Timewise

by P. K. Gardner

  Before Tyler can say another word, Jones is off and running. Tyler stares after him for long moments and then takes off after him. Jones has longer legs than Tyler, stretching his way farther and farther ahead. It occurs to Tyler that he's running toward danger when he should be heading in the opposite direction, but the thought doesn't even slow him down. He has to know what this is about. Has to know what's got Jones spooked, what caused the scream in the distance.

  Jones rounds a corner, heading toward the music wing. The discordant sound of the brass section tuning seeps through the walls. Tyler takes the corner without slowing down, but he nearly plows into the security officer.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Mr. Cleaver snags Tyler roughly by the shoulder. "Answer me, son!"

  "Late for class," Tyler grunts.

  Past Cleaver's right ear, Tyler can see Kevin Jones stop at the front door and look back. He mouths sorry and disappears into the light from outside. Something in the pit of Tyler's stomach flips over and freezes like he's just swallowed a vat of liquid nitrogen. The scene swims in front of his eyes. The sunlight seeping in from the edge of the doorframe lingers in his vision. Suddenly, Cleaver's hand on his shoulders is the only thing grounding him to reality. Tyler realizes he's still talking, babbling about being in middle school and finding classes, but the words seem to distort in his mouth, warping so badly that he can hardly hear them, much less comprehend them.

  "Get on with it then," Cleaver snaps. "Get to class."

  "Yessir," Tyler slurs, only dimly aware he's getting off easy. Cleaver lets go of his arm and he stumbles forward, feet working on their own accord.

  "Don't run!" Cleaver yells after him.

  Tyler forces himself to slow down and put one foot in front of the other as he moves unsteadily down the hall. Two minutes later, his photography class greets him with the smell of stop bath and developer. The acrid stench hits him hard enough to send spots into his vision.

  "Mr. Smith?" the teacher says, consulting the role for his name. There is a note of worry in her voice. "Mr. Smith? Are you feeling all right?"

  Something's wrong, he tries to say, but his mouth isn't working. He feels like someone has reached icy cold hands into his stomach and started pulling at him from all sides. Something's wrong something's wrong something's wrong.

  He thinks of Kevin Jones running toward the crash, he thinks of Zane Tucker sitting in a prison cell, he thinks of the freezing thing inside him that threatens to tear him apart.

  Routine check for that.

  The fire alarm sounds.

  "It can't be that hard to find this guy," Annie Gallagher complains, glancing around the campus. "We're mucking around in time that already happened."

  Ty adjusts the folds of his jacket. It's 2172 and they've got a tack on Zane in a place called Callope University. "No, it hasn't. It's all happening right now."

  "Right," Annie sneers, "but by Timewise standards, this is past."

  "Doesn't work exactly that way," Ty says. "The present and the past run more or less parallel. Zane's grounded in the future so his actions, though synched pastside, are also happening at a set time in the future. Something to do with how a week pastside is the same as a week in the present."

  Annie wrinkles her nose and gives him a look. "You're talking from your ass."

  "Look," Ty says. "It doesn't matter whyfore. It just matters that we find the guy."

  "We should split," Annie says. "Cover more ground. Besides, I know this campus backside front. Tucker picked a bad place this time around. Callope University attendee, I was."

  Ty is sure Zane has his reasons for choosing this destination. He's always been sure Zane has reasons for everything he's done. Tyler just doesn't know the endgame.

  Annie disappears into the crowd. She has a knack for it; a knack for deception, a knack for lies. She's perfect for a field agent and incredibly adept for a rookie.

  Ty glances around the crowd, the endless sea of faces, all of them new, all of them unfamiliar, but still a constant. No matter what time he is in, there are always people, there is always a crowd.

  Then, to his immense surprise, he spots Zane Tucker. He's standing just outside of an academic building, arms crossed over his chest, surveying the students.

  "Zane!" he calls, jogging over to him. "Zane!"

  Zane's chin jerks up, eyes narrowing, and Ty knows something's wrong the second he sees his face. This is Zane, sure, but it's not the same Zane who'd betrayed Timewise, humanity and Tyler.

  "Ty?" Zane asks hesitantly, and Ty can read the same confusion in his eyes. "The hell you doing here?" He fingers the stunner holstered at his side. "You're aged too far to be my Ty."

  "I'm looking for you!" Ty cries. There's an odd sort of prickle on the back of his neck. If Zane is here, that means Ty is here too, or at least the Ty of two years ago. The novice out on one of his first slips.

  "The hell am I doing crosswise timelines like that?" Zane asks, but then his eyebrows furrow and he adds, "Wait, no. Don't want to hear it."

  "Paradoxes," Ty agrees. "Where's the other me?"

  "Giving Gallagher the mission statement, I appose."

  "Gallagher's here too?" Ty says. Panic seizes his gut and starts to squeeze. There is nothing but adrenaline in his veins. "Right now?"

  "Acorse," Zane says. "Just picked her up."

  The color drains from Ty's face as he realizes what Zane's (the future Zane Tucker, not this one who is still his friend) plan is.

  The same matter cannot exist in the same place at the same time. It's a physical impossibility. They cancel each other out. If past Ty and present Ty bump into each other, both will cease to exist.

  There are two Zane Tuckers here. Two Tyler Smiths. Two Anne Gallaghers. "I need to get out of here," Ty says. "I need to grab Annie and slip on out of here."

  "Hold," Zane says. "I'm here, you're here, and Gallagher's here? Has all of Timewise gone hellside?"

  "Can't say," Ty says. "You know I can't say."

  Zane nods, accepting his statement at face value and something inside Ty withers up and dies. This is the Zane Tucker he knows, the Zane Tucker who's devoted to the agency, the one who would never dream of stepping on a butterfly much less going rogue.

  (what changed?)

  "Get out," Zane says. "I'll make sure you don't go running the way of my Ty. Hope you can go steering your Gallagher and me of the future elsewhere."

  "Acorse," Ty says and he's backing away because meeting yourself can be catastrophic even if there is no physical contact. Mention something too specific and entire timelines unravel to weave themselves into new patterns. He might wake up tomorrow a whole new person.

  When Anne spots him, she jogs over to meet him in the middle of the quad. It's between classes and the students are starting to flood out of classrooms and into the fresh air.

  "Got nada and nothing," Annie says. "You got luck?"

  "I saw Zane," Tyler croaks.

  "The hell you standing here for?" Annie says. "Let's go get him."

  "He's with me," Ty says. "Another me. Another you. Don't you understand Annie? We're all here. We've been here before."

  "Still is Tucker," Annie says, rolling up her sleeves. "Say we pick him up."

  "We can't do that!" Ty's moving in the opposite direction of Zane. "We're pastside and today already happened! We muck with it and we won't even be here anymore. We'll be somewhere else, sometime else, hell, someone else. You don't understand how bad this is."

  "Smith," Annie challenges.

  Ty grabs her by the shoulder. "Back to Timewise," he says. "Gotta slip now. Zane's smart; he's not going to linger places with more than one of him. Timewise'll have the tack on him."

  Annie sighs, a concession. She fades from view to leave Ty standing alone. He glances back at Zane Tucker and sees himself instead. He closes his eyes and surrenders to the cold.

  "Time," the professor drones from the front of the class, "is linear. No matter what anyone tells you, ti
me's progression goes sequentially. There are no loops, no turns, no preordained paradoxes, nothing. Time is and always has been linear. Certain select people, people like us, are not linear. Our lives deviate significantly from time's straight path, slipping back and forth."

  Tyler sits slumped in the back of class. Jones Longwood is behind him. Despite the futuristic setting, the Academy is depressingly similar to the schools of his own time. It has the same set of boring professors, the same uncomfortable desks and the same lethargic clocks.

  "The ability to slip through time comes from the mutation of a gene on the fourth chromosome. There is no conclusive evidence as to why this mutation occurs or the mechanisms that make it work. Timewise scientists have been investigating the gene long as Timewise has existed. Though some have speculated that the mutation in the gene was spurred by tikker involvement but nothing and nada has been confirmed."

  "They did it to us," Jones Longwood hisses behind Ty. "Timewise stole us from our houses and changed us 'gainst our willing."

  "It's Tikkers that pose the greatest threat to temporal stability and it's Tikkers that. . ."

  "Shitful" Longwood mutters, "It's all shitful."

  (later, much later, Ty will start seeing things Longwood's way)

  A hush always surrounds Run Richards. It's no fault of his own. He is a Timewise operative, a good one at that. Originally from the turn of the 22nd century, Run is one of the few people Ty classifies as a genuinely good person. He has dark hair, freckled cheeks and an easy smile.

  Ty hates looking at him.

  A knot forms in his stomach every time he glances Run's way and it pulls tighter the longer he stares.

  He asks Val Teasley about it one day while he's walking through the offices after class. She flashes Run an uneasy glance, and her big, dark eyes turn downward. "Poor guy," she says, struggling to keep her voice light. "No one knows what to do with him elsemore."

  "What's wrong with him?" Ty asks.

  Run doesn't seem to notice the commotion he causes just by existing. He just goes about his business in his usual easy manner.

  But there is something very wrong with him.

  "Run Richards is one a Timewise's greatest tragedies," Val says, settling down behind her desk. "Turns your stomach, don't it? Not just you elsewise. Not many folk can handle being around him."

  "What's wrong with him?" Ty asks again. "It feels like it does around tikkers, only worse."

  "Few months pastside, Run Richards was on an op that got jumped by tikkers. Some civilians got caught in the crosswise. His partner found out who one of them was." She casts a mournful look in Run's direction. "His mom. By rights, Run Richards shouldn't exist. No possible way for him to be born."

  Despite the twisting of his stomach, Ty can't tear his eyes off the man. Run is alone at his desk. The other agents seem to edge away from him, forming around him in a ring. Ty realizes it's not that Run doesn't notice, but that he doesn't care.

  "Then how is he still here? Why doesn't anyone tell him?"

  Val shrugs, twirling a lock of dark hair with her index finger. "What are we going to say? 'Sorry, Run, but you never were born? You're a walking paradox that turns my stomach?' Nah, second he fixes it out, he's gone. Won't be the first time it's happened and I don't expect it'll be the last. He's a glitch now, an anomaly in the timeline. The world's rewriting itself, and Run's in its way. That's the thing about people in paradoxes. They're stubborn. They want to stay breathing. The second he fixes it out, that means he's accepted it and the world snaps back to right."

  In the distance, Zane Tucker walks up to Run, clapping a hand on his back. Run grins at him, all too happy to have a human connection. Ty can feel the bile building in his throat just watching the contact.

  Val shakes her head. "Never could figure out how Zane does it. Guy must have steel for stomach lining. Run's not the only one either. He adopts them, you know? Zane doesn't talk much, but I think he knows what needs saying."

  Zane glances over to Val and Ty, a challenge in his voice when he speaks, "Off for lunch. Join us?"

  "That's fine," Val says. "Have fun."

  Ty nods his agreement, unable to stomach the thought of eating around the walking paradox that is Run Richards. Run smiles at them as he passes and Ty feels an inexplicable surge of guilt.

  "How long?" he croaks when they're gone. "How long does he stay in limbo like that?"

  "Don't know," says Val, pulling a pen from the coffee mug on her desk and flipping open a report. "It's happened before, acorse. Always different. Seen guys only last ten days. Heard tell of some making it thirty years. Whenever he fixes it out, it's goodbye to Run Richards and hello paperwork."

  The world restarts as Run and Zane walk out of the office. There is no mention of paradoxes, but the taboo hangs in the air, so real a presence that Ty can almost reach out and touch it.

  Sweat drips down Ty's forehead, dribbling down his cheek toward the ground. He's no good at this, terrible, in fact, not to mention out of shape, but it's been a long time since he felt this normal.

  "Ready?" Jones calls. He tosses the basketball to his defender, receiving it back on the bounce. "Let's go then."

  The day is dying slowly. There are ten of them: five from Timewise and five from who-cares-when on an unevenly paved basketball court nestled between a factory and some low-rent housing. They've been playing for hours, will be playing for hours more, playing until they can't seen the basket anymore.

  It's a day off at the Academy, a day off classes and there's nowhere to play basketball at Timewise. But who needs it when you've got four hundred years of pickup games to choose from? According to Jones Longwood, 2219 has got some of the best pickup in the century.

  Ty crouches in a defensive stance. The person he's guarding is faster than he is, more experienced. Ty's legs are screaming as he starts his sixth game straight but there's a huge grin on his face and he can't think of anywhere he'd rather be.

  They'll be reprimanded for this when they get back. But really what harm can it do? Five kids from a different time playing pickup with the locals until the sun goes down. What can happen? What can change?

  His man crosses over and Ty reflexively makes a swipe for the ball and miraculously makes contact. The ball bounces free. He darts after the ball, fumbling for it with sweaty hands. Jones Longwood has already broken for the opposite hoop, stretching his long legs down the court with astonishing speed. Ty throws the ball up and out. Longwood catches it on the first bounce, leaps up to lay it in.

  These people have been dead for two hundred years, Ty thinks with a hint of awe. He's playing basketball with relics of the golden age and the thought doesn't make his skin crawl like it used to.

  The locals will be going home tonight, back to normal lives and school and work and Ty will be back at Timewise reading about their lives in lecture. Reading about how they talked, how they dressed. . .

  It's good to do this, Ty decides. Good to make them seem human instead of an abstract notion in a textbook. And it's good to play basketball until his body aches, until he gasps for breath and can't think of anything but the ball and the basket and how good it feels to be alive.

  It's supposed to be easy. An op in the suburbs of Washington D.C. around 2200. The kid's not even a hard find. He's a senior at the local high school, name of Jackson Knoddings. Jax is a tall, dark-haired orphan who has nothing and no one to stay for. Timewise has tacked onto his accidental slips in four different time periods. Jax has been marked temporally unstable and it's Ty and Zane who draw the assignment to bring him to the Agency.

  Zane lets Ty do the talking; Zane always lets Ty do the talking. Zane would rather wander off to check out the scenery, which is what he does. Ty doesn't even realize something's gone wrong until he notices Jax shivering despite the heat.

  "What's the matter?" Ty asks.

  "Nothing," Jax says. "It shouldn't be this cold in mid-summer."

  Now that he mentions it, Ty can feel it too — the cold
seeping in out of nowhere like a fog settling in the damp morning air. "I need to be finding Zane," Ty says, the words thick and clumsy on his lips.

  "Sure," Jax says, raising an eyebrow.

  Ty bolts out the door, suddenly sure something is wrong. But everything is fine. Sure, the sky is cloudy and the sun dim even at high noon, but that's the 23rd century for you. As far as the locals know, the sky has always been clogged with pollution. There's a slight breeze, but it's nowhere near enough to account for the chill. Everything is fine except for the fact that Zane Tucker is nowhere to be seen.

  "Zane!" Ty calls. "C'mon, Tucker, where are you?"

  Ty waits an anxious moment. Jax is a step behind him. He doesn't say anything, but Ty can hear him breathing, the only noise in the still air. There are no birds singing, no crickets chirping, nothing.

  "Zane!" Ty calls again.

  Zane steps out from his perch. He'd been leaning up against a tree, hidden from Ty's view. "Crissakes," Zane grumbles. "What are you on about?"

  There's nothing wrong. It's a perfectly ordinary day. Zane's all right.

  "Nothing," Ty says.

  "Right," Zane says, "We ready to slip back to Timewise?"

  "If Jax is good for it," Ty replies, turning back toward the lanky local. He always makes a point to ask if they want to come. Recruits are twice as good if they're willing.

  If Jax says no, they'll take him by force. Can't have anyone untrained running around time.

  "What do you say Jax?" Ty asks. "Ready for a life of high adventure?"

  Jax's eyes widen. He screams something, mouth moving, but Ty can't hear him. The cold's back, flowing through Ty's veins, freezing his blood. Ty fumbles for the stunner at his hips with numb fingers, raising it to fire at the exact moment the tikker seizes Zane by the neck. Zane's eyes go wide in shock as the tikker's blue fingers curl around his jugular and squeeze. Red pools in his cheeks. Terror blooms in his eyes.

  Ty's never seen Zane afraid. He's never seen anything but cool professionalism from Zane Tucker. His panic is off-putting in all the worst ways.