Gary Gibson - Final Days

‘I’ll have to admit I’ve never exactly been clear on just how that works,’ said Fairhurst, leaning forward.

‘The ce is in the name we use to describe the wormholes,’ said Amanda. ‘CTC means “closed timelike curve”, right?’

Fairhurst nodded.

‘Well,’ Amanda continued, ‘CTC is just a fancy word for time travel. When we send one end of a wormhole to another star, time on board the ship carrying it moves extremely slowly, relative to the outside universe. But, because of the wormhole link on board, we can walk through the wormhole and on to the deck of that ship any time we like, throughout the journey, since the flow of time within the wormhole remains contiguous with its point of origin.’

She tapped a finger on the table in front of her. ‘It essentially allows you to step decades into the future, since the time-frame on board the starship is such that anyone who remains on board throughout its journey is going to experience a transit time of only a few months. So long as the far end of the wormhole is moving at relativistic speeds, it’s a time machine as well as a shortcut across the universe.’

Fairhurst nodded uncertainly. ‘I never understood why we can’t see the wormholes from the outside. I mean, if they go all that way across space, we should be able to see them, shouldn’t we?’

Fowler barely managed to suppress a grin at the look on Amanda’s face.

‘That’s because the wormholes don’t pass through the intervening space at all,’ she explained patiently. ‘They tunnel through hyperspace instead, outside of the physical constraints of our universe.’

Fairhurst looked none the wiser. ‘Please tell me all of this has something to do with why we’re here.’

Fowler nodded to Inez. ‘If you would, Anton.’

Inez cleared his throat and leaned forward. They’d already decided the bad news was best coming from him.

‘What I’m about to tell you,’ he began, addressing Kaur and Fairhurst in particular, ‘was known to only a very select group until a few days ago. About fifteen years ago, a standard unmanned reconnaissance of the outer Kepler system stumbled across the first evidence of advanced alien intelligence.’

Fowler watched for any signs betraying that either man might know more than he should. Fairhurst simply looked stunned, but Kaur, before reacting, hesitated just a moment too long to be quite convincing.

The CTC network map was replaced by an image of an irregularly shaped lump of rock, the swirling atmosphere of a gas giant visible behind it. The only thing that suggested it was anything other than a typical fragment of stellar detritus was the gleam of burnished metal dotted about its cratered surface.

‘Specifically, we found an abandoned space station,’ Inez continued. ‘Inside was a wormhole gate connecting to a network of thousands of other wormhole gates that may have been in existence for .well, billions of years. The network also appears to extend across what might be billions of light-years. We’ve been exploring it for some time, and we’ve made some interesting discoveries.’

Understatement of the century , reckoned Fowler.

‘We’ve had research and exploration teams investigating the network ever since,’ continued Inez. ‘We call the hypothetical aliens who built the network “Founders”, for want of a better name. We don’t know what they looked like, where they came from, or whether they even constituted a single species or more than one. If they left any written records – or records of any kind – we haven’t found them yet. All we have are the wormhole gates they left behind and a few recovered artefacts.’

Fairhurst uttered a strangled sound, glancing between Inez and Fowler. ‘Captain Inez,’ he finally managed to say, ‘with all due respect, assuming any of this is true – and I’m not convinced you aren’t pulling my leg – I’m struggling to understand why something like this wasn’t already known to me.’

Inez started to reply, but Fowler cut in, instead.

‘Marcus, we both report to the same people, but not to each other. We’ve managed to keep a very tight lid on this for a long time, and we did it by not sharing information unless it was absolutely necessary. It’s not like there haven’t been rumours for years.’

Fairhurst pursed his lips, clearly unsatisfied. ‘Crackpot rumours, you mean. Are you suggesting that, with our involvement, this information would have been less secure?’ he demanded, his tone noticeably sharp.

‘That decision wasn’t made lightly,’ Fowler replied, ‘nor was it made in isolation. It was deemed strictly need-to-know, all the way to the top.’

‘You mentioned artefacts,’ said Kaur. ‘Are these samples of alien technology?’

‘Yes,’ said Inez. ‘In fact, based on our analyses of some artefacts, we managed to develop a form of faster-than-light quantum-communications device.’

‘I’m not sure I quite understand,’ said Kaur.

Inez spread his hands. ‘Communications instantaneously, without limitations – even across light-years.’

‘So you’ve tested this technology,’ Kaur asked.

‘We did.’ Inez nodded. ‘In fact, we attempted to contact our future selves.’

‘Excuse me?’ said Fairhurst, his expression transforming into outright incredulity.

Fowler realized he had been right to pick Inez for the job. He had an air of authority that made it hard for others to challengeeven the most lunatic-sounding ideas, when they came from him.

‘Specifically,’ Inez continued, his face set like granite, ‘we transported a prototype quantum transceiver to Ptolemy, fifty-five light-years from here. The intention was to communicate with identical transceivers located both here on Luna and on Earth.’

He spread his hands, then clasped them again. ‘Keep in mind that time dilation means Ptolemy, as accessed through the CTC gates, is about sixty years in our future. So when that message was sent from Ptolemy to here, without passing through the gate, it arrived – or, rather, it will arrive – sixty years from now. That means any reply from back here can’t be sent until then.’

‘And?’ asked Kaur, his skin taking on a grey tinge.

‘The only reply we got from our future selves was a montage of video fragments,’ Inez explained. ‘What it showed made us very worried indeed. Once you’ve seen it, it’ll be clear why we need your help.’

Fairhurst made a sound of disgust and leaned back, arms folded, but Inez continued unfazed. ‘Based solely on these video fragments, we made the decision to send a starship carrying a secret wormhole gate back to Earth, from a star system much closer to our own, in order to try and understand what happened.’

‘And this gate arrived back here . . . when?’ asked Kaur.

‘A little over a decade in our future.’ Inez brought up a new set of images that segued from one to the other every few seconds. ‘Before we get to that, you’d better take a look at the video sequence.’

The image of the mottled grey rock changed abruptly to a view from the deck of a ship somewhere on Earth, sailing close to the base of a clearly alien structure rising out of the deep ocean. It looked, at first glance, like some abstract sculpture of a flower rendered in sheet metal and plastic, and painted in gold and silver. Compensation software, built into the contacts of whoever had recorded the footage, reduced natural eyeball jitter.

They watched as the view panned first across and then upwards, thus giving a sense of the staggering scale of the thing. Clouds drifted around its uppermost petals. The view suddenly blurred as whoever was recording it shifted himself to cope with the ship’s rolling motion.