timeline backwards. I’ve gone too far—we see nothing but black. At first I’m thinking that I went back before the simulation began, but there’s more scroll bar to the left. If I go all the way to the beginning, we’re looking at a sidewalk next to a row of low, cheap houses.
“Is this the same place?” Vanessa asks.
I shrug. I don’t know. I didn’t move any of the controls to shift our position. I’ve only been messing with the time. I jump forward in chunks. We see a car parked next to the curb, then a starry night. We see people moving through their lives. Houses are torn down and replaced, other houses weather and then are re-painted. It’s a time-lapse view of any shitty suburb. The most interesting thing we see is the burned out hull of a house after a fire has ravaged it.
Then, with one click to the right, we see blackness. In a spot where the timeline is especially thin, there’s a long string of black. Somewhere to the right of that, we find the landscape scrubbed of everything. It’s just dirt and rocks, like the surface of a dead planet. Farther to the right, plants and trees come back and then are eventually replaced by the construction site.
“So everything was destroyed,” Vanessa says. “Arthur built the Grids on the graveyard of a destroyed planet.”
I nod, but I’m focused on finding the exact moment when everything went to black. I scroll back into the suburbs and scan carefully to the right. It takes a minute, but I eventually find the spot. The screen is bright blue and then the next screen is black. This is the Big Bang, so to speak.
I exit the simulation and go back to the timeline. I’ve figured out this interface now and I know how to bring up the menu. I finally find what I’m looking for. There’s a control that allows me to switch between the highest-probability timeline and all possible timelines. The selections are disabled. I guess I haven’t figured out the controls precisely.