Time Agency

by Aaron Frale

  The exact time of entering a crowded area sometimes varied from the intended time. The exact moment when she could appear when no one was looking may not be the time she programmed, but it was always close. The protocols shifted her not only in time but space as well. Getting as close to Jerry’s time was important. A time shift could lose him entirely. Jerry was across the street dropping off the briefcase to the dazed 07760. She began walking briskly because she didn’t want to alert Jerry to her presence. He would jump again if she spooked him. She just needed to get in range to control his machines.

  She started towards a crosswalk when Jerry noticed her. He left 07760 and took off. She charged after him, ignoring the “Don’t Walk” signal. Cars honked and slammed on their breaks to avoid hitting her. An angry man yelled out the window at her. By the time she crossed the street, both 07760 and her protégé were gone. Jerry could have ducked into an alleyway, clothing store, bookstore, or various other places, but she was good at the simple solutions. She scanned for tech and found out that he was running through an alleyway.

  She chased him down through the city. He led her through streets, alleys, bridges, and stores. Running from a time agent was absurd because neither of them would tire. She knew that he was leading her away from 07760. Once her thickheaded associates caught up with her, they would track her down via the historical archives of the close circuit cameras from this city and also be far away from 07760. She didn’t care about 07760 at the moment. What mattered was catching Jerry before the other agents had a chance to catch up. She saw the chance to turn the chase around. He ducked into a park. After tapping into an ancient network signal called GPS, she mapped a route that would cut him off.

  Once she was within range, she froze his nanomachines.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded, throwing emotion stifling out the window.

  “Jogging. It’s an ancient pastime,” he said.

  She softened her voice. “I’m not here to take you in. I’m here to talk.”

  He seemed incredulous. A look of dubiousness came over his face.

  “I think about Russia every day.”

  His features began to soften. She let go of the control she exerted over his nanomachines. She could tell that he wanted to kiss her, but they both knew they couldn’t. They couldn’t risk the exchange of skin cells. If her superiors detected his DNA on hers, she would be suspected of being a part of the conspiracy. A tear rolled down his cheek. The tear would have to be enough.

  “We are secure but not for long. There are other agents after you,” she almost pleaded.

  “Then let me go.”

  “You know I can’t. Why did you help him?”

  “It will end up implicating you. And I can’t do that. You’ll be wiped.”

  She knew he wouldn’t budge. He was well trained and in love, a dangerous combination.

  “One agent going rogue is cause for alarm but not unusual. Two rogue agents are a rebellion, and absolute panic will ensue. They will send every agent from the future looking for us,” Jerry continued. “Arrest me. Wipe my memory. But leave 07760 alone or at least lighten up the pursuit of him. It’s the logical thing to do.”

  “Go fuck your logic,” she said in a very unusual fit of emotion. She loved him. The thought of him looking at her like she was a total stranger was too much for her. “I am going to help you.”

  It was as if the weight that was holding her down all her life had been lifted. She allowed herself to make an emotional decision. Love was crushing her from the inside and even though she would be wiped herself, she did not care.

  “I love you,” she said as he put his hand on her shoulder. Her body tingled.

  “Arrest me. Put me in an interrogation room. I know how to escape.” He accepted her offer. “I can handle the rest.”

  “But when you escape, I’ll have to chase you, and other agents will follow. You’ll go to reprogramming anyway.”

  “I need to tell 07760 about the ancient bookseller.”

  “The what? Let me help.”

  “No, you can help more if they don’t suspect. They are lying to us. Don’t trust anyone.”

  “Why do you trust me?”

  “Because I love you too.”

  She looked into his eyes. Their eyes spoke volumes. An agent appeared down the path. The others found her. She cut the conversation short. “I will backup your memories, and meet you back in this city. Now let’s give them a show. I’m sorry.”

  “I know,” he said as he stiffened again, and she froze his machines. She tapped him on the forehead and sent him to an interrogation room in the future. Another agent appeared with the briefcase.

  “We traced the origin of your chase to a street, and we found this at the café.” The agent gave her the briefcase.

  “And 07760?” she asked.

  “That’s just it. He sat at the café and stood up to get some cream and sugar. We approached him, and he saw us. He must have panicked because he blinked out of existence. He didn’t take the time to get the briefcase,” the agent said.

  “What’s in it?” she asked.

  “It’s quantum locked,” he said.

  “I’ll take it from here.” She took the case from him.

  The agent was about to leave when he turned to face her. “One more thing.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Did 07760 have a beard?” he asked.

  Event 15 – R

  “We have to get out of here,” I said to the time agent. Her face was locked in a cold stare. She did not say a word to me and began walking toward the chamber. My double must be controlling her. I stepped in front of her and the chamber. She pushed past me. I rushed her, and we both sprawled to the ground.

  She belted an animalistic scream and elbowed my head. She hit me twice and kicked me before I could even think about blocking. The kick sent me tumbling to the ground. I drank a face full of dirt and grime. She was trained exceptionally well. I was a historian. There was no chance I could face her in a physical confrontation.

  Once she was satisfied that I was out of the way, she returned to heading toward the chamber. I made the only move I had left. I reached out with my nanomachines. I never tried controlling anybody before, but there was a first time for everything. My future self obviously could do it, so I postulated that I could too. For all I knew, this was the moment where I learned to control other people’s nanomachines.

  My mind screamed out. A mysterious energy seemed to erupt throughout my body. My heart rate increased, and my body began to shake. I trembled and felt the rush of my nanomachines collide with hers. Her machines defended her with every security protocol imaginable. I instinctively began to reprogram my machines to combat her protocols. My mind raced through many probabilities. My brain decoded, short-circuited, and circumvented every protocol her machines could handle. It was nice to have finally found my ninja move.

  Her hand reached for the chamber door. It hesitated. I didn’t have control, yet I was slowing her down. The machines were too busy attempting to fight me and she froze. I could probably keep her locked indefinitely, but my double would come back. While I had raw talent, he had years of experience and practice. We needed to get out of here. My body shook more. My heart threatened to pound out of my chest, and sweat poured from my brow. It taxed me as every nanomachine in my body ceased to keep my functions going, and I focused on controlling her. The security on agent nanomachines was the toughest code to crack. They had encryption that acted as a quantum computer. The agent’s security was so hard to break because if someone did, they could virtually do whatever they wanted to anybody. It was too much power for any one person to have, and my future self seemed to have an abundance of it.

  My future self was corrupted. I couldn’t deny that I had the same potential. Did learning the ability to control others lead me on a path of corruption? Did people with power begin with a desire to do the right thing and end up abusing the power? Maybe I should let her go into t
he chamber and save myself. I didn’t know her, but I couldn’t leave her. She was one of the few allies I had. Even if it meant I would put myself on a road to ruination, I would save her. Maybe by knowing my destiny, I could change it. I focused on her machines.

  The energy my body produced made my hands shake violently. My nose began to bleed, and I almost grew feint. My head pounded and ached with a pain I never experienced before. My body was about to give out when I finally cracked her security protocols. I was in control of her nanomachines not just control of her movements. I could stop her heart, cause her pain, and do anything I wanted with her. The temptation with my power would be great. Maybe I would be corrupted over time. The ability to control other people’s nanomachines meant I could do anything.

  Maybe my doppelganger knew that about myself. Perhaps he stayed in this time period because he couldn’t use his powers on people without nanomachines. The events here must be pivotal to creating the person I would become. The only difference between him and me is that I would not become an asshole. I would not learn new powers only to abuse them. My body almost could not take the stress of fighting her security. Overriding his control sapped every last bit of energy I had. Maybe learning the powers would kill me, but at least I would not become a dick. I started slipping from consciousness. My vision began to fade. I slipped into a dream.

  Event 8 - J

  Jerry followed the cook from the Chinese restaurant through a tunnel into the sewer system. The cook smiled and motioned Jerry forward.

  “Where are we going?” Jerry ventured. The man smiled and gave the forward motion signal again. There was a language barrier. The cook didn't speak much English.

  They climbed down a ladder into a subway tunnel. The tunnel was old and had obviously fallen into disrepair from years of abandonment. The tracks were old and decayed. The air was stifling. Jerry almost choked. The cook pointed down the tunnel, smiled, and waved them forward. Jerry wished he spoke Chinese.

  “Rúguǒ wǒ néng shuō zhōngguó huà, zhèhuì gèng róngyì,” Jerry said.

  The man laughed and turned around. “Why didn't you tell me that you speak Chinese?”

  “I don't,” Jerry said.

  “Your grammar sucks, but you are speaking Chinese right now.” The cook wasn't sure if Jerry was joking or not. The man was speaking Chinese, but Jerry heard English. It was like Jerry heard both, but his brain parsed the words into something he could understand. His superpowers were getting more useful all the time. He must have turned on some internal translator. After a moment of thought, he tried thinking about another language.

  “Lo language Estoy hablando ahora?” the well-dressed man said.

  “No lo entiendo,” the man replied.

  Jerry was speaking and hearing in Spanish. However, he didn't understand Spanish, so he didn't know what he was saying or even if the grammar was poor like the Chinese he spoke. Jerry must be a spy. His abilities seemed like they were geared for espionage. His first memory was also indicative that he was some of sort of spy. Jerry switched back to Chinese.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Friends. They will hide you from the police,” the cook said.

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “You are a member of the resistance.”

  “The resistance?”

  The cook stopped and turned to Jerry. His face furrowed. “You killed the traitor!”

  Jerry couldn't deny that he killed somebody but something didn’t seem right. The cook's approval of murder seemed so casual. Being disconnected from the situation allowed Jerry to look at it with a sense of logic rather than the obvious hatred the cook had for the person Jerry killed. Murder was an extreme act, and Jerry wondered what “the traitor” could have done to merit execution from a person outside the law. Jerry must have held the same beliefs as the man before him, but with a complete absence of memory, he couldn’t help but wonder if his convictions would be so unshakeable that he'd be willing to kill.

  Jerry elected not to tell the cook that he lost his memory. A group willing to kill and hide in the sewers was a delicate situation. A wrong move now was dangerous. He pretended that he knew what was going on, so he agreed with the cook, “Yeah. Fuck that guy.”

  The cook laughed and patted him on the back. Any doubts the cook experienced earlier must have melted away because he led him through the subway tunnel with a level of ease Jerry didn’t encounter before. The old subway tunnel gave way to what could best be described as a cavern, but it wasn't a natural cavern. It looked as if it was a human construction. It was carved from the earth but felt abandoned. It looked like it may have intended to be a transportation hub deep below the city that was never finished.

  Jerry risked conversation. “Do you know what this was going to be?”

  “It was going to be the main transit hub. It was going to connect all the cities along the coast,” he said and didn't seem suspicious. “You’re not from around here are you?”

  “Not really.”

  “The coast is packed. You can drive for days and never leave urban areas. They wanted to make a subway over the entire coast to ease traffic. The project crumbled when the economy collapsed.”

  Jerry wanted to ask more questions, but he decided that if he went deeper into the conversation, he would reveal too much about his current mental state. For all he knew, the cook just caught him in a lie. He was best to keep silent, and he almost wished he had never discovered his universal translator properties. Luckily enough, the cook was a man of few words.

  Eventually, they made it into a shantytown. Homeless and city dwellers roamed the “streets,” which was more like the rubble of buildings. Jerry had to assume that they were resistance fighters as most of them were armed. Some seemed to live down here, and others seemed to be coming from the cleaner surface. All the deep dwellers seemed to be working together for a cause. Jerry would like to find out what the cause was before he decided to become one of them.

  But for all Jerry knew, maybe he lost his memory because he was reprogrammed by whatever government they were fighting. Maybe the police caught up with him and wiped his memory. Maybe they implanted some compulsion into his brain, and he would betray the resistance. They certainly seem to like Jerry. Lots of the members patted him on the back and shook his hand. If he was a sleeper agent programmed to perform a task, the plan was going flawlessly. He dismissed the thought. He felt like he was in control. There didn't seem to be any impulses planted in his brain.

  The cook led him into one of the ramshackle huts. Jerry thought he was fooling the cook into complacency. As he crossed the threshold to the hut, the butt of a gun to his jaw proved that he was the one being fooled. The cook kicked him in the stomach, and the unseen assailant placed a hand on the cook’s shoulder. The cook backed down, still fuming. Jerry spat blood from his mouth. He could feel his body recovering quickly. He felt as if his body was dulling the pain.

  He was about to gain his strength back and climb to his feet went he thought the better of it. There were two in the hut and who knows how many in the city. He decided to play incapacitated so that he could choose the right moment to strike. The one who hit him with the butt of a gun wasn’t a man at all. She had blond hair and wore a tracksuit. They didn’t look the part of vigilantes, but she packed a powerful punch. There was an ache in his jaw melting away from his superpowers.

  The hut was empty except a chair and a cold fire pit in the middle. The floor was dirt and filth. The walls were made from discarded material of every sort. Jerry didn’t see any tactical advantage yet, being that his captors had a gun. They murmured to each other, and when they came to a conclusion, they walked toward him. They picked Jerry up by the shoulders. The woman slung the gun over her shoulder. They thought he was still dazed and with a blow to the head most people would be.

  Jerry kicked the cook in the groin by snapping his foot backward. At the same time, he elbowed the woman in the face. He jumped her, and they both crashed i
nto the fire pit and smeared ashes everywhere. She kneed him in the stomach, pushed him off, and rolled away. She attempted to slide the gun off her shoulder when he rushed her a second time. They both toppled to the ground, and the gun flew out of her hands. She dug her elbows into his back with some swift blows. The cook went for the gun after he had recovered. Jerry pounded his fist into her face. Her nose burst with blood. The cook raised the gun and shouted.

  They both turned to face the cook with the gun. She smiled and kicked Jerry in the kneecaps. Bone shattered and broke. His body cried out in pain, but it stopped as quickly as the pain began. She turned away to face the cook. That was her mistake. He had underestimated her fighting abilities, but she, in turn, underestimated his healing abilities.

  He stood up and wrapped his arms around her chest. Two shots were fired. He had moved her in the path of the bullets just in time. One bullet missed, and the other one dug through her torso. Her body flopped in Jerry’s arms. The bullet stung as it exited her body and entered his body. It did not do as much damage to him as it did to her.

  Whatever was healing him better work for bullet wounds, Jerry thought. He tossed her body to the side and walked with determination to the cook. The cook was stunned by Jerry’s resistance to bullets. The cook failed to fire another bullet, and Jerry got the drop on him.

  Jerry yanked the gun from the cook’s hands. The cook cried in terror. Jerry was about to shoot him when he thought better of it. Because there were shots fired, Jerry didn’t think it would be long before there was back up. He turned the gun backward and hit the man in the jaw. The cook went down and was out.

  Jerry found zip ties in the pocket of the woman. He flipped the cook on his stomach and hog-tied him. He tore a non-bloody part of her tracksuit off and stuffed it in the cook’s mouth. After tying the cook, he peered through a crack in the wall. The underground city life didn't seem to skip a beat. How did the gunshots go unnoticed? An exhaust fired and there was a loud roar of an engine. Jerry looked through another crack in the wall. There was a motor pool next door. A collection of old bikes were being maintained. A mechanic revved the engine of a Harley. He must have been testing the motorcycles when the gun was fired.