Burning Woman and the Ghost Lance

Daily Journal of Matla Tlatlasihuatl. November 5, 2016 CY.

It is Victory Day, marking twenty years since the end of the war between the Hundred Nations and the Sacred Empire of the Obsidian Jaguar. During the last two decades the relations between those ancient enemies have normalized and become stable, exceeding everyone’s expectations, including my own. As a noble-born Mexican, living among the highly varied cultures, languages, and religions of the Hundred Nations has been an experience both enlightening and confusing. At least I am no longer seen as an enemy by my neighbors, but merely an exotic in a nation that embraces diversity.

Still, even after so much time, it feels strange to take part in the celebration of my former nation’s defeat. Is it guilt, I wonder? The fundamentalist government that ruled the SEOJ was deposed, and the war crimes trials after their surrender resulted in mass executions – a purge of all the murderers and fanatics that tried to return us to the worst times in our bloodthirsty history. No, I do not feel guilt for taking part in their downfall. That was justice.

The role I played in that war was not insignificant, and I earned my scars both physical and emotional. I had defected on moralistic grounds, and the Hundred Nations wasted no time in taking advantage of my skills. I am an inventor, and I made powerful weapons that were used against my own people. Perhaps I feel guilt from that, but then I know my contributions made the war shorter by months, if not years. How many lives did I save? Doesn’t that wash some of the blood from my hands? Even a little?

Just my typical awkwardness, I suppose. I’m not someone who is comfortable with social events. Intellectually, of course, I know that holidays that celebrate peace are to be enjoyed for what they are, even as we mourn the dead that made that peace possible.

This is also the birthday of my dearest love and best friend, Da’anammi, who passed away in her sleep just one month ago. She was my strength and my conscience for more than twenty years of blissful matrimony, and I am lost here without her. I will leave a white rose on her grave this afternoon.

And then, I will carry on, as she would have wished. I’m just not sure how.

Daily Journal of Matla Tlatlasihuatl. November 6, 2016 CY.

I met a strange woman today. I’m still trying to make sense of our conversation, which has left me thoughtful and brooding, unable to sleep. This is what I remember of it, more or less.

I was tinkering around in the lab, once more re-rebuilding a circuit board for the frequency modulator as part of… Well, an ongoing project that is still in the “thought experiment” stage. That’s all I can say at this time.

There was a low-frequency hum that gradually leaked into my awareness, until I was forced to set down my work and actively search for the source of it. The hum grew louder and rose in pitch as I walked hesitantly from one end of the old airship hanger to the other.

There, seemingly at the peak of the hum’s volume, a bright dot of bluish light appeared in the air in front of me. It quickly expanded, and I was forced to take a step back. The light formed a disk, suspended vertically just a few inches above the concrete floor with the uppermost point of the circle just a bit higher than the top of my head. The hum had taken on an oscillating quality, varying in pitch and frequency in a complex, but symmetrical, wave-form.

I reached out my hand, my curiosity slowly overcoming my fear to touch the floating disk of blue light. I can only guess how the average person would react to such a sight, but I have never been afraid of the unknown, only annoyed that I did not yet know it. Was it solid to the touch, I wondered? Would it burn my hand, though I could not feel any heat from it yet? Where did it come from? I had a billion questions.

Still reaching, but not yet touching the disk, it seemed to suddenly flip on its axis. I stepped back again, but awkwardly. My ankle twisted and down I went on the cold concrete floor.

As an older woman of the academic profession, indolent at best and practically sessile when my mind is focused on a problem of science, the act of getting up off the floor was a task of great logistical consideration for me. Thus, I was still in the throes of planning for this monumental endeavor when I saw the disk flip again, this time forming a blazing hoop of blue light surrounding a dark space. From my position on the floor it was hard to make out any details, but I seemed to be looking up at an overcast sky. The vaguest impressions of clouds at night, like a watercolor in shades of black.

Through this portal stepped a figure covered from head to foot in unfamiliar technology. Shiny fabric that was smooth as polished metal, yet flexible enough to bend as easily as a second skin. The helmet, and other hard bits scattered around the suit, though no buckles or buttons could be seen, seemed to be made of glass or ceramic, but not like those things at all. The overall shape was clearly female humanoid, just a bit overweight like myself.

The figure stood, looking down at me, then turned as though scanning the room before coming back to face in my direction once more. She bent down and extended her hand. I took it and allowed myself to be pulled to my feet. My ankle screamed, but did not buckle under my weight. We seemed to be the same height, and I could see my reflection in the dark faceplate of her helmet.

Still holding my hand, she reached up with her other hand to touch the side of her helmet, which was same dark shade of metallic gray as the rest of her suit. The faceplate faded and became transparent, though it still seemed that I was seeing my own reflection.

It was me, though, not a reflection. A touch older, perhaps? Did I really look that old now?

“Yes,” she said, her voice slightly buzzed from the technology she was using to speak through her helmet. “I am you. I am from the future. Or, rather, I am from a future.”

I had to grab a chair and sit down at that point. Of all the questions I needed to ask at that moment, and there were too many for one lifetime, the one I started with was of no surprise to anyone that knows me: “When do I invent time travel?”

“You don’t,” she said, looking unbearably sad at that revelation. “Neither did I. It was given to me in the same way I am now giving it to you, by an avatar of myself, ourselves, from yet another time line. I don’t think even she knew which of us came up with it first.”

“But…,” I started, then started again, then changed my mind, but she interrupted before I could form a new question.

“There is no time, and I’m not being ironic,” she said. “Take this, Seniora. You will know what to do with it.” She handed me a thick manuscript, well over a hundred pages.

The secret of time travel in my hands! I was overcome with fascination. Voiceless, yet open-mouthed as I paged through the diagrams and formulae. The text was in Spanish, with which I had a passing familiarity. However, I would need to brush up on it before doing a proper translation.

“There is one caveat,” she said. “You must pay attention. ¿Convenido? Eso está bien. You must never, under even the most dread circumstances, go back in time before the common year 1493. Visit the future, if you dare, or the past along your own timeline. Take care not to erase yourself. But, never before 1493. Remember that year. 1493. ¿Lo tengo?”

“Why?” I tried to ask, but still voiceless. She smiled, but seemed to understand.

“Ah. I suppose that, if I don’t tell you, your curiosity will lead you to your own destruction,” she said, looking as though she wanted to cry, but had no more tears left.

“So, this is what happened in my timeline: There was a European expedition, led by an Italian navigator named Colombo, sometimes Latinized in English history books to Columbus, who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to find Cuba and the Caribbean Archipelago, then returned to deliver news of this discovery to Europe. More explorers followed, bringing disease and death to millions, plundering what was to them a new world in order to enrich their kings and popes. That wealth enabled them to turn back the invading forces of the Ottoman Empire, and then eventually to dominate the rest of the world, including the Western Hemisphere which you are familiar with.

“Your people, I should say our people, the Mexica, along with every other tribe on the Western continents, including the Caribs, the Onondagas, the Aniyunwiya, and thousands of others, were decimated by the Europeans and their diseases, against which we had no immunity.”

“How horrible…” I said, not sure how much of this I could believe. I hoped it was a dream, and that I woke from it soon.

“Tell me, Seniora,” she asked, “how were you raised?”

“I was the eldest daughter of a Mexican nobleman and his wife, and raised in the Sacred Empire of the Obsidian Jaguar,” I said quickly. A story I told often to the curious in the Hundred Nations. “I had access to the finest education available, and could do as I pleased with it.”

A sad smile briefly appeared on her face.

“My life was very different from yours,” she said. “I was born into poverty in Mexico City, and my options were very limited as a female with an indigenous background. I did well in school, though, and excelled in mathematics and physics. I managed to secure a special needs grant to the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, and continued there until I earned my advanced degree in Electrical Engineering. I worked for the Mexican government for many years, mostly doing research into microwave communications and wireless technology. Then, I was visited as I am now visiting you, and my life changed. Everything changed.”

“Time travel? Where did you go?”

“Of course, the first thing I did, once I had built the device, was to travel into the future.”

“Of course,” I said, nodding. To journey into that great unknown country – the future. How could she not?

“I learned so much, and I brought back some technologies that I thought would be beneficial.” She shook her head within her helmet. “¡Ay de mí! I was naïve. Inventions that were meant to help people were turned into weapons of war. I became rich beyond my dreams, but the world was devastated. What use is money in an apocalypse?”

“What did you do?”

“I took a weapon, a portable heat ray that I had taken from the future, and I went back in time and I killed the bastard, Columbus.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Call it an experiment in world building. Nothing I did seemed to change the destruction of my world, my timeline was too corrupted. I had learned that, if I went back far enough, and changed a significant event in the timeline, a new branch was created. Like resetting a computer by turning it off then on again.”

“A what?”

“Lo lamento, Seniora. Spoilers, as they say.” She smiled for just a moment, then returned to the sorrowful look that seemed to be her natural state.

“Granted, it was a desperate act. I had tried other changes. I killed Hitler, for example. ¡Qué cabrón! A dictator that killed millions of people in my timeline. Shot him dead while he was cowering in the trenches during World War One, then burned the body to make sure. That changed almost nothing. Apparently, all the other elements were still there, and someone else stepped up to take his place. Same results with a different person. History is more than just one man or woman. Except for this one exceptional event.”

“Columbus? What made him different?”

“First of all, he was wrong,” she said quickly. “He was kind of a crackpot, really. Convinced that he knew a shortcut to the orient without going around Africa or across Asia by land. He thought he had the key to vast wealth and power, which was what he really wanted. It was the get-rich-quick scheme to end all others. Nobody else was insane enough to make the same mistake. Spain was bankrupt from the war that united it. After expelling the Jews and Moors, Ferdinand and Isabella had very few resources to fund their new joint kingdom. They had bet the bank on Columbus, and were not prepared to send another expedition into the unknown if he failed.

“Also, the Turks were knocking at the gates of Christendom, and nobody had the time or cash to waste on longshot gambles like trying to cross the Atlantic. Everyone knew the world was round, and they also knew how far it was to China. They had the necessary mathematics and knowledge of the Earth enough to know it was a stupendously long way to travel across trackless seas. They didn’t know there was land between Europe and Asia going west. How could they? That was the news Columbus would bring back. The news of a whole New World to explore and exploit.

“He was the key. Killing him and his crew, and destroying his ships, changed all of the events that came after. There was no explorer foolish enough to try again when he failed to return.”

I thought for a moment to consider her story. I decided this was not a dream, and I had no choice but to believe her. She was me, even if she had lived a different life.

“I never heard of this Columbus fellow,” I said, “but I do know my own history. The Ottomans, under Suleiman the Magnificent, crushed Vienna and marched his Janissary troops and Sipahi cavalry though the rest of Europe with ease. Only the British Isles and Scandinavian countries remained independent, as they are to this day. The Turks control everything else from Portugal to Mongolia. Any rebellions or in-fighting anywhere in that realm are put down swiftly, so that the infamously contentious peoples of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East have been forced to live in peace for around 500 years.”

I could see the woman nod inside her helmet. She was me, there was no doubt. A different me from a different universe. Twins, of a sort.

“And your New World?” she asked. “How is it doing?”

“We made contact with the Irish centuries ago,” I replied. “It was just after the discovery of vaccination, I think around 1742 in the Common Year, and smallpox was nearly eradicated shortly thereafter. We had some outbreaks, but we managed to survive. The Turks were stretched too thin to be interested in attacking us across the ocean. We made trade with them and Britain, as well as China and India, and everyone prospered. We recently even adopted the European calendar. There was a brutal war between the SEOJ and the Hundred Nations, but that ended twenty years ago. We call our nation Mexico, now. An enlightened, progressive republic, though I am still not welcome there. The world is at peace, at least for the moment.”

“How far have you gotten with technology?” she asked. I saw that look in the edges of her eyes, having seen it so often in the mirror. That part of me that loves to tinker, to take things apart just to see how they work. “Have you discovered nuclear fission? Automobiles? Digital electronics? Aircraft that fly faster than sound?”

“Well,” I began, confused and curious to know about the things she named, but afraid to ask about, “some amazing discoveries have come out of the Ottoman Empire lately, including radio communications with solid state components. Heavier-than-air travel is making good progress, with air mail routes crossing the Atlantic every day. Dirigibles are still considered more practical for passenger flight, however. Refrigeration has revolutionized food distribution in the last ten years, and just recently I visited something called a “super-market”. Trains now have internal combustion or electric power or a hybrid of both, rather than steam. I remember reading something in a physics journal about fissionable nuclei, but that’s still highly hypothetical, as far as I know.”

Out of habit, I hesitated. Keeping secrets for so long, it is hard to know when to stop.

“Currently,” I finally said, “I am working on a way to send images by electronic signals. Moving pictures, in real time. Projected into a cathode ray tube of some kind. I’ve got my assistant working on that part. I’m mostly concerned with the camera.”

She smiled. It was a wistful smile without joy. “I almost wish I could help you with that, Seniora. It sounds like a fun project. But, I can’t stay. I may have already been here too long. My actions have erased my existence on my own timeline, which is probably for the best from their perspective. I have managed to survive in this isolation suit, living between universes outside the time-stream. But, it means I can’t stay in one timeline for very long, and even that means stretching the continuum dangerously. You are not likely to see me again.”

She turned away.

“Remember, Seniora,” she said over her shiny metal shoulder. “Never earlier than 1493. You don’t want to undo what I did to Columbus. ¡Qué cabrón!”

She stepped through the circle of blue light, which promptly shrank to a small blue dot once again. Then it was gone.

Daily Journal of Matla Tlatlasihuatl. November 11, 2016 CY.

I burned the manuscript.

I kept thinking about what my time-twin said about her attempts to change her own timeline, and I realized that I would fall into the same trap. The temptation to change events was almost overpowering. All of time at my fingertips! The incredible knowledge to be gained, now lost to me.

It just seemed like cheating, using time travel to answer all of my questions. Questions I should be answering myself, in my own good time. Doing my own work without using some Deus ex Machina to bring me the secrets of the universe on a big blue platter.

Perhaps I could have saved Amina and the others from the island. Perhaps I could see my lovely Da’anammi one more time. But, that would have been selfish. The lives of millions of others, unknown to me, would be in jeopardy.

I’m sure my time-twin had the best of intentions, of course. I understand. How could I not? I might have done the same if she had not warned me of the danger. I have enough blood on my hands, I think.

Da’anammi might have been able to talk me into keeping the manuscript, but maybe not. She is not here to ask, and I’ve never been very good at coming up with rational excuses for my own decisions. I just know what is right.

At least now I can get some sleep for the first time in five days. It’s about time.