Rockets and Ray Guns - An Anthology of Sci-fi short stories

Shadows of Yesterday

A/N: SmackDown: The Second Coming Round of 4 entry, Theme: Immortality, Quotes: from section 1, #'s 1,2, & 3, and from section 2, #'s 1 & 3, all quotes have been highlighted in bold script, used video 2 as the musical prompt 

They called themselves the Dedicated: a small group of scientists and mystics that wanted to remake the universe by combining all possible alternatives into one. To enact that vision, they created the Unity Engine, a device that was part technology and part magic, with the sole purpose of binding all possibilities and all probabilities into one.

In one day and night of magnificent horror, they succeeded.

The multi-verse became the Unity, a blending of every possible universe that was and could be. Day to day life became the Flux, an uneasy journey of survival for common folk trying to make their way through an existence that had become a waking nightmare in every facet.

That day was 2700 years ago.

No young man believes he shall ever die. That belief made them bold and adventurous, as if they were immortal. Which, ironically, was what got most of them killed. Still, if they didn't think that way, they wouldn't ever try anything.

The traveler, on the other hand, was truly immortal, made such by the unimaginable power of Unity. Many would have considered it a curse, doomed to wander the Flux forever while everything, and everyone they knew turned to dust with the passage of time.

Not the traveler; to him, immortality wasn't a curse. It was an opportunity to undo a little of the misery Unity had caused. If he did it right, he would have just enough time to make a difference. But not if he got trapped on a single world.

The traveler drew in a long, thoughtful breath as he looked out from beneath overhanging branches at the empty glade. According to his map of the Flux ways, there should've been an entry point to a transdimensional gate on the glade's far side. However there was no sign of the graceful, symbol-etched arch that marked the entry point. Not even a scan with extra-sensory goggles could find it.

To further add to the mystery, there was also no evidence of the gate being destroyed. Granted, that would've taken considerable effort, effort that was beyond the capabilities of most mortals dwelling in the Flux. Crafted by the Dedicated in the aftermath of Unity, the transdimensional conduits that connected the worlds of the Flux were supposed to be an efficient way to move goods and personnel between points of interest. As such, they were constructed out of materials, technology and magic that were built to last millennia. Still, it was possible to destroy one as he himself had demonstrated on several occasions.

Having personally witnessed the resulting devastation destroying a gate caused, he knew what to look for: signs that were visible even centuries after the event occurred. No such markers were in evidence here.

'So, if not destroyed, the arch should be right there!' The traveler frowned. There weren't many possibilities left to explain the gate's absence. If he didn't know better, he would've thought one of the Dedicated had returned from the grave the Flux Rebellion and the Pathways War had put each and every one of them into, and moved, ...

The traveler paused in his thought as a realization occurred to him. That was one thing he hadn't looked for: meddling in the fabric of time/space by a Dedicated. Which should've been impossible for the reasons he had already considered. But, if he had learned anything from his 2700 plus years of existence, it was that no possibility, however remote, could be dismissed out of hand. After all, this was the Flux, where every possibility walked on its own feet and breathed fire.

Now determined to discover the reason behind the gate's disappearance, the traveler drew a small device from a utility pouch and thumbed it on. Before Unity it would have been called a spatial integrity scanner. Now, however, it was called a Second Eye, able to detect the minute traces left behind by the kind of spatial tears moving a dimensionally anchored gate would cause.