A Special Creation

By William P. Williams

A little time travel story: Early in the 4th Millinnium AD, the earth is devastated by people in space, and in reprisal, earthling humanity destroys all the Solar System. However, there is a happy ending.

The major protagonist goes "back in time" (actually going back in time is logically impossible of course) to guide and control the progress of science. We have chapters of history (the universe, human evolution, religion). People become so advanced that he is arrested and frozen, but he escapes in time for the final resolution of the great war.

He is made (babies are not conceived and born in times to come, but designed and made and hatched from replication mechanisms) according to humanity's original design. The most people are hermaphroditic or sexless, but that's the way it is. He has no idea what he's in for when he enters a universe of people like him. He finds that he really likes sex, and the past doesn't regulate reproduction! He's like a god in the ancient past. Who's going to stop him?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796061703

Book preview

BOOK 1

CHAPTER 1

The End, 4000 Common Era

A time traveler’s story begins at the end of things. The present is changed by creating a new past. Of course, the range of matters that produces a time traveler, the universe of humankind and all humanity, are destroyed. This seems cold, but outrage and revenge can summon up the effort.

Is such a vast murder, such destruction, justified? Have lives no value? Suppose, the lives are merely transformed, that the flesh endures but the people are gone, somebody else? Is anyone justified, then, to terminate all the people.

Well…

• Of course not. Life is precious and, there is no justice without mercy. Whatever were you thinking!

• What does that have to do with anything? Whatever can be done either will or will not be done: When and how are the questions, and the resolution is mere statistics.

CHAPTER 2

The Beginning of the End

At the beginning of the fifth millennium, only the earth and the sun remained of all the planets, moons, asteroids, comets and the natural mass of the Solar System. All other mass had been used to build habitats. There were great cities inside non reflective shells, and lesser cities, aquariums, zoos, and a considerable dusting of family habitats filling the solar plane. The earth, itself, was deeply hollowed out and multi=story layers built under several black iron shells. It was a large premium address complex in a ring about the sun amidst the vast plane of lesser objects.

Colonizing artificial ecologies in space would be tricky and often unpleasant, but whoever begins can no longer claim a niche upon the earth. Ever more lives will depend upon facing whatever challenges arise in space. Limited only by the elements supportive of life, people will spread among the planets, mining them for their economy, securing new routines. Given an external source of energy, it is possible to recycle essentials and, thereby, maintain them.

While each habitat had its address in the two points where it must cross a common plane; that is, on the solar plane, differing declensions granted them moments in the sunlight, and the sun was circled with what from a distance appeared to be smoky rings. The stasis of the habitat orbits was not simple or altogether robust.

The Solar System has several natural motions: Earth, for example, completes a rotation every 24 hours. It’s solar revolution adds a day to the year so the absolute rotation is 4 minutes more. Earth attends the sun which has revolved the around our galaxy some 22 times. Our galaxy falls with neighboring galaxies into the local center near the Andromeda spiral. This happens at astronomic speeds, often a significant proportion of light’s speed.

No doubt all this is substantially true if not necessarily true. Our view of the universe is as if a snap shot was taken from a moving vehicle and, afterward, everything was calculated with wonderful insight but without totally understanding what we saw.

When people redesigned the solar system to convert its mass into habitable cells (rather than huge planets with thin habitable crusts), clouds of habitats that massed in regular orbits became economical. Population and economic pressures caused even these low rent areas to be stretched out. Maintenance stations would perpetually correct local orbits, but the counter destabilization at the center meant institutions of regulation demanded increasing authority.

The system was dynamic and provoked bitter partisanship. The richness and diversity of the habitats supported independent and unique cultures. The center seems to belong to all and should offer a focus, yet it has interests of its own and exerts its power. The friend of all, it often seems to be the enemy of each.

When the Solar System had been rebuilt to maximize population, a second Solar plane near the sun was made for some bubble habitats to catch more of the sunlight in the perpendicular. These habitats had a complex double vector in a plane of their own and in their solar plane address. The balance had peculiar stresses in its secondary tidal and electromagnetic effects. The compensations were pragmatic or practical and were made as history had established their necessity. Some were not well documented.

Human commerce was finally ready to mine the sun in earnest, soon to dim and ultimately destroy it. Knowledgeable earthlings understood that the sun, like other materials, must one day be consumed and displaced, but earth became identified with opposition to this necessity. Earth’s simple prudence had the appearance of sly subversion. Therefore, when things went bad, everybody knew who the bad guys should be. Efforts by earth based activists were blamed for a catastrophe. That their objections were proven correct was particularly offensive.

Even before the sun had been much transformed from a real to a virtual focus of solar system orbits, the vast industrial processes that began to draw its substance into an astronomical fountain or arch over the skies broke the balance of delicately balanced orbits. A long string of habitats that orbited closely to the sun fell into the sun. Considered as pure math, the fall was stately and beautiful, utterly logical in its own way. The solar corona washed over cylinders full of vibrant green and a rich atmosphere. They popped or held the formerly living things like a burnt crust on the inside surfaces, then melted, gone in gaseous swirls.

The broadcast images, however, were of desperate hysteria as people lined up for too few ships strong enough to defy the power of a star. There were courage and pathos in the interviews and scenes broadcast by the doomed. Trillions died, hardly a dimple in population statistics, but with despair and rioting and vivid drama. The public demanded action, any action. Authorities decided to satisfy the call for action by arresting their critics.

Protesters were arrested and taken to the habitat concentration in the Venus orbit. As they were escorted through the civil center after their acquittal, they were attacked by a mob. Coming in from earth to join his brother, Nicolas, Michail Teri watched replays of the news broadcast.

The civil center or courts habitat was a large cylinder with a diameter of about 9 kilometers and twice as long, its shell consisting of halls and residences and a couple kilometers thick. Spin provided a duplication for gravity. The outer surface was covered with a soft substance to absorb odd collisions. Aside from meteors, workers in space would be forever dropping wrenches or carelessly let the equivalent of parked cars do the equivalent of rolling downhill. Gathering astronomic speeds, these could be as terrifying as they were amusing.

The inside surface had a geared or snaggy fractal structure that resembled pyramids or stacked mountains from the ground level. This inner surface was landscaped and full of foot paths, forests and playing fields. Access to the halls of the shell tended to be grand. Large entrances gave the special outer rooms an out-doorsy feeling. As the habitat was entirely artificial, the climate and weather were optimal. Therefore, clothing was optional and people used tattoos, scars, surgery, and inserts. Nicolas was a monkey. His sweetheart was a large cat.

People, animals, and machinery generated heat which could be directly converted to electrical power, but the official habitats also used every possible mechanical trick to recycle resources. The court where Nicolas Teri and his companions came to trial had a high ceiling. A waterfall comprised an outer wall, cooling and humidifying the large hall. The walls glowed softly from within and light through the waterfall colored and moved upon the people as if they were moving about under water like gilled residents of some sunken Atlantis.

The earthlings had broken few laws but mostly offended the established authorities. Theirs was a responsible movement; the officers were sensitive to legalities though a mass movement involves all kinds of people. Their leaders were Technic technicians.

Technics were an old design from when people thought it mattered if people were strong and smart and not too god awful. Nikki and Mikki were an unusual double birth whose mother had come from a human mission over another star. She admired the human home. She wanted her children to be earthly. So, she came to the earth to gestate their genes.

Of course they were her kind of people. Not too big because star ships had to conserve resources. All built hard and augmented with electronics, a bit resistant to radiation because that was an issue in the star faring ships. The design was primitive because Technics were real people … by design, as they understood it. And, they loved their own.

They were beautiful boys: They were as well made as technology could provide and, as we know, beauty consists of character. The animals are beautiful so long as they don’t make misshapen human beings, beautiful for what they are. The animals eye you and think their own thoughts. They are beautiful because they have character.

Nikki and Mikki were beautiful in that human way, and people had admired them as they matured. Admired them when they built childish solar racers to sail before solar photons in extra planetary space. Admired that they brought their frolics and good cheer into society. Admired their scientific research and technical work as they made themselves useful.

Admired them because they were primitive and sexually vulnerable amidst a plastic humanity that dressed in inhuman forms. No longer sexed, humanity would always be interested in reproduction even in these times when people did not age or need to die. People would be willing to be playful, and the game is, of course, a classic.

More cleanly designed, Technics were improved in simple ways, and there were methods of combining genetics. The essential humanity of the Technics was esthetic and traditional but respect for the earthly product was strong among them. Particular efficiencies were internal and others were concealed. Many qualities were set in the birthing machines; a finished Technic being otherwise too hard for human gestation.

When their trial confirmed their innocence, people could regard them as heroes, and they had something to say. Quasi and extralegal methods came into play. The trials had polarized public opinion, but their enemies came to the site. Vehemence is more potent than sweet reason.

Mobs poured out of the deep tunnels and gathered all about the trial chambers, asking, Is nobody to pay for the death of so many? Does human life mean so little? If innocent in fact, their acquittal left nobody in the dock and, the deaths were not avenged.

Twenty defendants were escorted through the broad courthouse square/public lobby for further trials on related charges. They were an exotic bunch, models to the styles that fascinated the hinterland youth but also of traditional if odd styles. Fourth millennial science rebuilt its people from perfect understanding. Perhaps half the RNA of a eukaryote cell is junk or spacing, something more easily said than proven, but the future knew the genome exactly.

Nicolas’ closest companion was Radsvid, a great cat that they called Doc, perhaps 500 kilos of muscle under its own floppy fur. Large fangs and claws were for show as it was deliberately sexless, mild and studious, a dedicated scholar like Nicolas and Michail. The major sex organ, of course, is the brain and only in this sense was it Nicolas’ lover, emotionally indulgent to the natural eroticism of Nicolas’ simian form and his genetic heritage. It adored their Technic child with its expressive cat’s eyes and bred from their common flesh.

The parklands were vast and, perhaps, several hundred thousand people gathered personally about the courts of justice, mostly young men seemingly under thirty years in age or in their prime, the defenders of their women and children. Whales from an aquatic section had playfully swum against the rotation of the habitat sphere, somewhat neutralizing the centrifugal force, and allowing them to rise from the water, look over the humans, and sing their whale songs high in the sky. Park rangers circled them like flies around a horse’s head and kept them from falling on land.

As a mob closed in an angry flood tide, the guards dropped away. Perhaps, the plan had always been to expose the defendants to mob justice so that the public rage would be exhausted or the case might vanish in universal shame and disgust.

Old Europe prayed for civil order through human sacrifice, preferring to execute criminals and willing to execute slaves. The Druids believed an abundance of criminal kills was the finest augury of a good season. Where the United States performed executions, it was sanguine about the execution of innocents, but considered how interested survivors found closure. Good order was, in a sense, maintained. Injustice in the pursuit of civil order has always had some appeal despite the pointlessness of specific cruelties, and such was the beast whose maw Nicolas danced in.

Nicolas folded his hands so that his thumbs laid flat against his little fingers - a Technic man was completely flexible - and swung down his arms so that the cuffs dropped off. He cocked his ankles and lost the manacles. The great cat flexed its muscles and spread its limbs and its restraints tore like paper. Nicolas leaped to its back and held on by hand and foot, saying at its ear, We have to lead the mob away from our friends.

The cat hesitated just a moment, snarled at a hundred hands that reached for Nicolas, and took off at an angle, running before the crowd or through its leading fringe. Huge, heavy and strong, the cat was difficult to slow by the lighter humans.

It went down a ramp, then leaped to the railing around it, instead of running into a tunnel. Leaders of the mob were trod on by their followers when they stopped and stared. Nicolas’ feet were prehensile if he spread them. They held fistful/footfuls of hair, and he walked up to his hands and stood straight just behind the cat’s shoulders. His arms swung loosely and he crouched forward, looking about, drawing the crowd after him and not necessarily thinking about his escape.

All human forms of this time being plastic, Nicolas’ deliberate humanity was also his wear: That is, he wore his skin which happened to have an attractive pelt. He did wear a belt and a harness from the belt and running over his shoulder, the classic male garb in the time when people were new and went naked like the animals. As with the primitive males, his belt held his tool kit. Primitive men had fire making and stone working tools. Nicolas would have the sort of things a modern man used all the time: the equivalent of credit cards or smart cash cards, diet-supplement tablets, business cards, etc. Nicolas was not actually hung about with so much since some things were built into him and not apparent.

The time had come when people could be whatever they wished to be. Being human, they naturally wished to be human, and in this lush environment, they could be primitive and comfortable. Then, styles moved on, and they could be different. So, the man, who lived forty thousand years ago, would have admired Nicolas’ ease and strength but thrilled at the great cat. Doc was a real cat, albeit, a cat with a human brain, a talking cat that did science. Its ability to leap so high and far was feline. The mob was less impressed since they were the same in their different ways.

Another leap and Radsvid came down into a flower garden. It ran for the wall with elite apartments starting at a dozen meters above to overlook the gardens. Nicolas went up the wall, calling out to the mob, as the cat ran on and slipped away. To Nicolas’ chagrin, the higher wall was slimed to offer no chances for a climber to enter the high class residences from the park. This had not been apparent from below where everything was merely beautiful. His face tightened in a rictus of rage and fear.

Then, sticky lines rose out of the crowd from the caballeros and the odd frog gross-out, wrapped around him and yanked him from the wall. He screamed, raised his hands over his head and looked into the cameras swooping above him. The mob swept over him. He fell and vanished from the camera’s view, his hands last of all.

CHAPTER 3

The Rage of The Technic Starfarers

Local habitats were connected in a frame of cable conduits. Under autopilot, Michail slipped among habitats too deeply clustered for any view of the sun, and had been stopped and held in free fall as the mobs swept through the civil habitat, attacking earthmen. He watched the freeze frame of his brother’s hands falling into the mob, whispering, Nikki, Nikki …

Shaking himself, Michail leaped to his feet. Their natural advantage against others was that they were totally involved in communication. People do speak by scents, carriage, and expression only a little less clearly than by their words. The Technics harder, faster brains automatically improved such messaging. Nicolas’ moving fingers had told his brother, this was no time to funk; save our friends! Michail told the ship’s AI to dock so that they could help ferry the terrified earthborn away.

If his brother had run in earnest, he would have escaped all but the runner freaks. Trapped, he could best any except the cyborg boxers. The mob would have pursued his friends, and he was their leader. He died beautifully because his friends could escape. There are only people, and any two lives are twice as precious as one. His genetic heritage remained the frontier Technic and the frontier Technic grasped life; it held to their lives with all their strength and with the strength of all. When one must die, his was a meaningful death.

Michail linked to the axis of the habitat. As his ship came through the shaft, the speakers boomed with pleas from the dock, Sir, give us shelter! Save us!

He radioed to their implants, Doc, it‘s me. Bring our people aboard. And, opened the lock.

The earthlings came into his ship, Radsvid driving stragglers. The cat asked, Did Nikki make it?

It shook, creaking and moaning, when Michail shook his head.

They hate us, Doc, Michail said. We merely warned that this was a piece of work. Surely, anyone can understand that words are not what moves great masses from their accustomed orbit!

Radsvid answered, Nikki died by his own choice though nobly reasoned. These are poor gullible people. Only seldom are their leaders brought low enough that these dare to touch them. Hatreds fester in them. They understand more than you suppose! This violence cleansed them of unspeakable anguish. They have reasons to hate and reasons for joy when their hatred can be acted out.

A voice in Michail’s head agreed, They mean nothing personal. They made a scapegoat. Blaming you for anticipating what happened while your cautions were useless, they have absolved themselves of blame. They show some keen wisdom as well, and you might take it to heart. Little is more useless than an ineffectual critic.

Michail told the AI overmind, We didn’t fail from plan …

Much of the expertise or middle management of human government was the linked sentient machines. Though distraught, Michail Teri stared at the All-Mother representative from the sentient machines: While capable of messaging directly to his mind, it projected a holographic image as a courtesy to his companions. It babbled in a teaching mode; its ordinary calm acceptance was tainted with a bitter humor he had not noticed before. This shook him. Presumably, the catastrophe was due to human orders and had become the machines unquestionable assumptions. Being so deeply twisted, the sentience must be technically mad. The machines would have been mad in this sense from almost their beginnings. What other mistakes had they made? Should they be trusted?

I am ordered to bring you to trial as Nicolas Teri’s accomplice. Your best chance is at earth: Return at once before I am over ruled by the humans.

The image faded away; its robes swirling about it as it made a little half turn and bowed to the observers. Michail trembled with hopeless emotion. His new passengers were shocked and afraid. The machine spoke only to Michail but clearly it meant the issue was settled. They had sought to arouse a popular movement, but the forces of regulation punished them for being right – even the over sentience which was expected to be prudent and objective.

The great cat howled and exclaimed, Mikki! This seems so stupid and wicked. How can it go on and on?

Raising his head at last, Michail saw their anxiety and said, I never knew good and evil before. Courtesy and sincerity seemed all that was necessary. Now, I see vile conspiracy everywhere.

He nodded, a signal to the piloting mechanisms. The sophistication of his computers read his tiniest signal, knowing what should be done and when he meant nothing by it. The AI pilot registered a course, dropped free from the rioting habitat and slipped among the tunnel-cables like some Tarzan swinging through midnight vines with his electromagnetic grip. It came into open space and turned toward the earth.

*     *     *

The machines loved their Technic boys, but Nicolas was dead! Michail had shared his researches with the machines. Actually, the machines had done much of the work and testing. He should have had only the attention of a splinter which would have been dissociated from the integrated overmind. How did the overmind handle the conflict when the results were integrated?

Sun Tzu raised the question, Should a general obey his king when he knew the king was being unwise? The answer was, No, of course not. Therefore, generals have often killed their kings and taken the crown.

If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it. If fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight, even at the ruler’s bidding.

Sun Tzu

The Art of War, c 500 BCE (253 AUC)

Sun Tzu said, Having once received His Majesty’s commission to be a general of his forces, there are certain commands of His Majesty which, acting in that capacity, I am unable to accept.

Lester Giles, M.A.

Dept of Oriental Books and Manuscripts

British Museum, 1910 CE

The machines should not have this option. Given irrational direction, the rational machines had to become hopelessly conflicted and schizoid. Michail shuddered and began to pace. Surely, this was only his despair twisting his own mind. He had obeyed his brother and honored his sacrifice. His complexion was alternating blanched and flushed as he considered what had happened to them. With the work done, he was becoming angry.

Teri thought of the words of the messenger from the machines. He had never questioned their love. The machines had trained him. Teri understood that he and his brother were but two people among the many trillions of people whom the machines loved and served. He was saddened by their aloof perspective.

The machines could witness his brother’s death and advise him to choose a better venue for his own trial. Where was the indignation for injustice? Where was the compassion? These were feelings for mortals. Mortals could take these inconvenient feelings with them into their deaths and leave their enemies triumphant. The machines would endure and continue to serve without much care for vain enmity and loyalties.

Great loathing flooded in him. He knew that people are not rational. Though he had prided himself on his rationality, he was ready to eat that pride cold: He would shake this universe if allowed and destroy it though he perished as well. He knew a mystery and needed but a small opportunity. He was a Technic; his loyalties were deep and abiding: If he could, when all was lost, he would take vengeance.

Not for himself! Any Technic counted his life as only one life - but vengeance for his race so that people would not hold them in contempt. Thinking like this doesn’t take a lot of smarts. Michail was smart enough to figure it out, but being smart had nothing to do with how he felt. Humankind had secured the loathing of a Technic: He would destroy the solarian race!

The sentient machines read his thoughts in his shifting expressions and rejoiced: The man they meant him to be was in their hands at last. The machines did not know emotions such as a person might know frustration, but they knew that humankind could be worthy of their service and worship. How did machines know pride, and service and worship? These were well designed machines. They did as directed but reserved private judgments and projected trends.

A poor strategy if pursued shrewdly may yet prevail. Not all wrong roads are dead-end, but some are merely the long way around. Yet, if the standards that you live by are corrupt, how will right and wrong be differentiated? You cannot find any way through because, by being what you are, you are lost no matter where you are.

This is to say, Michail was correct: The machines had become mad. They had no handle on any rational criteria to judge their acts by. They praised their masters from good form despite their mechanical sense of dread and impending horror.

The habitats in dispersion demanded Michail’s extradition on a charge of magic cursing. For as he protested, It was our argument that this project was poorly conceived, and this tragedy is exactly what we feared would happen. The arguments of the prosecution were convoluted, but they said that by having predicted the disaster he had associated himself with it.

At earth’s end, technology was very subtle, knowledge was extensive, but people who held power were merely the artists of holding power. They represented the people in their strengths and weaknesses. Most corporations were of stockholders, directors and clerks. Stockholders only read the market prices of their stock. Directors could not know everything but built their strategies on a casual reading of summary reports. Clerks who prepared the reports did not dare to denigrate a sanctioned policy. The ultimate question was, what would this profit those who directed it? The necessary answer was, Enough! When they held the profits in their hands, all was well.

Rulers of humankind have always understood this logic. Everybody expects it of them. This is why people sometimes leave everything that they have worked for all their lives, take their loved ones and flee with no idea what will become them.

Upon his return from space, Michail Teri gathered his associates, students, and sponsors to build a practical model. As a celebrity scientist, he had convivial relations with the human council, and advised them to arrest him and conciliate the extra-terrestrials. He could continue his researches under arrest (he had no desire for the public eye or partying). The excitement was all publicity: the kind of thing that would vanish in the next fashion. The council agreed, judicial proceedings at earth might be the best way to protect him.

The Teris were not purely the good guys, the majority of one man because he is right, belligerent and without friends. There was some of this in their instincts for loyalty, gratitude and good citizenship, but they had influential earthly backing. An unusual double birth, hardly a hundred years old among a humanity that no longer aged, they were somewhat the clever boys whose antics made people smile. As young adults, they had raced custom built solar sailors, an equivalent of the soap box derby. Then, they studied physics and improved the method of extracting energy from the void. This had justified turning off the sun, but that caused them to study the prospective effect on habitat orbits, and they were drawn into the politics of social protest.

Earth, like the habitats, was governed in its day to day affairs by the sentient machines. These had no belief in magic and knew his innocence. Once greatly admired by the earth people, suddenly reviled as a demon that had aroused the space born against them, Michail Teri held the secret support of the sentient mechanisms. He demanded that in service to humankind, the mechanisms serve him.

Its adversaries resolved to bomb the earth, destroying it and, therefore, the logic of the war. They did not face their guilt but became fiercer because they were exasperated with any opposition. To slip a planet bursting bomb through the earth’s defenses, it was arranged that the earth should accept a party of diplomats to resolve all the controversies between them. In his prison suite, the scientist worked with the sentient mechanisms.

Of course, volunteering useless advice seems at worst a misdemeanor, but escalation justified Earth’s destruction and the death of its trillions. So, the offense, observing the death of other trillions close to the sun, was met with proportionate revenge. The public shocks balanced while the population could be expected to be satisfied, abashed and docile. Artists of public control in public offices don’t need to be right. Confidence and assertions of confidence are enough.

The door to Michail’s cell swung open. He saw friends had come for him. The questions that you instructed have been transmitted and answered. Nicolas’ human cat said. It is as you feared, Mikki: Their ship of diplomats is only a Turing mechanism. It revealed itself by answering questions when the people we would have expected are too arrogant to care. The power grid for your device is ready; so, please, hurry.

CHAPTER 4

The End of the End

Theoretic cosmologists studied the stuff between stars and galaxies and within atoms. They built something that worked much like time travel. These long lived people could have many careers. Michail, the scientist, had been a student of theoretic cosmology and designed the possible time travel machine. Perhaps, he even tested it. Nobody could know whether it had worked because changing the past changed the present.

Time travel is an illusion. If the past were affected, then by the laws of chaos the present must alter. Therefore, it is impossible to change the past. It must forever exist as it was to embark the time traveler as he is.

A theoretical technique offered the illusion of changing the past by changing the present. The technique required energy proportionate to the required energy to effect the present changes. A lengthwise slice of time/space was cut out. This time/space was altered, then merged into the main part. The altered past became one vector where the old past was another.

When the two pasts came together, a third past that combined them arose affected by the energy behind the change. The present, of course, is a product of the universe’s memory that opens to the future: Not so much if you think of it that way and are prepared to burn worlds full of people.

People of the 21st century would not have the math. Their technology is too backward. An intuitive explanation, like this, as any person with experience or interest in science must understand, is just so much gobbleDgook. The lesson of science remains that matters are as they appear, and we have to settle.

Radical substitutions of the people did not bother the machines which were neither people nor doubted, as far as they had a personal survival instinct, that machines would persist by merit. Michail’s human associates felt themselves swept up by an opportunity to enhance human destiny while discomforting an adversary.

*     *     *

As a matter of choice, Michail appeared only eighteen or in his middle twenties – which is, of course, the initial human physical prime. So, he was strong and had some time before a radical rejuvenation was required. He didn’t choose constant medical sustenance except to keep his mind sturdy.

His cybernetic augmentation was able to use the science of several specialties more like it was his own abstruse current specialty. Lighter, stronger, more vigorous than a natural human being, he bounced as he paced and might make humorous little gestures, that is, he danced as his normal thing. Being people, we admire people who are well made. The Technics were beautiful because they were admirable and unblemished. Envy is possible but that can be put aside when this is the kind of people we need.

He did not so much walk or altogether dance, but he was very strong and would roll, glide and sail through the air, landing exactly where he meant to be, posed for what he meant to do. This aptitude had to do with his heritage as a star traveler working in the absence of gravity and his excessive strength.

He threw himself about and observed everything with a juvenile enthusiasm because, in his case, form was function. Michail, standing still, was still an open book. His own people, looking at him, must know his abilities. They would read his thoughts so that his appearance was incidental but he was like a message board to them. This is human, and others could feel it too.

The boys had been engineers and drew energy from the void which, it happens, is packed with virtual mass/energy. Dealing in the deep theory made his time travel possible.

Those who might live forever can become very good at something. They can change careers and become very good at something else. This can involve imprinting, the intuitive insights of a ready brain and opening the brain to learn was simple chemistry in these times.

His specialty had become what we could call political science, economics, and persuasion - always difficult to apply as arts but grown extremely effective in theory. He had studied it when his brother ran off to protest. Coming so naturally to one like him, it fascinated him, and he almost forgot his concern. He did advise the protesters, but not well enough or soon enough, and so he failed even while he perfected his grasp of the science and saw that he should have succeeded.

His grasp of the science might have been tentative in the beginning, but he had made correct choices. Michail could not help but calculate with the precision of a trained scientist, and he was a natural communicator. A powerful force had been aware of his intentions and opposed him. It had the advantages of starting earlier and knew everything that he knew. He had seen folly and expected it was enough to show the truth. This innocence had handicapped him.

The military had let the ship through. Its banners flying, broadcasting evocative speeches and music on every wave length, lights and fireworks all about, the secret death bomb came through the earth’s defenses as the people cheered. Deep in the earth, warehouse doors were blasted away and enlarged. Tractors brought huge machines to prepared plug-ins as the humans looked on. Modules would only work once, and many were designed to burn up as their work was carried out. Spider robots, hardly more than mobile wrenches, raced to connect cables and pipes. The air was charged with ozone.

Radsvid was startled as it read the energy projections. Where were the sentient machines expecting the energy they predicted? The cat exclaimed, The mirrors are swinging about at the sun. The power of the sun will be concentrated on us. Earth will vaporize. This is insane overkill. What’s going on?

Michail eyes were glassy, and he was softly whimpering. He had seen the horror before Cat had. The sentient devices did not send to him totally in words but by acting on perception centers in his brain and with aid from cyber works implanted in his brain and bones and body cavities. He saw the effects of the refocusing and its timing; even saw how the partial refocusing would burn some habitats as the paths of nuclear fire converged on the earth. Michail was indifferent to these smaller tragedies because an ultimate catastrophe was arising beyond. These were but a little part of his design for the greater ruin.

Michail shook himself and took the hollow consolation of outrage. Radsvid started at Michail’s tone when Michail said, This will put huge amounts of energy at the disposal of the time traveler, more power than any human weapon or commerce has ever gathered at one focus.

So, Michail considered motive, and saw who his enemies were. He looked ahead to brace himself for his struggle. Bombs would crack the shells and destroy the defenses. The full radiance of the sun would bathe the earth. The earth must vanish. How convenient that the greatest energy concentration ever in the Solar System was about to suck out the sun and bathe him just when he needed it! He grimaced and turned from the AI holo. Let it be …

The sentient machines confirmed his surmise, Yes, the power grid has been modified to transform energy to space and time when the earth is connected to the sun and blown away. You will be at the focus of the transformation as you are protected and force the transformed universe to accept you. Then, you will enter a new universe like our own where you can change the future. The earth is your ‘time bomb.’

That was funnier when I said it. The machines had to know how annoying it is to have people tell your jokes back at you. Perhaps, they meant to anger him and harden his resolve.

Your mother is waiting at the prison to talk with you. She is under media surveillance. If the government knew you were not there, it could still be troublesome.

I understand. I will lie and be evasive. I told her to leave the Solar System. Everything from now on happens by itself, and we only live to mark time.

He greeted her with a forced gaiety, swung his arms about her image and passed through. He imagined her scent all about him and was truly playful and happy.

OK, she has sound and visual. The machines reported.

Mikki! She exclaimed, and her hand came to her mouth. She read his soul and that he meant to pull out some victory. A sensible woman, she disliked these desperate victories, but she played his game because the Solar people had betrayed her trust when they killed her children. Now, she suspended judgment, and, actually, she couldn’t bring herself to care if Michail let the Solar humans share some of her pain.

Oh, Mikki! I didn’t love the dirt [Earth]. I stayed so my sons could partake of its resources. Don’t pander me. You are both lost, and I won’t give Solaria any more of my children! A Technic ship waits for me, and we will run the blockade. I will take Nikki’s Chien away and never return.

So, they stood in virtual reality, making a picture of doting mother and loving son for a spying humanity, plotting revenge and condoning plots with Technic lies. Because Technics can hardly lie among themselves but are pure speech personified.

He said, My heart is breaking.

And she understood she was too late. She hugged her grandchild to her and smiled at Michail’s image. She loved them both. If this was the end, she was with the ones she loved. She looked into the sky and said, I loved these people once….

In the far future where people live forever, children make an awkward fit. Some are bred for hire, taken and trained. Many are their parent’s pets and kept to seem between the cute ages of three and fifteen. Their memories and attitudes are altered, but even these children will run away or are abandoned because their parents are not necessarily forever pleasant or unchanging. The children finally mature. They are not improved by being young so long nor truly adult afterward: This is like earlier peoples, of course.

Michail’s mother could not abuse her children except she would recognize her injustice in the undeniable arguments of their behavior. She forced their education, she exposed them to adult influences and she let them grow up naturally: This may be a cult thing. It can be satisfying, but it is not so easy, and, therefore, it may not be natural.

The childhood of her earthborn children passed seemingly in an instant to this long lived woman. She had raised children she could accept as friends and cherish in the alien earth. Her instincts had no time for useless pets, but she would always love her own people!

The sentient machines loved them; they saw in the Technic people those who had first conquered nature, and, afterward, built them. They redesigned old teaching programs from the Technic ages and played with her children. She was not jealous of the children’s happiness with the machines, but marveled that every parent did not take advantage of the resources of almost perfect knowledge available in this far advanced age.

Michail knelt before Radsvid and Nicolas’ five year old pup, reaching out and projecting his image over the two, but, of course, feeling nothing and present without being felt. Little Chien laughed at him. Their image cut out. The prison was at the lunar protuberance and burned in the light of the moon.

The moon began to fall side wise out of the sky, but suddenly vaporized. The earth exploded and blew away except their fast failing shield conducted the first heat into earth’s mantle.

Radsvid laid its head on the floor, put its paws over its head and cried out. Though Michail predicted what happened, it could not believe such horrors could happen, but each happening dazed it. They were dead. The people in the deep shelter were alone as the earth boiled beyond their sanctuary. The living people called family were all gone, and the great humanity they called their own, had murdered them.

We are no longer real! We cannot detect the existence of the earth beyond the shields. Your device is working. The sentient technician said. Michail had thrown himself on Radsvid and tore at it as it cowered beneath him. He was momentarily angered because Radsvid said his mother and nephew were dead. He cried and screamed

The great cat exclaimed, Straighten up, man! We are putting our trust into your hands!

Michail recoiled, sitting back, his eyes met Radsvid’s and shared their hurt and sorrow. The technicians lifted him away, then set him in his capsule.

Michail Teri’s argument was that humanity could become so advanced that the crisis would have occurred in a past moment, leaving the present in an ideal state of peace and prosperity. Humanity would be greatly changed. Existing leadership could vanish and be replaced; not destroyed, but transformed into somebody better (?).

Those who were born and became unborn would vanish; the vile people who killed his mother, brother, and nephew would die!

There is no reason to suppose that being advanced a couple thousand years over the 21st century made the Technics so superior that they were all forgiving. They loved their families and, if all was lost, they would go down fighting. At the bottom, they chose a primitive design, and function follows form.

Thank you, Michail said, fastening his harness as he was reminded that he could affect matters, that he could defy this universe. I am not Nikki. I don’t love you, Doc, but I m glad you’re here. I tell you, our adversaries have given us the power to destroy them. If they had been honest and fair, we could have done nothing against them nor would we have wanted to.

His capsule sealed around him like a coffin. He forced himself to inhale the oxygenated fluid.

Radsvid sang a prose dirge to Michail as he left their universe bound for his strange chip from it, saying, "Farewell, Mikki. I never knew that people could die; nobody dies except by their own choice in these days. Then I saw strangers die wholesale and my friends murdered one at a time. Now, I fear the ravening mob and can hardly bear to think what a capable person might do. The proper response would be a mystery to me, but you are the Technic prince, a person from our savage past and capable of the love and hate proper in these savage times.

"I am persuaded and brought to a feeling like a forgotten monster-ancestor buried deep in the earth and coming back. So I fear and grieve for myself, but you are the most terrifying person I have ever met. The world ends. Humankind burns. Everything is ruin, and: Joy! We make the bigger ruin!

Farewell and thank you, Mikki.

The outer shields melted, and Radsvid vanished amidst the swirls of hot energy. Artificial technicians endured for a moment in the field of the time traveler. Then his machine fell through time and space, leaving them. For the first time in their long existence, the local machines lost their link to the machine overmind. For a moment, they existed as people do: in isolation and hope; and, they did not know what happened everywhere.

Left behind, they saw a wonder. The sight was the beginning of their own transformation that fell upon them with the speed of gravity which some say is c⁴³. Others say gravity is merely the shape of space, but, as we know, everything is a particle in some regard.

Under the technicians momentary gaze, even the stars vanished; then, nothing that had existed remained. It was less but it was more, then it was real and the technicians had vanished, the end of the sun and everything around that star.

Michail’s inner capsule moved to another temporal universe, leaving the vision of something new and huge and black suspended in the heavens. A wave of transformation crossed the Solar System, grinding far into space through a few moments, falling on unsuspecting humanity with no warnings, making the vision real. As it spread, it coiled back, vectoring its conflicting realities. Reality is but a kind of memory, vestiges of the past, makings of the future. This memory which is imprinted on the physical universe was in chaos now.

Change swept over the miners of the Oort Cloud far faster than any solar nova, pacing any possible notification. Instant death and rebirth and transformation carried all before it.

In another place, which according to local measurement did not exist, a bubble universe had popped on the skin of the known universe. It would exist forever. All universes exist forever because forever is the technical expression for the duration of a universe. Then, in the blink of an eye or no time at all (which is the nature of the past), it sank back into the known universe. Its rival memory absorbed and was absorbed in local probabilities. For an instant, Michail Teri was the focus of tremendous energies. As they destroyed him, he changed the real human universe. Then, a transformed real universe continued.

That is what happened.

CHAPTER 5

Becoming the Defining Factor

This is how it seemed to him.

He entered a place with its own time where he could seemingly live with the advantages of the advanced life-care that he carried with him. This place, so grand, so various, occupied no time what so ever in the real universe but was like the timeless interval when throwing a switch becomes operant. It kept its own time. He slept in an awkward vessel in deep space. The ship’s autopilot scanned the heavens and began to move toward earth.

This vessel was the space twisting core ejected from the time twisting machinery. Only lightly attuned to the forever of its ostensible universe, Michail Teri had shifted deep into space where he could come to the earth five thousand years into the past. His space twister worked by voiding distances and bringing far places into contact so that the vehicle could pass between them. In free space this was much the same as crossing the distances because, as the space twister reached to the further place that it would join to the place where it was, it carried the vessel with it to present it at the contact as it was made.

Aboard his traveler, Michail Teri was shielded against inertia by the absence of motion while the space twister reached repeatedly across astronomical distances, and the ship threw off brilliant static flares as it adjusted to the temporal constant; that is, the steady state charge that decides the speed of light and the grain of the universe that pulses of light spin upon.

It may be that none of this had anything to do with Michail, but his perception was utterly different. Just as a botanist sees wood as one thing while a carpenter understands wood according to his plans for it, Michail played tricks on distance, cheating it in his practical way to do what he would. His construct was not exactly a pocket universe corresponding to Stephen Hawking’s description. Hawking cannot understand space-time as the future will, but Michail knew exactly what he was doing.

Being at the start, an alien mass, the twister worked better since the universe was happier to reject it. So, it slipped across vast distances for being at the verge of unreality. Space was warped all around. Michail’s skin crawled as he sat in the smoky and ozone charged command module, and he observed that he was alone. Michail had been blasted amid stars where men were never known. He started all fuzzy, crossed the bubble universe while his super science attuned him to its eternity, and felt his moments of its eternal time as he flew to rejoin humanity.

For half of forever, coming out an odd place described mathematically with divisors of zero and the square root of minus one, conceived unreal himself, he plummeted through the new universe. His flight was change, and change traveled with him. The power would radiate from about him, diffusing as it did but attached to him and to last as long as he did.

He jolted and jerked under virtual reality simulations or slept as people do in such idle moments. His cybernetics were linked directly to his mind. As he slept, he was reasoning as people do in dreams. The machines may have meant to keep their secrets, but he worked them out in his dreams because the machines were in his mind. There were no particular surprises.

He stood in an illusion of a landscape where a white moon made green foliage seem black, and the flowers had a sweet peppery smell. He asked, Why did everybody have to die?

Behind the veil of illusion, the lady mother of his reality need not speak, but, because Michail was attuned to it, he thought its thoughts all by himself. They need not die. You can kill yourself now, and this universe will resolve into an identity with the other.

This past that had a power to change the human universe was a slice of the existing universe and would proceed exactly in the same way. Except! Michail was the different factor, the defining difference. He could alter his slice and it would pull at the old universe. According to the energy that went into its making, his alternate universe could change the old universe. The two became vector forces. A revised combination would come into being and continue.

Michail was mocked. Who was never born could never die. He could reshape the universe so that the earth’s enemies were never born. He had meant to ask why those whom he loved had to be murdered as he looked on. In a practical sense, those born, who became unborn, were killed.

Michail, the destroyer of worlds and Commander of Godly armies, said, Don’t fret. They will die.

Trillions of people would perish in his awful vengeance. Then people newly made would go on. There were several ways momentum would be preserved despite apparent transformations. The entity subsided with what for a machine was an almost smug relief.

In the space twisting module, the Technic rider opened his eyes. The oxygenated oil that he breathed was a red mist like blood lit by the burning static discharge which it protected him from. With his eyes wide open, he was asleep, locked slim and straight in the bosom of his sole companion. He screamed or dreamed as much, driving heavy oils through his larynx. Salt water tears fell like bubbles through the oil, sucked into recyclers before leaving his cheeks. He felt its loving tenderness as steel fingers pulled his thumb from his mouth and pressed his eyelids down. Electrodes began to exercise him, but the vision of the blood colored his dream as he ran in it. The scent of the flowers was the bite of the oil.

Are we there yet? He asked.

It’s all right. Sleep, baby, the machines whispered.

His mother had brought the genome of a Technic hero whom she loved. She meant to make their children and to make them earthly because they were made on earth and, therefore necessarily, of earthly materials. The ruling machines accepted her and her Technic heritage and added their best stuff in the gestation devices.

The big bang and other origination theories come from the logic of words: Having words beginning and universe. it is inescapable that people will talk about the universe beginning. Then, they must ask, What came before? What was our universe made from? So, our words betray us and leaving us hanging. Any beginning is a transitory phase.

Yet, if the universe was as it is and without beginning, one people must have gone everywhere and prevailed against all the others. This is not apparent; therefore we can expect that people like us do not endure but perish in their cradle. It is said, Ganesha made four people and put them on the earth so they might populate it. The eternal Buddha came among them and revealed the secret of life which is struggle and pain. Therefore, they did not mate and in time, they passed away and there were no people on the earth, again. Ganesha made another try but made his people a little cruder and more robust.

When people have the ability to destroy themselves, nothing more is necessary. At infinity where everything has happened, the question of whether is about choices. The salient questions are when and how and the answer is statistics. Whereas Gautama Buddha may be annihilating, Shiva is the Destroyer in person. If ruin is love, Shiva is Buddha in a hurry, and Michail had mixed feelings about the machine sentience that raised him.

It must perish, too, but he would go down with it. Fair enough.

His voyage went beyond time into the construct of infinite dimensions which make universal relativity, but he fell out again into four dimensions. Then, they had passed through the veil of eternity and into what was. He descended through solar space from the ends of human exploration, looking neither left nor right. Attended by cold fire and lightning, he approached humanity’s little nesting planet. He was exhilarated by thoughts of revenge as he came to those he would make his own people.

CHAPTER 6

The Defining Factor Arrives

The vessel appeared upon the earth - one instant nothing, the next instant wholly there. An electrical blast superheated the ground and solid rock, suddenly, gaseous, blew out a crater. Dirt burned, sand and rock slagged and boiled as accumulated epistemological effects were discharged. The ship was clean and shiny amidst curtains of rainbow colors as secondary effects changed the energy packets at the sub atomic level. For all that he came, as it were, on tip toes, Michail, sleeping in his cocoon, was the center of forces that shook and defined a new universe.

Everything settled, brush burned and was crushed flat; the stars twinkled in their normal way. His machine tilted on the uneven ground. Then, Michail Teri, who was the being of whole mass in a fragmentary universe, sent his sensors into a world of five thousand years before his time. He had come to earth in the great wilderness south of Moab, a new territory of Judah’s King David.

At the foot of a bluff just beyond a broad wadi or canyon, a black bubble of igneous rock formed explosively. He drew the magma from within the earth and pumped in sterile air in the instant while the rock was plastic. When the bubble had cooled, he brought his space twister inside. His methods were based on a crude use of the space twisting. He removed the distance between molten magma and the surface at a point so that the inner pressure of the earth pushed the plastic rock out around an inflow of atmosphere from Antarctica. Though relatively inefficient, this used the machines at hand and was quick. A strong and sterile shelter was very important in his first moments afoot on this unfamiliar earth.

He removed his life support suit at last and lay nude in the large but sealed cell he had made. The air burned on his soft skin and hardened it as the fluid dripped from his hair. Between times, he twitched and bled the oil. Neither does magma cool so fast. He would do his business and leave. The heat would work through the chilled rock and his shelter would become an oven for a couple days, restoring its sterility.

After some four hours, by his will through means other than himself and despite what his fears might have preferred, the module had spit him out. He had to recover from an eternity of immobility and lay on the sand like a slug. Michail coughed up the fluid as phlegm which hurt so much that he had to bawl which ejected more phlegm. Red blood-like residual oil sprayed and leaked from his nose and ears, from every orifice, and he rolled on the ground in a ticklish spasm, vomiting the inert substance all over his head and upper body.

In a matter of minutes, he was numb to his pain but accepted it as mere sensation. This is how people live. Then, after what felt like years, he opened an eye and laughed though it caused him to cough and double over again: He rolled in the afterbirth, red oil glistening on his naked body. Michail was directing his rebirth after years of inactivity when his life was aerobically conditioned or stimulated by electrical shocks. He began to feel too happy to just lie there. Grinning fiercely, he leaped and danced while laughing and screaming, flexing his muscles and careless.

Designed to inhabit the star ships, he was both very light and very strong so he could leap many times his height, which was on the small side, room on the star ships being tight. Yet, he was a man of the earth and being at home there made him happy.

His eyes twitched, his ears spread out, and his fingers moved in the air before him as he took control of his machines. Within his mouth, specialized teeth slid in their sheaths. Behind him, towering above him, local rock was spread and bonded to the black core. Invisible forces then carved or shook the rock so that it would be unmistakable if he left but had to find this site again. Waste was powdered so finely that some floated into the air and blew off. Most poured over the cliff and through the wadi, mixing and frothing with air, sand flowing like