Part IV
"Anything that happens, happens.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though."
– Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
"What the..." Kevin's voice trailed off.
The other Sawyer closed the door and walked into the lounge. "So, you're the three sprites Welman brought to Mainframe. It all makes sense now."
"I'm glad one of us is making sense," Kevin said. "I feel like I'm in a house of mirrors."
"Don't feel bad," Sawyer said. "It took me a while to completely understand temporal causality and stuff like that."
"Causality?" Kevin asked. "You mean you're me."
"From another world-line, apparently," said the alternate Sawyer. "It's odd, but this is exactly the event I was trying to prevent."
"You?" asked Bob. "You caused the Gateway to malfunction?"
"I was trying to collapse the portal," said Sawyer. "I had no idea I was actually participating in history."
"What are you talking about?" asked Enzo.
"It's a temporal causality loop," Bob said. "The future is writing its own past."
"I don't understand," Enzo said. "You just said this isn't our history anymore."
"That's right," said the alternate Sawyer. "It's my history that's being written. From my perspective, this is how history unfolded in my world-line."
"Care to elaborate?" Kevin asked.
"There's no time," Sawyer said urgently. "We have to get out of here before Welman and his colleagues come back."
"You have a way out of here?" Bob asked.
"I have a ship outside. Follow me."
The other Sawyer led them out into the hall. Slumped against the wall next to the door was an unconscious security sprite.
"I had to knock him out with my pistol," the alternate Sawyer said. "Don't worry, he's just taking a nap."
He led them down the hall to a set of double doors marked "EXIT." Once outside he led them across the walkway. It was at this point he began explaining himself. He told them about his experience in Mainframe, about Daemon's invasion, and how it was Welman's idea to travel back in time and thwart his attempt at making contact with other systems.
"Welman built a network that unified the entire Net," Sawyer explained. "When Daemon infected the Supercomputer she simultaneously infected the whole Internet as well by using the Gateway Command."
"And you traveled back in time to prevent the network from being built," clarified Enzo. "Is it just me or is this getting weird?"
"We're way past weird. This is some real Twilight Zone stuff," Kevin said. "So Daemon is in control of the whole Net in your reality?"
"Practically," said the alternate Sawyer.
"That makes sense," Bob said. "In our history Daemon had to move slowly because the keytools left the Guardians. Without the capacity to make portals, Daemon couldn't reach offline or disconnected systems. With a Gateway Network unifying the Net, she wouldn't have to worry about access."
"So Daemon tried to invade the Net in your world-line as well?" asked the alternate Sawyer.
"Yeah," responded Enzo, "and she would have won if it hadn't been for Hex."
"Who?"
"Hexadecimal," Enzo repeated. "Queen of Chaos. Always had a thing for Bob. A bit on the nutty side."
"I've never heard of her. She was a virus?"
"It's a long story," Bob said. "Back there you said it was your history being written. What exactly happened with Welman's experiment?"
"In my history Welman Matrix transported three sprites from another system into Mainframe. This proved his theories about life existing elsewhere in cyberspace."
"Three people?" asked Enzo. "This is starting to sound familiar."
"It should," Kevin said. He turned back to his double. "We're the three sprites your history said Welman transported to Mainframe."
"Believe me, this isn't what I was going for," he replied. He stopped and turned and pulled out the hyperspace file lock. "This was supposed to collapse the portal, not cause it to connect to another universe."
"What does it do?" asked Kevin.
"It fires a beam of virtual particles. It was supposed to cause an energy overload in the Gateway. The portal would have folded over on itself, creating a closed loop in space-time. It should have caused the wormhole to collapse."
Kevin, Bob, and Enzo looked at one another, then at the other Sawyer.
"This explains a few things," Bob said. "The overload. The particle buildup. It was all because of that."
"I traveled back in time to stop the Gateway experiment from being a success," the alternate Sawyer said, "but instead I caused the very history I was trying to change."
"The loop is complete," Bob said. "Our coming here was part of your history."
"But what about our history?" asked Enzo. "Our Mainframe? Our world-line? Where is it?"
"We'll figure that out, Enzo, I promise," said the alternate Sawyer. "There's my ship. We'll be safe in there."
He pointed across the parking area. The ship was black, and Kevin noticed it had a hull design similar to the Nighthawk. They quickly boarded and sealed themselves within. The Relativity only had one chair, the pilot's seat. The rest of the inside space was empty. The four time-displaced travelers leaned against the cold metal walls of the time machine.
For a moment there was silence. Then Kevin said: "Maybe... it hasn't happened yet."
"What?" asked Bob.
"Enzo's question." Kevin turned to his other self. "The three travelers... us... what happened to us in your history?"
Sawyer thought for a few seconds. "Welman told me they disappeared from the university. He always assumed they'd ran away and hid somewhere in Mainframe. To my knowledge they were never found. You just... vanished."
"We just vanished..." Kevin's voice trailed away.
"What are you thinking, Kevin?" asked Enzo.
"Maybe we're not out of luck," Kevin said. "We participated in a causal loop, us four. Maybe we can complete another causal loop."
"What? You mean there's another one?" asked Enzo.
"There has to be, don't you see? Our reality still exists, but we have to participate in its history the same way he..." he pointed to his double, "participated in his by bringing us here."
"What's the plan, Kevin?" Bob asked.
"This is a time machine. We can go back again and use the particle beam. Instead, this time we can use it to direct the portal to another location."
"What good will that do?" asked the other Sawyer.
"It will reestablish our history," said Bob, snapping his fingers. "In our world-line Welman succeeded as well, but there is no Gateway Network. Instead of trying to collapse the portal we can divert it to where it's supposed to go and bring our history back."
"Couldn't have said it better myself," Kevin said.
"We'll have to modify the file lock," said the alternate Sawyer. "I don't have any tools with me to do the job."
Bob raised his left hand. "We've got Glitch," he said. "Kevin, can you and... Kevin modify the file lock to redirect the portal to the Supercomputer?"
"Using Glitch? Sure. It might take us a while."
"We'd better get out of here then," said the other Kevin Sawyer. "This ship has a civil identification transponder, but it won't be long before the authorities figure out there's one more vehicle in Mainframe than there was this morning."
"Where are we going to go?" asked Bob.
"Back in time again," said Sawyer as he strapped himself into the pilot seat once again. "I'll take us back twelve milliseconds so we'll have enough time to rewire the file lock."
His hands flew over the controls, pushing buttons and flipping switches like an expert pilot. Within nanoseconds they were high in the sky and then blackness surrounded them.
The Relativity landed in Floating Point Park. The trip only took a few nanoseconds, but in reality they had moved backwards in time twelve milliseconds before the experiment was scheduled to commence. The two Sawyers set about disassembling the hyperspace file lock using Glitch as a handy multitool while Bob and Enzo walked around outside.
For the sake of simplicity, the alternate Sawyer opted to go by his shared middle name, Taylor. It was confusing enough for him to be interacting with another version of himself without having to worry about names.
"So," said Kevin, "you've been trapped in Mainframe?"
"Yeah," Taylor replied. "My retrieval module was destroyed in a battle when a bunch of viruses invaded the Principal Office."
"How did you manage?"
"It wasn't easy. The Mainframers would have killed me right after I exited the Gateway if it hadn't been for Welman. I convinced them I was a scientist involved in a teleportation experiment, but it just didn't wash with Welman. He did some analysis of his own and figured out I was a user."
"What about the people? What are your Matrix and AndrAIa like?"
"I don't know who those people are," replied Taylor.
Kevin looked surprised. "I guess the variance between our realities is bigger than I thought."
"Your Enzo seems pretty similar to mine. Is he dating Zoë Mathis by any chance?"
"No. I don't think so. Then again, your Enzo is my Matrix. I'm assuming, of course, your Enzo doesn't have a younger copy."
"Are you saying that's what Enzo is? A backup?"
"Yep."
"Geez," Taylor said. "Things between us really are different."
"You might be surprised. Mainframe was nearly destroyed in a war with a virus named Megabyte. Don't suppose you ever heard of him, either." Taylor shook his head. "Be glad. That guy nearly knocked me out of a car in mid-flight."
"Sounds like you've got some stories yourself."
Kevin chuckled. "You'll never guess who I ran into a month ago, and in Mainframe, too. Martin MacDonald."
"You're joking."
"No. He released Daemon into the Supercomputer as a ploy to market his immune operating system software."
"Are you for real?"
"If I'm lyin' I'm dyin'."
"I can't believe it, but then again it's not surprising when I think about it. He always was..."
"Sinister?"
"I was going to say unstable, but yeah, sinister works too. It seems everything prior to the Gateway Command experiment is exactly parallel," Taylor stated. "In your reality the Gateway Command was a success, but there were no three travelers like in my history and there was never a Gateway Network."
Kevin handed Glitch to Taylor. The keytool had morphed into a laser spanner. The two scientists were busily reordering the microcircuits.
"Okay, the power source has been disconnected," Kevin said.
"Now we have to modify the spin of the particle beam from -1/2 to 1," Taylor explained as he aimed the keytool at a collection of relays. "That will create a beam of virtual gravitons."
"We'll have to figure out a way to direct the portal to a specific system."
"I'm already ahead on that. We can use components from the navcom to build a makeshift navigational array. So in your reality, what happened after the demonstration?"
Kevin did not want to lie. He desperately wanted to tell him the truth, that the Gateway transported a virus into Mainframe's Twin City which caused a colossal explosion that nullified thousands. He knew that soon he would have blood on his hands, he and Bob and Enzo. What was worst, they would all have to send Taylor to his unwitting grave to do it.
Outside, Enzo paced around the ship. Bob remained motionless, leaning against the hull. Enzo, finally aggravated beyond his limits, uttered a curse and left the immediate premises.
Bob walked after him in pursuit. "Where are you going?" he asked.
"Away. I need to think." Enzo's tone was one of seething anger. He was hurt, and Bob knew there was very little he could say or do to help alleviate his mounting grief. "Enzo, you know we have to do this."
"I know that," he shouted, stopping suddenly and turning to face his mentor. Enzo was furious, his face contorted in an expression of anger and fear. "I don't have to like it," he continued venomously.
"Enzo, if we try to change things we'll only make the future worse. We already know what would have happened if your dad succeeded. Do you really want that future?"
Enzo hesitated for a moment, then shook his head slowly, his face downcast, eyes closed as if in pain. "I don't understand how all this can be real. Why does it have to be us?"
"It just is," said Bob. "I'm sorry, Enzo."
Enzo finally looked up and faced the Guardian. "We're going to kill them all," he said. "We have to destroy the Twin City! My friends, my life before..."
He broke down into uncontrollable sobbing. Enzo may have been 18 hours old physically, but his heart was still that of a ten-hour-old boy, and that young heart was in torment. To return to the future they left behind meant they would have to knowingly cause the explosion that destroyed Mainframe's Twin City.
It would mean the genesis of Megabyte and Hexadecimal. It would mean the death of a father, the death of a childhood for Dot; it meant the Web for Bob, and hours of wandering across cyberspace for two small sprites. It was the most unfair thing fate could possibly pull on them. Despite the existence of parallel timelines, of other-whens and what-ifs, they were still destined to birth the very future that birthed them.
As Kevin Sawyer would later explain, fate had conspired to bring them all to this point in time and space. Taylor had traveled back in time and unwittingly caused the very history he was trying to divert when he unwittingly brought the three of them into an alternate past reality. From that point forward, the history known to Taylor would unfold exactly as he knew it. However, for every possible event in history there existed an infinite number of possible outcomes. Kevin, Bob, and Enzo represented a possible future reality, real to them, but hypothetical to Taylor. In order to return to the life they knew, they would have to cause their own history the same way Taylor had caused his.
Why Bob allowed this, he had no idea. It was dangerous enough to be this far from the ship, but Enzo had asked, and Bob was enough of an emotional wreck himself to indulge him. They were outside Enzo's old school, standing across the street at a bus stop. The final bell had just rung, and a flood of young sprites came pouring out of the front doors. Some were piling into yellow buses, others were being picked up by their parents. Such was the case with little Enzo Matrix, only instead of his father his big sister Dot pulled up to the curb and waited.
Strange as it seemed, Bob was tempted to walk over and talk to her. She looked so... amazing. Her long bangs were still tye-dyed, her lips were painted in a soft pink lipstick, her cheek was dusted with glittery makeup, and her pink dress accentuated her young figure. It was then Bob remembered this was not his Dot, at least not yet. His Dot was in the future, in a reality which might or might not come to be.
The Guardian felt a pang of guilt knowing that, in order to get back to her, he would have to knowingly help destroy the Twin City. Not for the first time, Bob wanted to do something to spare her and Enzo from the terror and heartbreak of losing their father. Deep down he knew there was nothing he could do. The explosion created Megabyte and Hexadecimal, and without Hex, Daemon would never be defeated and that would lead to Taylor's future. That could not be allowed.
The Temporal Protocol asserted itself, and Bob forced his feelings back into his deepest recesses. He knew now why time travel was so dangerous. The temptation to alter things was almost more than he could bear. Bob patted Enzo on the shoulder. It was time to leave.
When they returned to the ship, they found the two Sawyers ready with their modified hyperspace file lock.
"We had to remove a few circuits from the navigational computer," said Taylor. "But the file lock now has the ability to redirect the Gateway portal to any system whose coordinates we enter."
The file lock had been wired onto a square circuit board with an LED screen and a makeshift pad of numbered buttons. Kevin handed Glitch back to Bob, who reattached the keytool onto his arm.
"In our world-line the portal connected to the Supercomputer," Bob said. He took the file lock and programmed the necessary coordinates into the device. He handed it back to Taylor.
Kevin spoke next. "Remember, we're part of another time loop now. This is our history we're writing. When you enter the university, you won't see the earlier version of yourself that brought us here. If we are a part of our history now then the causal relationship that spawned your universe is no longer relevant."
"Let's hope so," said Taylor. "We've still got almost nine milliseconds. We can skip ahead in the ship."
And skip ahead they did. This journey was much more intense since the navcom was working on bypassed components. The team was jostled violently as they traveled from past to future. The ship landed outside the university nine milliseconds later after making a fifteen nanoseconds' jump across time.
"You take the file lock," Bob said. "It might look suspicious if the two of you walk in there. We'll stay here with the timeship until you get back."
Taylor nodded and headed toward the walkway, unknowingly to his death.
Enzo slammed his fist against the hull of the timeship after he had gone. "This isn't right!"
"Do you think we feel any different?" asked Bob. "This has to be done, Enzo."
"We didn't even tell him the truth," the youth continued. "He thinks he's going to walk out of there alive and processing."
"He wouldn't have done it willingly," said Kevin.
"I guess you'd know," Enzo said almost spitefully.
"Yes, I do know," Kevin replied plainly. "And I also know that I'd rather it be him than any one of us. Now listen, we don't have a lot of time here. I suggest we get in this thing and get back to our future. If everything goes right we should arrive back in our reality."
Sawyer took the pilot's seat while Bob secured the hatch. Sawyer manipulated the controls and got the craft airborne. He was not as familiar with the workings of the Relativity as his counterpart, Taylor, but he proved to be adaptable and soon had them high in the sky. Taylor had shown him some rudimentary principles when they disassembled the navcom. The coordinates were a combination of spatial and temporal factors. The destination was defined by pre-calculated functions already programmed into the computer. Kevin imputed the proper coordinates and the computer took over. Blackness consumed them once again.
Taylor took his previous seat. Like his counterpart said, there was no sign of his earlier self. This was an entirely new world-line. He could see the end of this nightmare finally in sight.
"System detected," Welman Matrix said. "Executing Gateway Command."
Kevin Taylor Sawyer aimed the hyperspace file lock at the Gateway and fired the beam. A white light suffused the portal, and Welman's control board shorted out.
A voice called out from the portal. "I am GIGABYTE!"
KABOOM
"Commander Matrix, we've got reports of a downed transport in Kits Sector. It just came out of nowhere."
"Don't bother me with this right now," Dot shouted. "Begin evac procedures. Get everyone out of the Principal Office!"
The explosion jerked her attention back to the vidwindow. A bright white flash engulfed Bob, Enzo, and Kevin. The whole building shook with the released energy of the Gateway portal. Lights flickered, pulses race, and Dot screamed helplessly.
"Bob!" she screamed.
Dot fully expected to delete any nano. Her mind was filled with images from the Twin City, a wave of energy rippling through the system, destroying everything in its path. To her surprise, nothing happened. The vidwindow went to static for a few nanos, then returned to its image of the Core Room. The Gateway Command stood intact and inactive. The room seemed undamaged by the energy discharge. There was only one problem: Bob, Kevin, and Enzo were gone.
"What happened?" Dot asked.
"We are still processing," Phong said. "Oh, thank the user."
"I need a status report," Dot said. "Where are they? Dad?"
"I... I don't know," said Welman. "They were caught in the blast radius. It's possible they were... that they..." His voice trailed off. User, what had gone wrong?
"Dad," Dot said, "could they have survived?"
"Commander Matrix," said a CPU troop. "That transport that crashed, it has survivors."
"Phong, take care of this," Dot said. "Our main priority is finding out what happened to our people."
"But ma'am," persisted the troop, "it's them. They're the ones who crashed. They're already on their way over here."
It took Kevin a moment to regain his equilibrium. The jolt of the crash had knocked his senses off-kilter. As he focused his vision through the cockpit, he was able to tell they had crash-landed in Kits.
He heard a groan from behind. "Everybody still breathing?" asked Sawyer.
"Yeah," said Bob. "No thanks to your brilliant piloting skills. I thought you said you could fly this thing."
"I did the best I could," said Kevin. Piloting the time machine was difficult without the help of the navcom.
They used the side hatch to exit the craft. There were already several squadrons of CPUs cordoning off the crash site.
"This is Mike the TV coming to you from the scene of a horrible transport crash in Kits Sector. Just moments ago, an unidentified flyer crash-landed not a hundred yards from the Eight Ball Apartments building... Wait, the pilots are alive. Get a close up, get a close up!"
Bob, Kevin, and Enzo were approached by a CPU squadron commander. "Sir," said the binome to Bob, "what in the Net happened?"
"It's a long story," said Bob. "We need to get to the Principal Office right now."
Microseconds later a CPU patrol unit landed at the front steps of the Principal Office. The three journey-worn time travelers climbed the steps and entered the main hall. They were greeted by Dot, Welman, Phong, and the others.
At the sight of his father in his nullsuit, Enzo broke down in tears and ran to his father, embracing him.
"I'm sorry!" he cried. "I'm so sorry!"
"What is it, son?" Welman asked. "What happened to you?"
Bob held Dot tightly, pulled back slightly and kissed her forcefully on the lips.
"Bob," she asked, "what's happened? You just disappeared out of the Core Room a few nanos ago."
"We've been traveling," Kevin said. He turned and looked out upon the shining city of Mainframe. "Looks like my idea worked. Funny. I almost wish it hadn't."
By the end of the second everyone knew all there was to know: the time loop, the interference from the other reality, the truth about the Twin City Explosion. All was laid bare. The other Sawyer was now dead, nullified in the explosion. He had been the reason the portal locked onto the Supercomputer in the first place, and it could not have been done without them.
It would be some time before anyone could understand the implications of what happened. For now, all was forgiven. They had blood on their hands, but it was history, and it was the past. Given the alternative, no one could complain. However, that did not alleviate the emotional strain they had been through.
Kevin stood on the steps of the P.O. staring contemplatively over the city when Enzo walked up beside him.
"How are you holding up?" asked Kevin.
"Better," said the teen. "You?"
"I'm trying to figure out if what I did constitutes a form of suicide."
Enzo shook his head, not amused. "I can't understand how you can be so cold about this."
"If I seem cold it's because I'm trying to reconcile with myself. This whole thing has made me sick."
"Ditto."
Silence.
"Which one is real? Which version of history, I mean."
"They're both equally real, Enzo. I can give you a perfectly reasonable scientific answer, but I don't think it would do you any good. All I can tell you is that time and space are a real bitch."