Another dark saucer-like creature appeared on the edge of his vision, with a row of javelin darts attached beneath its shell, strapped on like missiles on the underside of a warplane. The intruder rushed at the wounded creature.
Jason watched as spider-like aliens launched themselves from this marauder, thrusting through space and landing on the crippled alien. Some kind of particle beam erupted from one of these pirates, searing the central dome and creating the massive scar he’d floated through just minutes before when he found the alien in the darkened crevasse deep within OA-5772.
Jason could see that the spiders were capable of operating without a spacesuit. Their exoskeletons must have shielded their internal organs in much the same way as his spacesuit protected him.
Jason found himself wondering about the energy requirements of such celestial creatures and the need for their metabolism to maintain an internal temperature in which their biochemistry could function properly. That space was poor at convective heat transfer must have helped, but the extreme differences between starlight and shade would have made it difficult for any biological creature to negotiate. Perhaps this was why these creatures stayed well clear of the stars, he thought. Perhaps it wasn’t the gravity wells they were avoiding, but the excessive heat. Or maybe it was both.
Jason wanted to study these creatures. He was fascinated by the possibilities filling his mind and he could understand how Jae-Sun would have once felt the same way.
His viewpoint closed in on the fractured, smoldering dome of the creature and he could see one of the hunters setting up the console he’d seen glowing in the darkness.
The wounded creature fought, bucking like a bronco. Strobes of light continued to burst around it as the pirates set about breaking their captive’s will. Jason found himself willing the alien to flee and in a flash of light it was gone. The marauders were left without their prey, drifting aimlessly through the nebula in response to the shockwave that reverberated when the wounded creature fled.
Jason was again in the darkness of the chasm deep in the shattered asteroid, only his viewpoint had shifted. Although his outstretched hand still pressed hard against the mass of brain matter, he appeared to be floating near the back wall of the skull. He watched as another astronaut sailed in through the gaping wound and at first he thought it was Lassiter.
A white spacesuit drifted before him. Spotlights flashed around the darkened interior of the skull.
“That’s me!” he said, almost expecting to see himself responding to those words. It took a moment for him to realize he was seeing Jae-Sun in the original time stream.
His doppelgänger turned, looking through him, not seeing him.
Several more astronauts drifted by outside the creature, floating past like scuba divers in a dark cave. They attached cables to the outside of the animal.
The view before Jason flickered and suddenly the empty brain cavity was flooded with light.
Jason blinked as his eyes adjusted to the sudden influx of light.
Several men walked around within the brightly lit skull of the creature. They were dressed in clean-room suits, hermetically sealed with their own oxygen supply.
That the men walked meant they were under the influence of gravity, and Jason wondered whether this view was onboard the Excelsior or on Earth. Their movement was too fluid for either Mars or Titan, where they would have appeared to rebound more, but either way, this view revealed a much more distant, future time.
Jason could make out Jae-Sun’s features through the visor of one of the suits. He’d aged considerably. Given that they were both already almost five hundred years old, that could only mean Jae-Sun had reached the limit of genetic renewal. As Jason understood the process, that would have made Jae-Sun almost a thousand years old.
“The collar is in place, but the damage appears too great,” one of the men said.
“I’m convinced we can do it,” the older Jae-Sun replied. “I’ve studied the design. I understand the physics.”
“But the dome would need shielding,” the other man said. “Without protection, you’d be exposed to the radiant energy within the wormhole. We have no idea what that would do to human tissue.”
A woman spoke. Jason had assumed all three scientists were men, because their baggy suits hid any hint of gender.
“You’re going to hit a backwash of energy, not unlike when a river opens out into the sea. Both sides of the timeline are going to pour energy into the void, trying to close the hole. I don’t see how anyone could survive given the damage to the alien dome.”
“And yet this creature survived such a trip to get here,” the aging Jae-Sun insisted. “Don’t you see? If we can harness this power we can change time.”
Jason was shocked to learn he could be so arrogant. This magnificent interstellar creature had once been nothing more to him that a vehicle to exploit. He’d given its life no more consideration than a child would stepping on a bug.
“Think about what you’re saying,” the woman pleaded. “You’re stealing fire from the gods!”
“Ha,” the elderly Jae-Sun replied, clearly surprised by the comparison with the fabled Prometheus. “Think about how society advances. We learn from our mistakes. We learn the hard way. What if we could learn the easy way? What if we could learn without consequence and avoid heartache and ruin? What if we could fix our mistakes?”
“But consequences are unavoidable,” the woman replied. “Time will not permit paradoxes. You cannot play God!”
“God was an amateur,” the old Jae-Sun snapped, his voice booming as he became more bellicose. “God knew the future and never changed a thing. But us, we have a real shot at turning back the clock and resetting the tragedies of mankind. We can prevent billions of deaths in the War of the North! We can avoid the loss of tens of thousands of other animal species to our own stupidity. We can undo extinction itself!”
“You are mad,” the woman stated firmly, raising her voice in defiance. “You’re drunk with power.”
He recognized the voice.
“Lily!” he whispered, reaching out with his hand.
The woman turned her head to one side as though she heard something from the rear of the craft, but that was impossible. They were separated by hundreds of years, and this was an illusion, a projection, a fabrication. In that instant, their eyes seemed to meet, but it wasn’t Lily. The eyes were too narrow, the jawline too broad.
The woman turned back to the older Jae-Sun, pleading, “This is wrong. Don’t do it!”
The aging man stood there, proud and defiant. He began to reply, but in real time, Jason pulled his hand back briskly, breaking the neural connection and returning himself to the darkness of the asteroid.
Jason was repulsed by what he had seen. He didn’t want to see any more. It wasn’t that he was in denial, but rather that he found it difficult to watch himself being swept up in the hubris born of time travel. The cavalier attitude he’d witnessed sent a chill down his spine. This was the egotism that defined evil across generations: Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, they all shared the same self-absorbed arrogance and myopia. They saw everything clearly, and they alone held the answers. It was the classic trap: blind stupidity and hubris.
For a moment, Jason wasn’t sure quite where he was. The visions he’d had were overwhelming in their clarity, fooling his senses and leaving him uncertain of when and where he was, but he quickly became sure he was back in the quiet of the present.