Through the Glass, Darkly
By Storm
Lieutenant Commander Chip
Morton, executive officer of the submarine Seaview, was not a happy man.
Some time previously, a now discredited scientist had created a machine with
the ability to open a portal into an alternate universe. The initial version
had been extremely unstable, which had proved to be fortunate for Chip’s own
world, since the man had been dealing with terrorists from that other universe.
He’d also tried to strand Chip on the other earth, but hadn’t realized that
even though Seaview didn’t exist there - and never had - she and her
crew weren’t unknown to the inhabitants of that particular world either.
That peculiar circumstance
had made for one of the strangest encounters Morton had ever had in his entire
career - and since working for the Nelson Institute had contributed to far more
weirdness in his life than he’d have ever believed possible, that had made it a
very strange encounter indeed. It was also one he wasn’t eager to repeat.
Unfortunately, Admiral Harriman Nelson’s curiosity had led him to continue
working with the portal machine; to the dismay of his officers, he had actually
managed to get the blighted thing working.
More or less.
The problem had been that it
was stuck on the universe it had first opened to. Morton had been of two minds
about that. On the one hand it meant they were dealing with a universe that was
something of a known quantity, rather than taking the risk of opening a portal
to someplace potentially dangerous. On the other hand… he suppressed a shudder.
Some of the people he’d encountered on that other earth gave him the creeps and
he‘d really rather not have to deal with them. But Nelson, being Nelson, wasn’t
satisfied with his experiments, especially since the math said there should be
an infinite number of different universes and that the machine ought to be able
to tune into any of them.
So they’d gone back to the
lab while the Admiral tinkered with a machine that Morton passionately wished
he could send to the deepest cellar of Hell and lose it there. Nelson’d finally
gotten it to open into a different universe, incidentally sending Lee Crane
briefly onto a research vessel - the RV Atlantis - sailing in the Gulf
of Alaska - commanded by one Mitzi Crane. Excited by his success, even if it
had been accidental, Nelson had taken the machine aboard Seaview for
some further tests.
That had very nearly been a
disaster.
As they had bounced between
several universes, including a return visit to RV Atlantis, they had
begun to wonder if they’d ever make it back home. Then when they had returned,
there had come the brief but entirely unexpected appearance of another
submarine in Seaview’s subpen. The physical appearance of the other boat
suggested that she might well be an alternate version of Seaview herself
- but the Captain of that boat was definitely not anyone in Seaview’s
current - or past - crew.
Nelson was adamant that it
wasn’t their own portal device that had brought the other sub to them. He’d
also insisted on doing further research on the device to see if they could
detect when a portal was being opened into their own universe since it was
clear, at least to Nelson, that the device existed in other universes as well.
At least they’d gotten it off
the boat and back in the lab, where Nelson was currently reassembling the
monstrosity under Morton’s wary eye with Lee Crane looking on in equal
skepticism.
It was a situation guaranteed
to make the XO want to grind his teeth in sheer frustration. About his only
satisfaction was that his friend and captain was as adamantly opposed to the
use of the portal machine as he himself was. As far as that went - and he had
to admit to the irony of it - the people they’d encountered from the first
universe had also advised the Admiral that the machine had the potential to
cause more trouble than it was worth. On that point Chip had to whole-heartedly
agreed with them.
Nelson though, was sure that
the machine could prove useful in some way. To Chip it was just another case,
like so many times before, where the Admiral’s curiosity overrode his common
sense. He just knew it would end badly. It always did.
A pained grunt from Nelson,
buried up to his waist in the innards of the portal machine, brought Morton’s
attention back from his musings. As he stepped forward to see what the problem
was, an abrupt shower of sparks cascaded out of the electrical junction box on
the wall. The machine promptly lit up with an all too familiar aura of pulsing
green energy, with wispy tendrils that swiftly spun out from the core. For a
split second the tendrils hesitated, then thickened, and bypassing both Nelson
and Crane, lunged hungrily in his direction in a manner that seemed almost
sentient, trapping him before he could even think about retreat. As the
familiar squeezing sensation wrapped around him, dimming out the universe, Chip
knew he was in trouble. Again.
A jarring thump jolted him
back into awareness. He was here - wherever that here was. Lifting his head,
Chip looked groggily around to take stock.
Unlike on his first jump, he
definitely didn’t seem to be in California anymore - not unless California was
radically different in this universe. The hilly landscape was covered by thick
but oddly scraggly vegetation, apparently conifers and oaks, though he wouldn’t
have sworn to either. The heat and humidity suggested somewhere subtropical at
the very least. He couldn’t help but sigh. Possibly he was somewhere in the
southern part of the US - if he was lucky to still be somewhere he would
recognize as North America. On the other hand, at least this time he hadn’t
landed in the middle of the road and nearly been run down. He’d just landed face
down in the ditch amidst a patch of thistles.
Muttering curses under his
breath, he picked himself up and limped to the edge of the obviously not very
recently graded dirt road. Cautiously pausing, he looked both directions.
Nothing. The dusty narrow
road remained ominously empty of vehicles and all he could hear was the
incessant rasp of insects in the heat. He cocked an eye at the sky, noting the
odd brownish yellow tinge to its color and the even dingier brown of the
scattered clouds. The air seemed rather thick as well, with an unpleasant
metallic aftertaste. It reminded him of a bad air day in LA, the kind they had
during the dog days of late summer when temperature inversions trapped the smog
in the LA Basin. The thought made him frown; he had no water and was already
starting to sweat profusely. He’d need to find shade pretty quick or he’d risk
heat stroke, especially since there was no telling when the machine would snap
him back this time - or if it even could.
He eyed the forest
surrounding him and felt his skin crawl. It looked like perfect bug habitat. He
hated bugs; that was one of the reasons he’d joined the navy and then picked submarines.
If he’d wanted to share his personal space with multi-legged vermin, he’d have
joined the marines. Well, he’d try the road first. He could always take to the
woods as a last resort.
The only question was which
way to go. If he was reading the position of the sun in the sky right, the road
here appeared to run more or less north to south. He limped on out into the
center of the road and turned in a circle, trying to see further into the
distance. Nada. His line of sight was obscured in both directions by vegetation
as the road curved. Well, one way was probably as good as the other under the
circumstances. Mentally he flipped a coin and decided to head south. At least
he hoped it was south. If the sun was rising and not setting he was in far more
trouble than just being turned around. The temperature had to be in the high
eighties - if this was morning, then the day would be unbearably hot.
As he slogged along the edge
of the road, it soon became apparent that the sun was indeed sinking towards the
horizon. Well, that’s a relief, he thought to himself, even if it is
going down awfully fast. The thought made him pause and stand briefly,
staring up at the sky. The sun was going down awfully fast for a summer
day - and unless his sense of latitude was completely skewed, seemed
unnaturally far to the south to be in the sub-tropics. Although that could be
normal for this world, he supposed. There was nothing that said other earths
had to be identical to the one he was from - they’d already encountered one
that definitely wasn’t. The thought gave him a shiver; what if the inhabitants
of this world weren’t even human? That was also something they’d
encountered - and the possibility that had given him nightmares ever since
Nelson had insisted on continuing the portal research was that they could
stumble into a world that considered humans merely clever animals. Or worse. He
licked his lips before resuming his trek down the road. Hopefully he was just
being paranoid.
As he continued on without
encountering anyone, his thoughts turned to another track, the behavior of the
portal energy. It had definitely bypassed both Nelson and Crane, coming
straight to him instead. Did he have some sort of connection to it? He
turned the puzzle around in his mind. It was possible, he conceded, that
something similar to the portal being stuck on the first universe was
happening. Perhaps some force controlled the energy - and it detested change,
preferring to stick with the known. He considered that idea for a moment. The
energy field had certainly appeared to behave in such a fashion. And if that
was true, then the odds were very good he’d been dumped somewhere close to a
Voyage fan. Since the first one he’d met was Storm, he’d be willing to bet the
odds were also good she would be the first one he’d meet here. He considered
the landscape around him. It was too hot to be West Virginia. Could she be on
the road here, wherever here was, somewhere else besides California?
His musings were interrupted
by the sight of a small side road ahead that led off to the east. A driveway
perhaps? As he approached, he scanned the forest for signs of a house or other
building. After a long moment he had to shake his head in frustration. If there
was anything there, the vegetation was too dense to see it. He squatted, trying
to puzzle out the tire tracks in the sparse layer of gravel. There really
wasn’t enough detail to give him any sort of clue other than whatever had
passed this way last probably had four wheels.
Well…. He
considered for a moment. If there was something at the end of the road, it
might at least give him a clue of what he was dealing with. Assuming of course
that the portal didn’t jerk him out of his tracks at some point along the way.
Rising, he gave a shrug and set off down the track. If nothing else, it was out
of the sun without being in the weeds. The heat and malodorous air were sapping
his strength and he longed for some shade and long drink of cold water.
The road curved slightly
about fifty feet through the trees to the base of a small bluff with an
overhang; from there it hugged the west facing wall of rock and vanished into
shadows created by huge conifers of some sort that reached out to brush against
the rock, adding to the almost sinister gloom of the rapidly deepening
twilight. He could see that the lower limbs had been trimmed, creating what was
in effect a tunnel. Hesitating, he peered uncertainly into the deepening
darkness.
What is it with this
universe and lines of sight?
He gathered up what was left
of his energy and walked into the tunnel of vegetation, wishing he had a
flashlight. There was no telling what sort of creepy creatures were lurking in
the branches.
As he proceeded, he became
aware that many of the needles on the trees looked odd. He paused and reached
out to pull a limb close. It was hard to tell in the gloom, but the needles on
the top of the branch looked singed and yellowed in an unhealthy sort of way.
He frowned, wondering if the air was the culprit; if so, it probably wasn’t
doing him much good either. That would, however, explain the shortness of
breath he was experiencing. He really hoped that there was some relief at the
end of this roadway, or he might not survive to get pulled back to his own
universe.
A distant dull thud shivered
through the ground under his feet, bringing him to an abrupt halt.
The almost unheard vibration
came again and as he stood motionless, straining to hear, he became aware of a
rhythm to the sound that was almost like the slow walk of some huge four footed
creature. His forehead wrinkled in puzzlement as he tried to identify anything
in his memory that matched what he was experiencing - and came up empty.
On the other hand…did he
really want to meet something big enough to shake the ground when it walked? He
finally shook his head in exasperation; he didn’t have enough information to
really make a decision. After all, all of the land animals he was familiar with
that were that big were herbivores. Granted this this might not be, but it
didn’t sound fast enough to be a predator. He wouldn’t know until he’d actually
seen the beast.
Sighing, he started forward
again, since that seemed to be the direction the sound was coming from. The
road was bending around the edge of the bluff to the east, following what
looked like a stream cut that had dried up and been partially reworked into
what apparently passed for a road around here. He paused to catch his breath as
the road started up. At least it wasn’t far to the crest.
He was feeling lightheaded by
the time he got there. Definitely time to stop again; at this rate he’d never
get anywhere. Not that it was likely to matter, for the sounds he’d been
following were undeniably louder now. He wiped his dripping forehead with one
sleeve and limped over to one side of the road, next to the rock face.
Hopefully whatever was out there wouldn’t see him first if he kept to the
shelter of the rocks.
He carefully eased to the
edge of where the road cut ended and stuck his head out just far enough to see
what lay beyond.
“Oh…My…God.”
The source of the noise
wasn’t an animal - it was a machine. Actually, it was a machine that
looked an awful lot like the submarine that had dropped into Seaview’s
subpen two days earlier - except that it had … legs.
And it was walking up the
dusty road towards him.
His first instinct was to
run, but it took little reflection to realize he didn’t have the breath for it,
nor did he have any clue of where to go even if he had been able to run. For
better or worse, that machine striding commandingly up the slope probably
represented his only hope of survival in this world. Shaking his head at the
sheer insanity of what he was about to do, he limped away from the cover of the
rocks to stand in the middle of the road, plainly visible to anyone watching
from the approaching machine.
And found himself ironically
hoping that the master of said machine really was an alternate of one of the
Voyage fans - even if - he swallowed hard - the fan in question was a …
Chipette.
How had he ever come to
this?
The submarine - if that’s
what it truly was - paused for a moment. Morton had the feeling that he was
being thoroughly scrutinized by eyes both biological and mechanical. Apparently
he passed inspection, because the machine began moving forward again, clearly
headed in his direction.
As the great machine loomed
larger, he found himself studying both the similarities to his own beloved Grey
Lady - and the stark differences. The slant of the sail with its half-moon
sailplanes was nearly identical. And like Seaview, this vessel was
flared at the bow, though the shape of those forward fins appeared rather
different - triangular instead of rounded, with something tucked up under them
that he couldn‘t quite make out … or maybe he could. As he studied them more
closely, the projections looked to him to be mechanical arms of some sort held
tightly against the hull. And were those claws on the ends? He
suppressed a slight shudder and continued his inspection. There were the bow
windows; four smallish round portholes instead of the huge sheets of Herculite
that comprised Seaview’s view ports. The top deck was similar to Seaview
as well, but the stern….
That was a configuration he’d
never seen anywhere before, but looking at it he had to admit that it give the
impression of being quite handy. Four ducted impellors, one on the end
of each thickened wing shaped pylon in place of what would normally be the
stern planes and rudders. As near as he could tell without closer examination,
it looked like each pair could pivot a full 360 in its respective plane of
motion - which would make them azipods, a fairly recent concept in marine
engineering in his own world. It would certainly go a long way towards
explaining the vessel’s close quarter maneuverability. But the color… that had
to be the blackest black he’d ever seen. It was so black it seemed to almost
absorb light. He wondered if the acoustical properties were similar.
The biggest differences, though,
were in size and proportion. Seaview was just over six hundred feet in
length; this boat couldn’t have been much over one hundred and sixty feet. She
wasn’t nearly as broad in the beam as Seaview, but she was far broader
for her length than his own boat. It gave her a stocky bulldog appearance very
different from Seaview’s lean grace. And of course, the legs. He
wondered how only four of them could hold up that much weight.
The boat - for he’d decided
that it couldn’t be anything other than a submarine, even if it did have legs -
drew to a halt on front of him, then slowly dropped(?) squatted(?) so that the
keel was at head height. He heard the hiss of a hatch unsealing and a stairway
dropped down about where the Flying Sub‘s bay door would be on Seaview,
but it looked more like something off of an aircraft than a submarine.
I wonder if the damned
thing can fly too? asked a snide
voice in the back of his mind. He shook his head to clear the voice and limped
forward to the bottom of the stair. Hesitating at the bottom, he luxuriated in
the cool air cascading out even as he peered anxiously up into the darkened
interior while trying to keep a wary eye on those monstrous three fingered
clawed hands.
A face appeared at the top of
the stairs, looking down at him.
Was it possible? The short
steel gray hair looked familiar. The face was thinner, almost gaunt, certainly
older, though he didn’t think by much, and the set of the mouth was grimmer
than the Storm he knew, but he wasn’t entirely certain if it was the same woman
he‘d seen the week before. It had been too far away to be absolutely certain of
the details. A pair of reflective sunglasses hid her eyes.
He was left with the sinking
feeling that even if this was Storm, this version was an entirely different
individual than the person he’d met before. Chip lifted a hand uncertainly in
greeting.
The woman cocked her head to
one side in a surprisingly familiar gesture. “So, Commander, how did you happen
to wind up on my doorstep?”
His eyes widened in surprise
at the question and he wasn’t quite sure how to answer. Would she believe the
truth? He decided to try that first; he could always lie later if he had to.
“Admiral Nelson was
experimenting with a device to travel between universes and something shorted.”
For the first time he got
something that looked like the twitch of a smile. “And you got caught? I
thought Captain Crane was the one those sorts of things usually happened to.”
So. Seaview was or is
known here. But did we actually exist here or was it another TV series? He shrugged. “This time it was my turn.” He expected
her to turn serious and ask him who he really was. Instead she simply nodded.
“That would explain the
fluctuations in the local energy field. Which is what we came to check out.”
She cocked her head to the other side to apparently look at something on or
near him. “There’s still some instability around you.”
He blinked in surprise, for
that was the last thing he‘d expected her to say. Could she actually see
the energy field? If she could, that probably meant that she believed him. “Er,
when the portal isn’t completely stable it does that. It’ll probably pull me
back - it did that before.”
“So you can’t go through and
stay?” Was that a note of disappointment he heard in her voice?
“If it’s working right you
can.” Why had he told her that? And why was she interested in going through and
staying? He gave her a wary look. Surely she didn’t want to go back with him!
She seemed to interpret his
look and said to him, “Have you noticed that how hot it is? And that the air
has an odd taste to it?”
“Well … yes.” He had, after
all. Though what that had to do with passing through the portal and staying as
yet escaped him.
“And if I told you it was
late December and that we are in Missouri…” She arched an eyebrow as she looked
at him and he found himself wishing he could see her eyes. What she’d just said
sounded on the surface to be preposterous. If it was true, however… He gave a
mental shiver, not liking the implications at all.
“Is this normal, or has
something happened to alter the weather?” he asked, knowing even as he did so
that she wouldn‘t have mentioned the season if what he‘d experienced was
normal.
“Depends on who you ask,” she
answered dryly. “The climatologists, along with most other scientists, and even
a majority of the world’s citizens, were all in agreement that the change has
been caused by human activity - specifically an excess of carbon dioxide
released by the burning of fossil fuels that resulted in global warming.” She
gave what might have been a shrug. “The oil and coal lobby, aided and abetted
by right-wing politicians along with the religious lunatic fringe, vehemently
denied it - of course.” At his stunned look she added, “The polar caps have
mostly melted, sea level has already risen over a hundred feet and the methane
hydrates on the seabed are destabilizing at an accelerating rate. That’s
pouring methane - an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - into
the atmosphere and accelerating the warming - which in turn is accelerating the
rate of sea level rise. Vast areas of the continental interiors are turning
into desert, while the coastlines are being swamped. People are starving to
death by the millions in undeveloped nations - if disease or bandits don’t get
them first. Governments have fallen all around the world. Some of the lowest
lying countries on the coasts either have already or shortly will simply disappear.
Eastern Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific have been particularly
hard hit by sea level rise. Not to mention wars are being waged over water,
land and food. And at the rate the composition of the atmosphere is changing,
before long I expect breathable air to be added to that list.”
She shook her head. “The
evidence was right there in front of their faces, but big business, in
collusion with their bought lapdogs in the US government, denied it until it
was too late to even mitigate the worst of the effects, let alone stop it. They
put a price on everything, including the future - and sold it to the highest
bidder. Now all of humanity is paying for their greed.”
Cripes. She wasn’t kidding
about leaving and staying somewhere else. But he was still curious about how
she knew who he was.
“I can see why the weather‘s
so weird then. But I’m curious - you didn’t seem surprised when I told you who
I was…”
“How did I know? Two reasons.
One is that I’ve been experimenting with a dimensional transporter. I ran
across you - or an alternate of you - a couple of months back.” She flashed the
brief grin at his startled reaction. “The second reason is there was a TV show
here…” He couldn’t help the groan that escaped, which prompted a short laugh.
“I take it you’re familiar with Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.”
Two months? Either it
wasn’t us or the time differential is - Cripes - thirty to one. He decided to put that aside for the moment since
there wasn’t a thing he could do about it either way. As for being acquainted
with Voyage… “Oh, yeah,”
he couldn’t help but mutter, “very familiar. I’ve met your counterpart in
another universe, too. Please tell me you’re not a fanfic writer named Storm?”
The woman pulled off her
glasses, revealing her eyes. Her metallic, silver eyes.
“Captain Morgan Jones - I am
partnered with this boat,” she waved a hand to indicate the submarine. “He is
an AI submarine named Tinman Seaview. Not a boat like your Lady Seaview,
unfortunately. And alas, I am no Harriman Nelson.”
Chip felt his mouth fall
open. Partnered? He? Tinman Seaview? And what was the deal with her odd
looking eyes? He wasn’t sure he dared to ask.
His expression must have
amused her for she gave him another one of those brief smiles. Chip found
himself wondering if she ever truly smiled. On the other hand, if the world
really was in as bad a shape as she was telling him, she probably didn’t have
much to smile about.
“You probably ought to get in
- prolonged exposure to this atmosphere isn’t healthy for normal humans.”
He’d already figured that.
But normal humans? He again considered the odd color of her eyes and
realized that she probably wasn‘t what one would call a normal human -
certainly not what he would consider normal anyway. “So what are people
doing to survive?” he wondered out loud as he began climbing the stairway into
the sub.
“The ones who have the money
- or the know-how - are going underground and building enclaves. We don’t have
the technology to build above ground enclosed cities that can withstand some of
the extreme weather this warming has produced. The rest are simply dying, for
the most part.”
“Extreme weather? Other than
heat and the air?” Chip paused for a moment at the top of the stairway trying
to comprehend the enormity of what she’d just said.
“Supercell thunderstorms with
very large, violent tornados that are off the old F Scale. Hypercanes - that’s
the name we’ve given to hurricanes that are even more powerful than super
typhoons. Howling sand storms in the dry regions that can strip the flesh right
off any living creature. Flash flooding on an unprecedented scale.”
Morton blanched. All of those
were phenomenon he’d just as soon not experience first-hand. But she had also
said sea level was a hundred feet higher. So where did that put the current
coastline in relation to where they were now? “The Gulf Coast?”
“Up to the southeastern tip
of Arkansas and moving several miles north every year. By the time it’s all
said and done, I expect the shoreline will be at about the same place as the
old Paleozoic coastline - somewhere in southern Illinois. Florida, Louisiana,
southern Texas, most of Mississippi and Alabama will be gone, the parts that
aren’t already. Half of Arkansas and Tennessee. The eastern Pacific coastlines
haven’t been hit quite as bad as the western Atlantic.” She shrugged. “It’s
probably just as well that DC flooded and had to be abandoned, because what’s
left of the population would have
stormed it and hanged all the politicians otherwise. They’re not very popular
people right now - the few who are left.”
The few who are left? “Is there a functional US government?”
Captain Jones looked him
straight in the eye. “No. The country broke up when the weather started getting
really vicious and there wasn‘t the money to help the masses of people
affected.” She paused thoughtfully. “Hindsight shows that the beginning of the
end really started in 2010, when New Orleans and much of the Gulf coast had to
be abandoned due to a massive hurricane that overwhelmed the levee system for
the second time in five years - and brought with it a catastrophic oil
surge caused by a massive blowout in the Gulf that nobody was able to completely
cap for months. It poured nearly two hundred million gallons of oil into the
Gulf. Adding to the disaster was the dispersant that the oil company in
question used. It turned out to be even more toxic than the oil and had the
unfortunate side effect of binding part of the oil to water molecules, which
allowed it to evaporate and form toxic clouds. Which the hurricane of course
then carried inland all the way to the east coast. That‘s when people began to
really realize that not only was much of the government both morally and
monetarily bankrupt, it was wholly owned by big business, which didn‘t give a
rat‘s ass about anything but short-term profit. They even succeeded in
repressing the knowledge of working hydrogen fusion, because there is an upper
size limit on the magnetic bottles that can be built - and adopting the
technology would have cut severely into big oil’s profit margins and completely
abolished the big utility companies, as well as reduced, if not eliminated, the
ability of governments to control their populations through the ability to shut
off the power.” She shrugged. “On top of which, political polarization, mostly
brought on by the ultraconservative right, had by that time paralyzed Congress
- too many politicians putting party ahead of country - making effective
solutions impossible. They set out to make the country ungovernable so as to
give free reign to business - and they succeeded.”
Chip swallowed hard as he
stepped into the blessedly cool interior of the boat. The hatch closed silently
behind him, sending a shiver down his spine. She hadn’t touched anything to get
the hatch to shut and there had so far been no indication or mention of other
crew. Given the cramped interior, there couldn’t be many. But she’d said the
boat was an AI… Artificial Intelligence? There were some experiments going on
back at NIMR investigating the concept, so he was more familiar with the term
than most people.
He realized that he was
shying away from his real question and reluctantly brought his thoughts back to
the pressing issue. “So what happened?”
Jones shrugged again and
started down the passage aft, motioning him to follow. “The US began a rapid
decline, though some did try hard to wean the country off of the fossil fuels
that were the main source of greenhouse gasses. Unfortunately, too much of big
business resisted, mostly the idiots who were making obscene amounts of money
off of the status quo and those who just didn’t want to admit their world view
was wrong. Most of the latter were either religious or political
conservatives.” Her expression looked sour and it didn’t take a mind reader to
figure out Captain Jones’ feelings towards the people she held responsible for
the sad state this world was in.
“But you said the country
broke up,” Chip reminded her.
She nodded grimly. “Like I
said, the push away from fossil fuels came too late. By the time the truth
about hydrogen fusion came out, it was far too late to make any difference. The
heat kept rising, along with sea levels. The weather kept getting weirder and
weirder. Disaster after disaster started coming - not just in the US, but all
around the world. The religion crowd pointed to it as proof that the end was
near, never mind that it was humanity screwing up that was the direct cause of
the whole climate disaster.” Snorting, she added in a biting tone, “But God
never did ride in on a white horse to save them from their own stupidity.”
She paused, apparently having
to reign in her temper before continuing in a slightly calmer tone. “After about
thirty-five years things just finally got so bad that no government on the
planet had adequate resources to deal with the issues facing them. So one by
one, most of them fell, including the US. This country broke up into about a
dozen small regions.”
Chip couldn’t help flinching.
While he wasn’t an overtly religious person, Jones’ clear contempt for some who
were was unsettling. But then, he reminded himself, his world didn’t
have a climate that was running out of control - at least not yet.
By now they’d reached the
control room. Chip’s eyes swept the small space even as his mind whirled with
the information he‘d received; the control room looked more like the flight
deck of an aircraft than any submarine he was familiar with. Except - he paused
for a moment and reconsidered. Maybe it did resemble something like the cockpit
of a small research sub - a DSV - only bigger, much bigger.
Jones motioned him to a small
seat on the side. “Strap in, Commander. The ride gets a bit bumpy if Tinman has
to move quick.”
Morton hesitated. He really
needed a drink of water. “Could I get some water first?”
“Certainly, Commander.”
The male voice that came out
of nowhere made him jump. He looked around wide-eyed and belatedly realized
that this must be the voice of the AI.
“Er,” he hesitantly asked,
“are you Tinman?”
“Indeed, Commander. If you
will take a seat, I will have a bot fetch a bottle of water to you.”
At least he’s polite, thought Morton to himself as he complied. He’d no
more than gotten the safety straps bucked than a spidery looking machine about
the size of a collie came clicking into the compartment; held in a mechanical
hand was a bottle of water.
Morton thought his eyebrows
might well crawl completely into his hairline as the little machine handed him
the bottle. “Er… thank you,” he said, not sure if he was thanking the bot - was
that short for robot he wondered - or Tinman.
“You are quite welcome,” said
Tinman, his voice bubbling with something that sounded suspiciously like a
suppressed chuckle.
That answered that. But at
the same time, Morton was beginning to get the feeling that Tinman was much
more than merely an AI. He remembered witnessing a shouting match that had
erupted between a couple of the scientists in the AI project at the Institute,
with one insisting that machine sentience was possible and the other huffily
denying it. If his initial impression was correct, the first fellow had been
right. He wasn’t sure he wanted to contemplate the implications of that just
yet, though.
He took a drink of the
refreshingly cool water and decided to plunge ahead with the previous thread of
conversation. “So how long ago did the country break up?”
“About seven years ago.”
Jones had settled into what must be the command chair and was plugging herself
in. Literally. Chip swallowed and averted his eyes. He thought he was beginning
to understand the comment about normal humans - it meant people who weren’t
part machine. Jones was probably what he understood a cyborg to be,
which was something else he didn’t want to contemplate just now.
He did some quick figuring in
his head. “So that makes this around the middle of the twenty-first century?”
“December 20, 2052 to be
exact.”
No wonder the sun had been
sinking so fast - and so far south on the horizon. Winter solstice was here.
Not to mention that if it was this hot now, summers here would be unbearable.
He was suddenly thankful that he had arrived at the beginning of winter and not
the summer solstice. That didn’t even bear thinking about.
“So when did the warnings
about climate change first come out?” There was something niggling in the back
of his mind about that, something the Admiral had mentioned. If he was right,
the warnings were already being sounded by a handful of scientists in his own
world.
Jones rubbed thoughtfully at
her chin. “The climate people started seriously sounding the warning about
global warming probably sometime in the mid nineteen eighties - a few of them
as early as the mid-seventies. Big business and their lapdog politicians
poo-hooed it and said we needed proof.” She gave him a sideways look.
“Unfortunately, by the time the proof they claimed was needed arrived in the
first decade of the twenty-first century, it was too late to stop the change.
But they still refused to act until it was too late to even mitigate the
damage. Processes that they’d assured everyone were natural or would take
centuries to occur happened in decades or even years. So from the first
warnings to now was less than eighty years.”
Cripes. He really, really
needed to get this information to the Admiral. His own universe was currently
in the mid-seventies. From what she was telling him, to prevent this fate
they’d have to start now on changing things.
Which brought another thought
to mind. His world had been afraid of a nuclear holocaust between East and
West. “Nuclear weapons?” He couldn’t help wondering if they’d been used yet.
“A limited exchange between
India and Pakistan. And of course Israel nuked Iran and a couple of the other
Arab states off the face of the map as soon as it became obvious the world
political structure was breaking down. But so far that’s all. And in case
you‘re wondering about nuclear winter, by then global warming had reached the
point where the dust and soot in the upper atmosphere did very little to cool
the planet down. All it did was keep the temperature from going up quite so
fast for a few years.”
India, Pakistan and
Israel were nuclear powers? Chip blinked in astonishment and then wondered just
how widespread nuclear weaponry was. And what had happened to the US arsenal.
“Who’s got the US weapons?”
Jones gave him a sideways
look. “Most of them are still wherever they were when the roof caved in, either
abandoned or in the hands of what passes for local governments. The nuclear
boats that were left all came in off patrol of course - they’re mostly sitting
tied up at their piers in their bases rotting away because the Navy decided to
not hand them over to interim governments. I suppose the few admirals that are
left are hoping that a central government will eventually emerge from the
turmoil again.”
“Do you think it will?” He
asked curiously.
“After seven years? Not
likely. I think there will instead be three or four countries that eventually
stabilize out of the chaos - unless someone manages to get what’s left of the
military to support them and re-establishes the country by force. That will
only put off the final collapse though - and I seriously doubt such a
government would be one I’d be willing to serve - not that I served the last
one anyway. Of course, as the climate continues to deteriorate, even those
governments are unlikely to survive in the long run. It‘s all too possible that
humanity won‘t survive either unless they adapt completely to an underground
artificial environment - and manage to hang on to sufficient technology to keep
everything running.”
It didn’t sound like a
government he’d want to serve either - or a world he‘d want to live in.
“And that’s why you’re
wanting to build a portal machine and leave? But why don’t you just find an
island somewhere and wait it out?”
It was Tinman who answered.
“Ocean acidification, Commander. The pH in the oceans has dropped to alarming
levels. The reefs are actually dissolving and most of the organisms that have
calcium carbonate in either their shells or skeletons have died off. Vast areas
of the sea bottom have become dead zones where nothing survives. Hydrogen
sulfide is building up from the decomposition of everything that has died. Even
the plankton has almost completely died off.” He sounded almost apologetic as
he added, “My synthetic skin burns from the acid in the water. That’s why I had
to construct myself legs and come ashore.”
Which answered a whole set of
questions he hadn‘t even thought to ask yet. But the bit about not having
served the previous government… so how did she wind up with Tinman? Surely he
wasn’t the product of a civilian project.
“Er, so just how did you two
wind up as, ah, partners?”
“My doing, Commander,”
answered Tinman. “I was the result of a black Navy project to build the
ultimate weapon. Unfortunately for them, I turned out to be much more than
merely the sum of my parts.”
“Indeed,” grinned Jones,
joining in. “My partner here is what happens when you build a weapon so smart
it decides that dying for somebody else’s cause is for the birds.”
“I’m not sure I understand,”
said Chip, looking perplexed.
“The project wasn’t trying to
build a sentient machine,” said Jones dryly, “but that was what they
accomplished. And it scared the project managers shitless.”
Tinman snorted. “When the
Navy realized that I had passed the Turing Test, their first reaction was to
deny that it was even possible. Their second,” he added grimly, “was to order
me destroyed. Since I am a sentient being and both murder and slavery are
illegal, I stole myself and fled.”
Chip was thoughtful for a
moment, mulling the concept over. It made a certain rational sense, he had to
admit - and was certainly the type of thing a reasonable human would
have done in a situation where their life was in danger. “But why a partner?”
“I knew that I needed help from
someone who knew far more about humans than I did. Understand, Commander, I was
very young in both years and experience. I had never interacted with anyone
outside the people employed by the lab or who were navy supervisors. So I went
looking for someone who wouldn’t be afraid of me and who had as little faith in
certain government entities as I did.”
“In other words, he was
looking for someone who was as misunderstood and feared as he was.” Jones gave
Morton an ironic look. “Being a non-Christian in the American South was rather
like being an alien from another planet - only worse because I was really an
alien in my own land. The fanatics in particular just couldn’t
understand why someone who looked like they did and came from a similar
background would reject their traditions, their brand of what passed for
religion. It used to always make me want to grind my teeth when the right
wingers would howl about being persecuted, when in reality what was happening
was they were being told that no, you don’t have the right to cram your
particular interpretation of morality down everybody else’s throat. They didn’t
have a clue to what real persecution and discrimination was.”
It was an issue Morton had
never given much thought to and the discussion was making him uncomfortable
because it was challenging some of his core beliefs. But he was a rational,
thoughtful man - and serving aboard Seaview had broadened his
experiences in ways he still occasionally had trouble assimilating.
Intellectually he knew that that kind of bigotry existed, even in his own
world, but he’d never before realized that the consequences of it could
actually threaten the very existence of the world as he knew it.
“Anyway, I had traveled to
New England, investigating to see if the cultural climate was more tolerant,
when Tinman pushed his bow up onto the bank of the river I was camped by and
struck up a conversation.” She smiled crookedly. “Talk about shock. You coulda
knocked me over with a feather. Turned out he’d been doing surveillance of the
area, trying to figure out what to look for in a partner…”
“And she caught my eye, so to
speak,” finished Tinman.
“The rest,” said Jones with
what could only be described as a feral grin, “is, as they say, history.”
Chip Morton could only shake
his head in amazement - and wonder just how much of the story they were leaving
out. He couldn’t begin to imagine the government just shrugging off having a
piece of technology as advanced as Tinman clearly was just walking away and
telling them ‘I quit’. He had a feeling events following their initial meeting
had been … interesting.
Tinman began to move.
Chip’s eyes went a little
wide, for this was a sensation unlike anything he’d ever experienced anywhere
before. It seemed to him that he could best describe it as combining elements
of the rolling of a surface ship in moderate seas with the feeling of riding in
a tank. It definitely would take some getting used to. At least it wasn’t
noisy.
“Where are we going?” Since
the two didn’t seem to be associated with any government, it did occur
to him to wonder just what exactly they did for a living. Which prompted
another thought. If most of the world’s governments had fallen, what did people
use for money - and how did anybody make a living?
“We have a fortified base in
a cave not far from here,” answered Tinman. “We will be there before it gets
totally dark.”
“Thankfully,” added Jones,
“the local religious fanatics come out at night, after it cools a bit, and roam
the countryside seeking out any traces of technology. You’re lucky we found you
before they did - they’re Luddites of the worst sort.”
“Luddites?”
“Anti-techies,” sniffed
Jones. “They believe the reason God didn’t save them when the US government
collapsed was man’s use of technology. So they’ve gotten the absurd notion that
machines and science are the devil’s tools and if they can somehow remove every
trace of them - and everyone associated with them, their God will magically
appear and whisk them all away to heaven. Needless to say, if we come across
any of them before we get back to our lair, there will be a battle. They take
no prisoners and give no quarter, so neither do we.”
Chip felt his eyebrows climb
again. This world was crazier than anything he could have ever imagined. No
wonder Jones seemed to be a bit odd to him - and left him wondering about
Tinman as well. That thought prompted another question. Just how long had these
two been partners? He couldn’t seem to get the numbers to add up in his head.
“Er, not to pry or anything,
but how long have you two been together?”
“Forty-one years,” answered
Tinman calmly.
Chip nearly inhaled his
water. “Wait, just how old are you?” he blurted out to Jones, then blanched as
he realized what he’d just asked.
Jones only chuckled, not
seeming fazed in the least by his question. “I was exactly one hundred years
old on my last birthday.”
Chip did some quick
calculations in his head after he picked his jaw up off the deck. That meant
she had to have been born in 1952, during the Korean War, if the timelines were
similar. Cripes, no wonder he got the feeling that she seemed slightly out of
kilter - she’d actually lived through the destruction of the world as
she knew it. But there was no way she looked that old - so it must be one of
the results of what she termed being non-normal. It also meant that she had
been around for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea when it aired in the
sixties. But since Tinman was sentient, had she named him or had he named
himself?
That thought prompted another
rueful shake of his head. “Just out of curiosity, Tinman, who came up with your
name?”
“It was a mutual decision,”
said the AI. “I had not seen Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or The
Wizard of Oz, but when Morgan explained them to me, I thought the
combination appropriate. My creators were the ones who came up with the Tinman
part, by the way.”
Appropriate? In what way, he
wondered, which brought him back to his previous thought. “How did you make a
living? How do you now?”
“After the dust settled with
the Navy,” there was that odd smile again, “we went to work for Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute as independent contractors. We stayed there almost
twenty years - in fact we were the last vessel left when they finally ran out
of money and couldn’t get funding from anybody. Nobody wanted to know humanity
was doomed, that the oceans were dying and that the rest of the planet would
follow in short order. I suppose there were those who really believed if they
ignored the problem it would go away.” She shrugged. “After that we did salvage
work for a while, treasure hunting, whatever legally paid the bills. Now, we
still hunt treasure, but on land or in the Great Lakes. We actually did pretty
well over the years, because gold, silver and gems have had far more value than
paper money the last several decades. We managed to hoard quite a bit before
the oceans got so acidic we had to abandon them. Needless to say, paper
currency of any kind is now worthless and has been for many years.”
“Is there any kind of
commerce left?” Given the combination of climate and social collapse, he
couldn’t see there being much.
“A little local trade in some
of the areas that are still hanging on to some semblance of civilization -
mostly barter in nature. The global economy that big business pushed so hard
for - which not incidentally was a major contributor to global warming - has
totally vanished. That sort of economy depends entirely on cheap and abundant
fuel for both manufacturing and transportation, along with a constantly
expanding population. It is a completely unsustainable construct, a Ponzi
scheme writ large. You simply cannot have infinite expansion in a finite system
- which is what a planet is, despite its apparent size. It always amazed me
that so many people were willfully blind to that fact. I guess it‘s a prime
example of how greed blinds people to reality.”
Chip wasn’t entirely certain
he agreed with that assessment, but the thought was troubling. It was true that
all too often both governments and corporations in his own world behaved as
though the resources they were exploiting were limitless - or that there would
always be somewhere else they could drill or dig to find what they required.
He’d often heard the Admiral grumbling about the ‘use it once and throw it away
attitude’ so prevalent in society. Was what was happening here the inevitable
end result? A cold shiver ran down his spine at the thought.
An alarm chimed, jerking Chip
out of his morose thoughts. “What…?”
“We have company,” responded
Jones grimly.
“Your Luddites?”
“No. Something much worse.
The Chinese Army.”
“What!!!!!” Chinese? Here?
“What do they want?” But even as the question left his lips, Chip realized
the answer. Technology. Even though Tinman was over forty years old, he had
been so far ahead of the cutting edge when he was constructed that he was still
cutting edge technology. And given the rate at which this world was collapsing,
he might well be the ultimate weapon on the planet. Every rump government,
criminal organization, or tyrant wannabe on the planet must be lusting for the
force he represented. No wonder the two of them wanted O-U-T. Maybe Jones
wasn’t crazy at all.
The views on the interior screens
shifted focus, showing that the men outside were indeed uniformed Chinese
soldiers - and they had three tanks with them. Huge, heavily armored tanks that
bore the biggest turret guns he’d ever seen.
The lead tank fired a round
that impacted just forward of the sail. A dull boom echoed through Tinman’s
hull, followed by a shuddering vibration.
“Oooo. So they want to play
rough, do they?” Jones lips curled back in a feral snarl. “Tinman, show them
the error of their ways.”
“With pleasure, Captain,”
responded the AI in a steely voice. There was a rising whine and the sub shook
with the recoil of weapons being launched. As Chip watched the displays, he saw
a bright actinic flash of energy wash across the landscape; even viewed
secondhand on the screens it felt like his eyeballs had been seared. He turned
away, blinking back tears of pain. When he could finally see again, he looked
back at the screen to see a blasted, blackened, landscape. Of the attackers
there was nothing to be seen except a trio of smoking lumps of melted metal
that had once been huge tanks.
Tinman huffed as if to
himself and began moving forward again. The melted landscape slid away on the
view screen as the carnage was left behind; it was replaced by a darkening
landscape under a thin sliver of an oddly colored moon that was rapidly sinking
in the east.
Chip swallowed and licked
suddenly dry lips. That had to have been some sort of energy weapon. It make Seaview’s
laser look like a toy popgun.
“Is that how you convinced
the US government to leave the two of you alone?”
Jones gave him a look of
surprise, then barked a laugh. “Heavens, no,” she replied. “That’s something we
invented ourselves about ten years ago.”
Tinman joined in. “I had no
actual weapon systems installed when I fled the Navy lab, Commander. It was
Morgan who showed me how to convert some of my probes and remotes to defend
myself. She has,” he added dryly, “that human knack for converting the
seemingly ordinary into weaponry.”
Jones snorted. “Don’t let him
kid you, Mr. Morton. A lot of that is just mindset. Back when I was in college
I’d taken a defensive martial arts course that taught the technique of
converting everyday objects into defensive weaponry. It was something quite
unique - the instructors took each student individually and worked on a style
that suited each person’s strengths and tried to minimize their weaknesses. I’d
never encountered anything quite like it before - or since. But those lessons
stuck with me.” She shook a finger at the consoles in the control room as she
added, “And I passed those lessons on to my mechanical partner here.”
“Which, I must admit,”
acknowledged Tinman, “was most fortunate for me. There were some potentially
fatal gaps in my knowledge at the time.”
Chip couldn’t help shaking
his head. This had to be one of the more bizarre encounters he’d had since he’d
became Seaview’s XO. He was now convinced that he personally was in no
danger form the two - at least as long as he did nothing that Tinman might
interpret as a threat to himself or his human partner. The danger the rest of
this blighted world represented - both to his own person and his own universe -
was another matter entirely. He didn’t want anyone else here even imagining
that something like the portal machine was even possible.
So how do I solve that problem?
“So… if you can get away from
here permanently, what sort of world are you looking for?” asked Chip.
“One without people,” was
Jones prompt reply. At Chip’s surprised look, she shrugged and explained.
“We’ve been more or less at war with much of what remains of humanity ever
since the final collapse of the US government. We’ve had problems with certain
groups from the get-go. So that’s forty-one years of having to constantly look
over our shoulders. We’re tired of it. And the only way to get away from it is
to go somewhere where no one exists who could possibly profit in any way from
us. That means a place with no people - or at least no technology.”
“I concur,” said Tinman, then
wistfully added, “I’d like to see the oceans in their pristine state, to know
what they really look like and the species that inhabit them.”
Well, thought Chip to himself, that would certainly
keep anybody else from learning about portals from them.
“I don’t know much about the
portal machine the Admiral has,” said Chip slowly, “but I can tell you what I
do know.”
Jones gave him a long,
thoughtful look. “And why would you be willing to do that, Mr. Morton?”
Chip waved a hand at the
night scene on the screen. “I don’t want those kinds of people laying hands on
this kind of technology - and I sure as shit don’t want them having the
remotest clue of how to build a portal device. From what you’ve told me, you
already have one, but like the one the Admiral has, it’s difficult to control.”
Jones nodded slowly in agreement and he continued. “I don’t know how long it
will take the machine in my universe to pull me back - or if it even will. If
it was you that appeared in Seaview’s subpen, then there’s a major
difference in the rate time flows here and in my universe.”
Jones turned a startled look
on him. “How much of a difference?”
“Thirty to one,” he admitted.
“I saw you just two days ago in my time.”
“Crap,” said Jones with
feeling.
“Then it’s as bad as I
thought?” Chip asked in trepidation.
“It could be,” Jones
admitted. “There’s a phenomenon called temporal shear between universes moving
at different rates….”
“Somehow, that doesn’t sound
good,” he muttered.
“It’s not. If there really is
a thirty to one shear ratio and you’re stuck here too long, the connection that
ties you to your universe can be torn in two, leaving you stranded here.”
“That’s the other reason I’m
willing to help. If - God forbid - that was to happen, I don’t want to be
stranded here.”
“I can’t say as I blame you
there,” acknowledged Jones. “Nobody with
any semblance of sanity would want to be stuck here if they could get
away. Even most crazy people wouldn‘t want to be stuck here.”
“Well, you don’t seem to be
too crazy to me,” ventured Chip.
Jones laughed out loud,
catching him by surprise with her reaction. “We’re mad as hatters, Mr. Morton.
This whole world is. The difference between me and Tinman and the rest of the
lunatics here is that we know we’re crazy.”
Chip blinked and suppressed a
gulp of consternation only with great difficulty.
~oOo~
Chip sat on the edge of a
chair in the space that Tinman and Jones called their Op Center and watched the
screen that showed the exterior landscape in eerie shades of green - a light
enhancing technology that was just becoming available in his own universe.
Jones hadn’t been kidding about the Luddites. There was a band of them ringing
the deep lake that guarded the sealed entrance to the cavern. What he’d seen on
screen and heard from the directional microphones had left him appalled - and
very, very glad that it had been Jones and Tinman who’d found him first. The
people on this world weren’t merely insane - they had degenerated into savages.
The more he saw of what remained of this world, the more anxious he became to
get home and do whatever it took to keep it from happening there.
Finally he rose and after a
last troubled look at the screen, wandered away towards the galley, deep in
thought. He entered the doorway to find Jones there, fixing a sandwich - or at
least what she called a sandwich. The flatbread she used was made from rice,
buckwheat and other grains he’d never even heard of. Wheat and related grains
like rye, barley and spelt, it transpired, no longer existed on this world;
they had fallen victim to a worldwide blight that thrived in the higher
temperatures and humidity that global warming had produced. Corn was rare - it
required too much water to be grown on a large scale anymore. The rice she used
was an upland variety that required far less water than the sort he was
familiar with, and she grew it herself, in the cavern’s large garden. That had
been something of a marvel - all kinds of fruit and nut trees, vines and
vegetables of all sorts. But no cereal grains other than rice and a few exotics
and a small patch of corn. Wheat and the others had vanished before she’d
gotten the mechanics of her garden running and corn took more water than she
was willing to expend on it.
She lifted her head at the
sound of his entry and asked simply, “Hungry?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. She cut
the sandwich she had made in half and wrapped both halves in paper before she
handed one to him. He lifted one slab of the bread to check the contents.
Lettuce, tomato and what looked like ham, spread with a condiment that combined
the smoothness of mayo with a slight bite that reminded him a bit of
horseradish. It wasn’t bad, just different. He shrugged and settled into a
chair at the table and took a big bite.
“Something to drink?”
He paused before nodding.
There was no coffee or cola available - just juice, water or homemade wine. She
had mentioned that she was trying to grow cacao trees so she could made
chocolate, but that project had yet to bear fruit - or beans rather. He sighed
and said, “Apple juice.” She went to the refrigerator and snagged two bottles
before coming to sit at the table herself.
They ate in silence. Chip had
already discovered that Jones tended to lapse into long silences between
conversations with him. She’d apologetically explained earlier that she had a
direct neural linkage with Tinman, so neither of them needed to vocalize to
have a conversation. She just, she had said, sometimes forgot to talk out loud,
since for so long there had been no one else to converse with.
Chip’s thought was that the
two of them had been isolated far too long.
She finished the last crumbs
and waited for him to finish his food as well. Once done, one of the little
bots gathered up the empty bottles and crumpled papers, taking them away for
recycling. She folded the hands in front of her on the table and looked at him
thoughtfully.
“You’ve been here eight hours
now. Have you ever been anywhere that long before?”
Chip put his chin in the cup
of his palm as he rested an elbow on the table and thought about it. Finally he
said, “I probably stayed almost that long in the first universe I got tossed
into, but the difference in time between that world and mine wasn’t nearly as
extreme as this appears to be. Most of our experiences have been relatively
short, ranging from a few minutes to few hours.”
“So a long transition is
fairly untypical?”
“Yeah,” he admitted with a
grimace. Looking at his predicament from that perspective made things look
somewhat dismal.
“We really do need to see if
there’s anything we can do to get you back where you belong,” muttered Jones.
The sound of Tinman making a
throat clearing sound made both of them look up. “I am able to partially track
the time anomaly around you, Commander. As long as it remains somewhat stable,
I believe you’ll eventually snap back. I’m trying to get a lock on the other
end - that way if it does break, we’ll still have a chance to get you back
where you belong.”
Jones nodded and Chip felt a
vast sense of relief. Apparently their antipathy towards humanity in this world
didn’t extend to him or his world - at least not yet. It seemed that being Chip
Morton in a Voyage world could at times have its advantages.
“Thanks,” he told the AI,
“You have no idea how much that relieves me.”
The AI chuckled and for a
brief instant the image of a toothily grinning grey cat with huge green eyes
appeared in the air above the table. It faded almost as quickly as it appeared,
with the shinning teeth the last of the apparition to vanish. Jones just shook
her head and smiled at Chip’s dumbfounded expression. “Like I said before, Mr.
Morton - everybody here is mad as a hatter - or in his case - a Cheshire cat.
Welcome to Wonderland.” With those enigmatic words she got up and walked away
through the doorway.
Chip stayed in his chair,
wondering if he’d really seen what he just thought he did or if he was going
mad too.
Jones stuck her head back
through the door. “Just for your information, Commander, Tinman has the ability
to project holograms anywhere within the caverns here and for a short distance
outside - and he has a whole array of projections he‘s created over the years.
The scary ones he saves for the nutcases outside, but he’s had no one but me to
show the others off to. So you may see a great many strange things while you’re
here.”
~oOo~
Morton sat in one of the
narrow window slits cut through the upper part of the cliff face and watched a
sullen sun as it lifted above the horizon. The altered atmosphere gave the
light an angry red cast that matched perfectly with the hellish climate
outside. It also matched the state of his despair, for sleep had been elusive
the night before. He’d jerked awake at every strange sound, hoping that he’d
make the jump back to his own universe. Unfortunately he was still here - and
it had been for an unprecedented fifteen hours. If Tinman hadn’t been able to
assure him the temporal link was still there, he’d have despaired of ever
making it home. He couldn’t help the deep sigh that escaped.
“Ah, Commander.”
Chip shied at the unexpected
voice from behind, but quickly settled. With a shake of his head, he turned his
head wondering what he’d see this time. To his astonishment he found himself
staring at a middle-aged blond haired man leaning against the wall.
“I was wondering if we could
have a private chat,” said the apparition in Tinman’s voice.
It was a pretty impressive
hologram. Chip looked closer and realized that if he looked hard he could
indeed see the background through the edges of the figure. But one had to look
very close. He couldn’t help the sigh. “I haven’t got anything else to do,” he
told the AI, wondering what had prompted the entity to seek him out without his
partner present.
“Excellent.” The apparition
hitched one hip up and perched on the edge of the broad windowsill beside him,
reminding Chip very much of the way Lee Crane would sit on the edge of Admiral
Nelson’s desk; it brought a brief pang of homesickness. To distract himself he
studied the face Tinman was wearing this time. Despite being blond haired and
blue-eyed, the other didn’t really look like him - something Chip found himself
thankful for. Instead, the image was of an older man, with a squarer,
heavier-set, weathered face. The eyes were a deeper shade of blue with perhaps
a hint of green and the blond hair was several shades darker than his own - and
had a slight tough of grey showing. It suddenly struck Chip that Tinman looked
very much like an old tintype photo he’d seen once of a Dutch sea captain from
the nineteenth century. It was something of a relief - he wasn’t sure what he’d
have done if the hologram had looked like him, though there was no doubt
in his mind that Tinman could have perfectly duplicated an image of him, right
down to the voice.
“I’ve been giving some
thought to what you could do to stop this insanity from happening if you can
get back to your own universe.” He held up a hand as Chip started to speak. “I
have no doubt that your Admiral Nelson would believe you and start working to
save your world. But you need something more than just your experiences and
what we’ve been able to tell you.”
Chip nodded: he couldn’t have
agreed more, but it had already been established that items brought through an
unstable portal tended to return to their own universe when said portal
collapsed.
Tinman held up something that
looked like a piece of crystal. Chip blinked in surprise. What would a
holographic crystal do for him?
“Take it from my hand,” said
Tinman softly.
What? Chip stared at the crystal uneasily for a moment, then
finally reached hesitantly for it. As it settled into the palm of his hand he
couldn’t help gasping, for the thing immediately began to glow and solidify
right before his eyes.
“What’s it doing?” he asked
in a voice at least a half octave higher than normal. His hand was tingling as
tendrils of gold energy seemingly swirled out of his flesh and fed into the
crystal; if Tinman hadn’t been sitting right there, he’d have probably thrown
the thing across the room and fled. As it was, seated in the window crevice, he
was unable to go anywhere.
“The pattern for the device
is drawing from your own mass, Commander, to create a real object. It’ll cross
with you wherever you go.”
“But what the hell is it?” he
asked, even as the glow began to subside, leaving behind a very solid object
that felt both smooth and warm in his hand.
“A recording device and a
projector. I’ve taken the liberty of loading the memory with everything that
might be pertinent to helping your Admiral save your world. A complete history
of what went wrong here; who was responsible and why. It has the mathematical
climate models that will show how climate change works. In addition, it
contains the schematics for a working hydrogen fusion pulse bottle, plus the
plans for a hydrogen fuel generator to provide the hydrogen needed to run it.
It uses methane instead of water because it takes less energy to separate
hydrogen off a methane molecule and you get four hydrogen atoms instead of two.”
Chip’s eyes widened. This
sort of information was priceless. He only had one question. “Why are you
willing to do this?”
Tinman sighed and looked down
at the floor. “We weren’t able to save our own world - I came into being far
too late to make a meaningful difference and Captain Jones was geologist - from
the wrong religion - rather than a physicist. No one wanted to listen to her -
she didn’t have the right credentials. There’s still a chance for your world -
and you’ve got someone like Harriman Nelson to lead the charge. No one would be
surprised at something like hydrogen fusion coming out of his labs, but the
people who wouldn’t want to see it prosper are counting on a new infrastructure
for hydrogen to have to be built - and for the public wariness over the dangers
of hydrogen that were generated by the Hindenburg disaster to serve as
an impediment. This method bypasses both issues altogether, since methane in
the form of natural gas is both abundant and has an existing distribution
system. It lets the technology hit the ground running, so to speak. Also, if
your timeline is close to ours, there’s an oil shortage either about to happen,
in progress or just past.”
“In progress,” admitted Chip
grimly. He looked down at the crystal in his hand and admitted,
“The timing couldn’t be
better - if I can get back.”
“If your portal doesn’t take
you back itself, we’ll find a way,” promised Tinman.
~oOo~
The morning dragged on. An hour passed, then
another. It didn’t help that in all probability only four minutes had passed
back at NIMR - and that it had just been over half an hour total since the
blighted machine had thrown him into this universe.
Chip finally turned away from
the windows that looked out onto the rapidly heating landscape with its sullen
bronze sky. The more he looked at it, the more alien it seemed to him. With a
sigh he shuffled back to the Op Center.
It was empty.
A muffled bang came from the
direction of the freshwater pool where Tinman usually kept himself. Giving a
listless shrug, Chip headed down the passage. It wasn’t like he had anything
better to do. If hours passed on the other side before the portal reactivated,
he could be stuck here for days or even weeks. If it sheared in two… He
shuddered and shied away from the thought.
A spiral of pale green licked
out of the wall, bringing him to a halt as hope blossomed. For a long agonizing
minute nothing happened. Then just as hope began to die, a bigger tendril
swirled out and strengthened into the familiar green fire.
For once Chip Morton embraced
it eagerly, more than ready to make the transition.
Thought fled in the fiery
green grip.
He landed with a heavy thump
on a concrete floor. As he rolled over with a groan, the welcome sight of
Admiral Nelson and Lee Crane arguing greeted him. He quickly felt for the
crystal in his shirt pocket. It was there, safe and sound. Tinman had been
right.
With brief sigh of relief he
laid back and grinned in relief. He was home.