By Aladdin and Christopher Leeson

A stranger has arrived at Eden's suburban home, and he seems to know everything about her, including her identities as Mantra and Lukasz. She could either kill him or listen to him, so she listens. The story he tells her is unbelievable. He might be a crank, but does she dare risk disbelieving him? If what he tells her is true, the universe is going to end in 24 hours, and saving it will depend a lot on the decision she makes in the next few minutes.

Chapter 2

The Tree of Eternity

Be void of feeling!
A heart that soon is stirred
Is a possession sad
Upon this changing earth.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
.

"Why do you say that?" I asked. "My old master saw the future and said I'd live and active for centuries to come."

"Unfortunately," Gabriel said, "that prediction is not true any longer."

I blinked.

"I do not doubt that Archimage's had a talent for precognition," he continued, "but the looming disaster will negate everything previously pre-ordained. Archimage foresaw a stable Main Bough, but events have occurred that endanger that stability."

"Okay, I'll bite. How long do we have left?"

"If you and I do not act to circumvent it, reality will end on September 15 at 7:11 p.m. That's Pacific Time, of course."

That was tomorrow! I had just visited an altered reality where the world had gone mad following a cosmic energy discharge that came upon the Earth a little after 7:00. The little man now had earned my undivided attention.

But he still had not won my trust.

"Why do you think that?" I asked.

"Anti-Creation is the enemy we face. My people call it the Nemesis Effect. I have traveled up to the last microsecond before it breaks free to observe all the various playing pieces of the disaster. I naturally had to flee from that onrushing future before I would perforce be made a part of that anomalous event."

I frowned. "That's very interesting. But you sound like you're leaving a lot out. Can you be a little less eager to cut to the chase?"

"I'll try. My people, the Ysgorans, travel in time, and also in space. Even one like myself, a person not really involved with exploring duty, has seen this universe billions of years in the future and also gazed upon its primordial beginnings – up to the instant of the Null Place itself."

"What's that? The Big Bang?"

He shook his head. "The Big Bang never happened. The idea is totally illogical and unsubstantiated by scientific data. Those who believe in such a wild hypothesis, are not true scientists at all. The term Null Place denotes the time before Time itself began. Past that point, not even the Ysgorans can time travel into it."

"That's a relief. Up to now, it sounded like your people could do anything."

"We do have our limits. The technology of Ysgor was, in fact, not founded upon any miraculous discovery made by our own people. We were chosen to fulfill a certain required role because we were technically inclined. Those we call the Creators passed their secrets on to us."

"Are you talking about gods of some kind?"

He shook his head. "I refer to the Creators of the Godwheel, not of the Multiverse."

"Weren't the Vahdalans the Creators?"

"No," he said. "The Creators surpassed the Vahdalans in every way conceivable. The Creators established the Vahdalans at the Godwheel, assigning them the humble task of being its caretakers. After many millennia, that stormy race succumbed to a civil war that all but destroyed itself. But you already know something about that."

I nodded. If these alleged Creators were much more potent than the Vahdalans – one of whom I'd personally met – they were not a gang I would like to meet in a dark alley. Or even in the light of the Godwheel's two suns.

"Are these Creators still around?" I asked. I wasn't buying into any of this. I was only hoping that he'd trip himself up and put me in a place to refute his con game, whatever it was.

Gabriel's eyebrows arched thoughtfully. "Whether the Creators have gone beyond recall or remain with us undetected, no one may say."

"Well, then, are the Ysgorans something like the Vahdalans?"

"We are not so impressive as the stormy and exciting Vahdalans. We served in a role analogous to that of a royal watchmaker. Just as an earthly ruling family needed people of special expertise to operate their societies, the Vahdalans depended on the Ysgorans to care for vital temporal matters, especially those which concerned the Tree of Eternity."

"What's that?"

"It's the living diagram that rationalizes the operation of time over the entirety of the Multiverse."

"It's only a diagram?" I asked.

"By no means! Forgive me; it is hard to convey concise meanings in English."

"If you don't like English, I've learned dozens of different languages over the last fifteen hundred years," I said.

"I do fear that no Earth language can express the science behind the structure of the Multiverse. Though I call the Tree of Eternity a diagram, it is something much greater. The Tree comprises the reality that it describes. In your world, a change in reality changes the diagram made for it. But with the Tree of Eternity, any change in the diagram changes the existing reality."

"This is entirely over my head, I'm afraid."

"Basically, the Tree of Eternity is self-operating, but irregularities can occur. The Timekeepers monitor these anomalies and dispatch agents to correct them. I am a Timekeeper myself, even if only a minor one."

I frowned. No such system could be operated – or even maintained -- by mortal beings. So, was Gabriel a liar, or was he more than a mortal being? His appearance, if it wasn't an illusion, made him look like a short, redheaded man who had eaten too many donuts.

"Timekeepers are like gardeners," my visitor hurried on. "We figuratively pull weeds and make sure that Time's course is cultivated and pruned. Typically, when a chaotic event confounds us, we reduplicate it under laboratory conditions and study its longer-term effects. If the effects are positive or harmless, we might allow it to occur in Real Time. If they are destructive, we seek to intervene and prevent it from affecting Real Time."

"What kind of 'laboratory conditions' are you talking about?" I asked.

"A timeline can be created to examine the anomaly. Before you ask what a timeline is, you should know that the concept is foundational to our mission. One reason I have come to you in preference to contacting any other ultra is that you are one of the few who knows firsthand about the existence of alternate timelines."

Yeah, that was for sure! In August, I'd fallen into an alternate timeline where I had never become Mantra. Unfortunately, what Lukasz had become there was appalling! But I had an even worse time of it in a different alternate world when I'd taken the kids out shopping earlier in the evening.

"Each Main Bough of the Tree," Gabriel continued, "has many timelines."

Another incomprehensible term. "Main Bough?"

"It's easiest if you think of a natural tree. It has limbs, branches, and twigs directly or indirectly anchored to the tree trunk. In the Twenty-first Century, science has finally been forced to accept the theoretical existence of alternate worlds. But the human race understands little about the concept and uses flawed terminology when describing it."

"But you haven't said what a 'main bough' is."

"Think of that tree that I mentioned. Imagine that its trunk supports a few great limbs. The trunk is called the Bole, but the limbs issuing directly from the Bole are referred to as the Main Boughs. Each Main Bough exists as a universe of its own. Each has limbs, branches, and twigs, but all Main Boughs depend on the Bole for support. As in a forest, if the trunk is cut, the limbs all fall to earth and die."

"Okay," I said, "I'm nowhere close to understanding where you're going. But I think you're claiming that the world is in trouble!"

"Yes, that is what I'm saying. Think of Argus, the enemy you battled. He threw open a gate into an alien Main Bough and snatched from it the god Thor, who inhabits a Main Bough other than our own. On has to give credit to Argus. It took a god who knew what he was doing to open a passage between separate universes."

"Out of this entire universe, why have you shown up on the planet Earth to try to fix it?"

"Because this is the planet where the Nemesis Effect will soon be released.

"Yeah, that really explains a lot!" I said sarcastically.

"I can see that you are still skeptical! The Nemesis Effect is a force from Outside. It didn't arise out of this Main Bough. Destructive elements have intruded into the universe you know by way of the portal that Argus made. But if destruction befalls this keystone Main Bough, the whole Multiverse is irrevocably doomed."

"And that's the worst possible case, huh?"

"Indeed! If any Main Boughs other than this one were lopped off the Tree, the results would be vast and tragic, but the Tree as a whole could survive it. But this Main Bough is the very keystone of the Tree of Eternity. If the Keystone is destroyed, the Bole is compromised and everything it supports collapses. There is only one Tree of Eternity, and all Creation from the beginning of Time is maintained by it. The fall of the Tree is literally the undoing of Creation."

"What you're telling me is something too big to put my mind around it. Don't you think you can find a better time agent than I am?" I was hoping that he'd say "yes."

"Your perceived shortcomings shouldn't amount to a serious obstacle. The tasks you need to carry out are those you are best suited for. I will use my advanced knowledge to direct your activities toward our focused ends." Here, he paused thoughtfully. "Mantra, if we're going to become colleagues, I cannot emphasize the extent to which you and I will have to depend on one another."

"I don't know yet if I want to be your colleague. I have a life to live here, and this cosmic thing you're talking about must come packed with about a million ways to get me killed." I still didn't believe a word he was saying but I hoped he'd go away and become someone else's problem.

Gabriel wagged his finger at me. "You will not be made safer by remaining at home. So very soon, all that you know will pass away. A sudden rewriting of past, present, and future will occur. In less than twenty-four hours, your entire universe will end. It will not be merely destroyed, but it will mean the erasure of any existence this universe ever had, alone with all its contents.

"So you say! But nothing I've heard or seen tells me I can trust a single word that comes out of your mouth."

"That is true. But haven't you just returned from an alternate reality where the Nemesis Effect has already had its initial effect? If this event manifests here, it will place a false Main Bough where the natural one used to be. The old universe will be blinked out of existence, and a flawed copy will take its place. Then, as your people say, 'It will be all downhill from there.'"

"Well, the world I visited was pretty lousy, but it wasn't a null void."

"That is because of the Tree's self-preservation system. It can perform emergency repairs. Think of a damaged automobile. One may do roadside repairs, but these are insufficient, and a little farther along the road, it will stop again. Then it is repaired again, but that allows for only a short trip before more adjustment is needed. This jury-rigging process cannot continue indefinitely. The Bole collapses when the Main Bough can no longer create a workable keystone. Should the Bole collapse, it will collapse the rest of the Multiverse."

"Oh, come on! You sound like one of those 'the sky is falling' guys," I said.

"Then why not give me a chance to prove myself? If I cannot win your trust, I will try to recruit a less accomplished time agent. But to give you fair warning, your idyllic life will end in less than 24 hours
unless my mission is successful."

I looked him straight in the eye. "If the disaster is so near, why have you waited this long before starting your mission?" I asked.

"As I've said, the Timekeeper leadership was against preventing the catastrophe about to occur."

I decided to keep on humoring the little man. "What reason would the big-cheese Timekeepers have for wanting the Multiverse to collapse?"

"My people share some traits with yours. The scientific mind, wherever it manifests itself in the Multiverse, tends to be very inflexible. If it chooses not to believe something that has not been previously accepted as truth, it seldom reevaluates its long-held beliefs. Instead, it reflexively deems the perceived anomaly to be untrue. When scientific minds deem something to be false, their reaction is to protect the prevailing belief system by obstructing the research of anyone holding a contrary opinion."

"But willfully perpetuating false theories betrays the truth-seeking mission of science," I protested.

"It truly does. But consider the many submerged cities that are being discovered in your world, dating from tens of thousands of years ago. Have any serious expeditions been sent to investigate them? I dare say they have not!"

I sighed. "If super scientists can be so stupid, what, exactly, do you expect
from me?"

"As I have said, I seek your help stopping the annihilation of – well – all Creation."

Well, I'll give the little man a one point: he was nothing if not dramatic.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 3