side-by-side. They stargaze.
Nereus' gaze is fixed on a faint blue star. His face says: "What? Did I just see that?" A chill runs up his spine. He shudders, and his shock passes. He sits up and turns to look with admiration at his Son.
NEREUS
Son, if we do ever meet anyone else out there, I hope with all my heart that you're right.
INT. COMMANDER'S LOUNGE--DAY
Janus, Xenon, and Idan sit in cushy seats around a bright green rug. Four guards stand attention. Janus looks back from the meteorites, to Xenon and Idan, dumbfounded.
JANUS
But our people, we don't even know, we thought you were all bent on...
He looks around at all the Salamanders, aghast, but also moved. For some moments he doesn't know what to say.
JANUS
Thank you for fighting for my people.
Water gathers under each of the Salamanders' eyes.
XENON
It is our greatest honor.
Idan stands and heads toward an exit.
IDAN
Come. We will demonstrate time travel.
INT. FLIGHT CONTROL DECK--DAY
Janus, Xenon, and Idan sit in portable chairs behind a glass wall which overlooks an airfield. FOUR GUARDS stand at ease. Evergreen forested mountains border the valley around the compound and airfield. The broad daylight sky ranges from darkish violet to violet-blue.
EXT. AIRFIELD--DAY
A lone fly, piloted by a Salamander, ignites thrusters with blue fire, and rises vertically. Fifty feet up, the thrusters turn and send it high and far. It produces a sonic boom.
EXT. PLANET HEBE ATMOSPHERE--DAY
The fly fighter soars high, away from the control tower and compound in the valley. Five miles out, it performs a deft half-loop, half-roll, and flies back toward the tower.
INT. FLIGHT CONTROL DECK--DAY
Janus, Xenon, and Idan sit in portable chairs and overlook the airfield. Four guards stand at ease.
IDAN
In a few moments, you'll see the fighter jump back in time twenty seconds.
After a short time, the fighter vanishes in a bright blue flash, and appears twenty seconds' distance ahead.
Janus is confused.
JANUS
Wait, it went back twenty seconds. Why did it move ahead? Oh wait.
IDAN
Correct. By jumping back twenty seconds in time, it gained twenty seconds, or it has been there twenty seconds longer. So from our view, it simply disappeared and reappeared twenty seconds ahead.
Janus regards the jet fighter with amazement.
JANUS
Wow. Trippy!
IDAN
Now let's jump back ourselves to the moments before it jumped. You'll need a time-traveler.
Xenon straps a small, flat device to Janus' forearm. Everyone wears one of their own. Xenon works controls on his.
XENON
This way, everyone.
They follow him through a door and down a stair onto the open airfield.
EXT. AIRFIELD--DAY
Xenon, four guards, and Janus walk on the airfield outside the flight control deck.
XENON
(to everyone)
We must continue to walk until I say we may stop.
JANUS
If I may ask, why?
XENON
To avoid distraction and complication.
He pushes a button on his time traveler device. A wall of white light appears about ten paces behind them, wide and tall enough to obstruct most of the compound behind from view. The wall of light moves with them at a steady distance of ten paces.
XENON
Since we are about to travel back in time twenty seconds, if we stayed where we were, we would collide with copies of ourselves. Frankly, also, Humans tend only to stare at themselves when they run into copies of themselves. Thus the light wall.
JANUS
Wait, is that light wall having anything to do with time travel also?
XENON
No, it's just a wall of light.
Janus chuckled.
JANUS
Right. Just your everyday wall of light.
Xenon presses a button on his device. With a flash, a bright blue wall appears between them all, then vanishes.
IDAN
Please continue to walk. In about twenty seconds, you'll see what we just saw--the fighter jump back. But for us now, it will jump back, from further ahead in time, to our time.
With a bright blue flash, a copy of the fighter appears, ahead of the first by twenty seconds' distance. They watch it.
The wall of white light behind them disappears. Curious, Janus looks back.
IDAN
Alas, you cannot gawk at yourself. Our time stream with ourselves is no longer overlapped, so there's no copy of you back there anymore.
Janus looks at the ground, embarrassed.
IDAN
Both of those fighters are the same ship. The one which we see in the front is in fact also the one in the back, but the one in front has a twenty second lead because it jumped back in time twenty seconds. In about twenty more seconds, we will witness the event that caused the appearance of two fighters, which we say is overlapped time: we will see the rear fighter jump back in time. However, when the rear fighter jumps back in time, the overlap will end. The rear fighter will vanish, while the front fighter persists. In other words, if we see someone concurrent with our timeline jump back in time, they appear only to vanish, while, if we watch someone from further ahead in time jump back in time to become concurrent with our timeline, we see them in overlapped time; we can see two copies of them--but only for the duration of time in which they overlap.
JANUS
Oh my heck you need an editor.
Idan frowns.
IDAN
We work so hard at our explanations--
JANUS
Sorry, no actually I get it. I guess there's no simple way to explain it, maybe.
IDAN
Ah. Anyway--
The rear fighter vanishes in a flash. Only the front fighter remains visible.
IDAN
This is the question, Janus: while the fighter jets appeared at the same time, which of them was real? Or are they both real? Or neither?
Janus is bewildered, and stammers, flummoxed.
JANUS
I, uh...copies of jets...is this rhetorical?
IDAN
Let's go have a closer look.
Xenon, Idan, four guards, and Janus stand on a runway. The fly fighter lands on the runway a hundred feet from them, and shuts off.
IDAN
You'll want to keep your eye on that pilot now.
The pilot emerges from the fly and walks toward Janus. Xenon shouts out to the pilot.
XENON
Airman, perform a merge!
The pilot breaks into a run toward Janus' right. At full speed, the pilot vanishes through bright blue ripples, and instantly appears further ahead.
JANUS
Uh, did he just jump...from ahead? In time? Again?
The pilot slows, turns, and walks toward Janus.
IDAN
Actually, he merged forward in time, which will take some explaining. We just saw two fighter jets, and two pilots, one in each jet. But are there in fact two fighter pilots? Do you think if a person travels in time, they can copy themselves, or have two souls or spirits?
JANUS
Hmm.
IDAN
Our experiments show a person can't. When the pilot jumped back twenty seconds and coexisted with himself as a copy, their time-streams overlapped. The pilot is one soul in two timestreams and he decides which stream his soul will reside in. When he makes that decision, he merges into that stream, and destroys the other stream. His soul can exist in both streams for a while, maybe even a very long time, but not forever. He is one soul, and he must merge into one or the other stream. One of the streams dies, at his choice.
The pilot arrive
s with the group and stands attention.
XENON
Thank you. At ease, Airman.
The pilot stands at ease.
JANUS
How does he decide which time-stream to merge into? And how does he merge into one stream or the other?
IDAN
Here, the time-streams of the two pilots overlapped for twenty seconds. There was a back-stream, which is the pilot we came back to watch, and a forward-stream, which was created by the pilot jumping back from further ahead in time. When those streams overlapped, because the pilot is one soul, he had access to all information available to both pilots. Which means new information became available to the back-stream pilot.
Janus is amazed.
JANUS
What new information?
IDAN
Think it through to the end. What changed as a consequence of the pilot jumping back twenty seconds?
JANUS
When he landed, it would have to be twenty seconds later, and he also started to run twenty seconds later. But I just saw...he jumped instantly across a distance that would take him twenty seconds to run across. Did he merge into the forward time-stream, destroying the stream where he was twenty seconds back?
Idan and Xenon smile.
JANUS
But he did that long after the twenty seconds of overlapped time! Wouldn't he only be able to decide which stream to merge into during those twenty overlapped seconds?
Idan and Xenon both smile more broadly.
JANUS
He can decide which time stream to merge into long after the twenty second overlap?
IDAN
Yes. The time streams overlap, potentially, forever. After the back-stream pilot vanished, the forward-stream pilot continues to have the opportunity to merge into whichever time-stream he chooses. For as