Time Series: Complete Bundle

by Claire Davon

  Finally they were at the top. The Commander gave her a look and Fiona nodded to the opening, one she knew from experience led to the familiar view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  “Let’s go,” she said. For the first time she saw a flicker of uncertainty. “Now.”

  He pushed on the port until it gave and opened. Gale-force wind and grit blew around them. A dark grey sky was visible but she couldn’t see the ruin she knew lay out there. She didn’t need to. She’d seen it one too many times. Debris began blowing into the opening, refuse that had a new source to occupy. Fiona choked on the stale air and saw the Commander do the same.

  His hair was plastered to his body by the ceaseless wind. She saw it try to tug him out and he clung to the last remaining steel step.

  “No,” he shouted. “It’s not possible.”

  “This is what your boy did,” she said, keeping the weapon on him. “This is your legacy. Death. The ruin of all things. You have done all this, murdered the man I love, for nothing. You misguided son of a bitch. You caused this. Not me. You.”

  “No,” he said. “No. We fixed it.” He focused on Fiona, who was three rungs below him. “You did this. You’re lying to me. Ah!” he shouted, as the wind continued and more dirt poured in. Nothing else moved. “Make it stop.”

  She felt no pity for him, no sympathy.

  Now, Fiona.

  “I can make it stop, and I will.”

  Fiona realized what the writers meant when they said someone had murder in their eyes. There was no mistaking the expression on the Commander’s face, and also his indecision. He couldn’t kill her or he’d be stranded here, in a world where there was nothing left.

  She should leave him there. That would be fitting. She should jump out now and leave him to the ruin of the world.

  Before she could act, the Commander moved. He roared and seemed to be banking on the fact she might not know how to use the weapon. He looped one arm around the handle of the port and kicked at her.

  Fiona shot him. Once. Twice, and a third time for good measure. Large bursts of energy appeared across his chest and he jerked. His look of surprise was comical and she wanted to laugh. His grip on the handle loosened and he let go. For a moment she thought he was going to pitch back into the bunker. She prepared to fire again. He gave her an odd look and staggered free and out into the topside chaos.

  Her last glimpse of the Commander was his face in a rictus of agony and surprise. His body appeared to be melting with the blasts and the fury of the Earth as it existed now. Then the wind caught him and blew him high up and sideways, out of sight.

  The wind continued to howl and Fiona grabbed for the door. It resisted her for moments before she wrested it into place. The sound of the wind diminished when it shut with a clang.

  She was tired. She wanted to rest but there was no time. Fiona corrected herself. There was plenty of time. She didn’t want to waste it.

  She tucked the weapon back into her back and descended again. The ladder creaked under her weight. Once back down she picked her way to the small room and looked at the clock. She knew the Event happened somewhere around 2230, but not the exact date. She would jump to the Event and work backwards. Timing would be essential. She wished she had Sonder, or Rogald, or even Illiria. Did she have time to jump back and get one of them? No, there were too many possible paradoxes. She didn’t know what was happening on the other side, but if his descendant was aware, he might be trying to stop it.

  With a deep breath, Fiona focused on the clock again, and jumped.

  #

  2230. November. Fiona listened. There was still heard howling outside. This was post Event. She had to go back farther.

  #

  2230. September. Same.

  2230 August. Same.

  2230. July. Same.

  2230. June 25th…not same.

  #

  She could feel the change in the area, the time shift and difference in the weather told her that the Event had either just happened, or was in the processing of happening. She focused again and jumped.

  2230. June 24th.

  Fiona looked at the clock and felt the atmosphere around her. She pulled on one of the helmets and switched it on, cutting the dark with its bright beam. There was no need for subtlety. The Commander’s descendant, whose name she didn’t know, had to know she was coming. He had warned the Commander against her. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he thought the Commander had taken care of her. He thought she was out of the way.

  If nothing else, that convinced Fiona she was in the right. If the Commander’s descendant had been doing the right thing and she had been wrong, then the balance of time scenarios should show the Event didn’t happen with her out of the way. Nothing the Guardians had run had shown that. As a certainty, it would have to be enough.

  She pushed into the corridor and out into the main area. It was blazing with light which seemed to come from a central globe hovering above the room. Future tech, she decided. There was a lot of great stuff to learn, but it would have to wait.

  As expected, she saw a person in the middle of the room, bent over a machine. Fiona stared at it. It was small for what it was about to do. The man was not paying her any attention, focusing on the machine. He didn’t expect trouble.

  “Knock knock,” she said, and the man whirled. His eyes widened when he saw her and she realized she was blinding him with the helmet. She reached up and shut the beam off.

  “You!” he cried, in surprise and alarm. He didn’t look like the Commander. Several generations had diluted any resemblance to the man out. He had a bland appearance, smooth as if he had been altered. She wondered if they’d found a way to modify the body from within.

  “Me,” she agreed.

  The man looked behind her, as if expecting the Commander to be with her.

  “Where is Bernie?” he asked and it took Fiona a moment to realize he had to be talking about the Commander. If she told him the Commander was gone he might get unstable. If she told him a lie he might let down his guard, thinking the Commander would be there at any moment. So she shrugged and raised her hands in a gesture of uncertainty.

  “I don’t know,” she lied. “I lost him in the time stream.” It was odd the man would be expecting to see the Commander anyway, she realized, since he couldn’t get to this time frame.

  “He can’t come here,” she said. The man frowned.

  “He will in a moment. This will fix everything. You won’t stop me.”

  She wished she had access to the Guardian devices that would show the various scenarios.

  “It doesn’t fix anything,” she said. Maybe reason would work, although she knew that was a silly thought. “It destroys everything. I have come from tomorrow. The Event is in motion, tearing the world apart. Stop this. Don’t activate that device.”

  He looked at her and shook his head. “When we found the tech, when we realized what we had, we weren’t sure what to do at first.”

  She nodded, trying to stay focused for when she had to freeze everything. She wasn’t sure how much he knew about her powers, but she had to assume he knew everything.

  She frowned. “Found the tech? Where?”

  He grimaced. “The polar ice caps melt more and more each year. Many of them are gone. After some melted we discovered three devices in Antarctica. When we activated them two vanished and left behind this. We discovered one went to a base on Mars and some to the past. We’ve been to Mars, of course, but we don’t have the resources to maintain a base there. Even though we can’t get topside on Mars, the fact that we’re there, in the future, is so amazing. We can colonize it, if we can figure out how to get out.”

  “Are you saying you were the first ones to use the portals? You and your,” she glanced around to punctuate the lack of other people, “friends?”

  He twisted a knob and looked up. His eyes were brown, she noticed.

  “We found them and we used them. It’s so remarkable. What is your name? The messages don’t
say.”

  “Fiona,” she said.

  “Fiona. The Traveler. Do you ever hear a voice in your head?”

  She nodded.

  “We all do. From what we can figure out these devices are from our distant future, sent back to us but something went wrong. We think they lost control somehow and are in the time stream. But after a while, they stopped. I discovered this device and started tinkering with it. It will save us.”

  She chose her words carefully. “Did the voices tell you that?”

  He snorted. “They stopped talking to me. I think this is a wormhole. I have to activate it. Imagine, um, what was your name again?”

  “Fiona.”

  “Fiona.” His eyes burned with zealotry. “They were on other worlds and stepped back here to check on primitive man. I don’t know what the bases are for, but it doesn’t matter. With this we can go anywhere. And I will be in charge of it. I want to see the Sombrero Galaxy, the Crab Nebula, black holes. I want to see it all. This is the device that got them here, and it is going to be what will set us free.”

  Fiona finally understood. Whatever the device was, whether it was a wormhole or a black hole or something their physics hadn’t caught up to yet, it demolished the world when it was activated. Maybe it was unstable and that’s why they crashed on Earth. There were a lot of maybes, but she didn’t know and it didn’t matter.

  “Don’t do it,” she said. “You will destroy everything if you turn that on.”

  He scoffed. “That’s a load of nonsense. I’ve heard about this so-called Event you 20th century travelers talk about, but that’s never going to happen. This will save us, not destroy us.”

  He didn’t have time travel powers, she realized. He didn’t know how to use the devices. They were still linear. He had discovered it and therefore he could not use it but yet he had… The paradox made her mind hurt. She had thought that the man traveled to meet the Commander, but that wasn’t true. She didn’t know how he had gotten the messages down through time. Those events hadn’t happened yet. If she succeeded that past, or future, would be wiped out and never occur. He thought by switching the machine on he would gain freedom. But it would only bring death.

  He made a gesture and looked up.

  Time slowed without Fiona even being aware it was happening. The hovering light box, which she had taken for a source of light, was also a weapon. In slowed time she saw a beam emerge from it, aiming straight toward her.

  She saw the Commander’s descendant reaching for a switch that would activate the device and destroy the world. She had been to tomorrow. She knew the Event was happening.

  Fiona stopped time.

  The beam and the descendant froze in place. The menacing white light was about a foot away from the hovering object, short pulses of energy emitting from it. She saw a second one beginning to emerge behind the first. The descendant was frozen with his hand about two inches from the switch.

  Her head felt heavy and her body felt like she was slogging through molasses. She felt time’s resistance, its reluctance to give up the Armageddon of the future that lay seconds from now. She saw the beam move toward her and knew the little weapon was not going to be subject to her time freeze for long. None of it was. Time was fighting her. There was no time to wonder. Ready or not, she was committed to this.

  As if at the bottom of the ocean, Fiona made her way to the device and out of range of the beam heading her way. She didn’t doubt the weapon would refocus on her when it slipped the time freeze. She had only seconds.

  Fiona. Into the black.

  She frowned. She tried to tug on the descendant’s sleeve but his hand refused to move. Time was struggling to assert itself. How powerful must the machine be if it could create time anomalies with this sort of resistance?

  Into the black? Her? Why should she go into the black?

  No.

  The machine?

  She saw the beam come closer, moving far too fast. The descendant’s hand moved and now was on the switch. It glowed and she realized he had pressed it.

  Fiona summoned a breath and focused on the machine and herself. She put a hand on it and feeling as if that wasn’t enough, put her arms around it. They didn’t go all the way, but it would have to do. Into the black, then. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, she thought.

  Purposely summoning no exit point at all, Fiona took a deep breath and brought her time travel powers to the surface. She felt the black grab them and swirl around her. She felt ill and then, with a pop, descended into the black. She could feel nothing and hoped like hell the machine was with her. She had no picture to guide her by. Fiona opened her arms, although she felt nothing. She hoped the machine was dropping away from her, into the black. The black grabbed her and gripped her. With no exit point she may never come out. Her last thought was of Sonder. Then she lost the fight to stay conscious.

  Chapter 7

  “She’s awake,” a voice said.

  Fiona lifted her head, and felt sharp pain behind her eyes. She opened them and looked around. The room was strange, alien, and her addled senses couldn’t make sense of it. She did not seem to be supported by anything and yet she was horizontal. She didn’t appear to be anywhere but she was also everywhere. There was a display above her in a language she didn’t recognize.

  Then a person was just…there…as if teleported in. It looked human, or humanoid, but different as well. There was something strange about the way the being was walking and she realized the creature was gliding. Luke Skywalker’s skimmer had nothing on this person. Another person came in, with the same fluid motion. She wasn’t sure if she should be scared.

  Don’t be scared, Fiona Jensen.

  “Who are you? Where am I?” Her memories came flooding back and Fiona groaned. Her body ached as if she’d run the Boston marathon. Her head pounded. The room was curved, as if it was a pod rather than a room.

  It is a manifestation of your memories. We trust you are comfortable in this room.

  “We are the Voice.”

  “The…Event…? Did I...stop it?”

  The humanoid nodded. “You did, Fiona Jensen. Time is restored to its normal course. The anomalies that occurred when the machine was triggered still happen. The machine went into the black when it was being activated. It caused havoc along the time stream, moving backwards and exploding in Thera.”

  Again, something she should have realized.

  “And the Earth?”

  See for yourself.

  The humanoid turned something and the wall glowed. It showed her and the descendant. The Event had started when he pressed the button. Time froze for an instant when she shifted. When she opened her arms the machine went into the enigma that was the black. The small hole in San Francisco paused and winked out. Fiona could almost hear a poof behind it. She sighed with relief. She had done it. The Earth was safe.

  She had lost her love in the process, but the world remained. It should be a fair trade, but it didn’t seem that way.

  “Good,” she said. There would be other men, in time. But none would ever be the man of her dreams.

  “Why me?” she asked. “Why did I have these powers?”

  The Voice, the person manifesting as the Voice, paused.

  You were not the first one.

  “I…what?”

  The wall shifted again, and she saw a series of people coming in and out of time. None seemed to last long. Fiona frowned.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “In most the time senses drive them insane,” the humanoid said. “You were the first who was able to stay sane and do what was needed.”

  Hmm. That made her Traveler-ness ess special. But being the last of a line was okay too, she supposed.

  “How come you couldn’t stop it?”

  The person made a noise and Fiona realized it was the first sound she had heard from it. The words she was hearing were in her mind.

  “When we were stranded here we were caught between worlds,” the be
ing said. “We were not corporeal. There was little we could do to influence things, other than choose a soul to bestow time gifts on. When the device destroyed the world we had to fix things or we would cease to exist. It is…complicated. But you did it, and now we are all free. We owe you a debt, Fiona Jensen.”

  Was there time in the black, Fiona wondered. Where had the machine gone? Would she keep her powers? So many questions. She doubted she’d ever know the truth.

  They owed her a debt. Could she ask? Should she? There was one thing she wanted and it was the only thing that mattered.

  “I want Sonder restored to me,” she said and the other frowned. “I don’t care if it’s against the rules. Bend the rules. I want him back. Please.”

  The person shook their head, a gesture familiar to Fiona. She wondered how they knew it and then decided however far these people were from the future, and from where, some things didn’t change.

  “That is not possible,” the person said with a sorrowful tone.

  Fiona wanted to shout at them, but stopped herself. If Sonder were gone, of course it wasn’t possible, any more than it would be possible to bring the Commander back. It might be doable, by bending time until it screamed, but it wouldn’t last. Sonder would be struck down by a truck, or trip over a Chihuahua. He was gone and there was no bringing him back.

  She nodded and tried to rise. Her head shot daggers through her body and Fiona sank back down to a prone position.

  “I understand. I wish you could.” All her powers seemed ridiculous when she couldn’t change the fate of the one person who mattered. He had done what was necessary to ensure the safety of the world. That was Sonder. She wouldn’t change a thing about him. Wouldn’t have changed a thing.

  “We can send you back before the time of your discovering your power, although doing it a third time has risks,” the member of the Voice said. “We can erase any memory you have of this and you can resume your life as if you had never left it.”