Recursion

by Marion G. Harmon

  I crossed my legs and tucked my cape back. “How bad’s the fire?”

  Blackstone gave me an odd look; the fire was Tom’s line. “We’re still finding out. Ms. Trent is unmarried and currently . . . unemployed due to chemical abuse issues. It seems to run in the family. She just got out of rehab, and it appears that her brother had been helping her with funds from his off-the-books jobs.”

  “What does this do to us? Will I need to wait longer before I can get out there again?”

  “I’m still waiting to see the court filing,” Tom said, recovering himself. “But her civil lawsuit won’t affect the outcome of your internal review. Will it?” The question was to Blackstone, who shook his head.

  “The panel that reviews our action-reports follows the same procedure whenever there’s a use of force. The only difference here is Astra’s benching until their review is complete.”

  “Well, I think they might want to take a few more days on this one,” Tom opined. “Process is important, but so are appearances. The more this looks like business as usual, the worse it will look for the civil suit. All Ms. Trent will need is a majority verdict, not a unanimous one, to cost you millions.” He smiled sympathetically. “Cost your insurance carrier, anyway. I’ll get with Quin, craft a statement. From here until it’s finished, it’s going to be tried in the press and with the public as much as in the courtroom with the jury.”

  “How bad does it look with the public?” I asked.

  He grimaced. “I won’t sugar-coat it. This wouldn’t have been a problem for Atlas.”

  “Because of his experience.”

  “Yeah, because of his experience. Ms. Trent’s lawyers are going to try and make it look like you didn’t know what you were doing. Their line will be the Sentinels put you out there before you were ready, and you lost it, panicked in the clinch. He wasn’t actively threatening anybody on the recording, just ranting, and they’ll second-guess your call. They’ll make it look all regrettable, no malice intended, but fatal incompetence. Nobody doubts your guts, kid. Not after Whittier Base. But your judgment? Well that’s not proven, yet.”

  “Thank you, Tom,” Blackstone stepped in before I could come back at that. “I’ve let Quin know you’re coming to see her. You can float some ideas, work out a statement together.” He stood and shook Tom’s hand. “We appreciate you coming down so quickly.”

  I echoed his thanks, and Tom disappeared. Blackstone touched the pad on his desk that closed his always-open office door behind the attorney. Taking off my mask and wig, I shook my hair out while he decided what to say to me.

  He finally settled for “What’s going on, Hope?”

  “I’m from the future. Come with me if you want to live.”

  “Way to sell it, Terminator,” Shell laughed in my ear. Because really, who hasn’t wanted to use that line?

  * * *

  I told Blackstone everything that had happened, Shell chiming in with her comments from his epad screen. We’d decided on the drive over that I was going to learn from my mistakes. Or the mistakes future-me had made, anyway. No keeping it to myself, no trying to solve this on my own. I didn’t have the brains, or the resources. Blackstone called Chakra before I finished, and she arrived in a swish of gypsy-dancer skirts to hear him say “Well, that explains quite a bit.”

  She smiled at me. “Explains what?”

  “Would you please look at our girl, my dear?”

  She did, smile widening at my wardrobe change, and looked again while I flushed hotly under the regard of her warm brown eyes. I liked Chakra a lot, but by reading my chakras she’d known when I had the serious “heat-raising hankering” for Atlas. Dr. Mendel said I was intensely private with my feelings (no, really?). I tried not to let my discomfort with Chakra’s ability to read my physical and emotional states at a glance get to me, but when she gave me the look it was hard.

  Then her smile dropped away and suddenly I wasn’t worried about privacy. What? She offered me her hands, and when I took them she turned mine and held them lightly, palms up, staring at a spot between my eyes. And I felt it—a dot of warmth, like a touch, the tip of a warm finger on a cool day.

  “Well,” she echoed Blackstone.

  I swallowed. “What do you see?”

  “I see you.” Her normal serene smile returned. “What happened? You’re not our girl anymore. Definitely a woman.” When Blackstone made an impatient sound she turned her gaze on him, still holding my hands.

  “Hope’s heart and naval Chakras have always been strong; her sacral and third eye chakras not as much. That’s not unusual in a young woman. Now? Well, she’s still Hope, but this kind of change takes years of significantly redefining experiences.”

  “January—” he protested. She shook her head.

  “Her chakras remained disordered just a few days ago. Even yesterday they weren’t like this. Strong. Orderly. I have seen a marked improvement in the balance of her prana over the last few days.” She dropped my hands. Aimed at him now, her smile turned fond. “You probably thought she’d just ‘snapped out of it.’ Typical man.”

  “So you’d say Hope’s been through a transformation?”

  “Wouldn’t you?” She winked at me and despite everything I stifled a laugh, remembering how much fun it was watching the Blackstone/Chakra dance.

  “I only remembered today,” I explained as Blackstone cleared his throat. “But I’ve been better at least a week. Chakra, am I . . . Is what you see normal?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Could someone be manipulating me?”

  She cocked her head, considering. “No. Mental changes imposed by outside influences only increase disorder, unless they happen over a long period and aren’t resisted. This looks purely internal, organic. So are you going to tell me how it happened?”

  I explained again. I was getting pretty good at it. Three years of memories, no idea how I’d gotten them. Every time I went over it, it seemed less and less possible that someone had just planted the memories in my mind, even if that was the only explanation Shell could think of for what I knew. Chakra agreed with me, but didn’t see any other explanation of how I’d gotten this way.

  Blackstone stopped us from going in circles. “Since the expert in the room says you’re not being manipulated, and we have no idea why this happened, I’m going to assume it’s happened for a good reason. Hope, go get Dr. Mendel to certify your fitness today. Don’t tell her you’re from three years in our future.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’m going to lean on the review panel, tell them we need you in the field, and see if they’ll expedite their decision. Public optics on this can go hang.”

  He considered me for a long moment.

  “And I want you to make lists of all near-term warnings you can give us, any long-term situations that an early warning would help, and the differences you’ve noticed so far. We’ve got to get on top of this.”

  * * *

  The lists took the rest of the afternoon, with only the break to see Dr. Mendel and then I was so distracted by my thoughts I sailed right through her evaluation. Only afterwards did I think how different I must have looked to her; no fidgets, no over-controlling of every expression and word—just I wish it hadn’t happened, I feel awful about it, I’m fine. She’d reminded me of my once-a-week commitment to therapy and left it at that, no recommendation I stand down again for a while to “find my footing.”

  “What?” Shell asked at my laugh. She’d projected a virtual white-board on my bedroom wall to fill in as I paced and ground mental gears and dictated. She’d also changed her t-shirt to a brilliant yellow with sparkling white letters that spelled Hey, I’m a freaking ray of sunshine.

  “Dr. Mendel.”

  “Hey, she cleared you.”

  “For now. If I tell her all the places I’ve been—remember being—she’ll have me committed.” I’d have to tell her I was three years older, eventually. If I didn’t then she’d probably decide I was massively disassociating—no ot
her way to explain my attitude change if she didn’t know about three years of healing. Like a tree, I’d grown around my wounds. Grown stronger, even.

  “So break it to her slowly. How are we doing?”

  I scanned the board. “It looks good.” The first box, in red, was Villains Inc. That one was months away, and just being able to make a list of most of the Chicago mob’s private supervillain team—Hecate at the top—was worth being messed with. There’d be no Blackstone-In-A-Box in this history, whatever happened to me next.

  And next was a worry; I hadn’t told Shell, but with my opening joke with Blackstone I’d realized someone really was messing with me.

  How did I know that? In all the tv shows and movies featuring a time-travel plot, the hero always, always arrived knowing his mission. Come with me if you want to live. Or if they were here by accident, they still knew how they’d gotten here. Pushed the wrong button. Picked up the weird artifact. I knew everything but how I got here and what my mission was—whatever memories connected then to now stayed behind the door. There was no way that keeping me from knowing my mission made any sense if I was meant to accomplish something.

  The same was true if I was the victim of a memory-dump, like Shell suggested, thus, I was being messed with.

  Am I going to have to take all those classes again? Some things might be a lot easier, now, but being three years of experience “out of step” felt weird as snakes in plaid. Which didn’t make me feel any more charitable to whomever had done this to me.

  Shell crowed as she chased down another link to the list. She’d just about exploded with happiness when I’d drawn a line from Hecate to Blackstone-In-A-Box, and now she was chasing down every lead she could electronically access for all the other names. Her infectious enthusiasm made me smile. I had six years on Shell, now: three while she was gone and three I remembered and she didn’t. It felt like a lifetime. A lifetime of experience. A lifetime of fights—

  Fights. Future fights. Oh, crap.

  “Eric.”

  “What?” Shell turned her head.

  “Eric Ludlow. Shell, I need you to do a search for me right now.”

  * * *

  “Traffic isn’t any better headed this way. And this is a dumb idea.”

  “Shut up.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Know your enemy. And know your friends. Know yourself, too. There, I’ve just listed three impossible things you’ve got to do to really know what you’re doing. Study your enemy, pay attention to your friends, at least try to understand yourself. You’ll never know everything, but the more you know the less stupid you’ll be.

  Astra, speaking at the 27th Hillwood Academy Commencement

  * * *

  I’d always liked the Crew. They didn’t blow stuff up or break things, they were superhuman breakthroughs applying their powers to super-cleanup and construction. When they had nothing local to do, they’d head overseas to do quick infrastructure projects in developing countries. Today they weren’t doing cleanup, they were completing a government contract to dig and lay the foundation for a mega-warehouse south of town. Finished, it would be filled with emergency stocks—part of President Kayle’s and now Touches Clouds’ program of building up national disaster redundancy. The failure of a lot of our disaster-response systems in the California Quake had given the federal program a turbo-charge.

  I got off the freeway and navigated the plowed road to the site. It had been chosen because the open acres around it would allow room for a military base with a runway, but for now trees and fields surrounded it. Parking outside the perimeter fence, I got out to lean against the warm hood of my car and watch them work on the hole. I recognized Irons and Brace, and spotted Gantry working with a heavy-mover, pushing the footings in its load into the holes he’d excavated in the frozen ground for them.

  “I can’t believe he answered your text,” Shell said.

  I chewed a nail. “Blackstone thinks—will think—I have leverage with him.” I thought about going down and re-introducing myself to him now, but decided to stick with the plan.

  With the weather and time of day I’d made terrible time getting here. I told Shell more stories, about our ronin games, about the Eight Excellent Protectors, about their naginata-wielding leader Kaminari and their bookish resident sorceress Kochi. About cat-Shells and god-fish and promises. Only fifteen minutes later the whistle blew announcing the end of the workday. Union construction workers and Crew members all put down their tools and loads as I got back in the car. “C’mon.”

  The Stop-and-Eat was obviously new, planted just a mile from the site on an otherwise empty stretch of road in anticipation of future growth. It might get bigger but right now the place was just one step up from a food-truck, one of those portable diners you could haul on a flatbed and drop on a foundation anywhere. It had a long service counter with stools flanked by an equally long row of booths, and two doors to the kitchen behind the counter. A jukebox sat in one corner under the restrooms sign.

  It was clean, warm, smelled like pot roast and apple pie, and was still pre-rush empty. I took the corner booth opposite the jukebox. That put me next to the side door, but I doubted there’d be customer traffic through it.

  “Are you lost, sugar?” The waitress, Susan according to her nametag, smiled at me as she set a water glass and menu on my table. I’d dressed for the “mission” in blue jeans and a leather jacket (part of my carbon-webbing reinforced civilian wardrobe), but my clothes were pressed and unstained and even my sturdy boots were new. Not that I’d dressed to blend in; even if my stuff had been properly worn, my half size and bantam-weight self was the opposite of anyone, man or woman, who worked heavy construction. At least anyone without powers.

  I returned her smile. “Meeting a friend. Coffee? And can I have the pot roast? It smells amazing.”

  “Coming right up, sugar. Wave if you need anything else.”

  She placed my order, brought my coffee, and went back to rolling silverware and napkin sets, prepping for the rush as I tucked into my food. It came ten minutes later, a flood of workers bringing the smells of dirt, rock and cement dust, oil, and sweat to the diner.

  They called out for their “usual,” Susan and her co-worker cheerfully calling back what it was, as pots of coffee emptied and were refilled. Some of them looked twice at me, just because I was new and out of place. I might be a pixie and at first glance underage, but I knew from visits to some of my dad’s sites that construction workers would hit on any girl who might be remotely legal. Fortunately Eric—Gantry—spotted me first and headed off a couple of interested ones headed my way, squeezing past coworkers to get to the end of the aisle and slide into my booth amid wolf-whistles. They probably assumed I was his girlfriend, a superhuman-groupie, but they left us alone.

  “Astra?” A big guy, Eric took up all of his side of the table.

  I slid my round wire-rimmed shades down my nose to look at him over them. “Yep.” I’d worn the wig without the mask, and how many superhuman pixies were there? Reaching over my plate, I shook his hand, squeezing just hard enough to establish my bona-fides. “You look better.” Better than I’d seen him a few months ago, before he’d gone into rehab, and better than I’d seen him later. “Do you like the pot roast?”

  “Thanks.” He shook himself, raised a hand that Susan saw and nodded to. I ate slower and savored my coffee, and his own pot roast plate arrived in five minutes. We ate, and I watched him.

  Mom was the people-person, but Dad had skills too. He always told me you had to know a person’s levers. If you didn’t, trying to influence him was like trying to eat your Wheaties with a fork; sure you could get it done, but it might take more time than you had. I crossed mental fingers and prayed that Future Me’s visits to see him in the federal supermax after his re-capture had given me some insight.

  He watched me, too, and got half of his plate inside him before saying anything else. “So, your text said it was really important?”

 
“Sort of. I want to keep you out of jail.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m getting that a lot today. The current operating theory is I got my memories of the next three years dumped into my head. Here’s what’s important for you to know. Dr. Pellegrini is going to come out of the closet as a big bad supervillain called the Ascendant. He’s going to do it with a team that includes you, and you’re all going to kill a bunch of people. I’m sure you’ll believe it’s for a good cause, but you and I are going to fight three more times. The last time, I’ll give you the chance to flee to Canada and you’ll wind up turning yourself in. Sick of killing people, I suppose.”

  I got through that as fast as I could, voice low and never looking away. Eric flinched hard when I named Pellegrini, and I tried a smile. “Is it weird that you’ll apologize to me more than once, as you’re kicking my ass?”

  He would afterward, too, when I went to see him.

  He put his fork down. “Why’re you saying all this?”

  “Because the DSA already has all the information they need to get Pellegrini.” And they did. Before leaving the Dome I’d dictated everything I knew about his operation to Shell and set her loose to find actionable information she could pass through Blackstone to the feds. She’d already found enough of his shadow network that it would take the DSA days, tops, to get what they needed to take him down. “But you haven’t done anything. Not yet.”