The chronometer superimposed over the edge of Floyd Garcia's vision displayed the year 28, A.D. This was the farthest projection yet, by nearly a thousand years, and at this temporal distance the computers were having trouble keeping up with the uncertainty calculations. This made the scene quite nauseating as Floyd adjusted the Virtual reality goggles and wiped the sweat from the place where the cushioned rim was held firmly against his cheeks by the tight elastic headband. Maybe the queasiness also had something to do with anticipation. In any case he was glad he had logged over a thousand hours on the terminal, the jerkiness of the nearer destinations in time acting as a sort physical training for the rigors of further projection.
At this temporal distance the probability calculations involved with past projection were taxing even the giant hive of supercomputers which man once thought would have help to map out the cosmos, projection forward in distance rather than backwards in time. Arguably the first project, a NASA brainchild, had experienced a lot more enthusiasm in scientific circles. The new project, being independently run by a small team of four up and coming visionaries and funded by the University of San Juan, received a more cynical welcome. True, if mankind could use mathematical computer algorithms to construct probable models of past events, which would glean the truth from the uncertainties of the process of history, the implications would be staggering. But legitimate scientists weren't biting.
Most of them claimed it was because the idea of extrapolating past events with probability mathematics didn' t offer any accuracy, or hope of verification. Floyd had conceded this point from the start. The simulation wouldn' t provide exact details, Floyd had maintained, but was convinced that for major events of global significance with a variety of well-documented viewpoints to test the projection against, the simulation would be good enough.
Floyd reached out with his meat arms and legs to make sure he was still well balanced and firmly strapped into his chair. The scene that now presented itself in front of the public grounds in Jerusalem was giving him the combination of motion sickness and vertigo that he had jokingly coined to be "past shock." Of course, it had nothing to do with the past really but rather the way in which the simulation was forced to operate. At this distance in time the probability calculations were huge, and the sheer number of people present that had to be tracked, simulated and verified was putting a huge load on the Plutarch computer. Each of the figures before him in the public square moved normally for a few seconds, and then Plutarch had to pause to reconfigure and recalculate. At the instant that one of these two second down times began, it was common to see any given person, who was, say, walking, take a step in about four different directions, and make a dozen or so posture adjustments or body gestures, effectively splitting it 48 or so separate and overlapping entities. During the down time, the image froze, with the effect making the people look a lot like cartoon cats and dogs fighting, a smudge of motion blurred flesh with random appendages emerging from the confusion. When the new calculations were finished, all but one of these quantum probabilities would disappear, and that which belonged to the model which best fit documented historical consequence and eyewitness accounts, taking into account personal bias and credibility, would be suddenly be alone again of its other incarnations, and continue to function for the next few seconds. After adjusting to this sort of viewing on his previous historical voyeurisms, it was pretty easy for Floyd to follow a single person through this process, but it turned a large group like the waiting crowd in front of him into an amorphous mass of dizzying flesh.
The waiting was long and sickening, but it would take much longer to reconfigure and recalibrate the program to place him an hour or so in the future than it would to just sit and be patient, and wait. Floyd leaned tilted his chair back, and tried his best to let his attention wander from the staccato nightmare that was passing in front of eyes. He thought about taking the headset off and getting himself a cup of coffee and an aspiring, but he did not want to miss anything important. Being a Saturday morning, none of the other team members around to do that for him. Todd Wilson, his physicist, was at a national conference on nuclear ethics at in Miami. He had given his anthropologist Jane Winters the day off. His computer programmer, Aaron Friess, had helped him to set up the final calibrations for this particular simulation yesterday. Floyd had told him that he wouldn' t run the simulation until Monday morning when the whole team returned. He had been lying through his teeth.
It wasn' t just selfishness. It wasn' t just curiosity. It was a little bit of both, coupled with a larger anxiety that Floyd Garcia felt somewhat unable to account for. As he was mulling it over, his stream of consciousness broke, and his heart rate picked up for a few seconds and then stopped. A figure was passing close to him, walking hurriedly across the streets of Jerusalem, not milling about like the rest of the crowd. He was dressed much like the rest of them, loose and heavily soiled robes and hard, low wooden sandals. But something about him broke Floyd' s trance. His face was remarkably clear, distinct, unlike the somewhat ambiguous faces that had been wandering in and out of the town square. It was an effect that Floyd had noticed on his previous six runs. The man was obviously someone important. The closer a person was to historical data and critical events, the more detail Plutarch' s algorithms were capable of gleaning out of the simulation. For the most part, faces in the crowd appear ambivalent, expressionless, like someone in the background of a fuzzy TV picture.
This man' s profile cut a hard outline against slanting rays of the morning sun, standing out in bold contrast against the blur behind him. He must be some kind of a saint or something, Floyd Garcia thought, damn. For the first and last time ever Floyd Garcia actually regretted not paying attention in Catholic school. He thought for a moment. There weren' t any books in the compound, and it would take precious minutes to download the information off the Internet with all of the Plutarch' s computers employed in the Herculean task of projecting and simulating human history. He suddenly wished Jane had been around. She was a regularly churchgoer, one of the nearly extinct breed of practicing Christians. "Let it go," he told himself. If he decided to try and get the information now, he might miss what he came to see, and he knew that reconfiguring the computer to see the scene again would involve several hours of painstaking calculations, as well as admitting to Jane that he had lied to her.
* * *
The tension that Floyd Garcia had begun to feel about the project had begun about three weeks ago. With all the credibility problems the project had been dealing with in the public eye, Floyd had made the decision to take up a challenge from late night talk radio host Art Bell, who' s weekly show about supernormal and superscience phenomena was broadcast on the discovery channel nation wide on Sunday nights. With its controversiality, its use of chaotic attractor mathematics, virtual reality and supercomputer technology, and all the media coverage the project was getting, it had become the biggest pop-science fad since the Biosphere projects of the early 1990's. It was just the sort of thing that late night radio show hosts eat up. Whether the project passed the test with flying colors or fell flat on its ass millions of people were assured to be watching. So many in fact that CNN cut a deal to simulcast the show.
The test was to be simple. Not necessarily a test of the project' s full capabilities but more designed to show that this kind of mathematical modeling could produce viable results. It would prove nothing, only help to establish the possibility of viability of the Plutarch team' s work. Independent judges were to watch as team members entered into the computer data from the Apollo 13 moon landing mission profile. The team entered design specifications for the rocket and lander, the preflight time schedules and data from safety tests, profiles on the mission and ground crew and atmospheric conditions. Then, the Plutarch, participating via Ethernet connection to LA from its permanent home in Arecibo, would create a virtual reality simulation of how the mission proceeded as well as a false set of telemetry data.
When regular programming was interrupted, viewers saw Floyd sitting under the hot lights on a beige leather couch across a small table from the host' s chair. As Art Bell was describing the challenge to the viewing audience (as if they hadn' t already heard it a million times on cable television and video billboards) Floyd Garcia was passing final orders and specs to the rest of the Plutarch team back in Arecibo on his cell phone. Behind him was the 10 by 16 foot TV screen which would be broadcasting Plutarch' s simulated data and footage split screen alongside actual video footage and telemetry from the original flight. After a few preliminary remarks and questions from Art, the launch got underway and Floyd' s palms were slimy with cold sweat.
Much of the projection was fast forwarded, the launch, orbit calculations, and moon landing being of primary interest. Floyd Garcia was beginning to calm down when the moonlander dropped down on the lunar surface a mere eight tenths of a second behind schedule. It was a small deviation in the public' s eye, and only caused the landing sight to be shifted by three meters from the original. Then something went wrong. The man who was filmed stepping out from the landing ladder on to the lunar surface was not Neil Armstrong. Floyd wouldn' t have even been able to tell this except for the man wasn' t even wearing an astronaut' s vacuum suit. The entire viewing public held their breath, and then burst out into laughter at the absurd spectacle. As the camera' s zoomed in on Floyd' s motionless, expressionless face, Abraham Lincoln made the bottom of the ladder and went bounding off across the lunar landscape in his stovepipe hat.
* * *
That weekend Floyd sat across the table from Jane Winters, his angry boil had now calmed to cool white rage. Jane leaned forwards, glancing at the computer screen perhaps to confirm her findings or to avert herself from Floyd Garcia's wrathful gaze. "I found the problem. It was a series of erroneous data strings... perhaps typographical errors," Jane stammered as Floyd leaned closer, "But they look a little too intentional... but I don' t..."
"Who?" Floyd Garcia demanded, leveling a blank gaze at her.
"They were entered under code HBJ347. That' s Bill Wilkin's code."
Floyd' s tirade lasted only about ten minutes, and with effort Jane Winters was able to keep him from destroying any of the vital equipment in the Plutarch compound. Only the radio and the coffee maker would have to be permanently replaced. When his wrath had spent itself, he flopped down heavily into the VR chair, knocking the goggles and touchpad to the floor. Jane was still pleading with him. "I just don' t understand why," he puffed.
"Maybe some people just don' t want to know the truth. Bill was a historian. The past has long been the domain of the historians, theirs to discuss, to debate, to create for the public eye," Jane' s voice was raising. "This computer, this technology, has the power to change all that. If we succeed, the future will belong to you, Floyd. There will be no more need for lovers of history, archaeologists, whatever. The answers will all be right here." Was it Floyd' s imagination, or was Jane starting to show an accusative posture. For a moment. Then she slumped back into her chair and took a long swig from her water bottle. "It shouldn' t take long to clear false data," Jane said, assuming her normal business monotone. Perhaps, thought Floyd, Bill Wilkins is not the only one who was having second thoughts about the Plutarch project. Bill Wilkins denied everything, and Floyd had him unceremoniously booted off of the project.
* * *
The hubbub in the open square in Jerusalem now increased. A man was stepping forth, in slow degrees between recalibrations, onto the raised steps of the palace in front of him. Bill leaned forward in anticipation. It was a habit to be for sure, for to actually move closer Floyd would have had to manipulate the touchpad to his right. He was just fine where he was. The soldier, dressed in a Roman centurion uniform stepped forward and cleared his throat to speak. The man took forty eight simultaneous steps in various directions and then froze, looking like a long exposure picture of a roman centurion doing a jig. The computer paused again to recalibrate. This was not a routine check cycle, however.
The loadtime seemed to last a fraction of a second longer, and when the action resumed there were to soldiers standing halfway inside each other, and moving and speaking simultaneously, at least to the human eye. Shit, Floyd thought. The computer had found an unresolvable contingencies. At least the readout at the corner of his vision informed him that there was less than 10 to the minus 47 power seconds phase between the two different quantum possibilities. It probably wouldn' t have any visible impact on the events of the next few seconds. As the soldier began speaking to the assembled crowd in an unfamiliar tongue, Floyd pressed the corner of the touchpad, activating the built in translator.
"-usalem. As you m-" the soldier started before the next load time. The voice was clear, with no notable phasing in words, timing or tone. The hubbub of the crowd was beginning to silence. The simulation resumed, "-ay recall it has been a long standing tradition of the emperor on this holiday to r-" The next noise came from outside the headphone speakers. The compounds security lock opened with a clunk that was muted by the walls of the control room. "-elease from captivity whichever of the condemned prisoners the assembled crowd demands. At this time there are two pri-" When the next down cycle began Floyd quickly pulled the VR goggles far enough away from his space to glance at the security screen. The door had been opened by the entrance code of Todd Wilson, BIY3493. "-isoners which have been brought before the magistrate for executionable offenses. The first is th-"
"Back early, eh Todd," Floyd shouted. No response. Floyd heard him shuffling around in the mainframe area. He wondered whether or not the control room was opened. He was about to check when three much plainer dressed men dragged a shabby looking man with his hands bound out on to the steps.
"-is man, who stands convicted of murder and rioting." The soldier paused, and both of his faces seemed to swallow nervously. "Todd?" Floyd called, waiting for a response. No answer. Floyd had probably left the door closed. Floyd swallowed nervously.
"And this man, who is ac-" As the simulation paused again Floyd could just barely make out the shadow of more soldiers pushing the second prisoner out from between the marble columns. In the maze of possible shadows the figure at the center' s shadow had a hard cut edge. It was the clearest projection that Floyd had seen yet, including one his first projection that ranged mere days into the past. The sharp outline of the shadow of the prisoner stood out against the fuzzy possibility shadows of the guards. "-cused of treason. He calls himself the king of the J-" Floyd' s anticipation turned to rage as the figure of the prisoner began to step from the shadows the moment the computer went into another possibility cycle. The shadow itself did not stop moving. It was now striding out of the shadows, slowly but smoothly, surrounded by silent lifeless crazed masses of limbs, like a figure walking calmly through a still photograph. The figure stepped out into the light, as the next movement phase should have started. Floyd didn' t even notice, his gaze intent on the slight figure stepping from the shadows.
As the bright morning sun broke through the shadows of the columns, Floyd' s face turned from anxious anticipation to pure rage. Standing before him, on the steps of the roman magistrate in ancient Jerusalem, stood his computer programmer, Jane Winters. She was smiling, slightly.
Floyd tore of the VR goggles with a single motion of his hand, ripping the elastic strap and leaving a bright red mark on the back of his neck. Sitting in the control room, across the table from him at the main service terminal of the Plutarch computer, was Jane Winters. She was typing with one hand, and the other was shaking visibly, holding something against her black T-shirt. She pulled it out, and Floyd saw the steel barrel pointing at him from across the table.
The expletive that had been forming on Floyd' s lips got lost in a sharp inhale. He couldn' t find his voice. "Jane-" he managed to cough out and shot her a questioning look with his eye. "What-"
"I told you, some people don' t want to know." She looked nervous, awkward behind the gun. The hand that held it was shaking. Floyd was pretty sure that she wasn' t going to fire it. But her hand was shaking so bad he was doing his best not to make any sudden moves, lest he should startle her into making a mistake. "I tried to warn you. That thing with Bill. That was supposed to be a warning. You don' t know what you' re messing with. Neither did I, at first. I thought I wanted to know. I believed in it, the truth and all. But then I began to realize. The truth is dangerous."
Floyd' s knuckles were turning white from gripping the armrests on the chair so hard. "Jane, God this is crazy, what do you expect-"
"Not just to the people who have nothing to hide," Jane continued, ignoring Floyd' s protest. But to everybody. So many things were supposed to remain hidden. The truth is bad medicine, whether it turns out different of the same from what we thought it was supposed to be. People will abuse it. Because it is the truth…" Jane shot a quick glance to the service terminal, which was displaying the projection time and location. " And this here," Jane said gesturing towards the screen, her nervous energy suddenly turning to dark purpose. "This was never meant to be known. It didn' t take you long. I didn' t think it would. You couldn' t wait to hit the bigger questions. She pulled the gold chain from underneath her collar with the tiny gold cross on the end. And dangled it at its length between hers and Floyd' s gaze.
She stared thoughtfully for a moment, watching it spin. "If I hadn' t stopped you, you would have seen by now. Whether he was there, or he wasn' t, or if he actually existed, or if the story was about someone else. IT was the most important date in the history of the human race. You cannot know. Whether he did or didn' t live. It' s not for you to know. Not for anybody to know. If you would have seen him up there today or if he wasn' t there at all, it' s all the same. This all would have been over!" Jane shouted suddenly, tearing the chain from her neck and slamming it down on the table hard.
Jane stared at Floyd' s young face, with a flash of compassion, or was it envy. She leveled the gun at his forehead. "This is the only way to find out. There is no leap if there is no faith. You got your wish Floyd, today you and I both will meet the son of God. But our lips we be sealed, and so will Plutarch' s" she said, keying in her wipe codes on the keyboard.
* * *
Outside the Plutarch compound, two gunshots were heard, and moments
later, the security lights began to power down.