Torbin was woken early by a buzz at his door. Nowadays he valued sleep more than ever, it was a welcome refuge: the comfort of dreams; of what he once had; of what he might have had, where possibilities were never crushed.
Zardino was there looking uncharacteristically stressed. ‘She’s gone,’ he blurted out. ‘They’ve taken her.’
‘The Elusivers?’ Who else, he thought.
‘The sensor log showed a spider-craft enter a wormhole. There was no warning. They must’ve created some kind of dampening field to suppress the---’
‘Never mind that,’ Torbin snapped. ‘We have to get her back!’
Zardino was shaking his head. ‘I haven’t been able to track them.’
‘You’re a b’tari, for fuck’s sake. You’re supposed to be able to monitor all space activity.’
‘I’m sorry, Torbin.’
‘You’re sorry. I’m sorry.’ Torbin could feel tears welling up.
‘I wish there was something---’
‘They want to take everything away from me that I care about. Maybe it would be better if they just killed me, and be done with it.’
Zardino looked somewhat taken aback by Torbin’s reaction. He turned away as if about to walk out the door, but then swivelled back on his feet, fixing Torbin in direct sight. A sudden revelation? Zardino said, ‘I maybe banished by the council for suggesting this. But given the circumstances. There is one possibility of undoing recent events. An experiment Roidon had done: sending his AI, Harvo back in time. It was considered way too dangerous, banned by the council. However, it did succeed in achieving a controlled temporal displacement.’
‘Temporal erasure by another name. I go back but lose my memory.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘A static field could never be stable. I do remember going over the figures. It was agreed.’
‘That is what the council wanted you to believe. The principle of it went against doctrine. But our scientists continued to refine it.’
‘And you’re telling me a stable field is possible?’
‘It’s possible. Just one proviso: You won’t be able to interact with the past. If the bubble collapses, so does your memory. But that doesn’t affect non-physical information.’
‘Still, that seems to go against the know laws---’
‘I’ll take you to it.’
Torbin’s erstwhile wariness of going into space was barely any longer a factor; the trepidation in his mind telling him that they were a prime target for the Elusivers was just a distant voice. Die or be caught, it was worth the risk.
The Lunar base had been dug nearly a kilometre beneath the rock. It contained a vast hanger full of equipment.
‘How did the Elusivers ever miss this?’ Torbin wondered.
‘They made the logical assumption that we had concentrated all our resources into one part of the Moon, the part where we stayed, where we experimented. This base has been left dormant for almost a year.’
‘Why leave it till now?’
‘We could not use it. It is essentially your technology.’
‘Bound by the temporal directive.’
‘Indeed.’
Torbin approached a pyramidal object nearly the same height as him, covered with cones: a smaller scale version of the temporal eradication device.
‘Roidon had been working on this to create a more precise, more reliable exposure than his original device.’
‘Did he succeed?’
‘To that extent, yes, which is not to imply that this technology is without risks: the calculations for exposure can never be one hundred percent accurate. It’s a matter of picoseconds for the shield bubble collapse.’
At the other end of the hanger was what Torbin could only describe as a shuttlepod with its top half removed: a soft-back chair surrounded by a console array. He knew this was the isolation field generator – the realisation of his research, back when all he had to work with was micro induction modules powering bare bones componentry.
Without even looking back at Zardino Torbin stepped into the pod, positioned himself on the seat, staring in awe at the array of raised buttons. It was like being inside a shuttle craft from two centuries in the past. These days there would be nothing to see if the system was quiescent – it either operated holographically, projected into retinas, or directly mind linked. Here now was something he had only ever dreamt about. He was a child again, inside his ultimate toy. Until Zardino shattered his rapturous state.
‘Torbin, I must point out it will take time to learn how to use the IFG.’
‘Time, my friend Zardino,’ said Torbin gleefully. ‘It can truly be ours now.’
*
Yes, this is real, Scott decided. One hundred percent. Anger was so effecting to reality. He left the cabin that morning and headed for the nearest airbus stop with one objective in mind: retrieve the life that they had tried so hard to remove.
Deanna had told him in some detail of her experiences at the institution, the way they had treated her as a mentally ill patient in need of chemical restraint. To them she had made the unforgivable error of questioning his disappearance, and thus her own existence had become a threat.
The psyche institution was not the easiest place to find; Deanna had only remembered the road with the nearest stop, her mind at the time understandably in turmoil. The building itself was hidden in some industrial estate. He could only identify it by the high fence, the private property sign that gave no indication of any business. The large drive-in entrance had metal barriers, designed to only retract upon authorisation. The walk-in entrance, a simple chicken wire fenced door. He was somewhat surprised to find it wasn’t locked.
Scott walked through the austere grounds, noticing there was only one vehicle in the parking area. There was no obvious main entrance, only what seemed to be a visitor’s door.
Scott had in mind the various security procedures he would have to endure to get beyond the entrance, thoughts of simply persisting in his demands to be let in.
But none of that was needed. Incredibly the door wasn’t even locked. It simply undid with a turn of a handle, more like the door to a room in a listed house than the entrance to a secure compound. For a moment the thought flickered through his mind that he was not in the right place after all, and then even a doubt that what Deanna had told him was true.
His doubts were wiped away on seeing the clinically white interior under an efficiently bright bioluminescence. A corridor lined with doors, leading to a glass office-like room. The room contained other rooms within, more privately obscured from view. Again none of these offices were locked.
When he opened the door at the far end office the stench hit him in a nauseating wave. He turned away, retching. The immediate thought was to flee, an instinctive, visceral reaction. Instead he covered his nose and mouth and strode towards the source.
It was human: a man in a white uniform, presumably one of the staff. The man was on his side, one arm extended above his head, the other by his side. The man’s face had the desiccated hollow greyness associated with advanced decay. When Scott’s initial horror subsided he wondered if the man had died around the time Deanna had been released. He got closer, fighting his natural repulsion, to look for clues. Nothing obvious. In this place there would be a variety of ways to murder someone and cover the evidence: potent drugs in the right dose, leaving no trace, the most effective way.
No good, he had to get out of here. He’d seen enough death before: his fellow crew members. Yet even though he could regard them as friends seeing their space-suited forms didn’t have anywhere near the same visceral impact; it could almost have been that they were asleep such was the disconnect due to the hermetically sealed isolation.
On the way out Scott passed many doors. He’d seen no sign of anyone alive in this building, and suspected if he looked carefully he would find more examples of suspicious deaths.
Here he was, escaping a crime scene. Possibly his prints and DNA were all over it. This was the place he had come to in anger with thoughts of, if not exactly revenge, then at least retribution. It wasn’t looking good for him.
Scott turned back, his eyes focusing on the doors until he found a medical dispensary. He was no longer surprised to find it unlocked, and then to see the empty medicine storage cabinets. He picked up a powerful cleaning solution and some paper towels. He then returned to the end office, wiped all over the part of the door he had handled. On leaving the building he did the same to the entrance door, suddenly aware that might have been observed, that he had only served to incriminate himself further. What he felt sure of was that he had not eliminated clues left by the real murderer. The real killer would have been far more careful.
This building was sufficiently isolated not to be subject to scrutiny from passers-by. But how could a man murdered, missing from his family and friends, not be reported?
Again doubts began to creep in. Had he really come back, or was this just another artificial reality experience? Regardless, he couldn’t chance that being the case.
Now the notion of revenge had become a hollow one. Now he just wanted normality, craved it like Deanna craved her medication. Just to feel comfortable. The life he had once taken for granted seemed itself like an idealised simulation, something at the time he’d never even thought to question.
***