They were gathered in Forrester’s newly refurbished quarters, sitting in the living room for an informal, postmission debriefing over drinks and coffee. There was still some construction going on outside as workmen repaired the damage from the lilliput assault and installed new, state-of-the-art security systems, the necessity of which Forrester had finally reluctantly admitted. In the morning, Forrester was due to go in for surgery to repair the damage done to his face and kneecap. The other wounds, fortunately, had not been very serious, but the hospital was less than enthusiastic about having him back as a patient.
“It seems crazy,” Lucas said. “I’ve been going over it and over it and I still haven’t been able to accept it, somehow. I know that Andre saw that jezail bullet make hash out of my chest, and I know that Finn helped bury me, but I didn’t die! That was never part of my experience. It was part of theirs. So what does that mean? Does it mean that another Lucas Priest died in my place? Some. . some alternate version of myself that was only a potential future for me relative to where I was before Darkness snatched me, a potential future which was realized for everybody here but me, because I was sidetracked? I can’t figure out what happened. Did I sidestep my own fate and get away with it somehow? Or am I the temporal anomaly here? Is my existence the metaphysical result of some sort of compensation by the Fate Factor? Am I some kind of parallel Lucas Priest who came into existence the moment my ‘original self’ died? Just thinking about it gives me the shakes.”
“There’s still another possibility, you know,” Delaney said. “One that suggests the laws of temporal relativity are a lot more flexible than we might think.”
“What do you mean?’ said Andre.
“In effect,” Delaney said, “what Dr. Darkness did was essentially the same thing that we’ve been doing all along. He effected a temporal adjustment. “
“No, wait, that can’t be right,” said Lucas, “because there was never a temporal disruption in the first place. “
“How do we know?” Delaney said.
“What do you mean, how do we know?” said Lucas. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Our presence there in 19th century Afghanistan was never part of the original temporal scenario. We went back there to effect a temporal adjustment, so anything that happened to us couldn’t possibly have been disruptive because we were never part of the original scenario to begin with.”
“How do you know?” Delaney said. “How do you know that by going back into the past, we didn’t become part of the original scenario?”
He paused, trying to formulate the concept.
“The fact that we’re capable of going back in time and becoming involved in so-called ‘past’ events would seem to indicate that, in a sense, it’s all happening now, only that ‘now’ is not an absolute, concrete concept. It’s completely relative, depending on where you are and what you’re doing. I mean, how do you define ‘now?’ How do you capture it? Even as you perceive that something is happening now, it’s already happened, hasn’t it? Something has to be in order for you to perceive it, but once you’ve perceived it, it is no longer something that is in a state of being it’s something that has been. The act of your perceiving it has, in a sense, relegated it to the past.”
“Come on, Finn, that’s just semantics,” Steiger said.
“Is it?” said Delaney. “Look, one thing I learned in R.C.S. when we got into advanced Zen physics is that all perception of time is, in a sense, nothing but semantics. I know that’s a complicated concept, but bear with me. Mensinger compared the timestream to a river. And no matter where you are in relation to that river, it’s in the act of flowing. Mensinger also made the analogy that a temporal disruption is like something that acts against the current and the result of such a disruption depends on its degree.”
“We’ve always assumed that presence in the past by people from the future was relatively safe, so long as it remained nondisruptive,” he continued. “That fits in with what Mensinger believed and it’s what allows us to effect temporal adjustments. But we’ve also always worked from the assumption that our presence in the past had a negligible effect, or essentially no effect at all, so long as it remained nondisruptive. That we were somehow separate from the original scenario, like someone standing on the outside and looking in. But what if that was wrong? What if the mere fact of our presence in the past made us a part of the original scenario,’ whether we did anything disruptive or not?”
“I’m not sure I understand,” said Andre. “How does that change anything?”
“In some ways, it doesn’t,” said Delaney. “It still allows us to effect temporal adjustments, and in fact, it supports our ability to go back into the past without disrupting it significantly, by lessening the temporal impact of our presence. It might account for the continued resiliency of the timestream considering the growing influence of the Time Wars over the years and the potentially disruptive presence of such things as the Network and the Underground, ,not to mention the confluence effect.”
“But how does that relate to me?” said Lucas.
“I was getting to that,” said Finn. “If, by going back into the past, you become part of the past, not just a potentially external influence, but an internal one as well, then anything that happens to you co
uld be potentially disruptive to the scenario, but necessarily from our standpoint, but from the standpoint of the future. Because what we’re concerned with is what happened to you in the period between your so-called death in 1897 and right now. But people a hundred years from now would be concerned with what happened in 19th Century Afghanistan and its effect on the timestream all the way down the line to where they are, or will be, and that includes not only anything we do right now, but anything we might do, or be meant to do, for the remainder of our lives, because that will be part of their past. “
“I see,” said Forrester. “So what you’re saying is that Priest’s death might have been the temporal disruption, not his survival?”
“It’s possible,” Delaney said. “And the more I think about it, the more sense it seems to make. He’s survived and there hasn’t been a timestream split as a result of that, so far as we can tell. Now maybe that’s because he wasn’t historically significant enough for his survival to have caused a serious temporal disruption. But on the other hand, maybe his death would have resulted in a temporal disruption further up the timeline, as a result of something he wouldn’t have been able to do if he hadn’t lived, something he hasn’t done yet. In that case, what Darkness did in saving him would be a temporal adjustment to restore the continuity of the timeline. “
“Wait a minute,” Lucas said. “If that’s the case, then that would mean that Darkness knew my death would cause a temporal disruption.”
Delaney nodded. “Think about it,” he said. “Consider everything that he’s accomplished, Lucas. Consider what he’s done to you. Consider that our most brilliant scientists can’t even begin to understand the principles behind some of his discoveries. Hasn’t it occurred to you that Dr. Darkness could be from the future?”
“Wow,” said Andre.
“I never even thought of that,” said Steiger. “But you could be right. Assume that, and everything else falls right into place. All the things he knows, everything he’s done, all the questions” about him that we’ve never had any answers for…
“Yes, and speaking of answers,” Forrester said, “Darkness has a lot to answer for.”
“You might as well forget it,” Steiger said. “Knowing him, he probably wouldn’t tell you anything, especially if what Finn just said is true.”
“Where is he, Lucas?” Andre said. “I never saw him again after what happened at the club.”
Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know where he is. Back at his secret headquarters out beyond the galaxy. Maybe he’s discorporated, which would mean he’s everywhere. Or maybe he’s standing right here beside us, vibrating faster than light and laughing up his sleeve. Who knows?”
“Well, whatever the truth may be,” said Steiger, “I’m glad to have you back, Lucas. And you can have your old job as exec back anytime.”