“And your response?”
“We employed one of our psycholgeestes to study it. If you have read the report uploaded to your M-As, you will find events logged in chronological order?”
Nods from those who had read it were vehement. Cobb clearly had not and shrugged.
“Just prior to Professor Kyne’s unfortunate psychotic episode, we were able to breach the sarcophagus and identify the true nature of the A-Class,” added Floraboden.
“Breaching an A-Class? That is outside protocol boundaries, Floraboden. Not to say, risky,” said one of the OLOSS members.
“I understand that, Pre-Eminence. But we feared an outcome like the one we found on the JestShift. I decided that we should act in the interest of station security.”
He watched the mixture of reactions. At least half of them approved—better than he’d hoped.
“So, what did you learn? And why was it not included in your report?” asked the Pre-Eminence.
“I thought it better you heard it from me, so there was no misunderstanding. You see… we found nothing,” said Floraboden.
“Explain!” demanded the OLOSS contingent in a synchronous chorus.
“The sarcophagus held only a tiny, tiny creature. Or at least, a part of a creature that we believe to be its detachable projection organism. I oversaw the opening myself.”
“You mean the A-Class had left an echo behind in its shell?” asked Cobb.
“Yes. Years ago, we believe. The projection organism that Kyne interacted with was merely as you say, an echo, left as a guardian against scavengers, in case the A-Class needed to return to use the casing again.”
“You’re saying that your psychologeeste developed a relationship with the echo of the original inhabitant?” asked Cobb, seemingly amused.
Annoying fellow. Floraboden pressed his lips tight. Restating the obvious and asking questions he should already know the answers to. In real time, Floraboden rubbed his throbbing temples, but didn’t allow his avatar to copy the gesture. “So, it seems.”
“And the crew of the JetShift?”
“The same fate, I imagine. After they were dead the sarcophagus harvested the amino acids from the bodies to boost its energy signal—like a location finder.”
“So, you sacrificed one of your own to learn what the A-Class was up to?” Cobb, was openly sticking the needles in now, insinuating that Floraboden had mishandled it.
“Professor Kyne was appraised of the risks and chose to serve his community. By observing his interactions with the echo artifact inside, we were able to deduce how it worked. It is adaptive and responds differently to varying stimuli,” said Floraboden, stiffly.
“So, with your Professor… err… Kyne, it chose seduction.”
“Yes. We think it reacted to his… umm… well… Kyne kept to himself. He was perhaps more vulnerable than we realized. It used his loneliness to form an attachment. Then Kyne became irrational and attacked a guard. Both died during the incident. We believe a similar situation may have occurred on the JetShift. The creature’s echo seems to be able use human emotions as a weapon against us.”
“Ingenious,” said Cobb.
It was not the word Floraboden would have chosen.
“We’d better keep this one under wraps. Wouldn’t want our enemies to know things are so loosey-goosey over Leto way,” Cobb added.
Floraboden enjoyed a momentary image of strangling the man before his M-A registered his spiking blood pressure and flooded his body with a light sedative. “The situation was handled perfectly professionally, S-M Cobb. We suffered no loss of life and followed the OLOSS protocols once we established the A-Class was potentially hostile. The casing is on a trajectory with the Mintakan calcium cloud.”
It was only a half lie. There was no way he was reporting in front of Cobb that they’d found a second guard dead with his hand adhered to the observer’s window. Floraboden would back channel that information later and blame it on an accidental station death.
Eventually, the OLOSS chorus spoke. “Thank you, Stationmaster. We’ll retire to consider the implications of this. Meanwhile, please award Professor Kyne a memorial plaque for services to humanesquekind.”
The meeting adjourned and Floraboden was left alone in his rooms. He let his valet know he was ready for a glass of grape juice and settled himself on one of the kneeling stools to think about Kyne. He recalled the terms of their agreement.
Mount a plaque to honor Professor Kyne in the corridor near Professor Freeburg’s office, he said to his M-A.
At the mention of the dead man’s name, he noticed the normally white lights along his array turn a rosy hue. An anomaly. But after a quick system check, he could determine no issues. Maybe he’d been awake too long and was hallucinating again. He logged a check-up with the station medic and went back to his maintenance schedules.
16 Minutes
By Jasper Fforde
The technical term was ‘Closed-Loop Temporal Field Containment’ but to everyone who had been so incarcerated, it was known as Looping. You were a looper, you had been looped. The period of time in which you found yourself was a loop. The company that managed the system on behalf of the Chronoguard was named Loop Inc.
Loop, loop, loop.
Which is what you do these days: same sixteen minutes of time, exact same place, exact same people. You can explain to others what’s happened to you, but success is short lived. Even if someone does believe you, it will never be for very long. Inside the loop those sixteen minutes are all you have; outside the loop those sixteen are simply an empty block of time that, to most people, is utterly unremarkable and has now long receded into the dim forgotten past.
Cruel and unusual? Sure. Effective? Youbetcha.
“Will sir be having a dessert today?” asks the waitress, taking away your plates. She is young and pretty and has a kindly face. She has served you nearly twenty-five thousand times. You’ve told her your name every single time. She hasn’t remembered once. She can’t remember. There are any number of her, but only one of you.
Anything you have with you, stays with you; anything you put down is lost into the Chronoclastic ether next time the loop was reset. You change clothes, washed, ate, drank, disposed of waste—everything is supplied accessible within the temporal window they gave you. That’s why loops are generally centered around shopping malls with a food court and public restrooms. It wouldn’t take you long to starve, stuck inside sixteen minutes, in say, the middle of the Atlas Mountains.
When you arrive at Loop 1, you first find a notebook and pen to log the number of Loops, the equivalent of chalk marks on the wall of the cell. You have no money, but you can steal what you want, because your punishment for a world in which there are consequences is to be banished to a world where there are none. The irony and perversity are not wasted on you.
You try using the phone, but there’s no one to call that can help you, nor believe you. The people you call think you’re a crank or a hoax caller, and you’re reset every sixteen minutes, so it’s like it never happened. You even try calling your past self to figure out a work-around, but your past self is only eleven.
Whatever happens in the Loop, stays in the Loop.
You shout and cry and carry on until Loop 20, and then you calm down. You start to explore, and by Loop 450, you have a general understanding of the parameters of your prison. The date, the time, where to find food, nearest toilets, bookshop, that kind of thing.
By Loop 1000, you will have extended that particular knowledge to reflect your own particular needs more usefully. Who will be kind, who will not, who you can talk to, who can be relied upon to perform a physical act at short notice on credit.