Caino's Alphabet, X

Xalwo watched as Caino returned to the group. As he grew closer, she thought 
to herself that the boy seemed strangely cheerful considering his recent ordeal, “and did it work?” 
she asked him.
    “It did,” replied Caino with a smile.  
“Darius saw the Paths merge into a common trunk and he followed them back 
to the hunter’s very Beginning.”
        “If that is truly the case, 
then you have your evidence,” said Vincent, 
“but then why have we seen nothing 
to support this in our own observations 
of the Day?’ 
    “Indeed,” agreed Wayne, “we have seen nothing to suggest  Points gather up vestigial Paths 
in the manner you describe, no sign of dreams incorporated into the Machine’s architecture,  nothing of this at all.”
        “Are you sure?” asked Caino, 
“nothing at all?  At no point during the Day?”
    “Well…” replied Wayne, “the Hardening has us blinded to the earlier hours but-”
    “Wait a moment,” broke in Vincent, 
“perhaps this Hardening confounds us 
because we’re treating the Points as if 
they’re oriented in time as we are, but they are not.  They move against entropy.  
If an event were to move backwards 
through the Day, it might 
add a new Path retrospectively.  
The day’s certainty would then be undone, rendering us blind.  A protagonist moving back through time could do that, and it
could explain this creeping opaqueness.” 
    “Possibly…’ said Wayne, cautiously, 
“perhaps some-thing happening in the time 
between our future and the Day’s past.  
An event still undecided for us, 
but certain on the Day… if we were to move 
beyond this event chronologically, 
the Day should again become 
observable in its entirety…”  
    Once again Vincent and Wayne had strayed 
into the rabbit hole of pondering the phenomenon they referred to as the ’Day’—that brief confluence 
of all Paths that will occur upon the activation 
of the Machine which, drawing each 
and every Path to it, will inevitably 
form about itself a visible island of certainty.  
The two monks spent most of their time 
observing this event with the help 
of the Abbot’s Point.  
This was their speciality at the Abbey.
    Others of the First Science 
also had their own specialities.  Xalwo, for example, was an expert in the physics 
which govern the workings 
of those tiny singularities referred to as Points.  Rather than viewing Caino’s theories abstractly, 
as did Vincent and Wayne, 
her sterile focus on laws and mathematics led her instead to approach them as problems 
that could be measured and solved.
    “Judging by what you are saying,” 
began Xalwo slowly, “and assuming Caino is right about the Points moving backwards, 
we should be able to reach this period of time,
but to do so… 
One of us will have to die.”
    Xalwo, not known for her sense of humour, gained the group’s undivided attention 
with this ominous caveat. Lowering her voice 
as if telling a ghost story, she continued.  
“Any death on that Day will be a final End.  
There is only one Path in that Place—
only one version of events.  
If someone dies on the Day, 
the closest available Point will enter his Mind 
to make the journey back to his Beginning—
back through the Hardening, 
but what if we sent a Point through that Hardening with  a passenger on board?”
    “So we pass through the Hardening,” 
snorted Wayne, “but as blind passengers.  
What’s the point of that?”
    “No Wayne, this can work,” 
broke in Gail excitedly, “as Xalwo said, we could send a Mind encased in a Point to the Day.  
If I prime it as I did the one that sent you 
into that pig, Caino, I can redirect it to a time and place-”
    “Hold on,” cautioned Aaron, 
“we have tried to take control of your people 
on the Day, as you do with us, 
but our agents are always taken to be Minds 
of the deceased and immediately absorbed 
by the Machine.”
    “True enough for any of you,” Gail replied, 
“but we’re all marked before we travel.  
the Machine will recognise my Mind 
when I return and allow it to go upon its way,” 
    Gail glanced about herself excitedly, 
“don’t you see?  When we send our Minds 
into the past, the Second Science sustains 
our bodies mechanically.  You must have seen that,” she said, addressing Vincent and Wayne.
    “I could possess one of my comrades’ bodies 
and use it to turn off my own body’s life support.  That would allow us to send an agent directly 
into my corpse, avoiding the gaze of the Machine.”
    “Couldn’t you simply send yourself back 
through the Hardening?” asked Orion, 
“why this need for a second agent?”
    “I can only direct the Point to do 
one thing at a time.  A Point is like a ball, 
you can throw it, but once it leaves your hand 
your influence is at an end.  I can travel to the Day, 
but another must make the journey back through it. 
    “We’ll send a Point containing our agent’s Mind into my body.  When I turn off my life support, 
it’ll follow my Path back through my life
towards my Beginning, but when the Point encounters my own Mind before I’m sent here, 
it’ll realise its error and awaken its passenger, leaving him in control of my body.  
Our agent will wake up early in the morning 
of the Day.  This should give him all the time he needs to access the Machine 
and reverse the temporal bias of the Points—
which is, I assume, what you want us to do, Caino.” 
    Gail paused, and her face became grim.  
“Then comes the nasty part.  As Xalwo said, 
we won’t be able to sustain our agent’s body here with your primitive medicine.  It will die, 
but his Mind will have to leave my body 
before his previous self is sent into it.  
Our agent will have to instruct the Machine 
to remove himself from my body—
but it must not take him in, or it’ll also recognise 
and absorb his previous incarnation as it arrives.
    “So Xalwo is wrong.  
It will be much worse than death.  
Our agent, separated from his Path 
and unacknowledged by the Machine, 
will drift back through time.  
The Point which contains him will have nowhere 
to send his Mind, so he’ll remain trapped inside 
as it makes its way back towards the start 
of all things.”
    “That sounds like the oblivion we sought 
to end in the first place,” said Aaron dejectedly.  
The others shuffled their feet 
and avoided each other’s eyes.
    Caino stood and, smiling, he broke the silence, 
“I’ll go,” he said cheerfully.  
They all looked up at him in surprise, 
surely the boy had travelled enough for one night.
        “You all forget, Darius is bound to me.  
He won’t be blind.  If the Point I’m suspended 
in is floating free of a Path, he’ll guide it back 
to his own.  And if it all doesn’t work, well, 
the loss of one novice is a small price to pay 
for a Third and final Science, don’t you think?”  Caino looked around at the others and grinned.
    “That might be logical,” said Aaron hesitantly, “but Darius could lead you anywhere, 
and what’s more, this plan would require two Points and we have only one.”
    “No.  We have another,” said Xalwo and, reaching into her robe, 
she produced a small metal box.  
She opened it a crack and quickly shut it again, 
but not before a deep, violet darkness 
once again assaulted their eyes.  
    “From the Abbot,” she said shyly, 
“you’re not the only one who sneaks 
about the Abbey, Caino.  
I took it from his drawer before you told me 
of this meeting. I only wanted a look, but when I did, I felt compelled to keep it with me.”
    “It’s still too dangerous,” said Aaron, 
“we should meet again and think of a safer way 
to pro-shhh!  What was that?” 
Aaron motioned for the others to hide themselves 
and they all took cover and listened.
    Silence… then the sound of careful footsteps 
and hushed voices.