The guard
rushed into the main hall, face flushed, panting. The royal protection detail
started to intercept, but their master waved them away. Eventually he got his
breath back, and started to speak.
"Sir he
seeks an audience with you. He has shown power we cannot understand. He has
shown wonders greater than ours yet they fit in his hand. He has knowledge that
surpasses ours. He claims he is from 2016."
The Mountain
King (as McGregor liked to call himself, though his "mountain" was
barely worthy of the name, and was more of a large hill) was barely awake, but
he started to liven up a bit at this intrusion. "Who seeks an
audience?"
"I
apologise, Sir. A man walked up to the main gate and told us that he travelled
here from the year 2016, and wished to discover how humanity lived in our
time."
"2016?"
"Yes,
sir. However, when he got here he said that he was disappointed to find so few
traces of human settlements, and that now he just wanted to find shelter from
the rains and prepare to return home to his own time."
McGregor was
amused. "And you say he has shown wonders greater than ours that fit into
his hand?"
"Indeed,
sir. He has a small shiny stone that shows images on it's surface! It is a
marvel!"
The King's
mood darkened. "Bring this visitor to me, that we may converse in private.
Everyone leave the hall now!"
As the guard
sprinted out of the ancient hall to fetch the new arrival, the King's personal
guards reluctantly left him to his thoughts.
The man
arrived and was shown in to the huge hall, hewn by hand out of the granite that
lay beneath this land.
"I
understand you are the main man in these parts. McGregor, is that right? Hello
to you. I'm Dr Kenneth Garrows. I'm the inventor of time travel. I sent myself
to your era to discover how things had improved in the intervening thousand
years, but it seems that they have gone backwards. What happened?"
McGregor spoke
coolly, unimpressed with the man's familiar nature and his lack of respect.
"Dr Garrows, I must correct you on a number of points. I am the monarch
'in these parts', and demand that you treat me with the appropriate
respect."
Dr Garrows was
obviously not used to being anything other than the authority figure in his
life, noted McGregor. The doctor visibly bristled, but managed to control his
irritation. "As you wish, your Royal highness." Garrows continued
with a thinly sarcastic tone: "What other points am I to be corrected on,
sir?"
This would be fun.
"Number one: you are not the inventor of time travel. It was invented in
the year 2860. You may have made the same discoveries in parallel with the
original inventor, but you are not her."
Garrows was
confused: "But I came from the year 20-"
"-16. I
know. But remember, we are talking about time travel. Try as humanity might to
avoid paradoxes or undue manipulation of past events, some irresponsible or
unwary people still drop hints and information in eras that mean progress is
accelerated."
The king took
a swig from his goblet while Garrows doubtless processed what this
primitive-looking fool had just told him.
"So why
does everything look so...primitive?" And there it was.
McGregor sighed
and began the lecture. "Why? Because humanity has had to deal with the
consequences of earlier ages! Events that were catastrophic for life on this
planet. Events, Dr Garrow, such as the release of gigatons of methane and
carbon from the Arctic permafrost. Without rapid industrialisation and a
slavish adherence to neo-classical capitalist economics in the 19-21st
centuries, the release would have been gradual, and advances in knowledge and
technology would have managed them effectively. Because you people couldn't
stop eating livestock, making even more humans, and burning dead dinosaurs to
travel from one concrete hellhole to another, the tipping point came a couple
of hundred years too early, and humanity had to migrate quickly. Billions still
perished."
Dr Garrows was
amazed. "Migrate? You mean we -"
"Indeed.
We are presently colonising and terraforming a significant number of suitable
planets within a 'bubble' of approximately a thousand light years. Our
ancestral home was rendered uninhabitable by most life forms for hundreds of
years after the Release, but when our climate manipulation technology was
operational, we restored Earth to a clean bill of health. Our Ark scientists
reintroduced most of the local varieties of flora, fauna, and microbial life
that we had recovered and stored. Eventually, it was decided to open the planet
to human inhabitants, but to ensure that it remains the beautiful green and
blue ball it is today, the Galactic Federation issued an order that population
would be tightly controlled and that no advanced technology would be permitted,
on pain of death. I, as the Mountain King (or the administrator of the British
Isles, with my headquarters inside Ben Nevis in Scotland, as your antiquated
terminology might put it), am charged with maintaining order on this landmass.
Other Kings exist."
McGregor
enjoyed watching the colour drain from this man's smug face. The Doctor gulped
and spoke: "Death? Am I to be executed for daring to bring some ancient
technology to Amish Earth?"
"I don't know
what Amish means, but I will not issue any execution order if you immediately
return to your time. Federation agents have been notified of this violation via
mindlink - "
Garrows perked
up "- What? I mean, excuse me sir, did you say mind link?"
"We introduced
what you might term 'quantum communication via neural link' to select people in
positions of authority not long after your time, Dr Garrows. As I was saying
before you interrupted me, agents from the Galactic Federation will have
already detected your wormhole start and end points and will arrive at the
starting spacetime coordinates shortly - so to speak - to dispose of your
unauthorised vehicle. Unless you want to be stuck here to be tried by a people
who currently believe in evil sorcery, I would suggest that you..."
Garrows
couldn't press his "back" button quick enough, and vanished in a
flash.
Oh well. The
good Doctor hadn't asked why they didn't just go back and fix everything, at
least. He must have realised that time travel was a dangerous drug, and that
undue tampering would soon lead to the pre-empting of human history by the
impatient.
The Mountain
King finished his mead, called in his staff, and summoned his jester. He needed
to lighten his mood after meeting one of those mass-murdering idiots.
