by Jaxon Reed
Everyone raised their eyebrows.
Collier said, “How do you know that?”
“Because, you visited me four years ago and told me this would happen.”
Hsu smiled and motioned toward the room while heading that way. They all followed him in.
Boggs and Jamieson took the side chairs while Collier sat in the middle.
Jamieson said, “Why do I gotta sit in the one spot that hasn’t been tested out before?”
Hsu said, “I assure you Mr. Jamieson, there was nothing wrong with your clone when it visited me in the past. You are fine. You too, Ms. Collier. Whatever internal issues you are experiencing from your gunshot wound will not affect your clone.”
Collier said. “Good. I’ll be glad to escape for a while.”
Boggs said, “If there are no records of when Bainer traveled, how do you know what date to send us back to?”
Hsu smiled and said, “Fortunately, I memorized the date you first showed up in my office. I’ll send you back to that morning. Find me in the past and let me know what is going on.”
This settled the matter. Everyone nodded and pulled the domes down over their heads. Holos showing their vital signs appeared above each person.
A line of red quickly scanned down their bodies, then back up. They remained stock still, their conscious selves ported into the past.
-+-
Boggs opened his clone’s eyes first. He found himself back in the cramped room behind the chairs.
He moved forward and turned, watching Collier’s clone blank reshape itself. A red line scanned down the body making it look like her and giving it identical clothes to those she wore in the present.
Boggs smiled when her eyes opened.
He said, “I wanted to see that last time. It’s the coolest thing. Watch, Jamie is about to be formed.”
She moved forward and turned around to watch the process repeat with him.
When Jamieson’s eyes opened he said, “What? What are you two looking at?”
“One ugly clone,” Boggs said. “It’s too bad this machine has to be so precise.”
“I wonder if your clone can feel my fist as it connects with your face?” Jamieson said, assuming a fighting stance.
Collier sighed dramatically. She said, “Boys,” in a disdainful tone.
She tried the handle on the door. It opened into an empty control room.
“I presume this is the past. Let’s hope it’s the correct date,” she said, stepping out into the control room.
“How does your clone feel?” Jamieson said, following her. “Any pain?”
“I feel great!” she said. “I wondered how the clone blanks would handle a female, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I’m all here.”
“Me too,” Jamieson said.
Boggs said, “Before you two start getting all sexual, we’ve got a job to do. Let’s go find Dr. Hsu and introduce ourselves.”
The other two glared at him as he headed for the control room door.
“That’s not what we were talking about,” Collier said, a tone of indignation in her voice.
“Somebody was thinking it, that’s all I’m saying,” Boggs said as he opened the door.
A handful of Republican Shipworks employees stood on the far side of the room deep in discussion, but they did not notice the trio.
Jamie pointed and said, “I bet he never moved offices.”
As they walked across the floor, Collier said, “Why would Dr. Hsu think this date was so significant? I mean, sure we showed up. But why would he think this was around the same time Bainer traveled back to?”
Jamie shrugged and palmed an access panel. The door to Hsu’s office slid open.
A man in a mask stood over Hsu, beating his face. He looked up in surprise at the three newcomers and froze for a split second.
Then he ran for the door, shoving them aside.
Jamieson said, “Hey! Stop him!”
The employees at the far side of the room turned to watch, but did nothing as the man raced into an elevator pod. The door shut and it zipped away.
“That might be our guy,” Collier said. “You two go get him, I’ll take care of Dr. Hsu.”
Jamieson needed no further encouragement. He raced off for the elevators.
Boggs said to her, “Be careful! If we don’t come back, meet us later, noon today in the lobby!”
“Okay. Go!”
He raced off after Jamieson.
Collier turned to Dr. Hsu, who looked at her with a bruised and bloody face.
She said, “Oh, you poor thing. No wonder you remembered this date. Hi. We’re from the future . . .”
23
The two former Marines stood in the elevator pod as it rushed horizontally.
Jamieson said, “How do we know he’s going to the lobby?”
“That’s one thing about the past. Whatever you do, you’ve already done it. Good or bad, mistake or not, you’ve done it already. No sense overthinking it,” Boggs said. “It’s destiny.”
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Nope. No idea. But it seems reasonable. I mean, that’s where I would take the elevator to, if I were trying to get away and go somewhere.”
“Yeah but you don’t work here. There could be dozens of places to hide. Hundreds. It’s a whole complex of interconnected factories and work areas. He might know a ton of places where he could disappear. And we can’t ask PLAIR for help, can we? Our implants won’t work.”
Jamieson touched his as he said this, experimentally trying to bring it up but with no success.
Boggs shrugged and pulled out his gun.
He said, “You’ll notice that your sidearm works, though. I left my AOJ pea shooter behind and brought the real deal this time.”
Jamieson, distracted from the dilemmas of the space-time continuum, reached inside his jacket and pulled out his own firearm.
“Sweet. A fully functional replica.”
The pod slowed briefly, then the door dinged open.
Across the spacious reception area with model spaceships hanging from the ceiling, they saw a distant figure racing for the door.
Boggs said, “There he is! Let’s go!”
They both ran out of the elevator, drawing stares from employees and visitors.
Somebody screamed at the sight of men openly brandishing weapons.
They reached the far side of the room and burst out the doors and onto the street.
Boggs said, “Over there!”
The masked man pulled out the driver of a parked car and slugged him. The driver fell to the street as he jumped in, taking over the controls.
Jamieson said, “He’s jacking a car!”
They both gave their clones a burst of extra speed, adrenalin spiking in their bodies back in real time.
Boggs holstered his gun and jumped on the back of the vehicle as it lifted off the street. Jamieson followed right behind, but he kept his gun out, whacking it against the rear window on impact.
The masked man looked over his shoulder and his eyes registered shock and surprise. Then he turned back to the controls and shot through the sky.
“This was a bad idea,” Boggs said, grunting as the vehicle accelerated upward at a sharp angle.
The wind whipped around them both, making their suit coats flap.
“I was just following you,” Jamieson said, his voice sounding farther away in the rush of air around them.
The car dipped sharply to the right, sending him tumbling into Boggs while they both held on for dear life.
“He’s going to knock us off, and our clones are going to die, man,” Boggs said.
“Did you lose your piece?”
“No, I put it in my holster before I jumped on.”
“Ah. You might want to get it out.”
“Why?”
Jamieson waved his gun at him and smiled.
He said, “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail!”
“
What’s that supposed to mean? Oh, no.”
Jamieson aimed his gun at the back windshield.
Thoop!
Plexiglass shattered, flying back in the air stream and around the men.
Jamieson and Boggs pulled themselves tumbling into the back seat, just as the driver jerked sharp to the left and headed down.
“Pull over!” Jamieson said, aiming his gun at the man’s head.
Boggs said, “Yeah, set her down,” trying to recover from his sudden entry. He scrambled up into a sitting position.
The man whipped around, abandoning the controls. He slapped the pistol up as Jamieson involuntarily squeezed the trigger.
Thoop!
A hole burned through the car’s roof.
With his other hand the driver hit Jamie’s face.
“Ow! A little help here?”
“Right!”
Boggs landed a blow on the man’s chin, hidden under the mask.
The city raced up through the windshield, a building suddenly looming large.
“We’re gonna—”
BOOM!
The car slammed into the side of the building at a sharp angle, crashing through a window and part of a wall.
It bounced into an office, colliding with a desk and several chairs before crunching to a halt against the far wall, ripping a huge gouge through the floor.
The men inside jumbled around with the impact. Jamie’s gun flew out of his hand, clattering down somewhere inside the car.
Everyone felt stunned for a moment as the dust settled, arms and legs akimbo.
The driver was first to recover. He pushed on the car door with his feet and scrambled out through the debris. He ran through what was left of the office door and disappeared inside the building.
Boggs groaned as he recovered. He tried the back door and found it jammed shut. He climbed over the seat and pulled himself out the driver’s door, then reached in and gave Jamieson a hand.
He said, “Glad these aren’t our real bodies.”
Jamieson said, “Let’s try to catch him again.”
24
The office building proved too big to easily find a suspect, especially with no help from PLAIR.
Several of the building’s resident employees came up to see what made such a loud noise, and were surprised to find Boggs and Jamieson climbing out of the rubble.
Boggs tried to flash his badge, then remembered his implant would not work.
He said, “Uh, please disburse. Nothing to see here. Did anyone notice a man running away? He was wearing a mask and covered in dust.”
“Come on,” Jamieson said. He found his gun in the car and holstered it again.
They walked through the increasing throng of curious office workers and out into the hall.
“Let’s try the stairs. We’re only four or five stories up,” Boggs said.
Jamieson shrugged and said, “Your instincts were right about the lobby. Let’s try the stairs.”
They heard no footsteps running down the stairwell, but took it down to the ground floor anyway.
“Anybody see a masked man go running by?” Jamieson said when they found some more employees.
Everyone shook their heads no.
They walked out the building’s front door and looked both ways on the street, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
Boggs said, “He’s gone.”
“Maybe he’s still in the building, hiding somewhere,” Jamieson said.
“We’ll never find him. If he did leave, we don’t even know if he came out this door.”
“I hate to say it, but I think we’re going to have to locate him some other way.”
Boggs nodded. He said, “Let’s go back and collect Collier. Maybe she’ll have something figured out by now.”
He turned down the street and began walking back toward the Republican Shipworks complex. Jamieson followed.
Overhead, red and blue lights flashed as the first emergency vehicles arrived on the scene of the car crash.
-+-
“So, you’ll have to pardon me, Agent Collier. This is a lot to take in, even though my research team was the one behind the time chamber project.”
Collier nodded in understanding. A company doc bot applied ointment to ease the pain in Hsu’s face, carefully cleaning the wounds first.
When done, it retrieved a pneumatic syringe filled with nanobots and injected them into Hsu’s arm.
The droid said, “You’ll be good as new in a day or two. Try not to injure yourself again in the meantime.”
The doc bot had a face that looked like a stereotypical MD from the old movies. He appeared to be in his mid-40s, with brown hair and an aquiline nose. The Verberger programmers added a strong empathy component to his personality. He seemed extraordinarily calm and compassionate, no matter what injuries a patient sustained.
“Thank you,” Hsu said. “You may return to the medical station now.”
The doc bot nodded once, then left the room.
Hsu said, “I’m sorry. I just expected . . . I thought I would be at least among the first to try the machine and experience an optical connection in the past through the use of clones.”
Collier shrugged. She said, “As far as we know, the machine has been used less than a half dozen times. You may still be among the first to try it. But, and this is important, you should lock the thing up for the duration of the war. Keep the project active, but don’t use it, and don’t let anyone else use it. It will be a matter of utmost importance to the war effort, even though it may seem harmless at the time.”
“Okay. Okay, I can see that. I suppose I shall be happy to know that the machine has proven itself capable of working. Otherwise you would not be here, telling me not to use it.”
Collier smiled and said, “I don’t know for certain, because it hasn’t happened yet back in the present, but I suspect there will come a day when your own clone walks out that door and finds you.”
This seemed to brighten the scientist’s spirits, and his face smiled under the bruises.
He made an opening gesture when a knock came at the door. Boggs and Jamieson walked in.
Collier said, “Did you get him?”
Boggs said, “No. Jamie made him crash the car, but he got away afterward.”
“I don’t understand,” Hsu said. “Who are you here trying to stop? It’s the same man who beat me up?”
The three visitors looked at each other, exchanging a questioning glance.
Collier said, “It’s probably better you do not know, Dr. Hsu.”
“Yeah, the less you know the better,” Jamieson said. “Let’s avoid making a paradox.”
Boggs said, “Hey, if there were two Dr. Hsu’s, we’d have a pair of docs.”
He grinned at the others. Nobody said anything for a moment.
Jamieson looked at Collier and said, “You get to be his partner now.”
She said, “Lucky me.”
Boggs said, “Come on, that was a good one. You get it, don’t you Doc?”
Before Hsu could answer Collier said, “Can we use your facilities to find this person, Doctor? Our implants, at least the ones replicated by your machine, do not work in the past. We have no way of tapping into PLAIR directly.”
“Certainly,” Hsu said. “But if you are invisible to the AI, your suspect is too, I would imagine. How will you find him?”
“By figuring out where he would go,” Collier said.
“That’s right,” Jamieson said. “He told me we were too late. He already told her . . . something.”
Bogg said, “The question is, who is ‘her.’”
“That, I’ve been thinking about,” Collier said. “And it’s got to be the same woman that we’ve been chasing from Eastside all this time.”
Jamieson said, “She’s the one who got away, right? From the Black Goggles Gang?”
“Right. We should probably watch what we say around Dr. Hsu here.”
Everyone turned to look
at the scientist.
He said, “Don’t mind me. Let me open up a terminal in our workspace area so you can access whatever you need. Feel free to use any resource at my disposal.”
Boggs said, “Thanks, Doc!”
Jamieson said, “You know, your past self is not bad, Dr. Hsu.”
“Is there something wrong with my personality in the future?” Hsu said, his eyes blinking in confusion.
“He’s just kidding, I assure you,” Collier said, glaring at the men as they walked out the door.
25
Collier said, “We’re not able to get much on that name. Are you sure that’s what Sarge called her?”
“Yup. Her name is Ginger Storm. At least, that’s the one she was going by,” Boggs said. “Or, will be going by.”
The three stood huddled around a terminal in the general work area assigned to Hsu’s research team. They were alone in their corner of the large room, talking quietly.
“Those people probably stayed in deep cover for years,” Jamieson said. “They were planted here by SSI well before the war as spies. They kept their cover during the war. I bet she’s part of a ring that was activated recently, now that the League lost. Thrall is probably striking back against us, even though the ink is still wet on the treaty.”
“You’re probably right,” Collier said. “She kept a low profile. The question is, how do we find her? And I remind both of you that once we leave this terminal, we’re cut off from the flow of information again. Our implants don’t work.”
Boggs said, “Why don’t we just go over to her building in Eastside? I mean, we know where it is. Go there, and I bet the past version of Bainer is skulking around too.”
Jamieson said, “That’s a good idea. Eastside is several kilometers from here, though. That’s a long walk unless somebody thought to bring some credit tokens with them.”
He looked at Boggs, who shrugged. They both looked at Collier.