Read City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis for Free Online Page B

crew.
    “And the only reason I could think of was that the choice was join up or die.
    “If I stay flatline, I've just shot myself. The only way out is to create a paradox, change the past. The only people who can change the past are Time Wardens. So therefore the only way to save myself is to become a Time Warden. Q.E.D. So now you've forced my hand. My only question at that point was: why did you bother?
    “Why go to such effort to create a Time Warden, a possible rival, a possible enemy? Answer: You had to. Not another Time Warden. The same Time Warden. You had to make me a Time Warden or else you would never come to exist. And, then, once I'm you, I'm stuck. I'll have to play the same crooked tricks on my younger self when it's my turn, or else I'll get edited out of the time stream and dissolve into the mist myself. Everything is justified. Every step is rationalized away. Because whatever you have to do to survive is okay, isn't it? Necessity excuses everything, you think, right?
    “Except…” I said slowly. “Except that it doesn't. The one piece of the machine you need to make all the rest of it work is my cooperation. You've got to assume that I'd do anything, no matter how rotten, just to stay alive; because you are nobody but the version of me who did just that.
    “But what if I throw a monkey wrench into the whole works? What if I just stand here and take it? Maybe I deserve to die. I killed a lot of innocent people in my day. I'm sure it won't hurt me any more than it hurt them, and probably a damn sight less, judging from the size of the blast that does me in. Better than I deserve, maybe.
    “And it will all be for the same reason, won't it? Killing someone before they commit the crime.
    “But I'll die happier than those poor flatliners I killed for you. At least I'll know why I'm dying. And I'll know I'll be taking you to hell with me.”
    And I just stood there, a pawn still one square short of the final row.
    The blur of voices echoed from the Time Warden's helmet: “Nobly spoken! Nobly spoken but sadly mistaken! You are not so important as that. Not to me, nor, I think, to anyone. I am not you, I am not your son. You are nothing to me. But I! I am everything to you!”
    “You're lying. Who are you? This is just a trick to get me to pick up those damn cards. Show me your face.”
    He opened the faceplate with a slow gesture.
    And there was nothing behind it. Nothing solid.
    I saw a horrible blur of half-formed faces, multiple overlays of translucent features, crowned with a weightless, shifting mass of floating hair. The only thing clearly visible was the skull beneath, half-glimpsed through the misty vibrations of face crawling over it. Perhaps the skull-bones had a smaller range of motions, a less-uncertain future, than the rest.
    I stepped half-backwards in disgust and shock. Something in the narrow angle of the jawline seemed almost familiar to me. “Iapetus?”
    From the mist came many voices. I could see the muscles of the tongue and throat writhing snakelike through translucent layers of throat, the knobby ridges of the neck-vertebrae looking a black tree trunk behind. “So you call me. Fitting, is it not? Father of Epimetheus and Prometheus, past and future! A titan!”
    “Who are you?”
    “I am the Inventor. The Crystal-Smith. The man who synthesized the first destiny crystal out of the subatomic substance of folded time. The first time traveler. No matter whether you wish it or not, once you are a Time Warden, you must go back to sustain my existence, lest no Time Wardens at all ever will have had existed. I am the First. Upon me, all depends. Perhaps, yes, I created the universe. Certainly my probes into the ultimate dawn of time had sufficient energy to trigger the Big Bang. But you–you are one candidate of many. Many! Your death causes me inconvenience, nothing more. Does it seem so noble now, waiting passively and defiantly to die? No? Then pick up the cards! Pick up your