25 Dec 2011

Beyond the Farthest Star: Chapter 36

Posted by joncooper

Amy Stryker and the Sentinel materialized on the small hill that overlooked Star City. Amy was exhausted from a long day’s work and did not want to be anywhere near Xanthe. She had only agreed to come at the Sentinel’s insistence, and she was not happy about it.

“So just what was so–” she started to say, and then she stopped. Star City, the metropolis that her sister had built and the Sentinel had restored, was gone. In its place were more than a dozen craters. Smoke was rising out of them into the sky, and the forest around the city had been flattened. Every single last building – including the Tower of the Sparrow – was gone.

It took Amy’s nanites less than a second to figure out what had happened. The entire area was bathed in hard radiation and the most intensely radioactive areas were the center of the craters. Amy also noticed that the craters themselves were not made of dirt. The heat from the bombs had been so intense that it had fused the soil into glass. Oh my goodness, Amy thought with alarm. Someone has used nuclear weapons to destroy the city! But that doesn’t make any sense. In fact, that’s insane! Why would they blow themselves up?

Speechless, Amy started to use the nanites’ record of the past to find out what had happened when she was suddenly cut off from Xanthe’s network. At that same instant the area around her disappeared from view. A white wall appeared around the hill, cutting off her view of the area. Even the sky vanished.

Amy stared at the glowing white wall, puzzled. “Where did that come from? Steve, did you do that?”

The Sentinel did not answer her. Instead he quickly grabbed her arm and let out a burst of intense energy. The hill instantly disappeared, along with everything else. Amy found herself standing in the darkness, unable to see anything. The world was gone.

“You’re scaring me,” Amy said. “What do you think you’re doing? Why can’t I see anything?”

“I’m afraid we have a rather serious problem,” the Sentinel replied. “I apologize for not giving you an advance warning but I had to act quickly to save as much time as possible. It appears that I severely underestimated the resourcefulness of the citizens of this planet. I did not expect this to happen.”

“Underestimated who? The people on Xanthe? What have they done?”

“They have trapped us,” the Sentinel said. “They’ve erected a prison around the hill.”

“Is that what that white field was?”

The Sentinel nodded. “What you were seeing was the side-effect of time distortion. When we materialized on the hill we set off some kind of trigger that activated a temporal field. Time travels much more slowly within the field than it does outside it. I was unable to determine the exact rate of flow, but it is very possible that a few seconds inside this field could translate into a year or more outside the field. As long as we are trapped in here we are essentially being moved into the future.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Amy said sourly. “Haven’t we done this time-travel thing before? I am absolutely sick of being transported through time.”

“In a way we are very fortunate,” the Sentinel replied. “If they had created a time stasis field instead we would have been trapped until the field collapsed or time itself ended. The fact that time is actually passing for us means that we have a chance to do something and escape. This could have been very much worse.”

“I guess. But what’s the point of all this? I had already left Xanthe and had no plans to ever return. Why would they do this to us? What did they have to gain?”

The Sentinel thought for a moment. “At this point I can only guess. Once we escape this field we can tap into the planetary network and find out exactly what happened. I suspect, however, that the people of Xanthe did not trust you and wanted to guarantee that you would no longer be interfering in their affairs. I seem to recall that Ms. Hamilton was especially angry with you.”

“But that’s ridiculous! None of those people had the knowledge to create time stasis fields – or nuclear weapons, for that matter. In fact, I bet they didn’t even know how to make a toaster. How could they possibly be behind this?”

“There is the Steward that we left behind,” the Sentinel pointed out. “I placed many restrictions on his ability to create weapons, but I did not limit their access to physics or temporal mechanics. If Ms. Hamilton asked him how to slow down time he would have told her, and perhaps even offered to create some schematics.”

“Well that’s the last time we’re ever doing that,” Amy said firmly. “When the Stewards start taking care of refugees from Earth they will be positively forbidden from offering any scientific or engineering advice. If those natives want to build a time machine they’ll have to figure it out on their own.”

“I agree that is a sensible precaution, and I will keep that in mind when we get to that point. However, as I was saying, Ms. Hamilton – or perhaps one of her peers – must have decided that they wanted to eliminate us. Rather than attacking us directly the way Carroll Lane did, they decided to take a more indirect approach. After all, if this worked then the effect would be irreversible. Once we were transported into the distant future we would be unable to go back.”

“I guess that makes sense. But why did they bomb their own city? Was that just to lure us here? If so, it sounds like a really dumb move.”

“That I do not know. It may have been part of an internal power struggle. It’s very possible that after we left Xanthe the city divided itself into factions, and one group decided to eliminate the other. They would have realized that any hostile action would immediately draw us back to the planet, so perhaps they created the trap to keep us from punishing the criminals responsible for the bombing.”

“But how were they able to create bombs?” Amy asked. “Wouldn’t the security bots have stopped them?”

“Maybe they didn’t make bombs,” the Sentinel replied. “Perhaps they created actual working power generators, then simply altered the settings so that they would explode catastrophically. In that case the bots would have done nothing. They were not built to scan for possible accidents and take proactive counter-measures.”

“So they found a loophole. Boy, isn’t that great. I can see that we’re going to have to make a lot of changes to the next generation of security bots. But why did you bring us here? I don’t really like standing here in the dark.”

“I brought us here in order to keep us from going too far into the future,” the Sentinel explained. “The moment I realized what had happened I created a temporal field of our own. Within this place time is going at a different rate. A second outside the field, in their trap, corresponds to more than an hour in this darkness. I realize this place is not very pleasant, but it will give us more time to figure out how to escape their barrier. I am trying very hard to keep us from being transported into the distant future.”

“Just how far into the future do you think we’ve gone?”

“I do not know. In order to tell I would have to break down the barrier first. As long as we are inside it there is simply no way to tell.”

“All right,” Amy said slowly. “So what do we do now?”

“I’m not sure,” the Sentinel replied. “Let me think.”

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