The Time Surgeons

Baronak looked at the equations, as he had done so many times before. They danced mockingly before his brain, jeering at his failure to understand.

Or perhaps there was nothing to understand. Perhaps they were all doomed.

His own father, the great Arragath, had done much of the work to develop these equations from the hints of the Ancient Sage Einstein and his own insights and talents, fed by all the talents of first the world and then the Egg. For ten years after his parents and thousands of others had been sealed into the Egg, the world above went on; it had now been another twelve since communication with the outside had ceased, with nothing but a storm of static as witness to its fate. And so the world had ended except for the two enclaves built by men, now cut off from each other, possibly forever; each hoping the other had survived, hoping against hope that one would achieve the dream bequeathed to them, not fall to the doom that prowled the wasteland that was once the vibrant greens and blues of planet Earth.

Unlike too many of their fellows Arragath was still alive, still working. But Baronak, his first child, born before the Egg and now twenty five years old, had proved to be everything the planners had hoped for. In the genetic lottery he had combined not the average but the best of his parents; his was the mind of generations.

There were many others of great genius in the generation born around and after the Fury, and they too struggled with the tortured equations of spacetime and their elusive hints of burrowing through the fabric of the universe. Perhaps they would see the solution. Baronak hoped so, because he could not.

The equations of spacetime were now advanced even over the work of the great Einstein. They even showed how to make a burrow. But to keep the burrows stable seemed impossible. Spacetime folded about them, and the bigger they were and the further they went, the less stable they were. Experiments confirmed it, and so far had offered no way out. The tunnels collapsed in a flash of radiation moments after they were created. Some of the researchers claimed that to keep a burrow open would require negative energy. Unfortunately nobody could say what that was, let alone how to produce it. Some claimed that negative energy could be created via a new, exotic form of matter; but none could say what that was, either.

We’re never going to get there. It is too hard a problem, our resources too small, the systems that power our experiments and keep us alive degrading by the day. Our own bodies beginning to fail us. If only we had more time.

He stretched, slowly turning his head and wriggling his shoulders, trying to unknot the tensions of the night. He was tired but too keyed up to sleep; a hollow feeling told him he was hungry. He reached over and toggled a communicator.

Geldamur frowned wryly. A sandwich and a jar of caff. Seriously?

In the genetic lottery inside the Egg, Geldamur had not won any notable brilliance of mind. But he possessed a great facility for cooking, fortunately coupled with a love of the arts of the chef. Perhaps the limitations of life in the Egg made that career difficult; or perhaps those limitations merely challenged his creativity the more, and added to his enjoyment.

In any case he loved his job. There was no real day or night inside the Egg. The automatic lighting in public areas was set to the standard day-night cycle, but nothing was to interfere with the Great Task, and so depending on their proclivities, opportunities or mere insomnia, while most work was done during ‘daylight hours’, enough people could be found abroad at any hour that services never ceased.

If asked, Geldamur would have said that he most loved the early evening, when people were relaxing and socializing and really appreciated an inspired meal. But the variety of his life was also something he loved, and whether he was assigned to breakfast, lunch, dinner or night shift, he enjoyed the challenges of meeting whatever requirements he was rostered to meet.

Unless they ask for sandwiches.

He grinned and set to work. Let’s see if I can give The Great Baronak the best damn sandwich he’s ever eaten.

There were a number of students scattered around the cafeteria. They were studying, reading or watching entertainment, but like many people they were also here to serve the Great Task in whatever manner was asked of them, and if they were here but not eating it meant they were available for any tasks Geldamur might require.

He caught the eye of one of them, a young woman who’d had her nose in a notebook but chosen that moment to remove it and glance in his direction. He did not know her well, as she had spent most of her time in another section and only recently started frequenting this region, but he had seen her around and chatted to her once or twice.

“Can you deliver this to Baronak, Jennara?” he asked her. “His room number is printed here if you don’t know where he camps.”

“Sure thing Geldamur, right away,” she replied, scooping up the tray and heading to the bank of lifts.

Baronak had forgotten about his sandwich until his thoughts were dragged back to the mundane by a gentle knock at his door.

“Enter!”

A young woman came in, bearing a tray and the unmistakable air of ‘Student’, an air possibly unchanged since the time of the Ancients.

“Yes?”, he enquired.

“You ordered a sandwich and a jar of caff, no?”

“Oh. Oh yes! Sorry! Just put it down here. Thanks, er…?”

“Jennara.”

“Hi Jennara, pleased to meet you,” he said, clasping her forearm in formal greeting with one hand, while reaching for his sandwich with the other then taking a large bite. “Sorry,” he muttered around his mouthful, “now it’s here I’m a bit hungry.”

He looked at the sandwich in surprise. “Hey, this is the best damn sandwich I’ve ever eaten. Maybe I’m hungrier than I thought.”

She looked at him critically. “You look more than hungry. You look completely done in. I think you need sleep more than that jar of caff.”

He smiled ruefully. “Probably. But you know how it is. I can’t go to sleep with these equations bugging me. Problem is, that means I might never sleep again.”

She favored him with a look of disgust. “Well at least relax a bit. Here,” she ordered, “sit back and eat your sandwich. Let me work my arts.”

She had wondered if he was one of those prickly types who would order her out for impertinence, but he took it with good humor, rolled his eyes and obeyed. “Yes, Mom,” he murmured.

As he lay back in his chair she began to massage his shoulders and neck, and she heard him groan with relief as the knots in his muscles began to unwind.

“You’re good at this. I’m not normally one for massages, but I might change my mind.”

“Shush. Stop talking. Stop thinking. Just relax.”

He leaned back further, relaxing into the chair, and sighed.

“I’m allowed to sigh, right?”

“Shush!”

He shushed, and allowed himself to drift, letting his thoughts loose to drift where they would too.

Then he noticed with some surprise, since he had not been thinking of her in that manner, that while her hands were succeeding admirably in their task of relaxing his upper body, his lower body was reacting in its own, different way.

Jennara had not been thinking in that direction either, but she could not help noticing his reaction. Probably been a while for him, carrying the world on his shoulders and on that remarkable mind of his. She felt an answering tingle from her own body. Been too long for me, too, come to think of it.

He knew she had noticed when her hair brushed his cheek, as she leant over to say in a soft but hoarse voice, “I think you need more than a sandwich and a massage, my Sage.”

She paused before adding, “I think I would be happy to provide it.”

The Eggs were designed with enough space for psychological comfort, but private offices were no larger than required for their purpose. As he spun around to stand up, his elbow brushed against a small pile of papers on the edge of his desk, scattering them onto the floor.

“Sorry! My fault for startling you!” she said, bending as if to retrieve them.

But he grasped her arm and looked down at her. “I have a more urgent task for you. If you meant what you said?”

“I surely did.”

He had a cot in his office, as nightly researches were far from uncommon in his life. They moved toward it, undressing each other with abandon as they went, then they fell on it in a tangle of limbs.

She was surprised by the violence and speed of their passion. It really has been a long time for him, she thought, when thought found a way to express itself. Fortunately for her, the speed was compensated by the violence of it, and her own nerves screamed their approval so by the end of it, she too lay gasping.

“Oh, Baronak,” she murmured, holding him, but there was no reply, just softly even breathing. She opened her eyes, and saw that he was already asleep.

“Jennara’s Stress Reduction Service, open for business,” she whispered, then she too was asleep.

Baronak woke a few hours later, the slightly brighter hue of the strip lighting around the floor indicating early morning. Jennara was still asleep beside him, but he somehow managed to gently disentangle himself from her without waking her, before covering her with a blanket.

He quietly padded across the floor to his desk, picking up the scattered papers from last night. One of his habits was to jot down random thoughts and ideas on pieces of actual paper, which he would examine at leisure later in random order to see if some otherwise hidden thought or connection would reveal itself. He had gathered this sheaf early the previous evening with a view to such an exercise but then never got around to it.

He was surprised to see a single piece of it still on his desk. I could have sworn that wasn’t there, he thought. He glanced at it. It was clearly his handwriting, yet it was strangely wavering, as if written in great haste or fatigue: perhaps it had been a sudden insight at the end of too late a night, hurriedly scribbled in an exhausted hand and then forgotten.

He took a closer look, and gasped. But this… is this what it looks like?

He skimmed the entire page almost in one glance, before going back over the equations with greater care, staring at the strangely twisted equations and their peculiar transformations, as if the answer might emerge from the warped spacetime they represented.

There were no diagrams of what the equations represented, just the symbols; but a mind like his, looking at the equations, could see the diagrams in his head. If this is right, then… but if this is also right, then…? Impossible! And yet…

He put the paper aside and fired up his computer.

Spacetime he thought. Maybe I’ve been looking at this wrong. Maybe… no. What good could that do?

He sat up straight, startled by his own thoughts, as the thought from earlier in the evening echoed again in his mind.

If only we had more time.

Jennara sat up and yawned. She glanced over at Baronak, who was back at his computer, seized either by uncommon dedication to his work or a more commonplace desire to ignore her. Well, good morning to you too! She knew that many men’s eyes were dark with interest and passion in the night, but having achieved their pleasure, in the morning they wished only that you would vanish quietly and forever. She figured he was one of that standard type.

Not that it matters, she thought with a shrug. I’m a grown woman, and I got at least one thing I wanted. So she quietly began to dress.

The sounds of a person rising from bed and dressing no doubt reached Baronak’s ears, but somewhere between there and his conscious mind they got lost, until finally he heard a quiet “Good morning” and sensed a presence standing behind him.

He spun around in his chair.

“Oh!” Are you still here? Jennara heard. “Good morning.” If you are, I suppose I must be polite. We did after all just sleep together.

His eyes looked as if he weren’t even seeing her, which only reinforced the cynicism of her mental translations.

“I’m feeling like some breakfast, but I have to finish this.” I never finished the sandwich you brought me, so why don’t you fetch me something else to eat, since you’re just standing there? “How about you go down and order breakfast for two, and I’ll join you in about ten minutes when it’s ready?”

His last sentence somewhat derailed her translation, so after a second’s pause she replied, “Oh! Um, sure. That’ll be nice.” Slick, so slick. “Um, what are you working on that got you up so early? You must have had only about four hours sleep.”

She rested her hands on his shoulders as she said it, hoping he would not flinch. Some did.

“A new direction. It’s weird. One of the papers I knocked over last night… well, one that didn’t get knocked over, I guess, caught my eye. And it was… fascinating. Here, take a look.”

He reached for the piece of paper, but it wasn’t there. “Huh. That’s funny. I’m sure that’s where I put it.” He rummaged around a bit. “Huh. Weird. Where’d it get to? Oh well, doesn’t matter. I’ll show you later.”

She could tell he was already drifting away from the world of flesh and blood into some higher realm of mathematics, so she stepped back and quietly slipped out of his room. Glancing back as she eased the door shut, she could see he was already immersed in his computer, apparently having already forgotten she existed. See you soon. If you remember. At least for that I have an ally in your stomach.

Geldamur was still at work when Jennara came down for breakfast.

If he had noticed that she had not returned last night, he now could not have said whether she had or hadn’t. There was nothing remarkable about it. Even students sometimes slept.

But when she asked for breakfast for two, mentioning Baronak’s name and asking for ‘whatever his favorite is’, and the man himself duly joined her, he smiled to himself.

Geldamur was somewhat temperamental, a trait not uncommon in those of his profession. In the circumstances of life after the Fury, in him it was also accompanied by a certain streak of melancholy. So in defense against the melancholy, he liked to see people find happiness where they could: especially if they found it in a meal prepared by himself, but wherever else they found it too.

This is what life is, is it not? he thought as he gazed at them enjoying their breakfast, while displaying the subtle signs of a more personal shared intimacy. A pleasure here, a piece of joy there, a love gained in the night. In the midst of whatever other tragedies we may endure, it is the accumulation of such joys that life is made of, and that let us bear the rest.

Then another call for food came, and his mind turned from the contemplation of the infinite to the contemplation of breakfast.

The lovers continued doing both.

“So did you find your piece of paper?”

“Huh?”

“Did you know you say ‘Huh?’ a lot?”

“Oh! Sorry!”

“You say that a lot, too.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, shush! I said, did you find your piece of paper?”

“No… but it’ll be somewhere. Doesn’t matter. I know what it said. If I wasn’t so hungry I’d be back there working on it now.”

“Sorry.”

“What for?”

“I interrupted your sandwich last night.”

He grinned at her, then intoned in a solemn voice like a Sage extending a special favour to a Student, “I forgive you.”

“Thus I know I am truly in the presence of greatness.”

“No, seriously, you were right. I needed the relaxation and I needed the sleep. And what went between. Gave me fresh eyes. And who knows, if I hadn’t knocked over those papers, I might never have gotten around to noticing that one piece of paper on the bottom that was left on the desk.”

She nodded, “So what’s it all about?”

“A new way of looking at spacetime. If those equations are right, and I think they are, then they might open up a whole new world. Unfortunately it might not be a world we’ll like. But progress is progress. Reality is what it is.”

“Painful knowledge is better than blissful ignorance?”

“Usually. Blissful ignorance has a habit of sneaking up on you and ruining your bliss. Knowledge lets you know what to do. Gravity sticks you to the ground, whether you know what it is or not. But science can let you fly when nobody could before.”

“Do you think,” she asked speculatively, “that all those people who died, you know, in the Fury, that if they’d been given the choice, they would have chosen knowledge over ignorance?”

Baronak rested his chin on his hands and gazed at her, or perhaps through her. “I’ve asked my parents the same thing. You know my mother is Pachmeny, the one the stars were named after? She says sometimes she wishes she herself never knew what was coming, that she could have just lived her life and died without even knowing it. But then she says she’s glad they knew. Well, not glad, but at least it meant they were agents, not just victims. Someone had to take on the burden of knowing, if anything were to be saved.

“But for the rest, what could they do? Nothing. The knowledge would have ruined their lives to no benefit. Perhaps they were wrong, the Sages back then, to keep the knowledge secret. I don’t know. All I know is that I hope I am never called on to decide over the lives or deaths of others, but if I am that I have courage to do it and the wisdom to do it rightly.”

She nodded slowly, drinking the remainder of her caff.

He finished first and stood. “Well, speaking of such matters, the equations won’t solve themselves. I must be off.”

She smiled at him, waggling her fingers in farewell. “Of course. Thank you for your time, I know it is precious.”

He turned to go, then looked back. “If I call on you again, will you come?”

She answered softly, “If you call, I will come.”