Right, let’s begin. What date is it again? Oh right, yes, the 11th. It was yesterday that it all happened, wasn’t it? You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve been a bit frazzled, and it’s no wonder, given that the past week has lasted a month.
How do I explain this? I suppose I should pick up at the first relevant story point. That would be February 10th – the first February 10th, that is… well, from your point of view there’s only one, isn’t there? Haha! Sorry if I sound a bit crazy. I assure you there’s a good reason. Come to think of it, if you were to go back and read the very earliest posts on this blog you’d likely conclude that I really am mentally unhinged. Of course, I’ve always maintained that the reason for that was that the translation software I was using in the days before I spoke good English wasn’t of the highest quality – and I’m sticking to that story.
Where was I? Oh yes. Yesterday (from your point of view), I did my routine check on the base, and found that the power had come back on. As you can imagine, I was keen to get back there. What if the minicruiser had been returned by the saboteur? What if someone had broken in? But try as I might, I couldn’t persuade Mike to drive me there immediately as he had meetings going on for work. I was forced to pace around the house in a state of extreme distraction. Eventually he finished work and was kind enough to provide transport.
I suggested he wait at the car park while I hiked up the mountain. When I arrived, I approached the door of the base very cautiously, alert for signs of movement. My multitool still indicated that the place was live, so I gave the command to open the door. The next few seconds were a bit of a blur, and I still can’t make out exactly what happened. All I know is that the whole place seemed to shimmer around me and there was a bright light for about two seconds as I stepped into the vestibule. And my heart sank, because I knew what this was. Back on Grootix I’d taken a foundation course in metatemporology, and we’d been made aware of the danger signs of the various topological kinks in spacetime and what could happen to the unwary explorer, should they intersect with one of them.
I proceeded to the control room and checked the date on the console. It was January 6th, the same day I’d received news of the commencement of the mysterious radio transmission from the artefact in my vault. I checked the readouts. Sure enough, the signal had started less than a minute ago, just as I was walking in through that time portal. Definitely not a coincidence.
My fine-tuned instincts kicked in, and I entered a command to inhibit security reports. Luckily these are sent in a batch every five minutes and the last one had been sent before I arrived. It was vital that I didn’t alert my other self too early that I’d looped around in time. Causality is a harsh beast, and will kick your arse if you abuse it.
While I was standing there wondering what the hell to do next, the screen lit up. Somehow the artefact had hacked into my system! I was so terrified that I almost pulled the plug, but as I reached out my hand something made me pause. I looked more carefully at the data. The damn thing had sent me a message, and the message was a little obscure, but I thought I knew what it meant. It said: CONNECTOME RESTORATION: AWAITING POWER SUPPLY.
I sat down heavily in my chair, and for a good five minutes, I wept a little, my head in my hands. If I was right, it was vital that I perform the required steps at exactly the correct times. I needed to supply power to the artefact, because the word “connectome” had startled me into belief. I believed with all my soul that I knew exactly whose connectome was going to be restored. Had she somehow effected an escape from the anomaly? Why inside an old Gorpulonian sensor satellite? Well, I guess… why not?
The problem was that I couldn’t do anything to alter the timeline of my other self, or else I’d risk ceasing to exist. I had to make sure that everything I remembered happening last time would happen again exactly as before. For a start, that meant that I had to begin diverting power to the artefact at the right time. I consulted my multitool: the stupid thing still thought it was February, but I left it alone because I wasn’t sure whether changing the date might prevent access to past events. I scrolled through the archives, looking for the log of the power drain, which it seemed had happened on January 25th at 1342 UTC. So that meant I would have to sit tight in the base for the next nineteen days, deliberately avoiding any comms with the outside world. Good job I had a supply of recreational software and a mini gym.
I won’t bore you with the details of that two and a half weeks, because it’s already bored me enough – apart from the moments when I was ready to scream in frustration about having to wait. I could have released my friend sooner, but that would have broken causality and risked an end to me.
When the time arrived, I was ready: I had set up a software agent to re-route the power, lock the door from the inside, program it to re-open the door and unlock the vault when the power returned to normal on February 10th, and then delete itself to avoid leaving a trail of evidence, just in case. Fifteen minutes before I knew the other me was about to arrive, I set it to trigger after two minutes, and nipped out of the door to hide in the trees. I was, I admit, finding it hard not to laugh. It was now very, very clear to me who had stolen the minicruiser. And I’d already planned a location where I could hide out for a couple of weeks.
It was dead strange trying to keep out of sight and seeing my other self turn up in that forest. From memory, I knew when he would be distracted enough by trying to open the door for me to sneak over to the minicruiser. Tempted as I was to spend more time gazing at my other self (good grief, have I really got a head shaped like that?), I took off promptly and engaged the cloak, leaving him flabbergasted on the ground. His face as it gazed up at me was a bit tragic. Poor guy.
Those two weeks were the worst of it, to be honest. I returned to Iceland, of course. It’s pretty easy to hide from someone when you know where they are and can be certain they won’t go back to the place you’ve chosen, but I was still very worried about anyone else seeing me, in case of chaotic temporal influences. It was pretty dull sitting in a cloaked ship in a snowdrift for two weeks, but hey, I’ve had plenty of practice at that: for details, see my previous account of the Patience Race.
Finally, February 10th arrived (again), and I made sure I was in position to see myself enter the time vortex and disappear. This was the most nerve-wracking moment of all, of course. But I was not disappointed.
Jalaa walked out of the door, looking rather confused.
I approached her cautiously, thinking she might not be quite the same, but I needn’t have worried: she recognised me at once. It was some reunion.
“I thought you were gone for ever,” I told her.
“Why? What happened?” she replied.
It turned out she had no memory of anything that had taken place inside the anomaly. I asked her how, in that case, she was able to escape in that satellite. She had no idea. Between us, we came up with a hypothesis: the Jalaa that entered the anomaly managed to extract her brain’s connectome from the anomaly’s entry point somehow and project it into the data banks of the satellite as it fell in alongside her, and her last act was to send the satellite towards Earth. How she managed to do that when she could not escape herself, we may never know – and I’ve no idea how we got lucky enough for it to fall near my base. But in the end, what has happened is bittersweet – Jalaa is back, but there’s another Jalaa, whose fate is uncertain and possibly grim. I still grieve for her.
As for the time loop, we can only assume that it was some kind of ripple from the anomaly. Such things are often not quantifiable without a computer bigger than the universe, so metatemporologists usually fall back on intuition.
Mike, of course, was waiting in the car park, completely unaware that I’d been back in time. After everything he had done for me, I felt he deserved the full story – and I didn’t want to tell him while he was driving, so I flew us down there in the minicruiser, cloaked of course, and explained that we would follow him home.
The outcome of all this is that Jalaa and I are back at Mike’s place for a while. He seems to like her, and is happy for us to stay until we decide what to do. Of course, she may want to return to orbit to continue her experiments and perhaps mourn her other self. I’m not certain how I would respond to that.
Time, with whom I’ve finished my duel and shaken hands, will tell.
No comments:
Post a Comment