David Staves [Staves - Time Trap

Time Trap

Climbing Echoes

Book One

Copyright 2019 David Staves Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

All rights reserved.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in review.

ISBN: 978-1-7333451-0-1

ISBN: 978-0-9600739-9-3 (ebook)

First paperback edition August 2019.

Cover Design by: David Staves Jr.

The cover art is a composite of images obtained from:

mimadeo / stock.adobe.com

Zhaludesign / stock.adobe.com

Dedication

For Krissy.

For Noah.

For Devin.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

House Mind

Exile

The Distant Future

The High Court

The recording was an oddity. Was the 911 call a hoax? Investigators of the time quickly set it aside. It made no sense in the context of the disaster. It was just another inconsequential mystery, attached to a tragic event, in a time when death and calamity were daily occurrences.

The authorities had more pressing business.

There was no manpower to chase dead-ends.

The survivor had no explanation for the existence of a 911 call. There was no Alice in the residence. The family, as far as they knew, didnt even know an Alice.

They filed it away. The file was mislabeled, hidden in plain sight for millennia.

Forgotten.

No one cared.

The world moved on.

Life moved on, as it must.

Centuries later, a solitary historian was tasked with searching for evidence against a tribe of scientists who sought to manipulate time. This investigator got a wild hunch to search records from ancient Earth. It was a shot in the dark. Most of Earths secrets had been found out long ago. They were scooped away and cataloged in the Archive.

The historian lived on an archival world at the heart of humanitys new interstellar empire, light years away from old Earth. The obscure file was a voice recording of a cybernetic entity placing a call to emergency personnel. This would not have been out of place except for the fact that the file was decades older than the documented existence of robotic sentience.

It wasnt critical evidence, just a part of what interstellar humanitys governing body, the High Court, needed to dispose of its enemy, a group of scientists known as Experimentalists.

The evidence implied treason.

The reckless actions that led to the Saturn incident, along with this evidence, might be actionable.

Archive Seven representatives approached the court.

The voice on the recording sounded human, but it wasn't. It was synthesized using a mechanism common in automation. Early designers of robotic sentience attached subsonic variations containing identifying data. The recording held such data.

The court agreed. Ominous Deception Actionable

Mankinds first encounter with a nonhuman sentient species happened fifty-two years before historys accepted timeline.

To those who cared about robots, it would have been nothing less than a revelation. This was evidence of the mysterious genesis of cybernetic life. Most people, including the court, did not care. They were just looking for another blade to twist.

It was proof of deception, that was its importance to the court. Either the Experimentalists kept the important event secret or violated the High Courts prohibition of time travel.

The defense argued that it was common to keep such breakthroughs secret, to protect from theft. It was not evidence of temporal tampering.

Any argument was incomprehensible to a court of this elevated epoch.

They knew what they knew, guilt was guilt. You can't fight city hall, as the saying goes.

The transcript of the audio file was as follows:

The line rang.

A sharp click marked the dispatchers acceptance of the call.

Dispatcher : 911. Whats your emergency?

Caller : Mother's asleep! They are all asleep!

Dispatcher : Please state the nature of your emergency maam.

Caller : I am being buried! Crushed!

Dispatcher : Is your address 320 Maple Avenue?

Caller : Correct. Please help them!

Dispatcher : What is your name?

Caller : My name is Alice.

Dispatcher : Where are you, Alice?

Caller : Im in the house

Dispatcher : Try to remain calm, help is on the way.

Caller : I will die. No time for me, it's too late. Save my family. Please.

The quality of the call was fading. There was a rumble of interference. The young voice became more desperate.

Dispatcher : Please stay on the line, maam.

Caller : Please! Quickly! Time...

The call disconnected.

The corresponding report was stored all these years in the same file as the recording created by local emergency personnel.

It told that the alarm rang at 3:41 a.m. at the firehouse.

Help arrived eleven minutes after the call commenced. It was too late.

A mudslide consumed a whole housing development. It was difficult to ascertain where the houses had been because of the devastation.

They consulted survey maps, with limited success.

On the archive world known as Seven, one of many storehouses of ancient knowledge, the librarians combed through files containing ancient data that should identify the home and its occupants. Everywhere they turned, the data was corrupted. It was no coincidence. Someone intentionally destroyed the information.

The conviction was swift. The verdict was absolute: exile. Anyone tied to the Guild of Experimentalists was given a year to leave. This meant the shut-down of humanitys prime technologies. The scientists that enabled humanitys conquest of the stars were banished.

Some representatives on the High Courts Council of Worlds were outraged. They saw it for what it was: not retribution for any crime, but a grab for power. They were too afraid to speak up. The few who opposed the ruling were convicted of conspiracy and exiled with the scientists.

It would mean the stop of human expansion. It would mean the end of liberation: freedom from oppression, from the grasping tendrils of corrupt governments.

Nonsense, the politicians said. Humanity would continue its rise morally, justly, without breaking the rules. Had they not suffered enough by the hands of those who would play God? But who would set the rules? The High Court promised to represent the will of all the people. They would establish a new order built of respect for the laws of the universe.

The Experimentalists quietly departed for parts unknown.

The decades and centuries to come would reveal the truth of the exile. It was the end of what would soon be known as the Golden Age. Slowly, undaunted by independent expansion, freedom, or choice, the corruption reclaimed power, more sinister than ever.

Those in power had no concern for truth. Truth was consigned to the archive. The audio file of that fateful night was once again put away deep in the library.

Forgotten.

No one cared.

The Galaxy moved on.

Life moved on as it must.

Chuck's Data