Motionless, Edward stands and waits until Fisher’s tantrum runs out of steam. Eventually the struggle with the door ends and Fisher rests his head on the small pane of reinforced glass, cool against his skin.
There must be a way out of this. There has to be something he can do. Maybe he can kill Edward, destroy him, and the pan-dimensional entities will just...go away.
“Will that happen?” Fisher asks, without turning round. “If I continue my work, will I affect the future like that?”
“It’s impossible to say. And that’s exactly why the guardians won’t allow it. Other species have been where you are now, and they took heed of the warning. Dimensional planes cannot be ruptured.” Edward’s tone hardens. “They cannot simply be broken into with this,” he gestures at the frozen on-screen display,” crude attempt at picking the lock.” His demeanour softens, and the sly smile returns. His voice is smooth and evenly modulated once more. “Anything is possible, but the guardians like to keep a certain order. If everything happened at once then nothing could exist.”
Fisher feels his resolve weaken. He turns around, glances at the screen he’d been studying, interrogating, pouring every ounce of himself into. This had been his life for almost six years. This is what he saw when he closed his eyes at night and when he opened them again just a few hours later. This is the course that nothing or no one must deflect, or endanger, not even his own family. His dreams of collisions and their consequences were in black and white. They were clearly defined as obsession or failure. And they were all he had.
“You praised my effort, my ingenuity.”
“I did.”
“The ingenuity that led me to this point, this discovery. But you want me to stop. You want me to turn my eyes away, just when the biggest secret of all is waiting.” He points at the screen, a familiar anger building in him. “Right there. What do I do now if I stop all that—take up gardening? I can’t be held responsible for the past, Edward, or whatever the hell your name is.”
Green irises twinkle.
“Not even at any point in the 36 years 5 months and 14 days you have been alive? Are you responsible for nothing that has happened in that time?”
Fisher shakes his head, a weed of guilt uprooted.
“That’s not what I meant, I meant big changes. World shattering events. I have no responsibility for those, not even in the time I’ve been alive.”
“World shattering,” repeats Edward. He walks over, fixing Fisher with his penetrating gaze.The eyes…where illumination and secret amusement dance. Face to face. Mind to mind.
And then: heat, like an oven door opening. A dark land. And snow, drifting down. Except it isn’t snow. It is soot.
Before them, stretching away to a formless edge, is a smouldering blackened landscape. The ground is littered, carpeted, with pieces of charcoal no bigger than a fist, some of them still glowing orange, curls of smoke rising. From high ground, Fisher can see no plants or buildings or any living creatures, just carbonised rubble. Directly overhead, though the sun burns down, the stars are visible. Only at the far horizon is there any sky left, a strip of misty milk against the black.
This place is a great death. The song of life had been muted to stillness here. Silence had condensed to a singularity from which nothing of life could emerge. Fisher can feel it, the absence and the desolation. It chokes, assaults him, and he can barely speak.
“Earth? War?” He croaks, trying to swallow. “Asteroid?”
“War, yes, but on a much grander scale than you envisage. This is indeed the earth. Eight days ago it was a junior member in an alliance of galactic civilisations. Now it is no more.
“From the smallest microbe to the Great Barrier Reef, nothing lives here, in this timeline. Most of the atmosphere has been stripped, except for the heaviest elements, and the planet’s axial tilt has been changed. You would not be able to breathe here. It is a dead world.”
“Did I cause this?”
The way the land curves, the sides of that ravine in the middle distance...
“This also is 1981, Dr Fisher. Shooter’s Hill.”
Fisher gasps.
“A discovery is made in the year 1168 by a man who died as a child in your timeline. In your timeline, that discovery takes another 500 years, but here the process of technological change accelerates. By 1981 your species has travelled 30 light years in all directions. They make friends, and they make enemies.”
Swallowing hard, Fisher’s throat is as dry as the cauterised world around him. He kicks the rubble-cinders, and they give a dry metallic clink.
“Fucking toast,” he whispers.
He turns to Edward, turns and wants to say something, but the urge to resist, the desire to project his own authority, is crumbling. Inviolable limits are being set, and, for once, he is powerless to change the terms of the debate. But his selfishness, the habit of getting his own way, isn’t ready to lie down just yet.
“To be capable of travelling 30 light years, someone, in this timeline, must have copied my work, found out what I did.”
“Of course. And she stopped, just like you are going to.”
“Why? Did research like mine cause this?”
“No.”
“Then why should...”
For the first time, Edward’s serene façade cracks into anger. “Because all timelines are at risk.” As he glares at Fisher, face to face, they are transported back to the lab. “This, all this destruction, is as nothing compared with the damage you could do, everywhen and everywhere. You have seen what effect even a slight change in the distant past can produce. Smashing your brutish way through the dimensional planes...” He waves the thought away; it is too fanciful to even formulate. “You will stop your work, Dr Fisher, or you will be stopped. You have no choice in the matter. I know that’s an unusual situation for you, but there we are.”
He falls silent, sits down heavily on a lab stool. Rubbing his face, Edward appears human, like a real person, one who loses his temper and then regrets it.
The smell of planetary incineration lingers. Fisher tastes it in his throat. He’s at the lab’s only window, staring blank-eyed at the outside world.
“It’s not easy, when you have an important job to do,” says Edward.” His voice pleads, but his eyes have the same hint of smile. Fisher, his face pressed against the window stares outside. Caught in the glare of car-park floodlights, there’s an owl, frozen in fixed-wing flight, about 20 feet above the tarmac. The time is still 11.17 and 23 seconds.
“Others don’t really understand,” continues Edward, standing up. “They don’t appreciate the goals we set ourselves, or the pressure such responsibility brings.”
He places a hand over his heart. “Believe me. I know. I have responsibilities, in every timeline.”
Edward sighs.
“What’s a man to do...time passes, and then you forget how to smile. Worst of all it doesn’t seem that important anymore.” He goes over to Fisher, who turns away from the window and is eased into another time and place. “For some of us, there is only work and a world of no colour. We only have the memory of another way of existing, echoes of ordinary joy, of other people. It’s the price we pay. But it is a pity, don’t you think?”
