Dissonance (The Machina of Time Book 2)

by Daniel R. Burkhard

  The ozone smell of the hot electrical equipment seemed almost overpowering. The room was cool. The banks of large black stacks of servers resembled servers found in many large companies from Wyatt's time. Some of the black boxes had blue and green flashing lights.

  As the door swung closed behind them and its bolts set, Wyatt scanned for any sign of another human in the room. Besides their group, no one else was around. He heard fans operating in the server stacks and smelled the hot electrical odor of the processors.

  "This is different than I remember," the older Avery said, and shook her head as if she didn't mean to say that.

  "What did your contract say about this?" Wyatt asked, seeing a chance to press her further. "You've been in here before. It is the same room I remember."

  The older Avery glanced back at him over her shoulder and shook her head. "This is different," she said. "Maybe you have been blinded by it, but this is different."

  "How is it different?" the younger Avery asked, a glare tightening her face. She stepped closer to the older Avery.

  Aldan backed up and around the older Avery, still holding her left arm above the elbow. But he allowed the younger Avery to face her.

  "These rows are different than I remember," the older Avery said, matching the same challenging, defiant stance of her younger version. "They were parallel to the entrance the last time." She moved her right hand to show the aisles between the stacks had gone perpendicular to where they stood this time.

  "Are you sure?" Aldan asked. "Don't you remember coming here with us?"

  The older Avery nodded once. She glanced at each of them. "Sure, I came with you here," she said, her eyes remaining on Jeremy. "We had some trouble with Jarod and came here to meet with the Machina."

  "What do you mean, meet with the Machina?" Jeremy said. "The Machina is a transdimensional computer. How would you meet with it?"

  The older Avery shook her head sharply. "Are you going to disbelieve all that I say?" she asked. "We met with the Machina by coming in here and finding a screen we could use."

  "Let's go find it," Aldan said, dragging the older Avery around the right side of the stacks of servers.

  They moved along several rows, before they entered the row that had a small table near the middle. So far, everything was as Wyatt had remembered it the last time. Except that the screen built into the surface of that table would not turn on.

  "I told you it probably wouldn't work," the older Avery said as Aldan tapped the screen a few more times with his right index finger. "Someone has gotten to the Machina."

  "Did Jarod do this?" Wyatt asked. Stepped around the small table to keep it between him and her. As he leaned on it, he felt the pressure of her wrist terminal in his pocket. While he waited for her answer, his mind spun with ideas. He could do, with that wrist terminal, what Brooke had done with the wrist terminal she had stolen from Aldan. He could scan her previous locations and figure out where she had been.

  The older Avery said something he missed, because of his thoughts, but when he looked at her, she finished shaking her head.

  "If Jarod didn't do this, what is behind it?" Jeremy asked. "What happened to you? You used to talk to me a lot more easily than this?"

  "Everything changes," the older Avery said. "Ever since time travel was unleashed, the changes have not stopped."

  Wyatt felt a sinking dread as he heard her words and tried to determine just how long he had been employed by the Machina. It was probably only a week at the longest, but with all the traveling they had done, subjectively, he had probably been at work longer.

  "Do you remember the business park?" Aldan asked. "Do you remember almost being run over? Or do you remember someone else in our group being hit?" He let go of her upper arm and folded his arms.

  The older Avery looked down at the black screen on top of the table, seemingly calculating her answer. "I remember it," she said. Her eyes never looked up as she answered.

  Wyatt couldn't tell if that was due to her words being a lie, or something else. He decided to press it a little and see if it were a lie. "Did you see Hannah there?"

  The older Avery's eyes shot up toward him. "I didn't do anything with her," she said.

  Wyatt looked over his left shoulder toward the young Avery. Her earlier comments about this not being the same Avery bothered him. "Do you know who Hannah is?"

  "The woman in white," the older Avery answered, drawing a glare from Aldan.

  "How many times have you seen her?" Aldan asked.

  The older Avery shook her head slowly from side to side. "I'm not going to answer that."

  "I've got another question for you," Wyatt said. "Do you remember Linda?"

  He caught Jeremy's puzzlement in his peripheral vision and hoped the older Avery wouldn't see it. Aldan watched him and nodded, and as Wyatt waited for an answer, he remembered what the older Aldan had said about Linda. That older version of Aldan had said Linda was important. Had he said she was the key to this?

  "She didn't last long," the older Avery said.

  "What do you mean?" Wyatt turned to look over his left shoulder toward the younger Avery again. She stepped closer.

  "It's too bad we lost her," the younger Avery said. "But we've had a tough time remembering what happened."

  "Really?" the older Avery asked. "She's the one that started this. She's trying to save someone from a paradox."

  "Is that why she made the changes?" Wyatt asked. "What paradox?"

  "Some changes create paradoxes," the older Avery said. "But she seemed to be trying to help Jarod. She was the one that gave some of the Machina's information to him."

  "Are you saying Jarod is stuck in some paradox?" Wyatt asked. He let out a breath he didn't realize he held. He looked down at the top of the black screen. The changes were huge. "How long has Linda been working on this?"

  Aldan stood on the other side of the older Avery, with his eyebrows slightly raised. It seemed he was shocked by the questions Wyatt asked.

  "Haven't you seen her?" the older Avery asked. "If you haven't seen her recently, I shouldn't say anything more."

  "But you have to," Aldan said. "We've got your wrist terminal, and if you don't tell us the answers we need, we won't give it back."

  The older Avery smiled broadly. Wyatt felt a sudden overwhelming unease that accompanied a painful amount of resonance. His stomach spun, he retched, as did Aldan and Jeremy.

  The younger Avery beside him, supported herself with her left hand on the nearby server stacks. Anger filled her glare that pierced through the resonance.

  "What have you done?" the younger Avery asked.

  Wyatt heard the words but had to close his eyes against the dizziness that overwhelmed him. Supporting his weight with his hands on his knees, he was vaguely aware of footsteps nearby.

  "You should have let me come in on my own," the older Avery said. "None of you have much idea what is really going on."

  "Tell us what you know," Wyatt said. "You were one of us."

  "Tell me what you did?" the young Avery growled from behind Wyatt. He felt her hand on his back as she stepped between his bent over body and the table that housed the screen.

  "I'm sorry," the older Avery said. "You'll know this soon enough. You'll understand why you have to do this."

  "This is perfect," a male voice said from behind Wyatt. "Which one of them took your wrist terminal?"

  Wyatt opened his eyes and focused them on the source of that male voice as the resonance subsided slightly. The middle-aged version of Jarod Whiting stood a few feet away, watching the older Avery.

  "He took it," the older Avery said, pushing off the table and stepping closer to Wyatt. "Hand it over, or we'll take yours again." She extended her right hand.

  Wyatt watched her palm for a moment, before glancing toward Aldan. He let out another sigh as he dug his right hand into his front pants pocket.

  "Don't give it to her," Aldan said as the older Avery rounded on him. She stepped into a push
that sent Aldan into Jeremy. The effects of the resonance that still affected them meant they both toppled to the ground.

  The older Avery laughed and stuck her hand back out in front of Wyatt. He tried to reason out the best course of action as Jarod stepped closer. It seemed likely the only reason Jarod was there was because Avery had not been able to get her wrist terminal back. As Jarod stepped closer to Wyatt, he watched Avery's eyes. Her eyes twitched toward Jarod, who continued to step closer and back toward Wyatt. He thought he saw pleading in there. Her words to the younger Avery flitted through his mind again, and he wanted to trust her.

  "Give it to her," Jarod said.

  "I'll take care of this," the older Avery said. "You watch the other two." Her eyes darted toward the younger Avery as she extended her right hand farther into Wyatt's face.

  The risks were high. Wyatt wanted to think he had a better way out of this, but with Jarod in the room, he worried others would come soon. He didn't have time to wait. He placed her wrist terminal in her palm and backed away. "Why?" he asked quietly, mouthing the question more than speaking it.

  The older Avery gave a quick shake of her head as her fingers closed around the wrist terminal. Another portal opened behind her and Jarod. The portal was jagged on its edges, so not made from a wrist terminal.

  The resonance tore at his mind, and he closed his eyes against the dizziness. Nothing helped, and he fell to the floor.

  CHAPTER twenty-nine

  SERVER ROOM, NEAR R333PS

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2090, 8:10 AM

  "Well, that sucked," Aldan said.

  "I can't believe you would do that to us," Jeremy said.

  Both of their voices barely registered in Wyatt's mind as the resonance faded. As he looked up, he saw only Avery still on her feet. She seemed to brace herself angrily on the small table with the screen. Her eyes focused on Wyatt as he looked at her.

  "What would drive you to do that?" Aldan asked, rolling to his knees in front of her.

  Avery shook her head and straightened up. Her hands released the table but immediately balled into fists. Her eyes remained on Wyatt as if she wanted him to rise to her defense. As he pushed himself to his feet and began to rise, Jeremy stepped around the table.

  "Is that because you read your contract?" Jeremy asked.

  "I wish my contract said something about that," Avery answered. "Everything I read in my contract seems to have changed."

  "You shouldn't have given her the wrist terminal," Aldan said, glaring at Wyatt. "Now she can get anywhere we have gone. How do you know she won't use that to destroy even more of our past?"

  "He didn't have much of a choice," Avery said, her eyes finally shifting from Wyatt's toward Aldan and Jeremy.

  "We're in a big mess," Wyatt said, holding his hands up to stop Jeremy and Aldan from speaking. Aldan tried to say something, but Wyatt jumped in, cutting him off before he could get started. "We have to be smart about this," he said. "If Jarod came here looking for her, I think that might mean she never originally got out of here with her wrist terminal."

  Jeremy laughed and Aldan stopped him. "You think you helped her?" Aldan asked. "At least we know none of us went back and tried to help us."

  Wyatt nodded at that as he finished rising to his feet. "I wish we could start over," he said. "After we stopped Jarod that first time, the only other times I have seen him are in that business park and on the dirt road in R720RS."

  "Are you saying we need to go back to one of those areas?" Avery asked.

  "What about Hannah?" Jeremy said, but he looked at Aldan as he spoke. "If she was there in the business park, do you think she is partially behind this?"

  Aldan let out a sigh and rubbed his hands together for a moment. He looked ready to say something but didn't speak for several seconds.

  "Is she involved?" Avery asked. "Or is she trying to stop this."

  "She did return my wrist terminal," Wyatt said, but regretted it as soon as it was out of his mouth. That returning of his wrist terminal was probably just Brooke.

  "Was Brooke in the group you saw with Lenny earlier?" Aldan asked.

  "Yeah," Jeremy nodded stepping around the small computer table. "Was she there?"

  Wyatt thought back to the way the room looked and his encounter with Lenny right before they left. "Brooke's bed was empty," he said. "But Avery was there. Those were the only beds I was able to see. But Lenny seemed to speak with everyone that was in the room."

  "Did you hear Aldan or Jeremy?" Avery asked.

  "No," Wyatt said with a sigh. "But I'm sure you were in there."

  "Let's go find out," Jeremy suggested.

  "Wait," Wyatt said. "Lenny mentioned something about gaining an extra person. I asked him if her name was Linda, and he reacted kind of weird."

  "Like he didn't want to confirm that?" Aldan said. "Do any of you know who this Linda is?"

  The others shook their heads.

  "We should go and check it out," Wyatt said. "We could go back earlier than I did. That would let us see who is in the room."

  "Maybe we can see who this Linda is," Avery said, nodding. "What time should we go back?"

  "We may need to be prepared to take a few trips," Aldan said. "We want to see who comes to the dormitory, but we don't want to get caught."

  "Let's divide up and check a few times," Avery suggested. "What do you think?"

  "We need a place to meet between our checks," Jeremy said.

  "Let's all go to R333PS, Wednesday, April 5, 2090, at 12:30 am.," Wyatt said. "That would be half an hour before I arrived to see the dormitory occupied. That should work out because everyone was sound asleep when I arrived at 1:00 am."

  Aldan shook his head and watched Avery.

  "That doesn't give us a lot of space to be certain," Avery said. "But we probably don't have a safe place to end up."

  "Wait," Wyatt said. "We could go to R720RS, Saturday, November 3, 2040, 6:00 am. as a safe space."

  Jeremy looked at Avery and nodded. When they looked at Aldan, Aldan smiled briefly.

  "You look like you aren't okay with that," Avery said. "Does that location mean something to you?"

  "No," Aldan said. "It's fine. We can do that."

  "R720RS is outside and cold," Wyatt said to the others. "We should make each time we go there five minutes later than the last. As soon as you hit that dirt road, get off it. No cars moved along it that morning. By that time, I had walked on a bit."

  Aldan's eyes shot toward him as he said that last, but other than that, Aldan didn't say anything.

  "Okay," Avery said. "Let's set our wrist terminals to R333PS, Wednesday, April 5, 2090. Set the time for 12:30 am." She waited for Jeremy and Aldan to nod before she adjusted hers.

  Wyatt had already been adjusting his wrist terminal as she spoke. He was the first to activate his portal and step through.

  Resonance dropped him to his knees and grew as the others fell in beside him. None of them vomited this time, which Wyatt thought was a good thing, considering other versions of themselves were in the dormitory right in front of them.

  Avery was the first on her feet after coming through her portal and Wyatt followed her to the dormitory door. She tried the handle slowly twisting it and opening it.

  Because of the hinge location, on their right, the first bed they were able to see was Avery's. Her shape, at least Wyatt thought it was hers, rested under the covers in the almost darkness. The only light was a small patch of light from the kitchen area above the fridge.

  "Has it always smelled that way?" Wyatt asked as he stepped closer to Avery. The odor of stale sweat, and dirt now mixed with the mildew that filled that area of the warehouse.

  "That stale sweat is coming from inside here," Jeremy said, pointing past Avery as she opened the door wider. "It seems like these versions of us must have been exhausted. Listen to the way you are all snoring."

  "You're adding to the chorus," Aldan said quietly from behind the three of them. "So, who is missing
?"

  Wyatt watched Avery step into the room and scan around. Without speaking, she pointed toward the corner behind the hinge side of the door, then motioned toward her eyes with the same hand.

  Someone else was there, Wyatt assumed. He stepped into the room, listening for any difference in the snoring. So far, even though he heard his own heartbeat in his ears, the snoring hadn't been disrupted. With the lights out, the room had only a little bit of spilled light from the clocks in the kitchen area.

  Jeremy and Aldan entered behind him as Wyatt rounded the door and saw the new figure near the bed that had never been used. The woman's blond hair was cut short, shaved on the sides, and her face was thin. Her thin, brown eyebrows formed almost perfect lines above her eyes as she looked toward them in the warehouse light spilling through the doorway. The light seemed to highlight her dark eyebrows below her blonde, spiked hair.

  "That has to be Linda," Avery whispered. "And Brooke is not here." She waved back over her shoulder in the direction of Brooke's empty bed.

  "Get out," Avery said. "Go. Go. Go."

  Wyatt followed her and the others out of the room, but they weren't fast enough. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the blonde's motion. She had been sitting on the bed.

  As Wyatt pulled the door closed, the blonde's fingers wrapped around it and she pulled it back open, staring directly at him.

  All he saw was the shape of her face, in the darkness. The lighting of the warehouse outside reflected off her white teeth as she smiled. Wyatt stepped back from the doorway, letting her hold it.

  Without a word, she stepped through. Her blue eyes scanned each of them, remaining a little longer on Aldan than any of the others. All the while, her smile didn't fade until she yawned.

  Had she been sleeping in their dormitory.

  Wyatt tried to hold in a sympathetic yawn as she closed the door quietly and stepped away from it.

  "What are you doing here?" the blonde asked. "You aren't supposed to be here, yet." Her eyes watched Wyatt.

  "Who are you?" Wyatt asked. "Is your name Linda?" He backed up to stand beside Jeremy, with Avery and Aldan on his other side.