The Kremlin Phoenix (13 page)

Captain Wilkins looked puzzled.
As a pilot and astrophysicist, his mind went straight to the obvious means of
speaking to the future. “Their propulsion technology is too primitive to use
time dilation to send a message forward in time, if that’s what you have in
mind,”

Mariena shook her head. “No, I’m
not thinking of a relativistic solution. There might be a simpler, low tech
way.” She turned to Commander Zikky. “What can we upload from Montreal? What
data?”

“The Montreal Data Center is a
mirror of the Canadian and the US data exchanges. It has everything they had,”
Zikky replied. Unlike Canada, the United States and much of Eurasia, the Quebec
Republic had not been destroyed in the war, leaving its data repository intact
and still linked to the civilian satellite communications system. Secession and
neutrality had saved the republic’s major cities from direct attack, but not
from the frigid radiation storms that followed.

“Does it have the complete social
history of the 21
^st
century?” Mariena asked.

“Sure,” Zikky said, then his eyes
widened as he realized what she was thinking. “Yes! It does!” He grinned,
jumped to his feet and pointed at her emphatically. “And that’s why you would
have been the first woman to walk on Pluto – if they hadn’t screwed everything
up!”

She smiled. “I haven’t given up
that hope, yet.”

* * * *

Craig watched the television in his
hotel room with growing dismay. The pictures from a news helicopter showed a river
of cars snaking bumper-to-bumper along the motorway towards a column of smoke.
At the base of the column, a Bentley burned furiously in front of several
police cars parked across the road to keep onlookers at a safe distance. Along
the shoulder of the road, a fire engine raced towards the scene. “Among the
dead was prominent London banker, Albert Bridgeworth, and three as yet unnamed
former SAS troopers . . .”

Craig switched the TV off with a
heavy heart. He was sorry Bridgeworth had not got away, and now he knew the
assassin had followed him to London.

When he’d returned to his hotel room
after spending the day in London’s financial district, he remembered Valentina’s
warning that the British Police were tailing him. He avoided the main entrance
in case it was being watched, sneaking instead through the narrow back street
behind the hotel. He didn’t try to spot the detectives, for fear that even one
look would reveal his return. He simply slipped up the back stairs, then once
inside his room, retrieved the flash drive he’d hidden in the base of the curtain
lining.

Craig inserted the small device
into Nikki’s computer and checked his new Swiss account. It had exactly ten
Swiss Francs in it, just enough money to open an account. He then checked the
MLI master list and accessed an on-call cash investment account in Frankfurt
containing over twenty billion Euros. Experimentally, Craig tried transferring
the entire balance to his Swiss account.

A moment later, a short message
flashed onto the screen: TRANSACTION COMPLETE.

Craig’s hands started shaking as
he realized what he’d just done. “I’m in business!” he whispered, scarcely able
to believe how easy it had been.

For the next forty minutes, he
worked through each account on the master list, transferring the balances to
his numbered account. When he finished, he silently converted his account
balance from Swiss Francs to US Dollars.

“Holy shit!” he muttered to
himself, as the shock of having just completed the largest robbery in history hit
him. He stood up, breathing deeply and pacing, trying to calm his nerves. “Get
a grip, man!”

Craig returned to the computer
and studied the two pieces of paper he’d brought back from the Swiss Bank. One
contained his account number, the other his password, neither of which he had
any hope of memorizing. He logged into his Swiss bank and reset his account’s
password to a fourteen digit number he would remember; his and Nikki’s
birthdays combined. He then scribbled a simple note on a piece of hotel
stationary and slid it, and the account number into an envelope, which he
addressed to upstate New York. Satisfied, he sealed the envelope and slipped it
into his pocket to post later.

“We need to talk,” Mariena said.

Startled, Craig jumped backwards,
tumbling off his chair. “Don’t you ever knock?” He yelled as he climbed to his
feet.

“I know you’re there! We found
the date stamp of the transfers you made from MLI’s New York account.”

“How the hell did you do that, so
fast?” He stood up and approached her, now used to her eyes not following him. “And,
of course, you can’t see me!”

“You have a Twitter account. Use
it. Hashtag 90045884, to speak to me.”

“What?” Craig asked, walking back
to stand in her new line of sight. “You’re kidding! Twitter?” It made no sense.

“If you’re speaking, I can’t hear
you. Send a Twitter to that hashtag, and we’ll see it.”

We who?
Craig wondered as he stepped toward Mariena and tried touching her,
but his hand passed right through her arm as if she wasn’t there.

She turned to her left. “Anything?
. . .” She returned her gaze towards the window. “I know you don’t understand,
but if you want to communicate with me, you must use hashtag 90045884.” She
sighed. “I knew they were stupid in the 21
^st
century, but this is
ridiculous. Maybe he’s gone?”

Craig sat at the computer and
logged into his Twitter account, then tweeted,
#90045884 Who are you? And
what the hell is going on?

She glanced to her left and brightened.
“Finally! What did he say?” She listened as Zikky read out Craig’s message,
then said, “My name is Mariena. What is going on . . . is more difficult to
explain.”

Try me
, he tweeted, including the hashtag.
Start with why I have to
tweet you, when you’re standing right in front of me.

The moment he entered the tweet,
her head tilted slightly as she listened to Commander Zikky read out the message.
“I’m not in front of you. This is . . . a form of communication.”

Have you considered using the
phone?

“That’s not possible. I’m very
far away.”

What do you want?

“You have to transfer all of the
money to Valentina Petrovna, immediately.”

I will, after she does what I
ask.

“You have to do it now.”

No
.

“You owe me. I saved your life, twice:
once at the elevator; once at the restaurant.”

I escaped.

“More than that. You were dead
both times, before I helped you change the timeline.”

You’re not making any sense.

“I told you about the file, in
Goldstein’s office.”

The file wasn’t in the top
draw of Goldstein’s desk.

Mariena looked puzzled, then
shrugged. “He mustn’t have followed my instructions.”

You spoke to him?

“I visited him a few minutes
before his time of death. I couldn’t save him, but I asked him to help us. I
had no way of knowing if he complied with my request.”

How could you know his time of
death?

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

Try me!

“His date and time of death is in
the historical record.” She paused, then added, “As is yours.”

But I’m not dead.

“You are from my perspective. All
that happened is the exact moment of your death changed. When your time of
death changes, the timeline resets.”

Craig laughed incredulously. 
Wait
a minute. You’re in the future?

“Your future, yes.”

So you remember what I haven’t
done yet?

“More than that. I remember what
happened before the timeline reset, because the resets are so small, and they
don’t affect me directly. That’s how I know you’ve died twice already, and that
I saved you both times. It’s why you’re still alive in your current timeline.”

“Dying twice isn’t a small
thing!” Craig said aloud.

Mariena’s attention was
distracted by Zikky again. “He won’t understand,” she said, then arched her
brow skeptically before returning her attention to the window over Craig’s shoulder.
“What you’re seeing is a hologram. A message, not a person. I exist, but not in
your temporal reference frame.”

And here I was thinking you
were just a mirage.

“I’m as real as you. I’m sending
you this message at a very high speed, faster than the speed of light.”

Even I know nothing can go
faster than the speed of light.

“Except for a particle known as a
tachyon, which can’t go slower than the speed of light,” she corrected. “We
have the technology to send a stream of such particles backwards in time to you
in holographic form.”

That’s impossible.

“Not impossible, just
paradoxical. Have you ever heard of the causality paradox?”

I’m a Harvard lawyer, not a
science geek.

“It’s a side effect of Einstein’s
theory of relativity. If you send a message faster than the speed of light, it
travels backwards in time, so you can receive the message
before
you sent
it. So what’s the cause of the message? Sending it, or receiving it before you
sent it? That’s what this is. You’re receiving my message before I sent it,
because I’m in your future. In the linear timeline, I won’t be born for several
centuries.”

Craig stared thoughtfully at her,
wondering if this was a trick to get the money from him.
Prove it
.

“I already have. I saved your
life – twice.”

If you’re in the future, how
come you can’t see what I tweet, before I tweet it?

“Because we’re changing the
timeline as we speak. You never tweeted in my past, or your future – in the old
timeline. By talking to you, I’m a cause of your tweets, and by listening and
responding, you’re also a cause – in the new timelines. Every tweet you send is
an infinitesimally small reset. I guess you could call it simultaneous
causality, because we’re both causing the same reset, from different points in
the timeline. It requires a non-sequential view of time, a simultaneous view
stretching from creation to infinity.”

Craig blinked. “If you say so.”

So why do I have to tweet you?

“Social media in your age is your
historical record. Everything people say on it, is stored forever. When you tweet,
we see it appear in ancient data archives, after the timeline resets. Historically,
Goldstein handed the MLI master list over to the people he was working for, and
they used the money to create my past. I stopped him doing that, but it has
only delayed events. It hasn’t completely broken the timeline, only stressed
it. In my time, they still get the MLI funds.”

How?
Craig tweeted.
I’ve hidden it.

“Because they kill you and take
the money, and use it exactly as before. Your only hope is to give all of the
MLI funds to Valentina Petrovna immediately. That should trigger a complete
break in the timeline, rather than the tiny resets we’ve seen so far. It might even
be enough to save your life.”

I’ll give it all to her, soon.

“It doesn’t matter what you’re
planning in your own timeline, I know in mine that you don’t do it because you
are killed before you can. Your death certificate is a matter of historical
record for us.”

Craig exhaled slowly, trying to
get his head around the paradox.
So, I’m going to die soon?

“Yes.”

How soon?

“Very soon. I’m sorry. You must
do what I ask now.”

On impulse, Craig went to the
hotel door and slid the old style metal loop over a bolt in the wooden door
frame. The old door lacked a heavy dead bolt or electronic card reader, making Craig
acutely aware of how flimsy was the protection offered by the door. He returned
to his computer and tweeted again.

What’s so important about this
MLI money?

When Zikky read out the tweet, sadness
swept over Mariena’s face. “Earth in our time is very different to what it is
in yours, but it’s a result of yours. There’s a revolution coming in your time.
The MLI money is the key. It can change the direction of that revolution and the
balance of power in the world. It all hinges on Russia.”

But Russia is no threat to the
West.

“No, but China is. In your time,
people wondered what would happen when China’s economy equaled America’s, but
they didn’t consider what the world would be like when China’s economy was three
or four times larger than America’s. Later in your century, an Autocratic
Russia and a Communist China become allies. Russian technology combined with
massive Chinese economic power are too great for a debt-ridden America and an
impoverished Europe. In the centuries that follow, the balance of power shifts overwhelmingly
against the free nations, with a terrible result.”