“You are,” said Blue Alpha. “Before the attack, we received technical data from the Architect and instructions that we should begin construction immediately on this facility. The custodians would be placed in each of these locations. While it appears that time has stopped for us, it is actually moving at a greatly reduced rate. Watch the ducks.”
I concentrated on a duck that was in the process of taking off from the pond’s surface. Its body was almost completely out of the water, its wingtips just touching the surface, creating a ring of water. As I continued to stare, the ring expanded ever so slightly outward, as though I was watching in super slow motion.
“For the custodians,” Blue Alpha continued, “time is passing at a normal rate.”
“How much time?” Freuchen said.
“Mere hours since they entered,” was the robot’s reply.
“Weeks have passed here,” I said, shaking my head. “Astonishing.” I moved to the next door and pressed my face to the glass, my breath condensing against its cold surface.
A man, his back to me, stood on a deserted beach looking out at a cold gray ocean. Huge foam-tipped breakers poised to crash toward the sand and pebble-strewn beach. The sun was either setting or rising, I couldn’t tell, but it was barely visible behind a bank of fluffy white clouds. The man was dressed casually in a jacket and jeans, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. I couldn’t tell his age, but he had the beginnings of a bald spot visible on the crown of his head, his brown hair tussled by the sea breeze. He was as frozen as the woman beyond the other door.
“How is any of this possible?” Freuchen asked.
“I do not understand the intricacies of the physics, but I believe that it is a similar concept to how gears work. Our universe is the small gear of a vast trans-dimensional machine. These doorways are teeth on that gear and lead to other dimensions that are the equivalent of far larger gears, relatively speaking, of course. For us, time continues as normal, but on the other side of each of these doors, time to us appears to move incredibly slowly. The doorway is kept slightly out of phase with their reality, so it cannot be seen on that side until we want it to be.”
Chou and Albert were already at the third door. Freuchen and I crowded in next to them. Inside, we looked in on what I took to be a workshop. An old man stood at a metal workbench. He had to be in his seventies, maybe even older. He wore flannel pants and a woolen sweater. His hair was silver-gray and slicked back over his head, his age-spotted pate visible here and there. He had a narrow face, studious eyes highlighted by a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles that rested halfway down a narrow nose. Full but pale lips were surrounded by a neatly-trimmed beard and mustache that was either red like my hair or stained by nicotine, I couldn’t tell.
“He looks worried,” Albert said.
He did look worried. His brow was furrowed in either concentration or worry. It was hard to tell which. The bench was littered with circuit boards, computer equipment, and tools, as were the four other nearby benches. But the old man wasn’t concerned with any of these. His attention was completely focused on a framed photograph he held in his hand. It was a strange feeling, to be getting a glimpse into a time way ahead of the one I had left behind me. It was so personal, voyeuristic, yet it was so… mundane. So every day. So—
“Meredith!” Chou said sharply.
I jumped as though I’d been stuck with a pin. “What?”
“The photograph. Look at the photograph.” She stepped aside so I could get closer to the glass window.
The photo was in a plain ten-by-eight silver frame. A woman in her forties stood behind a podium. She had red curly hair that was shorter than mine, a more business-like style. Eight men and women stood around her, captured in that split second of jubilation cheering and smiling, some with an arm raised in an obvious gesture of celebration, others caught mid-applause. A young boy of maybe eight stood to her left, gazing up at her. Red, white, and blue balloons cascaded down from the ceiling where they had just been released.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “It’s the photograph Weidinger said the Adversary had implanted in his mind.”
“Or one very similar,” Freuchen said, turning to stare at me, then the photograph. “She is older, to be sure, but there is no doubt in my mind that she is you, Meredith.”
I spun around to face Blue Alpha and blurted out, “Who is he? Is he Candidate 1? Why does he have a photograph of me? You have to tell us.”
Blue Alpha repositioned herself behind the control panel. “I think those questions will be better answered in person.” She began to manipulate the switches on the console.
I stepped forward and placed both hands on the console. “No, you need to tell—”
Blue Alpha raised a single tentacle in an obvious “shut-the-hell-up” dismissal. I listened.
“I will need you all to step over to the right of the doorway, please,” she said.
We did as we were told.
“Thank you.”
Chou said, “You’re bringing him back, yes?”
“Yes,” Blue Alpha said, focused on the console and the computer screen above the doors.
“How?” Chou insisted, obviously fascinated by the whole experience.
“As I have said already, I do not understand the physics of how this works, but the analogy I used earlier—”
“Of the gears,” Albert said.
“Yes, of the gears; imagine we are simply meshing more intricately with the universe behind that door. Changing the size of the target universe to match our own so that they meld together and allow us to connect at the same speed of time.” She threw several switches at once. The ground reverberated with a low hum, which grew steadily louder. There was a hiss as loud as a sack full of cobras.
Then there was only silence.
The wheel on the door began to rotate. A creek of the hinges, the door opened, and the old man stepped through the doorway to our side, as if he’d simply been standing there all along.
His attention was fixed entirely on Blue Alpha. If he saw any of us standing off to the side, he gave no indication of it. In his right hand, he still carried the photograph of that other me he had been staring at so intently.
“Blue Alpha, you made it. Are you okay?” His voice was mellow, American west-coast, but he delivered his words with the professorial precision of someone who was used to being listened to.
“I did.”
He raised his right hand and looked at a wristwatch. “Twenty minutes over there. How long here?”
“A little more than a month,” Blue Alpha said.
The old man staggered momentarily, reached his empty hand out to steady himself on the control deck.
“The others?” he said after regaining his composure.
“I brought you back first.”
“We should begin transporting them back as quickly as possible.” He still had his back turned and hadn’t noticed us.
“Of course, Michael, but first, there are some people I’d you to meet.” Blue Alpha gesticulated with one appendage in our direction.
The man turned, jumped in surprise, and took several steps backward when he saw the five of us standing near the wall. “You let a SILAS unit in here? Are you insane?”
“It’s all right,” Blue Alpha said reassuringly, “I have checked his core system, and his programming is uncorrupted.”
The old man relaxed a little. “Who are you?” he demanded. His gaze moved over all of us, and for a moment, I imagined how we must look to him. A giant, a robot, a child, a woman dressed all in white, and me. We must look pretty damn odd. His eyes met mine, moved to Chou, then snapped back to my face. He inhaled an enormous gulp of air then exhaled it as a gasp of astonishment before taking two teetering steps toward me, adjusting his spectacles.
“My God,” the old man said, his voice hushed. “It… it can’t be. But it is, isn’t it?”
I looked at my companions, but they were all staring at me. I took a couple of steps closer t
o him. “I understand you probably think you know me,” I said, nodding at the photograph he held, “but I’m not—”
He covered the space between us in a couple of quick, long steps and snatched both my hands up with his own. His skin was calloused and warm, and he held my hands with a tenderness I had not felt in a very long time. He seemed unable to speak, words trying to escape his lips pulled back by the gravity of his emotion. Tears welled in his eyes and began to follow the curve of his age-spotted cheeks.
“Mother,” he said.
Twenty-Two
I laughed nervously and let go of the old and obviously crazy man’s hand. “Look, sir, I am absolutely not your mother. I know this all must be very confusing but—”
He thrust the photograph in front of my face, tapping the picture of the other me with a wrinkled index finger. “This is you, yes?”
“No. I suppose so. Kind of,” I stuttered.
“And this…” he tapped the picture of the little boy, “is me. This is the day you… my version of you, won the election for President of the United States.” He tapped the image of a tall, good looking man standing next to Photo-Me’s immediate left, his right hand pressed against my lower back.
“That’s my father.” He lowered the photo and wiped the tears from his eyes with a knuckle, composed himself, and continued. “I’d wondered whether I might meet someone that I knew—an alternate version of some old friend—but it was just a daydream. I never imagined this, never thought that I might find someone who meant so very much to me. It is a little overwhelming.”
“But I’m not really her,” I insisted. “My life took a very different route.”
“Of course. Of course,” he repeated, not unkindly. “The very fact that you are here means your life-paths diverged early on. My eyes see you, and I know you’re not her, but my heart… well, that is an entirely different matter altogether. But I know this: if whatever accident brought you here hadn’t denied you of a future, then you would have become her, a version of her, with all her strengths and tenacity and fire.”
“Perhaps you should sit down?” I suggested, cupping his elbow and nodding to the office chair next to the control panel.
“A good idea, yes.” He eased himself down. “Now, why don’t you introduce me to your companions?”
I did so, starting with Albert, Chou, Silas, and finally, Freuchen.
“Peter Freuchen… I believe I read a book of yours when I was a young man,” Michael said. “You were quite the adventurer.”
“Another time and another me,” said Freuchen, with his trademark grin.
“Michael,” I said, using the name I’d heard Blue Alpha use, “we are searching for a very specific person, and we think, hope, that you might be him.”
Chou interrupted, “We were all brought here at the brink of certain death, contacted by something we have come to call the Voice. The Voice referred to us in a very specific manner. Tell us, how did you come to be here?”
Michael paused, seeming to deflate. His shoulders slumped, and he placed his head into his hands as all the energy left his body at once. He took a few moments to himself, then sat upright again and said, “The end of the world brought me here. And yes, I was contacted by this same Voice that you refer to. I was offered a choice, remain and perish alongside everyone else on the planet, or be saved. I, of course, chose the latter.” He trailed off, his eyes dropping to stare at his feet.”
“And ven the Voice spoke, how did it refer to you?” Freuchen said.
“Ah!” Michael said, a sad smile creasing his lips. “Well, I can tell you that it knew intimate details of my life, from the nickname I was called in high school to where I met my wife.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
He thought for a moment. “Why yes, it referred to me as a Candidate. Candidate 1, to be exact. Is that the answer you were looking for?”
I smiled, exhaling a sigh of relief. A huge weight lifted from my shoulders as a light throbbing pain began to pulse behind my eyes. Finally!
Freuchen said, “Ve have already met one other person who came from a version of Earth ver all human life appeared to be destroyed. Earlier, you mentioned that the ‘end of the vurld’ brought you here. Did you mean that literally or figuratively?”
“Oh, I meant it quite literally, I can assure you.”
“What caused it?” Albert asked.
“Well that, young man, is one question that I can most certainly answer. It was me. I am the man responsible for the end of the world.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?” I said half-heartedly.
“Oh, I wish that I was, but no. I am the man responsible for—”
Chou interrupted us. “Perhaps it would be better to discuss this later. We have more pressing matters, after all.”
The message. Of course. I nodded. Nodding at my robot friend, I said, “When we first discovered Silas, he had been trapped by a rockfall. When we freed him, he gave me a message and told me to look for Candidate 1—you—and tell you something that we think is of great importance.”
Michael’s eyes glowed with an intense curiosity. “A message? From whom? And why me?”
“The message is from the entity we believe is also the Voice—Silas calls him the Architect.”
Michael said, “And the message…?”
“‘Candidate 13,’ that’s me,” I said, “‘humanity is in peril. The plan has been compromised by an external entity. This interference has introduced multiple patterns of disorder; the effects on the outcome have moved beyond predictability. Agents of chaos will be unleashed in an attempt to stop what I require of you. You must travel to the collector immediately and locate candidate 1; they must know that the field is collapsing, and the void follows behind.’”
“Hmmm,” said Michael but offered no more.
I watched him for a few long moments. “We’ve pretty much figured out what the first part of the message means, which is how we found you. And while we don’t know who or what the ‘external entity’ is, we’ve had a couple of run-ins with its ‘agents of chaos.’”
“We call it the Adversary,” Albert said chirpily.
Michael smiled back at him. “An appropriate name, if ever I heard one.”
Chou said, “The last line of the message, ‘the field is collapsing, and the void follows behind;’ does it mean anything to you?”
Michael leaned back in his chair and slowly shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said slowly. “Not a clue.”
I felt the air leave the room.
“Damn it all to hell,” Freuchen hissed.
Michael held up a hand. “While I am obviously not the person that line was meant for, I think I know who was.”
“What? Who?” I gasped.
Michael got to his feet, his knees popping loudly.
“Blue Alpha, I think it’s time we brought back Miko and Vihaan.”
Miko Tanaka was an astrophysicist. A keen mountaineer, she had been descending from the summit of Everest in 2037 when an enormous avalanche plucked her from the side of the mountain. As she was swept away, sure that she was a dead woman, the Voice contacted her and asked if she wanted to be saved. Miko was a slight woman in her early forties, delicate looking but with clearly defined muscles beneath the material of her blouse, and a grip that was vice-strong when we shook hands. Freuchen took to her instantly, sensing a kindred adventurer, and now, the two sat across from each other at the end of the table we were all gathered around in some kind of mess hall or cafeteria, sharing stories of each other’s adventures.
Vihaan Deshpande would have been one of several million victims of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan in 2028. He was in his early fifties, a tenured professor at the National Centre for Nanosciences and Nanotechnology, University of Mumbai. He seemed to be the most affected by his translocation to this version of Earth. Permanently sad eyes watched us from beneath heavy eyelids, and he rarely spoke unless questioned. Understandable, I realized as the
destruction of his beloved city was still so fresh in his mind, having had nowhere near the time to acclimate being pulled here. The rest of us had all become candidates by sheer bad luck, or at our own hand, the kinds of events and endings that you could put down to the vague statistical maybe’s that whatever hidden dice roll had been assigned to us by the universe, commonly known as bad luck. But for Vihaan, he had been a victim to mankind’s utter stupidity—the kind of stupidity that always seems to have to be paid by the blood of innocents.
“I hope this is to your liking,” Blue Alpha said as she reentered the room, carrying seven plastic plates in her tentacles. The plates were heaped with lettuce and spinach and cucumber and a few vegetables I didn’t recognize. “I’m afraid I had to cannibalize the cultured meat machine for parts several decades ago.”
“You have quite the green thumb… tentacle,” I said awkwardly, then tried to save my own embarrassment by asking, “Where did the vegetables come from?”
“I have maintained a greenhouse facility on level four on the off chance that the Architect’s plan would eventually come to fruition.” She paused, then added with her own hint of embarrassment, “But I must admit that I do find the art of growing and nurturing life, even life as simple as the plants you see before you, very satisfying.”
I smiled at her, took the knife and fork from the plate, and began to eat. The salad was delicious, and I told Blue Alpha so. She dipped in midair and rustled her tentacles in appreciation before disappearing into the kitchen only to reappear with glasses and two jugs of the most refreshing water I’d ever tasted to wash the food down. When we were done, she cleared the dishes away.
We took our chairs and formed a circle with them. Michael stood, his legs quivering a little as he rose and said, “Meredith, would you please tell Miko and Vihaan the story you told me?”
I repeated the whole story of how I’d gotten here along with how we’d found Silas and the strange message Silas had given to me and me alone. I mentioned nothing of Photo-me’s relationship to Michael. He could tell them that part if he wanted. Otherwise, it was none of their business.
A Memory of Mankind: (This Alien Earth Book 2) Page 21