CHAPTER 34

2010

Garth’s Residence

Tanadad Front City

Earth

First there was a sonic boom, then Riley landed with a heavy thud on Garth Andrews’ front lawn, creating a crater beneath him. The moment he landed, Garth’s front door flew open and he stepped out on the porch with a frown. He appeared less than happy about the damage Riley had done to his otherwise immaculate lawn. Riley didn’t care one bit about the lawn. He could have turned the beautiful front yard into a scorched wasteland if Garth looked at him the wrong way. Garth sighed with his hands in his pockets. He turned and walked back into the house, leaving the front door open. Riley hated that. He hated the look on Garth’s face. When the door had opened, Riley expected a reaction from Garth, he expected him to lash out. Instead, he saw only apathy that made Riley want to scream. Still, Riley knew he had to be careful with Garth. There was so much he didn’t know about him; he took down the Children of the Corn without laying a hand on them. He also opened a breach and sent them through it without wearing armor. Riley still had no idea how any of it was possible.

Riley assumed that Garth leaving his door open was an invitation. He took a step forward, then stopped. He reminded himself that he wasn’t there for pleasantries, but for answers.

“Be careful, Riley,” Sky warned him.

Riley closed his eyes and tried to relax. He took a deep breath, then walked into the house and shut the front door. Riley kept telling himself that Garth might have looked innocent but he wasn’t. He needed Garth to be a villain, even if his gut was telling him otherwise. But Riley knew what he saw. He considered himself an excellent judge of character, capable of making astute assessments of people’s personalities, based on how they looked, how they talked, walked, or even how they breathed. Riley was rarely wrong.

This time, all the evidence said he was wrong. From the glimpses of the future that Riley saw, none of it could have happened any other way. It always happened exactly the way he saw it. Riley began to question his approach. The evidence against Garth was only a glimpse, a fraction of a larger event. Riley needed to know more before he could make a verdict. He didn’t like where his thoughts were going. He needed the problem to be something he could pummel out of existence, something he could resolve with his fists. Unfortunately, in all his years of travel, if Riley had learned anything about the plague that ended the world, it was that violence could never be the answer. He sighed and marched into the living room where Garth was sitting and waiting for him. Riley looked into Garth’s eyes. All he saw was an honest man, a man he could trust. He sent a mental command to Sky to retract his armor.

“What are you doing?” Sky asked. “Why would you want to retract the armor now? You’ll leave yourself vulnerable.”

“Sky,” Riley replied, “I think if Garth wanted to hurt me, Vindex wouldn’t keep him from doing it.”

Sky sighed and retracted the armor into the band on Riley’s wrist. Riley asked himself what he was doing, but knew he wouldn’t get any answers if he didn’t give Garth a chance to talk. He stepped into the living room and sat across from Garth. For nearly a few seconds, the two men stared at each other in silence.

“My wife won’t be happy about the lawn,” Garth muttered.

“I can leave a bigger mark if you want,” Riley said.

Garth sighed. “How did you find me? How did you know who I am?”

“You found me first. On Exoginos, remember? You knocked me out and left me in stasis for thirty years.”

Garth’s brow twitched as he listened. He had never seen Riley before. In all the time he spent on Exoginos, he had never met another human. Riley must have been mistaken or misremembering.

Riley didn’t miss a thing. He noticed every brief expression on Garth’s face, even those Garth tried to hide. He saw how Garth’s temple twitched, how his eyes widened when Riley talked about Exoginos. Riley knew immediately that this wasn’t the same Garth he met on that planet, at least, not yet.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Riley growled, raising his voice. “Everything that happened, the reason billions died, it was all you. You ended the world.”

Garth stood up and walked to the window with his hands in his pockets.

“It’s easy for you to call me the bad guy, but you don’t know half of it.” Garth turned to Riley. “Do you have any idea what a temporal loop does?”

Riley didn’t answer. He had encountered one before, and it wasn’t something he ever wanted to experience again.

“I don’t know how you found out about any of this, but if you’re going to judge me, you should at least know what it’s like to be me.”

Garth glanced back over his shoulder. The scowl Riley had been wearing since he walked in had not softened. Riley hated beating around the bush; he preferred it when people got straight to the point. Sitting there and listening to Garth made him want to lash out. He reminded himself of what Garth did to the Children of the Corn and remained in his seat, biting his lower lip.

“About seventy years from now,” Garth continued, “I’ll do something that has never been done before: I’ll traverse the stream of time. I served twelve years in the army, I was loyal to my country. I did all that they asked of me and went wherever they told me to go and I always came back until one day, I didn’t. It was a black op in the Isles of Edmond. That’s where I first died. Titan Corporation secured my body from the government and, somehow, they brought me back. As far as the world knew, I was dead. I had no one and nothing. That made me the perfect soldier to use in their temporal experiments. It took years of preparation but everything was finally ready. They fitted a mechanized armor with a time drive and a quantum reactor. I called it the-”

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“Endurance,” Riley interrupted.

Garth nodded. “The Endurance. The only problem was that the scientists didn’t build the time drive or the quantum drive. Someone gave the tech to them. All they could do was tinker with it, with no understanding of what kind of power they were dealing with. On the day of the jump, the system collapsed and everything exploded. The explosion sent me thirty-seven thousand years into the future, but that wasn’t the worst of it. It caused a three-way anomaly. It tethered me to the Earth and to itself. Since that moment, I’ve died a thousand times. Each time I do, the universe resets with me.”

Riley watched Garth intently, trying not to miss a word of what he was saying.

“I tried everything. I thought that maybe if I died enough times, it would eventually end. As you can see, that hasn’t happened yet. I journeyed across the galaxy, searching for answers, and I found them. As you’ll find out, Riley, things aren’t always that simple. I found the anomaly. All I had to do was destroy it but I couldn’t. The anomaly can be destroyed, just not by my hand or I risk unraveling the universe. For countless generations, I’ve raised people, groups, armies, to destroy the anomaly, but they always fail. Always. So I had to find another way.” He looked down and fell silent.

“What’s the other way?” Riley asked, eager for Garth to get to the point.

“A temporal eradication of earth. The only other way to break the loop isn’t to destroy the earth, but to let oblivion swallow it. It would be as though it never existed. There wouldn’t even be a memory of it. It took centuries, but I finally figured out how to make it happen.”

Riley stood up, while still clawing his hands into sofa, nearly tearing it in the process “Let me get one thing straight, Andrews,” Riley snarled. “You’re trying to end the world just so you can die in peace?”

Garth was silent.

Riley stood up and clenched his fists. “Every part of me wants to put you in the ground, but I came here hoping I was wrong about you. Tell me, Andrews," the various weapon subsystems started emitting ascending pitched sounds as they were priming "is your peace worth sacrificing twelve billion people?” Riley’s armor spread around his body and solidified.

Garth raised his hands. “Wait! There’s something I need to show you.” Golden particles flowed out from beneath Garth’s skin and spread over his body, solidifying into sleek golden armor.

Riley froze. He had seen what Garth could do without his armor and wondered what he could do with it on. Riley sent a mental command to Sky to arm all of Vindex’s weapons. His hands buzzed with energy. Guns grew out of the armor that Riley didn’t even know existed. Meanwhile, Garth remained still, unmoved by the appearance of the weapons.

Riley narrowed his eyes. He had long suspected that the man who attacked him on Exoginos was Garth but he hadn’t known for sure. Now, seeing that golden armor again, there was no mistaking that it was him.

Garth looked back at Riley. “Try to catch up,” he said. By the time Garth had finished speaking, he was already hovering in the air with his body phasing through the walls of the house.

“Shit,” Riley muttered. “Can I do that?”

“I’m afraid not, Riley,” Sky answered. “And keep a level head. Use the door.”

Riley hurried outside. Garth was already three hundred kilometers away. Riley took off like a rocket and went after him, with no idea of where they were going. They were moving so quickly that Riley’s vision was a blur; he could no longer make sense of the things he was seeing.

“Ease up,” Sky reassured. “Your parietal lobe will adjust in no time.”

Riley grunted and rotated until his feet were facing the ground, then landed a few feet from Garth, kicking up a cloud of dust. He observed their surroundings and saw that they were in a desert. The place felt familiar. He gazed around, expecting something to jog his memory, but it didn’t happen.

“Where are we?” Riley asked.

Garth stepped forward and reached out as if to touch something, but there was nothing there. His hand hit an invisible barrier, causing sparks of electricity around his armor. Riley stepped back, startled.

“Wait a minute,” Riley said as he took another look around. “I’ve been here before.”

Riley stood beside Garth and held his hand out as Garth had but did not get the same reaction.

“Riley,” Sky called, sounding distressed. “I think I know where we are.”

Riley grunted.

“The Pillars of Jericho,” Sky and Riley said in unison.

“The anomaly, the one I found,” Riley said to Garth, “it’s the same one you’re tethered to.”

Garth nodded.

Riley couldn’t see through Garth’s armor, but he could feel the pain and regret weighing him down.

“If I go any further than this,” Garth said, “I could tear a hole in the heart of our reality. I can’t be a part of whatever it is you’re going to do.” He retracted the armor covering his face. “The "vilis", as you call them, are not your primary threat, Riley, nor am I. My first jump in the future created this non-linear anomaly, spreading it across every point in time. As long as it’s here, I’ll know you failed. If you succeed, it will disappear from every point in time, and I can finally rest.”

“I’ve been here before,” Riley said, “in the future. It didn’t let me in.”

“Of course it didn’t,” Garth muttered. He held out his hand to Riley and handed him a data chip. “Everything I have on the anomaly is in there.”

Riley absorbed the data chip into his armor. He was unsure what he should do with Garth. He had no reason to doubt what he had been told, but he couldn’t help but feel that he was being manipulated. Riley knew that he and Garth were alike in many ways but there was one major difference, which made Riley wonder if Garth was as righteous as he portrayed himself. Riley wondered what it must have been like to have lived a thousand loops. He had lived through just a few loops and almost gone insane. Yet here was a man with a family, friends, a complete life, knowing that when he died, everything would begin again without his loved ones. He couldn’t possibly imagine what that would be like. Riley wondered if he would do anything differently in Garth’s position.

“It’s too late at this time,” Garth said. “The events leading to the end are already in motion. You need to go back. And take a piece of advice: be as unpredictable as possible. It’s how they always find you.”

He must have been talking about the Children of the Corn. It made sense. There were two ways they could find Riley. They could either trace him in history or they could study his behavior and use it to predict his likeliest actions. It was the little things that revealed the big things. He snorted, knowing he was never predictable. However, Riley also understood that being unpredictable was, in its way, predictable.

Garth reached his hand out to Riley. Riley’s armor dissolved and flowed away from him to Garth.

Riley’s eyes bulged as he was left exposed. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Your armor has been weakened,” Garth said. “Too many battles, some it has fought and many more it will fight. I’m fixing it up for you.” He transformed the nanites from Riley’s armor into a shining orb between his hands. His hands lit up, bathing the orb in light. The nanites spiked as the photons of the light touched them. Soon, the light went off, and the orb exploded into floating particles again. The particles flowed back to Riley and circled him a few times before they covered his skin and solidified.

Riley frowned and looked at his body. The armor seemed different. He felt stronger and more in control of the armor.

Garth handed Riley two armor bands.

“What are these for?” Riley asked.

“You’ll need them for what’s coming.”

Garth slowly hovered into the air. He stopped briefly and looked down at Riley. “Promise me you’ll break the loop,” he said and waited, hoping Riley would agree. In the short time he had known Riley, he had realized he was a man of few words. What Riley lacked in words, he made up for in action. Garth smirked and continued on his way until he disappeared into the sun's radiance.

Riley turned to look toward the Pillars of Jericho and frowned. He grunted and flew away.