Project: Aleph

“Time is on my side... yes it is.” ~ Mick Jagger

It started over lunches. The scientist, resplendent in his long white coat, ate at a frenetic pace,
never talking with his mouth full, but talking whenever he could. He rattled off theories, conspiracies,
numbers, philosophy. An unending deluge of how mankind had been doomed. He would go on for
hours in the cheap little diner off the massive mid-grav ring. Below them, the dulled orange surface of
dead continents gleamed up through the atmosphere, reflecting the sun.
The psychologist in the black suit absorbed the input without interrupting. They were old
friends, the two of them. The doc had been in the DSDF back when the last bit of salvageable life had
been taken off of Australia. The scientist had worked to nurse the animals back to health with an
emergency squad assembled for the purpose. Together, they'd helped a lot of traumatized people accept
the impending final years of the slow death of Earth.
“It was old Valenzetti that really turned me onto this. His equation. Look.” The scientist
jammed his fingers at an incomprehensible parade of numbers. Certain patterns repeated. 4 8 15 16 23
42. The psychologist shook his head and rolled up the flexiscreen, handing it back to his friend. “No,
no, look.” He dropped his sandwich and unrolled it again, fixing the man in the black suit with a wide,
blue gaze. “This is the timeline, and this chart here is the number of impacting factors. You can see
humanity's bottleneck here... and here... and here.”
Toba. The Black Death. The 21st Century.
“It's that last one that really did it. If we could just change - “
“Look, whatever happened, happened.” He shook his greying head. “Don't even tell me you're
going to try and break ethical quarantine. This is the future we got dealt. Look forward, kid, not
behind.”
Messy blond hair shook in denial. “I need you on this, you're like a brother to me. You
understand people. You know how to make them react, or change. I need that.”
He leaned back. “What does that even mean?”
“I-” The square jaw clamped shut. “Come down to the lab tomorrow. I'll show you
something.” He shoved the flexiscreen into a deep pocket and scooped his sandwich back up with his
free hand.
The man in black arched an eyebrow, looking at his friend with a sardonic expression.
“Meanwhile, I'm getting the bill for the meal, aren't I?” The blond head jerked up with a rueful
expression on his face. He put his hand up to stave off the incoming apology. “It's all right. Just don't
tell me you're funneling all your credits into whatever crazy thing this is.”

~*~

Something swirled in a huge glass cylinder. It was hypnotic, forming and reforming. A cloud
that jutted out shapes, sometimes forming into a ball, then dissipating into something nearly invisible.
It seemed to nearly dance. The psychologist watched it silently, worry forming in his gut. He'd never
seen a nanite swarm act like that. This one seemed to be suspended in liquid.
“I call it Aleph, the first of its kind. It's a ferrofluid. Iron compound. Not nanites, but close.
Watch this, I'm going to generate a magnetic field.” The scientist's fingers flickered across the console.
A low hum started, and the swarm went rigid, transforming from liquid into a solid mass. It sent out an
elegantly spiraling, mathematically perfect set of spikes.
“...Jesus.” He ran a hand through greying hair.
“I love that. It's suspended now to keep it together, but when I've activated the binding AI, it'll
hold itself together just like nanites. No need for the fluid. It'll adapt, change itself into whatever it
needs to be. There's more, too – it's like a brain cloud, capable of storing centuries of memories.”
“It can do what?”
“It can practically hack a human mind. Could you imagine something like this in your field?”
He flashed his dark-suited friend a quick grin. “Scan a guy, assess the memories for trauma still
present in his subconscious, go directly to work. It'd be like a mental scalpel.”
Something crawled in his stomach. “Yeah, I'm... really not sure of the ethics of that. People's
minds are still their own, the Union hasn't legislated that away yet.”
“It's okay, I'm not gonna let it out here.” The blond man barked a quick laugh.
“Yeah, there's another side to what you just said...”
“Listen – listen...” The scientist approached his friend, hands out. “If you knew someone
could be saved if you said just the right thing at the right time, if you could... adjust them, fix
something, and then it'd be all better, you would absolutely do it, right?”
“Well, I'd be a really crappy headshrinker if I didn't, but-”
“I can fix things. I can fix all of it.”
The man in the dark suit shook his head and backed away, growing genuinely concerned. It was
always hard to diagnose those closest to you. He'd missed the signs of messianic ambition, of real
derangement. He was going to have to go straight to the council. “No.”
“I need you!”
“Man, no. I know what I promised your father, but this is ridiculous. You want to do what?
Travel in time, cut loose a swarm when you won't even have any resources to control it, and... what?”
“Fix things.” The scientist gestured outward. “Make it so we're not going to die out. Because
we are. I did the numbers. We've got less than fifty years of viability left up here.” He shook his head.
“Either I try and maybe fail, sure. Or we die anyway. Tout fini.”
The psychologist passed a hand over his forehead. “You've got to be kidding me. Where would
you even start?”
“A very, very long time ago. Look – I nailed down an electromagnetic anomaly; it's persistent
throughout millennia but very hard to track. I think I can use that. It'll bind the swarm within a
restricted area. It's in a weird spot. We'd be isolated. We wouldn't be interfering with history on a
grand scale. Just... small steps.” He reached out to the psychologist. “Give me your hand for a
second.”
Without thinking, he offered it up. The scientist immediately jammed a hypo into the back of it.
“Ow! What the f-”
“It's just the base, I'll add the catalyst later,” he said, his tone distracted.
“Base for what?”
“It's, um.” The scientist shrugged, beginning to back away. “It's a little thing a guy I know was
working on. Slows aging, works virally. I... borrowed it.”
The psychologist immediately turned and moved to bolt towards the door. This had gone far
enough. Then something thwacked into the back of his head. Words followed him down into the dark.
“I really, really need your help on this. It's to save the world, you see. We can do this.”

~*~

The psychologist woke up to sand and the smell of the sea in his nostrils. Neither was familiar
to him, and he jerked up in startlement and wonder. The motion aggravated the pain in his head and he
heaved a little. A hand reached down and steadied him.
“They're coming.”
He stared uncomprehendingly up at his friend. “What? What'd you say?”
“They're coming.” The blond head jerked, indicating towards a band of men. They were dark,
clad in thin fabric. They held spears and rough metal knives.
 “Oh my God, we have to get out of here.” His mind swirled, but he'd panic later. Whatever
mad plan his friend had in mind, he was now in the thick of it. He struggled to his feet, ready to flee.
His friend stood stock-still. His white coat gleamed in the sun. Wedged in the sand next to a large
satchel was a thick plastisteel canister – probably the swarm.
The mob ululated something at them. One of them, obviously a leader, came forward, spear at
the ready.
The scientist stood, hands empty, palms outstretched towards the natives. He had a beatific
smile on his face. The leader stared at him, with huge dark eyes both scared and curious. The
psychologist watched carefully. Whatever his friend was doing, if he didn't startle the man, they might
still be able to get away.
The scientist waited until the mob had inched closer. The leader spat an order back at them, and
they stayed close, clustered together. They all looked scared of the two strange, pale men. And they all
stepped back when the man in white moved towards them. He still had that wide, delighted smile. The
man in black narrowed his eyes and watched.
The scientist reached out and touched the leader, who jerked away as if burned. The other men
shouted, but stilled. Old Arabic? Farsi? The psychologist racked his brain, looking around. The
beach curved, the pure blue water lapping against the shore. Probably archaic Egyptian. Good god.
And he was coming to an idea that he was on an island.
“My name is Jacob!” the scientist called out. The men pointed their spears, but now they
quivered, unsteady. “I've come to teach you to be civilized!”
The natives howled, terrified.
The man in black closed his eyes. His friend had gone completely mad, and now they were
trapped together in the past, eternally struggling towards the future, tied to a psychotic plan to 'save' the
world.
It was only going to come back around. Nothing ever ended.
Except maybe once. The man in black opened his eyes, looking at the man who had been his
friend. He would have to disconnect from that idea. He could hope. He could make counter-plans.
He would have to stop Jacob by any means necessary. Oh, but he had promised the man's father on his
deathbed that he would always look out for him. That he would never do anything to hurt Jacob.
The leader of the natives was kneeling before Jacob. The man in black licked his lips.
There were always loopholes.

~fin

(ABC's LOST is not my creation, nor do I claim any ownership or rights to the above content beyond
that of the average godforsaken fanfiction writer. A snippet of dialogue is an intended homage to
Stephen King's 'The Stand.' All errors are my own.)

7/1/09 MDS