Long Past Forgotten

By David Nook

Ariala sat alone in her office staring at her informational display screen. The pages upon pages of research that she had done on civilization number 76398, also known as Earth, were all there. She had dedicated a year of her life to archive an entire century of this civilization and now it was late at night two days before her deadline. In two days she would have to present her research to the Council of the Archivist Union and she did not feel ready. Her research had documented every seemingly important event of C76398 that occurred over the 100 year period determined by archival scouts as the most influential in the civilization’s history and yet she still didn’t believe that she knew what truly defined the people of Earth. This was her first assignment as a chief archivist; she had been promoted the year before for her outstanding work as an archival scout and as an assistant archivist. Given the opportunity to prepare her own research project, Ariala selected C76398 because it allowed her a full year to research the planet. Most projects were no more than a week or two certainly no more than a month, but the archival scouts could not define the research period of Earth to anything less than 100 years so the project warranted a full year. She had always been confident in her ability and so thought nothing about jumping into such an ambitious project, but now almost a year later and with the deadline looming in front of her, she wasn’t sure that her research had been worthwhile. The expectations for her were extremely high. Not only was Ariala the youngest Chief Archivist in almost 300 years, but Earth was the first project to be approved for a yearlong study in over 100 years. Big things were expected from Ariala and C76398 and Ariala knew that right now, she would let the Council down. She would not let that happen, she had 3 days to figure out what made Earth special and she was going to do it.

Ariala stood up from her office chair and walked to the door. “The only way that I am going to find what I am looking for is to glide back in there and observe some more,” she thought out loud as she opened her office door and walked out into the dark and empty hallway. She walked down the hall to the elevator. “Research Deck 76” she said and the elevator responded whisking her from the ninth sublevel where her office was to the 76^th deck in a matter of seconds. The doors opened and Ariala was left staring down the very long and very familiar hallway that led to the glide door of C76398. She walked down the hall passing the other 397 glide doors that she had passed everyday for 11 months before spending the last 28 days compiling her research. When she reached the glide door she set the time orienter to near the end of her research window, somewhere near what was determined to be the height of Earth's civilization. Ariala waited for the display to show that a glide terminal had been constructed on the other end, and then she took a deep breath and touched her palms to the two pads on either side of the door. She leaned in slowly and entered the glide stream as she had hundreds of times before. Ariala had to admit that this was one of the favorite parts of her job. The feeling of being in glide was like nothing else. It kind of felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket just out of the dehydrator after you had just taken a thermal shower, and at the same time you experienced this amazingly free sensation as if you were flying without assistance. Everywhere she looked was the familiar bluish-green haze of the glide stream.

Ariala couldn’t help but feel relaxed despite having the most important deadline of her career looming two days away. After the four-minute glide, Ariala came to the abrupt but comfortable stop at the C76398 glide gate. She stepped forward out of the stream and looked around the glide terminal. It was the same small ten by ten room it had been when she was there a month ago. The display on the wall directly to her left showed that it was exactly 12 pm on August 12^th 2010 for the people of Earth. She turned to the rack on the right of the room and selected the correct clothing for her time and place. Then she exited through the door on the wall directly opposite the glide portal and found herself in an alley between two fairly large buildings. She glanced around to be sure she was not spotted and then walked out to the main street.

It was supposed to be a great day for Joe. It was supposed to be the culmination of his life's work. He had dedicated his life to proving that it was possible to not only travel through space to far off worlds in a matter of minutes, but also to travel through time. It was supposed to be the day that he showed the naysayers, the scientific community, and the world, one of the greatest scientific advances in history. Unfortunately, on Joe's final calculations for his amazing invention he had forgotten to carry a four, and so when he turned on his machine and attempted to leave the boundaries of his world and his time, all that happened was some very impressive fireworks and Joe was left standing there, slightly singed and completely humiliated. Within an hour of his failure, his funding had been cut, his codes to the labs voided, and the keys to his company apartment confiscated. He was tossed out on the street with a box of his last possessions and left to fend for himself. Devastated and confused by what went wrong, Joe spent the last of his cash on a bottle of vodka and set off wandering the streets of the city in a daze. Finally he collapsed in a pile of boxes in a dark alleyway and passed out.

He awakened several hours the next day to the sight of the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, exiting a door that he had not noticed before, in the side of one of the buildings. She was dressed impeccably in a clean white blouse and a black skirt, much too nice for the neighborhood he was in, Joe thought. He lay very still, as she glanced around and then headed off toward the street. Once she had left the alley he got up and walked toward the door. He stared at the door and debated whether or not to open it. He was down on his luck but wasn't sure if he wanted to make it an excuse to cross that moral line. Something inside him was pushing him to open the door, maybe it was the inquisitive nature that had made him a good scientist, or perhaps he was being drawn to whatever was on the other side. He reached out his hand towards the doorknob, then recoiled. "Wait, what am I doing? First off, it's probably locked and secondly, I could get in big trouble for trespassing, and who knows what other laws," he thought to himself. Then Joe's thoughts returned to the woman. What was she doing in one of the worst neighborhoods in town wearing designer clothes and exiting dark alleyways? "Maybe she's a hooker?" Joe thought out loud. But he quickly scratched that idea because he figured any call girl who looked like her and dressed like that would be way out of the price range for this neighborhood. "Well, there's only one way to find out" Joe thought as he again reached out and grabbed the doorknob. He turned it slowly and found it unlocked. He opened the door and stepped inside the relatively small room.

Ariala turned right at the main street and headed up town. This was always the least favorite part of her trips to the planet and she often wished this glide terminal wasn't in so unsavory a part of the city. She walked briskly and was glad that it was the middle of the day because she knew from her research that it was not exactly safe for a woman to be out at night in this part of town. After about ten or twelve blocks the buildings became nicer as she began to entire the shopping district of the city. Everywhere she looked people with bags from an assortment of stores were walking and talking, hailing cabs and heading for the subway. Ariala had returned to this time period because the economy was in the midst of its biggest economic boom. Economic growth percentages were astronomical and as a last resort Ariala was considering making the focus of her presentation to the council economics. This would not be that revolutionary a report however because her own civilization's economy was arguably more prosperous than any civilization yet researched including this one. In fact the most interesting part about the economy was that it was very similar to that of Ariala's world. This world had no technological advances to offer as everything that it considered extremely high tech was extremely common on her world and had been for as long as Ariala can remember. She bought a newspaper from the newsstand and scanned the headlines. The front page was crowded mostly by headlines pertaining to a new wonder drug that showed amazing success at fighting cancer. Nothing radically new, or incredibly important to her research caught her eye. She spent the remainder of the day walking around and then as dusk approached headed back toward the jump gate to make it before dark. She arrived just as the sun was beginning to set. She looked around the alley again to be sure no one was around and reached out and grabbed the doorknob.

Joe closed the door behind him and looked around the room. On his right was a large display that showed the time, date, year, and temperature outside. It also had a large chart that showed several universes and had a red line from a star in one to a star in another. To his left was a fairly large rack of clothes spanning styles from the last 100 years. Directly in front of him was doorway of sorts. It had the frame of a door but looked as though there was a solid wall where a door should have been. There were two panels, one on either side of the door that had the outlines of hands on them. Joe couldn't believe his eyes. He was looking at what appeared to be a slightly tweaked version of his life's work. He walked slowly towards the machine. "Could this really be what I think it is?" Joe wondered. He turned to the display on the wall and took a closer look at the chart. He recognized the stars that were connected on the chart. One was Earth's Sun and the other was the central star of a solar system that contained a planet with similar atmospheric, gravitational, and climate conditions as earth. In fact it was the solar system that had his experiment worked, he had would have traveled to. Joe knew who that woman was, she was an alien from the planet that he had intended to visit and this gate was how she got to earth. Joe wasted no time whatsoever, his probing mind had to know why this machine worked and his didn't. He looked for a panel on the left side of the gate and found one exactly where it was on his machine. He pried it off and looked inside at the circuitry and machinery. Almost everything was the same but Joe noticed the few differences immediately. The main processor was routed slightly different, the third generator coil wrapped three times instead of only two, the two vortex propagator were inverted. From looking at this working machine, it was cleat to Joe why his had failed miserably. Joe felt so vindicated, he was right! Travel through space and time at incredible speeds was possible. Joe was now confronted by to very powerful and yet conflicting urges. One part of him wanted badly to use the gate and yet part of him said that he should contact those who had believed in him. He was struggling with these urges when he heard the doorknob begin to turn.

Ariala opened the door and was immediately knocked back. A man bowled her over as he ran out of the glide terminal. Arial fell to the ground but was able to get a good look at the man's face as he turned to look back and see if Ariala was giving chase. The fall had hurt, but she was not badly injured. She was however extremely startled and shaken. Who was that man, how did he find the terminal, what had he been doing inside, what had she done? These were all questions circling her head as she got up off the ground and entered the terminal. She closed the door and looked around. She immediately noticed the panel on the ground and ran to inspect he glide gate. Everything inside the machine was in working order. Ariala replaced the panel and looked around the rest of the terminal. Nothing else was amiss. Ariala wasted no time in getting back to her world. She set the time orienter to her own the 25^th century, set the location as Archivist headquarters and pressed her hands to the pads. She entered the glide stream and was whisked back toward her own world. This was however the first time that she did not feel relaxed while in glide. All she could think about was that man's face. It was as if the image was burned into her mind. When she arrived on the 76^th deck gate 398 she headed directly for her office. She entered her office sat down in her chair and thought about what had just happened. She had done something that every rookie archival scout knew not to do; she had let someone from another civilization find the glide terminal. Her thoughts roamed around for the next couple hours. One minute she would be thinking of the punishment she would receive, the next the consequences this could have on things other than her job, but all the while her thoughts kept coming back to that face. She couldn't help but feel she had seen it before.

Joe stood up from the floor in front of the machine. He looked around but saw no place to hide quickly so he simply decided in the spur of the moment to run for it. As soon as the door opened he sprang out it, knocking the woman over as he did. Joe sprinted down the alleyway, and as he reached the end he looked back to see if she was chasing him. She wasn't, she was still sitting on the ground where she had fell. He rounded the corner to the street and headed, mostly out of instinct towards his apartment. It wasn't until he was standing out front of his building that he remembered that he no longer lived there. His keys had been taken along with his job. Joe stood out front of the building for a couple minutes while he thought about what to do. He came to the conclusion that he should go to Harry's apartment. Harry had worked with Joe on the project for several years before giving it up for a Professor position at the University. He was Joe's best friend and new more about Joe's research than anybody else except Pam who was Joe's assistant for the last nine years. Joe walked to Harry's and thought about how his life would be different if he had known what he knew now before the experiment. He realized that he would have been famous, rich or soon to be rich, and recognized as one of the greatest minds in history. It would have been great, or would it? Joe had never been a very outgoing guy and this certainly would have thrust him into the spotlight. Heck, he had gotten his picture in the paper for failing, imagine if he had succeeded. Money was never more important to Joe than the equipment that he could buy to further his research. With his life's research a success what use would he have for money? And another thought entered his mind that had never occurred to him before. What would this mean for civilization? Who would control this technology? This like all technology had the potential for evil as well as good. Was society ready for it? These thoughts were still swirling through his head as he arrived at Harry's apartment building. He rang the buzzer and heard Harry's voice on the intercom, "Who is it?" "It's me," was all that Joe said and Harry buzzed him up immediately. Joe climbed the stairs to his friend's apartment still pondering what to do next.

Ariala sat there concentrating on the image of the man's face trying to remember where she had seen it before. An hour passed, then two and still she could not remember. Finally she gave up and turned her thoughts to other equally vexing matters. She decided to use her computer to simulate the situation and determine probable outcomes. She felt slightly reassured to discover that 96 percent of the scenarios predicted that nothing would come of the incident. The most likely probabilities were that the man was homeless and looking for shelter or a thief looking for valuables. Other scenarios in which the man was not one of these two options still showed a high probability that the man would have no clue what he had found. The only thing that still bothered her was the she still felt like she had seen him before and it wouldn't have made sense for her to recognize a bum or a thief. Then suddenly it came to her. She quickly began fumbling through her bag for the newspaper she had bought. She pulled it out and began frantically flipping through the pages until there it was, the picture of the man who had knocked her over, the man who had found the glide gate. She looked at the headline in horror: "Respected Physicist Fails in Attempt to Violate Laws of Space and Time." She read the article and learned to her dismay that the man who had found the gate, was in fact the exact type of person it would take to know what it was. He had attempted to build his own gate but screwed up somewhere, but now he had seen the inside of a working gate. He could very likely now build his own working glide portal. This was not good. This could have catastrophic affects on not only his civilization, but if used irresponsibly the Universe. She reran the scenarios this time calculating for his knowledge of physics and his research into the mechanics and theory behind the glide gate. The numbers were depressing, only a five percent probability that nothing would happen. The effects of the other 95 percent of scenarios ranged from meaningful contact with other civilizations to the end of the Universe. The question in Ariala's head now was, "What do I do now?"

Harry reached the inside door to Harry's apartment and found his friend waiting for him. The two went inside and Harry invited Joe to have a seat on the couch. Joe declined electing to stand while he explained recent events to his friend. Joe started at the beginning, explaining his failure, his firing, and his decent into drunkenness and despair and moved to the girl, the machine, and his eventual arrival at Harry's door. Harry sat and listened while Joe wandered the apartment telling his story. Harry was basically speechless when Joe finished. He truly did not know what to think. Part of him wanted to dismiss his friend's story as that of a shattered, depressed man, who was unable to accept that he had failed, and at the same time part of Harry believed every word that Joe had said. Finally after a few moments Harry asked, "So what do we do now?" Joe smiled because he knew that Harry would be in and that was why Joe had gone to him. "I need a few to repair my machine, but this time with the corrections that I saw on the working machine," Joe said, "can you get them from the University?" "Well that depends on what you need and when," Harry replied. Joe and Harry discussed the list and Harry determined that he could get most of the items. Then they discussed whom to tell and contact about the new machine. Pam was on top of a list of about four-dozen people who had at one time or another been involved with the project and that Harry and Joe believed to be trustworthy. Harry left to get the supplies while Joe began calling the people on the list and giving them the details.

Ariala sat staring at the list of possible outcomes. She was more conflicted about what to do than she had ever been in her life. Part of her wanted to go to the council and admit what had happened and let them decide the course of action. At least then the burden of decision was out of her hands. Another part of however, told her that she had gotten herself into this mess she could get herself out. She had another day before her presentation to the council; she could fix this if it needed fixing. After wrestling with the issue for a half hour she gathered up the confidence that she had been looking for and headed back to the glide gate of C76398. She set the orienter, pressed her hands to the panels and was off to earth to find the man who had found the gate.

Harry returned to the apartment an hour latter with everything that Joe had asked for even the items that were questionable. Joe's phone calls were not quite as successful as only about half of the people he called were willing to join them. Luckily one of the people who was more than willing to cooperate was Pam, who had managed to keep her job at Joe's old lab. She agreed to use her access codes to allow Joe and a few others into the lab to remove what remained of his machine. Once they had retrieved the machine, they brought it back to Harry's apartment, which was to serve as the interim laboratory. Within 3 hours repairs and modifications were in full swing. They went fairly quick with a team of 27 skilled scientists and engineers working on it, and within 6 hours Joe was wiring the last of the circuitry. This was the moment of truth for everyone there. For Joe it was whether he had been able to accurately duplicate the modifications from the working machine, for the others it was whether their faith in their friend and colleague was well placed. Joe was even sure of his destination now, after observing the chart in the room with the other machine. He set the destination, looked around the room, touched his hands to the panels and leaned in.

Ariala arrived back at the glide terminal and wasted no time, getting down the alley, and uptown. Once there she found a phone book and scanned for Joe's address. She found it and was off again as fast as she could manage towards his apartment. She found it empty however. Her next stop was the library where she immediately set to work scanning through years of newspaper articles scanning for any mention of Joe and his experiments. She found several and the most common two names other than Joe's were Pam O'Connell, and Harry Fredric's. She set off for Pam's address and found that no one was home and so the next stop on her journey was Harry's. She ran as fast as she could because she had no money for a cab, or the subway, but the Harry's apartment was all the way across town. She only hoped that Joe was there. The feeling of traveling through the portal was like nothing Joe had ever experienced before. It was an incredible sensation not only because of the free sensation of the glide but because Joe had waited for this moment his entire life. He was finally experiencing the realization of his life's work, and to top it off he had reason to believe that there was life on this planet. After all, this was the woman had come from. When he came out on the other end, he excitedly looked around. He was expecting cities or at least structures of an advanced society; instead he saw only trees, bushes and grass. There was no sign of intelligent life. There were however large amounts of fruit trees and small game in the wild before him. He was somewhat disappointed but he quickly got over it as he remembered where he was. He was in another galaxy on another planet. The others had to experience this. He turned around, reset the gate, and returned to earth. He arrived on the other side to the cheers of everyone in the apartment. Joe described what he had seen and made a proposal as to how the technology should be used. He proposed that everyone in the room bring the items in the room and come through the portal. He declared that he was going to start a new life on the planet and that everyone in the apartment was welcome to join him. Everyone in the apartment agreed that Earth was not ready for this technology and that the rest of the world should not be made aware. Most of the people in the room decided to join Joe on the other planet and start a new world. Joe was determined to one-day find the civilization that had helped him achieve his dream.

Ariala made it the block that Harry's apartment was on and ran for the building. She managed to gain entrance with another lady who lived there as she agreed to hold the door so the woman could carry in her groceries. She ran up the stairs to Harry's apartment and knocked on the door. No one answered. She tried the knob and found the door unlocked but the apartment deserted. The only thing she found in the entire apartment was a note, from Harry to his landlord with a check for the next six months rent. The note simply said, "Dear Mr. McGill, I've gone to start a new life, somewhere far away. Here is the rent for the rest of my lease, and take care. Harry Fredric's." Ariala knew she was too late. Joe had built a gate and used it with at least Harry, most likely Pam and who knows how many others. She began the long walk back to her gate and tried to figure out how she was going to explain this to the council. As she was walking back however she came to a stunning realization.

Joe and his fellow colonists had no trouble setting up their new civilization. As Joe had believed from his first visit there was plenty of food available on the planet. Also, whenever the colonists needed something from earth they simply used the portal to travel there and bring it back. Joe's determination to find the civilization that developed the technology first developed into a sort of mission for the colonists. They used the technology to travel the Universe, and search new worlds. They were very careful not to reveal the technology to other civilizations for fear of tampering with the course of other civilizations history. They colonists documented important events in the histories of other civilizations always in search of the one responsible for their new life. They archived entire histories using the gates ability to travel through time as well as space, but they never encountered the civilization that gave them their start. The colony grew rapidly however, at first through invitation of people on Earth than through natural reproduction. Joe and his colonists founded a new civilization on their new world and dedicated it to researching other civilizations.

She knew what was special about Earth. Earth was responsible for her civilization. Joe and his followers had traveled to her planet to live. The important thing was that they must have traveled there in the 21^st century. She had come from the 24^th Century. Ariala's civilization was descendent from that of Earth's. Earth's history was her history. She returned to her office and finished her report. She presented her findings to the Council and although somewhat skeptical at first, they eventually came around to see what Ariala was saying was true. Ariala had archived the earliest history of their own civilization. She had had lived up to the high expectations, as had civilization 76398.