Rashi was grateful for the slight gravity holding her in place in the chair. Floating around in zero gee was fun, but it was also distracting and now she needed to focus. After arriving in the Sol system and being hailed by the mysterious shuttle, the captain had ordered The Pegasus to accelerate in-system while they decided on their next steps.

Watching the men across the table in the meeting room, Rashi knew that whatever they had to say would certainly affect that decision. There was something undefinable about them. A gravity, an importance, a sense of something momentous.

Arriving on a small shuttlecraft less than an hour ago, they had spent a few minutes talking with the captain, before he had convened the usual group. So many questions whirled around in Rashi’s thoughts. How did they know The Pegasus would arrive in-system in this precise location? How had they travelled here to intercept them - they would have needed to leave the inner system weeks ago? How did they know the exact time when The Pegasus would transition? She caught Nick’s eyes and recognised the excited glimmer as he also perceived the mystery.

Leaving those questions to the side for now, Rashi shifted her attention to an even more exciting mystery; who were the two men?

Introducing themselves as Mr Harrow and Mr Bletchley, they had presented no credentials or offered any information about who they were beyond giving their names. The men looked like polar opposites; Mr Harrow was long and reedy, wearing an oddly anachronistic suit that was certainly tailored to his thin body. Careful and deliberate in movement and speech, he had done most of the talking so far. The shorter Mr Bletchley, on the other hand, was dressed in casual slacks and a T-shirt.

As the XO walked around serving coffee, the captain nodded to the two men. “Mr Harrow, Mr Bletchley. Welcome aboard. I think it is time you told us who you are”.

Mr Harrow answered, “Who we are is really not that important. But I appreciate your trust in inviting us aboard, and I am grateful that you accepted this meeting. We are… If you need a label, you may think of us as The Neptune Group. And no, before you ask, we are not associated with any government. At least not directly. Consider us… an independent entity, working for all of humanity.”

As the captain raised an eyebrow at the grandiose description, Rashi flashed a look towards Sae and Nick, which Mr Bletchley picked up on. “So you know of us? Good. I think. Not surprising, although… From where? Nevermind. As Mr Harrow said, it’s not important. We’re here to... Anyway. Before we continue, promise to keep this secret, ok?”

Incongruous, Rashi thought. His pattern of speech and clothing were… designed. That was the best word. There was a lack of authenticity. Something about the way his body moved belied the attempt to appear casual. This was a controlled person, everything measured and planned. He was putting on an act... Probably to lower our guards, she thought.

Mr Harrow interrupted his partner. “Well. Mr Harrow is quite right, but regretfully we need more than a promise. Before we continue, please know that anything you hear in this room from this point onwards is regulated by some quite singular secrecy protocols. As I said, we are not the government. Our regulations are enforced by… A different kind of force. Please accept this request”, he said and Rashi noticed a flashing icon in her mindpal.

“You will need to authorise this program to install with root level privileges on your mindpals. From this point onwards, the program will create a recording of this meeting. After the meeting, the program will remain in your mindpal… forever. It will also record future conversations that we may decide to regulate. Further, the program will monitor all other communications you make, and any attempt to share information matching that recording will… Well. I advise against it”.

Mr Harrow looked around the room. “You may now authorise the program, or leave if you do not consent.”

The room went quiet, and Rashi looked towards Sae and waited for her to speak up. Right on cue, she said, “No, I don’t think so.”

The captain looked up at Sae. Not surprised, Rashi noticed, simply regarding Sae and nodding. “I must agree with Ms Anson here”, he said. “You invited yourselves in here, so speak. Or not, and leave.”

“I must insist, “ Mr Harrow began, “the information I will share simply cannot - “

“Chris, it’s ok, “ Mr Bletchley interrupted, and for a moment he forgot to put on the casual act. There was a subtle hint of command in the voice. Smiling at Sae, he continued, “Go ahead, tell them. I suspect Sae here has already prepared a virtual container and shared it with everyone else that would have made our little program worthless.”

He’s a clever one, Rashi thought as she dismissed the message Sae had sent her with a file attachment.

“I see.” Momentarily flustered, Mr Harrow continued. “In that case, please… For your own case. Trust me, please. If you share this information with anyone, you would put yourself and your friends in immense danger.”

To calm himself, Mr Harrow tried to take a sip of the coffee in front of him, nearly spilling it as he struggled with the way the fluid acted in the low gravity. After a moment, he continued.

“As I was saying. The information I will share now is probably the best kept secret in history.”

Rashi noticed how Mr Bletchley scanned the room while Mr Harrow was talking, and… how he avoided looking at the XO. Ah ha! She thought. That does explain some things.

“To put something very complicated as simply as I dare; we are all living in a past that has already happened”.

Rashi was so busy watching people it took several seconds before she registered what Mr Harrow had said. Living in a past that has already happened? She saw Tord and Nick exchanging a look, some kind of recognition or acknowledgement passing between them. So… why were they not surprised?

Sae was clearly pensive, withholding judgement. The XO was unsurprisingly unsurprised, and Rashi could see the captain turning to her and asking a question. She gave him a quick response, which clearly did not satisfy the man.

Like herself, Mr Garner was more focused on watching the room than following the conversation. Their eyes met briefly, and he gave her a brief nod as conversation broke out in the room.

“What are you - “ Mr Garner began, but was interrupted by the captain saying “Are you serious?” and getting to his feet, the XO placing her hand on his arm. Nick and Tord started talking to each other in low voices, as Sae joined the captain and Mr Garner in directing an incredulous stare at Mr Harrow. “What kind of joke is this?” she exclaimed. As the discussions continued, Rashi let the ebb and flow of the arguments wash over her, trying to pinpoint the currents more than the individual words. Nick and Tord were mostly curious. Sae disbelieving, but trying to gather more facts. Mr Garner and the captain would have thrown the visitors out at this point, if it wasn’t for the XO’s efforts to calm them down.

Eventually, the room quieted down, and Mr Harrow continued. “I appreciate the skepticism. It’s like this. Time, as we know it, is not sequential. Just like far away points in space can co-exist, far away points in time exist together. And just like we cannot just reach out to touch a point in space that is far away, we cannot simply reach out and touch the past, or the future.”

At this, Tord spoke up. “But they are still qualitatively different. I can walk over to a corner of the room and then back to this place. With time, that is not possible - I can only move in one direction.”

Mr Harrow nodded to Tord. “Right. Our best mathematical models say that… Well, picture it like this. The first time that time plays out, it creates a new pattern, like a roll of yarn rolling across the floor; but after playing out, it stays there. Like the string of yarn sitting on the floor, time sits there, now defined. Once the yarn has rolled out, time moves along its pattern in one steady direction. You can decide to walk to another corner of the room or not, but you cannot decide to stop moving through time.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“But how about free will?” Rashi asked. She was following the explanation, but there was something fundamental that was missing. “If that string of time has already happened, is it already decided if I will walk to that corner, or out of the room altogether? I just have to wait for it to happen... Every second of existence becomes…” She was looking for the right words. “We are like actors in a play. We have our lines, we have our movements. In a script that has been written for us.”

“And now you touch on the essence of our situation. What about free will?” Mr Harrow smiled at Rashi and picked up his drink to take a sip. This time with more success.

“Paradoxically, free will exists. And everyone in this room, and everywhere else, exercises that free will every second of their lives. We’ve even done experiments to prove that! However - and this is key - in the larger context, those actions of free will are like grains of sand thrown into the ocean. Sure, they create a small ripple where they land, but that ripple is small and localised. It quickly dissipates when it meets the ocean. You may choose to leave The Pegasus mission, and your life will take on a new trajectory. But The Pegasus itself will replace you and the big picture stays the same. Our acts of free will dissipate when they meet the established timeline, which is like a large ocean full of everything that has happened, and everything which will follow from those events.”.

“What about butterflies?” Tord interjected. “Wouldn’t smaller events and acts cascade through cause-and-effect into larger events? Events that noticeably change the pattern?”

“In theory, “ Mr Harrow answered, “that may be possible. But what we find is that it is practically impossible to build enough causal momentum to make material changes to the timeline. Except for -”

“To use Chris’ analogy, “ Mr Bletchley interrupted, “the ripples on the water simply disappear. The waves of the previously established timeline continue to wash over them.”

“Indeed, “ responded Mr Harrow. “If we take a step back and consider the timeline as a whole, we find that there is constant rippling on the water’s surface, as smaller and larger changes to the timeline happen constantly. Right now, this same group of people are having this same conversation, but miniscule changes in your responses and questions create an infinite variety of ripples at this point in the timeline.”

Again, Nick spoke up. “Alright. So time is like the ocean.” Nick looked at Mr Harrow and Mr Bletchley. “But what does that mean? Why are you here?”

Mr Harrow looked at Nick for a long time before responding. “Which takes us to the here and now.” Rashi could see a change happen in the man’s expression. It became… darker. Fearful.

“There are some changes that can grab hold of that string of yarn and yank it out of the settled path.”

“And that is a… bad thing?” Nick asked.

“It can be. But…” and he looked over at Mr Bletchley, who returned the look impassively. “But it can also be a good thing.”

“Explain!” Nick and the captain said at the same time.

“Now we are moving from hypotheses, theories, and conjecture into guesswork and speculation. We are also getting closer to the kind of knowledge that can be very dangerous to possess. This is what we think.”

Mr Harrow paused to take a breath and another sip of his coffee, before continuing.

“The timeline stretching ahead of us has been played out millions of years. We don’t know if it has played completely out… if the ball of yarn has stopped rolling, so to speak, but we know that at some point many hundreds of thousands of years into the future…”

Rashi watched Mr Harrow search for the right words. It was knowledge that was very intimate to him, but he had not told the story before.

“In the far future, humanity has conquered the Galaxy. As far as we can tell, humans have achieved hegemony. Complete dominion. There are other species out there, but… From what we have learned, humanity has become… Well.”

“Out with it, Mr Harrow,” Mr Bletchley interrupted. “Or I will say it. We - humans - become bad. Oppressive, enslaving, stagnant, tyrannical. We have put everyone under our heel, and we step down - hard. I’m talking full on species wide holocaust, exploitation, slavery. For hundreds of thousands of years, humanity has been the driving force for a galaxy spanning dark age.”

“Right, “ Mr Harrow said. “And, well. Someone, at some time during this oppression, has managed to send a message to us. Back in time. Asking us to…”

“Change the timeline”, Nick whispered into the otherwise silent room.

“Quite right, “ Mr Bletchley nodded. “They are asking for our help in undermining tyranny, before tyranny gets started.”

“But how?” asked Nick. “If they are in the future, surely they can… find and stop anyone from messing with the timeline? A timeline you already said was very difficult to manipulate?”

“They’ve been particularly clever and careful about it, “ Mr Harrow answered. “We would never have discovered the message, if it wasn’t for a discovery that began after the excavation of Troja in 1871 that -”

“Chris, “ Mr Bletchley interrupted again. “I don’t think we need to take the full backstory now, do you?”

“Right. Anyway, it turns out that if you know what to look for, there are clues hidden in texts and pictures going back to Ancient Greece, and all the way through to today. A letter here, a number there. And if you apply the right… Let's say, lens, a message appears. It has taken us decades to fully understand it.”

“And that’s why the Neptune Group exists, “ Mr Bletchley continued. “We were created to analyse and interpret the message from the future, and once that was done… Our mission has been to change the course of history. To create a new timeline.”

Rashi thought she could see where this was going. Pieces of the puzzle were appearing one by one, slotting nicely together.

“So, “ she said. “I take it that there is a way to change the timeline. And that it involves us, well, The Pegasus, and you need us to… help you?”

“We think this is the best chance we will have. It’s a pivotal moment. I’ll explain shortly, but first, to warn you, “ Mr Harrow said. “Let’s track back for a moment. I mentioned that our acts of free will today are like grains of sand. Well, there are certain types of acts or events that would be pebbles, rocks or even asteroids thrown into the ocean. Events that would massively shift the timeline, putting the established future at risk.

We call these events singularities. You may know of black holes as one version of singularities, with an event horizon where no light can escape. Singularities are really any concept where the physical manifestation of anything in our universe causes ripples across both space and time with the potential to rip apart the time. To trigger the birth of an alternative destiny, so to speak.

There are two main types of singularities that can shift timelines: The first of them is a technological singularity, where we theorise that a sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence can become self aware, or at least self-improving, to a point where its development accelerates past a point of no return. A sufficiently strong AI might enable the creation of game changing new technologies that would shift the momentum of the timeline, enough to divert the current path..

The second possible singularity was the development and successful launch of a drive which could go faster than light. The wormhole drive. The Pegasus. The paradoxes inherent in this type of travel branches out separate timelines each time it is used to account for breaking the speed of light. “

“Right!” Tord exclaimed enthusiastically. “That explains the weird transition effect. Somehow. Also, that means… we are in a separate, alternative timeline now?”

“Yes, “ Mr Bletchley replied. “By triggering a singularity effect, you have effectively given birth to a brand new timeline. The timeline we are in right now has not yet been… spooled out, so to speak. Anything could happen.”

“But that means, “ Rashi said, “that in the… old timeline. We are still around. And humanity is still headed for galaxy wide tyranny?”

“Yes, for now, “ Mr Harrow said. “But the mathematics seems to show that it will not last. The Universe does not… like having multiple timelines in existence, and will eventually pick one.”

“What happens to the other one?” Rashi asked.

“It… disappears. We actually don’t know. Some scientists think that it simply ceases to exist. Others think that all timelines eventually merge, cancelling out differences if there are any… the strongest ripple wins out, so to speak”.

“And that is why we need to warn you, “ Mr Harrow said. “By successfully using the wormhole drive, you have created a tremendous threat to the timeline. That won’t be accepted, and they will come for you. Think of it like this… there are now two timelines in existence; one where The Pegasus successfully launched, and one where it didn’t. The future is certainly monitoring developments, and just like we are here to trigger change… they have agents in place to preserve their preferred version of the timeline. They will try to destroy The Pegasus in the timeline where you succeeded, expecting that destruction to collapse the timeline back to the previous timeline.

Why do you think The Pegasus failed for so many years? Why do you think the AI moratorium is growing strong year by year?”

Thinking about Goose, Rashi asked, “And what about other civilizations? Other species? What if they develop AI or faster-than-light travel?”

Mr Bletchley answered.

“Let me tell you about something we call The Singularity Guild”.