Jessie Stern and the Time Shifters

by Kim Merrill

It all became very strange very fast.

  We engaged the QT and appeared on the far side of the Shilona’s furthest moon. The Shilonans allowed the use of QT a lot closer to their planet than Earth does. It seemed since their planet was dying it didn’t really matter to them.

  Just after we passed the moon, a ship appeared on our screen. It was ship that wasn’t supposed to be there, I could tell by the way Jake was reacting to it. He jumped out of his chair and went to my dad. They talked soft and low and very fast like there wasn’t any time. I went over to dad and asked him what was wrong. He had his don‘t bother me I’m concentrating face, so I knew something was up. He rushed into the Communications Room, the door swishing closed behind him. I pressed myself against the door straining to listen to his voice. All I heard were fragments of words and parts of phrases ---“Incompetent idiots... kids with me...should have been told...hologram telling myth wasn’t good enough...” When he came back out I could tell something was seriously wrong. I knew that meant they were here. The Time Shifters.

  It was a Time Shifter ship that appeared on our screen, a Time Shifter ship that caused my dad and Jake to have a rushed panic that they tried to hide from us. They were making unanswered calls and trying to move a ship that had suddenly become sluggish. It seemed they were moving slowly too, but I knew they weren’t. They both stopped moving completely when a voice broke over the com. It was the Captain of the Time Shifter ship.

  “We have no quarrel with you,” he said. “All we want is the girl Priestess. Factions within factions have ordered her demise, so other powers can take hold. It is an unhappy occurrence that you have arrived when you did and have become a part of this. Unfortunately, we can not halt our mission because of your presence,” he apologized, but didn’t really seem sorry. “We will continue to do what needs to be done. It is strictly business. There is a contract to be fulfilled and our reputation must remain untarnished.”

  His voice was like an icy, gooey clay my cousin use to have. It was black and it spread and it left a dark place even when it was gone. It was just creepy. And even creepier were the words that played in my mind, the words of the Shilonan Priestess, “You will encounter danger, your lives will be threatened,” and I hoped her other word were true, “…but your wisdom will save

  you.”

  While the Captain of the ship was still talking, Jake was trying to hack into their systems. I think he was trying to override their Time Shifters programs by using some of the information he got from the PC he stole. As Jake worked, we watched while the Time Shifters calibrated their beams. The beam was pointed on a small but turbulent moon in a distant part of the solar system we had just entered, the solar system that was coming to a fiery end.

  I always heard it called a beam so I call it that here, but there wasn’t any light coming from the ship. The moon that they picked just began evolving in front of us like those time elapsed movies you see in school. You know, the ones where a flowers peaks out of the Earth, blooms, and withers in just a few seconds. It was just like that. We watched as underwater volcanoes of the little moon erupted, turning into islands in an instant. Continents formed, then broke apart and formed again. Jake said when they were done calibrating the Time Beam, he was sure the Shilonan sun would be the next target. And that would mean that we would be the next target as well. It would speed up the sun’s death cycle, causing it to swallow Shilona and our ship in heat filled gases.

 

  “Why are they doing this?” I meant just to think it, but I must have actually said it, because Dad answered. “When the scientists found out about their sun dying they sent research ships to study it. There was a tragic accident and a solar flare with its elector magnetic pulse killed many of the researchers. The ones that lived seemed… different; they lacked judgment – they couldn’t really tell right from wrong. Electro magnetic pulses don’t usually have that effect on people but this one was very different. The scientists affected started calling themselves the Unconstrained Ones and they wanted to take over the Shilonan government. They enlisted others to help them by promising them power, money, anything they wanted. The Unconstrained Ones fitted the new members with a device that would send out the same type of electrical pulse that altered their perception of right and wrong. It also made the members easier to control. It seems the Shilonan government didn’t tell many people about what happened. They certainly didn’t tell Jake and me.”

  I looked at Daniel and he looked at me. I wondered if he, at some time, had the same dream I did hours ago. The dream about the glowing ball that changed the way people thought and behaved. I somehow know he did.

  Dad took a deep sigh then softly said “It was the Unconstrained Ones that hired the Time Shifters. Some say they paid them by giving them the Time Shifters the technology they used to control others. Now the Time Shifters can control people too. I’m sorry. I guess your Aunt Mini was right. It was too dangerous for you to come.”

  I was thinking it, but this time it was Daniel who said it “No she wasn’t. The Time Shifters are real and they can go anywhere, even Earth, you can’t always save us from everything.” Daniel looked at me and I knew he was thinking about what happened to our parents.

  The words had barley left Daniel’s lips when we saw a streak of light come at the Time Shifters ship and hit the air scrubber system. The ship began to fill with sickly sweat gas. It was fog white and felt just as cold. It filled the room and swirled around us. I remember wondering what kind of gas it was, something that would kill us, or just make us so sick we wished we were dead. Then I remembered thinking it didn’t mater, either way it was bad.

  Dad grabbed Daniel and me pushing us into an airlock, closing the door behind us, leaving us alone in the darkness and ordering us to “Stay!” I hate it when parents talk to you in one word orders like a pet dog. We didn’t obey. We tried to open the door, but in that dark which was as black as the deepest night, we couldn’t find the controls. We had no choice but to do what he said. We stayed and we listened in that lightness room to what was going on outside. Dad and Jake were still trying to save us all.

  Listening as hard as we could, we were able to get enough information to tell what was going on. We heard that Jake was still trying to hack into Time Shifters computer to reverse the beam and disable their systems so they couldn’t fight back. We could hear Jake tell my dad that he would then need to enter Sun life sequence backwards – back to where it was when we came. After that their voices grew heavy, sluggish, dull, then stopped. Certainly Jake didn’t have time to enter everything he needed.

  I thought it was all over, that we were done for, when a bluish light broke the darkness. Daniel had turned on his computer. I was really glad he had insisted on getting the battery for it. With the faint light we searched the walls looking for a way to escape. The light revealed a control panel door. “The Timer” We said it at the same time. We worked together to re-set the clock so we could make the door open. As we worked his thoughts were my thoughts and his voice was my voice. It was all very bizarre. I guess maybe we are alike after all, at least a little…sometimes.

  Finally, the door flew open. The gas was gone but there was bad news. Dad and Jake were motionless on the floor. Only the lifting of their chests showed they were still breathing. I felt a pushing from behind me then saw Daniel in front of me. He raced to the flight panel and became fixated on the computer where he and Jake had been working.

  “What do you think you’re doing. You don’t know anything about this stuff.” He didn’t listen, or at least acted like he didn’t.

  “What could you know about it. It’s not even your computer”

  “Enough,” he said. “I know enough”

  I considered that for a moment. “You’re right,” I said softly. I don’t usually tell him, but Daniel really is good with computers.

  Daniel didn’t look up. He just kept working, his fingers flying over the keys. I noticed for the first time the control panel was just
like Daniel’s game.

  “Jake showed me the files where he keeps the information he gets from other computer systems. I’ll bet I can get into the program he was using to reverse the cycle of this star. The one he got off the Time Shifters computer.” He looked at me and said, “You know he was trying to reverse it, you heard them. If he wasn’t able to get in maybe I can.” His eyes locked once again on the computer before him. “Besides, it’s the only chance we have.”

  As he was working the communications line opened again. It was the captain of the other ship. He tried to act relaxed as before but you could tell he was worried.

  ‘We have discussed it and decided we were wrong to involve you this situation.” He held out some small blue balls, like the ones I had seen in my dream. “We will send these over to you in a transport. They will save you. Simply…”

  “No!” Daniel and I cut him off together. We returned each others look and knew we both had the same dream – again.

  “You will fail…. and you will die!” the captain roared as the screen turned blank.

  Daniel went back to work, then hesitated, then pounded his fist on the panel.

  “He didn’t finish,” Daniel’s voice was raspy like he just finished a race. His fingers flew across the keys on the control panel. I could tell by the look on his face he was able to access the programs we needed.

  But I also knew he would still need to load the star sequence and send it back into their Time Altering Program.

  He turned to me. “You know the sequence of the stars. You’re always looking at stuff like that. You’ve got to remember how a star is born and dies.”

  He kept talking while I was frozen.

  “Maybe this is what we’re suppose to do. Maybe what we saw back in the library, the dreams we’ve been having, everything that has happened, all of it was leading us to this.”

  “So we are suppose to save everyone here” I said it in a snide way but it was only a front to not show that I was scared.

  “Ya maybe we are. We could be like super heroes in a game – but with out the extra lives.” After he said it I’m sure he knew that wasn’t very convincing.

  I did nothing.

  Then he said in that annoying mocking voice he knew I hated. “Or we could just stand here and die. It’s your choice.” That didn’t help. Or maybe it did. I mean, he was right. I couldn’t just stand there.

  He kept going on.

  “That would be a really stupid choice, but...” I didn’t look at Daniel, I just forced past him and approached the panel, trying to remember how a star grows old and dies. But other memories flashed in my head. Memories of family, absent friends, going to the movies. All kinds of normal stuff. What was happening now was so strange, it seemed so unreal, but it was real and I had to focus on it.

  I tried, but I couldn’t. Time was stretching. Seconds became minutes and the minutes never ended. I was frozen.

  I heard my cousin say “Your wisdom will save you, that’s what she said.” He put is hand on my shoulder and whispered, “You can do it.”

  I shut my eyes and could see the words that told about the life of a star. I remembered how a star has hydrogen and how nuclear reactions in a star generates large amounts of energy and heat…”Eventually the stars core runs out of fuel and begins to shrink and becomes hotter. Hydrogen fuel begins to burn outside the core and the star swells up and becomes a red giant.” (Read More About It #11)

  I put my fingers on the keyboard and began enter what my mind saw. I knew I had to reverse the current hydrogen levels back to where they were when we first arrived.

 

  Time passing faster than it should feels like wind and speed. You can feel it whirling, twirling, spinning. It whips around you from above and below and from every other direction. It flows so fast you can’t catch your breath. We watched through the front screen as the star whose gases were expanding stared to be pulled together again; the hot gasses that were surrounding our ship gave way to the cool of space. It was just in time too. The controls were telling us that the shields were loosing their battle in protecting us from the heat of the gases and Solar Winds that buffeted the ship. As the vapors fell away the shields regained their strength.

  Finally the searing mass of gas settled, returning to the way it was when we came; a star nearing the end of its life. We heard dad and Jake stirring from their sleep and watched as the Time Shifter ship left –defeated-- knowing that – if they tried again we could reverse their efforts. It would be at least a little while before they could put up firewalls guard their systems from us hacking into theirs.

  ***********************************************

  So in the end it turned out to be a pretty good trip. We fulfilled a prophecy, saved a Priestess, saved ourselves and found a way to defeat the Time Shifters. Oh yea, we also documented a dying star.

  I guess being a hero isn’t too bad after all. And yes, I have to say, I think my 13th year looks promising.

  Chapter 8 - Fun Facts

  Read More About It

  1. https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980213a.html - Ask an Astrophysicist