Guardians of Time

by Zimbell House Publishing

  I whisper to the band on my wrist. “Janice ... Janice?” Hurrying, I slide my fingers along the band to lower the volume.

  “Yes?” Janice says in a lowered voice.

  “Scan the tent for bugs.”

  “Scanning ...”

  Ellie probably thought I wouldn’t shoot if I thought it was Ambrose. She must have figured having him here would make me get sloppy. I’ve given up so much to be Marxus Tran that not even Ambrose could stop me.

  “Possible signature detected,” Janice repeats. “There are six insects located in the tent and one listening device, which you can find here.” A beam of light points to a small black beetle.

  “Thanks, Janice.” Before I move my hand, it starts crawling toward the exit. I pick it up between my fingers and crush it. There is no fluid or goo—only a smashed superconducting chip, more widely used in our future time.

  All of this is abnormal. This assignment has two travelers in the same place and time, I have to learn a whole new set of tactics during the mission, and the traveler I need to contend with is a Xeno-Person. How is this only a Level 3 mission?

  All this weirdness must be due to the Guardians’ political bickering and interference. I have had too many unexplained “disturbances” recently. Has it been Ellie this whole time? Has she been sent by some of the Guardians to try to stop my missions?

  As the nights pass, thoughts drift in and out of my mind. I often find myself blindly walking to the lab lost in a world of indecision. However, I still continue going through the mundane janitor motions. I sweep. I mop. I ruin experiments.

  I can’t decide what to do. If this is about the Guardians’ political squabbles, this could take forever to deal with. I might as well quit and be put on another mission. It may take another few months, but I could still climb back up.

  If I get into an altercation with another traveler, dealing with all unintended consequences would definitely get me a demotion, especially since she is a Xeno-Person. Ellie has the determination to truly make this messy, and she probably has the authorization to kill me. I must finish this mission.

  Awaking from my haze, I stare at the mini-fridge-sized incubators in the lab’s cell culture room. I pull several petri dishes out of the warm incubator that I tainted before. I use the benchtop microscope nearby and notice the Xenobot stem cells moving, almost like I haven’t been putting bleach in them.

  Suddenly, I hear loud footsteps. Shit! Was one of the grad students still here? The key reader at the lab entrance didn’t make any sounds.

  I rip open the incubator door, putting as many of the tiny dishes back as fast as possible.

  “Hey!” someone shouts.

  I look up and stare at three people who seem to have appeared from nowhere. One of them is the professor. The short, frazzled one seems to be the graduate student, and the large, hulking man beside them is university security.

  “What are you doing? You shouldn’t be in here!” the Professor says sternly.

  “Oh ... uh, sorry. I-I thought I was supposed to clean these too,” I stammer.

  “Did you? Is that why you’ve been putting bleach in my samples?” the student yells.

  “M-me?” I stammer. “I didn’t ... I wasn’t ...”

  “Stop lying. I caught you on my own personal camera.” She fishes out the tiny device lodged between boxes across from the incubators. It had a perfect view of me.

  She turns to the professor. “I knew those cells were viable. I told you we’d find her here.”

  The security guard sternly says, “Hand your badge over and come with me.”

  The rest is fairly boring, a lot of yelling and termination procedures. Someone mentions something about me getting sued, and there are plenty more unintended consequences.

  On my way out of the building, I overhear the graduate student say something about “the man who left her a written letter about this.”

  I head back to the abandoned lot and return to find another note on my tent.

  I told you to leave it alone. You try something else, and I’ll stop that too. –

  Ellie

  She even knows that I know! I sigh. So much for the element of surprise.

  I sit in my tent for hours, trying to think of the next move. That might have been the death knell. None of my other options seem as good as being the lab janitor. A silhouette appears at the side of my tent.

  “Someone as smart as you had to think something was weird,” Ellie says.

  I reach for the zipper to the tent.

  “Don’t!” she shouts. Ellie must be able to see my silhouette too. “We’re at mission critical. I’m not sure what I’d do if I saw your face.”

  My hand inches back from the front of the tent. “Well, why don’t you just end it now then?” I say.

  In typical Ellie fashion, she continues to talk, ignoring my response. “The other Guardians know about your mentor’s plans, Beatrix. A year ago, they saw the future timeline and knew your success on this mission could mean the end of all Xeno-People.” She sighs. “If it makes you feel special, months ago, I was birthed and given the general termination task of stopping you.”

  “So, you could have killed me at any time ...”

  “Basically, but something was stopping me. First, it was the thought that I could get you to quit by messing up your missions.”

  “That didn’t work out so well for you, huh?” I say, smirking.

  “Maybe it did,” she says.

  My smirk fades as I glance at her silhouette quizzically.

  She continues to speak, unphased. “It’s true. Even with everything I threw your way, you still managed to succeed, but at least with the ‘unintended consequences,” you couldn’t get promoted and assigned this mission straight away.”

  “So, I did get in your way,” I boast.

  “Don’t get excited. You got in my way ... as much as I wanted you to.” She pauses. “For some reason, I was satisfied. It was perfect. I was stopping you, in a sense, and I got to work missions and see beautiful places and times. No one thought your Guardian mentor would try something this sneaky.”

  I nod, knowing exactly what she’s referring to at this point. Falsely assigning a high-ranking mission as a Level 3, I think, now inching away from her silhouette. My Guardian must have been trying to avoid tipping them off.

  “As soon as this mission started, there was no reason for me not to kill you. I would be fulfilling my great duty, and almost every part of me wanted to.” Her hands grip the side of my tent, stretching the lining.

  I move back even further.

  She releases her grip. “I would be the great hero who saved all the Xeno-People ... but I kept coming up with excuses, like, ‘Maybe I can still make her quit.” Or, ‘It’ll only take a little more time.” Or, ‘She might get distracted.”” Ellie huffs, grabbing the side of the tent again. The tent tremors slightly from her grasp. “I said anything and everything to myself, using any excuse to draw out the clock.”

  My mouth drops. I’m only alive because of her ... Her speech sounds like a god telling you your life is in his hands. I always believed I was capable, but now, I’m not sure. She has been several steps ahead of me this whole time. I may not be able to compete against a Xeno-Person, whose literal purpose in life is stopping this mission ... especially not one with authorization to kill me.

  “I can’t draw it out much longer,” Ellie says, releasing the tent once more. “I’m tired of fighting myself. I keep ignoring urgent messages from the League. They may even send someone else soon ...”

  I reach for my bag, trying to grab the sound pistol. “So why do you keep letting me live, Ellie?”

  “First, let’s drop the act. You know it’s not Ellie. It’s Xenobot #31773.”

  My eyebrow peaks. She thinks I know more than I do. As she says this, her “ELLIE” tattoo flashes in my mind. I remember my confusion, seeing it in the ghost image on the wrist. If it’s rotated, it’s “31773.”

  “I alway
s preferred the numbers and hated the codename.” She huffs. “Why haven’t I killed you?” Her voice lightens as she speaks with a chipper tone, “Because you’re the only thing that makes life worth living.”

  I roll my eyes. “Oh, stop. I know you hate me.”

  She chuckles. “You’re right. I think you’re even more of a tool than I am. You’re smart, but you were so blinded by ambition that you couldn’t avoid ending up here.” Ellie sighs. “The real reason why I haven’t killed you is because a small part of me ...”

  I watch as the silhouette of her hand meets her face.

  “... and it’s just a small part ... doesn’t want to fulfill my termination task.” She sniffs a few times. “I know I have to complete the mission. I even feel like I have to complete the mission. Every fiber in my being wants to, except for that small, tiny part that would rather see tomorrow.”

  “This is all pointless for you,” I say. “After you fulfill your termination task of stopping me, you’re also dead.”

  I rub my wristband, thinking of my mentor. Have I been following the wrong person? It’s impossible to know. I just stare at the band, wishing Janice would speak up and give me the right answer this time.

  Is my mentor actually evil, or was this what Ellie was told? Xeno-People have become an abused class. We tell them what to think and what to do, and then they die for us after their usefulness has ended. We prime them with videos about lives they never had, so we can train them to be dedicated to missions many never come back from. They’ve become an involuntary working class, and the backbone of a new indentured servitude. Maybe my Guardian wanted to free them from this ... the only way she could in a system this wrong.

  “Nothing to say, as usual, huh?” Ellie spits. Her shadow grows smaller as she walks away from the tent. “I can’t promise you I know what I’ll do, but don’t let me see you again ... for both our sakes ...”

  I open my mouth to speak but stop myself. The insanity of the situation weighs on me. I’m starting to feel bad for Ellie? The Xeno-Person who wants to, and can, kill me? I wonder as her silhouette disappears.

  The other Guardians will see that I’m eliminated, unless I can finish the mission. If I do, they’ll forget about me and forget that Xeno-People were even a thought. I grab the shower curtain and pull it over me, hoping I dream of some crazy way to make this all stop.

  CONSIDERING EVERYTHING that happened, the next few days pass by uneventfully. Leave tent. Walk around. Think about the situation. Go to sleep. Rinse and Repeat. With no job and no way to finish the mission, time just evaporates.

  Sometimes I go to the library, looking up job ads at the university in Vermont where the other half of the Xenobot study is being done. They develop the AI-inspired designs that the researchers use to make the stem cells to form Xenobots.

  I could have Janice mess with the designs. It’s another crux of the planning. No plans. No more Xenobots. Then, everyone forgets. I keep this running through my head. It’ll take me a while to get to Vermont, but once the job posting is open, I’ll find a way to make it. I can still stop their experiments. I focus on trying to get a new position. This time, it feels like I’m going through the motions, but I don’t know what else to do at this point.

  After a week, a listing for a janitor position pops up for the university in Vermont. As I start filling out the application, Ellie’s green highlights appear in my mind. I grab the clunky mouse and close the listing. I’m kidding myself. For better or worse, she’ll still find a way to stop me. I head back to the abandoned lot.

  There’s no way to continue this without dealing with Ellie.

  She’s a Xeno-Person, with access to better gear because she ported here with a higher mission level. I obviously can’t get physical and kill her. I think over and over again about a way out of this. Wait ... could I make her think she’s fulfilled her termination task?

  As I walk back to the lot, I whisper into my wristband, “Janice? I need you to draft the following documents ... a completed request form for canceling the mission, and a document form from my mentor, acknowledging that I quit.”

  “Those documents don’t exist,” Janice responds.

  “Just get me emergency permission to have the files created.”

  After a few minutes, I hear a ping from my wristband and load the documents, making sure they pop right up as soon as I double-tap the wristband again.

  If I convince her, it would mean she’s the last Xeno-Person that has to die. For the rest, it will be like they never existed. Even the Guardians will forget them. Their suffering will vanish like it never happened. Her gentle green highlights appear in my mind once again. She had so many chances ... regardless of the reason, she let me live.

  My arm freezes. It is hard to look at the wristband now. Maybe I could convince her to abandon all of it, and we can live in this time forever. No one gets to enjoy a normal life in their time, but no one dies either.

  Maybe ... I think, as my hands start to tremble, for all my planning, her biological drive has plans of its own. I’m afraid she’ll eventually be driven to fulfill her mission.

  I think about the scenarios. They play in my head on repeat. I can’t stop my legs from walking toward her tent. The documents are loaded on my wristband, ready at a moment’s notice. Tears well in my eyes as I step closer. My hands won’t stop shaking. There is so much I am not sure of. The only thing I know is that I can’t stop walking toward her dingy tent.

  “Hey Ell—?” I whisper. “I’m sorry, 31773?”

  I hear her shuffling around. A curt ‘What?’ sounds from the inside.

  “It’s me, Beatrix. We need to talk,” I say as she unzips her tent, and I step inside.

  Training Days

  Bob Price

  THE EPITAPH BELOW THE statue of Cornwell Giro, the first Sentinel to correct a timeline anomaly, stood proudly outside the League of Guardians Orbital Palace.

  The maintenance of our Universe has become mankind’s greatest challenge. Failure to prevent Universal expansion beyond the means of our Universe’s ability to manage will inevitably lead to our destruction and that of every other living thing that exists. The League of Guardians is all that stands between us and extinction. May the power of the Natural Order always be with us.

  -Cornwell Giro

  DAY ONE

  MY NAME’S BRODIE TYRELL. I’m thirty-four and proudly wear the red-armored uniform of a Major in the League of Guardians (LG) Military. My decision to join the LG happened when I was fifteen, having just graduated from university with honors degrees in both astrophysics and Earth ancient history. In the thirty-fifth century, you’re expected to achieve at least one honors degree before choosing a career path. I was lucky, plus I worked damn hard because I knew the career I wanted. Aged fifteen and fresh out of university, my head was brimming over with facts and figures—little use in relation to the metaphysical training aspects demanded for a Time Guardian.

  Time Guardian is the highest rank in the LG military, while all other ranks mirror those of any army over countless generations, except we use the term Sentinel. I’m a Sentinel Major. The LG military is an elite unit in peacetime numbering just five hundred on each humanoid world, of which there are many.

  I graduated from the Academy at twenty-five. Ten years is the standard length of time it takes to develop effective metaphysical prowess to survive time travel. After graduation, another five years of active service has to be earned before a Sentinel can participate in the training of new candidates to the program, referred to as novices. Personally, I quite enjoy meeting newbies because they often ask questions about issues that I take for granted these days. It’s a way of reminding myself how I reached this point in my career and just how tough it has been.

  Since the war began with the Haze—creatures from another universe—three months ago, the need to increase the number of Sentinels to protect the timeline from overexpansion soared to urgent. As with every war since the beginning of time, untested conc
epts get introduced in the hope they work straight out of the box. My appearance at the head of a fresh class of novices would be associated with one such hope.

  Classes are conducted over millions of miles using holographic interaction. Doing so means that only a small area is required for presentation purposes. These areas are sterile, twelve-by-twelve foot, white-walled rooms located at the Academy managed by an intuitive Artificial Intelligence. In this instance, my personal AI who was assigned to me at my LG graduation. An assigned AI stays with a Sentinel throughout his or her career, acting as a consultant, support worker, and defender. My AI is called Joan. Although AIs are constructed using identical software, when linked to their human principal, their complex brains and circuitry develop different personalities. Unlike other military AI support units, Sentinel AIs are holographic and without physical form, meaning that we do not have them following us around like a huge, armored guard dog. However, their hologram is capable of displaying a humanoid individual capable of interaction on the physical plane. More importantly, they are also able to time travel and physically assist us.

  Introductions to the Academy always have an open agenda on the first day. That means I answer lots of questions that I’d likely answered dozens of times to dozens of other novices. As I waited in the holographic suite, my excitement rose a few notches. This would not be an ordinary class. If successful, they would lead a whole new generation of Sentinels to not only defeat our enemies, but also to save the universe from overexpansion. As their images began to materialize, I matched them to the data I had studied days before.

  “All novices are present, Brodie. There are four. From your right to left, they are Brown, Kay, Blundell, and Norse,” Joan said. Her own holographic presence materialized behind me as the old movie star Scarlett Johansson, a favorite of mine from the original Marvel series of superhero movies they made more than a thousand years ago. As a history buff, it seemed right that I use the image of a hero from the past as my assistant.