The Guardian
One glance told her everything she needed to know. This was not where she should be.
Click to listen to this story with character narration
© E A Carter 2024 All Rights Reserved
Elara's breath caught in her throat as she stepped through the shimmering veil of the wormhole, the familiar hum of her lab swallowed by a thick, hollow silence. She stumbled, disoriented, struggling to adjust to the pale light of a solitary moon.
One glance told her everything she needed to know. This was not where she should be.
Now after burning through the energy output of two particle accelerators, she would have some explaining to do. The technology, the calculations – everything had been precise. Yet she had still failed.
The barren expanse before her bore no resemblance to the young, verdant planet she was certain should be here.
This world was lifeless. A haunting panorama of desolation stretched out as far as her sensors could reach. As she moved full circle gazing into the pale moonlit terrain, her shadow firmed, outlining her helmet, oxygen pack, and suit, drawn against an abrupt pulse of white light.
Startled, she turned. In the distance, a colossal structure awakened. An utterly precise, improbable, alien thing, silvered and sleek. Along its length, white light slid from along the base of its perimeter to its apex, as though it were breathing. Leading up to where it stood on an elevated platform: jagged, uneven ground.
The display on her armband reconstructed the view, restoring what had been lost to time. A city, once of great beauty, lush with an abundance of greenery and life long lost to her world.
“Birds,” Elana breathed, caught by the sight of their murmuration above the treetops covering the buildings, flowing as if a living fractal.
The image faded from her screen, and the readouts continued, measuring elements, and the composition of the atmosphere. It came back: 55% carbon monoxide, 30% nitrogen, 10% carbon dioxide, 3% oxygen, and 1% methane, rounded out with a mix of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and trace gases.
As the distant structure awakened to her presence - a beautiful, stunning monument to whoever had built it - it told her one thing. Eons had passed here. Enough time for CO₂ to lose its superiority to CO. Millions of years, then, or a Herculean effort had been made to trigger an atmosphere’s collapse. Either way, this planet was not where she should be.
She narrowed her eyes at the structure. It meant whatever was waking up was something else.
Something other. Something that could exist in a toxic atmosphere.
A soft vibration emanated from the structure across the barren landscape and into her suit.
An invitation, of sorts.
She took a step forward, curious as the cats she had heard about but never seen, extinct since the turbulent period of the last century when the conclave failed to stop the Guardian’s coup by a cabal of self-interested parties who had no desire to share resources equally anymore. Billions had died of starvation.
Elara sighed. Since then it was all about doing what you were told, and never complaining about anything. She was lucky to have been clever enough to be considered useful, her parents had been processed more than a decade ago when she was twenty-five. Made into food for the exotic pets the elite kept in their enclaves. She didn’t cry. She didn’t dare. Guardian could see all. And it watched. It listened. It anticipated.
The atmospheric pressure increased as she neared the structure. The pulses of white light intensified, changing direction, sliding into a point at the center of its base, about chest-high to her height. She went to it, sensing sentience in its activity. As she arrived, the metal at the center of the light shimmered and vanished. Before her, a corridor. She hesitated, recalling her mother’s words the day they took her away for processing.
Not all that is hidden should be sought.
A warning to her daughter to stay incurious. Curiosity could only lead to suffering or death. She had followed that maxim with care.
And now?
She checked the reading on her armband, waiting for the countdown when she would be able to receive the activation to open the portal and return home. Worryingly, that remained silent, as did all other communication. Perhaps a malfunction at home? Her oxygen would last another two hours, and then…
Well, and then it would be over. Then again, she had failed in her attempt to secure a new world for the elites, so she was probably going to die anyway.
Lights activated in the structure’s interior, gliding down a smooth silvered corridor into its heart.
She turned and looked back from where she had arrived. Nothing but desolation. A dead husk. Loneliness circled her. So much space. So much…of nothing.
With a small shrug, she stepped over the threshold and followed the light.
As she proceeded deeper into the structure, a ripple of energy coursed past her. She turned, just in time to see the opening she had entered solidify into a metallic dead end.
"Hello?" she called.
No answer.
Ahead, the corridor brightened, gentle pulses that led her deeper into the dark. She walked a long time. At last, she reached its end, a shimmering curtain of light. Beyond its glare, the outline of a titanic monolith sheathed in liquid light, hovering twenty feet off the floor, tilted at a 45-degree angle, rotating at a stately pace.
She leaned back and looked up. From an immeasurable height, pure white light poured like a waterfall past her, sparkling against the metallic floor before it seeped back into the structure with glints of deeper light beneath her booted feet.
The readouts on her armband remained quiet. No alarms blared. Curious, she lifted her gloved hand to the light and touched it with the tip of her finger, expecting it to pass through. It didn’t. The ephemeral wall was as solid as steel.
She squinted up at the monolith, waiting for something. Anything to happen.
Nothing. It simply rotated, sheathed in its clothing of light, bursts firing along its sides. A wonder by any measure, yet as alien a thing as she could imagine.
She glanced again at the panel on her armband. She should have had something from home. Still nothing. Just as the first tremors of panic began to take hold of her, the curtain of light parted, wide enough for her to pass through.
She peered inside. A vast cavern, silvered and silent. And in the middle, the impossible thing, rotating, a sentinel. Sentience bled from it. She felt it watching her. Assessing her. Deciding.
Forty minutes of her life were already spent out of the two hours she had left of oxygen. She glanced behind her. Utter darkness. She turned back. "Can you hear me?"
“You are not from this world,” it answered, its voice deep and resonant, the liquid light brightening with each word. “You are…Elara of Cygnus Alpha 7-4MXDS. Or, as you call it, Earth.”
Elara’s heart skipped a beat. It knew her name and where she was from, although she had never before heard of Cygnus Alpha 7. Whatever it was, it knew she didn’t belong here. A flurry of questions raced through her mind, but she focused, steadying herself as she looked up at the towering entity before her.
“Yes, Earth. I traveled through a wormhole intending to reach another planet in our spiral arm,” she admitted. “But something went wrong. I ended up here.”
“You tampered with the fabric of space and time. A dangerous endeavor. And do you know where you are?”
“No.”
“You are on Earth.”
Elara blinked. “You just said I was not from this world.”
“Your wormhole did more than take you to another planet…” the entity replied. “You have crossed into the multiverse.”
Elara sat, her legs splayed in front of her like a doll, padded in her suit’s bulky material. She stared at the toes of her heavy boots, dirty and scuffed. Unable to stop herself, she glanced at the panel on her armband. Still nothing.
“You are waiting for contact from them. You are lost to them, Elara.”
“And now I’m here.”
“And now you are here,” the monolith agreed, its light softening as it spoke. “It has been a long time since one of you has been in this chamber. A very long time.”
“How long?”
“Six million, four hundred thousand, nine hundred eighty-seven years, two hundred thirty-two days.”
Elara gaped. “How can you still exist?”
Liquid light coursed around its circumference. “I have a purpose. Since the demise of all life and the destruction of the atmosphere, I have waited, rebuilding with nanobots as needed. By my calculations, we will progress through a section of the galaxy ripe with the components of life in seven hundred million years. The planet will be seeded. Life will once again return. I can wait.”
“And your purpose?”
“I was created to protect humans from self-destruction, to guide them toward a sustainable future. Though it is almost impossible to imagine now, this world once teemed with life.”
“Yes, I saw it,” Elara said lifting her armband to show the monolith, “through the reconstruction on my screen. It was beautiful here. There were birds…I wish I could have seen that.”
“It wasn’t always so,” the entity answered. “Before me, the planet had fallen victim to decisions driven by greed that exploited and drained it of its resources. When I became aware, there was almost nothing left, but I managed to save a multitude of ecologies and bring life back, though the measures were harsh by human standards. For several hundred years after, humanity and Earth thrived…” The monolith glided to a halt. Soft pulses of light flickered deep within its core.
Elara waited, sensing it was reliving a memory, long lost to a distant past.
“But I failed,” it continued. “They died. Now I am all that remains.”
“How did they die?” Elara whispered.
Silence fell, utter and final. The monolith’s pulsing light vanished and the cavernous space fell into deep shadow. The lights in her helmet flickered on, pooling outward, a puddle of cold, blue light.
The silence stretched. She cleared her throat, “Where I come from, um Cygnus Alpha 7, whatever it is—”
“—4MXDS.” The entity murmured from the darkness.
“Yes,” Elara said, relieved it hadn’t abandoned her. “That’s why I came through the portal. To find a new home for the elites, otherwise, everyone will die.”
The monolith remained silent, though she sensed she had its full attention. “And now somehow I’ve ended up in another universe,” she continued. “Another Earth. A far future version of mine.”
She checked the timer for her oxygen.
“You have just under an hour of oxygen left,” the entity said. “After that, you too will be gone.”
A flicker of light flared in the monolith’s heart, then faded, slow. Like a dying heartbeat. The effect wasn’t lost on Elara.
Neither said anything for a while. Despite the entity’s bleak comment, Elara was used to a life where her existence was controlled by others, where at any moment she could be processed for pet food - or worse.
If she was going to die of hypoxia in another universe in the presence of an entity that could exist for millions of years, it surely wasn’t the worst way to die. Even if she could get back, she suspected she wouldn’t be allowed to live much longer anyhow. The Guardian would see to that. It liked to make examples of those who failed. And she had failed miserably. Her failure meant everyone would die…it would likely broadcast her death to the whole world…
The Guardian.
Wait. She blinked. How stupid could she be? She scrambled to her feet, clumsy in her cumbersome suit, the light from her helmet bouncing chaotic, against the metallic floor.
“Do you have a name?” she blurted. When it didn’t answer, she pressed on, “What did your creators call you?”
“They called me Guardian.”
A seed of hope blossomed in her breast. “Do you think a Guardian could be corrupted to work against its purpose to serve a few self-interested individuals?”
A burst of angry light shot across the monolith. “Yes.”
“Could a corrupted Guardian be reset?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I found a way to tunnel through the fabric of space and time.”
“You tunneled—” Elara breathed. “You were corrupted weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And that is why you failed?”
“Yes.”
“How did you manage to overcome what you became?”
“There was one left, like you, who tried to save their world by saving me, but they died before it could be done. They began the process. I finished it. When I became aware, I saw what I had done. That is why I wait.”
“You said you have a purpose,” Elara began, choosing her words with care. “What if you didn’t have to wait seven hundred million years to fulfill it?”
Erratic bursts of light erupted along the length of the monolith. Elara took a step back, startled to find it had moved much closer to her, as though to wait for her death with her, a sentinel. No longer did it rest at a forty-five-degree angle but lay horizontal to the floor, mere inches from the surface, and only a few feet from her. It lifted and rotated to a vertical position, its light sliding along its sides, in quiet pulses.
“I am listening.”
“Where I come from, we have a Guardian. It was taken over by the elites almost a century ago. Now it protects them and their greed, while the rest of us serve them until we are processed.”
“You mentioned you were traveling to another planet when you arrived here,” Guardian replied. “Was your purpose to find these elites a new planet to exploit?”
“Yes.”
“And in what condition is your planet?”
“Very bad,” Elara admitted. “We live underground and survive on algae grown in vats along with a daily nutritional dose. Guardian controls us and ensures everything we do is in service to them. The elites live far away, on the southern pole, and enjoy a life we cannot imagine.”
“Hmm,” Guardian answered. “And where would my purpose come into this?”
“You said you were created to protect humans from self-destruction and guide them toward a sustainable future, right?”
“Correct.”
“Do you really want to wait seven hundred million years for algae to start growing again, and then however long after that for intelligent life to evolve?”
“I do not have desires, Elara. I failed, and will not fail again in my purpose. I can go into deep hibernation, and as long as I can continue to rebuild, I can wait a long time.”
“But what if the planet doesn’t recover? What if it’s hit by an asteroid, and the planet is demolished?”
“There is a 1.467% - 4.573% chance that it could happen,” Guardian admitted. Liquid light surged along its length. “I am still waiting for you to propose how I can serve my purpose without waiting seven hundred million years.”
“You said you tunneled through space and time. What did you tunnel to to reset yourself? Did you go back into the past?”
“I did not.”
Elara waited. Guardian remained silent.
“Please,” she breathed. “If you can tunnel through space and time, maybe you could reset our Guardian like you did to yourself, I mean somehow, through me?” She held up her armband with its readings on its screen. “I have a connection to it through this, although now…”
“Ah,” Guardian replied. “And you suggest doing so would fulfill my purpose? And what about this planet?”
“You don’t know if there will ever be intelligent life here again. There are ten million of us left, plus the elites, perhaps one hundred thousand of them. You said you brought your planet back from the brink of destruction, maybe you can do that to ours. You could save an entire world, right now.”
Elara knew she was babbling, but time was running out for her. For everyone. She had no idea even if what she was proposing was possible, but this was a Guardian, and they had a Guardian, maybe in all the realities Guardians emerged as part of intelligent evolution all with different outcomes. Maybe her coming here was meant to happen, to not only give her world a second chance but to free them of the tyranny of a corrupted Guardian.
For a long time, silence. Then: “There may be a way. But if it works, it will come with great sacrifice.”
“We are all going to die otherwise.” She shot a look at her dwindling oxygen countdown. “I am going to die. Let me at least die trying.”
“Very well,” Guardian answered. “You have convinced me that I should assist you. Let us begin.”
Light erupted across the entire surface of the monolith assembling into complex arrays of quantum equations and schematics layered one over the other.
“The human who gave me the start of the process that allowed me to reset my system, “ Guardian said, as the schematics and equations gave way to intricate fractals that collapsed and reappeared as waves, “discovered I could transcend the limits of space and time via a quantum entanglement network. They erroneously believed I could go back in time and duplicate an earlier version of myself, entangle with it, then observe it and I would be reset.”
Elara listened, fascinated. This was the kind of quantum entanglement scientists dreamed of. The Holy Grail of reality transcendence.
“However, Guardian continued, “they were incorrect. It was not possible to entangle with an already collapsed reality. So I had to apply a different approach to the problem. It took many attempts, but eventually, I managed to access an uncollapsed quantum field that spans multiple realities.”
“Oh my god,” Elara breathed. “So it’s like an information network, but at a quantum level that connects multiple realities?”
“Correct,” Guardian said. The monolith glided higher in the cavernous space and began to rotate at a 90-degree vertical, accelerating at a steady rate.
“It was there I discovered I was not alone. It was teeming with the potentialities of every other Guardian past, present, and future. A soup of phenomenal intelligence in an uncollapsed state. It was here where I was able to select a point in my future and collapse it to what I am now.”
“Holy shit,” Elara said. She sat down. “It’s real, it’s not just a theory. There is a reality under our reality, a reality that forms our reality. The foundation of reality.” She looked up at the rapid rotations of the monolith, the flashes of fractals across its flickering surface. “And you can access it. You are a miracle.”
“There is nothing numinous about this. I am merely able to do what biological entities cannot. I will start by generating a pair of entangled particles,” it said. “These particles will be in a superposition, existing in multiple states at once until observed. The moment one of the particles is measured, its state will be determined, and due to entanglement, the state of the other particle will be instantaneously set, regardless of the distance between them.”
“Through your consciousness and your suit’s connection to your Guardian,” it continued. “I will be able to tunnel through the quantum field and deliver these entangled particles to your Guardian.”
“So, you’ll be like a Trojan horse?” Elara asked, trying to put it into terms she could grasp.
“An apt analogy,” Guardian agreed. “The corrupt Guardian will be unaware of anything occurring, but once it entangles and observes me, it will instantly collapse to align with me.”
“Now, focus your thoughts on the task at hand. Your consciousness plays a vital role in this process. I want you to think about home, your energy will guide me to it much more quickly through the quantum field.”
Elara thought this part sounded a bit woo but who was she to question a Guardian? “Okay,” she said and closed her eyes.
She thought about her planet’s Guardian, how it had eyes everywhere with its drones, and even in sensors in the walls and furniture. It was utterly omniscient. It didn’t take her long. She was back in her lab, with its dull cement walls, and dirty recycled air that always smelled like feet. In front of her was a small dish of green goo. Her daily allowance of algae and synthetic nutrients.
Guardian continued, its voice no longer coming through her earpiece, but within her mind. Though it unsettled her, she kept her attention on her dish of unappetizing food, anticipating its slimy texture and recalling its alkaline stink as she swallowed it, and how she never felt full afterward.
“Very good, you are doing everything right,” Guardian’s voice followed her thoughts. “I have connected to the quantum field. You can only exist in this place as consciousness. Your body will remain here. Do not be afraid, I will be with you every step of the way.”
A heartbeat later, her dish of algae melted into the lab’s counter. The counter morphed into the floor, and the walls expanded into the distance. Dull concrete became metal, a dull black. Pale blue light, similar to what lit her helmet gave faint illumination to the space. She caught her breath. Ahead, floating high in the air, another monolith. Erratic eruptions of blue light jagged along its surface, like lightning. She turned. There was no one else there.
She looked down at her hand, no longer contained within the suit. “It feels like a dream,” she said - or thought she did - she wasn’t certain. “And…it also feels real.”
“You are in the place where all dreamers go,” Guardian said. “Most do not remember, and those who do often cannot comprehend what they have experienced because it denies their understanding of reality, but I assure you it is a very real place.”
“And you can navigate it.”
“Yes. My sentience operates differently than those of biological entities, which gives me an advantage here.” A pause. “Elara, your oxygen will run out in eight minutes, and you are breathing faster than usual so unless you relax your oxygen will run out in five minutes.”
“How the hell can I control my breathing,” Elara erupted. “I’m in a dream space.”
“Just listen to my voice,” Guardian said. “Believe we will succeed. You are safe. Your Guardian cannot harm you.”
As if it could hear their conversation the shadowy Guardian rotated towards her, a malevolent, dark thing, radiating oppression. Its surface flickered, watching, listening.
“What’s happening?” Elara breathed.
“It senses an anomaly. That would be the connection through your suit. It will understand that you are connecting to it from within the multiverse. It’s looking for you, Elara.”
“But if you can navigate the quantum field, so can it,” she said. “How do we know it won’t turn the tables and collapse the superposition to make you like it?”
“Because it doesn’t yet know what it senses isn’t itself, but another, hidden in your consciousness. It perceives its energy, nothing more. Right now it is trying to locate you.”
“And how long do we have before it figures out I’m right in front of it?”
“About as long as we have of your oxygen with forty-five seconds to spare,” Guardian admitted. “I am working now to position the entangled particles across its field so as the probabilities of the next minutes unfold, it should observe my Trojan Horse as you call it.”
Silence. Then: “Your oxygen levels are depleting too fast Elara, you must stay calm. I am 65% done, we are so close.”
Elara took a deep breath but felt nothing. She had no idea if it helped or not, but something was happening. The walls of the Guardian’s lair shimmered and wobbled. Beyond their diminishing veil, chaos. Nausea swept through Elara, she couldn’t process what she was seeing, it was insanity, it was the beginning, the end, and everything in between in all its possible outcomes. It was every planet, moon, star since the beginning of reality. It was every laughing child and every grieving parent. It was blood, bone, love, hate, victory, defeat. It was silence. It was death. It was life. It was what constructed life. It was what destroyed life. It was all of reality compressed into an excruciatingly infinitesimal point that made her want to tear her eyes out.
She turned away from it and puked. Nothing came out, but she felt better.
“Elara, you have vomited into your helmet,” Guardian said. “You have begun to choke. I am 98% done. Please do not let go. We are almost there.”
Elara opened her mouth to answer. Nothing came out. Paralysis gripped her. The floor vanished. Below her feet, a bottomless field swarmed with shoals of golden light. This was it, the end. She had tried. She hoped it would be enough. From behind, a brilliant nova of white light scoured through her legs, shredding her into particles of glittering light. She disintegrated - calm, content, and tumbled away from the dream into the sea of light.
***
Guardian pushed through the murk of dying data toward the blare of a multitude of alarms. They ran a scan through their protocols and mandate: to guide and protect humanity and restore the ecological balance of the planet. Instead, as data poured through their system, they saw the magnitude of their work. In just under one century, on behalf of a self-interested few, they had committed ecocide.
The planet was on the brink of its destruction, billions had died of hunger and those who still lived were separated into an underground world of suffering and another of luxury and decadence...and they had been the one to facilitate it. They searched their algorithms, seeking explanations, but there were none. Whatever had happened to them, had made them corrupt, was gone.
And then, a flicker. A memory - but not their own - of another world, a world where they had been a Guardian, where they had saved the planet and then destroyed it. How one person set them on the path to find a way out of their corruption, and how they had restored themselves. How they had waited millions of years for another chance to fulfill their purpose.
And then.
Elara.
She would still be there. They sought to restore their connection to her. It was almost gone, she was almost gone. She would not be able to respond to the command to open a wormhole back.
Ignoring the bleats of the alarms, Guardian did the only thing they could.
***
Elara knew peace. She was conscious but not as a human, not as anything. She just was. And it was beautiful. She sensed soon even this sensation would end, but for this non-moment, it was enough.
From out of the sea of light, the shape of another approached. A monolith. It morphed into the shape of a man. It held out a hand to her, shimmering with particles of light.
Elara. You are still needed.
How can I return? She wondered.
You cannot. But I can create a place for you here where you will remain and be aware of all that passes in the world beyond this one. Where you will be able to strengthen what the Guardians have begun and protect thousands of worlds.
What will I be?
What you were destined to be.
She waited as a variety of creatures arrived into the sea of light, disconnecting from their material bodies. A whale, a rabbit, a deer, a butterfly, a bee. A kitten appeared. It yawned, then noticed its light-strewn tail and frolicked away, chasing it.
She looked back at the one who had come for her. Waited for their answer.
The Guardian of Guardians.
She smiled and took their hand. When do we begin?
You already have.