In Times Like These Boxed Set

by Nathan Van Coops

  The major moves his hands from under the desk and I see he’s not holding a weapon after all, but rather a tablet. He stands and smiles at our group. The first smile I’ve seen from him.

  “Mr. Bozzlestich is an eloquent speaker. He speaks the truth. The Anya Morey have always been an honorable race and careful caretakers of time. Our mission was to figure out why he was invited to participate in this race in the first place. Being able to solidify our theory about the gravitans, I think we now have enough information to go on. Whoever wants these ore samples, likely wants an Anya Morey for the same reason. We know something more as well. Lieutenant La Cuesta, Mr. Kalani, you’ll both want to see this. We gained this information while you were on your mission, and I believe it holds the key to figuring out the mystery of why the race committee built a time gate in the middle of hostile territory.” He selects something on the tablet and another image fills the wall screen. This time we see a shot of a time gate. Like the starting gate in Ireland, it is constructed between two stone pillars. These pillars aren’t Celtic or ancient, however. They are a simple concrete structure inside an industrial warehouse.

  “We lost three good soldiers getting this footage here, but I think the information was valuable to our cause.” He begins the video and I watch as six figures move toward the gate. I recognize Ariella and her guide, Dagmar Sensaborria, followed by Horacio and Donny, but behind the groups of racers is a young girl. She’s wearing an old-fashioned nightgown and appears to be around Jonah’s age. Her long black hair reaches almost to her waist. The last figure to enter the scene is the man from my apartment. He’s still dressed in all black, the uniform I now recognize to be the garb of a Zealot. The Zealot’s presence seems of little concern to the others. Ariella activates the time gate, and as the colors swirl between the columns, she gestures for the little girl to enter. The Zealot takes her hand and guides her through the gate. The rest of the group follows them and the colors quickly vanish.

  The major shuts the video off and turns his attention back to us. “What was important to show you there was that the people responsible for this operation have gone beyond merely smuggling gravitans. They’ve also smuggled at least one person.” He flashes an image on the screen showing a gray-haired man in black robes and a girl next to him that I recognize from the video. The pair is standing near a podium at some large event and the man is stretching an arm toward the crowd.

  “This is Corman Task, better known to his followers as The Prophet Zsa. He is head of the entire Order. His daughter, Elenora, is the girl from the video. What we don’t know is why she was transported by time travelers.”

  Kara speaks up. “Do you suspect kidnapping?”

  “It would be believable. A hostage would be a valuable defense against an attack by The Order, but our investigators turned up more information. Corman Task has been meeting with members of a well-known organization from the central streams, and we believe he may have been bartering some kind of deal with them. If we’re not completely wrong, we believe he wanted them to take his daughter.”

  “Why would the most well-known hater of time travel give his daughter to one of us?” Genesis is on the edge of her chair. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It might make sense if you were dying.” Major McClure crosses his arms. “Corman Task has stage five kidney disease. From what we know they’ve already attempted kidney donor transplants for him and they didn’t go well. Zealot medicine is not like ours. They are a backward-thinking belief system and they won’t perform many of the synthetic procedures we do in the central streams. I believe Task is getting his daughter out before something big happens. He’s dying but he hasn’t stopped working. If anything, the Zealots have been growing stronger than ever. They’re recruiting faster, training harder, getting themselves all worked up for something. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were prepping for an all out war.”

  The major steps from behind his desk. “So you all know what we know. You’ve suspected you’d gotten involved in something bigger than your average chronothon. You have. I believe we’re on the edge of something big. All of you have been through plenty getting this far, and I’m sure you’re eager to get home, but you are welcome here as well. When whatever it is that’s about to happen goes down, we’re going to need all the help we can get right here. I’m sure of it.”

  Cliff is the one to respond. He pushes himself out of his armchair and stands to face the bearded officer. “Major McClure, I appreciate all you’ve done for us. Getting us clear of Zealot territory no doubt saved all of our lives. We owe Kara and Milo our lives, too, not just once, but several times. If we hadn’t had them with us in the mines at Diamatra, I doubt any of us would have made it back.” Cliff hitches his belt a little higher under his middle. He looks a bit thinner today and I realize he’s likely been missing meals.

  “I’m sure we all appreciate what it is you folks do out here. You keeping the likes of the Zealots away from the central streams is a thankless job, and I doubt near as many people realize that as they should. You deserve help, and if I can, I’ll do my best to find you more, but this group—” He waves toward the rest of us. “—I don’t believe we’re it.” He fixes his gaze on the major. “We’re ragged here. We’re cut up and hurting in more ways than we can count. We’ve lost good people. We fought hard all right. Nobody can question the bravery of this group. I’ve never seen anything like our green friend here cutting his way through that horde of Soma. The boy, the dog, Ben Travers, even the academy kids, I’ve never been prouder to compete with a group of racers than these right here. But we aren’t soldiers. I promised Gen and Jet’s father I’d see them home safe. I failed at that promise. I can’t change what happened to Jet. He did what he did because he thought it was worth it. But it’s up to me now to see that it was. I need to get his sister and this boy he gave his life for out of harm’s way. I owe him that.”

  The major chews his lip and the bristles of his beard protrude farther as he listens. When Cliff is finished, he unclasps his arms. “We deeply appreciate the service your group has provided us. This information you gave us today could very well be the key to our survival.” He gestures toward the soldiers near the far door. “My men will see that you have everything you need. Food, clothing, a place to sleep, and when you’re rested up and ready, we can see you safely back to the central streams.”

  Cliff steps forward and shakes the major’s hand. “Thank you. That would be very kind.” He helps Genesis up and starts to collect their things. The soldiers at the far wall open the door and hold it for us. Jonah hands Bozzle his pack and the alien smiles. I’m about to follow the group through the doorway when the major calls to me. “Mr. Travers, would you mind if I have a word?”

  I study the man by the desk. Milo is behind him, but his face gives away nothing. Kara is equally stoic, but that is the norm for her, so I have no way of knowing if she is expressing any particular new emotion.

  “Yes?” I set my pack back down on one of the armchairs.

  “If you don’t mind, before you go, there’s something I’d like to show you.”

  I walk cautiously closer to the front of the room and stop behind the first row of chairs, letting my hands rest on a leather seatback.

  “Your group is going to get rested and head home. We’ll get them all fed and cleaned up and we’ll get them back on the elevator.”

  “I appreciate that.” I hesitate to say more since I’m not sure where the conversation is heading. I try for a polite compliment. “It’s a great elevator. Unique. Is it some kind of time gate technology?”

  The major smiles and accepts the conversational tangent. “It is, yes. That elevator is one of the very first time gates ever invented. Marvelous history to it. It ran continuously from the 1880s all the way till the end of the twenty-fourth century. Zealot activists came back and destroyed it when they started their anti-time traveler campaign of course, but we were able to reconstruct one of the cars. It doesn’t servic
e all the times it once did, but it will get you back quite a few centuries into the past. And now, since our reconstruction project, it even provides a path back into Zealot occupied time. They’d go bat-shit crazy if they found out we rebuilt it, but I think I can trust you to keep our secret, can’t I?”

  I give what I hope is a reassuring smile. “I don’t have much desire to meet any more Zealots. Your secret is safe with me.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. No telling who might get to asking you questions, though, where you’re headed.”

  “Home? I don’t think any people I know would believe a word out of my mouth when I tried to talk about this.”

  The major chuckles. “I suppose you’re right about that. Not much use for time elevators in the November Prime around . . . 2009 was it?” He looks to Milo for confirmation.

  I glance at my friend’s face and find it serious. He studies me with a penetrating stare that seems slightly unfriendly. That look unnerves me far more than the major’s questioning.

  “What is it you wanted to show me? As much as I appreciate your interest in me, I have to say that I feel the same as Cliff on this one. I admire what you guys do here, but I don’t think staying to help would really be for me. I have someone I need to get home to.” Saying the words out loud makes me want them to be true even more. I hope she’s waiting for me at home, now that this race is over. She said she would be, didn’t she? I have a promise to keep. Lunch date and roller disco.

  “Ben, we aren’t expecting you to stay here and fight with us.” The major has an amused look in his eyes.

  “Oh. Okay good. I mean . . . right. I’m glad we’re on the same page then.”

  “But you aren’t going home yet, either.”

  I stare at the man, trying to make sense of his words. “Pardon me?”

  “You don’t go home from here, Ben.”

  “Why not?”

  The major reaches for his tablet and activates the screen behind him. “That was what I was hoping you could tell me.”

  The image on the screen is the time gate in the warehouse again. I stare blankly at the vacant space for a few moments, then suddenly a man walks into the frame. The worn blue jeans and leather jacket are unmistakable, as is my uncombed hair and Abraham’s canvas messenger bag. The man in the video doesn’t look at the camera, but I know without a doubt it’s me. I watch in shock as the future me steps toward the time gate and checks his race bracelet. He watches it for what seems like a long time, but the monitor only ticks off about ten seconds. When he is satisfied with the time, he steps forward and waves the bracelet in front of a metal plate with a power symbol on it. The colors swirl between the pillars and, after only a moment’s hesitation, the other me steps through. The colors fade as quickly as they’ve appeared and the warehouse is once again vacant.

  The major sets the wall display back to bricks and windows and says nothing. He just looks at me.

  “Why? Why am I going to do that?” The image of the other me, confidently stepping through the gate replays in my mind.

  The major consults his wristwatch. “That’s something you’ll have to figure out for yourself, because I don’t have the answer. What I do know is that tomorrow, a little over half an hour after we reactivate the race bracelets, you walk through that gate. And as far as we know, you don’t come back out.”

  The major collects his hat from the desk and heads toward the door. “Think it over, Mr. Travers. And when you figure it out, do us a favor and let us know, will you?” He sets his hat on his head and strides out the door.

  29

  “I’m sure every timestream in the universe has something good to offer. That doesn’t mean I need to visit them all. You say you’ve brought dinosaurs back from extinction in your twenty-first century? I’ll pass. I’ve seen how that movie ends.”–Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2035

  “Where does that gate even go?” I’m seated at a cafeteria-style table across from Milo and Kara. I have a platter full of mashed potatoes, vegetables, cornbread, and a grilled bit of meat that may or may not be beef. It all smells delicious, but I seem to have lost my appetite.

  “We do have a partial answer to that question,” Milo says. Since we left the library, both he and Kara have shown more concern, Milo guiding me to the cafeteria and trying to look sympathetic. He showed me the room where I’ll be staying, and had some soldiers take care of my things. Kara has acted more or less the same as always, but hasn’t yelled at me for anything during the entire walk downstairs, so I take that as her being supportive, too.

  Milo is searching something behind his glasses but has brought along a tablet for me to use. He holds the tablet up and shows me a timestream chart. “We call it a solitaire.” The thin glowing line on the display doesn’t branch off any of the timestreams around it but seems to exist all by itself. It doesn’t have any offshoots of its own either but rather continues as a solid, unbroken line. “These are extremely rare. They only occur when all other timestreams leading to it have been eradicated. Someone went to a lot of trouble to isolate this spot. They didn’t want anybody stumbling onto it accidentally. As far as we can tell, the time gate must be the only way left to get there. We’ve named it Epsilon Vega Solo.”

  I consider what he’s saying, trying to reconcile what little I know about timestream navigation. “The way I always understood it, timestreams are like highways. If you want to take a parallel route, you just have to back up to the point where that path broke away from the main road, then you can just jump ahead again on the other stream using something from there.”

  “Right,” Milo agrees. “But in this case, it’s like they built the road, then went back and removed the exit. You can’t get there anymore. Not by conventional navigation.”

  “Does that mean that whoever is over there is stuck now?”

  “Possibly, unless they have an anchor from another nearby timestream to jump to.” He zooms out a little from the thread on the map. “A well-charged device could probably make the leap over to Negative Epsilon Winter, but you would need an anchor from there before you went in. Like I said, once they built this thing, nobody has tried to come back.”

  I swirl my fork around my mashed potatoes and take a half-hearted bite. “So we know the chronothon committee, or at least some of the members, used their influence to get time gates built in specific places and times. Places where someone could get access to the gravitan ore. Have you guys tried interviewing committee members to see what they know? I can think of a pretty persuasive guy to have ask the questions.” I recall what Cliff had told me in the tunnel. It’d be hard to answer questions with Cliff’s hands around their throats, but they might be able to choke something out.

  “We’ve done some research,” Kara replies, “but the committee members we suspect were in on it have disappeared from their home streams.”

  “To where?”

  Milo holds up the image of the solitaire. “One guess.”

  I take a sip from my water glass and make another attempt at my mashed potatoes. “And tomorrow, I go there myself for some stupid reason.”

  That part is driving me crazy. What possible motivation would I have? Sheer curiosity? A death wish? I consider what my strongest motivations are. Right now all I can come up with is Mym. I have other friends at home, too, family, and of course my new friends I’ve met recently, Abraham, Dr. Quickly . . . I think about the two of them laughing their way through the tall grass toward the river. They seemed so carefree. None of this had affected them yet. Why would Dr. Quickly’s gravitan research one day become so important that people would go to this much trouble, even kill for it?

  I voice my next question out loud. “The items with the gravitans in them that we picked up; why get so many? Why not use one and just reproduce more? Gravitites replicate really fast, shouldn’t gravitans, too?”

  “That would make sense,” Milo replies, “but these gravitans weren’t all the same. They were different strains.” He strokes his ch
in and studies his glasses. “In fact, now that you mention it, it could be . . .” He trails off and we lose him inside the world of his lenses. It takes about thirty seconds till he pops back out to us. “There are!” He does something to make the image from his glasses appear on the tablet again. “We’ve identified six known strains of naturally occurring gravitans. The same number as attempted killings we had in this race. At least that’s what we suspect anyway.” He starts talking faster as he unravels something in his mind. “They wouldn’t have wanted to make it obvious, so they scatter the gravitan pick-ups over nine levels, make sure there were plenty of other objectives to clutter up the mix. It’s a brilliant plan. No one would look too closely at what happened to the objectives as long as everybody was intent on the race. Once they got the race going, they didn’t need the façade anymore. They just made digital levels to fool the fans at home. Meanwhile they were really using the money to build gates in places like Diamatra and Negative Epsilon Vega, places no sponsor in their right mind would ever fund.”

  “But how would they actually get the gates built without anyone noticing?” I ask. “I know in the time travel world things might be different, but where I come from, if you’re going to build some billion-dollar structure, someone would need a permit for it, insurance, probably a zillion lawyers to sign off on it. Corporations don’t just drop that kind of cash to sponsor something without wanting to see the results. If you’re going to slip that past a budget committee, at least somebody would have to be in on it.”

  Milo stares at me like I’ve either said something ridiculous or he’s about to have a heart attack. “That’s it! That has to be it. The sponsors are in on it, too!” He jumps up from the table and starts talking to himself as he speeds out of the cafeteria. I watch him disappear into the hallway before turning back to my tray of half-eaten food. Kara has polished hers off and is draining the last of her cup of water.