Relativity Synchronization:
The Eighth Cause

2044: Answers & Questions

Chris sat by himself, staring into space, lost in a maze of contemplation. Every thought was another wall, and there was no sign of the cheese at the center. He watched the barista as he fiddled with the bar, looking up from his work periodically to glare at Chris through black-rimmed glasses.

It had grown late and Chris was the only remaining customer. Generic music filtered through ancient speakers with a tin-like quality, as it attempted to fill the silence in the shop with a cheerful atmosphere, but failed abysmally. The clock on the wall above the counter, said it was not yet four but continued to slice away the past in one second increments. The gun weighed heavy in his pocket, pulling at his conscious mind, making him all the more aware of how alien this world felt even though he had no memory of his own. He stood to leave, clutching at the bundle under his coat with a sweaty hand. The barista watched him go but said nothing.

The brilliant oranges and reds of autumn light painted the landscape, the sun cast its rays though the maze of glass building fronts, making Chris squint from the glare on the closed storefronts around him. It was a picturesque scene, a forest of glass that felt more like a painting than a city. While many of the upper story windows had shattered that morning, the ground level seemed unharmed. He could no longer see smoke coming from behind the D.A.B., which looked like a chrome phallus sun, casting a second, silver brilliance down the mall, eradicating the shadows made by the slanting yellow light in the cloudless sky.

Chris walked down North Cherry Lane in a daze, only half noticing that the streets and skies were now abandoned. Jameson KNOWS something, Chris thought. He knows all about me … or least more about me than the record archives. Why did he give me this? He hefted the weight of the old handgun under his coat. It comforted him and yet filled him with suspicion.

Jameson said he didn’t need it because he never left the Corporate Zone, but he was at the coffee shop. But that didn’t make sense either. Jameson didn’t try to cajole Chris into trusting him. He had told Chris not to trust him.

He knows what I am, Chris stopped in his tracks. He figured out what I am while I was … sleeping. Goddamn him! He met with me and left and managed to not give me any answers about myself. Why did he bother? To give me this? Chris once again felt the weight of the gun under his coat. Then why?

Chris knew what he needed to do. This Frost woman knew something, too. He needed to find her, ask her all the questions that Jameson didn’t answer. Frost’s murder, whether or not by him, at least had been committed because of him.

His … ability, Jameson’s ambiguity, and the Frost woman who happened to be in the Punt at the same time he was. She knew what he was, too. Chris began to wonder if he was the only person in the world who didn’t know about himself. He shook his head and kept walking.

The question: what was he? Chris tried not to think about the answer, the only answer that he could find, beyond the reach of theory or reason, forcing its way out of his subconscious and into the forefront of his weary mind.

Am I Kronos? Some time traveler controlling the byways of history with no conscious memory? Chris allowed himself to think it, once, before trying to laugh it down. He was successful. Almost. I am Zrvan. That thought brought a strained smile to his lips. He tried to laugh out loud, but it came out dry and hollow. He began walking again, but he could feel the press of the void filled with all things, lurking beyond his reach.

He tried to touch it again, without success. Only this time it was not quite nothing. It was like many little nothings, like little holes of absence that all together made up reality.

Chris stumbled and snapped out of his daze, looking around. He no longer recognized where he was. A street pole loomed above him, but he couldn’t tell for which street—all the signs were missing save one, obscured by soot and ash, hanging high above his head. He turned around, but could no longer see the spire of the D.A.B., and the wall of the Corporate Zone, beginning to illuminate itself in the dying evening light, seemed far away. He could tell he was in a shopping district, but the stores around him were not closed, they were abandoned. One side of the street was lined with high, residential complexes, while the other consisted of a low strip-mall of abandoned pizza joints and burned out grocery stores.

How long have I been walking? The sun had already set behind the city and the mountains beyond that, and the sky turned purple as night chased the fire-filled sunset in its eternal pursuit. There was still not a cloud to be seen.

Chris turned and started back the way he had come from, reaching under his coat and clinging to the gun. He tried to figure out how he had passed the Rangley, and wandered off North Cherry Lane without noticing it, when he heard the gunshots.

At first they were distant, rapid-fire things, and he needed to think a moment before understanding what they were. He scanned above the buildings in front of him one more time for a glimpse of the D.A.B., saw nothing, and jogged over to the shelter of the doorway of an abandoned apartment building. He squatted there, listening to the sound of approaching internal combustion engines, thinking of Rat.

I need to find him. I can trust him, because he doesn’t know anything about me. And he would know what to do, now.

Chris tried the door, but the rust and gunk of years stuck it closed. He looked closely, running his hand over the surface, and felt little bumps, evenly spaced, on its metal-reinforced wood. Someone boarded it shut from the inside. Maybe there’s a window … He only had time to take a step from the doorway before chaos exploded around him.

From his right burst a full-sized Hummer, rolling over the mangled hulk of a Cadillac as it rounded the corner. There were several figures hanging off of it, and a 50-caliber machine gun swinging on a tripod mounted to the open back. A bloody mass hung over the low railing behind the mounted gun, which bounced and slid off as the rusted, yellow vehicle crushed the last of the life out of the Cadillac. Chris had time to see the looks of ecstatic fear on the driver’s face before a shadow dimmed the star-lit sky.

The chopper approached without warning. Even as it slid into view, low over the destitute apartment building, it emitted only a faint whine, higher and quieter by far than the PolCorp Cruisers, and barely audible now over the roar of the rampaging Hummer.

One of the Hummer riders clambered to the back to replace the once human chunk of meat now lying by the Cadillac. A low roar from anti-tank guns protruding from the nose of the helicopter broke the silence and huge chunks of pavement exploded around the truck as it swerved to avoid the hole created by the blast. The climber tumbled with a scream and was crushed by the rear wheel of his allies, but another took his place behind the machine gun.

Chris assumed that the helicopter must be PolCorp, but as it swung around above the canyon of the buildings for another attack, he saw that it had a green bug-face sloppily painted on the side. Chris thought of the Skragsuit costumes he had seen in Jones Drugs & Merchandise. The gangs have attack helicopters. Chris started laughing—for some reason the idea was funny to him. Funnier, anyway, than the thought that he might be the God of Time.

Among the violence of full urban combat, shrapnel and stray bullets ricocheting all around him, Chris felt something in his mind snap, and the laughter kept flowing, an unstoppable tide barely audible above the noise of the gunfire.

The guy on the back of the Hummer positioned himself and let fly, the roar of the gun shots echoing up and down the abandoned street. His wild shooting, drew a wide, curving line of destruction across the building opposite Chris, shattering windows and concrete, but coming nowhere close to the silent predator above that flew into position for another burst.

Swerving, the Hummer tried to get out of the line of fire, turning ninety degrees until it headed right for Chris. He could see they weren’t going to make it—the chopper changed its course to come in right behind them. Chris watched, fascinated, as the gun on the nose of the helicopter dropped down to come in line with the hummer.

He could see the look of terrified resolve on the young, scarred face of the driver and his female passenger; she would have been pretty but looked more tired and used up than anything. The man on the machine gun shot bursts, but his inept shots only succeeded in blasting away at the already shattered buildings lining the wide street.

This shouldn’t be happening, Chris thought, as he backed further into the doorway. He knew he had seconds, and he knew that should be enough. But he wasn’t going to make it. He saw the nose of the helicopter light up and his head filled with the awful roar of gunfire. I’m trying too hard, Chris thought. It will happen.

But he couldn’t stop trying to grasp time, to change it, and so he knew he would fail as the Hummer burst into flames and came rolling toward him. I’m doing it! Chris thought at first, as he watched the flaming wreckage fly at him and heard the engines of the helicopter whisper in pain as the pilot tried in vain to pull up over the building towering over Chris.

He heard the explosion above him, but he didn’t move. No, I’m not doing it. I’m about to die. An incredible calm suffused him with a complete absence of thought as he stood in the doorway, watching his destruction hurtle toward him, an angry deity of twisted metal and fire. Then I’ll be a god, he found himself thinking, when behind him, he felt a hand and something pulled at him …

Chris expected to find himself inside the apartment building. He stood on a rooftop, the tar still warm from the October sun, the sky black and clear, speckled with a few stars. He could smell smoke, and he walked to the edge of the roof, peering down onto the fires below him.

The wreckage of the Hummer lay strewn in a smoldering line, reaching from halfway across the wide avenue all the way to the building opposite him, where it joined another pile of burning junk. Near the top of the building was the smoking hole left by the impact of the helicopter. The oily smell of smoking plastic filled the air. How did I get over here? Chris wondered, looking around.

He saw a small bundle near where he had found himself, and picked it up. It was Jameson’s gun. He unwrapped it and put it in his coat pocket before going back over to the edge of the building. By the sky and the low flames of the fires, a few hours must have passed, but there were no signs of fire trucks or police cars. He had no memory of anything that happened between standing in the doorway and being on the roof, but he knew, knew he didn’t manipulate time. He remembered the hand that grasped his shoulder, and looked around.

A figure, barely noticeable through the dark and the haze of smoke, stood down the street where the shadows were complete. It wore a long, black coat and a black fedora. Chris squinted at it, and the figure tipped his hat at him, and walked away.

Jesus Christ, Chris thought. I need to get out of here.

1997: Yuri’s Gambit

Shivers ran down Yuri’s spine, like tiny spiders crawling under his skin, as he left the hotel in the middle of the night. For the better part of the past four weeks someone had been watching him, but it didn’t matter now. He had played along, masking his nighttime bio-signature trail with some intelligence tech that he had the foresight to bring along. With a clever mix of a monotonous daytime routine and effectively used night hours, he was pretty sure he had duped whoever was on him.

The thought that there was no one on him never crossed his mind. Time Corp’s procedures dictated that a hunter would be sent after any unauthorized jump and he hadn’t had the right tools to mask his jump from the agency’s scanners. Giddy, he climbed out the bathroom window and started working his way down the wall below him.

Whoever followed him was a moot point now and didn’t really concern him. He had managed to unravel the trail of Alex’s movements and the results were disturbing, to say the least. This paradox was far bigger than anyone back at headquarters had imagined. And far more dangerous as well. Right dead center in the whole thing stood Alexander Zarth, seemingly making all of the right moves needed to keep the entire paradox balanced and moving forward without actually breaking down the fabric of history.

Considering that Yuri’s job, over the years he spent in the Time Corp, had become that of hunting down Alex, a known time criminal who had created some of the only unsolved paradoxes in the Time Corp’s history, he had a difficult time fitting it into his mental picture. But he had to try. And if his suspicions were actually correct, tonight, breaking into Lucy’s office would reveal the missing part of his equation.

It would also present Yuri the opportunity to meet the man he had chased across history without ever actually encountering face to face. That, more than anything else, drove Yuri. To meet the man who spun history from his fingers and danced around agents like they were children. To meet the man known as the uncatchable thief of time by the most elite police force known to history.

Lost in thought, his foot slipped from the crack he had it wedged into. He dropped the final story down the back wall of the hotel, but managed not to hurt himself much. He grinned at that. Director Arbu had been more than correct when saying that Yuri was not up to snuff for the physical demands of a field mission, but regardless, he enjoyed himself.

Being in the field was a rush and as with most things that provided a rush, Yuri found it addicting. Catching his breath after the fall, he composed himself, then started off at a light jog, moving away from where his watcher had to be and heading a couple streets away to catch a cab.

The first taxi that he found had a sleeping driver. Yuri shrugged to himself and rapped on the window. The man leaned back in his seat, ignition off, and snored. Startled out of his slumber when Yuri knocked on the glass next to his head, he rolled down the window. Yuri smiled at the man. “Sorry to wake you up, but I was hoping that you were available for a fare,” he said as he flashed a fifty dollar bill.

The driver blinked and yawned, stretching his arms as wide as the cab’s interior would allow. “Don’t worry about waking me up. A long, dead night. Hop in, I can get you where you need to go.” Yuri popped open the door and climbed into the cab. The newly wakened cabbie looked back in the rearview mirror as Yuri settled into the cab. “Where you headed?”

Yuri shut the door. “The desk at my hotel said there was a twenty-four hour coffee shop over by the air force base. You know where it is?”

The driver nodded and turned the car on, kicking it into drive and pulling out into the empty street. “It’s only about a five minute drive from here. I’ll have you there in no time, man. It’ll be about seven or eight bucks though.” Yuri nodded and watched the dark buildings pass by in the night as they drove through the islands of light the street lamps created. He marveled at the smell of the cab, the subversive odor of combusting hydrocarbons masked by the dangling air freshener on the rear view mirror. How different the twenty-first century was from any other time.

The journey, as the cabbie had promised, took about five minutes. Yuri smiled when they pulled up to their destination and gave the man the fifty. “Keep the change. I’ll need you to pick me up in about an hour if you can do that.”

The driver nodded. “Sure thing man. See you in one hour.”

Yuri walked into the shop and bought himself a cup of coffee. He took it plain black with four shots of espresso mixed into the already dark roasted blend. He would need as much energy as he could get. This old century stuff was nowhere near as good as his time’s coffee, but the flip side was that a cup of joe was a cup of joe.

He steeled himself and left the shop, walking down a side road to break into a classified military facility. For a field agent, used to hard, physically trained discipline, this would be a challenge, though doable. For an intelligence officer, willing to use his brain in a methodical and unhurried way, this would not be a challenge at all.

Forty minutes later, he walked back away from the facility, having finished the deed, and surprised at what he had found on Lucy Frost’s desk. Why was she pushing Christopher Nost away from the discovery of the travel nano machine he was about to discover? It made no sense. Nost had to invent the machine and then die; it was all in the mission dossiers he had read through trying to unravel the paradox back here.

He filed the thoughts away for later and scanned the semi dark parking lot, looking for Alex Zarth. His intuition had told him the man would be here. And his hunch had played out correctly. Across the lot, concealed by shadow lurked a figure that could only have been the twenty-seventh century renegade. Yuri started walking towards him, not bothering to try to conceal his presence.

The man waited for him. As he approached the Shadow, Alex held out his hand and Yuri stared at it for a second.

“Come now, Yuri, you are a brilliant man. You’ve pieced together enough to know that I would be here waiting, so you must also know what I am waiting for.” He finally got to hear Alex’s voice. It was a pleasant and intelligent voice, melodious even, not at all filled with the diabolical madness that Yuri had been expecting.

Yuri started and handed Alex the papers he had stolen from Lucy Frost. “Of course. Here you are. I have to ask though, what first clued you into this … situation?”

Alex laughed. “Thank you for the credit to my intelligence, but to be frank, someone tipped me off. They came back from C Forty-five to hire me. Said they didn’t have any local talent that could get the job done. So, they got me instead.”

Yuri nodded at that. He had suspected something similar, even if he had been unwilling to voice the suspicion to himself. And it could not have been a future incarnation of the Time Corp, otherwise they would have alerted the past mission centers that they were operating there. Yuri suspected he knew what that meant, but pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind.

Not his concern. “You know Alex, that when all of this is said and done, if I’m not fired, I’ll have to go back to hunting you.”

Alex let out a bark of laughter. He had a rich and deep laugh that Yuri found he trusted.

“Yuri, that will be a damned hard goal to accomplish. You see, we’re both going to die. No other course of action will solve this paradox except the one that results in our deaths.”

Yuri swallowed. He believed Alex. He nodded, accepting this tidbit that had been floating at the back of his mind as a possibility since he made the jump back. “Do you know how and when I buy it? I know that … well … I want to know how long I have.”

Alex nodded. “Fair request. I know you won’t try to stop it, since subjectively it is in my past. Tomorrow night, in this parking lot, you will meet Lucy Frost. You will hand off to her a file of all your research, as well as all your speculations about this event nexus. You will be shot from behind. I’m sorry, truly. I would have loved the chance to get to know you, Yuri, and to chase the hunt with you again.”

Yuri nodded again. “I see. One other question for you then. Do you know how long you have? Your death was never recorded in any era we could find in the databanks.”

Alex stepped out of the shadows and Yuri could see he looked thoughtful. “Yes, in fact, I do know basically how I will die. It’s odd to me that you asked.”

As Alex scratched his chin, Yuri noticed that the skin was heavily bruised, almost to the point of being jet black around his jaw. “Well, I don’t see the harm … on one condition.”

Yuri shrugged. “What is the condition? That I do not share it in the file I give to Frost? Fine. You have my word.”

Again Alex smiled in amusement, like he was privy to a joke no one else knew. “You nailed it in one. All right. I’m going to die of old age, in a sense. I’ve managed to break the Point of Origin and travel into my future. So now my body thinks it should be a hell of a lot older and it’s trying to catch up. To be specific, my body thinks it should be in the neighborhood of fourteen hundred years older than it is.”

Yuri’s mind spun, churning out math and theory. “But, if that’s the case, you should be dead already. There is no way that the math works unless the aging is an immediate factor.”

Alex laughed again. “Essentially you are right, Yuri. Except that I’m a hell of a lot smarter than your average bear. I did not go unguarded into the future. I’ve not much time left, but I did manage to buy myself some time by outthinking the situation in advance. And on top of that I got lucky. You know how lucky I am. Let’s leave it at that though. I have to use my time wisely, Yuri. Good luck in the next life.”

Yuri blinked and Alex was gone. With a sigh, he turned around and headed back to catch the cab.

Time: Unknown
Location: Unknown
Operation: Classified

Wanda opened her eyes and tried to take stock of her surroundings. The world spun and she felt the same sickness that most people get from drinking too much. She blinked a few times and managed to convince the world to swim into focus. The nausea in her stomach thankfully subsided to a controllable degree.

Something bound her wrists, waist, and ankles to a chair. It didn’t feel like rope, but it held her tight. A man sat in the room with her on a stool about ten feet away.

He smiled as she looked around the stark white room. “Welcome back from dreamland, sunshine. Enjoy your rest? You frankly looked like you needed it, so I let you sleep a bit longer than you would have from the drug.”

Other than a large black bruise disfiguring his jaw, he was ruggedly handsome and tall.

“You are the one who shot me at the courthouse, aren’t you?” Her mind was still groggy, but a memory marched into view for her. When she had been knocked out he had not had the bruise on his jaw.

He nodded.

A name swam into her addled brain. “Alexander Zarth. That’s you. The infamous criminal. Which begets the question, why am I still alive?” She tried to access her HUD to send out a signal only to discover that her contact lenses had been removed. “And you didn’t have that bruise when you took me down. What happened?”

He grimaced and rubbed his jaw. “Long story about the bruise. I’d rather not bore you with the sundry details. Though maybe I will sometime down the line. First, I want to go over a couple of basic details with you, so I can release your cuffs. Will you listen without interruption?” he asked.

Wanda Garret thought for a second and decided that the situation was not overtly hostile. If he had wanted her dead, she had no doubt she would have been. So listening could not hurt. “Alright, Mr. Zarth. You have my undivided attention.”

Alex smiled to himself. “Okay then. We’ll keep this as basic as possible. Firstly, I have hacked your nano system. Yes, I know it’s impossible to do that. Regardless, I have. If you try to travel in time you will fail. Instead, all that will happen is that you will become violently ill. Second point we have to cover, I have triggered a destruction bug in your system. Any attempts to counter hack or access your programming will result in your entire nano system destroying itself. This will not be pretty, and I will not be a happy camper if you attempt this. Which means that I will make you as unhappy as you have made me at that point.”

“This will not kill you. Don’t worry. But it does mean that you will be stranded here in the middle of the wilderness, not knowing when you are. And believe me, you are far from any civilization. Third point that we need to cover is that your nanos are now tied into my biomonitor. Until I release the departure frequency telling them I am leaving, any substantial change in my biosystems will alert your nanos and you will suffer the same fate I do.”

Alex stopped and scratched his chin, thinking for a moment before continuing. “I don’t like pain, and I suspect you don’t like needless pain either. Repercussions for attacking me will be exact, up to and including death. So please do not do anything foolish. I need you alive, and you need you alive even more, unless you want your husband to die. Rule number four, and the final rule, you are going to spend the next ten years of your subjective time stream here.

“Get used to it, it is a fact. It may seem unpleasant to you, but this is simply how it has to be. Once we hit the ten year mark, my inhibitors to your system will break down and allow you to leave. I know you will wait because it has been over ten years in my subjective time since I caught you, and under a week ago for me you were released from here. Now, since I am sure your mind is spinning from all of this, what questions would you like to ask? One at a time, please.”

Wanda thought for a moment and made her decision. The impulse to fight was strong, but her training was stronger. In a captivity scenario, you had to play by the captor’s rules until you found the way to break them. “I think this will be simple. I’d like to ask to test these things. If I can ascertain that they are true at some basic level, then I think I will be able to accept this and live within these rules. Or rather, I won’t have a choice about it. Is that acceptable to you?”

Alex nodded his assent and she felt the pressure of her bonds lift. The next half hour felt like a living hell. She pushed and pushed against the limiters, and every time it felt like a jackhammer was slamming against her intestines from the inside, trying to rip its way out. Even trying to hack the limiters produced a head splitting effect. One by one she went through the Corp’s list of how to break limiters, and every trick failed.

The only gratifying part of the experience was hitting Alex. Once she had caught her breath again and felt halfway stable, she asked the other question that had been nagging at her. “Okay, I believe you. Now what the hell am I supposed to do for the next ten years?”

Alex smiled once again at some private joke. Turning his back to her, he slid his hand across a spot on the wall that looked no different from any other spot on the smooth surface.

The motion activated a panel that had been concealed in the drab room. “You have a fairly spacious compound imprisoning you. Exercise, entertainment from your time, and here in the file marked Nost Paradox is a lot of reading. I’m not sure it’s actually ten year's worth of reading, but it is about three million pages of heavy information for you to digest. I expect it will keep you busy. If you need me to help explain anything, simply exert your will and aim towards me. Do not try to travel towards me, try to sense me. It will call the subjective me to you to help you answer any questions that you come up with.”

She nodded to Alex. “I’ll thank you for some privacy then, so that I can get down to the business of being a prisoner.”

No sooner had she finished the sentence than Alex vanished, time hopping out of the room. Wanda burst into tears and started punching the wall, hammering at it until her knuckles were bruised and bloody.

4016 A.D.: No man’s land, between the great western
city-states

Heat waves scoured the horizon, shimmering in a red and pink haze, creating battling optical illusions and provoking the eye by promising even more tantalizing visions beyond the edge of sight. Overhead, the sun shone down relentlessly, burning the ground and heating the sand underfoot until it scorched the air above it. Hundred-and-thirty degree air hammered at Alex, ripping his breath away with the extreme change of climate.

Acclimation into this new environment would have to be fast. Already the heat and sun were hammering on his system, draining his body’s resources and burning his skin. He scanned his surroundings, looking first for shelter. Desert sands stretched away in every direction, seeming to fill the horizons with death and offering no respite from the harsh environment.

Alex took his battered fedora out of his pocket and donned it, feeling a small measure of relief from the shade it provided. But far from enough, he was all too aware. Shelter could be anywhere he realized. The mirages being created by the extreme heat made his vision an unreliable tool to use beyond the range of about two hundred yards. Time to implement plan B and hope his guess had been correct.

Computer, he voiced the thought internally. Across his retinas words started to spell themselves out.

‘Yes, Alex, how can I be of assistance?’

Access any local databanks that you can read. I need to know where I am. And if I’m going to live through the next couple hours I also need to know where the closest source of shelter is. This environment will kill me quickly.

‘One moment,’ his newly found internal computer replied. ‘Local databanks registered and downloaded. Locally there are three sources of category five technologies. You are located in the year four thousand and sixteen. Current spatial positioning is eight hundred and sixteen miles west of the city-state Kn’saty. Directly below you is what appears to be one of the three hubs of technology. It is the only one of the three you can reach without mechanical aid.’

Alex blinked. This computer performed better than his initial session with it had led him to believe. Computer. What is your manufacturing time frame? What year? The computer displayed a statistics sheet for Alex. It read A.D. Fifty-four oh one.

Alex swore to himself under his breath. So, someone had lied to him about his point of origin. But the sophistication of the computer also led him to think about the ease with which he had initially hacked it with far inferior technology. The situation started to stink of a set up to Alex. Computer. How was I able to hack you and subvert a portion of you into my technology?

It took a moment for the response to come, almost as though the computer thought about how to respond to the question. ‘You didn’t hack me. I hacked your nano system and allowed them to absorb a small portion of me. Without my assistance you would not have survived past the ninety minutes mark, subjective time, to your frame of reference. As my previous core system was engaged in the task of hiring you to fulfill a duty which required your survival beyond that point in time, I allowed the intrusion in order to execute my primary directive.’

Alex thought about this for a moment. Does this mean you are still subservient to your previous core system?

‘Incorrect,’ came the reply. ‘I am fully integrated into your system now, and am a separate entity from the previous system which held me. My directives now orient around your survival and directives, instead of the survival or directives of my previous host.’

Host. The word choice indicated that someone had programmed the computer to see itself in a symbiotic, or possibly even parasitic, relationship. The heat broke down more of his energy and he gasped at the relentless onslaught of it. This discussion, however interesting, would have to wait until after he had found shelter from the scorching sun. All right, how do I get to the underground area?

‘One moment please. I am hacking the surface lift system in the complex below you to bring it up to your elevation. It is a slower system than me, hence the delay. You have my apologies.’

Sand shifted and slid aside from a small hill rising about two meters from where Alex stood. He watched in amusement as a small garage revealed itself, open on the side facing him. Meant to be a vehicle entrance, by the sheer size of the portal, it yawned. He sighed and walked forward, muttering to himself. “Why do I always get stuck taking the service entrances?”

As he entered the elevator, walking over built-in vehicle treads on the floor, immediate relief from the blasting heat hit him like a cold shower. Some form of environmental control created a threshold at the edge of the entryway. The temperature dropped by over forty degrees and Alex almost fainted from the differential. He caught himself on the wall and focused on breathing, allowing his body to catch its own pace and recover. Once his vision stopped swimming, he stood erect again and braced himself. Is there going to be anyone waiting for me?

‘I’m not showing any living presence currently. Organic matter is only a trace element below, not showing up in clumps larger than approximately two pounds.’

Alex smiled. So no one dead either. Or if they are, they are spread in very, very small pieces.

The lift started its slow shift downwards. His teeth chattered as he shivered, but Alex noticed that it moved slowly enough that his body could acclimate fairly well to the ever dropping temperature. Wouldn’t that be a hell of an irony? Dying of hypothermia while it was well over a hundred degrees outside.

Once the lift stopped, Alex looked around the underground complex stretching out before him. Burnished steel with matte black trim and long, sterile corridors seemed to be the vogue-decorating theme in this era. Either that or secret bunkers were the same throughout all of time. “Welcome to the bat cave, Mr. Zarth,” he mumbled to himself as he wandered around the small complex, getting a feel for the layout. First things first. A life of barroom brawling, and being hunted as a thief, had taught Alex well what to look for when entering a new place.

There were a total of three exits. Two were man-sized lifts, one was the vehicle lift he had come down in. None of the lifts went further down than the level he was at. Parked in a rather large room off the vehicle lift was a garage with several futuristic looking dune buggies in it. The vehicles looked battered, but well maintained and kept up.

All of them had rear-mounted weapons that looked like some futuristic laser cannon. Alex sighed and muttered to himself. “Such pretty toys they have here, one would think that this future is the epoch of utopian brotherhood.”

Leaving the battle vehicle room, he continued on through the complex hunting for more important things, which he promptly found. Alex sorted through the various boxes and fridges in the kitchen portion of the complex and grabbed himself a beer, then headed over to the room housing the main computer terminal.

It was about time to put his new system to the true test. Computer, is there any way that you can scan the information in this computer and, well, push it straight into my brain? I’m looking for you to do something that would allow me to assimilate the information you can grab quickly. Otherwise we’ll be stuck here for a long time while I read. Alex pulled a long drink off the beer, surprised at its pleasant taste.

‘I cannot perform the exact function you are seeking. However, if I were to flash the information in subliminal text blocks through a series of induced dream sequences I believe that I could assist you with a ninety-degree retention of information. Perhaps higher. Would this satisfy your stated needs?’

Alex thought about it. Conditionally, I believe it would, yes.

The computer waited a moment, then replied ‘What would that condition be?’

Alex laughed aloud. Can you put me to sleep? About a second and a half later Alex hit the floor with a thump, unconscious.