Grand Fiction

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Part two.

It was some days later when Sorsa was called into the laboratory again. He had nearly forgotten about the device, though the memories soon came rushing back as he saw it once again.

Though it was a bit hard to focus on the machine when the room was filled with large piles of carrots.

"Why are there so many carrots here?" Sorsa asked, though he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.

"I needed to test the machine on living matter. A carrot may not be the perfect test subject, but it is more suitable than a notebook."

"I see more than just one carrot," Sorsa said, moments before one of the piles vanished.

"It is the same carrot taken from different points in time, all brought here at once. As I took them all from the future, they will begin to disappear over time."

"Wonderful. I suppose this means we can threaten our enemies with famine."

"Not the most elegant form of conquest, but I suppose it is a viable plan," Konka agreed. "Once I know enough to take something from a great range, that is. Regardless, this is the perfect opportunity for a basic causality test."

"A what?"

Konka handed him a carrot.

"This is the original. All the other carrots are future versions of this one. We are going to see what happens if you eat it."

"I don't especially like carrots."

Konka glared at his descendant. Reluctantly, Sorsa bit into it and began chewing, as Konka pulled another carrot out from the nearest pile.

"No bite marks," he mused, as another pile of carrots faded out of existence.

Sorsa swallowed, grimacing.

"So what does that mean?"

"It strongly suggests that, if we return to my time, and prevent my past self's defeat and interfere with your own birth, I will still exist in my current body and you will not vanish from existence."

"Suggests?"

"I have not tested the device on anything sentient. Though I see no reason to believe it will affect our physical bodies any differently from this carrot, I cannot yet be certain it will not affect our minds. Perhaps our bodies will be fine but our minds will be erased, or our memories altered. There is also the slim possibility of a delayed physical effect, though I can test that rather easily."

"How so?"

Konka examined the carrots in the nearest pile, even as others vanished around him, then pulled one out.

"This iteration should not fade as I retrieve duplicate carrots. Place this in formaldehyde. I will then pull it from a time twenty years into the future. If causality somehow has a delayed effect, the carrot should have experienced it by then."

Sorsa obediently pulled out a jar, and Konka placed the carrot inside. The tyrant then returned to the console, and a second jar soon appeared on the table.

The carrot in the second jar was perfectly preserved and untouched. There were no bite marks in it.

"Perfect. There are other tests to be done, of course, but this is very promising."

"Wonderful." Sorsa stared at the carrot in his hands. "Do I have to finish this? We've already seen that nothing changed."

"Yes. If you are going to keep your mortal body, then it should at least be a healthy mortal body." Konka

Sorsa sighed, and continued chewing the carrot.

"I never expected you'd tell me to eat my vegetables," he muttered in between bites.

"Don't talk with your mouth full, Sorsa."