Instants Instance Wattys2016

After Nestor had recovered, they sat themselves down in the main quarters of the Pod. Alex had explored it extensively in the last five years, and had discovered that the complex was a vast warren of domes, some tiny, others bigger than football stadia. He had once asked Nestor how nobody had noticed the giant structure. His response had been that since Ukraine was now a bombed-out wasteland, there was nobody left to notice.

After a while, Nestor waved a hand, and a holographic timeline appeared. A glowing red dot marked the point when and where Alex and Nestor were currently.

"Now, what do you remember of what I told you about the history between where you were born and now?"

Alex concentrated. "Between then and 2046 there was some kind of power struggle between Russia, China, and the USA?"

"Exactly. As China grew in power, the waning empires of the USA and Russia came to believe that the world wasn't big enough for the three of them. Tensions rose, but nothing really happened until 2046, which is when..."

"The bomb went off." A miniaturised nuclear bomb had gone off in a crowded square in Kiev, killing 150,000 people.

"Yes. This sparked a war between all three states, which all used it as an excuse to accuse each other of breaching the nuclear agreement of 2035. All of them started to send soldiers into Ukraine, apparently to help, but they ended up fighting each other. Ukraine became a wasteland extremely quickly, and the eastern half of Europe followed suit soon after. The western half survived, though Greece went bankrupt again. The rest of the world was, surprisingly, unharmed, but the three states which started it all found themselves so poor and under populated from the war that they practically collapsed by 2052. In the power gap that followed, other countries began to flourish, and the world slowly rebuilt itself." Nestor had a faraway look on his face.

"But why do I need to know about this bit of history?" This apparently jolted Nestor from his reverie, as he became abruptly present again.

"Because this is the context in which I am going to send you. This," he gestured, and a holographic face replaced the timeline, "is your target."

Alex peered at the face curiously. The face was that of a man in his late twenties, with black hair and striking amber eyes. The expression on the pale face was that of grim determination.

"Max Lucas was born in 2020 to relatively affluent parents in London. They travelled a lot on business, and when Max was twenty-six, they invited him to stay with them in Kiev. He was flying out to meet with them when the bomb exploded. He lost both parents, and, stranded in an airport after the plane was forced to land, he was in prime position to watch the chaos unfold. He returned to England, and took over his father's business empire, becoming very successful over the next few years."

"So why is he an issue?" Alex asked.

"Three years later, he became intrigued by the large amounts of money he noticed changing hands between the British Government and a small firm in Australia. Investigating further, he discovered the reason; they had created the first Warper. Max immediately realised the potential of it, and managed to get his hands on it. Almost immediately, he went back to 2046, intending to stop the bomb and save his parents. And that, Alex, is where you come in."

"You want me to stop him saving his parents?" The idea seemed more than a little strange to Alex.

"Look, I know it sounds cruel, but there are many reasons why they need to die." Nestor ran a hand through his grey hair. "For example, if his father hadn't died, Max wouldn't have taken over the business empire of his father, and so he wouldn't have discovered the time machine to go back and save his parents... you get the idea, the whole thing would cause paradoxes galore. Then there's what it could mean for the fate of the planet, if it happened."

"What would happen?"

"Well, the war between the USA, Russia and China was surprisingly small for such powerful empires. The explosion in Kiev allowed the pressure that was building between them to be released early and, most likely, less explosively. Think what three rich nations with nuclear weapons could do to each other if they really tried! This is the alternative, and I don't like the look of it, do you?"

"But given how time travel works, shouldn't events conspire to stop him without me?" This referred to a lesson Nestor had once given, early on in Alex's training.

24/07/2165 10am.

"Why can't I change things with time travel?" Alex asked, after trying, and failing, to go back in time and shoot Nestor.

"That's because of the way time works." Nestor answered. Time travel isn't something completely outside the control of time." He had called up a hologram of a timeline.

"This timeline does not change; everything within it is subject to the flows of time, and every point, past, present, and future, everything has always happened the same way, because those descriptions of time are relative terms. Got all that?

Alex nodded.

Nestor drew a red line on the hologram, connecting two points on the line. "So if a time traveller went from one point to another in time, he will have always travelled back in time, so this line was already here on the diagram. That means that the time traveller's actions and all the consequences of those actions are already there, and so anything a time traveller, or indeed anyone, does is just working from the script, as it were."

"That's a bit depressing. I mean, that means that my entire future is already planned out, and there's nothing I can do to change it."

"But those decisions you have made and will make are still your choices." Nestor replied, his expression somewhat intense. "Even if all your decisions are already made, that's no reason to live your life any differently than before. It's only in terms of trying to change the relative past that it becomes important. Essentially, it stops paradoxes. If I went back in time to try and kill my own grandfather before my father was conceived, what would happen? We know that I exist, and so I can't have killed my grandfather, which reduces the probability of that happening to zero. Therefore, the chances of the next most likely thing to happen are the highest probability thing now, and so most likely that thing will happen instead of the paradox-causing death of my grandfather. So in this instance, the most probable thing is usually that I miss, or he survives the bullet. The same can be applied to other paradoxes."

"So, basically, what you're getting at is that nothing can be changed by time travel in any way aside from the ways it has always been," summarised Alex.

"Precisely," Nestor smirked. "Now, try again!"

Three years later

"Normally, I would say that events would stop him from causing a paradox," admitted Nestor. "But I have it on good authority that you go back to that time and place to stop him, and so you must go."

Alex sighed. "This is why you trained me, isn't it?"

Nestor nodded, his expression somewhat grim.

Standing now, Alex rolled his shoulders. "All right. What do I have to do?"