Hexad: The Factory (Time Travel Thriller) Book 1 (19 page)

He was in shock, unable to comprehend what it was that he was going to play a part in. Yet it made sense, in a perverse sort of way, and as Amanda had said when she'd told him that she wanted to change things even though it seemed like time travel did nothing but send you in a loop of repeating what had already been done: Fuck it, you had to try anyway.

So Dale was back in the future, the future from his correct timeline, yet way back in the past from when Cray had unleashed his ego onto a future world and played his part in emptying the streets.

He was no computer genius so visited Peter, who, not surprisingly, wasn't in the least surprised to see him.

"Don't ask," said Dale, holding up a hand when Peter opened the door.

"Wasn't going to. Come in."

Dale looked at his friend, noting the wry smile. "Ugh, don't tell me, I've already told you I'm going to turn up and what this is all about. Right?"

"Yep," said Peter. "You know, you seriously make my head hurt with all this stuff. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't believe a word of it."

"Spare me, I don't think I can take another conversation like this. So, you're up to speed, me or some version of me, whatever, has already told you all about this and you believe?"

"That's about the size of it my man. Hey, you want a beer?"

A beer, a cold beer, watch some TV, chill and maybe order a pizza. Bliss.

"No, better not. My head's already foggy enough."

"Suit yourself." Peter padded over to the fridge, still wearing boxers and his old dressing gown even though it was the middle of the day. He popped the cap and took a swig of beer. "So, you have it then?"

"What? Oh yeah, here." Dale handed over the Hexad. Peter held it up like a hard-won prize.

"Wow, crazy. Can I, you know, do a jump?"

"What? Christ no, please don't. Look, you get your turn, trust me, but for now can you just, you know, figure it out?"

Peter stared at it, turning it this way and that, tapping it on the coffee table like it was just a lump of metal.

"Careful, it's delicate."

"Don't worry," said Peter, taking another pull on his beer. "If what you told me happens does happen then everything goes according to plan."

"Guess you're right." Dale watched his friend drink his beer. He licked his lips. "Maybe I will have that beer after all."

After taking a long drink Dale asked, "So how long is this going to take?"

"Probably a few years, not that it makes any difference, right?"

"Suppose not. May as well have another beer then."

Dale drank his second beer, then jumped forward two years with a Hexad that had a happy 6 flashing on its dome. He knew he didn't need to check, but he assumed that he probably would have so felt he had no choice.

"We done?" Dale peered over Peter's shoulder, watching his fingers fly across the keyboard, amazed he could work on such a cluttered desk. Cups of partially drunk coffee littered the desk and floor; he was sure there was mold growing in some of them.

"Hellfire Dale, you scared the life out of me. A bit of a warning would be nice."

"Oh, sorry. I forgot to make the noise."

Peter stared at him curiously. "Whatever. Anyway, it's done. You wanna see?"

"No, I'm good. You sure it's right?"

"Yeah, it's right. Only thing I can't work out is how it actually, you know, works."

"Trust me on this dude, you really don't want to know. I wish more than anything in the world that I didn't."

Peter stared at Dale some more, then turned back to the monitor. "Okay then, if you're sure. You ready?"

"What? Now? Bit sudden."

"I've been stuck at this desk for over two years Dale, I wouldn't call that sudden." Peter rubbed a hand through his hair, as if noting for the first time that it had grown longer and was in desperate need of a wash. "Anyway, you want to do the honors?"

"Guess I should," mumbled Dale, leaning over Peter's shoulder, not even bothering to try to decipher what he saw on the screen.

"Three, two, one. Hit it."

Dale pressed enter.

No turning back now... or forward?

Absolute Power...

2817 Years Future

Dale found it hard to breathe, his ribcage was constricted and air was elusive. "Hey, hey, I'm back, it's okay." Amanda loosened her hug, burying her head in his shoulder. "I'm here, I'm here." He stroked her hair, her beautiful hair, and took in her scent. The scent of Amanda that wasn't Amanda — it was so easy to forget that this wasn't the woman he had spent so much of his life with, not quite anyway.

"Sorry, I thought you'd gone for good. I can't lose you again Dale, I've lost you so many times in the—"

"Hush, it's all right." Dale could feel himself adjusting, already the strange scent was becoming familiar, connected to the woman he loved so much, a duality that was at once both unsettling yet oddly comforting.

He loved Amanda, he really did, and was it so wrong that this woman, this beautiful, scared woman, had slightly different experiences to the Amanda he loved? He no longer had an easy answer, but he knew that if this was all that was left, however much he would worry for the other Amanda over the years, he would still love this woman holding him tight with as much energy as he had inside of him. He would do anything to protect her. Anything.

"I take it everything went without a hitch?" said Cray, shading his eyes and looking into the sky before putting his hat on. The day was really warming up, and the vast plaza was radiating heat intensely.

"It went fine, but now it seems like I have to jump back a little further to tell Peter I'm coming. This could go on forever."

"Worry about that later, the main thing is that you leaked the plans?"

Dale just nodded.

"Good. Let's get some shade, this weather is getting a bit much."

Could always take your jacket off.

Dale didn't speak aloud — although lessening, he was still getting that familiar tingle of nervousness when confronted with authority.

Get a grip Dale, you just jumped through time three times and you get all clammy because this man is, used to be, a policeman.

Dale shook his head, astonished at his own body. He took a firm grip on Amanda's hand and followed Cray toward the shade of buildings lost in a heat-haze circling the plaza like sentries watching over a space that no longer needed protecting.

~~~

Once out of the fierce sun — Dale was sure that they were in a foreign country, however far into the future they were he couldn't imagine temperatures so high in the UK — he began to appreciate just how bizarre and incredible the architecture truly was. There were hints from the plaza, but it wasn't until you got a little closer that you could truly appreciate just what fantastical complexity had gone into the construction. It was, and Dale knew it sounded stupid even thinking it, like he was far into the future where things were very different indeed.

Because I am.

Cray led them through a maze of Escher-esque architecture, dizzying and far beyond merely impressive. It was true futuristic stuff, CG movie graphics from the biggest and best studios, except this was real.

Finally, Cray led them into a vast room, clearly a place that saw a lot of activity. The style was a combination of comfort and opulence on a rather surprisingly tasteful level, complete with functional spaces and desks, uncomfortable looking chairs for minions to be kept in their place, and everything a person could need to run an empire.

"I kind of got a little carried away," said Cray rather meekly. "Power will do that to you. I couldn't stop myself, it was like a dream. I was like a god, well, a very rich man anyway." Cray walked over to a desk and ran a finger through the dust of years, maybe centuries.

"What exactly did you do?" asked Amanda, inspecting the quarters like she wouldn't mind stealing a few ideas, if not actual things.

"I told you, I sold a few Hexads. Got incredibly wealthy. I don't just mean rich, I mean most powerful man alive rich. It was a strange time."

"And how long did it last?" asked Dale.

Cray stared at him as if not quite understanding the question. "Oh, right, I haven't really explained everything have I? It's still going on I suppose, except there is nobody left. I jumped one day and when I came back I was alone. Nobody here, all gone. But I guess it was only a year or so, then, well, I tried to change it all, went back, killed myself, and—"

"About that," said Dale, something nagging at the back of his mind. "How could you kill yourself and still be here? That was you, so you should be dead. And how did you meet yourself anyway? I thought that was one of the major paradoxes? Meeting yourself, touching yourself."

"I never saw myself, although that's safe enough. I cut the brake cables on my crappy car and that was that."

Cray filled them in on lots of missing details, Dale only half listening, obsessing over how exactly to get out from the mess it seemed like not only he and Amanda had created, but involved a cast that was growing with each jump. First them, then Hector and The Factory, now Cray. Dale wondered how many other people were responsible for what had happened.

Cray had jumped forward initially to a world that was entirely strange, so different to their own world that he didn't know how to even begin to understand it at first, but he did, and he quickly came to realize that humanity had advanced extraordinarily well.

People were civilized, polite. Crime was basically unheard of as each and every person had as much as the next, and although there were mega-rich, and powerful positions, it was different to how it used to be: everybody was happy and the world ran as smoothly as an atomic clock.

Then he ruined it all.

His strangeness singled him out immediately: his dress was so archaic people hardly even understood the concepts behind the materials or production. He spoke in a way that many found hard to understand due to the use of old language long ago incorporated into others to form a globally recognized dialect that ultimately became the one language everyone used, and with his talk of the past, trying to convince people that he was somebody that didn't belong, he was a person of immense interest to the global community.

Within days of him appearing he was a viral sensation. Every person on the planet watched his every move, replayed his every word through the connected Web that was implanted directly into the brain at birth, a right of every citizen, the entire human history since digitization there for the taking, and much more besides. When people finally accepted what he said as the truth, which they did almost immediately as lying was to them little more than an abstract concept rather than something people actually practiced, he was already rich in material goods and land given by those wishing to gain his favor and spend some time with him.

For an ordinary detective inspector it was too much. The man once obsessed with his job, and doing things by the book, got lost in a strange world and was replaced with somebody that saw a new life before him where the possibilities were endless. So he gathered a crowd in the plaza of the capital and demonstrated the Hexad.

After that it was downhill rather rapidly.

"That's enough of my sorry tale anyway. I got powerful, things began to get strange, and after one jump I came back and they were gone. Then I pieced together what had happened, did the you-know-what, and here we are. The only ones that can fix it."

"We need to go back," said Amanda. "To The Factory in the mountains, to... to that room, to stop Hector."

"Yes, we need to do that."

"Wait. I thought we were going to go to when the Hexads were first made, stop things there, stop them ever being made in the first place?"

Amanda and Cray both stared at Dale like he was a total idiot. "I thought you got it Dale?"

"What? What am I missing here?"

"That is when it all happens, that's when they are first produced. Hector gets the plans, he makes a few, then he steps it up and makes millions. He's the one we have to stop."

"No, wait, that can't be it. I thought people in the future made them?"

"Well, yes, in our future, if we were back in our proper present, then that is the future. But in this future, where and when we are now, all the Hexads came from me, from the ones I stole, the ones you dug up."

"So who put them there?" said Dale, feeling smug.

"I did," said Cray.

"No, no, no. This can't be happening. That's an impossible loop. Me and Amanda dug them up, dug them up and reported the trunk and you stole them. Now you are saying that it was you that buried them in the first place? This isn't possible."

"I know, tell me about it," said Cray. "But I knew at once what I had to do, so I did it, not long ago in fact. I went back and put them there, so that all of this would happen as it was supposed to. Now we are on track, we just have to stop Hector, then everything will be back to normal."

"What about the plans? On the Web?"

"What about them? If Hector can never build Hexads then the plans are just the ravings of a madman Online, lost in a sea of millions of other useless pages, buried under the daily onslaught. It means nothing."

"Okay, whatever. I can't even think about this any longer. The Hexads were invented by nobody then? It was just us all along, back and forth in time, playing games and catch-up with ourselves?"

"That about sums it up, yes."

"I need a lie down."

"Help yourself," said Cray, pointing to a very bizarre looking recliner. "It's very comfortable."

Dale had a lie down.

Convoluted Plans

2817 Years Future

There were so many holes in the plan that Dale didn't know where to start. But maybe that was the point: nothing made sense and nothing seemed like it could be changed, so why worry about it? With life now impossibly complicated and him the last to realize that there were no future uber-technical wizards that created the Hexad, then maybe stopping Hector was the only plan that had any chance of succeeding. Besides, what else was he going to do, lock himself in a dark room and rock back and forth on his haunches? It did sound appealing.