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Chapter 5
You Can Observe a Lot Just by Watching
The door near the water cooler opened onto a dark, cavern of a room that curved away from them in a broad arc. When Buffy’s eyes had adjusted sufficiently to the darkness, she could see that it was in fact a large control room of some sort, filled with rows of computer terminals and displays that looked quite a bit more technologically advanced than those of the Reality she’d just recently left. Dominating the center of the room was a large holographic display around which a number of technicians were clustered. The display showed an insane network of multicolored lines that continually converged, diverged, and entangled with bewildering complexity.“This is Ops. Come on. I want to show you something,” said Buffy Three Echo Foxtrot, waving the duo along.
She brought them across the room to an expanse of tall gallery windows running the length of the operations center. Beyond the windows was a vast, towering chamber of dark metal that gave an immediate impression of great age and wear. It was easily three hundred yards across and half a mile high. But the ancient chamber with its latticework of skeletal gantries, catwalks, ducting, and conduits was nothing compared to the thing that lay at its center.
The chamber housed … well, a machine was Buffy’s best guess. A very large machine. About a hundred yards worth of machine, actually.
The machine for the most part resembled a huge globe of dark steel girders, translucent spans and pulsating gas plasma confined in crystalline spheres, all of which interacted in a mechanical dance of clockwork elegance despite the machine’s intimidating size. Massive counterbalances, cams, cantilevers and orbits all seemed to mesh with the intricate harmony of a moving sculpture. To either side of it loomed two giant holographic displays that were cycling through various complex geometries and topological grids.
It was, in its own imposing way, hypnotically beautiful, thought Buffy.
“Say ‘hello’ to TACIT GHOST,” said Buffy Echo Fox after taking a sip of coffee. “That’s our little time stream surveillance gadget, courtesy of some people even older than the Elder Powers.”
“TACIT GHOST?” asked Buffy. “What does it stand for?”
“It stands for TACIT GHOST,” came a familiar voice from behind her. Willow!
“The GHOST part is the machine’s code name, and TACIT is our designation for any time-stream surveillance project. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s pretty much par for the course around here most of the time,” added Willow. She looked to be somewhere in her late twenties, and was dressed casually in blue jeans, sneakers, and a black sweater.
“Willow!” exclaimed Buffy despite herself. It had been so long since she’d seen any Willow, either her world’s or the parallel universe’s one …
“One of ’em, sure,” said Willow, smiling. The smile was all Willow, innocent and knowing both at once.
“Willow Six Five November is our resident Chronomancer and all-around genius,” said Buffy Echo Fox.
The smile broadened. “Time girl, that’s me — although some days I feel more like TACIT GHOST’s baby sitter than a bona-fide time sorceress. GHOST gets cranky a lot.”
“She means it literally, too,” said Buffy Echo Fox. “GHOST’s a sentient machine, and she doesn’t have any reservations about bitching at you if something is bothering her, which is most of the time as far as I can tell.”
“She?” asked Cordelia.
Willow nodded knowingly and said, “It’s a girl power thing.”
“GHOST tells us where in time and in which Reality we’ve got a wrong to right,” said Buffy Echo Fox. “But Willow can explain it a whole lot better than I can.”
“It’s probably kind of boring,” said Willow.
“I’m pretty well versed in relativity, quantum theory, and the basics of temporal dynamics,” said Buffy.
“Oh,” said Willow, her eyes widening.
Buffy Echo Fox tried to suppress a grin. “Not all of us Buffies are mathematically challenged, Will.”
“Oh, I didn’t think that. I mean, not really. Not too much, anyway,” said Willow. She bit her lower lip in embarrassment for a few seconds, then brightened at the chance to talk shop.
“Anyway, as Echo Fox was saying, GHOST monitors the timestreams of all the mapped Realities, looking for points where the odds are starting to favor the bad guys,” said Willow. “But that’s a real oversimplification.”
“What do you need GHOST for if you’ve got Flynn?” asked Buffy. “I got the impression he was sort of in-the-know, future-wise.”
“Flynn would like you to think he’s omniscient, that he knows the future, but that’s not strictly true. He knows possible futures. That’s really all anyone can know. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle applies to time as well as particles and quanta. Time is really a whole lot more complicated than most people think,” said Willow.
Buffy was momentarily distracted by the sight of Cordelia, who had moved off and was busily chatting up a good looking young technician. Buffy wondered what the tech’s reaction would be if he found out Cordy was a vampire. She filed the thought away and returned her attention to Willow.
“First of all, the future relative to any observer is like Schrödinger’s Cat — it’s just a cloud of unrealized probabilities until someone observes it, at which point the possibilities collapse into a certainty — the future becomes the present. Normally, that’s pretty straightforward because you’re part of the space-time continuum whose timeline you’re experiencing. The past is the past, the present’s the present, and the future’s the future. But here we’re outside of any particular spacetime continuum. From our perspective, there is no definite past, present or future in the Realities. It’s all in flux all the time,” said Willow.
“If it’s all indeterminate, then how are we supposed to be able to change history in these parallel universes?” asked Buffy.
“That’s where TACIT GHOST comes in. GHOST continually scans the time streams of the Realities looking for Convergence Nodes …”
“Convergence Nodes?”
“Basins of attraction in the Reality, points where regardless of the system’s initial conditions the events of a timeline will always tend to converge toward a common result,” said Willow.
“Complexity theory. Non-linear dynamics,” said Buffy, nodding to herself.
“Exactly,” said Willow, looking impressed. “The Harvest is a Convergence Node in a lot of Realities, for instance. Since we can model and predict outcomes once we’ve isolated and analyzed a given Convergence Node, we can alter the future of a timeline with some expectation of success. It’s never a guarantee when you’re dealing with probability, but the chances are radically better at the Convergence Nodes than at any other points in a timestream.”
Buffy Echo Fox held up a hand. “All right. That’s enough of the course requirements for one day, Will. Is Flynn anywhere to be had?”
Willow shook her head. “Haven’t seen him.”
“GHOST? How ’bout you? You seen our erstwhile multidimensional taskmaster around?” asked Echo Fox.
“Flynn is not in contact at this time,” said a disembodied female voice.
“GHOST, I take it?” asked the older Buffy.
“Uh, huh. Talkative as always,” said Willow.
“Excuse me, but I’m currently monitoring a statistically significant event in Reality Five Five Lima Delta and I can’t drop that just to hold a pointless conversation with the hired help. Some of us have work to do,” said GHOST.
“And some of us are off duty,” said Echo Fox. She looked at her twin. “You want to come up to my place until Flynn shows up?”
“Umm, sure, I guess. What about Spike?”
“He’ll be fine. When Flynn wants him, I assure you he’ll be found,” said Echo Fox.
Willow Six Five November gave Buffy a heartfelt handshake and said, “It was nice to meet you. Stop by the Pub sometime when I’m off duty. I could always stand some good conversation about physics and temporal magic.” Then she moved off to attend to some work at the large status holo. Buffy caught Cordelia’s attention and motioned her over.
The three left the way they’d come and found themselves back in the ornamental garden. Buffy looked more closely this time. Above them, an azure sky was broken by brilliant white, cottony clouds. The trees soughed gently in a soft, springtime breeze. A few yards away, a small pond burbled with the sound of water falling from an artificial waterfall. The grass underfoot was an amazingly deep emerald, and all about them a profusion of flowers were in full bloom.
“Is any of this real?” she asked Echo Fox.
“That really depends on what you mean by ‘real’. Does everything here have mass, texture, all those things that define a physical object? Yes. Are they what they appear? No. It’s all a very elaborate physical illusion made possible through the most complex synthesis of computers, quantum physics, and high-level magic you’re ever likely to see. It’s virtual reality made virtually real,” said Echo Fox as she moved toward the same classical statue that admitted them to the waiting room. “Same goes for my beach house. You’ll see.”