A Precog in the Machine

Images of nightmares hung briefly on the periphery of Talli Sarah Mann’s consciousness. Every time she tried to catch them in clarity they darted out of her vision before vanishing from view entirely. It took her a moment to remember where she was – the bedroom of her small one bedroom house in Cordoba, which she joyfully shared with her boyfriend William Room after moving from Cambridge four months before. Her time here had been Heaven by comparison; she did not enjoy living in that red brick, blue blooded University city where air was so thick with pretention it made her feel suffocated. In Spain, thanks to its slow pace, warm in temperature and more so temperament lifestyle she could finally relax, well she had been able until about thirty minutes before.

She was awake now, too awake and all too disturbed by the images that darkened the sparsely lit room. She checked her phone, ‘3am’. Talli groaned before rolling over and staring at the silhouette of Will; she smiled slightly at his sleeping form. That smile didn’t last, something was scratching form behind her eyes desperately trying to get her attention. Huffing, she arose to the uncomfortable cold that caused the sweat to steam off her forehead and freeze to her t-shirt. She enveloped herself within the modicum comfort of her bathrobe and slippers. That was her one complaint since moving to the glorious conurbation of Cordoba, not that summer days grew painfully hot for painfully long but that in the winter when it got cold (and boy did it get cold), their modest one bedroom house lacked any central heating to keep her such uncomfortable temperatures in.

‘It’s something to do with…’ She whispered, but the thought was gone again, disappearing back into the night.

Talli desperately needed to know what had disquieted her sleep, she could not settle otherwise. She stepped into the kitchen to drench her parched throat with chilled tap water and take a moment to look out on the dimly lit courtyard. Something in the grounds seemed slightly misplaced, as if the world had been tilted onto a Dutch angle. And then she saw it. It made her beating heart pause for a moment before bursting back to life in her chest, pounding sharp and hard.

‘… The hell?’ Talli coughed through a sip of water.

What she saw was an orange tree, an innocuous oddity that simply shouldn’t be. It was aged and diminished in the winter cold, but stood defiant in the harsh temperatures as if it had done so for some fifty years or more. The problem was she was sure, or rather, she was absolutely certain it wasn’t there yesterday. Every day she had taken a moment to appreciate the beauty of her life as it was now, drank in every line of the view of the sandstone courtyard from her new home. She knew that view inside out and indeed outside in, there was never an orange tree there before.

‘Am I still asleep, or have I awoken into another dimension?’ She queried dizzily.

That thought in any other moment in her life she would have dismissed as an absurdity but right now it seemed entirely rational. The popularised theory that peoples’ consciousness can phase shift from one reality to another has been about since 2011 on Earth, and 2099,209999,2099999 on Devirian – the Devirians’ have a slightly different calendar to Humans.

On Earth the theory arose after a series of conversations between people who distinctly remembered Nelson Mandela’s death, not on the 5^th of December 2013 as a human rights hero (as that hadn’t happened yet), but in the 1980’s, in prison as a martyr. These people remembered the incident vividly and came to postulate that every now and again people slide between realities. The theory is of course nonsense, as any sound scientist will tell you there aren’t multiple realities, there is only one, singular, that the Universe exists in and the idea that the notion that Nelson Mandela may have died twice is poppycock. Nelson Mandela didn’t die twice, he has of course died four times.

Talli desperately wanted to wake her sleeping partner so he could reassure her that she wasn’t going mad and that the tree really had broken in to their courtyard and taken root. But she couldn’t, instead she did nothing, frozen by fear, slowly freezing, fretting at what it all meant.

Nelson Mandela first died six hours after birth from a congenital heart defect that would never have been detected by physicians of the time. His mother mourned him ceaselessly for two years until King Christian X of Denmark made the reluctant decision to abdicate his thrown and dismiss his de facto government to resolve the Easter crisis. Seven years later Nelson Mandela died again when he fell out of a tree in Mvezo. Once again his mother mourned him for seven years before a seemingly innocuous decision by a rather young Ronald Reagan prevented the branch from breaking. His third death was, as stated, in prison, when guards mercilessly beat him for four days until his congenitally damage free heart could not take anymore and just gave out. That time Mr Mandela was saved by a Pennsylvanian estate agent who decided not to buy a lottery ticket.

Talli slipped back under the covers shivering, unsure if it was because of the cold or the fear. Will instinctively rolled over and snuggled up to her, he always knew when she needed to be cuddled, even whilst in or listening to R.E.M. She relaxed a little, and then a lot, taking a moment to be completely happy before returning to her disquieting memories to scour them for answers.

There has only been one person of the Human race, a physicist as it happens, who has ever really appreciated the true nature of Time. This drunken, rather sociopathic physicist understood that time is both linear and deterministic, entirely bound by the laws that created it. He knew the laws that define the Universe state that from the moment that the Universe Big Banged into existence it has been following an almost unchangeable arch to it’s own demise. Just as every action has a equal and opposite reaction, every reaction has another equal and opposite reaction and so on and so forth into an apparent eternity, entirely predictable if you had a mind for such things, which the physicist did not.

Equally given an infinite Universe all life on Earth, from the most inconsequential flesh eating bacteria to the most objectionable Burberry ridden banker who makes said flesh eating bacteria seem like a nice date in the park, are not only likely to be born into existence, but given enough time guaranteed to be. By the very finite nature of DNA combinations, given an infinite amount of time, the bacteria and the banker will be born an infinite amount of times, as disturbing as that thought may be. Evolution isn’t the progression of life to survive changing harsh environmental conditions but rather harsh changing environmental conditions are simply the trigger for the next preset DNA combination. Life isn’t just made out of star stuff, life’s existence is written in the stars.

It therefore seems almost perverse then that within this deterministic, remarkable Universe, which bore all possible life in the flash of its very birth, there lies within the most advanced of these life forms the very switch that can kill all of reality.

Talli’s stiff, unclenching fists relented a little as she gently slipped back into slumber. Like fireworks, the dreams popped in front of her flickering eyes and snapped her back awake. It took a moment as the dreams hovered just above her like clouds, before reforming as something she recognised.

Every human civilisation within the history of the Earth has made gods of certain men and women. Most of these men and women were often as unremarkable as the common civet, which have also been occasionally worshiped. What elevated most of these people to status of deity was either their collection of gold shiny things, the amount of land they had acquired, or the number of malodorous boars they could have sacrificed unto themselves. This is not a phenomenon reserved for divinity either, for enough cash people can buy themselves a knighthood, a pontiff or a ‘world’s greatest dad’ t-shirt. However a very few of these gods among men and women did in fact have a rather god-like ability.

At first it was all too much for Talli, too much information. Her senses were on fire. Painfully bright lights seared her retinas, sharp high-pitched screeching burst her eardrums and she could smell toast. She was pretty sure she was having a stroke until she realised the smell was from yesterday’s leftover breakfast that Will had dropped on the floor and he still hadn’t tidied it up yet. She could feel her brain splitting, a migraine storming its way through her frontal lobe to her cerebellum, but she pushed on, continued to understand what she was being shown.

These so called “gods” with god-like abilities were exactly the same as the rest of the population but for one crucial difference. The human brain may look like a cauliflower found round the back of the sofa but unlike the humble brassica the brain works on a quantum level and not just in terms of superposition. The superposition trick isn’t so impressive frankly, even grass utilizes it to send electrons through every single energy pathway at once to find the most efficient way into the reaction centre to burn water and make sugars for its own survival. It’s just one way grass is like a quantum computer, in another way they’re very good at solving quadratic equations, but they don’t like talking about that much, it makes the cauliflowers jealous.

What makes the human brain sentient (as is with all sentient life) is that it is quantumly entangled in both space and in time. It is locked in a temporal loop with itself, meaning that it can have a lovely chat with its future and past selves to get all the juicy gossip, and it often does. Unfortunately for humans the only part of their brain that is entangled is the subcortex, limiting those lovely chats to the subconscious. Your subconscious knows every right choice to every decision you will ever make, but unfortunately most conscious people are too arrogant to listen, under the illusion that they know better than their instincts, so are doomed to repeat their mistakes over and over again, forever, for the rest of infinity. This is why your subconscious hates you and frankly is why you often have that nightmare where you’re in public and have forgotten to wear any pants and/or trousers.

The truly god-like gods of ole were the few whose conscious brain had also been entangled together. These people could hear their future and past selves talking to them, they could remember what hasn’t happened yet. These people were called things like Tykhe or Fortuna, Ganesh or Ebisu. They were improbably lucky fore they knew every right decision to ever make; they could predict every roll of dice, always knew which path to take, every answer to every question they were ever asked. Their luck became lore and the lore became mysticism and the mysticism, religion. Of course these types of people still exist – Talli for example – even if the lore and the mysticism and the religion does not. Unfortunately for Talli the religions worshiping people like her died out thanks to people like her. Talli is a atheists luck god with self-esteem issues who doesn’t believe in herself.

The problems the Universe encounters arises from those troublesome ungod-like individuals who actually on occasion have the good sense listen to their subconscious selves. Change one decision in the cacophony of determinism, say by not buying a lottery ticket or maybe not having chicken tonight, and not only will your own timeline change, but every related timeline will be as well. It’s like geese flying in formation, they are simply gliding on a current, change the current and all the geese will change direction.

Had Mr. John Summers of Pennsylvania not subconsciously decided to un-win the lottery because it was ‘too much hassle and that he ‘preferred being an estate agent anyway’, you would still be getting to work on your very affordable jetpack. This is just one of the many reasons why subconsciously humanity hates estate agents.

Some altered decision have far wider ramifications than just limiting your boss to figurative hot air to get up the corporate ladder. Make a big enough decision and the very origins of the Universe can be unwritten. Talli could see it, she saw it all and she could do was cry herself back to sleep.

 

***

 

‘Tssssst.’ was the sound Fabien Swing heard from above him.

He fought against his lungs as he desperately tried to hold his breath. His chest burned, his throat silently screamed but he would not relent.

‘Tssssst.’ Fabien could hear again, closer this time.

Fabien prayed to Elvis, the Big Cheese in the sky, that the thing wouldn’t hear his heart beating, as it was pounding so hard that if it were to break out of his chest it could make a pretty nifty makeshift pneumatic drill.

‘Tssssst.’

Fabien could feel saliva drip onto his dishevelled forehead. It knew he was crouched within a mossy crevice below the giant bushes. He could feel himself blacking out so reluctantly, despite his better judgement, he let his lungs inhale and exhale again. If the thing didn’t know he was there before it certainly did now.

More foul drip, drip, drips fell onto Fabien’s forehead.

‘This is how I’m going to die, as an entrée for a giant bug.’ Fabien shuddered before realising that he wasn’t being tripped on by saliva, it was rain.

Large heavy drops forced themselves through the thick shrubbery. Peering out, Fabien could see that the thing, which had been chasing him, had been driven away by the heavy fall. For a moment Fabien breathed a much needed sigh of relief before bursting into tears.

He let himself fall into subconscious for a while in that damp crevice; it wasn’t a sound sleep, heavily disturbed as it was by anxiety dreams. In them he was being chased through an unknown giant forest by a twelve-foot long worm but in his dream the worm had eyes, and a mouth, and terrifying teeth, and about a thousand legs. Fabien’s dream self realised he was being chased by a twelve-foot long carnivorous millipede, not a worm and he forced himself awake. Fabien hated millipedes.

Fabien wasn’t sure he had been asleep for ten minutes or ten hours, but it didn’t matter because he had awoken still stuck in this strange land. The sky still crying heavy tears mirroring his own despondent mood. He could literally feel his stomach sink into his bowels with disappointment at the realisation he was still alive.

‘That’s it.’ Fabien snapped.

He strode angrily out from his safe little hole and drove deeper into the oxygen rich wilderness. He was losing his mind, little as there may to lose, in this alarmingly sized flora and fauna filled jungle. He was bereft of hope; he had given up on ever seeing Fred again and so had stopped trying to call him.

‘Why is everything so damned big here?’ He spat disgruntled as he launched himself through a trap of vines.

‘I’ve been chased by damned carnivorous insects and the neon orange birds of prey, conversational bees and a very angry boulder.’ The boulder wasn’t angry of course, it just looked angry.

‘And I could have taken it all, dealt with all this hideousness,’ Fabien yelled at the world, is lower lip quivering, ‘if my suit, my beautiful hand stitched suit, hadn’t been damn well been ruined.’

‘Look at me! I look like a goddamned hobo!’ Fabien screamed out to no-one in particular, for the first time feeling safe as he was cloaked in protection by his unbound anger, completely unaware that he was the prey to the deadliest thing on this mysterious planet.

 

***

 

One-eye silently snapped the neck of a ten-foot scarab beetle. Biggs emerged from the bushes wide-eyed with alarm. He never fully appreciated quite how dangerous One-eye actually was.

‘Did you hear that?’ Biggs asked, forcing another conversation.

One-eye said nothing, he just snapped one of the pincer from the decapitated head and examined it. Too sharp, he thought to himself, too clean, not nearly brutal enough.

‘He m-m-must be close.’ Biggs said with a sudden onset of a stutter.

No response. One-eye’s intense silence was making Biggs nervous, and when Biggs got nervous he talked; Biggs had never been so scared before.

‘So where do you think we are?’ Biggs said far too quickly. Still no response. ‘I figure we must be dead y’know? That this must be the afterlife. But it can’t be Hell because there’s no fire and brimstone and it’s not Heaven because there’s… no clouds…’ Biggs trailed off unsure if speaking was maybe a very bad idea.

‘and very little harp music.’ He said with authority as his nerves got the better of his common sense, they needed to keep filling the silence. ‘So you know where I figure we must be?’ This has got to be Purgatory. Yeah, that’s the only thing that makes sense.’ Biggs stopped.

Silence hung in the air for a moment like a like the pink mist that comes from shooting someone in the face far too close. Biggs made the sign of the cross and quietly asked for forgiveness for all the people he’s whacked even though they deserved it and he really enjoyed anyway so that surely meant that murder couldn’t really be a sin.

‘The only thing I can’t figure…’ Biggs said turning from whence they had come. ‘is how we died?’

‘I mean last thing I remember was that I was going to cut off that smooth singing dingbat’s dingaling and then suddenly I was drowning. Thanks for saving me by the way! Hey do you think if you die in the afterlife you die for good? Or do you think you go to the next afterlife?’

Biggs turned back to One-eye to find he was now staring at him with an intensity that worryingly he had seen before. It had always been just before – always before – One-eye performed the most disturbingly brutal murders. For example One-eye had the same look on his face when he had killed Mrs Geraldine Flounder whose coroner report had stated she had been hit by the force of a truck. She had in fact been hit by One-eye. And it was the same expression had when One-eye had decided to kill his ex-wives, all five of them.

‘You’re not dead Biggs, not yet.’ One-eye said without moving his lips.

Biggs tried to get his legs to move, to run as fast as they could, but all he could do was relieve himself into his trousers. One-eye looked down at the wet patch running its way down the front Biggs’ pants and smirked with a grin that would scare the Devil himself.

‘Yes, that’ll do nicely.’

 

***

‘I’m a racoon, I am, I am! I’m a racoon, I am!’ Koosh sang cheerfully from Breeze’s rucksack.

‘Shhhh!’ Breeze hushed her jubilant stuffed toy.

‘I’m. A. Racoon. I. Am. I. Am.’ Koosh repeated loudly and tunelessly through angry, gritted teeth.

Breeze sighed. Fortunately when you have facial piercings, colourful hair and a few tattoos, with enough confidence you can walk through the streets of London with a talking stuffed toy in your bag and a living jacket on your back and the passing commuters won’t bat an eyelid. It was slightly harder to walk through London inconspicuously with a space-time anomaly known as Fred hovering by your side. Well it would be if any of the commuters ever looked up from the glowing screens of their smart phones.

‘We need to find Professor. Dewar.’ Breeze said half in thought as she scanned her London A-to-Z for the possible police stations he had been detained in.

‘Why?’ Koosh asked breaking from its jolly “song”.

‘Because he’s an old friend and the only person who can possibly help us.’ Breeze replied quietly.

‘Why?’ Koosh repeated irritatingly.

‘Because he knows about time and that’s what we’re running out of.’

‘Why?’ Koosh said again enjoying how annoying it was being.

‘Because the Universe is coming to an end, I think.’ Breeze said suddenly looking up at the street and blinking at the sunlight. ‘Time is ending, I’m pretty sure it is anyways and Dewy knows all about time. He has theories on it and everything.’

‘Why.’ Koosh repeated one last time for maximum effect.

‘Because he’s a scientist. Scientists have theories on things.’ Breeze reasoned, too deep in thought to take the bait.

Koosh relented on this angle of irritation and went back to musically proclaiming its particular genus.

‘I can’t figure out which direction we should go in.’ She huffed.

‘Well there’s a station down there.’ Arnold, snuggle wrapped round Breeze as any good jacket should be, said directing her arm.

Arnold had been released from its wooden prison on the proviso that it do its very best to try to not be a complete leather ass-bag. Arnold said it wouldn’t promise anything but it would try to at least try.

‘There are two that direction…and…about five over that way.’ Arnold said pointing Breeze’s arm.

‘But that’s like a million police stations; we’re never going to find him.’ Breeze pouted disheartened.

‘Why not just ask Fred to take you to him.’ Koosh said breaking off from its song for a moment, for no other reason than to prove how fantastically clever this particular little stuffed raccoon was.

‘I, uh, say that again?’ Breeze asked a little lost by the toys train of thought.

‘Ask Fred to take us to this Dr Drool – or whatever this oh-so-smart scientist is called.’ Repeated Koohs, a little irked its genius hadn’t been recognised straight away. ‘It’s a hole in the fabric of space-time. You can communicate with it, ergo it knows where Dr Drool is and can take you to him in an instant.’ Koosh enjoyed using the word ‘ergo’, it magnified its brilliance.

‘That’s brilliant.’ Breeze squeaked.

Koosh snuggled down comfortably into the rucksack. The word ‘ergo’ had successfully served its purpose and so was granted immunity from being culled from the dictionary when it was eventually made Lord and Emperor of all it surverys.

‘Fred take me to Dewy.’ Breeze said in all smiles.

Fred twisted itself underneath the little wood nymph and transported her, her living leather jacket and the precocious stuffed toy a little bit closer towards their deaths.