After History
by Patrick Smith
In the night, Mike woke to the cries of his baby.
“It's your turn,” he mumbled. His wife only nuzzled her face against his back.
“Alright, alright” he said, as he slide out from under the covers, “just be here when I get back.” She meeped in sleepy pleasure.
As he shuffled across the room, something was bothering him. He couldn't figure out what.
Even as it occurred to him why isn't it cold? he walked into a book shelf.
His eyes flared open and the frigid air hit him like a slap. Fully awake, he shook his head. Just a dream.
He rubbed his eyes in the cold and the dust, looked over at his tiny single bed. The streetlight penetrating the blinds cast salmon orange strips of light on the wall, enough that he could see the fridge and hot plate, the books in shelves and in stacks across the floor, the clear area in one corner where he would meditate and, sometimes, pray. The one room apartment was dark and cold. There was no baby, no wife. He had been sleep walking. Dreaming.
He crossed over and fell back into bed. At least the bed was warm.
Just a dream.
Michael Gladwell loved History.
Actually, it would be more accurate to say he hated it. His parents had always tried to push him to other pursuits - business, or technology, or a career in the military, or anything. They hadn't believed him when he told them he wished he could.
The History department had been dying when he entered the program. “Out of favor with the Ministry.” Now, a decade later, he was the head of the history department by virtue of the fact he was the only professor in it.
But he could not put it down.
His enclave, the Darrowtown Enclave, was one of a half dozen or so in the world. Something like half a million people, roads, offices and apartments and hot dog stands, huddled behind the Wall. Who built it? Why? That knowledge was lost.
That was before the War.
Most of the world was wasteland. Beyond the Wall, a million million miles of blasted urban ruins where nothing grew, and only the ghosts felt at home. Literally ... the “Ethereal Resonant Echoes Manifesting Collective Hallucinations,” in Ministry-speak. Hallucination. Hallucinations capable of murder.
Of course, you knew not to ask those questions. You knew what it would get you.
Mike knew what he would get. When he ignored the subtle hints: “Past is dead, let it rest.” When he ignored the relentlessly dwindling salary and budget cuts. He'd known what was happening.
But he couldn't stop.
He had found records - clear documentation - of things that had never happened. A moon shot. Olympics. Revolutions happening in countries on continents that weren't there on the maps. Like some one had made up whole continents ... or some one had taken them away.
And the War. The Last War. Of that, there was no mention. Not the weapons, not the causes ... not even the enemy. All these fragments, pages torn from magazines, shreds of ancient newspapers, not one even mentioned the War.
It wasn't the challenge that drove him. There was something lost. There was a hole in his world where something should be and there was nothing there and he had to look. He couldn't not. So Mike went back to the stacks, the books, the artifacts of a vanished world, searching history ... because he didn't know where else to look.
The University was on the edge of the Darrowtown Enclave, some of the buildings towering tall enough to provide a view of the wasteland over the wall. He assumed they did, anyway, but even as Head of the History Department he rarely got above street level.
His office . . . the whole department, which pretty much was his office, was in the basement of the the sagging three-story tall Humanities building. At least no one bothered him. Usually - usually no one bothered him.
When he walked into the building's mail room, Barb grabbed him.
“You've got a guest,” she said quietly, her restless eyes flickering towards Marty and then back. Marty was Campus Security, and kept his job mainly by informing on teachers. He was at his station by the door, and despite the familiar reek of vomit and urine, he seemed to be asleep. Marty must have scored last night. “He's waiting in your office.”
Christos, I can not afford this. “Thanks, Barb.” He reached in his pocket and fumbled for the right bill. Her pudgy hand came up and his was suddenly empty.
“Don't mention it.”
The heat and the pounding roar of the furnace was overwhelming before he even got to the bottom of the stairs. His office was in back of the stacks, and filled with more moldy, disintegrating manuscripts than the campus library. The door was open and lights were on, but he couldn't see anyone...
“Hello?” he shouted over the thundering rumble of the furnace.
“Hallo!”
Stepping out from behind a shelf emerged a stump of a man: shabby brown coat and a rotted tooth grin. He held a package in one hand, the other was inside his coat. Mike knew it was resting on a gun.
“Oh, hey Jim!” he shouted, “Come on in, and let me see what you've got! Coffee!?”
“Right you are, Professor.”
What Jim had, once the door sealed out some of the noise and pleasantries were done, was a 3rd printing of the the second edition of “Saving Time: The Story of Chronodymanics,” dug up from some book collection in some basement ruin in the wastes. The paper was cracking, and it had minor water damage, but it was in remarkable condition. It was also illegal - the Ministry would execute Mike for just holding it.
“I've already got a copy.”
“Ah, come on. You know what I had to go through to get that past the Wall? To say nothing of hunting the damn thing up . . . there was a 'haunt on our arses halfway across the . . .”
“Look, I'm sorry. I can't use University funds for this one, and even if I could, the well's running dry. I've got,“ he opened up the drawer and pulled out a jar - mostly coins, but with a few bills folded in, “that. Rainy day fund.”
Jim hesitated - it was barely enough for lunch and a couple of beers, and Jim could tell that at a glance. Mike could see the calculations in his eyes. Still, it was literally all the money he had. He wouldn't have let Jim see where he kept it otherwise.
“Alright, then.” The other hand reached out, if you could call the clicking, metal, grease-caked prosthetic a hand, and the jar disappeared under his coat. “Alright. Don't be expecting any more, though, seeing as how you can't pay me ... I guess henceforth I'll have to take my business elsewhere.” Jim paused. Contraband books were not in high demand.
“I'll see you, later Jim. I get paid in a week, come back if you find anything else.”
Jim snorted, “I know the way out.” Only after the door closed and he had counted to 100 under his breath did Professor Michael Gladwell relax, breath out, and with trembling hands reach for the text.
It was a week later, after the first day of the new semester, that Mike picked up his paycheck.
The light was fading and the lamps were coming on in places. He should have been home by now, but his plan to cut class short had hit a snag.
Avoiding the shadows (muggings produced a few corpses every week), he aimed for the Administration Building. It was the tallest of the Darrowtown University buildings, glass and chrome, and looked more like a corporate office than an educational facility. As he opened the door, he couldn't keep his mind from drifting a little.
One class canceled, 8 students in the other and 2 no shows. Of the 8 students tonight, 3 were engineering students looking for an easy elective, and 4 were half-baked idiots looking for “occult wisdom.” Half of those might make it to the final. The last one, though . . . an Asian girl in thick glasses . . . didn't fit the profile. Any profile.
She could be a plant, but the Ministry hadn't run one through his class for a long time. Any way, they didn't employ 'ethnics,' never did. They might have changed that, but . . . she had been as snarky as any student, but she was listening. Really listening, and at the end she had asked when the War started. He stumbled something out, and none of the other students had noticed, but . . . no one ever asked that. No one.
The cashier's office was in the back, and Mike received the check with shaking hands - he hadn't eaten well for the past two days. The clerk looked at him with thinly veiled contempt, which he ignored. He turned to go.
There was a lady waiting, and she waved at him. “Professor Gladwell?”
“Yes?” he answered, out of habit.
“The Dean was hoping he could have a word with you.” She wore a smart business suit and had short blond hair and an open, infectious smile. Mike started to sweat. Would the building entrance be covered? His gaze flashed towards the door, and he suddenly found her hand on his wrist. He hadn't seen her move.
“You do have time, don't you?”
Although the bright smile never faltered, she was squeezing hard enough to grind his bones together.
“Of course.” He replied through gritted teeth. “Of course.”
The Dean's office was on the top floor - 40th or 50th or something. There was money here, and power. When the University actually admitted the existence of History, it was at best a memo from on high. He had never thought that they were written somewhere, and now that he was seeing it, his attention was else where.
The secretary (Ms. Maxie?) blathered on about the Dean and his office, and about the problems with the copiers. He had trouble focusing because she hadn't eased her grip, not in the elevator, or walking through the maze of halls and cubicles. In a lucid moment he remembered muscles were supposed to die from fatigue toxins if clenched too long, and then the pressure was gone.
They had arrived.
The Dean's office was dark - mostly dark, although a light shone down on the chair behind the desk. The high backed chair was facing the windows (a corner office looking out over the vast darkness of the wastelands) and a voice was speaking . . . reciting? No, not reciting . . . reading. Mike's blood went cold.
“Even without a technical understanding, the implications of the quantum 'Many World' theory seem clear: the future is not set. Broyle's model indicated something far more radical: neither is the past.
“The Ministry's Conflict Prevention Bureau restricts access to certain areas of knowledge, citing the laudable - I like that, 'laudable,' that's a good word - the laudable goal of preventing a recurrence of the technologies that led to the War. One cannot wonder at the assertion that not only must the technology be restricted, so to must knowledge of what those technologies are.
“Blah, blah . . .” the sound of pages being flipped, “Ah! Here we are . . . the possibility of not only defeating our enemies, but preventing them from ever having existed to challenge us! These 'Time Bombs' . . . heh, good one . . . would literally be an attack on time itself, and the consequences of . . . well, it goes on. Gets a bit dull. I couldn't figure out how the hell you wrote it, until... Well, here, this bit:
“Perhaps the most frightening thing about these weapons is that if they were used, we would never know. A historic general dies as a baby, and a nation disappears from our maps - from our present. We don't know it ever existed, because it never did.
“Now think if it wasn't a nation, but a friend, a brother, a wife. The events that created them never occurred. They disappear and you would not even know that your life had been changed.
“Hey, think about how they feel: You wake up Saturday morning with plans to spend the whole weekend existing, and then BAM! Now that's got to suck.”
The chair spun slowly around, and a sheaf of papers bound with strings was tossed onto the desk. The Dean flipped it open again, and Mike could see the tight, hand written scrawl. It had been in his desk when he left to teach class.
“You should be proud, Mike. Your first book.”
The Dean (never referred to by name, Mike wasn't even sure he had ever heard it) was young . . . too young, and somehow too beautiful - sharp bone structure, clear skin, perfect, white teeth, and pale blue eyes. There was a warmth in his voice - but even in the dim light, Mike could see that it never reached his eyes.
“Thank you, sir. And it's 'Professor Gladwell,' please.”
Mike didn't know what he was expecting - anger, surprise? - but what he got was a pure delight of laughter.
“That is right! Mike, what the hell was I thinking? Oh, lordy lordy lordy.” The Dean took a breath and shook his head.
“I am so glad to have met you. 'What do we need a history department when we don't even have a history?' That's what they said, Mike. I convinced them you'd turn up stuff - odd chants, weird bits of rituals we've lost - but this, “ he indicated the book, “this is beyond anything I'd ever hoped for. You, Mike, you have . . . potential.”
Mike was a bit taken aback. He had expected to be taken out back and executed. Not . . . complimented?
“Tell you what: an explanation. You like that crap, right?
“Here, look... cause and effect, action and reaction, all that causality shit, right? But what does it look like, a present without a past? What happens to the effect when the cause is blown to a shit pile of quantum vomit? Great wide blast craters stretching across centuries of human history, what then?”
The chair revolved again, and the lights went down. The two walls were floor to ceiling windows, and the view of the wastes, rolling out to the horizons and lit here and there by an burst of fire or a flicker of light - it was spectacular. Out there scavengers where searching and dying, half-real nightmares haunting sleeping minds and occasionally devouring unwary flesh.
“I'm glad we had this little chat, Mike. We're done.”
What happened next was confused. He remembered thinking of Ms. Maxie and starting to turn when there was the howl and burn of a constrained plasma field weapon and he was somehow on the floor in the corner and something horrible and chittering and metal was flying through the air and a searing arc of light burned the air and a wind rushed in and he had not even heard any glass break and he stared out into the night were the dark rubble had been skyscrapers reached to the heavens and their windows glowed brightly and he could see them, clearly see the people inside talking and eating and sleeping and they looked . . . warm.
Mike started speaking - there was a whisper in his ear, and he spoke. A translation of the Key of Solomon, a litany and prayer he had read a hundred times, but now he ignored the flashes and screams behind him and did not just recite the words. He closed his eyes and prayed.
When he finished, it was quiet. He rolled away from the jagged shards of what was left of the window, distantly wondering if anyone had been walking below. In the darkness of the office, he couldn't see much, but a figure emerged, highlighted against the sky. She lifted him up, threw his arm over her shoulder, and together they lurched forward.
“I can walk,” he protested.
“Not with a broken leg,” she replied. “Buddha on a stick, I hope we don't have to work together.” Past a sparking pile with the acrid stink of burnt metal. Out the door. “Nice one with the banish, thou.”
“Well, it was Solomon - a prayer for extending dominion over demons. My wife helped. Demons, of course, only makes sense. Never thought . . . I'm going to have to change the sylabus.”
He didn't see the small Asian girl smirk, and suddenly remembered . . . “There were towers.” He said. “They were . . . they weren't right. Or . . . we aren't right. We aren't right. It's not . . . it shouldn't be so cold.” The elevator arrived with a cheerful Bing! and they went in.
“So let's go fix it.” She jabbed the a button and the doors started sliding closed. He nodded in agreement.
“What broken leg?”
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