Peripheral Visions: First Principles

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

First Principles

The overhead lights came on at 0600 as they always did, but Dr. Kara Douglass hadn't slept well enough to be refreshed.

"You look like hell," her wife, Dierdre, told her, rolling to a sitting position on the opposite side of the bed. It was an accurate summary of how Kara was feeling. "Did the security announcement last night wake you up?"

The announcement had come in the middle of the night, as they always did, informing the Stronghold's population that due to "pressing needs," there would be a power blackout. Such blackouts, and the middle-of-the-night announcements that went with them, had become increasingly commonplace over the past few months.

"I don't know what Great Leader has going on," Kara groused, "but he could at least try and do it quietly."

"Careful," Dierdre said in a low voice. "It's not like we need more trouble."

She was right, Kara knew, but she also knew that the intercom panel, situated as it was to the noisy ventilator grate – another constant assassin of her sleep – was likely to give Barris' eavesdroppers in security little more than white noise, no matter what she said.

Still, she couldn't blame Dierdre for her reflexive urge to censor what she said. That had become an ingrained habit, almost an instinct, in the twelve years since Barris had ascended to the position of Head Councilor. There were hushed mutterings that achieving the apex of political power had not been enough to satisfy him. The rumors said that Barris was also the true voice behind that of the Stronghold Prophet.

Of course he was.

Stronghold Prophet, Kara thought contemptuously. Such a position hadn't even existed until a year or so before Barris took control of the Stronghold's government. She was certain that the people's sudden faith in such an office... and the three people who had served in that capacity ever since it had suddenly been decreed... was itself Barris' work. She'd seen how the Stronghold Prophet's backing had worked to elevate Barris to his current position.

Humanity is facing its extinction, she thought bleakly, sitting on the edge of the bed and gripping the foam mattress with tightening fingers, and Barris is amping up the pomp, ceremony, and "Us versus Them" rhetoric to 21st Century levels. Serving up more of the same poison that led us down this path in the first place...

"We've gotta get going," Dierdre said. She was already dressed in her day gown, a Common Gray garment that signified her as part of the Stronghold's work force.

Kara sighed and willed herself to her feet. She had been too tired to take off her own Common White gown, opting to simply fall into bed the night before. You'd think that at some point I would be tired enough to sleep through the security announcement, she thought to herself. To Dierdre she said nothing, giving her wife a weary smile instead.

"Good day, subjects of the Stronghold," an irritating voice said over the intercom. It was Barris himself; Kara felt her inside clench with apprehension. Barris never made announcements in person, referring the mystique of removal and barriers of bureaucracy between himself and the commoners. Any time he did address the people directly it was to announce some new restriction – and frame it as a triumph for security or, as was more often the case now days, for morality.

"I have wonderful news for you," Barris said over the intercom, his nasal, grating voice sounding alarmingly chipper, "news that I alone could bring!"

Kara and Dierdre looked at each other with undisguised fear; the Stronghold Prophet had been thundering for months about the "sin of sodomy" that he said threatened the Stronghold. Three more Strongholds had failed over the course of the past four years; only six were left intact and operational at this point.

Six strongholds scattered across the hot, dead planet. Only six outposts of survival standing between what was left of civilization and utter barbarity as the human race slid toward oblivion. And the so-called Prophet was preaching hatred of targeted groups, including the Stronghold's few people of color... and, of course, its sexual minorities.

We knew this was coming, Kara thought.

Dierdre had sat on the bed again and was reaching out for her. Kara sat on the bed and allowed Dierdre to pull her to the mattress and then to curl herself around her. If they were about to hear their death sentence, they would do so in one another's' arms.

I truly thought Barris would know he can't run the Stronghold without me, without all the science and tech personnel, Kara thought wildly. Many of the Stronghold's gay and lesbian people were in those fields – too many to simply liquidate them, as the Prophet seemed to be hinting should happen, his language growing ever more strident.

But part of Kara had known that relying on the plain facts was not enough, even if it meant the Stronghold's survival. Barris was more interested in glory, and his own authority, than in the well-being of the people...

His next words were not what Kara was expecting.

"My tech teams have finally achieved my ultimate goal," Barris was saying. "Didn't I make you a Justice Vow? Didn't I make a sacred promise? Yes, my friends, I have accomplished what the naysayers and scientists said was impossible. I've brought a perpetrator from the past into our time – and he's going to pay the price for what our criminal ancestors did to the planet we call our home."

Kara felt Dierdre's arms tighten around her in astonishment. "Halleluiah," Dierdre said.

But Kara knew better. Pushing her wife's arms away from her, she sat up in a rush, then sprang to her feet and began looking for her shoes.

"What are you doing?" Dierdre asked.

"I've got to get to the lab," Kara told her. She paused for a moment. The power blackouts... could Barris have reinitialized the Vorenberg generators that powered the temporal portcullis? But even if he had...

"You should check in with the minister," Dierdre said. "You probably won't need to go to work today. Surely, we'll have a holiday!" Dierdre's face was alight with happiness; Kara bit her lip in distress. If Dierdre – who was smart and educated, unlike much of the work force – could have instantly bought into Barris' claims, it was likely that this absurd, impossible claim was already being taken for truth by almost everyone in the Stronghold. "The entire Stronghold will want to watch the execution of the evil ancestor," Dierdre added excitedly. "This is worth celebrating!"

Kara shook her head. "You know better. Everyone knows better. It's impossible to bring a native from the past into the present – as impossible as it is for any of us to venture into the future."

A look of disapproval came across Dierdre's face. Kara watched, astonished, thinking she was watching her own wife become a Barris supporter in that moment. "You know," Dierdre said coolly, "maybe Barris is right that it's the naysayers we have to watch out for."

"Are you nuts? It's people like you and me... you and me, Dee... that Barris has been painting as 'the enemy within,' " Kara reminded her. "You can agree with him out of excitement or simply for the sake of camouflage, but the laws of physics can't be changed on a whim, and they don't operate according to political convenience. The hard stop of the present moment is the first principle of time travel. People from our time can go back and then return to the present... but people from the past, even our own past selves, can never use a Portcullis to jump into the future."

"Maybe," Dierdre said, "science doesn't have all the answers. Or maybe the technologists found something in your precious physics that enabled them to figure out a workaround."

"A workaround? For an inviolable law of temporal physics?"

"There's a theoretical workaround for exceeding the speed of light," Dierdre reminded her. "So why not?"

"Because that 'theoretical workaround' doesn't violate the fundamentals of what we know to be true about the universe," Kara said heatedly. "Not now that we know a lot more about cosmology and particle physics. But that can't happen with temporal physics. We know the rock bottom foundations of temporal physics, because we've actually used it – a lot!"

Diedre got up from the bed and walked toward the door. She stopped by the mat in front of the door to slip on her shoes, then pointed to something near her feet. Kara saw that it was her own shoes, white in the room's shadows.

Looking back at Kara, Dierdre said, "Then maybe this is what God wants. And not even physics can argue with God."

"Where are you going?"

"The refectory," Dierdre said. "Breakfast. And, you know, fellowship. To be together and appreciate a glorious day."

Alone in the apartment cell, Kara opted to push the domestic drama with Dierdre out of her mind. She and her wife had always disagreed about religion; Dierdre was a physicist. She was assigned to the maintenance of the Stronghold's power grid, but she understood the origins of the cosmos. She didn't need a god to explain natural phenomena or the laws of reality. Equations known for almost four centuries did that more than well enough. Still, Dierdre was a believer; to her, faith transcended reason. While Kara had placed her hopes in the crucial role science played in maintaining the Stronghold's chances for survival, Dee had taken comfort and a sense of sureness from her beliefs, irrational as they were. God will take care of us, Dee would say when the Stronghold Prophet's ravings called into question the validity of their marriage and the very humanity of people like themselves.

But gods were fickle, and dogmas were riddled with exceptions and contradictions. Dee might be able to gloss all that over and call it faith, but Kara's own faith lay solidly with numbers... and the numbers here didn't add up. Barris was lying... as usual, Kara thought. But the boldness and impossibility of his claim had Kara worried. What could he be up to now?

***

"It's got to be because everyone's so spooked by the collapse of Stronghold 60," Deavers was saying as Kara entered the lab. "That, or it's because he made so many promises... and has kept none. But delivering on his so-called Justice Vow? His power will be cemented forever if he gives the people a scapegoat."

Deavers and the others on Kara's team were standing in the lab's refectory. It wasn't much – just a table and chairs gathered near a food outlet and a countertop with a working sink and faucet.

But no one was eating this morning. Everyone stopped and glanced at Kara as she entered the lab. The group seemed to have come to some sort of consensus and seemed to be assessing whether or not Kara was in agreement with them.

Kara knew what they had to be thinking. Mindful of the intercom and whoever was certainly listening in, she said, "It's interesting news this morning, isn't it?"

Deavers smiled. "You can talk freely," he said. "I'm using the white noise generator on the intercom. Barris' snoops won't hear a thing."

"Good. Then we can spend a few minutes dissecting his bullshit and figuring out what he's really up to."

"It's a power grab," Kaitlyn Crothers said instantly.

"What power?" Deavers asked. "Barris already has all the political power, and the religious power too, thanks to his scripture-spouting little pawn. There's no more power to grab. What there is, though, is a constant need to shore up the consolidation of that power by giving the people what they want... even if what they want is nothing more than what he tells them they want."

"But they really do want this," Kara said. "I saw it in my wife this morning. She's on the verge of a conversion to the Cult of Barris."

A moment of sober silence followed.

"We can't rely on family or friends," Crothers said.

"For what?" Elroy asked. Elroy Covington was the youngest member of Kara's science team. He didn't often speak up, but when he did he had a way of getting to the nub. "Are we gonna mount some kind of revolution?"

"Not possible," Deavers said.

"No, it's not," Kara said. "But we also can't just stand by and let whoever Barris is scapegoating get torn to pieces or flayed alive in the public square."

"If we try to oppose it, we'll be the ones they flay," Elroy said.

"I'm afraid he's right," Deavers said.

"Let's think about this for a second," Kara said. "For two decades – since he was just another councilmember, and not a popular one at that – Barris has been talking about punishing the people of the past for what they did to the planet... to us. He's been full of promises about cutting deals with the past to coax the ancestors to change their ways and accomplish the Great Miracle."

"Turning shit into fresh vegetables... that would be a miracle," Evelyn Tracey scoffed. "Even if we had managed to change the past, the present wouldn't magically transform into a better world for us. None of us would even be here. We're the result of the history we tried to change. The fact we're still here probably means that history can't be changed."

"Or that if it is, those changes propagate along an entirely different alternate space-time," Evelyn said. "A parallel universe."

"My point is that almost everyone in the Stronghold, including the garda, the security details, and Barris' whole political machine, believes in the absurdity of the Great Miracle," Tracey said. "These are not people who grasp the very simplest principles of temporal physics. We can try and tell them that Barris' claim about bringing someone from the past to our present time is an obvious lie, because it's utterly impossible. But they won't listen."

"So, then," Evelyn said, "what's been going on with all the midnight power outages? The only reason the entire energy supply of the Stronghold would need to be diverted is for the Vorenberg generators. And they serve only one purpose: To make the Portcullis work."

"Well and good," Kara broke in. "Barris can try all he wants to bring someone from the past to the present, but it can't be done. Maybe he's been sending operatives into the past to fetch an ancestor forward, but when they get back here they'll be empty-handed. Maybe he's been dispatching teams of saboteurs to mess up the ancestors' power grids, crash their computer-based economic systems, or assassinate key figures who drive the extinctions and the ecological collapse. Whatever he's up to, he's obviously failed to change anything."

"Which is why he needs to bring a sacrificial offering into the mix – to placate the people," Evelyn said.

Elroy spoke up again: "But are we absolutely sure that the technologists haven't found something we overlooked?"

"Yes," Kara said flatly. "Yes, we are. We've already tried everything imaginable to bring ancestors from the past to our own time so that we could show them the end result of their reckless ways: Temporal cocooning of random individuals, temporal suspension of entire cities... those attempts had effects, but not the effects we wanted."

"Temporal suspension. What a miscalculation. Horrible." Evelyn shuddered. "Entire cities cut off in localized time warps, but the distortions didn't move people through time the way we intended. Instead, they were..." Her voice trailed off.

"What?" Elroy asked. He was too young to have participated in those attempts from years ago.

"The trapped cities experienced relativistic distortion," Evelyn explained. "To outside observers, a millisecond passed. But to the people inside the distortion... centuries went by. Except the people didn't survive that long, because they were cut off from the outside world, from resources... I can't even imagine what those poor people suffered."

"A taste of their own medicine," Deavers said coldly.

"No. Worse, because at least we still have a functioning society. We understand how we got here, what's happening to us. We have the hope of trying to find solutions. They... they had nothing. Only bewilderment, and time... more time than they could survive," Evelyn said.

"What happened to them?" Elroy asked.

"No one on the outside can ever know for sure," Kara told him. "But historical accounts record the phenomenon: Cities filled with millions of living people one moment... then, nothing but dust a fraction of a second later."

"I can imagine what it would have been like," Deavers said. "Panic, murder... barbarism... A little like what the failed strongholds must have suffered."

"The point is, nothing and no one actually made it to the future," Evelyn said. "We invented dimensional mining in order to store people from the past in a livable environment outside of ordinary space-time, and all we did was give our ancestors the same idea. When they initiated transfers to extra-dimensional habitats, they simply spent a couple of hours in extra-dimensional space and then returned to the same spot in ordinary space and time that they left. When we tried to throw someone from the past into one of those habitats, all we did was subject them to an ordeal they didn't understand. It was a similar problem to the temporal cocoons: The isolation fields are too unstable. A few dozen people were frozen in extra-dimensional vacuoles while time progressed in ordinary space, but the vacuoles collapsed after a couple decades. There's just no way to bring people from centuries in the past to our time now."

"Enough navel gazing over our own past mistakes. Let's focus on what's actually going on here," Kara said.

"Barris lying? Getting away with some new crime that is supporters are only going to adore him for committing?" Deavers asked.

"More essential than that," Kara said. She pointed at the lab's video monitor, which had come to life a moment earlier. The sound was muted, but the image on the screen froze everyone in place: A young man – a boy, really, no more than 16 – was being paraded into the Council chambers. All the councilors were in attendance, and all of them except for science councilor Jared had bloodlust scrawled across their faces. Jared, Kara noticed, looked terrified.

"The kangaroo court is session," Kara said. "Since it's obvious that kid isn't from the past, what we need to find out is where he really came from."

"But, I mean, it could be possible the technologists found a way," Elroy insisted.

"It absolutely could not," Kara said. "They might refine technology in absolutely brilliant ways, but they can't change the First Principles of temporal physics."

"Children," Evelyn said abruptly. "Newborns. From our own time. It's the only possible way."

Everyone looked at her.

"The couple in the apartment cell next to mine... he's a rising star in the garda," Evelyn said. "They had a baby last month. But after a couple of weeks of listening to the newborn crying, I stopped hearing her. I asked the wife if everything was okay with the new baby and her husband got very threatening... he said if they had a new baby it was none of my business. The wife seemed subdued and even a little afraid... I mean, I'm afraid of her husband, too, and I know he beats her, but this was something even more intense than his usual bullying. So I asked a friend at the medical complex whether she knew anything about the baby, and she confided in me that..." Evelyn looked around. "You've all heard the rumors, haven't you? That Barris has been 'recruiting' newborns for a secret creche? He's raising a whole generation of new security forces that will be deeply and personally loyal to him?"

Elroy scoffed.

Kara had to agree. "I have heard those rumors, but how likely are they?" she asked. "I mean, where is this 'secret creche?' In the past? Because something like that could never be kept secret in the Stronghold."

"Looks like the Council is coming to order," Deavers interrupted, nodding at the video screen. "We should probably listen in."

***

The young man was introduced by Barris personally. Barris was enjoying every minute of this great accomplishment he claimed to have all but singlehandedly pulled off. He paraded back and forth in the space between he councilors' table and the crowd that filled the chamber. A security detail stood in that same space, surrounding the young man who looked terrified and bewildered.

Barris' speech was full of self-congratulatory plaudits and dire threats about what the young man was going to suffer. Barris promised the crowd that he would entertain any and all suggestions for the young man's punishment. The crowd roared with approval and threw out a variety of crude and vicious ideas ranging from disembowelment and decapitation to rape and sexual humiliations, including castration and having his own genitalia stuffed down his throat. Others suggested that the young man be burned alive; someone with an extraordinarily loud voice (or who was situated right near a microphone) screamed over and over again that the young man should be crucified.

Most of Kara's team was mystified by that one, but Dee had told Kara enough about her religious beliefs that Kara understood the word. Dee's parents had belonged to a religious sect that once had enjoyed dominance in many of the world's nations but had fallen by the wayside when the collapses had taken place. That was no surprise; as Kara understood it, Dee's religion had something to do with a god-man who preached compassion and promised forgiveness for all sins. Forgiveness and compassion weren't cardinal virtues among the survivors who had established the Strongholds, and the ancient texts that Dee quoted had been either banned or simply ignored in most of the world's surviving Strongholds by the time Kara and her generational cohort had been born, replaced by the stringent Book of Sureties and its many practical advisories.

Finally, Barris signaled the crowd to calm down. Within moments, the red-hot storm of rage had subsided, though the council chamber was still obviously filled with a thrumming excitement.

"Gentlemen of the Council," Barris said, turning to the Councilors' table and making a foolish-looking, grandiose gesture. "I present him to you: The ancestor, the one we managed to bring to our world after much trial and error and effort. I submit to you... He Who Shall Answer!"

The crowd in the Council Chamber roared again. From all around the sound of shouting penetrated the walls of the science lab; every person in the Stronghold seemed to be bellowing at that very moment.

Again Barris gestured, and again silence descended swiftly.

Councilmember Jared leaned forward. Jared had taken the seat once occupied by Councilmember Marjorie. He had replaced her when Barris had declared that all positions of political authority were to be filled with men. Marjorie had angrily resisted that order and been locked up on charges of sedition. Kara had no idea if she had survived over the years, or perished in her cell.

"Young man," Jared called out. "The Council has a question for you."

Other councilmembers spoke over each other in objection to Jared taking the lead this way, but he ignored them. "Tell us who you are."

The young man... boy, Kara corrected herself, seeing how youthful he was as the image shifted to a closeup. He was red-cheeked and had a scattering of pimples; his dark hair was tousled and fell across his pale forehead above terrified brown eyes.

Barris gestured to the council members and they, like the crowd had done, quickly fell silent. "Councilmember Jared," Barris said. "Go ahead. Take charge of the Council's questioning." Barris seemed to be enjoying this. Kara could only imagine why: Jared was a decent man, and as a former member of the temporal diplomacy task force he surely rejected Barris' claim that this boy had been plucked from the past to answer for the crimes of the ancestors.

Barris wasn't inviting Jared to lead the questioning because he expected Jared to believe his claims, Kara thought. He was doing it because he knew the Jared didn't buy the story but was powerless to do anything other than to try and convince a vengeful crowd that was deaf to truth, facts, and reason.

Barris was doing this to Jared simply to torment the man, and Jared was going to try advocating for the boy anyway, because he was a good person. Kara steeled herself for an ugly, sadistic spectacle.

"Go ahead, son," Jared said. "Tell us who you are."

"My... my name is Anton," the boy said. "Anton Tsiolkovsky."

"Can you tell us more about yourself?" Jared asked him.

"I... what do you mean?" the boy asked.

"He means," Barris interjected, gloating, "tell us everything about yourself. Where you were born. The date of your birth. The life you've lived so far... yes, especially that: The nice, fat, cozy life you have lived so far in the open air of a beautiful world."

Anton looked at Barris in complete confusion.

"Where and when were you born?" Jared prodded gently.

"I'm sixteen years old," Anton said.

"Yes, but can you answer the question?"

"I was born in Plainfield, Illinois," Anton said. "On April 4."

"What year?"

"Um, 2016," the boy answered.

"A critical juncture!" Barris crowed. "Clearly, the very gods have chosen him to bear the brunt of his generation's crimes against us!"

Once again the council chamber – and the rest of the Stronghold with it – was filled with a deafening clamor as the people voiced their anger and their threats.

Barris gestured. Silence fell.

Anton had covered his face and seemed to be sobbing.

"Anton," Jared said soothingly. "Anton. Can you look at me?"

Anton wiped at his eyes.

"Do you know where you are?"

"They said I'm in a fortress," Anton said.

"No, Anton. You're in a Stronghold. Do you know what that is?" Jared asked.

"It's... a fortress, I guess," Anton said.

"Do you know today's date?" Jared asked.

"They... they said I'm in the future?" Anton replied.

"That's correct," Jared told him. "This is the year 2438. It's February 12th, and we're about two hundred miles from the Arctic Circle. The temperature outside is 118 degrees Fahrenheit. The atmosphere is poisonous. There is no more drinkable water or arable land anywhere on the planet. There is no more ozone layer. The Earth's biosphere has essentially been wiped out, and even the oceans have been polluted and overfished to the point of lifelessness. Did they explain all this to you?"

"No... not really," Anton said.

"The people in this Stronghold have lived here for generations," Jared continued. "There were once almost a hundred Strongholds in different locations around the world. Most of them have failed, either because of technological problems or else because of political division and civil unrest. A civil war in a Stronghold is a death sentence for everyone who lives there. Everyone knows this – in the abstract. All the same, humans being what they are, emotions tend to run rampant. The end result? There are only six Strongholds left at this point in time. Does this all make sense to you?"

Anton stared at Jared, trembling. He seemed to be in a trance.

"The people in this Stronghold are led by the man who introduced you, Council Head Barris," Jared told him.

Barris took a stagey bow – or tried to; his massive belly, an anomaly among the Stronghold's thin, underfed residents, got in his way.

"Council Head Barris claims that a team of technicians under his direct supervision brought you from the past to our time. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"You stole me from my time and brought me to yours," Anton said.

"Do you know why?"

"You... you blame me for the way the world is now," Anton said. Then, his voice quickening: "But I'm trying to change things! I know the future will be bad. I've been working to stop the future from... from..."

Boos and jeers drowned him out. Barris looked around, a smug, amused expression on his face. Then he and Jared made eye contact; a swift, charged look seemed to pulse between them, and Barris made an impatient gesture that brought the crowd to silence again.

"People of your generation tried. We know this," Jared said. "But no one listened. And by the time you were an adult it was too late."

"It is? I mean... it will be?" Anton looked stricken. "Nothing we're doing now makes any difference? I mean... I marched in New York. I even went to Washington, and there were thousands of us, and... and there were police beating us up and calling us 'woke' and 'socialists,' but all we want is... all we want is a chance to have a life."

"I'm sorry," Jared said.

"He's sorry," Barris broke in loudly, and the crowd burst into a new round of jeering. "He's sorry for our evil ancestor here. But what do we have to be sorry for?"

The crowd quieted again, listening intently, expectantly.

Barris didn't keep them waiting. Walking close to the boy, circling around him, looming over him, Barris said, "We have everything to be sorry for. Land that won't sustain crops. Cities cooked under a blazing sky and a relentless sun. Mutation rates doubling every two generations. Starvation."

Not for you, Kara thought, watching Barris' preening on the video screen.

"The cruelty is the point," Evelyn muttered, to no one in particular. It was an observation about Barris that she had all too many occasions to make.

"But we have nothing to apologize for!" Barris shouted on the video screen. "Which is what he – " Barris pointed an accusing finger at Jared. " – is doing right now: Apologizing to an evil ancestor! Apologizing to a world-murdering perpetrator! Tell me something, Councilmember Jared," Barris added, staring Jared down. "You're a time traveler from way back. You hobnobbed with the ancestors during your stupid, wasteful 'diplomacy' mission to the past. If we were to send you back right now to those times... what would you do? Go on an apology tour?"

The crowd laughed uproariously. The sound had a nasty edge.

Barris turned to his audience. "Let me cut to the chase," he proclaimed. "Council member Jared is going to tell us that this young man is as much a victim of his time's recklessness and selfish disregard for the future... for us... as we are. And yet, he lived in a world where he could enjoy the natural beauty and kindness of a veritable garden – a garden now lost to us. So, no, I don't agree, Councilmember Jared!" Now Barris had wheeled around and was pointing at Jared again. "I don't think that young Anton here is a victim at all! He's one of them! An evil ancestor, just like the rest! For centuries we have wanted to put those people on trial and make them answer for what they did. Now, thanks to a unique quantum alignment – or maybe the mercy of the gods – we have succeeded at our long-sought quest to bring one, just one of the evil ancestors to our time to face our wrath and feel our judgment. I promised you this, people! I promised you with the Justice Vow, and now a promise made is a promise kept!"

Quantum alignment? Kara wondered. She had only half expected that Barris would attempt some sort of technical jargon to explain his claims, but this word salad of unrelated terms was simply pathetic.

Not that it mattered to the roaring crowd.

Barris didn't even try to quiet the crowd as he gestured to the security detail and walked out of the Council chamber via a secure side door, the security men and their prisoner following after.

The walls trembled with the shouts of the people, their applause, their stomping feet – their blind, rage-fueled acclamation.

"We can't let this happen," Kara told her team. "Whoever that kid is, wherever they got him from, we can't let them do this to him."

***

Kara had arranged to meet Jared in The Alcove – a niche in one of the subterranean service tunnels that had been dug over the centuries to access and enlarge the Stronghold's reservoir and water processing plant. The tunnels here didn't have lights, much less cameras or intercoms.

Jared arrived, out of breath and looking flustered, and walked past the other members of Kara's science team. "All of you?" he asked. "Sticking your necks out like this? You know that Barris is just gonna chop your heads off for your trouble."

"As if he could run this place without us," Kara told him.

Jared laughed bitterly, "Haven't you heard? His technologists can work miracles. Or maybe that was the work of his pet 'Prophet.' In any case, I wouldn't assume you're indispensable. Barris surely doesn't see you that way."

Kara refused to be sidetracked. With time to think about what she had seen in the Council chamber, she had started asking herself questions. Now she asked those questions of Jared.

"What does he have over you?"

"What – what do you mean?" Jared asked, taken aback.

"While you were speaking for the Council, you didn't point out the obvious," Kara told him. "Barris claims he brought someone from the past to our present. That's a violation of the First Principle. It's impossible. It's the obvious thing to take note of in a public forum."

"You think that would do any good?" Jared asked. "You think the people care about science, or physics, or any of the laws of nature... much less the rule of law? Barris is telling them something they have been desperate to hear all their lives. And we're as much to blame as Barris!"

"What?" Kara asked, affronted.

"All those years we spent trying to find a way, feeding into this revenge narrative... how much better could we have made this miserable present time if we'd focused on the real task at hand – survival, rehabilitation of the planet – instead of focusing on ways to punish the past?"

"We don't have time," Kara said, aware of the irony of her words, "to quarrel about this. Barris keeps talking about putting that kid on trial, but how much of a trial do you think he's gonna get? There won't be any sort of process, no legal niceties, no prosecution parrying with the defense. It'll be a summary judgment decreed by Barris himself, the showboat... and then we'll see some real mob justice. The walls will be red with that kid's blood. He's a sacrificial lamb, and I'll be surprised if we don't see people feasting on his organs and entrails."

"I've seen people act like animals before," Deavers said from down the rough-hewn corridor, "but not like they are right now."

Jared looked at the floor.

"Answer the question," Kara said. "You could have and you should have challenged Barris on the absurdity of bringing an ancestor through time to the present. But you didn't. You didn't put up a twelfth of the fight you might have."

"Because what good would it do?" Jared said in a whisper.

"Or he has something over you."

"He wants....he wants me to resign from the Council," Jared said. "And after today he won't have a problem getting his way."

"Again, you're not fighting," Kara said in exasperation. "So, what is it? What does he have on you?"

"It's... it's my son," Jared said.

"What?"

"My son. Eighteen years ago, Barris agreed to send my baby son to the past. I took him myself... Barris came with me. The ancestors used to have drop stations for unwanted infants. We took him to one. We left him there."

"Why?" Kara asked.

Jared snorted with sorrowful laughter. "Why do you think? I wanted him... I wanted him to have a life. Not grow up here. Not face the failure we're headed for... the violence, the strife... eventual, inevitable oblivion, like all the other Strongholds. No one is going to survive. There is no future, no way to rescue the present from the past. The world we live in... it's a dead end for all of us..."

Jared was starting to sound dissociative. Kara shook her head impatiently. "And you think this Anton kid is your son? Is that what Barris told you?"

"It makes sense," Jared said, seeming focused again. "We know that we can't bring people from the past into the future. There's no other explanation. Anton is from here... he grew up in the past, raised by adoptive parents. He's just been returned to – " His voice faltered.

Kara stared hard at Jared. Jared stared back, his eyes widening with realization.

"The second-most obvious fallacy in Barris' story... and in your panic you didn't see it," Kara said. "If Barris were to bring your son back to this time, it wouldn't matter how many years he spent living in the past. Your son would arrive at the same moment he left – eighteen years ago. Not now. That's part of the First Principle of time travel!"

"Oh, my gods." Jared looked sick – and also relived. "It's not Hal."

"Who?"

"My son..."

"No," Kara said, "it's got to be one of the kids that Barris has been sending back recently."

"What?"

"Isn't it obvious? The power outages. The rumors about a 'secret creche.' "

"Secret what?"

"It's just scuttlebutt originating from insiders who don't grasp what's really going on," Kara told him. "You're not the only well-placed resident of the Stronghold who wants a better life for their kid. Let me just guess what price Barris asked from you all those years ago: That you, a much more respected strongholder than he used to be, either stood out of his way while he made his schemes and climbed the political ladder, or else you actively helped him."

Jared said nothing, but his guilty look confirmed what she was saying.

"But Barris needs more – more cooperation from the people who maintain the daily operations of the Stronghold. The garda, the techs, the department heads, the influencers... and, of course, the growers. The only truly wealthy people in our subsistence economy. He's always had a gut, but now he's even portlier than he used to be. Where's he getting this wealth, this power, this food? He's the one who holds the strings... he's the one who can make arrangements for power diversions under the guise of security operations, which I'm sure is what he did for you all those years ago. Only, what some powerful family doesn't know is that their son – dispatched, what, a couple nights ago? Last night, maybe? He went to the past as a baby, but he's back as a young man now, brought back to the very moment he left, snatched from the past as part of Barris' political theater. This kid's blood family in the here and now has no idea of how they've been fooled and manipulated."

"That monster," Jared breathed, his air of defeat dissipating with his growing anger.

"So," Kara said, leaning close to him, "what are we gonna do about it?"

***

There was no time to waste, but the plan presented itself to them fully formed as soon as they set about formulating it.

Justin showed up at Barris' palatial apartment complex, looking chastened. "You can have my seat on the Council," he told Head Councilor once the guard who escorted him to Barris' study had departed. "You can have anything. My public suicide, if that's what you want..."

"Oh, my, yes," Barris said, leaning back in his chair, hands folded across his belly with satisfaction. "Since you offered."

"Just don't kill my son."

Barris laughed. "You think that's an option? After everything I promised the people? They may be sheep... they'll follow me anywhere, believe anything I tell them... but make the herd mad enough and they can still trample a real man like me to death. I know you science types like to think of me as oblivious to facts, but... not really. I just like having the option to deploy facts as I see fit."

"Surely you could find a way. Fake his execution, Send him back to the past..."

"Why should I? Here's what you don't grasp, Jared. I owe you nothing."

"For someone so focused on what others owe him, that seems a strange sentiment," Jared said.

"Not at all. Not for someone with the courage and the will to take what he wants," Barris said. "Here's where I stand: At the pinnacle. A winner. What I want is what I'm owed. If you were a stronger man..." Barris smiled. "But then, if you were a stronger man you would be the one in charge."

Jared hung his head. "You are strong enough to grant a father's wish to see his son in private, aren't you?"

***

Kara and her trusted senior staff had maneuvered themselves into position by the time Jared and Barris approached the Stronghold's prison. Kara could only imagine the words that Jared would have for Anton as he played the role of the grieving father... and then turned the tables.

Kara had suspected that Jared would have a weapon, and he did – an eighty-year-old burner. The weapon ran on outdated maser technology, but was still operational and decidedly lethal. The sequence of events was easy to envision: Jared pulling the weapon on the astonished Barris, the young Anton quickly realizing that he was being rescued and proving all too willing to play his part as Jared, burner concealed in his hand, concocted a story that would get them past the guards... a story about a secret confession, a meeting with the Stronghold Prophet, either for reasons of devotion of perversion. Kara shuddered at the stories the guards would dream up for their own amusement – "devotionals" and "confessions" indeed, carried out behind suitably closed doors...

The three of them emerged from the prison complex looking much as Kara had supposed they would: Anton shuffling along in front of Jared and Barris, with Jared's clenched hand positioned casually, yet meaningfully, near Barris' corpulent body.

"Not a word," she heard Jared warn in a low voice.

"You'll pay for his," Barris replied, in his own low growl.

The three of them moved up the corridor, away from the entrance to the prison. Kara and the others converged; the group moved in a tidy, tight knot toward the Stronghold's industrial sector and the disused Vorenberg generators. The Portcullis was situated not far away from the generators. The area would be uninhabited at this time of night.

But as they neared their objective, a sudden clamor of footfalls grew audible – not the chaotic noise of garda scrambling toward them, but the measured steps of a cadre of trained security men moving in concert.

There were about two dozen of them. They came into sight as they rounded a corner up a side corridor.

With a curse, Jared jammed his clenched hand into Barris' side.

"You're only making things worse for yourselves," Barris told him.

"Tell them to stand down," Jared ordered tensely, as Anton looked around, his face pale.

"Back off, men," Barris called up the side corridor.

The security detail paused – and now Kara registered something she'd overlooked before: Leading the pack of grey-uniformed security men was Elroy in his white lab coat. Had he been spying on Kara's science team the whole time? Probably, she reflected.

"Sir?" the leader of the security team called back.

"Stand back," Barris called, and Jared hustled him past the side corridor. "And stand by!" Barris added, throwing the words over his shoulder.

Kara and Elroy stared at each other across the forty meters that separated them. Elroy shrugged. "Sorry boss," he said in a conversational tone of voice that was perfectly distinct despite the distance between them.

"I'll just bet you are," Kara said coldly.

"Sorry you were an egghead socialist traitor!" Elroy called, then burst into laughter.

The leader of the security detail shushed Elroy and gestured for him to retreat to the back of the group. Elroy followed the leader's brusque, silent instructions without another backwards glance.

Kara hurried past the side corridor, catching up with Jared and Barris. The other members of the science team trailed her. She fell into step next to Jared and whispered haltingly in his ear as they proceeded toward the Vorenberg generators.

Jared nodded tightly. Kara waved Deavers forward, then, falling back with him a few paces, carried out a swift, quiet exchange with him. Deavers nodded in turn, then gestured at two of the members of the science team. As the corridor branched a few moments later, Deavers took the leftward passage, followed by the two scientists he had summoned. Kara and the others followed Jared and Barris into the Portcullis lab.

The room was shielded, but the heavy door hung half open, looking like a vintage depiction of a high-tech bank vault. In a sense, that was what it was, being a modified door from the Stronghold's first incarnation as a seed bank.

Kara shut the heavy door and secured it.

Overhead, the lights flickered; Kara knew what this meant: Deavers had activated the Vorenberg generators. The power would fail throughout much of the rest of the Stronghold as most of its available energy was channeled to the generators and to this chamber the Portcullis within it.

With a swift movement, Jared handed Kara the burner. She was all too glad to herd Barris into a corner of the room as Jared worked the master console to the Portcullis. A moment later, a powerful hum started up, loud and deep and throbbing in the chests of everyone in the room. The Portcullis had no lights, but it seemed to glow.

"What do you think you're doing?" Barris said, his voice rising, cracking, shrill with fear.

"I'm taking this young man back where he belongs," Jared said.

"He belongs here – with us," Barris protested.

"No, I don't think so," Jared told him.

"But he's from here, you idiot!" Barris exclaimed. "Just like your First fucking Principle dictates he must be! And isn't it part of the temporal natural laws that whoever travels to the past eventually has to come back to the present?"

"In theory, yes," Jared agreed. "And if not, the version of the universe that time traveler originates from might – just might – collapse. The equations are unclear on this. But even if it happens... so what?"

"What... what do you mean?" Barris asked, eyes wide and beads of greasy sweat standing out on his forehead. The rooms was getting hot as the the Portcullis drew energy, but Kara doubted that was the reason for Barris' perspiration.

Jared finished his work at the console, then nodded to Kara, who nodded back with a brief smile. Kara looked at Anton. "This world is already dead," she told him. "The body just hasn't fallen yet. You understand?"

"I..." Anton seemed overwhelmed; he stared at her with wide eyes.

"We wanted to change the past and fix the present," Kara told him. "We wanted to have a future. I know it's a lot to ask – too much. But we couldn't change the past. Maybe you can."

"Why?" Anton asked, his voice nothing more than a whisper. "Why me?"

"Because in your origins you're one of us. But you're also one of them – one of the ancestors. You understand them in ways we never will. Maybe you can see a way to steer the human race away from the dead end of this future. I hope you'll try." She smiled at him, then nodded to Jared, who took Anton's arm and guided him toward the Portcullis.

"What's all this about the dead future?" Barris demanded. "I am the future! Of course you failed at everything you tried. I am the only one who can – "

Kara grabbed Barris by the throat and, with a hard shove, slammed him into the wall. "Shut the fuck up, man," she growled.

Like Anton, Barris stared her, wide-eyed... though in his case the eyes were filled with terror.

"What do we mean by a 'dead future?' " Kara snarled. "I'll tell you. It doesn't matter any longer what happens in this version of reality. And no, you can't change it. You're no savior, you're the very incarnation of the problems that brought us here. Our only choice is either to keep on struggling, hopeless and deluded... or purify this reality."

"Purify? What do you mean? What are you going to do?" Barris jabbered.

Kara smiled serenely. "I think you know. Deavers isn't going to power down the generators. They'll keep drawing power and channeling it here, and as they do they will build to an overload. When they go up... scratch another Stronghold."

"No!" Barris lunged toward her in panic, and Kara was all too happy to treat him to a full discharge of the burner. Barris tumbled to the floor, gasping as his innards cooked. "No," he croaked, his face blackening. "Stop..."

He died moments later. Kara looked around and saw that the chamber was empty aside from herself and the other members of her science team. She gestured at the Portcullis, but her colleagues... her brothers and sisters, loyal and steadfast... shook their heads and remained standing where they were.

Kara smiled. She understood. It was counterintuitive: After all, how had Jared put it? Who wouldn't want to take refuge in the past? But this place, this ruined future and this doomed Stronghold, was her home. Kara, like her team, had no wish to leave it, even now.

There was a brilliant light, a crush of superheated air...

***

Barney Fillmore surveyed the church basement with its circle of folding chairs. A table stood at the side of the room, an urn of coffee and a box of donuts ready to serve anyone who might be peckish or just a little nervous.

"This a twelve-step meeting? I thought..."

"That's what this room is normally used for," another man told him, brushing past and headed for the chairs. "Not tonight, though."

Barney stepped toward the chairs, then chose one and sat down. A young woman seated next to him spared him a shy glance and smiled.

Barney smiled back.

"Hello everyone," a youthful, confident voice rang out. Everyone looked over to see a dark-haired young man sitting down in the last unoccupied chair. "My name is Anton. This isn't a twelve-step meeting..." Anton looked at Barney with a smile. "But it's something a little like it. Something that's about personal responsibility, facing facts, and, if you need it, believing in a higher power. It's about making your peace with the past... and it's about forging a better future."

"Mister," Barney called out, "I don't know what future you think I have. The cancer's put a pretty definite boundary on that in my case."

"Here too," someone else agreed.

The shy young woman next to Barney nodded: Her, as well.

Anton looked around the rom. "I know," he said. "Each of you has had bad news from their doctor, or clinician, or curandera. I know. That's why you've been invited here: Because you have nothing to lose. Nothing the gain, either, except a better future for your friends, your family... your loved ones. The whole world."

"What do you mean?" Barney asked.

Anton leaned forward. "When I was a young man... about twenty years ago, now... I was part of the youth climate protests. They got nothing done, and a bunch of my friends got their heads knocked in by cops, or else they got a criminal record just for marching in the streets and speaking out, or they got both. All we wanted was a chance to have a future... a life. Then... I was sixteen when it happened..." Anton seemed to gather himself up with a sigh. "Something happened to me. I thought I was going to die. I ended up surviving, but... the experience gave me a new perspective on my life and what I was doing to try to save the future... the prospects for the future. Banging our heads on a wall of indifference and ignorance wasn't working. We weren't earning a future for ourselves; all we got for our trouble was outright hostility from people worried about their shareholder profits, people with their heads buried in the sand. What would work? People, I had an awakening. I realized that what I had survived had only left me alive to face another grim fate as the planet died around me. I thought I should do something about it.

"Now," Anton said, smiling again, his eyes shining, "am I the only one in this room with a care for the future? The only one who wants to take his agency back, do something meaningful?"

"Something?" Barney asked. "Something like what? Something illegal?"

"Illegal? Hell, yes! Because what else is there? Protest is illegal. Criticizing the president or any elected official... even criticizing a pastor... all of that is illegal," Anton said.

"We gonna have to get violent?" Barney asked. "Not that I'm opposed to it, if that's what needs done."

Anton shrugged. "When it comes to saving the future and countless generations who have a right to live in it... we'll do what we have to. But I'm hopeful there's another way. Are any of you familiar with the work of Robert Heinlein? He had a theory that civilizations decline when common courtesy falls away and people stop being polite, stop having care and compassion for reach other."

"Who?" Barney muttered to himself.

"Heinlein," the young woman next to him whispered. "He's a writer. Brilliant, I love all his stuff."

"That's the world we live in right now," Anton said, drawing Barney's attention once more. "Lots of people still care, still feel compassion, but in a society where offering help... food to the homeless, water to people standing in line to cast a vote... in a society where simple acts of fellowship are criminal acts, what room is there for compassion? And that's my project," he said. "We're all dying in this room anyway, right? So what more than they do to us? They tell us to sit down and shut up while they poison our water. And then when we get sick and need help and health care, they dismiss us as losers, tell us to hurry up and die, get out of the way of their profits, quit sucking up the money that society owes them. But we don't have to hurry up and die. And we don't have to die without making an answer of our own to their callousness."

Barney nodded.

"I say we use our remaining time to good effect," Anton added. "I say we set the world back on track. And I say the way to do it is to remind people that courtesy and compassion aren't criminal acts – they're essential to any functional civilization. I truly believe that message. I truly believe something so simple as be a cure... not for everything that afflicts us, but for much of it. Now... who thinks so, too? Who wants to give it a shot?"

Barney chuckled. "Hell," he said, "I'm in. There are more than a few motherfuckers I'd like to preach that message to."

Anton nodded. "Okay then. Welcome to the Courtesy Corps."

Barney burst out in laughter, as did everyone in the room. Anton looked confused.

"Son," Barney told him, "you know you just made a funny, right? We're all dead men and women in this room. You're not talking about a 'corps' – but a corpse!"

Anton considered that, then he, too, started laughing.

"Peripheral Visions" will return in March, 2023.