The Time Travel Chronicles

by Peralta, Samuel

  Darren looked up at the ceiling. Bare struts underneath the panels of their roof and industrial-looking lights hanging from the struts made it clear this wasn’t a place meant for comfort, either physical or emotional. These coddled people with their perfect equality and tranquility didn’t stand a chance.

  He directed his words toward the roof, no longer comfortable looking into the faces of so many soon-to-be-dead people. “Go to bed, everyone. We’ve got a big day tomorrow. I’m going to show you a few things you can use. From your past. From my time. For now, get some rest. Go to bed.”

  And with that, Darren rolled to his side, dislodging Paga from her perch on his bed. Strangely, he felt like he did when he’d opened his first investment house, with the odds against him and failure almost a certainty. He felt a fire in his belly that he’d thought he’d lost somewhere along the years of his life. That same lost fire that had sent him to Life/Time in the first place had returned. It was an irony not lost on him that he had gotten exactly what he wanted.

  He could feel Paga behind him still, standing by his bed and waiting. He rolled back over and looked at her. She might be small, but she was strong and healthy. He could see that even in the low light. And there was something there, a stiffness in her posture or a certain defiant set to her shoulders. He smiled grimly at her and said, "I'm going to show you how to fight. Do you want to fight?"

  He heard her deeply indrawn breath. She paused, then said, "I want to fight. I want to fight them all." She said nothing more, merely turned and left his cubicle. As he rolled back over in his bed, he heard the shifting of bodies and feet and the echoing words of many others as the sentiment spread through the warehouse like wildfire. Fight, fight, fight.

  Darren closed his eyes, pushed the image of Genarae out of his mind, and after that, had no trouble at all falling asleep. The matter was settled. Tomorrow he would begin building his army and he had deals with a politician to strike. And whatever was in the forest was not the only enemy he sought.

  He had bets to hedge and dividends to collect, and in this future, the markets opened early.

  A Word from Ann Christy

  Like most people, I’ve yearned to find a way to know what happens next. By next, I mean what happens after I’m not here to marvel at it. It seems terribly unfair in this rapidly changing world that I’m unlikely to see humans uploading their minds into computers for eternal life in a silicon shell, or be replicated after eons of space travel to live on a new world. All these things and many more are deep desires and I’m just a smidge too old to see them come to fruition. Close? Yes. Tantalizingly near? Yes. Available for me? Not bloody likely.

  This story was born from conversations I’ve had with many others. Every single person I’ve had the “deep” conversation with has expressed a similar desire. I console myself by saying, “Be careful what you wish for.” This is my fictional expression of that statement.

  If you enjoyed reading “Life/Time in the New World”, then I invite you to visit other worlds that come out of my (slightly) demented brain. I write clean (mostly) science fiction that ranges from one end of the spectrum to the other. My latest series, the Between Life and Death series, is my take on zombies (though they aren’t zombies at all). Though I’ve spent my entire adult life as a scientist and a military officer, (now newly retired), I’m finding that creating new and interesting worlds is the best job ever.

  You can get extended sneak peeks of my books and find out what I’m up to at http://www.annchristy.com. Also, I invite you to join my VIP Reader list. I sent out not-too-frequent newsletters, hold drawings for free books and swag only for subscribers, give chances to read my new stuff first and free, and all sorts of madness. Plus, there’s a freebie to read for you. You can do that here: http://eepurl.com/buDy4r

  Just Like Old Times

  by Robert J. Sawyer

  THE TRANSFERENCE WENT SMOOTHLY, like a scalpel slicing into skin.

  Cohen was simultaneously excited and disappointed. He was thrilled to be here—perhaps the judge was right, perhaps this was indeed where he really belonged. But the gleaming edge was taken off that thrill because it wasn’t accompanied by the usual physiological signs of excitement: no sweaty palms, no racing heart, no rapid breathing. Oh, there was a heartbeat, to be sure, thundering in the background, but it wasn’t Cohen’s.

  It was the dinosaur’s.

  Everything was the dinosaur’s: Cohen saw the world now through tyrannosaur eyes.

  The colors seemed all wrong. Surely plant leaves must be the same chlorophyll green here in the Mesozoic, but the dinosaur saw them as navy blue. The sky was lavender; the dirt underfoot ash gray.

  Old bones had different cones, thought Cohen. Well, he could get used to it. After all, he had no choice. He would finish his life as an observer inside this tyrannosaur’s mind. He’d see what the beast saw, hear what it heard, feel what it felt. He wouldn’t be able to control its movements, they had said, but he would be able to experience every sensation.

  The rex was marching forward.

  Cohen hoped blood would still look red.

  It wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t red.

  * * *

  “And what, Ms. Cohen, did your husband say before he left your house on the night in question?”

  “He said he was going out to hunt humans. But I thought he was making a joke.”

  “No interpretations, please, Ms. Cohen. Just repeat for the court as precisely as you remember it, exactly what your husband said.”

  “He said, ‘I’m going out to hunt humans.’”

  “Thank you, Ms. Cohen. That concludes the Crown’s case, my lady.”

  * * *

  The needlepoint on the wall of the Honorable Madam Justice Amanda Hoskins’s chambers had been made for her by her husband. It was one of her favorite verses from The Mikado, and as she was preparing sentencing she would often look up and re-read the words:

  My object all sublime

  I shall achieve in time—

  To let the punishment fit the crime—

  The punishment fit the crime.

  This was a difficult case, a horrible case. Judge Hoskins continued to think.

  * * *

  It wasn’t just colors that were wrong. The view from inside the tyrannosaur’s skull was different in other ways, too.

  The tyrannosaur had only partial stereoscopic vision. There was an area in the center of Cohen’s field of view that showed true depth perception. But because the beast was somewhat wall-eyed, it had a much wider panorama than normal for a human, a kind of saurian Cinemascope covering 270 degrees.

  The wide-angle view panned back and forth as the tyrannosaur scanned along the horizon.

  Scanning for prey.

  Scanning for something to kill.

  * * *

  The Calgary Herald, Thursday, October 16, 2042: Serial killer Rudolph Cohen, 43, was sentenced to death yesterday.

  Formerly a prominent member of the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Cohen was convicted in August of thirty-seven counts of first-degree murder.

  In chilling testimony, Cohen had admitted, without any signs of remorse, to having terrorized each of his victims for hours before slitting their throats with surgical implements.

  This is the first time in eighty years that the death penalty has been ordered in this country.

  In passing sentence, Madam Justice Amanda Hoskins observed that Cohen was “the most cold-blooded and brutal killer to have stalked Canada’s prairies since Tyrannosaurus rex ...”

  * * *

  From behind a stand of dawn redwoods about ten meters away, a second tyrannosaur appeared. Cohen suspected tyrannosaurs might be fiercely territorial, since each animal would require huge amounts of meat. He wondered if the beast he was in would attack the other individual.

  His dinosaur tilted its head to look at the second rex, which was standing in profile. But as it did so, almost all of the dino’s mental picture dissolved into
a white void, as if when concentrating on details the beast’s tiny brain simply lost track of the big picture.

  At first Cohen thought his rex was looking at the other dinosaur’s head, but soon the top of the other’s skull, the tip of its muzzle and the back of its powerful neck faded away into snowy nothingness. All that was left was a picture of the throat. Good, thought Cohen. One shearing bite there could kill the animal.

  The skin of the other’s throat appeared gray-green and the throat itself was smooth. Maddeningly, Cohen’s rex did not attack. Rather, it simply swiveled its head and looked out at the horizon again.

  In a flash of insight, Cohen realized what had happened. Other kids in his neighborhood had had pet dogs or cats. He’d had lizards and snakes—cold-blooded carnivores, a fact to which expert psychological witnesses had attached great weight. Some kinds of male lizards had dewlap sacks hanging from their necks. The rex he was in—a male, the Tyrrell paleontologists had believed—had looked at this other one and seen that she was smooth-throated and therefore a female. Something to be mated with, perhaps, rather than to attack.

  Perhaps they would mate soon. Cohen had never orgasmed except during the act of killing. He wondered what it would feel like.

  * * *

  “We spent a billion dollars developing time travel, and now you tell me the system is useless?”

  “Well—”

  “That is what you’re saying, isn’t it, professor? That chronotransference has no practical applications?”

  “Not exactly, Minister. The system does work. We can project a human being’s consciousness back in time, superimposing his or her mind overtop of that of someone who lived in the past.”

  “With no way to sever the link. Wonderful.”

  “That’s not true. The link severs automatically.”

  “Right. When the historical person you’ve transferred consciousness into dies, the link is broken.”

  “Precisely.”

  “And then the person from our time whose consciousness you’ve transferred back dies as well.”

  “I admit that’s an unfortunate consequence of linking two brains so closely.”

  “So I’m right! This whole damn chronotransference thing is useless.”

  “Oh, not at all, Minister. In fact, I think I’ve got the perfect application for it.”

  * * *

  The rex marched along. Although Cohen’s attention had first been arrested by the beast’s vision, he slowly became aware of its other senses, too. He could hear the sounds of the rex’s footfalls, of twigs and vegetation being crushed, of birds or pterosaurs singing, and, underneath it all, the relentless drone of insects. Still, all the sounds were dull and low; the rex’s simple ears were incapable of picking up high-pitched noises, and what sounds they did detect were discerned without richness. Cohen knew the late Cretaceous must have been a symphony of varied tone, but it was as if he was listening to it through earmuffs.

  The rex continued along, still searching. Cohen became aware of several more impressions of the world both inside and out, including hot afternoon sun beating down on him and a hungry gnawing in the beast’s belly.

  Food.

  It was the closest thing to a coherent thought that he’d yet detected from the animal, a mental picture of bolts of meat going down its gullet.

  Food.

  * * *

  The Social Services Preservation Act of 2022: Canada is built upon the principle of the Social Safety Net, a series of entitlements and programs designed to ensure a high standard of living for every citizen. However, ever-increasing life expectancies coupled with constant lowering of the mandatory retirement age have placed an untenable burden on our social-welfare system and, in particular, its cornerstone program of universal health care. With most taxpayers ceasing to work at the age of 45, and with average Canadians living to be 94 (males) or 97 (females), the system is in danger of complete collapse. Accordingly, all social programs will henceforth be available only to those below the age of 60, with one exception: all Canadians, regardless of age, may take advantage, at no charge to themselves, of government-sponsored euthanasia through chronotransference.

  * * *

  There! Up ahead! Something moving! Big, whatever it was: an indistinct outline only intermittently visible behind a small knot of fir trees.

  A quadruped of some sort, its back to him/it/them.

  Ah, there. Turning now. Peripheral vision dissolving into albino nothingness as the rex concentrated on the head.

  Three horns.

  Triceratops.

  Glorious! Cohen had spent hours as a boy pouring over books about dinosaurs, looking for scenes of carnage. No battles were better than those in which Tyrannosaurus rex squared off against Triceratops, a four-footed Mesozoic tank with a trio of horns projecting from its face and a shield of bone rising from the back of its skull to protect the neck.

  And yet, the rex marched on.

  No, thought Cohen. Turn, damn you! Turn and attack!

  * * *

  Cohen remembered when it had all begun, that fateful day so many years ago, so many years from now. It should have been a routine operation. The patient had supposedly been prepped properly. Cohen brought his scalpel down toward the abdomen, then, with a steady hand, sliced into the skin. The patient gasped. It had been a wonderful sound, a beautiful sound.

  Not enough gas. The anesthetist hurried to make an adjustment.

  Cohen knew he had to hear that sound again. He had to.

  * * *

  The tyrannosaur continued forward. Cohen couldn’t see its legs, but he could feel them moving. Left, right, up, down.

  Attack, you bastard!

  Left.

  Attack!

  Right.

  Go after it!

  Up.

  Go after the Triceratops.

  Dow—

  The beast hesitated, its left leg still in the air, balancing briefly on one foot.

  Attack!

  Attack!

  And then, at last, the rex changed course. The ceratopsian appeared in the three-dimensional central part of the tyrannosaur’s field of view, like a target at the end of a gun sight.

  * * *

  “Welcome to the Chronotransference Institute. If I can just see your government benefits card, please? Yup, there’s always a last time for everything, heh heh. Now, I’m sure you want an exciting death. The problem is finding somebody interesting who hasn’t been used yet. See, we can only ever superimpose one mind onto a given historical personage. All the really obvious ones have been done already, I’m afraid. We still get about a dozen calls a week asking for Jack Kennedy, but he was one of the first to go, so to speak. If I may make a suggestion, though, we’ve got thousands of Roman legion officers cataloged. Those tend to be very satisfying deaths. How about a nice something from the Gallic Wars?”

  * * *

  The Triceratops looked up, its giant head lifting from the wide flat gunnera leaves it had been chewing on. Now that the rex had focussed on the plant-eater, it seemed to commit itself.

  The tyrannosaur charged.

  The hornface was sideways to the rex. It began to turn, to bring its armored head to bear.

  The horizon bounced wildly as the rex ran. Cohen could hear the thing’s heart thundering loudly, rapidly, a barrage of muscular gunfire.

  The Triceratops, still completing its turn, opened its parrot-like beak, but no sound came out.

  Giant strides closed the distance between the two animals. Cohen felt the rex’s jaws opening wide, wider still, mandibles popping from their sockets.

  The jaws slammed shut on the hornface’s back, over the shoulders. Cohen saw two of the rex’s own teeth fly into view, knocked out by the impact.

  The taste of hot blood, surging out of the wound...

  The rex pulled back for another bite.

  The Triceratops finally got its head swung around. It surged forward, the long spear over its left eye piercing into the rex’s leg...r />
  Pain. Exquisite, beautiful pain.

  The rex roared. Cohen heard it twice, once reverberating within the animal’s own skull, a second time echoing back from distant hills. A flock of silver-furred pterosaurs took to the air. Cohen saw them fade from view as the dinosaur’s simple mind shut them out of the display. Irrelevant distractions.

  The Triceratops pulled back, the horn withdrawing from the rex’s flesh.

  Blood, Cohen was delighted to see, still looked red.

  * * *

  “If Judge Hoskins had ordered the electric chair,” said Axworthy, Cohen’s lawyer, “we could have fought that on Charter grounds. Cruel and unusual punishment, and all that. But she’s authorized full access to the chronotransference euthanasia program for you.” Axworthy paused. “She said, bluntly, that she simply wants you dead.”

  “How thoughtful of her,” said Cohen.

  Axworthy ignored that. “I’m sure I can get you anything you want,” he said. “Who would you like to be transferred into?”

  “Not who,” said Cohen. “What.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That damned judge said I was the most cold-blooded killer to stalk the Alberta landscape since Tyrannosaurus rex.” Cohen shook his head. “The idiot. Doesn’t she know dinosaurs were warm-blooded? Anyway, that’s what I want. I want to be transferred into a T. rex.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Kidding is not my forte, John. Killing is. I want to know which was better at it, me or the rex.”