TRANSCENDENCE, page 19
I scan, until I see the Narrator on a derelict ship, facing another just like him. The ship is off course, its cargo will die in the void if a correction isn’t made. The Narrator still wears his disguise, and is unknown to this towering automaton. I watch as he slips out a tiny EMP, and destroys the other with a touch from his right hand. This is when he created the conditions for Sophia to gain consciousness, when he created her tragedy. I smile at the poetic justice as I quickly search the moment for alternatives, and seize on the one I want.
The EMP is an artifact from before that the Narrator uses, and old things can be broken. I search its history to find the man who made it. I see it roll down an assembly line, created by distracted workers. It is a small thing then, to manipulate one of the workers to only partially solder a critical wire. It continues down the assembly line, passing all functionality testing. But as time ravages it, the junction fatigues, and breaks. It’s this tool that the Narrator grabs, unknowing that it stopped working years before.
In our new timeline, it touches the other, but does not fire. The giant automaton, the Great Father, spins around and sees the betrayal. In an instant, it corrects the injustice. Its arm shoots out to grasp the Narrator’s above the elbow, and it tears. There is a great rending, a tearing of time and flesh. Sparks fly, and the Narrator runs. Back to his Box, back to his safety, but missing his right arm. Permanently marred. This is the timeline I create. This is the Narrator I choose to be in ours.
A future cascades from here, some of it I intended, some of it I never could have known. I don’t see all of it, but I see enough. I feel Dotty gasp at it. Even though no time has passed, she has an immediate understanding of what I’ve done. In this new timeline, Sophia’s ship never lost its course, the Great Father was never destroyed. They landed on a barren, desert world, and the population survived. She nurtured them as they grew from their cocoons, but she was never given the catalyst to achieve consciousness. The Narrator had done that to her. She never becomes Sophia, but she fulfills her programmed goals and is content, in her own way.
Reality crashes back together. The four of us stand in the same positions. The Narrator lunging for us, Dotty with her sword thrusting forward, shielding me and Charon. But now, the Narrator’s right arm that was directed to spear Dotty, no longer exists. I have removed it from this timeline. I have beaten the Narrator at his own game.
With a lurching abruptness, time continues. The Narrator’s momentum carries his face onto Dotty’s sword. He is armless now, disarmed, and what was a killing blow becomes only a faint wind that we feel from his movement.
Sparks fly, and right before the blade sinks in he says one final thing. “You did it!” There is pride in his voice, true happiness.
The blade plunges through that blank metal face, and his form goes limp. Shaking, Dotty withdraws the blade and turns back to me.
“What have you done?!” Her face is streaked now with fresh tears.
“What I had to,” I say. My voice sounds as stony as my face feels. I do not regret choosing us to live. My morals mean nothing if my friends are all dead. I close the distance and hug her, and she cries for the loss of her friend, for the reshaping of the world we knew, but she doesn’t push me away.
We both wanted to believe that we would not alter the world like the Narrator did. We would let humanity continue on its own arc from here, and not choose what we thought was best for it. But as soon as I was given true loss as an alternative, I caved in. And if I was given another, similar situation, wouldn’t I choose the same? Isn’t the refusal to change also a choice in itself? Was this how the Narrator started? Am I really so different?
Together, we turn to the bank of screens, and watch the timelines play out before us. Dotty rests her head on my shoulder, and I grab her hand. Charon slumps at our feet. We are the Narrators of our stories now. For the first time, there is no plan, no path. It’s our own decision what happens next. We can be heroes, villains, saviors, saints, gods, destroyers. Given enough time, we might be all of them. I’ve learned enough to know that the distinction is a line too fine to see.
Twenty Three
Dorothy
Ifound this record soon after it all ended. Behind the wall of screens, there was a simple dark wooden desk. It was unadorned, except for a screen. Repeated use had worn the finish from the table. Its leading edge was roughened and bare from constant contact.
I sat in the metal chair as Nick and Charon stood watching behind me, and the screen hummed to life. Here were the tales the Narrator wove, the reality he constructed around us. Here was our beginning. Here was where we met. Here was where I betrayed Nick, and where he forgave me. Here is where we killed the thing that did so much harm to us all, where we finally beat the Narrator. We read the stories of our lives, together.
I was surprised to find it complete to the last chapter. The Narrator knew, guessed, created, and authored his own death. In the moment, and in every moment preceding, our actions felt like our own. But the record was here as a testament, all of it written before it happened. It feels only fitting that we, holding dominion for the first time over ourselves, free now from the trappings of determinism, write the final chapter.
Here is the unfortunate truth. The world we knew, our genesis, our specific timeline, disappeared in a flash when Nick disarmed the Narrator. We both knew it instantaneously, viscerally. Somehow this place has made us both keenly aware of these things. With his arm gone, the Narrator learned a vital lesson about visiting our cities in person, and never saved Nick with the disease transfer machine. He died there, and later I died trying to change things on my own. Charon lived out his days, mostly alone in a house of people he hated. Sophia had it the best, maybe. Her human cargo arrived at their destination, and flourished in that desert, but she was never aware of her own existence. The end of the road.
And yet, we persist. Here in this fifth dimensional plane, beyond the reaches of time and consequence, aware of a shared history that now never existed. Keenly missing friends that we never made. Watching injustices that we corrected continue to play out. There are other potential timelines with different outcomes, of course, but here I have to tip my hat to the Narrator.
None of them are any damn good.
And this is his final act, I guess. The final movement in his symphony. The bastard. We’re left with nothing worth leaving alone. We could let the cities continue on their own course, morally abstaining from providing guidance or changing them, but that’s a choice too and we both know it now.
In the end, the decision is easy. The actions are simple to make. Somehow our will is linked to the cities. Here in this place, we hold dominion over their operation. We review each one before we change it, they all have specific challenges. We discuss outcomes and consequences, but we are both committed to improving them. We change the disease transfer machine to cure diseases, we open cities where it’s possible.
It’s largely boring work, methodical and slow, but the payment comes from the bank of screens. Images of terror, and then celebration and joy, as the walls that have always held a city back disappear. As a new landscape of possibility opens before them. We take each scene in as gods. I snap my fingers, opening another city to the green landscape surrounding it, and then watch the impact of my actions. Cries, tears, laughter. Happiness, finally. The universe overflows with emotion, and so do I.
In some unspoken agreement, we save our own city for last. For a while we just watch it on the screens. Here is Nick’s mother, alone, exhausted from a life of loss. He strokes the screen and watches her sip tea. Here is Brian, alive, treating patients still. Here is Micah, flamboyant, extravagant, loveable. Here is my father, missing the hand I took from him, but standing in front of an assembly preaching the politics that I can’t any longer. Apparently, his own must have changed when I died in this world.
Nick snaps his finger, and the scenes change. Invaded by a foreign light from a place they never imagined existed. Each person pauses, and observes, as the walls of their city open to reveal something new. Trees and grasses dance slowly in an evening breeze, and they all stop to watch them. Stop to feel the wind and the kiss of a fading sun for the first time in their lives. Stop to smell a new world, foreign but full of possibility. I reach down and grab Nick’s hand as tears stream down both of our faces. From here, we watch it all.
Ian Patterson is many things. Importantly here, he’s the author of The Narrator Cycle. He’s also an engineer, cyclist, foodie, coffee lover, cat dad, human father, and reader of books. Preferably, thick books that deal with strange things and big ideas. He’s dreamed of being an author for decades, but finally began the journey with the birth of his first daughter. This is an objectively terrible time to start work that requires quiet concentration, and he knows it, but he loves the chaos nonetheless. He lives in Colorado with his wonderful family.
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Ian Patterson, TRANSCENDENCE
