Author's Note: If you like time traveling as much as our pet caveman, then you're warmly invited to check out the Phil of the Future group here at FanFiction. Right next door to 2149, our characters originally hale from 2121 - my, how things did change. Don't bother to make a reservation, Time Traveler - we already know when you're coming, and whom you're smuggling along for the ride.
Disclaimer: My attorneys have informed me that my ownership of Terra Nova in 2149 does not extend to earlier time periods in my own timeline nor alternative timestreams. Fuha.
Equipoise
by CraftyNotepad
For a planner, Commander Taylor wasn't the patient sort. He wanted answers, not explanations or puzzles - answers and now, not later. McIntyre; however, he didn't push as hard. From past history, Taylor knew that it would just make McIntyre take longer to spill what he knew, so instead he looked around for a stool to get comfortable on and maybe some of that acidic pseudo coffee. He found both.
"You haven't found a way to make this fuha taste any better," Nathaniel Taylor stated as was his style, as an indisputable fact, not a question. It did snap his personal researcher back to the reason he sent for his only supervisor.
"Look at this," Nigel McIntyre invited with something ... sadness? ... in his voice.
Nathaniel glanced at the wall, half filled with calculations like some 19th Century blackboard, only here Nigel had used charcoal to work out his math homework. It scared Nathaniel when he realized he actually recognized some of the calculations - not that he understood them, but they were familiar. They were very much like the ones his son left on the rocks beneath the waterfall. What had McIntyre uncovered at last?
"Looks ... interesting. Tell me about it."
"It doesn't make sense."
"Not to me. I'm not scientist."
"That's not it. I mean the answers don't make sense. You're going to have to hurry."
Taylor had more questions, but knew when to be quiet and let Nigel organize his thoughts. He sipped the "coffee" again, grimacing in regret for doing so. He watched the scientist open a couple dozen images which were being projected upon the walls and ceilings within the bungalow. Star charts, neutrino emissions, even more calculations, and something else familiar: the Probe, the one perched atop its roost with pilgrim's names scratched into it.
"We shouldn't be here, and before you ask, I don't mean 'shouldn't', I mean 'can't'," Nigel McIntyre clarified.
Taylor had had enough. Time to go.
"It's the Probe. It's not ours."
That statement made no sense in Taylor's thinking. As the first person to arrive from the future, he was here when it was located here. He hadn't found it himself, but was present when it was dragged into the Fort, now his command center at Terra Nova. It's discovery didn't change a thing, other than to create a useless monument. If he had had his way, the Probe would have been scrapped for it's metal long ago and turned into something useful, such as fishing hooks, scalpels, or needles. They needed metal and that probe was left there on its pedestal to rust away. Okay, so it wouldn't rust, but then neither would the tools that could be fashioned from it. But he had to pick his battles as the leader of Terra Nova, and appeasing the people with their version of a cannon in town's square was a easy, if wasteful, accomplishment.
"I was there, Nigel. It's the probe that was sent into the rift. It's the reason the governments decided to give their thumb's up to Terra Nova. No probe's signal back then, so this is a different timestream. Are you trying to tell me that it's not?"
McIntre shook his head no. "It's a different timestream, alright -"
"Okay then -"
"-but it's not 'our' probe."
Nathaniel Taylor hated eggheads at a certain level, the level that made his noggin hurt and this qualified. "If it's not our Probe, then whose is it?"
"We did."
Passing thought ran through Taylor's mind, something about Nigel's leg and a flesh wound ... reluctantly he shook it off. This was getting no where fast; he tried another tact, "Explain."
"We sent it, but not us. Another us. Let me show you." Twin images of Earth appeared on the wall, the upper one was the Earth they came from, below it was an Earth sporting continents in a Pangeanian arrangement. "We sent the Probe here." A little golden sphere icon raced from Earth I to Earth II. "Or so we thought." Nigel McIntyre took a deep breath, then manipulated the images. An identically arranged pair of Earths were now beside the first set. "I opened up the Probe. Its outside shell appears identical to our probe."
"What good would it do you to look inside? Are you an expert on what its guts look like?"
"No, I'm not, and I don't know anyone here that is?"
"Then why?"
"I reinserted its power core."
"YOU WHAT?"
"Three weeks ago. It wasn't Sixers' sabotage. I borrowed the power core for less than five minutes, just long enough to reboot the device and take a reading. Like I said, I"m no expert, but its locator frequency is simply to record. The power core was replaced without danger to the colony."
Lucky, thought Taylor, but he kept listening.
"It's not the same frequency as on record."
"Oh, come on, Nigel. Someone would have-"
"Would they? Why? In a primeval world filled with sticks and overgrown lizards, why should the notion of verifying the frequency being sent out come up when they can see with their own eyes that what they expected to find is before them?"
"So where the fuha did it come from; aliens?"
"We sent it, but not us; another us." Taylor watched the Probe's icon depart the new future Earth and end up on their Terra Nova Earth. THe frequencies simply don't match up. Then a third set Earths lit up and their Earth's probe landed on the new dino-inhabited Earth. "See? Our probe traveled 85 million years to another Earth, just not the one we're standing on. This probe? It originated from a parallel world. Nearly identical, yet different."
"Different enough to bring us the Sixers?"
"Yes, that's my theory! The rift is stable, but the reason it can't be accessed anytime we wanted is because its portal openings shift."
"When?"
"I don't know."
"But this would explain the Sixers, why their pilgrimage was different, and why they have a different agenda for the future here. They're from another Earth."
The two men let this settle in their thinking.
The commander broke the silence first, "I don't see how this helps us, Nige. We can't control the rift and the Sixers are already here." Sigh. "Thanks for the coffee," he somehow found an empty surface to leave it on, "but I've got to have a dozen fire pits ready to burn iron stalks in less than a week."
"But."
"Let me know when you have figured out something useful, like those rock drawings, until then-"
"Sixers!"
That got Taylor's attention. He shut up to hear what was next.
"Every pilgrim brings along with him personal belongings. And among the toothbrushes and pocket knives brought through the timestream, each backpacker brings along a bit of technology by way of a pocket 'puter - and, and EACH 'puter has as standard equipment a complete account of the history, science, art, and music of the world." Taylor figured out the rest. There were Sixers still here that had not left the Terra Nova compound with Mira, and while Taylor knew who they were and even suspected some of communicating with Mira, he couldn't force them to talk - but he could seize their 'puters, at least temporarily. He could at last know his enemy, what makes it tick; what's more, a 'puter could be scanned from each new pilgrimage, old ones, too, for that matter, and see which ones matched or approached matching his own. As for the Sixers's 'puters, they could provide a template of what to be on the outlook for.
"That's more like it, Nigel. Thanks for the intel. Good work."
"But I'm not done," Nigel pleaded, now pointing at the rock drawing images.
"Damn," thought Taylor aloud. He should have got while the getting was good and he was ahead.
"We shouldn't be here. By arriving here, we should be altering this planet's future human civilization, just as our probe should be doing to the next, and the one another 'us' transported here and so on."
"But they didn't find the probe's signal in the future, Nigel."
McIntyre rolled his eyes, "Oh, come on, Nate. You can't be that naive. An environment collapsing? Do you really think anyone had any choice? They lied, Nate. I just can't figure out why we're still here."
"So what do I do with this information?"
"Make every request for provisions from the future like it is our last. I don't know how many more trips the rift is going to handle before one side or the other collapses."
Nathaniel Taylor left McIntyre's hutch and took the long way back to his command center. Lots to think about, that was for certain. Sixers, iron stalks, his son's involvement, and now multiple Earths. Nate found himself wandering, noticing the patrols, capturing bits of conversation escaping homes. Is it possible that these people he risked his life for weren't even from his Earth? He found himself walking by the Probe, of all things. He had never carved his initials by the Probe, but now? Now, he decided without any doubts, he's rewrite his next supply request for the pilgrimage after the next one, and he'd make a wish regarding it: "I hope you can bring us some decent coffee beans from wherever you are, Pilgrims."
-end-