12/31/15

There will not be Time
By David K Scholes


At first it was only barely perceptible. A sense that everything around me had sped up a little. I wondered if someone had spiked my drink with a very mild dose of the slowtime drug.

Then it seemed the slowtime dose might have been much stronger as everything around me was moving alarmingly fast in relation to my own body movements. My own thought processes. Then things around me really took off, so to speak, and I started to realise that I had a problem. A problem that had nothing at all to do with slowtime or any other drug. My own perception of the passage of time was quite out of kilter with the mayhem surrounding me. As if there were two lanes of traffic and I was very much in the slow lane. The very slow lane.

The progression became exponential. From people around me moving very fast to their becoming a blur, to whole days lasting apparent seconds for me, to months passing in the blink of my eye, then years and decades and even centuries passing before me. The blurred outline of a constantly changing futuristic world becoming continually ever more futuristic spread out before me.

Early in this process I realised I was moving up through the well of time. There could be no other explanation. A part of me was terrified by this while the scientist in me was fascinated by the phenomenon.

* * *

The first serious attempt to help me came from the Time Authority after 2500 AD. A time arrestor was thrown across my projected time path by Time Police. I suppose a mundane analogy might have been highway police throwing out road spikes in order to stop a vehicle travelling at very high speed. For just a moment it looked like they might be successful. My rate of progress up through time was slowing dramatically. The Time Authority had even worked out a crude way to pass me a message. A permanently located, ultra long lasting 4 Dimensional electronic communication board existing in a broad time band and set up at my last known location.

Further up time two more attempts were made by the Time Authority to bring my headlong advance to a halt. Each failed. Following this I saw a message from the Time Authority. It read “Good bye, good luck, and god speed.” It gave me the shivers.

After this I received no more messages from the Time Authority and was not aware of any further attempts to halt my passage through time. For a part of my journey I felt very, very alone.

At some point well back in my past I had shed my physical human corporeal body. Now I was just a consciousness without physical or even energy form hurtling through time. I knew that my consciousness had been vastly expanded during my journey. Though I don’t know how. Still I was able to see and understand much more now.

* * *

Somewhen I failed to notice the birth and death of suns as these were happening too quickly. Though I was still able to bear witness to the birth and death of galaxies. Then I noticed that no more new Galaxies were appearing. That the Universe, the Multiverse even, was running down.

At this moment my consciousness gave thought to something that I now knew was more than merely a theoretical concept. Time’s End – or to use the more technical term - the End Time horizon. Though what might become of me when I reached that ultimate up time barrier I could not begin to imagine.

As the Multiverse continued to run down I realised I was now beyond saving by any of the great powers save, just perhaps, Time’s Guardian himself. He had never intervened in my predicament and a part of my consciousness wondered why.

Then finally I began to slow and slow dramatically in my advance up through the well of time. Ahead I could actually see the End Time horizon and I knew that even Time’s Guardian himself could not help me now. I knew, intuitively, that here in this place, that noble entity, his job done, no longer existed.

I was now long, long past loneliness and fear and a part of my current consciousness was actually even elated to be here at this last moment of time.

Yet why me? I wondered why me? Just as my consciousness impacted the End Time horizon.

Consciousness then departed me just as my physical corporeal body had departed me earlier.

Yet some non-conscious part of me sensed that I was not completely done for. That I still existed in some form on some level.

Then in this place beyond time a level of altered consciousness, returned for me and I saw a concerned, not unsympathetic face looking at me.

“We are starting up again,” he said “that’s how it all works, but you know that now. A few others will follow but you are the first to arrive. Apart from several inanimate objects that were more of a test run.”

I knew now exactly what he meant.

Looking around I saw that God had made just a small start.

Soon a new Multiverse would be aborning.


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The author has published seven collections of speculative fiction short stories and two science fiction novellas (all on Amazon). He has been a regular contributor to the Antipodean SF and Beam Me Up Pod cast sci-fi sites and has also been published on a variety of other speculative fiction sites. He is currently working on a new science fiction novella.