The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller

by Edward W. Robertson

  But Prince was right. The kid had already died. If I missed, the outcome would be no different than if I'd never come here at all.

  I squeezed the trigger.

  I missed my mark, but not enough to miss Prince altogether. The bullet—case-fired, awkward, dumb—clipped into the side of his neck. He spun from the boy, blade yanked away by the impact, then stabbed at Stephen's neck. I was already walking forward across the grimy concrete ground. I shot him twice more in the chest. He tumbled back, legs reeling, and sprawled on the naked floor.

  His chest wheezed. I stood above him and shot him in the head.

  The bangs reverberated in my ears. Stephen's eyes bulged. He'd rolled onto one shoulder to watch me. I took a knife from the toolchest Prince had brought to the shack.

  "It's okay," I said. "You're safe. I'm going to let you go. But I need you not to scream."

  He nodded fractionally, as if afraid to startle me. I sawed into the cords on his ankles and the ties on his wrists. He held very still. I raised my eyebrows at him and removed the gag.

  "Don't look at him," I said. "That isn't something you want to remember."

  "Is he dead?"

  I nodded. A small cut on his throat dribbled blood. I applied pressure with the gag, then used a clean corner to wipe up his tears and snot. He gave me a pleading look and hugged me. It was a good thing I was wearing a dark shirt. I'd have to think of a good lie to explain the blood to Mara.

  Soon, he stopped shaking. I led him out the door and took him to my car.

  "If your parents ask, you cut yourself climbing a fence," I said.

  He wiped at his red eyes. "Will they know?"

  "Not unless you tell them."

  "I won't."

  "Good." I grimaced. "But if anyone else ever tries to hurt you, you should. This is just a special case."

  He pushed out his lower lip. "But if it happens again you can help me again."

  "You can't count on that." I opened the passenger door and boosted him inside. "The world's too big. Good people aren't always there."

  "Then how come you found me?"

  A few smart people running the show. A lot of persistence. Even more luck. Not the sort of things you say to a six-year-old. Or maybe you do. I don't know, I'm no parent. The whole situation was beyond me. Sometimes I don't even see the victims with my own eyes. I'd never talked to one who knew the score.

  "Because I have to."

  I dropped him off a couple blocks from home. The cut on his neck had stopped bleeding. He waved at me. I waved back and drove away.

  I cruised past the brick shack to make sure the shots hadn't drawn any cops or neighbors, then parked and walked right up to it. Prince had bled a lot. I found his keys and opened his trunk, grabbed his floor covers and the emergency blanket in his roadside kit, then wrapped him up as best I could and carried him to the trunk. I couldn't do much about the blood in the shack. If CR cared, they'd send someone else back to clean it up.

  I drove out of town and parked in the dusty hills. That night, right on schedule, the Pod pulled me back home.

  Its door swung open. I blinked at the bright lights. As usual, I was a little foggy. The experience differs for some, but for me, the passage is like being flicked off like a light. When you come back, you can't tell quite how much time has gone by.

  "Well?" Mara said. She was waiting right outside the Pod. Unusual.

  "He's fine," I said.

  "Pod brought back a second body."

  "That would be David Prince, aspiring murderer. I'll check his photos for a real name as soon as you get out of my face."

  "You're always so cranky when you come back." She smiled, making no effort to conceal the fact her amusement was at my expense. She had just a couple lines around her mouth. She was several years older than me, but you couldn't tell by looking. "Anything snarly?"

  I rubbed my face. "All of it. I got lucky. Or Stephen did. Whichever you prefer."

  "Good. I always hate when it's kids."

  I didn't see what difference it made, but I did not feel like arguing. I jerked my thumb toward the door. "Off to report."

  She didn't press. She was used to me. I fed the Pod my pictures of Prince. It scanned records while I composed my report. I stuck to the facts wherever possible, diverging only when it came time for me to tell Stephen Jaso the truth. Instead, I reported that I'd made a last-gasp followup on all suspects and caught Prince making another trip to the hardware store. In a rented van. Piqued, I'd looked out for it on the day of the abduction and was able to follow it away from the school.

  The Pod took almost as long to finish as I did; Prince had gone under the knife before he'd reversed time's arrow, and the Pod had had to dig deep to match his new face to anything in its system. It alerted local authorities while I examined the file. Prince's real name was Joee Holtz and he'd been an overseas chipcaster. Explained his interest in early computers. I didn't much care about the rest. Evil is warped biology, that's all.

  I was just closing his file and opening the boy's when Mara entered the room.

  "Still here?" I said.

  "Working late," she smiled tightly. "So are you."

  "I like to come at it while it's fresh."

  "This one doesn't sound like anything to get lost in. Your report's done. Why not come have a drink?"

  I was interested, but the fact she appeared to be as well set off a whistle in my head. "What's up?"

  She shrugged and leaned against the wall, crossing her legs at the ankle. "You been offtime for a week straight. A trip that long should be buffered by a drug or two before you leap back into Primetime."

  "Is that a medical opinion?" I searched her face. My jaw dropped at what I saw there. "No way. I got him home safe."

  "Blake. You don't always have to know."

  "Then what's the point?"

  "To give them a chance."

  I shook my head and turned back to the monitor. The Pod's spiders had already pulled up the revised timeline. Nothing deep, just newspaper reports and a few public records, but it was enough. In middle school, Stephen had reached the playoffs with his soccer team. High school, he pulled a couple of regional academic medals, gold in math, a silver in physics. Graduated salutatorian. Would attend a university called MIT in the fall, except he died in a car crash in August of his 18th year.

  I turned around. Mara was still watching me. She sighed, angry. "Blake, I told you."

  "Did he die in the original timeline? Before Prince got to him?"

  "I don't know that."

  "He didn't, did he? Not at 18. I saved him, but I changed things, too."

  She held out her palms. "So what?"

  "All I'd have to do is go back for a few minutes. Drop him a letter. 'August 22, do not get in your car.'"

  "You know that's not how it works."

  I gazed into the empty space between us. The room smelled like plastic. "He wasn't supposed to die. So what if it was accidental or on purpose?"

  "The timeline played out the moment you left." She gave me a small and sympathetic smile. "Go back again, and you'd change billions of lives. Maybe for the worse. You have no way to know."

  "I know I could make his better." I slammed my palms on the table twice, rattling my tablet computer. Mara's shoulders jumped but her face stayed calm. I let out my air. "Do you still want a drink?"

  "You think this made me want one less?"

  I laughed hollowly. We left together. I'd only been away for a few minutes of real-time and so I had nothing to catch up on. After a couple drinks, one laced, I told her the Jaso kid had been special, a difference-maker. She asked if it made any difference. I thought it did, but I couldn't explain myself well. I might have been able to go home with her, but it would have been a pity thing on her part. The tube took me back by myself and I stood in my apartment and watched the city glimmer.

  It looked perfect, because it was. People were still miserable—there's no such thing as infinite resources, and even if there were,
we'd find a way to make each other's lives hell nonetheless—but there's no greater power than the power to control your own past.

  Protocol insists that, after a trip, we spend at least twice as much time back in Primetime as we did in the other stream. It's meant to avoid feeling lost between whens, a particular affliction known as Timeless or Untethered or The Dream. At home, I delved into my best sims of the latter half of the 20th century. Research. Training. The best way to forget the Jaso boy's face.

  After two weeks, I returned to the CR and did pretty much the same thing, but with access to the physical facilities as well. It was quiet for a few days. I didn't expect a new assignment for a while. There's a rotation of sorts and there isn't always a lot of work to go around.

  But five days after my return to work, a red light winked in the upper right corner of my sim. I shut down and blinked at the real world.

  Mara poked her head through my door. "Want something new?"

  "Where am I going?"

  "'We.' Not you and me, mind. But the plural of 'you.'"

  I raised my eyebrows. "Partner work? Is it that serious?"

  She gave me a funny smile. "Better not be. I'm hoping to break her in easy."

  I didn't like that as much, but I'd never turned down an assignment. I stood. "Where to?"

  "Does it matter?"

  I grinned back. I was ready to return.

  Or so I thought. It's a bitter irony that I protect the futures of others, but have no hint of what's to come for myself. My eagerness to do my duty was about to destroy me. Within days, I would find myself hopelessly enmeshed in a conspiracy that spanned worlds and centuries. Ironically, it's a story six-year-old Stephen Jaso would have loved to tell to his classmates.

  Because my fate isn't in Primetime. It's in the past. I'm so far gone that humans don't exist yet—but dinosaurs do.

  And they are hunting me.

  II

  Brownville looked like a city people got killed in. Tires sliced rainbow-slick puddles. Neon shimmered from skyscrapers like glass razors. Rain pounded from the sky, driving people down the gum-spotted sidewalks, holding their hands over their heads, fending off the anger of the gods. Brownville wasn't a city we had in Primetime, but we'd once had cities like it, and they hadn't been good ones.

  "When does Haltur die?" Vette said.

  I didn't move from the hotel window. "Seven days. Murders of non-public figures, we almost always get seven days to find out who's going to do it."

  "What about for public figures?"

  "Depends how public they are."

  "A president?"

  I turned, searching my new partner's expression. The sunlight cutting through the blinds cast her young skin in bright planes and hard shadows. I didn't see any sign of a tease in her green eyes. "How was your training?"

  She gave a nervous little laugh. "Are you asking if the CR sent me back to another world with no training?"

  "Have you been adequately trained?"

  "How is one 'adequately' trained to travel back in time to other dimensions and stop other dimension-hopping time travelers from committing crimes they haven't yet done?"

  "Thoroughly," I said.

  "No shit," Vette laughed. She sat on the bed and grabbed her tablet from its case on the nightstand. "I've been through all the classes. Spent the last six months in sims. But I assume once you hit the real thing, all that training goes out the window."

  "More or less."

  "So?"

  I closed the drapes. "Learn as you go. That's why you're here with me."

  "Okay," she said. "So why's it called the Cutting Room?"

  I examined her again. Still no indication she was kidding. "First steps will be just like the sims. I want you to run down the victim on every corner of the net. I'm going to go scoop up some bugs. This is a high-surveillance era. May as well let the gear do our work for us."

  "Can I come with?"

  "Minimize disruptions to the timeline at all points in the mission." Quoting scripture. I pulled out my tablet to check whether the CR slush fund had filled up my account. It had. I stood. "The faster we start pulling intel, the more likely we save his life. I'll critique your technique when I get back."

  She glared at the glossy screen of her tablet. "Sounds like a blast."

  I stepped into the quiet hall. The carpet was a tasteful pattern but it was so old a rut of grime had been worn down its center. The elevator was old school, polished brass and paneled oak, but descended with such subtlety I couldn't tell I was moving.

  Outside, the rain seemed to make the streets even dirtier. Cars sloshed by, driven by human pilots. No matter how many times I saw it, or drove one myself, that always creeped me out; one phone call, one glance at a woman on the sidewalk, and that car became a person-crushing ton of high-velocity metal.

  The exhaust smelled like french fries. Rain slid down neon signs and cartoonishly bright billboards. Middle-aged men raced to escape the downpour, long coats flapping behind them. The electronics shop was just a few blocks away and I decided not to bother with a cab.

  Within three blocks, the neighborhood shifted to low-down buildings and trash-clogged gutters. Tattooed men squatted on stoops smoking sweet-smelling cigarettes. Some flashed metallic irises or stainless steel hands. When it came to tech, these people were nouveau riche: they had it, and they wanted you to know it.

  The shop was a hole in the wall, narrow and deep. Display cases housed a thousand different gadgets: cameras, tablets, holos projecting tiny little people bathed in ghostly blue light. I wandered over to the spy stuff. A clerk took notice. I didn't know quite what these people had, so I had to play dumb, but once she saw I was serious, she took her time explaining the ins and outs of every pinhead-sized microphone and button-small camera. I took a full two hours selecting my loadout. The clerk winced at the total, glancing up with bad-dog eyes like I might smack her, but I handed her my card without the briefest hesitation. Another world's money means literally nothing to CR.

  Most of it was in plastic bubble packs, but I had her double-bag it anyway. Outside, the downpour had slowed to a drizzle. Back at the hotel, I stripped off my coat and toweled off. Vette gave me a vague smile and returned to her tablet.

  I sat and propped up my feet on the coffee table. "Tell me everything you know about the victim."

  She attempted to pass me her pad. "It's all right here."

  I shook my head. "I said tell me. I want to hear what you think is important."

  Vette frowned and returned the tablet to her lap. "Korry Haltur. 27. Works with computers, software. Started at 17 and has freelanced for dozens of corporations, but the last year he's worked exclusively for TyCor, based in..." She squinted at her readout. "Gad-something. A country that isn't this one. Works out of his home."

  "And?"

  She looked up from her pad. "What else do you want to know?"

  "Someone came here from Primetime to kill him." I swung my feet down from the coffee table and braced my elbows on my knees. "Why? What stands out about Haltur as a vic? Is he a shut-in no one would notice go missing? Does he order girls up on the net every Tuesday and Thursday?" I rubbed my mouth. "The normal motives for murder don't apply. It wasn't his boyfriend or his business partner. It was one of us. Someone from Primetime. You see?"

  She nodded a bit, then gestured at my bag. "So what did you bring back?"

  I spread it on one of the twin beds. Little black pieces gleamed darkly in their packaging. "Way too much, as it turns out."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We're just going to set up cameras outside his building. See who comes and who goes."

  Her eyebrows slowly raised and lifted. "That's it?"

  "He works for a major tech firm," I said. "They can't let their ideas be stolen. His apartment's going to be fifty percent detectors and countermeasures by volume."

  "And then?"

  "Then we watch. The real world and the virtual. See who pops up and feels wrong."

 
; "Oh."

  "That's the job," I said. "Ideal mission, we stay in this room until the second we know the killer, then neutralize him and wait for the Pod to zap us home. Only disruption to the timeline is room service goes home a few hundred dollars richer."

  Vette looked like she might argue—meaning she'd be arguing with the core philosophy of the CR—then dug into her tablet instead. I got mine and finally read the briefing the Pod had put together on Haltur's upcoming murder.

  He would be found at the desk in his apartment. In two equally-sized pieces. Cut in half by a chainsu, an electric knife favored by most of the world's gangs, particularly in Brownville. The case would lead to the arrest and conviction of a low-level hood. Who was almost certainly innocent.

  Of the death, anyway. Haltur's murder hadn't happened in this world's original timeline. Someone from my world had changed things. Tipped off the CR's Pods. Almost certainly killed Haltur themselves.

  The body would be found nine days from now. Investigation would pin the death to two days before its discovery. It was early evening, daylight dying from the overcast sky, replaced by the hard glow of the billboards and animated ads. I had less than seven days.

  We ate up the next few hours collecting and collating his net presence. He had several dozen handles, eleven of which had recent activity. Thousands of friends in his various online tribes. We gathered them up and set the tablets to run traces of their net footprints as well. This was a linked-up, plugged-in world, comments and posts and messages flying as fast as the electrons that carried them. Anyone of Haltur's friends whose online history didn't date back to childhood would be an immediate suspect.

  Around midnight, I got on my coat. It was still wet, a dumb-fabric model spat out by the Pod just before we left.

  Vette looked up from her chair, mouth half open. "Where are you going?"

  "Set up the cameras."

  She tossed her tablet on the bed and stood. "Great. If I don't get up and move soon, my legs are going to file for divorce."

  I shook my head. "One-man job. You're better spent combing records."

  "Come on, Blake! Aren't I here to learn?"