The Other by Marilyn Peake Read online

  The amendment to the original law basically states that in the event that a time traveler needs to save their own life or the life of a fellow traveler or needs to bring back the dead body of a traveler, they are to use their judgment regarding the Law of Noninterference. In other words, if they need to expose themselves to people from whom they would normally hide or if they need to kill a person from the past, it’s basically a case of let the multiverse be damned, we’ll take our chances.

  The test that was the hardest for me is when I was sent back in time to right before my father’s death. We all had to do this. It was part of our training—to go back to a moment of intense loss or tragedy in our personal lives, to simply observe and do nothing. My father died from cancer, most likely caused by the aggression stimulant AgStim, one of the drugs designed to combat the overly calm disposition of modern people. The same mutations that scientists had made to the human genome hundreds of years earlier to allow our bodies to conduct partial photosynthesis, in order to reduce our need for food from a planet increasingly unable to supply enough for everyone to thrive, had a few side effects: green skin, greater passivity than previous generations, and increased empathy to the point where we could share thoughts. We were still animals. We continued to exhibit aggressive behavior and experience a wide range of negative emotions—anger, jealousy, hate—but none of that was particularly intense and we weren’t usually motivated to sustain it for too long. But some situations and jobs require aggression over longer periods of time. My father was a bit of a creative dreamer. He was a painter who discovered that AgStim allowed him to work longer hours. The longer hours he worked, the more paintings he could sell and the more our quality of life improved.

  AgStim has nasty side effects. When my dad binged on it for months at a time, he usually became violent. I was beaten numerous times until I learned to hide as soon as I saw the telltale signs he needed to withdraw from the stuff: his normally lustrous eyes became dull, his skin took on a grayish tinge and his hands shook.

  The Time Travel Administration (TTA) sent me back to three different points in time when I could have interfered with the timeline leading directly to my father’s death. The first mission took me back to the moment when he first decided to try AgStim. I was nine years old. AgStim was being heralded as a breakthrough invention in brain enhancement. The commercials that flickered across our virtual reality eyesets, the huge black lenses we popped over our eyes for direct neural access to the Information Hub, told us that AgStim was the invention that would advance the human race forward, just as the Photosynthesis Experiment had done for previous generations.

  My dad came home from his art studio telling us that his doctor had prescribed AgStim for him because he’d been feeling tired. I asked him, “So, you’ll have more energy, Dad?”

  He said, “That’s what they say. I should feel ten years younger and have the energy of a hummingbird drone.”

  I’d run off to paint him a picture in which my dad was a hummingbird drone zipping around his office with a paintbrush poking out of the top like an antenna. My dad loved the picture. He took it to work and hung it in his studio the next day, my simple kid’s picture hanging next to the professional paintings he sold.

  The TTA sent me back there. I had to be extremely careful not to let my family see me. I was to slip into the house through the back door and listen to the conversation from the kitchen. I’d remembered my mother wasn’t home that day and the younger me would be chatting with my dad and then off in my room painting the picture.

  I wanted more than anything to walk in and explain the dangers of AgStim to my father and warn him about his future. When it was time to leave, I hopped into my pod with tears streaming down my face.

  The next moment I was sent back to was a time when I was a teenager and my dad asked me to take his prescription to the pharmacy. His eyes had lost their shine and his hands were shaking.

  I wanted to stop the adolescent me from filling the prescription, but I held back.

  The most difficult mission of all, however, was when TTA sent me back in time to my father’s hospital deathbed disguised as a nurse.

  I could have saved him. He didn’t die from AgStim itself. He would have survived, after going through enhanced withdrawal where his body would be monitored and replenished with everything it needed. They were about to begin the process when the computer malfunctioned and mixed a deadly combination of drugs that would be poured into an IV bag and delivered through a tube into his veins.

  TTA put me through rigorous virtual reality training in which I relived this moment over and over again, and then relived it once more in a modified scene. I watched myself refill his water pitcher and chat with him as the other nurse hung the bag filled with poisonous liquid and started the drip. I watched my father’s body tremble and stiffen in a series of seizures. I watched him die within the large black contact lenses that obscured the rest of the world and made this my only reality. I was monitored the entire time. If I took off the lenses or ordered the program to stop running inside them, I would never become a time traveler. I had to pass this test.

  The final test was going back in time to that same moment with a virtual reality headset over my face, the split-screen type that allows a doctor to see reality in one section and medical information in another, so that my father wouldn’t recognize me. I was to take his vital signs through medical instruments in the headset while the nurse hung the bag and started the drip. I was to say nothing unless asked a question. I was to change nothing in that instance of time. I was to leave the room shortly after my dad began seizuring. I was in no way allowed to help or report the problem to hospital personnel.

  After surviving the incident and returning to the present time, I was debriefed. And then I was treated to the ritual that made all of this easier: two solid days of raucous partying and drinking with fellow trainees. Everyone got four days off following any of our Time Travel Missions: two for partying, two for recovering. It was, I believe, a ritual for reintegrating us back into our present time and having those of us who would be traveling through time on a regular basis bond as a group. Once we became full-fledged time travelers, we’d have clubs for that. It was important for us to realize how much we would need those and how much we should turn to them for support.

  After I completed my training as a time traveler on both the Anthropology and Medical teams, I received my first real mission. Training started with a series of classes. The first explained the goal of the mission.

  I woke up early, showered and dressed. Looking in the mirror, I liked what I saw. My skin had a healthy green color, none of the gray tinge I’d noticed after my final training mission. The luster had returned to my eyes, which were now bright green. The top of my head was green and smooth, no longer riddled with the rash I’d developed from the neoskin helmet. Next mission, I’d be wearing one of the older models, since I seemed to be allergic to the new ones.

  Walking across the TTA grounds, I thought how lucky I was. This place was beautiful and uplifting. Trees towered over white concrete buildings. Flowers in a wide variety of colors filled numerous gardens. Fountains tossed water up into the air and statues stood in the midst of them. A rich forest completely surrounded the campus, bathing it in the perfume of trees. Food was plentiful here, as were vitamins and other health enhancements. The latest in medical advancements and human-machine interfaces were available to us. Our teachers and trainers were all highly qualified.

  I had started thinking about whether or not I’d like to get an interface. My best friend, a time traveler in the History division, had recently had a chip implanted in her brain that would allow her to see historical events unfold as she read about them. It was a step beyond the VR eyesets or contact lenses, more immersive.

  I passed a few mechanical engineers with robotic arms that allowed them to work more efficiently on the time travel pods and the TTA’s infrastructure. One bowed their head to say hello.
r />   When I finally arrived at the instructional building, I sighed with happiness. Looking up at the tall white building in the shadow of living, breathing trees, sunlight forming a sparkling pool on the ground in front of it, I thought how long my journey had been to this point where I’d be given an actual mission.

  I stepped from the quiet campus into a hallway bustling with recent graduates, everyone on their way to find out where they’d be going and the purpose of their assignment.

  I found my classroom and got seated just a few minutes before the instructor entered the room and introduced herself. She was short, had green freckles and one of the latest fashion enhancements: long blue hair implants. She looked like someone from the past when human beings still had hair. That kind of thing was totally impractical for time travelers or astronauts, but it was perfectly fine for teachers. I kind of liked the look. It was starting to grow on me.

  Folding her hands, she looked around the classroom. She smiled and said, “What a fine group of time travelers we have here! Welcome to Mission Instruction. I’m Dr. Raelynn Molyneux. Here’s how you spell it…” With a printing stick in her hand, she shined her name in the air, in bold yellow letters against a black background. A few heads nodded as they took pictures with their contact lenses.

  She said, “I’m going to explain your mission this way: downloads into your contact lenses followed by instruction. You’ll need to turn off all tune-out devices in your implants or contact lenses right now in order to experience the entire lesson. I’ll tell you when to turn them back on.”

  We saw footage of what was happening in other parts of the world and a history lesson on scientists saving our planet through genetic manipulation in the past. There were hints that something similar would need to be done again.

  I got chills partway through the lesson. What kind of manipulation were they talking about doing this time? The transition was never easy.

  We saw video that had been preserved from the past: footage of raging storms and massive fires and floods. It was from the epoch labeled the Near Apocalypse by historians. To those who had lived in those times, it must have seemed like the actual Apocalypse, the coming of the end times.

  A family stood in front of a burned house. The bottom section—made from wooden beams, as trees were abundant enough to do that back then—was charred and disintegrating. The interior was a pile of ash. Whatever the family had owned, all the things they had purchased and collected and treasured, had been turned to gray ash. A woman was holding up a few photographs and crying. She said to the reporter, “These are the only photos we found. All the rest were destroyed. This is all I have left of my kids’ childhoods.” The reporter asked, “Are your children OK?” Wiping tears from her face, the woman said, “Yes, thank God. Really, we’re incredibly blessed. We’re very lucky.”

  From a different time and place, that sounded so odd. That woman and her family were some of the unluckiest people on the planet. Faced with overwhelming tragedy, human beings have the unique talent of only comparing it with worse tragedies, rather than with better, happier times. It’s a survival mechanism. We feel that we’re lucky, rather than cursed. We convince ourselves that our luck will only increase in the future. It helps us move forward. And for those who get stuck, we’ve invented all kinds of medicines and more recently, implants. Unfortunately, all of this dulls the potential impact that tragedy has for teaching us important lessons. The human race never seems to learn from all of its mistakes.

  The reporter explained that one hundred and twelve homes in that family’s area had been destroyed by a forest fire that came down from the mountains and raged on for two weeks before firefighters got it under control. He said that luckily the fire was now completely out and families were returning to look for anything that remained of their home and belongings.

  Next, there were scenes of flooded streets in what was then Miami, Florida and New York City, New York. Cars floated upside down in the middle of flooded streets. The numbers of people who drowned were staggering.

  There was aerial footage of people in a place called New Orleans, Louisiana stranded on rooftops spelling out messages asking for help. Their homes were surrounded by floodwaters as high as second floors and attics. It was haunting.

  The tune-out device had been invented to lower the intense empathy that came with our mutated genes. I’d wished we could turn them back on. They never eradicated decent amounts of empathy. They just lowered it to a comfortable level when dealing with extremely painful situations others were in. Too much empathy often rendered it impossible for us to help in situations where action was needed. We became paralyzed.

  The film showed a wide variety of weather-related tragedies that occurred in the Near Apocalypse. Fires and droughts in food-producing parts of the world led to mass migrations of people desperate for enough food and water to survive. Countries began enacting laws to keep foreigners out. People died by the thousands. Scenes showing people starving to death—their faces gaunt, their eyes and stomachs bulging, bones clearly outlined where they would normally be covered by layers of fat and skin—were especially hard to watch.

  The most painful part of the film showed emaciated infants dying in their mother’s arms—veins protruding beneath the skin of their skulls, ribs pressing against taut flesh, arms and legs as thin as sticks, eyes bulging with a look of horror at the only reality those infants had ever known. This part affected me so deeply that I experienced terrible nightmares after going to sleep that night. I woke up covered in sweat and screaming. In my dream, I’d traveled back in time to a village where there were hundreds of infants in this condition. Their mothers had begged me to give them food and formula for their babies. I refused to do it. I told them rather haughtily that I could not violate the Law of Noninterference. I treated them as though they were immoral for asking me to do that. When they continued to beg, I turned down my empathy, swallowed AgStim and murdered their children. I woke up gasping for air.

  The instructional film showed mothers and children crossing miles of desert—on foot, riding even on the roofs of trains or in the trunks of cars—and families risking dangerous boat rides across miles of ocean to bring their families to places where they could thrive. They were repeatedly turned away for not being legal citizens of the places they were trying to enter.

  A Mexican boy and his mother, exhausted and dirty after walking miles of desert in extreme heat to reach the United States, were shot by a guard on the U.S. side of the border before they even crossed it. Their bodies were left to bake and rot in the blistering sun. Bobcats and wolves and coyotes found them and fed on their flesh. For the non-human animals, it was a feast, a celebration. It was the natural law of survival of the fittest.

  I pondered laws. People back then had tribal laws designed to protect their own kind. We have the Law of Noninterference. We aren’t allowed to kill people from a different time period, but we can certainly watch them die and do nothing to help. We’re expected to do that. What if the Law is wrong? What if the universe is a test? What if we’re supposed to right the wrongs of the past in order to fix the universe and pass the ultimate test? If this is true, our generation will fail, as all the generations before us have failed.

  Twice, I had watched my father die. I had been there when I knew he was about to be poisoned. I had done nothing to help. What if that was my own personal test—not only from the TTA, but also from the universe? What if the universe’s test was more important?

  Dr. Molyneux turned off the video downloads. Our contact lenses went back to normal. She said, “That was tough to watch, I know. It was important, however. It’s a history lesson to prepare you for your first two missions. It showed you a few events from the first Near Apocalypse caused by the human race. As those situations accelerated and got much worse, scientists worked on a variety of ways for the human race to adapt and survive. A few settlements were established on Mars, but they didn’t succeed. Everyone perished due to accident
s in the inhospitable environment and countries lost their motivation to fund additional settlements. We’re the result of another experiment: major changes made to the human genome, so that we create some of our own food through photosynthesis. A major side effect of the photosynthesis: our skin color changed from shades of tan to shades of green. But it solved the food shortage problem. People used to eat three huge meals a day plus snacks. They had sandwiches that were 1,000 calories each, even drinks with that many calories. Can you imagine?”

  No, I could not. I felt queasy just thinking about it.

  Dr. Molyneux continued, “We’re now facing the second Near Apocalypse caused by man. You know what the world is like outside of elite enclaves like this one. People are once again starving. We’ve had a huge population explosion generation after generation. And we’re encountering a serious issue that the scientists of what is now known as the Green Genome Project did not foresee. Having plant genes spliced into human genes has over time bred too much passivity into us. Drugs like AgStim were supposed to be the answer, but they’re not a long-term solution. They cause mental illness and cancer. These drugs have led to extreme aggression and homicides. And they’re addictive—not immediately, but definitely after continued use. So, you are all going back to different points in time before the Green Genome Project occurred to collect blood and tissue samples. These will be used to splice modified genes for human aggression back into our gene pool. If the human race is going to survive, this needs to be done.”

  She gave us time to absorb that information.

  Then she said, “Your first mission is to go back to the moment when mothers gave birth to the first babies with successfully modified genes, the first babies with photosynthetic capabilities. That was not handled well. Because human beings back then had persecuted others with skin colors a different shade of tan than their own, scientists feared that babies with green skin would be killed. There were tribes in East Africa that had reacted horribly to people born without pigment. Here, let me show you what they looked like.”