In Times Like These Boxed Set

by Nathan Van Coops

  “Good afternoon, sir,” Penny says as I walk up. “How can I help you?”

  I smile. “Just checking in. I have a particular room in mind . . .”

  Five minutes later, I’m back outside staring at the temple lit by the afternoon sun. Drones buzz overhead and passersby continue on their way without urgency, scooting along in their driverless cars and smaller personal conveyances.

  There is nothing ominous about the temple in daylight. The archway above the door hosts a pair of doves that are cooing softly to one another. A trio of people are seated on the front steps enjoying sandwiches. The gate is open.

  The sunlight has helped me shake some of the fatigue from my muscles. I take a deep breath and trudge up the steps.

  The entrance to the temple passes through a breezy foyer with two metal bowls on either side that contain fires. There are bundles of dry wood a few feet away from each fire, but the pieces are tiny, hardly substantial enough to make a difference. Whatever ritual purpose the wood serves is lost on me, so I continue on.

  I had thought I would be accosted immediately upon trying to access this lair of my enemies. To my surprise, I am able to pass through a lush interior garden and then walk right up to a sort of arched stone gazebo at the center of the main courtyard. Two domes, one on top of the other, are supported by the four pillars at the corners. The inner dome has holes cut out in the shape of stars and the light from a large fire inside the structure makes star shapes on the outer dome even in daylight.

  A flowing fountain near the arched structure runs out toward the garden and burbles pleasantly.

  A willowy young woman in a pale, flowing skirt appears from an alcove in one of the courtyard walls and greets me cheerily.

  “Welcome to The Temple of the Eternal Flame. Have you come seeking wisdom?”

  I tense immediately at being approached, but the young woman seems sincere. With her simple clothing and lack of meta imagery, she looks unthreatening. Even her expression invites trust. Her big eyes are fixed on my face, and she smiles at me pleasantly.

  “I was just curious what you do here.”

  “We offer opportunities for those who wish to live a better life. This place is a sanctuary. A place to encounter your most perfect self and to discover your highest destiny.”

  “What if I don’t want to know my destiny?”

  The girl shakes her head. “You can’t avoid it. We all share the same destiny. The outside world is going to pass away. We’ve seen it.” She gestures to the building around us. “Mere stone and flesh can’t withstand time. But we among the brethren will experience immortality.” She tilts her head to consider me. “You look tired.”

  “Exhausted.”

  “Think how rested you could be if you were no longer a servant of time.” She fingers the fabric of my work shirt and rests her hand on my forearm. “If you could unshackle yourself from your daily toils and live a life of your choosing, wouldn’t your life be more restful?”

  “One would think.”

  The willowy girl smiles at me serenely. “We’ve seen the future. We know that this takeover by machines affecting the world is just temporary. Your struggle as a human being will not be in vain. They might be taking your jobs and threatening your spirits, but the true human race will be reborn. We’ve been given a savior.” She lifts up the front of her shirt and exposes a fabric pouch tied at the top of her skirt, along with a fair amount of her firm stomach. She pulls a scrap of paper from the pouch and offers it to me.

  Unlike the glossy flyers I’ve seen from other religious ministries, this one is made from rough paper and full of hand-written script. “Here, this is one of my favorites.”

  I take the slip of paper and read the calligraphic script out loud.

  “A mountain of fire. A savior’s grace.

  “A new beginning for the human race.

  “An open mind is an enduring portal.

  “Time cannot thwart this life immortal.”

  The poem is signed—Eterna.

  The willowy girl is smiling. “Isn’t that beautiful? Doesn’t it just make you want to drift away into the sky to be with our savior?” She twirls a few times, skirt flaring out around her—getting herself dizzy—then tumbles into me, her hands landing on my chest. She looks up with her doe eyes and smiles. It makes me wonder how many men have wandered in here less for the enlightenment than for the company. It also makes me wonder what kind of drugs they might be passing around.

  “Are you Eterna? It’s a very nice quote. Or poem.”

  “It’s from my dreams.”

  “You dream the future?”

  “We all can,” she says. “It’s what makes us special.”

  “What if you want to stop?”

  Eterna appraises me skeptically. “Why would you want to stop? Messages from your more enlightened self are a blessing.”

  I remove her hands from my chest and prop her back up. “Who runs this place? Do you have a service of some kind?”

  “We’ll meet tonight,” she says. “We’ll make contact with His Greatness.” She looks up at the sky again, dreamily. When she lowers her gaze, her voice loses a bit of its elation. “But it’s only for the brethren who have been initiated. New members come to the gatherings on Thursdays.”

  “What time is the meeting tonight?”

  “You won’t have time to be initiated today, but if you are serious about seeking your future, we could start the process. We need to spend some time with you and teach you how to access your deepest self.”

  “My deepest self is pretty loud already.”

  She laughs and pats my arm again. “I’ll look for Ollech. He handles initiates. Stay here and I’ll try to find him.”

  The girl swirls away into a side passage and leaves me alone. As soon as she’s out of sight, I uncover my chronometer. I move swiftly around the courtyard, passing a pit at the back of the domed gazebo that is perhaps six feet deep and charred from being burned multiple times. I continue around the perimeter of the courtyard searching the various other alcoves and grottos for an out-of-the-way spot suitable for a time jump. I don’t see anything that I can be sure no one will be occupying over the next few hours. Finally I discover a staircase that leads up to the roof overlooking the courtyard. A locked iron gate blocks the passage at the top, but that is within my abilities to circumvent.

  I trot back down the stairs, select a stone from an out of the way spot in the garden, run back up the stairs and toss it through the gate. Then it’s just a matter of running back down the stairs, making a jump back in time to when the stone was still in the garden, and then using it as an anchor to jump forward to the time when the stone is lying on the roof. It’s a process I’ve gotten used to now as a time traveler. It’s almost routine, but I still double-check my settings for each jump.

  Having successfully acquired a secure spot on the roof from which to observe the courtyard, I use my meta goggles to zoom in on the scene, then fiddle with the toolbar until I find the record option. The goggles will likely do a better job of keeping track of the action than my sleep-deprived brain will. Once the recording is running, I set my chronometer for smaller jumps to move myself forward in time.

  My first few jumps make it apparent that my disappearance was not too difficult on Eterna. She returns with a grouchy-looking man in black robes who looks relieved to find me gone. He simply grumbles at her and vanishes back indoors when she can’t locate me. I skip ahead to witness her perform her greeting services and poetry distribution a few more times to other interested men who wander in, but none must show as much interest in the brethren as they do Eterna herself, because she doesn’t fetch Ollech for any of them. As the sun dips down to the horizon, the big gates at the front of the temple close. A large, robed man takes up a position near the entrance and admits people using a smaller door built into the gate.

  Midnight had been dry out, but I’m careful to check the sky before each jump for any sign of Florida’s frequent spontaneous
rainstorms building above me. I don’t linger long in any one time—just long enough to see if the promised meeting has begun. Approximately an hour after sunset, I find what I’m looking for.

  The courtyard fills with figures. The fire in the center of the temple grows brighter as it is fed by various acolytes, and they’ve built a new fire in the rectangular pit out back. This recess sits just beyond the edge of the raised dome structure and from my angle it now resembles an orchestra pit to a stage. That is if someone especially hated orchestras and lit them on fire.

  The assembled group of the brethren in the courtyard swells until there are roughly a hundred people standing around the fiery pit. The crowd has left room for a path from one of the corridors, and a smaller group of figures proceeds along it and up into the domed room.

  The leader of the procession is Mr. Longcase. He seems to have recovered from his encounter with Sonia and my earlier self at the mansion in Port Nyongo, but there is still a sense of insecurity about his movements, as if he is still upset by the way his day has gone.

  A few more men and women I don’t know follow Longcase, then, bringing up the rear, is Jay Sprocket.

  I get a jolt of adrenaline seeing another face from Sprocket Manor here. His presence makes the whole thing seem more real—another stitch in Mym’s abduction tied to this coast of Florida.

  Jay looks more childlike than the last time I saw him. Here, surrounded by strangers, he seems to have shrunk. He looks more like the Jonah I know, a boy confronting a world of grownups. I want to get close to him and ask him why he’s a part of this, what drove him to come here. I’ll need to find a way to speak to him when this meeting of theirs is over. I owe Jonah that much.

  Longcase stands at the side of the arched structure overlooking the fire pit. The flames cast an eerie glow on his features. He raises his arms and speaks in a language I don’t understand, but the crowd has no trouble and responds in unison, volleying back phrases in a liturgical fashion. Once the recitations have concluded, Longcase lowers his arms and switches back to English.

  “Brethren of the Eternal Line of Gnomon, our hour of glory is almost upon us. The rebirth has begun.”

  A few members of the crowd cheer before being shushed by people around them. Longcase abides the interruption calmly.

  “You are right to be joyful. We have worked hard to achieve this moment. Because of your faithfulness, we have stretched the line of Gnomon to the distant past. We have just received word from the brethren that the body of our great lord has been found.”

  More cheers erupt from the congregation, and Longcase lets them die down before he continues. “Despite our savior’s distance from us and the many millennia that have kept us apart, we will finally fulfill our destiny. The vision of the Lord Gnomon— first disciple of our savior—has been a gift to us, passed down from the coming centuries. He told us of the greatness of Zurvan and has showed us the path to our salvation.”

  Longcase points to the sky. “The Lost Star is almost upon us. Its return heralds the turning point in our great journey to freedom. Because of your dedicated service to our cause, all of humanity will benefit.”

  Jay has been positioned directly between the two pillars on the near side of the dome. Longcase gestures for him to step forward. He stands behind Jay and places both hands on his shoulders.

  “This young man volunteered himself to our cause. He is a former student at The Academy of Temporal Sciences. He wished to become a time traveler, but when he left that school and took his destiny into his own hands, he discovered the insidious lie that has been told to all of us. There is no path forward in time that does not lead to our destruction and abandonment at the hands of the machines. He came to see what we know to be true. Our only salvation lies in the power of Zurvan.”

  Longcase raises a hand. “And now, as evidence of his commitment to the brethren, this brave young man will bear a message to our Lord and allow us to hear his divine words.”

  The crowd around the fire applauds enthusiastically. Some shout praise to Jay. The boy is looking more assured of himself now. When Longcase takes a step back, Jay steps forward to the edge of the fire pit and stares into the flames. He begins to hum and sway, putting his hands out over the pit. The crowd follows his example, chanting and swaying with him. A few of them likewise have their hands extended toward the flames.

  What on earth are they up to?

  The chanting and humming continues uninterrupted for a solid ten minutes without change, the whole crowd swaying gently in trancelike harmony. I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open as it is, and this rhythmic monotony is not helping at all. I turn the dials on my chronometer and am about to skip ahead again, when Jay goes suddenly rigid. His body jerks and his eyes roll back in his head. His hands fly to his scalp, clenching at his skull. No one intervenes to help him. The crowd goes quiet instead, engulfed in rapt silence.

  The voice that comes out of Jay’s mouth is not Jay’s. Jay’s mouth moves to form the words, but it’s a powerful, adult voice speaking.

  “The Almighty Zurvan sends this message to his faithful brethren: The Lost Star returns as I have promised your prophets. You will bring it to me, and I will grant your reward—spare you from the fate that consumes humanity. Those who would be saved should heed my words. Bring the Lost Star to the eternal fires of Yanar Dag. Restore me to my body and assure your eternal salvation.”

  Jay’s hands drop from his head, and he returns as if from a dream. Longcase is at his side in an instant, whispering something in his ear. Jay inflates his chest and runs a hand up his arm, pushing the sleeve of his robe up past his elbow and revealing something strapped around his bicep. A Temprovibe. He pushes something on the device, takes a step forward and leaps, soaring out over the flames, then plummeting into the pit of fire.

  “NO!” The yell is out of my mouth before I’ve had any chance to think. I leap to my feet, but there is nothing to be done, the boy does not land in the fire, instead, he vanishes into thin air. Gone.

  The silence of the next moment is a pregnant pause. Two distinctly different things happen in the moment that follows. Some of the enraptured brethren, intent on Jay’s actions, send up a cheer. Others, who have heard my shout from the rooftop, have turned to search for its origin.

  My mind is sluggish. I’m in shock from what I just saw. Jay vanishing into the flames defies all logic, but the danger I’m in is slowly registering too. I back away from the edge of the rooftop and search the face of my chronometer for a setting. Where am I going?

  The iron gate from the stairwell swings open on squeaky hinges and three robed figures spring from the darkness beyond.

  Shit.

  I spin the dial on my chronometer for six hours into the past, a time before I was first up here. I reach for the roof, but I’m tackled just as my fingertips brush the surface. My attacker and I go sprawling. Another body is added to the pile momentarily, and my right arm is wrenched behind my back in a submission hold.

  “Get off!” I blurt out. Someone has ahold of my legs, possibly sitting on them, grinding my knees painfully into the roof.

  “Surrender yourself,” the attacker above me hisses.

  My chronometer hand is still free underneath my body, but the third person has arrived, and I can feel myself being lifted. In a fit of desperation, I cram my chronometer into my mouth, spinning the dial on the timer mechanism with my teeth and pressing the pin with my chin. Ten seconds.

  I’m yanked to my feet, and a fist slams into my stomach. All of the air leaves my lungs.

  Nine seconds.

  A punch to the face. I sway sideways, but am still held by strong arms. They clamp down on mine. Sonsofbitches.

  Seven seconds.

  A second punch to the stomach. I crumple and go limp in their arms. Rough hands squeeze me on all sides. Not yet.

  Five seconds.

  I’m being dragged toward the doorway to the stairs.

  Four.

  More figures sta
nd near the gate. I contort myself into a ball, as compact as I can get.

  Three.

  The men holding my feet lead the way, hauling me feet-first through the doorway to the stairs.

  Two. I come uncoiled and kick hard at the men at my feet, simultaneously slamming my head into the forearm of the man holding my left wrist.

  One.

  He loses his grip on my arm, and I stretch it downward, straining to reach, and dragging my fingertips along the rough concrete floor.

  Blink.

  I crash to the floor, bumping my way down three more steps till I come to rest in a heap on the landing. None of my attackers have come with me. I’m lying in the stairwell in indirect daylight. Other than my own gasps, there is no sound except the burbling stream in the garden and the dull drone of noise outside the temple.

  “Ow,” I mutter aloud as I get slowly to my feet. My ribs are aching. Whether it’s from the punches or the tumble down the concrete steps is hard to tell. I probe my side gently. Nothing feels broken, but I imagine I’m pretty well bruised. There is a trickle on my chin. I lick my lips and discover the blood. A quick tour by my tongue assures me that I still have all of my teeth at least.

  I grip the handrail firmly and make my way gingerly down the remaining stairs.

  It’s roughly 2:30 in the afternoon. Too early to walk into the hotel yet. I need to jump forward. I wrack my brain for a time to jump to where I know I won’t run into myself or the other Eternals. It takes me longer than it should, but as I stand there aching and trying to wrap my mind around the temporal knot that my day has become, it finally dawns on me that I have all of the afternoon’s activity recorded on my goggles. I shuffle through the first few video images till I see a spot where Eterna is out of sight, then dial my chronometer for the second after the video ended, when my earlier self skipped ahead in time. Once I’ve arrived in that window, I just stumble out the temple’s front gate and back into the street.

  Penny is aghast at the sight of me. She immediately races from around the concierge desk to tend to me. “Oh goodness, what happened to you? Do you need me to contact the police or an ambulance?”