Greg Krojac - The Schrödinger Enigma

Marine Geek leapt onto the back of another warrior who was about to issue the same fate to Sitara and, with one clean sweep, sliced open a gaping hole across the Argon’s throat, a wound that caused the man to immediately drop to the floor as his body vomited blood from the Sicilian smile inflicted upon him by the marine.

Enak pushed his thumbs hard into the eyes of the Argon commander, whom he had wrestled to the floor and pinned in place with his powerful legs. The commander’s eyeballs became a white and red syrup, oozing slowly and uncomfortably out of their sockets, dripping down his cheeks, No longer able to see, the Argon was powerless to prevent Enak from smashing his fist into the alien’s chest, the shock of the blow stopping his heart immediately. Enak looked over to where Sitara was trying to extricate herself from the dead body of her attacker who had fallen on top of her in his death throes. He ran over to the scientist and lifted the dead Argon off her.

“Are you alright?”

Sitara was far from alright, covered in the Argon’s blood, but she was alive. Enak rifled through the dead warrior’s utility pockets and pulled out an object, which he passed to Sitara.

“Here take this. It will help you.”

Sitara thought she recognised the thing in her hand.

“Is this what I think it is?”

“Yes. It is his izimutam ahc obmoh . His molecule manipulator.”

Now Sitara understood.

“The bone-breaker?”

“Yes. The bone-breaker. A good name, for that is how you will use it. Position it on the body of your opponent and press the red button. If it does not kill him, it will severely damage him.”

“But I thought it was for healing?”

“If you press the blue button, yes. However, if you press the red button it will disperse the molecules.”

Enak then turned and launched himself once more into the affray, while Sitara targeted an Argon who had Miriam in his sights. The warrior, blind to everything but his prey, didn’t hear the scientist’s approach and let out an agonising scream as she forced the weapon against his neck and the bones within rearranged themselves into a disorganised confusion of molecules.

Although without the physical strength of his Argon friends, Jason was holding his own against the Argon invaders. After leaving the British Army he had continued his Kung Fu training, and learned to master the Wing Chun one inch punch technique that the late Bruce Lee had popularised. The Argons had never seen anything like it and, although it didn’t generate enough force to kill them outright, it was sufficient to knock them off balance for long enough that the ex-Para could pummel their heads in with the stock of his now empty Remington semi-automatic rifle. He instinctively ducked as Daniel Triggs’s severed right arm flew towards him, splattering him with blood as it grazed his shoulder. This was shaping up to be a repeat of the metro station massacre, although there would almost certainly be no survivors this time.

And then… silence.

Jason looked around, unable to comprehend what was happening. He looked at Sitara who, in turn, looked at him, her eyes blinking in astonishment. Jason heard a noise behind him and turned to see Enak, just as confused as the two of them. It was as if they were looking at a still photograph, or somebody had hit the pause button on a movie. The room was perfectly still, with both humans and Argon warriors frozen in mid-movement, along with three computer monitors and a paper shredder suspended in mid-air. Enak closed his gaping mouth and whispered.

“Are they dead?”

Sitara shrugged her shoulders.

“I don’t know. If they were, I think they’d have fallen to the floor, wouldn’t they?”

Jason was just as confused.

“Perhaps we’re the ones who are dead.”

Sitara patted herself down.

“I don’t feel dead. Do you?”

The other two shook their heads. A voice behind them startled them and they span round to see somebody approaching them through the group of statues. The newcomer, dressed in a well-tailored magenta Nehru-style suit, smiled as he drew closer.

“Don’t be afraid. Nobody’s dead.”

Sitara wasn’t sure that she agreed with the stranger.

“But they’re not moving.”

The stranger gave a knowing smile.

“They are perfectly healthy. They are in fact moving quite normally. As are you. However, you and they are passing through space-time at different speeds.”

Jason wanted answers.

“Who exactly are you? Did you do this?”

“My name is Dracip. We are the Jah, We are from a place hundreds of interdimensional leaps from here.”

Sitara grabbed Jason’s arm; she had only recently become used to Enak and his colleagues being aliens. She wasn’t really ready to meet any more.

“How can you speak Urdu?”

Enak interrupted.

“He is not speaking Urdu, he is speaking Argon.”

Sitara insisted.

“No. She’s speaking Urdu.”

Jason was really confused now.

“It’s English. And she is a he.”

Dracip’s constant smile never faltered.

“You each hear me speaking your own language, and see me as a slightly distorted image of yourself. To Sitara, I look and sound like a sister might. To Jason and Enak I look and sound like a brother. I have created an appearance that would be agreeable to each of you. Sitara, ever curious, was awash with questions.

“So are you real?”

“In the sense that I am a physical three-dimensional representative of each of your species? Yes, I am real, in your dimension.”

”And what have you done to the rest of the group?”

“Nothing has happened to them. They are well, Sitara.”

Jason felt a little lost. The only science he had studied had been at school. Dracip continued.

“Time is relative. Time is only relevant when it has a relationship to something else. To your friends, time is continuing at its normal pace. To you, time is also continuing at its normal pace. However, you see them as moving at such a slow speed that any movement is completely imperceptible. For their part, neither human nor Argon eye can discern any difference from normal.”

Jason accepted what it was for what it was. He couldn’t be bothered to try wrapping his head around the science.

“So we know your name. What are you doing here?”

“I am here to rectify a mistake. It is our responsibility.”

“What mistake?”

“The Argon were never supposed to encounter your species. We removed them from your planet over forty thousand of your years ago. But we underestimated the speed of their technological progress. And yours, also. The unmanned spacecraft that left your solar system encountered an Argon vessel, which then used it as what you would call a Trojan Horse to attack your population.”

Jason didn’t give the scientists the opportunity to ask, what would be to him, irrelevant questions.

“If you knew about it, then why didn’t you stop it from happening? Unless you couldn’t.”

Dracip momentarily lost his smile.

“We could have, but we didn’t notice until it was too late. We had other matters to attend to which took priority.”

“What the hell could take priority over humanity being destroyed?”

“Many things, unfortunately. You’re not the only life-forms in the Universe. And not the only life-forms under our stewardship.”

“Yeah. Well. We found that out to our cost, didn’t we?”

Putting aside his anger at the needless loss of lives, Jason asked the sixty-four thousand dollar question.

“What are you going to do about it? Bringing back all those dead people might be a good start.”

The smile returned to Dracip’s face.

“I’m sorry, but we can’t do that. We’re not gods, even though you humans have been worshipping us for thousands of years. The resemblance between the words Jah and Jehovah is no coincidence. What we can do, however, is to remove the Argons from your planet and return them to Argon.”