“How did I get here?”, Said a confused Terry Horowitz looking out from the comfortable single bed he appeared to have found himself in, in an English country house. Apart from mild mental problems Terry was in perfect health considering the last thing he remembered was being stabbed through the neck.

“Weeell… that’s a long story”, said Beiphlat.

“I’ve seen those two before”, said Terry pointing at the two people idly taking in the cottage in medieval outfits. “They were… from a different time…” said Terry tailing off as he tried to make sense of events.

“Yeah and we remember you”, said Aelric. “If it wasn’t for you we would be still living normal lives… we would…”

“I wouldn’t have a family…”, interrupted Erthgi.

“Yeah he’d be much better off…”, continued Aelric, not quite sure whether he was still in the right train of thought.

“You would both have died the next day after being attacked by one of the many occupying forces. Your village was to be sacked and everyone you knew would die…”, said Beiphlat.

Aelric and Erthgi looked at each other.

Beiphlat continued. “Sorry to be so blunt, but my point is that the reason that you are so resistant to the changes in the time line is that you previously had very little influence on the events of the future… you have a similar if very different position to Mr Horowitz here.”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted Terry, “but you seem to know a hell of a lot about what is going on. Who are you?”

“How rude of me… ladies”, he said trying to send his voice down the stairs “and gentlemen, I am Beiphlat.”. Beiphlat put his arms out for dramatic effect.

Aelric and Erthgi looked at each other, each subconsciously asking the same question. Who was Beiphlat?

Terry vaguely recalled the name. “The Blieg… I mean the scavenger future type Blieg… they mentioned you… you caused me to be… I mean to be in my present state… I was something more important to history… I was some great leader… I’m sorry this isn’t making any sense”

“Terry”, said Beiphlat, “you are still very important to history. Look I need to try and explain this properly: -”

“I am from the year 5,250,256 AD, by your calendar – well the one you’re familiar with… its changed a few times. By that time Terry Horowitz, your namesake, was a legend. Everyone in several galaxies knew your name. Your existence allowed a social train of thought that no one had considered possible… imagine every great revolution rolled in to one – and you where at the epicentre of it. Your ideas about how civilisation should work was phenomenal. But in my time there was a danger of that being corrupted, there were questions about your way of doing things… now questioning is obviously an important thing… but people were questioning things just for the sake of it – these people wanted anarchy… a seed of doubt is potentially the most dangerous thing to a thriving civilisation, it can be like poison to a system… the only way I could prove to people that what you had suggested was what it claimed to be, I had to go back in time and document it, and you. But there were those who didn’t want this, there were dark forces at work in the universe… a group known as the scavengers… no one knew what they represented until it was too late. They we’re the evolved version of your mortal enemies – the Blieg.”

“Those three legged, jaw-handed, stone crunching things that live in space…”, interrupted Terry.

“They live in the shift… where your other self sent them to die… but they had found somewhere to evolve in our universe. And they became the scavengers, those ones who trapped you. Well they managed to convince people that they should follow me back to monitor what I was doing, so that it was fair… but instead of monitoring things they tried to kill me… and you, I mean your name sake… I managed to manipulate my time machine to try and protect you… but I only managed to protect your three children and your wife… the Blieg killed you… I thought all was lost for my world… somehow I managed to continue existing using crystals that powered my machine, like the one on the end off that staff”, Beiplat indicated the stone on the top of the Merlin-esque staff that Erthgi was holding. “I gave that one to your wife to protect her. But she used it to save you when you saw her as an old woman… as leader of the Callack organisation.”

“I tried to go back and rearrange time, but it had already changed beyond control. Somehow the death of your other self caused ripples backwards in time, and changed things beyond belief. You came in to existence at a later date, and became the person you are in front of me now, the same biologically, but quite a different person. Not worse, just different. I only found this out later on when you went on your little adventure…”

Terry sighed, “right can we just take a break, I need to take all this in.”

“No problem”, said Beiphlat. “Time seems to have stabilised for the moment.”

There was a female voice yelling from downstairs. “Ah I see Anna has woken up”, said Beiphlat. “Lets see how shes getting on shall we?”

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The Legacy of Terry Horowitz Archive

Terran

01.09.05 Front Page

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