Emperors of Time

by Penn, James Wilson

  Julie: If you think this conversation’s weird, you’re in for some big shocks down the line.

  The next day at school, Julie asked Tim nonchalantly if he could come to her house again after school that day, Thursday. Tim thought it was funny that she could ask him this in front of Sam and Bridget without either of them having any idea that the reason he was going to her house was to plan a strategy for undoing something people from over 300 years in the future had done to the past.

  Later on that day, Tim and Julie continued their now daily routine of walking to Julie’s house together after school.

  “Something’s been bugging me,” confessed Julie once they were through the door.

  “Just one thing?” asked Tim.

  Julie laughed. “Okay, several things, but one in particular. I saw a news program last night. I guess the United States just captured Baghdad. Did you hear about that?”

  “Yeah,” said Tim. He had his own opinions on the matter, but didn’t want to go into them so close to the school. There were a lot of ears that could be listening. He stuck with a shallow comment on the issue. “The Russians held it for most of last year. Before that, we held it for the previous decade. The Iraqis were more or less independent before then.”

  Julie nodded with a frown. “I’m wondering about the casualties. The reporter said thirty thousand allied troops died over the last week of fighting, but then that only 136 Americans died. Who are these allies? Why are so many more of them dying?”

  Tim looked around to make sure no one was within earshot before answering. “Okay, listen. Before I say this, I want to let you know something, just in case you ever get questioned by the police: This is not information you’re supposed to have. I get most of my news from the internet. There’s an international group of journalists and free-thinkers who call themselves internet pirates, and they’re able to get some good information up online. Way more reliable than the nightly news, anyway. The government has tried to stop them, but they’re good at what they do, so the only way to do that would be to shut down the whole internet. That would probably cause riots among generally law abiding citizens who only use the internet to get celebrity gossip. So, they just spread a whole bunch of misinformation saying the pirates are hacks and make all their news up. But it’s the truth. You still want to know?”

  Julie rolled her eyes emphatically. “I just showed you how to travel through time. I think I can handle some covert internet reporting.”

  “Fair enough,” said Tim with a tight smile. “So, when you hear something about the United States, you gotta remember we’re talking about the forty-eight states that have made up the Union since 1912. They’re still the only states today. Our colonies are all territories. After we started getting European territories, Congress made it tougher-- impossible, really-- for other territories to become states. Today, we have three hundred million American citizens, including a lot of people who migrated here from the colonies. Obviously we only take the best. And then we’ve got about two or three times that number in the colonies. Our colonies do most of the fighting for us in battles, mostly because it’s the only way we agree to make sure they’ve got food to eat. We call them our allies. America’s native contribution to the military is basically generals, specialists, and then some people who are considered undesirable in America. Mostly the unemployable.”

  “Oh…” She looked dumbfounded, and Tim could guess why. She wasn’t great at History under the best circumstances, and now she was hearing a history quite different from her own. After a moment, she said “It doesn’t sound like we’re necessarily great people.”

  “Well, the Russians aren’t any better. Although we’re richer. Helps that we’re not communist, or at least that’s what the government says. Either way, those of us who are allowed to stay in the country- and it’s a crazy high majority, really- are comfortable enough to keep us from asking too many questions. What… are we any better in your timeline?” asked Tim.

  “Well, we’re just as belligerent, I guess. In my lifetime we’ve been at war with the Chinese, Japanese, and Indonesians. But our colonies have been turned into states over time, usually on a one country one state model. So, like, Hungary’s a state, Austria’s a state, Prussia and Bavaria are states… France has two states, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales have one each, and Canada has three. We have… um… had… about eighty states in all, mostly in North America and Europe. I guess we have a more even distribution of casualties in war, but we’re still pretty well off.”

  “Hmmm… and all that comes from letting Lincoln live and a handful of other changes?” asked Tim.

  “So says Hopkins,” Julie confirmed with a shrug.

  “Oh, also… France isn’t a colony in our timeline. When I said they were our allies yesterday, I mean they’re seriously our ally, not our territory. The greater French empire includes Africa and basically all of Western and Central Europe, up to where Russia takes hold, in Poland and the Balkans. Russia and the United States fight it out in the Pacific and the Middle East. South America and Mexico joined together in a league, but they’re pretty insignificant, along with a few other independent countries,” Tim said.

  “Well… that’s a lot to process. But thanks, I guess. I mean, if I’m going to live in this timeline, I might as well know a little about it,” Julie said.

  “But if Hopkins is right, we can change things back to the original timeline, before the Emperors of Time messed it up,” said Tim.

  “Maybe, but do you think it will be any better? I mean, this is the second timeline I’ve seen, and both of them are pretty unpleasant,” countered Julie.

  “Those timelines were both created by the Emperors of Time, and they sound like pretty devious people. The normal timeline has to be better, right?” asked Tim.

  “Why, because people left to their own devices are just better than this?” asked Julie with an uncharacteristic bitterness. “Remember, they only changed a couple things.”

  “Right,” said Tim. “But they did those things intentionally to control outcomes. We just have to hope it will be better if we fix things.”

  “I suppose,” said Julie skeptically. But then her face brightened. Tracking her gaze, Tim saw that it was Rose, appearing in the road in front of her house, who had caused Julie’s change in mood.

  “Hi, July!” said Rose. “Hi, Timothy. How are you two?”

  “All right,” said Julie. “Tim’s just been giving me a social studies lesson.”

  “Yeah, and then she gave me a very pessimistic philosophy lesson on the depravity of mankind,” quipped Tim.

  “Oh?” asked Rose, politely curious.

  “Yeah,” said Julie. “Hey, quick question for you, given my new pessimism about the human race… What do you think about Baghdad being captured?”

  “That’s a dangerous question,” said Tim, before Rose had a chance to respond. “You shouldn’t ask that question of someone unless you know how they’re going to answer.”

  “Lay off,” countered Julie irritably. “I know Rose. Even if not from this timeline, I know her.”

  “Okay,” said Tim hesitantly. But it wasn’t as if he could un-ask the question for her.

  “I think it’s abhorrent, and so do you,” said Rose casually. “What the government says about defending ourselves from the Russians is a load of bull. It’s total imperialism and it’s ridiculous. If I could do anything about it, I would.”

  “Good answer,” said Julie.

  Rose smiled. “I think so. So, are we going to debate politics, or talk about time travel? ‘Cause honestly, I’m okay with either.”

  “Well, aren’t you agreeable?” asked Tim.

  Rose nodded. Julie led the other two into her house. “We’ve got this book to look at. And we should work out the particulars for our little outing Saturday.”

  “Sounds good,” said Rose.

  As they made their way to her room, Julie said, “So, I got Billy to agree to come along with us to W
right’s Ferry Mansion.”

  “Oh, good!” exclaimed Rose brightly.

  Tim didn’t go so far as to call it good, but he did ask, “How’d you manage that, then?”

  Julie laughed, “Okay, maybe I mentioned that I had a cute blonde friend who had seen him play basketball and wanted to meet him.”

  “July!” yelled Rose.

  Julie laughed even harder. “Yeah… he might be under the impression that it’s a double date. Oh, right… also, Tim, I had to make it sound like you and I were dating… I hope that’s okay.”

  Tim half wanted to say that it would be even more okay with him if they actually were dating, but instead mustered a quick, “Sure, whatever.”

  “Hey!” said Rose, obligingly taking the attention off of Tim’s slight blush. “Why don’t you care if it’s okay with me?”

  “Because you get to pretend to date Billy, and Tim has to pretend to date me. Which one’s more unpleasant?” asked Julie.

  Rose laughed at Julie’s self deprecating humor, and before Tim had a chance to say something charming in response, Rose said, “All right. That’s settled then, I guess. Should we go back to that journal?”

  “Sounds good,” said Tim.

  Julie grabbed the book from her bookshelf and flipped it to the next page.

  Tim read along as Julie read aloud.

  I will now give you a little more background on the Emperors of Time and what they are doing.

  The Domini Temporis were commissioned by the American Empire government to weed out a complex terrorist organization called the Fingers of Anarchy. They were threatening to topple a government spanning three continents and governing billions of people. By 2335, they had infiltrated all corners of the empire with an ideology based on self-sufficiency, freedom and a cult of political martyrdom. For every terrorist weeded out, ten more took his or her place in a week. As more attacks strained our American civilization, the government realized that the only way to end the mudslide would be to somehow prevent the organization from ever having existed.

  As the pace of advances in the philosophy of science and the science of space-time quickened, this apparent impossibility seemed within reach. I was one of twelve scientists put to work on the project.

  As we began to make progress, something even more amazing happened. The members of the Fingers of Anarchy began to pursue political goals within the government as a replacement for violence. More people were beginning to sign on to their ideas. The government feared a ruse, and it is hard to accept compromise when you are so used to fighting. The government was still hungry for this weapon to dwarf all other weapons.

  Why simply kill your enemies when you can prevent them from ever having been born?

  We worked on the project, and a complex computer program to help us make the weapon work. No one wanted us to go back forty years, knock off the first members of the Fingers of Anarchy, only to find out upon returning to our own time that doing so had somehow caused a nuclear disaster of epic proportions.

  Our computer had the ability to comprehend the events that had already taken place, how each one connected to the other. It required immense amounts of data and something bordering on an independent intelligent sentience in computer form. The program collected factual and biographical data about every known person and event in the present. Extrapolating from this information, as well as the information we uploaded about the past, allowed the computer to form an understanding about history’s causes and effects. Now it could make intelligent guesses about what would change if one terrorist was killed, or if Lincoln had never been assassinated. It also allowed the Emperors of Time to input a desired effect, such as Dr. Russell being president of the world government, as he is in my present timeline, and then outputs the easiest way to cause it.

  We still needed a way to change the past, though, and in 2346, we solved our final roadblock: How to make the Domini Temporis recognize objects as distinct essences, connected to each time and place they had been. We placed a small, but non-replicable piece of each of our minds into one of the twelve Domini.

  This means that the twelve of us are always linked to the Domini and can remember all timelines, no matter who else uses the Domini. If events are changed, only those linked to the Domini understand what has changed. We twelve will always remember all timelines, and anybody else who uses them will remember any timeline they used a Dominus to travel from.

  We took a couple of quick test runs to prove that it worked, making sure not to change anything… deciding what to change was the government’s job.

  We created the Domini to function under a very specific set of rules to protect the American Empire if the Domini were captured by an enemy. Only one event per year can be altered. Once it has been, the Domini block people from making changes within one year before or after the changed event, although the Domini will allow travel to that year to change the timeline back to the way it was. This is in case somehow we changed something in the wrong way. Each person may travel to a year only once, with the exception of the three years before 2347, which we left open to allow us to test the Domini. This is why I cannot travel to your own year again; I travelled there once to send the package with the Dominus and coin.

  The Domini exist in every timeline and can’t be reprogrammed unless they are all gathered together.

  When I awoke the day before we were scheduled to give the Domini to the government, I realized my world had changed overnight. Changes continued over the next three days, since I saw the changes after however long it took for the Emperors to complete them from their base in my time. I immediately knew who was behind it; I had long been suspicious of Russell. I discovered everyone except me was in on the trick.

  Comparing history books to my own memory, I determined that the first cause of the change was Lincoln’s survival. After that, it was only a short time before I found you. I assumed you would still be around in this timeline. Dr. Russell is a descendant of yours, and it would be harder for him to come to power if he didn’t originally exist in the present timeline. He will manipulate time in a way that will not preclude you from existing, and this will probably keep most of your friends in existence as well.

  In the original timeline, your current year had relative peace and not an insignificant amount of prosperity. The Emperors of Time are conniving to establish a one world government where they are in control, so the Emperors’ timelines will probably always be very violent. The Emperors of Time are more interested in power than they are in lives.

  To return the world to how it was, you must return events close enough to normal to allow me to steal the Domini Temporis from the Emperors of Time, who will hopefully be vulnerable enough for me to take all the Domini so I can reprogram them. I hope to initialize the self-destruct sequence, which will make it as if the Domini had never been activated except that you and your fellow time-travelers, the Emperors of Time, and I will know that there was once an alternative timeline.

  “Well that was some heavy reading,” commented Rose, when they were done. The next page started the historical summary, but not even Tim felt like starting on that now.

  “Yeah, it was,” agreed Julie.

  There was a brief pause, after which Rose said, “So my mind maybe wandered during some of the more technical stuff, and something occurred to me.”

  “Yeah?” asked Tim, eager for a momentary diversion. “What’s that?”

  “We know almost nothing about Billy,” stated Rose.

  “Hey!” shouted Julie. “I thought you were on my side on this!”

  “I am, I think,” said Rose, “but I’d still like to meet him before I travel through time with him… I mean… assuming you guys aren’t full of it. Which I still feel like you might be. But, if you’re not, we’ve got one day before we’re supposed to actually time travel. What if tomorrow night, we hung out, all four of us? We could get to know him, I could get to know Tim a little better, and we can decide whether Billy’s the kind of person we wa
nt to be travelling through time with.”

  They thought about this for a moment. “I’m game,” said Tim.

  Julie sighed, then said, “All right… what about bowling? Do you guys bowl?”

  “Not well, but sure… there’s a place in town,” said Rose.

  “Okay. I’ll make sure that Billy’s in… what about six tomorrow?” asked Julie.

  “Cool,” agreed Rose. Tim nodded.

  It was at that point that the door to the house opened.

  “Oh no!” exclaimed Julie in a hushed whisper. “Mikey!”

  Tim raised his eyebrows, noting the irony present in the fact that he was discussing the intricacies of time travel and at the same time worrying about whether a nine year old was going to catch him in a girl’s room.

  Still, he listened to Julie’s advice when she said, “Hush… We’ll just wait for a few minutes until he’s gotten a snack… Then he’ll be playing his video games and we can sneak you out.”

  Once they had finished executing this plan, which wound up with Tim safely outside of both the bedroom and the house, they decided they had had enough talk about time travel for one afternoon, and they would bowl together the next day.

  Chapter 6

  The Bowling Alley

  The place was dingy and a little run down, but they had a decent package on Friday nights where you could get shoes and your first game for just eight dollars a person and three dollar games after that. If nothing else, it was a cheap way to spend a Friday night. Besides, in Tim’s case, his parents were footing the bill anyway.

  “I’m just glad you’re finally hanging out with friends on a Friday night,” said his Mom as she handed him a twenty dollar bill.

  “You don’t have to-” started Tim. He had been planning to use some money he had gotten from tutoring kids in History earlier that month.

  “Take the money,” his Dad suggested, in a way that made it clear he just wanted the subject to close so that he could get back to watching his news show.

  Suzie looked up from her ipad. “Why does he get money?”