Don remained aloof and even visiting my old room didn’t initiate a conversation with him. I could feel his emotions and knew he was grateful for the healing but a tad fearful as well. I didn’t know if it was fear of me or fear for his mate’s life. Theia scanned her and said she just needed rest and so after failing to communicate with Don I decided to give him time to reconcile his feelings.

I started working with Shel on her “magical” control over the Mana. The problem with cybernetics is that you need to have an understanding of what you are asking the little nano-machined cyborgs, which make up the Mana, do. The little guys shared a collective intelligence but asking it to give you a gold bar isn’t enough information. You need to ask the Mana to separate and collate the gold particles found in the rocks into a specific shape. Mixing gold and titanium, for instance, is difficult without the understanding of chemistry and metallurgy. Titanium is not found in its pure form in nature, and it’s doubtful Shel or well—anyone other than students like myself would know how to purify titanium. Add to the complexity of the various grades and uses of titanium, and you needed to educate yourself in sciences.

Lucky for me, I had years of education and a data dump from Zeus to fuel my knowledge on the vast majority of issues. However, Shel was uneducated and illiterate. Her complete and total lack of an understanding of the world around her set back my plans to teach her magic.

The conversation of Mana wiped out my supplies of APRIL, but I wasn’t sure injecting her with all the modern knowledge about the universe around her would be a great idea anyway. I spent a couple of days contemplating how to introduce Mana control into a society devoid of even the most basic of education. I had no intention of sticking around forever to educate Shel or others who could control Mana. In the end, Theia and I decided to build a library.

Paper would be simple to create, but I was hoping for the records to keep…I guess hoping they would keep ten thousand years would be too much to ask the paper to do. After a some thought I decided to engrave books in a magnesium alloy commonly used in spacecraft construction. It’s often used for photoengraving but it’s resistance to corrosion and light weight was a plus. I could have used a tungsten alloy as well, but I imagined future scientists would be more impressed with this alloy in say…ten thousand years.

I could have printed the books in English but decided a modified shorthand would be better in the long run. Zeus had known a number of systems used as early as the Greeks going back nearly as far back in time as I was. Rather than using a system already in use or developed in the future, Theia easily created a new shorthand for our library. Shorthand evolved over thousands of years of practice and finally refined itself into “sound writing” or phonography.

The reason I wanted to use shorthand for the books was kind of for selfish reasons. If I changed the course of humanity, I wanted to keep the language the same. Spelling may vary, but the sounds of words, if appropriately taught wouldn’t change while reading shorthand. I spoke with a few students from Scotland while attending Mines and realized we even didn’t speak the same language. If it wasn’t for Virtual translating software, I doubt we could have talked for more than thirty seconds before getting frustrated with each other.

Theia began the 3D printing of the books using the more traditional method for creating items. We chose a number of topics ranging from agriculture to metallurgy. We kept the books to the basics and theory. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to know everything. I kept out technology and purely focused on how the world worked rather than giving them spaceflight. It would take Shel many lifetimes to understand all of it, but my hope wasn’t for Shel to hoard the knowledge but share it with others once I’m gone.

###

It was on the third day after Don’s mate was critically injured before the majority of the Goblins left the Grand Mesa valley and headed south. Theia was never able to find a village or region the Goblins came from. She’d promised to track them on their winter migration. She saw no indication of an industry in this group of goblins and theorized the weapons and their clothing had to be coming from a home area.

“When are you going to talk to Klapdud?”

“How long until there’s a conflict?”

“Week, maybe longer. You didn’t have much of a conversation with Klapdud. You mostly stood there comparing penis’.”

The corner of my mouth turned up with her description. “Where in the world did you hear that term? Did you just make it up?”

“I read it of course. Have you read any of the classics?”

“No,” I said and frowned.

Theia has been spending more time in the visual spectrum since our little relationship talk. It was helpful that she could be in multiple places at the same time since she was responsible for teaching Magus Sonshel how to read and write. She was currently sitting on my new couch with her legs crossed. I knew she wasn’t there, but it felt nice having a reminder that she was in the room.

“You should stop working so much and smell the roses.”

“We don’t have roses here.”

“It’s another saying.”

“Oh.”

I spent a lot of time in Virtual trying to recreate the events which got me here, but I couldn’t crack the time travel aspect of what happened. A few scientist in my day theorized that time travel was possible, but it’d never been proven. I hoped I’d had enough data to recreate the circumstances virtually, but nothing came of it. Time travel was impossible and yet, here I sat.

“I think you should talk to Klapdud soon.”

“What? Sorry, my mind wandered. Klapdud? Yes, I’ll try that tomorrow.”

“Good. Master?”

“Hmm?” I lifted an eyebrow at Theia.

“You know I can read your thoughts. Right?”

“What? Yeah, but I thought we agreed you wouldn’t.”

Theia sighed. “Well, I think I agreed not to comment on them.”

I blew out a frustrated sigh and set my work tablet down. “What’s on your mind, Theia?”

“Promise not to get mad?”

What is it about people asking you not to get upset when they’re about to tell you they screwed up? I closed my eyes in frustration before opening them again. I gave Theia a nod.

“You’ve been trying to figure out how to time travel but—” Her voice trailed off.

“But, what?”

“You’re looking at the math wrong.”

“What do you mean wrong? Have you had the answer this whole time?”

“Um.”

“Wait! You said the other day you were working on the problem. When did you solve it?”

“Last week.”

I jumped out of my seat and balled my hands. “You’ve known for a week and didn’t say anything while I’ve been raking my brain trying to solve it?!”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean, ‘not exactly?’”

“I need to confirm it, so I don’t know for sure.”

“But you are sure, or you wouldn’t have mentioned it!”

Theia started to cry again, and my anger melted away but turned into a mix of frustration and something I wasn’t able to identify. Regret maybe? I didn’t know.

“Theia, please stop crying. I—”

I walked to the couch and sat on a cushion next to her and put my arm around her shoulder. It was the first time since she touched DJ that I’d made any attempt to touch her. I was surprised when my arm rested on her virtual projection and felt body heat. Before I could pull away in surprise, she melted into my shoulder and sobbed.

Emotions I hadn’t felt in a long time rushed through my body. I realized then that other than when I carried Shel to my bed, I hadn’t touched another human in over a year. I thought about saying something comforting to Theia a couple of times but ended up keeping the words to myself. Hell, she knew what was going through my mind anyway.

My arm began to cramp before Theia spoke. “I don’t know if your old world is still there. I—was afraid you’d leave.”

“Theia, I won’t leave you here. If I go back, so do you.”

A disgusting sound of snot and sniff sounded from Theia right before she wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “Promise?” She looked up in my eyes when she spoke.

“I—I promise. Theia, can I ask an unrelated question?”

“Sure.”

“Why do you—” Theia started to giggle, and I glared at her. “Why do you imitate crying, snot, and tears?”

She pulled away, twisted her body around and placed her hand on her hips. “Are you saying I don’t have feelings?”

“No. Ugh. You don’t have a nose or tears. Your brain is a liquid solution inside a jar.”

“Master. I want to be with you, and that requires me to be human. Well, human-like. I’m not human.”

“Okay, I get it. But…snot? Really?”

We both broke out laughing for a few minutes. I stopped laughing when I realized Theia said something important.

“Wait! What do you mean my world might not be there?”

Theia stood up and straightened the sundress she was wearing today.

“Well…Um. If we are in your past and we introduced Mana…”

“…Mana. Yeah? I’m not following.”

“If we changed the course of human migration, evolution, and…”

I held up my hand stopping her. “I may never have been born.” Theia gave a tilt of her head, confirming my words, more or less. “But if I was never born, then I can’t be here. The argument doesn’t make sense.”

“And, yet, here you are,” Theia whispered.

I remained silent while I mulled this problem over in my head. “You said you know how to get back? How? No. Why was my math wrong?”

“The world and sun are not sitting still. We’re moving in space and time. You were calculating the Earth position but not in space. You were trying to calculate it based on the orbit around a stationary sun.” She sighed. “I think we can create a portal anchoring it to this time and where you came from. However, there is much we don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, lots of things can slow down or speed up the orbit. Moon gravitational pull, comets, earthquakes, etc. I just don’t have enough information about what might change the earth rotation. You probably don’t notice it, but the days are longer here than in your world.”

“Wait. I don’t think we’re on the same planet. The geological information is wrong.”

“Um.”

“Damn it, Theia! Spit it out.”

“It’s just a theory! Stop yelling at me.”

I ground my teeth in frustration. “Sorry. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Time travel shouldn’t allow you to travel to before your birth. The particles that make up your body are different than particles created say, ten thousand years ago. I believe that when you had your accident that you were kicked out of sync with your universe into an alternate universe. You’ve created a paradox in which you don’t or can’t exist thus allowing you to be.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Look, you exist now in this universe. You could travel up and down the timeline,” she paused and looked me in the eyes, “theoretically, but never to a place where you can’t exist. Doing so will force a new paradox.”

“You’re talking about parallel universes or a multiverse?”

“Yes and no. The theory that time is an illusion and everything that can happen has happened is true. However, when your accident happened, I think you destroyed the timeline you came from. At least for you.”

“I’m sorry. I still don’t understand why my—”

“Caden.” I stopped talking and listened to her. “Caden, matter can’t exist in the same place at the same time. The atoms that make up your body existed in your world and thus can’t be at two different locations at the same time. When you traveled back in time, you created a paradox where matter would have existed in two places. The universe responded by kicking you to a world where your atoms didn’t exist.”

“But, the first law of thermodynamics says matter can’t be destroyed or created.”

“No. The first law of thermodynamics says energy is a closed system and cannot be created nor destroyed. Stop trying to get around the problem. You transported an empty room into solid rock. The energy exchange between the two worlds would have been…”

“I—You think—”

“I’m sorry, Caden.” A tear fell from her cheek.

“I—,” I put my head into my hands shuddering at the implications. “I destroyed my planet.”