Future's Prologue
Time is a strange and wonderful thing. While it feels absolute to those experiencing it, time is in fact relative. Time in London is different from time in Sydney and both are different from time on the Moon, though in a much more interesting way. For centuries human beings have wrestled with their concept of time, does the future exist in some form, waiting to be explored? Can we visit the past? Or are we stuck in the present?
Classical models of the universe said that time was fixed, that we were indeed stuck in the present. However, Einstein revealed that the universe is not so simple. Time can flex and warp, it can run at different speeds for different people and different objects. This warping of time is most evident when travelling at velocities approaching the speed of light but could be experienced simply by leaving the Earth’s gravitational field.
Upon this revelation, it quickly became evident that the future and past could exist in some tangible form. You can experience your present while someone else experiences what you perceive to be the future. This reasoning opened up a possibility that all of time exists, simultaneously. The past, present and future exist everywhere, all of the time, we just have to access it. Doing so is incredibly hard and most beings in the universe are indeed condemned to experience time linearly but for a lucky few, time is just an illusion.
19.9.2159 – 03:41 Universal Time.
The Seyborne Institute’s main control room was once a hive of activity. The room had been brightly lit, shining metal stretched from floor to ceiling only broken by the many computer monitors and view screens that displayed the various video feeds, medical data, status reports and other information that was vital to the people who worked within. Now, it stood almost empty, covered in a thick film of grime and dust. All of the monitors and view screens were black as the night sky, one small desk lamp was all that lit the room.
Scott Seyborne, President and Head Scientist at The Institute, sat in a battered chair scribbling out equations in the dim light, which flickered intermittently, occasionally going out altogether. Every time this happened, he flicked the lamp with his finger and pleaded with it
"Don’t you fail on me, I have nearly finished. I promise I will turn you off soon".
During one instance of this repeating plea, a tall blonde woman entered the room
"You know Scott, talking to inanimate objects isn’t making you seem any saner" she joked.
Scott turned and looked at her before turning back to the paper on which he was furiously working
"Chrissie. You know very well that I am perfectly sane, even if the rest of the human population has deluded itself into thinking I have lost my marbles. Now if you don’t mind, I have work to do and so do you"
Chrissie Lee had once been amongst the principal scientists working at the Institute, she was a brilliant woman, attractive, hardworking, funny and had graduated first in her class from the Lunar Colony University of Science. She looked around the room, just as the light went out again. Scott started to plead with the lamp once more, but Chrissie interrupted him by waving her hand past a door sensor, causing the entire room to erupt into life.
"I finished repairs on the backup power generator about ten minutes ago, so now it’s up to you," she said.
Scott scanned the room, most of the monitors and view screens were still almost black from the dirt that covered them, some didn’t work at all. The hum of electronic equipment filled the air, Scott started to clean the dust and dirt from one of the keyboards on the desk.
"Fantastic. It shouldn’t take me long to finish off the calculations now, another few hours and..." his voice trailed off as he started inputting the data from his paper to the computer.
Chrissie cleaned off another keyboard and typed in a few commands
"We still need the core online to attempt an incursion, and I don’t think I can get it working alone" she said.
Scott stopped working for a moment, then he turned on his chair and smiled at Chrissie. She had always loved it when he smiled, except when it was this particular kind of smile
"So what genius solution have you just come up with? and how many new scars is it going to cost me?" asked Chrissie.
Scott laughed and said "Only two or three"
As it turned out, for once she would not need to carry out the idea all by herself. She would only have to do part of it, though that was still going to require a lot of work. No sooner had Scott finished explaining what she needed to do than she strode out of the room.
Three hours had passed when she re-entered the control room, she found Scott lying under a computer station, he did not acknowledge her presence so she kicked his protruding foot and spoke
"I’m nearly done, but I am having trouble with the stabilizing field. Every time I think I have it working properly, a new bug arises. Where is Kelley when you need him? He could have had it fixed in about ten minutes"
Scott sat up, and a different kind of smile crossed his face. He pulled a chair underneath himself and entered some commands into the computer
"You might be in luck, the holo-projectors and communications array are still functioning. Kelley might not be able to join us in the flesh, but he might still be able to help us"
He then entered some more commands into the computer and an image appeared on one of the view screens. The image was of a scruffy, dark-haired man, he spoke softly
"Hello Scott, you’re looking a bit under the weather, Old Man,"
Scott replied in a similar tone "Good to see you again Kelley. You don’t look so great yourself, the wife stopped feeding you or something?"
The conversation continued in this manner for another minute or so until Kelley asked "Anyway, what do I owe the pleasure of the call. If its to ask me to come back to the Institute, you know I can’t travel. House arrest isn’t as much fun as I thought it would be".
Scott laughed but looked sombre "I am sorry that you have been treated so unfairly. And I wish you could have joined us. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t help. I take it the holo-projectors in your home still work"
Kelley nodded a yes
"Then turn them on and give me access, you have work to do".
The screen turned black and a perfect facsimile of Kelley appeared from thin air.
Kelley looked around the room
"I take it you can see me?"
Scott gave an affirmative bow of the head
"Good, lead the way, Chrissie."
Scott turned back to the computer console and began to work once more.
"We have 4 hours until the authorities detect the commlink to Kelley’s House. That means if Kelley’s involvement in this matter is to go unnoticed we have to be finished in three hours and fifty-nine minutes. If this doesn’t work, we will all be in a lot of trouble" he said.
Kelley turned back to face Scott "It was you who told us you should never change your own timeline, and that trying to was foolish, possibly dangerous and almost impossible to do. So let's be honest, whether it works or not, we will be in trouble all the same".
The three friends began to laugh, and then Kelley and Chrissie left the room.
Scott returned to his work, he had been negotiating with the badly damaged computer systems. They were designed to be a perfectly structured and glitch-free example of programming and engineering.
However, after so many years of inactivity in the badly damaged Institute, hard drives and circuits had degraded and many of the systems would not function at all. He had expected some damage, but he had not imagined it would be so bad. He simply did not have time to bypass the many programs and system files that were blocking his progress. If only he could get Kes, his holographic assistant, online then she would be able to reroute the systems in minutes. He decided that this would be the best course of action and changed tack immediately.
