Zenith (The Interscission Project) by Arshad Ahsanuddin

Author:Arshad Ahsanuddin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 33

“Time travel.”

Martin ignored Knox’s comment, lost in thought.

“It makes sense,” said Charles in a subdued tone. “The foldspace drive punches a hole between two points in space-time. We’ve known that from the beginning. It stands to reason that the points can be separated in time as well as space.”

“So this shadowy conspiracy trying to kill us, it’s really our own company attacking us from the future?”

“I don’t think so,” said Martin. “The foldspace manipulator came from Starfire, but Starfire is a legitimate military contractor. They have legal access to the specs and materials to manufacture modern weapons. It doesn’t make sense that they would have to resort to antique military surplus if they wanted to build a bomb. It could be that these are components from multiple sources, which have been assembled by a third party. I’ll bet they used the old nukes because they’re not as well guarded as the active munitions depots. This warhead is probably stolen.”

“That makes a lot of sense.” Knox nodded slowly. “But why go to the trouble of building a minefield? Time travel is the ultimate assassin’s weapon. You want to eliminate some guy? Just go back and shoot his parents before they meet, and he ceases ever to have existed.”

“Not necessarily,” said Charles. “There are many competing theories of how manipulating history would affect the present. No one has any idea which, if any, are correct, because time travel has always been an untestable theoretical possibility.” The repair drone swiveled its head to look at Knox. “Take your example, for instance. If you kill a man’s parents before they meet, then he is never born. He is erased from the new timeline that is created by that event. But, does the original timeline continue to exist, just no longer accessible from the new timeline? Or is there only one timeline, which incorporates every change to the present, each iteration overwritten by the next? And suppose someone from the second iteration comes back and shoots the first traveler before he can kill the original targets, so that the second iteration never comes into being. Would that restore the original timeline back to iteration one?”

“No,” answered Martin. “It won’t really be the original timeline, because there’s two new elements present: the two time travelers. They don’t belong in the present, so their presence changes history. Instead, you’ve created a third iteration of your timeline, which just happens to resemble the first.”

“True. But one traveler is dead,” said Charles. “He doesn’t count anymore. And the second time traveler just needs to go home, and the present is restored. It raises an interesting issue, though. What happens to the time traveler when he goes back to his time? Will he remember his trip to the past, replacing the third iteration version of himself at the moment of his arrival? Or would his second iteration identity be replaced by his identity in the third iteration, so he effectively ceases to exist?”

“Maybe neither,” said Martin. “Maybe he winds up with two sets of memories, one from each iteration.

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