He doesn’t know where he’s going, Ian thought as he made his way up another rocky hillside.

He had been trudging through the wilderness for hours, following Pip’s directions, feeling his already low spirits sinking further with each step.  Of course, it had been as much his idea as Pip’s to leave the road and hike up into the mountains, both to escape the Decay and to find food in the forest.  But he certainly wasn’t going to admit that to himself now.

He stopped walking to scratch his arms and legs.  The Decay had left a burning sensation where it touched his skin, and he desperately longed to find a stream where he could wash himself off.  But they hadn’t come across any water, except for the light drizzle that had been falling for most of the afternoon.  Ian had been considering whether or not to strip down and roll in a bed of wet pine needles when he heard Pip crashing through the trees behind him.

“Ian! Look what I got!”

Ian scowled at Pip’s cheery demeanor.  As if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.  What’s wrong with him, anyway?

“Did you find anything?” Pip said.  One of his hands held some edible greens, while the other contained a mix of peeled lichen and pale mushroom caps.  Ian grimaced.  Like all poor folk, he had often been forced to subsist on forest scrapings in lean times, but that didn’t make the fare any more palatable now.

“I uh…I haven’t…”  Ian trailed off, then waved his arm in frustration.  “Maybe I’d be able to focus more on finding food if I weren’t stuck with this thing.”  He held up the Piece, showing how he was forced to carry it clamped between his thumb and fingers.

“Maybe we can fix that,” Pip said.

“What? Hey, what are you…” Ian said as Pip began to unceremoniously rip apart his tattered shirt.  “Don’t do that!”

“Don’t worry, it’s fine.  Hand that thing over.”  Pip tore two thin strips of cloth from his clothing, then deftly wove them through the web-like strands running over the plate’s surface.  “See? You can wear it like a shield.  Slip your arm through here, and hold the other strap in your hand when you’re in a battle.”

Ian did his best to hide his amazement at Pip’s ingenuity.  “I’m not going to be in any battles,” he said, “and it’s too small and brittle to be a shield.”  Nevertheless, he wore the Piece on his arm as Pip had indicated.

Satisfied, Pip turned and walked on up the hillside.  Ian grudgingly followed along behind him.  “Hey, where are we going, anyway? We need some kind of plan.”

“I was thinking about that too,” Pip said.  “We have to find a Knight to help us.”

“A Knight? What’s a Knight going to do against the Decay?”

“Knights always take on quests to fight evil,”Pip  said, hopping to his left and bending down to pick up a slender tree branch.  Brandishing it like a sword, he made several practice swings in Ian’s direction.  “And they always win, too.”

Ian put his hands on his hips.  “Forget about that.  I need to find my father.  Maybe we should circle back around to look for him.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Pip said.  “He’s probably dead, anyway.”

Ian’s hands clenched into fists at his sides as he began to shake with rage.  “You take that BACK!”

Pip stared wide-eyed, stunned at Ian’s sudden ferocity.  “I—I’m sorry!” he said, “I didn’t mean…it’s just sometimes I forget what it’s like. My father’s been dead since before I was born.  So I guess I just meant that you and I could be…the same now.”

A long silence followed.  Slowly, Ian relaxed his hands as his breathing returned to normal.  That was stupid.  I’m older than he is; I need to be in control.  “It’s alright,” he said.  “It’s going to get dark soon.  I wish we could make a fire.  Those mushrooms might taste better if they were cooked.”

“We can do that,” Pip said.  “We just have to find some dry tinder.  And something we can use to cut wood.  Can you see if there’s any sharp stones over near those boulders?”

Ian did as he was instructed, happy to have changed the subject.  Pip went looking for dead branches and a suitable campsite to burn them in.  Before long, they were sitting together in a small clearing at the top of the hill, kneeling over a carefully-prepared pile of kindling.

“Just keep turning,” Pip said.  “If we keep it moving long enough, it should start to smoke.”

They took turns at the apparatus Pip had devised, twirling a small stick in their hands while keeping it pressed against a notched wooden platform.  It was a long, tedious process, and Ian felt himself sweating from the exertion despite the rising cold.  When the platform finally got hot enough to catch the tinder, they both let out a whoop of exhilaration and patted each other in triumph.

A short time later, Ian sat and watched the flames as darkness fell.  He sat in silent contemplation for a while, mesmerized by the dancing light and crackling wood.  Around them, all was silent except for the distinct ‘byeff’ sound of byeff pods popping.

“How did you know how to build a fire like that, anyway?” he asked.

“I like learning about different things,” Pip said, poking the embers with his stick.  “I spent a few months when I was ten living with Woodsman Derry and his family, before they moved away.  I learned a lot about camping, gathering, tying knots…all kinds of stuff.  But of course, no one around here could teach me what I really wanted to know.”

“What’s that?” Ian asked.

“Swordplay!” Pip whipped the stick upward, inadvertently sending a hot coal in Ian’s direction.  “I want to train to be a Knight someday.  But in the meantime, I figured learning a bit of everything might impress them enough that they’d let me join up.”

Ian moved his head back to where it had been before he dodged the coal.  “Join them? Do they even allow people in? I’ve never heard of anyone becoming a Knight.”

“Well there must be some way to get in.  Otherwise where do new knights come from? And I figure I have a better chance than most people.  My mother once told me my father was a Knight.”

“Really?” Ian said, “Who was your—cough—your— cough…what’s wrong with this cough fire?”

As they had been speaking, the smoke from the campfire had grown denser.  At the whim of a passing breeze, Ian suddenly found himself engulfed in a pitch-black cloud of noxious soot.  Eyes watering and throat clenching, he leapt away from the campfire.  He tried to run further, but ended up tripping and rolled a short distance down the hill.

Ahead of him, he could hear the sound of someone stomping and shouting.  A rescue party? Or bandits come to rob and kill them? Before he could consider the likelihood of either possibility, he opened his eyes to see a figure standing above him.

“Ian! Forgive me! For Omim’s sake I didn’t know it was you!”

Ian reached up and wiped the tears from his eyes, then blinked and opened them wide. “You…”

“Giesling!” Pip came running down the hill and hit the old man with a jumping hug that nearly knocked him off his feet.  “You’re alive!”

Ian scrambled to his knees and watched Pip clinging to Giesling’s body like a squirrel on a tree.  He embarrassingly realized that he had been considering doing the same thing a moment before.

“Come,” Giesling said, gently dislodging Pip and placing him on the ground, “let us return to the fire.  The spell I used is potent but short-acting; it should have worn off by now.”

“How did you get here?” Ian asked, once they had all climbed back to the clearing and settled in the camp.

Giesling pulled back his sleeves to expose the skin of his palms, which he held close to the warmth.  “The same way you did, I expect,” he said.  “When I saw the smoke coming from the direction of the village, I went to see if I could provide aid.  But when I saw the calamity that had taken place, I wasted no time returning to the Dracinarium to gather supplies and make my escape.   When I happened across your fire in the darkness, I thought it could be a trap set by wandering bandits.  Perhaps that was foolish of me, but I suppose the events of the day have rattled my nerves.”

“Can we go back to the village in the morning?” Ian asked.

Giesling shook his head.  “Not much there to go back to, my boy.  And if the legends of the Decay are true, we have not seen the worst of it yet.  Better we should head to the Capital.  The Justicars and the Leaders of the Order of the Dracini are there.   If they are going to help resist the Decay, they may be aided by hearing the details of what we saw.”

Ian hugged his knees to his chest.  “You can bring Pip to the Capital if you want.  I have to stay and look for my father.”

“If it’s your father you seek, then going to the Capital may be your best chance of finding him,” Giesling said.  “It will be a likely gathering place for refugees from the mountains.”

“Maybe,” Ian said, turning away to stare at the fire.  “I’ll think about it.”

“Yes.  Better to decide in the morning.  And better for me to turn in now, to be ready to depart at first light.  Goodnight, gentlemen.”

Ian watched the old man make his way to other side of the fire to lie down.  He and Pip began to follow suit, making themselves as comfortable as possible in their beds of pine needles.  But despite his exhaustion, sleep refused to come.  Whenever he closed his eyes, all he saw was Mortimer’s face exploding, a half-melted arm reaching out to grab him, his village burning.

“Ian?” Pip’s whisper drifted through the night like the titter of a field mouse.

“What is it?”

“You’re not going to leave us, are you?”

“What?”

“You have to come to the Capital.  We were so lucky to find someone else from the village.  We can’t split up when we’re the only—when we might be the only people left.”

“I won’t leave,” Ian said, without putting much thought into what he was saying.

He heard a rustling sound as Pip turned over, and the rest of the night passed in silence.

▬

Ian groaned as another stomach cramp cut into his midsection.  They had been walking for hours through the damp forest, after passing a mostly sleepless night.

The fire had burned out deep into the pre-dawn hours, leaving him shivering with only his clothes for protection.  Giesling had apologized for using the single bedroll he had brought with him, explaining that his advanced age made him feel the cold deep in his bones.  To make up for it, he had gladly shared some of his meager supplies with the two of them, but the carrots and turnips he had offered were not enough to quench Ian’s morning hunger.  Now, the long trek over the hilly terrain had only made his discomfort worse.

Ian increased his pace, despite the fact that he was heading into a steep incline again.  He had been lagging behind for most of the morning, and he was tired of Pip cajoling him to move faster when he drifted out of sight.  Up ahead, he could see Giesling standing at the top of a ridge, speaking to Pip and pointing at something ahead of them.

In his entire life, Ian had never seen anything like the sight he was greeted with at the top of the ridge.  The view stretched out for miles over a great valley, the land rumpled like green cloth on an unmade bed.  Directly below them, the barest trace of sparkling light shining through the fog revealed a line of water at the bottom.

“The road runs parallel to the river here, on the near side,” Giesling said.  “I worry that it may soon become crowded with desperate people from the mountain villages.”

“They couldn’t be any more desperate than us,” Ian said.

“True enough.  But such crowds tend to draw those who would prey on the desperate.”  Giesling raised the walking stick he had fashioned from a fallen branch and began making his way down the slope.  “Still, the road is the best way.   If we walk while the sun is up we could make it to the capital in less than three days.”

Pip, still armed with his wooden sword, clambered after him.  Ian was left to pick up the rear, his father’s decorative plate still strapped awkwardly to his arm.  This is some adventure party, he thought, imagine how absurd we look.

Luckily for Ian’s dignity, when they finally made their way out onto the road, they found it deserted.

“Eastward,” Giesling said, pointing to their left.

The three of them went off, and Ian was glad to at least be walking on level ground, even though the path was badly washed out in places.  This far into the mountains, the road was still no more than a rutted dirt trail, twisting and turning as it followed the curve of the riverbank.  They followed it further into the valley, and as the elevation dropped the vegetation became greener and more vigorous.  Soon, their visibility was limited to the immediate bends in the road ahead and behind them, and so they were given little warning when a horse drawn cart approached them from the rear.

Giesling hailed the driver.  “Greetings, traveler!”

The man pulled his reins until the horse came to a stop beside them.  He was thin, with close-cropped white hair and one eye spoiled by cataracts.  “I’m not interested in seeing your show,” he said, eyeing them suspiciously.

“Ah, but we are not performers, good sir.  Merely travelers ourselves, quite tired and hungry.  Might we beg a ride in your cart, so that we may speed our journey to the Capital? We’d be willing to pay, of course.”

The man looked at them with fresh eyes, his gaze jumping back and forth.  “I don’t want her pulling that great a load.” He patted the horse. “But if you’re low on food, I could take the children off your hands.  They look like they eat a lot.”  He cast a glance in their direction, and Ian noticed him take a small lick of his lips.

Giesling cleared his throat.  “Hmm, no, no.  I think we shall choose to continue on foot.  But I do bid you safe travels, sir.”

“Hmph.  Fine.”  The man snarled and whipped his reins with a distinct crack, and within a few seconds he was out of sight down the road.

“What was that all about?” Pip asked when the cart was out of earshot.

“It’s about the Region at large, my boy,” Giesling said with a small sigh.  “We have been lucky to live in remote isolation for so long, safe from many of the dangers that plague this world.  Come, we should not waste the daylight; the Decay will not be waiting for us.”

After several more hours of walking, Ian’s feet were beginning to cramp.  The clouds had parted as the sun rose higher, and the heat caused him to sweat and feel light-headed.  But he dared not to complain and break the grim silence that had passed over all of them.

Eventually, they stopped to rest at a bend in the road that ran near the river.  “Still clear,” Giesling said, kneeling down and running his hand in the stream.  “That’s good.  We must be wary of the Decay poisoning the waterways. ”

Ian walked into the reeds to rub his face with the cool water.  “What is exactly is the Decay, anyway?” he asked.

“Old magic,” Giesling said.  “A spell cast long ago, but not based on any of the four schools.  It is—“

He paused at the sound of footsteps approaching from further up the road.  Ian gasped and held his breath as three men made their way around the bend, walking side by side.  One was dressed in slightly soiled linen, while the two on the right were wearing what could almost be described as armor, but was really nothing more than a motley collection of mismatched mail and leather pieces.  More concerning however was the long-handled, heavy axe the middle one carried slung over his shoulder.

It took time for Giesling to rise to his feet while the men advanced.  “Greetings, travelers!” he said when they had come within a few strides.

The three men stopped in place and stared forward with looks of slight surprise.

“May I ask where you’re going up this road?” Giesling asked.

There was no reply.

“You should be warned, the Decay has spread into these mountains.  My companions and I were heading in the opposite direction, to escape to the Capital.  Might you gentlemen be interested in escorting us on our journey?”

At the mention of the Decay, the three turned and exchanged puzzled glances with each other.  The one on the left, a tall man with long brown hair tied back in a knot, looked somewhat more alarmed than the other two.

“Were these the ones we were told about?” The one on the far right asked.

“They must be,” said the one with the axe.  “He said we could do what we liked with the old man, but that we should grab both the kids.”

From his side, Ian heard Pip let out a growl as he raised his stick.   Giesling was moving as well, dropping his own pole and reaching into the lapel of his cloak with one hand.

The armed man spoke up at once.  “Leave the dagger where it is, old man.” He brought his axe forward until it was poised over Giesling’s skull.  “Unless you want to find yourself with an extra head.”

Giesling froze in place, his eyes fixed on the blade above him.

“It’s going to be hard to take both of them,” said the man on the right.  “Even with the three of us, they might struggle and kick and such.”

The man with the axe grumbled. “So we’ll just take that one then.” He motioned towards Pip. “And leave the ugly one behind.”

“What? Ugly?!” Ian said.  “I’m not half as ugly as you, you scuzzy son of a lamprey!”

The armed man turned and snarled.  “You little shit!” he said, bringing the axe up in a high arc and swinging it down at Ian’s face.

Ian jumped back and instinctively raised his arms up to block the blow, which turned out to be a mistake. The axe head came down and smashed through the Piece, breaking it into tiny fragments, then severed his hand at the wrist.

From Ian’s point of view, it was all happening in slow motion: the Piece breaking apart, blood spurting from the vicinity of his exposed arm bones.  Except that somehow it was slow motion.  The axe was gliding downward through the suddenly still air.  Giesling and Pip were moving nearly imperceptibly as their faces turned to masks of horror.

Then the scene froze completely, and a flash of light blinded them all.

When Ian’s vision returned, he was sitting on his behind by the side of the road.  His arm and the Piece had both returned to being whole.  The axe head was buried in the dirt not far from where he had been standing, with its handle still in the hands of his very confused-looking would-be murderer.

“Bloody hell!” A voice called out from somewhere in front of him.  It was the plainly-dressed bandit speaking for the first time, in a strange accent that Ian did not recognize.

The man holding the axe spoke next.  “What in Omim’s name was—argh!”

Giesling had taken advantage of the distraction to reach into his cloak and retrieve a small leather pouch filled with gray dust, which he proceeded to toss into a cloud towards the bandits’ eyes.  In his other hand he held a small metal object, and before the men could properly react, he twisted a knob on its surface with his thumb.

The cloud of dust exploded into flame.  The three men all screamed and dropped to the ground; a futile gesture, as the road itself was being set alight by the powder as it settled.  They began making a great clamor as they jumped up again, rubbing their eyes and shedding pieces of fiery clothing.

Within a few moments, the two armored men managed to get to their feet and begin running away, but the third had more trouble.  He had spent so much time beating the flames out of his hair that he hadn’t noticed the soles of his boots melting into the roadway.  When he turned to run, he tripped and fell.  Squealing in pain, he crawled on his hands and knees away from the fire, then collapsed in the dirt.

After the man had laid there for a few moments, whimpering and cursing, he turned over onto his back to find Giesling, Ian and Pip all staring down at him.

Ian was the first to break the silence.  “What do we do now?”

Pip raised his stick in the air.  “We should definitely beat him to death,” he said matter-of-factly.

The man’s eyes went wide.  “No, no! Don’t kill me! Listen, I can help you! You need me as a guide, to escape from the Decay!”

Giesling sniffed.  “Please.  We were already headed to the capital, and we don’t need a guide to get there.”

“No, not the capital,” the man shook his head vigorously.  “That’s not going to work this time.  If you want to survive, you’ll have to go someplace else.  Through the bubble.”

Ian blinked.  “What did you say?”

The man met his stare with pleading eyes.  “If you follow me, I can take you out!”

“Out of what?” Ian asked.

“Outside the world!”

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“Mortimer, you stink!” Gus said, pointing a finger at the object of his ridicule.

“Hey, leave him alone.”  Bart’s head, topped with his mop of brown hair, peered over Gus’s shoulder.  It was an easy feat, given that he was a foot taller than his companion.  “What did ol’ Mort ever do to you?”

“It’s true!” Gus slapped his hand on the fence of the corral.  “All the other pigs try to avoid their own poop, but Mortimer doesn’t care.  He’s so old and fat, he just lays right in it.  Don’t you, you stupid fat hog? I swear, if my father weren’t around, you’d be bacon by now.”

Bart watched as Mortimer, seemingly offended, waddled away towards a shady spot in the pen.  “OK, maybe he does stink.  But I thought you wanted to talk about Katya.”

Gus turned around.  He resembled a pig in some ways himself, with his round face and upturned nose.  Even the wispy hairs on his upper lip and chin made him look porcine.  “I do want to talk about her,” he said.  “I’ve got a plan.  This evening, when Katya gets back from the berry-picking, you’re gonna pick her up and drop her in the pen with Mort.”

Bart stopped and considered for a moment.  “That’s not really much of a plan, is it?”

Gus narrowed his eyes and snarled.  “You didn’t let me finish! You’re not actually going to drop her in there.  Right when she thinks she’s going to fall and get covered with mud and pig crap, I’ll show up and stop you.  All you have to do is pretend like you’re scared of me, and do what I say.  Once she sees that I’m her savior, she’s going to want to marry me even more than she does now.”

“Hmm,” Bart said, absent-mindedly scratching himself behind his neck, “I don’t think it’s going to work.  I mean, I’m pretty sure she knows that we’re friends.  So isn’t she going to figure out that this is all a trick?”

“She’s not gonna figure out anything!” Gus bared his finger at the larger boy.  “Girls aren’t smart like that, Bart.  Don’t you think I know what I’m doing? I’m the son of the chief elder, for Omim’s sake.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll do it,” Bart said, “but what do you mean ‘even more than she does now’?”

“Look, you know as well as I do that Katya’s the prettiest girl in the village.  Her father’s been holding on to her for as long as he can, way past the age of womanhood, because he wants to cash in on her wedding.  And now my dad is willing to pay for her to be my bride, which means it’s going to happen whether she likes it or not.”

“So if she’s going to marry you anyway, why all this pig-throwing stuff?” Bart asked, motioning towards the pen.

“Because, there’s a big difference between what a girl will do because she has to and what she’ll do when she wants to.  Don’t you know anything?” Gus frowned as Bart stood silently and raised an eyebrow at him.  “Look, just be ready by sundown, OK? I’ll give you a signal.  And whatever you do, don’t let word get around!  If anyone finds out about this, then…”

His words were cut off by the sound of cracking branches coming from the nearby forest.  A moment later, Ian emerged into the village clearing, covered in scratches and pine needles.

Gus stared at him for a few moments, bewildered.  “Ian? What are you doing here? Were you listening in on us?”

“I…” Ian had to gasp out the words due to his exertion.  “I need to talk to the elders.  To your father.  It’s an emergency.”

Gus glanced at Bart, as if trying to confirm he had heard the sudden change of topic correctly.  Then he looked back at Ian and crossed his arms defiantly.  “My father is busy.  He doesn’t have time for artisan nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense!” Ian shouted, a bit louder than he had intended.  “I just fought with an orc in the woods!”

The absurdity of juxtaposing those two statements made both Gus and Bart burst out laughing.  Ian’s face began to flush red.

“Sure,” Gus said between gasps of air, “and I just saw a wisp come out of Bart’s ass!”

“Well,” Ian said, “I guess you do usually have your head stuck up there.”

A sudden hush seemed to fall over the three of them.

Gus’s nostrils flared.  “What did you say?”

Ian’s eyes went wide when he realized what he had done.  “I uhh…” he said, stepping back a few paces.

“Bart,” Gus said, “let’s show this little freak what we do with people who spy on…hey!”

Ian had already begun to take off before Gus finished speaking.  Bart may not have been fastest runner in the village, but he knew from experience that it would be better to get a head start against those long strides.

The houses on the southern edge of the village tended to be larger than most, and so Ian had only gone past one of them before he began to hear signs of pursuit.  Despite his rapidly-fading stamina, he made a dash around the next corner and spotted a likely hiding spot behind Elder Farnish’s wood pile.  He dove for it immediately, sliding against it and rolling himself into a ball.

His gambit paid off when Bart ran by seconds later without so much as a backwards glance.  Ian continued to stay put after the tall boy had gone out of sight, waiting to see if he would notice his mistake and immediately double back.   A moment later, his heart jumped when a face suddenly bounced around the corner and looked directly at him.  Then a hand appeared in front of it, waving at him excitedly.

It was Pip, the local orphan boy.  “Hey Ian, what are you doing in there?” he asked.

“None of your business,” Ian said.

“Are you hiding from Bart? I just saw him run past here.  Hey, do you want me to try and throw him off your trail? That guy is such a jerk.”

Ian stood up and dusted himself off.  It had never been made clear to him where Pip had come from or why he had remained in the village for so long, instead of being shipped off to the Wanderer academy in the capital.  “I don’t need your help, OK? I can take care of myself.”

Pip nodded with aplomb.  “Alright.  So do you want to play a game then? Looks like you’re already set to play hide and seek.”

Ian made a huffing noise.  “I don’t have time.  I have to go see my father.  It’s about something really important.”

Pip smiled.  “OK then.  If I were you I’d go that way, though.  Not that I’m helping you or anything!”  He gave Ian an exaggerated wink.

Ian scowled, then showed Pip his back and jogged away.  He turned to his left, following the edge of the town clearing until he came to the main road.  From there, he could see the village for what it was: little more than a small collection of ramshackle dwellings thrown up on both sides of the central roadway.  The road widened slightly at the center into something resembling a main square, currently empty except for a few lazy residents sitting outdoors and gossiping.  Ian continued across to the southern side, where the houses were little more than tightly packed together huts.  His own home was distinguished by the brick kiln out back, still smoking from a recent firing.

When he stepped inside, he saw what the kiln had been used for: sitting on the cooling table was his father’s favorite creation, affectionately dubbed ‘The Piece.’  Physically, it resembled an 8” circular plate with ornamental web-like lines running across its surface.  But it was the finish that made The Piece special; it was glazed with a process that his father had invented, which involved painstakingly collecting the white dust spewed by the byeff fungus when it burst open to lay spores in the surrounding area.  The dust was mixed with a clear lacquer and then fired onto The Piece layer by layer, slowly building up a hard, perfectly white enamel.  To Ian’s knowledge, there was nothing similar to The Piece anywhere in the entire region; it could easily have fetched a high price if sold as a fancy wall decoration for some rich household in the capital.

That is, if his father could ever be convinced to sell it.  As it was, he had always insisted that The Piece wasn’t ‘ready’ yet, and required ‘one more’ coat of glaze before it would be complete.  Looking at it then, Ian let out a small sigh.  Certainly, finishing The Piece had become something of an inside joke in their small family, but it was also the longest-running of his father’s many eccentric, unprofitable projects.

With a creak, the back door to the house opened to admit his father, carrying a cloth sack filled with dried rushes.  He was a tall man, with unkempt, shoulder-length hair that partially hid a magnanimous face with a friendly smile.

“Ian! You’re back a little early.  Giesling didn’t kick you out, did he?”

“No,” Ian said, “I ran back as fast as I could.  Something terrible has happened.  I just fought with an orc in the woods.  I came to warn everyone.  The village might not be safe anymore!”

“Hmm…” His father considered the matter carefully.  “How do you know it was an orc?”

“Well it definitely wasn’t human!” Ian said. “It was hideous.  And it had an orcish helmet on.”

“Ah, but that doesn’t mean anything necessarily.  It could have been stolen,” his father said.  “Do you remember what it looked like? Maybe I could draw it for you. I wonder if a drawing of an orc would sell to a caravan…”

Ian threw up his hands.  “Don’t you think you should be taking this a bit more seriously?! Orcs! There could be thousands of them by now, crawling all over the woods.  And what about the Decay? What if the orc was fleeing from it?”

“Now, now,” his father said, “let’s not get too worked up over one orc.  I mean sure, seeing one is pretty rare.  But it’s not totally unheard of.  It was probably lost when you came across it.  Maybe it got sick was wandering off to die.”

“Sick? Actually, there was something sort of strange about it…the inside of it…” Ian trailed off.  “I don’t know, it still seems dangerous to me.  Should we go and tell the elders?”

“I’ll tell you what,” his father said, “I’ll bring it up next week at the festival planning.  Why don’t you help me prepare these rushes right now? I’m going to weave them into a basket for Lady Miranda.”

“The elders…next week…” Ian paused for a moment, lost in thought.  “Hey, wait a minute.  What do you know about that letter saying that I’m going to be Giesling’s apprentice?”

His father frowned.  He slung the rushes off his shoulder and turned away, suddenly appearing busy.  “It seems like you’re angry.”

“Of course I’m angry! Why would I want the elders deciding my fate behind my back? Please tell me you didn’t sign that letter!”

His father turned and looked his son up and down.  His eyes were loving, but sad.  “Well, you never seem to want to help me with my projects.  Perhaps the elders are right.  This could be the best thing for you.”

Ian’s jaw dropped.  “’The elders are right’? Since when do you say things like that?!” He turned away and began to storm out.

“Ian! Wait a second!”

“Forget it.  I’ll see you later.  Try not to sell me to any passing caravans while I’m gone.”  He stomped out the front door without looking behind him.  What’s worse, he thought, my own father conspiring against me, or running all that way and almost getting my butt kicked for nothing?

Glumly, he began walking back towards the square, his eyes planted at his feet.  I guess I should be glad for the excitement.  Everything here is so boring, anyway.  Say, I wonder where…

Before he could complete the thought, he was airborne, lifted by two strong hands grasping under his armpits.

“Bring him over here,” Gus’s voice called out from behind him, “I’ll grab his legs.”

“Hey! Stop! Cut it out!” Ian writhed furiously, but Bart’s grip was implacable, and soon Gus managed to get a hold of him as well.  “What are you doing?!” he yelled as they began frog marching him through the village.

“We’ve had a little change of plans,” Gus said.

“What? Help! Someone help me!”

“Aw, keep it down, you’ll spoil the fun.  We’re almost there anyway.”

When Ian looked down to see where they had taken him, he saw Mortimer’s flat nose and beady eyes staring back up at him.  “No! Not that! Please!”

His outburst made Gus and Bart laugh uproariously as they swung him back and forth and heaved him over the fence.  He landed on his side in a particularly fetid pile of ‘mud’, the laughter of his tormenters still echoing through his gunk-filled ear.

Mortimer didn’t seem nearly as amused.  He calmly waddled over towards Ian, taking a sudden keen interest in the area near his right shoe.

“What are you doing? Stay away from me.”  Ian attempted to wave off the old hog with his foot, which made him notice something odd: the bottom of his shoe was smoking.  It had started as a subtle vapor, barely distinguishable from the steam that rose from the fresh pile of pig dung, but in only a few seconds it had grown considerably in size and visibility.  “What in Omim’s name…” he said, leaning in closer.

Mortimer had grown more curious as well.  Gingerly, he stepped forward and sniffed at the shoe, coming close enough to touch his wet nose on its surface.

At that instant, the old hog let out a blood-curdling squeal as his face melted into brown goo.

It happened in a flash; one moment Mortimer was a fully formed pig, and the next he was a skeleton, standing in place with his flesh exploding in all directions.  Where the brown muck that had been his skin hit the mud, it seemed to multiply, transforming the ground itself into a tidal wave of ooze.

Gus and Bart stopped laughing for a split second before the wave washed over them, melting them instantly.  Ian looked on in shock as the chain reaction began to grow out of control.  Wherever the goo traveled, it transformed the ground it touched into more of itself, and the force of the change was enough to send it flying explosively in all directions.

Ian scrambled to his feet as fast he could and vaulted over the fence.  All of the pigs were gone.  Gus and Bart had been completely obliterated as well, leaving behind only fragments of bone, some tattered clothing and two pairs of boots.  And yet somehow, he himself had suffered no ill effects despite being covered from head to toe by the sticky brown fluid.  To his right, he could hear people screaming as the villagers ran out of their houses in panic.  “Decay! It’s the Decay!” someone shouted, but screams of pain and the sizzling sound coming from the ground made it impossible to determine who it was.

“Father!” Ian yelled, running towards the center of the village.  The town square was crowded with people running between the penned animals, and the Decay was eating through them all with equal vigor.  Somewhere a cooking fire had overturned, and soon the square began to fill with black smoke as flames began to spread among the tightly packed houses.  Pulling away from a melting hand that had reached out to grab his arm, Ian took off and made a bee-line towards his own house.

“Father! Are you in here?!” He yelled as he burst inside.  The only reply was the creaking of the back door as it flapped in the wind.  Did he run out that way? A crackling noise from behind made him aware that the flames were rapidly approaching.  The Decay was helping to spread them somehow, the ooze igniting on contact with the fire like lamp oil.  Ian looked around in panic, searching for a clue to his father’s whereabouts.  Randomly, his eyes settled on The Piece resting on the table beside him.  Without thinking, he grabbed it and then rushed out the back door, leaving the rest of the household to be consumed by the blaze.

The area behind the cottage was empty, so Ian ran back around to check the town again.  One look told him that going back through the center of it wouldn’t be as easy a second time.  Just then, through the chaos and the half-melted bodies, Ian spotted a small shape coming towards him.  The shape looked up, and its brown goo-covered face brightened with recognition.  “Ian!” Pip exclaimed, “Come on, we gotta get out of here!”

“I have to find my father!” Ian yelled.

“No good!” Pip grabbed Ian by the arm and attempted to drag him in the opposite direction.  “It’s the Decay, Ian! This whole place is lost! We have to head down out of the mountains!”

“No! I can’t leave yet!” But even as he said it, Ian knew that Pip was right.  Half the village was already a raging inferno, and the other half…Ian could barely bring himself to look at it.

Cursing, he turned and followed in Pip’s footsteps as they ran through the frothy brown muck streaming down the main road.  He sprinted as fast as he could, for as long as he could, keeping his gaze forward and focusing all his attention on his breathing to increase his stamina.

Finally, after running for what seemed like miles, he collapsed face-first onto a low ridge.  Beside him, Pip was kneeling calmly, looking in the direction they had come at the burning remains of the village.

They both stayed and watched it for far too long, unable to tear themselves away from the sight.  Ian felt strangely numb.  He had seen what had happened with his own eyes, and yet his brain was simply refusing to process it.  He tried to speak to himself, to narrate the events that had led up to the calamity, but all that came out was incoherent mumbling.  What could he possibly say as he sat and watched his own village, the only home he had ever known in his life, simultaneously going up in flames and melting into brown ooze?

“Wow,” Pip said, as if answering the question, “I never realized burning pig shit could smell that bad before!”

Continued in Part 3.

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I’ve been working since February 2011 on my first novel, currently titled “Reintegration: A Practical Guide for the Working Metanaut (a novel)”.  I say “currently” because I am not above being talked out of it by an editor or agent who feels they know better than me what is marketable.  For now I am somewhat fond of it, though.  Perhaps that’s because the title, like the classic Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, comes from the name of a fictional book that plays a role in the plot line, albeit a somewhat small one in this case.  The novel itself, to use the one-sentence description I came up with in February, is “an inter-universe coming-of-age story”…and that’s all you need to know for now.

In November, soon after completing the rough draft, I started a full read-through/revision of my manuscript (this could be considered by some to be the second revision, since I had already done a revision on each chapter as I finished it.  Then again, some people would say that doesn’t count.  Whatever).  That revision produced innumerable in-line fixes and changes, as well as 368 notes (Word calls them “comments”) which mostly consisted of things like “fix this” (short for “fix this at some point in the future because right now reading it makes me want to lobotomize myself with an egg beater”).

As of a few minutes ago, I finished addressing the comments in chapter ten, which means there remain ten more chapters and an epilogue to go.

I took the liberty of creating a visualization of how the comments are distributed in the manuscript:

The red bars are chapters I haven’t addressed yet.  As you can see, even though I’m chapter-wise around the halfway point, I’m actually about 70% done in terms of number of comments.  This is for two reasons: 1) The chapters towards the end of the book tend to be a bit shorter, because some of them are focused on wrapping up the story and that type of narrative doesn’t tend to drag on too long.  2) I wrote the book in linear order, and I got better at writing as I went, so the chapters towards the end didn’t need as much fixing.

Once I finish the remaining 100-odd comments, I’ll need to start over again and do another revision, both to review some of the new stuff I’ve written (I added four scenes and substantially changed several others), and to “tighten-up” everything.  But before I do any of that, I’m going to take a break of somewhere from two weeks to a month (I mean really, how many times can I read the same novel in a row without going insane?).  In the meantime, I’ll continue to work on the short and serial fiction here, especially EPIC FANTASY 0.9b, for which I spent some time this weekend outlining and drawing a map.  My plan is for that series to run about 25,000 words total, at which point I will release it as a free eBook novella (and from the looks of what I’ve got in this outline, it’s going to be a pretty awesome one).  At least, that’s the best laid plan; you know how those often go.

I started at around 90,000 words in the book before this revision started, but due to all the additions it’s ballooned up to over 100k.  My hope is that after the tightening-up is over, I will have cut it back down to somewhere around its starting size again, and I’ll have something that’s presentable to beta readers.  Anyone want to submit an application?

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The Dracinarium was ahead of him now; a simple, thatched-roof shack, with a trail of smoke rising from its chimney.  More noteworthy was the mountain that loomed over it, visible now through the break in the tree cover.  The mountain itself was not particularly majestic or imposing; but Ian was concerned with what lay beyond it.  That’s where the orcs live, he thought, and beyond that, the Decay.  Ian had never liked visiting the Dracinarium for just that reason; it made him nervous to travel so close to the force that had laid waste to entire continents.  The fact that the elders of his village considered such thinking the hallmark of a troublemaker or a dunce didn’t matter to him.  In his mind, it was simply a question of logic: orcs, owing to their partial immunity, would always take up residence in the border areas between the Decay and where mankind held dominion.  And having done so, they would tend to press as close to the man-side of their borders as possible, where the food would be most plentiful.

Then again, no one I know has ever actually seen an orc, Ian reminded himself as he made his way around the side of the hut, past Old Man Giesling’s vegetable garden and waste pit.  Besides, if the Decay did move south and the orcs invaded to escape from it, it isn’t like I’d be any safer in the village than I am here.

With a sigh, he reached up and rapped three times with the heavy knocker affixed to the Dracinarium’s front door: a teardrop-shaped lobe of metal with a curling spiral tail, the symbolic crest of the Dracini school of magic.

“I’m coming!” came a muffled shout from the other side.  There was a bit of commotion; sounds of a chair scooting and earthenware dishes being hastily put aside, and then the door opened and Old Man Giesling’s ruddy, pockmarked face presented itself in its place.  “Welcome to my Dracinarium traveler, it is my pleasure to meet all of your needs that the order of the…oh, it’s you, Ian.”

As soon as the old man noticed who he was talking to, he cut off his prepared speech and ambled back the way he had come, leaving the door wide open as a sign of welcome.  On the opposite wall, a hearth was busy crackling, making the inside almost unpleasantly warm.  To the right, a low table strewn with various small objects stretched the length of the room.  Most of the objects resembled locks, child’s spintops, or other such useless doodads.  But here and there among them, small charcoal-gray octahedral crystals stood out as their facets caught the glimmering firelight.  In the center of the table, a space had been cleared away where Giesling had been eating his lunch before he had been interrupted.

“Why do you always give that long speech whenever you open the door?” Ian asked as the old man prepared to sit down again.  “You know as well as I do that no travelers ever come here.”

“It’s just something we’re told to say.” Giesling gave Ian a look that might have been mistaken for annoyance, if one were unfamiliar with his wily demeanor.  “When I was inducted into the order of the Dracini, I pledged to conduct my business in a manner befitting their traditions.  Granted, if I did deviate somehow from their established methods, it’s unlikely that my indiscretion would be reported back to them.  But still, it seems prudent to keep up appearances for their own sake.  When people come to a strange Dracinarium for the first time, they know what to expect; they want to be served with a certain speech and in a certain manner.  Finding each Dracinarium the same throughout the region helps to put them at ease, and therefore increases sales.”

“Oh come on,” Ian said, “when was the last time you even made a sale?”

“None of your business, young man!” Giesling snapped, before conspicuously turning his attention to the gadgets arrayed before him.  “Now, did you bring me my supplies, or have you come only to make light of me?”

Ian grinned and unlaced the leather pouch from his belt.  With a certain reverence, he placed it on the table with the opening up, so that it parted to reveal its contents: dozens of the gray crystal gems, along with a few bundles of herbs wrapped in twine.

“Excellent, I thank you for your service.” The old man smiled and showed his grayish-brown teeth.  When his face relaxed again, the two jowls on either side slid back into their places beneath the tufts of white fuzz that served as sideburns.

“Oh! I almost forgot.  There was something else I was supposed to give you, too.  A note…” Ian reached inside his tunic and withdrew the folded parchment, then handed it over.

The old man held the letter close to his face and angled it to catch the light from the fireplace.  “Interesting.  And I’m to understand that you haven’t read this?”

“Me?” Ian gave Giesling a suspicious look.  “How would I know how to read it?”

“Ah, yes.  Pardon my rudeness.  It’s just that the note concerns you, is all.  It’s a request to take you on as my apprentice.”

Ian blinked once, then twice.  A magician’s apprentice? Him? He had to admit it made a certain amount of sense; the elders would consider him a good match for the strange old man’s temperament, and sending him away from the village where he would be unable to make trouble must have seemed advantageous as well.  But to reveal their intentions in this way, by writing his own fate in a note that he was given to deliver? That simply showed a lack of courtesy that Ian found unconscionable.  He made a mental note to make a big stink out of it when he returned.

“So, what of it?” The old man placed the note down and looked Ian over, as if he were a hog being sold at market.  “I can see from the look on your face that this idea is new to you.  Do you wish to learn my trade, or not?”

Ian hesitated.  “Well, I…”

“Hmm? Out with it boy! Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“It’s just that…you’re asking me to decide my entire life, right now, in the space of a few seconds! I just can’t do it!”

Giesling turned his palm down and flicked his fingers in Ian’s direction. “Please, don’t be so melodramatic.  Have you ever stopped to think that you might have an aptitude for magic?”

Ian considered it.  He had imagined what would happen if he became a magician, but in his fantasies the circumstances had been a bit more grand, more heroic; not leading the life of a poor old man in the woods.  “Even if I do, it still seems wrong,” he said. “I don’t want my future decided by the elders.  How would I even know which school of magic is the best?”

“None of them are ‘best’, Ian.  Each one is simply a different aspect of the same underlying principle.”

“That’s not what I mean…” Ian’s tone had gone from surprised to depressed.  It was starting to dawn on him that he might not have any real say in this matter.  “If I explain to you what my problem is, you’ll probably think I’m crazy.”

Giesling stared in silence, then slid over on his workbench to make room for the young man to sit down.  “Please, I would love to hear of this madness that seems to have overtaken you.  Mental illness is one of the afflictions that can be treated by the magical arts, you know.”

Ian sat, ignoring the feigned sympathy. “I guess I just always had the idea that I could be different.  Everyone in the region takes up some trade when they come of age.  The woodsman chops his trees, the tanner makes his leather, the piss pot man carries his piss, and so forth.  But what does it all mean? Why do all these things need to be done? Each one seems just as pointless as the next.”

“Pointless? Surely the people who depend on the tradesmen for their goods and services do not think so.”

“No, no…it’s hard to explain,” Ian said.  “I don’t mean pointless really, just…”

“Perhaps the word you’re looking for is ‘arbitrary’,” Giesling said.

“Yes, exactly.  Arbitrary.  I always thought I could…I don’t know.  Cut through it all.  Find what underlies all of this…this…existence!”

“If you seek a profession with a deeper meaning, perhaps your calling is as a wanderer for Omim?”

“No, no.” Ian shook his head.  “Don’t you see?  That choice is no better than any other.  Sure, Omim created the world, but why? Why did he put mankind here to serve him?  Why the forests, the rivers, oceans, and four schools of magic? Why is there a Decay? What good does devoting my life to spreading Omim’s teachings do if I can’t answer those questions?”

The old man leaned back, grinning mildly.  “I think I understand now why the village wants to send you to study with me.”  He stood up, making his way back towards the fire to fetch another bowl of stew from a hanging kettle.  “But perhaps the decision is more fortuitous than you think.  We magicians are closely tied to the forces that underlie this plane; forces set in motion by Omim himself.  The four schools were not chosen arbitrarily, you know.  The Dracini’s sigil is the dragon, because the dragon’s shape was one of the four created by the embers of Lavenia’s soul as it burnt in the eternal flame of Ser.”  He pointed at the fireplace with his wooden spoon.  “Her divine ashes curled and twisted as they cooled, eventually forming the dragon’s tail, and in a similar way the other four aspects were created.  Together, the ashes became the elements that Omim formed into the world.”

“I know the story,” Ian said, “but what I don’t understand is, why that particular shape? Was the dragon already there, buried in Lavenia’s soul? Or was it not determined until the burning took place? Perhaps there were other shapes, other worlds that could have come out of the flames, but didn’t?”

Giesling only smiled and nodded in response.  Ian exhaled, feeling his enthusiasm for the debate rush out of him along with his air.  “You’re just nervous,” the old man said. “Your problem isn’t embers or dragons; it’s your worry that you might be missing out on something better than our humble profession.” He managed to slip in the word ‘our’ in such a subtle manner that Ian almost didn’t catch it.  “But this will fade with time.  You are a poor artisan’s son from the Northwestern forests.  You should consider it an honor to study with a real magician.  Would you rather be a piss pot man?  Now, return to your village and tell them I have decided to accept you as my apprentice, provided a reasonable price can be negotiated.  It will all be worked out by the spring festival, I’m sure.  No need to rush these sorts of things; I still have a few years left in me, Omim willing.”

Ian nodded glumly, then turned and made his way out of the cabin.  The skies had grown overcast in the time he had been inside, and he could see rain beginning to fall over the nearby mountainside.  He took to the path at once, winding his way back out of the gully and up towards the forest.

“The old man is right, I should be grateful,” he said aloud as he stepped over hollowed logs and ducked under low branches.  The path had broken up in this section, but he felt confident that he wouldn’t get lost.  He had been playing in these woods since he was a child, and the slope of the hilly country made it easy to find his way by dead reckoning.

Childhood, he thought.  Carefree, happy; looking forward to a lifetime of possibilities.  But now he was nearing the age of manhood, fifteen.  Even though he was a late bloomer and still looked half a babe, the truth could not be avoided.  He would have to make his way in the world somehow, and that meant his silly childhood fantasies were through.  Solemnly, he rubbed the sides of his arm and looked down as he walked, taking his time to avoid any pits or brambles on the forest floor.

And that was when he noticed the shape.

He had thought it was a snake at first by the way it moved, undulating and slithering beneath a carpet of dead leaves.  But it was far too large; in the forest the only snakes were barely longer than a man’s forearm, whereas this one was at least three feet across.  It was multi-limbed as well, splayed out like a starfish, although the exact details were difficult to judge in the underbrush.  Ian ducked behind a tree as the thing came in his direction.  At that point, he was more curious than scared; he wasn’t even sure if the thing had eyes with which to see him, but it seemed prudent to hide just in case.  As the shape shuffled by where he had been standing along the path, Ian peered out to get a better look at it.

As soon as he saw the helmet, he knew what it was.  Ian had never seen an orc in person before, even a dead one, but there were several bent and splintered helmets on display over the hearth in the village lodge.  What had taken him by surprise was the motion; he hadn’t expected orcs to crawl along on their bellies like that, undulating in a way that would be uncomfortable or impossible for any normal creature.  As the thing came closer, he struggled to catch his breath, and in doing so a small yelp passed his lips.

The orc stopped moving.  It was less than two feet from him by then, and Ian could feel his skin crawl as it slowly began to turn towards the tree.  What he could see of its skin under the loose leaves was brownish-green and scaly, covered in some sort of transparent ooze that made it hard to determine what was flesh and what was torn, dirty clothing.  It continued turning until the part that the helmet rested on; Ian could only assume that this was the thing’s head; was facing directly at him.  Then, it suddenly lifted its face up towards him and let out a ferocious, snarling howl.

Ian screamed.  Without thinking, he lifted his right leg and delivered a straight kick directly to the orc’s nose.  Shockingly, the orc’s face crumpled and caved in beneath his foot.  Wide eyed and panting, Ian stared with disbelief at what he had done: the orc was still screaming with its head split open, the noise distorted as it emanated from its mangled throat.

But even worse was what the throat was made of: the inside of the orc’s head was metal.  Not hard metal; it had more the consistency of parchment, all folded together and rumpled up in a loose pile.  But it gleamed and shimmered like a polished surface, at least in the places where a viscous black liquid was not seeping out through its crevices.

Ian backed away one or two paces, unable to take his eyes off the creature.  The orc was still coming after him, clawing at the ground with one arm even as it reached up to tear at its now-destroyed face with the other.  With another yell of terror, Ian turned and ran, tearing away at top speed off into the forest.

Continued in Part 2.

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Everett marched down the hall long metal hallway, Dr. Furca at his side once more.  It was the third scheduled meeting on the quantum anomaly, and he had never felt so stressed in his entire career.  The window given in the prediction for the time of the shutdown was growing ever-nearer, but there was no news from anywhere which could offer a reasonable explanation.  The Infinian fleet, as far as the Cluster was concerned, remained safely beyond their defensive perimeter.  In every other respect as well, the Cluster operated more or less perfectly, except in the case of this one maddening error.  Within the facility itself, all procedures were being observed as normal, save for unrelenting pressure placed on Everett and his team to solve the mystery.  Now, having not slept well in days, and with the shutdown deadline looming, Everett knew that this upcoming meeting would not be pleasant.

It took a large amount of self-control to bring himself to knock on the heavy metal door.  It swung open almost immediately.

“Doctor.  You’re right on time.”  The Admiral was fingering a pagelet which attached to his desk on flexible hinges.  Behind him, as always, stood Agent Ellis.  Of course.  I didn’t expect anything less.  He heard Furca let out a barely audible groan as the smaller man noticed the agent’s presence.

“Admiral.  I understand why this meeting was called.  I want you to know I am personally not satisfied with the results spelled out in my recent status reports…”

The Admiral looked up.  Everett could see that he was filled with a cold, quiet rage that was only beginning to bubble to the surface.  “The results.  Yes.  Let us discuss your results. The dome is almost complete.  Built quickly and at great expense, to your exact specifications.  There is no doubt it will be finished before this…prediction…comes to pass.  And yet…”  The Admiral was grinding his teeth too hard to complete his own sentence.  “Well?! You tell me…”

Everett stared down shamefacedly.  “And yet, the glitch is still present.  I offer my apologies Admiral.  I realize they don’t begin to make up for what has happened, but…”

“No.  No they don’t.  We’ll deal with that later.”  The Admiral cast his eyes on the obsequious figure of Dr. Furca.  “But you’re here now, and you brought him with you.  Is there anything you would like to offer by way of explanation?”

Everett nodded at Furca.  It seemed like convincing the Admiral of their latest idea was a long shot, but it was the only chance he had.

Furca had a hard time getting his bearings at first.  “Err…uhm…Admiral Sir.  It’s like this…I had said previously that the glitch might be present as long as there was any physical possibility of a cosmic ray colliding with the Cluster.  My plan to build a shield was partially correct, in as much as it eliminated a large portion of the probability state space for that event.  But there was another avenue of possibility that I, at the time, failed to account for.”

The vein in the Admiral’s forehead stopped throbbing for a moment.  At least his curiousity had been piqued.  “And what avenue would that be?”

“Ourselves,” said Furca, “The shield prevents cosmic rays from intersecting the facility, but there is no physical law preventing one of us from issuing an order to have the shield removed.  As long as one of us could decide to have the shield dismantled before the deadline, then a future where the glitch occurs could still exist.”

“Dismantle the dome?! Why in the hell would we ever consider doing that?! We just had the thing built!” the Admiral yelled.  He pointed out his office window.  Where once there was a lovely view overlooking the Capital city, now only a featureless gray wall was visible.

Agent Ellis chose that moment to speak, smiling and crossing his arms.  “So, you do believe there is a traitor at this facility, Doctor. Finally come around to my point of view have you?”

“I didn’t say that,” Everett responded peevishly.  “I haven’t seen anything to make me doubt the loyalties of any of our senior staff.”

Ellis spoke again as the Admiral fumed silently.  “But you have seen something, Doctor.  As a scientist, you must hold the evidence before you in higher esteem than your own perceptions of your colleagues’ intentions, correct? To do otherwise would be baldly hypocritical.”

Everett narrowed his eyes.  “The evidence points to a possibility of an event occurring.  While I maintain that no one at the facility intends to sabotage the dome now, that doesn’t mean some external factor couldn’t convince them otherwise.  People respond to pressure in unpredictable ways; there is no telling what sort of threat or crisis may have a remote chance of presenting itself.”

“Well personally, I find that attitude quite disconcerting,” said Ellis, sounding as if he were speaking as much to himself as to the others present. “Administrators should be expected to handle any eventuality that presents itself.  Perhaps our psychological exams are not up the standards they should be, if we have people with so little willpower in charge of our OI efforts.”

Everett had opened his mouth to respond when Furca abruptly cut him off.  “There is another explanation,” he said sheepishly.  Everett looked over at him, confused; this was not something they had discussed in their preparations.  “It’s possible that a high-ranking official could be manipulated into taking down the shield, not by his own recognizance, but by enemy action.  I’ve read of a theory, as yet unproven, that the human mind may be susceptible to cosmic rays just as a computer is.  The brain is nothing more than a large computer, after all.  And yet, it is notoriously unreliable.  We often make simple mistakes performing tasks that we have done successfully thousands of times, as if there were a glitch when retrieving information from our cerebral cortexes.  What if some of the simple mistakes we make each day are actually incidences of cosmic particles modifying bits of information in our neurons’ axon terminals? It might be feasible for the Infinians to manipulate us into making a horrifically bad mistake, if their technology was advanced enough…”

“Furca…” Everett whispered his overzealous colleague’s name between clenched teeth.

“…yes, theoretically it’s really quite possible.  And possibility is the true enemy we are fighting.  But there is a way around the problem.  Lead helmets, issued to every employee of the facility with enough influence or access to disable the main shield.  Of course, the additional weight on the neck muscles would cause some discomfort, but that might be mitigated with the addition of a set of supporting braces attached to the shoulders…”

“ENOUGH!” The Admiral stood and pounded his fist on his desk.  Furca let out a small eeping noise.  “I have never in my life been so insulted, and by two sniveling sacks of dog-piddle-laced rotten maggots like you to boot.  You, doctor Everett, are a disgrace to this facility, a disgrace to the service, a disgrace to your entire planet!  And to think I defended you all this time, told the high command you were indispensable.  Bah!  I see now nothing could be further from the truth.  The war effort has no use for incompetent lack-wits, doctor.  Remember that, wherever you end up in this God-forsaken world!”

Everett could hardly believe his ears.  He stood, shaking, tears in eyes.  His hopes and dreams, shattered in an instant.  It was too much.  His voice broke into sobs as he spoke.  “Yes…sir.  I will be taking my leave then.”

“Not so fast, Everett.  There’s still the matter of the ongoing security investigation.”  The Admiral looked back at Ellis.  “You’re going to be taken into DICE custody for interrogation.  I don’t expect we’ll be hearing from you anytime soon.  Guards! Take them out of here, both of them! I want them out of my sight!”

Everett watched as Furca was led out, babbling incoherently.  As the guard’s gloved hand grasped his arm, he glanced at Agent Ellis.  Through his tears, he saw it clearly: the smiling face, leering over him, taunting him mercilessly with its sickening, torturous intent…

“NO!”

With a sudden burst of strength that surprised even him, Everett wheeled about and ripped himself free of the guard’s grasp.  Before anyone could react, he was reaching forward, grasping the sidearm pistol at the man’s waist.  He snatched it out of the holster, then aimed it at the surprised guard’s chest.  A soundless flash, and he was down.  Wordlessly, Everett wheeled to his left.  The Admiral and Agent Ellis stood side by side, faces showing masks of shock.  Horne started to speak, but Everett raised the pistol first and fired.  A shot went through the Admiral’s neck, spraying bloody gore all over the wall behind him.  Ellis turned and saw the Admiral fall, then looked back in Everett’s direction just before catching his own shot between the eyes.

For what seemed like an eternity, Everett stood alone with only his own heavy breathing for company.  The three pools of blood spread out slowly on the smooth metal floor, while his heart continued to pound unabated.  Finally, he moved towards the Admiral’s desk, to where the secure terminal rested, still logged in with Horne’s authorization code.  Working quickly, he began entering commands, feeling the pagelet in his pocket shake as he transferred as much data as he felt could be moved quickly; plans, schematics, personnel files.  When he felt he had done enough, he stood up and considered his next move.  All interplanetary flights to Infinius had been suspended since the war’s start, of course.  But there were still transports available to other worlds.  He could find one leaving soon to a planet with an Infinian embassy.  With a little luck, he should be able to make it.

With one last look at the carnage around him, he straightened his clothes and tried to act nonchalant in preparation for his exit.  Then, just before he was going to leave the room for the final time, an idea struck him; a surefire way to cause confusion throughout the facility and help to cover his tracks.  Leaning down over the monitor to ensure accuracy, he carefully entered one final command:

shut down

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Everett stood silently outside Admiral Horne’s office.  A month had passed since their previous meeting, although the memory of that disastrous encounter was still fresh in his mind.  Day after day, he had been diligently crafting his status reports, taking care that they arrived in the Admiral’s inbox on a daily basis.  The reports required a relatively small amount of effort, but they were unwelcome at a time when he was already overseeing progress on the quantum anomaly, in addition to his normal job of running the OI center.  No matter what was put in each report however, he never received more than a cursory response.  Eventually, Everett had begin to conclude that the reports weren’t being read at all, which made it all the more surprising then when he was suddenly summoned to meet the Admiral once again.

This time, Everett had brought along one of his top lieutenants, a lead quantum computational researcher named Dr. Furca.  Furca was a short man, balding with bad breath and a face that could only be described as rodent-like.  As Everett gazed down at Furca waiting beside him, busily tapping away at his unfolded pagelet, he reflected that he never ceased to be amazed at how his career had exposed him to individuals even less socially competent than himself.

Without warning, the door opened.  Oh no, thought Everett.  Behind the Admiral, Agent Ellis stood once again, smiling graciously.  Everett had not seen the agent since the last meeting, and had been secretly hoping that sometime after its conclusion he had dragged himself back to whatever hole he had crawled out from.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Everett.  You were early this time.”  The Admiral seemed uncharacteristically cheerful.  Everett didn’t know whether or not that was a good sign.

“It’s quite alright.  I’ve brought along my colleague, Dr. Furca, who heads up the Quantum Informatics section.  I thought he might be able to clarify some of the points in my most recent status update.”  Everett motioned at Furca, who smiled and bobbed his head approvingly.  The poor bastard doesn’t know that Ellis is from DICE, thought Everett.  I wish there was some way I could warn him, but pointing it out would look suspicious.

“Oh.  Yes, very good.  We will discuss the update in a moment.  I haven’t had time to look over the written report just yet.  But first I have something to tell you: the reason this meeting was called. We’ve scored a major victory.”  The Admiral made a fist and pumped it in a small but triumphant motion.

Everett raised both his eyebrows.  “Yes, sir.  Please go on.”

“After our last meeting, Ellis brought to my attention your theory about the enemy producing artificial cosmic rays.  The high command authorized a new operational priority: perform sweeps for locations where the Infies could be setting up equipment with the intent to sabotage our facility.  One week ago, they got a hit; an asteroid base ten gigaclicks from our main perimeter.  The Infies were moving in heavy machinery…superconductors for electromagnets.  We must have caught their prediction system completely off-guard; we had time to move in a squadron before they could build up any defenses.  Forced them to dismantle everything and retreat.

“So, the mystery is solved and the threat eliminated, just like that…” The Admiral trailed off as he watched Everett’s face become a mask of confusion.  “Is something wrong, Everett?”

“It’s just,”  Everett tried to think of the best way to break the news, “you say the enemy base was detected one week ago…when was this counter-action performed?”

“The whole thing was wrapped up yesterday.  Why?”

Everett and Furca exchanged a nervous glance.  “It’s just that…sir…as of this morning, the glitch is still present, and still coming from the reverse temporal direction.  I verified it myself with Dr. Furca before we came here…”

Everett had rarely seen the Admiral truly angry, but now that it was happening it was far more frightening than he had ever imagined.  Horne sat perfectly still, his hand clenched against the desk in front of him, a single bright red vein in his forehead throbbing so forcefully it threatened to burst.  He stayed that way for what seemed like an absurdly long time, until Agent Ellis spoke calmly from behind him.

“Tell me Doctor, what sort of information security procedures do you practice in this facility?”

Everett sputtered.  “What? Excuse me Agent, this is hardly…”

“Hardly what? Regardless of the current state of our little glitch, the fact remains that the Infinians were preparing to build their sabotage facility, based on what we assume must have been illicitly-obtained information.  The security of this facility has now been called into question, security which I believe you are in charge of upholding.”

Everett gulped.  Ellis had pinned him completely, and he knew it. “We use standard military-grade security throughout the facility of course.  Software is all maintained by operations, with no non-standard installations anywhere.  All requests for configuration changes must be personally signed off by my chief of InfoTech.  All machines in the cluster are air-gapped, and accessible only by secure terminal.  No connection with the Global Hive whatsoever.  And all personnel are thoroughly screened…”

“Yes, the personnel…” Ellis interrupted him.  “Dr. Furca, is it? You are in charge of the portion of the cluster where the glitch was found, correct?”

“Oh, yes!” Furca nodded his head appreciatively.

The DICE agent smiled warmly.  “And the software which contains the glitch, did you have a hand in writing it?”

“Ah…no, no.  That’s not the way we do things.”  Furca seemed to delight in explaining the details of his work to strangers.  “Each engineer is responsible for his or her own specific code blocks, with limited or no access to the rest of the system.  For security, of course.”

“Of course,” said Ellis. “And which engineer was in charge of the specific code in question?”

“Ah, that would be Alec Benson,” responded Furca, appearing to flip through a mental rolodex, “one of our junior engineers.  Such a promising lad though, and quite bright.  The code that runs on the quantum computational unit is so much more difficult to write than standard modules, and he handles himself quite well.  I see great things in his future.”

“I see.”  Ellis pulled out a pagelet and began keying commands into it.  “Tell me Dr. Furca, would you say you have complete faith in this young engineer?”

Be careful Furca, it’s some sort of trap.  Everett stared at his well-meaning colleague, whose head was still bobbing up and down obliviously as if he were a toy duck in a bathtub.

“Oh yes, I vouch for him totally.  An excellent example of the products of Pisceon public education!”

Ellis cast his eyes forward.  “Interesting.  Perhaps you should have a look at this.”  He tapped his pagelet once more, and Furca’s hand-held display fluttered, as if it were caught in a passing breeze: the indication of an incoming signal.

Everett leaned over to view the file displayed in Furca’s hands.  “What is this?”

“A surveillance report.  I took the liberty of placing a trace on young Alec after our last meeting.  As you can see, there are some…disturbing elements in the report.  It appears our bright young engineer has been bending the security protocols behind the backs of his superiors.  Transferring classified material from the Cluster to his personal pagelet.  And like all personal machines, that pagelet is connected to the Hive.”

Furca’s eyes were wide.  It was finally dawning on him who Ellis must be, to have been able to order a trace like that.  “You…you don’t understand…the younger generation…they don’t like working on the secured terminals.  Sometimes they will use their own workstations in addition…I…I’ll have a talk with Alec immediately.  You’ll see this won’t happen again.”

“Oh, I’m afraid that won’t be necessary.”  Ellis grinned again, and this time Furca did not return the expression.  “The boy has already been placed into custody, and his security clearances revoked.  We at the Department shall handle the matter of determining his true intentions ourselves.”

“Ellis!” Everett’s hands were shaking with rage. “You can’t do that! That boy is working for me! Admiral, I demand you protest this action! This whole thing is nothing but a witch hunt against me and this facility!”

“Get a hold of yourself Everett.  I was the one who authorized Agent Ellis to make his arrest,” the Admiral snarled.  “I will tolerate no breaches of protocol in this facility, no matter who the engineer in question works for.”

“But…but…” Everett felt his grip on the situation failing, with Ellis’ smiling face leering over him, mocking him mercilessly. “Admiral, you spoke yourself about the importance of our work.  Why jeopardize us by authorizing this interference from DICE? I don’t know what sort of game he’s playing, but Ellis doesn’t have our best interests at heart.  If you would only…Furca…good God man, why are you mumbling?!”

Everett turned in annoyance to see Furca wobbling back and forth as if in prayer, tracing out a diagram on the surface of his pagelet with his finger. “Interference…interference…oh no…oh dear…”

“Everett! What is wrong with that man?” The Admiral believed so strongly in the chain of command that he would never consider questioning Furca directly.

“I’ve made a mistake…a terrible mistake…one that may go down in history…”  Furca held up his pagelet for Everett to see, although his hasty scribblings were less than understandable. “Don’t you see? We had always assumed that the S-matrix representation was sufficient to explain the anomaly we were seeing.  But what about contributions from off-shell paths…if we sum them in this manner, it’s possible they could cause interference with our initial states…”

“Everett, for God’s sake what is he talking about?!”

Furca looked up at the Admiral.  “Sir, I’m talking about the future state of the universe.  Quantum physics predicts a myriad of possible futures, not just one.  As long as there is any physical possibility of a future existing where the Infinians could build their accelerator, then the result could still be a glitch in the operation of the Prediction Cluster.”

The Admiral looked more annoyed than anything.  “But there is no possibility.  I just told you, we forced them to dismantle their base.”

“That base, certainly.”  Furca was gaining confidence now.  “But the enemy could always rebuild elsewhere.  Or perhaps there are some futures where our random sweeps did not locate their position before time ran out.  If any quantum noise was used to seed the random coordinate generators inside the probes…”

The Admiral sat back in his chair, tapping his fingers rhythmically on his desk.  Everett could not help but notice that his puzzlement over Furca’s outburst seemed to have momentarily defused his anger.  I need to take advantage of this.  “Furca,” he said, snapping the small man out of his reverie, “let’s say you’re correct.  Is there any way we can prevent the sabotage from occurring?”

“Yes,” said Furca.  “We could build a dome around the facility.  Preferably lead, or depleted uranium.  Any dense matter will absorb cosmic rays.  Of course, some space particles would still be able to penetrate, but we should be able to stop enough of them to eliminate any physical possibility of a glitch in all future timelines.”

Horne raised his eyebrow.  “A dome.  A goddamn dome.  Everett, is he serious? Do you have any idea what that will cost?”

Everett looked at Furca’s calculations, then back to the Admiral.  “I’m afraid I agree with Dr. Furca’s analysis sir.  The construction may be out of the range of our ordinary budget, but it’s a small price to pay for our global security.”

The Admiral clasped his hands together below his chin for a moment.  He looked up at Ellis, who shot him back a disinterested shrug.  Finally, he spoke.  “Very well, I’ll do it.  But you had better hope you’re right about this, Everett.  For your sake.”  He narrowed his eyes.  “And for all our sakes.  Dismissed.”

▬

Several minutes later, DICE Agent Ellis walked alone through the black marble lobby of the OI center.  All around him, promising young engineers filed to and fro in groups of three or four; explaining, listening intently, often gesticulating wildly to punctuate a particularly important point in their arguments.  None of them seemed the least bit concerned about the sudden disappearance of one of their own.  Or perhaps they are concerned, and afraid to show it, he thought.

“Ellis!”

The agent stopped and turned.  Everett was hurrying after him, trying to catch up before he left the building.  “Doctor! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Everett stopped and doubled over slightly, trying catch his breath.  “I…I wanted to…ask you…” Ellis looked down into Everett’s eyes.  He could see fear there.  And worry.  Both were always welcome sights, in his line of work.  “I want to know…what will happen to the boy?”

“Alec? I’m afraid I can’t tell you Doctor.  Classified and all that.” Ellis had to give Everett at least some credit for not appearing surprised at his answer.

“Listen.  Why are you bothering with him? You never actually said he had broadcast the data over the Hive.  And you know as well as I do that whatever he transferred was of no consequence to our security anyway.  Trying to get information out of him is a waste of your time.”

“Doctor, I must say I’m touched by your concern for your colleague.”  Ellis placed his hand over the centerof his chest to indicate where he had been touched.  “But you must understand, I am as highly trained in my own art as you are in yours.  We at DICE have, over time, developed techniques that we’ve found to be highly effective for information extraction.  One of those is what I call the Haarlem procedure.  Poke a small hole in the dike.  Then another.  Eventually, from many small holes the dike breaks, and the floodwaters pour in.  Alec is one such hole; inconsequential alone, but perhaps his absence will cause enough consternation in the facility to convince someone else to come forward.”

Everett’s face twisted into a snarl.  “But the boy is innocent.  You’re destroying his life to make him a pawn in your little game!”

Ellis shot him a lackadaisical expression.  “Must we go through this again? In war, none of us are innocent.”

Everett stood in silence for a while, until Ellis grew bored and turned to go.  He watched as the agent marched through the tiled lobby, and past the security checkpoint in front of the wide glass doors.  Then, he mumbled to himself under his breath.

“So you say…”

Continued in Part 3.

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A wise man had once said that each generation cannot possibly understand war as fought by those who will live after them.  Those that lived in the pre-exocolonial era could not understand the nature of this current conflict; just as it would be as impossible for cavemen to fathom the great marching armies of Napoleon.  The Admiral had once been told that this was the first truly cold war.  Cold as in the vast emptiness of space, where the drones and satellites shuttled about with silent precision.  Cold as in the lack of casualties; to date in the half-decade-long hostility between Pisceon and Infinius, no shots had been fired by either side.  And cold-blooded.  No one, least of all the Admiral could deny that.  There was no doubt in his mind that if Pisceon were ever out-predicted by the Infies, the planet as he knew it would be erased, destroyed in a sudden hail of atomic weaponry from above.  It was simply an accepted fact of interplanetary war; to outmaneuver and penetrate the enemy’s defense meant winning, and winning meant annihilation.  To expect otherwise would simply be naïve or suicidal.

And so, the Admiral sat and idly bided time in his office, while up there, unseen among the stars, the unmanned spaceships performed their dance of death.  Some would sit and wait, while others drifted to and fro, scanning for signs of enemy movement.  Others would purposely maneuver forward, feinting, creating smoke screens, building up forces at strategic locations, then just as quickly dispersing.  The battlefield was giant and the stratagems too advanced to be comprehended by mere humans.  All the planning and direction had slowly been given over to computers many years ago, until Operational Informatics had grown into its current size and importance within the military hierarchy.  Now, nothing moved in space without being directed to do so by the Prediction Cluster.  All day and night, every day of the year, researchers and programmers poured over logs, updated algorithms, double and triple checked data feeds. Almost all of them were civilians, albeit with high security clearances, and it was the Admiral’s job to keep watch over them in the name of the Pisceon military apparatus.  At times, it felt as if watching over the horde of scientists was akin to herding cats, but Horne accepted the responsibility with calm determination.  He knew that there were members of the military brass who scoffed at his position; a glorified babysitter in his fortress, surrounded by barbed wire at the end of a twisting dirt road through the mountains.  Certainly, the other branches of the war effort which his peers commanded were indispensable as well; no war could be fought without the contributions of drone manufacturing, weapon design, and supply logistics to name a few.  But Operational Informatics was the nerve center, the connective tissue through which all the other pieces flowed.  In its own way, OI was the war.

“Is he usually late?” said a voice from behind him, words ringing out clearly on the smooth metal walls of the large office.

The Admiral’s only response was a grunt.  Most of the Center’s administrators were accustomed to meeting at strange hours, but sometimes last-minute problems or conflicting schedules caused delays.  Horne was in no mood to discuss such details with his guest however.  He had a bad feeling about the coming rendezvous which had put him in a sour mood.

A short time later, there was a knock.  The Admiral nodded to his guardsman to open the door, revealing Dr. Max Everett waiting on the other side.  Everett was a slight man, balding with a touch of gray, with soft, blue eyes that betrayed a deep intelligence.  He seemed well at ease as he strode in, looking only slightly surprised to see a man he didn’t know standing at the back of the room, behind the figure of Admiral Horne seated as his desk.  The man was tall and wearing a navy blue suit, hands clasped in front of him. His handsome face was framed by a thick mane of slicked-back red hair.  Discussing status reports with the Admiral was a duty that Everett, in his role as chief researcher, was quite used to, but having a stranger attend such briefings was not a common occurrence.  Still, it was within the Admiral’s purview to invite whoever he wished to sit in on their meetings.

“Admiral, so nice to see you this evening.  I trust you’ve had time to look over the updates to my previous report.”  Everett pulled his personal computer from his pocket and unfolded the paper-thin substrate.

“I did,” said the Admiral gruffly.  “I want you to know that I’m taking this matter extremely seriously.”

“Of course, I understand,” responded Everett quickly.  His tone was calm, soothing.  “It’s no doubt a serious matter.  For the Cluster to issue a prediction like this one requires immediate scrutiny, which is why I directed my team to begin…”

“The prediction that the Cluster will be shut down in three months,” the Admiral interjected.

“…err, yes.  The timeframe was given as approximate, but what you said was correct.  If in fact the prediction can be trusted, then the Cluster will cease operating for at least a short period of time three months from now.”

The Admiral angrily tapped his fingers on his desk.  “I can’t say I quite follow this whole episode, Everett.  The Cluster is meant to predict enemy movements, is it not? Tell us in advance what they are planning to do, so we can redirect our forces to counteract them.  What is this business with ‘ceasing operation’?”

Everett let out a small sigh.  “Well sir, as I’m sure you’re aware, the Cluster is simply a large computer.  It accepts data about any number of entities related to the war effort, and uses models to extrapolate the future states of those entities.  To help make the simulation as accurate as possible, we supply data feeds about many different subjects, be they based on intelligence gathered from Infinian space, the current position of our drones, or the status of our operational systems here on Pisceon.  One of those data points is the status of the Cluster itself.  Hence, the system was able to deliver news of an impending change of its own operational status.  An anomalous reading in the midst of its normal predictive output.”

“An anomalous reading…” The Admiral frowned.  “Doctor, I find your attitude about this matter perplexing.  Am I to believe that you really don’t understand the implications of what you’re saying?”

“The implications?” Everett hesitated for a moment.  He struggled to better explain what he had meant, and found himself momentarily flustered.

The Admiral stared silently while reaching over with his right hand and calmly undoing his left cufflink.  He gently rolled up the left sleeve of his uniform as he held his eyes locked to Everett’s.  “Yes Doctor, the implications.”  The sleeve rolled up to a reveal a bright tattoo on his upper arm.  A figure with bright blue skin, four arms and wild cross-crossing locks of hair.  The figure was engaged in a dance, one leg flung high in the air, the other resting on the prone body of a small dwarf.  “Surely you know as well as I do what it would mean for the Cluster to shut down.  It means we have lost.  With no orders coming out of the machine, the Infies will overtake us, and what follows is annihilation.  All-consuming fire.  Shiva’s dance of destruction.”

Everett stayed quiet for a moment until he was sure the Admiral was finished.  Horne was prone to bouts of melodrama when he felt a point needed to be made, but this was the first time in Everett’s memory that he had performed the bit about the tattoo.  He tried to ignore his curiosity about where the Admiral had originally gotten it, instead staying focused on crafting a proper response. “Yes, I do understand that quite well Admiral.  Of course I consider every day just how much depends on our enterprise performing its intended purpose with maximum efficiency.  It’s what drives the determination that has led me into a position of leadership among our engineering staff.

“That being said, it is part of my duty to consider every possibility when presented with troubling or unusual situations.  That is, after all, the essence of what Operational Informatics is about; gather information, analyze it, and act on it in the way that is most logically consistent.  So while I do not reject the possibility of danger arising from this prediction, I would be remiss if I did not consider that it may simply stem from a previously undiscovered error in the system.”

The Admiral narrowed his eyes slightly.  With care not to wrinkle the fabric, he began rolling his sleeve back down.

Suddenly, the stranger standing behind him spoke up.  “A question, Dr. Everett, if you would be so good as to satisfy my curiosity.”

The lead researcher looked over with annoyance.  “And who, may I ask, am I addressing?”

“Doctor, this is Agent Ellis,” said the Admiral, waving his hand up in the direction of the visitor, “of the Defense, Intelligence and Communications Executive.”

Everett’s tongue caught in his throat and his eyes went wide.  A DICE agent? Here? Why?  It took him only a moment to regain his composure, but he noticed a small smile crossing Ellis’ face as his alarm was given away.  Perhaps he happened to be discussing an unrelated matter before I arrived, he thought, although he wasn’t foolish enough to actually believe it.  DICE agents were almost sure to bring trouble with them wherever they went.  Nevertheless, Ellis resolved to continue the meeting as if nothing was amiss.  “Very well, Agent Ellis.  Your question?”

“I was wondering, Doctor…what exactly would a shutdown of the Cluster entail?  How are we to interpret this prediction, assuming it is taken at face value?”

“The system gave no precise details,” admitted Everett, “but none of the scenarios we’ve considered that fulfill the prediction are consistent with our current knowledge of the state of the war.  For example, if Infinius did attack, and the Capital and surrounding area were destroyed, the computer might consider that equivalent to being in a state of non-operation.  But as far as we know, the Infinian military is nowhere near ready to commit to such an action.  The Cluster relies on the same intelligence we have to recommend its course of action, and it has not warned us of any danger from a war-ending strike.

“Similarly, one might imagine that we, the research staff, could intentionally take the system offline.  Perhaps if we had a completely new set of hardware that we wanted to use to run the computations, such a step might be necessary to make a replacement.  But we have no such plans on the horizon, and no great leap in hardware technology in development.  All upgrades to the system are performed as hot-swaps, in order to maximize available computational time.  There is no reason to believe that we would change our protocols to allow a complete decommissioning of the system in the near future.”

“I see,” said Ellis, rubbing his chin as if pondering the situation carefully, “but have you considered the possibility of an unforeseen shutdown? Perhaps some sort of emergency measure, in order to address a serious error in the system.  Didn’t you suggest that such an error could be taking place?”

“I did, but that’s circular reasoning.”  Everett shook his head, “The error is what is causing the faulty prediction of a shutdown.  Why would we shut the system down in order to address the error, thus fulfilling the predicted scenario we were attempting to avoid?”

The agent laughed and raised his hands to his sides.  “I’m merely speculating Doctor.  If the computer is malfunctioning in some way, then perhaps the only course of action available would be to shut it down in response.  After all, if it is capable of producing one bogus prediction, how can any of its output be trusted?”

“With all due respect, I don’t put much stock into the speculations of laymen,” said Everett.  Catching the rudeness of his remark, he cast his eyes down to the floor as he spoke; Everett had made it a habit to avoid direct confrontation whenever possible.  “Within our branch of informatics we are quite familiar with what are called feedback loops.  You’ve found an example of one here; if the system gives a wrong answer about being shut down, then it will be shut down as a result, thus creating a paradox where the wrong answer is actually certain to be right.  But we have algorithms for detecting such logical fallacies and removing them before they pollute the system.

“No, I believe the cause of our current issue lies elsewhere, Agent Ellis.  Our team has already identified what we believe to be a very strong candidate for what it could be.  It was this candidate that I outlined in my recent status update to the Admiral; the update that I presumed was the purpose of this meeting.”

“You presumed correctly,” said the Admiral from behind his desk.  He reached out and tapped a large screen jutting upward from its surface.  “According to this, you traced the problem to a glitch in the quantum computational unit.”

“Yes,” said Everett, relieved to be addressing his superior once again.  “The Cluster’s quantum unit is a standard model, CM-1.  Thirty qubits and two hundred kilo-pseudo-qubits.  But the problem we appear to be encountering is quite novel.  A glitch in the input stream traveling in the reverse direction from the normal computational flow.”

The Admiral reached up and pressed on his temple gingerly.  “The reverse direction?”

“Yes,” said Everett, “like all quantum computational units, the CM-1 is a reversible machine.  This means it’s susceptible to interference from its output as well as input registers.”

“Doctor,” interrupted Agent Ellis, “I’m afraid my background in quantum computation is slightly rusty.  What exactly does it mean when you say that the machine is reversible?”

Everett felt slightly uneasy at the agent’s continued interruptions.  Nevertheless, he was obliged to explain.  “Perhaps the easiest way to think of it would be a video recording.  Imagine you had a recorder which could play back video of your actions, either in a normal fashion or in reverse, depending on what setting you chose.  So, if you woke up this morning and made breakfast, the normal playback might show you getting out of bed, washing up, then preparing food, in that order.  Likewise, the reverse playback would show you preparing raw ingredients out of a fully-assembled meal, then throwing water from your face up into the sink spout, and finally at the end of the video, laying down to go to sleep.

“The essence of reversibility is this: if your actions had been reversible, than I, by examining the playback, would not be able to determine if you had chosen to play the video forwards or in reverse.  In the example I just gave, since I would be able to tell that the reverse video of your morning routine would have been impossible for you to perform, we could say that your actions this morning were not reversible.”

“Ah, I see.” said Ellis, “You’re talking about entropy.  I can scramble an egg for breakfast, but the law of increasing entropy means that I am prevented from unscrambling my breakfast back into an egg.”

“Well, not quite,” responded the researcher.  He couldn’t help slipping into a professorial tone during these types of conversations, no matter who he was having them with. “You’re on the right track, but reversible computation is slightly different.  Let me give you another example.  Let’s say you’re on a beach…”

“This example seems much more enjoyable than the last one,” interjected Ellis, smirking.

Everett frowned.  “On the surface of the beach are multicolored pebbles scattered about randomly.  You are holding a blank piece of paper and a set of paints.  While being recorded on video, you will walk forward, and after taking each step, look down and take note of the color of the pebble directly below your feet.   Then, paint a mark on the paper, using the same color as the one you observe on the pebble.  Continue the process until the paper is filled with colored marks, in the order that you saw the pebbles while walking.”

“So the paper acts as sort of a record of the colors along that particular path?” said Ellis.

“Exactly.  Now, it should be fairly obvious that the process as described is not reversible.”

“Let me see…if the process is reversible, then you shouldn’t be able to tell if the video was being played in forward or reverse, correct?” said Ellis.

“Correct,” the researcher responded curtly.

“Of course, painting on paper is a one-way process.  There’s no way for me to pull dried paint from my paper back onto the brusg, so I suppose just seeing me brushing on the paint on the video would make it irreversible.”

“For this scenario, I will give you some extra powers.  You can have a brush that acts as an eraser, perfectly removing all the paint on a section of paper.  And you can ignore all the other entropic effects you create, such as friction.  But there is one power I won’t grant you; you cannot look in advance at what pebbles lay ahead of you.  In other words, you must arrive at the beach and choose a random direction without scouting ahead.”

“Ah hah!” The agent chuckled mildly.  “I have it then.  The process is not reversible because I would have to start out with my paper already colored-in.  Unless I had the incredible luck to choose the correct colors, then I wouldn’t be able to erase the color on the paper that matched the pebble I was looking at.  Bravo!”

“Good,” said Everett, “What this scenario illustrates is the workings of a classical computer.  By copying the information being fed as input, which in this case is the line of pebbles on the beach, the classical computer becomes irreversible.”

“Well then,” interjected the Admiral, face resting on his hands and looking bored to tears, “now that we’ve cleared that up…”

“Please Admiral, if you will.  There is still one part of the story I’m missing.” Ellis smiled again and Everett shuddered.  It seemed wrong for this relatively young man to be cutting off the Admiral in such a way, and without any rebuke whatsoever.  “If what you just described is akin to how a classical computer operates, then how could I imagine a quantum computer works?”

“A simple modification would be necessary,” responded Everett after a moment’s hesitation, “instead of paint and paper, let’s give you a tray with many small cups arrayed in a row.  Inside each cup is a pebble similar to the ones found on the beach, and similarly randomly colored.  This time, you will continue forward as before, looking down and noting the pebble directly below you with each step.  However, now there will be one crucial difference: instead of copying the color you see, you will reach down and take away the pebble from the beach, replacing it with the pebble from one of your cups.  Now when you finish your journey, the colors of the pebbles in the cups will hold a record of the colors you encountered in your journey, much as the paper did in our last example.”

“I see,” said Ellis, “but by removing the pebbles from the beach, instead of merely copying them, I’ve made it so that I could record myself walking backwards instead of forwards, and no one would be the wiser.  The pebbles that start in the cups end up on the beach, and vice-versa.”

“The input becomes dependant on the output as well as the other way around,” concluded Everett, “and that is the crux of what we believe is happening with the Prediction Cluster.  A glitch in the output is what is interfering with our results.  That is why we have encountered a delay in solving the problem.”

The Admiral spoke again, his voice booming. “I don’t understand this business about a delay, Everett.  If you know where the glitch is, then tell your boys to fix it, and if they won’t then find someone else who will!”

Everett responded in a hushed tone.  “As I said before, Admiral, this type of glitch is new to us.  It is appearing in the output registers, in a computational state which we have not yet reached.  The ‘boys’ are so far confounded trying to find a way to fix a glitch which has not occurred yet.”

The Admiral shook his head in disbelief.  “Wait a minute here Everett.  Did I hear you correctly? The glitch has not occurred yet?”

“Yes sir.  A glitch from the future.”

Horne was rendered speechless, forced to only stare at his head researcher in shock.

Everett tried to project an aura of expertise.  “The team could hardly believe it as well, when we first uncovered the evidence.  But the math checks out; it appears that glitches stemming from future events may be a systemic problem with quantum computing.  You see, humanity imposes a strict ordering on the events we experience, in order for us to maintain the illusion of causality.  But for physics, time is symmetric, even if that fact only becomes apparent at the very small scales at which the quantum computational unit operates.”

The Admiral stammered, appearing to lose his composure as he attempted to determine whether Everett was playing him for a fool or not.

Behind him, Agent Ellis appeared perfectly calm.  When he spoke, it was clear that he had taken everything Everett said perfectly seriously.  “Correct me if I’m wrong Doctor, but doesn’t this qualify as something you would call a ‘feedback loop’? If you and your team are aware of the glitch now, would that not help you correct the mistake when the time does come for it to occur?”

“That might be true,” said Everett, considering the proposition carefully, “unless the glitch was not caused by a mistake…”

“…but by sabotage.”  Ellis’ eyes narrowed.  Everett found himself taken aback by the previously jovial agent’s sudden change in tone.  Now it was clear to him why DICE was involved here.  Somehow they had gotten a hold of his report ahead of time and understood the implications.  This entire conversation with Ellis was nothing more than a diversion; a ploy to see if Everett had thought the matter through completely.  This was more dangerous than he had imagined.  Without a doubt, DICE was the most secretive, and most feared, organization on Pisceon.  They specialized in human intelligence, specifically internal threats and rooting out traitors.  The stories Everett had heard about their methods made him ashamed to be Piscinian.

“No!” Everett surprised himself by shouting.  Quickly he regained his composure.  “I mean to say, I don’t believe this facility could be sabotaged from the inside.  Admiral, I can vouch for the loyalties of all those who serve below me…”

“Yes, yes,” said the Admiral dismissively, “the fact remains that we need answers for what’s going on here.  If your boys aren’t the cause of the issue, then what is Doctor?”

“Well, I do have a theory, although it isn’t fully fleshed out just yet…”

Horne shot Everett a look which indicated he wished to hear it anyway.

“Cosmic rays.  Charged particles from space.  They’ve been known to cause glitches in computer equipment for millennia, and quantum computers are even more susceptible to them than a classical one is.”

“Cosmic rays!” The Admiral blustered angrily.  “My God man, if we’ve known about them for so long, why wouldn’t the system be designed to handle them already? Just how incompetent are you?”

“Sir…” Everett tried to remain calm.  Being called incompetent cut him to the bone.  “The system is designed to handle them.  All the chips come equipped with hard-wired error correction and hamming codes to prevent a cosmic ray from corrupting data and causing a glitch.  But the current situation is exceptional.  With some more time, I’m certain the team could find an explanation…”

“They had better, Everett.  The responsibility is yours.  I want all your division leaders delivering status reports twice daily until this problem is fixed, with the results collated and forwarded to me by you personally.”

“But sir, since time is of the essence, I am sure the division leaders would be more useful if they could spend…”

“Everett!” The Admiral invoked the full furor of his booming, gravelly voice, “Do you not recognize an order when you’re given one?”

“I do sir.  I’ll be leaving now then.”  Everett ducked his head.  From out of the corner of his eye, he could see Agent Ellis, still grinning mischievously.

“Dismissed, then.”

Everett turned and left, walking through the door held open by the stoic guardsman.  Folding his pagelet and sliding it back into his pocket, he attempted to put some distance between himself and the meeting’s unpleasantness.  He had just been about to turn the corner when he heard a familiar voice call out behind him.

“Doctor! A moment of your time, if you please?”

Everett stopped dead in his tracks.  It was Agent Ellis, walking up leisurely behind him.  He could afford to take his time; who on Pisceon would dare turn down an invitation to speak with a representative of DICE?

“A very fascinating talk Doctor.  It makes me wish I had gone into science, instead of…my chosen career field.”

Everett looked at Ellis’ face, taking a quick stock of the taller man.  He and Ellis were of similar age.  But a scientist? He didn’t doubt the Agent’s intelligence, but he thought that his smooth demeanor and condescending tone would not have made him popular amongst the quiet, sober denizens of academia.

“I am left wondering one thing however.  You said that the computers have error correction systems, to compensate for things such as cosmic rays striking a chip.  But surely these systems are not infallible.  Have you considered the ways in which they could be overcome?”

“Of course I have,” said Everett curtly.  “The mathematics of error correction are quite ancient and well-established.  The only way to overcome the hamming codes would be for three cosmic rays to strike a chip simultaneously.  The chances of such a thing occurring are ridiculously remote.”

“Three cosmic rays, arriving at random from all over the cosmos…it would seem unlikely.  But Doctor, what if the strikes were not random? Could such rays be manufactured by the Infinians?”

Everett stared dumbly.  “Manufactured…an artificial cosmic ray? Certainly, any particle accelerator could fire a proton with the required velocity.  But to actually aim them with enough precision…”

“Perhaps it is simply idle speculation.” Ellis’ smile had disappeared.  “But what if there was a, information leak from inside this facility? What if the Infinians were given detailed knowledge of our location and the specifications of the Prediction Cluster? Would such an attack be feasible then?”

Everett’s eyes suddenly went wide.  “Agent Ellis! Are you accusing me of something?! This is…this is preposterous.  Outrageous!”

Ellis clucked his tongue.  “Now now, Doctor. As I said, it is mere speculation.  A possibility.  But perhaps your overzealous reaction has revealed some hidden dealings on your part?”

Everett was beginning to sweat.  Stupid to lose my cool like that.  I need to get out of this conversation.  “I apologize, Agent Ellis.  It was a stupid mistake, nothing more.  I must be going now, if you will excuse me.”

Ellis let him walk away a few steps, then spoke again.  “Tell me Doctor…just between you and me, off the record.  Is there something about me you don’t like?”

Everett stopped and turned.  The strangeness of the question had thrown him off-guard.  Would it be worse to lie or tell the truth?  “You make me nervous. You’re a DICE agent.”

“Is that all? Suppose I weren’t an agent of the Department. Say I had chosen to become a baker instead.  Do you think you and I would get along?”

“No.” Everett’s lips moved before he knew he was talking. “I’ve known people like you all my life. You use your power over other people to hurt them.  You’re a bully.”  He shook his head.  “Why are you asking me this?”

“I’m interested in how others think.” Ellis grinned.  “Call it a hobby, but it’s also necessary for doing my job.  Tell me Doctor, were you interested in computational science at a young age?”

Everett nodded.  “It was all I thought about.  I studied every day.  After school, even during recess…”

“Sounds lonely.  And what about now? Are you single? Married?”

“Divorced.”

“Children?”

Everett looked at the floor.  “We never wanted any.  Or so we said.  I found out later my wife had eventually remarried…now she has…” he trailed off. “It doesn’t matter.  I have my work to look after.  You are certainly aware of its importance, and my importance to the proper functioning of this facility.  So, I don’t need to feel intimidated by you.  You should be ashamed of what you do.  Snooping into the private lives of others…it’s disgusting.”  He had slowly lifted his gaze as he spoke, until his chin jutted forward confrontationally.  His heart was pounding in disbelief at his own bravery.  Have I just done something truly idiotic?

For a moment, Ellis stared vacantly, betraying no emotion.  Then, he laughed.  “Perhaps you’re right, Doctor. About me, I mean.  For your sake, I can be whatever you want me to be, if it helps you to feel better.  But just remember one thing; think of this when you sleep peacefully tonight, dreaming of what a better person you are than me.  Remember that if this project does succeed, your actions will result in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people on Infinius.  So try not to get up on too high of a horse while you’re off saving the world!”

And with that he turned and left, his chuckling echoing down the long length of the metal corridor.

Continued in Part 2.

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