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The Time Vortex: Part 1
Posted By: Arthur Wellesly<arthur_wellesly@hotmail.com>
Date: 3 November 2002, 8:35 pm
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Coincidence. Is there such a thing? Fate, destiny - are these a reality, or an idea humankind has created and stringed together, an elaborate tapestry of myths and lies. And what of time? Is it merely a continuous chain of events, or is it something tangible? Something that could be, perhaps, harnessed?
Sergeant Peterson was in a tight spot. He was running behind a warthog for cover with Lieutenant Carson as the gunner, Private Mendoza as the passenger, and the Spartan Master Chief as the driver. He had honorably chosen to not enter the warthog and let others take his place. He was, of course, much more vulnerable, but he had done what any courageous Sergeant would have done and so he gave up the luxury of safety.
The Marines and the Master Chief were on a mission to take Halo's Control Room after landing on the strange ring a day or two before this. Unfortunately, before they joined up with the rest of Fire Team Zulu, who were pinned down in the adjacent canyon by hostile Covenant forces, two Elites and four Grunts popped out from behind a snow-bank to the right of Peterson and opened fire. The warthog wheeled around to protect Peterson and provide cover for him, but it was too late. A plasma bolt struck him in the leg, melting it off and instantly setting him on fire. Two needles struck his stomach and blew his intestines clean out of his body. Another needle embedded itself painfully into the side of the Sergeant's head, and moments later, Peterson knew no more.
If 343 Guilty Spark's programming had allowed him to curse, he would have done so, and he would have cursed terribly. As it was, the Monitor merely hummed in an irritated tune and considered what had gone wrong. Peterson needed to survive to fulfill his destiny in the swirling vortex of time. But how could he work it out so that Peterson survived?
Then the answer came to him. If Peterson had been in the warthog then they probably would have just continued past the Covenant to rejoin with the rest of Fire Team Zulu. But with Carson, Mendoza, and the chief all in the warthog as well... obviously, one of them needed to go. It definitely couldn't be the Chief, for he was the chosen Reclaimer. This Private Mendoza also had his part to play in time, and that would soon come. That left only Carson... 343 Guilty Spark smiled with success as he saw through his infinite wisdom that the Lieutenant's destiny was blank and would not matter on Halo. Carson had to die.
343 Guilty Spark, looking back in history, saw no window of opportunity recently in which Carson could easily be killed. He had spent the last seventeen years of his life on board several different ships, doing nothing but look out a window helplessly as he, a Marine, watched other ships burn or entire planets be destroyed by his fanatic enemy. He considered changing time so much that the ship he served on would also be destroyed by these "Covenant", but he dismissed this idea after examining it thoroughly for a hundredth of a millisecond. That would be violating protocol, as well as killing others on the ship whom had their part to play on Halo.
Then Guilty Spark saw an opportunity, and he congratulated himself on finding it so quickly. Back on Jericho VII was the only place 343 could possibly kill the irritating Lieutenant. The Monitor was not worried that this was seventeen years in the past. It did not matter in the least to him - the Forerunner had programmed him so that he was incapable of feeling impatient. To do so would be cruel, and the little machine would probably go insane. The number of times he had to do this, repeating time over and over again to get things straight; often the Monitor had to go back farther than seventeen years. So thus it was that 343 Guilty Spark made his decision.
The bonds that held time together suddenly snapped, and the entire universe was hurtled back through time seventeen years in the past. Then, quite suddenly, time completely froze as 343 Guilty Spark considered exactly when Carson should be eliminated. He considered killing him along with the rest of his company earlier that day, but then he remembered he needed Carson to save Peterson from getting vaporized by a Hunter's plasma weapon. Obviously it had to be after that... but when? There was a very small window of opportunity before the dropship would take him away. He couldn't get him killed by the Hunter firing on the house, because that would kill Peterson as well.
343 Guilty Spark was not a machine to give up easily, though. He eventually saw an Elite waiting in a near by building, about one hundred feet from the dropship's eventual position. That creature would be his loophole.
Time, however, is a slippery thing. What most things living creatures do is of their own free will, considering what they should do next with their own thought process. External forces, of course, influence their decisions, and in this instance, time would be this external force, perhaps making a living thing realize something it didn't before. Perhaps, maybe... an opportunity to kill.
Elite 4711 had watched in rage as these pathetic humans wiped out his entire squad. He watched as a Pelican dropship roared up the street, tearing the asphalt apart with its massive 50mm chainguns and killing the last remainder of the Covenant. In his position, a Grunt would surely run out stupidly and try to terminate an enemy much the strength of its own. A Jackal would probably run away for reinforcements. A Hunter would walk out and blast the dropship with one shot of its fuel rod cannon. Elite 4711 knew it could not take out the four chaingun turrets on the front and the one mounted on the back, and so it knew it had to retreat. It figured all the humans were aboard anyway and now protected by five inches of titanium - it couldn't possible take a couple of Marines that long to get into the hovering Pelican.
Something, however, suddenly compelled the Elite to look out the door of the building it was hiding in, probably the click of a strap that sounded unnaturally loud to the Elite that told it there were still humans buckling up. Maybe it still had an opportunity to kill one of these foul aliens. After all, there were probably wounded that needed more time to get into the dropship. So Elite 4711 decided to look out of the door to kill whatever it could. It saw one human strapping another wounded Marine into a seat of the Pelican. It laughed in triumph and fired three rounds at the human.
Two of the needles failed to target very well and hit the titanium plating of the dropship, doing little damage. However, one of the explosive needles embedded itself in Carson's flesh, blowing his neck apart and drenching the Pelican's deck with his blood. The Marines mounting the chaingun opened fire on the Elite, but failed to hit it. The alien retreated back inside the building.
"Excellent", 343 Guilty Spark muttered to itself as Carson died. The Monitor was taking no chances, and he waited until the Lieutenant was clinically dead before going on his way and monitoring other parts of the universe. Guilty Spark could not speed time up - one change in Time could dramatically change the outcome of the vortex's continuing spin. And so the Monitor prepared to wait for seventeen more long years as the vast loop of time began to thread itself back together again, all of it culminating in the eventual knot that would tie it all together.
TO BE CONTINUED
Email: arthur_wellesly@hotmail.com
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