Human, page 15
part #1 of Humanity Ascendant Series
E th didn’t quite wake up, but he was at least half conscious. He was in a maturation chamber, the same kind that had been used to grow him, to heal his wounds…
…to train him.
The fear was still there but it had somehow lost much of its power. He still couldn’t identify its cause but he could at least think in a more-or-less coherent manner.
He felt exposed. Even inside the gravity-free, womb-like environment of the chamber, he felt as though he had no protection from the vagaries of the Universe.
Come to think of it, he didn’t quite trust the Universe to play nice anymore. Was it even real? Was the chamber real? Was the chamber’s link to his mind real… ?
Hold on.
He was linked to the chamber’s system as though a training module had been implanted on his brain. The exit command was available and, real or not, he wanted out of the damned thing.
The door slid up and his feet settled to the floor of the chamber. Like the end of a warm embrace, the neural interface let go of his mind and he stepped out, oddly off-balance.
“We thought you’d be ready to come out soon,” a voice said.
He turned to find a Varangian sitting in one of the low lounge-chairs that faced a large window, looking back over his shoulder with a friendly smile, or what passed for a smile among his kind.
The same black orb was visible through the window. It was impossible to tell how far they were from it but it looked like a black hole. Eth moved toward it, and the chairs, on unsteady feet.
“I’m Jabir,” the Varangian offered. “In your language, I might be described as a psychophysicist.”
“A what?”
Jabir grinned. “We believe reality is an artifact of observation, so it would be quite hypocritical of us to study physics and psychology separately, don’t you think?”
“Well, that sounds great for you,” Eth said, easing into a chair next to Jabir. “Maybe you could explain why I was crammed into that chamber?”
“You suffered quite a shock when you crossed over,” Jabir explained. “Your mind had to shut itself down to prevent a complete psychotic break.”
“I suppose that sort of news would sound comforting to a Varangian,” Eth mused. “Let’s stick to something more concrete for the moment. Where have I crossed over to?”
Jabir gazed out the window for a moment. “Technically, you’re no longer in your universe, at the moment.”
“Technically?” Eth looked out at the black orb, frowning at the use of ‘your’. “Where am I, technically speaking?”
“Between your universe and ours.”
“Alternate universes?” Eth darted a glance at Jabir’s reflection in the window, hovering next to the black orb. “Hasn’t that concept been thoroughly disproven?” He turned to Jabir as the Varangian chuckled.
“Disproven by the Quailu, yes,” Jabir agreed. “But do you really think they know everything there is to know?”
Eth opened his mouth but then quickly shut it again. He suspected that he might be out of his depth here and that was, more often than not, a good time to shut up and hear what others might have to say.
The Varangian offered a conciliatory smile. “You know, your kind are on the verge of eclipsing the Quailu, at least in theoretical thought.”
Eth tried to imagine some secret research lab on Kish, run by renegade Human slave-scientists. The image was too preposterous to sustain itself.
“If the Quailu are so wrong,” Eth retorted, “why are the Varangians their subjects instead of their masters?”
“You can’t rule every universe,” Jabir said airily, “and besides, we’re just visiting here.”
“Just visiting…” Eth raised an eyebrow at him. There were billions of Varangians in the HQE and they were the emperor’s personal military – quite a large presence for a species that was only ‘visiting’.
The Varangian shrugged. “We find you interesting.”
Eth looked back out the window, heaving out a deep breath. He shook his head, very slightly. “Anyway, what caused the shock?”
“When you passed through, your perceptions underwent an… evolution.”
“My perceptions? Perceptions of what?”
“Everything,” Jabir said with emphasis. “How you see the universe around you.” He paused for a moment, frowning at the wall behind Eth. “Stepping away from something,” he began, turning his eyes back on Eth, “and looking back at it can open new perspectives. This tends to be true at all levels, at least for those who are able to truly perceive what’s around them.
“Imagine a two-dimensional being in a two-dimensional space. If it were restricted to a single, two-dimensional plane, it would see only the edges of its friends. It would assume that they were all line segments. It wouldn’t even realize that it lived in two-dimensional space.
“If it moves in the x and y axis, it might perceive one of those axis as time , not really understanding it’s true nature.
“If it were to suddenly step out into three-dimensional space and look back at its friends, it might be shocked to learn that they weren’t just line segments. How would it feel to learn that they were circles, squares and triangles – that they’re creatures of far greater depth than ever suspected?
“The shock came when you stepped out of your universe and into the interior of this super massive black hole. Frankly, we didn’t expect it, especially when the young female that Hjalmar sent to us had no such experience.”
“She’s here?” Eth sat up, staring intently at Jabir, hands on his armrests.
A shake of the head. “No. We spent some time with her but she was returned to Uktannu’s station several months ago.”
That nagged at Eth. He’d only seen her taken from that station a few weeks back.
Jabir leaned over toward Eth. “Your comfortable belief in the physical world has taken a bit of a beating, I’m afraid.”
Eth shuddered. It had the ring of truth to it but he still didn’t trust what he was being told. Still, coming here had triggered something , wherever here was… “Where am I?” he demanded.
The Varangian chuckled. “In denial, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Fine!” Eth threw up his hands. “My perceptions have been altered. That’s why I’m feeling this fear?”
A nod. “Almost every life-form creates a view of the Universe that’s largely informed by its own biology. Most of us train ourselves not to see beyond it.”
He gestured to Eth. “As an example, you continually move physical mass through the power of thought.”
“I’m… pretty sure I don’t do that,” Eth replied.
“You see? This is a perfect example,” Jabir insisted. “If you don’t do that, then how did you reply to me just now?”
Eth rolled his eyes. “My brain sent a signal and my lungs moved air past my vocal chords. My mouth did the rest, also under orders from my brain.”
“And what caused that electrical impulse to race from your brain to the rest of your body?”
Eth squinted at the Varangian, who now seemed dangerously close to making a point.
“At some point,” Jabir continued, “you have to accept that your desire to move muscle tissue is causing a polarity change in your neurons. Following the entire process back from muscle movement, you end up reaching the point where your own wishes are causing something physical to happen, even if it is only initiated at the sub-atomic level.”
“Unless my wishes are merely a product of that same electrical activity,” Eth observed.
“A very inelegant view of existence,” Jabir reproofed him gently, “and one that fails to explain much that my people can do. It also fails to explain why you’re suddenly so unsettled. Our expectations really do create our reality.”
“Are you saying I’ve been turned into a superhero or something?” Eth joked. “I can move things with my mind…?”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Jabir said urgently. “Even if you could control such a thing, it would exact a heavy toll on you. The Universe is no longer what you thought it was, but it still favors balance. Nothing comes for free.”
“So, no throwing enemy ships into the corona of a nearby star?”
Jabir was holding his hands up, palms toward Eth in a shushing motion. “Gods, no! You get away with moving your own body because it starts at the sub-atomic level but to move whole atoms or,” he shuddered, “a ship…”
“Bad?”
“Very.” The Varangian nodded emphatically. “It would probably mean the end of you, maybe even the end of all around you as well.”
“Alright,” Eth spread out his hands to placate Jabir. “I’ll try to avoid smashing planets into each other but you’re gonna owe me for that.” He kept his expression serious despite the ludicrous subject. “How about you just drop the soft-sell and tell me what you’re driving at? Why have you brought me here?”
“A comedy of errors, actually,” the Varangian said frankly. “Your future raises many questions for us, so we decided to bring you here in an attempt to find out what it was that set you on your path.” He chuckled ruefully. “As it turns out, the act of bringing you here was the cause we were looking for.”
He shook his head. “Talk about ‘expectations creating reality’. One of the basic tenets of Varangian science and we failed to anticipate our own role in your future.”
“My future?” Eth was about to make a sarcastic remark but, given the metaphorical beating he’d taken over the concept of alternate universes, he held his tongue.
“We know you have a role to play,” Jabir said, “because we’ve seen what happens.”
“So you have the ability to peer into the future?” Eth asked. His eyes grew wide. “Will I be able to do that, now that I’ve been through your damned portal?”
The Varangian held up a hand to stall Eth. “As individuals, we have a slightly improved ability to feel our way through the tangle of causality. It looks like ‘luck’ to outsiders.” He paused, looking straight through Eth as he collected his thoughts.
“As a species,” he continued, “we already know the future of your universe on the larger, political scale because we’ve already lived through it.”
Eth stayed silent. Such a statement was so preposterous as to beg interrogation. Jabir had to be expecting an outburst or a string of questions but that merely proved they weren’t needed. It was blatantly obvious the Varangian would have to provide some sort of explanation, so Eth merely tilted his head to the right a little, raising his eyebrows a fraction.
Jabir looked mildly disappointed but it was hard to tell with his species. Finally, he nodded to himself and continued. “Where we come from, time – for lack of a better word in Imperial Standard – flows in a different direction. We first broke through to your universe ninety thousand years ago in our frame of reference which, of course, is in your future.”
“How does that even work? Do you only come for a few years and go back?”
“Some do, in order to maintain the connection with the rest of our people,” Jabir said, “but there are still a few Billion of our kind living permanently in your universe. We do have a planet to populate, after all. The vast majority of our presence here is descended from settlers sent from our own future, which required some pretty strict rules about what those early settlers could tell their own children.”
Eth frowned. “How is this not common knowledge? billions of Varangians living in our universe and none of them have let the secret out? None of your ‘settlers’ passed on knowledge of disasters or wars in your own universe?”
“Oh, thousands have blabbed,” Jabir conceded cheerfully.
Eth leaned toward him, shaking his head slightly. “And… so?”
“So?” Jabir grinned. “Our past is your future… sort of… Look, it’s a simple matter for us to maintain a group of enforcers who scan history for such leaks and trace them back to their origins.
“If I were seriously considering the betrayal of our secrets, one of them would show up and give me a stern warning. Might even wave a gun in my face or something. If that didn’t take, he’d come back and blow my head off.”
Eth made a show of looking around the room. “Jabir, you’re telling me everything right now,” he said, eyes coming to rest on the Varangian. “Where’s your enforcers?”
Jabir flicked a dismissive hand. “This has already been approved. You won’t betray our trust.”
“How can you possibly know…” Eth trailed off in the face of Jabir’s exaggeratedly-patient expression. “Right. Of course you’d know.”
“Right about now,” Jabir resumed, “you’re probably wondering why we didn’t establish more of a presence here, even take over the HQE while we were at it…”
“Well, yeah.” Eth scratched at the back of his head. “I am wondering that – now.”
“For one thing, it’s damned difficult to overthrow an existing empire when your time frames are opposed. We’d be fighting constantly as we went back in time. For another, there are plenty of other universes out there.
“We were looking for one that had no multi-galaxy empires in it. Someplace where we could put our feet up. A universe to save our species.”
“Save it from what?”
“The end of time.” Jabir shrugged. “Not trying to panic you or anything but they don’t last forever, you know.”
“They?”
“Universes.” Jabir turned his gaze back to the window. “They’re born with great fanfare, grow for billions of years, but a moment comes when the expansion stops and it’s all downhill from there.
“We found this universe while searching for our own new home. We’ll eventually have to evacuate our current Universe. When we find it, we’ll ride the new one back in time for all it’s worth and then find another headed in the opposite direction.”
“You don’t just return to your original universe?”
“Why would we want to do that?” Jabir looked at him in mild alarm. “Do you have any idea how crowded it would get if we kept jumping back and forth between two universes? Remember, our ancestors would still be there.”
He shook his head in amazement. “Imagine if we accidentally interfered in the discovery of the bow and arrow or the fleem or even the pointy stick. It could set us back by thousands of years, and we barely got out of there in time as it was.”
“Yeah, that would be problematic for you.” Eth sat up. “Thanks for the chat and for messing up my brain, but what do we do from here?”
“Well, we promised you’d know what our questions were once we had our answers,” Jabir said. “The question we wanted answers to was what set you on your particular path , and the answer, as it turns out…”
“Is you,” Eth finished for him. “I get the irony, but what exactly is this path you speak of? What is it that I’m going to do?”
“You’ll learn the answer to that as you go,” Jabir said guardedly, “unless, of course, I actually told you right now and changed your future as a result.”
“Well…” Eth looked around the room again. “… looks like you’re not going to do that, so what’s next?”
“We send you back,” Jabir replied. “We’d intended to send you back after a quick chat, but then you collapsed on us so we had to put you in stasis – give your mind time to adjust to the changes.”
Eth felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. “How long was I in there?”
Jabir considered his response for a moment. “About seven months.”
Eth leapt out of his chair. “Seven months? We were facing off against Uktannu’s fleet when I came here. What happened to our people? Where is Mishak?”
Jabir sighed. “Firstly, if you’ve missed a battle by seven months, there’s no real need for urgent histrionics so could you please stop pacing around like a gralloch who’s caught a scent?”
Eth unclenched his fists and, after a few deep breaths, forced himself to sit again.
“Much better,” Jabir said, smiling reassuringly. “Now, as far as your friends are concerned, they’re still there. Remember, that door you stepped through was a portal in space-time – time being the operative word in the current conversation. Months have passed on this side but, with the portal held open, no time has passed on the other side.”
Eth was impressed. “That must take an incredible amount of energy – holding open a space-time portal for seven months!”
Jabir raised an eyebrow and looked as though he were about to say something but he stopped himself and leaned forward slightly, an expectant expression on his face.
“Ah!” Eth felt mildly foolish. “No time has passed on the other end. That’s where you hold the portal open from, yes?”
The Varangian heaved an exaggerated sigh of relief as he stood, gesturing Eth toward an exit door. “They told me you were supposed to be clever. I’d have given them a merciless ribbing if you’d failed to sort that one out.”
He led the way to the portal. “The reason we wanted you to get through so quickly was that we didn’t want you colliding with yourself on the way back out.”
E th stepped through the portal. The Varangian officer was still straightening up from having shoved him through, seven months earlier.
“All finished?” the lieutenant asked.
Eth nodded, standing there while he waited for another wave of crippling fear to assail him. Nothing happened, except for the officer’s polite gesture toward the heavy outer door.
The fear was still there, at the back of his mind, but he understood it better now and, frankly, he was far too tired to care.
The outer door slid down into the deck and he followed the officer back to the hangar bay. He had to wait for Mishak who, after Eth’s seven-month absence, was still just arriving on the bridge of the Varangian ship.
He walked up the back ramp of the barely serviceable shuttle he’d arrived in and, ignoring the disgusted shudder of the Quailu pilot, stretched out on one of the benches that ran down either side of the small craft and fell asleep.
He was awakened by the arrival of Mishak and his personal pilot as they clumped up the ramp.
“Well,” Mishak began, nodding to Eth, “that didn’t take very long! Hopefully, Rimush has had enough time to send the coordinates for our fallback position.”
