by Liana Brooks
“When have I not?” Mac caught her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. “There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t follow.”
CHAPTER 23
No one can do my job and carry regrets. The temptation to misuse our control of time would be too great. Still, we are human. We long for the same things everyone wants: recognition, friendship, comfort, love.
~ private conversation with Agent 5 of the Ministry of Defense I1—2073
Saturday November 1, 2064
Sydney
Australia
Iteration 2
As a girl, Sam’s least favorite book from the library had been Lost at the Park. In it, little Ellie Sweet took a dare to enter an abandoned amusement park at midnight. There was a plot somewhere in faded pages, something about foiling a bank robbery, but what stuck with Sam was the terror of the abandoned park. Empty benches. Row upon row of derelict cars. Buildings with paint peeling off smiling faces. The book had given her nightmares for weeks afterward, and she’d suppressed it all until the trip to the carnival when she turned six. Seeing the clown castle had sent her running back to Sister Mary Peter and refusing to leave the elderly nun’s side for the rest of the day for fear of being left there overnight.
Sydney reminded her of the abandoned park.
There were no clown castles or bank robbers, but the buildings were empty. Several had been torn down in the wake of the Yellow Plague, and many that survived did so with only a few floors lit at night. As the sun set, she looked out her hotel window at a stygian vista. This was the darkness that first drove mankind to find safety in fire. This was the blackness that swallowed the soul and left bleached bones in the desert.
She shivered with primal fear before securing the curtains tightly. Australia had been one of the nations hardest hit by the plagues. Seventy percent of the population was infected in the first wave. Over 50 percent of them died in 2045. A second wave in 2047, when the borders opened and another 20 percent were killed. Birth rates were down. A population that had soared past the expected 32 million was reduced very quickly to less than 9 million. Inadequate medical care over the intervening nineteen years had slowly chipped away at the population base.
The incentives offered to come and rebuild the country were tempting for many who wanted to escape the financial collapse of the northern hemisphere. Australia was at least self-sustaining, isolated, safe from the chaos of the United States nationhood vote and the collapse of the American dollar.
Sam flipped through the folder she’d been given upon arrival. There was a choice of lovely homes, all certified plague-free, and jobs to accompany them. She’d live tax-free for the first five years and be paid an incentive for marrying and having a baby—to the tune of a hundred thousand dollars per child. The woman who’d greeted Sam had talked about the joy of having families for over an hour. No amount of polite refusal could convince the Aussie woman that children just weren’t in the cards. Claiming to have a fatal disease would get her booted back to the Americas, where Commonwealth surveillance would tag her as a clone within a few weeks of taking over the United States. It wouldn’t matter if she told the truth, the early Commonwealth had been brutally clonephobic. Stating she was infertile was equally problematic. So she’d fallen back on the “waiting for true love” response.
That had gotten her a list of eligible Aussie bachelors in each town.
Sleep eluded her, so she packed her bags and checked out before dawn. She drove northward on the paid highway, her newly assigned, solar-powered car zipping along the empty road at an excess of 250 kilometers an hour.
A few hours before noon, she stopped to stretch and find food in Goondiwindi. The air was baking as she pulled the car to a stop at a strip mall with a small carnival going on. A group of students was holding a car wash to fund-raise for some vague event. One of the boutiques had rolled most their wares outside, children ran around mirrors with bright pink frames as their parents tried on sunglasses and held up shirts with the critical eyes of professional window-shoppers.
Sam dug through her purse for the Aussie money she’d gotten just for arriving and sought out the scent of hot dogs and caramelized onions that flowed on the breeze like the perfume of the gods. “One, please,” she told the vendor as she sorted through her change.
He gave her an odd look.
She held up her pointer finger, and he nodded. Probably the accent, but it was hard to tell. She could hear at least three different languages being spoken in the plaza. English was considered the main language, but the welcoming immigration policy meant people from everywhere were rushing to rebuild Australia. And she was beginning to realize her Eurocentric education wasn’t going to get her very far.
“Come pet a puppy! Dogs make the best pets! Come find the love of your life!” a woman shouted from somewhere in the crowd.
Sam swapped cash for lunch and went in search of puppies. She found them in the shade of the buildings romping in temporary playpens. Tiny teacup poodles, a terrier mix that looked ready to do flips on command, and . . . her heart lurched . . . a tiny tan mastiff with a black mask just like Hoss’s. Suddenly, she wasn’t so hungry.
“Would you like to pet one?” the woman sitting under broad white straw hat asked as she moved a braid of silver hair out of the way to reveal a name tag that proclaimed her to be Jill. “They’re all adoptable.” She held a poodle up for Sam’s inspection. “Microchipped, vaccinated, spayed or neutered, and they come with two weeks’ worth of food and a leash!”
“Can I . . . could I pet the mastiff?” Sam asked.
“Sure thing!” Jill said. “This cute little guy is Bosco, and he won’t stay small forever.”
Bosco was already a forty-pound bundle of wiggling, wagging, licking love. He squirmed on Sam’s lap, turned two circles, and collapsed in typical mastiff exhaustion.
“They get huge,” Jill said. “He’s a—”
“—Boerboel,” Sam said. “I know. I had one.” Her heart tightened. Sorrow squeezed her chest, and she pulled Bosco closer, sobbing into his fur. “I miss him. I miss him so much!”
Jill patted her tentatively on the shoulder. “Would you like a hanky?”
She nodded, forcing herself to release her death grip on the puppy. “I’m sorry, I just . . . I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“I understand,” Jill said. “I was the same way when my Tofu passed away. Silly thing, she was a Yorkie, and I adored her. It was the cancer that got her in the end. I cried for weeks! What was your puppy’s name?”
“Hoss.”
“Sounds like a real gentleman.”
Sam nodded reluctantly as she stroked Bosco’s back. “He was a wonderful dog.”
“What happened to him?”
“There was . . .” a serial killer who wanted me dead “ . . . an accident. It was over very quickly, but it felt like losing a limb. Every time I turn around, Hoss is missing. I have a dog-shaped hole in my life.”
Jill nodded.
Bosco looked up, noticed the uneaten hot dog in Sam’s hand, and obviously decided the delicious gift was for him. The hot dog was gone in two bites, and Sam was smiling. “Can he come home with me?”
“Sure!” Jill said. “Do you live here?”
Sam shook her head. “I’m moving north of here, near Airlie Beach? A city called Cannonvale. There’s a house waiting for me.”
“Oh . . .” The other woman frowned. “Bit brave of you to go back to a tourist destination. Half the town was burned, you know, to get rid of all the germs.”
With a weak smile, Sam nodded. “There are worse things than ghost towns.”
“I can’t think of any.”
Sam hugged Bosco to her chest. He licked her chin, leaving onion-scented drool behind. “I’m sure there’s worse.” Like being cast adrift from your own time and place. Or being tortured and hideous
ly mutilated before being dumped back in time and buried in a pauper’s grave. Or being erased from history entirely. That was worse. Her gaze was drawn to the car on the other side of the crowd. No one here knew about the stability core she’d smuggled through time. They were all blissfully naive.
Bosco licked her again and gave a tiny mastiff growl of content.
“I’ll have a big, drooling, lazy mastiff to protect me!” Sam said with a cheery smile. “What could possibly go wrong?”
Jill sighed sadly.
“Don’t answer that,” Sam said. “Let’s just sign the adoption paperwork.”
Forty minutes and three hot dogs later—two more for Bosco, who was a growing boy, and one for Sam—and she and the lazy puppy were back on the road. And, for the first time since arriving in 2064, Sam thought she could see a light at the end of the tunnel.
CHAPTER 24
I look at the sea and see the incarnation of eternity. Time, the elusive goddess wed to death, is present in every wave.
~ excerpt from The Heart of Fear by Liedjie Slaan
Saturday November 23, 2064
Cannonvale, Queensland
Australia
Iteration 2
A pale moon hung low over the Coral Sea like a luminous opal. Mac parked his truck in the driveway of the only house with lights on without checking the address. According to Sam’s e-mails, no one else lived in a three-block radius. The sweet aroma of woodsmoke and charcoal pulled him forward. He walked up the terraced stone steps to the house and knocked on the door.
A ferocious bark made Mac step back.
“Down, Bosco! Sit!” The door opened to the thumping of a heavy tail on tiled floors. “Hi, Mac. I’m glad you made it!” Sam reached out with one hand and hugged him, pulling away far too quickly. “How was the flight?”
“The one up from Sydney wasn’t bad. The one down here from New York was . . . long.” He watched the puppy smear his pant leg with drool. “He has a tail.”
“Yup, they didn’t dock it when he was born. Watch it, it’s lethal. Especially when he’s happy.” She smiled fondly down at the puppy, looking happier than she had when she’d left him.
Mac reached down and rubbed Bosco’s ear. “Did I smell the charcoal grill going when I pulled up?”
“You did. I was just about to put on some lamb steaks, and I have a salad I’m tossing in the kitchen.” Her smile was the warmth of sunshine after a long winter.
He reached for her, needing to know there was something for him. Needing to know she was really with him again. “Tell me you missed me.”
“Every day.” Sam walked into his embrace, resting her head on his chest as she wrapped her arms around him. “I kept waiting for you to call and say you weren’t coming.” The fear in her voice broke his heart.
He kissed the top of her head, gentle and reassuring. “Why would I do that?”
“You could have gone anywhere. Vanished. Gone home to Idaho or joined one of the mercenary companies the news keeps going on about. You had choices.”
“You know I didn’t want any of those. Not if there was a chance to be with you.” He squeezed her tight, then let her go.
Sam stepped away with a sigh. “It’s been strange here without you, honestly. There are days I can wake up and almost pretend it was all a silly dream. Without any proof to hold except my own memory, I catch myself thinking the memory is faulty. Having you here with me makes it real again.”
“I’m sorry.” The words weren’t enough. They had the ability to travel back in time, and some days he wished he’d stopped to tell his younger self not to tell Sam about Jane Doe’s true identity. It was tempting to think that other choices would have led to an easier life, but there was always a shadow of doubt. A dark faith that any other action would have led to death. He couldn’t put it in words, but he knew it in the same way he knew the sun would rise in the morning. There was only one way to get through this, and that was together.
“Don’t be sorry,” Sam said. “Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away. Come on, let’s have dinner. We can plan for the future tomorrow.”
Dinner was a quiet affair. Sam filled him in on the few locals, her on-paper-only job as an on-call manager at the boathouse in the harbor, and Bosco’s training. She talked, he listened, and they danced around the difficult topics.
Sam cleared the table in silence, then said, “I forgot the cider.”
“What?” Mac ran a nervous hand over his jeans pockets.
“Sparkling cider. I bought it for your ‘Welcome to Australia’ dinner.”
“We can have it for dessert,” he said.
She nodded. “And drink it on the porch. We have a beautiful view of the ocean.”
“I’ll pour,” Mac said, jumping at the opening. He filled two champagne glasses with the bubbling golden cider and joined Sam on the wooden deck that looked over the edge of a hill to the sea. “Beautiful.” He handed Sam her glass.
“It is a gorgeous view.”
“I wasn’t talking about the view.” He set his glass on the wooden railing and wrapped his arms around her. She leaned back into his chest, right where she belonged.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too.” He’d lived for this night since the day she’d boarded the plane. Dreamed of her. Wanted her so much, it became a physical pain.
“You realize this is just the calm before the storm, right? It’s all going to get crazy from here. We have time to plan, but reality is collapsing, and Emir isn’t going to let his vision go without a fight.”
He held her tighter, breathing in the scent of the vanilla-and-cinnamon soap she’d used in the kitchen. Feeling their heartbeats falling into sync. “We’ll be fine.”
“You think so.” She sounded amused.
“I know so.”
Sam’s chuckle vibrated against him. “I have a million questions about the future.”
“Really? I only have one.” He reached into his pocket and pulled a ring. Black opal ovals were defined on two silver infinity signs on either side of an Asscher-cut diamond.
“Sam, will you marry me?”
THE END
CHAPTER 25
Nothing changes faster than the future.
~ excerpt from A Brief Summary of Time by Dr. Henry Troom I4—2065
Day 187/365
Year 5 of Progress
Central Command
Third Continent
Prime Reality
Commander Rose moved around the quiet command room. The lights were at 30 percent, mimicking night and discouraging anyone from lingering after their shift was over. She was alone with the soft hum of data collection interrupted only by the occasional chirp of a computer spitting out data.
This was the very center of the universe. Her fingers brushed across the synthapaper scrolls that showed the constant sine wave of time. With training, she’d learned to read each dip of the iterations. Here, the birth of an einselected node. There, the tragic outcome of an event that crushed a million iterations and left only four struggling forward.
The future had a unique brilliance. During the times of expansion, all of time looked like a rainbow fracturing into infinite color. Now the lines of possibility were thickening, collapsing. Decoherence was drowning the rainbow in brutal black.
Quietly, the machine drew the newest line. Tomorrow shifted into view.
Her Prime iteration—the master control of the iterations, heartbeat of the universe—appeared as a thin black line at the base of the sine wave. The scroll rolled out, and the black line surged up like a wave, following the possibilities of the lesser iterations. Hour by hour, ink drop by ink drop, the future appeared. She held her breath as the wave crested and crashed down, back to where it belonged at the baseline.
But this time, the Prime it
eration didn’t crash far enough.
Heartbeat stuttering with an unpleasant rush of fear, she watched another iteration take its place. Another line touched the baseline and took dominance as Prime iteration. Someone was stealing her future.
Rose went to the communications board and dialed a number she thought she’d never need to use.
After a moment, the screen shimmered as the stern visage of a world leader appeared.
“Dr. Emir, my apologies for calling at this late hour, there’s been a mishap here at the command center.”
He raised a bushy white eyebrow. “A mishap? A flood perhaps? Did you run out of synthapaper? You’re a commander. You are supposed to be able to handle these things on your own.”
Rose bristled at his tone. “There is a problem with the machine, sir.” She only barely managed to keep her tone respectful because she knew how easily commanders could be replaced. There was no place for dissenters in the world now.
“Impossible.” Emir sneered. “The machine is infallible.”
“If that is the case, sir, than we have lost our place as the dominant iteration.”
“Impossible!”
“Then the machine is broken. Sir.”
Emir’s scowl burned through the screen. “Prepare a hit team. I’ll be there in two hours.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It takes a village to raise a child and it takes no less to create a book. I want to thank everyone who was in this from the beginning. Amy, Derek, Dave, Jason, Christina . . . just to name a few. You got me through the early drafts. Special thanks to my battle buddy Samantha for loaning me her name for a character (love you!), my agent Marlene for believing in me even when I didn’t, and my editor David for all he does.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LIANA BROOKS is a full-time mom and a part-time author who would rather slay dragons than budget the checkbook any day. Alas, Adventuring Hero is not a recognized course of study in American universities. She graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in marine biology, a husband, and no job prospects in her field. To fill the free time, she started writing. Now her books are read all over the world (she says she’s big in Canada) and she’s free to explore the universe one page at a time. You can find Liana on the Web at www.lianabrooks.com, on Twitter as @LianaBrooks, or on Facebook under the same name.