The Scalian Legacy

Admiral Tarza placed his palm on the wall and spoke:

“Frazeer Tarza, tranen oguran!”

The doors slid open, and he and his two aides, Hargue and Nramal, entered the large room. There were four large wide beds in the room with a door to the left that lead to an office. Only two of the beds were occupied. Two lifeless human bodies lay motionless with tubes connected to their arms and wires coming out of the back of their skulls. The tubes and wires rose into control panels that protruded from the wall behind the beds. There were also holographic displays above the two populated beds. Beside each of the beds there were tables with bottles filled with liquids, syringes and other medical equipment, as well as a couple of chairs.

A Scalian next to one of the occupied beds stood and approached the new entrants. “Frazeer, azee-tel-ran,” he said.

“Same to you, doctor,” Admiral Tarza replied in Scalian. “Time is short, so please tell me that you have something.”

The admiral and his aides grabbed nearby chairs and sat around the doctor and one of the occupants in bed.

“Not too much yet.” The doctor grimaced. “We are still trying to get our standard protocols to work on these humans, but we have yet to get the neural interpreter to work properly. Still, the cooperation influencer is working, so I have been able to ask them questions and force them to answer verbally.”

The admiral was confused. “If you have accomplished this, then why do you not have all the information we need?”

“Well, this one—” he pointed at one of the humans “—doesn’t reply in the standard human language of English. He seems to understand English, but refuses to reply in that language, so we can’t understand his replies. We have yet to identify the language, but it’s not among the few others we have records of.”

“How many languages did these humans need?” the admiral asked rhetorically. He sighed in frustration. “What about that one?” He pointed at the other human, who was a few feet away.

The doctor stood and walked across the room as the admiral and his aides followed. “That one does reply in English and has provided us with some information. His name is Robbie Felder and his friend over there is named Marcelo Souza. They were in the forest with Robbie’s brothers, Kenny and Jack, as well as someone else who he calls ‘whining pain in the ass.’ We’ve asked him repeatedly to provide us with a name, but that’s all he replies. We’re not sure that he knows that other individual’s name.”

“Oh for Nagaran’s sake!” the admiral commented. “So, why were they in the forest? We thought it was an isolated location.”

“Apparently, it is a very isolated location,” the doctor said. “From what we could glean, they were exploring the area for leisure. They were going to view some odd-colored river species.”

“So, it was a chance encounter?” Commander Hargue asked.

“From what we can tell, yes.”

“Hargue,” the admiral said, “try to find out what happened to this man’s brothers to ensure that they lived a nice long life after this adventure. Also, see if we can determine who this other individual is.”

“Yes, sir,” Hargue replied.

“Nramal,” the admiral started again, “take the one called Marcelo, since we are unlikely to get any more information from him, and modify our scanners to detect these kinds of humans. I’d also like to have that data added to the Redeemer’s database for us to detect them in case we run into them again for some reason in the new timeline.”

“Yes, sir,” Nramal replied.

“Remember, you only have one day,” the admiral said. “Tomorrow, we need to send their corpses back to old Earth.”

“What?” The doctor seemed appalled at the suggestion. “Why would we risk returning to old Earth? That was never the plan. It’s too risky to return. Has this been approved by the council and the Emperor?”

At that Admiral Tarza stood aggressively, breathed heavily and squeezed his hairy hands into fists. It took great restraint for him to control his emotions, as he desperately desired to rip this little brazen doctor’s head clean off. Very few were allowed to speak to him in that manner, but unfortunately, the good doctor was one of them. He was the emperor’s cousin, and while brilliant in his own way, he was also often shortsighted and lacked strategic vision. Despite Tarza’s aggressive maneuver, the doctor did not move. He knew he was protected and was not fearful of Tarza.

“Doctor, I would like to remind you that I am a member of the Senior Council.” While killing the impertinent doctor was not something Tarza felt he could get away with yet, he made a mental note that it would be nice to do it just as the mission was ending—along with this timeline. There would be no consequences with the refreshed timeline. After another deep breath, the admiral decided to go ahead and converse with the doctor about his reasoning. “Still, I shall explain nonetheless.

“These two—” Tarza pointed at Robbie and Marcelo “—are a paradox that we must take care of prior to completing our mission.”

“How so?” the doctor challenged.

“Once we destroy old Earth, then a new timeline will begin and it will not include our visiting old Earth and picking them up. Since they did not die on old Earth because they left it prior to us destroying it, it would not make sense that they die or even disappear. Yet, in our new future timeline we would not have picked them up. So, where will they go and what will they experience? In fact, even if we kill them and leave them here, the paradox persists, because the new timeline begins prior to our killing them. So, what will happen to them?”

“Right, so in the new timeline, Earth has been destroyed and we may not even know about it. Yet these two were picked up prior to its destruction, so where would they go?” The doctor repeated the paradox as his brow furrowed and he began to rub his furry face. “I don’t know,” he finally conceded.

“We do not either, doctor,” the admiral said. “There is no record of something like this occurring during any of our previous missions in the other timelines, so there is no precedent. Thus, the only prudent thing to do is to eliminate the paradox. We can do this easily by killing them and dropping them back on old Earth prior to our destroying old Earth. At that point, the paradox no longer exists. The risk of going back to a deserted section of Earth for a minute is minor, as is the chance that returning two dead bodies would impact our current timeline in any significant manner. It is a much higher risk to allow this paradox to occur.”

The doctor nodded. He didn’t like Tarza and his arrogant ways, nor did he agree with why Tarza was allowed to be on the council, but he had to admit that he was brilliant when it came to these matters. He could see why his cousin trusted him to be the one to lead Scalians through this.

“Glad you agree with our conclusions, doctor,” the admiral said with condescending sarcasm. “Keep trying to get the neural interpreter to work properly with this one.” He pointed to Robbie. “If you do get it working, then we can also add the variation to the Redeemer’s database.”

“Understood,” the doctor replied flatly as he glared at the large, rude and overbearing Scalian.

“May the power of Nagaran support us!” the admiral said as he stood and turned to exit.