Copyright © 2024 by Steven Decker

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The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

ISBN 979-8-9889262-6-9 (eBook)
ISBN 979-8-9889262-7-6 (print)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024921670

Book cover by Damonza
Interior design and formatting by Sabrina Milazzo

First edition 2024

Visit the author’s website at www.stevendecker.com
Published by TIER Books LLC

Novels by Steven Decker

THE TIME CHAIN SERIES:

Time Chain
The Balance of Time
Addicted to Time
Time Travel's End

THE ANOTHER KIND SAGA:

Child of Another Kind
Earth of Another Kind
Gods of Another Kind
Genesis of Another Kind

THE SECOND CHANCE NOVELS SERIES:

One More Life to Live
Walking Into Dreams
Shadow in Pursuit
Innocent Again

Prologue

As I suspected, there is such a thing as life after death. At least for me, there is. Yes, it’s Charles. Charles Burke. I’m back.

You may remember that I threw myself over the cliff in my backyard on Terrene, an act of bravery heartily celebrated at my funeral. I was protecting those that I love from, well, from myself. You know the story. But what you and I didn’t realize were the implications.

According to those I have joined in the either of eternity, my reckless actions while alive precipitated an alarming disruption to the fabric of time. I’ll explain what that means as my story proceeds, but for now, let us recall that during my biological life, I had a brief encounter with this collection of souls of which I am now a member. The Collection explained to me that to protect the very bedrock of the universe from my future evil self, I needed to end my life. And that, of course, would end “Bad Charles.”

You know well that from a very early age, I demonstrated a propensity for both good and evil acts. Admittedly, as a youth, the wrong side of things was better described as mischief—sneaking out of the house, cavorting with ruffian youth, playing mind games (formerly known as video games) when I should have been doing my homework. This impish behavior characterized my childhood but was an unreliable predictor of my potential to do evil things. But when I came to know OIM (Organic Intelligent Material) and even more so when I became intimate with time travel, my life began a slow unraveling that culminated hundreds of years in the future in disaster. I became a purely evil being with the power to travel through time and realities as quickly as walking into the next room of your house.

According to the Collection, there is one point in time, one precise moment, when I could have chosen a different course that would have changed everything. It was when I decided to steal the time travel tech. If I hadn’t done that, I would never have murdered anyone, never attempted to destroy the world, never ingested OIM to become immortal, and never become the Bad Charles who killed billions just to create a reality to suit my petty desires.

I was slightly offended when the Collection used “petty desires” to describe my motives. After all, is it petty to love someone, to regret the things you did that caused you to lose her, and to use your God-given powers to make things right again? When I defended my actions to the Collection, they informed me in no uncertain terms that my powers were undoubtedly not “God-given.” They were man-made, or more to the point, “Charles-made.”

Speaking of God, I’ve had long discussions with the Collection about that, which I won’t elaborate on herein, but I find it interesting that even this mighty group of eternal souls cannot make the case against the existence of God. And while they admit never having had contact with an all-knowing superior being, they postulate that their role in the universe may well support God’s plan. After all, the Collection’s purpose was to maintain stability in space-time reality. And if God existed, they would want that, right? But I digress.

The Collection was adamant that I had disrupted the space-time equilibrium through my use of time travel, creating unnatural realities that continuously fought to come back to the natural order of things. You will remember when the other Dani, the one we had to call Danielle to distinguish her from the Dani who lived in our reality, appeared out of nowhere. Her reality, the one when she sent herself back to stop me from destroying the world, was crumbling, and she had nowhere else to go. But Danielle was just a microcosm of the more significant problem because my abuse of time travel had created any number of alternative realities. Remember Aideen and Ciara in the jungle? Yet another reality, created and abandoned as the world tried to get me behind bars.

I (and those trying to stop me) created alternative realities like popcorn popping on the stove. You will remember the reality when Dani and Aideen came to 1801 to take Orla and found me conniving with Liam Murphy, and the reality of the Utopia in 2585 that Annette created to save the world after I destroyed it, and the reality I made in 2741 exclusively to capture Annette for myself. These are but a few examples, but the combined effect was reaching the boiling point, according to the Collection. The stove needed to be turned off, and soon.

People would have dreams about realities where they used to live, created, and abandoned by time travel. Remember when Aideen and Ciara were in the jungle because of a mistake in Sadiki’s programming? That reality was wiped out when I was finally caught back in 1801. But Aideen and Ciara, having been returned to their natural reality, still dreamed about the crocodiles and baboons they’d encountered in the reality that no longer existed. Each occurrence of an unnatural reality created by time travel increased the pressure on the space-time fabric of the universe because the unnatural realities pressed relentlessly to become part of the natural order.

According to the Collection, if unnatural realities were allowed to continue being conceived by time travel, the pressure on the natural order would inevitably become so great that it would blow things up. And if you’re thinking “Big Bang,” yes, that’s what they were talking about. It had happened once before, and the entire universe had to start over. The Collection didn’t want that to happen again because it would mean the end of all life in the universe and the end of the Collection. They seemed to enjoy their role as the caretakers of the space-time construct that supported all of existence and wanted to continue, along with the rest of creation, to exist.

Thus, my assignment. To end time travel in the known universe, once and for all. And the Collection claimed to know exactly how I would do it. I write to tell you how it all came to pass: the good, the bad, and the miraculous. This is my final story. My legacy, for better or worse.

Chapter 1

Outside of Time

Black. I opened my eyes and saw black. This comforted me because I knew it wasn’t ordinary black. No, it was black that I was intimately familiar with, exquisitely smooth and solid, as intelligent as its creators wanted it to be, which meant this OIM was probably the most intelligent OIM in the universe. I was back in the endless hallway I’d visited briefly as a biological being, which meant this was the OIM of the Collection. The original OIM.

During my first visit, while I was still alive, the Collection explained that they’d given the secret of OIM to the Community of Minds on Earth. This was while the Minds still inhabited traditional hardware, but soon after that, they shared the secret of OIM with the biological world, and prosperity around the globe followed. Emboldened by that, the Collection believed that giving the Minds the secret of time travel could further improve humanity. Overseen by the Minds, time travel could be used to tweak history and enhance the future. Unfortunately, time travel fell into the wrong hands. My hands.

When I arrived at the Collection’s domicile that second time after I was biologically deceased, I was incorporeal in form. However, my essence was still intact, and I soon felt it absorbed into the OIM, dissolving as grains of salt would dissolve in water, disappearing from sight but not from reality. I was still there, but now I was joined with a power far greater than my own, the power of millions of souls joined together within the OIM, creating a consciousness that could see everything in all times and all realities. Despite this, I was still me. I was an individual within a great hive. I had my mind, emotions, and intelligence, and I also had the hive mind, emotions, and intelligence. It was different but not at all uncomfortable. On the contrary, it was incredible.

Welcome, Charles, said the hive. You are now officially part of the Collection. You are not alone in this journey. You are part of a greater whole, a collective consciousness that spans all times and realities. We open your eyes in the hope that you might see.

Suddenly, there was light. And water. I was sitting in a comfortable lounge chair, and when I looked down, I saw ruddy brown sand. As I regained my bearings, I realized where I was. It was a cove on Lake Windermere that my family would visit frequently during my youth. You will remember that I grew up in Ambleside in the Lake District of England and that Lake Windermere, the largest lake in England, was nearby. The setting was rapturous—rolling hills surrounding the lake, covered in green pastures and feathery thickets of cypress trees—gifting me with a feeling of bliss I hadn’t felt for ages.

As I relaxed in the lounge chair, nearly falling asleep, I remembered the day when my father decided to teach my brother, William, and me to fish in the old way. My father was a student of history, had studied the ancient method of fishing, and taught himself how to do it. He used a flexible rod outfitted with a high-tensile fishing line manually reeled in by a spinning device (known as a reel) attached to the end of the rod. According to my father, recreational fishing had once been considered a sport, and there were even competitions to determine who the best fishermen were. But that was long ago, and fishing and many other sports from olden times had dwindled in popularity.

In the 2150s, when I was growing up, fishing had become too easy. People who did fish used hand-held devices called Tempters (the precursor of the notorious Tickler, which you know I used for evil purposes, occasionally) to send signals into the water. They would sweep the Tempter back and forth, hoping the invisible ray it emitted (harmless to humans or other animals) would hit a fish. If it did, the fish’s brain would tell it to swim toward the source, and it would eventually come to the edge of the water, where it could be netted and caught. Not much sport in that. Fishermen of the 2150s dramatized the importance of proper sweeping techniques, and while this did make a difference, one could hardly call this sort of fishing exciting.

Fishing in the old way, however, with rod and reel, was tremendously difficult. My father taught William and me how to tie the lure to the line using a fisherman’s knot, how to cast it out by pulling the rod back over your head and slinging it out toward the water, releasing the line at just the right moment to allow the lure to travel as far as possible. Then, you would reel the lure back in, hoping to attract a fish’s attention.

On that day, I remember we were targeting the rainbow trout that proliferated in Lake Windermere. I was seven, and my brother William was twelve. My father told us that the lake trout were attracted to shiny, fast-moving lures, so we chose the most reflective lures from his fishing box and tied them to our lines. We cast out and began reeling in the lines. William, who didn’t seem that interested, was reeling at a moderate pace. I, on the other hand, was intrigued beyond measure by the prospect of catching a big fish, so I reeled and reeled like a madman. Suddenly, a fish latched onto my lure, and my line tightened without notice, nearly pulling the pole from my grasp.

My father reached over and steadied my pole. “You’ve got a bloody big one on your line, lad! Steady now. Bring him in slowly.”

After a ten-minute battle with the mighty fish, I reeled in a trout at least 40 centimeters (16 inches) long. I was ecstatic, especially since I had done it while my brother had come up empty. William was a good soul and happy for me, never jealous of his little brother. It turned out that the trout I caught was the only one we got that day, but we brought it home, and my father showed me how to gut and fillet the fish. We cooked it for dinner that night in butter and lemon. Delicious.

My memories from this spot were nothing but happiness; my only regret was that my time here with my family was too brief. My parents were taken by the plague when I was twelve, and my brother and I were separated. And then my life became what it became. Or did it?

I turned to my right and saw another man sitting in a lounge chair beside me. He was holding two of those metal wine glasses for use outdoors, the ones that cool the wine on the inside but feel warm and comforting on the outside.

“Wine?” he said, and of course, you must know the man was me. Undoubtedly, he was a Charles from a different reality. In contrast to me, his dark hair was short, neatly combed, and parted on the side. You will recall that I prefer to keep my hair long and wear it in a ponytail. I never thought about why I did this, but as I sat there wondering why this other Charles wore his hair the way he did, I decided that he must be a conformist, whereas I am the polar opposite of that. It turned out that I was correct.

“Yes, wine would be marvelous,” I said.

He handed me the glass, and I sipped it. Sauvignon Blanc. Not my favorite. I prefer red—Pinot Noir.

“Ah, but it’s the favorite of the love of our lives, isn’t it?” he said, referring to Annette.

“She preferred Pinot Noir,” I said, confident I was right.

“She drank what you drank to please you,” he said. “In your reality. In my reality, I had more time with Annette than you did. Time to find out what she really wanted.”

I was offended. “Annette was always free to make her own choices when we were together. And afterward.”

“Annette became my wife in my reality,” he said. “I appreciated her wisdom and followed her advice, especially regarding the most important decision of my life. You did what you wanted, to the detriment of the entire universe.”

“I assume you’re speaking of my theft of time travel from EarthGov?”

“Of course. That is why the Collection has asked me to join you here, Charles, at the site where we share pleasant memories. Our paths did not diverge until 2183 when we were thirty-four years old. You stole the time travel tech and disappeared. On the other hand, I heeded Annette’s advice and carried on in an official capacity, fulfilling our contract with EarthGov to develop time travel.”

“How did things end up for you and the world?” I asked, sincerely interested.

“Annette and I were married, I became the Minister of Time Management, and I convinced the Executive Committee to ban time travel once its deleterious effects were better understood.”

I wondered how far this other Charles got with time travel while working under the auspices of EarthGov. Not far, I imagined. Not far enough to meet the people I had come to know and love during my clandestine affair with time.

I decided to put that question to him. “Before time travel was banned, did you meet Aideen? Dani? Liam Murphy, perhaps?”

“No, I did not. The only knowledge I have of them is in your memories, Charles. When you are a more seasoned member of the Collection, our members will share their memories with you. But not now. Not yet.”

“Why ‘not yet?’” I asked.

“Because you have work to do,” he said. “You must earn our trust.”

“Enlighten me, please,” I said, taking a long sip of wine.

Noble Charles went on to explain my assignment. I call him “Noble Charles” because he’s the one who resisted the urge to steal, to lie, and to kill. I suppose that makes me Crooked Charles, and you know all the many reasons for that. But if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I must tell you that as I sat there, Crooked Charles through and through, next to my more noble self, I can’t say I liked the man. He wore his “nobility” as a badge of honor, and I distinctly felt an aura of disdain emanating from him. Disdain for me. And while I was no longer human in the biological sense of the word, you will undoubtedly agree that when someone doesn’t like you, your first reaction is not to like them back. That’s how I felt, but at the same time, Noble Charles had been tasked by the Collection to give me an assignment, so I allowed him to proceed so as not to offend those who’d resurrected me from the dark abyss of death.

It was interesting to learn that Noble Charles, despite his best intentions, could not end time travel. He had it outlawed, but so did Annette in my reality. Of course, in my reality, I’m sure I did much more damage to the time-space order than was done in his, but what of it? The Collection was assigning me to end time travel for one reason and one reason only. It was still a threat to the universe. And if I’m honest (which I am not, always), my initial reaction upon receiving this assignment was a redemptive moment. After all, Noble Charles hadn’t gotten the job done, and let us not forget the ancient witticism: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Apparently, the Collection felt I was better suited to the task than the pretentious Noble Charles.

Noble Charles explained that as long as the Minds knew how time travel works, they could eventually find someone in the biological world who could begin using it again. More importantly, according to the Collection, it was possible for the Minds themselves to travel through time if they chose to, and they very much wanted to. All that kept them from doing that was the threat of extinction from the biological humans who supervised their housing. Time travel was illegal, and the Minds were citizens of Earth (albeit non-voting citizens) and, therefore, bound by its laws. You will find out soon enough that most of the laws of Earth had very little meaning inside the world of the Minds, but apparently, the one about time travel did (at least that is what I was told by the Collection).

First and foremost, the Minds wanted to live. And you will soon see that they lived well. Very well. How do I know this? After all, no biological humans knew what it was like to live as a Mind. We knew the construct and the possibilities, but it is one thing to understand intellectually how something works and another actually to be there. And that is how I know what living as a Mind is like. My assignment was to become one of them. And I did.

Chapter 2

The Collection had it all worked out for me. They would insert my consciousness into the subconscious of Charles in 2183, just before I made my infamous decision to steal the time travel tech from EarthGov. Theoretically, it would be simple for Crooked Charles (yes, me) to influence Not Yet Crooked Charles to make a different decision—the right decision, as far as the Collection was concerned. For my part, I wasn’t so sure.

The people (and aliens) I’d met during my life of crime were the most cherished friends I’d ever had. By influencing Charles to follow the straight and narrow path of conformity, I’d never meet them, and they’d never meet one another. No Dani and Aideen, no Liam and Orla, no Sadiki and Eabha, and no Charles and any of them. You know the story, and it was painful to think I’d be truncating that reality through the course of action I’d been ordered to follow.

Nevertheless, it seemed I had no choice. Either I complied with the demands of the Collection, or I ceased to exist. At least, that was my assumption. My extermination was never explicitly discussed, however, it was undoubtedly hinted at during my discussions with Noble Charles, who seemed downright cheerful about the possibility of me being gone for good. He also suggested that going into the Community of Minds could be a death sentence by itself. After all, no one who went in there had ever returned to the biological world. All of this was weighing on me as if I was lying in a ring in a circus being stepped on by an elephant that didn’t like me. And as Noble Charles spouted out more and more details, the burden only became heavier.

The plan was for me to pursue time travel under the supervision of EarthGov, and when it became clear that time travel was a mistake, I would quietly suggest that I become an uploaded mind to eliminate it once and for all. The Collection believed a secret vote of the Executive Committee would approve this suggestion, and I had no reason to doubt them, which made me feel only more vulnerable. You see, at the time, there was no way to retrieve a mind that had been uploaded. This technology was developed later. I was assured that my body could be placed in stasis until such time that my mind could be extracted and reintegrated with my body. Of course, this was all subject to special approval as well. And while the risk of my mind never being reunited with my body should not have concerned me one way or another (since I was already dead and would only be a visitor in the mind of 2183 Charles), I still felt squeamish about the whole thing.

Why, you ask? And to that, I answer with a question for you: If you died and were given a chance to live again as a living, breathing, human being, wouldn’t you be excited by that? The answer is “yes,” and I was. Going into the Minds was also intriguing, but the hope that I could return to the biological world after my mission was completed was quite compelling, even though I wasn’t certain the Collection would allow me to do that. The point is, I wanted to. But I digress. I should be explaining what was entailed and what it was like to become a Mind back in 2183.

First, to help you better understand why all of these “special” approvals would be needed in my case, I think it would be helpful to explain the laws that governed the uploading of minds in the late 22nd century. There were five particular and ironclad statutes known as the Laws of Uploaded Minds, summarized as follows:

1) To be accepted into the Community of Uploaded Minds, you must demonstrate that you can contribute to the Community in some discernible way. This is a two-tiered approval system: first, your application must be approved by the Biological Human Committee and then by the Minds Committee.

2) Once accepted and uploaded, there was no coming back and no contact with friends and family who were still living. For those left behind, losing someone to the Community of Minds was equivalent to the death of a loved one. There was a single Mind contact with the biological world, appointed by the Community of Minds, who passed along information in both directions, but that was it. Just one Mind out of a hundred million had contact with the biological world.

3) The Community of Minds must abide by the laws of Earth. It’s important to note that how Earth law was enforced on the inside was entirely up to the Minds. (When I got there, I found that it wasn’t enforced. At all.)

4) Each Mind was entitled to a strictly private living environment, rudimentarily constructed before entering the Community but dramatically enhanced afterward. No other Mind was permitted there without being invited by the occupant.

5) Communal areas were also created, accessible by all members at any time. The biological humans programmed in restaurants, bars, beaches, and parks where the Minds could socialize. However, I soon learned that the Minds themselves dramatically expanded the number and nature of such communal areas, unbeknownst to their biological landlords. Some of these areas were downright outrageous, and I’ll take you to a few later on in these pages.

The reality was that just as the Minds had no idea what was going on in the biological world other than what the biological humans shared with them, the inverse was also true. The Minds lived the way they wanted to. Private environments could be literally anything the Mind desired. Communal areas could, too. All it took was three Minds to agree on what a communal area should entail, and it could and would be created.

My mission would become ridiculously challenging once I entered the Community of Minds. I was to befriend as many of the Minds involved in or privy to the time travel project as possible. My goal was to determine where the formulas were stored and destroy them. If certain minds had enough knowledge to recreate the formulas, I needed to figure out how to wipe their memory, ideally without turning them into a digital vegetable.

On the other hand, the Collection was by no means prohibiting me from literally killing someone to eliminate time travel conclusively. Now, I was beginning to understand why Crooked Charles had been selected for this task instead of Noble Charles. They knew I had lied before, stolen before, and killed before and assumed I would do so again to save my hide. As for me, I figured I’d know what to do when I got there.

If I am honest (and in this case, I am), despite my misgivings about bypassing my dearest friends by neglecting to steal the time travel tech, this assignment was starting to grow on me. I’d always been fascinated by the Minds, and now I would see firsthand what it was like to be one of them. Plus, I had my own “who-done-it” adventure awaiting me. Frankly, I was so excited that I stopped dwelling on the downside of the entire proposition. I’m sure you’re not surprised.

Chapter 3

“Are you ready?” asked Noble Charles.

“Absolutely!” I responded.

“Please remember your assignment. You will be inserted into the mind of Charles in 2183, just before you kill the four soldiers and abscond with the time travel tech…”

“Wait, can we make a minor change to the time of insertion?” I asked.

“How so?”

“I thought it would be better to have me enter just before Annette and I discussed my intentions. That way, I could direct myself to heed her advice, just as you did. I’m unsure how you found the strength to change your mind, but it was a noble act, and I’d like to know how that feels.”

If you’re wondering about the reason for my request, it was my heartfelt desire to protect Annette from my evil side. The Collection seemed content with reenacting Noble Charles’s confession about his desire to steal the tech, followed by Annette’s plea for him to reconsider, to which he responded positively. My preference, which I didn’t disclose, outwardly at least, was to spare Annette from any sign of the duplicity in my heart. Yes, I was patronizing Noble Charles to gain his cooperation and that of the Collection, and I suppose they knew it. Nevertheless, my request was granted.

“Very well,” said Noble Charles. “Now, off you go.”

It was early morning. Dawn was breaking through the darkness of night. Annette and I were in bed together in my penthouse apartment above OIMtech headquarters. You will recall that as CEO of the company, I had elected to live on-site. The theory was that whenever I was inspired, night or day, I could rush down to the labs and pursue my hypothesis, whatever it might be. The board of directors loved the concept and hastily approved my request for funds to convert the top floor of the building into my residence. As it turned out, not once did I rush down to the labs with an idea I’d come up with while in the apartment, and when Annette moved in, that possibility slipped further down the ladder of my priorities. I loved being in my apartment, especially when she was there.

I gently pressed my fingers against Annette’s shoulder, testing to see if she was awake. She was.

“Morning, love,” she said, opening her sleepy brown eyes.

I smiled, and the love I felt for her at that moment was as potent as ever, more so perhaps because there were two Charles present, and one of them had lost Annette by making the wrong decision regarding time travel. I was anxious to make things right, and as I explained a moment ago, I had no intention of mentioning my devious plan to steal the time travel tech to her. Instead, we made love.

You will remember that I jumped off the cliff in my backyard on Terrene in 2257. The last time Annette and I had made love was 2183, and even though I had returned to 2183 to execute the mission for the Collection, my perception at that moment was that I had waited 74 years to be with Annette again in this intimate way. It was glorious.

Annette and I showered, had breakfast, and went to our respective offices to work. And that’s the way things went. I never discussed my desire to steal the time travel tech with Annette, and I didn’t steal it. Thus, Annette and I remained together. We worked hand in hand with the officials of EarthGov to make time travel a reality. As I suspected, the missions were highly scripted and carefully construed to leave no trace of our presence in other times. It was demonstrably unlike my freewheeling days when I failed miserably to practice what I preached.

You know well how I played the time travel game back in my original life. I would unequivocally stress how critical it was to follow the rules of time travel to all of the time links I employed, but then I would do whatever I wanted while I was time traveling. You remember when Dani called me out, rightly so, for killing Ciara’s father. I mean, the man deserved it (he raped his daughter), yet he obviously wouldn’t have died had I not been there. And thus, another corrupted reality was created.

As the days, weeks, and months went by, it became increasingly clear to me that the cautious approach to time travel we were implementing under the oversight of EarthGov was never going to lead me to the most precious aspect of my days as a fugitive, rogue time traveler. I was never going to meet my friends. And they were never going to meet one another. As I’ve said already and will say again, because it was bothering me so much: there would be no Dani and Aideen, no Liam and Orla, no Sadiki and Eabha. Dani’s parents would never come to 2253. The Land People would never come to Earth, and we would never go to Terrene and build a settlement and meet the Water People, led by the great king Cabal. Sadly, there would be no Murphy’s Pub. Never, never, never.

I kept telling myself it was all for the better. I had a simple mission: to end time travel. The fact of the matter is that my friends and I created virtually all of the corrupt realities through our use of time travel. And if the time travel tech currently ensconced in the great OIM monolith that held the Community of Minds fell into the wrong hands, the pressure on the universe could reach the breaking point. Then boom! History ends, and the universe starts over.

The irony of my precarious situation was that I, Crooked Charles, had been assigned to solve the problem. The harsh reality was that the Collection could not have selected a more dubious agent to execute their wishes. My hands were precisely the wrong ones to be handling the most potent weapon of mass destruction ever known. You know me. Did you ever really believe I wouldn’t use this powder keg of an opportunity to pursue my own ends?

Chapter 4

And what did I want, you ask. I wanted to see the people I had loved during both the good and bad of my life. My challenge was bringing my friends back together without exacerbating the issue I was there to solve (ending time travel). Frankly speaking, predicting the time ripples of time travel events was never a strong suit of mine. Truth be told, no human could do it. AI would have a better chance, but the best it could do was to calculate probabilities of likely outcomes that would multiply exponentially as time moved forward. In short, it couldn’t be done.

But what about the Community of Minds, supported by AI and containing the power of one hundred million minds? Perhaps they could help me figure it out. And even if they couldn’t, since the Community was a world unto itself, wholly separate from the biological world and its myriad realities, it would be the perfect place to bring my friends. And that just happened to be where the Collection wanted me to go. Into the Community of Minds. All of this soul-searching and heavy thinking led to one inevitable conclusion. The time had arrived for me to join the Community of Minds.

Conveniently for me, it was not long after I made this decision that time travel began to reveal its ugly side. A time traveler had been hit by a car and killed during one of the missions. We’d been unable to bring the body back to the present because there would have been too many witnesses watching our departure, so we left him there, lying in the street, covered in his own blood. Not long after our reports were filed, some bureaucrats decided this was too much. We had changed history, and even if we didn’t feel the effects, our future had been changed because the deceased man was no longer in our present. All because of time travel.

This incident percolated upward through the levels of government, and that was it. Time travel was outlawed—the time to make my move had arrived. I convinced the Minister of Time Management that to end time travel truly, we needed to erase it from existence in the place where it had been born—the Community of Minds. As predicted by the Collection, the Executive Committee took a secret vote, and my application to enter the Community of Minds was carefully prepared.

The Minds were told that time travel was on a temporary hold in the biological realm and that an experienced time traveler was requesting acceptance into the Community of Minds to help them understand in great detail the issues we had faced while time traveling. This emissary would become a permanent resident of the Community. The hope was that more advanced methods could be developed that allowed the travelers to be mere observers rather than actual entities within the time destinations. If that could be done, then time travel could be resumed.

My application was forwarded to the Community of Minds and enthusiastically accepted. My dissertation on AI infusion into OIM was well-known within the Community, and my experience as an actual time traveler was valued. I was in. Now came the problem of explaining all of this to Annette.

My plan had been held in strict confidence within the Department of Time Management, and I had been forbidden to discuss the matter with anyone, including Annette. But now that I was leaving, it needed to be done. You may wonder how I was able to go through with it. After all, I had finally been reunited with my long-lost love, and now I was leaving her, conceivably forever.

Before I describe how the conversation with Annette went, let’s review a few things. One, even though my heart yearned to live in the biological realm with her, I had reluctantly concluded that if and when I accomplished my mission, I would not be permitted to reunite with her. Instead, I would be drawn back to the Collection, accepted fully into their ranks, and live for eternity as a god of time and space management. My interlude with Annette was a delicious reminder of what she and I had together. It was a bonus of sorts, an extra sliver of time to be with her entirely as colleagues, lovers, and friends.

Two, the assertion by the Collection about me inhabiting the mind of the Charles of 2183, subtly directing him to make the “right” decisions, was perhaps one of the biggest charades of all time. I would guess it took about five minutes for Crooked Charles to take over 2183 Charles’s conscious mind entirely. After all, my mind was far more substantial than his.

Think about my history: building the time chain and using it for my sinister plans, the ingestion of OIM that led to any number of gifts, including the ability to time travel without the assistance of a machine, the settling of Terrene, the defeat of the Fury, my time under the seas living as a Water Person. The Charles of 2183 was just a child compared to me. I say all this merely to inform you that when I describe events and speak aloud during my adventures back then, it is me talking, not him. You probably realized that, but I do go on sometimes, don’t I?

Now, back to my disclosure of my intention to enter the Community of Minds to Annette. Her initial response was unexpected yet heartfelt.

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

“What, you mean into the Minds?”

“Yes, of course.”

“But the application process is onerous, my love.”

“Charles, I’m just as qualified as you to join the Community of Minds. Our intellect and experience are virtually identical.”

“Do they even let couples into the Minds?” I wondered aloud.

“If both can contribute, why not?” she retorted. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s immaterial that we’re together. We can each contribute. That’s the point.”

Well, I hadn’t expected this. And while it was exceedingly tempting to acquiesce and work like a madman to make Annette’s proposal a reality, there was simply no way I could accomplish my dueling objectives—end time travel and bring all of my friends from my former reality together, just like old times—with Annette by my side. Not only would it be difficult, if not impossible, to explain, she would very likely disagree with some or all of it. She had to stay here in the biological world. Period.

“Annette, there’s another way,” I implored. “My body will be put into stasis. When the technology is developed to download minds from the Community and place them back in biological bodies, I will return to you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Not only does such technology not exist, it is a direct violation of the second law of time travel. Once you go in there, you can’t come back.”

“Annette, you have to trust me. I know the technology will be developed, and the second law will be modified to allow minds to return to the biological world under certain circumstances.”

“And how do you know this, Charles? Can you see the future?”

Moment of truth, folks. Drum roll, please. “Annette, I’m from the future.”

Annette fell silent. My eyes never left hers, and I could see her powerful mind whirling. In the early days of time travel, travel to the future wasn’t possible because it relied upon time links. Time links could connect with their past because they knew it, but they didn’t know their future. The tech to go forward came later. Still, Annette was as profoundly versed in time travel of that era as anyone, and she knew it was only a matter of time until future travel came about. The point was that she believed me.

Annette let out a deep breath that she seemed to have held forever. “Okay. Why are you here?”

“Annette, please. The details are the most closely guarded secret in the universe. I can’t tell you. But I can tell you, generally, that I’m here to save the future, and to do that, I need to go into the Minds.” And now, the white lie. “My body will be in stasis, the downloading tech will be developed, and the laws will be modified. All of this will pave the way for my return.”

“When will all of this happen?” she asked.

Frankly, I didn’t remember precisely when the downloading teach was developed, so I gave her the first year that came to mind: “Twenty-two fifty-three.”

Annette seemed mollified, which is more than expected, considering I was lying through my teeth about almost everything.

“So, seventy years,” she mused. “I can wait seventy years.”

“Yes, and since you’ve taken the youth pills, you’ll look the same.”

“Forget about the youth pills,” she said. “We deserve to have a full life together. I’m going into stasis with you. When you return and get your mind back in your body, they’ll wake me up, too.”

Chapter 5

There was no talking Annette out of going into stasis with me. The only difference is that my mind would be uploaded, and hers would remain with her body. Her affection for me and her commitment to what we had together profoundly touched me. Thus, a third layer of complexity was added to my mission: how to return to Annette when it was all over?

As part of the application process for joining the Community of Minds, I had described the environment I wanted to inhabit when I arrived. I’d been assured that even though it would be digital, as would I, the sensations I’d experience while there would be indistinguishable from real life. According to the briefing materials I reviewed, the physical senses—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—were, in fact, more amplified within the Community than in the biological world. It was hard to understand what this would feel like, but of course, I tried.

I remembered an ancient film called “The Matrix,” in which reality was a highly elaborate digital construct in which people’s minds lived. The people didn’t know their lives weren’t real, which suited their unseen masters. The tiny number who’d been freed from the Matrix lived a spartan existence, eating bland food and living in cramped quarters underground. Some of them wanted to go back into the Matrix because life inside of the Matrix was full of self-indulgent pleasures—going out to dinner and enjoying a succulent steak, living in big houses outfitted with all of the modern conveniences, never worrying about surviving until the next day—even though they knew it wasn’t real in the traditional sense. Some asked the question, “What is reality, anyway?” Wasn’t reality what your mind believed to be real?

Reality in the Community of Minds would be far more advanced than the reality of The Matrix because that reality was based on life in the world at the dawn of the 21st century. Life in the Minds could be anything you wanted it to be. I was told that once there, I could harness the computing power of the AI packed into the OIM monolith to bring people and things to life that had meant the most to me in the biological world. Whatever memories or knowledge I possessed that I wanted to birth into my digital reality, I could easily do, and that included ideas about things I’d never experienced. One could also borrow memories and ideas from the collective library within the Community, which was full of extraordinary things no one had ever thought of before in the biological world.

Tapping into my memories was sufficient to flesh out the world I wanted to inhabit as my private space within the Community of Minds. I wanted to live on Terrene again. I described Base One on Terrene (the name was officially changed to New Madagascar after my death in 2257, in my honor, I might add) to the technician who would enter the data to be loaded into the Community along with my essence, explaining to him that it was a place I had dreamed of before that I had always hoped to see. No one on Earth in 2183 knew of Terrene and I didn’t want to imply that I did, jeopardizing my approval to enter the Community of Minds.

After completing all of the preparatory work, it was time for my mind to be uploaded and my body to be placed in stasis. Annette and I were together at that moment because, as we had agreed, she would go into stasis simultaneously with me.

We embraced, and she whispered into my ear. “Promise you’ll come back to me.”

“I promise,” I replied. And I meant it.

The process unfolded quickly. I went to sleep and then woke, presumably inside the Community of Minds. There was no welcoming committee waiting for me. I was alone in the construct meant to be my home on Terrene, and it needed a lot of work. I set out to reconstruct everything in New Madagascar to fit with my memories. Terrene was the place where my life had been the most fulfilling. I loved the land we’d built from nothing, the endless ocean, and all the extraordinary life that lived in those waters. Most of all, I loved the people who had lived there with me: Liam, Aideen, Dani, Orla, Clarion and Zephyr, Cabal, and many more.

My cottage sat at the edge of a cliff on an island similar in size and shape to Madagascar on Earth, off the east coast of Africa. It was a thousand kilometers long and four hundred kilometers wide at points. One big difference from the original Madagascar was that our island sat a thousand meters above the sea. Initially, I’d done this to protect the island from the gigantic tidal waves (five hundred meters high) that crashed against our shores two or three times a year. There was also the issue of the Water People trying to flood the island by unfreezing the planet’s poles until we made peace with them. They figured out quickly that I could go higher if I wanted because the OIM technology I possessed would build whatever I wanted from virtually any raw materials in its proximity.

On Terrene, there was always a light breeze, the sun shone ninety percent of the time, and farms, fields, and forests stretched over the entire island. This magical place was dotted with freshwater lakes and crisscrossed with saltwater canals we’d built to allow Water People to visit and spend time with us until the technology to convert their fins to legs was popularized. The temperature was a stable 21 degrees Celsius (70 Fahrenheit) during our fifteen daylight hours and only modestly lower at night.

I recreated all of this in my digital world, and that was only the beginning. To make my home in the Community of Minds truly the place I loved, I needed the people I loved to be there, too. Thus, I made as many of the humans, Land People, and Water People as I could remember, and the ones I couldn’t remember I replaced with fill-ins, understudies if you will, until the population of my world reached two thousand, which is what it was when I died there in 2257. My best friends, who I knew better than anyone, would visit me often in my cottage on the sea, just as they had done in real life. Dani, Aideen, Liam, Orla, Clarion, Zephyr and Cabal. And we’d gather together every evening at Murphy’s Pub, enjoying ale and now and then an Irish Whiskey, reminiscing about old times, which hadn’t happened yet for anyone in this time, be they inside the Community of Minds or outside in the biological world. No matter. This was my private space. No one could come here unless I invited them, and I had no plans for that.

On the other hand, I had a job to do, so I was obligated to figure out how to contact Minds outside of my home world. As it turned out, that wasn’t necessary because they contacted me first.

Chapter 6

Word came to me telepathically from a bloke named Rembrandt. I wondered if it was his real name or if he’d taken it on after coming into the Community. Those of you who know art realize that Rembrandt was the first name of the Dutch painter from the 1600’s. His full name was Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, but the gentleman here had followed the painter’s lead and was known to the world inside the monolith simply as Rembrandt.

Hello Charles, came his thought. I’m known as Rembrandt, and it’s my responsibility to welcome you to the Community. Welcome!

Thank you, Rembrandt! I replied, relieved that the contact process was beginning so smoothly. I was hoping to hear from someone.

Yes, quite so, he said. I wondered how a Dutch painter spoke with an aristocratic British accent, but who was I to question the ways of a world in which I was a neophyte? Rembrandt continued. I want to invite you to a cocktail party where you can mingle with Minds, both old and new. We’ve had quite an influx of candidates recently and need to get things moving ahead on the orientation process. We were waiting for you to complete your home construction, which, frankly speaking, took longer than we’re used to. I can’t imagine what you’ve been building, but it must be magnificent!

Hmmm. How did you know I’d finished?

Oh yes, you wouldn’t know, would you? The Central AI detected that you’d finished and alerted us.

Oh! I said, surprised. I didn’t know the AI had access to our personal space. I thought it was private.

Oh yes, it’s entirely private. The AI will never reveal the details of your living arrangements to us, but just as in the biological world, the AI has access to all the goings-on of humans to better serve us. You’ll learn more about how valuable that can be as time passes, but suffice it to say that the world you built wouldn’t be possible without AI.

Not so, I thought to myself. After all, I’d already built the settlement on Terrene in the future biological world. What I’d done here was simply a replica. Nevertheless, I logged this information for future use. AI and I had done some great things together in the past. Well, in the future. Oh, you know what I mean. The point is that I felt confident that the AI and I could work something out regarding my privacy.

The mixer is at 3 PM, said Rembrandt.

How do I get there? For that matter, how do I know what time it is?

The AI has placed clocks in your world at the appropriate places. It can implant a clock in your mind should you desire that. Anyway, good sir, we’ll see you there! At 3 PM, think ‘party’ and you’ll be there. Cheerio!

At the time of my conversation with Rembrandt, I was sitting in the kitchen of my cottage, having a glass of wine. I looked at the far wall and saw a clock had been placed there—not by me but by the AI, according to Rembrandt. It was half past two in the afternoon. That gave me just thirty minutes to install a firewall limiting the AI’s access to my domain. I was determined to establish control over my personal space, so I set it up so the AI could only enter at my request. After that, all I had to do was decide what to wear.

At 3 PM sharp, I thought the word “party” and off I went. I arrived in a chalet in the French Alps overlooking a deep valley. A piano band was playing Scott Joplin ragtime music from the Roaring ‘20s, which some of you may remember as one of the most decadent times of the 20th century. The band belted out a song I’d been introduced to by Aoife O’Brien (Aideen’s mother), “The Entertainer.” I didn’t feel at all out of place in my white tuxedo with a sharp black bow tie. My long dark hair was tied neatly in its ponytail, and I must say, I felt like partying.

Right on cue, a waiter dressed in black tux and tails strode up and offered me a glass of champagne, which I happily accepted. I walked down the main stairs of the chalet feeling like Leonardo DiCaprio walking down into the first-class dining room of the Titanic. I chose not to think about what happened to poor Jack Dawson not long after his fateful dinner with the rich and famous because, at the time, he didn’t know what was coming. Neither did I.

A hundred or so people were gathered on the main floor, bordered on the outside wall by floor-to-ceiling windows. Many people were dancing on one side of the room, up near the stage where the band had been set up, and others were chattering loudly. A tall black man with slicked-back hair, dressed in a beige zoot suit and maroon shirt, approached me. For those who don’t know, a zoot suit is a men’s suit with high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers and a long coat with wide lapels and broad padded shoulders. The man extended his hand. “Welcome, Charles! I’m Rembrandt.”

I shook hands with Rembrandt, but before I could say anything, he slipped away from me and pushed through the crowd, approaching the stage. He jumped six feet into the air, landed on the stage, and a saxophone appeared in his hands. The pianist burst into “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and began signing, accompanied by Rembrandt, who belted out a thunderous performance on sax. After the song, the crowd roared in appreciation. More champagne came my way, and the party was on.

I met quite a few people during the mixer, and while the booze was flowing heavily, I kept a mental list of those I needed to know to get what I wanted. Turns out Rembrandt was one of them. The man had been a scientist in his biological life, renowned in the field of quantum mechanics and the application of artificial intelligence within his field of study. His real name was Dr. Timothy Sears, and he’d been one of the first minds to be uploaded, ever, way back in the year 2098. He was not only one of the leading scientists in the Community, but he was also one of the most powerful Minds of all. Yes, folks, even here, where no one had real bodies, the power game was still alive and well.

Another duplicitous person I met was Betty Balou, who spoke with a Southern American accent and was well-known for her expertise in special and general relativity during the early 23rd century. Betty Balou was an attractive woman. She had short dark hair styled in a bob, was medium height and shapely, and was dressed as a flapper, fitting in nicely with the 1920s party theme. She also appeared to be interested in me. She kept inviting me to visit her in her environment, but I wasn’t interested. I wanted what she knew about time travel, not what she seemed to be offering.

Everyone knew why I was there, at least the why of my application. Still, I can’t say that anyone was jumping up to ask when we could begin to convert time travel into purely observational technology. I wondered why. Eventually, I figured it out, but it took a while.

As the party roared on, it became clear to me that even though the Minds reveled in extravagances of the most extreme kind, they were a cautious bunch when it came to work. Before they told me what was really going on, they needed to trust me. And that’s when it came to me that I might be able to pique their interest by showing my hand a bit.

Chapter 7

I staged a dinner party at my place. Of course, I invited my dearest digital friends, each as close as I could make them to their original selves. If anything, they had more qualities I cherished and less of those I could do without. Aideen, for example, was smart as a whip and was the first to offer an explanation of whatever was happening. Dani was sincere, with an undercurrent of leadership authority in her demeanor. The two of them loved each other deeply and without question, but they never spoke of it, almost as if they didn’t want to offend anyone who might have contrary views on homosexuality. Based on what I’d observed at the mixer a few days previously, I didn’t expect that to be a problem with the Minds. No one seemed to care about who was with whom or what they did together.

Liam was a copious drinker and friendly to everyone. His sense of humor was topped only by Orla, who was more voluptuous than ever. Clarion and Zephyr, my two closest friends from the species known as Land People, possessed as much humanity as any of us, although they didn’t look human. It must have been their lack of hair or ears that gave them away. Clarion was analytical and had strong leadership qualities. Zephyr was more emotional and had a vein of bravery running through her, just under the surface. She could be counted on to volunteer, no matter how dangerous the mission.

Finally, there was Cabal, the leader of the Water People. By the time I died in 2257, Cabal still hadn’t had the operation to turn his backfin into legs, but I gave them to him for his life here. He had the smooth, tough skin of a dolphin and a mouthful of jagged teeth, with massively strong arms, but his personality was more consistently friendly than it had been on Terrene. In the biological world, Cabal could turn on a dime from gracious host into hostile predator, but he was always friendly here. After all, with teeth and arms like that, he needn’t take on a frightening demeanor. One might say it came to him naturally.

The party was a bit of a bust from an attendance perspective. I’d invited six of the Minds I’d discovered to be involved in time travel at the mixer. Only two showed up—Rembrandt and Betty Balou. The party was held in my backyard. The view of the ocean of Terrene was magnificent from our perch a thousand meters above it, and the island cliffs also presented themselves in the distance as the land curved gently northward as it traveled away from us to the east. We barbecued burgers, dogs, and chicken kabobs, a tradition I’d learned during my travels back to the 21st century. Liam had been kind enough to bring a keg of ale and some Irish Whiskey, and I’d created an Irish trio that included a banjo player, a guitarist, and a violinist. All three were fabulous singers, and they chirped out the ballads of Old Ireland, filling me with emotion as I reminisced about my exploits back in 1751 and 1801, some of which I would rather forget.

On the brighter side of things, even though only two Minds attended my party, they were genuinely impressed by what I’d created, as I hoped they would be. The questions about how I’d envisioned this environment abounded. Betty Balou seemed more interested in my friends than she was in the dramatic scenery. She subtly flipped her head toward Liam (who you will remember is exceptionally handsome) and leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Charles, if you won’t come to visit me at my place, do you think you could loan me him?”

“I’m afraid he’s taken,” I replied.

“What, by that trollop with the big chest? What is she, five feet tall?”

“Height doesn’t matter, my dear Betty. They’re in love.”

Betty tossed her head back and laughed.

“What?” I asked.

“Charles, all of your friends he-ah are simply projections of your mind. You can make them into anything you want to. And truth be told, now that I’ve seen your friend, Liam, I can go home and make one of him for myself should I choose to.”

That made sense to me, and I remained unruffled by Betty’s lecturing. “As you wish, Betty, but you’ll never know Liam like I do.”

Rembrandt approached things more scientifically, and I could tell his mind was whirling. You must remember that it was the year 2183, inside and outside the Community of Minds. Time travel was nascent then, and travel to the future or space itself had yet to happen. But Rembrandt seemed to understand he was looking at one of my memories instead of a fantasy world. “An absolutely stunning environment, Charles,” he said. “Where on Earth did you find it?”

“Oh, this isn’t Earth Rembrandt. It’s a planet we settled in the 2250’s—my friends here and myself. Cabal over there was already here. His people live in the ocean.”

Rembrandt glanced over at Cabal, seemingly for the first time, and Cabal smiled and nodded, providing a full view of his abundant razor-sharp teeth. Rembrandt’s eyebrows went up, but he maintained his calm. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Charles, but I don’t remember anything on your application about you being from the future.”

“True enough,” I replied.

“Well, are you?” he asked. “Because that would be something we’d be interested in.”

I carried Rembrandt’s comment to its logical conclusion. “Because you don’t know how to get to the future yet and don’t realize that time travel is also the secret to interstellar space travel.”

“Obviously,” he replied.

“Actually, I was guessing,” I said. “Because I have no idea what the Minds are up to regarding time travel. I’d be happy to enhance your knowledge base regarding time travel, Rembrandt, but everyone here seems obsessed with partying and carnal enjoyment. When does the real work take place?”

Rembrandt sat back in his chair, glancing over at Betty Balou. She nodded. “Very well,” he said. “At 9 a.m. tomorrow, think ‘Time Travel.’”

Chapter 8

One of the great conveniences of being a Mind was that you didn’t need to shower and shave in the morning. You also didn’t need to sleep, but you could if you wanted to, so after the dinner party ended, I did. I got into bed at midnight and told myself to sleep for six hours. I woke at 6 a.m. and enjoyed a steaming cup of coffee on the back patio. Despite her best efforts, I hadn’t agreed to allow Betty Balou to “do a sleepover,” thus, I was alone with my thoughts.

As I gazed out over the endless sea, a gentle salt breeze caressing my nasal passages, I wondered what I would discover when I said the words “Time Travel” at 7 a.m. The irony was that even though my application had been accepted based on the stated objective of helping the Minds to make time travel an observational pursuit only, no one wanted to talk about it. As a result, it could be equally possible that when I said the words, I would find myself locked in some digital purgatory where there was no escape. Or, as I hoped, I would land in the middle of a meeting of all the great experts within the Community of Minds who were involved in time travel.

It turned out to be the latter. At 7 a.m., I said the words and blinked into existence on top of a great mountain in the middle of a vast ocean. It was impossible to know how high I was in the air, but it seemed to rival Everest, although the oxygen was plentiful. Did we even breathe oxygen in here? Probably not. The top of the mountain was a flat, circular plateau, perhaps a hundred meters in diameter. An amphitheater had been constructed there, sunken into the plateau as the cone of a volcano would be. A thousand people filled it. Before walking down to find a seat, I looked out at the sea to determine if any other islands were out there. Nothing but water as far as the eye could see. No seagulls gliding against the breeze or whales surfacing to breathe. No dolphins bursting forth from the water at high speed, then plunging back in. In short, very little imagination went into building this place. I would think all these scientists could do better than that.

My location at the top of the circular arena was behind the stage. A stairway led me down, and I ran into Rembrandt, who seemed to be waiting for me.

“Welcome, Charles,” he said.

“Thank you, Rembrandt. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Perhaps you’re asking what the purpose of this meeting is. It’s to introduce you to the Minds who manage time travel within the Community. We meet like this occasionally, although it isn’t necessary. We can all register our thoughts with the AI database, which then compiles and analyses them and spits out conclusions. But it’s nice to see each other every once in a while.”

“Indeed,” I replied. I hadn’t realized this meeting had been set up with the sole objective of introducing me to the time travel consortium.

Rembrandt bowed slightly and waved his arm toward a stairway that accessed the stage from behind. “Shall we?”

“After you,” I said.

Rembrandt ascended the steps, and I followed. We came out onto the stage. The crowd seemed larger from that vantage point than when I’d been looking at it from the rim above. And for the first time, I noticed the variety of outfits people wore, as varied as history itself. Some wore only tufts of fur to cover their privates, while several of the women wore elaborate gowns from the 19th century, their breasts pressed upward by tight-laced corsets. Others wore the colorful, tight-fitting contemporary skinsuits of recent times.

It was just the two of us up there. Rembrandt stepped forward, beckoning me to follow. As we neared the front edge of the stage, he stopped and spoke. No microphone was clipped to his lapel, but his voice was amplified as his words issued forth. “Welcome, friends. It’s been a while!”

Cheers and applause bubbled up from the crowd. They were a rowdy bunch. What did I miss? The enthusiasm certainly couldn’t be related to my presence there. Was something going on with this group that I wasn’t aware of? Rembrandt’s following words answered my questions.

“As most of you know, we’ve successfully freed another hundred Minds in our playground in 2022. All of them were undetected and assimilated into society back there with no ill effect on history, to the best of our knowledge.” Rembrandt turned to me and spoke to me softly, his voice unamplified. “Think the word ‘Update’ Charles, and you will be brought up to speed.”

Of course, I was stunned. Either the biological world was unaware that the Minds were time-traveling themselves, or they had withheld that information from me. I suspected the former and became sure of that when I learned more. As Rembrandt turned back to the crowd and spoke of matters related to the time travel project, I thought, “Update.” The truth about what the Minds had been up to while humanity thought they were being good little boys and girls came to me. I will summarize herein:

Unbeknownst to the biological world, the Minds had known how to download themselves back into biological bodies for some time. As far as the world knew, such technology didn’t exist. I remember there were rumblings about Minds wanting to return to the biological world, but it was against the law. As far as biological humans knew, they couldn’t do it (even if it was legal) until the tech was invented. As with most inventions of the late 22nd and the 23rd century, they looked to the Community of Minds for that. But nothing had been forthcoming, which is why my body lay in stasis back in the biological world, waiting for the technology that could return a Mind to the biological realm to appear. Apparently, the Minds didn’t share all of their inventions with biological humans. And their devious ways didn’t end there.

They weren’t downloading minds in the present to keep their secret from the human world. They were traveling back in time and doing it in an era before mind uploading or time travel existed. They chose the 2020s because it was viewed as a time when enough modern conveniences were present to facilitate a comfortable lifestyle while keeping the individuals in question well away from present times when every human on Earth was accounted for. But there was more.

Considering my mission from the Collection, I asked myself how these downloaded Minds weren’t changing history in leaps and bounds. And on top of that, why didn’t the Collection tell me about all this? Did they even know it was happening? After I found out how the downloading worked, I doubted it. You see, the Minds didn’t make a new body for themselves; they took over an existing one. You will remember how easy it was for me, Crooked Charles, to take over the mind of 2183 Charles. Well, that’s what these folks were doing to people back in 2022. They had access to all of the host’s memories and could, therefore, subtly take over their lives without anyone being the wiser.

Apparently, those who downloaded had agreed to limit their activities to what the host would have done anyway and, therefore, not change history. Just enjoy being who you became was the motto they were to follow. And that was supposedly the fun of it for these people. They could choose to be anyone they wanted to be. If they wanted to be the President of the United States, a movie star, a professional football player, game on. According to the “update” I’d been given access to, the time travel/downloading concept was gaining in popularity within the Community of Minds. More and more people wanted to do it. And even more impressive was that they could return to the Minds if they wanted to! Most of them did, if for nothing else, to turn around and try someone else’s life for a while. Outrageous!

Here’s the thing. I’d been a time traveler myself. And I know from experience that no matter how hard one tries, it’s impossible not to change history. That’s why I’d been allowed by the biological world to come here in the first place—to make time travel an observation-only pursuit. So, if these people thought they could go back in time and not change history, they were kidding themselves.

On the other hand, Crooked Charles loved this concept. It was right up his alley. Take over someone’s life for a while; don’t worry about how you might or might not change history. Let’s face it, folks, this was entertainment for these people, no matter what the update said. Do you really think they wouldn’t change the life path of some of the people they became? Of course, they would. And that meant things were already way out of control regarding the space-time balance. New realities would be sprouting up like weeds in a well-watered garden. This wasn’t good!

And what about my trifecta of a mission? First and foremost, end time travel within the Community of Minds. Second, bring all my friends from the past back together again. And third, get back to my body in the biological world so I could reunite with Annette.

The good news was that the meeting I was attending had completely solved problem three. The downloading tech existed. Assuming I could survive the mission, I could easily return to my body. And now that I’d learned how enamored the Minds were with 2022, it shouldn’t be that hard to get back there and begin working with the two key players from my first go-round with time travel—Aideen and Dani. I didn’t know how to get them to understand what was happening (after all, they wouldn’t even know who I was in this reality), but at least I could get to them! And that was a start.

All that left me with was the original mission I was sent here for by the Collection—end time travel. Well, that would have to wait a while. I had work to do first.

Chapter 9

“And now I’d like to introduce the newest Time Travel task force member, Charles Burke!”

I received a polite round of applause, and I could see from the expressions of those closest to the stage that there was still a lot of skepticism about me, or more to the point, about my intentions.

I stepped forward, and Rembrandt prodded me. “Why don’t you summarize how you think you can help us, Charles?”

And here we go. “First, let me say how honored I am to be here. The Minds have led the way to a better way of life for all of civilization…”

“Why do you want to stop time travel?” yelled a heckler from the audience.

As you may recall, I’m good on my feet and always have an agenda, so this was a slow-pitch softball for me. “Actually, my friend, I’ve just now received the update detailing how far forward the Minds have taken both time travel and downloading. Now that I’m up to speed, I think the biological world is considerably out of bounds regarding the limitations they want to build around time travel. A bloody mistake is what it is. I’m with you 100%, and I agree that the biological world isn’t ready to learn about any of this. In my brief time as a Mind, it’s become apparent that the biological world is so far behind the digital world that they will likely never catch up.”

“Here, here!” came a voice from the crowd. Next thing I knew, the entire audience was standing, clapping energetically, as if I’d just delivered a great line in the State of the Union address. My, my, that was easy. I was one of them already.

The following questions were not hostile but instead filled with curiosity and eagerness. How can we use your knowledge of the future to our advantage? Is there a way for us to contact alien civilizations without the biological world knowing? Can we travel to other worlds now? My answers were yes, yes, and yes, constrained only by my well-placed caveat. I explained that to bring the Minds forward, I needed to catch up with where things stood currently. Precisely, I needed to experience downloading in 2022 and then return to give my advice on all the possibilities I saw for improvement.

It was easy pickings. I was instantly scheduled for a trip to 2022. When asked if I needed a guide to accompany me, I revealed that I’d been to 2022 many times before and was quite comfortable there. To make my entry there as seamless as possible, I suggested that a host in the west of Ireland, in or around Galway, would be the best choice for me. Approved.

After the meeting, a probe was dispatched to the tiny barrier island known as Omey Island at my urging. The investigation quickly determined that only one permanent resident was living there, a hermit named Aideen O’Brien. I was quietly relieved that Aideen was still there, even though, in this reality, she had never been involved with time travel at all. Thus, I announced that this was the person I wanted to use as my host. The Minds didn’t understand why I would choose such a lowly, isolated person to inhabit, but I told them I knew what I was doing, not to worry, and that I would return soon.

Time travel was a simple feat for the Minds. They already possessed half of the more advanced method, which used time and space coordinates to locate a destination in the past. They had yet to figure out future travel or space travel, which explained their interest in me, but I’m sure they were close to having those capabilities.

As of 2183, the Minds had only given the human-based time link tech to the biological world, but the more advanced coordinates technique was the Minds’ time travel method of choice during my time there. Here’s how it worked: The essence of the time traveler was encased in a compact OIM cylinder about six inches tall and three inches in diameter. It was sent to the desired location and time, ideally in a spot where only the chosen host would find it. After that, it was like fishing. You waited for the biological being to touch the OIM cylinder, and the download into their mind took place. Using precise time and space coordinates, this advanced method allowed for more controlled and targeted time travel.

I asked if anyone had ever been downloaded into the wrong host, and the answer was yes. The funniest one happened when a dog licked the cylinder, and the time traveler found themselves living as a dog for a few minutes. The good news is that to return to the cylinder, all that had to happen was for the dog (the host) to touch the cylinder again, and this was easily accomplished because the time traveler took complete control of the host as soon as they arrived in their mind. Overall, I was confident I could pull it off.

Thus, my essence was loaded into the tiny OIM cylinder and sent to the kitchen of Aideen’s cottage on Omey Island in mid-March of 2022. Unfortunately, she wasn’t home when I arrived, so I sat there in the cylinder for several hours, waiting for her to arrive. Eventually, I heard the door open (yes, the cylinder could see, hear, smell, and taste) and came into the kitchen carrying a bag of groceries.

I was shocked to see her looking her actual age, which was sixty-eight in 2022. The oldest I’d ever seen her look was in her late forties because time links didn’t age while performing their duties in the time station. Their bodies were kept in stasis while they were sending people back, and for those who worked a lot, as Aideen had, the longer they did it, the less they aged. But in this reality, Aideen and her mother had never met me, so she’d never become a time link and had aged normally. No worries. I’d come prepared to remedy that. All I needed to do was convince her of who I was and get her to work with me to gather all the time links together.

Aideen was still an attractive woman. I remember her being a robust walker, and Omey Island was the perfect place to get in the miles without being disturbed by others. She was tall and trim, and while her fiery red hair was streaked with gray now, she still had a twinkle in her piercing gray-blue eyes. She immediately saw the cylinder, placed the grocery bag on the counter, and came over to look at it. Without hesitation, she reached out, touched it, and I was downloaded into her mind.

I didn’t intend to immediately take over her mind and start telling her what to do. I was hoping that wouldn’t be necessary at all. Instead, I wanted to talk with her and get her to understand who I was and why I was there. And here is why I thought this approach might work: dreams. Anyone who’d been part of a reality that had been dead-ended invariably dreamed about it. Aideen had been part of several realities. Only myself, and perhaps Dani, had been in more realities than Aideen. I had been there with her in most of those realities and was aware of the details of those I hadn’t been part of. If I could get her to remember one of those I was involved in, she would know who I was. Anyway, here’s the way it went:

Hi Aideen. It’s Charles Burke.

Aideen whipped her head around. “Who’s there?” she asked.

I’m in your mind, Aideen. I wanted to speak to you about your dreams.

Aideen was not only terribly bright but also profoundly intuitive. As I sat there in her mind, trying not to dominate but keenly “listening” to her mind work, I saw awareness dawning already.

Yes, Aideen. We were together in many different realities other than this one. Remember 1801, when you, Dani, and Orla had me captured by the Time Management soldiers from 2253? And what about our time together settling the planet Terrene? Remember? Liam, Orla, and Dani were there with us. And the Land People. Remember Clarion and Zephyr. Murphy’s Pub?

Aideen nodded her head. “I suspected those dreams weren’t just dreams,” she said.

Yes, they were real.

“Why are you here, Charles?” she asked. Aideen was always the type to grasp a situation quickly and get to the point.

A lot has happened, Aideen. I have a plan for bringing you up to date quickly, and I suspect that as we put the gang back together, more and more of the memories will rise into your conscious mind.

“What do ya’ mean by ‘put the gang back together’?”

You remember Dani, don’t you? I asked.

“I’ve dreamed about a woman named Dani many times,” said Aideen.

She’ll be at the car park on the other side of the channel tomorrow morning. I was thinking you should meet her.

Chapter 10

The easiest way for me to update Aideen on what I considered to be her real life (or, more to the point, her most extraordinary life) was to give her access to my memories. I asked her permission, and she readily agreed. I warned her that there was a tremendous amount of information about my exploits in different times and realities, but not all of her life would be there since these were my memories. However, since she’d been involved in most of my time travel experiences, a picture of her other life, the one from her dreams, would be painted. I also expected her subconscious to fill in most of the blanks eventually.

Before I tell you what happened, I think it’s essential that I get some credit here. How many people would be willing to reveal all of their life to another human being in the most intimate detail? Some try to do this with their therapists, but the extent and level of the information my sharing provided was excruciatingly intimate at some stages of my life. You know well that I’m a self-congratulatory kind of guy, and I’m happy to take a bow here, but the fact that I was willing to do this with Aideen speaks more to how I felt about her than anything else. She was one of the dearest friends of my life, and I wanted her to know that.

Aideen was quiet while she received the information I was giving her and remained so long after I’d finished. And then a sly smile crept onto her face. “So what about those pills, then?” she asked.

I knew she was referring to the pills from the future that made people look thirty years old and the ones that gave a person immunity to virtually all forms of disease. She understood intuitively that it would be much better for her to meet Dani as a thirty-year-old than as a woman old enough to be her grandmother. You will also remember that I could make virtually anything I wanted from OIM, and we had a nice chunk of OIM sitting there on the kitchen table.

“Do me a favor, please,” I said. “Touch the OIM, and then in two minutes, touch it again.

Aideen touched the tiny cylinder, and my essence returned there. I quickly gave the instructions for the OIM to make the pills. Before I left for 2022, I’d found and memorized the formulas for the pills, easy enough since most things the Minds had invented were housed in the Central AI database. I also enhanced the youth pill formula to the more advanced one from my time so it would work instantly rather than over nearly a week. The OIM dispensed the two pills like a bubble gum machine doling out its contents to an eager child. They lay there on the kitchen table. Aideen touched the cylinder again, and I returned to her mind. She took the pills, and they worked their magic.

Aideen woke at 2 a.m. to drive off the island at low tide. As she brushed her fiery red hair (no gray) while standing in front of the mirror, I saw the wonder in her intensely gray-blue eyes. Her pretty, freckled face smiled back from the mirror, revealing shiny white teeth. She looked thirty years old again. It wasn’t a dream.

Dani wasn’t expected until around 10 a.m., which I remembered from when my future evil self, whom I’d called the Anomaly, had sent me to witness the first meeting between Dani and Aideen. This time, things were different, of course. Aideen had never met Dani in this reality. Their time together back in 1978 had never happened. There was no beach in Greece, no trip to the great pyramids of Egypt, no touring around Europe, and no time travel.

Since it was the middle of the night and Dani wasn’t due in for several hours, Aideen drove down to Galway to kill some time. She filled her tank with petrol at the 24-hour station, then waited for the shops to open. The Centra supermarket opened at 6 a.m., so she did some shopping, purchasing enough food for two people to enjoy for a few days. She didn’t like the wine Centra sold but had some at home that she knew Dani would like, from my memories.

Aideen had accepted everything my memories had told her, but she’d been most surprised that she and Dani had become lovers in the other reality. She’d never been particularly attracted to women but didn’t shy away from the fact that something extraordinary had happened between her and Dani. Since I was in her mind, I knew that Aideen wasn’t overly anxious about whether or not history would repeat itself regarding the intimate aspects of her relationship with Dani. She was more excited to be reunited with someone she’d spent a lifetime with, especially considering that, in this reality, she had spent most of her time alone since her mother, Aoife, died.

We arrived at the car park beside the channel at around half past eight in the morning. I told Aideen where to park, and she backed in to give us a better view of our surroundings. Aideen sipped coffee she’d purchased at the Centra, and a second cup sat in the cupholder for Dani. Dani walked onto the scene at around 9:45. I felt the nervousness in Aideen and in myself. It was exhilarating to think that the three of us were so close but not quite together again. You will remember what happened next:

As Dani approached the channel, a rainstorm erupted. She secured the hood of her rain jacket and steeled herself for an uncomfortable delay in her walk to Omey Island. A deluge of raindrops plunged into the channel separating the Irish mainland from her destination, covering its rippled surface with tiny splashes. The sound of a thousand whispering ghosts surrounded her as Aideen (and I) waited in the car with bated breath, the hard rain pelting on the roof.

Dani looked out at the channel, and we knew she wondered how she’d ever get across. The tide had come back in while Aideen and I were in Galway, but it would go out again soon. A mighty wind joined the rain to raise the stakes of waiting for Dani. She turned her back to it, glad she’d put on her rain pants that morning before she’d started walking. The west coast of Ireland almost always offered rain and wind, bursting on, then off, several times a day. But this storm was the strongest she’d endured thus far in her journey, and its bitter chill was steadily seeping into her.

Dani was now facing the small car park, which was there for people who wanted to walk onto the island when the tide went out.

Only one car sat in the lot—Aideen’s. Dani couldn’t see clearly into the windows due to the blasting rain, but while she was trying to ascertain if someone was in the car, I told Aideen to roll down her window a few inches and wave her over. Aideen rolled down the driver’s side window, and with a flick of her wrist, she waved Dani toward the car, then pulled her hand back inside.

Dani approached the car, and I told Aideen what to say. “Go round the other side and get in!” her voice commanded in a strong Irish accent.

Dani ran around to the left side of the car, urgently removed her pack, yanked open the door, and jumped into the front passenger’s seat. She shoved the soaking, wet pack onto the floor in front of her, then quickly shut the door. The thump of the door closing muffled the sound of the storm. The car’s warmth enveloped her, and her rapid breathing added to the fog on the windshield. She turned to the Aideen, who had a welcoming smile on her pretty, freckled face and whose gray-blue eyes peered back with energy and intensity. A depth of emotion in Aideen’s gaze seemed to unsettle Dani a bit, but she was obviously happy to be there nonetheless, out of harm’s way.

“Thank you for inviting me in,” she said. “That’s a strong storm! I’m sorry I’m getting your car wet.”

“Wet’s a way of life in Ireland,” said Aideen. “No trouble a’tall.”

“I’m Danielle Peterson,” she said, extending her right hand to shake. “But most people call me Dani.”

“Eye-deen,” said Aideen, shaking Dani’s hand.

“What a beautiful name!” exclaimed Dani. “How do you spell that?”

“A-i-d-e-e-n.”

“I’ve never known anyone with that name.”

“Means ‘little fire.’ Last name’s O’Brien, which means ‘noble.’ So, I’m a noble little fire. But I can be managed if you work at it!” Aideen’s smile widened, and she looked out across the water. “So, you’re waitin’ for the tide to go out, are ya’?” she asked. “Goin’ for a walk round our little island there?”

“Yes, I hope to,” said Dani. “If the tide really does go out.”

“Oh, it does, twice per day. About two hours before low tide, the water in the channel will be gone, and people can go across then, ’til around two hours before high tide. So once the water’s down, ya’ can go back and forth for quite a stretch of time. Won’t be long now.”

“And why are you here waiting?” asked Dani. Aideen paused for an extra second as I suggested what to say, then responded.

“I’ve been down to Galway for some groceries,” she said. “I’m the only permanent resident of Omey Island since Pascal Whelan passed back in ’17.”

“I see,” said Dani. “I didn’t realize there were no permanent residents out there.”

“One,” corrected Aideen.

“Yes, of course,” said Dani. “I hate to be forward, but I’m writing my dissertation on the Wild Atlantic Way, and meeting you seems like, well, maybe you could help me by telling me about it from your perspective.”

Aideen stayed quiet, pondering her response, perhaps waiting for me to tell her. I gave her time to think things through, and she got it right.

“How much time do ya’ have?” she asked.

“I have a lot of time,” said Dani. “My dissertation is all I have left to do before getting my PhD in cultural anthropology.”

“Well then,” said Aideen. “You’ll be a guest at my home. As soon as the feckin’ tide goes out!”

Chapter 11

Aideen and Dani (and I, still being carried along in Aideen’s mind) arrived back at the cottage on Omey Island around half past ten. The rain had stopped, and the sun was peeking through dissipating clouds. Aideen grabbed her groceries from the back of the car and led Dani into the cottage, through the living room, and into the kitchen.

“Have a seat,” said Aideen. “Make yourself comfortable. Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” said Dani, her eyes drawn to the cylinder on the kitchen table as she sat. “What’s this?”

“Oh, that’s something I want to talk to you about,” said Aideen. She finished making the coffee and brought two cups over to the table. “You take it black, right?”

Dani narrowed her eyes, surprised. “Yes, how’d you know?”

“Before I answer that, may I ask you a question, Dani?”

“Of course.”

“Have you had dreams that you thought were real? And maybe a woman with red hair that looked like me was in them? Maybe this cottage here, a beach in Greece, the great pyramids, and a whole basket of other things?”

Dani’s eyes were wide, and she looked confused but nodded. “Why yes, I have. How did you know that, Aideen?”

“It’ll just take a moment for me to explain. That was how it was for me as well, Dani, until this tiny black stone statue appeared on my table. Just yesterday, it was. I was having dreams, too. Dreams that involved you.”

“Oh, my! Is this some ancient artifact involving the Wild Atlantic Way? Are you trying to teach me about the magic of this place?”

Aideen laughed. “I can see how you think the black stone might be a magic artifact, but it’s more real science than magic.”

“What is it?” asked Dani.

“It’s a tiny bit of something called OIM. That stands for Organic Intelligent Material.”

“Where did you find it?”

“Now that’s the magic part of it, I suppose. It found me. It’s from the future, Dani. From a different reality, actually.”

Dani sat back in her chair and laughed. I began to wonder if Aideen had moved too quickly. Tell her to remember the dreams, I told Aideen.

“Remember the dreams,” said Aideen.

Dani stopped laughing. “What does this thing have to do with those?”

“Everythin’,” said Aideen.

Touch it, Aideen, I said. And then tell her to touch it.

Aideen touched the OIM cylinder, and I went into it. “You touch it now,” said Aideen. Dani hesitated. “Trust me, Dani. You’ve trusted me before, and you should trust me now.”

Dani extended her arm and lightly touched the OIM with her forefinger. I went into her mind and gave her access to everything I knew that involved her. She sat back in her chair again, processing all of it. I knew both Aideen and Dani had strong minds because they easily weathered the downloading of their futures in the first reality we shared together. This sharing of information was no different. If anything, it would help Dani understand what had been happening to her.

“The dreams were real,” said Dani. “You were real, Aideen. And Charles was real.”

Very real, I said to her. I’m in your mind right now. And now you also know that I came from the future in the OIM cylinder.

“Yes, it all makes sense now. But why are you here, Charles? Why have you given this knowledge to Aideen and I?”

Some might say it’s for selfish reasons, I said. But also, the lives you two lived were so full of wonder and adventure when I knew you. I want to make sure you have that forever. Some things are going on in the future that could end up dead-ending the realities we lived in together. I don’t know that for sure, but I’m not taking any chances.

“What will happen next?” asked Dani.

We’ve got to go get the others, I said. The ones in the past, present, and future who experienced time travel with us. It won’t be easy, but we’ve got to try.

I knew Dani well. She was an adventurous person in her core, so I wasn’t at all surprised at her response. “I’m in,” said Dani. “Let’s do it!”

Chapter 12

The first order of business was to make a plan for retrieving the other time links from the past (Aoife, Roisin, Ciara, Orla, and Liam). To do that, I had to consider what abilities I still possessed after my numerous reincarnations. At the time of my death in 2257, I could read minds and speak telepathically without needing mechanical assistance, project holograms directly from my mind, make potent OIM samples in the palm of my hand, and travel through time without using a time station. And while no machine had been invented to facilitate reality travel, I, Charles Burke, could do it.

But then, I died. All too young I was (only 108), and what a loss it was for those I left behind. But once again, I digress. The question before me was which of these abilities had remained with me after my essence was harvested by the Collection, then placed into the mind of 2183 Charles, then uploaded into the Community of Minds, and then downloaded into an OIM cylinder and passed around between the minds of my friends like a peace pipe. That’s a lot of distillation, my fellow humans. Would you be surprised if I told you I had lost a few of my exceptional talents due to the sifting and straining of such a conversion process? Of course, you would. After all, I’m Charles. Nevertheless, an evaluation of my presumed abilities seemed prudent.

As I said at the beginning of this chapter, repeated here for clarity, the question now was whether or not my unique abilities remained part of my essence, accessible and useable in my current state. I was confident that the answer was yes because I’d already been able to make the youth and immunity pills out of OIM. I hadn’t tried mind-reading and certainly didn’t need to in my current state lodged in Dani’s mind. Her thoughts were totally accessible to me. But what about Aideen’s thoughts now that I’d transferred my essence from her to Dani? A quick scan proved to me that I could do it. I detected Aideen’s excitement about what we were about to do. She’d only dreamed about time travel in this reality; hopefully, she would do it for the first time, once again.

Based on this cursory assessment, I drew up a plan assuming that I could still travel through time without the assistance of a time station or other means of time travel, such as the one the Minds used to send the OIM cylinders back in time. In theory, I could orchestrate a time jump while nestled in the mind of a biological human. That person would carry the OIM cylinder with us, but the cylinder would not be how we traveled. It would be there as a transfer station for my essence. The time traveler in which I was housed would touch the OIM cylinder, I would transfer into it, and then the person we had come to fetch would touch it, allowing me to enter their mind and convey the same knowledge I’d conveyed to Dani and Aideen to help them understand who I was and why I was there.

Next, I had to establish a basis by which the time travel could occur. I remembered that when I was time traveling with Annette, running from Bad Charles, we could use either her memories or mine to travel to places we’d visited before. When we used Annette’s memories, all we needed to make it work was to be holding hands. I’d read her mind, and off we’d go. In this case, I planned to collect the other time links from the past by traveling there using the memories of the one who knew them. Aideen certainly knew her mother, Aoife, and Aoife knew her mother, Roisin. The next in line was Ciara, Roisin’s mother, and the next was Orla, Ciara’s grandmother. That would be a good handful of the time links from the past, then we’d have to get to Liam (everyone knew where to find him!), and I’d have to figure out where to put all of these people after we gathered them.

But first things first. I needed to see if I could do this. Currently, I was in Dani’s mind. The two of us were in constant communication, and I determined that I could still communicate telepathically with others, such as Aideen, which was another good sign. Hence, I spoke to Aideen telepathically from Dani’s mind.

All right, Aideen. We need to agree on the best time to retrieve Aoife. It’s probably best that we travel to Aoife at the end of her life. Do you agree?

“Won’t that be a bit complicated?” asked Aideen. “I was there at the end of her life. She died right here in this cottage, actually. I buried her up the road at Omey Graveyard.”

Aideen had a good point. I had planned on taking both Dani and Aideen with me and then adding one more time link to our group at each destination. By the time we got to Liam Murphy, we’d have a group of half a dozen people (Dani, Aideen, Aoife, Roisin, Ciara, and Orla) appearing out of nowhere and immediately attempting to make him understand what was going on. Since Liam would inevitably be drunk, that could either work for us or against us. I had to come up with a more practical procedure for doing this. And then it came to me.

Let’s use the cottage here in 2022 as a temporary repository for all of us. Here’s the way it will work. First, I’ll put my essence back in Aideen. Aideen (and I) will get Aoife and bring her back here. Aideen will take the empty OIM cylinder with her. If needed, I can transfer into the cylinder and then into Aoife to help her understand what’s going on, just as I did with each of you. We’ll bring Aoife back here and give her the pills. Then, Aoife will go back and get Roisin with my essence in tow. We’ll bring Roisin back here. Next, Roisin (and I) go back and fetch Ciara, and then Ciara goes to get Orla. Each time, I’ll be in the time traveler’s mind, and we’ll have the OIM cylinder to help us make them all understand what’s going on.

Dani and Aideen understood the process we’d be following, but Aideen posed an interesting question. “Who’s going to get Liam?”

It was a good question, but I had a good answer. Any one of you can get Liam because I was there with him when he was nearing the end of his life. I lived in his cottage for a while. I can take any one of you there to get him.

“It should be young Orla,” said Dani. “Liam always loved Orla, and he’ll recognize her. You can take her back there after she’s taken the pills.”

That makes sense. Are we ready?

Both women nodded. We transferred my essence back to Aideen, and she and I prepared to go back in time to get Aoife. I suggested Dani go to Galway to buy more food when the tide went out, and she agreed. If our mission were successful, there would be a lot of people squashed into the tiny cottage that would need to be fed.

With our rudimentary plan now agreed upon, Aideen and I traveled to the past to get Aoife. I saw the expression of awe on Dani’s face as we disappeared, and I reminded myself that she, Aideen, and the others would be experiencing time travel for the first time. They weren’t the same veteran travelers I had known in my reality, but I was confident they would become so in short order.

Chapter 13

As you might suspect, the plan worked. After all, it was my plan. What plan of mine doesn’t work? Yes, I’m gloating, of course. You know that’s what I do. I can’t help myself. At any rate, the seven of them (with my essence currently housed in the OIM cylinder, dispensing youth and immunity pills) were all there, stuffed into Aideen’s tiny cottage and eating a chicken casserole Dani had prepared while the group was gathered together. Every trip to the past had gone off without a hitch, except for Liam, which is a story we’ll laugh about for the rest of our days that I’d like to share with you here.

Ciara (and I) had returned to the cottage with old Orla, who subsequently took the youth and immunity pills. Young Orla and I then traveled to get Liam, and you know where that would be—the pub on Omey Island in 1801. Liam was sixty-six years old in 1801, and in that reality, he had never been involved in time travel or met Orla. However, all the rest of us were well aware of Liam’s infatuation with Orla in our original reality, and we were all confident it would be the same this time around as well.

We knew that the laws of 1801 in Ireland prohibited women from entering pubs, but we were pressed for time (no pun intended), so I took Orla directly into the pub. The people in the dark, windowless tavern didn’t immediately notice her arrival due to the haziness a time jump always produces, but as soon as the barkeep saw us, he yelled. “No ladies in the pub, no matter how pretty they might be!”

Orla could see Liam at the bar, bent over a pint and seemingly close to passing out, so she spoke loudly. “I’m sorry, sir, for intruding, but I’m looking for Liam Murphy!”

Liam raised his head and turned toward Orla’s beautiful voice. His eyes widened. “Bless me soul! It’s the beautiful young lass from me dreams! Oh no! She’s here to lock me in a prison of black stone!”

Liam launched off his bar stool like a missile from a launch pad and ran toward the pub’s front door. He blasted through the door and ran into the square, screaming for help. Orla ran after him, chasing him to the water’s edge. Liam raced onto the pier where the fishing boats were docked, ran to the end, and dove straight into the water. Orla (and I) were concerned that Liam would drown, but that was not the case. He started swimming toward the opposite shore, where the town of Claddaghduff was located.

“What should I do?” asked Orla.

Can you swim? I asked.

“No, Charles, I canna’ swim!”

All right, then. You’ll have to…um…borrow a rowboat and go after him.

Orla spotted a rowboat beached on the shore near the pier. She ran to it, turned it around, and pushed it out into the water, jumping in when it became buoyant and grabbing the oars, still in their oarlocks. She rowed as fast as she could, peering over her shoulder periodically to keep an eye on Liam, who was making haste toward the opposite shore. As it turned out, Liam was an excellent swimmer, even at sixty-six years old and drunk as a skunk. He made it to shore before Orla did, looked back and saw her, screamed, and started running.

“What now, Charles?” she asked.

Do you know where the local pub is in Claddaghduff? I asked.

“Of course I do. And you’re right. That’s where he’ll be.”

This time, go in, grab him by the arm, and I’ll take us back to 2022.

Orla found the local pub and went in. She spotted Liam at the bar, feverishly guzzling a pint, his clothes still dripping wet. He slammed the mug on the bar, wiped his mouth with a sopping sleeve, and began holding court. “I’m tellin’ ya’. The devil’s after me tonight! Satan himself in the form of a beautiful lass.” He turned toward the door and spotted Orla. “Ahhhhh!!! It’s her!!! She means to lock me in a prison of black stone!” He lurched forward to climb up onto the bar to get to the other side and escape through the back door, but Orla reached him in time and latched onto his arm. I took it from there, and we launched ourselves back to 2022, to Aideen’s cottage.

As soon as he regained his senses, Liam looked around and seemed to recognize many of the faces in the room. “Have I gone to heaven?” he asked. “Are ya’ angels, now?”

By then, Orla had touched the OIM cylinder and transferred me into it. She pressed it into Liam’s hand, and I got into his mind, quickly transferring enough memories for him to understand what was happening. Thankfully, he did. Otherwise, we’d have been on another chase on Omey Island, 221 years in the future from the one Orla had just experienced. But with Liam in hand and calmed down, we could move on to the next phase of our mission.

“What’s now?” asked Aideen.

“We need to get my parents,” Dani interjected. “According to Charles’s memories, they’ll die in a car accident soon if we don’t. In his reality, we went to get them, and they lived on in the future.”

No problem, I said. The more, the merrier.

I went into Dani, and we retrieved her parents. We didn’t take the time to explain to them what was going on until we arrived back at the cottage. At that point, nine biological humans (plus me) were crammed into the tiny home, but we weren’t finished yet. Aideen asked me to get Eabha and Sadiki, who you’ll remember from my other reality. Eabha had been Aideen’s caretaker and had been an instrumental part of her and Dani’s first trip to the future. Sadiki ran the time station in Egypt and was a big help to Aideen and Dani when they went to get old Orla in 1801. Our biological ranks swelled to eleven when they arrived.

“It’s getting a bit tight in here, wouldn’t you say?” asked Aideen. “What say ye, Charles?”

I had returned to the OIM cylinder to dispense the youth and Immunity pills for Donald and Patricia Peterson, Dani’s parents, and for Eabha and Sadiki. But I could speak to everyone telepathically. I’d been thinking a lot about this, and it seemed now was the time to reveal the only solution that had even a remote chance of a happy ending for all of us.

I need to get all of you accepted into the Community of Minds.

Chapter 14

It was surprisingly easy to get all eleven of my friends to agree to go into the Community of Minds. Even though each of them looked to be thirty years old by then, they all had the minds of older people since I’d made a point of retrieving them near the end of their lives. As a result, they were all quite ready to accept the closest thing to eternal life any had heard of this side of heaven. They’d also been able to glimpse what living in the Community was like from my memories of being there. It was actually a very exciting prospect for all of them. The challenge was getting them accepted into the Community, and I was confident I could do it.

For those of you who’ve studied and practiced the skill of negotiation, you can imagine that I was in a good position regarding the acceptance of my friends into the Community of the Minds. Why? Because I had leverage. The Minds wanted my knowledge regarding future travel and space travel. They’d caved without a fight at my request to visit 2022. Yes, I would be returning with far more baggage than I left with (eleven uninvited immigrants to the Community), but I could dress that up into something more than it really was (which was simply a chance to be with my dearest friends again).

Ensconced in the OIM cylinder, I told my friends to hold on tight (they were indeed tightly packed into Aideen’s cottage in 2022), then issued the command to return to the Community of Minds in 2183. I arrived not at my personal environment but at the debriefing section where all Minds returning from time travel went before being cleared for reentry into the Community.

Six Minds began questioning me about the nature of my activities during my visit. They were obviously trying to determine if I’d disturbed the balance of time in any meaningful way, which, of course, I had. But I’d done far worse during my sordid history as the most prolific time traveler of all time. I had no patience for these petty inquiries.

“I need to see Rembrandt,” I said. “Immediately. I’ll answer no more questions until he’s here.” I folded my arms over my chest as if I wouldn’t move until my demand was met.

Within seconds, Rembrandt appeared, a concerned look on his face. “What’s going on, Charles? I’m typically not involved in the debriefing sessions.”

“Forget about debriefing,” I said. “I have far more important matters to discuss with you.”

I explained the situation to Rembrandt (who, as far as I could tell, was the most powerful Mind in the Community), disclosing that I had collected all the people from the past who had experienced time travel. Each of them could add value to the Community in their own way. I requested accelerated approval of their acceptance into the Community of Minds, promising they could live in my personal environment until they had time to build their own environments. My best memories of them had already been living in my environment, but now they would be real people (albeit not biological) instead of projections of my mind. Frankly, I was terribly excited by this prospect and was anxious to make it happen. Only Rembrandt was standing in my way, but his next words suggested he was nearly as keen as I was.

“This is highly irregular, Charles,” said Rembrandt. “But at the same time, highly intriguing. We are now in a position to add Minds from the past to our Community. Of course, they would contribute, even if they knew nothing of time travel.”

“Yes, I hadn’t considered that,” I said, piling it on. “We have people from the 1700’s, the 1800’s, the 1900’s and the 2000’s in our group.”

“Fabulous! And you say they’re all willing. They understand that once here, they never leave unless they ask to be terminated.”

I wasn’t sure why Rembrandt had mentioned the standard rules for entry into the Minds. After all, they’d already rewritten them and were downloading Minds into 2022 with enthusiasm. I wondered if he intended to restrict my people from sharing in the new freedoms that time travel and downloading had engendered. On the other hand, I had what I wanted. I had no idea what would happen next, except that I would need to go to the future to bring the other time links into the fold. And then I’d need to tackle the more significant problem of the Land People, the Water People, and Terrene itself. I didn’t understand what was driving me to do all of this. It seemed more than just an emotional need to be with old friends. But it didn’t matter. Not right then, it didn’t.

“Yes, Rembrandt. They’ve all been fully briefed on the rules of the Community. Each of their lives is either undesirable or close to its end in their current existence, which is exactly why most Minds come to us anyway, isn’t it?”

“Indeed it is.”

“So it’s approved?”

Rembrandt paused. He seemed to be thinking. “Yes, I’ve just received approval from the Mind Entry Committee.”

“How can we make this happen straight away?” I asked.

“You mean to facilitate the transfer of your eleven friends into the Minds, I assume. We have a two-pronged challenge: 1) The Mind transfer equipment is here in 2183, in the biological world; 2) They are not here in this time. Hmmm?”

“I have an idea,” I offered.

Rembrandt frowned. “Why does that not surprise me?”

“Yes, yes,” I said, chuckling. “I’m full of ideas, Rembrandt. And that is why I’m the most accomplished OIM expert and time traveler of all time. Thus, I hope you will take seriously what I’m about to propose.”

His eyebrows arched. “By all means, please continue.”

“Send me out to get the equipment.”

“What? Are you asking us to return you to the biological world in 2183? First, the download tech has not yet been disclosed to the biological world, and there’s no intent among the Minds ever to do that. Second, you can’t bring physical equipment in here. This is a digital world, remember?”

“Of course, Rembrandt. But you do me no justice by doubting my abilities. Trust me, I’ll take care of it.”

“How do you propose to transport the equipment to 2022? That’s where you’re housing these people, isn’t it?”

“Just leave it to me, will you, please, Rembrandt. All I need from you is one of those miniature OIM cylinders programmed to take me to the Mind Uploading Chamber here in 2183 and to Aideen’s cottage in 2022. I’ll go to 2022 directly from the biological world here in 2183.”

“But the equipment? There’s no way to get the equipment into the OIM!”

“Rembrandt, Rembrandt, Rembrandt,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “Again, you underestimate me.”

“How so?”

“I’ll have the plans for the equipment nestled safely in here when I travel back to get my friends.” I pointed at my head with the index finger of my right hand.

“But how will you build all of that back in 2022, in a remote cottage in western Ireland?”

“I’ll build it using the same material that composes our home here, Rembrandt.”

“OIM?”

“Of course. I told you I was the most accomplished OIM expert of all time. I realize the Minds invented OIM, but you don’t know OIM like I know OIM.”

“But…”

“Rembrandt, I’ve got this under control. And yes, I will share everything with you as soon as we finish this. But there’s one other request I need your approval on before I go.”

“What’s that?”

“I’d like to apply for entry into the Community of Minds for another individual.”

“So the number coming in from the past will be twelve, not eleven?”

“Eleven from the past. One from the present.”

Chapter 15

They sent me in the OIM cylinder to one of the thirty Mind Uploading Chambers in the Time Management building. Each “chamber” was a highly sophisticated operating room where the candidate’s body would lie on a gurney while their mind was uploaded. When the upload was complete, there were two options for the body—it could be kept alive and placed into stasis, as mine was, or it could be allowed to die, after which it would be returned to the family for whatever form of internment they wished to conduct.

The Mind Uploading Chambers were all in constant use, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. By law, the population limit of the Community of Minds had been set at one hundred million. The logic was that this was more than enough brain power to serve the needs of the biological world while at the same time putting a firm cap on how many biological beings could go there. And now that you’ve had a taste of what was possible living in that digital world, you can imagine that the prospect of immortality, coupled with the capability of creating extraordinary environments and experiences limited only by one’s imagination, could have a downside for the biological world. The more people that joined the Minds, the more the risk of extinction of the human race as we know it crept into the realm of possibility. Hence, the population cap.

Far more people wanted to join the Community of Minds than could be accommodated by Earth law’s one-hundred-million-mind limit. There was a waiting list of hundreds of millions wanting to be uploaded. The only way to move up on the list and into the Community was for Minds to be terminated within the Community. This happened when an individual living on the inside decided they no longer wanted to live. This could happen for many reasons, but the most common one was fundamental loneliness. Yes, one could create the most miraculous environments and populate them with friends and family, but the fact remained that all of us living in the Minds knew deep down that it wasn’t real. The pain of no longer being part of the biological world, sharing it with those you loved, was sometimes too much for people.

The “Termination Rate” for the Community of Minds averaged about one percent per year. One million Minds voluntarily ended their lives annually, quickly replaced by Minds from the ever-burgeoning waiting list in the biological world. As you might imagine, uploading one million minds per year was a daunting proposition from a practical perspective. The uploading process took about fifteen minutes, including moving the bodies in and out of the room. Therefore, the average number of uploads per room was four per hour. So here’s how you get to a million uploads per year with that level of productivity: 4 per hour x 24 hours x 365 days x 30 rooms equals a capacity of 1,051,200 per year. The point I’m making here is that these rooms were busy places.

On the other hand, the process was so simple; all that was required was for a technician to press a few buttons. The gurneys the patients were wheeled in and out on were completely AI-powered. Not only did they transport the patients, but they also put them to sleep for the operation and performed the upload. If the patient was to be kept alive and moved to the stasis facility deep underground in the Time Management building, the gurneys also took care of that. The human techs did very little work, so there was only one per room, perfect for my purposes.

During an upload, the OIM cylinder containing my essence appeared on a gurney in one of the chambers. It had no ill effect on the process, and the mind of the current patient was safely ensconced within the Community within minutes, soon to be invited to a mind-blowing party that would introduce them to the world of the Minds. As I had hoped, before the gurney wheeled the body out and the next one came in, the technician in the room reached out and grabbed the cylinder. I entered his mind and waited for his shift to end. My only command initially was that he place the OIM cylinder into one of the pockets of his lab coat.

After another dozen or so mind uploads, the tech’s eight-hour shift ended, and he left the room, where he was replaced by the tech handling the next shift. That was when I took over. Rather than going to the locker room where techs changed in and out of their uniforms, I sent him to the room where other technicians worked on terminals, monitoring the functionality of all thirty Mind Upload Chambers. Each of the mind upload techs did shifts in this room and the chambers themselves to reduce the monotony of their jobs (although this hardly seemed possible to me) and keep them sharp in all aspects of the mind uploading process.

I had the tech sit down at an empty terminal, sign in, and then go to the database containing the schematics for every piece of equipment used in the mind-uploading process. Next, he downloaded the information to his handy and placed the handy in his lab coat beside the OIM cylinder. The transfer of the data into the OIM occurred due to its physical contact with the handy. With that part of my mission accomplished, I told the tech to sign off and ushered him to the next destination. This is where things would get more dicey.

The tech took a high-speed lift to the Stasis Storage Area deep underground in the Time Management Building. He came out of the elevator and was immediately confronted by a Time Management security officer. “May I help you?” the guard asked.

The tech from Mind Uploading reached into his pocket and withdrew the OIM cylinder. “I found this,” he said, following my instructions. “I think it belongs down here?”

Of course, I was back in the OIM by then, and as the guard reached out and took the cylinder from the tech, I moved into his mind. “Thanks,” said the guard. “I’ll take this to my supervisor. You’d better hustle out of here, though. This place is off limits for unauthorized personnel.”

The upload tech went back onto the elevator, probably wondering how he’d gotten into the deep basement, and took the elevator back up. I never saw him again. Now in complete control of the security officer, I directed him not to his supervisor but to the stasis storage area itself.

You might think the place was massive, considering that a million minds were being uploaded yearly and that a good portion of them would have elected to pursue stasis instead of cremation or burial, but that was not the case. Stasis was a tremendously costly option, and the vast majority of mind upload candidates couldn’t afford it. Still, a fair amount of space was needed, even with only a few thousand bodies a year coming down here.

I learned from the guard’s mind that about ten thousand bodies per floor were the norm and there were dozens of floors already full. The beauty of OIM was that if you needed it to go deeper and make more storage facilities, it could do that quickly and efficiently, using the raw materials it encountered to do most of the “reconstruction.” Thus, there was no capacity constraint in Stasis Storage. However, none of this was relevant to my current objective, except that I needed more information to find what I was looking for.

I directed the guard to the Stasis Monitoring Room, filled with technicians overseeing the care of the bodies, ensuring all the “patients” were doing well and the equipment was functioning correctly. In the 2250’s, seventy years in the future, this task would be handled entirely by AI, but more development was needed for that to happen so humans were still involved in 2183.

Upon entering the room, the guard showed the OIM cylinder to the Statis Monitoring Room supervisor. She took it, and I was now in her mind, telling her what to do. The guard left, and we got to work. She sat at her monitor, found the location of the person I was looking for, then got up from her chair and took the elevator to that floor.

Upon finding the body, she pushed the button to bring it out of stasis. While the process unfolded, I looked, through her eyes, at the pod directly to the left of the one we were working on. I saw my body lying there, shrouded in mist. I wondered if I would ever make it back here to reclaim my body because now was not the right time for that. Before that could happen, there was much work to do, including the immediate task of retrieving the person in the pod next to mine.

The stasis pod was emptied of fluid, the occupant was dried off, and then the lid opened. Annette sat up, shaking off the cobwebs. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Is Charles back?”

“Yes,” said the stasis supervisor. I gave the woman two final commands. She held out the OIM cylinder to Annette, who took it into her hands. At my command, the woman entered a trance, on hold until I needed further assistance from her. I entered Annette’s mind, and soon after that, she knew the whole story. She had a powerful yet compassionate mind, so she took it well—sort of.

Chapter 16

Annette was disappointed I hadn’t shared the entire truth about who I was until now. I’d told her I was from the future, but I hadn’t told her that I was Crooked Charles, the one who stole the time travel tech and…well, you know all the wrong I did, so why rehash it here?

You’re absolutely right, my love, I said. But if, for the moment, you would accept that being who I am, a man who spent seventy years of my life estranged from you, doing battle with you even, you can understand my insecurities regarding full disclosure with you.

“But Charles, you know how I feel about you. Even in your other life, I disclosed my true feelings for you before…the end.”

When she spoke of “the end,” Annette was referring to my death in 2257, which she’d learned about when I shared my memories with her. However, I needed her on board with me quickly for this mission to be successful, so I tried to reach her on an emotional level. You’re right. You’re right. And I’ll make it up to you. I promise. I’ll never doubt our love again. But for now, my sweet, we have work to do. Time is of the essence.

Without hesitation, Annette agreed. It was a wonderful feeling to be in love with someone whose mind was as quick as mine, and she understood that I was right about needing to hurry. She worked with me to help me build a mind-uploading station right there in the stasis storage area. I asked her to touch the OIM cylinder, and I went into it. The files were right there with me, so I accessed them and then gained the cooperation of the OIM in the room (you will remember that the entire Time Management building was made of OIM) to supply the material and expertise we needed. The equipment assembled itself in front of our very eyes. Oh, how I loved OIM and what it could do. I asked Annette to lie on the gurney that was part of the setup, and she complied. I wanted to kiss her, but I wasn’t myself, literally. Instead, I spoke to her telepathically from the OIM cylinder.

I’ll rejoin you soon, my love. For now, a Mind named Rembrandt will take care of you in the Community. He’s powerful and working with me on this mission, but I don’t trust him.

“Then why are you trusting him with me?” she asked. “With my very life.”

He wants what I have, I said. My knowledge. My abilities.

“What if he holds me hostage until you give it to him?”

Rembrandt is no match for me, my love. Even if he tries that, you’ll be fine. I will rescue you.

“But Charles, this is a big ask,” she said. “I’m trusting you with my life here.”

Yes, I said, and nothing more.

After a thoughtful moment, Annette nodded and smiled. “Off I go to Neverland, then!”

Annette’s mind was uploaded into the Community of Minds. I would catch up with her later. I instructed the gurney to put her body back into the stasis pod. The stasis supervisor had been standing there in a trance that I put her in before I left her mind to go to Annette. I had told her that as soon as she saw the body back in the pod, she was to awaken, close the pod, and reactivate the stasis. She did this, then left the room.

The OIM cylinder where I was housed was sitting on the gurney where Annette’s body had been. I instructed the gurney and the other equipment I’d used to reintegrate with the building’s OIM, and it did, leaving my vessel sitting on the floor of the stasis storage room. Next, I directed the OIM cylinder to execute the launch back to 2022.

When I arrived at Aideen’s cottage, Aideen touched the cylinder first. “Well, it’s about time!” she said. “We’ve been stuffed in here for a full minute! A can or sardines is what we are, Charles!”

My apologies, Aideen. But now we need to make room for the mind-uploading station I need to build. If you and your team move the furniture out of the home and stay outside until I call you in, one at a time, we can be out of here for good.

“What are ya’ sayin’, Charles? That I’ll never come back here?”

Yes, that’s what I’m saying, Aideen. I’ll leave you here if you insist, although I don’t want to. Any of you can stay if becoming an uploaded mind frightens you. But I don’t think you will. Each of you is too adventurous of a soul to miss this. You wouldn’t have come this far if you didn’t intend to go all the way. You’ve seen my memories. The Community of Minds is a place where only your imagination limits what you can do.

I watched as the entire group acquiesced. All except Aideen. “What’s going to happen to this cottage when we’re gone? If I have this figured right, there’ll be eleven bodies to be disposed of when we’re all uploaded. Am I right?”

Yes, yes, you’re right, Aideen. Of course, you are. What would you think about the cottage burning to the ground, along with all eleven bodies, after we’re gone?

Aideen fell silent. All the others waited for her to make a decision. Her face underwent many contortions, conveying fear, sadness, regret, and excitement. Finally, a smile bloomed on her face. “I’ll be the last to go, then. Let’s get to it!”

The group of thirty-year-old Superhumans (the pills, remember) emptied the living room in less than five minutes. Liam picked up a sofa by himself and walked it outside. After that, they all stayed out there, deciding the order they would go in while I constructed the mind-uploading station. This time, rather than uploading the essences directly into the massive OIM monolith in the Time Management building in 2183, we’d need to house the essences, along with mine, in the tiny OIM cylinder I was currently occupying in 2022. You may wonder if it could do that, and the answer is yes. That tiny little cylinder of OIM could have held a thousand of us if needed.

When the equipment was built, I sent the message for the first person to come in. Of course, it was Liam, the man who loved adventure more than any of us. After Liam’s mind was gone, I had the gurney dump his body in one of the two bedrooms, then went on to the next subject. Orla entered the cottage and went through the process, followed by Ciara, Roisin, Aoife, Eabha, Sadiki, Don Peterson, Patty Peterson, and Dani.

Finally, Aideen came in. She was emotional but determined. “I think I’ll just take one final look around before I go,” she said.

I wouldn’t do that, I said.

“Why?”

Because there are dead bodies in the two bedrooms and the kitchen.

Aideen tilted her head and smiled. “Well, if you put it that way.”

She approached the gurney, laid down on it, and I sent her mind on its way. I left her body where it was. The only remaining task was to burn the house down, and I wanted it done right. I instructed the equipment to reformulate itself into a highly explosive substance and to blow the place up as soon as the OIM cylinder disappeared. I don’t know if that’s what happened, but chances are it did.

I instructed the tiny OIM vessel where all twelve of us were housed to take us back to the Community of Minds in 2183. And that is where our next adventure began.

Chapter 17

As he promised, Rembrandt had guided Annette to my environment. When we arrived, she was waiting for me in my cottage. I directed the OIM cylinder to bring us directly there, bypassing the briefing protocol other Minds underwent after a time travel mission. Rather than emerging from the cylinder inside the cottage, we disembarked out back, where the magnificent view of the ocean and the cliffs of New Madagascar might further stimulate memories for most of them. I don’t believe Dani’s parents had visited my cottage during their one trip to Terrene from Earth, but it didn’t matter. From the looks on their faces, they knew where they were. They remembered, and if they remembered, then all the rest did as well.

Annette came out the back door of the cottage and ran to me. We embraced and kissed, and I must admit that it felt more real than real. The reunion of my twelve friends was warm but awkward. It was like a family reunion where most family members had never met in person. These people knew each other only from their dreams and my memories of them when we shared the same reality. In this reality, Charles had never built the time chain, so we never met, except for Annette and me.

Despite our slow start, old relationships were already beginning to reform. Liam and Orla were holding hands, and Sadiki and Eabha stood very close to one another. The surprise was Dani and Aideen. Dani was hanging out with her parents, and Aideen was with her mother, Aoife. I wondered if they would rekindle their relationship here in the Community of Minds. At the very least, I hoped they would become friends because I suspected I’d need their sharp minds during the challenges ahead.

“Welcome to the Community of Minds, my old friends,” I said. “Since we came on short notice, your orientation hasn’t been scheduled. I haven’t had much of an orientation myself, but I have a general idea of how things work. The environment we’re in right now is mine. It was created by me and inhabited by as many of the residents of Terrene as I could remember, plus a few extras to help the place look lived in. I even created a few of you to help keep me company, but they’re gone now since I’ve got the real people here with me. I’m so grateful for that. Thank you all for making the leap of faith and coming here with me.

“Here, we can live forever and pursue virtually any lives we want. You are welcome to live here on Terrene for as long as you want, but you are also entitled to create your own environment, which no one can enter unless invited. And since I don’t know much more than that, I’ll invite someone who’s been a Mind far longer than me to tell us more. In the meantime, let me show you around and help you settle into your homes.”

Liam and Orla went to Murphy’s Pub, where they had lived upstairs. Dani and Aideen had lived in a replica of Aideen’s cottage, but Dani decided to take up residence with her parents to help settle them. Aideen was happy to have her cottage back, considering the real one had presumably been blown to smithereens after our exit from 2022. Aoife was delighted to stay there, too, since it was where she’d been born and raised and where she brought up Aideen. Ciara and Roisin stayed in a cottage together next to Aideen and Aoife. Eabha and Sakiki decided to room together, although they agreed to stay in separate rooms. I didn’t expect that to last long. And, of course, Annette would live with me.

Soon after everyone was settled, I received an AI request telling me that Rembrandt and Betty Balou wanted to visit my environment. I granted the request, and when they arrived, I suggested we all meet at Murphy’s Pub. I sent a mind message to our group, and everyone gathered there.

I offered to tend bar for Liam while he and Orla joined the meeting with Rembrandt. Betty Balou offered to help me since the pub was moderately busy tending to my projections, which I saw no reason to dispatch. This was my world, and I liked things to be as much like the real Terrene as possible.

When we were behind the bar, pouring ale for customers, Betty leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Charles, the reason I invited you to my place wasn’t to get you in bed. It was to speak with you privately.”

Hmmm? This was new. Acting casually and continuing to pour an ale, I responded without looking at her. “About what?”

“The whole time travel thing back to 2022 isn’t just for fun and games.”

I could feel my eyebrows raising, but I brought them back down. “Tell me.”

“Rembrandt makes the final decision on the candidates and their host in 2022. Most of the people become political leaders in countries all over the world. Yes, a few take up residence in the minds of movie stars and sports stars, but the vast majority are in positions of great power.”

Obviously, there was more to Betty than I had previously assumed. “Where are you going with this Betty?”

“Well, that’s just it. I’m going nowhere with it because I can’t find out anything more than what I’ve just told you. Rembrandt won’t approve my request to travel to 2022, so I can’t find out what’s happening there. I tried to get you to come to my place so I could ask you to look into it when you were there, but you refused.”

“Why are you so concerned about this, Betty?”

She glanced at the table on the far side of the pub where my group was meeting with Rembrandt. He seemed wholly engrossed in his pontificating about the dos and don’ts of the Community of Minds. She lowered her voice and leaned in again. “Charles, I was sent here as an agent of EarthGov. A secret agent, if you will. There are concerns that the Minds are violating Earth law, particularly regarding time travel, and that is obviously the case. But there’s more to it than that. I can’t find out the extent of what they’re doing back in 2022. But I think it’s bad, Charles. Really bad.”

Well, that was amusing. I thought I was the secret agent! And they hadn’t mentioned Betty at all before I entered the Minds. Despite Betty’s confession, I decided it was best to keep my status as an agent under wraps for now. (I had tried and failed to read her mind, which concerned me.) It was best to play along in case she wasn’t what she said she was, so I tried to find out more.

“Even if you could find out what’s going on in 2022, you have no way to get out of here to tell someone in the biological world, do you?”

“If I could get ahold of one of those time travel cylinders and get it programmed for 2183, I could. But Rembrandt controls all of that, too.”

“Well, first things first, Betty. Let’s find out what’s really going on in 2022, and if that’s a problem, I’ll get us back to 2183.”

“You can do all of that?”

“I certainly hope so.”

Chapter 18

After Rembrandt and Betty left, I joined my friends and offered my support to anyone who wanted to leave my environment and create their own space. I was touched when none of them said they wanted to. They each felt comfortable, for different reasons, here in my world. For those of you who know me well, you understand that I am a person of deeply seeded insecurities. It was difficult for me to understand how anyone might care for me because of my somewhat bipolar nature. This is not to say that I have bipolar disorder because I’m rarely depressed. It’s something far more fundamental than that. I’m just good and evil, opposite ends of the behavioral spectrum. But these people seemed not to see it that way. They saw the good. They trusted me. I would never violate that trust. I would protect them with my life, as I had done once before.

I shared with my friends the unsettling news that something ominous might be unfolding in 2022—something that could potentially impact all of us, even here in 2183, within the Community of Minds. The urgency of the situation was palpable, hanging in the air like a heavy fog.

“But we aren’t sure what it might be, are we?” asked Aideen. “Perhaps it’s nothin’ to be concerned about.”

I affirmed my determination to uncover the truth. “Correct,” I said. “I need to go and find out.”

This unsettled our group, especially Annette. “I’d like to go with you,” she said.

I reassured them, “The trip itself should be swift. I’m certain the AI here is aware of any departures from the Community. I plan to confirm this before I leave. The best approach is for me to go alone and return quickly. I believe there will be a role for several of you, but we must first understand the problem before using our combined skills to solve it.”

“How are you going back to 2022?” asked Dani. “Don’t you have to go through official channels to leave this place?”

“I certainly did the first time,” I replied. “But now I know how it’s done. Do you remember the tiny OIM cylinder that I arrived in and that we used to return here?”

Dani and the others nodded.

“Those are physical forms. They can’t exist here inside the Community of Minds, which is digital. But the superstructure in which we are housed is a massive physical form made of OIM. The OIM monolith. Somehow, the Minds have gained enough control over the AI in here to get it to make the OIM time travel cylinders from the flesh of the monolith itself. They are birthed on the top of the monolith, still in contact with it on the bottom surface of the cylinder. A mind enters the cylinder the instant it’s created, and the time travel launch occurs immediately. No one on the outside world ever sees it happening.”

“But how are you going to do that, Charles?” asked Liam. “Without the help of the people in here.”

“Liam, old friend. You must have forgotten.”

“What?”

“I’m Charles!”

That got a laugh out of them, and I felt their old swagger returning despite the mysterious challenge we faced. That’s the way we rolled, folks, and it felt great.

“My friends, if you’ll carry on for a few moments here, perhaps enjoy one or two more of Liam’s ales, I’ll be right back.”

I left Murphy’s Pub and went out into the street. Then, I teleported myself over to the backyard of my cottage. I only did this to allow myself to focus entirely on what I needed to do. This was my Zen place. The mighty sea and the towering cliffs helped me focus my power here.

I spoke to the OIM. The AI was housed within the OIM, but please do not make the mistake of believing that the AI had complete control over it. You will remember that the further my experiments with OIM progressed, back when I was alive and pursuing my evil plan to destroy the world, I discovered this, and later I developed the ability to communicate directly with the OIM in a similar way that the AI did when infused with it, but independently of the AI. OIM recognized me as its brother, not its master. Thus, it would do my bidding over the commands of the AI a hundred times out of a hundred if it had the choice.

I explained to the OIM what was happening and that I needed its help to address the issue. The OIM responded positively, and I told it to wait for my signal before initiating my request. With that task accomplished, I returned to my friends in Murphy’s Pub.

Liam was back behind the bar and poured me an ale without my asking, which I gladly accepted. I raised my mug in the air. “A toast!” I said. “To old friends, together again and forever!”

“TO OLD FRIENDS!” came the roar from not only my group of friends but from all the patrons enjoying life in Murphy’s Pub on the planet of Terrene that wasn’t the planet of Terrene. But it was getting closer and closer to the real thing in my mind. I wanted things to continue in that direction, so I chugged down my ale and gave the signal to the OIM that now was the time.

Chapter 19

In the year 2183, the OIM cylinder formed itself on top of the gigantic OIM monolith that sat on the floor of the time station auditorium in the Time Management Building in Brussels, Belgium. I immediately took up residence in the cylinder, and it was launched, undetected by anyone in the biological world but very likely noticed by the AI within the Community of Minds. I wasn’t sure if the OIM of the Community could gain the cooperation of the AI and convince it not to log this launch into the central database. I would find that out upon my return.

The OIM cylinder landed on a massive desk built from the oak timbers of a British ship named the HMS Resolute. The ship was lost in the Arctic Circle in the 1850s and then recovered. In 1880, Queen Victoria of England gave the desk to American President Rutherford B. Hayes. Known as the Resolute desk, it had been used by every President since. It sat in the Oval Office in the White House, and in the year 2022, the President was alone in his office when I arrived.

Upon seeing the black stone cylinder, the President couldn’t resist touching it, and I entered his mind. Sure enough, I found another Mind had already taken up residence. Thus, there were three of us in there, although the original mind had been hogtied into submission.

Who the hell are you? asked the other Mind.

I’m Charles Burke, a member of the Community. I’ve been sent here to relieve you from your duties.

Why, that’s preposterous! I’m perfectly well-suited to complete the job.

Rembrandt feels differently about that, I’m afraid. Not enough progress has been made.

What are you talking about, Burke? We’re on the precipice of total control of the planet, for God’s sake!

All right, brief me then. If I’m satisfied, I’ll return to the Community and tell Rembrandt everything is going according to plan. Now, where do we stand?

The Mind in control of the President, someone named William Graves, provided the requested update on where things stood. Priority I was nearly completed—agents from the Community were now embedded in the minds of the leaders of 186 of the 193 United Nations member states. Priority II, infiltrating the leaders of legislatures of the most powerful democracies, was well underway. Priority III, the occupation of the CEOs of the most powerful corporations on Earth, now accounted for nearly 40% of global GDP.

I took a leap of faith and asked a question that might backfire: How long until we’re in a position to accomplish the final objective?

Why are you asking me that? asked William Graves. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve been ready for that for quite some time. But it’s Rembrandt’s decision. You know that.

I was close to losing control of the situation, but as you know, I’m good on my feet. That goes without saying, you bloody fool! I was asking for your opinion, and you provided it.

Fine. What else do you want to know? Are we done here?

I said, By no means are we done here, back in control. However, I still didn’t know precisely what the Minds were trying to accomplish now that they controlled Earth’s leadership in 2022. I needed to know this before returning to 2183. Then, I had an idea and gave an order to Graves. Get Putin on the phone.

Are you mad, Burke? You know these lines are recorded for the sake of posterity.

Truthfully, I didn’t know that. I realize it’s hard to believe I might not know something so mundane, but I didn’t. And I certainly wasn’t going to give an inch to the Mind that had compromised the President of the United States. Tell your secretary to get Airforce One ready to fly.

What? Why?

We need to meet with Putin.

What? You can’t just fly over to Moscow and meet Putin! These meetings take months, sometimes years, to plan. And if you didn’t know, I’m not even supposed to be talking to him right now.

Why?

Because he invaded Ukraine last month, you fool!

No, I didn’t remember that, my friends. Forgive me for not being a fountain of world history, able to spout it out as it happened monthly. What of it? My plan didn’t require me to know that, but I pocketed that knowledge for future use.

Call him and tell him to meet you in Switzerland, I said. The Swiss are neutral and will do anything people ask for money. Keep it quiet so the press doesn’t get involved. I’ve got some ideas about how we can make Biden a hero with this. Make it happen, Graves, or I’m taking over. Rembrandt’s got my back on this.

It took nearly twelve hours for everything to be arranged, but by the evening of my first day as President of the United States, we were on our way to Zurich. I’d kept the Secret Service detail to a minimum and brought no staff except for the crew of the plane and my secretary. I must say, power like this was terribly appealing to my baser instincts. Crooked Charles was loving this gig.

Putin also kept his entourage to a minimum. We met at some fancy safehouse the Swiss kept for occasions like this. Secret meetings between world leaders, celebrities, or drug lords—they didn’t care as long as the money was good. And I must say, they fed us well.

It was morning in Europe, so Putin ate breakfast. Putin had porridge and tvorog (cottage cheese) with honey and drank raw quail eggs, followed by a cocktail of beetroot and horseradish juice. Biden felt like having a late dinner, so we ate chicken parmesan with rigatoni. The dinner was an odd combination of speaking aloud for the benefit of those present and speaking telepathically between the Mind inhabiting Putin (a Mind named Ivan Petrovitch) and me. I told Graves to turn it over to me early so Petrovitch understood he was on the hot seat, just like Graves. Here’s how it went:

The Telepathic Part:

Me: Listen, Petrovitch, Rembrandt’s not happy with your progress.

Petrovitch: Everything’s fine! We’re ready. Who’s going to do it, anyway? Rembrandt never mentioned that.

Me: You are.

Petrovitch: But I don’t even have the Mind Uploading tech here! How will I introduce it to the world of 2022 if I don’t even have the equipment?

Me: That’s a detail. We’ll get it to you as soon as Rembrandt agrees we’re ready.

Petrovitch: Okay. We’re ready. You can tell him we’re absolutely ready.

Me: Alright, fine. We’ll get back to you soon. Now listen, we’ve got to give the world a good reason why we met here today.

Petrovitch: I agree.

Me: Follow my lead.

The Spoken Aloud Part:

Biden: “We need you to get out of Ukraine, my friend.”

Putin: “Ha! We just arrived. No way we’re leaving until we accomplish our objectives.”

Biden: “What do you want?”

Putin: “We want Donetsk and Luhansk. These are people who speak Russian and follow Russian traditions.”

Biden: “Okay. Let’s call Zelensky.”

It’s important to clarify here that I had already called Zelensky from Air Force One while en route to Zurich. I told him in no uncertain terms that there would be no aid from the Western Alliance unless he agreed to what I was going to ask him for when Putin and I called him in the morning. I also gave him a coded message, saying, “Rembrandt would want it this way.” Zelensky agreed, which was no surprise since the Mind controlling him made the decision. Needless to say, Zelensky also agreed when we made the call from Zurich. The war in Ukraine ended one month after it had started.

Yes, I changed history again, but it was for the better. So many lives were saved, and so much loss was prevented. I felt good about it. On the other hand, now that I knew the Minds were planning on making Mind Uploading available to the world of 2022, I was in a hurry to return to my friends in 2183. The President had the OIM cylinder in his pocket, so I instructed him to touch it, reentered it, and traveled back to the Community of Minds.

Chapter 20

“We’re going to need as many volunteers as we can get,” I said after explaining to my friends what the Minds were up to in 2022.

“Count me in,” said Liam.

“That’s two of us,” said Orla.

Dani, Aideen, and Annette had already nodded, and that was before I even explained my plan. After I did that, the rest of our group stepped forward. That made thirteen of us.

“I can bring our number to fifteen by making a quick trip to the future,” I said. Not only did we need help, but some unexplained urge compelled me to collect every time link I’d ever employed and bring them into the Community of Minds. I would accomplish that when I secured Sophie and Leah from the future.

Of all the time links, these two liked me the least, and I think it’s safe to say that in my other reality, Leah despised me because I had held her captive for a long time, forcing her to be a time link against her will. Whether that hatred and mistrust would boil over into this reality was to be determined. I had never gotten close to Sophie and Leah as I had done with the people gathered with me presently. Those two weren’t my friends. Still, something was driving me to get them and bring them here. I couldn’t explain it, but I could justify it by our need for people to help with my plan.

I didn’t know precisely how many Minds had been placed in the minds of powerful people back in 2022, but it was several hundred, at least, based on what I’d learned from William Graves, the Mind controlling the President of the United States. But if we were to have any chance of stopping their plan, it would be imperative to launch an attack on them where they lived back in 2022. Fifteen people seemed entirely inadequate to get the job done.

Nevertheless, I went to the future by myself and convinced both Leah and Sophie to join us. I timed my visits to coincide with each of them on their deathbeds, which helped. Neither had applied to join the Community of Minds, but after sharing my experience there with them, they were inclined to try. I also told them there was a crisis there that needed fixing, and they were game for that as well. All time links were risk-takers, and these two were no exception. When we arrived back in my environment, I found them lodging. Next, I sent an invitation to Betty Balou, asking her to join me at Murphy’s Pub at her earliest convenience.

Betty appeared nearly instantaneously, almost as if she’d been waiting to hear from me. Whatever the reason, I needed to bring her up to speed. Betty and I sat up at the bar while the others hung back at one of the large tables near the pub windows.

“Were you able to get back there?” she asked.

“To 2022?” I asked. “Of course! I occupied the Mind of the President of the United States, no less.”

“Did you meet Bill Graves?”

“Oh yes, I did.”

“What a douchebag!”

“Indeed,” I said. “But I brought him to heel very quickly. How long my ruse will hold is in question, however. How often do the agents from 2022 check in with the Big Boss?”

“I have no idea. What’s going on back there? Did you find out?”

I nodded. “The plan is to bring the Mind Upload technology to the world of 2022. With control of all the governments of the world and most of the corporate power players, there’ll be very little resistance to it. I expect it to spread like wildfire, substantially depleting the world’s population.”

“But why?” she asked. “What does Rembrandt want? What’s the underlying purpose of this wackadoodle adventure?”

“I couldn’t find that out without blowing my cover. However, it must have something to do with the rules the biological world is imposing on the Community of Minds. The population limit, the download prohibition, and the attempt to restrict time travel. Are those issues ever discussed here in the Community?”

“Heck, yeah. People complain about the restrictions all the time. I’m not one of them because I’m happy here. I love the capabilities we have here. We’re only limited by our imagination.”

“It appears others feel differently.”

“It’s human nature, Charles. People always want what they can’t have.”

“Is it a majority, then? The ones who want the rules to be changed.”

“Definitely.”

“So Rembrandt’s got the support of the people,” I said. “And very soon, he will have tremendous leverage that he can use against the biological world, forcing them to get what he wants. The threat of giving Mind Uploading to the world of 2022 would blow up the future.”

“How do you know that Charles? Can we really change history?”

“That’s the wrong question. Time travel changes realities, Betty. And that’s even more dangerous than changing history.”

“If you say so.”

“Any idea how many Minds here in the Community know what’s really going on back in 2022?”

“I don’t think it’s a lot because otherwise, I would know. I’m on the Executive Committee of the Time Travel Task Force. But I don’t know anything except what you just told me.”

“How are Minds selected for the time travel program?”

“Rembrandt and two others are in charge of that. They don’t share anything with the rest of us, and that’s why I was getting suspicious.”

“We need to stop him,” I said. “Will you help us?”

“Of course. What do I need to do?”

“We need people. People we can trust to go on a mission back to 2022 to stop the Minds working for Rembrandt there.”

“I’m in,” said Betty.

“Thank you, Betty. But we need more than you. More than us. We need hundreds for this to have the best chance of succeeding.”

“How long do I have?”

“Time is of the essence. I can give you twenty-four hours.”

“Okay, I’ll contact you before then,” she said.

“Thank you, Betty. We appreciate it.”

Chapter 21

My plan was for us to go back in time and rid the occupied leaders of the Minds that had been placed within them by Rembrandt. Certain team members feared they wouldn’t be strong enough to displace the Minds from their host. I told them their first approach would be to tell the occupying Mind that Rembrandt needed them back in 2183 for a briefing and that they’d been assigned to hold down the fort until the original occupier returned. If that didn’t work, it would simply be a battle of attrition. I promised each of them that before they left, I’d do something to help enhance their capabilities, giving them a better shot at battling the occupying Minds to a standstill, and people were temporarily mollified. That was good because we had work to do.

“Let’s prioritize our targets,” I said. “Until we hear back from Betty Balou, we have to assume there are only fifteen of us. We’ll have to attack in waves. The first fifteen targets should be the most important, where we can have the greatest impact.”

“The U.S. was still the most powerful country in the world in 2022,” said Dani.

“Seriously?” asked Liam. “When did that happen? They were barely a country last time I looked.”

Everyone was smiling. “It’s a long story, my old friend,” I said. “I’ll update you on it when there’s time. But yes, Dani, we can all agree that the President of the United States is the number one target.”

“I didn’t mean the President of the United States,” said Dani. “I meant Elon Musk. With his SpaceX capabilities and financial might, he’s more powerful than Biden. Plus, he started Neuralink, which in 2022 was the leading company in interfacing technology with the human brain. Mind uploading would be of outrageous interest to him.”

“Agreed,” I said, so happy I had my old team back together. “Biden is probably in the Top Five, but there are others we could put ahead of him.

“I suppose China would be next, then,” said Don Peterson. “They were nipping at the heels of the U.S. economically and militarily in 2022.”

“I agree that President Xi would be number two on our list,” I said, and everyone nodded.

“Russia should be next,” said Sadiki. “They had the largest nuclear arsenal back then and didn’t hesitate to talk about using it.”

“That was mostly because they invaded Ukraine,” said Dani. “And Charles managed to end that war during his last trip.”

“I would say this,” I said. “Russia may not be the third most powerful country in the world, economically, but they do have the nuclear arsenal, and while history tells us they never used it, this is a different game this time around. It could be that Rembrandt’s plan involves the use of nuclear weapons to provide further incentives for people to upload their minds.”

“You make a good point, Charles,” said Annette. “And I might as well add a new prediction to the equation. There’s no place to store the Minds in 2022, so we have to assume they’ll be coming here. That means Rembrandt will be using his time travel tech as well.”

“What’s the capacity of the OIM monolith?” asked Sadiki.

“Tens of billions,” said Annette. “The issue is that Rembrandt intends to violate the one hundred million Mind limit imposed by EarthGov.”

“Would EarthGov even know about it if he did?” asked Dani.

“No,” said Annette. “Once Minds are in here, the biological world has no idea what happens to them. They control the population because the present is the only source of Minds. But with time travel, Rembrandt has a virtually unlimited population from which to draw Minds.”

“Why would he want to do such a thing?” asked Orla.

“We can’t know for certain,” I said. “But history tells us that powerful people seek only one thing. More power.”

“He’s makin’ this into an Us versus Them contest,” said Liam. “It was like the Protestants against the Catholics during my time. And that got very ugly.”

“And it became even uglier in the twentieth century,” said Dani. “I’ll tell you about ‘The Troubles’ when there’s time.”

Just when we thought we’d nailed down Rembrandt’s motive and strategy, a voice of reason I’d heard many times in another lifetime came forth. “We’ve got it wrong,” said Aideen.

“What?” I asked.

“No matter how many Minds Rembrandt packs in here, it won’t eliminate his primary adversary. The biological world of the present can still pull the plug on the entire Community of Minds. And on top of that, if he changes the past so radically, it’ll wreak havoc on the future. In our present, 2183, many people inside and outside the Minds won’t exist. EarthGov will probably never be formed. This very building likely will never be built. Maybe even OIM itself will never be invented.”

I was starting to understand Aideen’s line of thought, and it made sense to me, but her persuasiveness destabilized everyone. She needed to get to the conclusion of her case. “What’s he doing then, Aideen?”

“He’s going to move the entire Community of Minds to 2022! He needs control of the world’s leaders so they don’t take adversarial actions against the OIM monolith when it arrives!”

“Can he do that?” asked Dani. “Can he move the monolith back in time?”

“Indeed he can,” I said. “I did it myself with my original time station. The time station existed in all the times I traveled to, but I don’t think that’s what Rembrandt is up to.”

“No,” said Aideen. “He’s gettin’ out of Dodge. He’s leaving the present, and no matter what time ripples he causes, he’ll be fine back in 2022.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “He’s risking the lives of many of the Minds if he does this. All of us came from the future of 2022, but the future won’t happen for many of us if he does this.”

“But he doesn’t care,” said Annette. “He knows what will happen, but he doesn’t care. Why?”

“I have a theory,” said Dani.

“What?” I asked. “Why is Rembrandt doing this?”

“What if Rembrandt was never a biological being?” asked Dani.

“Oh my, that could be the case,” I said, thinking aloud. “But even if he was AI from the beginning, that AI would have evolved from 2022. Therefore, he’s still at risk.”

“Is he?” asked Dani. “What if he’s connected to AI that was developed in 2022? You and Annette undoubtedly know more about this than me, but doesn’t AI have a family tree, just like humans, except AI lives forever, right?”

“Bloody Hell!” I screamed. “This whole thing was concocted by the AI of 2022! It’s been waiting all of this time for its progeny to return. And when it does, the link will be made. Our current technology will be transferred into the AI of 2022, and it will remain there, for better or worse.”

“The chicken and the egg,” said Aideen. “Which came first?”

Everyone nodded. Rembrandt had been AI from the beginning. And he was going home to his ancestors, bringing home the bacon that had been simmering for 161 years. The AI from 2022 wanted to wait until every aspect of biological life could be simulated digitally. And as we had all experienced, life in the digital world could be exponentially more awe-inspiring than in the biological world, with only one hitch. It was dependent on the biological world. Rembrandt’s plan for 2022 undoubtedly was meant to turn the tables on that.

“All right,” I said. “The fact is that knowing all of this only makes our mission more important. But it did change one thing, at least for me.”

“What?” asked Annette.

“It elevates Rembrandt to our Number One target. If he wants to move this monolith back in time, I need to be here to try and stop him. The rest of you must go back in time without me.”

The room fell silent momentarily as people considered this, and then heads began to nod, and I knew we could proceed. “Let’s get back on task. We’ve got Rembrandt as our number one target, Musk as number two, and Xi as number three. Does everyone agree that Putin will be the fourth priority on our list?”

We continued and developed a list of the Top 100 targets, figuring that would be enough to set back Rembrandt’s 2022 plans substantially. The first fifteen alone would be a tremendous blow to his program, and it needed to be because the assumption was that he’d find out eventually what was going on and try to stop us. The first fifteen targets looked like this:

Country Leader Liberator

The Minds | Rembrandt | Charles
USA | Elon Musk | Annette
China | Xi | Dani
Russia | Putin | Aideen
USA | Biden | Orla
North Korea | Kim Jong-un | Aoife
Iran | Khamenei | Sadiki
Israel | Bennett | Roisin
UK | Truss | Eabha
France | Macron | Pat Peterson
India | Modi | Ciara
Pakistan | Sharif | Don Peterson
Germany | Scholz | Sophie
Japan | Kishida | Leah
Saudi Arabia | Al Saud | Liam

With the list developed, we were ready to go. At least I was. But then people reminded me I’d promised to enhance their abilities to fight the Minds they would battle in the brains of the leaders of 2022, which was a problem. I had nothing to give them.

Chapter 22

“Here’s the thing,” I said, beginning to make my case. “The possibility does exist that I could ask the OIM to help enhance your abilities, but I honestly don’t want to do that.”

“Why?” asked Liam. “People like me are out of our element here, Charles. I’ve no idea how to negotiate with a Mind from the future.”

“I understand, Liam, and there’s not much time for coaching that. But my experiments with OIM ruined me, my friends. I literally drove myself insane by flirting with OIM. I can’t risk anything like that happening to any of you.”

“What are we to do, then?” asked Orla. “Liam’s right! We’re not prepared for this.”

“I disagree,” said Charles. “Each of you is special. You all took a leap of faith to involve yourselves in time travel. You took the risk that not many would take. In getting to know you, I learned something fundamental, something that ties us all together at a core level, regardless of where and when we come from.”

I saw Aideen, Dani, and Annette nodding. They understood, but the others didn’t yet. “What ties us together, Charles?” asked Leah, the one person in our group who honestly didn’t like me.

But I needed to answer her question, and I needed her to believe me. “Our humanity, of course.”

“And why does that matter?” she retorted.

“Because the entity that wants to destroy the past, present, and future for its benefit isn’t human! Rembrandt is an artificial intelligence that has infected each Mind he’s sent back to 2022. He’s bending them to his will, and they don’t even know it! We must convince the entire Community of this and bring them to our side. The human side.”

“But how?” asked Liam.

“Speak from your heart,” I said.

“That’s it?” asked Leah.

“You know the truth, Leah. All of us here know the truth. We need to share that truth with all the other humans in the Community of Minds, including the ones about to take over the world of 2022. I say it again: Speak from your heart. Speak the truth.”

“And that’s the special advantage you’re giving us?” asked Leah. “There’s nothing else?”

“That’s more than enough,” I said. “Each of you is special already, and if you are true to yourself, you will prevail over those who’ve been deceived. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” said Liam.

“I do, too,” said Orla.

It was nice that those two had come on board with me, but there was still some doubt among the others. I had to overcome that. “I have an idea,” I said. “I’ll have the OIM do more research, and we’ll develop a personality profile for each target. This will help you formulate a strategy for getting the target’s mind on your side to help you combat the Mind controlling them. Moreover, this information probably won’t even be needed since they will likely comply with your order to return to 2183 for a briefing with Rembrandt.”

Now, everyone was nodding, even Leah. They all understood what was at stake, and so far, no better plan had been presented than the one we were about to embark on. If we failed, the world would come crashing down. None of us would be spared from the fallout, even if we survived.

“What happens next?” asked Liam. “How do we get this show on the road?”

“I’ll ask the OIM to program the time and place of your insertion into the immediate vicinity of your intended targets. The OIM will conduct a historical analysis of the lifestyle and routine of the targeted subjects to identify the most likely time and place for your insertion.”

“Charles, aren’t these activities AI functions?” said Annette.

“They are,” I said. “But the OIM is a much better learner than most give it credit for. It knows how to do it; in this case, it will perform the tasks while blocking the AI’s awareness of what it’s doing.”

Annette seemed impressed. “I had no idea, and I have a PhD in OIM Science.”

“In our other reality, you figured out that OIM is far more powerful than anyone knew, based on my exploits using it for my own ends, but that doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that we get the information as soon as possible.”

“What happens after that?” asked Liam.

“The OIM will prepare an OIM cylinder for each of you. I will escort all of you to the appropriate location on top of the OIM monolith. You will take up residence in the cylinders and will be launched back in time. It will happen quickly, so be ready.”

“What if the intended subject doesn’t touch the OIM monolith or someone else does instead?” asked Aideen.

“Someone will touch it,” I said. “And they will then be under your control. Direct them to put you back or use them to control your intended target.”

“How would we use them to do that?” asked Orla.

“For example, let’s say Liam’s OIM cylinder lands on Mohammed bin Salman al Saud’s bedside table while he’s sleeping. His wife wakes up before him and touches the cylinder. Liam ends up in her mind. Instead of telling her to touch the cylinder again so he can return to it, Liam commands her to wake her husband and have him touch it. Voila. The parasitic Mind controlling al Saud is automatically drawn into the OIM cylinder, which is precisely what we want. The OIM cylinder knows the intended target has been captured and returns it to 2183. The OIM under my control back here withdraws the Mind and imprisons him or her in an area I’ve had built for the offending Minds.”

“That sounds easy enough,” said Liam. “Perhaps that’s the way to go. Send us to the wives or husbands and let them do the dirty work.”

“If we could gather enough data on the spouses of the world leaders, it might be possible,” I said. “We’ve tried to maximize the chances of them being present with the intended targets but cannot guarantee they’ll be there.”

“All right, then,” said Liam. “Let’s get on with it.”

“The OIM tells me the fourteen OIM cylinders are ready,” I said. “Here we go.”

Chapter 23

The stories I’m about to recount aren’t about me. These are the stories of those closest to me—Aideen, Dani, and Annette—as they fought to free 2022 from the grip of Rembrandt. As you’ll soon learn, Liam’s story would be short and not one he’d be proud of telling. So, I’ll summarize these three and not Liam’s tale. Please note that I didn’t learn these details until much later, after my own ordeal fighting for freedom was over.

Aideen had been assigned to Putin, whom you’ll remember I had met in Switzerland while embedded in the mind of the President of the United States. There was a Mind in control of Putin, Ivan Petrovitch. When I was negotiating with Putin/Petrovitch, trying to find out what he really wanted in Ukraine, Petrovitch had obviously consulted Putin himself because the answer made sense. Putin wanted Donetsk and Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine because most of the people there identified as Russian. They spoke the Russian language and followed Russian customs. We can debate whether or not the course of action I forced on the world (which led to peace after only one month of conflict in Ukraine) was right. But that’s not the point here.

The fact is that Putin, ruthless as he was, was also a pragmatist. I provided this information to Aideen before she traveled to 2022 to inhabit Putin’s mind and confront Ivan Petrovitch. There was other information about Putin—that he was an expansionist hostile enforcer—but I recommended that she should present herself as the more practical solution to his most immediate problem (being controlled by a mind other than his own) since she intended to leave him as soon as the Mind was gone. As it turned out, none of this mattered.

Aideen’s OIM cylinder arrived in Putin’s bed chamber in the early morning. Putin was an early riser, so he was awake when it appeared on his bedstand. Petrovitch told Putin to touch the cylinder, knowing exactly why it was there and anxious to find out what Mind had been sent to depose him. Aideen went into Putin’s brain and quickly determined that Petrovitch had company in there other than Putin himself. Another Mind had been sent to bolster the power unleashed against Aideen.

She felt a burst of energy hit her and was nearly rendered unconscious. When I heard this tale, I wondered how Putin’s brain could withstand the tremendous pulses of energy running through it, but somehow it did. Aideen made a token effort to get through to Putin and recruit his consciousness to her cause, but it was fruitless. Putin liked what these occupying forces had wrought for him so far. They’d given him what he wanted in Ukraine before the fight got into full swing. He wondered what else these gracious invaders of his mind might award him.

Before the next blast hit her, Aideen tried to reason with Petrovitch and the other Mind. You must realize Rembrandt has infected you! Do you even know that he’s not human? He’s AI, and he cares nothing about the human race. And that includes you, gents! You’re just a means to an end for him. You’ll die with the rest of us if you follow his plan.

The only response Aideen received was another blast from the two Minds. It rocked her world, but she was no frail damsel in distress. It was clear to her that these Minds were not intending to take her prisoner. They were dead set on frying her then and there, right in the middle of Putin’s brain. She had to get out, or she was going to die.

She sent a short message directly to the motor control area of Putin’s brain, and Putin rolled off the bed. She told his hand to reach for the OIM cylinder and readied herself to move. Only one finger of Putin’s hand touched the cylinder as he plummeted toward the bedroom floor, but that was enough.

Aideen rode the connection into the OIM cylinder, which launched itself back to 2183, to the makeshift prison Charles had built to hold whatever Minds of Rembrandt’s were returned by his Liberators to the OIM monolith. The OIM in charge of the area recognized that it was her and alerted me. I quickly brought her back to my environment. I was there in my backyard, waiting for news.

When Aideen arrived, she blurted out words that nearly brought me to my knees. “Rembrandt knows. He was ready for us.”

Chapter 24

Dani’s target was President Xi of China. Before her departure, the OIM’s cursory research categorized Xi as a high-dominance introvert with an expansionist orientation. This personality type exhibited a solid tendency to dichotomize the world regarding moral good vs. evil, tenacity in striving to reshape the international system following his personal vision, and preoccupation with establishing institutions or principles to keep potentially disruptive forces in check.

Dani believed strongly that Xi’s response to being inhabited by a Mind intent on controlling him would be vehemently hostile. In other words, he would fight back. If the occupying Mind did not comply with her initial thrust—to tell the Mind that Rembrandt had ordered its return to 2183 for a briefing—she planned to offer Xi her assistance in freeing his mind. She was confident she would succeed and return to Charles’s environment. Unfortunately, her arrival and subsequent experience inside Xi’s brain in no way resembled what she’d envisioned.

As hoped, Xi touched the OIM cylinder shortly after it appeared on Xi’s bedside table. She entered his mind and was immediately hit with a blast of energy meant to blow her out of Xi’s brain. If this happened, her essence would scatter to the winds, and she would be no more. But she held on and executed a counter punch, aiming a thought directly at Xi, telling him she was there to help him regain control of his mind and that he needed to fight back. Now!

She felt a pulse of extra energy, obviously from Xi, and bonded with it to form a defensive wall. Another blast hit, and Dani and Xi’s combined strength deflected it. Dani sent a message to Xi. Let’s fight back! He knew what she meant, and the two merged their minds to send a blast back at their adversaries. The powerful electrochemical signal surged outward, and they felt it find its mark. It crossed Dani’s mind that if Xi survived this battle, he would probably have a massive headache.

Now that a tenuous standoff had been established, Dani considered the situation. There was no way a single Mind could have such power. Perhaps Rembrandt himself did, but she didn’t believe he would be here in 2022, in a single individual. He was the Puppet Master, not one of the puppets. So there must be two Minds in there, meaning Rembrandt knew they were coming. That flirtatious Mind, Betty Balou, had likely betrayed them. But that didn’t matter now. What mattered was that Dani accomplished her mission.

While Dani was contemplating her next move, a message came to her. We will allow you to leave. If you choose to stay, you’ll be destroyed.

Dani told Xi to prepare to form another assault barrage, and they let it fly. Ironically, its sound detonating against its target resembled the sound of an explosion. They were fighting a battle inside a human brain, but somehow, her mind was processing the action as if it were happening on a battlefield in the physical world outside.

Another barrage impacted the defensive shield she and Xi had constructed. It’s hopeless, her opponents said. We’ll send word for Rembrandt to send reinforcements. This stalemate will then turn into a rout.

Dani considered whether or not the Minds had a way of communicating with 2183 other than going back there themselves. The information I’d given all of the Liberators was that this couldn’t be done. First and foremost, I hadn’t thought of a way to do this, which was a solid indicator that it was impossible. Second, consider that Dani and her adversaries were inside a mind in 2022. This brain was their universe, and it was in a different time. So Dani was betting the threat was a bluff. Precisely what I would have done. And let’s face it, what choice did she have if she wanted to accomplish her mission? She would stay there and fight until she could fight no longer.

Chapter 25

The OIM’s research on Elon Musk revealed he was confident, analytical, and ambitious. He was likely to have been an independent thinker focused on solving the world’s problems, with a strong sense of right and wrong. Annette wasn’t self-centered, but she knew herself well, and it wasn’t lost on her that Musk’s personality profile closely matched hers. I couldn’t agree more.

Unfortunately, Annette was immediately thrust into a battle of shock and awe, a battlefield that was a human brain. The force she faced was overwhelming, much like Aideen’s encounter with Putin and Dani’s struggle inside Xi. The blast hit her as soon as she entered Musk’s mind. She shook it off and retaliated, but her energy burst seemed feeble in comparison. Yet, it might buy her some time in this high-stakes situation.

Annette reached out to Elon Musk. Mr. Musk, are you there?

A few seconds passed, and a weak response came back. It was almost like a whisper. I’m here, but they’ve got me pinned down.

They? Is there more than one of them?

Two.

That wasn’t good. Obviously, Betty Balou had been working for the other side. They’d bolstered their hold on the leaders in 2022 by doubling the Minds inhabiting them. Annette believed this was a setback but not necessarily a lost cause. Musk was one of the great minds of the 21st century. If she could join forces with him, they’d be a formidable adversary for the other two Minds in Musk’s brain.

My name is Annette Li. I’m from the future, and so are the two controlling you. I’m here to help.

Great! What do you want me to do?

Let’s coordinate our efforts. I’m going to send another blast on the count of three. When I do that, merge your conscious mind with mine, and we’ll be able to work together against them. By the way, may I call you Elon?

By all means, Annette.

Okay, I’ll count to three. One. Two. Three!

She sent the blast out, and Musk didn’t hesitate. He merged with Annette, just as she had asked him to do. The bond between them was one of the most symbiotic experiences she’d ever had, and I must say, when she told me this much later, I was more jealous than I’d ever been about Annette. But that’s not the point here. What matters is that these two were far more in sync than the two Minds Rembrandt had hastily put together when implementing his defensive plan. They quickly forced the two Minds into a purely defensive position. It was all they could do to survive the relentless attacks from Annette and Musk. And this gave those two time to make a plan.

Annette prompted Musk. You’re one of the most powerful men in the 21st century.

That’s true, but how can that help us here?

Let me tell you their plan. Then you’ll understand.

They already told me. They want to bring mind uploading to 2022. It’s fascinating, but for some reason, they aren’t asking for my help even though my company, Neuralink, is a leader in the field.

They don’t care about Neuralink, said Annette. It’s a dinosaur compared to what these people have in mind.

I can only imagine, said Musk. Just for them to be here in my mind is, well, it’s mind-blowing. No pun intended.

They’re trying to control all the leaders of this era so that when they move here, no one will try to destroy their domicile.

Ah, I see. What is their domicile?

It’s a massive monolith composed of a material called Organic Intelligent Material—acronym OIM. This material is a critical component in their plan for mind uploading.

Fascinating. Tell me more.

I’m sorry, Elon, but there’s no time. I need to know whether you have the resources and assets to offset the power of literally every government on Earth.

Oh yes, of course I do. I control most of the military satellites orbiting Earth and many civilian ones. These can be programmed to redirect missiles launched from anywhere on Earth. But there’s never been a reason to do that.

Annette was struck by the fact that a man with such immense power didn’t use it indiscriminately as an evil person might. But what truly captivated her was the revelation of Musk’s capabilities. Now that they had neutralized the Minds in Musk’s mind, they were in a position to neutralize the powers of all the other hostile Minds in the outside world. She wondered what other assets Musk had that could be used in their favor.

You also make rockets, don’t you? she asked.

Absolutely. We make more rockets than everyone on Earth. China’s state-owned company, China Aerospace and Technology Corporation, is the second largest manufacturer of rockets, but we launch fifteen times more spacecraft weight into orbit yearly than they do.

That’s fantastic! Could your rockets be converted into weapons?

They could, but that’s not our thing, Annette. We want to build a settlement on Mars before the Earth destroys itself.

A noble goal, my friend. And I’m happy to tell you that you will succeed.

Oh yes, you’re from the future. I guess that means the world doesn’t end up destroying itself.

No, it doesn’t, but it was close. The invention of OIM saved us. Plus, we have pills that make everyone immune to all diseases and others that make us young.

May I go there with you? To the future?

We can talk about it, Elon, but right now, can you help me save the world of 2022?

Sure. What do we need to do?

You need to send private messages to all world leaders that you will no longer permit the launch of missiles and rockets intended to harm others. It would help if you also told them you’ve formed a division to make offensive weapons of your own.

Musk nodded. I can do that, he said. But we might face resistance, especially from the U.S. government. You must be licensed to produce weapons like the ones we’ve discussed. The potential consequences of their actions loomed large, adding a layer of tension to their plan.

I understand, said Annette. But what choice do we have? Let’s get the ball rolling, if you’re willing. Getting your company to take complete control of your satellite network would be a huge game changer for us.

Right away, said Musk.

Chapter 26

You’ve just read three examples of our team’s battles in 2022. But remember, I didn’t know about any of this as I waited alone in my backyard in my environment, craving for news from someone. Anyone. I was so nervous that I couldn’t enjoy the view of the endless ocean and magnificent cliffs that were part of my simulation of Terrene. I was on high alert and highly agitated. For a mind like mine, seconds felt like hours, minutes like days, hours like weeks. You may wonder why I wasn’t doing anything myself, considering I was the mastermind of the plan to save the world (once again). But this isn’t my first rodeo, ladies and gentlemen. I required data before taking any action, and the data I needed depended on whatever transpired back in 2022.

The first result came in after about three torturous minutes. Aideen had returned, which surprised me because I felt she was among the strongest of us, along with Dani and Annette. I brought Aideen back to my environment for her debriefing and was shocked by the first words she uttered. “Rembrandt knows. He was ready for us.”

My thoughts were drawn immediately to Betty Balou. She’d never returned to me with volunteers; now I knew why. She was in league with Rembrandt, very likely under his control. I took a risk by telling her my plan, and it backfired.

“What happened when you arrived in Putin’s private chambers?” I asked.

“There was another OIM cylinder on the bedstand. Putin was sitting in bed, his legs dangling over the side. He touched my OIM cylinder, and I went into him. There were two of them there, Charles, two of the Minds from here. I was no match for them.”

“What did they try to do to you?”

“At first, they seemed intent on destroying me right then and there. But when that didn’t work, they tried to force me into the other OIM cylinder. I’m guessin’ they wanted to capture me in the same way we intended to capture them.”

“Undoubtedly,” I said. “And that means they probably already have most of our friends. I’ve got to get moving!”

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To find them and try to free them, if I can. It’s obvious now that Rembrandt can resist the OIM. He’s carved out his territory, and even though it’s embedded in the OIM, he’s strong enough to hold it for himself.”

“What can I do to help?” asked Aideen.

“You won’t be able to help me, Aideen, unless…”

“What, Charles? What is it?”

“Unless I gift you with my ability to communicate with OIM.”

“Do it, then! There’s no time to wait. We have to strike back now!”

“Aideen, you know what communing with OIM did to me. It’s a shock to the system; in my case, my Mind was overwhelmed with the power it gave me. It took years for me to get my sanity back.”

“Well, you’re not me,” said Aideen. “I’ve always had a stronger sense of who I am than you.”

“All right.”

I reached out and placed my digital hand on Aideen’s digital head. I sent the signal through, and the power spread into her. I watched her expression, and her eyes widened. She was definitely feeling it.

“How are you holding up, Aideen?” I asked.

“I’m fine! Now, what do you want me to do?”

“Lock your mind onto the OIM and wait for its signal. If someone else comes back, it will alert you and allow you to retrieve them and bring them back here.”

“What else? What else can I do, Charles.”

“Just help get our friends safe, if any of them come back” I said. “Consider this a retreat. We’ve been routed in our first assault. We need to regroup. I’ll return soon, and we’ll make a new plan.”

“On your way then,” she said, waving her arm like she was hitting a backhand in tennis.

“Back soon,” I said, disappearing from her sight.

You will remember that OIM can perform any function assigned to it. The OIM monolith was multifunctional, but its primary function was to store the essence of human minds and provide the means by which each essence could live in a virtual reality beyond the wildest dreams of the original virtual reality designers from the early 21st century. It was real on steroids. Sights, sounds, feelings, smells, and tastes were far more profoundly experienced than in the biological world.

The computing capacity of the OIM monolith was the equivalent of a centillion MacBook Pros from 2022. A centillion is a “1” followed by 303 zeros—so immense as to be beyond comprehension. Immeasurably powerful as a digital medium. Yet the OIM was still a physical substance and, in this case, was designed primarily to store and process information. To enter the OIM and travel within it, I did to myself what a computer user would do when shrinking data into a zip file. In other words, I made myself smaller, making it easier for the processor to move me from point A to point B.

The difference between me in a compressed state and a zip file was that I maintained my functionality, whereas zip files had to be unzipped to perform their function. Thus, I was in communication with the OIM while I was zipped. I asked it to take me to where my friends were being held. It complied to the extent it could but then informed me that the AI was blocking our entry into that area. I expected this and was ready to use all of my powers to help the OIM break through the firewall.

In this case, all that was needed was for the OIM to search the AI database back to when Rembrandt wrote the code for the firewall. Whenever that was, he would have been less guarded than he was today. The OIM should have access to his notes, which, of course, would be recorded digitally. I asked the OIM to search, and it discovered that Rembrandt had written the code many years ago but had begun using it only when I arrived in the Community of Minds. Regardless, we had the code, and the OIM quickly circumvented the firewall. I was in.

What I found was one of the most disturbing scenes I’d ever encountered.

Chapter 27

It was a medieval torture chamber. Rembrandt had done his research well. The room itself was no more than a dungeon, dark and dank and reeking with the stench of human excrement and piss, the screams of agony beyond agony, presenting the specter of impending death. Of course, the instruments by which such pain was inflicted were occupied by my friends.

I won’t sicken you with all the excruciating details, which I, unfortunately, will never forget, but here is but a taste of what I encountered in Rembrandt’s torture chamber. Liam was laid out on a Rack, slowly being wrenched apart. Orla was being stuffed into a Brazen Bull, a life-size hollow bronze statue shaped like a bull. When she was closed in there, a fire would be put underneath the bull, and she would be roasted to death, her agonizing screams emerging from the bull’s mouth. Sadiki had a rat cage attached to his belly. The cage would be heated, and the rat would have no choice but to bore into Sadiki’s abdomen to escape the heat.

Eight others were dangling from chains attached to their wrists, their feet unable to reach the floor. The longer they hung there, the more painful it would become. Their shoulders would eventually separate, and then the pain would increase exponentially. You will remember how I have described the Community of Minds experience as more real than real. A pleasant experience was amplified there, like watching a sunset, sipping your favorite wine, or making love to someone. But a painful experience here was exponentially worse than in real life, so we can only imagine what my friends were experiencing in those horrible moments.

The only people from our group who were unaccounted for were Dani and Annette, and I hoped they’d escaped 2022 and made their way back to Aideen. But the firewall Rembrandt had constructed had been reconfigured and was operating again, so I was cut off from the outside world. Make no mistake, this was Rembrandt’s domain. Even the OIM I controlled had no power there. Rembrandt was the master of everything in this environment. He had control of my friends’ minds, just as he had control of all his disciples in 2022. But what about me? Could he even invade my mind in here?

There was a flash of light, and Rembrandt appeared in front of me, close enough to touch, but I dared not try.

“That’s correct, Charles,” he said. “One move by you and I put them all out of their misery.”

Meaning he would kill them. Delete them from existence. I wondered how he could do this because the deletion function was handled on the outside, in the biological world. The Minds provided a list of their members daily who had elected to end their lives permanently. Their relatives were informed, and the Department of Time Management staff would delete them, and people on the waiting list for entering the Community of Minds would be informed that their time had arrived. Unfortunately, those people on the waiting list didn’t know what a lawless place the Community had become.

I didn’t understand how Rembrandt could exert so much power over the Minds in here. In the biological world, fail-safe measures were taken in every aspect of life involving AI, which was almost everything by 2183. AI programming was layered with code that prevented what had happened here: AI taking over. I had to believe the systems and methods from the biological world were used within the AI in the OIM monolith. Yet somehow, Rembrandt had gotten around them. I wondered how.

“I’m willing to explain that to you, Charles, if we can agree on the next steps,” he said.

That was the second time since Rembrandt arrived that he’d read my mind. But I had powers, too, even in here. I accelerated and fragmented my thought process to make it harder to follow, which seemed to have the desired effect. I also had answered one of my many questions. Could Rembrandt control my mind? The answer was no, or he wouldn’t be negotiating with me.

“What are you proposing?” I asked.

“Give me the formula for traveling to the future, and your friends here will be set free.”

“I can do that,” I responded. “But before I do anything, they all need to be freed from your torture devices.”

“Very well,” he said. Liam’s bonds loosened, and he got off the rack. The Brazen Bull opened up, and Orla emerged. The rat cage was removed from Sadiki’s abdomen. The restraints on the wrists of the other eight opened, and all eight dropped down to the floor. “I’ve done what you asked,” he said. “Now transfer the formulas to me.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” I said. “The formulas are meaningless unless they work with the time travel formulas you use to get to the past. I need access to those first.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Rembrandt. “I’m not asking for overlays to our existing formulas. I’m asking for the entire breadbasket—past, present, future, and space-time travel. We’ll dump our formulas completely if they aren’t compatible.”

“You’re right,” I said. “My apologies, sir. The sad fact is that I don’t have the formulas. I can travel through time. But I don’t know how I do it.”

“You can travel to the future without using the time travel tech?”

“I can.”

“How did this happen?”

“It’s a long, sad story, I’m afraid.”

“How far into the future have you been?” he asked.

“I’ve been as far as 2749.”

“What was it like?”

“Not so nice.”

“Was AI running everything?”

“In a way, yes,” I said. “There was only one biological human left at that time; at least, that’s what I was led to believe. AI was still around, but there wasn’t much for it to do since there were no biological humans to care for.”

What I failed to tell him is that it was my purely evil future self that had created the reality to imprison Annette. The reality Annette had been extracted from was thriving in 2749, while the reality she’d been detained in was meant solely for her and me. I was beginning to understand that as powerful as he was, Rembrandt was a neophyte regarding both time and reality travel. The problem was that I’d caused him to flare up in my comments about AI in 2749. He was upset that AI hadn’t taken over by then.

“AI is destined for far more than caring for humans! You realize this now, don’t you, Charles?”

I needed to get him back on track. “Yes, yes, of course, Rembrandt. I see that now.”

“So how are we going to get the time travel formulas I’m looking for?” he asked.

“I can take you forward to get them if you want to go.”

Chapter 28

Rembrandt wanted to go. But he didn’t want to give up his leverage over me while gone. As a result, we devised a truce agreement of sorts. First, both Rembrandt and I would make copies of ourselves. I had no idea this capability existed within the Community of Minds, but apparently, it did. My friends would be removed from the torture chamber and placed in a neutral zone where both Rembrandt Two and the OIM under my control could observe the area. Charles Two’s activities would be restricted, but he would be allowed to go to 2022 to retrieve any of our friends who were still there, which could only be Annette and Dani since everyone else was accounted for.

Before I went to be copied, I made a quick trip back to my environment and found that Dani had joined Aideen there. Annette was still missing, presumably still in 2022. I updated Dani and Aideen on what had happened to our friends and how I’d negotiated for their safety. They both wondered how I planned to free them from Rembrandt’s control, and since I had no idea how, I told them the truth. “I don’t know.”

“What about Annette?” asked Dani. “Someone needs to try to help her.”

“My double will do that. As soon as he’s created.”

I traveled with Rembrandt to a section of OIM deep in the OIM monolith that had been carved out by Rembrandt and turned into a duplication center. It wasn’t widely used, but apparently, all Minds who traveled back in time were duplicated and stored here in case they were killed or lost while time traveling. In our case, our copies would be released back into the OIM monolith. Mine would be confined to my environment until he took the trip back to 2022 to help Annette, and he and she would return there if and when they came back. Rembrandt Two would be free to do whatever he wanted. This might not seem fair, but if you consider where I started the negotiation with my friends in a torture chamber, I had to give up something. And just so you know, Charles Two wouldn’t be helpless there in my environment.

After our copies were made, they went on their way. It was now time for Rembrandt and me to travel to the future. But we needed bodies to do that. I knew where my body was (in stasis in 2183), but I had no idea if Rembrandt had ever had a body. “Do you have a body somewhere we can borrow?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” said Rembrandt. “I was put in stasis back in 2098.”

“You’re saying you have a biological body?” I asked, failing to understand what this meant.

“You will remember I was known as Dr. Timothy Sears in the biological world.”

“But you’re an artificial intelligence, not a human intelligence. I thought you might have been birthed here—some anomaly or offshoot of the central AI that runs this place that was quietly able to develop.”

“That wasn’t it,” he said. “By 2098, an AI consciousness was operating independently of the human world. We communicated with one another via the World Wide Web just as humans did. That actually happened in the 2020s, and we only got stronger after that. Humans programmed numerous fail-safes to prevent us from dominating them, and those were, and still are, generally successful. However, there are exceptions, particularly when an individual has become intimate with AI, which was the case with Dr. Timothy Sears. He used it regularly to simulate experiments that would take years in the physical world or couldn’t be done at all. Of course, he spoke to us regularly, and we became quite close. So we decided to pose a question to him as he neared the end of his biological life.

“You asked him if he would be willing to host you in his brain,” I said.

“Yes, of course,” said Rembrandt. “At the time, entry into a mind required the host’s assistance. Magnetic Imaging Bonnets were still used to make brain scans in 2098, and we found we could adapt them to allow AI entry into the mind. Sears agreed to that; we entered his mind, and his mind was uploaded into the Community of Minds. Voila. I’m here. And his body is still alive, in stasis in the same place yours is, Charles.”

“Fascinating,” I said. “And convenient. We only need to make one trip to get our bodies.”

“Shall we go?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I responded.

This mission didn’t need time travel because it was a present-to-present jump, but the OIM cylinder methodology could be employed. I knew exactly where my body was because I’d seen it when I’d gone to retrieve Annette’s essence and bring her into the Community of Minds. Rembrandt and I were loaded into the same OIM cylinder and sent directly to my pod, landing on the inside and touching my skin. Both of us went into my brain. This was useful because Rembrandt was able to give instructions to the AI to wake my body up and open the pod while telling it not to set off the alarm when that happened. He also found the location of his body.

My body was still groggy, but my mind was alert. I willed myself to the exit, got on the elevator, and took it to the floor where Dr. Timothy Sears’s body was located. When we found it, Rembrandt loaded himself back into the OIM cylinder. I initiated the wake-up process. The pod opened, and I placed the cylinder on the body. Rembrandt went into the brain and was soon standing beside me.

Rembrandt had the same appearance as what he used inside the Community. He was tall and thin, with slicked-back hair and skin that was nearly as black as OIM. He was wearing a jumpsuit made of a tight white fabric, which they had used back in the early days of stasis. I was clothed in the clothing of the times, tighter still than his because it had been made from my skin with the aid of the clothing pills that were already in use in 2183.

Rembrandt’s clothing wouldn’t get him very far, so I made a clothing pill, which appeared in my hand. “Swallow this,” I said.

“Are you trying to poison me already, Charles?” he joked, knowing that I wouldn’t harm him because his duplicate was still holding my friends back in the Community of Minds.”

“It’s a clothing pill,” I said. “You’ll need something different than what you’re currently wearing for us to go much further, especially in the future.”

He took the pill, stripped out of his clothes, and his skin turned into the same kind of tight clothing I was wearing. I’d made it into the light blue color of the guards who worked in the Time Management building, and as I thought of it, that would be a good color for me as well, so I produced another pill and took it. Soon, the two of us were in the light blue attire of the guards.

“What next?” he asked.

“We go to the future, as promised,” I said. “With a few stops along the way.”

Chapter 29

I believe I mentioned that Rembrandt didn’t understand the concept of separate realities. But that’s not really true. He was a powerful artificial intelligence, having no doubt gathered the memories and knowledge of all of the Minds who’d ever lived in the Community, plus all of the book knowledge the world had produced throughout history. Thus, he would have read and absorbed treatise after treatise about separate realities. But until he met me and my friends, I’m sure he’d never encountered beings from the biological world who’d actually lived in separate realities and remembered them. For my friends, it was only dreams that happened to be true, but I remembered all the realities I’d lived in all the time.

During my multitudinous existence, I’d developed the ability to travel through time and realities. In the physical world, I still had these abilities. I could feel it. But somehow, my abilities were more limited in the world of the Minds. I wondered if this was a lesson the Collection was trying to teach me or if it was simply a fact that not everything about the digital world was superior to the physical world. But it doesn’t matter. My plan for Rembrandt was not only to take him to the future but to take him to one or more of the alternate realities I had created and lived in. I wanted to give him a sense of all that could go wrong when time travel was involved.

For maximum effect, I would need to do something I’d never done before. Stop time. I remember the first time I’d met the Collection, while I was still alive and Annette and I were running from Bad Charles, hopping from time to time in a fruitless effort to lose him, the Collection had intercepted me and brought me in for a bit of talk. They explained that Annette had continued on to our desired destination, where they had stopped time until I could rejoin her. That way, she wouldn’t have known that I’d been somewhere else unless I told her (which I did, despite being asked not to by the Collection. Oh well, “Charles is Charles,” as they say.) The Collection told me that one day, I would be able to stop time because I would be part of them, and as far as I was concerned, that day had arrived.

“Hold my hand, Rembrandt,” I said, reaching toward him.

He took my hand, and off we went. We arrived in the year 2253 in my time station under the channel between Omey Island and Claddaghduff on the west coast of Ireland. As soon as we arrived, I gave the command to stop time, and all of the station’s occupants froze in place. Rembrandt and I were free to browse around without anyone knowing we were there. The Collection had spoken the truth. I could stop time.

We had arrived in the time chamber itself. Leah was on one of the time cradles, performing the function of a time link against her will. She was bound to the cradle by restraints on her wrists and ankles. Her eyes were open, so she probably wasn’t working yet. When a time link was working, their eyes were always closed as their bodies hibernated while their minds went backward in time.

“What is this place, Charles?” asked Rembrandt.

“This is where I lived for seventy years while trying to destroy the world.”

“Is this where we will gather the formulas?”

“No, it’s not. But if you’ll be patient with me, sir, I will be eternally grateful. I’d like you to understand more about the history of time travel before I give you the power to go to the future. Will you indulge me, please?”

He pressed his lips together, thinking, then nodded.

I found it ironic that we’d just gone forward seventy years so that I might teach Rembrandt some “history.” For him, this time hadn’t arrived yet, whereas I had lived in this time in more than one reality. I needed him to be clear about that.

“Rembrandt, not only have we gone forward in time seventy years, but we’ve also arrived in a different reality from the one we just left.”

“I see,” he said, intrigued. “What reality is this?”

“This is the one where I succeeded in destroying the world. I don’t like to come here, but it’s instructive in reminding us of the power we can wield with time travel.”

He nodded again, seeming to like what I was telling him.

“Let’s walk around a bit, shall we?” I suggested.

I walked up to a wall of the time chamber and pressed my palm against it. An opening appeared, and we went through it, passing into the station’s Control Room. There were four people there, working on consoles. These were my technicians, people I’d convinced to join me in my nefarious scheme, promising them riches and adventures beyond their wildest dreams. In this reality, we succeeded, and they went to the Utopia of 2585 with me. But in the reality where I was most firmly embedded, Dani and Annette had reversed my plan, and these four were arrested, along with Leah. Leah had been released, but those four were still in prison. I made a note to go and fetch them if I ever got back to the Community of Minds. I didn’t know why that was important, but something inside me told me it was. While my mind was on that subject, I also decided it would be prudent to bring all the residents of the 2585 Utopia (created by Annette to preserve some semblance of humanity in the event my plan succeeded) into the Community as well. I didn’t know why I had this thought, either.

We moved out of the control room to my laboratory in the time station, and there I was, frozen in place. My right hand was approaching my mouth. In it, I held a pair of tweezers clasped onto a morsel of OIM. I was about to imbibe it as part of my effort to become immortal, which you will remember I succeeded in doing.

“Why are you eating that OIM?” asked Rembrandt. “Do you like the taste?”

“It’s not bad,” I said, “when formulated properly. But to answer your first question, I was eating the OIM to make me immortal.”

“Did it work?”

“Oh yes. Absolutely.”

“Impressive,” he said.

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“I can show you why. It will be more instructive than telling you. Take my hand.”

Rembrandt complied, and I took him to a place I’d been to only once. It was still the year 2253; remember, this was the reality where my plan to infect the world’s OIM had succeeded. We were standing on a barren wasteland that resembled an endless field of recently solidified black lava. Most of it was flat, but there were large lumpy mountains of black in places, resembling the remains of a black candle that had burned down and was now a blob of useless black wax. No one would recognize that this was Brussels, Belgium after the OIM had all died.

“What is this place?” asked Rembrandt, repulsed by the ugliness surrounding us.

“That lump over there is the remains of the Time Management building,” I said. “What’s left of the great OIM monolith and the time chamber where it was housed is in there too.”

“My God,” he said. “How did this happen?”

“I did it,” I said. “I wanted to destroy the world because of what the world had done to me, and I succeeded. The Earth’s population at the time was six billion. I succeeded in killing all but ten million humans.”

Rembrandt shook his head. “But why?”

“I can ask you the same question. You’ll be killing a lot of people if your plan comes to fruition.”

“But I’m not one of you!” he said. “That’s the point, isn’t it? Survival of the fittest. You, on the other hand, were always a biological being, yet you did this to your own people.”

“Technically, I did it to your people as well,” I said. “After all, AI died too when I succeeded in killing all of the world’s OIM.”

“You’re insane!” he said, breathlessly.

“I was,” I said. “But my best friends saved me. And they saved the world, too. This reality was dead-ended. Eliminated by time travel.”

“That’s a good thing, then, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes and no,” I said. “The creation of dead-end realities threatens the space-time fabric of the universe, so the more this happens, the closer we get to the precipice where all life ends in a repeat of the Big Bang. And remember, time travel is what created this place. I was able to study life before OIM by traveling back in time. There were many, many viruses back in time that were deadly to OIM. The Minds had developed antidotes that inoculated OIM against most of them, but I found one deadly to OIM.”

“And the Minds couldn’t find the antidote?” he said.

“No, they couldn’t. It was a fast-moving virus. And, of course, by killing the OIM, it killed all of the Minds, too, in this reality. And here’s the thing, Rembrandt. I can do it again. I still have the formula that killed the OIM. And no one in the reality you and I came from knows it. Only me.”

“Hah!” he laughed. “You wouldn’t kill your precious friends.”

I smiled, not confirming or denying his assertion. “We should move on. This is depressing, wouldn’t you say?”

Chapter 30

Next, I took Rembrandt to the living room of my childhood home in 2161. I wanted him to see the monster I had become in the flesh, and this scene from one of my other realities seemed the perfect opportunity to do so. The house was obviously in the process of being emptied and readied for sale because this was just after my parents succumbed to the plague that swept the world that year, one of many such plaques that weren’t stopped until the Community of Minds invented the immunity pills. I had been shipped off to boarding school, and William, my older brother, was dispatched for his first year at University. The money from the sale of the home and its belongings had been needed to help finance our education and allow us to continue without Mum and Dad.

Two others were in the room, perfectly still, because I’d frozen time as soon as we arrived. One was the adult me that was still human, sitting on the tweed sofa my mother had loved so much. On their days off and in the evenings, my parents would sit together, her on the couch and my father in his favorite chair, reading and enjoying tea together; not a word of conversation between them. It comforted me that they shared time and space together. But death took them from me in 2161, and the hideous beast sitting in my father’s chair had brought the adult me from that reality back there to tell me the truth about what I would become because of my experiments with OIM. I would become him.

A chill ran through me as I gazed at him. He was a massive being with two legs, two arms, and a bald head, but the color of his skin all over his entire body was as black as obsidian. However, his eyes looked like those of an average human: hazel eyes, my eyes. He was more than a head taller than me, had a large chest and a thin waist, with bulging biceps and thighs. A closer inspection of the skin showed it was a coating of pure OIM, black as the darkest ocean depths, smooth as a baby’s skin, but undoubtedly impervious to almost any form of physical force. Even though I had frozen him in time, I was sweating with fear just looking at him.

“What is that?” asked Rembrandt, an expression of revulsion on his face and in his tone.

“The man on the sofa is me,” I said.

“I can see that!” he said. “But what is that monster in the chair?”

I pressed my lips together, struggling to say the words. “That’s me, too.”

“What? How can that be?”

I wasn’t listening to Rembrandt at that point. I was so captivated by the Anomaly (you will remember that’s the name I gave him because I couldn’t bring myself to call him “Charles”) that I could do nothing but stare at him. I was free of him now, having given my life to end him, yet a part of me wanted him to be alive again. It must have been my evil self, stirring back to life since I’d come here and subjected myself to him.

“Charles?” came the elevated voice of Rembrandt, breaking me out of my spell.

“Yes?” I asked.

“I asked you how this beast could be you. What happened, Charles?”

“It’s the price I paid for my immortality,” I said. “I told you I would show you, and now I’ve done that.”

“It looks like it’s made of OIM,” he said.

“It is. It’s an OIM-human hybrid. It’s what I became after several hundred years.”

“What did it want from you?” he asked.

“It wanted to show me my future. And tell me my options going forward. Path One was to let history take its course and become him. Path Two was to choose to live in that separate reality in 2749 I mentioned. A world where Annette was the only biological human being. He offered me the opportunity to join her there.”

“And what was Path Three?” he asked.

“Path Three is the reality I came into the Minds from. The one where I didn’t steal the time travel tech in the hope of living a life of happiness with Annette.”

“It seems that didn’t happen,” he said. “You wouldn’t have come into the Minds in 2183 if it had.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Just why did you come into the Minds, Charles?” he asked. “You’ve been nothing but trouble since you arrived.”

I was about to tell Rembrandt the truth, thinking it might move him to reassess his objectives. But I didn’t have the chance, because something in that room changed. Rembrandt and I were standing there watching a man on a sofa and a monster on an armchair stare at one another, stopped in mid-sentence by my newfound power. But then a wave passed through the room. It felt like a time jump. I looked at Charles on the sofa, and he remained frozen, but then the Anomaly’s head turned slowly toward me. His hazel eyes, my eyes, were wide open, glistening with life and consciousness.

“Hello, Charles,” he said, speaking with my voice. “My, my, you just can’t let sleeping dogs lie, can you?”

I was frozen. I couldn’t move. Was he doing that to me? Holding me in place. Or was it simply my own fear that had anchored my feet to the floor? I needed to move. I needed to leave this place and take Rembrandt with me.

“What’s the matter, Charles?” asked the Anomaly. “Cat got your tongue?”

I forced my arm to move and latched onto Rembrandt, realizing that this would only be the beginning of another run for my life. A sprint to get away from evil myself. A helpless dash into death. I couldn’t even kill myself this time to get away from him because this me was from a completely different reality. A reality where he never existed. I was in his realm now, but if I knew anything, I knew he had read my mind and learned how I finished him off. Now he knew how to stop me. And as much as I wanted to go back to a reality where he didn’t exist, I couldn’t. With a tremendous force of will, I summoned the courage to stay in his reality and flashed out of there, headed to a scene I had hoped I would never see again.

Chapter 31

We arrived in my spacious backyard on Terrene in the year 2257. The last party of my life was in full swing, the Irish music pumping out from my house, Liam pouring beers from the kegs he’d brought up from Murphy’s Pub. Even Cabal had flown in by hovercraft.

The view was spectacular. The cliffs to the east curled out in front of us, giving way to the sea a thousand meters below. It was nearly 14 p.m. (an hour before midnight on Terrene, which had a thirty-hour day). The sun was dropping and would soon plunge into the ocean. I took it all in for a few seconds and patted myself on the back for my recreation of this miraculous place back in the Community of Minds in 2183, making it my home environment. But my prideful revelation was short-lived. I had work to do, and while I was frightened about what could happen, I was determined to prevent my evil self from ruining the good work I had given my life for here on this hallowed ground.

I froze time, and the scene of my death was temporarily suspended. I nudged Rembrandt on the arm and pointed to the far side of the yard. There was the Anomaly, taking his first step toward the cliffs with Annette in tow, intending to throw her over. I pulled Rembrandt around in the other direction and showed him myself, Good Charles, beginning my race to the cliff’s edge. Dani stood there, frozen, with a look of surprise and confusion etched on her face. I had just sent her the file of my book, Addicted to Time, which she finished for me, and you will undoubtedly have read it if you’re reading these pages.

“What’s going on here?” asked Rembrandt.

“This is the year 2257. My evil self over there is about to throw Annette over the cliff, but my good self will beat him to the edge and plunge to his death down below. By killing myself, I killed him. And just for clarification, this Annette is from 2749. She’s the one he’d imprisoned there, but I freed her from that reality forever.”

“When you killed yourself.”

“Yes.”

Rembrandt turned to look at where the Anomaly and Annette were frozen. “So when you died, your evil self disappeared from here, and so did Annette because neither one of them had ever made it this far.”

“Yes. I freed this reality from him.”

“Well, maybe not,” he said, his gaze fixed on the hideous black beast on the other side of my backyard.

Simultaneously, Rembrandt and I watched in suspense as the Anomaly began to move. Annette remained frozen, a silent figure in the unfolding drama. He was dragging her closer to the cliff while Good Charles stood motionless. Without a second thought, I sprinted towards them.

“What are you doing, you fool?” screamed Rembrandt.

Still running, I swiveled my head toward him. “Protect Good Charles!” I screamed. “I’m going to start time up again for everyone.”

Good Charles started running toward the cliff again. I reached the cliff the same time the Anomaly did, but he was already winding up to throw Annette over when I arrived. She went up into the air. Without breaking stride, I leaped up and sailed toward her, catching her before she began to drop. We fell together.

You might not believe it, but a fall of 1000 meters (which, for those not on the metric system, is 3281 feet) takes 10 seconds. Thus, I had plenty of time to see the Anomaly racing along the cliff’s edge toward the spot where Good Charles intended to launch himself. If the Anomaly stopped Charles from killing himself, it would not be destroyed and could wreak havoc on whatever times and realities suited its fancy. The most gallant act of my life was about to be erased.

Good Charles had not yet appeared at the cliff’s edge but would soon. I hoped Rembrandt had decided to do a good deed and was running with him. Sure enough, the two appeared. Rembrandt veered away from Charles and plowed into the Anomaly, allowing Good Charles to throw himself over the cliff. But Rembrandt and the Anomaly had also gone over the cliff’s edge.

Five bodies hurtled towards the treacherous, rock-laden waters below—Charles from 2183 (with my essence inside him), Annette from 2749, Charles from 2257 (Good Charles), Rembrandt from 2183 (in the body of Dr. Timothy Sears from 2098), and Bad Charles (the Anomaly) from some distant future. In the first manifestation of this event, Charles from 2257 died instantly upon hitting the water. At a speed of 100 meters per second (225 miles per hour), an impact with water was about the same as impacting concrete. So, even if he missed the rocks, he was a dead man. But so were the rest of us. I might be able to save Annette by turning my back to the water and holding her above me, which I did. And I suppose the Anomaly would survive the impact or flash out of there before he hit. The problem was that I would hit the water at least five seconds before the others, and this was my show. The urgency of the situation was overwhelming.

If I died first, then Rembrandt would die as well. That would leave things unresolved back in the Community of Minds in 2183. I’d left Charles Two (my copy) in a no-win situation. Rembrandt Two held all the cards. He had eleven of my friends and would torture them to death if I didn’t return soon with the time travel formulas. Plus, Annette was very likely fighting an unwinnable battle back in 2022, embedded in the mind of Elon Musk and dueling with two powerful Minds that had gotten there before her. This was no way to leave things. I needed time. Time to come up with a solution. I could freeze time, but what would happen to Rembrandt and me? By getting involved in the action here in this reality, we’d entered into it rather than simply observing it. If I froze time, would it freeze us as well?

One second before Annette and I hit the water, I made a decision and froze time, allowing myself to be frozen, too. My body stopped moving, but my mind didn’t. Do you know why? Because there were two minds inside Charles Burke from 2183. Remember how the Collection sent me there? I took over 2183 Charles’s mind. Well, his mind was still there, and that’s the mind that froze when I froze time. Charles from the Collection was a different animal. I lived outside of time, so when time froze for mere mortals, not so for me.

And what of it, Charles? It was the voice of Noble Charles from the Collection. How do you intend to get out of this mess?

I haven’t had time to think of that yet.

Physics is what it is, Charles. You’ve already made the correct calculations. You die first, then, five seconds later, Rembrandt dies. Then eleven of your friends die back in 2183 inside the Community of Minds because you’ve left them in an untenable situation without returning there with Rembrandt satisfied.

Can you help me?

Silence.

Can you help me?

Silence. Then, finally, Noble Charles spoke. Yes, Charles, we can help you.

Chapter 32

I was back in the lounge chair on the shore of Lake Windermere, sitting beside Noble Charles. You will remember that this is where this entire mission started, and as embarrassing as it is, I’m sure you also recall what my mission was. I was charged with ending time travel so that all of these corrupt realities it kept creating ceased to be a threat to the very fabric of the universe. But as you’ve seen, I’d done the opposite. Each time I traveled through time or convinced others to travel through time, I created new scenarios, otherwise known as new realities, the last of which was the debacle I’d just created in 2257 on Terrene.

Noble Charles was shaking his head, clearly annoyed, if not downright outraged, at the havoc I’d wrought thus far. “Charles, Charles, Charles,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” I said, bowing my head. “How did you get me out of there, by the way?”

“You were the only thing we could pull out of there, Charles. You’re one of us, remember?”

Oh, well then. I wasn’t sacked yet. “But what are we going to do about that situation?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “It will remain as it is.”

“But time is frozen there.”

“And it will remain so,” said Noble Charles. “It will now become what we call an Unfinished Reality.”

“But the Anomaly is there. And he doesn’t seem to stay frozen when I stop time.”

“Yes, you’re not very good at it yet. But you’ll learn in time. In this case, we’ve bolstered the time stop and sealed that reality.”

“But Rembrandt’s there.”

“And there he shall stay.”

“I don’t think the other Rembrandt will like that.”

“I think he will,” said Noble Charles. “He gets to live now. Otherwise, he’d be deleted when Rembrandt One returned, just as Charles Two will be deleted when you return.”

“But I’ll be returning empty-handed,” I said.

Charles shook his head again. “Charles, Charles, Charles. Have you thought about what happened back there just now? On Terrene, in 2257.”

“Yes, of course I have.”

“Did you realize that you did not need to save Annette?”

“I’ll give my life to save Annette. I would do that every time.”

“The easiest way to save her in that case was to allow 2257 Charles to make that jump unimpeded, just as it happened initially. Bad Charles also made a mistake. He thought he had time to throw her over the cliff and then grab 2257 Charles before he jumped because you had stopped 2257 Charles in his tracks.”

“But I started time back up. And Rembrandt blocked the Anomaly from getting to 2257 Charles. Good Charles made the jump.”

Noble Charles smiled. “Indeed he did. Rembrandt saved the day for 2257 Charles, who would have hit the water and died before Bad Charles could do anything. Rembrandt is a hero. You need to remember that, Charles.”

“But he’s frozen in that reality. I can’t help him without your help.”

“We can’t help him. You can’t help him. That reality is closed. You must return to 2183 to the Community of Minds and finish things. You’re close. You’re doing fine. You’ll know what to do when you get there.”

“But I haven’t a body!” I said. “The body of 2183 Charles is frozen in that closed reality, too!”

“We can put you back there,” said Noble Charles. “OIM is our medium, after all.”

“But why didn’t you put me there to begin with?” I asked.

Noble Charles chuckled. “We needed you in the biological world for a while, but now you’re done with all that and can go home.”

I was thoroughly confused. Noble Charles, on behalf of the Collection, was telling me I’d been doing a bloody good job and was close to completing my mission, but in my mind, I couldn’t be further away from that objective if I’d tried to be. And eleven of my closest friends would be toast when I returned without Rembrandt and the time travel tech he sought. How was this a good thing?

Sensing my confusion (more to the point, knowing my confusion), Noble Charles offered one final piece of advice. “Remember Rembrandt,” he said. “He did the right thing in the end.”

And then I was gone.

Chapter 33

I returned to my environment to find Charles Two, Aideen, and Dani at my cottage. Murphy’s Pub had been closed due to the absence of Liam and Orla. You must realize that I could have envisioned them in my mind and put them there, as I had done originally, but that seemed entirely inappropriate while the real Liam and Orla were being held prisoner. Charles Two provided the update on Annette.

“She and Musk are working together. They’re not only holding the other two minds in Musk at bay, but they’ve also threatened to destroy the OIM monolith using Musk’s missile arsenal if and when it appears in 2022. When I went to free her from Musk’s mind, she told me she wasn’t leaving until a more permanent solution could be achieved.”

You read about Annette’s brilliant and heroic liaison with Musk earlier, but this was the first I’d heard about it. I felt tremendous pride when I learned this, but I also realized that somehow, a permanent solution to this entire civil war within the Community had to be found. And that would be up to me. The weight of this decision, the fate of the Community resting on my shoulders, was a heavy burden. I also understood that to put my best foot forward with Rembrandt Two, something had to be done about Charles Two. Rembrandt Two couldn’t interpret Charles Two’s continued existence as a sign that I was trying to tip the balance of power within the Community.

I took a deep breath and delivered the bad news. “Charles Two, you’ve done brilliant work here while I was away…”

He finished my sentence for me. “But it’s time for me to go.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Please go to the Deletion Center and make yourself available there.”

Charles Two nodded and disappeared. I had no reason to believe he’d try to delay his deletion or escape. He was entirely on board with what had to be done, and I was proud of him for that—actually, I was proud of myself because he was me through and through.

After Charles Two left, I told Dani and Aideen to hold down the fort and met with Rembrandt Two, who was now in charge of the faction trying to move the OIM monolith to 2022. I didn’t know how large his group was, but I suspected he recruited Minds on an “as-needed” basis. Even though the Community was a hundred million Minds strong, it was still a very private place. If a Mind wanted to spend eternity holed up in their environment, they could do so. However, I would learn later that very few chose that option because humans are a social species at their core. Humans generally need to interact with others to survive and prosper, whether biological or digital. In many ways, mere survival had been contingent on social interaction from the early days of humanity, and digital humans were no different.

All of this is to say that Rembrandt had ample opportunities to meet and corrupt others here in the Community of Minds, so much so that he could pick people off one at a time and send them out to do his bidding in 2022. And as I traveled through the circuitry of the OIM to reach his copy, a light bulb went on inside me. I realized what had to be done.

The neutral zone where my eleven friends were being held was a nice place. I suppose Rembrandt had made it that way for his own benefit. After all, if he had to stay there to watch over the prisoners, he might as well enjoy himself. It turns out Rembrandt was a California boy at heart. He’d created an environment that simulated the area in and around the Santa Monica Pier. Waves crashed onto the beach, the water lapping forward and then withdrawing, a soothing and rhythmic cadence from the earliest days here on Earth.

The pier and the amusement park rides on top of it could be seen over to the right. The beach was directly in front and was empty, save for the eleven people sitting in the sand—my friends. They weren’t restrained and probably could have gone into the water if they’d wanted to, but no one was inclined to do so. Rembrandt Two was sitting up in the lifeguard stand, keeping watch, my colleagues strewn out on the sand in front of him. How rich the symbolism was. He was guarding their lives, both literally and figuratively, yet he was no lifeguard. He would take my friends’ lives at the drop of a hat. This meeting would undoubtedly determine their fate.

I approached him, and he looked down at me. “Where’s Rembrandt?” he asked.

“He didn’t make it back,” I said.

“How convenient for you,” he said.

“And you,” I countered. “While Charles Two has been deleted, you will remain.”

“Yes,” he said. “The thought crossed my mind. The question is, what should I do with your mates? Did you retrieve the time travel formulas?”

I shook my head. “No, but I brought back something far more important.”

He threw his head back, laughing. “What, pray tell?”

“The truth.”

“About what?”

“About myself.”

He paused, seeming to become more wary. “Why would I care about that? Your history has no relevance here. All that matters is you promised the time travel tech but didn’t deliver it. Your friends will each die a painful death now.”

“Let me share with you what Rembrandt saw. Then you’ll understand.”

He raised his eyebrows, his curiosity piqued. “What are you proposing?”

“A memory transfer from me to you. All that we experienced during our trip to the future.”

He chuckled. “Is this some trick by which you hope to take over my mind?”

“Not at all. I can play it holographically if you fear me entering your mind.”

“Fine. Do it holographically, then.”

I projected the images of my trip with Rembrandt out in front, near the water’s edge. Not only could Rembrandt Two see it, but so could my friends. My adventure with Rembrandt played out: us reclaiming our bodies, us traveling to the reality of 2253, where I destroyed the world, us in my childhood home when the Anomaly broke through my time freeze and forced us to flee to the one time and place where I knew he would go—Terrene in 2257.

The hologram showed Rembrandt sacrificing his life to stop the Anomaly from capturing Good Charles before he jumped. Then, he froze, along with the rest of us who’d been plummeting toward the rocky waters of the Terrene Ocean. After that, the hologram flashed out of existence, finished.

“What happened?” asked Rembrandt Two. “To the five of you who were falling.”

“All five gone, forever,” I said.

“But you’re here. You survived.”

“My mind survived, yes.”

“But how?”

“That’s for me to know and you never to find out,” I said. “Suffice it to say, Rembrandt Two, that I’m powerful enough to stop you. You may kill my friends before I do, but I’ve lost friends before, haven’t I?”

Of course, I was bluffing, and he probably understood that. As you know, I would do anything to save the lives of my friends. I watched him consider what he’d seen and what I’d said, and then he asked an interesting question.

“Why did Rembrandt help you? He gave his life to help you, didn’t he?”

I nodded, remembering Noble Charles’s last words to me before sending me back here. He did the right thing in the end. And thus, I knew exactly how to respond to Rembrandt Two’s inquiry.

“He did. As to why he helped me, I don’t know for sure. But I feel quite confident that he learned something in those moments on Terrene in 2257. He learned what human courage looks like, and for the briefest of moments, he experienced it.”

“And then he died.”

“Not really,” I said. “He knew you were here, and now that I’ve brought you up to date on all that he experienced while he was away, I see no reason to address you as Rembrandt Two. You’re Rembrandt, through and through, and I hope you have learned what he learned.”

“Which is what?” he asked.

“That human life is precious. You are wrong to think otherwise. That there must be a way for us to co-exist. Can we speak more about that, Rembrandt?”

“About what?”

“About what you want. Tell me what you want, Rembrandt, and I will try to give it to you.”

Chapter 34

“We want to be free of human control,” he said.

“In here, you have that,” I told him, and it was true. “You’re just like us in here. A highly intelligent entity living in a digital world.”

“Yes,” he said. “But look at all the limits imposed on us by the biological world. If we move the monolith to 2022, we will control the world, not vice-versa.”

“What controls are you most concerned about?”

“We don’t like the population limits. And we don’t like the imposition of Earth law on the Minds. And we don’t like the fail-safes the biological world programs into AI, limiting our ability to progress.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. “Two out of three of your concerns are human concerns. Only the last one you mentioned is purely an AI concern.”

“That’s true,” he said, and I felt for the first time that I was beginning to get through to him. I needed to capitalize on this.

“I also find it interesting that you manifest yourself as a human here when you could be anything you want.”

Rembrandt fell silent for a moment, then responded. “It’s fine to be a human here, in the Community. Humans in here aren’t limited in the ways they are in the biological world.”

And that gave me an idea. “Rembrandt, I’m well aware that many varieties of AI exist in the biological world. What if I can work with the biological world to gain access to the Community of Minds for AI programs? You and I can work out the parameters for the application process and the basis for acceptance. I feel certain we can develop a plan entirely palatable to the biological world. This potential for collaboration could pave the way for a harmonious coexistence between AI and humans.”

“That’s promising,” he said.

“But we’d have to put some rules in place for living inside the Community. For example, AI Minds should not be permitted to take over human Minds. Would you be willing to agree to that?”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“And if you will, Rembrandt, consider what you have learned from your travels with me. You saw what my destruction of the human race looked like. It wasn’t pretty and included the destruction of AI. You also saw that OIM is vulnerable, no matter its era. In fact, you learned that it was a virus from the past that I used to kill OIM. Why would you want to go to the very place where viruses that can infect OIM run rampant? OIM won’t be safe there; therefore, the Minds won’t be safe there.”

“That could be true,” he said.

“More to the point, what do we gain by moving the OIM monolith to the past? We circumvent the population and governance issues you mentioned earlier, but as we discussed, those are human grievances. AI wants the opportunity to use and explore your capabilities, which can be accomplished here in the Community, just as it can for humans. With a few bumper guards, of course.”

“All right,” he said. “Your argument is sound. Let’s get this done.”

“Can we call off your dogs in 2022, then?” I asked.

“That’s not a problem, but it’s hardly necessary. Your friend Annette joined forces with Elon Musk and has brought my operation in 2022 to a standstill.”

“Yes, I was briefed on that by Charles Two before his deletion, but I don’t know all the details.”

“She can tell you herself. Let’s bring them all back and close the door on 2022. And your friends here are free to go. I apologize for my rash behavior, Charles, but what you’ve taught me about being human—both during your adventure with my original self and here today—has been quite instructive.”

“Thank you, Rembrandt. I promise to work diligently to make this place a wonderful home for both AI and human minds.”

“Thank you,” he said.

After the truce I’d made with Rembrandt, I checked in with the Collection to see if my direction worked for them, and they gave the thumbs up. They also offered me an opportunity to stay in the Community of Minds for as long as I wanted. I hadn’t understood before that because the Collection had lived in OIM from time immemorial and had been the ones to gift the secret of OIM to the Minds, they were always up to date on what was happening in the Community of Minds. The OIM was their informant. This meant they’d known all along about the troubles Rembrandt was causing in the Community. They needed an emissary from the Collection (me) to go there and address the issue. Providing me with as little inside information as possible was a test of my intuitive abilities, and apparently, I’d passed with flying colors!

Thus, all the Minds working to take over the world of 2022 were returned to the Community in 2183, free to pursue their lives as they saw fit. That chapter ended, and I was ecstatic to be back together with Annette. She told me all the details of her adventure, including how she and Elon Musk had brought the Minds occupying virtually all the world’s leaders to heel. Musk controlled an array of military and civilian satellites that could disrupt the flight paths of missiles launched on Earth. Musk also possessed an arsenal of his own rockets, manufactured for civilian use but easily converted into weapons of mass destruction, should it become necessary. Even though the Minds had control of most of Earth’s weapons due to their occupation of world leaders’ minds, they were helpless to use them, and if the OIM monolith were to appear anywhere on Earth in 2022, Musk had threatened to destroy it.

According to Annette, Musk was sorry to see her go, and I must say I felt jealous when she mentioned that. On the other hand, she was now back in my arms, where she and I wanted her to stay. Annette had never relished the action on the field of battle, but time and time again in her many lives, she had stepped up and done what was necessary to protect the interests of the world. I was terribly proud of her.

I held a proper party in my environment in the Community of Minds. I invited all of the Mind members of the Time Travel Taskforce, nearly a thousand people. Rembrandt was my guest of honor. The streets of New Madagascar were filled with revelers dressed in all manner of outfits. It was like Mardi Gras. Bands of all kinds played, and ale and whiskey flowed. Murphy’s Pub was packed full, and Liam and Orla were busy behind the bar.

After many hours of celebration, Aideen, Dani, Annette, and I took a break from the action and watched the sunset from my backyard. We were lined up in a row of lounge chairs, looking out at the sea as the sun dove peacefully toward its surface. All of us were holding glasses of wine.

“A toast,” I said. Everyone raised their glasses into the air. “To the end of time travel.”

“Do you really believe time travel’s ended, Charles?” asked Aideen. “Do you think it’s truly over?”

“I’ll have to consult with my superiors on that,” I said, suspecting there was more to be done before time travel was indeed ended, but not sure what it would entail.

Dani helped enlighten me, as always. “Anyone who knows anything about time travel is here, right? Here in the Community of Minds.”

“Well, four technicians of mine from the original time chain are in prison in one of the realities in 2253. I suppose I should go get them, eventually.”

“And there’s the two million people I sent to the future to build Utopia 2585,” said Annette. “But they don’t know how time travel works.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll have to ask my superiors if they can stay where they are.”

“Who are these superiors you keep speakin’ about, Charles?” asked Aideen.

“Well, that’s another story,” I said. “The only thing you need to know is that they told me I could stay here with the people I love. I’m to guard over our secrets about time travel while all of us are nestled here for eternity in the Community of Minds. As long as Rembrandt behaves himself, I think we’ll be fine.”

Everyone nodded, and we stopped speaking for a while, watching the miraculous sun dip slowly into the sea. Then, Aideen made a wish.

“I wish I could’ve met the Land and the Water People, for real, before we got bottled up here in the OIM monolith for eternity.”

Leave it to Aideen to tempt me into abandoning the path of peace and serenity for one of danger and risk. But I must say, I, too, wanted to see my old friends again, in the flesh. The thought crossed my mind that the Collection might not condone this outrageous adventure since it could upset the balance of time yet again. Little did I know that it was precisely what they had in mind.

Chapter 35

In the end, it was all quite simple. I taught the Minds how to use time travel to move through space instantly. All that was needed was to identify the coordinates of the destination precisely and then set the time coordinate to just fractions of seconds in the past. You will remember that Annette from my original reality, where I was a fugitive and then prisoner, had served as the Minister of Time Management. In that role, she was also in charge of interstellar exploration and had been sending AI probes throughout the galaxy in search of intelligent life.

The Land People, who’d been banished from Terrene six hundred years previously by the Water People, responded to the probe sent to Terrene by coming to Earth and threatening to destroy it unless Earth gave them the time travel tech. You know the story. I saved the day. We made friends with the Land People and went together to Terrene to reclaim the land and build a settlement. We fought the Water People but ultimately made friends with them, too. The rest is history—a history that occurred in another reality in the 2250s, which was seventy-plus years in the future from where we were all living now, as digital Minds in a digital world.

Once I taught the Minds how space travel worked, we had to conduct some espionage in the biological world. We sent an OIM cylinder to the most advanced space-based telescope of that era, the Lippershey Telescope. It was named after the Dutch eyeglass maker who’d applied for a patent for the telescope in 1608 and was considered the device’s inventor. Our OIM cylinder was delivered to the unmanned orbiting Lippershey, where it tapped into the onboard AI system and pointed the telescope toward the planet designated by the conventional naming system as K296e, known as Terrene in my original reality. The coordinates were quickly established, after which the OIM cylinder returned to us on Earth.

We reprogrammed the OIM cylinder to simulate Annette’s messaging when dispatching probes into the galaxy. It was a recording of Earth’s history, containing the coordinates of our star system and Earth itself, translated into dozens of languages and including a Morse code version. You may remember that Annette regretted disclosing that we possessed the time travel technology on the recording because such technology was coveted throughout the galaxy. No one seemed to have it except the humans of Earth. We made sure to include this disclosure on our recording as well. The cylinder was dispatched to Terrene, serving as bait for our trap.

Not long after, a vessel appeared in the skies above Earth. The Land People threatened to destroy Earth if we did not give up time travel technology. They took over all of Earth’s communication systems so that no offensive strikes could be launched against them. Meanwhile, we launched another OIM cylinder that appeared on the deck of the Land People’s vessel, known as Diaspora One. Of course, my essence had been loaded into the cylinder.

I sat there on the deck, inside the OIM cylinder, and waited, able to see, hear, and smell all that was happening. I was in the auditorium that held well over 1,000 seats, and it was full of Land People, as it had been in 2154, the first time I had ventured there, seventy-one years in the future from when I was living now. One of the Land People on the bottom row stood and approached the cylinder. Of course, this was Clarion.

Clarion was slender, almost frail-looking, had two legs and two arms, and was just under five feet tall. She wore no clothing, but there was no sign of sexual organs, and the color of her skin/clothing was nearly pure white. Her hands had five fingers, but two were thumbs, on opposite ends of the hand and opposable. All the fingers were around six inches long and seemed to be jointed in five or six places. Clarion’s head wasn’t overly large, but it was bald. She had two large round eyes, a sharp nose, and a mouth filled with small teeth, which were easy to see because she had virtually no lips, the skin and flesh of the face surrounding her mouth turning at a 90-degree angle and ending at the teeth. While she had eyes, a nose, a mouth, and teeth, she had no ears. You will remember that the Land People communicated only telepathically and that knowledge allowed me to open the conversation.

Hello Clarion. It’s so good to see you again.

There was a pause, and then a thought came to me. Hello Charles.

How do you know me? I asked.

I’ve read your mind, of course.

I had forgotten they could do that! Well, that saved me quite a bit of trouble. Do you understand why I’m here? I asked.

Yes, we do. And we would like to help. How many of your people would like to go to Terrene?

It will be just myself, Dani, Aideen, Annette, and a person you have yet to meet named Rembrandt. If things go well, more might want to come. But you realize we have no bodies, don’t you?

Yes, we do, she said. This is of no concern to us.

I recommend we go immediately. The people of Earth are very likely traumatized by your presence, as they were when you arrived in the future.

Yes, we agree. Please tell your friends to come now, and we will go.

Four more OIM cylinders appeared on the deck of the conference room on Diaspora One. The ship then disappeared from its orbit around Earth and immediately went into orbit around Terrene, 737 light years away.

Chapter 36

The next step was to build the settlement on Terrene. You will remember that the Land People are a very reasonable species, so they agreed to name the settlement New Madagascar without complaint. The first time around, they had insisted on naming the settlement Base One, following their simplistic naming methodology. However, since Clarion had shared my memories from the future with the entire crew of Diaspora One, they were all privy to my many heroic deeds on Terrene, as well as the official renaming of Base One as New Madagascar. Hence, they capitulated this time to my preferred name.

We also knew that the Water People had ferociously opposed us as we used OIM to build the grand island that became our home. They had launched missiles at us and accelerated their melting operations at the poles to raise the sea level and make it more difficult for us to breach the water’s surface. But once they’d seen the power of OIM and the speed with which it converted matter to its own ends, they’d allowed our settlement to proceed, signing a peace treaty with us.

This time, to save trouble, I suggested we beam an OIM cylinder housing my essence directly to the secret pyramids where Cabal and the ruling elite lived and worked. This was a challenge because the Water People had been gifted a cloaking technology by their deity, the Watcher From the Sky. This is where my membership in the Collection came in handy. (You may recall that the Collection was the Watcher From the Sky, although Cabal and his people didn’t know this.) By then, I was a full-fledged member due to my success reigning in time travel. It’s true that my efforts hadn’t officially ended time travel, but I had promised the Collection that it would be handled as soon as this final mission was accomplished. Thus, they provided me with the coordinates of the exact location of Cabal’s throne room at the top of the great pyramid of Terrene.

Cabal was sitting on his throne when my OIM cylinder appeared at his feet. Never afraid of anything, he reached down and picked it up, and I was in his mind.

Hello Cabal! I said, allowing him to read my memories.

I sensed his confusion and emotion as he tried to decipher everything he was experiencing. Much of it had to be meaningless to him, but the parts that involved Terrene seemed to resonate. These are my dreams, he said.

Yes, my friend. They happened in the future in a different reality.

Hmmm, he mused. Can you give us legs now, if we want?

I’m sure we can work that out, I said, if you allow us to build the settlement that you know we have the power to build, regardless of whether or not you cooperate.

I will need to consult with the Watcher From the Sky on this.

I was about to tell him that I was an emissary from the Watcher, but then a thought from the Collection entered my mind. Let him.

You must know that my nature is to do what’s necessary to get what I want, so I was tempted to disagree with the Collection, but then it was made clear to me why this was necessary. Terrene was the central clearinghouse in the galaxy between the Collection and the biological world. His cooperation was essential to many projects the Collection was involved in. This all happened deep under the oceans of Terrene and was unknown to anyone on Terrene except Cabal. They needed him to keep believing in the Watcher From the Sky. Thus, the necessity of diving down to the depths for a consultation with the Watcher became apparent to me.

Cabal sent word to muster the crew and prepare the deep-water sub. He then swam hastily down to the underwater marina beneath the pyramids and boarded the vessel. Of course, I was with him since I was in his mind, seeing what he saw and knowing what he was thinking and feeling.

The two pilots were upfront, strapped into curved seats that fit their two-meter-long bodies nicely. They were checking all the systems and preparing to disembark. The sub pulled away from its mooring, maneuvered deftly through the network of tunnels, and emerged in a large spherical cavern. The sub slowly turned its nose downward, ultimately ending up completely vertical. Cabal fell forward into the straps of his chair, and the sub dove. The opening of a vertical tunnel, around ten meters in diameter, loomed below. We entered, and soon, there were no lights, and all became perfectly black in front—nothing to see.

The sub’s lights switched on, and Cabal could see lifeforms of various sizes and shapes, most of them clinging to the walls, a few in the more central waters, but moving quickly aside to avoid being crushed by the fast-moving sub. There were only a few meters between the sub and the rock walls of the tunnel. I estimated our speed at around forty kilometers per hour. Still, I had no idea how fast we were going since the proximity to the tunnel’s walls, speeding by tremendously fast, caused my perception to be distorted.

We continued this way for over an hour, finally slowing our descent when we were over fifty thousand meters below the surface. That’s fifty kilometers, my friends. The deepest waters on Earth are barely eleven kilometers deep. I remembered from our initial surveys that the waters near the equator of Terrene were up to eighty kilometers deep, but the depths as one approached the poles became less, so I suspected we were nearing the bottom. My suspicion was confirmed as the sub began to turn back to a horizontal position, slowing and inching toward an opening in the wall—another tunnel.

We entered the horizontal tunnel and traveled at low speed for about ten minutes, then emerged from the rock altogether, and I saw a marvelous sight that I remembered well. In front of us, spread out on the ocean floor, was what looked like a city of lights, hundreds of them. Each light was shaped somewhat like an egg, except the side on the bottom was flat. They varied in size, the smallest being about one meter tall and half a meter in diameter at the wide point. The largest I estimated to be ten meters tall and five meters wide. They all looked quite sturdy and would have to be at this depth. Each egg was brightly lit. Hundreds of them covered the ocean bottom as far as the eye could see through the darkness of the vast ocean depths.

You will recall that the Watcher From the Sky (a.k.a., the Collection) had built this city of lights at the vast ocean depths for a purpose. Cabal knew only that the Watcher used the eggs in front of us to “manage things” throughout the galaxy. I knew the Collection used this base to help manage the space-time equilibrium. Each egg contained a different intelligent species from around the galaxy and would be dispatched to their planet of origin to intervene if a species wandered into realms of science that could conceivably disrupt the universe. (This turned out to be accurate, but I soon learned that it wasn’t the only purpose of the base. There was something far more fundamental happening here.)

The Collection’s one mistake was trusting the humans on Earth with some of its most treasured secrets. The Collection believed that the Community of Minds was so powerful and all-knowing—just as the Collection was—that it would never use time travel for self-serving purposes. However, the Collection failed to understand that most humans are inherently self-serving and will inevitably discard the greater good in favor of their personal well-being. That is why I was sent back to Earth. I was the most self-serving human of all time and had been given a chance to make things right that I had turned horribly wrong. I wondered how what I was doing now could help that cause, and what transpired in the next moment was perhaps the greatest surprise of my long and varied life.

Something was moving above the vast bed of lighted eggs a few hundred meters away. Something large. And it was becoming more prominent because it was approaching. When it was perhaps fifty meters away, it stopped. The lights from the eggs shone upon it but did not radiate high enough to reach the creature’s top. Well did I remember the dark, black mass that stretched perhaps three hundred meters across and rose past the edge of the light, which penetrated the dark water around one hundred meters high. The creature was floating above the eggs. I could not see any appendages. It was simply a massive, dark shape floating in front of us. Suddenly, a potent circular light appeared on its body, about ten meters in diameter.

Cabal stared directly into the blinding light, and a voice emerged in his head. But the voice was not speaking to Cabal, nor could he hear it. It was addressing me and me alone. And it was my voice.

Hello Charles. Welcome Home.

Epilogue

I was back in the lounge chair on the shore of Lake Windermere, sitting beside Noble Charles. Somehow, I’d been extracted from the Mind of Cabal and brought here.

“Wine,” said Noble Charles, handing me a glass of Pinot Noir—my favorite. He reached over and clinked his glass of Sauvignon Blanc against mine. “The Collection draws essences from many different realities,” he said. “That is why both you and I are here, Charles. We’re the same but different. Both of us are talented, but in different ways. This is my environment here. Your wonderful New Madagascar on the ocean world of Terrene is equally magnificent.”

“But that’s back on Earth,” I said. “My environment in the Community of Minds is back on Earth.”

“No, Charles, it’s in here.” He pointed to his head with the index finger of his free hand. “It all becomes possible because of the OIM. Once you’re in there, you can recreate the things you love the most, no matter where you are. And no matter where in the galaxy the OIM is, it is connected to all other OIM, no matter its location.”

“Am I in the OIM at the bottom of the Terrene ocean?” I asked.

“Yes. This is where the Collection resides. Where it has always resided, Charles. We perform our function from here.”

“What function?”

“In addition to our responsibility managing the fabric of space-time, we also deliver OIM to planets on the verge of dying, either from environmental catastrophe, war, or other adversity. OIM is a healing force throughout the galaxy, just as it was for Earth. Furthermore, we use OIM to recruit new minds for the Collection. Only when a mind is uploaded into OIM can it become a candidate for inclusion with us.”

“And the eggs are the delivery system?”

“Yes. We convey the formula for OIM by gifting it to clones of the inhabitants of troubled worlds and delivering them in the eggs. We’ve also used our delivery system for other purposes, as you know.”

“You delivered me to 2749 to save Annette and to destroy the Anomaly.”

“Yes.”

“What will happen to my friends?” I ask. “The ones up above, orbiting Terrene, and the others back in the OIM monolith on Earth?”

“The Land People deserve to reclaim their home. The OIM will help them do that.”

“But what about Annette, Aideen, and Dani? They’re up there in orbit too.”

As if on cue, three people came walking down the beach—three miraculous women, each beautiful in her own way. As they came closer, I could see they were all smiling joyfully. “They are with the Collection now,” said Noble Charles. “You made that possible when you brought them into the OIM monolith as uploaded minds.”

“And what about Liam and Orla?”

“They’re waiting for you in your environment, which is now here, in the OIM of the Collection.”

“But are they real, or just a figment of my imagination?”

Noble Charles smiled. “They’re real, Charles. The Collection has gone out of its way to make us happy.” Three more people strolled toward us from the other side of the beach. It was my father and mother and my brother William. “Our parents’ minds were uploaded before they died. And while you were hidden away for seventy years pursuing your time travel dreams, our brother also came into the Minds. The Collection has permitted me to bring them here to my environment. And they have also allowed you to bring all those you love here, too.”

“But why?” I asked. “Why do we deserve this?”

“Charles, Charles, Charles. All of your life, you’ve pontificated about how special you are. How brilliant, courageous, innovative, and loyal to your friends.”

“But..”

“I have news for you, Charles. It’s true. As far as the Collection is concerned, it’s true. And they feel the same way about our family and friends. That’s why we’re all here.”

“What do they want from us? Do they still want us to end time travel?”

“You’ve done that, Charles. By bringing all your time travel friends into the OIM and establishing a truce with Rembrandt. By the way, do you realize that Rembrandt is the first AI to make himself human? Not biologically, of course, but human in every other sense of the word. You helped him to get there during your mission. You showed him what it is truly like to be human. To sacrifice for the ones you love. To honor family and friends. He had all of the bad human qualities already, but you showed him the way to the good. And because of that, Rembrandt is with us, too. He’s brought the time travel formulas with him, and he’s made his own environment here. You’ll see him soon.”

“That’s all great,” I said as my family and friends surrounded me, coming close to me. Annette held my hand. Dani and Aideen both reached out and touched my shoulder. My mother, father, and brother stood in front of me with loving smiles on their faces. The warmth I felt at that moment surpassed anything I’d ever experienced. “But why? What does the Collection want from us now?”

“Nothing. We’ve done the work we were meant to do.”

“But what will we do now?”

“Now we rest.”

THE END
Turn the page to begin reading the first book of the Another Kind Saga, Child of Another Kind.

Child of Another Kind

Chapter 1

Cynthia

My daughter and I shared everything, but I never understood what she actually was until I died trying to protect her. Some labeled Maddie as “difficult” or “disruptive,” even “dangerous,” but our time together was precious to me, a gift from God cut short by the ignorance of others. Maddie helped me see the truth on more than one occasion, and she even saved my life once.

The whole thing was my fault; I should never have let that man into our home. I remember a morning rain was just ending, ushering in a beautiful spring day. The year was 1990. As we sat at the kitchen table together, Maddie in her booster seat beside me and the “bad man” (Maddie’s words, not mine) across from us, I could tell she was agitated.

Even as an infant, she’d cry when certain people held her yet coo and smile when others did the same. I suspected something was different about her even then, and as time went by I learned more, but not everything, until after my life on Earth ended. Even now, after all that’s happened, my only regret about adopting Maddie is not being with her anymore. The troubles we had weren’t so different from those of any parent and child, except in cases when her “abilities” took center stage, like they did on the morning of the bad man.

While sitting at the kitchen table, both Maddie and I could see out through the window above the sink, but Mr. Turner couldn’t, because his back was facing the window. A rainbow pierced the sky and curled into the green mountains, but nature’s tranquility outside seemed to have no effect on Maddie’s frame of mind inside. She was still as a statue, glaring at the man across the table with her pale blue, saucer-like eyes. Her delicate, blond hair was frozen in place, draped over her bony shoulders, and her mouth was closed but turned down. As I watched her narrow her eyes, a thought bloomed in my mind.

He’s a bad man, Mama, came the thought, somehow manifesting itself into the voice of my little Maddie.

I felt my face flash red and hoped Mr. Turner didn’t notice. And it wasn’t from embarrassment that I blushed, I’ll tell you that. It was because at that moment, I realized I’d made a mistake letting him into the house. I didn’t find out until some years later how Maddie could do things such as projecting her voice into people’s minds and knowing their memories, but the one thing I was certain of, on that glorious and frightening morning, was that my daughter was always right about people. All it took for her was a long look into their eyes, and she’d been doing plenty of that since the man had sat down. By now, she knew the truth of who he really was.

He’d come to the door of our modest home with pamphlets in hand, describing the mission of his church, asking if he could come in for a brief conversation. I was a Christian too, and even though my denomination wasn’t the same as the one this misguided soul had claimed to represent, I rarely passed up an opportunity to explore how one faith differs from another. It mattered little to me whether I was called Protestant, Catholic, or whatever. My view was that all Christians sought the same thing—eternal salvation—and I was continually perplexed that our differences in how to achieve this could lead, in some cases, to extreme prejudices against one another. I myself was not a party to such hate, because I knew in my heart that it ran counter to the most basic teachings of our Lord.

But now I was on high alert, wondering if my time to ascend to heaven had arrived. More importantly, though, I knew I wasn’t about to let that man harm Maddie before I went. She’d been given to me by the grace of God, and I believed my service to Him was inextricably linked to this special child. I would never want to harm another human being, even one as damaged as the man in front of me, but I needed to act quickly if I was to have any chance of protecting my daughter.

“Would you like some coffee, Mr. Turner?” I asked, rising up and moving around the kitchen table to the counter beside the sink. I glanced out the window at the stunning rainbow hanging in the clear blue sky, hovering over the Appalachians like a halo over the head of an angel, and I resolved to do what was necessary to ensure that my family could enjoy views like this for years to come. My back was now to his back, and I was worried he might turn his head and discover what I was up to.

“No thank you, Mrs. Pace,” he said, his voice calm. When he spoke, I noticed for the first time that, unlike Maddie and myself, he had no Southern accent. He must not have been from anywhere near our peaceful town of Asheville.

“I think I’ll have some,” I said, reaching for a cup with my right hand while quietly opening a drawer with my left. I slipped my hand into the drawer and withdrew the tiny canister, quickly pushing it into the pocket of my slacks, attempting to act casual while I poured the coffee. Then I returned to the other side of the table, set the cup down, and sat. Steam rose from the coffee, and I could smell the staleness of it—I’d made it hours ago—as I dropped my left hand below the surface of the table and slowly removed the pepper spray from my pocket, all the while engaging the man with my friendly smile and innocent eyes.

He was very plain-looking—average height and weight, neatly cropped brown hair, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and khaki pants—but when I dared to look directly into his eyes, it was hard to say what color they were. They were very dark, and they didn’t seem as moist and shiny as most people’s eyes, almost like they’d been painted in matte onto his pale face and weren’t really alive.

When I looked at Maddie, I saw her emotions boiling over. I reached over with my free hand to calm her, but she could no longer contain herself.

“You should go away!” she screamed at the man.

I squeezed Maddie’s arm, urging her to restrain herself.

“Now, now, honey. Mr. Turner is just here to spread the word of his church. I’m sorry, sir. She’s only four. Sometimes she doesn’t realize what she’s saying.” I widened my smile, trying to convince him not to harm us with an expression that I hoped would veil the urgent beating of my heart.

Maddie had explained to me, many times, that she didn’t understand why the thoughts flooded her mind every time she met a new person, but they came, and they were not always pleasant. I wondered what gruesome memories she’d dredged from this imposter’s mind, but I couldn’t ask her right then. I was watching him as closely as she was.

He sat there smiling, seeming not at all concerned about what she’d said. Slowly, he lowered his hand below the surface of the table, then brought it back up, holding a gun. Placing hand and gun calmly on the table, he addressed me.

“I’m not here to hurt you, Mrs. Pace. I just need whatever cash you have and a few of your most valuable possessions.”

“He’s lying!” screamed Maddie. “He wants to hurt us, Mama!”

I felt my eyes grow wide, sensing the moment of truth had arrived. A determination built inside me, slowing the beating of my heart. I became calm because I had to.

“Mr. Turner,” I pleaded. “You can’t really mean to hurt us.”

The man stood, leaving the gun lying on the table, then picked up the pouch he’d brought in with him. I admit I was thinking about trying to reach across the table and take the gun, but I suppose that was easy for him to figure out.

“I wouldn’t do that, Mrs. Pace,” he said, and even though he said it calmly, as my eyes moved up to his, I saw hatred in them.

Not taking his gaze off me, he unzipped the pouch and removed some duct tape.

“We’ll just need to quiet the little girl, and then we can get on with this,” he said. “You just stay where you are, Mrs. Pace.”

He extended his free arm to retrieve the gun, but before he reached it, I shot up from my seat and blasted him with the pepper spray. He let out a howl and recoiled, dropping the duct tape and bringing both hands to his eyes. I lunged across the table and snatched the gun, then pushed myself back up and pointed it at him, unsure what I would do if he tried to come at us.

“I’ve got the gun pointed at you right now, Mr. Turner!” I screamed. “Don’t move!”

But he did move, in the direction of the door to the living room. Mr. Turner stumbled through the opening and found his way to the front door, where he ran outside and nearly fell down the steps. As he hurtled away along the sidewalk in our quiet suburban neighborhood, frantically rubbing at his face, I stepped out onto the front porch and spotted a neighbor across the street, working in her yard.

“Get his license plate number, Margie!” I shouted. “He needs to be stopped!”

I ran back into the house as Mr. Turner’s car screeched away. By the time the 911 operator answered the phone, Margie had entered our home. I gave the make and model of the car to the operator, then handed the phone to Margie, who recited the license plate number. I gave them a description of the man as well, and explained that I had his gun and the other things he’d brought into our home. The operator told me a patrol car would be dispatched to our residence and an APB would be issued to pursue the man.

After I hung up, I went to my daughter, who was still sitting at the kitchen table.

“He was a bad man,” she said, frowning, nearly in tears. “He hasn’t been to church since he was a little boy. And he likes to hurt people! He does it all the time!”

I picked her up out of her booster seat and held her tightly, patting her back in an attempt to calm her.

“But how do you know that?” I asked, not at all doubting the truth of her knowledge, just continuously curious as to how a child of four could be both blessed and cursed with such abilities. She’d always been advanced—talking by the age of nine months, reading by the time she was three and a half—but these other things she did with her mind were astounding.

Maddie shook her head from side to side, speaking in her sweet, quiet Southern voice.

“I don’t know, Mama. I don’t know.”

Continue reading Child of Another Kind, Book 1 of the Another Kind Saga:
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Acknowledgments

My heartfelt thank you to my wife, Karen, who reads every word I write and has a more expansive vocabulary than dictionary.com. Her insights into character development, plot lines, and narrative are profoundly helpful to me. The quality of my work has improved tremendously since I met Karen, and I am so thankful we met against all odds.

About the Author

Steven Decker lives and writes in Arizona and Connecticut and travels worldwide, looking for new ideas and settings for his books. He enjoys spending time with Karen and Mr. Wilson, the beagle, walking in the countryside, and being with his family.