John Schettler - Anvil of Fate

So the world would know little of Odo’s life and deeds. He would die unheralded by the scribes and largely unmentioned in the chronicles that recounted the events of his day. Yet, when the autumn would come each year, and the leaves would fail and fall in the fields of Aquitaine, some few would sing his name, and tell how he first fought, and prevailed, and turned back the Saracen horde, years before Charles was even a whisper at court. And that after his great victory at Toulouse the Franks were given precious years to forge the union that would bring them the strength to face and match the doughty warriors of the Ishmaelites.

The bards would remember how Odo stood bravely on the River Garonne that hot summer in the year 732, while the blood of Aquitaine flowed red before the besieged city of Bordeaux. And they would tell how it was Odo who came, miraculously alive from that carnage, spared by the hand of God and Fate, and how he raised the alarm through all these lands, summoning even his old enemy Charles to stand and fight with him once more. It would be said that Odo bid Charles to stand behind his shieldwall and be the anvil that would endure the heavy blows of the Saracen horsemen all that day. And they would say how the name martelus, ‘the hammer,’ should rightly rest with Odo, for it was he that fell like a hammer at dusk upon the enemy camp astride the old Roman road south of Tours, and it was he that unhinged the weave of their enemies, putting all their greed and pernicious desires to rout.

And here is a tale no man will ever know, for it is written only on the whispering fog of Time—that in the same year proud Odo lay his head down to die, the pale gray horse that had carried him to safety, Kuhaylan, lay down as well in the stall where Odo had kept him, and breathed his last…

The Lawrence Berkeley Laboratorieswere just beyond the campus, up a winding way called Cyclotron Road. Born on the Berkeley campus, the facilities had grown considerably over the years, and eventually moved to the rolling green hills that overlooked the university. A host of scientific disciplines were rooted in the lab, which was a major center of research and a place where some of the most profound questions imaginable were asked, and sometimes answered, with the secret arts of Quantum Science. They took the universe apart, bit by bit, discovering atoms, protons, electrons, neutrons; and then breaking each one down into smaller and smaller particles, and watching how each one behaved. Once the physical structures of the universe were ferreted out and understood, science thought it would finally have the answer to how everything related to everything else. Soon, however, they began to encounter strange things in the corners of their vacuum chambers and cyclotrons. The deeper they looked, the more they found that the universe was playing with another set of rules altogether in the realm of the very small. Things that were once thought to be impossible, even unimaginable, suddenly became odd realities. Travel in time, long debated by physicists, was one of those unimaginable things.

One theory of time held that any given moment was simply a specific arrangement of every quantum particle that made up the universe. The particles, always in motion, created the perception of a forward progression in the flow of time, which was really nothing more than the constant variation of those particles, morphing from one state and position to another. To be in any place, or any time, all one had to do was find a way to tell all the particles of the universe to assume a given state or position in relationship to one another. Any reality that was ever possible could become this moment; this reality. The realization of the theory seemed impossible, however, for one could never know how to arrange each particle of the universe just as they were at the Globe Theatre in 1612. It was challenge enough to understand even one particle of the universe—but science held that the whole of the universe had sprung from one single point. If that were true, then any possible universe might arise in the same way.

The way, it was found, was through the seeming annihilation of a small black hole. Dorland found a theory, and the theory became an Arch. It was found that the crushing effects of gravity as one approached the singularity could be neutralized by simply getting the black hole to spin at a fantastic rate of speed. The resulting reality was like a dead spot of calm in a whirlpool, or the eye at the heart of a swirling hurricane. It was realized in the center of the Arch, and anything that passed within its aura was protected from the annihilation of the event horizon. The Arch opened and forged a safe pathway through the event horizon of a controlled black hole, and all that lay beyond it.

While it was impossible for humans to physically re-arrange the particles of the universe into a new pattern, a quantum singularity achieved this result effortlessly. Humans only had to tell the universe what they wanted—what shape and time to assume on the other side of the singularity. Mathematics was their voice, and the universe, being about nothing of any particular importance at any given moment, was kind enough to heed them and comply.

ABSOLUTE CERTIANTY –A condition brought about by willful determination that serves to limit variation in the continuum, creating a kind of tunnel in the Time Meridian that restricts outcomes to an absolute certainty.

ATTENUATION – A property of an incomplete Time shift, where the traveler manifests across a range of several milliseconds, slightly out of synch or phase with his correct manifestation point.

CLARITY – Clear or good understanding of a temporal locus, pattern, event, Outcome or Consequence .

CO-LOCATION – The presence of an object transported back through time to any point or Meridian on the continuum where that object existed. This is expressly forbidden by Time, and therefore impossible. In like manner, no person can ever shift in Time to a point where they co-locate with themselves.

EXCEPTION: See Vanishing Point.

CONSEQUENCE – An undesired result achieved by a temporal Transformation – Usually referring to the negative (i.e.) Sometimes certain Consequences must be accepted in order to achieve a desired Outcome .

CONVOLUTION – The relative difficulty or complexity of a given temporal event or condition.

DEEP NEXUS – Sometimes called a “Void” – A crucial, significant Nexus Point where radical alteration of the time line is possible. A Deep Nexus has a universal effect on all moments in Time until resolved, and can therefore be a portal into any potential Meridian passing through the Nexus.

DENSITY – A relative term describing factor counts in temporal events.

ELASTICITY –The tendency of Time to resist alteration and reassume its original shape. Also known as “Quantum Memory Foam.”

FACTOR – An element contributing to convolution in temporal events.

FINALITY – A catastrophic Grand Imperative (like the Cuthulu asteroid strike that led to the eradication of the dinosaurs and other life.)

FREE RADICAL – A dangerous, erratic variable in the course of temporal events – usually only existing within a Deep Nexus.