“Thou shalt not violate causality in my domain”. Or so commands the third or fourth item (I honestly can’t remember) on the constitution of this dingy little backwater monarchy. It’s a slithy little law, it might even be called clever, if anyone it concerns would actually follow it.
If you had told me any political leader would remain in power after the first Interloper stopped by, I wouldn’t have believed you. Doubly so, if you had told that same first guy would strike up a deal with them, effectively cementing the same powers you’d expect to be destroyed.
But, being entirely honest, I didn’t care. Might makes right. Well, at least here, it does. Being in the Hierarchy gives you a free pass on almost everything, except when someone more important than you starts paying attention.
Enforcer. That effectively summarized my job description: playing right hand to anyone higher up on the Hierarchy (which, for me, was everyone). I had to (scratch that, I get to; positive thinking) go around and collect taxes, bully troublemakers and do whatever errands come up. Sometimes, maybe once a month or so, I have to get to tackle an honest-to-god Interloper, with a capital I.
An Interloper is, generally speaking, anyone with some kind of special supernormal ability, but it almost exclusively refers to the ones with abilities relating to time, information or minds. In other words, the only ones capable of doing anything worthy of note. The Hierarchy has it’s own interlopers (with a lowercase i) who deal with the dissidents. It’s sensible, really. Precognitive interference is a well-known phenomena, and it’s hard to read the mind of someone whose brain strolled right on past human limits a long time ago.
But, any upstart precog or psychic could easily do enough damage to be an embarrassment. Or be enough of a pain to remove to get grandfathered into the Hierarchy. This, of course, means we typically scramble to take out any and every Anomaly that turns up.
Which, to make a long story short, is why I’m currently strutting through dilapidated underground tunnels.
A labyrinthine maze, rendered acoustically in dripping pipes, creaking structures, and a soothing drone of industrial machinery. I came in alone, and this place is seriously starting to creep me out. There are sterile white biolamps lighting up the halls, but not enough. The lighting is scattered enough that the ambiance is a few notches above “horror movie”, and the whole mise en scène of the place could be completely summed up as disuse, decay, and deterioration.
It’s never clear why these tunnels were carved, or what they were used for; they predate the Hierarchy, probably. Whatever its past, the present of this place is plainly obscure.
And perhaps it may have remained that way. Aside from spelunkers who may or may not have been heard from ever again, the government and the populace would have nothing to do with these tunnels. But the incongruous reports had been compiled, the odd missing person case or even ‘’possible anomaly’’ had attained enough weight to have Hierarchy interested.
Any Anomaly carries too much risk for the Hierarchy (or the populace -- positive thinking!) to allow anything less than an enforcer to investigate.
And did I mention the ever-present sense of déjà vu that has pervaded this place since I came in?
It feels as though every turn I make, I’m in at least ten different places, like moving in every direction at once. I walk into a T-intersection with unintelligible graffiti on the walls, and I swear I’ve seen this hallway from three different angles in the past second.
I’ve got a rifle in my hands, and I keep swinging it around, daring the shadows to vomit forth whoever else was walking around here, following me.
And did I mention the footsteps resounding staccato all around me? The vague motions of shadows dancing, cast by nothing at all? The rare sight of a person faint enough you convince yourself it’s a trick of the light?
I reach another forked intersection, two paths going in either direction. The hall had widened as I walked down it (becoming wide enough to fork, of course), and you could plausibly drive two trucks side by side down the corridor now. I still look around, trying to ferret out whatever ghosts are shadowing me.
My vision seems to blur, like my eyes can’t decide if I’m standing right here, or two meters to my left. A vigorous shake doesn’t do anything, but the feeling goes as quickly as it comes.
If I wasn’t spooked already, that did it. I took a few seconds to re-focus. I open my eyes, and get back to what I was doing.
A Y-intersection. Which way to go? There’s a protocol for these decisions, there always is. A neuro-electrical signal travels along my brainstem to an implant, queuing up a randomly generated number and–
«2»
I turn left, and keep going.
This is standard policy to deal with potential precogs. Randomize everything. How often do you look backwards? How thoroughly do you search the area? What directions to do you go? Do you take this shot now, or wait for a better one?
Randomize everything.
The theory behind it is that fluctuations at the quantum level would produce deviations in parallel Everette branches, (that is ‘parallel universes’ for you neophytes), and those flucuations are detected, assigned a number and it’s fed back to you. In one universe, you would get a ‘1’, and thus do one thing, in the next, you would get a ‘2’, and hence do something else. This muddies most visions of the future; it exchanges a certainty of losing for a possibility of winning, of surprises. This, of cours–
And, in a flash of insight just like in the movies, everything comes together. I understand exactly what was going on here. Maybe even exactly what that droning industrial machinery is for. As per protocol, I had randomized all of my movements through this labyrinth maze. Every time there was a fork, a intersection, an oxbow, I used the flip of a quantum coin to determine my path. With randomness, all possibilities are possible, by definition. This means in a spliterpoint timeline, maybe I turned right back there, instead of left. Most of the time parallel branches don’t affect each other, but some Interlopers are known to toy with those same physical laws.
In other words, what if these tunnels, those droning machines, just confuse the shit out of the universe? Those footsteps and those faint shadows aren’t someone looking for or following me, they’re me. The universe just forgot that happened in a different continuity and I’m not suppose to hear, see, or know about them.
That déjà vu, that feeling of being in two places at once, happens because the universe forgot who exactly I am, and smeared my memories across the various branched versions of me.
But, even more chilling, what if this is just a side-effect of the real purpose of the machines? I confidently doubt anyone with the capacity to enact this effect would do it just to create a spooky funhouse in this obscure corner of the Hierarchy’s jurisdiction.
So, some form of dimension manipulation technology that happens causes some arcane dimensional bleed-over effect in the nearby area? But isn’t intended to? Perhaps it’s some kind of transportation device–
Jesus Christ.
We’ve already lost.
Communicating across branches, with a device like this, would easily give you the capacity to launch a Groundhog Day attack on anything you wished. Even with all the resources the Hierarchy had, could we counter an enemy with infinite do-overs, infinite chances to get everything perfect?
A tiny little query lights up in the depths of my mind, faint enough to be ignored, but slowly crawling to my attention. It inspires a question I could never voice: why am I an interloper? What’s my ability?
There came a dawning sense of horror, with that realization that never ceases to terrify me. I can never remember what my ability was, never remember I even had one, never even question or notice that gap in my knowledge. But that block is gone, now.
Would you willingly sacrifice yourself, if it meant fixing everything?
That, is my Power. It’s a shadow in my mind, hiding itself from my view, from my notice, preventing me from thinking of or about it. Only emerging when I needed it most, when it knew I’d have no choice but to cut myself on the offered blade, the double-edged sword that can, in one swing, cut through any and every problem.
I just had to die to make it happen.
I’d never see the victory I’d win or the problem I’d solve. I’d be erased from existence, from Possibility. The flow of time would be diverted away from this timeline, erasing this eventuality.
Just a simple flexure of my will and I’d cease to be, reduced to a ghost of knowledge, to be sent back and to warn my past self, steering them away from this course of action. Once that was done, I’d lose even that meager existence, and that same past self would reap the rewards of my decision.
The activation of my Power was just a question. Was this situation soluble? Was it worth dying to fix it?
But the very asking of the question always implied my answer, and my answer would never change.
I cease to exist.