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  Now my hermit’s life is coming to a dead end. There’s nothing more to gain from absorbing the elemental truths of living intimately with nature; with its damp earth matted into my hair, under my nails, rubbed into my skin and clothes; feeling the surge, ecstasy, bounty and bite of the seasons. It’s served its purpose though, I’ve pared down the potential roads by a process of elimination, some more easily than others. For instance, at night I’d wait for my fire to die down to embers so I could examine its landscapes; lured in by the molten caves, mountains and craters; but there was no way through without becoming lost in the pulsing white canyons and orange cliffs. The wood fed into it had potential but was altered irrevocably by the heat, distorted by a set of patterns ruling the subterranean earth. As they catch light, you can watch the change happen, at the cusp the flames curl like leaves streaming in a gale and it seems accessible until the moment combustion takes over and engulfs the wooden roadways, shearing, crumbling, consuming. There is a route there but I don’t want to follow it. It’s not death exactly, it’s an absence of recognisable life, too far removed from my own. Terra Incognita.

  So I’m left with the steadfast oaks and their leaves, and I gather them fresh, or in brittle heaps drifting against my tent each year. One by one I pick them up and let them fill my mind with their unique forms. It’s overwhelming but if the multiple world theory is correct then all the trees in the world, all the trees that have ever existed since those first forests, whip-thin and dwarfed by the scorpions and dragonflies infesting them, have borne the maps to other worlds. Think of those billions of routes lost before sentient life had evolved to interpret them. Are those lost worlds still preserved in coal seams? Carboniferous layers of primeval maps going up in smoke from every city in the world as we burn our escape routes. I only need one, just the one leaf I’ve been hunting for and I’ll be gone from here, without a backward glance.

  When I find the next leaf, I’ll know what to do. I’ve learned to my cost how shock can wreck the psychological state needed to continue the journey, and I’m confident that I can guard against it happening again. I sort through the piles of leaves with a regular rhythm, picking each one slowly, turning it over and over as if it’s falling from the tree, and then hold it edge-on to my eyes so I can track its valleys and streams and fields to their vanishing point on the diminutive horizon. I spend a moment or two savouring each landscape, remembering how they used to satisfy me when I knew no better. Then discarded them, throw them to the wind and pick up the next.

  And the next. And the next.

  I’m not merely trusting to fate. This woodland produced a map I could read and it will do so again, it’s simply a matter of time and diligence. Think about how common knowledge states that no two snowflakes are the same: there are indeed trillions of permutations, each frail hexagon a fraction altered from the next, but our atmosphere was freezing water vapour long before life existed; ice swirled in the poisonous air over dormant continents eons before the time when everywhere but the equator was sealed with snow, ice-ages have repeatedly buried the Earth in mile deep glaciers… and amongst all of those uncountable crystals we are told there have never been two the same? Undoubtedly the chances of finding a match are vanishingly small, and someone without my direct experience could be convinced not to even try. But I rely on a defiant reality. Somewhere in the yearly abundance of leaves there are counterparts to the map I lost. I will find another. I will.

  I will think myself back to my childhood, when the knowledge came naturally. The light through my skin showing the pathways shining in my blood.

  I have a small pocket flashlight, it’s sufficient for my needs in the forest but doesn’t have the intense beam that the old torch could cast. I’ll show you anyway. See the patch in the centre of my palm glowing like a red coal? The light isn’t strong enough to show the routes as clearly as I remember them. I know there are main roads, crossroads and forks; I can trace the cords of my veins with my fingertips as if they were in Braille, but it doesn’t help. I need a place in this landscape from which to travel, there must be a mark that represents my location, a reference point.

  Wait. Move closer. The map of your life is in the lines on your face: here is the point at which we met, and there, nestled in the creases dividing your palm, the point at which we will part.

  My prime meridian?

  If every leaf is nearly a clone of the next, then so are the worlds they reflect. To search for tiny differences in the leaves and yet expect obvious alterations in the landscape is a mistake. It’s becoming clear that the leaves that didn’t resonate weren’t a failure, I have been travelling their pathways all along. Not enough has changed though, and I’ve given up too much for a different quality to the light, for a shift in the aspect of the trees, for a deeper darker heart to the woods.

  Perhaps that’s the point—it must be—that those small changes are stepping stones, necessary increments giving me time to adapt. You could say that all I’ve really managed to do is journey further away from what would have been my life without actually reaching my goal, and that time is running out. It’s true enough. See that leaf, fading from summer green to yellow, like the edges of a savannah pushing against dunes; grass giving way to drifting sand. It must lead to a desert, not the gentle country I want. If trailing behind the seasons can turn me on switchbacks and parallels, how can I hope to live long enough to catch up? Whatever you say, I’ll still insist that there is an abundance of answers spinning in the air above me and set in the ground below my feet, all I need is to pinpoint the right question.

  Perhaps, thanks to our crossroads, I’ve found it at last. Take my hand.

  I will exercise the privilege of the explorer. Claim my new land and name it after the ability I used to find it. Place my faith in the defining power of a word, and in the control sentience holds over the fractal universe, to anchor infinity and give it meaning.

  With this final step, I will become the road to Pareidolia. Follow me.

  * * *

  P.J. Richards

  P.J. Richards lives in England with her husband, kids, cats, an owl, and all the legends and history of the Westcountry. Can be found in castles shooting a longbow with the medieval group Bowlore, or occasionally as a unicorn at Stonehenge. The rest of her time is spent writing and painting.

  FORWARD

  Igor Ljubuncic

  “It's elementary, dear Emma!”

  “Elementary?” she said.

  “Physics!”

  “Remember I have only mastered phytology.”

  Charles spun about, all excited, then he remembered he had a cocked revolver in his hand, the barrel waving dangerously. “Mortimer Graves has bloody done it. He's invented time travel.”

  His assistant Emma frowned, staring dubiously at the contraption at the end of the cellar room of a small house at the northern suburb of Paris. “He has? That looks like the doors to a lift.”

  Charles lowered the pistol, let it drop on the floor. He tried to calm down. “Yes. He has. That cell is the portal that allows people to travel through time.”

  Emma approached the large, ornate box, Charles watching her, studying her body language. The cell had exquisite double French doors, brightly lacquered oak, with detailed wrought-steel leaf patterns framing narrow glass windows made in three colors, like the flag of the Republic. Almost like an entrance to a luxurious brothel.

  “Wait!” Charles shouted, startling her. “It might be booby-trapped!”

  Emma stepped back, as he carefully examined the box. He spent half an hour squatting, elbows straddling his aching knees, staring at the woodwork and metalwork, trying to figure out if a human hair, a string of silk, a thread of cobweb, anything might be a trigger that would cause the trap to spring. To kill intruders.

  Or worse, destroy the portal.

  But deep down, Charles Dover knew. Professor Mortimer Graves would never destroy his own work.

  Besides, the destruction of the time portal meant the profess
or would never materialize in whatever future he chose. He would just… cease to exist. Be removed from the annals of time. Forever.

  Damnation.

  Seventeen years of research, investigation—dedication—all thrown to waste.

  I could end it now. Destroy the time portal.

  But if there was anything Charles Dover shared with his mortal enemy, it was the fanatic love for science and knowledge. He didn't dare bring himself to destroy this thing any more than its creator could.

  “Charles,” Emma said, standing patiently by his side, always a faithful disciple.

  “Hmm?”

  “There's a letter for you,” she said, holding a sealed envelope.

  Charles shot up, cold pain lancing through his thighs. He suppressed a wince and gritted his teeth. “Where? How?”

  Emma pointed. “Left in the corner of the cellar. It's the professor's hand-writing. It is addressed to you. Shall I open it?”

  Charles waved his hand irritably. “Yes.” He quickly touched a finger to a red window pane. He wanted to open the doors and look inside, but not just yet. He savored his pain, his defeat. He savored the brilliance of his opponent. He savored the groundbreaking achievement of technology and science before him.

  He had spent seventeen years of his life—never married, never had the time—chasing after Professor Graves, the greatest criminal mastermind of his time—of all time. But Mortimer had always been one step ahead of him.

  And now it seemed, he had also mastered time.

  Emma cleared her throat, pulled her shoulders back. “Dear Charlie. May I call you Charlie? After all these years, I believe a level of intimacy is appropriate. How is your health? Do you still suffer from insomnia? Ah, I wish we could have met under more amicable circumstances, I would have loved to explore that cranium of yours. What secrets does it hold! How's your secretary, your protege, your shadow, Buxom Emma? Is she reading this letter now? She must be blushing. She has always been rather self-aware when it comes to her bust. She must be… Charles, I can't read this out loud.”

  Charles took the letter from Emma and read on. Half the first page was flattery and insult, woven together. Then, technology. Science.

  Time travel is a fascinating thing. If you have read my books, well I know you have read all my books, then you know that time is a dimension. Most Cambridge scholars will probably vehemently disagree with me, but I hear some German intellectuals are already making progress in this field. It won't be long before we experience a revolution in physics. A whole new era of ideas and concepts that will make thermodynamics look so utterly, utterly boring.

  What you see before you is a time portal. A contraption that allows people to jump through time! Worry not, my dear mortal enemy, it is perfectly safe for use. In fact, I encourage you to use it. But there are some things you should know…

  Charles put the letter down. He looked at Emma. Looked at the time portal. Looked at Emma. Portal.

  “You worry me, Charles. That look on your face tells me you are about to do something rather impetuous.”

  “I am contemplating, dear Emma.”

  “Using the time portal?” she said in a skeptical voice.

  Charles whipped his head back to her. “And you would advise me against it?”

  Emma shrugged. “If I knew how it worked and what it did, I might.”

  “It's utterly magnificent!” he said, perhaps too loudly. Then, he flung the French doors open and stepped into the portal.

  The box was the size of a typical lift, the far wall covered in a series of metal tubes and levers, not unlike a steam boiler room. At hip-level, there was a table projecting from the wall and into the room, like an organ keyboard.

  There was a square depression in the table, and it was filled with mercury. Floating, or rather, resting half-submerged in the silvery liquid was a transparent glass egg. A metal wire bored into the egg through the center top, wormed through the empty interior and touched the inside of the shell at a seemingly random point.

  The egg was held by six suction cups connected to extensible metal arms, and these connected to the table. Four taps seemed to control the motion of these arms and the table via a mesh of fine gold-colored cogs.

  Charles put a hand on one of the taps.

  And turned.

  The table shifted minutely, dipping toward him. He turned another, and the table tilted to the left, too, creating a diagonal line. The egg had also rotated slightly, and the filament inside it was now touching a different point in the shell.

  “Fascinating.”

  Emma was leaning over his shoulder, her perfume making him giddy, distracted. “What is it?”

  Charles tried to remember the exact phrase Professor Mortimer had used in his books. “This is the map of the hyper-space.”

  Emma had spent enough time with him not to question strange terminology, he knew. She just waited for him to explain.

  “A four-dimensional model of the universe. The glass egg represents the wavefront of the universe. The fiber inside the glass is a tunnel—a wormhole—through the fabric of space and time from our… reality, for the lack of a better word, to a new point in the hyper-space. When activated, the portal will transport its occupant there.”

  “Where?” Emma asked.

  “The future! A new point in the future!”

  She was silent for a moment. “So… Professor Graves has escaped you by… jumping into the future?”

  He spun around, grabbing her shoulders. “Yes. That brilliant bastard. Yes!”

  Emma closed one eye, inclined her head. “And you are going to go after him?”

  Charles opened his mouth to speak, but then stopped himself. He raised a finger. “There is a catch.”

  Emma sighed. “Of course there is.”

  “This portal only works forward. Into the future. There is no going back.”

  “Where has the professor gone?” She rolled her eyes. “When has he gone?”

  Charles flicked his fingers. “That is what makes this so exciting. It's a game.”

  “A game?”

  “A deadly game.” Charles knew he had arrived at Mortimer's hideout in Paris only minutes too late. He had been gaining lately on the professor, slowly learning his tricks and methods, unraveling his cyphers, his patterns, his motives. Then, just like the last seventeen years, his archenemy had upped the ante of the chase once again, by taking their struggle into a new dimension.

  It drove Charles mad.

  “You see, Emma, the professor has escaped our… reality by jumping to an unknown time in the future. It might be a day, a month, a millennium. It is very hard to know. But Mortimer is neither careless nor stupid. Going too far into the future may alienate him from the world he comes to. Imagine a citizen of ancient Rome suddenly finding himself in the streets of the Year 1901 London. How would he feel or react? How would he respond to arc lamps in the streets, or the tram? The radio. Or the automobile! What if the Roman was to visit the cinema? The language would be alien. There are just too many risks to the future. But the biggest of them is, will the time portal still be here?”

  Emma looked at the box and its wild array of tubing and cogs as if seeing it for the first time.

  “If one tries to travel to a time beyond the existence of the portal, one will simply cease to be.” Charles smiles. “So the professor has gone into the future. But not too far.” He stepped out of the portal and started pacing the cellar corridor, hands clasped behind his back, thinking.

  “The core of this problem, dear Emma, is another concept that Professor Mortimer coined in his writing. He called it the Paradox of the Intelligent Rational. What do you do when two equally capable minds are set against one another?”

  Emma waited.

  “It starts simply. One opponent makes a move. Or rather, he thinks about making a move. But he knows the other person knows what he will do, so he contemplates doing the opposite. Of course, his foe knows that, too. At this point, the two men are at an impa
sse. They both can act, but neither will, fearing their move will expose their strategy. Alternatively, they will so grossly overestimate one another that whatever they do will be mutually destructive.”

  Emma did not seem to understand, so Charles dragged her upstairs, to Mortimer's house, an unassuming estate of a countryside Parisian fop. Into the kitchen. He had two glasses of wine set on the table, and he was holding a vial of Thallium powder between his fingers.

  “Tell me, dear Emma, which glass do I pour the poison into? And then, which do I serve you?”

  She pointed at the one next to her.

  “Do you think Mortimer Graves would sip from that glass? For that matter, would he sip from this one?” He poured equal measures of powder into both glasses. “The only way to win this challenge is not to choose where to put the poison, it's to make your foe drink first.”

  He started walking back toward the cellar. He heard Emma toss the wine into the kitchen sink and break the glasses. Good. It would not be the first time he had accidentally poisoned himself.

  The portal's rich design fascinated him, annoyed him, teased him, challenged him. Mortimer Graves was whispering in his ear, like a ghost. Do it, Charlie. Prove that you are smarter than me. This is the ultimate fight between us. Only one will emerge from this.

  “I could simply not do anything,” Charles whispered. “Let the professor stay in whatever time he has chosen for himself.” If his jump was within reasonable time, they may even meet one day.