Stryker #5, At the End of Eternity – Chapter 1

“Tikal never ceases to amaze me! I knew the ancient Martians were advanced, but I had vastly underestimated their technological capabilities. The decaying city that Miles discovered is perfect in nearly every way – its electrical system, its sewage system, its road network, its manufacturing sector. It will be a fantastic launching point for a new Martian civilization.”
–Noel Lawson
June 18, 7243
 

Amy Stryker was standing on a wide, grassy plain on the North American continent on Earth. Her dog Alex was rampaging joyously about in wide circles, jumping and barking and enjoying the glorious morning. Amy smiled as she watched him enjoy himself. He reminded her of all the times she and her sister Amanda had played with him back in ancient Tikal, five thousand years ago. Alex would wake them up at some unearthly hour and then bark at them until they finally climbed out of bed and took him outside. Then the girls would run, and play, and chase him, and be chased in return. Those were wonderful days, she thought to herself.

Now things were quite different. The world of the 19th century was long gone, and the future had proven to be a bleak and inhospitable place. When she finally made her way back home she discovered that Mars was a dying world, on the brink of total ruin. That was three years ago. Today her homeworld was showing signs of life and activity, but it would take centuries before the planet’s inhabitants repopulated the world and began reaching for the stars. The cities the Artilect had built would have to continue their eons-long wait. Mars just might reach those cities, if mankind is given enough time, she thought. She had been to Mars just yesterday, paying a visit to her friends Miles and Noel. Aside from Alex and the Sentinel, they were the only friends she had left. She missed her family tremendously, but she tried not to think about it. She had a job to do on Earth and she was determined to stay focused. But it wasn’t easy.

“I feel old,” she said aloud.

The Sentinel looked at her and smiled. “You may have been born five millennia ago, but you are not old just yet. Figuring out your exact age is a bit complex, however, as you have done quite a bit of time traveling. According to my records you were born on July 23, 1853. You jumped into the future on December 15, 1867. You then arrived in the future on October 23, 7239, and lived there until you and I were trapped on Xanthe on April 1, 7240. We escaped yesterday morning. That means you are about two months shy of being 15 years old. You still have a lot of living to do before you become as old as Miles.”

“Oh, I know. I just feel old. Old and tired. I don’t belong here, Steve. I just don’t. I’m out of place, and I can’t go back home because my home decayed into dust thousands of years ago. There’s just no place for me here! I can go anywhere I want, but I don’t have anywhere to go to. I just – I don’t know. I’m just tired of dealing with all this.”

“You feel out of place because you are out of place. All true children of light are out of place in this world of darkness and evil. Your home is in the land beyond the farthest star, and you will never feel quite at rest until you get there. But before you make that final journey there is one more thing you must do. The tribes on this world need us. We’re their only hope for a cure.”

“I know,” Amy said. “I know. And that’s why I’m here. We do have work to do. How long do you think it’s going to take?”

“There is no way to tell,” the Sentinel replied. He looked at Alex for a moment, as the dog romped through the tall grass, and then glanced at the granite cliff that loomed behind them. “You know that we are not alone here.”

“Well, yes and no,” Amy replied. “There are lots of other humans on Earth, but there’s no one else like us. On the other side of this plain is a great big forest where the closest tribe lives. The tribe has hundreds of people, but they’re all insane, as you know. You really can’t sit down and have a conversation with them. Behind us, up that cliff and in the mountains, is the stone fortress Adrasta. About eighty thousand people live there. They call themselves the Children of Light, but if you ask me they ought to call themselves the Children of Darkness. They’re a pretty rotten group of people.”

“But they are still people,” the Sentinel replied. “They may be quite interested in what you intend to do. Have you spoken with any of them?”

“Goodness, no! The only time I’ve ever seen them was when they sent a hunting expedition into the forest. A group of natives had found a ruined gear in a cave, and the hunters slaughtered them all and stole it from them. There were a thousand other ways the hunters could have obtained that gear, but they just callously killed them for it. They’re monsters. I say let them rot. As long as they don’t get in our way I really don’t care what happens to them.”

“As you wish,” the Sentinel replied. “But, to answer your earlier question, you must realize that we don’t even know if it’s possible to cure the insanity that afflicts the tribes. Given the complex nature of their disease, we may spend centuries looking for a cure without any appreciable results. There is no guarantee that we will be able to help them. Their problem is unlike anything I have seen before. We may not be able to develop an effective antidote.”

“Oh, I know. I tried to find a cure on my own back before we were trapped on Xanthe, but I didn’t make any progress. They have some sort of weird genetic mutation thing going on. I just don’t know how to reverse it. There must be some way to fix it, though. There’s just got to be. There is always an answer.”

“Is there?” The Sentinel paused. A light wind blew over the surface of the ground, rippling the grass. Alex barked happily. The sky was a brilliant blue, but clouds were beginning to form. The nanite network that Amy had deployed in her earlier visit told him that a storm was brewing. “What about Xanthe? We both tried as hard as we could, but in the end we were unable to solve their problems. There was simply no way to help them.”

Amy sighed. “I know. We did all we could, though. But this isn’t a people problem, Steve. It’s a technical problem. These tribes have a specific biological anomaly. Biology is essentially chemistry, and chemistry is essentially physics. Physics problems can be solved. Why, your father even found a way to go back in time and bring my family and I here to the future! If time travel is possible then anything’s possible.”

“The Artilect’s time travel attempt required divine intervention,” the Sentinel pointed out. “He was unable to do it on his own.”

“Then perhaps the Lord will answer our prayers and intervene here as well. After all, He did save our lives, and He did bring us here. I don’t think He would go through all that trouble just because He was bored and didn’t have anything else to do. We’re here for a reason. Something is going to be accomplished here.”

“But that something may not be what we expect.”

“What do you mean? Do you know something?”

The Sentinel shook his head. “No, I do not. Jones was a seer, and could tell you what the future held. I am just a machine; I do not have any spiritual gifts. All I know is that things do not always turn out as one would expect. On December 7, 1867 Captain Max piloted the Sparrow off of Mars and set a course for the Tau Ceti system. Your family intended to get there and start a new life on Xanthe, but that is not what happened. We simply do not know what is right around the corner.”

Amy nodded. “I know. But this really looks pretty simple to me. I mean, yes, it’s a difficult problem. But ultimately, if you abstract it out, it’s a math problem, and we can find the answers to math problems. Or, at least, you can. I don’t see anything here that might complicate matters. The old Spanish Emperor is gone. Elder Lane is gone. The swarm are gone. Things are going pretty well on Mars. We don’t have any enemies left. All we have to do is apply ourselves to this problem, understand the nature of the disease, and find a way to reverse it. I’m sure it will take time but we’ve got time. After all, for all practical purposes we’re both immortals. We can spend a hundred years here doing this, if that’s what it takes.”

“Do the savages have that long?” the Sentinel asked.

“Probably. I mean, it’s not like I conducted any long-term trials or anything, but from what I could see the disease had stabilized. It wasn’t getting any worse, and it didn’t look like it was about to kill them. Now, I’m not saying that I want it to take a hundred years. I’m just saying that we don’t have anything else left to do. This is the only item on our to-do list. In fact, it’s the last item on our list. After that we’re done.”

“And then what?”

“And then we go home,” Amy replied firmly. “That’s all there is to it.”

The Sentinel nodded. “So how do you want to go about this?”

Amy closed her eyes and mentally connected to the network of nanites that saturated the Earth’s atmosphere. She then used the network to remotely view the tribe that lived in the nearby forest. There were 416 people there, who lived together in a loose community. The group lived in a network of shallow caves that dotted the area, although some of them had built crude huts that were outside the cave entrances.

Upon seeing this, Amy mentally connected to the Sentinel and made sure that he was seeing the same view that she was. “Do you see those houses? It’s something that I noticed the last time I was here. These people may be insane, but they definitely have some kind of civilization. It may be a savage and crude civilization, perhaps, but it’s still something. They make shelter, they forage for food, they hunt, and they’ve even made clothing for themselves. It’s really more than I would have expected from someone in their condition.”

“They do appear to have attained a level similar to that of ancient Earth tribes,” the Sentinel agreed. “They also seem to have some form of language.”

Amy watched as a group of six men gibbered excitedly at each other. They hooted, and talked, and gestured wildly – all at the same time.

“Are you sure that’s a language?” Amy asked doubtfully. “Are they talking with each other, or at each other? Is anyone actually deriving anything meaningful from what is being said?”

“They must communicate to some extent. After all, look at that group of children that is working to erect a hut. Group activity requires communication.”

“But I don’t see any adults working together,” Amy pointed out. “Only children and young people. You don’t suppose that the children do all the civilized-type work, do you? Maybe this disease gets worse with age. It could be that the children are taking care of the adults.”

“That is certainly possible. We will need to monitor the group’s behavior over time to see if any patterns emerge. Is that where you would like to begin?”

Amy thought for a moment. “I think so. Let’s configure the nanite network to monitor the clan activities of every tribe on Earth. We should be able to get a feel for how they behave and what they’re capable of. We probably need to understand how they act on a macro level before we start analyzing their genetic code.”

“It probably is wise to understand the effects of the disease before probing for a cure,” the Sentinel said. “Although there is no need to confine ourselves to simply one activity. The planetary network that you deployed is fully capable of collecting that data entirely on its own. Meanwhile, we can begin analyzing their damaged genetic structure.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Amy agreed. “So let’s–”

Amy suddenly lost her connection to the nanite network. She gasped and opened her eyes in surprise. A millisecond later there was an intense burst of bright blue light, and then the sound of thunder rumbled across the landscape. The harsh light was blinding, and it was so bright that it kept her from seeing the source of the noise. The roar of the thunder grew louder, and as the seconds ticked by the noise became deafening. When the light finally dimmed she saw a giant pillar of fire in the distance. As the roar subsided a cloud of smoke began forming around the pillar of fire.

Amy panicked, until she saw that Alex was all right. The dog had run over to her at the first hint of noise and was standing beside her, looking at the cloud. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Death,” the Sentinel replied.

The girl then realized that the network was back. When she reconnected she discovered that a brief burst of intense neutron radiation had temporarily blocked her connection to it – a defect that she made a mental note to fix. But what caused the radiation? The tribes aren’t nearly advanced enough to be experimenting with atomic power!

A horrible thought crossed Amy’s mind. The residents of Adrasta have a functional nuclear reactor. They could – but they wouldn’t. Oh no. No, surely not!

With great reluctance Amy used the nanites to remotely view the forest – or what had once been a forest. The whole area had simply disappeared. Where there had once been trees there was now only blackened, baked soil. The forest, the trees, and the tribes had all been blasted to atoms by the intense heat of an atomic sun. The clan was gone – wiped out by a single neutron bomb.