Chapter 1 – The Search for
Metric
He
sat as his desk writing again. He had imagined the roles that a lot
of people would have to play, wondered about how many loops and
dreams that they would have to have before they believed any of it.
How long before the upper management of the universe took another
chance on change. The radio was tuned into the most useful song for
the moment as it had been for a while. His organic searches on
YouTube with all sorts of crazy qualifiers like the last number he
had seen, the last character he had been working on, the point of
view of a certain character – it all seemed to fit. Or he made it
fit. Kitbash. It’s essentially what he was doing. Taking
divergent things like a random conversation with a religious friend
and a streaming playlist and getting them to mesh. He liked to think
it was working on the time gears of the universe, but maybe it was
just keeping his mind active.
All
of it for her.
Well.
For everybody eventually. But...
He
wondered what she was up to. What memories she had picked. Did she
go with the plainest version of events, or did she take some of the
weird and wonderful with her. Getting resurrected by the forces
behind the creation of this place was a miracle. But what if that
wasn’t needed in the first place? It was obvious to all that were
on board with that idea of a higher power wouldn’t see anything
wrong with the most pedestrian version of events. But what would
that accomplish? I mean apart from the obvious. Showing a God of
love and power had both of those things. I guess that would be
enough for some, but it didn’t really show anything not already written down as sure and true. Checking off boxes. Precedents for
that kind of thing. He un-paused the movie he was watching. He didn’t
like making the characters hold their breath that long. “Getting
younger all the time” another promise written in the Book. But
what of the New Scrolls? What kind of tempo would they set? Did they
have room for ‘off the books’ projects?
For
communication he set up the Metric project. A kind of Time Neutral
location that relied on universal constants (like Pi). It helped
write this novel. And it will help all of us get through this.
----
She
had it easy. Or so he figured. She was on the side of miracles
already happening, so the ask wasn’t quite as big. Or maybe it
was. Why would she want something different than what was already
provided. Why would she insist that things weren’t the way it
seemed. She could communicate with him in her dreams and whatever it
was during the day wasn’t quite him. It fooled most people, but
maybe they were just projecting themselves into a placeholder for
him. For all he know she was everybody and everyone on his end of
the internet. Putting on a hundred different masks waiting for some
sign that he was just the right level of crazy. Maybe it was bigger
than that. Maybe everyone else was a robot controlled from the
future. When anything is possible, it’s hard to rule anything out.
“I really value
the free boxes we had <location>. Places to take what you need,
and leave what someone else might. These places had no brokers; there
was no one there to collect and sell, or gate-keep what had value. “
It
was an out of place kind of post, but it touched upon what kind of
‘problems’ a perfect world without money might have. Something
the normal literature didn’t address.
It
looked like she wanted to find out more. Which is only fair. Not
the most exciting way for things to go forward, but a reasonable one.
She soon found the depths of the story though and he hoped they
could find her.
She
did the most responsible thing under the circumstances. She took the
gift of time travel and hid it away. She reached out with small
hints here and there. Something that wouldn’t be too out of place,
but a thread to tug at if one looked close enough. Posts too close
together. Weird things
that were inexplicable,
but fit in a certain context. Her mother, or some version of her,
kept her away from using her gifts too strongly, until certain
arrangements had been made. Something to keep her in check.
Something to occupy her time. Some kind of context to fit back into
the ‘real’ world. She was in kind of a dreamy fugue state.
Knowing she could get anything with enough effort so that nothing was
worth the effort and yet the effort was needed to keep things going.
She fell down the rabbit hole more than once. But yet on further
examination there was footholds in the rabbit hole. Someone wasn’t
giving up. Someone was trying to get her attention. It
was a base drum that beat below the level of things and
that she was one of the
few people to notice in the right framework.
It
was obvious from the chats – as disjointed and sporadic as they
were, that she needed some kind of reference point. Not a plain
ordinary life, but something less manic as well. He suggested
something like this a return to something mostly plain, but with a
number of incongruities or odd starting points that kept things
interesting. Maybe a start in a plane heading to Cardiff with hints
of past conversations on a phone or in the in-flight entertainment.
If it was in the happy garden maybe he wouldn’t be there – which
was true. From his perspective he wasn’t in any of those other
places and any attempt to bring him there prematurely left him with
missing days and a kind of crazy skid back into plainest life.
The
point wasn’t for them to be together, but for the middle of the
story to form. For everybody to get a happy --- new beginning.
---
Every century had it's own Temporal
Breakwater Tower. It wasn't quite in physical space, but at some
level it was anchored to it, and it kept to a relative position in
time. Outside of it were a web of Temporal Buoys that reached out,
in decades, 50 years in either direction. In this network was an
exhaustive record of everyone and everything that was supposed to
happen in a 100 year radius. As temporal events happened – there
was another direction to time-space that kept them from happening all
at once – this system settled the changes and prevented any runaway
effects from cascading.
At the 'top' – or really the most
prominently detectable – portion of the tower was a
lighthouse/magnet. Anyone attempting to visit a certain time in the
domain would first be drawn to it – and outside of normal
space-time. What they would find depended on both the era being
visited and the era the craft made it's initial jump.
It was part tourist guide, instruction
manual, decompression chamber – time travel put enormous stress on
entropy related systems – and warning.
Initially, if such a word means much
outside of normal space-time, these were natural whirlpools of
space-time, taking away significant memories and disruptions of
events and replacing them with whatever the swirling miasma of the
local culture had dreamed up. Alien visitors for late 20th
century people, monsters and nightmares for more primitive cultures.
Cross-pollination from different times
and people refined the process to the point where a recognizable
human structure was more noticeable that the natural effect.
Ironically, the shorter the time trip, the more built-up the
structure appeared to be. Visits from farther away in time resulted
in a more natural appearance, and more work needed to shore up the
quantum underpinnings.
This again worked out for the best.
Crude devices were offered the most help and more complex ones had
more control over the workings and tolerances of the tower.
--
Thanks
to the construction of these towers she found her self in a bit of a
time loop. The last part of her uninterrupted life. Some kind of
confusion and waking in the Garden, only to have it fade away when
the story lines there unravelled.
Whether
that was because of his interference or some other greater story, she
didn’t know – but the radio seemed to have some hints. It was
one of the first gifts of the second cycle. A real time way to get
a readout of the other. For him it meant timely songs and some
rather odd hosts and the occasional glitch.
That
was the problem with organic time travel. Things were too slushy –
what you kept and lost in time loops was more or less random, if it
wasn’t for the tagging device she grabbed from him she probably
would have been stuck for quite a few more revolutions. She knew she
was near the end of a cycle and made an attempt to grab him again.
However their temporal momentum was too different to make it work.
There
was a bit of a charge exchange but nothing too specific on his end –
as usual. He didn’t know what she saw, but now wasn’t the time
for happy endings – there was a larger goal on the horizon. He
could tell from his various channels that she was upset, but again,
you can’t have everyone happy all the time. She could drift on her
sugar dreams for a while yet, but sooner or later the real work would
need doing.
The
whole thing would need a bit more structure, or weird, pointless
things would keep happening from all the temporal discharges. The
last contact had already shorted one of his phones and left his mind
in a bit of a state. If there was any loose time-space software
attempting to take over his devices, it was back to square one now.
If there was some memories lingering in the mix, they hadn’t
settled out yet.
---
In
the first chapter she found she could move around her memories to
allows for certain events to take place. Only by reaching about
beyond herself could she affect anything outside herself though.
This caused some confusion, but eventually it was sorted. The two
protagonists picked up working with each other after a break of a few
years of time passed on his end while she was in a time loop.
If
this was based loosely on ‘A Study in Pink’ the next chapter
would have to be ‘The Game is On’ in which she uses her
abilities, passively, to help others sort out journeys through time
portals and the great Second Exodus.
