Chapter One: The Seeds are Born

Year 2054, New Abyssinia, East Africa

Jonathan Joseph “JJ” Gates

I hurt myself today

To see if I still feel

I focus on the pain

The only thing that's real …

Music has always been something of a sanctuary for me, almost like a physical place where I could escape to when the rigors of daily life became too strenuous for me to handle. Since this particular day promised to be more strenuous than most, I found myself once again taking refuge in my safe haven set amidst the enchanting melodies and captivating lyrics. I stood alone in the dimly lit room, listening to the melancholic voice of Johnny Cash crooning about the pain that had haunted him throughout his entire life, a pain that I was all too familiar with. As I slowly lost myself in the intense emotion of the song, I realized why I loved to listen to music so much. It was because music allowed me to feel things more deeply, more vividly, and more profoundly while simultaneously separating me from the mundane world. Music had the unique ability to change the way I thought and felt in such a way that I was drawn into a different realm, a realm created by the musician.

This particular realm was the creation of legendary singer and song writer Johnny Cash. It was during his twilight years that he recorded this song, a song originally written by Trent Reznor and performed by his group, a rock band that went by the name of 'Nine Inch Nails'. Johnny Cash’s version of the song ‘Hurt’ was released on the same year that he passed away. It was almost as if he took everything that he had been through along with everything that he had remaining inside of him and channeled all of it into this one final masterpiece. Every time I listened to his old, tired, yet at the same time uniquely compelling voice, I can feel the deep sadness that permeated his soul; it resonated profoundly with the sadness within my own soul. It felt like he was reaching out through the mist of time to connect with me.

…The needle tears a hole

The old familiar sting

Try to kill it all away

But I remember everything…

I picked up a small silver case off of the coffee table and opened it to reveal the contents inside: a syringe and four small innocuous looking vials filled with a slightly viscous, clear liquid. In this day and age, it was rare to find such implements. Things like syringes were mostly found in museums, displayed as antiques that showcased how “barbaric” and “uncivilized” medicine used to be but a few years ago. Nowadays, most drugs work simply by applying them to the skin, but unfortunately for me, the run-of-the-mill topical medication that is typically used to treat most diseases just didn’t have enough strength to work on my illness.

I was born with a very rare congenital disease called Schwartz-Ritchie Disorder. Due to a random mutation to my brain-derived neurotrophic factor(BDNF) gene, my frontal lobe is more active than a normal human’s. This may sound harmless, maybe even beneficial, but it is actually a cruel and unforgiving form of torment. People that are afflicted with this disease cannot get any rest from their own unsettled thoughts. Their minds are always working furiously, the cogs in their heads spinning ceaselessly day and night. Even as they sleep, their rampaging thoughts refuse to let them have any peace and as a result, they are unable to properly enter the all-important REM sleep cycle. Most people who have Schwartz-Ritchie disorder lose their sanity or commit suicide because of insomnia or other problems stemming from mental fatigue. It was practically a miracle that I had managed to desperately claw my way till the age of thirty under such exquisite torment but I refused to let the disease win, I refused to take the easy way out and kill myself. As for the state of my sanity… the jury was still out on that one.

After confirming that everything in the case was in order, I tied a rubber band securely around my arm and, with practiced ease, inserted the syringe into one of the many veins that were clearly visible through my pale, almost translucent skin. The automatic depressor made a familiar hissing noise as it injected the syringe's payload into me. I felt a slightly tingly numbing sensation spread from my arm to the rest of my body until it finally reached my brain, but that was where the effects of the drug seemed to vanish. To be honest, I had been expecting this. Over the past fifteen years, I had been gradually building up resistance to various drugs. Consequently, I had to slowly increase the strength of the sedatives I was taking in a bid to medicate myself. Unfortunately, I had reached a point where even the strongest sedative available, the poetically named "Lethe's tears", no longer had any effect on me.

…..What have I become

My sweetest friend

Everyone I know goes away

In the end…..

Was it a coincidence? Was it just happenstance that the day I finished working on the Chronos project was the same day that I became almost completely immune to the effects of the last drug on earth that could help me? Without the drugs to ease the symptoms of my illness, I would be at the mercy of my disease, doomed to a slow, inexorable descent into madness. To make matters worse, because I was using illegal narcotics to 'medicate' myself, my physical condition had been deteriorating at an alarming rate. Was it a coincidence that my final avenue for retreat vanished on this particular day, or was there something else directing everything behind the scenes? Maybe something grand and unfathomable was at work?

Purpose. Meaning. Fate. Destiny.

Words that have so much importance attached to them. People spend their entire lives trying to fathom these unfathomable concepts in an attempt to explain the reason for their very existence, but I constantly found myself trying to run away from these words, constantly trying to escape from these inescapable specters that have always haunted me.

My antipathy for such things started on the day that I lost my family during the great solar storm that destroyed most of North America. On that fateful day, when I was just six years old and I saw my parents and my sister get reduced to ashes right before my eyes, something dark was born in the depths of my young mind. To make matters worse, that was the same year that the symptoms from my mental illness started to appear. Fueled by my disease, the darkness that was born in my mind manifested into mental ghosts and monsters whose savage teeth made of my despair and sharp claws fashioned from my impotent rage nearly shredded my sanity into pieces.

Eventually, I managed to extricate myself from these vicious demons by numbing myself using drugs and focusing all of my efforts into my work, but now that I couldn’t hide behind the drugs anymore, my own personal Pandora’s box burst open. The specters that I had managed to ward off for more than twenty years came back to collect their due and their poisonous whispers started to invade my mind.

Why? Why did something so terrible happen? Why did my family have to die in such a senseless way? Why was the world falling apart? Why did thousands of innocent people die every day in these so called “aberrant natural disasters”?

Of course, once I started going down that slippery slope, my over-active mind kicked in and I couldn’t stop myself from slipping further into even more murky waters.

Why were we even created in the first place? What is the purpose of the human race? In the years before the Great Cataclysm, most people used to believe that they were created by an all-knowing, all-powerful deity or deities, but why would such a benevolent being create such an imperfect world? Whether it is Allah, Jehovah, Ra, Zeus or any of the many other gods that people worship, if everything was created by a god, doesn’t that mean that this god was responsible for all the good and all the evil in the world? Were we created, as most religious fanatics claimed, to struggle against evil in some twisted version of a trial to test whether we pass and are deemed worthy of entering paradise or we fail and our souls are forever consigned to the depths of purgatory? Why would an all-knowing god even need to test the flawed things he created in the first place?

Faced with such difficult questions, I was tempted to abandon any hopes I had in religion, but if I turned my back on the divine, then what should I turn to? Obviously, the only other option to religion was Atheism, where the only faith was to the scriptures of logic from the bible of science. The fact of the matter was that new-age Atheism had become something of a religion in itself, complete with everything a religion might need. The ‘bible of science’ which started out as a figure of speech was made into a physical book, an actual bible. It quickly gained a massive following of zealous fanatics who used people’s mistrust towards religion to spread their own ideologies. In the end, they were massively successful, even convincing the United Earth government to ban all religions on the basis that they made people “irrational and violent”. Under the leadership of their prophet, a self-proclaimed philosopher named Clyde Hudson, they crusaded against any and all religious institutions and burned countless churches, mosques and temples to the ground. They went around preaching the words of Mr. Hudson to anybody who would listen. It wasn’t uncommon to find these people in populous areas, raving about the truth of the infinite chaos. The theory of infinite chaos that they so enthusiastically shouted about in transportation hubs and eateries across the world was the crown jewel of ‘the bible of science’. It was also the reason that its champion Mr. Hudson became the de facto pope of the organization that insisted it wasn’t a church.

A school of thought that had been gaining prominence in recent years, the theory of infinite chaos was born in the ashes and despair left in the wake of the massive catastrophes that ravaged our planet. After people repeatedly experienced one massive tragedy after another at the hands of a wrathful Mother Nature, they discarded the idea that a benevolent god was watching over them. Most people started to believe that we were simply spawned from the infinite chaos. They started to believe the philosophers who suggested that what we saw as the patterns, logics, and laws that govern this universe were but a small part of a large infinite tapestry woven from all forms of matter and energy.

It is difficult to directly visualize it but it becomes somewhat easier to do so using Mr. Hudson’s favorite thought experiment. Imagine a canvas that is infinitely large and stretches out forever. Now imagine that this canvas has been painted in every color imaginable without any rhyme or reason. Hypothetically, on this infinite canvas, there is a hundred percent chance that we would find the Mona Lisa, the Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, pictures of Marilyn Monroe, and every other image we can think of. Now apply the same principle to reality. If there was an infinite chaotic region with everything in it, there would be a hundred percent chance that there would be an area of this chaos that is identical to our own universe. What does this mean? This means that our existence isn't special, fated or even meaningful. All that we were, are, and will be can then be summed up in one word: incidental.

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People who believe in this philosophy don’t care much about things like fate. Their purpose in life is to just live their mortal lives until they die. They don’t believe in an afterlife or a greater meaning to life.

And where do I stand in all this? My parents used to believe in God. Some of my earliest memories were those of going to church every Sunday morning to hear stories of miracles and angels, but that was before everything started to fall apart. That was before I had to watch powerlessly as my entire family was taken away from me while I prayed for a miracle, while I begged God to send his angels down from heaven so that they would use their white feathered wings to shield my family from the merciless flames of the solar storm. The angels never came. That day was the day that I realized that the angels would never come. That was the day that I realized that if there was a god, he didn’t give a damn. The man in the sky didn’t care about mere mortals on earth, but I did.

In the end, despite the complex theological debate that raged in my head, my thoughts on this matter were actually very simple. Fuck fate. Fuck destiny. Fuck whatever deity that decided that we would suffer like this. I refused to just rollover and take whatever is thrown at us. I refused to accept the crappy cards that were dealt to us. Since the hand that we were dealt was so rotten, I will just shuffle the whole damn deck.

I sighed and looked out the window as my turbulent thoughts continued to churn. I knew that my resolution to go against the most basic principles that govern the universe was a one way trip. Whether I succeeded or not, whether I managed to change the flow of the earth’s history or not, my own story will come to an end. In fact, by the end of my mission, my story wouldn’t even have existed at all. I would be erased from reality in the most complete and comprehensive way imaginable. In a few minutes I would activate the Chronos program and exchange my life for a small chance to save my family and the rest of humanity. My demise might just possibly sow the seeds for mankind's final chance for salvation. I thought that I would feel fear at the prospect of complete annihilation, but all I felt as I stood there staring up at the breathtakingly eerie fluorescent lights of the Aurora that covered the velvety black sky like a magnificent blue and green silken scarf, all I felt at that moment was regret and loneliness. Staring out into the night, I felt like I was drowning in a sea of melancholic thoughts.

But that was neither here nor there. Instead of losing myself in contemplation, I needed to focus on what I planned to do. There was no margin for error or second chances for what I was about to attempt, so I did everything I could in order to unravel the complex knot in my heart and clear my head. I even closed my eyes and tried to meditate in the hope that it might free my soul from the jumbled web of emotions that it was trapped in. For a second, I thought that I had succeeded, but that was when the one who had woven the web around my soul in the first place suddenly appeared from the doorway behind me, and all of my efforts to calm myself became null and void.

"Honey? Why are you up at this ungodly hour? Come back to bed, the sheets get really cold without you."

I didn't turn when I heard her voice. My resolution had already started to crumble the moment I heard that familiar soothing voice; I did not think it would survive if I actually turned around, so I stubbornly stared forward, afraid to look back.

Instead of directly confronting what could possibly be the scariest opponent I would ever have to overcome, I desperately scrambled for a random topic to talk about in order to distract her and prolong the inevitable.

"Look at this so called window. Isn't it interesting? It is not actually a real window but a computer screen programmed to display the images of the outside world in real-time. Right now, I am just looking at an image from a camera, but it feels like I'm looking directly at this magnificent vista of the sky outside. I know that I am not actually looking at a real window, but on some level, l let myself be fooled into feeling like I am looking out a window. Does that make me a moron?"

"What are you babbling about? You know that real windows haven't been used since the ozone layer broke up into small pieces way back in twenty thirty. What is this really about?"

And just like that, my attempt to make inane conversation and stave off what was coming fell flat. A smile involuntarily crept upon my face, but it wasn't a joyful or happy expression. No, it was a ghastly expression filled with pain and self-ridicule.

“You don't have to pretend anymore. You don't need to act like you care for me or love me. You have already donned this mask for far too long Natalia; it is about time you took it off.”

“What are you saying Joseph?”

The warmth in her voice had vanished. She was still struggling to stay in character, but the alarm in her voice had already given her away.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and I turned around to face her. Immediately, I knew that I had made a mistake. I had assumed that because I was confronting her about her betrayal, my anger would have dulled my feelings for her, but I was underestimating the irrational and overwhelming emotions that I held for her. The moment she entered my sight, I felt like I always did when I looked at her, the same way I had always felt starting from the very first time I had met her; I felt like I was suddenly punched in the gut before being repeatedly struck by lightning.

My wife was literally the most beautiful person, thing, or phenomenon that I have ever been lucky enough to gaze upon. Next to her, the majestic Aurora Afrikanis that I was looking at earlier was nothing but celestial fart that was not even worth a second glance. Every time I saw her, she stole my breath away, and even though it had already been three years since I had first met her, my reaction to her didn't seem to have abated in any way. If anything, like the flavor of fine wine, it had only grown richer with the passage of time.

In my defense, Natalia was one of the very few people in the world to have ever received embryonic genetic restructuring; she was carefully designed to look the way she does. She was the product of a seamless blend of cutting-edge science and transcendent art.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder but I couldn't see how anyone could look at Natalia and not think she was beautiful. Her shoulder length golden hair, pale blue eyes and exquisitely carved features made her look like a virtuous angel, but the devilish body that was on full display under a partially unbuttoned shirt that barely came up to her thighs ruined that virtuous effect somewhat. In the end, she was neither angel nor devil; she was more akin to an irresistible siren that lured sailors to their death. She was my Achilles heel, my one weakness. She was the only woman that had ever penetrated the wall that surrounded my heart since my family died.

Natalia was my wife. She was the only thing that made me hesitate to do what I needed to do, the only variable that might ruin an otherwise perfect plan.

I just stood there, gazing at the vision of loveliness that never failed to take my breath away, but I eventually recovered the use of my body and that ugly self-mocking smile crept back onto my face.

“It’s okay. I have always known that you were an agent for the HRPA (Human Race Preservation Agency). I have always known that I was nothing but a mission to you, but I still married you and let myself fall in love with you. Like this window, you are just pretending to be something you are not, but I still allowed myself to be fooled, to enjoy the fantasy. Does that make me a moron?”

“You have to listen to me Joseph. It is not what you think. I might be an agent for the HRPA, but I really do love you. The feelings that I feel for you are real.” Her beautiful face was scrunched up in alarm and her voice actually sounded anxious when she was talking. I could almost believe that she was telling the truth. Hell, I almost wanted to hug her and tell her everything was okay, but I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to.

“I want to believe you Natalia, but it is really hard for me to do so when you have a gun pointed at my nose.”

Natalia was holding a gun that she had somehow procured out of nowhere. I couldn’t fathom how she hid a gun on her person while the only article of clothing she had on was one of my slightly oversized shirts that she insisted on wearing as a pajama every night. I didn’t have a lot of time to ponder over this mystery before Natalia started waving the gun around dismissively as if it didn’t matter. ”What, you mean this? This is nothing, just a little precaution in case you come to a wrong conclusion and overreact. Instead of worrying about this, you should consider these,” she held up two strips of golden paper so I could clearly see the word ‘ARK’ printed on them in bright red, “You see these? Two first class tickets aboard the Ark. We could leave this damned planet behind, just you and me. I’ll quit the HRPA and we can live the rest of our lives in peace, maybe have some children, build a family together. This is our happily ever after. Just say yes Joseph. All you have to do is agree.”

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to abandon my plan and follow her into the wonderful dream she was describing, but my conscience wouldn’t allow it.

“It is funny that they are calling it the Ark. Most people probably wouldn’t get the biblical reference since religion has been banned for a few years now. The full name should be ‘Noah’s Ark’, right? The giant ship that delivered Noah and his family from the great flood; it is fitting that this space ship has the same name. Funny thing is, according to bible lore, there was only one Ark and anyone who wasn’t on it drowned during the forty days and forty nights of rain. I know the HRPA is spouting nonsense about saving all of humanity, but anybody who pays attention to these things will know that there aren’t enough resources to make another ship. In addition to that, you and I both know that the launch of such a massive ship will damage our already fragile planet. The earth will not survive once the Ark launches. All that would be left in the Ark’s wake will be meteorites, debris, and frozen dead bodies floating out in space.”

“How do you…? Never mind. Look, this planet is already doomed. We can’t save everyone so we chose to save who we can.”

“So you will sacrifice nearly a billion people to save a few hundred.”

Natalia was frowning hard as she tried to explain to me why mass extermination of the human race was a good thing. ”We don’t have a choice Joseph. It is either this or everybody dies.”

I smiled at Natalia and this time it wasn’t the ugly thing from before, but instead, it was a smile filled with pride and accomplishment. “That is not necessarily true. I have a way to solve everything.”

That surprised her. Although there was some skepticism evident in her expression, she still asked, “How Joseph? How can you save everyone?”

I made a gesture with my left hand and a podium slowly rose up from the ground. On top of it was a silver metal seat with something that looked like a spaghetti strainer with wires coming out of it welded on top of the backrest. “This is the answer. I know it looks a little rough since I didn’t have time to make it look pretty but this baby is a fully functional time machine.”

“A time machine? That is foolish Joseph. We have already explored this option and it leads nowhere. Anyone that attempts to change the past creates a paradox and is erased by the forces that govern the universe. If you try to do it, you will just disappear.”

I gestured again and two arks of electricity appeared like two swimming dragons, trapping Natalia in their midst as they circled around her. I calmly walked to the metal chair and sat down. I carefully put the metal object that looked like a spaghetti strainer over my head. “I believe I can avoid that problem. I am not actually trying to send myself back in time per say. Sending oneself back in time is a profoundly stupid thing to do and I am well aware of this fact. Instead of sending myself back, I will be sending back pieces my consciousness in the form of tachyon particles in the hope that they might find appropriate hosts. As for the paradox problem, that wouldn't really matter because these little pieces of my consciousness will be unstable. By the time the feedback from the universe arrives, they would have already dissipated into non-existence, leaving only a trace of my consciousness behind. This means that when the universe tries to restore equilibrium, I'll have already been completely erased from reality, so there will be no paradox. Causality will have been preserved.”

Natalia was still pointing her gun at me, but I could tell that it was more of a reflex action than anything else. Her face was filled with alarm and shock as she looked on in horror. "Joseph, please listen to me. What you are doing now will jeopardize what little we have left. It could destroy everything! Stop this madness! If you have ever loved me, please don't do this!"

I looked at her, unfazed. Now that the final moment had arrived, I felt a strange calm settle upon me. "Are you going to shoot me Natalia?"

Tears ran down her cheeks as she threw the gun away. "Joseph, why are you doing this? This is suicide! Our future is already secure; it is waiting for us aboard the Ark. Why do you insist on throwing all of that away? Why are you risking so much for people you don’t even know? Why are you throwing everything away for strangers who have done nothing for you?"

I started to flick the switches that would start the Chronos program and the seat underneath me started to hum softly. "I know this is suicide Natalia. I know that even if I succeed in changing this timeline, my existence will become too improbable and I will be gone forever, but it will be worth it. As to why I am risking 'what little we have left' as you so aptly put it, you are willing to kill billions of people to save a scant few, why are you surprised that I am willing to risk a scant few to save billions?"

That was when Natalia did something that scared the crap out of me. She ignored the dangerous looking force field around her and took a step forward right into the barrier. One of the two electric dragons collided with her chest, but instead of electrocuting her, it passed right through her and came out of her back, leaving her completely unharmed. For a second, she just stood there, frozen in shock.

"It wasn't real?"

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw the look of wonder and disbelief on her face. "It was just a hologram. Funny thing is, even now, I can't bear to see you get hurt. Well, I guess this is goodbye. You don't have to worry Natalia. I have taken steps to make sure that you are safe from any alterations in this timeline. I hope you will have a better life in the new future Natalia. I hope you will find someone that you will love as much as I loved you."

Before Natalia could react, I pressed the final button and the Chronos program activated. The last thing I saw before my mind was swallowed by unimaginable pain was Natalia frantically running towards me. She had almost reached me when a wave of blue light suddenly threw her back so violently that she hit the opposite wall and slid down motionlessly onto the floor.

At that moment, time started to elongate like an elastic band being stretched to its limit. It felt like only a second had passed while at the same time, that same second felt like it lasted for eternity. Eventually, my mind started to break apart and my thoughts became blurry. Finally, the only thing that remained clearly in my mind was the voice of Johnny Cash singing the last words to his song.

…..If I could start again

A million miles away

I would keep myself

I would find a way