When lights and reality returned the music was gone.
Every living creature without exception was at a different location, wearing different clothes. Life was back but everyone was obviously at a different time somewhere in the future. Most were watching television and were already connected to the Electoral 2072 system. Gone was the visions of Sophie in her bedroom watching birds.
The fourteen remaining players of the Electoral 2072 competition were in their respective tubes on mars in the large amphitheater of the Electoral Center. This time only fourteen Rho tubes shared the stage in a semi-circular configuration around Laurent's Rho cradle. The cripple was hooked-up by metal plates each side of his brain to the system. Laurent was ready to play. Next to him stood Sophie, his daughter. She was wearing a different t-shirt. The unqualified players, who ranked 17th to 32nd at the end of Round 28 were sitting patiently behind the contestants in a large room. Everyone was staged in place awaiting for the game.
Georges was sitting at his desk in a corner. On the screen, Marilyn stood ready to launch Round 29 normally scheduled in two days. On the screen, the Artificial Intelligence was dressed as an old NASA astronaut over the rocky landscape of her adopted planet. Behind her stood the lean dark spike of her Center. Everything was set for Round 29 to begin. There was even a countdown set in Milly’s ear by her producers and it was nearing zero.
Everyone in the room, with the exception of Sophie looked at each other with shock and dropped from mental exhaustion. They had all visibly no recollection of arriving where they stood but everyone was tired and now drained of mental energy. Two were able to stand up in surprise only to fall to the floor. The strange experience of communion with the Multiverse felt like a fading dream. Electoral also was surprised and she stopped the count as the screens.
Slowly, everyone’s energy was returning quickly. There was complete shock in the room. The computer launched calculations. As Marilyn tried to understand this strange situation, Georges jumped up from his chair. "Who?" he yelled out loud as if he had seen a ghost. He removed an ear plug. The man did not seem exhausted.
"What is going on?" asked the image of Marilyn to her father from the closest screen. She pause the game and all of the billions of viewers.
"There is a voice inside of my head,” said Georges.
"Who?" asked the Computer.
Georges was silent as he was having an internal conversation with the voice. "A man named Ronaldo Corvas. He is here with me."
"Sophie?" said Marilyn with a very kind voice, "what just happened?"
"Why should I know,” said the young guardian rather surprised. “Is there a problem with Daddy?”
Marilyn paused the countdown. In a human heartbeat, the creature compared the trillion of bites of information in her memory with those a few days back. She looked at sensors, probes and even orbital inclines.
“Yes!” answered Georges to his internal visitor.
People around the room were sitting back down. Marilyn having to fill in the void on the screens spoke, "In what appears to be a strange phenomenon, we jumped ahead in time and we are now November 3rd. When I say we jumped, I can confirm the past two days have indeed happened, we simply have no memory of them. Our collective consciousness has moved ahead in the time-stream.” Marilyn added, “The light points we saw last seem to be my founds of game. Rather exhilarating.”
Electoral on the screens smiled and unclipped her helmet. There was a hissing sound as air left the suit. In her digital world, she was a goddess. “This is awesome!” She said with the excitement of a young child. Her eyes were deep and tired. “Let me explain for my new secret love,” she looked at the screen and said silently “that’s you Francois.” She used subtitles to make sure the mathematician grasped each of her words.
The blond walked a couple of steps on the martian landscape until she stood next to an old music record player on it wobbled a flat piece of dark petroleum. “Remember these?” She pulled her gloves off as if she stood on earth, put them on a table and with her fingers picked and pulled out a record with its square protector. On it was the face of a man eyes closed.
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“These are music records from the 20th Century. Some DeeJay still use them to scratch in clubs. On it,” the camera moved to illustrate the lines, “are multiple songs each inscribed as lines forming a tight spiral. Between each you can see a darker region.” She slipped the record on and cranked the handle. Then with caution, she pulled the needle up, the music stopped and she dropped the needle next to it and the song resumed at a different spot. “To us, puny humans time evolves linearly the way this song plays, one note at a time. We have no way of seeing anything different. But that’s not how the Multiverse sees time.”
The view closed in. The viewers saw a close-up of the needle, moving between two crevices making the needle vibrate which in turn made sound. “This is what Sophie just did.” Electoral hit the needle. It sent the head up and it landed on a different track. A different song was playing. “Sophie’s patience for this entire circus called the Sixth Attraction is running short. She moved us in the future but like this,” she pointed at the record. “Sophie can’t travel time, she can only translate us to a point of her choice. The past two days happened to her, not us.”
On the screen she looked at Sophie standing next to her father, “Sophie, you did not just land here, right?”
“I guess,” she confirmed. “You did not see what happened with the sand people?”
“No.”
“Foreal? That’s stupid, I saved you guys after all and you did not see it?” Doctor Shin confirmed. “Ten minutes ago you told everybody about it, you don’t remember?”
“No. The good news is that the cloud of invaders is gone from above the Center. The planet is two days ahead in the orbit and I have yet to understand how she saved us.”
"Daddy is ready for the game, I will return to the room with him if you are not doing it. Everyone looks tired. Let me know when you want us back. This is getting weird," she said nonchalantly to one of Milly’s cameras. “Everything you do is always such a big deal.”
“Please stay,” said Marilyn to Sophie. “Give us a minute to land on our feet. We saw this point in time must happen for you.” The Artificial Intelligence had the power to digest insane amounts of information and knew there was no need for delay. "I can confirm the Valles is stable, the sand and these idiotic inhabitants are awaiting patiently in the bottom of the rock formation.” On the screens the images were those of Marilyn watching a television screen with remote control in hand. She was watching images recorded from these last days. Few things made her pause, yet this was surprising even to her. “The entire simulation I have prepared is ready and in my memory banks. Let's run with it,” she finally said. She made a sign to everyone to sit down and relax.
Georges was talking to himself in a corner.
The computer intelligence was slowly awakening from a torpor and needed to fill the void. “Let me explain something important. Stephen Hawking, a dear physicist postulated a theory early in the 21st Century of what he called relative time. The poor man, much like Laurent was locked early in his life in a fading shell of a body. He postulated that if space could be warped by gravity, so could be time. Before his theory, the only variation of time possible was a natural dilatation between observers moving at relative times. One man holding a clock in a slow train would see the clock of another man moving much faster go slower. Einstein postulated gravity waves, ripples in the fabric of space could also create some mild changes in the way time moved between two people. The brilliant man imprisoned in his dying body argued there might be more dimensions and time might actually act like space. The poor man was half right but on the right path.”
Marilyn as she spoke was clipping the gloves of her space suit back on. “Actually time, as perceived by life was a minor construct to help minds make sense of a reality. The same way a nose only smells variations in the sent, a living mind needed a timeline - a start and an end. But no such thing existed to the Multiverse. The Multiverse loved the man humanity called Hawking. She tried to keep him alive as long as she could but humanity’s lifespan was short when this great mind existed. The Multiverse let him go but found interest in the notion of a bright mind locked in a husk of a body. Hawking is, if you ask me the reason why Laurent is a cripple. Sophie’s power bent the Multiverse like a rope forming a noose. We now have evidence all segments of time, like every note of the songs on that record coexist at the same time.”
Marilyn put her helmet back and as it pressurized. Talking through the suit’s clumsy speaker she warned, “Now for the bad news, the heliocorium has started pouring out of the sun and is creating a long rope cooling in space moving toward our vulnerable orbits. On earth genetic mutations have started happening at a faster rate for the benefit of mankind. Takeda has already saved a couple of thousand people. Christian’s mission happened, was a success thanks to our players and it is now over. Their bodies have been destroyed and the aliens stranded on mercury are traveling back to mars. We will return to it soon, but to avoid another unfortunate jump ahead closer to the Sixth Attraction, if you don’t mind, let’s give Sophie what she wants to see.”
She blew a kiss.