Oliver felt like he had slept for a century. His eyes were stuck together with thick dry mucus. He could breathe but his chest was tight. His lips felt dry, parched and cracked. With effort he tried to crack the hardened crust that held his eyelids fastened shut. He opened his eyes but could not see, the mucus stringing across his eyes was blurring his vision. Oliver tried to move his head to see, he could not lift his arms.
A delicate damp cloth cleaned his eyes. He closed them again then tried to look ahead of him. A bright room, a white room with the brightest of light. The light hurt his eyes. He blinked at the glare that pierced his retina. Two figures, two shadows stood before him. Each moment Oliver tried to move he felt constrained. He felt like his body was encased within some tight fitting suit of flesh. Oliver shifted as best he could inside his pupal casing.
Oliver established focus and saw before him two elderly men. They could have been anywhere between the age of sixty and one hundred. Both stared at him impassively.
The two men were stood in front of a large white console several feet in length and width. Oliver sensed others either side of him. He felt as if he were floating.
“Has he arrived?”
“Readings suggest he is here and secured.”
“Welcome subject Oliver,” Marmon said.
Still disoriented Oliver could only blink his eyes trying to make sense of the unfamiliar surroundings.
“I suspect the process is a little traumatic, disorientating, take your time.”
“Shall I offer him a reflection?” Ramone asked.
“Good idea.”
Ramone went to the white wall behind them and from a concealed cupboard, by placing a plain silver ring on his index finger against a small circular reader, he withdrew a square floating silver frame. It was about the size of a television. He glided it gently across the room and steadied it to rest in front of Oliver’s view. From Oliver’s perspective it was transparent. He could still see through it to Marmon, who looked on from behind the console. Ramone pressed a small button and the transparency melted away and a mirrored surface unfolded within the frame.
Oliver tried to cry out at what he saw, but could only manage muffled protests from his dry cracked mouth. It bled as he tried to speak. He, it, was sat in restraints in a large black chair, with silver steel surrounds and small white lights studded on its edges, the lights blinked on and off. The chair hovered one foot above a dazzling white floor.
A human form looked back at Oliver from the reflection, a simple grey paper boiler suit for clothes, shaved head and of undistinguishable gender. An electronic box attached to its bald head blinked furiously. The face, skin and limbs rippled as Oliver tried to move to free himself. He was trapped, cocooned within the host that looked back at him. Black eyes, pale face and blood running down its chin from cracked lips where he had tried to speak.
When Oliver did speak it was with the aid of his hosts’ vocal chords. Ramone switched off the mirror.
Marmon spoke, “We have fused your life force with a host body, brought you here to our time, in order to speak with you.”
“Why?” Oliver managed his first disembodied word.
“I think you know why, there must have been unusual occurrences in your life back in the twenty first century, things that unsettled you, warnings, signs,” Marmon said.
“I don’t understand.”
Marmon leaned forward on the console, its coloured flashing lights lit up his face, “We have about thirty minutes, and in this time, for the sake of humanity, I must try to convince you to return, cease your experiments and destroy the Tempus Genesis Framework.”
“What?” Oliver croaked.
“My name is Marmon, First Commander of ‘HOPE’, this is Ramone my second. We have brought you forward many several hundred years to our time here. Your life force has been found and brought here, then melded with the host so you can live and breathe in our world. For a short time.”
Marmon walked around the console and stood to the side of the floating silver frame in front of Oliver. Ramone stood to the other side.
Oliver attempted a few laboured rasping words, as he began to feel more alert within his fleshy prison cell, “I don’t understand, the regression is a natural phenomena, assisted by naturally occurring enzymes, a vaccine is there as well, it should be harmless.”
Marmon shared a cold dead eyed look with Ramone as his face filled with contempt for Oliver. He suppressed his anger.
“Subject Oliver, we at HOPE implore you to desist with Tempus Genesis. We will explain.”
Ramone switched on the floating frame and holographic images suspended themselves in front of Oliver’s view.
Ramone spoke, “Certain Religious cults, Professor Dyer particularly and yourself, very particularly, discovered something very remarkable in regression. The religious cults have never been a problem, no, who would listen to them? They never had the ability to scientifically, propagate this phenomenon.”
Oliver saw the image of an old newspaper The Citizen Tribune, from the year 1958, with the headline;
Lakeway Regression Cult, Mass Suicide, Five Dead.
Ramone continued, “Your discovery of time travel through the genome strand, unlocking unknown corners of human DNA, was both revolutionary and evolutionary. Man understood himself like never before. It was the greatest discovery ever in mankind’s history.”
On the screen an image of Oliver, expensively suited and groomed, on a chat show. There was no sound but the host of the chat show held a book up for the audience, it was entitled Beyond Tempus Genesis. Oliver watched puzzled by the future version of him being interviewed on television, this older man confident and smiling widely.
Marmon interjected, “One of many books you wrote on the subject. You see, subject Oliver, when Dyer mutated his own gene, in the pursuit of Tempus Genesis Regression, it caused a problem. Subject Jenny, one hoped, would have just died, at birth preferably. But she met you. And you met Dyer. And between that triangle, you discovered.”
Oliver stared at the men who coldly discarded Jenny and her life. For the first time he was sufficiently aware to absorb his surroundings. For the first time he felt afraid.
On the screen Oliver saw a CNS news clip of a funeral. Dressed in black Oliver had each of his arms around two small children. They two were dressed in black. They stood in a church in front of a coffin, with a large congregation of mourners watching them. Oliver searched the scene but could not see Jenny within it.
Marmon took control of the narration, “She was the first carrier. And unfortunately you helped perpetuate that problem.”
Oliver protested, “Nothing has happened, a few experiments. Jenny has responded well to the vaccine. I can adjust the work, slow it down and stop it if needed.”
Marmon said, “In the time where you have come from, you will progress, did progress. You developed your work. You patented your work. You had children with the Jenny woman.”
On the screen the image of a still photograph of Oliver and Jenny with two young children. Jenny looked weak and grey. Her skin was taught and she sat hunched forward in a wheelchair.
Ramone pressed a button and the screen changed, “You had two children, both inheriting unstable tempus genesis regression DNA. Try as you might, no cure could be found. It is one thing to change a cell, DNA or gene in some way, and another to change it back, reverse a process.”
Oliver watched a corporate video of Minnie and him in front of a large complex, a leisure facility and then in a large stadium. They both smiled for the camera pleased with the buildings they presented. Then an image of them being interviewed together.
“In that time you patented, with your friend subject Minnie, the agent formulae for regressing. This was to fund your research to ‘cure’ the unstable genes in your children. Your wife Jenny died her final regression crushing her life force her physical body crumpled before you, disappeared. Leaving just a dusty hulk for you to bury. You’re grief was short and your
pursuit for a cure relentless. But it needed funding. With the broadcast technology you did world tours, travelling back through time like a deity, visiting loved ones of your pathetically desperate audiences, taking their money without conscience. And you made millions offering private sessions secretly giving the regression serum to the rich and famous. You coached them to access past lives of their choosing, one Dubai prince paying you twenty million dollars to witness the encounters between JFK and Marilyn Monroe. You had no moral objection to grant their sordid wishes, hidden from the view of a worshipping public who packed out your shows.”
On the screen a stadium full of people who chanted and celebrated Oliver as he regressed in front of the fifty thousand Tempus Genesis followers. Huge screens projected rich and colourful visions of history from his eyes in the past.
Oliver protested, lips bleeding profusely as he tried to raise his voice, “What is this madness? This is not real? Send me back, I promise you I will stop.”
On the screen, a family used a modern technological room to receive the regression agent and in turn they regressed. With pleasurable smiles on their faces and stunning images of the past on screens behind them. Smiling children laughed at the joyous pictures of the past their parents generated. This was an advert combining regression with a leisure break in a health spa setting.
“You became the director of the fastest growing leisure and science concern in the world, specialising in time travel, or reality regression experiences. Its use for generating you a research income was limitless, those seeking pleasure, those seeking knowledge. Due to the greed of your corporation, the failing health of your children, this meant, unfortunately, that the increasing incidents of data indicating the instability of the unlocked tempus regression genome, were ignored. You repressed them.”
Ramone said softly, “This is your chance to reverse the wrath you have bestowed upon us.”
More images, another funeral. Oliver stood flanked by Minnie and Jamie. He was aged and weak, walking slowly behind two hearses driving slowly side by side. Hundreds of mourners walked behind him and his friends.
“Sadly for you, your children died. This is where it spiralled out of control. Whilst the instabilities you suppressed should have led you to cease the experiments you at least had the good sense to exact control over the agents’ usage. Limiting its license, making it an expensive and infrequent experience, a luxury holiday.”
Another newsreel. A news reporter walked through a subway cardboard city providing refuge to immigrants and vagrants without homes. An impoverished scene made worse by the drug usage of its population. The news report on the screen showed the journalist looking into cardboard houses, behind piles of rubbish and into dark alleys. Many of the filthy pitiful lost residents were in varied forms of stasis, arched backs and eyes rolled back. Regressing.
“After your children died, you became reclusive, you indulged your grief in drink and drugs. You lost control of the company, your closest people exploited you. Agent 42A found its way onto the streets becoming the most popular illegal high of all time. From the wealthy on Wall Street, to the Arabs in Dubai, to the homeless of London. It ran out of control and became embedded in the very fabric of humanity.”
Ramone switched off the screen and pushed it away, gliding it to a far corner of the room.
“Eighteen minutes,” Ramone said checking a timepiece that was embedded into the epidermis of his forearm.
“Come subject Oliver, I want to show you how serious our quest has become.”
Two guards stepped forward into Oliver’s view. They wore smart black uniforms, guns strapped to their backs and ceremonial swords across their chests. One took a handle on the back rest of Oliver’s hover chair and eased it forward. Oliver sailed across the room and Marmon and Ramone walked with him. The second guard walked closely by him.
A glass door swished open and they exited the room onto the observation deck, which sat four stories above the hangar floor of the pursuit facility. They arrived at a lift and stepped into the glass walled elevator. As the doors closed Oliver was confronted with the sheer vastness of the operation. An army of ten thousand or more were arranged precisely in columns and rows, each man or woman reclined in floating chairs. Zipping between them were small floating medico-robots.
Marmon broke the silence, “The unstable gene had found its way into the human code, in time it mutated haematology profiles, became a blood borne virus, dirty needles, sexual activity, transfusions, its spread was rife. The world would be rocked by the explosion of death that was on its way.”
The elevator descended towards the floor of the facility.
Oliver spoke, still in shock at the bad news overload he had been exposed to, “I have no children, I will not have children. I can find a cure to stop the regression. Change the experiments. It will stop. I can help you. I understand the warning.”
The lift stopped and its glass doors silently opened. The industrious noise of the busy facility washed over Oliver. The group stepped out and paused before the army of regressing soldiers. They spread out further than Oliver’s blackened eyes could see.
Ramone answered Oliver’s offer, “Dear, dear, such arrogance. In several centuries of dedicated science there is no cure. That is why we need to seize control of this through you.”
The group walked forward and entered in amongst the legions of men and women. Robots busied between each station administering injections, adjusting controls, boosting energy to strengthen the regression of each soldier.
Ramone touched his ear stud, “Image.”
As Oliver glided forward his chair tilted back, he could see the holographic information hub high up in the ceiling arc of the hangar. It flickered and then projected further images for Oliver’s benefit.
Hospital wards were shown, in the rows of beds each patient was struck by a regression stasis. Each had the hallmarks of regression with protruding ribs and gaunt faces. Each trapped and fading tremulous corpse like figure had blue static tracing across their moon grey pale skin. One man died before the camera that filmed the scene. A final breath and then his body collapsed, crumbling to a sack of dust.
Ramone explained further, “the symptoms were uncontrollable, spontaneous regression, physical crumbling, fading, dissipation to the past. Leaving just faded hulks. Death rates soared within a decade it took eight million lives.”
Then another image showed on the giant screen high up above them. From tragedy to global disaster and Oliver watched as apocalyptic news scenes rolled above him, mass graves, protests and civil unrest. Then quick pictures in succession of quarantined camps, deserted streets, army patrols and civilians rushing through open spaces wearing protective clean air masks.
“Over decade after decade, through more than one century, the unstable DNA, through radiation exposure, accelerated evolution and further mutation, Tempus Genesis produced airborne viruses. In the following twenty years eighty million citizens perished. It could not be stopped. Then our agency was formed. An elitist scientific agency dedicated to travelling the past, finding the cause. We have lost many, recruiting the condemned to search time for a solution. We are here to help our people endure.”
Oliver’s chair was rectified to forty five degrees and once more he came face to face with Marmon and Ramone.
“Please let me go,” he pleaded pathetically through bloodied lips and a dry protruding tongue.
Marmon stepped forward and leaning on Oliver’s arm rests, squeezing the forearms of his host, he stared into Oliver’s eyes, “For ten years we have searched for you, and others, with minimal success. We were opposed, questioned in the beginning. But recently, with the human race being propelled towards extinction, all resources are invested here. Global resources diverted here, just to support this agency. Here science is racing forward, cerebral implants, bio-alpha wave suppressers, time specific agents. We are on to you, subject Oliver, humans will survive. Humanity has only a projected one hundred and fifty years left, thanks
to your snivelling self interest. I will not allow an apocalypse. If I could I would reach into those eyes and tear your soul out.”
Oliver was gripped in fear as he stared into Marmon’s steely determined eyes.
“How did you find me?” Oliver asked in the tone of a condemned man.
Marmon stood once more, “We have you to thank for that. You published your diaries, more egotistical money making. For us a diary is like a map in time. It helped us concentrate our search. We have the accuracy to pinpoint events in time through any recorded activity. News archives, documentaries, personal journals. Once the technology advanced sufficiently catching up with you was relatively easy.”
“I will stop. Please I am frightened, I never meant for any of this, send me back and I can change the future.” Oliver shifted his encased ghastly head from Ramone to Marmon, trying to search for a glimmer of conciliation.
Marmon leaned into him once more, “Subject Oliver, your meddling in this area of science has led humanity towards genocide. Time Travel is a disease. And you are the cause. The only cure is at source. You have to be culled. And like any cancer we may have to take some of the good flesh with it.”
Marmon stood, snapped his heels and turned and walked away. The guard pushed the hover chair and Oliver glided after him, Ramone at his side. The other guard walked slowly behind.
Oliver looked at the rows and columns of recruits for the cause. Perfect lines of hover chairs, containing men and women, heads shaved, naked, thin, fat, wasted, young and old. All had enhancements, implants and infusion lines. All were actively regressing. Electrodes from their heads fed computers attached to their chairs. This information was relayed to the information hub. Screens at the side of each chair showed images of their pursuit. On each screen as Oliver floated past he recognised scenes of the London he knew and loved. Scenes that were uncomfortably close to the areas he knew best, familiar comforting places sending a chill through his foreign bones.
A shout rose from across the hangar, “CONTACT.”
“At last,” Ramone said and they sped across the floor of the facility towards a red light that blinked above one hover station.
They slowed by the body of a large naked fat man. His bald head was snapped back and his ample flesh shuddered as he regressed. He made a tight groaning sound as he struggled to control his passage back through time.
Marmon appeared before Oliver, “For reasons I do not understand, that the scientists tell me to the point of nausea, I cannot kill you now. Even though we can almost touch you are beyond reach. Your true physical self remains in your time, a portion here. So I will ask you for one commitment and I will release you.”
“I want to help,” Oliver muttered, exhausted at that point.
“Then return and with haste destroy your research, kill those who know of it and take your own life.”