The Specialists

"Well. This is intriguing."

Velma typically spoke in short sentences, but didn't usually invest much weight to her observations. For her to call anything "intriguing" was tantamount to her jumping up and doing a cartwheel.

"What is it?" I asked. Whatever had her so worked up was surely more exciting than the comparisons I was running at my oculus workstation.

"A conundrum."

That was enough to kick up my interest a quantum notch. I swerved my chair to get a look at her screen. It was full of the same multicolored threads and tagged datapoints mine was.

"Here," Velma said, flipping to another screen where she had some detailed analyses running.

I saw why she was so enthusiastic. She was researching a man named Cyril Abundai who, in a number of slightly asynchronous proximal threads, was a leading economist. I didn't understand the nuances of his work, but one major theme seemed to be that he advocated an economic model predicated not on scarcity, but rather on plenitude... or at least what he called "the Principle of Adequacy."

From the thumbnail dossiers on dozens of iterations of Abundai, this "principle of adequacy," and corollary economic theories he'd developed along with it, carried such weight and made such impact that, in the best scenarios, they had vastly reorganized global commerce, with deep effects on society, governments, even major religions. His work re-cast theories of capitalistic private enterprise into a broader focus, calling for what he referred to as "communal enterprise," which seemed structured like a confederation of competing interests... competing, but also cooperating. Government had a role as well, stabilizing society through social safety nets and funding efforts to clean up the messes that traditional private enterprise had made, economically and environmentally, and always at the expense of the poor.

At first I took his work as an update on European-style socialism, but as I read I started seeing deeper divergences from traditional models. I didn't have time to read in depth, but Abundai seemed to be positing some sort of democratization not of political voice, but rather of money and workforce. One startling point leapt out ahead of everything else: As a result of Abundai's work, poverty had nearly been eradicated in a great number of realities parallel to our own. A corresponding fall in concentrated wealth and influence -- domination by the monied elite -- was also in evidence in those threads.

Of course, in just as many threads, and due to fears of "socialism" and "big government," his theories had triggered immense pushback that had toppled nations, started world wars, even given rise to totalitarian states. In a few instances, these developments led to devastating nuclear exchanges between ideological foes.

Heaven and hell - all spinning out of a single set of economic theories.

"My god, who is this man?" I asked.

By this, I meant: Who was he in our thread?

Velma flipped to a third screen, where a much more detailed dossier listed Abundai's life history and accomplishments. "Not an economist at all," she said. "Instead, he's arguably the most important writer of fiction of our time."

***

Before I explain who Velma and I are and what we do -- and why Velma's discovery caused us such consternation -- I need to provide some background. That's a tall order, since in this case. "background" is nothing less than the nature of the universe.

It's not like you think, with cause and effect forming a single neat line from start to finish. Instead, imagine a length of yarn. It's made of fibers that more or less hang together and form a strong, stable cord. Now, imagine that the material the yarn is made from is space, time, and consequence, and it contains all the matter and energy of the entire universe. Each of those fibers, full of cause and effect and event, is what we call a thread - that's another word for a distinct reality, like the one we live in.

But there are other threads besides ours, a nearly infinite number. Each fiber splits off from other fibers at decision points, which is to say, moments at which more than one course of action or outcome is possible. Will Bugs Bunny take that "left toin at Albuquoique?" Or will he veer right? Will I have the turkey or the pastrami for lunch? Will that tiny vibrating thorium molecule buzz on for centuries to come, or will it decay into lead this very minute? The short answer to all of these is, Yes -- to every possibility.

This is where divergent realities come from, forking and splitting off in wild, logarithmic profusion. The event matrices of distant threads can be so different as to make for unrecognizable realities you'd never think branch away from a common trunk. But the proximal threads are often quite similar to one another, though events contained in each of those little space-time fibers are usually ordered a little differently.

We have charted lots of parallel realities - tens of thousands of them. Some lie very close to our own: People exist there, they are human beings resulting from identical evolutionary paths, they speak the same language, they watch the same video programs, they read the same files, and in fact they are the same people as us in many cases... except when they're not.

But there are lots of very different realities, "distant" in terms of different outcomes, in which Earth doesn't seem to exist, or else it's a very different sort of planet. Then there are threads where our planet is an irradiated cinder, either due to our mistakes, or those of some other species that rose in our stead. And there are lots of realities where human beings exist as we know them, but human history is profoundly different -- along with language, literature, and customs. There are also realities - an unknown number of them -- with which we cannot even interface.

The alternate realities we can observe offer us unlimited opportunities for research, and even commerce. We use the oculus for this: It's a device that lets us peer into those other threads of reality.

Enter Velma and myself. We're not pure researchers; historians, anthropologists, and the like, they use oculant technology to deepen their understanding and expand their theoretical models. Nor are we businesspeople; merchants across a myriad of realities communicate all sorts of information to each other, everything from scientific papers to vidstreams and music files, using a complicated currency called Qdosh to keep track of who's offering what, how much it's worth to interested buyers, and what they'll accept in return.

No, we do very different work. In our own vernacular, Velma and I are "specialists in sequential optimization." A few years ago our ability to peer into other realities using oculus technology took a slight new wrinkle when it turned out that some of those realities, though "concurrent" or "proximate" with our own, are playing out a little faster or slower. Very similar histories are progressing at different rates. Events might be a little out of order, or else specific chains of cause and effect are accelerated because impediments we faced in one thread never happened in another, and vice versa. Classic example: The 140th Congress of the United States, the group of bozos who outlawed science for forty years and imposed a "faith based" model of research. They existed in 112,074 threads we know of. They didn't do one jot of good in any of those threads. They set progress back at least a century, and in some cases pulled their entire civilizations down into new Dark Ages, or worse. We didn't have them here, and as a result, we enjoy scientific advancements that those 112,074 threads don't have. Almost none of them have oculus technology. If they did, maybe they would have chosen differently.

And that's the essence of what we do. Why not study the good ideas and effective programs that had worked for others, and then apply those same solutions in our own thread? Why not study the mistakes others have made, identify which choices not to make, and thereby advance our own progress without the costly process of stumbling blindly through a labyrinth of possibility? The oculus is our hand torch in a dark cave; we can take note of how and where others had stumbled or succeeded, and map our path accordingly.

It helps when realities are so proximate that we had a lot of data to draw on directly; the same individuals, the same corporations, the same hierarchies, the same social systems. In those cases, the algorithms we write are fairly straightforward; we don't have to do a lot of guessing and adapting to fill in blanks to "translate" the recipe for success (or the recipe for disaster) from another thread into our own.

Rarely, we found that the fates... and the realities... seemed to make it exceptionally easy for us. Sometimes historical milestones (or blunders) are tied to specific people. This is exceptionally uncommon. Generally speaking, where Riyad al-Ahmet didn't invent the light bulb, Edna Featherstone or Thomas Alva Edison did. The end result is the same, but the person associated with it is not. (So much for the "Primacy of the Individual" so vigorously celebrated in Thread 33,327.)

Mr. Abundai, however, was that rarest of finds: A person whose singular contributions were consistent across realities. All we'd need to do to bring his potential to fruition here would be to find him in our own thread and then get out of his way -- maybe ensure he had a few critical resources or opportunities. The only drawback to this strategy arises when the individual in question doesn't exist here. Examples are far from commonplace, but I can cite one such instance: In thread after thread, a physicist named Genevieve Meieu was the brilliant mind who made cold fusion possible. We didn't find cold fusion in proximal threads where Ms. Meieu didn't exist. When we failed to locate her in our own thread, we realized with sinking hearts that cold fusion technology might never be ours to exploit.

In the case of Mr. Cyril Abundai, we had something of an opposite problem. As Velma and I carried out a more comprehensive survey on the economic contributions made by Mr. Abundai, we saw only a very few threads in which someone other than him had accomplished substantively similar achievements. Simply put, in almost every instance, the economic reforms that solved a huge number of social and economic problems took place in threads where Abundai was present, accounted for, and working on economic theory.

But in a number of other realities, Abundai wasn't an economist at all; he was a deeply influential writer, winner of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes (hundreds of times over, across realities), not to mention more exotic awards such as the Theilleur Medal in Thread 42,446 and the ZedMang Distinction in Thread 38,734. He was credited with everything from reinventing the novel to inspiring social justice in half a dozen major ways. He was the Upton Sinclair Lewis, the John Steinbeck, the Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the Alison Bechdel, all rolled into one, of a myriad of event matrix threads.

Including our own.

***

"So he exists here," Velma summarized during the action meeting with our supervisor, "but his role is very different."

"He's still a major contributor," I added. "A mega-major contributor. Just... in a different way."

"Yes," our supervisor mused. "I've read his books."

"His literary work has been of enormous consequence. But we certainly could use his economic insights," Velma put in.

Our supervisor looked from Velma to me, and then me to Velma, his expression quizzical. "Do you have a plan for bringing his economic work to our thread?" he asked.

Velma and I glanced almost guiltily at each other.

He knew that look. "You know the time travel option is almost never approved," he said.

Velma produced a palm-sized data-flat. "The decision point lies right here," she said, tapping a node on the computer-generated schematic illustrating the events and influence of Abundai's life. "He was up for a scholarship to the Sorbonne. He didn't get it. The selection committee chose a man named Erik Halsendorf instead. Abundai was unable to complete his degree for several more years, and in the meantime he met and married Adele Domatu. Whether that liaison had any direct bearing on Abundai choosing to pursue a writing career, we don't know. It might have been the loss of the scholarship in itself that turned him away from concrete academia and channeled him into the more nebulous creative arena."

"If we simply influence the selection process," I said, delicately inflecting the word "influence," "we could change the event matrix and channel Abundai back toward economics."

"But that would mean depriving our thread of his literary contributions," Velma noted. "In theory, it might even mean generating a whole new thread, possibly deleting our own in the process."

Which was why time travel was an option of extreme last resort: Change the event matrix of any thread, and in effect all you've done is introduce an artificial decision point from which a new reality splits off. Time travelers frequently never return, and the theory is that they end up stranded in parallel threads they've created by interfering with past (or future) events.

Velma and I both knew the risks, but we both believed the overall benefits to be worth it. After all, the equations we operate by suggest that there is also a pliability index in operation -- a margin for change that allows us, or so we think, to make certain alterations to own past, present, and future without splitting off a whole new reality. And why not? Random chance is also part of the fabric of hyper-reality. There has to be some "breathing room," as it were, for things to flex and ripple. For my part, I was of a mind to view the unwriting of a few books as a minor loss compared to the immense gain we stood to make by importing Abundai's theories of economics. It's all a matter of interpretation, after all, both in the temporal and event matrix equations and in the ledger of societal values. Some temporal physicists insist that to change the course of a single proton is to generate a hundred million new threads of reality; others scoff that the hundred million human lives lost in the Fourth World War created nary a shiver at all in the great scheme of things. By the same token, even knowing that Abundai's writings meant a great deal to a great many people, I thought the impact of his economic innovations meant more. I wanted the benefit of that side of Abundai's potential.

Velma, of course, disagreed with me. She saw the cultural value of Abundai's books as doing more good than his economic reforms. Maybe she was right. She worried less that by changing Abundai's path, we were going to cause a major reshaping of our own event matrix. That was certainly a possibility, but we flirted with splitting reality every day as part and parcel of our job, and she squared the ongoing risk of our daily work by investing in the theory of the pliability index and the safe space. But say that safe space is smaller than we thought? Or nonexistent? We've probably changed the overall shape of our event matrix hundreds of times since we began tweaking and buffing reality. We're still here, and our reality is better, as a place to live, than it used to be. So why not carry on? As yet, we've not erased ourselves in some sort of cause-and-effect apocalypse.

But if we changed Abundai's past and made him into an economist, we would be losing his literary work. All other considerations aside, all theoreticals notwithstanding, this was the stark choice we were left with. And who were we to deprive the whole world of their most celebrated author?

But by the same token, who were we to allow poverty, inequality, and the instabilities of imperfect economic models to continue to wreak havoc, all because we valued a shelf full of books?

The supervisor took in a deep breath. He hated situations like these, and this was the thorniest situation of its sort we'd ever heard of.

"What happened to Halsendorf?" he asked. "Could he be tweaked into making those same economic contributions?"

"No sir," Velma said at once. "Halsendorf left the Sorbonne after less than a year due to medical problems. He died three years later of Schlatter's disease."

"And even if he hadn't," I said, "in almost every thread we've surveyed, the sole originator of Abundai's economic theories is Abundai himself."

"Almost all?" our supervisor asked.

"In a handful of others, a man named Chethel Bridana came up with the same theories, and his work had similar effects," Velma said. "But he doesn't seem to exist here."

"At least, if he does," I put in, "he has a different name and life history."

"At what point does that scholarship decision point occur in our own thread?" our supervisor asked.

Velma glanced back at her data-flat. "Fifteen years ago," she said.

"A past-point within the parameters of current time travel technology," I noted.

"But were we to attempt it," our supervisor said, "we'd lose his books and stories, as well as his monographs, essays, and thoughtweb schemas."

"Is that really so important?" I asked. "I mean, I know he's important, but in day to day life.... Well, I'd only vaguely heard of him before."

"You're an idiot," Velma snorted.

"I'm not much of a reader," I shot back, "but that's because I have other things to do that I think are more important."

"I thought I was exaggerating," Velma said tightly, "but if that's true, you genuinely are an idiot."

"People," our supervisor said sharply. We both subsided like scolded children. "It boils down to this," our supervisor continued after a moment. "If we are to choose, we have to choose between benefitting from the cultural enrichment Abundai offers, or the monetary enrichment he makes possible."

Velma and I glanced at each other again.

I nodded.

"Well... yes," Velma agreed.

"And in any case, we want to be extremely, extremely particular about interfering with the past." He rubbed his eyes and thought hard for six long minutes. We could almost hear him arguing with himself.

"I have to take this to the full council directorate for analysis, debate, and a vote," our supervisor said at last. "It may take a while. Keep yourselves available."

***

Three weeks later, we had our answer.

"The issue was decided by a single vote," the director said. "And it offers you huge latitude. You are authorized to travel in time fifteen years, four months, and twelve days into the past in order to 'influence' the selection process that determines whether Mr. Abundai or Mr. Halsendorf is granted the scholarship to the Sorbonne. But only after you conduct at least twelve hundred terems of further research, and only if, at that point, you still deem it the best available course of action."

He had underestimated: That wasn't a huge amount of latitude, that was an astonishing amount, and of an unprecedented nature. Never before had a time-traveling team of specialists been allowed to so profoundly affect any individual's life.

The underling meaning was clear both of us. This was our show. We had better tread carefully and make the maximum use of minimally intrusive means, or else our careers were likely to be over... in whatever version of reality we'd find ourselves.

***

"I still haven't seen anything that would make me change my mind," I said six weeks later, when our target date had drifted to fifteen years, five months, and twenty-four days in the past. Every day that passed meant we'd need more energy to make the temporal jump, and diminished the degree of precision of just where and when we'd arrive.

"There's just one last avenue of inquiry I need to finish up with," Velma said.

"How long is it going to take?" I asked, heatedly.

"I can't say with any precision."

"Three days," I told her. "Then I'm pulling rank."

"You don't have any rank!"

"I have an uncle in the Senate," I said. "That gives me rank."

Velma turned deep red before my very eyes. "You rat-fucking bastard," she seethed. "The work I'm doing has direct merit to our case. And you're pulling underhanded influence."

"We need to get this done," I shot back. "Sooner is surer, and surer is better."

"You just want money over literature," she bit out venomously.

"It's not that easy," I started.

"Book burner." Velma turned her back on me and bent back to her oculus.

There was nothing to say to smooth the situation or assuage her feelings, so I stuck to my guns. "Three days," I repeated to her unmoving back.

***

Four days later, our supervisor gazed at us across his desk. "We had a conversation about a month and a half ago," he said.

"Yes."

"You were granted mission parameters of extraordinary latitude."

"Yes."

"Are you here to tell me you accomplished that mission?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do I want to know?"

There was nothing about the outcome that required plausible deniability. "Yes, sir, you want to know that Mr. Abundai remains our most respected and influential writer, a champion of social justice and unimpeachable voice for reform."

Our supervisor lowered his head to gaze at us like a bull with horns aimed and ready to plunge. "Exactly my worry," he said. "In theory, following your temporal transit, I should never have heard about Mr. Abundai as a writer. And yet..."

"And yet," Velma cut him off sharply, "Mr. Abundai remains our most cherished novelist and essayist. And at the same time, his economic theories are primed to enter our thread and help us toward a more optimal event matrix."

Our supervisor's head was still tilted low, but an eyebrow lifted -- an invitation to explain.

"Let's just leave it at that," Velma said.

He thought that over. "Okay," he said. Our supervisor visibly relaxed, as did Velma and I, and then he shooed us out of his office. "Well done," he called, as we cleared the door.

Velma was smiling as we walked back toward the oculus lab.

"Okay, you were right," I admitted.

Her smile only grew.

The "avenue of inquiry" she'd cited was a tickle she came upon in the datasets. It seemed that our thread didn't have a Chethel Bridana, but it did have a Jos� Merid�s -- the same child, taken to by his mother back to her native Mexico following a messy divorce, the result of an affair discovered by merest chance. She remarried and rechristened her eldest child with a new name. He grew up to be an artisanal wood carver. That is, he would have, except that Velma and I made a few stops at opportune moments in his life - starting with leaving a primer on economics on a coffee shop table when he was sixteen, which gave him something to do while he waited for two hours for a girl who had stood him up.

That was only the start. The council probably thought they were authorizing a single temporal transit, but the permit they issued didn't restrict us to just the one, which was lucky because we needed four time jumps in all. With our second visit to the past, we... well, let's just say we "influenced" Jos� to continue on to grad school, by arranging for an opportunity at Valdez University for the young man he was dating at the time.

A couple of months after that, we left a carefully prepared paper on some of the underlying themes that defined Abundai's economic work where twenty-three-year-old Jos� would find it, on a shelf in his dorm room at Valdez, where Jos� had entered the economics doctoral program.

Finally, a year later, we left a notebook -- fabricated to look like the scribblings of a fellow student -- in Jos�'s courier bag, alongside his data-flat and his folded thermal sheer. He puzzled over how the notebook, an exotic throwback made of real paper, had made its way into his bag, but that mystery faded from his mind as he worked through the refined theorems that gave shape and applicability to Abundai's theories. There was a large gap between the rough essential notions the notebook contained and the finished theories that Jos� worked out for himself, but we'd been confident that he would get to his goal once we aimed him and gave him a push. We knew we'd succeeded when, upon exiting the temporal transit chamber for the last time, we'd gone online using Velma's data-flat and found Jos� Merid�s' book "Good Enough: Principles of Economic Adequacy" for sale, copyrighted the year before. A browse around the Interweb showed the book exciting conversations on a number of fronts.

Our boy was on his way. Even Velma agreed that it was worth losing the elaborate custom doors, spiral staircases, and wooden ceiling panels Jos� otherwise would have spent his lifetime carving for well-heeled clients looking to give their summer homes a touch of class.

We trotted down the corridor, light on our feet, giddy with success. I stopped by the door to the oculus lab, but Velma breezed right by.

"Where are you going?" I asked her.

"To the canteen," she tossed back playfully. "I'm going to have my cake and eat it, too."

I felt a grin leap across my face.

"I'm coming with you," I called after her, and hurried to catch up.