Chronica
Authors: Paul Levinson
Chronica
Also by Paul Levinson
FICTION
Borrowed Tides (2001)
The Plot to Save Socrates (2006, eBook 2012)
Unburning Alexandria (2013, paper and eBook)
Dr. Phil D'Amato series
The Silk Code (1999, eBook 2012)
The Consciousness Plague (2002, eBook 2013)
The Pixel Eye (2003, eBook 2014)
NON-FICTION
Mind at Large: Knowing in the Technological Age (1988)
Electronic Chronicles (1992)
Learning Cyberspace (1995)
The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution (1997)
Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium (1999)
Realspace: The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age, On and Off Planet (2003)
Cellphone: The Story of the World's Most Mobile Medium, and How It Has Transformed Everything (2004)
New New Media (2009, 2012)
Chronica
Paul Levinson
JoSara MeDia
Chronica
Copyright © 2014 by Paul Levinson
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
1st ebook edition published December 2014 by JoSara MeDia
An earlier, very different version of Chapter 2 was published as "Advantage, Bellarmine" in Analog Magazine, January 1998
.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-56178-031-0
Cover illustration by Joel Iskowitz
To the original four.
CONTENTS
Also published by JoSara MeDia
Previously in
The Plot to Save Socrates
Sierra Waters, a graduate student in 2042 New York City, is given an unusual manuscript by her mentor Thomas O'Leary, who soon after disappears. The manuscript is a previously unknown dialogue in which Socrates receives a visitor after Crito on the eve of Socrates's death - a man who claims to be from the future and offers Socrates a chance to escape the hemlock that won't change history: a clone of Socrates will be given the hemlock, so Socrates can escape to the future.
Sierra is not sure what to think of this manuscript, but she and her boyfriend Max go off to London in search of Thomas. There they discover a room with chairs which can travel through time, as explained to them by William Henry Appleton, the great 19th-century American publisher, who has used such a chair to travel to the future. Sierra and Max travel to Londinium 150 AD, where Sierra to her horror sees Max attacked and killed by Roman legionaries.
She goes to Alexandria, where she meets Heron, the enigmatic ancient inventor, and his student Jonah. Sierra is now attempting to save Socrates - in the way indicated in the manuscript - as much as she is looking for Thomas, and her travels take her to Phrygia (later Asia Minor) in 404 BC, and the bed of Alcibiades, Socrates's beloved student. Alcibiades, who in our history is killed by Spartan mercenaries when in bed with a concubine, is saved from this fate when Heron arrives with legionaries minutes before the mercenaries arrive, and awakens Alcibiades and Sierra. In the ensuing escape and aftermath, Sierra and Alcibiades fall in love, and Heron enlists them in the plot to save Socrates which he is now traveling through time to set in motion. But Sierra and Alcibiades gradually come to realize that Heron - or some future version of himself - is trying to kill them.
In the end, Sierra not Heron rescues Socrates and takes him to 2042, where Socrates meets with Thomas, who has reappeared and is thrilled to see the philosopher. But Alcibiades is injured in the rescue and he and Sierra are separated. Desperate to find him, Sierra goes to Alexandria, 410 AD, where she has reason to think Alcibiades may have gone, and where she takes on the identity of Hypatia, who in our history was killed by fanatics in 415 AD.
Previously in
Unburning Alexandria
Sierra Waters is in the ancient city of Alexandria, hoping that Alcibiades her lover will know to look for her there. But as the months go by, Sierra's personal motive is replaced by a reason much grander and more profound: do what she can to save the ancient Library of Alexandria from burning. History discloses that the Library was burned at least three times, with the flames taking as many as 750,000 scrolls, many of them one-of-a-kind works.
To implement her plans in Alexandria, Sierra has traveled to the far future, and had her face remade to look like Hypatia, who died from a mysterious illness. Sierra as Hypatia increases her power in the ancient Library, and attracts a variety of fictional and historical characters to her cause. But there's danger in having that world think Sierra is Hypatia: in our history, Hypatia will soon die a horrible death, ripped apart by a mob of early Christian fanatics.
Sierra soon realizes that, even with all of her friends and her prowess, stopping the burnings of the Library will be beyond her power. She decides, instead, to save whatever few scrolls she and her friends can rescue from the Library. Her intent is to bring them to the future, where they could be digitally copied and put beyond the reach of any flames.
Heron, indeed, is desirous of seeing the Library burn, first because he is concerned about how the saving of any texts could alter history, but also for a deeper, more personal reason. In his youth, Heron wrote
Chronica
, a detailed explanation of how to construct a time travel device, and how to use it to manipulate history. He does not want
Chronica
to fall into anyone's hands – least of all, Sierra's – and he deploys all of his power to making sure the Library burns, and with it, his
Chronica
.
Sierra and her colleagues begin to get help from an unexpected source: androids from the future, who were likely constructed by an older version of Sierra herself, but who also seem to be doing Heron's bidding at times. These androids have a way of instituting "re-sets," in which pinpoint events in history, such as deaths, can be reversed. One of Sierra's friends benefits from a re-set, and it seems that Max, whom Sierra saw killed on the shore of the Thames in
The Plot to Save Socrates
, may have had his death re-set to life, too.
Indeed, Max proves to be Sierra's most reliable ally, and she needs all the help she can get, since Heron also has a spy deep in Sierra's cadre of supporters. Sierra and her group are almost completely foiled in their attempt to rescue scrolls from the Library, but she and Max manage to save a few books – including
Chronica
. They deliver the scrolls to William Henry Appleton, who promises to do what he can to get them published.
But Sierra, still looking like Hypatia, yearns to return to Alexandria, still hoping that Alcibiades might somehow still show up, after all. On the day in history that Hypatia is to be murdered, she is attacked by the Christian mob, who hack her to pieces.
Heron, who directed the mob to Hypatia, thinks he has at last disposed of his enemy, Sierra. But all he has killed is an android, who has taken on Sierra's appearance as Hypatia. In New York City in the 1890s, Sierra – now looking like herself – walks down Fifth Avenue with Max, and they consider their next move.
Chapter 1
[New York City, 2062 AD]
Sierra and Max didn't have to wait too long to learn the change in the future their time in the past had wrought. They arrived in New York City on November 20, 2062 – the 120
th
anniversary of Joe Biden's birth. It was not yet quite a national holiday, but it was noted in the press on every screen, where it was predicted that Joe Biden's birthday would indeed soon be a national holiday. He had been the 44
th
President of the United States, serving two consecutive terms, from 2008 through 2016. The nation loved him for many reasons, most importantly because he had revolutionized life in the U.S. with the 200 mile-per-hour fast-rail system he had begun to install across America in his second term.
Sierra and Max were stunned. "What happened to Obama?" they asked each other at the same time.
The Web gave them their answer a moment later. Obama was the 46
th
President of the United States, serving just one term from 2020-2024.
How this might have happened – how what they had done in the past might have caused this astonishing change – took a little time to discover. Max hit upon it late in the evening of their return to 2062 AD. "Ah, here it is." Max highlighted a few lines in the text on his screen and passed the phone to Sierra. The two thought of it as a phone, even though it had little resemblance to the phones they grew up with and had last seen and used in 2042. "It says here in Biden's autobiography that he was very taken by a book he read in parochial school as a kid – a treatise by Aristotle on good government and the dispensing of justice."