Three Kings

“What do you mean with talk like that? What will happen that could be worse than a full on nuclear exchange? Is another volcano about to pop off? And how can you know something like this? Is this all speculation? I can understand that the world’s at the edge of oblivion now with this news from Morgan on the Russian ICBMs, but you sound a whole lot more terrified than that.”

“I am… And to answer your question, we know because we were warned about this very moment-told what to expect.”

“Warned? By who? Has some pointy headed scientist come up with this prediction or was it a politician this time?”

“No, Gordon. The warning didn’t come from anyone here…”

MacRae remembered the look he had given her, cocking his head to one side, his eyes narrowing. “See here now. If you expect me to believe in little green men from Mars…”

“No, it has nothing to do with extraterrestrials either. I’m afraid our doom will be kept all in the family this time around. The warning came from the one and only place that could possibly know what would happen. It came from the future.”

From the future… Yes, as impossible as that sounded it held a kernel of sense that he could finally grasp. If it was ever possible to perfect the science of travel in time, it would be in the future. If it was true that the Russians had been conducting strange experiments on the fringes of their nuclear weapons tests all through the decades, then future generations would know that and certainly do the same. If these experiments carried on through the decades yet to come…

“You’re saying they revealed this event, this thing about to happen?”

“More or less. Look, Gordon, I need you to think now. I’ve told you a good deal, but not everything. Yet consider what I’ve said. The Russians have been playing with time. They’ve sent a bloody battlecruiser back through time, and it’s been less than kind about minding its own business. Things have changed, quite a few things. I’m not sure about it all myself, but think about it. The world can take a poke now and then and still hold together. We’ve learned that much. The history has a kind of cohesive quality. It wants to hold true, but there are some events that are too profound. The changes they introduce in the line of causality cannot be smoothed over.”

MacRae and Morgan were trying to follow her, but this was all fairly amazing and they could not quite grasp what she was saying. Elena could see the looks on their faces, so she tried again.

“Let me see if I can make this a little more concrete,” she began. “Yes… a man is laying concrete for a new walk. He gets it all laid out, mixes everything with just the right amount of water and all. Now he has only so long to trowel and smooth it all out before it begins to dry and harden. Once it does, it can’t be changed easily, and any blemish or misstep in the process sets in as it hardens. History is like that. Events get sifted and mixed into the slurry of time, and it all gets laid out nice and neat, hardening to the facts we take for granted as unchangeable. Well that isn’t true. Find a way to go back in time and do things differently, and you can change things quite easily. In this case that’s what the Russians have done, and messed that nice fresh laid concrete up rather badly. That change ripples forward. Break something there in the past, and things get broken here too, in our time. Back then it might be just a seemingly insignificant change, like a soft motion of the mason’s trowel, but here it could manifest like a sledgehammer on the hardened concrete of the history we know, and it can be rather terrifying. It’s called a finality-an event so important that it must change the history of everything that follows it. When that happens, things do change all throughout the continuum, suddenly and painfully. That’s what we were warned of, and it’s about to happen-it may be happening even as we speak. The only way to avoid the maelstrom of change is to be in the center of a safe spot on the flux of time-a nexus point.”

“And how do we do that?”

“I think we’ve already done it.”

The Captain shook his head, like a boxer shaking off a hard punch, and then he turned and stared at the box on the desk by the red phone.

“That?” he pointed at the box, saying nothing more.

“Yes,” said Elena, “That box is from the future too. At least that is what I now believe. Apparently we received more than messages from that distant time-sorry Mack, you haven’t heard any of this, but you may as well know now.”