Anachron

Back to the Future

I wasn't free yet.  It would take time to confirm the effects that my actions would have on the future.  During that time, I was confined to my quarters.  Every day, two security officers brought my meals.  Between meals, I was left alone, but I never felt bored.  Like anyone who does the wrong thing for the right reasons, I spent my time thinking about it.

At the time, I did what I thought had to be done.  By virtue of position and inspiration, I was the only one who could.  If I was right, I would change history for the better, preventing a war that would last for decades, span hundreds of planets.  The lives saved would be astronomical, probably in the hundreds of billions.

The sheer number of lives was just staggering.  The population of an entire planet might total around ten billion.  While whole planets didn't get wiped out, in a war of this magnitude, going on for decades, maybe I was underestimating it.  For all I knew, the death toll for this war could be in the trillions.

I also wondered what would happen when we returned to our own time.  If I had been right, there would be no war, but I had still killed my captain.  Would that make me a martyr?  At least I could go to prison knowing I had done the right thing.  I'm only one man, and what's that next to a trillion lives.  It felt strange to even think that number, a trillion lives.

On the other hand, what if I had been wrong?  Maybe we should have bombed Markad into oblivion, then there would be no Markadians to wage war against us.  That would mean that I had sabotaged our mission, and rightly deserved the worst that they would do to me, and more.  I just might end up as the most hated man in the history of the human race.

It had taken roughly a month to get from Cromble to Markad, and our mission profile had specified that we return there.  That meant I had a month, alone in my quarters, to think about what I had done.  That month was very monotonous.  I sat around, thinking and rethinking things that had already happened. 

When the month was over, Subcaptain Breiner came to my quarters.  Strangely enough, he had no guards with him.

"I have some interesting news for you."

"I was wrong."

"Not so fast.  We've arrived at Cromble, but there's no facility."

I didn't know what to think about this news.  Had I made things worse by giving the Markadians knowledge of the future?  I don't think I mentioned Cromble when I was talking with Tequar.  How could this have happened?

"What?"

"Oh, there's more."

I simply sat and waited for the news.

"We were greeted by a ship called the Parker.  That of itself isn't so strange, but I had the comms officer take a snapshot of their bridge crew from the communication feed."

He handed me a picture.  As soon as I looked at it, the strangeness jumped out at me.

"Markadians?"

Nearly half the crew was Markadian.  All the humans were at their posts, seemingly oblivious to the presence of the aliens all around them.

"Not just that."  Breiner seemed to be taunting me.  There was something else in the photo that I hadn't noticed.

I looked closer.  The entire bridge looked clean and shiny, as though the ship had never seen a serious battle, or perhaps they hadn't seen action in a while and had plenty of time to keep the ship polished.  Every station was filled, which wasn't really a red flag.  In our own battles, it was common for a ship to be missing a man here or there, but having a full complement wasn't so unusual either.  The entire crew seemed a little on the elderly side, too.  Beyond that, nothing else really jumped out at me.

"What am I looking for?"

"Look at the navigator."

As soon as I looked, I knew what Breiner wanted me to see.  My mouth hung open and I stared vacantly, silently, unmoving.  Eventually, Breiner spoke up, waking me from my trance.

"You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I think I have, haven't I?"

"Yes.  That's him."

The last time I'd seen Lattimer was over an ion pistol, and his head had been vapourized.  Right there in front of me, though, he was alive and healthy.  His hair had less gray in it, probably from not having to deal with as much stress without the war.  He wasn't captain of the ship, though.  In wartime, people are killed, they leave vacancies, and other people need to replace them.  That means that there's more room for promotion in wartime, so it made sense that Lattimer would be a lower rank now that the war never happened.

"Not to sound selfish, but what does this mean for me?"

"Well, we can hardly press murder charges against you for killing a man who's still alive.  Can we?"

For the first time in over a month, I cracked a smile.  "No, I suppose not.  That doesn't leave me entirely off the hook though."

"Oh, it gets better.  You noticed the crew, but did you notice their uniforms?  It seems the TSF doesn't even exist anymore."

With that, I was stunned.  Had I destroyed the Terran Space Force?  My voice was reduced to a whisper as I looked up at Breiner and asked the same question I did earlier.

"What?"

"Seems the consequences of what you've done are far-reaching indeed.  What we've been able to figure out is this.  Without a war, Earth and Markad became close allies, and formed a single, unified organization.  It's called the CCP."

"What does that stand for?"

"I have no idea.  We've only just got here.  But what it means for you is that there's no government in the galaxy with jurisdiction over us, so your fate is entirely in my hands."

"And have you come to any conclusions?"

"Here's how I see it.  You've prevented something like a hundred billion deaths, the one man you killed isn't dead, and you've saved a mission that was doomed to failure.  It seems to me that at the very least you don't need to be confined."

"Thank you."

Even though he told me I was no longer a prisoner, I stayed there in my quarters pondering the implications of what he had told me.  I had made a split-second decision, although I'm not sure anymore that I hadn't simply acted on reflex.  As a result of that moment, the entire universe had changed.