Nothing changes faster than the future.
~ excerpt from A Brief Summary of Time by Dr. Henry Troom I4—2065
Day 187/365
Year 5 of Progress
Central Command
Third Continent
Prime Reality
Commander Rose moved around the quiet command room. The lights were at 30 percent, mimicking night and discouraging anyone from lingering after their shift was over. She was alone with the soft hum of data collection interrupted only by the occasional chirp of a computer spitting out data.
This was the very center of the universe. Her fingers brushed across the synthapaper scrolls that showed the constant sine wave of time. With training, she’d learned to read each dip of the iterations. Here, the birth of an einselected node. There, the tragic outcome of an event that crushed a million iterations and left only four struggling forward.
The future had a unique brilliance. During the times of expansion, all of time looked like a rainbow fracturing into infinite color. Now the lines of possibility were thickening, collapsing. Decoherence was drowning the rainbow in brutal black.
Quietly, the machine drew the newest line. Tomorrow shifted into view.
Her Prime iteration—the master control of the iterations, heartbeat of the universe—appeared as a thin black line at the base of the sine wave. The scroll rolled out, and the black line surged up like a wave, following the possibilities of the lesser iterations. Hour by hour, ink drop by ink drop, the future appeared. She held her breath as the wave crested and crashed down, back to where it belonged at the baseline.
But this time, the Prime iteration didn’t crash far enough.
Heartbeat stuttering with an unpleasant rush of fear, she watched another iteration take its place. Another line touched the baseline and took dominance as Prime iteration. Someone was stealing her future.
Rose went to the communications board and dialed a number she thought she’d never need to use.
After a moment, the screen shimmered as the stern visage of a world leader appeared.
“Dr. Emir, my apologies for calling at this late hour, there’s been a mishap here at the command center.”
He raised a bushy white eyebrow. “A mishap? A flood perhaps? Did you run out of synthapaper? You’re a commander. You are supposed to be able to handle these things on your own.”
Rose bristled at his tone. “There is a problem with the machine, sir.” She only barely managed to keep her tone respectful because she knew how easily commanders could be replaced. There was no place for dissenters in the world now.
“Impossible.” Emir sneered. “The machine is infallible.”
“If that is the case, sir, than we have lost our place as the dominant iteration.”
“Impossible!”
“Then the machine is broken. Sir.”
Emir’s scowl burned through the screen. “Prepare a hit team. I’ll be there in two hours.”