Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel

by Michael Bunker

  He stared back, daring me to hurt him. I stepped back and let go. He straightened his collar. “Doesn’t look like God needs me to convince him.”

  Another two weeks off. Mara was up in rotation when a real case came in, leaving me to study under the care of a taciturn man whose attitude suggested he was on the verge of retirement. I rededicated myself to the work, but found myself staring through the screen, absorbing nothing.

  For the fourth case, we got something new. Kingmaker scenario. A nobody from Primetime flits off to a backwater to play out their fantasies of grandeur. Rarely happens in modern days—things are more settled than they used to be, it’s much harder to fly under the radar when you’re disrupting things on that scale—but it still crops up here and there. For some, utopia isn’t enough. They want worship.

  In this case, the virtual trespasser was entangling herself in a world where everything was jittering like a three a.m. Sunday comedown. Roughly mid-twenty-first, by standard reckoning. Too many living in desperation and too little funding to keep the violence corralled. Within this framework, the trespasser had spurred a joint rebellion in both Baja and Southern California. Due to her intrusion, tens of thousands would die in the fighting, and the area would crash twice as hard as in the pure version of the timestream.

  And I had to find her within a paranoid, violent underground who had consciously isolated themselves from the surveillance and public online presences that tended to make that era so easy to navigate.

  I was three days in and (I felt sure) one move away from her when everything went white. As I was pulled from the simulation, there was no swimmy, vertigo-inducing disorientation. Just Mara, dropping her face below the rising edge of the Pod.

  “I’m going in,” she said. “Real case. Answer now: Will you go with me?”

  “Of course.”

  She nodded, handed me a plain black backpack, and ran from the room at a dead run. We crossed into a hall into a second chamber of Pods, dressed ourselves in period-appropriate clothes the Pod had waiting for us, and climbed inside. The vertigo of the transfer was three times worse than it had been in the sims. I felt like I was turning inside out, like my teeth were flipping up from my gums to swallow my head. Next came the numb non-being of betweenness.

  Then I was there.

  “There” was a forest, dark—the Pods can’t directly observe conditions on the ground without damaging their pristine state (and risking exposing themselves), so they have to pop us out in the middle of nowhere, where there’s virtually no chance our arrival is witnessed. Makes the first few hours of a visit a real pain in the ass. There in the woods, Mara knelt and dug into her pack, withdrawing a sheaf of paper, the margins perforated. My heart sank.

  “Tell me there’s a tablet hidden in there.”

  Scanning her printouts, she smiled wryly. “Full-on analog, baby. I’m afraid this asshole knows what he’s doing.”

  “This is ridiculous. Why didn’t we poke our eyes out before hopping in the Pod, too?”

  She got what she needed—directions, I assumed—and started jogging through the trees. “We’re not operating completely blind. This knife cuts both ways.”

  I followed her through the undergrowth. The smell of fallen leaves was tremendous. “Why me? Why not Jackson?”

  “What happened between you two? At the Academy?”

  “What would it matter?” I cocked my head. “Unless you heard about our little disagreement.”

  “I hear everything, Blake.”

  “I’m sure the Pods help. For the record, he was being a poor winner.”

  “And at the Academy?”

  “He hurt a friend of mine,” I said. “I straightened him out. Okay, your turn.”

  “Don’t you understand?” Mara slowed, eyes skipping between mine. “The trespasser. It’s Jackson.”

  I stumbled on a root. One that might not have been there. “You’re joking.”

  “It’s not unprecedented. Get in the Cutting Room, and you’ve got access to everything.”

  “Including an education in how not to get caught,” I muttered. “So what’d he come back to do?”

  “Murder,” she shrugged. “Penny Clarke. Twenty-five. Ten days from now, she’ll be reported missing. She’s never found.”

  “That’s it? Would have expected more from Jackson.”

  Mara gave me a look. “It’s easy to look down on these people. They still use phones, for God’s sake. Attached to walls. And you, you’re Primetime. In a week, you’ll walk out of here, same as you’d walk out of a theater and back into your real life. But Penny Clarke—she’s a real person, too. Just as much as you. Always remember that.”

  I was quiet a minute. “If I drop this one, am I out?”

  “If you keep worrying about yourself instead of the victim, you will be.”

  We crested a ridge, but the trees blocked our sight ahead. Far away, a train whistle pealed through the night.

  “Better hurry,” Mara said.

  The ground sloped down for a few hundred yards, then leveled. The trees quit, revealing iron tracks under the stars. We jogged down to the platform just in time to greet the screeching metal monster pulling to a stop. Inside, scattered passengers gazed out the windows. Some read paper books and glossy magazines, also paper. A kid with long, greasy hair and a flannel jacket wore bulky, round things over his ears. Headphones.

  We were in public and there wasn’t much to say, so we didn’t. Within half an hour, a million lights sprang into view. It was unique, as always, each iteration sporting its own geography of towers, yet the Manhattan skyline was recognizable on any world.

  “Neither of us have been here before,” Mara said, as if reading my thoughts. “You think you know it, but you don’t.”

  We detrained at Norfolk Station. It was getting on in the evening, but people streamed around us as Mara examined a subway map and proceeded to navigate us to a Brooklyn hotel a few blocks from the Clarke woman’s apartment. While Mara left to fetch a car from an all-night rental place, she posted me in the diner at the corner down the street from the woman’s apartment. Mara was gone more than two hours, and I was glad for the chance to drink some coffee, bad as it was, and let my mind adjust to having been yanked from a simulated world and dumped into a real one, neither of which were mine. I saw two people enter the apartment, and jotted down their descriptions.

  In our musty-smelling hotel room, Mara waved her printouts at me. “Our file is as thin as the stuff it’s printed on.”

  “The net?”

  “In its baby phase. Not nearly big enough to have enmeshed the culture yet. Maybe our job’s as simple as waiting for Jackson to expose himself, but he knows we’ll be watching. He’ll have brought a mask.”

  “Then how do we recognize him?”

  “We watch from the street. Follow Penny Clarke, see who she meets, then take a sniff at them and see if they’re wearing Eau de Primetime.”

  She gave us a quick haircut to make us less obvious, then handed me a pair of sunglasses. She drove, parking up and across the street from the apartment. The Pod had culled several pictures of Penny Clarke from obituaries and such and I memorized these as the hours ticked away. The neighborhood was quiet but unfriendly, single men wandering past without destination. By the early hours, both of us were nodding off. Mara told me to head back to the hotel for a nap. I was grateful, but it wasn’t long enough; when I spelled her, I had to bite the insides of my cheeks to keep from falling asleep.

  Morning light hit the street, dirty and yellow. Mara popped the passenger door, startling me.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  She glared across the street. “Grab us some breakfast. Anything with bacon.”

  I returned to the diner, paying with one of the bills the Pod had printed into my wallet along with my ID, and brought back our food. The bacon tasted even better than it had in the simulations.

  “Here’s where she works,” Mara said, passing me an
address. “See if she’s in. Don’t get made.”

  I wasn’t overjoyed about running solo through a strange city where every other one of the barbarians was carrying a gun, but that was the job. The job I’d been working toward for six years of secondary school and another three years in the Academy. I climbed out of the car. The street smelled like old, damp laundry. I jogged past brick walkups and struggling trees guarded by short black iron fences. Her work was only a ten-minute jog away, a bodega with attached cafe.

  Clarke wasn’t in. That, according to the guy behind the counter, was because she hadn’t worked there in weeks.

  I jogged back to the car and clambered inside. “I don’t get it. Weeks, Mara. Is she already gone? How could the Pod have screwed that up?”

  She narrowed her eyes in disdain. “Got any change? Watch and learn.”

  I handed over all the coins in my pocket and followed her to the street. She found a hilariously antiquated booth sporting a large plastic receiver attached to a flexible metal tube as thick as my little finger. She consulted one of her printouts, dropped coins in the box, and dialed.

  Moments later, her eyes lit up. “Mrs. Clarke? Hi, this is Kenya. Kenya Andrews. I’m a friend of Penny’s, we went to school together. That’s right, Washington. So, reason I’m calling—oh no! Nothing like that.” She laughed brightly, waving a hand in the chilly air. “Much less frightening. Except for her when I ask why she changed her number without bothering to tell me. Do you have it? Oh, wonderful.”

  She turned and scowled at me, palm held up, scribbling above it with an imaginary pen. I rustled through my pack and produced writing instruments.

  “Okay, I’m ready.” Mara wrote down numbers, then smiled as if Penny’s mother were right in front of her. “I’ll tell her just that. Thank you so much, Mrs. Clarke.” She hung up and rolled her eyes. “I fucking hate the Analog Age.”

  “I don’t see why we can’t lock Penny Clarke in a room, but you can call her mother. What if that delay in her day means she steps in a crosswalk two seconds late and gets mowed down by a truck?”

  “Shit happens. Meanwhile, she can be happy her little girl’s moving up in the world. She’s got a new apartment—Manhattan.”

  Turned out she hadn’t climbed that much higher. Her new digs were across the river, but they were in the dubious stew of streets downtown and east: grimy brownstones mixed with buildings whose residents didn’t like to admit they lived in project housing. In a small stroke of luck, a motel sat across the street from her place. The carpet in our room was so worn you could see the glue in places, but the view was right. A few hours in, Mara hadn’t taken any notes on the people going in and out. I asked as much.

  She pointed to her right eye. “Camera. We’ll see about getting you one later. If you stick.”

  “I thought anacs weren’t allowed.”

  “It’s not really tech. Purely biological. Cut me open and you won’t know what you’re seeing unless you already know what you’re looking for.”

  It was nearly five p.m. and a full day into our visit before we first saw Penny. She was young, blond, as pretty as her pictures. We followed her into the subway. She got off a few stops south and walked to an Italian restaurant, waiting on the sidewalk, looking north and south. A few minutes later, a tall man with dark hair and a crisp suit walked up to her, grinning, and kissed her hard.

  “That look like Jackson’s build to you?” Mara murmured.

  “Thereabouts.”

  “They kiss like they just met last week.”

  I eyed her sidelong. “This counts as intelligence?”

  “In this era? I’ll take whatever I can get.”

  With the possibility that the man was Jackson, and no way to surveil them from out on the street, all we could do was take up space at a table on the patio of another Italian restaurant while we waited for them to finish dinner. By then, it was early evening. The man held the front door for Penny, waving inside to the staff. He headed north, and we followed on the opposite side of the street. At the avenue, he raised his hand for a cab. One swerved to the curb. They were off and lost in traffic before we’d even made it to the street.

  I stared down the bustling avenue. “What the hell do we do now? We don’t even know his name.”

  “No,” Mara said. “But the people who just fed him do.”

  She turned around and headed back to the restaurant. I was made to wait out in the gusty street while she spoke to one of the staff, who eventually led her deeper into the building. I put my hands in my pockets, inhaling basil and garlic bread.

  Mara emerged with a smirk. “Name and address. Never underestimate what those who work for pennies will provide in exchange for real dollars.”

  She pulled a similar trick with the doorman of his midtown apartment. The man’s name was Anders Rik. He had lived at his current residence for less than a month. The doorman had first seen Penny a little over a week ago. Rik got no mail and rarely received visitors besides her. When Mara checked the phone book, he wasn’t listed.

  We took the subway back to the motel. As soon as we got there, Mara set herself beside the window. “What do you think?”

  “Definite candidate. Maybe too definite.”

  “How so?”

  “If it’s Jackson, wouldn’t he put more into his cover? Go back further, plant more of a footprint? From what we’ve gleaned, this Anders Rik didn’t exist a month ago.”

  “Maybe he thought a month would be enough,” she said. “Or maybe he’s not as smart as you.”

  “Does that mean I passed?”

  Mara snorted. “I’m dead on my feet. Take the window while I take a nap.”

  It was a long night. Trapped behind the window while everything else thrived. I didn’t know why I cared. Most of the city smelled like urine or worse, the lights were gaudy, the traffic never really quit. Beyond that, the very era was horrifying, barbarous. People with no choice but to live on the streets like mongrel dogs. Many were a mere step or two above that, packed into bug-infested rooms, eating processed meals from plastic packages. Sirens yowled constantly, reminding us all how much crime and death roamed the streets at all hours.

  Even so. There was a pulse to it. It was alive. More than that: it was my first world besides my own. I wanted to be out in it, immersed in it, part of it. Not caged behind a window watching over a woman I’d never met.

  That thought was what brought me back. The reason I was here—the reason I was allowed to be here—was because I had spent years preparing to protect these worlds from my own. Primetime: alone in the ability to reach back to other wheres and whens. And no matter how good we made things—we had repeatedly altered our own past to achieve the best possible now—there remained those of us like Jackson.

  Which meant there had to be people like me.

  That was our first day. On the second day, Penny Clarke saw no one besides the employees at the bodega two buildings down. It was a Wednesday, but she didn’t go to work. On the third day, Penny walked to a park multiple blocks west, a far more upscale place where people ate lunch on benches without fear of sticking themselves with a discarded needle. Halfway through her falafel, she was joined by another young blond woman.

  During a lull when Penny had been in her apartment alone (a common circumstance), Mara had made a supply run, bringing back a bevy of recording and surveillance gear. It was dishearteningly oversized, and the fidelity was horrendous, but after some experiments, I was feeling less pessimistic. I found a seat on a bench behind the two women, separated by a well-maintained hedge. I set my pack beside me and maneuvered it until the shotgun mic blared their voices into my earbuds.

  Most of it felt like empty chatter, but it did provide us with a first name for Penny’s friend (Cecilia) and notice of their upcoming plans. What caught my ear, however, was our next introduction.

  “So what do you think of Dean?” Cecilia said. “I mean really.”

  “He’s nice,” Penny said. “Cute. Respectful. But
he should cut his hair. Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts.”

  Cecilia laughed. “Not exactly. More like… I’m thinking of asking him to move in.”

  “Move in? How long have you been dating, a month? Why not ask that dude with the skateboard while you’re at it?”

  “Because I really like him? And he’s in that place in Greenpoint. He’s going to get stabbed. If the rent doesn’t kill him first.”

  Penny lowered her voice, but she wasn’t able to hide her judgment. “Has he found a job yet?”

  “Well, that’s the other thing. As much as he sleeps over, why should we pay rent on two places? Another few months of this and he’ll have to move back to Pittsburgh.”

  Penny was quiet a moment. “Just be careful? You think you know a person, but they’re only showing you what they want you to see.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Cecilia laughed. “How long have you known the Golden Goose?”

  “Quit calling him that,” Penny said, but she was laughing, too.

  I followed Cecilia home and nabbed her full name from the listings at her apartment building. Mara did some calling around, learned she’d been in the city since college, same job and apartment for the last three years. Her boyfriend was Dean Sarnak, a newcomer to the city. Mara was able to confirm he had a birth certificate in Pittsburgh, but other details—like family, for instance—proved wanting.

  “That doesn’t mean they’re not there,” Mara said in our hotel room, staring down at the assorted notes we’d gathered to date. “Question is whether one of us wants to burn the time to check them out.”

  “Dean and Anders are our only probables, right?”

  “Along with the general wild card of ‘literally everyone here but you and me.’”

  “But right now, the favorite is one of those two. Why not try to rule one out?”