Chapter 87
The Strange Journey of Jim Stuart's
2098. Ancient Era.
After he realized he had traveled back in time, Jim Stuart was filled with an indescribable terror he had never felt in his entire life.
What was he going to do there?
And he was even more terrified when he realized, in the moments after the trip, that his memories were blurred.
He could remember many things, but others were in a thick veil of fog.
He remembered who he was, and partly how he had gotten there, but not all the details. The same with some details of his life.
He remembered his name, and that he had been part of the SID. He was the captain of an FRT team in Edinburgh. There were parts missing from his memories. It was partial amnesia. He remembered that he had called someone and had been collaborating with that someone in the hours leading up to the time travel, but he didn't remember with whom. But he knew it was important for him to remember, but that memory slipped through the cracks in his memory, like sand slipping through his fingers.
The SID team had integrated him into an operation in Geneva in a synthetic body. That place was about to carry out time travel and that was the reason he had ended up there. He had entered the chamber at the very moment it was activated.
But many details were missing. Who was that person he couldn't remember but who seemed so important? Why couldn't he remember himself in various situations of everyday life even though he knew he had gained experience from somewhere?
He tried to look into the synthetic Neurowire but that data was not there. There were corrupted parts and there was no way to fill in those blanks.
He had memories of studying that jumped into his mind, but he didn't remember studying too much. He remembered his parents and friends, even though many parts of them had also disappeared.
While watching that strange fight between the dog and the creature, he began to question what he would do there.
Indeed, the dog defeated the fractus in that battle that seemed so unequal at first. That small pug, not so small during the fight due his transformation into something that looked more like giant canid, made use of its crystal skin to generate electricity. That had provoked a successive attack of electric shocks against that strange fractus. In a way Jim didn't know why but, in the transformation, and since he could generate electricity, it almost seemed to him that the little one needed a name.
He would call him Nue. It was absurd for him to think about it but, among all the ramblings of his memory at that moment, it had suddenly jumped out.
After all mythologists and specialists had never agreed on the correct representations of the Nue. It was either a chimera, or had the body of a tiger or tanuki in different stories. Why couldn't a shape-shifting dog be given a name according to its ability? By the way, it could generate electricity, although it didn't seem to be able to generate storms like the nue in ancient Japanese stories. Since he was in that part of the world it almost sounded like a fitting name.
After that fight the body of the fractus began to break apart and the larger parts to dissolve, then in the end only the core remained, which looked like a platonic hyperbolic solid about forty centimeters in diameter.
The dog returned to its small size and for a few minutes neither of them knew what to do. How to get out of there? More important, what to do there? In that time?
The answer was not long in coming.
Due to the sounds of the fight that had echoed throughout the island, the coast guard had arrived to the archipelago. More precisely on Simushir Island, where the fight had taken place.
Jim Stuart had little time to think about what to do. What would the Coast Guard do when they found that sphere with his trapped consciousness and the dog? Was it a good decision to say: this dog and I are time travelers and we come from the future?
No, it was not, under the circumstances.
Using the voice device in the sphere he ordered the dog to take him in his mouth and hide. The dog had approached and sniffed all over, but in the end Nue did it so and then run away to hide.
https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dize3dx-310a3dec-aa33-47a9-a998-cfc63f1a41e4.jpg/v1/fit/w_828,h_1170,q_70,strp/nevermore_enygma_vol_5_chapter_87_by_hasegawakein_dize3dx-414w-2x.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTY4NCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZGQ4MGY5LTVhYzYtNDJkNS04Y2NjLWJjZWEwMjBiNjE1MlwvZGl6ZTNkeC0zMTBhM2RlYy1hYTMzLTQ3YTktYTk5OC1jZmM2M2YxYTQxZTQuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTExOTEifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.OPLyfos2mulCT38xCKXhwbdoX79vO7Tr5dX6XiO0uCI [https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dize3dx-310a3dec-aa33-47a9-a998-cfc63f1a41e4.jpg/v1/fit/w_828,h_1170,q_70,strp/nevermore_enygma_vol_5_chapter_87_by_hasegawakein_dize3dx-414w-2x.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTY4NCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZGQ4MGY5LTVhYzYtNDJkNS04Y2NjLWJjZWEwMjBiNjE1MlwvZGl6ZTNkeC0zMTBhM2RlYy1hYTMzLTQ3YTktYTk5OC1jZmM2M2YxYTQxZTQuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTExOTEifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.OPLyfos2mulCT38xCKXhwbdoX79vO7Tr5dX6XiO0uCI]
The Coast Guard landed on the island with personnel and they spent days watching the place. Russian and Korean personnel also approached, but could find no explanation for what had happened. They had just found the core of the fractus and had verified that for some reason some people who touched it had sublime visions of the future.
They could not explain how the fractus had been defeated, but they knew that the core was important because of those visions. More ships arrived with specialists and the dog managed to infiltrate one of them.
Jim was amazed to see how the dog could become invisible.
How was that possible? How had the dog and the squadron gotten to the accelerator in the first place? Was it possible that he had been with them the whole time and no one had noticed him? Maybe it was part of the mission? No, it was not possible. Nue had been captured only a few days before. But since his memories were fragmented, Jim couldn't be sure.
In any case, that invisibility allowed them to go about the place unnoticed. The dog needed food so being on the boats near the galley was vital for that. There were no food printers, so that was a problem, but the pug managed to steal food two or three times a day, Jim for his part did not need food and only rested the equivalent of a person's sleep.
It was one afternoon when two ships arrived from Korea. Both of those ships had the insignia of the multinational company ZAIEN.
Jim Stuart from his hiding place with the dog did not believe who had just arrived on the island. It was someone who in the future had disappeared from his memories, but he knew who it was at that time.
Gehirn.
Gehirn Steiner. The hidden owner of ZAIEN, and also one of the founders of the Nevermore Initiative before it became the Nevermore Institute.
Jim Stuart thought about it. Would it be a good idea to approach him? What would he tell him to start with?
Jim knew much of ZAIEN's history, but Gehirn had always remained in the shadows of his own company. Jim could remember the past stories he had learned on the island, but he couldn't remember why he remembered nothing about Gehirn in the future.
As one of the founders of Nevermore, would it be a good idea to approach him?
More importantly. Wouldn't it mean that Jim was intervening in the past? He thought about it for a whole day, but finally made up his mind. He wouldn't get a chance like that.
Jim Stuart was terrified, but determined. He had no idea how to get back to his time. But at that moment he knew he could change the course of the war.
He remembered the stories of the great war. Lucky for him he had always been a history nerd and remembered many of the important dates.
He remembered how the ZAIEN company was the one that had predicted many of the major battles during the war using new algorithms. And those algorithms were not there yet, because they would be discovered months later. Was it possible that he was there to give that information to Gehirn? Rather than seeing it as an adventure, Jim Stuart thought logically.
Maybe that was the reason for his time travel. He thought about it for hours and days, but his mind was made up.
According to the new interpretations of reality, there was no such thing as determinism at all. But perhaps that was his reason for being there. To make sure that the battles against the fractus were going the way they were supposed to in order to bring about the future he all the others knew. It really worried him that he could not remember certain details, but perhaps they would come in time.
On the other hand, he was in a synthetic body. Wasn't he in danger of his consciousness fading away completely at some point? What if that happened? What if he died? At least if that happened he had to make sure that the future he had known existed.
There were no mechanisms to move human consciousness yet. They were barely in experimentation.
He could not go back. But he already decided what he would do.
He ordered the dog to infiltrate ZAIEN's ship. Later that night, they broke into Gehirn Steiner's cabin.
Jim Stuart saw Gehirn's puzzled face when he saw the pug carrying the orb in his mouth. At first Gehirn grabbed the dog with both bare hands, but then Jim Stuart alerted him before the dog's crystalline fur hurt him. Gehirn immediately let go of the dog, surprised to hear a voice from the sphere that had scratches all over it.
That's how they met.
Jim Stuart decided that it was not a good idea to tell him who he really was and so he decided to give him a false name. Using a simple set of letters from the cipher Caesar gave that name to Gehirn.
Zuriqth.
He gave Gehirn a false story. He told him that he was an aeon-like artificial intelligence that had been sent from the future, to give him information about the battles that would occur in the coming months.
The dog by the name of Nue was a type of weapon that had been sent with him, but of only one use. It was best if it was put into suspended animation. Nue only objective was to defeat that fractus on the island where they would arrive. But it was vitally important that Nue make it back to the future. With that story Jim Stuart made sure that if anything happened to him at least Nue would make it back to the future from where he had departed.
In the following days he gave information to Gehirn that he was able to verify as the days went by, gaining his trust. Gehirn manipulated the information, to make it look like it was a new development of his company for the battlefield. Thanks to this, millions were saved, and also millons of efebs flow into ZAIEN accounts. At the same time he had told him a few details about the future. Among them was how there was a network to communicate between people's minds. The Neurowire device.
He told him some facts about Nevermore, but not too much. Gehirn asked about his version of the future, but Jim was honest in telling him that he didn't remember anything about it, which was true.
Because of this, Gehirn came to guess that he himself might even have sent Jim to the past, but that he had erased parts of the memories so that he wouldn't interfere with certain information from the future to the past. Stuart could not be sure of this as he remembered the infiltration of the accelerator, but several details had disappeared and his mind filled in the blanks with mere assumptions.
Gehirn put the sphere where Jim resided on a dog-shaped droid, so that he could move more freely around the ship.
Gehirn, in addition to his information, was interested in the fractus that Nue had defeated. More precisely in the core. As the days went by, those visions had disappeared from the people who touched the core and ZAIEN took ownership of it, to study it better.
So, in the middle of February, Gehirn Steiner, Jim Stuart-Zuriqth and Nue arrived in Tokyo.
New materials and weapons tests were being carried out in a linear accelerator.
At the same time Jim Stuart was surprised to see the debris floating in the atmosphere thousands of miles away but still visible in daylight. Jim knew what it was. The material from another dimension that years later would become the Orbital Belt. Although the major anomaly had occurred in Russia, anomalies had occurred in various parts of the planet and space. Almost as if two planes had overlapped.
Although he did not have time to marvel too much at those historical events he remembered studying in school and witnessing how many were still enigmas in the future, as they were Dark Events.
Gehirn invited him to meet one of the teams that would be studying the mysterious nucleus. If he liked, he could join the research.
Jim Stuart was surprised to see who was part of the team.
How had he forgotten about her?
She was part of his fuzzy memories.
Professor Oxy.
How had he forgotten her? How had he gotten involved in that operation with the main SID team in the first place? Why had he forgotten her?
She was the main reason he had wanted to be part of the squad that infiltrated the accelerator. Why had he only remembered her the moment he saw her?
What kind of cruelty was that?
But there she was now. As alive and full of energy as ever.
There were blurred memories, but now he could answer that question Thor had asked him in his apartment at the station. He remembered that conversation with Thor, but for some reason he could not remember a detail of that conversation before. That bothered him, but he had no way to remedy it by any means. But now the answer was there.
Yes. He liked her. He liked his professor.
He had understood it and had been honest with himself at a time when he was away from his real body.
Unfortunately it was too late to tell her. Not in that form. Or maybe it was better to say it was too early? What if he could go back to his own time?
He could only count on it by traveling back in time with the rest of civilization and wait more than a century until his past self disappeared in the accelerator. Or perhaps find a way to return to the moment he had departed. If that were to happen, his consciousness would instantly travel back to his real body. But how?
The answer came to him easily as he remembered more details of the plane case. If he applied what they had discovered, was it possible that he had arrived in 2098 at a time when there had been some emanation from the sun of those savitronic particles that Oxy had mentioned? He remembered it from one of the talks he had had with her while they were scanning parts of the plane. There were three types of fractus. One was discovered in the Kuriles and was the one that Nue had taken. The other was somewhere in Russia and the third would be shot down the following year in France.
So there was a possibility that the cores were of the same type. If that was true, perhaps he could return the same way he had arrived.
The experiments on the discovered core were proceeding according to plan, but there were no positive results. If that nucleus really could produce visions, was it also likely that it could be used to obtain clearer visions of the future?
Under that premise the experiments continued, but to no avail.
It was almost the end of March when Jim Stuart finally proposed something. To be the subject of the experiment himself.
Internally he had thought about it. Was it possible that only people with some special qualities could move through time or receive clear visions? That was that occurred to him, as he recalled certain details of the airplane research.
The Keelian Shin had traveled through time, while those people in the plane had been injured. The dog had been able to do so without any problems. And in his own case the travel had destroyed his synthetic body, but the mind had survived in that sphere. Maybe there was some reason that made it different. Maybe the reason was that he was in a synthetic body at the time of the trip to the past?
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That he could not remember things with absolute clarity was perhaps due to something happening to the memories due to the psychological arrow of time and thermodynamics?
While he had inquired about it, he offered more data to Gehirn about the conflict. But at the same time he had spent a lot of time with Oxy.
It pained him to lie to her, but under the circumstances there was nothing he could do about it. Oxy for her part enjoyed those moments together. For her it was a new friendship, something that went beyond whatever form he was in at the time. To her he was Zuriqth, an autonomous AI who was still learning and gaining conciousness.
Gehirn had noticed their comings and goings and had asked Jim on more than one occasion why or if there was a reason in the future. Stuart had told Gehirn that many of his personal memories had disappeared during time travel and so he could not say for sure.
In between experiments, he enjoyed those days with Oxy all the same. Until the day finally arrived.
It had been a little over four months since he had arrived in January.
Several experiments had been carried out and finally Gehirn had agreed that Jim Stuart would be one of the particle objects in the collision.
A few were performed but to no avail.
Until it happened.
Jim Stuart did not have much faith in the results of the experiment for one simple reason. It was because of the savitron particles. How could he know when an emission of those particles would occur from the sun to activate the fractus nucleus?
But it happened. On May 6, 2098 they got the results.
Or rather, Jim Stuart got the results, even though he had to lie.
There was no turning back for him.
That night on Simushir Island in the Kuril Archipelago had marked his destiny. No, perhaps it was better to say that from the moment he had set foot inside that chamber of mirrors? Or perhaps when he had accepted Oxy's invitation to the research? Or before that? When Thor had suggested that he step forward and call her?
Whatever it was, he was there.
The place had been under silent attack since that day.
The technicians placed the sphere with Jim Stuart's consciousness inside a capsule composed of mirrors, a device designed to channel particles through a controlled quantum field. The capsule spun at extremely high speed, inducing relativistic effects on the particles and altering the quantum vacuum fluctuations inside. This accelerated spin, combined with the reflecting surfaces, generated a resonance that amplified the Cassimir effect, creating an extremely dense energy environment.
The capsule had a clear purpose: to attract higher-dimensional fractus core particles. This nucleus, when hit by the accelerated particle beam, could release subatomic elements that did not follow the rules of conventional physics. The so-called tokions that only obeyed the savitronic particles. Perhaps therein lay the reason for those visions of the future that many had seen.
As the particles passed through the quantum field inside the capsule, they intertwined with the temporal fluctuations of the observer, allowing the observer inside to receive fragmented visions of the future. The linear impact was intended to direct the nucleus tokions into the capsule. That at least was the theory, but it had not worked in the previous experiments.
It was ironic, Jim thought, that he himself had suggested the design. A mirror capsule had sent him back in time during the infiltration on the CEEN complex, and now almost the same technology was being used to connect the core particles to an alternate time dimension, a dimension where the future was somehow already encoded in the particle stream like probabilities spreading out like branches of a tree.
The experiment took place and to Jim Stuart's horror it worked. They had decided to conduct the experiment during a period of intense solar activity, to see if better results could be obtained during the collision.
He received a stream of information from the future. That was information about attacks that would occur in the coming months that he did not remember anything about from his study memories. But he also saw something else. He saw hundreds of other scenarios he didn't know about. So much information that he could not fully process it. But he understood something.
It had to happen, or could happen. Destruction of civilization for sources that were alien to the fractus.
As he was receiving this information he felt dizzy and nauseous. It was as if his senses were splitting and his existence was being divided. And that was not the only thing.
In the middle of those tenths of a second he realized that the whole place was being invaded.
He had no idea what they were at first. But, from his point of view with his new senses, they made him understand that it was almost as if they were energy flows that circulated throughout the place trying to corrupt the information. He had the impression that it was some kind of insect invasion.
Then he remembered it from his memories. Electronic parasites. A type of fractus that could invade systems through electrical flows and take control of entire places. If memory served him correctly, few of these had been found, but they could cause irreparable damage to well-equipped installations.
Those, for some reason, were concentrated in that place.
Jim Stuart inquired about it, but it all came to an abrupt end. The experiment had finished. But among the visions of the future he got something else. In two days there would be another successful experiment. He could predict the emanations of those particles from the sun two days in the future.
Could it work? Unfortunately the studies of the scientists had not revealed the enigmas of those savitronic particles, although Oxy had been interested in the subject, as well as Gehirn.
The day of the new experiment came and things changed completely.
Jim Stuart experienced the same sensations, but intensified. And he was never the same again.
His consciousness was completely divided between the sphere and the accelerator complex. His mind traveled all over the electricity of the building. During this, the attack of those electronic parasites returned, trying to lower the defenses of the place. The place had its own firewall, but Stuart soon found himself trying to stop the attack.
The experiment came to an end and it didn't stop for him. His version, back in the sphere as it was placed inside the dog's body, suggested running a site-wide diagnostic on the technicians and security personnel. To his horror it was found that nothing was detected. But, nevertheless, he could see those parasitic entities attempting to attack through electrified flows.
In addition to the visions, Stuart had finally been able to see the source of those parasites. It was in Russia. A fractus of enormous size in the form of a ring, thousands of kilometers away from the accelerator. How had it sent that swarm of parasites from so far away?
He found the answer in the simplest way: The cores.
As a bad joke in the future would said: for someone who moves in a higher spatial dimension, privacy laws are like the toilet paper of the past, something that only serves to wipe your ass. And that was partly what was happening.
The fractus were of the same type although they had different shapes and forms of attack. The one from Russia had a ring shape and hovered dormant in the sky. That was because no one knew that their main form of attack was those parasites. Although it was the same type that Jim Stuart had encountered in the Kuril Islands, its attack form was from a distance, while the one that had fought the dog had a physical attack form.
Basically that ring-shaped fractus could be trying to sabotage the research or it was simply a reaction to the type of core. There was no evidence of such advanced intelligence employing infiltration techniques or strategy, so it must have been the same as the chemical reaction generated by insects at a distance. The fractus over Russia was reacting to the core in Japan and the attack was being carried out in a different dimension, sending the parasites by some unknown means.
And in the midst of that experiment he also realized with horror what would happen in two days.
In all the flood of information from the future he saw himself infected by those parasites. In various scenarios those things had reached his mind and taken control of his body. As a result the fractus had begun to understand how a human mind worked. They had understood the meaning of existence and how they were being eliminated. Civilization was a threat to them.
He saw himself becoming a kind of trojan horse for the fractus, moving around the world and helping in the invasion of the enemy side, which now had superior capabilities since they could understand the human mind.
That terrified him, but in the blurred memories he had he did not remember ever having read or studied about it. Different types of small fractus could infect humans to varying degrees, but it had never happened that they infected the mind or tried to understand the human psyche and there were no records anywhere.
So it had never happened. The war had been won in 2099. That only gave him one result: the possibility that he would die in that very place and that he was the only one who knew that. Given the strange circumstances of his arrival, he could not rule that out.
Inquiring into the scenarios of his visions, he focused on the one of the experiment and wanted to test the possibilities. There he found the answer. Indeed in one of those scenarios his vision only went to May 10. There were no more visions after that. In that vision he saw himself once again being part of the experiment. And at the same time he understood how to eliminate much of the threat.
The information dump of the collision. That was the way the parasites were sneaking into the computer parts, but for that many died and were diluted in the flow of electricity and lost data.
After that experiment was over, he had two days until the next one, but Jim Stuart began to be attacked in the part of his consciousness that was in the linear accelerator complex. He could evade the attacks, but if he was careless and stopped moving because of the electrity of the place, he was likely to be swarmed.
Because of this, Jim had verified that, although the experiment had concluded, from the sun there must be some kind of emission of those savitronic particles in smaller quantities that kept the core semi-active. He would have to be alert until May 10 when everything would be concluded.
In his vision of the new experiment, for some reason, the parasites would become more active and attack the facility and Jim Stuart, trying to infect his mind.
Jim Stuart understood what he had to do.
He understood his ultimate fate and what he had to do to avoid that threat.
From all that flow of data from the future Jim provided the scientists with some of it, which concluded that the experiment had been a success, stopping two fractus attacks in Korea and Papua that same day.
Then back in the dog droid's body he recorded two holographic messages. One message apologizing to Gehirn and, at the same time, providing him with all the attack data he remembered from his memories that would occur in the coming months. At the same time the final instructions for the second message to reach someone in the future.
The second message was intended for Oxy.
That message was an apology and at the same time telling her the story of his arrival in the Kuril Islands with the dog from the future. That message was to be delivered to Nevermore in the future, when he was no longer there. It was a message simply to put things in order and not to intervene in the course of events that had already occurred.
It was not a message with a confession of love, or anything like that. It was simply to set the record straight. It told what he was going to do in the next experiment and how he was going to stop the attack of those parasites. There was no need for him to declare his feelings to Oxy. What would be the point of doing so? He would be gone. Why cause her any further bitterness?
From the memories, which he had recovered little by little, he remembered that she had been kidnapped. But he, not having found her in his search inside the accelerator in Geneva, was laying all the cards that Shin, or the other part of the team, had most likely rescued her. Yes, surely she must be all right.
Pinning his hopes on it, he recorded the message for her. At the same time he asked them to please tell his parents and the members of his FRT team that he had died in that mission at the accelerator in Geneva. There was no need to tell them what had happened to him. A simple explanation was better, even if it was a lie, than a bitter truth that was really difficult to assimilate.
After recording that message, he gave it to Gehirn, who left for Germany on personal business and to put Nue in safekeeping, now that the process of suspended animation of the animal had been completed.
He spent the next day in Oxy's company as much as possible. It would be the last moments of his life.
He had already accepted it and made peace with himself. But at least he wanted to see her face as much as possible. He wanted to see those brown eyes and that messy hair for a little longer. He wanted to see her smile when she discovered something or made a joke.
Would she be sad when he was gone the next day? Probably but, to her version in that moment, Jim-Zuriqth was just someone she had met in the last few months, nothing more. He didn't even have an anthropoid form to begin with. She could hardly say they were friends. The most Jim Stuart could say was that they seemed more like lab partners for sure, but not close enough to be confidants. And that was fine. Nothing more was needed.
The rest would be explained in the future.
Their relationship had been one of professor and student, and that was fine.
He had mistakenly arrived to the past to give vital information to Gehirn and nothing else, and to prevent those parasites from spreading. That was his mission there and it was already past history for the others. Oxy would surely understand, it was a logical solution that he would not have told her who he really was, because Oxy would not meet him until many decades in the future.
And so, May 10th arrived.
Once again, the sphere of his consciousness was separated from the dog droid and placed in the mirror capsule.
To increase the readout data from the future, Jim had proposed to the team that in the final collision they would increase the number of particle rotations before colliding them with the core. That was part of their plan. Increase the level of the collision and by the time the attack began the energy level would be much higher. That would sweep away those parasites when they attacked him, because Jim would attract them to him.
However, it did not happen as he had planned.
He had estimated that the sun's emission of the savitronic particles would be the same. That was his fatal error.
The sun's emission was greater than predicted and, because they could not predict that, disaster struck.
The electronic parasites were wiped out as he intended. But the particle emission from the sun activated the core completely.
It was too late to turn back.
With horror, Jim Stuart's mind received a flood of information such as he had not expected and with it his blurred memories were completely exposed. All those details of his life surfaced, but it was one that hit him full on, as if someone had just shot him.
The fatal mistake. The memory that had always remained veiled and that was the main reason why he had been upset all the time.
He had forgotten something.
The Tokyo explosion.
For a split second his consciousness, which was part of the complex for miles, saw the horror unfolding. The cooling systems starting with the Minato power plant began to shut down. The system had been overloaded, by the core being fully activated and by the parasites, circulating through the electrical systems as never before.
As he watched the horror, he looked for Oxy through the electricity of the facilities. She and the team were several kilometers away, but surely the destruction would reach there.
He remembered what he had read about the Tokyo accident. Because of that accident the Council would later impose control over time-related experiments.
He was the cause. He had been to blame for it. Why hadn't he remembered that before?
As time slowed down in that microsecond, Jim Stuart began to feel his consciousness fading.
Of course it was. That was the end of him too.
With bitterness he surrendered to his fate. There was nothing left to do but await the embrace of death. If it was true that the conscience or rather the soul survived death, with that horror he had enough for a million years of karma. He had become a mass murderer.
As that happened, something flashed in the depths of his mind. Nothing mattered to him anymore.
What else did that core and particles have to show him?
At that moment he saw himself. It was an abandoned building, there were people. Feys, human aeons.
All fighting against something that looked like a bubbling mass like an amoeba and composed of hundreds of eyes and mouths frolicking in the most hideous shapes he had ever seen.
And then more horror. The building disappeared, but the creature had multiplied. He saw those masses spreading across cities and countries and continents. Invading everything. Jim Stuart had never seen such creatures. They were not fractus, but he had one certainty: they were much worse. They were intelligent and they were swallowing the world whole. Absorbing all kinds of life.
Reaching all the way to the Orbital Belt and transforming the Earth into a gray and lifeless mass. But it did not stop. It continued its path extending to the Moon and all the planets of the Solar System. Those masses had become one, absorbing everything in their path. Not even the Sun was spared, which was consumed and extinguished like a drop of lava falling into an icy sea. It spread like a cancer through everything it touched, even vacuum, absorbing everything like a gray goo.
Jim Stuart watched the horror as he felt his consciousness fade.
And then everything went black.
***
Broxburn, West Lothian. Scotland.
The scream echoed through the room.
Crazed, wild-eyed, and hands shaking, Jim Stuart sat up in bed.
Drops of unpleasant sweat ran down his face and his shirt clung to his body.
He felt an unpleasant twinge in his brain. It seemed like years had passed and he couldn't move his body easily.
“This... it can't be...” he said to himself, while looking at his own hands.
He consulted the Neurowire. It was Thursday, March 22. The 125th year of the Singularity Age. It was as if he had woken up from a nightmare. But no, it wasn't.
He was back. To his own time.
“This can't be happening,” he said, as he got out of bed and ran to the window. It was dawn. There was barely a light in the sky, but the sun was rising.
He remembered some words that had been spoken to him by Gehirn: “There is another possibility as well. If in the future there is indeed the possibility of moving consciousness beyond the body, as the aeons do, it is possible that you may still be connected... to your original body.”
It couldn't be true. Had he gone back to his own time?
Jim Stuart fell to his knees, as he felt despair flood every cell in his body.
“What have I done?”
The disaster in Tokyo. He was responsible for it.
All those lives blinded in an instant, because he had not taken into account that the emission from the Sun would be of higher intensity. Minutes passed and he froze. He checked again and again to make sure it was real. Indeed, according to Neurowire's registration system, his consciousness had just transported from Geneva.
Of course. If time was connected simultaneously at the moment of time travel, the Neurowire system would simply indicate that his consciousness had returned to his original body from the place where he had last been in that time. That was the accelerator. Which meant that at that precise moment his body, or rather the sphere with his consciousness, in the Geneva accelerator had traveled into the past to 2098 along with the pug named Nue. And he had just returned to his original body in the 125th at the moment when the nucleus, the parasites... and a part of Tokyo were destroyed.
Jim Stuart got down on all fours and pounded the ground until his fists bled in despair. A silent scream.
He had become a monster by his own hand. He was on his knees for several minutes as he felt desperate. Why was he alive? What was the point? Why hadn't he died in Tokyo? Everything would have been easier if that had happened.
Then he thought about it.
Thor. He had received a call from ZAIEN in that apartment to come urgently the day before. Could it be possible that this was due to the information he had given Gehirn in the past?
If so. Then at that moment some or perhaps all of them must have been finding out what he had done. Maybe Oxy included if she had just been rescued.
Should he turn himself in?
How had the operation finally ended at the accelerator?
What should he do?
While his mind was a chaos of emotions those final images he had seen came to him.
Those things invading the Earth, what were they?
A product of his fevered mind? Or something else?
He was frozen.
What if it had been a warning of something else, like the visions of him helping the parasites in their invasion?
Jim Stuart tried to remember his vision. That abandoned building in his memories had a stone engraving at its entrance, supported by columns.
It read: Eltdown Municipal Museum.
Eltdown. In his Neurowire he searched for the name. It was an area that had been abandoned for decades, located in southern England.
Jim Stuart swallowed hard, trembling and wondering what he should do next. Slowly he turned and looked over one of the nightstands next to the bed. There was his turtle backpack with his gear ready to go in case there was an emergency.
A wild idea had begun to nestle in his mind.