Faith by Thomas Brenner

Humanity is long gone. It disappeared, along with almost every other plant and animal, after the Earth became tidally locked with the sun. Then, as the Earth sat devoid of its once flourishing flora and fauna, the sun expanded into a red giant, nearly encompassing the Earth. It now appears as a red blob covering a large portion of the black sky. Soon, the sun will burn itself out, and the Earth will be covered in darkness, no longer able to sustain any kind of life.

The lands of the Earth are barren volcanic rock. Only by the oceans does anything live. The shallow waters of the beach are slightly warmer than the deep, and there are no longer any tides because the moon no longer rises or sets. What is left of organic life now lives in these shallows and along the beaches of the oceans.

On one beach in particular, there are two species, one which preys forever upon the other. High in the sky above this beach, gigantic moths float silently. Their wings span about a meter, and their back ends are curved into a sharpened blade of a stinger. Sometimes, one of these moths will drop out of the sky, its stinger pointed at a target far below. The target is an oversized crustacean. This crustacean is comparable in size to the moth. But it is much slower. Instead, it is covered in a thick coat of armor. Similar crustaceans are scattered about the beach. The moths prey on these crustaceans, diving out of the sky in hopes that their sharpened back ends can pierce their thick armor, and gain the moth a meal. When successful, the moths fly off, presumably to some kind of den, clutching their prey between their six powerful legs.

The crustaceans and the moths are not the only inhabitants of this beach. There are inhabitants who are conscious enough to give this beach a name. (They call it the Beach of the Screaming Moths, due to the terrible scream which the giant moths can produce during a moment of triumph or defeat.) These inhabitants are hard to see. One must look very close at one rock on this beach in particular. Initially, the rock appears to be covered in moss. But if one zooms in on this mossy substance, it begins to look more like a city, with factories and streets and government buildings. If one looks closer still, little beings can be seen scurrying about this city. These little beings are called Qubits for their small size and quantum computer brains. They are the intelligent inhabitants of the Beach of the Screaming Moths. They are not made of organic materials. Instead, they were synthesized, made, long ago, at the peak of humanity. They were its crowning achievement. They can run about their daily business with metal limbs and carbon fiber muscles. They can speak to each other through synthetic vocal cords. They can reproduce. And, most importantly, they can feel, understand, and think like a human being. They live off the faint glow of the sun and the stars. But when the sun’s light is gone each and every one of them will die.

The Qubits can see the demise of the sun, it is happening right before their eyes. The light that lets them live is slowly dimming into nothing, and they have fear. But they have a hope as well. This hope takes the shape of a man, the only human being any Qubit has ever seen since the disappearance of humanity. This man is the Time Traveler, who visits the Beach of the Screaming Moths with utter regularity, in accordance with a book he himself wrote. The book is nothing more than a journal, something the Time Traveler wrote as he traveled through time, scribbles about the times he visited. But he left this book in his time of origin, and it’s made its way through history, and into the minds of the Qubits. It tells the Qubits exactly when the Time Traveler is coming, and therefore its words are engrained in each Qubit’s mind. See, the hope of the Qubits is this: that on some visit, the Qubits will succeed in alerting the Time Traveler to their presence, and he will then proceed to take them with him, back to a time when the sun was bright and white, the Earth green and lush, and humans flourished, and the Qubits were their most celebrated creation. They therefore need to know exactly when the Time Traveler is coming, so they can be prepared, ready to show him they are there.

* * *

The Time Traveler appeared at around noon on a certain specified day, as expected. This was not a good day for the Time Traveler to visit: according to the city’s astronomers, Venus was scheduled to eclipse the sun, plunging the Earth into darkness for several hours. But the Qubits were ready for the Time Traveler anyway. They had plenty of time to get ready; the Time Traveler appears only every thousand years or so. (This is a long time for a Qubit, but not longer than an average Qubit’s lifetime.) They knew where he would appear; he always appears next to the Qubit rock. That is the reason, in fact, why the Qubits live on this particular rock. To prepare for the Time Traveler, city lights were installed, with the hope that these would catch the eye of the Time Traveler. Since his last visit, the Qubit city itself was literally rearranged, made into a grid pattern, which the Qubits hoped would be noticeable with the Time Traveler’s macroscopic eyesight. Finally, a laser was erected. The laser is contained in the largest building in the city, and it is a monument to the resourcefulness of the Qubits on this barren rock they’ve built their civilization on. The plan for this day was to shine this laser (who’s beam the Time Traveler can see with his naked eye) on the metal or glass of the Time Traveler’s machine. This should scatter the laser light, and produce an obvious and beautiful pattern throughout the time machine. The Qubits hoped the Time Traveler would be able to trace the source of this light back to the Qubit rock.

The Time Traveler appeared in a burst of bright white light. The city lights were on, and the laser was powered up. It shown against a brass support bar in the cabin of the time machine, and the light was scattered throughout the cabin. The Time Traveler noticed this light. He sat writing in his journal, but when he looked up the dancing red light of the refracted laser reflected into his pupils. He followed it; saw it emanating from the rock below him. He stared at the Qubit rock for some time, then got out of his machine. He walked to the rock, put his arms around it, and attempted to break it free from the ground. He could not. He took a few paces back and stood, apparently pondering the rock, and what to do about it. The Qubits waited in anticipation. It appeared that they had succeeded. Then there was another burst of whiteness, a cloud of dust. After it cleared, the Qubits could clearly see the Time Traveler lying face down on the ground, a Screaming Moth on top of him, its blade of a stinger stuck deep into the left side of his back. The Qubits stared in horror. Then, wrapping its six legs around the Time Traveler, the Screaming Moth let out its scream of triumph and defeat, and flew into the distance with its prey.

The Qubits watched, dumbfounded, as the Moth flew off with the Time Traveler. They didn’t know what to make of this. The Time Traveler’s book still had several more entries in it, several more stops in the continuum of time that the Time Traveler had to make. And it made no mention of him either dying or being mortally wounded. This would have been impossible anyway, as the Time Traveler had written the journal himself. Doubt entered the Qubits’ minds. The Time Traveler’s book had never been wrong in the past. The Time Traveler appeared right when he said he had, or, from the Qubits’ point of view, right when he said he would. But before them was a contradiction, and now each and every Qubit began to question the validity of the Time Traveler’s story. They began to argue about it, fight about it, until they all became confused and exhausted.

Then, darkness began to fall, as Venus began its eclipse of the sun. The Qubits were forced to go into their homes, where they could wait out the darkness under generator-powered light. This was not a good time for the Qubits.

Once the sun reappeared, the Qubits re-emerged, to find that the time machine was gone. This change sparked and inferno of questions in the Qubits’ quantum computer brains. It certainly appeared that the Screaming Moth had killed the Time Traveler; its blade had clearly pierced his heart, and then the Moth had carried him off. But now the time machine was gone. There was no sign that anything had removed it, dragged it away. It was simply gone. What happened to the time machine? What was the fate of the Time Traveler? Was he really killed? How could he have died like this? Did the Qubits make something happen that wasn’t supposed to? What should they make of their book of truth? Was it a lie? Did the Time Traveler lie? Did someone else lie? Why would someone have lied? Would the Time Traveler come back, as his book claimed he would? Or was this it? The dilemma was now there: what should the Qubits believe? And, following from that, what should the Qubits do?

This was the big question: What should the Qubits do? They could continue to prepare for the Time Traveler’s next visit, and expect him to appear when his book said he would. Or they could reject the Time Traveler’s writing and accept that they must either die with the sun or find another way out of their world. This choice was life or death. The red sun shone in their faces, and the Qubits realized they did not have much time. They had to choose, and they had to believe in what they chose.