The eighth episode, wherein the ASCRIBEPodcast finally enters the weird world of science fiction(!!!) to explore a story of monologues, hubris, and many, many unanswered questions.
Inspired by the phrase, “A stitch in time saves two in the bush.”
STORY
The place: earth, more or less. The year: irrelevant. Since the invention of the tesseract made time travel achievable, things have gotten… messy. In an effort to maintain the integrity of the space/time continuum, the government passed regulations to limit the use of this powerful device. These, of course, proved ineffective. Instead, the job was given to an elite group of men and women, tasked with doing the impossible, and ensuring the survival of reality as we know it. They are the ones who clean up the messes, even if it means making a few of their own. These are the Custodians, and these are their stories.
“We’re being lied to, Sara. This isn’t the best that things could be.” Michael was very serious as he stared into my eyes, and if I hadn’t known him as well as I did, I would have been scared. Even still, his words did not put me at ease.
“It’s all a conspiracy, and it goes to the top. The very top. They’re all in on it; they’re all afraid of what would happen if someone who really knew what they were doing got ahold of this. That’s why they’ve hired us: to make sure that doesn’t happen. But it’s just fear. They have no idea what they’re missing.”
He was speaking of the tesseract. Time travel. Since its discovery 10 standard year units ago, miracles previously only dreamed of had come within our grasp. Time was merely another dimension in which to move with impunity, or so we thought. The past was accessible, and the future attainable. It was the greatest scientific discovery of the millennium; of all millenniums. And it had come at a price.
“Just think, Sara; think of the good we could do. For mankind, for the world, for everything. It’s so simple. But they can’t see it. They only see what they want to see: the mistakes and failures. But every great leap forward has to start somewhere. All we need is someone bold enough to see it through.”
That price had been paid in full. It turns out that time travel is incredibly simple. Once we stumbled upon the secret, we realized the more amazing thing was that we hadn’t found it sooner. Almost anyone could do it, but it was what happened afterward that proved disastrous. Once you went backward (or forward) in time, inevitably there would be changes to your own recollection of history. Reconciling two or more incompatible versions of events simultaneously proved impossible. It was this that caused the catastrophe, as hundreds of thousands of new realities sprang into existence. Entire nations were erased. People ceased to exist. They were unmade, as the rest of us watched in horror, our memories shifting and warping and breaking. In the end (or was it the beginning) there were only two types of people left: those that went completely mad, and those that couldn’t remember. But the box remembered
“We need someone like me, Sara. Someone who can treat this as scientifically as it needs to be treated. It’s only science, Sara. And we are scientists.”
The tesseract seemed to be the secret to sustainable time travel, and it saved our lives. The black box, as we called it, was able to store information from across all of the different “timestreams”, while itself being immune to the effects the rest of the world was experiencing. It allowed us not only to remember what had really happened, both before and after a particular timestream was entered, but to calibrate the ensuing reality and not devolve into chaos. Without the tesseract, time travel might be possible, but no one would have survived to find out.
“It’s simple. We use the black box to catalogue every possible change to our timestream, and we go back to make things right. We fix the past. We find the best case scenario. Before, it would have been impossible. But we have the device now. It’s so easy. All it would take is for us to experiment, and observe, and we could fix things.
Even still, the box had its limitations. Though it appeared indestructible, we knew that it was a finite resource, wherever its limits might actually be. And given the ease with which the average person on the street could slip through time at his leisure, it quickly became clear that precautions had to be taken. Strict laws and guidelines were a start, but each exception to these proved so dangerous that more preventative measures had to be adopted. Thus, the establishment of the Custodians Corp. Entrusted not only with keeping people from time traveling, but also, and more importantly, cleaning up after those that did. We made sure reality stayed more or less in one piece, and were given almost complete free reign to do so. Which made Michael’s delusions all the more scary.
“You’re crazy, Michael! And you know it. The rules are there for a reason. Don’t you remember what it was like? How unstable it was? That’s why we’re here: to keep that from happening again. We are supposed to stop everything you’re talking about undoing. A stitch in time, remember?”
“You can’t tell me you really believe that joke, can you? It’s a mockery. ‘A stitch in time saves two in the bush. Don’t mess with this, or else. You see how screwy things could get.’ It’s a lie, Sara. All that dumb motto really means is that we shouldn’t take risks, no matter how great the reward. They say that because they’re scared, Sara. They’re afraid. Maybe you are too, but I’m not.”
He was a lunatic. I could see that now. This job had poisoned him. He had learned too much to be content, but not enough to know what kind of danger he was putting himself in. I knew that I needed to stop him, but it was too late; he was going to carry out his plan. Michael grabbed the device tightly in his hand, and he was gone. In his place, there was only a burst of light, that grew, and grew brighter, until I could see nothing else.
I awoke with a gasp. My body jolted, as I sat up, looking around my room. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, there was no reason I should have woken so suddenly. Except for that dream. I could still see it clearly. Michael…who was Michael? He seemed familiar, but now, awake, I couldn’t recall ever seeing him before. What had I called that device? The tessa…what? It had seemed so clear, but now, I wasn’t sure. How could there be such a thing? What sort of nonsense had I imagined. Time travel. That’s only for science fiction stories.
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