“See. They’re all intact,” Asmus says. I look around to count faces–Jenn, Chen, Bisset, Wagner–as I follow Asmus out of the back door. We walk toward the tree line. “I have a proposition for you, Joad.” I see the spot where Gallie and I sat together to discuss, plot, make love. “Are you curious what it is?”
“Tell me, Kasper. What’s your proposition?”
“Join me,” he says. I let these words float in the deadened air between us.
“Join you.”
“I know I’ve been impulsive at times.” He nods toward the barn. “And in my quieter moments, I do consider the merits of regretting that. But I want you to look past it.” I snort. “I know, I know.”
“Join you in what?”
“My work.”
“Your work.”
“Yes.”
“Of making the world a better place?”
“Of at least creating the opportunity.”
“By trying out every history until there’s one you approve of?” I ask.
Asmus surveys me for a moment as if deciding on the best course for his argument. “The world has no resemblance to the way you comprehend it, Joad.”
“I understand, so you’ll keep vandalizing it–”
“No. That’s not what I mean.” Asmus strokes the small, disk in his hand. “I mean the very physics of it.”
“Tee time and Tau time? I’d say you’ve demonstrated that pretty well.”
“No, no. Not even that. Just adding a dimension is neither here nor there. Not in the scheme of things. That’s just one more dimension added to a list we already had. I’m talking about a grand reunderstanding of things. Do you remember something you once said to me when I was the youth and you were the sage? You said, ‘the universe and its physics are imbeciles’.”
“Okay. That’s the sort of thing I would have said.”
“Well Joad, based on your understanding of the universe, you had a sound point. The problem is ... your understanding.”
Asmus leans against a tree and dabs his nose. “The big guy is quite a jackass,” he says.
“You happen to be right,” I reply. “But he just redeemed himself.”
“So, let’s call it vandalism,” Asmus says. “It isn’t, but we’ll save that conversation. So vandalism changes the timeline: makes a different history, a different future. I know your opinion of temporal logicians, and from where you started out, it’s a fair one. Idiots all.” I nod in a thousand small movements. “But we’ve come a long way since then. Ideas emerged. Theories formed. And mostly validated. And like most ideas in temporal logic they started out with your friend the great Prasad.”
“What theories?” I ask. I normally wouldn’t believe a syllable that Asmus emits, but I think these are matters about which lies would be sacrilege, even to him.
“As I said, with an act of ‘vandalism’ the timeline changes. What that means is that the universe in its entirety snaps instantly to a new structure–a new complete history, a new complete future.” I nod. “Tau time plays a role in the transition but you don’t need to understand that for now.” Even in the incomprehensible environment of this Tau space I see smugness on Asmus’s face. “Now listen to what I’m about to say carefully. When the universe makes that instant transition, all conscious perceptions of it make the same transition.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning all memories of the past, all comprehension of the present, and all assessments of the future line up with the new reality–in an instant. You see, you shouldn’t think of the universe as a place, or even as a collection of alternative places. Think of it as an experience–as billions of experiences of anyone or anything capable of having them. Maybe that picture’s not quite right, but it’ll get you closer to the truth than where you are now. If there’s a change to the timeline, that just means all those experiences snap to that change.”
“No,” I say. “That isn’t true. Bess and I have different memories–different pasts. In one I was with Bess for only hours, in another, years. You know that.” Then I think of the park in Risley. For me it had replaced a strip mall that had been there hours before, but for the kids playing in it, it had always been there. We had different pasts. Asmus is plain wrong.
“And how do you explain it, Joad? Why did someone else’s memory snap to the new timeline while yours didn’t?” Prasad had asked me that same question. I had no answer then and I don’t now. “I know the answer,” he says. “I’ve known it for a while.” Asmus pauses dramatically. “You see, Joad, it’s you. And it’s me. And it was Mancini before the idiot got himself shot up. I knew it the moment you turned up in my humble abode.”
“Knew what?”
“Well, this is one time I can’t really fault you for being dumb, for not figuring it out. You are dumb, but understandably so in this case. This is the kind of thing you have to be told. You just don’t have the facts. So let’s take a step back ... tackychemistry ... the three magical chemicals. The little buggers that started it all.”
“Go on.”
“Well, this is interesting. It turns out that analogs to those chemicals, in micro quantities, are produced by human glands.” He pauses. “Let that sink in, Joad.” He pauses again. “Is it sinking in?”
“Yes, it’s sinking in, Kasper. Consider it sunken-in. Just tell me.”
“And for some fraction of us, I’m guessing a small fraction, the chemicals are produced in just the right proportions–the Goldilocks effect. Are you ahead of me yet? You
