Owen McCormick hesitated once his hand was on the bank of switches.
“Am I doing it?” he said.
“No time like the present,” said Steve. “Carpe diem and such like.”
Owen gave him a withering look.
“Carpe diem it is then,” he said, and he flicked the switches on, one by one.
The screen on the wall lit up with figures, running through test cases one after the other.
“Come on, come on …” Owen hissed at it, his voice full of urgency and imploring.
“If this works, I’m going for a holiday in Antares to relax for a bit,” said Steve.
“If it doesn’t work, this entire planet is going to carry on turning into a madhouse,” said Owen.
“Couldn’t be much worse than it already is.”
“It absolutely could. Anyway, you don’t want to go to Antares. It’s just as fecked up as Oberon.”
“No way. It’s not that bad.”
“We should just finish what we’ve started.”
Steve Reynolds, once a young and upcoming respected research chemist on the Earth before the war, turned to glare at Owen.
“Don’t you get tired of endless work? We’ve been at this more than ten years. I want a life of some sort. Not just work. I want a wife and a family.”
Owen laughed scoffingly.
“Yeah, well, good luck with that on Frith,” he said. “It’s pure insanity out there.”
“There’s still normal women on Frith. I could find a wife, move out to the countryside somewhere.”
“Doesn’t matter where you go, you won’t be safe.”
“Maybe I’ll go back to the Earth, then.”
Steve turned back to watch the figures on the screen.
They stared at them intently for some time, then Owen said, “I don’t know what the Earth’s like now. Maybe it’s OK, maybe it isn’t. There’s one thing I do know, and that’s that we have to fix things here. Otherwise no-one will be safe, nowhere.”
Suddenly the figures on the screen stopped scrolling and some text appeared with a bleep: pass 1000, fail 0.
“It worked.” said Steve quietly, hardly able to believe it. Then, more loudly, feeling an irrepressible euphoria rising within him, he said again, “It worked!”
The two men began cheering and Owen briefly wrapped his arms around Steve, jumping up and down, before running around the room waving his arms like a lunatic.
Eventually they calmed down and Steve said, “Let’s have a beer in the garden. I want to watch the sun set for once.”
They went outside carrying bottles of a beer of Owen’s own design and sat on the bench in the garden.
The garden, contained entirely inside an enormous lattice of steel in the form of a dome, was thriving.
They gazed through the lattice at the distant mountains.
“We should just stage a takeover,” said Steve. “Screw the Emperor. Even if your theory is correct, we don’t really need him. Why give him even more power?”
“You don’t want to get on the wrong side of a man who has that kind of power,” said Owen. “It’ll turn into a bloodbath.”
“Personally I don’t quite have the same faith in Auron’s essential goodness as your friends. Anyway, people can change. For the worse.”
“It’s my project,” Owen stated flatly.
“Yeah, you’re the boss,” said Steve.
They sat there drinking beer for a while, then Steve said, “Hey, let’s go to The Sloth tomorrow. I’m sick of looking at these railings.”
“You want to leave the whole thing now, just when it’s finally working?”
“You’re messed up,” said Steve, laughing. “Ten years with hardly a break and you can’t even go for a celebratory drink?”
“What’s this?” said Owen, raising his glass.
“The Sloth. Tomorrow. You owe me.”
A thousand miles away, Auron Blake was reaching the end of his tether.
“This isn’t working, Jor,” he said, sitting down heavily on a couch in the bunker to which he’d long since retreated.
“We could try a bigger machine,” said Jor.
“That’s your answer, after wasting twenty-two years of my time?”
“Sorry mate. I did tell you I couldn’t be sure about it.”
“Is it even possible? He’s been dead twenty-two years now.”
“He’s perfectly preserved by the cryogenic system. It’s no more or less possible now than it was twenty-two years ago. I suggest we build a moon-sized machine and try that.”
Freddie, Auron’s dog, whimpered and jumped up beside Auron. Auron ruffled his neck.
“Maybe I just need to give it up.”
“That’s not a bad idea, Auron,” said Jor. “You’ve done everything you could. What happened isn’t your fault.”
“It is my fault. I should have warned him.”
“Maybe you should concentrate on the living. They need your help.”
“I can’t deal with them. The whole thing gives me bad anxiety.”
“You shouldn’t run from your problems, mate.”
“Shut up.”
Jor fell silent and Auron ruffled Freddie’s fur. Freddie was the only thing, he felt, that still kept him sane.
“Let’s go for a walk, Freddie, and hope no-one tries to kill us.”
Freddie’s ears pricked up at the word “walk”, and he jumped down from the couch and began jumping about.
Auron smiled.
“You maniac,” he said affectionately.
There was one further group of people on Frith who were carrying out private research at the time, and as with Owen and Steve’s efforts, their research was finally coming to fruition.
In a large house a mile from the centre of Oberon, a man by the unlikely name of Aldron Spear and another man known as Quentin Findlay, formerly known as Professor Findlay and now often referred to as simply “the Professor”, stood around a large pipe-shaped device mounted on wheels, while five other men stood around watching.
“Are you sure it can overcome his defence mechanisms?” said Spear.
“I’ve explained this before,” said the Professor. “I know exactly how it all works. You see, there are effectively an infinite series of fundamental forces, but really, it’s all one force, manifesting itself in an infinity of different ways. The weapon is able to —”
Spear held up his hand.
“I don’t want technical details,” he said. “I’ve explained that before. I just want to know if it’s going to work.”
“It’ll work.”
“When?” said one of the men standing solemnly behind them.
“Tomorrow,” said Spear.
“And what then?” said the Professor. “When he’s gone, what then? Have you thought about that?”
“Leave that to me. It’s none of your concern. All you need to know is, by next week we’ll have a proper prison system running and Frith will be in a lot better state than it is now.”
“I should hope so.”
Spear smiled grimly.
The following day, Owen and Steve pulled up with their scooters on the edge of Oberon.
Owen walked to the railings overlooking the sea, from where he could see the cliffs further along the coast.
“Look at those total headcases,” he said to Steve, nodding at some teenagers standing on the cliff edge.
The teenagers were throwing themselves off the cliffs, laughing and shouting.
“What do you expect,” said Steve, joining him. “Jumping off cliffs carries no cost here. Of course they’re going to do it. I’d be doing it if I was their age.”
A group of friends stumbled past them, blind drunk, staggering about. One of them vomited into the gutter and a cleaning robot appeared and turned the vomit into a plume of vapour which shot off towards the sea.
“You sure you won’t to do this?” said Owen. “It’s not like it used to be.”
“You said everywhere else is just as bad.”
“It is, so.”
“Then The Sloth it is.”
Steve straightened up and walked off towards The Sloth, Owen accompanying him.
When they pushed the door of The Sloth open, a grim sight met their eyes.
The Sloth, with its veranda overlooking the ocean, had once been a peaceful and calming venue, known for fine food and wine. Those days were clearly in the past.
Its patrons, mostly men, were all extremely drunk and many appeared high on other substances as well. A man lay half-insensible in the corner, covered in his own drool, eyes bloodshot. A half-naked woman gyrated obscenely on a table. A group of men at another table were arguing loudly with each other, waving knives in each other’s faces. As Steve and Owen watched, one of the men plunged a knife into the face of another, and the other man disappeared, transported away by the medical systems for repair. The others laughed mockingly, and one of them pushed the man with the knife off his chair. He lay on the ground and began laughing hysterically.
“Probably it’s all right on the veranda,” said Steve.
They walked past and through the madness and outside, where a middle-aged couple sat quietly drinking.
Steve and Owen took a table and Steve pressed a button on a small device embedded in the centre of the table.
“Bring us two of your finest beers,” he said, and two glasses of beer promptly materialised in front of them.
“Don’t see many people of their age here,” said Owen, nodding at the couple.
“It’s becoming fashionable, I’ve heard,” said Steve. “They’ll probably de-age themselves when they get to sixty or sommat.”
“If you think this place is still going to exist by the time they get to sixty, you’re a more optimistic man than me.”
“What’s going to happen to it? It can’t get any worse than it already has.”
The couple got up, still talking, and promptly dove headfirst over the balcony.
“Bloody ‘ell,” said Steve.
He got up to look over the edge of the railing. The woman had already vanished but the man was still there, in a slowly-spreading pool of his own blood.
“I say!” he shouted. “I seem to have miscalculated. Would you mind awfully coming down here and killing me? Or just jump down on top of me. That ought to do it.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” said Steve.
“I’m in quite a bit of pain,” said the man. “Could you throw something heavy on me at least?”
But as Steve was muttering to himself, wondering what to do, the man suddenly vanished.
Steve returned to their table, shaking his head.
“Are they OK?” Owen asked.
“They’ve gone now. I don’t know what’s hard about just taking the door.”
In the end they managed to endure The Sloth only for half-an-hour, before leaving, saddened and dispirited.
Outside, Owen said, “This place should be a paradise and instead it’s a nightmare.”
“Yeah well, all utopias end the same way,” Steve replied.
They walked silently back towards their scooters, until the sound of a voice ringing out from the town square caught their attention.
“It’s him,” said Owen. “Let’s go and have a look.”
In the square they found Auron—Emperor Auron—himself, standing on an enormous stone platform, speaking to a large crowd.
Next to him, two men were standing guarding a third man, who had his hands tied behind his back.
“He is accused of attacking a cat,” Auron announced to the crowd. “The cat has been repaired. What shall we do with him? Exile or death?”
“Death!” came the overwhelming reply.
“Kill him, Jor,” said Auron, and the man’s eyes widened momentarily in fear before he seemed to explode into a column of smoke that proceeded to disappear into the sky.
“So suffers anyone who disobeys the law of Frith.” said Auron.
But at that moment, quite unexpectedly, a deafening sound rang out and a bright column of light from the town square seemed to connect with Auron’s head. The column disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, leaving behind only an afterimage in people’s eyes.
Auron’s body, now minus its head, fell to the ground, lifeless.
A man strode to the front: Aldron Spear.
“You know me,” he shouted. “You know what I stand for, what I believe. The Emperor is dead, and I have killed him. Now we will build a new Frith. A Frith of democratic institutions and —”
But he didn’t have time to finish what he was saying. The crowd rushed at him, screaming and shouting. They threw him down from the platform and began tearing and kicking at him.
“Looks like we’re going to have to do without the Emperor after all,” said Steve.
Owen ran up the stone steps to the platform, where he found Viktor Feher already kneeling over the headless body.
Viktor looked up at Owen, and laughed mirthlessly.
“What?” said Owen.
A shout went up from the crowd. Aldron Spear had disappeared, taken by the medical machines.
“To the medical centre!” a voice shouted, and half the crowd moved off in the direction of the location where Spear was already doubtless being repaired.
Owen squatted down to look at the corpse.
Inside its neck, instead of muscle, sinew and blood, there was only a whitish gel interlaced with fine wires.
“It’s a robot,” said Viktor.
A look of astonishment appeared on Owen’s face.
“The Emperor is a robot?”
Viktor laughed again.
“Auron’s not a robot. It’s a fake. A stand-in. He always hated dealing with people.”
“A fake?” said Owen, faintly. “How do you know that? Maybe he was always a robot?”
Viktor stood up and watched the crowds running off towards the medical centre, anxious to exact justice for what they believe to be almost the worst crime possible on Frith: the murder of their still-beloved Emperor. Only a few remained behind: those with no appetite for vengeance and those who, for one reason or another, considered Auron’s murder to be justified.
“I’ve known him since he was eighteen years old. We met at university. In the 1990s, on Earth, before a robot like this was even possible.”
“Good answer,” said Owen. “Then where is he now?”
“If you can get your machine working, you’re the best person to answer that question.”
“It is working. That’s why I’m here. We’re celebrating.”
Viktor stared at Owen in amazement, then began to laugh once again, slowly at first, then heartily.
“What are you laughing at?” Owen asked him.
“The ironies of life,” he replied.
Half an hour later, Owen, Viktor and Steve stood around the machine that Owen had first begun to build eleven years earlier. The machine itself was no more than a tiny box of grey matte plastic sitting on a table, an inch in height.
“We’ve never actually spoken to it before,” said Steve.
“It passes all the tests though,” said Owen.
“Then let’s try it,” said Viktor.
Owen pressed a button and spoke to the machine.
“Omega, can you locate Auron Blake?”
There was a pause, during which everyone waited expectantly.
Viktor was the first to give up.
“I think it has some teething problems,” he said.
But then the machine spoke, in a low, ponderous voice.
“Blake is located at the following coordinates,” it said, and it rattled off a series of numbers.
“Then let’s go and find him,” said Viktor.
“I’ll go,” said Owen, “I want to speak to him alone.”
“As you wish,” Viktor replied.
“No way, ten years of my life have gone into this ruddy thing,” said Steve.
Owen turned to look at him, and he was about to say something when Viktor interrupted his thoughts. “The two of you go. I gave up trying to communicate with Auron a long time ago.”
Owen and Steve took a flying car out to the coordinates the very next day. As they approached the spot, the enormous pyramid was visible in the distance.
“Of course, he’d have to be close to that thing,” said Owen.
And yet, when they reached the spot Omega had specified, there was nothing there but a handful of scattered rocks of various sizes.
“I don’t believe he even exists,” said Steve. “He was a robot all along. Now he’s dead.”
“You think Viktor’s lying?”
“Nowt’s ever what it seems on this planet.”
Owen got out of the car and shouted Auron’s name. There was no reply.
“So what do we do now?” said Steve.
“We wait. He’s here. We wait.”
The sun was sinking fast on the horizon when they finally found what they were looking for. A large rock sank into the ground and a man and his dog appeared on a slowly-rising platform. The man and the dog set off towards the pyramid on foot, neither the dog nor the man noticing anything amiss.
“Auron!” said Owen. “Auron Blake!”
Auron turned around, his shoulders sagged and he rolled his eyes.
“If you’re here to kill me, I wouldn’t bother trying,” he said. “And for your information, my dog happens to have the strength of twenty men, plus he’s invincible. Aren’t you, Freddie?”
Freddie started to bark at the men.
“Auron, what’s in the pyramid?” said Owen.
“You know what’s in the pyramid. Everyone knows. The body of my dead friend is in the pyramid.”
“No,” said Owen, shaking his head. “I know people like you, Auron Blake. People like you don’t build pyramids just to remember the dead.”
“I haven’t got time for this.”
“There’s a computer in that pyramid. A machine. A brain. And I know what you’re trying to do with it.”
Auron became suddenly angry.
“You know nothing!” he said. “Get out of here before I forcibly eject you from my …” he trailed off, not knowing what to say, then finished weakly with, “my reservation.”
“You’re trying to resurrect your friend,” said Owen, “and you can’t do it. Your machine’s not powerful enough. You’re probably thinking about building something more powerful. The size of a moon, let’s say. Or a planet. But that’s not the answer.”
“Oh, and what’s the answer, according to you?”
Owen felt in his pocket and produced a small crystal, which he held up in front of himself.
“Back on the Earth, I was a computer scientist. I was working on a new kind of computer, same as you. Only my design can outrun your machines by a factor of ten thousand.”
“Then why aren’t you the ruler of this planet instead of me?”
“Because we don’t want to go to war with you,” said Steve.
“What do you want?”
“To work with you. Frith needs fixing, Auron. It needs proper institutions.”
“It needs prisons, even,” said Owen. “There’s a lot of crazy stuff happening back there; I don’t know if you’ve noticed. You don’t have to carry the whole weight of it yourself. We can set up a parliament. A judiciary. That type of thing.”
“If there was a way to fit more computing power into a volume of given dimensions, my machines would have thought of it.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong. Your machines are like old chess computers that can only tackle problems with brute force. It takes a human to think laterally.”
Owen tapped his forehead, smiling.
“You haven’t even got a prototype.”
“We have got a prototype,” said Steve. “We want you to see it.”
“… if you’re serious about bringing your friend back,” added Owen.
Auron started at Freddie, who was running around in circles, stopping to sniff at things.
“What do you think, Freddie?” he said.
Freddie carried on running about.
“Freddie!” shouted Auron. “I said, what do you think?”
“This guy’s not the full ticket,” Steve muttered to Owen.
“He’s been through a lot, to all accounts,” Owen replied.
Freddie barked.
“Freddie thinks it’s a good idea,” said Auron. “All right, then. Let’s go and have a look at your machine. I’ll take my copter and I’ll follow you.”
“Copter?” said Owen, puzzled.
“Jor, summon the copter,” said Auron, and a thing resembling a microlight helicopter but without any rotors shot towards them at astonishing speed and set itself down next to Auron.
“Right you are,” said Steve.
On the way back to their laboratory, Owen said quietly to Steve, “Do you know how old he is?”
“Looks about thirty.”
“He’s more like eighty, and he’s spent most of the past fifty years alone. It’s a wonder he’s not weirder than he actually is.”
Soon Steve and Owen were demonstrating the Omega system to Auron. Auron had Jor assess the machine’s intelligence, and Omega, in the end, impressed and outpaced Jor by a considerable margin, even though Jor had access to all the computing power contained in Auron’s pyramid.
“You’ve created an intelligent system,” Auron commented. “Very good. I did the same thing myself fifty years ago. Now I’ve gone beyond this kind of thing.”
“Your systems are big,” said Owen. “You know how big this system is?”
“Show me.”
Owen picked up the Omega system from the table. It was the size of a golf ball.
“This is the entire system,” he said.
“How?” Auron asked.
“Your systems are liquids or gels. Ours are crystalline structures.”
“Semiconductors?”
“Sort of, but self-organising. They’re analog systems just like yours, Emperor, with this technology you may be able to resurrect your friend. Imagine this cube, but the size of a pyramid.”
“Don’t call me that. My name is Auron. And in exchange for this technology, what precisely do I have to do?”
“You sanction our efforts to put proper institutions in place. That’s all. You allow us to elect officials, draw up a constitution and so on. You retain ultimate power, but you become a figurehead. The burden of organising Frith will no longer fall on you.”
Auron smiled silently. Then he said, “That actually sounds like an attractive proposition. You know, if you’d told me what you’d wanted I would have agreed to it anyway, without the offer of your technology. I never wanted to be a ruler.”
“You wouldn’t listen to me. I’ve been trying to talk to you for twenty years. Without Omega I wouldn’t have even been able to find you, since you’ve moved out of your place on the mountain.”
“Fair point. Listen, I have a laboratory. Let’s go back there and you can explain to me how your crystals work.”
“How about tomorrow?” said Steve. “We’re going backwards and forwards like a yo-yo. Us ordinary mortals need to sleep from time to time.”
“I can transport us there instantly,” said Auron.
Owen laughed.
“You might have mentioned this before. Why have we just flown a thousand miles if you can transport us instantly? I thought the maximum range of that kind of thing was a few miles.”
“It’s a technology I like to keep to myself. If it becomes widely known and used, it risks ending privacy altogether. Are you ready?”
“We’re ready.”
“Jor, take us to the laboratory.”
The walls seem dissolve and were replaced by the grassy landscape where they had stood hours earlier. To their surprised, they discovered they weren’t the only people there.
A substantial crowd, led by Aldron Spear, who had somehow survived the wrath of the mob, stood assembled a short distance away.
“Who are they?” Auron asked.
“They just blew the head off your lookalike robot,” said Steve.
“Yeah, we forgot to mention it,” said Owen.
“Probably should have mentioned it,” said Steve.
Suddenly there was a enormous ear-splitting sound and a vast glowing sphere emerged from a machine that stood among the crowd and flew towards the pyramid in the distance. Before Auron could even react, the sphere contacted the pyramid and blew it to pieces.
“No!” said Auron quietly, turning pale.
Spear’s voice range out, amplified electronically.
“The Emperor is dead and the seat of the Emperor’s power has been destroyed! Now we are free!”
“They’ve destroyed it,” said Auron. “Jor, is Jer’s sarcophagus intact?”
“No, it’s been completely destroyed. Sorry, mate.”
Auron scrambled up to the top of a collection of rocks nearby, and shouted to the cheering men.
“I am the Emperor, and you’ve destroyed my property! Now you will pay!”
The crowd fell silent, and an awed murmur rose up among them.
Auron held out his hand and a glowing blue-violet sphere of light grew in the air above it, accompanied by a noise that suggested the sphere was rapidly gathering energy. He turned his hand and Owen realised he was about to hurl it at the crowd, presumably with fatal consequences.
“Auron, no!” Owen shouted.
Auron turned to him, the sphere still poised in the air, and with almost a sob in his voice, said, “They’ve killed my friend!”
“We can bring him back!” Owen replied.
“He’s nothing but atoms now!”
“There’s another way! Don’t hurt them! They don’t know what they’re doing! They’re not bad people, Auron. They’re just mistaken. They think you’re a tyrant.”
Auron seemed to hesitate and for a moment Owen thought he was going to hurl the sphere at the men anyway, but then he closed his hand and the sphere fizzled out.
The crowd was already fleeing in panic.
Auron walked slowly back down the rocks and said to Owen, his voice shaking, “How is it possible to bring back someone whose body is now nothing but dust and vapour? You’d better have an answer, because otherwise, I will find everyone responsible for this, and I will kill them.”
“Time travel,” said Steve.
“Time travel is impossible,” said Auron.
“No,” said Owen. “We asked Omega about it yesterday. One of many random questions we put to it. It’s possible.”
Owen and Steve stayed as guests at Auron’s previously-abandoned house on the mountainside for two weeks, during which time they explained every detail of their discovery to Auron, and soon a second Omega device was ready, the size of a shoebox and fully under the command of Jor.
“Jor, is time travel possible, according to the new device?” Auron asked.
“It’s unable to determine that,” came the reply.
“No,” said Steve. “It’s possible. Our device worked it out. I don’t know what’s wrong with this one. Probably needs more training. Our device says a really massive system would be able to implement it.
“You have to understand,” said Owen, “It’s not like bigger devices always inevitably give you the best answers. They’re smarter, but they can get hung up or stuck. Like an academic who refuses to believe in atomic theory, or whatever.”
“We’re going to need to rebuild your pyramid, with this technology,” said Steve.
“Our system will train it. It will be capable of time travel. You’ll see.”
“They just blew up my last pyramid,” said Auron. “I don’t even know how they managed it. It had its own defence systems.”
Auron’s right hand played nervously with the fur on Freddie’s neck. Freddie was half asleep at his side on the couch, exhausted.
“You’ve never actually tried to understand how your machines do things, right?” said Owen. “I mean, how do the flying vehicles fly? How can a machine the size of a shoebox rearrange molecules and turn them into dinner for two? I know that professor guy who designed their weapons. He’s obsessed with those kinds of details. He figured out the principles of physics that your computers understand.”
“And then he blew up my pyramid,” said Auron.
“That’s all over now. Their demands are reasonable. It’s all just a misunderstanding.”
“Give them what they want—the same things we want—and you’ll have no more problems with them.”
“You’re telling me they blew my head off and you think they’re reasonable?”
“They mistook you for a tyrant.” said Owen, “That’s partly your fault, no offence. You gave a robot the power of life and death.”
Auron stared blankly out of the window.
“I’m just not good with people,” he said. “I prefer machines. Whenever there’s a bunch of people around me, I always feel like some sort of social hierarchy has formed and I’m at the bottom of it. People push me around, and I don’t like being pushed around. They don’t even mean to. Apparently I somehow invite it.
“When they began to hail me as an emperor I liked it at first. No-one pushes an emperor around. Except, they do. People try to take advantage. They try to get in with you. They bore you with endless requests and demands.
“I gave people everything they could possibly want, and they’re still not happy.”
“No-one’s blaming you,” said Steve. “It is what it is. Move on. You want to stop Jer dying? Then rebuild the pyramid. We’ll do anything we can to help.”
Auron nodded.
“All right,” he said. “It’s worth a shot.”
Of course, Auron and his new friends didn’t rebuild the pyramid manually. Their machines performed the physical work, and nearly all of the intellectual effort as well.
Perhaps if Auron hadn’t been so focused on the task at hand he would have spent more time reflecting on the fact that he no longer had the final say over what happened on Frith, but the fact is that he never wanted to rule over Frith anyway. Some have argued—notably Professor Aubrey Asquith—that a person with Auron’s psychology wants power over himself, not others, but that craving for absolute control over their own lives can lead such people to accruing power over others as a means to an end.
Whatever the origins of Auron’s absolute rule, it was time for it to end, and even he could see that.
When they had finished the pyramid, they stood in front of it, awed by its size. The pyramid they had built was even a third taller than the one Auron had previously constructed, and it was surely by far the most intelligent entity that had ever existed in the entire universe, or at least the entire galaxy.
“Jer must have been some guy that you’d go to such lengths to bring him back,” Owen commented.
Auron snorted.
“No, he was a bit of an idiot.”
“Then why are we bothering with all this?” Steve asked.
“Because it’s my fault he’s dead, and I owe it to him to undo what I’ve done, if I possibly can,” said Auron.
Auron took Jor from his pocket.
“Jor, hypothetically, using the pyramid, can I travel backwards in time to the Earth and prevent myself from opening the portal, thereby saving Jer’s life?”
There was a brief silence, during which unfathomable and titanic calculations took place with the pyramid, then Jor answered.
“Yes, Auron, it’s possible,” said Jor.
The three men smiled. Owen and Steve clapped their hands together in the air; Owen looked at Auron and considered holding up his hand for Auron to clap but thought better of it.
“I’ll need to take at least forty kilos of luggage with me,” said Auron.
“That’s not possible,” said Jor.
“What? Why not?”
“The manipulation of that much energy would create a singularity in spacetime.”
“Well, how much stuff can I take with me, then?”
“At your current weight, only some clothes. Even a jacket would exceed the energy limit.”
“What if we build another pyramid?”
“Negative. We’re coming up against a hard limit here, mate.”
“That’s annoying,” said Owen. “Still, at least you’re not going naked.”
They spent the rest of the day debating what to do and trying to find some way around the problem.
Auron wanted to at least take Jor with him, but that too would exceed what Auron laughing called his “baggage allowance.”
Owen suggested Jor’s mechanism be partially replaced with his new technology, enabling them to shrink Jor down, but Auron wouldn’t hear of it, fearing Jor’s personality—formed over years and with Jer’s initial input—would be lost, replaced by something less dependable.
In the end, Auron decided to starve himself for a couple of weeks, so that he could take Jor, a jacket, and some diamonds to exchange for currency. He also decided to remove five years from his biological age, just in case he were to end up spending a long time on the Earth.
Freddie would have to stay behind, but he would leave Freddie with Sandra and Raika, as he had already done so many times before retreating into two years of isolation.
Once on the Earth he would make his way to his chronologically younger self, and warn him not to open the portal. He would enlist the help of his own earlier self and Jer to instead use their technology to prevent the nuclear war that was to subsequently destroy the Earth.
But all of this raised some questions that not even the enormous Omega device inside the pyramid was able to answer with any certainty.
“If I stop myself opening the portal,” said Auron, as they sat together back at his mountainside house again, “Frith never comes into being, or at least not in this precise form, with this exact history. Then how can I come back here? All of this will never have happened.”
“Omega thinks this spatiotemporal manifold will still exist, as a detached ramification of spacetime,” said Jor.
“If this whole thing still exists,” said Owen, “you’ve not saved Jer’s life at all. I mean, if this whole history still occurs, then Jer still dies.”
“You’ll have created a separate branch of time,” said Jor. “at least, according to Omega.”
“Is there even any point to any of this?” Steve asked. “I mean, if changing the past destroys us in the present.”
“Currently there’s no timeframe in which Jer is alive,” Jor replied. “Auron’s proposed actions will create such a timeframe. That’s the theory. However, Omega thinks there’s a small chance that Auron’s attempts to interfere with the future may result in his death.”
“My death? Why?”
“Because there can only be one consistent past, therefore if you attempt to interfere with it, something must stop you. It’s the Novikov self‑consistency principle. But I wouldn’t worry about it, mate. Omega thinks it’s probably wrong.”
“You should stop this,” said Steve. “It’s not worth it. You might die, and if you succeed, you might create a worse future than what we’ve already lived through.”
“Kind of boggles the mind,” said Owen reflectively.
“I’ve come too far to give this up,” said Auron. “If those idiots hadn’t blown up the sarcophagus I might have resurrected him. Now it’s too late for that. Time travel is the only option.”
“On the upside, you can stop a nuclear war,” said Owen.
“Only in one timeframe.” said Steve. “In the one we’ve just lived through, it still happens.”
“There’d be two of us,” said Owen, “in different universes.”
“There’ll be one of you in one universe,” said Jor, “Only Auron will experience two different universes. For you, only one universe exists. Facts are subjective.”
“Facts aren’t subjective,” said Owen, suddenly exercised. “What a load of nonsense. Facts are facts.”
“Careful interpretation of the word ‘subjective’ is needed,” said Jor. “Facts are subjective in the sense that—”
“Look, enough of this,” said Auron, interrupting. “I’m going through with it. End of story. There’s no alternative. Hopefully I won’t die and you and Frith will still exist.”
“What the hell have we got ourselves into?” said Steve.
Two weeks later, a slightly thinner and younger Auron stood inside an enormous machine he’d had constructed in the nearby mountains. He’d left Freddie with Sandra and her dog Raika, saying an embarrassingly tearful goodbye, to which Freddie had been largely oblivious, and expressing the hope that he would see Freddie again.
Viktor, Rosa, Owen and Steve were there to see Auron off.
In theory the parting would be brief for them, since Auron intended to return to the same point in time and space from which he was leaving, but from Auron’s perspective he might perhaps be away for quite some time.
He was wearing a warm jacket and he had Jor in his pocket, and a small bag of diamonds in the other pocket. The diamonds had been carefully synthesised to resemble natural diamonds from the Earth.
The process of devolving power on Frith had already begun, and could safely be continued without Auron’s presence.
After appropriate words had been awkwardly exchanged, Viktor pulled a lever and a strange rising sound emerged from the enormous frame under which Auron stood.
A bright white light shone out of the edifice, growing in intensity, forcing the four observers to step backwards.
Then, quite suddenly, the light vanished and only the empty frame was left.
“If he succeeds, we might not exist anymore,” said Viktor.
“Not according to Omega,” said Owen.
“Let’s hope it’s right, then,” said Viktor.
Where Auron had stood, a little bag of diamonds fell to the ground.
For several entire minutes, Auron had no idea where he was—if anywhere—and wondered seriously if he was dead.
Around him seemed to be only blackness. He was suspended, as if in zero gravity, unable to make contact with any solid surface.
He began to curse himself for taking such a stupid risk, and he wondered if he was now destined to spend all of eternity in a dark featureless void.
But then it struck him that he was at least able to breathe and that the void was filled, apparently, with air, which meant that the time machine’s life support systems were functioning correctly, even if the process was taking longer than expected.
He tapped his pocket and found Jor still there. His clothes all seemed to be intact. The skin on his hands and face seemed fine, and he still had hair.
But how much longer would he remain there? Seconds? Minutes? Days? Centuries?
Then he thought to check the bag of diamonds, and with a startled, sinking feeling, he realised it was missing.
No sooner had he arrived at this conclusion than he was falling, and all around him was light. He hit the ground with a nasty bump.
He picked himself up, and found he was standing in a field. The sky was overcast. He was quite obviously in England, but where? The machine was supposed to put him down on his feet in an abandoned house near York, and clearly something hadn’t worked properly.
He felt his pockets again. The diamonds were definitely missing, but at least he had Jor.
“Jor, where are we?”
“No idea, mate. I can’t see anything without external apparatus, as you know.”
“I’ve lost my diamonds.”
“Maybe Omega’s density calculations were slightly off.”
Auron swore and began walking towards the nearest road.
“The question is,” he said to Jor, “what year is it? If the mass calculations and geotargeting were off, the time’s probably off too.”
“Probably not by much, if you’re on the right planet.”
“A year early would be better than a second too late.”
The edge of the field was marked by a barbed-wire fence. Since he couldn’t find a gate, he scrambled through it, getting stuck and tearing his jacket slightly in the process.
Then, finding himself on a single-track road, he picked a direction and began to walk.
Eventually he turned onto a busier road and saw signs pointing to York.
“OK, we’re not off by much,” he said.
“If you’re almost in the right place, you’re probably almost at the right time,” said Jor.
“Jor, I’ve got no money. What am I going to do?”
“Go to Auron 2 and ask for help?” said Jor uncertainly.
“Auron 2?”
“You’re Auron 1. The other Auron, the one that didn’t travel through time, is Auron 2,” Jor explained.
“I can’t do that! I know what he’s like. He’ll freak out! He’ll think I’m a robot or something, come to replace him.”
“Is it possible any of the diamonds fell out in your pocket?”
A sudden hope rising in him, Auron felt about in his pocket and soon located a single small diamond.
“It’s better than nothing,” he said. “This ought to be worth twenty thousand pounds.”
Soon he arrived at a small suburb of York itself. He went into a jeweller’s and produced the diamond.
“Where did you get this?” the jeweller asked; a tall well-built man with tanned skin and stubble.
“It’s been in the family for a while. Would you like to buy it?”
“Give me a minute,” said the jeweller, and he went off into a back room. When he returned, he said, “I can offer you fifteen thousand pounds.”
“Only fifteen?” said Auron, disappointed.
“Based on its weight and characteristics, that’s what it’s worth. You can try other places but you won’t get a better deal.”
“OK then.”
“I just need to see your ID.”
“I don’t have any ID.”
“Can’t do the sale without ID, I’m afraid.”
Auron went away disappointed and nervous. He didn’t even have the money to buy so much as a bottle of water.
He tried five more jeweller’s shops and finally found one who would agree to pay him in cash on the spot without ID, but only three thousand pounds.
“If it turns out to be stolen and I don’t have your ID, the police will seize it and I’ll be in trouble,” the jeweller explained. “The low price reflects the risk.”
“It’s not stolen,” said Auron.
“You can’t prove that.”
Auron sighed heavily, and said, “OK, it’s a deal,” and went away from the shop three thousand pounds richer.
He went to a cheap-looking cafe and ordered lasagna, coffee, and wine to steady his nerves.
He asked the girl who waited on his table what the date was.
“May 16th,” she said
“And the year?”
“It’s 2006,” she said, with a surprised expression. “What are you, a time traveller?”
“Exactly,” said Auron.
She went away rolling her eyes.
“Jor, I’m three years early,” he said.
“Never mind, mate,” said Jor. “Three years will pass soon enough. It’ll give you time to prepare.”
As he sat eating his lasagna, a young couple at a nearby table began giggling and casting furtive glances towards him. It was unclear what they were laughing about; possibly the fact that he was having a somewhat strange conversation with what they must have assumed to be a telephone in his pocket.
As he thought the matter over, he realised that the style of his clothing had diverged somewhat from what was considered normal in England in 2006, and that may also have provided a source of mirth.
He began to feel unpleasantly conspicuous.
The rest of the people in the cafe didn’t particularly seem to have noticed him, although a few were casting odd glances in his direction from time to time. There was a table of three men who looked like road workers, several tables of elderly ladies, and a table with an elderly couple.
As he scanned the scene he started to feel that he was, in fact, distinctly on everyone’s radar, even if most of the cafe’s customers were more discreet about commenting on his presence.
“Am I being paranoid, Jor?” he asked. “I feel like I’m attracting attention.”
“No, mate. Half of them are talking about you.”
“How do you know?”
“I can hear them. You should get some normal clothes and pretend I’m a telephone.”
He took Jor out of his pocket and placed him on the table.
“Talk more quietly,” said Auron, almost whispering.
The giggling young couple had just enjoyed a particularly loud and ill-concealed bout of laughter when the cafe door opened, flung open by a man wearing a cape. He was perhaps sixty years of age and sported a pointed grey-white beard and piercing eyes.
“Emperor Auron!” he shouted in a booming voice. “At last we meet! There can only be one ruler of this galaxy. But I’m not a man to kick an emperor when he’s down! We will meet again, Emperor Auron!”
And with that, and a swirl of his cape, the man departed.
Now everyone in the cafe was staring openly at him.
“Just some nutcase,” Auron said to them.
After leaving the cafe, holding Jor next to his face like a phone, he said, “Jor, who was that man in the cafe?”
“Haven’t the faintest,” said Jor.
“You’re no help.”
“I can’t even see anything. You need to hook me up to a matter interactor. Or at least a camera.”
Auron found a hotel and checked in. The hotel charged him sixty pounds for one night. Fortunately, they didn’t ask for any ID.
“Sixty pounds!” he said to Jor, lying on the hotel bed. “Three thousand isn’t going to last three years at this rate!”
“You can economise on eating,” said Jor. “Buy bread and cheese and stuff from a supermarket.”
“It’s still not going to stretch much longer than a month.”
“You’ll have to talk to Auron 2.”
“I’m not talking to Auron 2 until it’s really necessary. You don’t know Auron 2 like I know Auron 2! It’ll freak him out if he sees me.”
“Then ask Jer for help. Or Viktor.”
Auron paused for a moment as the thought hit him that here, in this time, Jer was alive and walking about, completely oblivious to his future fate.
“I’m not going to beg my friends for help,” he said, finally. “Come up with another plan.”
“Build a new interactor. You’ll only need a few days in a hotel to get it done. Then you can live in style for three years.”
“Finally, some sense!” said Auron, relieved. “I can easily get everything I need to make a new interactor.”
“You’re welcome.”
And so, at least on the surface, it appeared that Auron had a workable plan. He would stay in the hotel, build a device that would enable Jor to interact with the material world, and Jor would quickly make him as wealthy as he pleased.
In three years, he would find the other version of himself, the one that was currently discussing setting up a business somewhere with Jer, and he’d warn him against all future pitfalls.
Instead of Auron 2 and Jer ending up stranded on an alien planet for thirty years, they would devote themselves to preventing the impending nuclear catastrophe on the Earth, and he, Auron 1, would return to Frith where he would become a ceremonial figurehead, respected and perhaps loved, but—most importantly—with very few demands upon his time.
The future seemed bright, but there were things that Auron hadn’t accounted for; facts of which he was unaware, as he was soon to discover.
