No Other Gods (30 page)

             
“But being in a perfect place with perfect people was not perfect enough for you, Geno, or for me. While grateful for what we received, and happy to be productive members of the human race, we did not want to be the only beneficiaries of its blessings. We wanted to share, to guide, and to help other colonies, other planets, other peoples. Most had not achieved anywhere near the kind of blessed existence we had.

             
“The whole history of humankind is one long story of pain. Of death and loss and killing and blood and oppression and … waste. Much as you see here, Geno,” he said, with a little wave around.

             
“That did not change when people left our first planet. Tyrants and freedom fighters, the same with another name, still killed and ruled and enslaved. Enlightened rulers and idiots, nations and planets still became embroiled in wars and conflicts. And people still died, and died, and kept dying.”

             
He paused, grimaced at the pain, and tears filled his eyes.

             
“That is why you and I established the first time base together — the home you have known as your only reality for the past twenty years, as old planet Earth swings around her sun. We were scientists and engineers, both of us, but above that we were both idealists and humanitarians. We only wanted to use our knowledge and power for good. We only wanted to make life better in all the places humans had travelled.

             
“We knew there was some risk in meddling with our own past as well as the past of other peoples, but it was a risk we felt was worth taking, for the potential rewards. We believed that if we could eliminate tyranny, if we could stop the urge to empire, to dominate, to fight … if we could slow the rise of technology … it might be a wiser, happier, less evil humanity that rose up. And we thought our friends and neighbors would see that, in time, and be willing to take the risk for the good of all humans who had ever lived.

             
“We were fools. Naive fools.

             
“Powerful interests in the city rose up against us after we had established that first base, arguing that what we were doing was foolish and dangerous, and threatened the safety and security of our city. If we changed things for the better for others, could our changes not affect ourselves too? They opposed what we were doing, cut off our sources of funding, and drove us underground. That is why we built this second time base, the one you are now in, Geno.”

             
“Who led those interests?” I said. “Was it the one we know as Hermes?”

             
“It was Hermes,” Jonas choked out, spraying blood on the far wall as a fresh paroxysm of coughing caught him. “It was Hermes … and others. Others including his close friend, Rast.”

             
Stars burst in my head as I considered the consequences of what Jonas told me. If true, Jonas’s words meant that my entire life — all of our lives — were lies. And that I had spent years and decades witlessly serving the one who raped my mind, and the mind of my beloved.

             
“How can I know what you are saying is true?” I asked, pain in my own voice now. “And if what you are saying is true, how did I come to be fighting you?”

             
Jonas breathed heavily before answering. It was clear that he had little time left. But he reached out for my hand, and clasped it to his bloody chest.

             
“You must believe me,” he husked. “But the only proof I can offer is if you remember … remember me … remember how you built, and how to use these places. Find the engineering room — you will be able to rebuild what is damaged here.”

             
He faded, then returned.

             
“Hermes is not a scientist. Not a physical scientist at least. He’s a psychologist, and he caught you when you went back, one last time, to argue our position. We never dreamed they would stoop to violence …”

             
He paused, breathing quick, shallow breaths.

             
“He wiped part of your mind, part of your history. Left you a blank slate on which he could write you anew … his version of the truth. And then he raised you, with others, as his weapons against us … against the very project you once held dearest of all.

             
“You must remember!” he said, the hand that had loosened on mine tightening fiercely for a moment. “You must fight.”

             
Then his grip loosened. Jonas’ eyes defocused, and he struggled to find my face. I moved closer, right above him, more gripping his hand than being gripped. He opened his mouth.

             
“Look in … the mechanical room. You … you built it. You left a message … history … there. It may help … may help you … remember.”

             
He slumped, releasing. His eyes closed, then opened again. With the last of his strength he opened his mouth one last time.

             
“It is good to have seen you one last time, Geno. We did not know ... at first ... what had happened. How he had … turned you. Thought you had betrayed us. That … hurt more than most other things. Remember: our goals were good, and whether right or wrong … we did not deserve this at the hands of Hermes. He … is concentrating all power in … his hands. He sees himself as … savior … but he has become … tyrant.”

             
Blood welled up on his lips again. A weak cough shook his form. Red foam flecked his chin.

             
“Goodbye, my friend. Goodbye.”

             
And he died, and my heart wailed, and tears filled my eyes, and I did not understand why. I released the hand of this enemy, this friend, and half-fell, half-sat slumped against the far wall of the corridor, stained and damp with the blood of the man who had just died, the man who had been my ally. My brother. Perhaps.

             
Livia came to me and I clung to her, not knowing what to think or say or do.

             
After a time we looked at each other, and I kissed her forehead, and we got up. By unspoken consent we moved toward the mechanical room. I tried with some success to get my game face on — there were possibly still enemies-who-might-be-friends around, and you couldn’t argue with a bullet. So we stalked slowly around corners and scoped rooms and halls before we passed, finding nothing.

             
I radioed Kin and Sama, updating them on the situation, and telling them to sit tight for now. Then Livia and I proceeded to the mechanical room, hoping beyond hope to find something, anything, that would make this make sense.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

              - Arthur C. Clarke

We found the room without any trouble. No might-or-might-not-be enemies, no bullets, no fighting.

              But “room” was most definitely the wrong word for the almost unfathomable space that gaped open in front of us, dwarfing our bodies and perhaps our minds.

             
As in our Hall, the two halves of this base were equally large. And where the warrior’s side of the bases were filled with terrain training areas, some stretching hundreds of feet long with alpine or desert, urban or jungle environments for war games and exercises, the control side of the bases housed the arcane machinery that manipulated spacetime and thrust men and women across galaxies and millennia.

             
This was more than a room. It was inner space like I had never seen before. Or, at least, as far as I could remember.

             
If Jonas was right, I had once understood all of this well enough to build and use it. And if my hopes would be realized, I would somehow be able to remember or re-learn at least some of that knowledge. I consoled myself with a reminder that we did not need to remember how everything worked. I would settle for the knowledge of how to work it.

             
The door from the corridor had opened into a raised landing from which the entire mechanical area could be viewed. The landing was near the ceiling, and from it metal steps descended in five flights to the floor, sixty feet below. A humming, pulsing sound filled the area, not loud but incredibly deep, resonating in our bones, almost subsonic. For possibly half a mile to the front and to our right, massive structures connected by pipes and uncounted leagues of wiring stretched. In some the machines seemed to plunge deep into the floor and earth, as if to suck from the very planet’s core the energy needed to transpose mind and matter across the ages. In others the metal of the machine seemed to become translucent, transforming into bright, coruscating flows of energy that seemed to disappear and morph and reappear, capturing our eyes and threatening to warp the fabric of our minds.

             
We stood there for some time, surveying the room. Finding anything in this maze seemed impossible, a fool’s task.

             
“If there is something here for us,” I said to Livia, “it must be somewhere we can find by thinking it through. It cannot be something we have to search for … we would never find it.”

             
We started quartering the area visually, trying to simplify the task, looking for something, anything, that might be a clue to where or how Jonas had secreted a message. The far corner caught my eye. We could not see the machinery there — it seemed to dip down and become lower than the nearby engines. But on the wall behind, a strange pattern of lines and shapes caught my eye. The pipes and crenellations of the machine, on and partially embedded within the wall, were not random there. Something connected in my brain.

             
I shook my head, trying to remember. That pattern meant something to me, I was sure of it. Or a former me.

             
“If only I could remember!” I almost shouted at Livia, the world, myself, slamming the heels of my hands on my temples. She came to me, held me, and I clung to her.

             
“I want to remember,” I whispered.

             
Lifting my head and looking to that corner again, I could not figure out what it was that the pattern meant, or signified. But somehow I knew the answer was there. Our answer was there, if it was anywhere.

             
Running down the stairs three at a time we headed off in that direction, often losing our way among the towering machines, almost deafened at times beside the noisiest of them, but always catching another glimpse here or there of a wall, a corner, a shape remembered from our overhead survey. As we passed through the guts of this fantastic apparatus I had doubts that I could ever have built, or been part of a team building such a monstrosity, with complexities upon complexities upon complexities.

             
But did you think it was easy to move matter and mind between millennia and parsecs, I asked myself.

             
It was like a thought from an alien mind intruding into my consciousness, and I wondered if it was a piece of old me coming back. The question made me think, and wonder if it was not the case that the physical part of time travel was harder than the metaphysical. Because of course, eight thousand years ago, the earth was not where it now is.

             
The earth moves around the sun, yes. And the sun moves around the black hole at the center of the galaxy. But our galaxy itself does an intricate dance with the other galaxies in the Local Group, and group also was moving in complex arcing curves as all the other mass in the universe exerted its influence — tiny at distance and greater, very occasionally, when galaxies collided.

             
And I realized that part of the real magic of this science was travel faster than the speed of light, and I was in awe. And I realized that this very realization was another part of me returning to myself, and I wondered what this place was doing to me.

             
When we finally reached the corner, I knew what it was.

             
“Livia, you remember the computers that we accessed in the control room, back at our home base?”

             
She nodded.

             
“Hundreds of years ago, people used to access computers via physical devices into which they could tap commands and data.”

             
Raising her head to the corner wall in front of us, I pointed. Now, from this angle we could see, here on the wall, built into the structure of the room itself, a stylized image of an old-fashioned QWERTY keyboard. Jonas had laughed at me, I recalled now with a glimpse of a memory, for using my hands and fingers for interfacing with a computer, preferring instead to simply think to it, using an interface embedded in his brain.

             
He preferred the immediacy, the speed — almost everyone did, I think. Somehow, I had wanted a level of distance between me and the machine.

             
“I never got that implant,” I told Livia. “I wonder if you did?”

             
Rounding some more shapeless masses half-embedded in the floor, we finally came to our destination. It had taken us over half an hour to navigate this immense space. Door to desk, I thought with a wry grin, this must be the largest office in history.

             
Because in the corner of this room which could contain the palaces and entire government buildings of any nation of any time on earth, was a small wooden desk. On it was an ancient screen, an old-fashioned keyboard, and a little oval device my suddenly growing memory told me was a mouse. I sat down at the leather-covered chair behind the desk and tapped the space bar in a gesture that seemed both entirely normal and utterly strange.

             
As I sat I remembered Jonas, and I remembered a man outside the gates of Ur, and I remembered being called a tool, and a fool.

             
“I do not want to be another man’s tool anymore,” I told Livia. It was the first time I had openly said that I no longer believed that Hermes was a god, or that the people in the city of the gods were actually gods.

             
Livia shivered at the revelation, but nodded.

             
“We are not pawns for others,” she said, slipping her hand into mind. “And we must know the truth.”

             
The screen came to glowing life. Centered on it was a box, with a blinking line at its left side. I put my hands over the keyboard as if for the first time, and typed, first slowly, then with increasing confidence, as if my fingers were remembering something my brain did not.

             
AND PROTECT.

             
The box disappeared, and in its place was my face, and a waving hand, frozen in time. Superimposed over the image was an triangular icon. Dimly stirred by memories, I grasped the mouse, moved its on-screen avatar to the icon, and clicked.

             
“Hello,” a stranger on the screen who was me said. “If you’re seeing this, things are not good. Although, in a way I hope you’re seeing this … otherwise things might be even worse.”

             
I tapped the icon again to pause the video, and looked at Livia in astonishment. She looked back at me, equally bewildered, then grabbed the mouse from my hand and clicked to start the video again.

             
“I don’t have a lot of time, and I don’t know what you don’t know, Geno. It seems crazy odd to be calling myself by my own name, by the way — hopefully I will return safely in a few days and be able to wipe this recording like a bad dream.

             
“I and those who agree … Jonas, Livia, others … were trying to bring the best of our city, the city of gods as we so foolishly called it, to others throughout our time and our space who are suffering, weak, and ignorant. In doing so, we brought out the worst in those who opposed us. Hermes, for example.

             
“They took our first base away from us, painlessly, bloodlessly, legally. But I fear they will take this second base from us with violence if we do not give it up, if they can find its secret location.

             
“I am going back to the city now, to reason with them, to speak to them. Livia, Tonia, Kin and others are also going. Our goals are peace, time, discussion. But we have heard reports that some of ours — Drago and Lind, at least, and maybe more — may have already been waylaid by Hermes and others, and have had their minds … altered. Those who have met them say they are just pieces of their former selves, that they’re missing memories, and that even their opinions and beliefs have been changed.

             
“If that’s true, it’s already a great violence to human beings, and to our party, and a great violation of the laws and principles of our city. But I find it hard to believe that Hermes would go to such lengths. I’m going to talk to him and reason with him. We knew each other and worked together for many years. I think I can make him see reason.

             
“If I don’t make it back, we’ll know for sure that they have ill intent, and this base will become the home for the hopes and dreams of our group. We’ll never be able to go back, perhaps.

             
“But if you are here, there is something of me left. I’m leaving this so that hopefully … you can find your way back to being me. I’m leaving all my knowledge on this ancient computer. I’m confident that only you can access it, with a password that I’m hoping against hope I … you ... will remember. And oh, by the way, good thing you didn’t have someone else sit down here. There are biometric scanners in the chair, the desk, and the wall. Anyone who’s not me … you … but got this far, well, the computer would have melted down and the person would have gotten a pretty serious case of sunburn.

             
“I have to go. Just one more thing … about us, and about our plans. Maybe we were naive. Maybe we were stupid. Maybe we just wanted so much to believe in our ability to help people, to make things better, and maybe it’s not truly possible. But we have the best of intentions, and we truly want to help. We didn’t deserve this. We don’t deserve this.

             
“If you’re watching this, you’re me. Or, at least part of me. I wish you the best … the best of everything.

             
“Goodbye.”

             
With that, the me on the screen reached forward, touched a control, and stopped recording. And I turned to face Livia, bursting with emotions and questions and anger and disbelief. She looked back at me, the same feelings mirrored in her eyes.

             
“So our whole ‘lives’ have been a lie,” she said, finding her voice first. “Hermes waylaid and mind-raped us when we went to talk to him.”

             
“And,” I added, “Our former selves were cosmic do-gooders, insanely intelligent but unbelievably naive, trying to save others and not caring about the consequences to themselves and their neighbors. Which means that Hermes seems not to have lied about people trying to change the past.”

             
Livia nodded at first, but then lifted her chin. “We don’t know that yet. We don’t know what they thought about causal connections to today, or ripple effects of past actions, changing the past. We don’t know that they didn’t take precautions.”