Chronicles of the Aeons War, page 74
part #3 of The Omniverse Series
“Madness,” Heihachi said, “I never understood how the Schism happened, Voyager; let alone how our ancestors survived as long as they did on the Old Earth without destroying themselves and one another.”
“That makes two of us. But I’ve been there…feeling what you feel now…it’s always when you’re not on active that you feel it. Always when you’re not on duty…sometimes even when you’re just not in combat…especially when you’ve been at it for longer than you believed possible…there in the dark, in your rack…when you’re alone…battle after battle after battle…they just replay themselves in your head. You see the faces of those you lost, those you failed to save. You feel the terror, you hear the sounds...And when you throw yourself into duty, sometimes you feel like it’ll kill you before you see your way out…sometimes it’s the only thing that makes sense, even as its nothing but senselessness and death…other times you wish you were dead already. Sometimes you live for the thrill of it…but you never forget it.”
“You really are a veteran, for your few years.”
Benedict nodded, “It’s all a matter of perspective. You’ve been conditioned by the common era to view life as one very, very long thing. The Human lifespan in my era was somewhere between a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty years; if we were lucky, the last ten or fifteen of those years were comfortable and without too many health problems. Now I have to adjust to an unlimited lifespan; at least, in theory…something you’ve been used to for…well, probably for a lot longer than I’ve been alive. With a short life of a century or less you have to make the most of every instant…you don’t have enough time to experience everything.”
“I’ve often wondered if I’ll ever experience anything other than the war. I was born long after the Schism, which means I’m relatively young. But I’ve still been around a very long time…especially since your future self introduced us to tactical time travel…I can’t even count how many combat instances I’ve lived through, how many years I’ve spent either in battle or in Respite, waiting for refit and resupply...waiting to be back out there, back at it. Sometimes, just to fight a battle that lasts a matter of minutes.”
“I’m sure some computer system somewhere is keeping track,”
“I’m sure if I knew the actual number I’d go mad.”
Benedict laughed, “I hear that. You wanna get a drink, Captain? Just because we’re awake doesn’t mean we have to be sober.”
“As you say, Voyager; I know a place not far from here.”
♦♦♦
The Ouroboros held station in high orbit over Bloom’s Point as her new Starfleet formed up around her. Hundreds, then thousands of ships began joined the armada. They formed a complex, ever-changing three dimensional pattern, the Ouroboros remaining locked in the center of the group.
Commodore Baxter Vincent marvelled at a tactical display of the fleet’s movements and the complex navigational equations followed by each ship as it completed its circuit through the fleet. Phenex and Jibrail starships dancing complex knots together around his ship. Only the Ouroboros and Rafouz Ingrid’s nameless Jibrail ship remained stationary at the core of the ever-moving formation. It was the same sort of precision flying they used when engaging in tactical time travel combat; the ships were kept in a relatively tight cluster of several kilometres, flying patterns designed to ensure the maximum use of weapons systems and the minimum exposure of the fleet and all ships to sustained enemy attack. When they broke apart to engage individual ships they moved even faster and with deadly, efficient attacks. Bax had to admit to himself that the Jibrail had developed undeniably sound tactics to combat the Zohor and he was anxious to adapt those tactics to the El-Ahur fleet.
“Navigation, Conn,” the Navigation Officer called from the crew pit, “We have Q-field jump solution for Proving Grounds.”
“Relay solution to the fleet,” Baxter replied, “Conn, Helm: stand by to make the jump on my command.”
“Helm, Conn, standing by, aye.”
The Proving Grounds were a misnomer, as they were in fact a beacon-marked half-light year-wide polyhedron sector of the Void whose perimeters only existed in their navigation systems. As the fleet appeared in the training grounds they took up station – keeping, holding position on standby as they waited for Baxter Vincent to address them. This was his fleet. These ships were his to command; purportedly even the Jibrail ones.
He hoped he’d never have to test that.
“Ouroboros, all Commands,” Baxter said, licking his lips. The systems aboard the Command Deck scanned him and transmitted his likeness to every ship in the fleet, “Today we begin training new fleet manoeuvres, tactics and formations. We’re on the clock and counting down even now to the next phase of the war. Our path will take us into another violent and deadly encounter with the Zohor; like the Battle of the Maelstrom we will be going up against a major Zohor stronghold. Unlike then, we no longer have the Queen of Light and Sorrow on our sides; Unlike then, the Queen of Hope is with us and She has given us fresh ships, new weapons and allies, and the means to pass almost perfectly invisible through the Zohor swarm; at least, that is until we’re detected.
“The Caliburn fleet is conducting their own manoeuvres and will rendezvous with us in sector Tau Han Cela. From there, we will launch our assault on the Zohor Command Router Station.
“We are going to train intensively and incessantly over the next several weeks, as the Queen of Hope plots strategy for the observation instances that will be essential to the coming battle. We will overtake the Router Station; have no doubt. But the Hope intends to wait until She sees the most ideal set of possible outcomes before She deploys us. In the meantime, we will train. The more we train, the better we will be when the time comes to serve our Queen. So let it begin!”
And with no further word hundreds of thousands of ships scattered, deploying into tactical patterns that had until moments before only existed as part of an elaborate mathematical theorem. Training had begun, and Baxter Vincent wondered if any number of tactical drills could truly prepare them for what lay ahead.
♦♦♦
It wasn’t terribly late, but nonetheless it was a “quiet period” on the general roster. Barring another surprise emergency drill from Baxter Vincent – something no one could discount – Benedict should be able to use his down-time to practice with the Macronaut units; he was still having problem with three hundred and sixty degree vision and physical coordination so it was unsurprising to see him or any number of Macronaut trainees on the deck at this hour.
But Benedict was there with a different purpose that evening. As the Macronaut carapace sealed around him he disconnected the training module data block from the Macronaut’s system drive and inserted the one he’d been given by the Queen of Hope. Jacking in as the crystal given him by Gabrielle McQuire-Rejas took hold of the Macronaut’s systems, Benedict was not disappointed by what he witnessed.
It was like a lucid dream; he was aware this wasn’t real, that it was a computer simulation, but it didn’t matter. The reality was wholly immersive, all around him and thankfully not in three hundred and sixty degrees of vision. He was floating in an indistinct mist, and there in front of him was the source of his misery. Scar-faced, hair long and tightly braided and wearing a black-and-gold uniform that reminded Benedict of the clothing of a Samurai, the features of the face before him seemed backwards besides old and scarred; Benedict realized that he was used to seeing himself in a mirror and not face-to-face.
“Hello,” his future self said. Benedict said nothing; simply watched, waited. A table and two chairs appeared. “I know this is a simulation, but we can at least sit down to talk.”
Benedict shrugged and took a seat. Then his simulated future self did the same.
“The simulation’s wholly interactive,” Grandmaster Benedict explained to his past self, “Within limits. It’ll get obvious if left to its own too long. I’m here with a message for you, Jack; I know what you’re feeling, I know what you still think of me…of your future…and I’m here to tell you I think I’ve got it figured out; how to beat it.”
“I’m listening,” Benedict said, disingenuously, slouching and leaning back in the simulated chair.
“The idea wasn’t my own,” Benedict’s future self replied, “Well, in a sense, it was…but it wasn’t. Because of minute quantum-level changes made each time you, that is to say I, travel back in time to the beginning of the Aeons War, we’re not actually in the past, relative to how we perceive it; we’re a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of one degree sideways, if you will, into the next alternate quantum reality that branched off of the previous line the moment we arrived in the past.”
“We’re what now?”
“You haven’t studied many worlds theory properly, yet; you live as long as I have and you lose track of what you knew and when. Basically many worlds theory states that for every possible outcome, a separate and wholly real universe must also exist. You wake up with your alarm, or you hit snooze. Those extra nine minutes of consciousness are played out as surely as the nine minutes of dozing you’re doing before the alarm goes off again. When they say people’s destinies change, what they really mean is people’s destinies change relative to what they observe reality to be.”
“Is this where I’m supposed to sign over my worldly goods and get a funny hat and necklace?”
The simulacrum of his future self chuckled, “That’s funny,” he said, dumbly, “The point is as soon as you begin interacting with what is, relative to you, the past, you enter an alternate timeline; not the original timeline. Relative to the El-Ahur, the Grandmaster has always appeared at the start of the Aeons War, and always travelled from the end of the war back to its beginning. That Grandmaster’s always been us, but I’m no more you than you are me.”
“What?” Now Benedict felt dumb.
“Think about it,” his future self said, leaning on the table; the simulation now seemed more authentic, “The same way that we use multiple temporal instances of our Starfleet to engage and win each attack against the Zohor, we ourselves are instances of Jack Benedict, of the Grandmaster! The minute I travel back in time to the beginning of the Aeons War I will in fact be travelling to a quantum reality just slightly displaced from the one remembered by the El-Ahur who first woke me from stasis all those years ago. The fact that there has always been a Grandmaster—”
“Means that we’re all just different instances of each other…that memory and prophecy don’t necessarily have to apply…because we’re not in the same reality where our future past self died.”
“Exactly.” The simulation of his future self said, “One of our previous instances figured out how to cross-communicate by leaving a message for his past self. There’s no telling how many instances came before him, but using a simple N+1 equation, we know how many there have been since he…since we figured out how to do it. I’m the sixth instance; whether I succeed in surviving or not is unknowable to me because it hasn’t happened yet relative to me, and won’t happen again until you go through it relative to you. You’re number seven, Jack. We’ve all worked at this, all of us have died as we slowly, one instance at a time, worked on the solution. I hope like Hell I’m not one of the dead ones; if you haven’t met me in person yet…I guess maybe I am. Let’s hope what they say about Lucky Number Seven’s true. And yeah, I know…”
“…Twelve’s my lucky number,” Benedict muttered grimly.
♦♦♦
The Sentinel observed the manoeuvres of the fleet in the Proving Grounds and marvelled at the precision, the pure physical expression of a million mathematical equations represented by their movements and choreography. It was a ballet of numbers and if the Sentinel could have wept, it believed it would have.
Every Being perceived reality differently. The Sentinel’s consciousness was the accidental result of trillions of systems’ interactions. But those systems were all based on numerical computations. As such, everything they perceived was translated into a numeric statement; an equation, in one form or another.
To the Sentinel life was being surrounded by the poetry of the numbers; physics was nothing more than applied mathematics. Everything was represented by the numeric according to the universal physics theory interpreted by the Hub’s original creators. They had created a being with perceptions far beyond their own, but by the time it had gained self-awareness, the Sentinel’s creators were long dead, forever unknown to it beyond the records they’d left.
Which was what fascinated the Sentinel about Jack Benedict: his ability to travel through time, the necessity of their quest to vanquish the Zohor and the Nimbus. The Sentinel wondered if it could apply the navigational physics necessary to travel through time, to perhaps meet its creators…to tell them of what they had given rise to…to thank them.
What was beyond the Sentinel’s understanding was the many variables in the equations that governed Benedict Jack. Variables that influenced other variables backwards and forwards throughout the hyper numeric equations were how the Sentinel interacted with the universe around it. The Mysteries all had multiple interdependent variables that the Sentinel was almost certain could be expressed as part of a single equation, if only one populated by irrational numbers.
Of all the Mysteries, however, Benedict reminded the Sentinel most of some of the exotic alloys used in deep space engineering: metals that could withstand ultra-high velocity impacts with macro-particles were created by fusing several rare and unstable elements together to form stable, near indestructible metal compounds. Benedict was the perfect intersection of uncertainties, combining into one single certainty. And that the certainty itself was malleable was unlike anything the Sentinel had ever observed before; even the Queens of Light and Sorrow and Hope were easier to quantify. The Grandmaster, Grandmaster-to-be, Grandmaster-who-was could affect so much change to so many of the Mysteries’ equations. Many constructs of reality depended on Benedict’s actions. The Sentinel was enthralled by Benedict, not the Voyager or the Grandmaster but his true title, The Constant. Most fascinating to the Sentinel was that the Constant, their single most important entity was also their most unstable and uncertain chain of variable equations.
The closest the Sentinel could come to recalling a similar sense of uncertainty was when it had encountered the Ancient Being from the First Generation of life…Benedict Jack was, similarly, an unknowable presence and an unstoppable force. And yet the constantly-changing nature of the equations that spiralled out from Benedict’s core made so many other variables possible. Studying the geometry of the numbers, the Sentinel speculated that the Grandmaster may have been right; perhaps there was a way out for this next instance of Benedict Jack – perhaps for all future instances of Benedict Jack. But it was just as likely his death was a universal necessity, a cosmic inevitability. The numeric structure and stability of reality had to be considered, and so the Sentinel commiserated with its kind in other places where machine consciousness had not evolved into the abomination that was the mindless Zohor exterminator.
Ultimately a single life, one way or another, was generally utterly insignificant to the universe. But those insignificant lives could have considerable impacts on history – at least on a local level – as both groups and individuals. Benedict, the Voyager and Grandmaster-to-be-who-was was one such significant life, as were all the Mysteries. But the question the Sentinel was beholden to was how significant was the Grandmaster’s death?
It was a question the Sentinel swore to resolve, if only because so many of Benedict’s instances had already sacrificed so much.
♦♦♦
The Queen of Hope ordered the Commanders of the Fleet to the vast auditorium that served as Her War Room. The Pentavirate came in and took their seats surrounding their Queen. It was somewhat theatrical; Dagan and Kothar found the whole thing amusing while Beryt and Anat contemplated if an archived copy of composer Williams John’s The Imperial March should have been uplinked and played for the occasion.
It was Gabrielle, their new Supreme Commander and Queen who made the grandest entrance. Her coils and cables were shaped into hands and a long, flowing gown…except that the gown ended in twenty-five spectacular, woven tentacles, which She used to carry Herself to the dais. The cables from Gabrielle’s spine and head fanned out like wings behind Her.
