Creating The Future

Josh MacLeod

The door of the tent-shaped dome shimmered open and I looked up from my light trance to see three humans come walking in. The fact that they had bypassed the defences would have startled another. I was not, nor would they have expected me to be. As they paused to warily look around the drab burgundy room, I took a moment to study them from the cushions I sat on near the centre. They appeared to be true humans, but each had the same dark hair and skin and features. They could almost have been triplets, but were more identical by far, in gesture and action. They in turn took in my old, withered form, my golden eyes and skin proclaiming me to be Cyran as much as the sense of alien around me did. A thousand years ago, the gene-builder Cyriel had made the Cyrans, altered the minds of humans to do very powerful and unnatural things. Even other altereds found us disturbing, which said a lot. These three showed no reaction and their cold grey eyes seemed to try and rip my thoughts from my mind by sheer persistence. That meant they were definitely security and I knew they were willing to kill for the information they sought. In fact, they might have already because I was not easy to find.

"We wish to be told a future," the first one said in a dull monotone, as if the ritual was of no importance. Fool, all life was based on ritual and tradition. "You will tell us." A statement of fact, that. I felt a sudden anger at them but held it back. They were willing to pay the price and, more importantly, normal humans had priority of rights and law here. The court would take their word over mine.

Getting old, are we, when we can't face the truth? A part of my mind said but I ignored it. "What part do you wish to be?" I said, my voice echoing oddly in the tent, more felt than actually heard. They ignored that also.

"We protect our master. We wish to know when he will die so we can prevent it. "I stared outside the tent flap, looking at the odd green sun and emerald sky for one moment. "He cannot die here," I said simply. The second and third frowned identically and the first spoke again. "We have paid and will pay the price. You must tell us when the master we serve will die." I fancied I heard anger in the voice, but that is all it was - a fancy. They felt nothing.

"Ask someone else." I say sadly, but they do not feel my sorrow. They think themselves human, but they are clones of a dead man, only copies: true humans feel. As much as we Cyrans have changed, we retain that at least.

No response other than a cold grey-eyed glare from all of them. I sigh and bow to their demand. It is a strain, but I fold my hands in my lap and ignore the pain in my back. Traditions must be met, for in many ways they are all I have left. I close my eyes, reaching inward for the core of energy that is mine to use. The green light of the world, the light of healing, fades even from my inner sight and I reach into the darkness that is the essence of all. I reach, seeking the past that has been and see their master through their link that binds them to service. It seems strong, but links have been altered before and they wish a death, their masters. I follow the link to their master, and his to then and now and - beyond.

The future glimmered before me, coldly bright, hot as fire, a facet of hopes and fears. I touch the gift of the three, their life energies and they die a little as the futures change, alter, become one choice. I know not how much time passes, some say all does and others that no time can pass when one it outside it. I only know that in the reality my body inhabits, an hour has passed as it ever does when I do a deep changing of this nature. No matter how easy or deep the changing, when I trance an hour passes.

I open my eyes to the mundane sight of reality, to the welcome illusion of an unchanging world. I see them, with unchanging stances and faces. They remain as impassive as ever. A part of me dies when I do this. My own future hardens and fades, I feel like saying but I know they will not care. Nor, in all honesty, should they care. It is my price to pay.

"It has been seen?" The almost puppy-dog eagerness in the first one's voice startled me. "Yes," I respond slowly. "How may we stop it?" the being asks, and for once in all these years of seeing and changing, I am shocked.

"Stop?" I whisper, or think I do. They seem not to hear me, but wait for a response. Before they can move, I reach instinctively outwards into my own future. It takes but a second and I scarcely even notice doing it anymore. "You do not understand. He would never have died had you not asked for this seeing."

They stare in shock, three forms reaching identical hands for identical weapons but I see no understanding in their grey eyes. "I do not see the future. I make it." I say softly. "I thought you knew that." Lame, but all I can say.

"You should have refused," the first says, anger in its voice only because it is expected to be angry.

"I would have died had I refused."

"You will anyway," they reply as one.

But I make futures. And, more importantly, I have friends. Their eyes widen in shock and puzzlement as their hearts cease to beat. As they fall in one motion to the floor to land in identical positions, Metsi floats into the room. Her golden skin glistens with a faint sweat but she smiles and floats to the ground with the same ease as she stopped the hearts of these clones. I lift a wrinkled hand to the bodies and speak. "As you wish to kill, so have you died." Not pomposity, but ritual.

"You must be more careful," Metsi says sternly but I do not reply as she walks over to help raise my old, fragile form from the cushions I am sitting on.

"I should have died." There is no need to hide my bitterness since she has seen it many times. "I have lived far to long." She pretends to ignore me. "Someday, I will be in a present where no future can save me: some day I will die." I turn slowly to look up at her. "You should not have saved me."

Finally, she reacts with a frown of anger and reproach. She is looking at me as if I was a child. Has it come to that? Am I an infant, returning to a childhood I no longer recall as I become older, the circle of my life winding to a close?

"You are not a child," She says sternly, with real anger. "You created us, Cyriel, so that we would live and be honourable, for being human is respecting others. How should I not honour you?"

"I wish to die!" I cry but the faint scorn and exasperation in her eyes reflects my lie. Had I wished to die, I would not have made the future where she killed those three become real. I cannot ignore the truth. "But I wish to live," I whisper, the words dragging themselves from me as they do every day. And finally, I weep for these for these three dead soldiers whom no other shall mourn. Weep, because I know no one else will and of all being the murderer should weep for the victims if none other does.

I weep for their master, who the green light of the world would have kept alive with its healing for centuries and weep for the thousand years of my old, long life and the things I had meant to do and could no longer do. And lastly I wept for myself, for the instinct to live that makes me still human - even after making my people creatures of the mind such as no human had ever been - and cried for the instinct to survive that I cannot deny and the death I feel my evil acts should condemn me to.

- Josh MacLeod (1999)