Jessie Stern and the Time Shifters

by Kim Merrill

Despite the strange dreams I’ve been having I think my 13th year looks promising. On the first morning of my 13th year the clouds hung low on the mountains that surround our city. Rain came down in a drizzle bringing a damp chill to the air.

  I guess I really shouldn’t start that way. I’ve read books on writing that say you shouldn’t talk about the weather right off. But I disagree. Weather has such an effect on us. It determines how we dress, what we do that day, it can even be an omen. I like the rain, so I took it as a good sign. I took it as a sign that today I would get the “Great Gift.”

  When I came down the stairs the table was full of presents. Not all mine, of course, it’s my cousin Daniel’s 13th birthday too. People said that we’re a lot alike, but I can never see it. We do both look a little similar. Like most of our family we are tall, thin, have dark hair and glasses, but that’s where it ends. I think people just believe we’re alike because we were born on the same day and in the same year.

  I picked through the presents looking for the ones made out to “Jessie” (that’s me) - And especially for the “Great Gift.” The one thing I’ve been asking for since I could talk. Finally, right in the middle, there it was - a ticket, THE ticket, for the Goddard*. I recognized the name. It was a ship that my dad sometimes uses as a science vehicle. He and the pilot go way back. It’s also the ship that’s taking my dad on his next scientific expedition. The one where he will be studying the death of the Shilona star! I’ve wanted to go with him and I guess that explains the dreams. It’s just been on my mind. I only wish it was a happier dream. I think maybe the dream’s a little scary because I was afraid I wouldn’t get to go. I told my dad about the dream and how it made me feel crazy. He said, ‘Crazy people make the best scientists. It’s the wild crazy ideas that change the world.’

  The reason why I want to go with dad on this expedition is because I’m a scientist. That is to say I will be a scientist, even though I’m not always very good at it. Like the time last semester in chemistry class when I accidentally turned my hands blue. But that really doesn’t matter because I’m not going to be a chemist. I’m going to be an astronomer like my dad.

  I love studying the universe. It’s just so big and wondrous yet, for the most part, logical. The Earth revolves around the sun, the sun revolves around the galaxy – logical. Plus my last name, Stern, means star in German.

  The ticket felt thick, and when I rubbed my finger across it I saw there were two. I figured that meant my cousin was coming along. That’s all right. He’s generally OK. He came to live with us last year when his parents and my mom were killed by grave robbers on a dig in Peru.

  I have nightmares about her death sometimes; dreams of dark figures appearing out of the jungle mist or patches of shadows forming in the moonlight. Her death was illogical. They said it was grave robbers, but nothing was taken. I miss my mom. I miss talking to her and even just being by her and not talking. I think Daniel has nightmares too. Sometime quite screams break through the walls piercing the silence of the night.

  Even though Daniel had never asked to go on the expedition, I think my dad got him a ticket so he wouldn’t feel left out. I guess I can understand that.

  Just as I found the ticket there was the sound of thunder. It wasn’t from the storm outside, it was my cousin running down the stairs. He came over to the table and zeroed in on one of his gifts. He ripped it open and declared, “Time Shifters!” It’s a video game he’d been wanting. He believes in Time Shifters. Plus he loves the educational video games and the ones that are like piloting a ship. The game was from our Aunt Molly and attached was a card that said “master the game.” (She gave me a poster showing the life and death of a star with a card that said “master the star cycles”). After reading the card Daniel turned to me like he just noticed I was there.

  “Happy Birthday cuz!” he said even though he knew I hated being called ‘cuz’.

  “Happy Birthday,” I replied back and showed him the tickets. He did seem happy he was going along.

  Then, almost as if blown in by the storm Aunt Mini busted in. She didn’t knock, but breezed through the door, flew over to us and planted a kiss on Daniel and my cheeks. Then patted our head and cooed, “Poor dears.”

  She calls us “poor dears” because we only have my dad. She’s fond of saying, “I know he tries, but he just needs a little help.” Of course she means from her. I hate it when she says that. Dad’s great!

  She gingerly picked up the necklace I had on while shaking her head, “Dear, that really doesn’t go with what you’re wearing.” I was wearing pajamas. I was going to say that I didn’t know they made jewelry that went with PJ’s but I didn’t. My mom use to say that rudeness is catching like a cough. Once one person starts it it’s hard to stop. Since the necklace was from my mom, I tried to take her advice.

  Mom had a way of going past the surface and seeing into the heart of things. I always have trouble doing that. For example when I found out that Triton, a moon of Neptune, had a strange orbit (It orbits in the opposite direction of it Triton’s rotation, a retrograde orbit) she declared, “Isn’t that wonderful!” I thought it was just not consistent with everything, but she was right. It shows how wondrous the universe can be.

  Aunt Mini glared at Daniel’s necklace (it’s just like mine) and shook her head with a wordless “no, it just doesn’t go with what you’re wearing.”

  The necklace, which is made of something like pewter, shows four dolphins swimming in a figure eight that is laying down – the symbol for infinity. My mom and his parents sent them to us days before they died and asked us to wear them always so we do.

  Aunt Mini gave us each an umbrella for a our present then stood back and exclaimed in her high pitched yet soft voice, “Let me see how much you’ve grown,” even though we just saw her last week.

  As she looked at us, we looked at her. Aunt Mini always dies her hair to match her shoes. Today her shoes are green with white stripes.

  She started moving in closer, I think for another kiss, then it happened.

  She spotted the ticket.

  “Rick!” her high pitched voice became a deep megaphone as she yelled out my dad’s name. I don’t know why she yelled. He was already starting down the stairs.

  “I thought we agreed,” she said motioning to the ticket, her voice turning high pitched and soft again.

  He ignored her and turned to us, “Happy Birthday kids.” He started for the kitchen but she followed.

  “Space is no place for a young lady. I thought we agreed.” She gulped air like she was out of breath even though the kitchen was just a few steps away. Then she patted her green and white striped hair as if to put it back in place. But she wore it up in a tight beehive with so much hairspray I don’t think that even a tornado could mess it up.

  “It’s a wild and woolly Universe filled with Space Pirates and Time Shifters,” she continued as she looked back at us. She had been whispering that kind of stuff to him ever since I turned eleven. That’s when dad started saying I could go with him on a science expedition once I turned 13.

  Aunt Mini locked her eyes on me. She was waiting for me to say what I always say. I would agree that interstellar travel was new and things are always wild when new frontiers open up. But I would argue that the Space Pirates wouldn’t bother a science vehicle and that the Time Shifters were just a myth. (I mean a race of people that can speed up time – come on!) My dad wouldn’t say anything at all and I almost thought she won him over to her side until I saw the ticket. Since it looked like she hadn’t convinced him I decided to let my dad speak to her this time.

  “Come on into the kitchen Mini and I’ll make you some coffee. Then we can talk.”

  Daniel and I took that chance to go back upstairs. I wanted to read one of the books Dad bought me and write in my new journal.

  This journal was one of my other gifts. Dad gives me a journal every year. He says he gives me one because I have so many special thoughts, but I
think the real reason is so I will have something to do and not keep bugging him when he’s keeping his science log. But I have to admit, giving me a journal and saying it’s for “special thought” is a lot nicer than just telling me to leave him alone.

  I had just started reading my new book when my thoughts were interrupted by cries of “wow” and “awesome.” Daniel was playing the “Time Shifters” game. I went to his door to ask him to keep it down but before the words could leave my mouth he dragged me in telling me that “…you just have to see this.”

  He was talking so fast I could barley understand him but did catch how it was “so realistic” and that “its navigation system was based on actual spacecraft.” Before I knew it he slapped the visor for the inter-active holographic images on my head, placed the controls in my hand, and told me to, “Just follow the instructions.”

  In the game, as in the myth, the Time Shifters ships -like ours- are powered by ghostly particles that fill the Universe. Tiny neutrinos* and gasses that burn so hot we can’t even see them with our naked eye. The Time Shifters also used dark matter*; an unseen mystery to our people, yet we know it existed because we can watch as the stars and planets seem to dance to its gravity. The Time Shifters, on the other hand, understand dark matter so well they can actually bend time using dark matter’s strong gravitational forces.

  The game revealed this information to me as images whirled into focus. When the images were clear, I was standing on the bridge of a ship. Through the large portal I could see masses of stretched and crushed debris spiraling into a black hole* - nothing was escaping its grasp, not even light.

  A small ship was being pulled in and sending out a desperate transmission.

  “They want to destroy the Earth!”

  The voice over the intercom went on to tell the stories we have all heard-the stories of how the Time Shifters contract themselves out as mercenaries and can surround an area as big as a solar system or as small as a person and speed up the time for that area. The Time Shifters surround a person or place with their Time Altering Beam, making time passes quickly for whatever or whoever they were hired to “remove”. When directed at people the person grows old, dies and turns to dust in a matter of minutes. The Time Shifters can also do what they’re doing in the game; age a giant star so it becomes a black hole pulling every thing into – who knows where.

  In all the mythical and legendary ways to kill someone (you know the typical poisoned apples, magic swords) I think that speeding up time has got to be one of the most convenient ways. There’s no evidence to prove or disprove it. Anything small they age into dust. Anything large like a planet or a star is just as easy. The beam simply forms a temporal* bubble around it. What people see seems, to them, like a fluke astronomical event. The objects true past is lost in time like some ancient and forgotten civilization. Or at least that’s how the legend goes.

  “You’re going to have to pull up or you going to get sucked in,” my cousin’s voice floated to me. Another booming voice came from the game telling me, “Avoid the black sun.”

  Before me were strange instruments that gave off a dark blue light. As I looked at them I realized I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

  Like they had a mind of their own my hands moved towards the instruments to try to do – something-anything. Before I could do anything the instrument panel started glowing bright with fire. I watched helplessly as the hulls of the ship began being stretched out from the gravity of the black hole; spagetification* they call it. You couldn’t really see it stretch as much as sort of sense it stretch.

  An oddly pleasant voice announced “All propulsion units loosing stability – explosion is imminent.” Before I could react I heard blasts behind me while pieces from the ship whizzed passed my head. They smashed into the side of the ship and then flew into space as holes in the ship opened from more explosions all around me.

  Everything suddenly went black.

  I blinked and when my eyes opened again I was back in Daniel’s room.

  “You’re dead,” were the first words I heard.

  “You didn’t even make it through the first level,” Daniel taunted. I didn’t answer. My cousin was right; the game did seem real - eerily real.

  “You died before the game even really starts,” he taunted again.

  “So what,” great comeback, I thought. I was embarrassed and just wanted to change the subject.

  “I’m hungry. Let’s go talk go talk my dad into taking us out for pancakes.” Daniel nodded in agreement and we left his room and the game behind.

  What I couldn’t leave behind was the sense something was going to happen, something foreboding. I’ve been feeling that way since the priestess dream started and for some reason the game just made the feeling stronger. It certainly didn’t help me feel any better when Daniel told me he had been having a strange dream too. He dreamt about the ship that was in his game every night this week, right around dawn. Just like my dream with the priestess.

 

  Chapter 3 -2nd Entry – School, Filed Trips, and Wooly Mammoth Attacks