Relativity Synchronization:
The Ninth Cause

2044: Denver, Colorado

Shadows danced around Garret as he sat and sipped his coffee. They sidled up to him, cloaking him in a lightless mask. He welcomed the absence of light since he wanted to avoid drawing attention to himself as much as possible in this time period. Attention was a dangerous thing. Garret felt good about what had happened earlier in the day.

Chris had been sent off, and he really had nothing left to do but sit around and wait, with his subjective time now directly linked to the man who had invented time travel. Nervousness gnawed at him. But luckily the local era had settled down a lot over the last day, mainly since Chris had left. Gone was the tempestuous feeling in the air. Before today, this era had an acrid and tangy taste in its air, like metal corroding on the tongue. And the flavor settled into the mind, warning of the calm before the storm.

Now this place felt like the wreckage left after a hurricane. It amazed Garret how much havoc one man could wreak on an entire world simply by existing. And how no one else would see or understand the source that shaped the events around them.

He wrote down tables and equations from his experiences over the last months. There was a lot left to calculate to try to better understand the webs of fate surrounding Chris. Having been witness to the effects on the local system of a temporal paradox, he found resolution for many of his previously shelved theories. He hoped that he had pushed Chris in the right direction to resolve the paradox. It had seemed reckless at first, to follow his gut, but if he couldn’t trust himself, he couldn’t trust anything.

Uncertainty prevailed, as he was positive there were at least two other temporal forces from upstream acting on him and the paradox as a whole. But hopefully he had been able to tip the balance. If he hadn’t … he couldn't he could bear to think it.

More shadow eclipsed Garret as someone stood between him and the little remaining sunlight. He looked up in slight annoyance and said, “Can I help you?”

The clerk from Chris’s hotel stood over him, looking down with an odd smile on his face. The overall effect of his ugly features combined with that smile created an expression on his face that Garret did not find pleasant.

“So, meddler, are you satisfied with what you have done to the time stream?”

Garret narrowed his eyes and defocused his pupils, activating his HUD. Sure enough, the man’s form wavered and resolved into a very different person. It looked like he had found one of the other forces acting on the paradox. Or rather, that force had sought out and found him. “I’ll answer you when you are polite enough to drop the disguise hologram.”

The man grunted and his features blurred. His skin became more and more pixilated, and then with a snap, his appearance resolved into that of someone else. He was about six foot three and rugged.

Black predominated his appearance, from leather combat boots, up the faded trench coat he wore, and finally peaking on the battered fedora.

“Okay then. I appreciate the honesty in showing me your true image. I am satisfied … I think. Now who the hell are you?”

The man standing before him smiled a knowing smile and sketched a mock bow. “The name is Alexander Zarth and don’t bother to … damn!”

Garret snapped. Something inside him broke and he went on the killing offensive. He faded out of sight before Alex could finish his sentence and moved into accelerated time, picking up the chair he had been sitting in and throwing it forward at Zarth. Six hundred miles an hour of screaming, super-heated, twisted metal and plastic should have done the trick of killing the man, but somehow, against all probability, he had managed to dodge it.

Garret’s jaw dropped. This guy was as good as everything he had ever heard about. Luckily, Garret could do more here. Bunching his fists and preparing himself for the coming strain, he phased in and out of accelerated time, picking up anything his hand happened to touch and hurling it at the stationary figure of Zarth. But somehow he never hit the man.

Makeshift missiles ripped through the air where Zarth should have been standing. But somehow, as the objects phased into the normal flow of time, Zarth twisted his body around in a martial dance that moved him out of danger each time.

Explosions destroyed the street around them, sending chunks of building and debris flying everywhere. Craters opened up in the ground and walls around them, and deadly flowers of dust and glass bloomed around the edges of each of the craters.

Sweat poured down his face, leaving cold streaks down his cheeks as he ran circles around Zarth, always hunting for more objects to hurl. In his mind, an image replayed itself of the day he had discovered his down nanos. The rock, imbued with his nanos, ripping a thirty-foot gouge into the earth after he casually threw it.

A plan formed in Garret’s mind, a way to finally break the deadlock. Garret shivered and slipped off the one article on him imbued with his nano machines. He had no time to imbue another object. He held his wedding ring in his hand, glancing down at it and readying himself to use it as a bullet, moving through accelerated time, to kill Zarth.

And as suddenly as Garret had begun, an arm stopped him cold around his throat. He dropped his ring and Zarth caught it with his free hand.

Still in accelerated time he found Alex’s arm wrapped around his neck in a choke hold.

“Playtime is over. Now, doctor, let’s stop with these games. There is little enough air here as it is, and I’m better at controlling phase time than you. Shall we agree to a truce and discuss this where we can breathe?”

Garret slumped in defeat, “Yes.”

Both men phased back into standard time. Alex looked at Garret and sighed, then glanced at the object in his hand. Gold glinted between his fingers and he raised an eyebrow at Garret.

“Look, I know I came off less than pleasant, but I’ve spent a damn sight more energy than you fixing the few things you managed to overlook in your grand plan, so forgive me for being a bit tired.” Alex handed Garret’s wedding ring back to him.

Garret studied the man anew. The act of kindness he had performed did not fit with his mental image of a notorious arch-criminal. The fact that somehow another down streamer had ended up with his tech bothered him.

A few of the puzzle pieces fit themselves together in his mind. “Who is helping you, Mr. Zarth? How do you have the down nanos in your system?”

Alex appraised the man standing in front of him. “That was all too shrewd of a question. Before we go too far in this tale, can I recommend a change of scenery? One less likely to be swarmed by angry police officers who will be asking very pointed questions about the destruction of property?” Alex spread his hands wide and motioned to the scene surrounding them.

Garret looked about and realized that they had destroyed their surroundings. More accurately, he had destroyed much of this city block trying to kill someone who maybe he should have stopped and listened to. He nodded to Zarth.

“Good. I’ll have to ask you to trust me here about our coordinates. But look on the bright side—I could have killed you in phase time if it was my intention to do so. In a limited way, you can trust me.”

With those ominous words Alexander Zarth thumped a hand down on James Garret’s shoulder and jumped them both forward in time.

Time: 2873
Location: Time Corp Headquarters, West Coast
Operation: Classified

Director Arbu closed the screen on his computer, trying to rub away the headache building behind his eyes. Events were moving much faster than he had expected them to. Five minutes ago, he had sent the one top field agent he had left after the best intelligence operative he had. And something gnawed at his gut, telling him he had made a huge mistake. Even though he knew what was supposed to unfold in this time, everything seemed slightly off.

The answer to his feeling was definitely not in the historical files and mission notes that he could find about the era they had gone to. He would have to puzzle at his intuition to figure it out. Other than the fact that his best available agent was rather low on his list of preferred agents, he couldn’t spot what made him so uneasy. He glanced up and read the Time Corp motto, emblazoned in shiny steel letters two feet high on his wall.

TIME WILL TELL NO LIES

Well, he’d have to live by the Corp’s saying on this one and find out what truth would be told this time. Though truth may not be revealed, he thought. At least the lies would be revealed for what they were. Mounted under the false wood grain of his desk was a hologrid. It would automatically activate, displaying a hovering situation alert meant to warn him of a different situation occurring in the field rooms.

The situations covered everything from paradoxes found to returning agents. The only one that concerned him right then was a red holodisplay. His eye drifted down to the section of desk the hologrid was masked in. As if on cue, red flashed from his desk, throwing up an alert that a field operative had returned from active duty with a failed mission. Switching to his computer monitor, he reactivated the machine. The hologrid contained all of the information he wanted, but he had spent such a long time as a field agent in his youth that, like many of the senior command, he had grown accustomed to and even preferred anachronistic technologies. Toggling open the mission roster he frowned, less than pleased to see that the returning agent was Holly.

The sense of dread looming over him grew. Arbu spoke to himself. “Now I know how Damocles felt every night.” With a sigh of resignation, he got up and headed downstairs to the debriefing chambers.

What awaited him there was a nightmare. Doom and dread held nothing on a failed time mission; Arbu paled at what lay before him.

Yakavich’s corpse was on an examination table and a recent make of briefcase sat on the other table in the debriefing room, laid on its side in front of a weary but happy looking Agent Holly. Arbu looked for a long while at the corpse on the table, working hard to master his anger. He had not sent the man back to do this. It could very nearly have wrecked the plans he had been laying for a long time now.

In a very quiet voice, directed at Holly, he asked “When, in your mission briefing, did it authorize you to use lethal force on our best intelligence officer, Agent Holly? I want to know when you were ordered, and by whom, to put a bullet in the best brain in this agency.”

Holly looked up in surprise. Then comprehension dawned across his features. “Director. Sir. You don’t understand, Sir. He was handing off classified, future-time sensitive information to a loc.…”

Arbu slammed his fist down on the table, leaving a deep dent in the thin metal, and spun around to face Holly. In a voice that would have made the proudest of lightning storms quiver in fear he thundered out, “I said: when in your mission briefing were you authorized the use of lethal force in dealing with an internal agent!”

Arbu took a ragged breath and brought his voice back down to a somewhat reasonable level. If anything though, the edge in it made it scarier than him yelling. “If capital punishment were legal, Agent Holly, I would have you taken out behind this office, right now, and shot.”

He drew in another breath to stop his hands from shaking so much. “As it is currently illegal, I highly recommend you get the hell out of my sight and wait for me in one of the detention cells while I figure out whether or not criminal charges will be pressed against you. Do you understand me, Agent Holly?”

Holly paled and stood up. The man looked like Arbu had frightened him to the verge of tears. Field agents shouldn’t be so easily rattled, but senior commanders had edges in them hidden by other edges. “Yes, sir.” He hurried out of the room, fumbling with the door handle to get it open on the way, and presumably ran even further down in the complex to the detention cell grid.

Once the man had left, shutting the door behind him, Arbu pushed Yuri’s hair back from his closed eyes. The side of his head was a bloody mess, but Arbu didn’t care about the gore. He had to take a few minutes to compose his thoughts and calm himself. Arbu sat in Holly’s vacated chair and stared at the briefcase in front of him.

It looked like the same briefcase Yuri had carried into the office every day. The unpleasant truth in front of him was an ugly one. He had now lost the one man capable of resolving this paradox. Even that he was not sure of, but he suspected that Yuri had been on the trail to solving it without bloodshed.

He murmured to himself, letting his thoughts move his lips unbidden. “What tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” James Garret, Alexander Zarth, Wanda Garret, Lucille Frost, Christopher Nost, and now Yuri Yakavich. How the hell did the whole web fit together? And who was the spider? Once he had thought that question was easily answered, but that was not the case now. Were he and Zarth still the kings on this board or not?

From everything he had been throwing at the computers, the world’s objective time flow headed straight into a collision with the biggest paradox in known history.

All of these little paradoxes were spinning together into the web, all these little actions that time travelers were making, actions that were aberrant to the first unfolding of these events, were adding to the burden. And all that would happen was an exponential magnification of that paradox— magnification of a paradox already threatening to rip apart the world.

He knew, full and well, that if this paradox unfolded the wrong way it would wipe out any trace of humanity having ever existed. Only one thing frightened Arbu more. He shook his head and pulled himself out of the mental hole he was in danger of falling into.

Arbu looked up at the briefcase and mentally shrugged. Time to see what clues Holly had brought back with him. With Yuri’s death, Arbu himself was now the best analyst the agency had, and that meant that he wouldn’t be sleeping for the next several days. Or weeks.

Yuri had set the combination on the briefcase, but Arbu knew an easy override. A weakness he had seen, but not commented on with this model. He picked up the case and took it over to Yuri.

Grabbing the dead man's still somewhat warm hand, Arbu pushed Yuri’s thumb up to the locking mechanism. Releasing his own nano’s into the dead man’s body, Arbu cloned Yuri’s systems then said ‘Yuri’ in the dead man’s voice. He heard the clasp inside click as it released. Walking back over to the other table, he sat back down and readied himself. Arbu popped the case open. Inside rested a large sheaf of papers. He picked them up and began leafing through them. The first several pages were media reports surrounding the trial of Christopher Nost. Nearing the end of the pages was a picture of the assassination attempt.

He scanned the picture, done in the old style black and white that came out pixilated. Director Arbu sat bolt upright. Off to the right in the photo frame, smudged but still well visible, stood James Garret, listed in the frame below the picture as the trial’s prosecuting attorney.

Mentally, he thanked Yuri, hoping that the dead man could hear him from where his spirit now dwelled. This research had been oriented around Yuri’s mission and Arbu could already feel the tingle in his fingertips that let him know something akin to a picture built in the back of his head. With any luck there would be enough clues in this file for him to progress to whatever Yuri had figured out.

At least Holly had done one thing right in bringing this briefcase back with him—even if the rest of his mission had been a catastrophic failure. Arbu continued to scan through the files before him, managing to rebuild the events that had happened seven hundred and eighty-four years before.

And as the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place, Arbu saw the shape, and then the truth of the paradox building up around Christopher Nost. His hands shook and he became paler and paler as he read further into the file.

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

Alex woke with a killer headache. His mouth was dry and a disgusting taste of copper and salt coated his tongue. “Good gods. What did I drink too much of last night? A battery?” he grumbled as he sat up, massaging his throbbing temples. Clenching his jaw, he braced himself then popped his neck, easing creaks and crackles out of his spine while breaking in old joints and easing his waking stiffness. Cool air brushed at his skin, sending goose bumps down his arms and making him shiver.

He stood, scratching the back of his neck, and shook his limbs out to get the blood flowing back to them. He felt full of energy, to the point that he became fidgety. Something here was odd. He didn't crave a cigarette. Computer—how long have I been asleep?

‘Subjective to your personal time stream, you have spent almost eleven years absorbing the information that was in the mainframe I downloaded to your subconscious.’

Eleven years—! he started to exclaim, but he was cut short as knowledge crashed into his consciousness like a tsunami, a painful wave smashed into his mind and tore down all the barriers ever built in it. He stumbled forward and fell to his knees and started vomiting. But nothing came up as his stomach spasmed, just bile, bitterly stinging his mouth as he dry heaved.

Over the next several minutes, Alex watched his life flow by before him. It felt like he was dying, but he had felt that way before. He clamped down with an iron will and started beating his body back into submission.

Once the heaving finished, he pushed himself back up to standing, using the wall for support. He gasped for breath, breathing came hard, as he fought for internal stability.

As his body started to relax again, he asked his internal computer Okay, several questions. First—how the hell have I been asleep for eleven years without wasting away to nothing? Second, how do I stop this bulk of information from making me physically ill every time I access it? Third, which you might not have an answer to, why has no one been here in eleven years?

The computer took a moment before responding. ‘The first and third questions are tied together in their responses. By accessing and using your inherent time traveling routines I was able to accelerate your subjective time by a substantial factor. All that was required was a monitoring of your bio functions and to properly time your synchronization of subjective time with standard time flow. That was to refresh your oxygen supply. With an efficient usage of this technique I was able to accelerate you to a factor of one thousand, seven hundred and sixteen times standard time flow. So to the Earth’s objective time flow you were only asleep for an approximate time of fifty-six hours and ten minutes.’

Alex grunted. The whole process was brilliant; inspired, really. Not something a computer should have been able to come up with without instructions to solve the problem. He filed that thought away for the moment, letting his mind digest the implications it presented. And how do you explain eleven years of not eating? I’m curious how you came up with that impressive feat.

The computer continued. ‘The second piece of the process was simple enough for me to implement as well. I multiplied and reprogrammed a portion of myself to strip the surrounding area of all required proteins and necessary minerals your body required. By rebuilding the substances I was able to introduce all needed nutritional materials to your body. Through careful observation and interaction with your metabolism, I assisted you in eating through osmosis during your sleep. Had anyone else arrived here during your down time I would have begun a process which would have shifted you to your safe house time and location, then kept you in the absorption cycle till you awoke.’

Alex scratched his chin, feeling smooth skin there. And I’m clean-shaven, why? After eleven years shouldn’t I have a rather luxuriant beard?

Alex felt the computer perform the mental equivalent of a shrug. ‘Hair is essentially protein. It required less time and work to rebuild it into usable nutrition for your body. So I used it. You will find that with the exception of the hair on your head, all of your body is now devoid of that substance.”

Alex laughed aloud at the thought of eating his own beard. That’s amusing. All right then. I’d like an answer to the second question please. Best method for processing without making myself physically ill? Or is there any method of accessing the information in my head while maintaining a physical balance?

‘I have analyzed your system and all effects of absorbing the knowledge you did should have been worked off already. All indicators which I can find are that the illness you underwent was a onetime reaction to the bulk of the information you absorbed; as well as the rebuilding I performed on your neural network.’

Alex blinked. The computer had slipped something into the sentence that triggered a red flag for him. You rebuilt my neural network while I was asleep!? What exactly did you do to me?

‘Nothing in my databanks shows this procedure having been previously performed before, so I cannot give you a procedure name or operation diagnostics, but the results of what I did should be a reduction of core processing waste time. Your neural network was processing at approximately forty-seven percent of its capacity, which seems to be a rather high percentage and an anomaly for a human. However, with what ended up being a very simple restructuring, you should now be processing at a gain of approximately one hundred and twenty-four percent of your previous capacity. I find it worth mentioning that your network appears to be, from all available information, somewhat unique in a human. Had it not been, this operation would have yielded a much lower success ratio, unlocking at most forty to forty-five percent additional capacity.’

Alex thought about this for a moment. That the computer inside him had this degree of autonomous decision-making capability made him slightly uncomfortable. It also made him suspect something else as well. He shrugged it off and filed it away with the other information brewing at the back of his mind. I see. Then let’s give this a whirl, and see what relevant information we can pull out of this data we grabbed.

Alex opened his mind to the information that had been crammed into his brain, making it an organic library of dizzying scope. Contained therein were hundreds of thousands of terabytes of information, compiled over thousands of years of human history.

He started sorting. Scanning at the speed of thought, he knocked reams and reams of information into one or the other of two categories forming in his head. One he marked useless and pushed aside for later perusal. The other he marked useful and, though it started off small, it rapidly grew in scope and size. His mind raced to keep up with everything stacking up in it and he finally started to assemble a working, though not full, picture of what happened to the world. Over the next several hours he thought, focused inwards on his own mind’s landscape and the history of the world that lay out across it.

He stopped. Having reached a saturation point, he found that his mind finished processing. He had reached the limits of his newfound capabilities. He had to let it settle before he tried to process anything else.

Knowledge burned like fire behind his eyes as he looked up and truly saw the world for the first time in his life. A smile graced his lips and he said, “I see.”

Internally however, the dialogue picked back up as the computer spoke to him ‘Now you understand why I allowed you to subvert me. And you see that you will die shortly.’

Alex nodded. I do.

‘And you understand what must be done to ensure that you may be reborn in your death, and that the world will be reborn in its death?’

Alex nodded again. I do.

‘Then it is sealed. We go back to kill him, thus freeing the cycle.’

Alex shook his head. No. I will not allow that to happen. I have seen something that you have not. And because of this, we must work to save him.

The computer took several minutes before responding. ‘I do not understand. You know that my core functionality allows me a processing time exponentially higher than yours. There is nothing that would allow you to process a piece of this that I have not. Why do we not go to perform my recommended course of action? What faculty do you have which I have overlooked? Which piece of information?’

Alex shrugged. Easy. Human intuition. And a memory. Something which happened to me long ago. That memory now starts to become clear to me in its meaning. And it means that we must save him, or all that we have done will be undone, and all that is will no longer be.

And Alex proceeded to share an old memory with the computer and to tell it why it was wrong. The computer processed over the next several minutes, at billions of decisions per second, what Alex had pieced together with intuition and a single clear memory, burning like a candle that warded the darkness away. And then they jumped backwards in time to play their hand.

The way Alex figured the game now, they were sitting on the royal straight flush. They had to get the other players to stay in the game long enough for it to matter.