Erasing Time

by C. J. Hill

  So okay—maybe her society had ranked people, but at least they didn’t have to wear their status on their shirts like name tags that read, “Hello, My Name Is Loser.”

  Echo followed Sheridan’s gaze out the window to the streets and pavement below. “Our city is much cleaner than the ones you’re used to, isn’t it?”

  Clean yes, but she missed lawns, bushes, and trees. The city was one continuous beige without any green to break it up.

  She studied one of the buildings farther down the street. “Why do some buildings have no outside walls?”

  “Offices, apartments, and restaurants have walls for privacy. Stores don’t. They only use rails for the upper floors to prevent anyone from falling.”

  Stores without walls? How did they keep people from stealing things? Sheridan decided against asking this question. If she asked about stealing, Echo might think she had a personal interest in the subject. She’d already branded herself as a low-ranking flesh eater. She didn’t want to add thief to the list.

  “What about churches?” she asked. “Where are those?”

  “Churches?” Echo said the word as though it had sharp edges. All conversation stopped. Echo and Jeth exchanged pensive looks. “We don’t have churches,” Jeth said. “Religion was banned ninety years ago in an international treaty on human rights.”

  His words, although spoken softly, hit Sheridan as if they had actual weight. In her mind’s eye she saw her father standing by the chapel door greeting people who came in. He knew each person by name. She couldn’t imagine her life, let alone a world, without churches. “Banned?” she breathed out. “Why?”

  Jeth’s tone indicated that the reason should be self-evident. “Religion promoted divisiveness and oppressed its followers.”

  The subject was ninety years past arguing, and yet Sheridan argued it anyway. “No, it didn’t.”

  “Religion,” Jeth said with a scoff, “was a compilation of superstition and wishful thinking—which wouldn’t have been so bad if its members hadn’t been so intent on killing one another.”

  Sheridan glared at him. She knew Taylor didn’t approve. Her sister was sending her wide-eyed pleadings to shut up and sound happy. But Sheridan didn’t. “My father was a minister,” she said. “The whole point of churches was to help people.”

  Sheridan waited for Taylor to back her up, to defend their father. Taylor had been drafted into church service projects right alongside the rest of the family. They had served food at the soup kitchen, pulled weeds at the homes of the elderly, collected blankets for the homeless, and raised money for shelters, cancer patients, and whatever organization her father was feeling sorry for at the time.

  It wasn’t Taylor who spoke; it was Echo. His voice was gentle but firm. A warning. “Religion doesn’t exist anymore, and you shouldn’t speak of it again. People will think you’re intolerant and have violent tendencies.”

  Elise broke into the conversation, her eyes brimming with sympathy. “Sheridan lost her home today. Don’t pry her beliefs away from her too.”

  The comment brought an immediate change to Jeth. He nodded, and his tone turned coaxing. “We don’t mean to upset you. These changes are coming very quickly for you. Relax for now. You can take each new idea slowly—as slowly as you need.”

  Sheridan let out an exasperated huff. Great. Now they thought she was stupid.

  Well, she wasn’t. She was a straight-A student in honors classes. The only one who ever made her feel stupid was Taylor, and that wasn’t on purpose—it just naturally happened when your twin had the IQ of Einstein.

  Sheridan shot Taylor a last pleading glance. If you won’t defend me or Dad, at least defend your convictions.

  Taylor looked away from Sheridan without uttering a word.

  Sheridan turned back to the window, stared unseeing out it. Jeth changed the subject to Virtual Reality centers, where people could pretend to be different characters in stories; then Elise told them about dancing parties called darties. Taylor happily asked them questions.

  Fine. Let Taylor talk. Apparently she didn’t need to take new ideas slowly.

  Echo leaned toward Sheridan; his voice was still gentle. “You told me you were the quiet one. I don’t think I believe you about that.”

  “Just wait. I’m going to be really quiet from now on.”

  He looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “You also said Taylor was the daring one. That doesn’t seem right either. It’s very daring to profess outlawed beliefs.”

  But not smart. Taylor was still the smart one.

  Echo’s gaze returned to Sheridan. “Now I’m not sure how to categorize you.”

  “I thought you already had plenty of categories for me.”

  He looked at her quizzically, but she didn’t want to elaborate. She turned the topic to him. “What about you?” she asked. “How did you compare to your twin?”

  He hesitated, then said, “I’m the lucky one, because I got to meet you.”

  For a moment she thought he was flirting. Then she decided he probably just meant she was interesting in a historical way. Or maybe he meant he was lucky to be the one alive.

  Before she could say anything else, a shrill beeping noise sounded from Jeth’s belt. He looked at his comlink. “It’s Helix.”

  “Sangre,” Echo said. “They must have found Tyler Sherwood.”

  Sangre. Spanish for “blood.” It seemed like an odd swearword to Sheridan. But then, maybe when you didn’t believe in a deity, all that was left to swear by was blood.

  Jeth stood up and pushed a button on his comlink. Immediately the far wall flickered with light, then turned on like a movie screen. The man with the black-and-gray-striped hair looked out at them.

  Jeth walked closer to the wall and in the modern accent asked, “Have you found Tyler Sherwood?”

  Helix stiffened, a snarl growing on his face. He said several things that Sheridan didn’t understand but that, judging from his tone, were either curses or insults. Then he said, “I’m almost to your office. I’m bringing men to talk to the girls.”

  This part Sheridan understood perfectly. Helix was coming. And it wasn’t to talk. If he wanted to talk, he could do that from the screen. And why bring men?

  She couldn’t follow the rest of the conversation. Her panic made it too hard to decipher the words. When the call ended, Jeth turned back to the group and used the twenty-first-century accent. “Helix is coming over to talk to you. He’ll be here soon.”

  Sheridan put her hand on Echo’s to get his attention. “Is he going to take us somewhere?”

  “He didn’t say he would.”

  Jeth clipped his comlink back onto his belt in an unhurried fashion. “You needn’t worry. Helix won’t hurt you.”

  Well, that depended on your definition of hurt, didn’t it? Perhaps he was coming to put one of those crystals in her wrist, or sterilize her, or some equally horrible thing that hadn’t come up in casual conversation yet.

  Even Taylor, who’d been a continual stream of perky enthusiasm all afternoon, sat quietly on the couch growing pale.

  Sheridan let go of Echo’s hand and stood up. She knew there was nowhere to run. She probably couldn’t find her way out of the building, let alone take up a covert existence in this society. Still, her gaze darted around the room, looking for an escape route.

  Taylor stood up too. She walked toward Sheridan wearing a plastered-on smile. “You’ll have to forgive Sheridan. She isn’t used to the future, and I’m afraid she isn’t herself yet.”

  Elise cocked her head so that her striped ponytail leaned onto her shoulder. “Then who is she now?”

  Jeth nodded thoughtfully, almost to himself. “Schizophrenia. It was common in the old twenties.”

  “I am not schizophrenic!” Sheridan said, probably louder than was necessary.

  Taylor took hold of her arm and pulled her a few feet away. To Jeth, she said, “Sheridan will be fine in a minute. I’m going to give her a little pep talk, you know, h
elp her pull herself together.”

  Elise’s eyes narrowed in question. “A pep what?”

  “Pull herself together?” Echo asked. “What does that mean?”

  Taylor turned back to them, mouth open to explain, but then shook her head instead. “I’m going to talk to Sheridan privately for a minute, okay?”

  It wasn’t really private. The wordsmiths sat nearby, undoubtedly waiting to see Sheridan do some sort of pulling stunts with her body parts.

  Taylor leaned in and gave Sheridan a hug, only it wasn’t a hug, it was a way to whisper in her ear. “Could you possibly be acting worse?”

  “You’re one to talk,” Sheridan said, and it wasn’t a whisper. She knew that at least Jeth heard her. He frowned in puzzlement as though this, too, was an unfamiliar piece of slang.

  “At the rate you’re going,” Taylor whispered, “we’ll both have amnesia by nightfall. Start acting cheerful and unafraid, and whatever you do, don’t tell those scientists anything. You remember nothing before you came here.”

  Sheridan’s voice dropped. “I’ve already said things about the past. If I say I don’t remember anything, the wordsmiths will know I’m lying. Then everyone will think I’m a low-ranking, schizophrenic liar.”

  Taylor sighed in frustration, letting Sheridan know she still wasn’t getting the point. “Be as vague as you can about everything. Remember, someone else’s life depends on that machine not working.”

  Taylor released Sheridan from the hug, and they walked back to the couch by the window. “Sheridan feels better now.”

  Sheridan sat down. She didn’t feel better.

  “A pep talk,” Jeth said. “Wasn’t that something cheerleaders did? You two aren’t planning on playing football right now, are you?”

  Taylor didn’t have time to answer. The door slid open, and three men walked into the office, Helix leading the way.

  chapter

  9

  Helix and his men strode over to the group, every step making Sheridan feel more like a trapped animal. Jeth, Echo, and Elise stood up. Despite his assurances, Jeth wore a tense expression, Elise fiddled with a ring on her finger, and Echo—well, Echo was harder to read. His face was expressionless, but his blue eyes were intense.

  A man with a multicolored crew cut unclipped a red cylinder from his belt. It was the size of a cell phone and had a tiny green light circling around its perimeter. He mumbled something to Helix, then stopped in front of Sheridan and Taylor. “Ask them where they were and what was happening right before the Time Strainer brought them here.”

  Sheridan understood him. It was getting easier the more she heard the accent. Taylor probably understood too, but she shook her head sadly. “We … don’t … understand … you.”

  Jeth gestured at the third man. “He wants to know where you were and what happened right before the Time Strainer brought you here.”

  “I don’t remember,” Sheridan said, perhaps too fast.

  Taylor got a far-off look on her face. “We were walking across the University of Tennessee campus to study at the library, and then there was this big light, like a lightning bolt. After that, I woke up in the glass case feeling groggy.”

  Jeth related the answer back to the scientist.

  The man folded his arms. “Who else was near? Gente? A man quizá?”

  Gente and quizá. Spanish words. Quizá meant “perhaps.” And gente was … She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

  Jeth said, “Were there any people around you before you came? A man perhaps?”

  Gente was “people.” Now she remembered.

  “I don’t remember,” Sheridan said, and this time she looked contemplative, for effect.

  “There were,” Taylor said. “On campus there were always people around. Students, professors, lecturers, all sorts of people.”

  The man pointed at Taylor. “What was her career?”

  Jeth asked the question. Taylor said, “I was in high school. I was planning on studying literature when I got to college. Back in my time, they gave degrees for reading books.”

  “Did they?” Jeth asked. “How interesting. You’ll have to tell me more about the educational process later.” Jeth repeated Taylor’s answer to the scientists, then asked Sheridan about her career.

  “I was a student too,” she said.

  “What did you study?”

  “The normal things. Math, history, English.”

  Surprise flitted across Jeth’s face. “You studied your own language? Do you mean you studied the origination of the English language?”

  “Well, no. In English classes we studied literature.”

  He looked at her blankly. “Then why did they call it English?”

  “I don’t know. They just did.”

  Jeth gave a grunt that indicated he didn’t believe her, but he repeated the answer to the scientists anyway.

  Sheridan fidgeted with her hands, then stopped because she thought it made her look guilty of something. How was it that Taylor could spout off lies without ever being caught, while Sheridan told the truth and was never believed?

  The scientist with the crew cut took hold of Sheridan’s arm and placed the cylinder on the back of her wrist. It pricked her skin, and she flinched away.

  “It’s a measurement device,” Echo told her. “He’s checking your DNA’s energy signal.”

  The crew cut man let go of Sheridan’s arm and watched the green circling light on the cylinder. After a few seconds, it flashed a row of symbols. He noted it, then repeated the process on Taylor’s arm. When the light flashed the second row of symbols, he scowled. Whatever it meant, he didn’t like it.

  From behind him, Helix called out, “The readings?”

  The scowl dropped from the man’s face, and panic swept across his features. By the time he turned to address Helix, however, his face was placid.

  “The energy signals are taking longer to stabilize than we anticipated. We should have some good data, but we need to analyze it before we can determine what it means in the context of the Time Strainer. It could be that the girls were standing near the Time Vortex when it opened and were sucked in before it could retrieve Tyler Sherwood. If that was the case, the Time Strainer may have overloaded and closed. It wasn’t designed to move multiple people, as it could accidentally intermingle or even scramble DNA.” At the mention of DNA, the scientist looked down at his cylinder reading with discomfort.

  Sheridan was understanding the accent so well now that her mind was automatically translating the Spanish words, mixing them with the English.

  “Or,” the scientist went on, “we might have calculated the wrong energy signal for Tyler Sherwood. We were only able to get a partial DNA reading from his papers in the city museum. Or maybe the DNA we thought was his actually belonged to someone else....”

  Helix frowned at the scientist, unimpressed by the explanation. “Have your analysis to me by tomorrow. Another failure won’t be tolerated.” He cast a disdainful look at Sheridan and Taylor, as though they had purposely thrown themselves into the Time Vortex just to vex him; then he turned and went to the door. Jeth accompanied him, asking about the next day’s schedule. The scientists trailed after them.

  Echo sat back down next to Sheridan, watching the scientists leave. He whispered, “I almost feel sorry for the guy who tested you. He has no clue why his spectral reader gave him the same DNA result on both of you.”

  Sheridan smiled despite herself and wondered how long it would take him to figure it out.

  As Jeth returned to the couches, Taylor picked up a Rubik’s Cube from the end table beside her. “They haven’t zapped Mr. Sherwood into the future yet?”

  “No,” Jeth said, sitting down beside her. “They can’t find his energy signature in the time stream anymore, and now the machine needs to reboot. They’ll make another attempt tomorrow.”

  Taylor tried to twist one side of the Rubik’s Cube. It didn’t budge. “What exactly is an energy signature?”

/>   Jeth gave a short laugh. “That’s the sort of thing I wasn’t able to learn in school. My sons, however, took some science classes before they decided to work with me.” He motioned to Echo to explain.

  Sheridan didn’t remember half the stuff she learned in her science classes, but Echo didn’t have to pause to search his memory. “Every atom has a different wavelength, depending on its electrons and their orbits. So the combined atoms in each person’s DNA have a unique energy signal. The scientists are probably using energy signals in their search because those don’t decay over time. They’re constant.”

  Taylor rotated the Rubik’s Cube and tried to twist a different section. It didn’t move either. “Why do they want Tyler Sherwood so badly?”

  “He put forth theories in your generation that eventually changed the way scientists view matter.”

  Jeth watched Taylor’s apparent attempt to wring the Rubik’s Cube but didn’t comment on it. “Our instructions are to tell Mr. Sherwood that he’ll work with our scientists to cure aging. He must have done work on regenerating cells.”

  Taylor returned the untwisting Rubik’s Cube to the table. The replica clearly had flaws. “Matter. Energy signals. It sounds terribly complicated. That’s why I liked reading novels.”

  “Ah yes,” Jeth said with rising enthusiasm. “You were going to tell me about the educational process.”

  “What’s the point of telling you things,” Sheridan asked, remembering their talks about animals and religion with fresh frustration, “when you won’t believe what we say?” She didn’t mean to look at Echo while she said this. Somehow her gaze slid there anyway. She knew Jeth doubted her, and probably Elise did too, but it bothered her more that Echo didn’t believe her.

  His blue eyes stared back at her, nearly as vibrant as the crescent moon he wore. He shouldn’t have looked like an intellectual. The blue hair that brushed against his broad shoulders should have canceled out any scholarly effect. And yet in the short time she’d known Echo, she could tell he was smart beyond his years. Like Taylor.

  “You’ll tell us about your lives,” Jeth said. “Your experiences don’t include everything that took place in your time, though. We’ve spent so long studying history, we know things about your society and its influences that not even you realize.”