“Trust me, there’s a beautiful goddess beneath that mask,” Jonathan added.
“She’s what’s called a Heretic,” Kari explained, nodding to Sam. “It’s what we three are. You know of werewolves and vampires? Most stories about them can be traced back to one of our kind. It appears that humans on this world have genetically manipulated their bodies to mimic ours in order to adapt to the climate here, but we’re what you might call the real thing, hybrid children of humans and extradimensional entities known as Demons, as is the Apostle. She has many abilities you might consider superhuman. I know that your walls will not keep her out, because they wouldn’t keep me out either. Additionally, she has some sort of power that I have never encountered before, except in her. She seems able to manipulate the emotions of others and bend them to her will. I would not take her presence lightly, nor would I expect your walls to protect you.”
“I see,” Allie nodded. “This facility also has an energy shield that is capable of deflecting nuclear bombardment. Can she break through that?”
“I’m not sure. In fact, I don’t understand why she’s coming at all. She already has the ability to travel to any world she pleases. Why would she want a gateway to other worlds?”
Blinking at her, Gabriel thought it was rather obvious.
“Not space,” he explained. “Time. This place is a time machine.”
“Possibly,” Kari looked to her brothers, and they nodded in unison. “If that is true she must not be allowed to reach this facility. Imagine how many worlds she could convert or destroy if she had infinite time to do so before we’re even born. She could change the course of history for the entire universe. We might all simply cease to exist.”
“A comforting thought,” Gabriel muttered. “Now that we’ve been over that,
Allie, you said that the last scientist here gave you a task before she magically jumped almost six centuries into the future to give me my quest. Could you tell me what it was?”
“Of course, Gabriel, I have been waiting centuries for someone to ask that
question. I was asked to put all of my unused runtime into reversing the damage that this facility has done to the sun.”
“And your findings?”
“Unfortunately, there is no feasible method of undoing the damage. A star is not a living being, or a machine. It cannot be healed or repaired. My recommendation is that we use the time we have left and evacuate the entire population to another habitable world using a Gate Jump.”
“Wait,” Sam interrupted. “Hold on for just a second. You said you could use this place to go back in time, right? So why not use it to go back and stop it from being built in the first place?”
“Because that would create a paradox,” Gabriel sighed, to an approving nod from Allie.
“A what,” Sam asked, a dumb look crossing her face.
“Let’s see if I can explain this right,” Gabriel leaned toward her. “Say we use the Spires of Infinity to go back in time, and stop the Spires of Infinity from ever being built.
This causes a change in the flow of time to our version of the present, where it is then impossible to use the Spires of Infinity to travel back in time, and therefore impossible to stop the Spires of Infinity from being activated. In doing so, we make it impossible for us to do it, which, in turn, makes it possible for use to do it again, which, in turn, again, makes it impossible. It chases itself around and around forever, creating a vortex that causes the entire universe to collapse until it consumes all of space and time. And when it finally winks out of existence itself, there is nothing left in its wake to ever say there was a universe here. A paradox is infinite destructive energy created by a contradiction in the flow of time.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean,” Sam cried, looking more confused than ever. “Can’t you say it more plainly than that?”
“If we use this place to stop this place from ever being activated, the resulting contradiction in time will tear the universe apart. Here’s another example. If you travel back in time and kill your grandfather, then your mother would never have been born, which means that you would never have been born. If you were never born, you couldn’t have killed your grandfather, and so he lives. It’s basically a problem of creating a sequence of events that physically cannot exist within the same line of time. Better?”
“You couldn’t have just said that to begin with,” Sam asked in exasperation.
“Jeez, for a second there I thought you were speaking a completely different language!”
“Um,” Kari shared worried looks with her brothers then cleared her throat. “I think I know why the Apostle is on her way here. Her master, Cain, likely wishes to use the Spires of Infinity to create one of those paradoxes. For committing the very first murder, God cursed Cain with immortality, telling him that for his crime he would live until the very last day. Never say that God doesn’t have a sense of irony. Cain’s been looking for a way to die ever since. He’s been actively searching for a way to bring about that fabled last day for billions of years.”
“So if he sends his Apostle back in time to create a paradox the job is finished,”
Gabriel asked. “The universe goes poof, and this Cain gets to die?”
“This is a very disturbing line of thought,” Allie said. “And rather ludicrous. Are you certain?”
Kari nodded. “Extremely.”
“So the question is,” Gabriel said. “Do we go to the Emperor and tell him
everyone needs to evacuate to another world, leaving the Spires for the Apostle to possibly destroy all of creation with. Or is there some possibility to undo what was done to the sun without destroying the universe?”
“I do not mean to brag,” Allie said, “but I am infinitely more intelligent than you are. I doubt that there is anything you could think of that I have not. Relocation offers the best solution in my professional opinion, and there is plenty of time to find a suitable world, and organize the evacuation. I can simply refuse the Apostle access to the primary systems of the Spires of Infinity and that will prevent any unauthorized Gate Jumping once this world is abandoned.”
Standing, Gabriel started pacing. He’d always done his best thinking while on the move. In court he was notorious for how much he ranged across the courtroom while questioning witnesses. Wracking his brain, he knew that there had to be some solution.
If his entire life of watching cheesy sci-fi shows couldn’t produce an answer to this, nothing could.
“Come on Gabriel,” he muttered to himself. “What would Doctor Who do?”
Eyes widening, Gabriel got an idea. He wasn’t sure if it was something he’d seen on Doctor Who, or Battlestar Galactica, or Lost in Space, or a hundred other shows, but he was reasonably certain that it would work.
His father’s disembodied voice disagreed to such an extent that Gabriel began to doubt himself. Would it work? It was such an insane idea that there was no way it possibly could. His father was right. He didn’t have what it takes. He was a lawyer for god’s sake, not a physicist. If the most sophisticated AI ever built couldn’t figure out the answer to this problem, what made him think that he could?
As doubt settled into him, Gabriel pushed the idea away as no good. His father was right. His father had always been right. He’d never had what it takes, and he never would. He didn’t even know why the Northern Sage had chosen him for this. He wasn’t up to the task.