terms and tactics, and technology too. "Whatever works. The ends justify the means."
"What if your ends are the wrong ends? What if anachronism isn't enough?"
"For what?"
"For the attainment of humanity's grandest desire: to become as gods."
He frowned, an expression with which I am now very familiar. "You think we should be more anachronistic?"
"More than anachronistic," I said. "That's just the first step."
Before I could explain more, Alice-Angeles interrupted to tell me that the Apparatus had found a landline into the complex. The gestalt possessed data I needed to see immediately.
I ended the conversation with Bergamasc without regret, and I let him go in Malan, just as I promised myself I would. He tried to talk to me before we parted ways, but I ignored him. I had a campaign to prepare for, other priorities. He looked puzzled and hurt as we drove away. Chained to the side of the nuke, he appeared, in the relentless rain, to be transparent and devoid of color. He seemed to find my ignoring of him far more affronting than resentment or hatred.
Two days out of Malan, we were pounded by micro-missiles dropped from orbit. The fury of the attack was unprecedented. Alice-Angeles and I barely escaped with our lives. My boxer was killed when a sliver of metal sliced half his head clean off. Even dying, he tried to protect me, clutching at my arm to hold me close. I had to shake him loose with some considerable effort.
Another dawn ticks by, and Bergamasc is sitting before me, holding a new moon of bread crust in one hand. I smell the rich aromas of olive oil and cheese. The produce is fresh and of local origin. Occasionally I can smell baking from beyond the walls of my stone cell.
"Welcome back," he says. "Have a nice trip?"
I realize then that this is no ordinary day. It falls between the second and third dawns of his ultimatum—and if he has his way, it will be my last. There have been times when, in the grip of a fleeting fury, I have thought him quite capable of the attempt. What mood will he be in tomorrow morning?
We were talking a moment ago, he and I, but for a moment I can't place the terminus of our conversation.
Instead I ask him, "How much do you think you know?"
"You tell me. Don't you already know how this conversation will end?"
"It doesn't work like that."
"Why don't you tell me how it does work, then? I'm listening."
I think back to Malan, and to the few words we exchanged there, and I decide that I am tired of playing games.
"It's really not so complicated. I don't see time the way you do—but that doesn't mean I see the future. Not as you think it means. I can see some parts of your future, sometimes. Not all of them. It's the same with the past. I can see the days I've lived, just like you, only my days don't clock forward one at a time. My life winds through the past and future, following a different kind of progression to the one you're used to. And why shouldn't that be so? Physics shows us that this moment we both call 'the present' is the one that matters. How we came to be here, and where we go from here, is entirely arbitrary."
He is listening. "Can you control which days you see?"
"No, and I can't revisit a day I've already lived. I can only keep moving, as you do, but..." My right hand inscribes a complicated spiral through the air. "...around."
"You've never told me this before. Why not?"
"I knew I would tell you at some point. That point is now. Sooner or later, by your frame of reference, means nothing to me."
He nods slowly. "Hence the transition. Hence your mood swings. And hence the mistakes you made on the field, too. Presumably you didn't learn a key piece of information you'd need on some days until after those days were passed—because there are gaps in your history, counterbalanced by the fact that you can see some days in the future. Right?"
"You persist in believing that I made mistakes. But apart from that, you are correct. Does that mean you believe
"What if your ends are the wrong ends? What if anachronism isn't enough?"
"For what?"
"For the attainment of humanity's grandest desire: to become as gods."
He frowned, an expression with which I am now very familiar. "You think we should be more anachronistic?"
"More than anachronistic," I said. "That's just the first step."
Before I could explain more, Alice-Angeles interrupted to tell me that the Apparatus had found a landline into the complex. The gestalt possessed data I needed to see immediately.
I ended the conversation with Bergamasc without regret, and I let him go in Malan, just as I promised myself I would. He tried to talk to me before we parted ways, but I ignored him. I had a campaign to prepare for, other priorities. He looked puzzled and hurt as we drove away. Chained to the side of the nuke, he appeared, in the relentless rain, to be transparent and devoid of color. He seemed to find my ignoring of him far more affronting than resentment or hatred.
Two days out of Malan, we were pounded by micro-missiles dropped from orbit. The fury of the attack was unprecedented. Alice-Angeles and I barely escaped with our lives. My boxer was killed when a sliver of metal sliced half his head clean off. Even dying, he tried to protect me, clutching at my arm to hold me close. I had to shake him loose with some considerable effort.
Another dawn ticks by, and Bergamasc is sitting before me, holding a new moon of bread crust in one hand. I smell the rich aromas of olive oil and cheese. The produce is fresh and of local origin. Occasionally I can smell baking from beyond the walls of my stone cell.
"Welcome back," he says. "Have a nice trip?"
I realize then that this is no ordinary day. It falls between the second and third dawns of his ultimatum—and if he has his way, it will be my last. There have been times when, in the grip of a fleeting fury, I have thought him quite capable of the attempt. What mood will he be in tomorrow morning?
We were talking a moment ago, he and I, but for a moment I can't place the terminus of our conversation.
Instead I ask him, "How much do you think you know?"
"You tell me. Don't you already know how this conversation will end?"
"It doesn't work like that."
"Why don't you tell me how it does work, then? I'm listening."
I think back to Malan, and to the few words we exchanged there, and I decide that I am tired of playing games.
"It's really not so complicated. I don't see time the way you do—but that doesn't mean I see the future. Not as you think it means. I can see some parts of your future, sometimes. Not all of them. It's the same with the past. I can see the days I've lived, just like you, only my days don't clock forward one at a time. My life winds through the past and future, following a different kind of progression to the one you're used to. And why shouldn't that be so? Physics shows us that this moment we both call 'the present' is the one that matters. How we came to be here, and where we go from here, is entirely arbitrary."
He is listening. "Can you control which days you see?"
"No, and I can't revisit a day I've already lived. I can only keep moving, as you do, but..." My right hand inscribes a complicated spiral through the air. "...around."
"You've never told me this before. Why not?"
"I knew I would tell you at some point. That point is now. Sooner or later, by your frame of reference, means nothing to me."
He nods slowly. "Hence the transition. Hence your mood swings. And hence the mistakes you made on the field, too. Presumably you didn't learn a key piece of information you'd need on some days until after those days were passed—because there are gaps in your history, counterbalanced by the fact that you can see some days in the future. Right?"
"You persist in believing that I made mistakes. But apart from that, you are correct. Does that mean you believe
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