Diverse Energies

by Joe Monti Tobias S. Buckell

  “I can’t leave! I —”

  “Three . . . two . . .”

  Purple light enveloped her body, intensifying the tingling to the point of real pain. Everything around her dissolved into complete blackness. Not just dark, absolute absence of light. And air. She couldn’t breathe and couldn’t move, and one thought floated up: Am I going to die? Not a second later she felt hot air on her skin when she landed hard on the ground.

  “Like I said, not the most pleasant trip.”

  Iliana drew in deep breaths, then immediately wished she hadn’t. Not only was the air hot, it smelled foul and tasted tainted. Standing slowly on the rough, crunching leaves, her body protested every movement.

  Sebastian stood a few feet away. “Sorry there wasn’t time to prepare you better.”

  “Where . . . ?” Shaking her head to clear the last of the darkness, Iliana tried to look around. They stood on a wooded hill filled with leafless trees. The setting sun’s light had nearly gone, but the orange glow was all wrong. . . .

  “Ay!”

  Just across a narrow river an island parted the water between two larger landmasses, covered as far as she could see with tall buildings jutting into the sky. Every one of them was one fire.

  The sun wasn’t setting. Rising smoke blocked it out.

  “I know, not a pretty sight.”

  “Where are we?”

  “New York City. We’re in the Bronx. That” — he nodded at the flames — “is Manhattan. Or will be, from your perspective. You just traveled ten years into your future. The last year of the Oil Wars.”

  “Looks like we lost.”

  “Everyone thought so at the time.” The timbre of his voice made Iliana notice for the first time that Sebastian had changed. Before, he hadn’t been much older than she. Now deep lines creased his brow and the corners of his eyes.

  After another moment of looking at Manhattan, he headed into the trees. “New York City will be uninhabitable for a while. No one is likely to find us.”

  Iliana followed so she wouldn’t have to keep looking at the burning city. As they came to the bottom of the hill, a large mansion came into view.

  When they came up on the back, Sebastian tapped his droid. “Someone’s at the door.”

  A purple pinprick of light appeared in the middle of the wall, then irised out until it was wide enough for them to step through. Beyond the light she could see Viola, also older, and a room filled with computers. Following Sebastian’s lead, she stepped over the purple-rimmed threshold, the time travel tingling present for just a moment as they passed.

  “Welcome to Wave Hill,” he said.

  The cavernous room they’d stepped into ended up being much bigger than she thought it would be. From the high ceilings, old chandeliers, and deteriorated art on the walls, she guessed it had been a sort of ballroom at one point.

  “You’ll be safe here,” Viola said, no longer wearing a suit.

  Once again there were a million questions. “Look, I appreciate you bringing me here and all, but I need to know what’s going on. And I need to know what we’re going to do to get my parents back.”

  If she’d offended them, they didn’t show it.

  “True. You deserve to know,” Sebastian said as he peeled off his suit.

  Viola hesitated. “Honestly, we’re not sure if we can get your parents back.”

  “But you said you’d help!”

  Viola flashed a momentary glance of supreme annoyance Sebastian’s way, which he pretended not to see.

  “We’ll try,” she said. “But you have to understand what happened to them.”

  Iliana’s throat tightened — if she left home for nothing . . .

  “In our timeline, your parents are famous,” Sebastian explained. “They were the first people to travel back in time. But the tech hadn’t been perfected, and they ended up stuck in 1984 for eleven months and six days. When the research team finally brought them back, your mom was pregnant. Coming back induced labor, and she had you twenty-eight minutes later.

  “In the timeline we took you from, the same thing happened, except that just before the jump point opened, someone they couldn’t identify shot them. They came back, but your father died a few hours later and your mom the next day. Elena is your mother’s cousin. She and Victor adopted you.”

  Which is why she still looked the same. Her real parents still existed. Just dead. Worse than just not existing. “The people changing time, they killed them,” Iliana said after processing it all. It wasn’t a question, and neither of them challenged her.

  “We think the reason you aren’t affected by changes in the timeline is because you were born outside of time on a jump station, like the one we’re in now,” Viola said. “It only connects with realtime when someone goes in or out. You’re the only person ever born on one.”

  “In our timeline, you’re famous, too.” Sebastian grinned a bit, somehow thinking that this news would make her happy. The smile fell off his face when he noticed the way she looked at him. “I’m going to go finish changing.”

  Iliana took a moment to feel overwhelmed by everything, letting grief and anger and hopelessness wash over her. Tears came, but crying wasn’t going to do it. Instead, she let out a long, rough scream that didn’t end until she’d poured every bit of self-pity out of her body.

  “Better?”

  “A little,” she admitted, and wiped tears from her cheeks. “What happens now?”

  “We’re at an impasse, to be honest. Better off than before, though. Thanks to you, we now have a more detailed map of the changes these people made to the timelines.” Viola went to one of the laptops. “Once we combined that with our existing data we pinpointed dozens of points in history where they interfered.”

  “Why are they doing this?”

  “For control. In our timeline, time travel is administered by universities for research. The United Nations should have already drafted resolutions regulating it by the year we came and got you. Instead, it’s controlled by private interests, and not many people know about it.

  “With all the changes they’ve made, they have to be operating from a jump station, too. And because of the limitations of their technology, they can only travel seventy-three years in either direction. We’re fairly sure they’re based out of 1984.”

  “That’s where my parents got stuck.”

  “It might even be why.”

  An idea occurred to Iliana. “You said that my parents are famous. You must have records on where they were back then.”

  “A very detailed account.” Viola handed her a droid from the table. “Look at the local wiki. There’s an entry.”

  She wasn’t kidding. The entry had so much information, the table of contents had a table of contents. Iliana found the section on their time in 1984. At the end, the exact day and time they left, along with coordinates. A string of numbers that represented the moment her parents began to die.

  “If you know they’re somewhere in 1984, you find these people and arrest them or whatever it is you do, right?”

  “Not so easy,” Sebastian said, returning from a side room, now in normal clothes. “The jump station they’re operating isn’t one of ours, and it could exist inside any second of any minute that year.”

  “If we could find one of them, we might be able to pull the data from their mac,” Viola said.

  “What’s a mac?”

  “That,” she said, pointing at the droid.

  “Even if we pinpointed a location, transferring data between phased and unphased tech takes up to three minutes, and they’ll see it happening.”

  “You can’t drop out of phase, not even to stop them?”

  “We would cease to exist.” The sudden bitterness in Viola’s voice surprised her a little. “Someone erased our timeline long ago. The only reason we didn’t disappear is because we were on a jump station. It keeps us outside of time but means we can never leave unless we’re phased.”

  If there was a
nything worse than watching the world change around you and losing the people you love, that had to be it.

  “I wouldn’t,” Iliana said.

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  “Stop existing. I’m not affected, right?”

  Sebastian leaned in closer. “Her eyes get all fierce like yours when she’s thinking hard, little sister.”

  Now they both shot him a look.

  “No, you’re not affected. But that still doesn’t solve —”

  “If I travel back to when we know one of these people messes with time, then I can get their droid — mac — thing and get into their jump station.”

  “Maybe . . .”

  “And even if they make a change, I still exist where I am. I can still stop them!” It all fit so perfectly in her head, but Viola didn’t look convinced.

  “She has a point,” Sebastian said. “We can teach her how to control the mac with voice commands and program it to sync with any others that come in range.”

  “We still don’t know where to find them. Not exactly.”

  “Yes, we do.” Iliana showed her the wiki entry. “One of them, at least.”

  For the second time in her life, Iliana prepared herself to travel through time. The pins and needles feeling burst through her once she put on the belt again. This time it didn’t hurt as much.

  Sebastian handed her the mac he’d programmed. “One more time: When you get to the jump station, just put this on the cradle. They’re using similar tech, so it will fit.”

  “Got it.” They’d explained that the mac would force all instances of the jump station out from the fraction of a second where it existed into real time.

  “We’ll know exactly which moment in time to find them. If they still exist,” Viola had said. Iliana tried not to think about what that last part meant.

  “Let’s go over the voice commands once more,” Sebastian said. This would be the fifth time. But she knew she only had one chance to get this right, so she listed them all for him again.

  Viola input the time and location coordinates, sending them to the belt. “Just remember, don’t take that thing off for any reason. It’s the only one we have, so we can’t send another.”

  “Why only one?”

  “It’s tech from a time in our future. About a hundred years past our original timeline.” He winked. “Not supposed to have it, but no one is playing by the rules anymore.”

  “Ready?” Viola asked.

  No. “Yes.”

  The two of them stood back and glanced at each other, a million conversations in one look.

  “Good luck,” Sebastian said.

  The mac in her hand counted down. Four . . . three . . . two . . . darkness.

  This time the landing wasn’t so rough. The lack of acrid, burning air helped, too. Instead, the first gasping breaths she took chilled her throat. December 1984. The snow on the ground threatened to seep past her jeans and socks, so she forced her aching body to stand once again.

  They’d sent her back ten minutes before her parents’, jump point and several yards away, so she could scope out the person with the gun. The event happened in a parking lot on Xavier University’s campus that the guards only patrolled twice a night. Plenty of privacy . . . for anything.

  Iliana walked as quietly as she could, trying not to crunch the snow too much. With the light from the lot guiding her, she kept her eyes open for her parents and anyone else around.

  A crunch of gravel from the other end of the lot sent her behind a clump of trees to hide. Peering out, she saw two people, one having trouble walking, the other holding her up. A very pregnant Adelina and Malcolm. Their shabby clothes didn’t look warm enough for the cold.

  Just as they entered a pool of light from a streetlamp, Iliana noticed another figure in the dark. In the low light, she couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. At this point, it didn’t matter. Because the person then crouched down behind the car and aimed something in her parents’ direction.

  Iliana did not take a moment to think.

  She ran as hard and as fast as she could at the person with the gun, the slight downward slope helping her gain momentum before she plowed into their side, shoulder first. The gun flew away and something else clattered to the gravel.

  Their mac.

  Up close she could see the person’s face: a white woman with short-cropped blonde hair. No one she recognized.

  Before she could get over the shock and pain, Iliana stepped on the woman’s gut and scooped up the mac, then the gun, and took off running. Having never been athletic, her newfound speed surprised her. But she knew that this wouldn’t last, and she needed to get out of here fast.

  “Sync!” she yelled, pressing the WAKE button on the mac in her belt.

  Purple light flared to her left, and Iliana glanced over to see her confused parents. Malcolm’s eyes were fixed on the car where she’d just been, Adelina’s on the jump point opening for them.

  “Run! Get back home, now!”

  “Look out!” Adelina pointed behind her just as the blonde woman tackled Ili.

  Iliana had enough forethought to pull her arms close to her chest as she fell, protecting the mac and the gun from the woman’s grabbing, scratching hands.

  “New jump station loaded. Add and engage?” the mac’s computery voice chirped into her earpiece.

  “Affirm! Engage! Go!”

  The split second before the belt activated, Iliana wondered what would happen to someone touching her when it did. Would the field encompass her? Would she travel with her?

  Just before the explosion of prickling sensation and darkness, the blonde woman screamed in a way that would haunt her for years. Question answered.

  The room where Iliana ended up didn’t have much light, only the glow from a panel of monitors along one wall. Just as Sebastian said, the room also held several computers. Dozens and dozens — too many for the low-ceilinged space. In another life this could have been someone’s basement. It certainly smelled like one.

  After a few moments of catching her breath and assessing the room, she noticed that the arm she’d hurt before now throbbed with the promise of greater pain to come. Her shoulder also complained. Once the adrenaline had completely left her, it would get a lot worse.

  “So let’s get this over with,” she said to the room.

  Afraid that the gun might go off if she stuffed it in a pocket, but not wanting to leave it lying out just in case, Iliana settled for placing it carefully under one of the tables where it wouldn’t be seen. Then she did as Sebastian had told her, transferring an app from her mac to the one she’d taken from the woman. In the center of the electronic mess, she found a cradle for it. As Viola predicted, it connected via a wire to one of the bigger computers.

  She set the mac in the cradle and waited. The sync icon swirled, a notification came up: COMPLETE. Nothing.

  “Is that it?”

  Every monitor in the room flared red, a yellow warning triangle flashing, announcing a security breach. Half of her wanted to panic, half insisted she calm down because Viola and Sebastian knew what they were doing. The first half won out when two men in those odd white suits walked out of nothing into the room and headed right for her.

  “How did she —”

  “Who is —”

  Then that familiar sound rushed in on her, now more turbulent and terrible than ever. Far more intense than a normal change, this one pulled at her from so many directions Iliana feared her heart would just stop. It took a while to realize that the men were gone, the room had changed, and the monitors, while still warning of security breaches, weren’t so many in number.

  Again out of nothing, a group of people — this time in normal clothes — appeared in the room, panic palpable in their frantic movements.

  “Where did that droid come from?”

  “Grab it!”

  “No!” Iliana fought through the pain and the sound screaming in her head to push through them, grabbing the droid — m
ac — thing and holding it in the cradle. The jump station pressed in on itself even harder. Or that’s how it felt.

  The group disappeared. Strong hands gripped her shoulders and slipped away almost as fast. An arm wrapped around her neck, pulling, then left her gasping for breath. More shouting that died an instant later.

  All the while she held on to make sure they couldn’t take the device away. Soon there were just three monitors, then one, blinking the warning: IMMINENT COLLAPSE.