Trust is an interesting concept; but then this was never really about trust, was it?

Nick was alone in his room, sitting on his bed and leaning back on some pillows he had propped up. His legs felt heavy as he stretched them out; feeling the strain and stress of the last hours, days and weeks drain out of his body. With closed eyes, he had spent the last few hours systematically thinking his way down a list of topics. Some items had been problems to solve, some were emotions he had to figure out, but most of it had been letting his brain simply… float. Letting his intuition offer what insight it could, and slowly putting the brakes on patterns of thought which had spent too long spinning in unchecked confusion and fear.

His thoughts kept returning to Goose. To that… automaton. That imprint of an alien species, designed for a specific task. Created to carry out a mission: Intercept the backup signal, record it, recover his entire people. If Nick considered the creature strictly in those terms, as a machine following predetermined patterns of behaviour, then trust, friendship or forgiveness were concepts at odds with that nature.

You don’t befriend a computer or forgive a piece of technology. You used it, or it used you.

But is that really all Goose was? A machine? Nick remembered conversations, discovery, laughter. There was more than crude logic and intelligence, there had been emotions, wishes… Perhaps even dreams for a future beyond a programmed goal.

He felt a wave of shame welling back up in him. Once again, Rashi had seen everything more clearly than him.

Nick found comfort in the immediacy of dealing with Goose. The other… Issues… If he could call galaxy spanning temporal rescue missions an issue, were just too large for him right now. He felt his brain pushing those questions away and was happy to wait for Tord to finish his research. Saving the future of the galaxy? That was just crazy. It was too big to be real. Thinking about them as problems he could help resolve just made his brain seize up and laugh back at him.

So instead, he turned to consider Goose. The strange alien… Goose who was still inside him. After checking in to confirm that they had successfully downloaded the backup signal, Goose had gone quiet, and Nick hadn’t tried to communicate. What was he thinking about in there?

And then Nick thought back to the two conversations he had earlier today.

-

“Do you really believe him?”

Rashi had sat down on her bed as Nick paced around in her small cabin. Twice so far, he had sat down in the desk chair, only to get back up to pace more. His arms were gesticulating and his eyes were alive as he looked at her. “It just sounds so… It’s like a movie. It can’t be real, can it?”

“I believe him,” she said. She smiled at him, but his eyes were already staring off into the distance. He had touched her hand briefly as they entered the room, but apart from that, he had been all business. All intensity and curiosity. Gone were the muscle spasms, the wary looks.

“So do I,” he said absently, eyes still not focusing on anything in the room.. “Although I don’t really know why… Why would I? I need to talk to Tord. Did you see where he went?”

Rashi knew he wasn’t really talking to her and simply waited.

He sat back down in the chair and leaned back, looking up at the ceiling as he mumbled something to himself. Rashi imagined his brain as a small engine floating above his head, and could practically see small gears whirring around, processing one mystery after another, picking questions out of a hat, considering them, discarding them.

Suddenly his eyes flashed open, and he got back to his feet, looking straight at her.

“Goose! He’s the key.”

“What do you mean?”

“I keep coming back to that virtual machine we have running in the cargo hold. Which is supposed to contain all the knowledge of his entire people. But it’s… limited. We keep trying to engage it, to get more information out. But it keeps responding with the same request. Synchronise data with emergency cluster. It needs Goose. Perhaps that was the design all along? Perhaps it’s a security mechanism to make sure that it’s one of the designated clusters which retrieved the main backup? It doesn’t have Goose’s intelligence. No actual capacity for independent thought.

Goose is the key.”

Rashi nodded at him. “Makes sense.”

Nick was quiet again before shaking his head.

“There’s just too many things happening, Rash.” He gave her a small smile. “I’ve tried to make sense of what Bletchley and Harrow said, and the implications are… beyond me to consider.”

He looked at her again.

“It’s just… Too vast. If there’s a way forward here… a solution… I have no idea how to even start looking for solutions. I need to focus on one problem at a time. And we still haven’t really solved our original mission.”

“Rescuing Goose’s people.”

“Yep. We have the data, but that’s not enough. We need to figure out what comes next. What do they actually need? A new solar system? An ecosystem matching their original? How are we even supposed to find some place where they can be restored? The virtual machine keeps asking for Goose, and Goose… Well.”

“You still aren’t talking to him.”

Nick nodded and paused. “He still makes me so… angry. But I don’t think I have a choice. I need to approach him without my emotions messing up the interaction”.

Rashi had been prepared for this moment, having known they would arrive here, eventually. She had seen it coming since shortly after Nick returned. At some point, there needed to be a reckoning, or a reconciliation, but he would need to find that path himself first. It wasn’t something she could force on him before he was ready.

“Nick,” she began, hesitantly. She had practised this conversation, but making Nick face this reality still wasn’t easy.

“What hurts more? What he did… the act itself, or the perceived betrayal?”

He spun his head towards her. “What do you mean?”

“Those are different thoughts… different emotions… with different ways to resolve them. If you analyse your own feelings, what’s bothering you the most, what is causing the anger? The act of cutting your brain off from your body, or -”

“Of course it is that!” Nick interrupted, and Rashi placed her hand calmly on his arm.

“Or is it the betrayal? You considered Goose a friend, didn’t you?”

“I…” Nick’s voice trailed off. She could see the beginning of anger turning to introspection.

Good, the wheels are turning.

Eventually, he said, “I did. He was my friend. It’s strange, perhaps, but he was just as much a part of our little group as you, or Sae, or myself.” Again, he went quiet as he thought. “I trusted him,” he said. “I trusted him to help us, to follow our plan, to… to care for us. For me. He… hurt me. When I needed him.”

Again, Rashi simply nodded and waited.

“He was there through it all, part of the team. We planned together, we did our stupid raid on the medcentre in the hab, we… did all of it, together. And then he simply discarded us. To follow his own plan.”

Nick looked at Rashi, waiting for her response. Waiting for her to comfort him, to validate his feelings. She took a deep breath, knowing this was a pivotal moment.

“I think you are missing one important factor,” she said, and could see Nick reacting to the hard tone in her voice. “We never actually trusted him. You never trusted him. You were never his friend.”

“But -”

She could see him becoming agitated and met his eyes as she continued in a low voice. “You speak about trust and planning and being a team, but have you thought about how you have treated him? Do you remember that throughout this… He, your so-called friend, operated under limitations and restrictions that you put on him? We didn’t even allow him to see, hear, or talk without your explicit approval. He could only communicate what you decided.

Yes, sure, we did it because it made sense. We had to maintain security. There was an enormous risk - there is a risk. But have you considered what it was like for him?”

Nick made to speak, but again Rashi continued over him.

“Have you considered what was at stake for him? For us, it was an adventure. It was like a book or a movie. The big heist, the big escape. Superpowers and standing up against the auditors. Even The Pegasus is more a piece of an adventure story than it is reality, even now. For Goose, it was… it is everything. Success or failure wasn’t about getting in trouble, it was about the survival of his species. It wasn’t an interesting problem to solve, it was an existential threat. Just think of the fear he must have felt when the wheels started to come off!

We practically forced him into a plan that fit into how we saw the world. Into a plan where we decided what risks we were willing to take.”

Rashi paused, meeting Nick’s eyes.

“That’s not trust. That’s not friendship. That is… I don’t know what it is, Nick, but can you really blame him for taking control of his own destiny?”

Rashi watched Nick’s eyes carefully. They would either light up with anger, or they would… Yes! Rashi suppressed the smile before it reached her eyes.

Nick got unsteadily to his feet. Rashi could see he wasn’t really seeing her, reaching a hand out to steady himself on a desk, before moving towards the door. Before exiting, he turned back to Rashi.

“Thanks,” he said, in a small voice.

-

Nick was heading towards his room, emotions roiling inside him. Simply talking about Goose had caused familiar spikes of anger, making him want to lash out. He had almost done exactly that when Rashi had first started talking. But then the spikes had met something else. As realisation struck him, waves of… shame? Regret? It was still too new, too raw to put a name to the emotion.

He wanted to go to his room to make sense of it all, but as he walked down the corridors he realised it was too soon. Right now, the emotions were driven by his body. Which would make thinking clearly pretty much impossible. Adrenaline, increased blood flow, cortisol… Rashi had explained it all to him earlier. He really wanted to go to bed for twelve hours and wake up to find out someone else had come up with all the solutions while he was asleep. That was probably not a valid option, so he needed to clear his head.

Going alone to his room would end up with his thoughts chasing around in the old patterns, fueled by his unstable emotional state. Instead, he turned towards the common area where he found Tord. He picked up a coffee and made his way over to him. As Nick sat down, he shared a tired smile with his friend, feeling grateful that he was here. Hashing out this time travel thing with Tord is exactly what the doctor ordered.

“What a mess,” Nick said by way of greeting.

“Yup! And something tells me this is only the beginning.”

“Indeed.” Nick sipped at his coffee and leaned back in the chair, looking around the nearly empty room. “The beginning of what, though?”

“Apart from utter craziness? Perhaps…” Nick could see Tord looking for the right words. “I don’t know, Nick. On paper… What those guys told us back there matches with everything else. All the theories, all the maths, but still… A concept of time where we are just replaying events? Walking down an existing path? Causality as a probabilistic function stretching across the immediate here and now? There’s theories on paper, and then there is… This.”

“I know. And… How can even conceive of a future that is millions of years in the future? How can we postulate solutions to problems that far removed from our current reality?”

“It is as if… Well, my mind understands what they told us. Most of it, anyway. But there is a distance between understanding and intuition.”

Nick nodded in silence, knowing exactly what Tord meant.

“So…” Tord looked at Nick, his eyes sparkling with mirth. “We are supposed to simply.. Save the galaxy?”

They broke down in giggles, fueled partly by the absurdity of the situation and partly by the beginnings of a panic as they took in exactly what that meant.

“Yep. That’s us. Saviours of the Galaxy,” Nick eventually said, as their giggles faded.

Two boys looked at each other as a weight settled on them.

“There is something I don’t understand, though, “ Nick said after a long while. “So, the wormhole transition created an alternate timeline. Here we are, and there’s another timeline with another version of us where The Pegasus never succeeded. In that reality, we are continuing down another timeline. Down a timeline that eventually will make humanity evil overlords of the galaxy.”

Tord nodded. “Yup. And don’t forget the timeline where we left Sol with our first transition, but didn’t transition back. Where we are still out there.” Tord pointed vaguely out into space. “I wonder what is going on with those guys. Are they waiting there to do more experiments with the alien in the virtual machine? Have they given it access to that thing you have trapped in your body? Do they eventually head off someplace else, creating even more branches?”

“Right. Each transition creates a new timeline. And… We spoke about this before. About temporal confusion and the Fermi paradox. Since pretty much any contact with aliens would require faster than light travel or some other advanced tech… If we take what Bletchley and Harrow said at face value, we can explain the Fermi paradox by this mysterious evil overlord police force flying around and snuffing out singularity effects. ”

“Right. The evil space police. Of course. And they would, of course, also join us in this new branch of the timeline. Since their mission is to stop any singularities from happening before they disturb their timeline, they will look for us, to -”

“Holy crap,” Nick said, suddenly realising where Tord was going with this.

“Yup. They will try to remove us from the equation. Taking out The Pegasus will probably force our current timeline to follow the pattern they want.”

“That’s the key, isn’t it. Hanging on to our clean slate timeline. So we can build a future here without that tyranny at the end.”

“Nope. Not so simple,” Tord answered. “Sure, that would give this timeline the potential to make its own mistakes and create a different future, but there is still the original timeline to consider. And the merge effect.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember what they said about timelines converging? About how they think timelines would eventually merge back? After the meeting, that Bletchley dude gave me access to some of their research. It will take me days to read it all, but I had a quick look at the abstracts. In short, they are right. We are actually living on borrowed time. I think. All three current timelines will collapse back to a single timeline at some point. The key question now is… What determines the result of that collapse function?”

“So what you are saying is that -”

“Yup. Unless we figure this out, we will disappear back into a common timeline. Suddenly and without warning. And if I were to guess, the dominant timeline will be the one with the most… weight.”

“So. We need to figure out what determines that weight”.

They stared at each other for a moment.

“I think I need to look at that research,” Tord said.

“And I think we need some help,” Nick answered, heading for his room.

-

Back in his room, it still took Nick several hours before he opened the channel. The time had been well spent, though, as he now felt his mental state approaching something resembling equilibrium.

Goose, I am sorry.

It took only a few seconds before he received a response, but Nick knew that was like hours for Goose.

Sorry for what?

How we treated you. How I treated you. We lost sight of what was at stake for you. I am so sorry.

Again, the pause was long.

I am also sorry, Nick.

Another pause, before Goose continued.

This is the point where we should shake hands, is it not?

Yep! Nick laughed tiredly. I guess it is.

So, what has been happening out there?

Over the next hour, Nick told Goose about their situation. About their interactions with the virtual machine, about ‌Mr Bletchley and Mr Harrow, and about… Everything. When he was finished, Goose asked.

What are you going to do?

I don’t know, Nick said. I thought I’d ask you.

Me? Do you trust me?

Trust is… a complex concept. I am still wary. Your abilities… what you could do to humans. To humanity.

I understand. But Nick, remember what you are carrying in your cargo hold.

Nick thought of the satellite containing the virtual machine.

Good point. It’s like mutual assured destruction, isn’t it? Did you read about that in our archives?

Yes, I know what you mean. Perhaps it is, if you choose to interpret it like that. I have an alternative view, though.

Yes?

Look at this like this, Nick. This is no longer about my people, or about humanity. If what you have told me is true, this is about all species that may ever exist in the galaxy. Our question of trust and your concept of mutual assured destruction become squabbles that put everything at risk.

This Singularity Guild has already wiped out my people. Even if it wasn’t you individually, it was still humans.

That isn’t really a convincing argument for trust, Goose. Why shouldn’t we expect you to take revenge as soon as you can?

Taking revenge would not make sense. Revenge is a human concept. We have a common goal: to divert away from a future that would create a tyranny with the intention and capability to wipe out civilisations throughout the timeline.

I also have a goal to recover my people.

And unless I am mistaken, those two goals happen to coincide.

You see, I have a plan…