“I'm not going to keep saying 'surprise' if you keep forgetting...”
“Oh, right,” the traveler interrupted. “I'm resending that order. From now on, just go back to 'I've been thinking'.”
“Alright,” the young man nodded. “I've been thinking.”
“You surprise me!”
“Why can’t we just say computer and then tell the computer what to do?” Morgan asked, ignoring Robert's sarcasm.
“We can,” the traveler explained. “Try it.”
“Computer,” the young man said forcefully.
Nothing happened.
“Try again,” Robert encouraged.
“Computer,” Morgan repeated.
“I don’t think you’re getting the pitch quite right,” the traveler said, doing his best to imitate an Irish accent.
“Computer,” Morgan said for a third time.
“That was definitely closer,” Robert assured him.
“Computer,” the young man tried again.
“Did you ever watch The IT Crowd?” the traveler asked.
“Yeah! I loved…” Morgan began before pausing to glare at his friend. “Oh... I see...”
“This still isn’t Star Trek, Morgan.”
“Rob,” the young man said, shaking his head, “even in my day we had voice recognition software. We could just say 'Alexa, bla, bla, bla' and Alexa would bla, bla, bla. Don't tell me we don't have that capability here in the future.”
“We're always in the present, Morgan.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do,” Robert chuckled. “We could have the computer do that if we wanted. We just don't.”
“Why?”
“Reasons.”
“Well, I want it to,” Morgan asserted. “I think it'd be cool.”
“Then, turn it on.”
“How?”
In reply, Robert pressed a number of buttons on the console in front of him.
“That,” he said, pointing at the screen, “is how to turn it on and configure it.”
“Awesome!”
“If you say so,” the traveler shrugged. “You'll have time to find out for sure before we get where we're going.”
“I thought we were almost there.”
“We would have been,” Robert nodded. “If I hadn't remembered that we needed to go pick up that video equipment from Miss Sharp's. Which has added hours of trip time before we can even start the next job.”
“What is the next job?” Morgan asked.
“Good question!” the traveler replied, reaching over to hit the intercom. “Everyone meet me in the conference room. We need to get prepped up.”
Minutes after this, Robert, Morgan, and Vox were pushing their respective ladies' chairs in for them, as Doc was taking up his own seat.
“This time,” the traveler said, stepping over to the head of the table, “we've got to deal with a double paradox.”
“Meaning what exactly?” Morgan asked as he sat.
“If you'd give me ten seconds to explain, I'd tell you.”
“Tell away.”
“A time traveler named Norman Dewbridge,” Robert continued, “went back to the planet from which his species originated...”
“What planet was that?” Morgan asked, giving Azure a quick wink.
“Rouladen,” the traveler smiled.
“So, the people are Rouladenians?”
“Precisely,” Robert nodded. “In any event, he went back to just days before the Rouladenians were first contacted by an alien race. Technologically, they were at much the same point in history as Earth in the nineteen-forties. Seventy years later, they were roughly where Earth was in the twenty-fourth century.
“Norman was an anthropologist and wanted to see first-hand what effects first contact had on his people's culture. During his lifetime, there was a great deal of debate on how first contact should be handled and whether more-advanced groups should ever help less-advanced groups technologically.”
“The Prime Directive,” Morgan nodded.
“Exactly,” Robert replied. “Compared to some time travelers, he was extremely careful; determined only to observe, not to change. However, one thing good old Norman didn't consider was the overwhelming power of love.”
“He met a girl?” Doc asked with a smile.
“He met a girl,” the traveler replied. “The couple had a whirlwind romance, and she ran off to the future with him, leaving everything else behind her. Of course, as she was an orphan without any romantic entanglements and a job she didn't really care for, there really wasn't all that much to everything else.”
“Obviously,” Vox speculated, “her being gone caused a paradox.”
“It did,” Robert explained. “In her proper time-line, Emily Marrison had a very unfulfilled life until she was nearly thirty. At that point, however, she decided to become the Rouladenian equivalent of a nun. Eventually, she was as respected by her people as Mother Teresa was by the people of Earth. Just after her eightieth birthday, she was invited to join a series of peace talks in the hopes that she could help bring a war that had been raging for over twenty years to an end. She succeeded.”
“Until Norman ran off with her,” Morgan pointed out.
“Just so,” the traveler nodded. “Without her there, the peace talks fell apart and the war continued for another decade, costing literally millions of lives.”
“So, we have to stop her from running off with Norman?” Azure said, shaking her head. “That's kind of sad.”
“It is,” Morgan agreed, taking her by the hand.
“It would be,” Robert replied. “However, we can't do that – not in the long run, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Emily and Norman had twelve children,” the traveler explained.
“Twelve?!” Morgan exclaimed.
“What's wrong with that?” Azure asked, giving his hand a gentle squeeze.
“Nothing!” he instantly replied. “It's just that it would be a lot of work. Of course, it's the kind of work I'm more than willing...”
“All twelve of them,” Robert continued, interrupting his friend's thought, “are extremely important to the time-lines. If they aren't born, the future will be in worse shape than if we let millions of people die who shouldn't have.”
“So,” Celeste said thoughtfully, “if we keep them apart, it causes a paradox, and if we let her leave with him, it causes a paradox.”
“Hence,” the traveler replied, “a double paradox.”
“What's the solution?” Cleo asked.
“A clone.”
“That's just nasty, Rob,” Morgan said, shaking his head.
“I mean,” he explained, “we leave a clone to live out the rest of Miss Marrison's life, after she's run off with Norman.”
“That seems risky to me,” the young man said. “A clone doesn't have thoughts, it has simulated thoughts.”
“How do you mean?” Robert asked with a wide smile.
“It may pretend to think like Emily,” Morgan explained, “but, it won't actually think like her. It might accidentally spin her life off in some unexpected direction. She might not get invited to the talks or she might say the wrong thing when she's there. We might end up making all kinds of minor changes to the time-lines that could blow up into a paradox before all the dust has settled.”
“You're getting better and better at this, Morgan,” his friend chuckled. “It's hard to argue with that logic, which is what makes this tricky. What we have to do is; keep her from meeting Norman, go scan her brain after she's lived out her entire life, rig up a clone that knows her entire future, make sure she meets Norman, and then replace her with the clone.”
“How do we do that?” Cleo asked, her eyes locked on her love.
“Miss Marrison,” Robert replied, “met Mister Dewbridge simply because she happened to forget her lunch that day. She opened her desk drawer to find that it was missing and decided to go out to eat. Norman was havi
ng a meal and chatting with the locals at a small restaurant a short walk from the office where she worked. The two met, started a conversation, and almost instantly fell in love.
“Step one is to give her a lunch that she doesn't know is there until after we get back to Never Never Land.”
“Because if she sees it before we get there,” Celeste began, working it out as she spoke, “she won't meet Norman and we won't need to go back to give her the lunch.”
“Which would trap us in yet another paradox, Mama,” Robert replied, turning his eyes to her husband. “Vox, how long would it take you to rig up a stealth-paper-bag that no one could tell from a regular paper bag?”
“Years?” Vox shrugged with a laugh. “That's never been done, Rob.”
“Do you think we could do it?”
“Maybe,” Vox replied, “but, we'd need to do a good bit of research. We can't just leave a stealth-bag in the past where anyone might be able to find it.”
“One way or the other,” Robert said, shaking his head, “she can't see the lunch until after we get home.”
“Let me think,” Vox said, rubbing his chin. “We could rig up a biodegradable holo-emitter with a break-down-catalyst setup to trigger half-an-hour after the emitter is fired up.”
“What good would that do?” Morgan asked.
“We could have it project the image of an empty drawer after we've hidden the lunch in her desk,” Robert explained with a smile. “That's good, Vox.”
“Once we get back to Never Never Land,” Vox continued, “we'll fire off a signal to turn it off so she'll see the lunch and not go meet Norman.”
“If it's small enough to fit in a drawer,” Azure mused, “it's going to need some kind of signal relay for us to reach it.”
“That will be simple enough,” Vox asserted. “We can make a biodegradable relay and hide it near the office.”
“How long will it take to rig up all that?” the traveler asked.
“A few hours,” Vox shrugged. “With Doc helping me make the parts, I don't see it taking longer than that.”
“You've got that much time,” the traveler asserted. “At the moment, we're on the way to pick up our video equipment. Speaking of which; we're going to have to come up with a more efficient way of doing that.”
“We could keep a pod in the spare launch bay,” Vox suggested. “Then we could leave it behind with whatever equipment we were dropping off.”
“That would be better than this,” Robert agreed. “Still, I think we can do even better than that if we give it some thought.”
“I'm sure we can,” Vox agreed.
With step one in mind, the crew got to work. Doc first helped Vox manufacture all the biodegradable parts he would need. The moment this was done, Vox and Azure began working on assembly while Cleo was programming up an OS for the device and Doc was programming up the crew – one by one – with ancient Rouladen. (This was due to the fact that Robert had assured the entire crew that they could all go along on the upcoming mission and that the Rouladenians didn't speak Common at the target time in their history.) While all this was going on, Celeste and Morgan began preparing a late breakfast. This was done because Robert assured them that they would likely be eating a late lunch. After breakfast had been delivered and consumed, the young man helped with the washing up.
The moment Celeste had no further need of him in the kitchen – which is to say: the galley – Morgan headed back to the bridge. After a few minutes reading (and a few more minutes’ pressing various buttons), he managed to turn the voice control for the computer on.
“Computer,” he said forcefully as soon as this was done.
“Yes, sir?” it asked in a deep, masculine voice.
“Weird,” Morgan asserted. “I expected you to be a girl.”
This statement was met with silence.
“Computer,” he repeated.
“Yes, sir?”
“Why aren't you a girl?”
“I don't understand the question.”
“I'm saying, since your name is Cleo, shouldn't you be a girl?”
“Could you please rephrase the question?”
“Let me think...” Morgan said, rubbing his chin.
“Yes, sir.”
“Why are you a boy?”
“I don't understand the question.”
“Why do you have a boy's voice?”
“You have selected the default voice for voice control, sir.”
“Can I change it?”
“Yes, sir.”
After spending several minutes listening to all the voice possibilities that the ship had to offer, Morgan – shockingly – selected a sultry, female voice. Just after this, the ship dropped into real-space and Robert stepped onto the bridge. As he reached out toward the console, Morgan spoke.
“Hold on there, Hos,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Picking up the equipment we've come here to pick up,” Robert explained.
“Computer,” Morgan said.
“Yes, sir?” the rather sexy female voice asked.
“Can you retrieve our video equipment?”
“I believe so, sir,” it replied.
“Please do so.”
“It's on the way back to the ship, sir.”
“Is there anything else you need, Rob?” the young man asked with a smile.
“I need you to change its voice,” Robert replied.
“That ain't happening,” Morgan asserted, shaking his head. “It took me hours to pick that one.”
“It can't have. We were in the conference room just over...”
“An hour, then,” the young man interjected. “Either way, the voice stays. If you wanted a different one, you should have turned it on yourself.”
“It's up to you, I guess,” the traveler chuckled, pushing buttons on the console. “I've got the feeling you may regret it, though.”
“Why aren't you using the voice control?”
“It takes too long,” Robert explained. “By the time I've told the ship where I want to go, I could have typed it in three of four times.”
“The fastest way isn't always the best way.”
“It is in this case.”
As soon as the video equipment arrived, Robert sent the ship hurtling back into non-space.
“How long before we get where we're going?” Morgan asked.
“Just under an hour,” the traveler replied. “Fortunately, Miss Sharp's place wasn't completely out of the way.”
“We shouldn't waste the time,” the young man asserted. “Let's get the girls and hit the gym for a few minutes. They've never gotten to see my mad martial arts skills. The last time we were all in there together, the girls were clones.”
“I wouldn't worry about that if I were you,” Robert replied, shaking his head. “You don't have any mad martial arts skills to impress them with.”
“In that case,” he rebutted, “I need to acquire some.”
“Agreed,” the traveler nodded. “We don't have time right now, though. I have to prep the holo-emitters for this job.”
“Can I help?”
“You can, actually,” Robert claimed. “I want you to search the ship again. For some reason, I get the feeling that swag-mad pirates are likely to pop into existence in the ship at some point. I want to make sure that they don't take us by surprise.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Morgan replied, rolling his eyes.
Less than an hour after this rapier exchange, Robert gathered the entire crew in the armory. Each of them armed themselves with a tranq-gun, a deadly force weapon, a shield generator, a stealth-belt, and a transponder.
“Obviously,” Robert began, “we shouldn't need weapons or shields. However, one of our guiding principles is now... Morgan?”
“Never lie to the girls for any reason.”
“That's right,” the traveler nodded. “As well as; always expect the unexpected.”
“Which has more to do with the shields and guns than not lyi
ng to the girls does,” Vox added.
“Just so,” Robert agreed. “We should only use them in dire circumstances, and we need to do our best to make sure that circumstances don't become dire. However, we'll have them if we need them.
“In any event,” he continued, “one of the rather interesting physical qualities of the Rouladenians is that – although they physically mature at around twenty – they keep getting taller until around forty. As a result, all of us – even Doc – can easily pass for locals with the aid of holo-emitters.”
Having said this, he switched his on. Morgan gazed at him in utter amazement.
“You look like an elf!” the young man exclaimed.
“I look like a Rouladenian,” the traveler corrected.
“You have pointed ears,” Morgan observed, “long, golden hair, and crystal blues eyes. You could have just stepped right out of D&D.”
“In Dungeons and Dragons,” Robert replied, pointing at Doc – who had just switched on his own holo-emitter, “elves don't grow to be seven feet tall.”
As he made this point, the rest of his companions all transformed themselves.
“Alright,” Morgan nodded. “Then, you could have just stepped out of Lord of the Rings.”
“Rouladenians are rather attractive,” Azure opined.
“The attractive ones are,” the traveler agreed.
“Which attractive ones?” Cleo asked with a tone of mild displeasure.
“The ones that look like you,” Robert replied, slipping his arms around her. “Although I much prefer you in your natural state, I have to admit; you wear this well.”
“What do you think, Morgan?” Azure asked, striking a bit of a pose for him.
“It's not bad,” he admitted. “I mean; obviously, you're a lot hotter in real life, but if – at some point – you decided you wanted to play 'dress up' just for variety's sake, I'd certainly be willing to...”
“Thank you, Morgan,” Robert interjected. “As interesting a topic as that might prove, we have other things to discuss at the moment.”
“Like what?” the young man asked.
“Cleo, love,” he said, gazing down into her currently blue eyes, “I need you to take a rather brief class.”
“What kind of class?” she asked, looking at him from under a single raised eyebrow.
The Search for Cleo Page 3