Infinity Cage (28 page)

Roald Waldstein stared at the being that was impersonating his wife, Eleanor. It … she … was standing there before him in this perfect re-creation of their home. Their small kitchenette was bathed with morning sunlight streaming in through a venetian blind, his baby son, Gabriel, burbled in his high chair.

‘… you have to do what?!’

‘We have to act pre-emptively, Roald.’

‘Act pre-emptively? What do you mean?’

‘Complete sterilization of your world.’ She reached out and touched his arm. ‘There is no room for pity or mercy in this matter. Or favouritism. This sanction is absolute. This particular technology is the one science, the ONLY science that cannot be permitted.’

He looked at the apparition of his wife with suspicion. ‘Who … who are you?’

‘As we have said, you can refer to us as the Caretakers … guardians of a kind. Carers. Perhaps it might make it easier for you to think of us as parents. And you – humanity – you are just children, children meddling with powers you can’t possibly begin to comprehend. Tapping into spatial dimensions above the cardinal three in order to move forwards or backwards through time, you don’t yet see that you’re inviting disaster, not just for yourself but the entire universe.’

‘Time displacement?’

Eleanor nodded. ‘A thin and very fragile barrier protects your existence
and the existence of countless other inhabited worlds … this entire universe … from higher dimensions. You can think of this barrier as being like a tissue-thin membrane. Every time you pass through it, every time you open a window through it, you are leaving a puncture wound in this membrane that never heals … You are weakening it.’

She squeezed his arm gently. ‘You have to understand, Roald, one day, one too many of these holes will have been punched through it … and the membrane will collapse and tear and everything on this side will be consumed. Absolutely everything!’

‘My God!’

‘That’s why we have to be so strict … so harsh … so brutal, my love. If a civilization stumbles across this obscure science, then they can’t simply undiscover it. It’s a Pandora’s box; once opened it can’t be closed.’

He was staring with growing, wide-eyed horror at her. ‘You’re saying … there are other intelligent –’

‘Yes, Roald. Humanity is far from alone.’

She smiled sadly. ‘And a few … a very small number of civilizations have stumbled across this science. It’s inevitable. And on those rare occasions we have no choice but to intervene.’

‘Intervene?’

He could see a tear glistening on the rim of one of her eyes. ‘There can be no exceptions, Roald. Absolutely no exceptions. There is just too much at stake. We have to remove them.’

‘Remove? You … you mean …’

‘There is no kind word for it. Genocide. Complete erasure. Complete annihilation.’

He suddenly felt light-headed and nauseous. He reached for a chair, pulled it out from under the table and sat down heavily on it. ‘My God … w-what have I done?!’

‘We’re not monsters. If we could, if there was any other path, we would take it … but I’m afraid in this situation this is the only way.’

Waldstein lowered his head into his hands. ‘What have I done? Oh God, Ellie, what the hell have I done?!’ He started to sob.

‘Listen to me, Roald …’ He felt her arm rest across his shoulders, holding him, comforting him. ‘Listen carefully to me, Roald,’ she whispered into his ear, ‘this time round, there is a ray of hope. There is a way that something can be salvaged.’

He looked up at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We have glimpsed into your world’s near future, and that’s all we dare do … the smallest pinprick through the membrane … and we’ve seen what happens. In just twenty-six years’ time – in the cosmic scale of things, that is just the blink of an eye.’

‘What? What happens?’

‘You will destroy yourselves. In just a few years’ time, humanity will engineer its own Extinction Level Event.’ She stepped round him, pulled out another chair and sat down beside him. ‘And it’s not a complete extinction. Some – a very, very small number – will survive. And they will struggle; trust me, they
will
struggle in the aftermath. Struggle to rebuild. Just like the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome … after the bubonic plague, you’ll be set back by hundreds of years. And quite possibly someone on Earth may one day, like you, Roald, stumble upon this dangerous science. But we believe we can give you this chance for now. But … we need your help.’

‘Help?’

‘Twenty-six years, Roald. A lot can happen in such a small blink of time. You are the only human who’s done this. You are the father of this technology. We need you to steer things. To ensure the science you’ve discovered doesn’t spread, doesn’t proliferate. The membrane can take some damage, but only a little. Do you understand? A pinprick here … a pinprick there … but, God help us, not mass migrations of people forwards and backwards.’

‘I … I can destroy what I –’

‘No, you can’t. The groundwork is already accessible. The theoretical
seeds were out there before you made your prototype. But you’re the first to make it work. There’ll be others coming in the next two decades. Others following in your footsteps, building their own prototypes. You won’t be able to stop that happening. But … you can work to preserve this timeline. Make sure it isn’t derailed. Just for these few years – keep things on track.’ She smiled. ‘I’m sorry, my love, that’s the one small chance we can give you. The alternative is absolute and complete.’

Waldstein looked up at Maddy. She was staring back at him, ashen-faced.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘that’s why I set up this little agency. That’s why you, Liam and Sal had to keep us on this track.’ He rubbed his tired, aching hands together in his lap. ‘And they’re watching us. If you hadn’t corrected all the contaminations that you had, put things back on the right course … then they’d have had no choice. They would have stepped in and wiped out this world, erased every last trace of our existence from this universe. Forever.’

‘My God.’

‘I’m so very sorry, Maddy. I created you so you could do this one job, to be agents of doom. To be the steersman … steering this ship on to the rocks.’ He extended a shaking hand towards her. ‘That’s not exactly the sort of heroic destiny you’d hoped for, is it?’

A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘I am become Death.’

He recognized the quote. ‘Robert Oppenheimer. “
I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
” Do you know what else he said when he watched the mushroom cloud from that first atom bomb rolling up into the sky?’

She shook her head.

‘He said, “Now we’re all sons of bitches.”’

‘I guess that’s what I feel like.’

‘Well, don’t. You did it, Maddy. You saved the few people out there who survived this nightmare. You’ve given them a chance.’ He smiled. ‘You did a good thing.’

‘It doesn’t feel like it.’

He nodded. ‘I know. That’s not much of a heroic legacy, is it? To be responsible for seven billion deaths.’

‘No … not really.’ She took in a deep breath. ‘So, what next? What happens now? Liam’s still in the past. I need to tell him what you’ve just told me.’

Waldstein pulled himself up out of the chair with a tired-old-man grunt. ‘First you should get some rest. You look exhausted. You and your support unit can have some warm food. I have plenty of supplies here. Then you should get some sleep.’

‘And then?’ said Maddy. ‘What’s going to happen? We came here … and now we know everything … what next?’

Waldstein shrugged wearily. ‘Perhaps you’ll stay and keep an old man company for a little while?’

They had a few hours to kill before computer-Bob would have some worthwhile results to show them so Liam decided there was time enough for them to indulge in a culinary treat; he invited Bob to go with him to grab some food at Bentham’s Pie Shop. They found their usual table on the top floor, overlooking the narrow alleyway below. Bob slurped at the mutton broth, grimacing slightly as he swallowed.

‘How’s your throat?’

‘There is some discomfort when swallowing. I believe the arrow must have done damage to my oesophagus as well as my trachea.’

‘Your voice is sounding a bit better, though. I thought we were going to be stuck with a whispering support unit forever. That, or –’ Liam grinned at him – ‘after you healed you’d end up with a bizarre squeaky voice, or something.’

‘Most damage I sustain is fully repairable given enough time.’

Liam cracked open the flaky crust of his pie and watched a steam cloud waft out. ‘I was really, really hoping we’d find Maddy in the dungeon when we got back. We should all be going to check out the transmitter together. I don’t understand why she hasn’t been back yet.’

‘Her mission involves a lot more guesswork than yours. She did not have a precise date and location to travel to but a whole
year and several locations to choose from. And we have no idea what obstacles or difficulties she will have encountered.’

‘Do you think she’s found Waldstein yet?’

‘If she finds him, then it is reasonable to assume that she would use whatever technology is available there to send a tachyon message to us to inform us of that. Becks has the location data. A precisely targeted message would be possible.’ He shrugged. ‘That is, assuming that you were not correct, and that they have not been lured into a trap and destroyed.’

‘Jay-zus, Bob … you’re such great fun to go out on a dinner date with.’

‘If that has occurred, it might also be possible that Waldstein has managed to obtain our location information. If so, then at any given moment another assault squad of support units could appear inside the dungeon.’ Bob looked at Liam. ‘This would effectively conclude matters for Waldstein.’

‘You’re a real barrel of laughs, aren’t you?’

‘I am merely considering possible scenarios.’

‘Jay-zus, I hope they’re all right.’ He gazed out of the window. ‘Maybe it was a mistake me being this stubborn. We should have stuck together.’

‘The decision to split resources was tactically valid, Liam. You have twice as much chance of acquiring information this way. Also … if Waldstein has lured them into a trap, at least two of us remain alive still.’ Bob slurped his soup again. ‘I suspect this is not cheering you up, is it?’

‘No. Not really.’

‘Hmm … I will see if I can come up with something positive to say.’ Bob gazed down at his bowl for inspiration. Finally, he had something encouraging. ‘At least our intervention in the time of Jesus does not appear to have caused enough of a contamination to have triggered a time wave. If we caused some
changes, it appears it was not enough to deflect the course of history.’

True. There was that for good news. Liam had noticed on the way down Farringdon Street there was still a church on the corner of Stonecutter Street. There were still copies of the King James Bible on sale outside Messrs Water & Stone’s bookshop. And the Salvation Army brass band near the bridge was playing ‘Amazing Grace’.

History has a way it wants to go.

‘Don’t you think it’s one hell of a coincidence, though, Bob?’

‘Please expand on that.’

‘Well … that one of those tachyon transmitters is right in the same place
and
the same time as the arrival of Jesus Christ?’

Bob looked at him. ‘Do you think Jesus is related to the tachyon transmitter?’

Liam shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ From what he’d witnessed, Jesus didn’t seem like some time traveller from the future, trying out his luck at being a prophet. Rather, he’d seemed genuine. A man with conviction and courage and charisma and armed with what sounded like a pretty decent philosophy on life to share with those who were prepared to sit down and listen.

No. If anything, perhaps the transmitter was located there for the same reason their first base of operations had been based in New York on the day those towers had been knocked down by terrorists; it was a nexus point in history, a crossroads. The transmitter had been built there in that time … simply because an important thread of human history emerged from that place and time.

Liam did have another theory, though … One that sounded too stupid to say out loud – one he’d been kicking around in his head for a while. ‘What if those tachyon things are like two sides of something like a box?’

Bob frowned.

‘OK. Not a box … say more like
bookmarks
, or even
bookends
maybe. I mean, if you were going to section off a period of history, what two events would you pick?’ He shrugged. He wasn’t waiting for Bob to come up with an answer. He was being rhetorical. ‘The
end
of civilization … and the
beginning
of Christianity. Hmm? Those are two pretty significant historical markers, wouldn’t you say?’

‘They are significant.’

‘
Interesting …
even?’

‘Affirmative. Also interesting.’

‘I mean,
very
,
very
interesting.’

Bob scowled impatiently. ‘Yes … very, very interesting.’ He looked at Liam. ‘I sense you are leading me towards some sort of specific assertion.’

‘Do you remember Rashim’s theory? That maybe all of that history trapped between those two markers is … some kind of
exhibit.
Like in a museum?’

‘That is a perfectly valid theory, Liam. May I add to this theory?’

Liam spread his hands. ‘Sure. Please do.’

‘Far more plausible might be a digital analogy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That everything we have seen, heard, touched … experienced is part of a detailed simulation. That we are all software AI in a simulated reality.’

‘You mean, in a computer?’

Bob nodded. ‘A very large one.’

Liam laughed. ‘No … see now, that’s stupid.’