Strange New Worlds 2016

by Various

  This was all her fault. But sooner or later I knew she’d show up.

  Kathryn Janeway lived long enough to fulfill a promise made to her crew. She got them home, four hundred years too early. I mistook her for a local dressed all in white. After my anger subsided, I welcomed her affectionately, calling her “dear.” The thought of returning with her to Voyager and leaving this miserable backwater era crossed my mind. I could have constructed an interplexing time beacon in one of the ship’s cargo bays using technology she never knew existed or even guessed at its awesome potential. I would have had to work fast, though. She destroyed her ship and crew before and was prepared to do so again.

  I’ve learned to accept my fate, my role in this tragedy. Janeway couldn’t. And by failing to accept it, she was doomed to repeat the same mistake over and over and over again. Causality loops work with such flawless certainty.

  I didn’t expect any visitors after Janeway and Chakotay.

  The cycle of causality had one final turn left to make.

  A sound I hadn’t heard in decades and a voice I heard every day interrupted my fitful sleep. I stood straight up, amazed by how lifelike my dream was. Until I heard that sound wide awake.

  My hand dove inside my jacket and ruffled my frumpy clothes. A single chirp broke the silence for a third time. Incredulously, I looked at the combadge I held in my hand, recently plucked free of my greasy vest. My dry mouth seemed incapable of forming a response. Slowly, I whispered, “Who the hell is this?”

  “Captain Braxton of the Timeship Relativity.” The strange voice didn’t belong to me. It sounded automated, stripped of any inflection, vitality, life.

  Suddenly, I realized that my latest blunder had called on me.

  I’d underestimated the resourceful Captain Janeway again. Somehow she managed to stop Starling, this time without sacrificing her ship and crew, and broke the cycle of causality. She succeeded where I failed and rescued the future.

  “What do you want?” I asked. “And this had better not be another one of my hallucinations.”

  “We need your help. Get over to the Chronowerx Industries building on East Third Street and Route one-oh-one and retrieve or destroy the HyperPro PC prototype.”

  I burst out laughing. Even mad, I still had a sense of humor.

  “You want me to break into Starling’s building and steal a museum piece. Why?”

  “That museum piece, as you call it, has twenty-ninth-century code hidden in twentieth-century machine text. And there are a pair of criminals en route to your location attempting to steal the device. If they successfully return to their century with the personal computer, it will cause a temporal incursion and power shift that will prove disastrous for the Federation.”

  I stroked my matted gray beard and thought for a moment before I spoke, a practice I all but abandoned in this century.

  “Why don’t you send a member of your crew?” I said.

  “I’m doing one better. I’m sending the captain.” He paused a moment before continuing. “You haven’t forgotten about the dangers of time travel? Life in the twentieth century hasn’t dulled your mind that much, has it? Sensory aphasia ring a bell? Look at this problem from the big chair. Why risk a crew member when we already have an agent in the field? Don’t you want to do more than scribble warnings on pieces of cardboard and tape them to lamp posts all over town?”

  “You’ve been monitoring my activities.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you rescue me instead of leaving me to rot for thirty years?”

  “From my perspective, I just got here. Tempus fugit. And I know you, quite literally, like I know myself. You know what I’m saying is true. You want to save lives. You want to make a difference and you can do that again.”

  He was reminding me of my duty. I would have done the same if our roles were reversed. But he didn’t have thirty years of life experience in this zinc-plated vacuum-tubed culture. I did.

  “Captain, I’m no Lynter.”

  That name was only invoked during dire circumstances. A cautionary tale told in whispers around the Academy of a time traveler that became so enamored with yesterday that he fled into the past to escape his own future.

  The service tried to rescue him, but he would have none of it. He’d rather wallow in musty history celebrating its quaintness, its slower pace. Well, one day the past caught up to him, and he died an ignominious death on a street corner.

  I needed to tell this captain that wasn’t me. That wasn’t who I wanted to be. It was who I turned out to be.

  “Captain, did you know in all the time I have spent trapped in this kabuki theater, I have made and had only one friend? Like me, he was abandoned too. Forced to live on the streets without the simplest bare necessities like food and shelter. I befriended this kindred spirit and made sure he was fed, even if it meant I went hungry.

  “Why, you ask? Because he was more human than the humans that passed me by every single day. They wouldn’t waste an act of kindness on me. But he did. His humanity kept me going for fifteen years until he died. I still mourn Tachyon’s passing.”

  “You’re talking about a stray?”

  “Well of course I’m talking about a stray. None of these wretches care what happens to me.”

  “Captain Braxton, I need you to get moving.”

  I folded my arms and huffed.

  “I haven’t agreed to help. Beam me down a weapon and maybe I’ll do it.”

  “You won’t need one if you get there in time.”

  I kept my own counsel and said nothing.

  “I could return you to the twenty-ninth century. Stand by to be beamed up,” he said.

  Thirty years of pent-up emotions poured out in a stream of tears. Civilization awaited on the other side of a temporal inversion. My life sentence had been commuted. Then it dawned on me.

  “Leave me here, Captain,” I begged. “Leave me in the twentieth century.”

  “You know better than anyone else that I can’t do that,” he replied.

  “This mission is our destruction. We have been ordered to commit suicide.”

  “It’s not suicide if one timeline never was. Our continued coexistence poses a future threat and constitutes a direct violation of the Temporal Prime Directive. We both know that,” my other self reasoned.

  “Why not vaporize us with a hand phaser?”

  No reply. Ranting and raving came quite naturally to me after three decades in the twentieth century. I pressed on.

  “Too messy? Too much like murder? It’s so much tidier to beam me up, store me inside the pattern buffer and rematerialize me on twenty-ninth-century Earth. Beam me down any time after I departed for the twenty-fourth century. That should do it. Let time eradicate me. Why should we get our hands dirty?”

  I expected more of a pause before my other self quoted regulations like a first-year cadet at the Academy.

  “Preserving the sanctity of the timeline comes above all else.”

  Did I just say that? The irony of this situation was not lost on me. The juvenile mind that needed convincing was my own.

  “I was dead before you left the twenty-ninth century and when you return nothing will have changed. I’ll still be dead. I was, am, and will be captain of a timeship. Even though my command is lost, I haven’t lost my sense of duty. I won’t contaminate the timeline. Let me have a life in this time.”

  I waited for a reply from myself. The silence fed my fears. Fear of my other self training a transporter beam on these coordinates and carrying out orders without question, like any good soldier would do. My glimpse of a safe, intact future would be the last sight that I carried with me into oblivion. Janeway, by preserving the future, had ended mine. I broached the silence again.

  “You know me like you know yours
elf. And you know I’m telling the truth. Tell the Temporal Integrity Commission that. Tell them you have our word. Do this for me, for yourself.”

  The combadge went dead. And then it dawned on me what a dimwitted fool I had been. I’d wasted my breath. He was prepared to delete himself (me) from the timestream. A temporal transporter leveled at me would force my conscription. It was still my choice to make.

  “All right,” I shouted to the sky. “I’ll do it. Just don’t erase me.”

  “You okay, Captain?” Officer Sims asked.

  I didn’t hear the constable sneak up on me. His female partner always stayed behind the controls of number 36897, the black-and-white motor car they both traveled in. Fortunately for me, my behavior was not out of the ordinary and would not draw suspicion.

  “Of course I’m fine,” I said. “What do you want?”

  He always smiled and put his hat back on after stepping outside his machine. This was an overt display of his power and office, something that I should respect. And he always talked to me in soothing tones like we were friends instead of jailor and prisoner, our true status.

  I always hated that about him.

  “I was on my regular patrol and heard shouting. Sounded like some heated words between you and someone else. You’re not getting into arguments with the locals again, are you? Do we need to talk about this downtown?”

  “We don’t have time for this. Get rid of him.”

  Sims kept talking as if nothing happened.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked.

  “What was I supposed to hear?” Sims asked.

  “Only you can hear me, you old fool. We’re in silent mode. I have a Betazoid communications officer. I dictate and he sends my commands down through the centuries to you, telepathically.”

  Sims started to move toward me. Instinctively, I drew back away from him.

  “Come on, Captain,” Sims said. “Let’s go.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” I said.

  “No. Let him take you. You’ll get to the target faster.”

  “And how am I supposed to carry out my mission behind bars?” I asked.

  “What mission?” Sims asked.

  I cleared my throat and said nothing. He led me over to the primitive transport, pushed my head down—crumpling my fedora in the process—and shoved me into the backseat, safely ensconced behind black grillwork.

  Sims came round the vehicle and sat next to his partner up front.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “God, he stinks,” the partner said. “I’m rolling down the windows.”

  Hate to admit it, but she was right. I smelled like a Bolian who was denied access to a bathroom for a week. Hard to tell out in the open, but in an enclosed space it became harder to deny. But I had bigger problems than olfactory ones. Topping that list was how I was supposed to get out of this automobile.

  These little joyrides usually ended up with me led away in handcuffs to a holding cell and transferred to a mental hospital. I can be separated from my stuff for hours or days, depending on the mood of the arresting officer and damn doctors.

  “Can’t wait to see you pull this one off,” I said.

  Sims looked over his shoulder and gave me an uncomfortable smile. He turned to his partner and said, “Take the one-oh-one. It should be moving this time of day.”

  “Good. The peacekeeper is making it easier on both of us.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I said.

  “Hey, Captain, you might want to keep the outbursts down to minimum. If you catch my drift,” Sims said. “Could be the difference between a chat with me and a stay at the hospital.”

  I stared out the side window as the cityscape rushed past. Architecture was aesthetically unpleasing and functionally lacking. Log cabins or caves would be a step up from this squalor. Signs all over the urban sprawl demanded that the inhabitants KEEP THE CITY CLEAN.

  What a joke. This had to be the dirtiest city on the planet. It wasn’t fit to house refugees from a war zone in my century. At least the part of the city I called home had the ocean, even if it was a pale comparison to the vastness of space-time. Something about the salt-scented breezes that curled around my alleyway comforted me.

  “Go around back,” Sims said. He picked up a corded handset mounted to the dash and said, “Two-forty-seven-Baker bringing in a five-one-five-zero suspect.”

  I started to speak, but my body was being taken apart one atom at a time. The powerful temporal transporter beam reached across the centuries to find me, destroy me, transfer me, and reconstruct me all in a moment’s time.

  Materializing on a sidewalk in Los Angeles drew no one’s attention, typical behavior for these self-absorbed screw heads. I tilted my head skyward and shouted, “That was subtle. Well done.”

  “Law enforcement of this era misplace criminals all the time.”

  “I am no criminal.”

  “Go stand on a street corner and do whatever displaced humans do in this timeframe.”

  “Why didn’t you just beam me from the alley to here in the first place?” I asked.

  “Chroniton flux readings would be too high for a transport of that distance. The time-traveling thieves would be alerted to your presence.”

  I hated it when he was right. There appeared to be no other fellow outcasts who claimed this stretch of roadway. You don’t want to encroach on another unhoused human’s territory. I learned that lesson the hard way in the first few weeks of my exile.

  I dug through a waste receptacle for a disposable container of their weakened version of raktajino. Red lip prints stained the sides and earthy dregs wafted from the one I retrieved. It was still warm to the touch. I always carried a stylus on me and scribbled an appropriate plea.

  PLEASE GIVE. GOD BLESS

  All that was left to do was to find a corner that afforded me a clear view of the Chronowerx building, then eke out whatever sympathies still resided in these vainglorious cretins. A shuffling gait usually elicited an appropriate response. A despondent look pasted to my face would help too.

  I staked out a crossroads with a string of multicolored lights, which afforded me the best opportunity to mimic atypical behavior. The less fortunate frequented these intersections where those who rode in private transportation were obliged to stop.

  Motor carriages of this era spewed toxic amounts of carbon monoxide. Society compelled its lowest ranking caste members to engulf the polluted air for a small recompense to be doled out at the driver’s whim. I’m sure I inhaled unsafe levels with my container held out, seeking alms. Most ignored me, some gave me a few coins or paper currency to make me go away.

  And when the lights changed and the engines roared, I scampered out of the road to avoid being run down. I was digging through my cup, counting my take, when a new voice began speaking to me and me alone.

  “Captain Braxton. This is Lieutenant Ducane. We serve together.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said. “For one thing, there’d only be room for one of us.”

  “Sir, we serve aboard a Wells-class timeship, much larger than an Epoch-class.”

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “To warn you, sir. You may be suffering from the Atavachron effect. And retrieving you from the twentieth century runs some serious risks.”

  “Good. I can use this information against myself,” I said. “Tell me more.”

  “You have spent so many years, decades in fact, in Earth’s past that pulling you out and bringing you back to our present may kill you.”

  “Sounds like poppycock to me,” I said.

  “No, sir. There have been studies that show your memory engrams, even your biorhythms, are synced to the past from your lengthy stay. And just like a traveler prepared by the Sarpeidon device, a ret
urn trip to the future could be fatal. I have to end transmission. Good luck, sir.”

  Why didn’t the other Captain Braxton warn me? What game was he playing?

  I didn’t know what to say to Ducane. It had been far too long since another human being was humane to me. I started to thank him, but stopped. A young merchant standing behind a food cart stared at me with a distressed look on her face. Since she only heard one side of the conversation and I had no portable phone, she thought me quite mad.

  I yelled at her and she moved farther down the street. Didn’t matter. I had work to do. Ducane instructed me to continue panhandling until dusk. Then I was to head over to the southwest corner of the building. Starling’s henchman resided just inside the double doors hunched over a primitive monitoring device.

  I tried to remain inconspicuous digging through a waste receptacle just outside the well-manicured grounds. My actions would appear quite mundane to the unpracticed eye and afforded me a prime observation post. In short order, I was able to locate and log the guard’s activities down to the minute.

  “Get ready”

  It was Braxton this time.

  “One step ahead of you,” I said.

  After the guard exited the building, I gave him his requisite ninety seconds to cross the street and enter the motor car stables for their inspection.

  “All clear.”

  I trotted across the small parking lot in the rear of the building and stood in front of the double doors. My lock-picking skills were a little rusty, I admit, but I managed to get indoors in twenty seconds.

  “Hurry up before he comes back.”

  “This isn’t my first mission, Captain.”

  Then it hit me all at once. The canned air was much cooler than the stifling heat that lingered outside. The feel of the cool air pressing against my skin was intoxicating. And I had a roof over my head, and just down that corridor was an indoor bathroom with soap and water. I bet they even had one with a shower. Oh, a shower would be heavenly, especially after years of bathing in the Pacific Ocean.