Authors: Cam Rogers
Nick caught up to him. “You think there’s stuff on there that might … bring Monarch down?”
Horatio shrugged. “Been here a few years. It’d be shitty timing to find something now, don’t you think? But … yeah, I think so.”
Nick glanced around, not liking this at all. “How long you need? We get caught we’re goin’ out a window.”
Horatio pushed open the meeting room door. “After today I’m out of here. This is my last chance.”
Long mahogany table. Whiteboards on two walls. Central teleconference dome. Five-thousand-dollar seats. Vidscreen.
Terminal. Built into the flat of the table, right in front of the door.
Horatio sat and got to work.
“Listen, Horatio—”
Horatio slapped his security card on the desk, kept typing. “Five minutes.” He took a thumb drive, jacked it into a slot in the table’s polished surface. Smoothed his note, typed.
Waited.
The screen lit up with Monarch’s geometric logo.
“Yes.” Horatio dived in, keyboard clattering.
Nick took the card. “I’ll keep the elevator ready. Five minutes.”
If Horatio heard, he didn’t respond. Nick was just out the door when Horatio said, “Jesus H. Macy.”
Nick came back, peered over his shoulder. “What?”
“Wait. I need to … I need to copy this. And … fuck me. Wait.” Keys clattered. Files were copied to the thumb drive. “So Hatch has been pushing for the development of Project Lifeboat—this grand plan that’s already racking up cost overruns and has a five-year dev schedule it is
never
going to meet. The Lifeboat team is talking chronon harvesting and storage technology orders of magnitudes more efficient than what we currently have, technology to allow whole teams of specialists to move through chronon-free zones for months or years on end and pylon technology to preserve causality within a much wider radius than what we’re currently—”
Nick twiddled the security card. “And?”
“And there’s a second group involved with the project. From
outside
Monarch that nobody but Hatch seems to know about. Hatch has been corresponding with them since day one. Project Lifeboat is above top secret, but this other crew—and it looks like they’re scattered all over the planet—are getting regular updates. From what I can tell nobody in Monarch knows these guys exist. What the fuck is Hatch up to?”
“Copy it and let’s go.”
“There’s also reference to a second time machine. In a … swimming pool?”
Nick craned in. “Say that again.”
“A swim—”
“Fuck. We have to go. We have to go right now.”
“I’m mailing this to Beth.”
“Now, Horatio.”
Horatio held up one hand, still typing with the other. “I’ll be right there. Thirty seconds.”
Nick jogged out, got to the elevator, swiped it open.
If Horatio had found something that could cause some damage … yeah. Nick was all for using it to give it to Monarch in the neck. But it wouldn’t mean anything if they were too dead to use it.
Nick glanced at his watch. “Horatio! Come on, we—whoa!”
Horatio was no longer typing. He was in his seat, shuddering, arms slack by his sides.
Martin Hatch stood next to him, four fingers and thumb locked deep into Horatio’s throat, gazing at Nick as Horatio’s life ran out of him.
Nick swung into the elevator and hammered the Door Close button.
Martin Hatch watched him go.
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 10:05
P
.
M
. Monarch Tower. Paul Serene’s Apartment, Floor 49.
If Monarch’s success and hypersonic rise could be attributed to one thing it would be Paul Serene’s explorations of possible futures and his identification of key junction moments that led to the choicest outcomes.
He had not always been sick, and he had not always possessed the ability to fly down the branching corridors of future probability. The gift was a trait of the sickness. The chronon syndrome.
In the early days his vision had been tight and nearsighted. A day ahead at most, with no control. In time he had learned to focus on moments that led to moments. He called them junctions. These almost always manifested in the instant, allowing him to make a choice
now
that would elicit an outcome later. This was fine for short-term gain, but there was a blindness to it, an element of chance. The choices he made were best guesses based on what shadowy perceptions he could grasp at the end of what probability branches were at hand—and he always had to choose quickly, before the moment passed.
But that would not do. It was not enough.
Paul did not want choice forced on him. He wanted knowledge, awareness, and control. In time, with great effort, he learned to identify junction moments before they arrived. This enabled choices that were more considered and better informed.
In this manner Monarch Solutions had first begun to shape the life of every person on Earth.
With greater effort and diligence Paul began to explore a larger selection of possible futures. And then to explore the possible futures that branched from those.
Greater exploration came with greater effort. Especially deep forays came at a cost: the giving of himself to the sickness, and the sacrificing of his flesh.
The dreams were terrible after such journeys. Not just
a
dream, but dreams about dreams. Dozens of iterations of surreal scenarios played out atop one another yet all of them, somehow, simultaneously comprehensible. Parallel timelines, near-identical causalities, each with small variations blooming into sometimes vastly different outcomes.
In the moment it felt like joy; on waking it felt like madness. He was never right for days after such deep journeys. But the company profited. Armed with detailed foreknowledge, Martin Hatch’s captaincy had been immaculate.
The sicker Paul got, the easier it became. The farther he went, the sicker he got.
Paul’s instincts honed. His efficiency sharpened.
Now, as Paul’s time on Earth grew short, he centered himself for his greatest and most complex voyage to date. His mission was to chart the most detailed probability map that he could, covering the coming days. This would be especially difficult as, given the events of the last twenty-four hours, the skein of cause and effect was in a state of high agitation.
The journeys he had taken previously would be as garden pathways compared to the seething jungle tangle that awaited him.
This final foray would cost him greatly.
Paul Serene sat comfortably on his magnificent chair of thirty-six-hundred-year-old
Fitzroya cupressoides
. At each compass point an articulated stand directed a microphone toward him.
His final operation as a surgeon of causality—his final voyage as a cartographer of future history—began in this instant.
The map he would leave behind would allow Monarch to navigate the coming storm, to survive the inevitable scrutiny, and to win the loyalty of those who could assure the company’s future as the savior of mankind.
It would assure the development and success of Project Lifeboat, which, without immediate and unconditional global governmental cooperation, would fail. Humanity, this universe, this timeline would cease to be.
Paul closed his eyes.
And began.
His consciousness became four-dimensional. He rose above the weave entirely and allowed his consciousness to point—compass-like—toward the future he desired most.
He had never perceived the skein of probability so completely, so vastly, as he did now. Vast enough to crush a mind, perfect enough that the changing part of Paul Serene wanted to dwell there forever.
His mind found its direction as though it were the most instinctive thing on Earth. Paul Serene’s awareness found the future where Martin Hatch stood before those who control the world … and those who control the world said:
Yes.
Paul Serene started there, examining in detail the threads of cause and effect that led each and every person in that room to that singular and most-desired outcome, and worked his way backward.
Only then did he begin dictating to the microphones.
His flesh burned with starlight.
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 10:07
P
.
M
. Monarch Tower. Martin Hatch’s Apartment, Floor 50.
When Randall Gibson entered Martin Hatch’s office the great man was cleaning one hand with a dark handkerchief, meticulously working the spaces between his fingers.
“Mr. Gibson,” Mr. Hatch said, without looking up from his work. “The tragedy in your unit has returned you to command. Welcome back, Senior Operative. They were good soldiers. Let’s not have you tarnish their memory, hmm?”
“Sir?”
“You and the remainder of C-1 are to head to the Riverport Swimming Hall. A time machine is inside. You are to enter the swimming hall, enter the machine, and go back as far as you can—to 1999—and kill Jack Joyce. Do you understand?”
“And … the Consultant? Mr. Serene? He’s gone and changed his opinion on the science? Last I heard messing with collapsed waveforms was verboten.”
“Mr. Serene has not been well. Leave the laws of the universe to me.”
“Y-yes sir.”
“Doubt, Mr. Gibson?”
“Sir, no, sir! I look forward to executing the mission with the utmost aggression, sir!”
“And I look forward to you and I renewing our friendship. Now go forth, and deliver a mighty suffering.”
Gibson felt his chest light up like a ball of phosphorous on a dark night. “Sir, yes, sir!”
With the utmost fucking aggression
.
Oo-fuckin’-RAH!
“Dismissed, Senior Operative.”
Gibson saluted, pivoted, and marched on out, head high.
Hatch sighed, folded his handkerchief, and tucked it into his pocket. Today was a day for housecleaning, and setting things in motion.
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 10:17
P
.
M
. Riverport Swimming Hall.
Beth had left Sofia in Jack’s care while she shut herself in the locker rooms to tend her savaged leg and change out of her Monarch uniform. Jack had some first aid training and figured she’d be okay in the short term. There would be a scar, but the slug had done no damage to bone or arteries. He had offered to stitch her up, but Beth wanted to take care of it herself and retreated to the change rooms.
So he was stuck with Sofia.
“You don’t need to convince me,” Sofia snapped. “I’ll help you. My own calculations are very clear: the Meyer-Joyce field
will
collapse. Well in advance of Paul’s five-year prediction. We have a day. Two at most. Now please let me work.”
Sofia was already examining the console of Will’s machine, looking up occasionally to compare what she was seeing onscreen to some detail of the machine’s structure.
“So you do think the world’s about to end.”
“Yes, I do.”
Jack leaped on that. “Paul’s been to the end of time. He has the date. If a collapsed waveform can’t be altered, if things can’t be changed, how can he be wrong?”
“It’s his word against my expertise and a model supported by verifiable data,” she scowled. “I can only conclude his recollection is flawed.”
Beth reappeared from the locker rooms out back. “He wants you to tell him it’s possible to influence a collapsed waveform, to change events.” Gone were the monogrammed Monarch jacket and fatigues. She had prepared an outfit that was fashion agnostic: blue jeans, plain black T-shirt, mid-range leather jacket of classic cut. An outfit that wouldn’t look out of place anytime in the last twenty years. “Jack,” she said. “You have to let go of the idea that you can save Will. Focus on what’s possible.”
Jack let it go, but wouldn’t be giving up. Will was alive in 2010. There had to be something he could do.
Beth turned to Sofia. “Are we good?” She was favoring her good leg pretty heavily, but otherwise looked okay, all things considered.
They could both have used some sleep.
Sofia stepped away from the keyboard. Gathering her thoughts she said, “Before I do this, I have a question for you: your brother built something he called a Countermeasure.” Being here, looking at Will’s machine, and piecing together her own experiences with Paul Serene and Monarch, it was now clear to her that Dr. Kim had little, if anything, to do with the pioneering of chronon research. That, quite possibly, she had made a grave error in helping Monarch to achieve their goals. “‘Countermeasure.’ That is a very specific word.”
“Will built it to repair the fracture in the M-J field,” Jack said.
Sofia’s face broke into a sudden smile. It suited her. “Then it exists.”
“It existed on July 4, 2010, we know that much.”
“And that is your destination?”
Beth stepped in. “We go back, retrieve it, return here, fix all this. How soon can you get the machine working?”
“It’s ready now, if you are.”
* * *
Irene Rose was in a top-down position on the pool, her rifle’s barrel nosing through a gap in a thin and grimy window, waiting for go.
“Count all three. Joyce, Wilder, Amaral. They’re focused on the machine, seem pretty excited about it.”
Gibson was hanging out on the corrugated eave, outside the cafeteria-level window. He had just finished laying a sheet of black plastic adhesive across the pane. “Team, report in.”
“IR, roof,” Irene responded.
“Voss, rear door, ground level.”
“Chaffey, Reeves, Dominguez, rear door.”
“Gibson…” Gibson took out his knife, tapped the plastic hard. The glass pane beneath it snapped, came away clean. He laid it down carefully. “Cafeteria, top floor.” He ducked inside, unslung his carbine as a car pulled up outside, braking loudly.
Irene piped up. “Boss.”
“I got it. Count one: Caucasian male. Limp. Voss, how you coming with that door?”
“Already in.”
* * *
Shouting from the lobby bounced around the swimming hall. “Jack! Beth! You here?”
Nick ran into the hall, heavily favoring one leg. He and Beth were a matching pair.