In Times Like These: eBook Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Nathan Van Coops

  “The committee’s gates were rigged for use by specific racers. Instead of allowing all racers through every gate, it was coded to isolate certain individuals for elimination from the race. They were also set to allow passage to a couple of select additional individuals.”

  “What kind of individuals?”

  “It would be easier to show you visually. Do you have a display screen I can interface with?”

  The major taps something on the surface of his desk. I see nothing there, but the wall behind him responds. The entire brick wall, including the view of the airships out the windows, disappears. The wall is replaced by solid black, and I realize that the surface is a digital skin. The major lifts his palm toward Milo. “It’s all yours.”

  Milo taps the side of his glasses, and the wall lights up with a photo image of Traus Gillian. I hear Jonah gasp behind me at the appearance of the oversized face. I glance over my shoulder and Genesis is wearing an expression of pure hate. Cliff, sitting between the two, places a hand on Jonah’s shoulder.

  “This man is a known assassin,” Milo explains to the major. “He appeared multiple times during the race and eliminated two racers, though we suspect he intended to eliminate more.” He acknowledges Jonah briefly before turning his attention back to the wall. “But he wasn’t the only assassin employed. There was this man, or men to be technically accurate.” A full body shot of Ajax covers the wall, followed by a shot of Viznir at the time gate at the start of the race. “As well as this guide who also turned out to be employed or coerced into their scheme. I suspect these last two were used to terminate players in levels out of range of Mr. Gillian. This man, Viznir Najjar, attempted to eliminate one of our companions on the planet Diamatra.”

  “For what purpose?” the major asks.

  “To cover up the fact that they’d been used to transport contraband.” Milo turns to look at us. “It is my belief that these racers were engaged, without their knowledge, in smuggling unauthorized materials through time.”

  The major runs a hand over his beard. “It makes sense. No one had built time gates anywhere near these locations before—especially not Diamatra. God, that had to have been in the works for ages just to get a crew there.” He looks us over thoughtfully. “But we still need to prove why.” His eyes land on me and he seems to be sizing me up. “I know you all have questions about why you’re here. You’ve been traumatized by this experience and are no doubt still concerned for your safety. I don’t blame you. You’ve been through more than anyone should ever be subjected to.”

  I raise my hand, not sure if I should speak.

  “Mr. Travers, isn’t it?”

  “Ben is fine,” I reply. “I don’t think we were really introduced officially. Pardon my asking, but who are you people? And where are we?”

  The major stretches both palms to the desk. “A valid question.” He gestures to the digital wall while looking at Milo. “Do you mind?”

  Milo taps his glasses and the image of Viznir vanishes. Milo sits back down.

  The major stands and the brick walls and window views return to the screen. “You are looking at an image of the last year of peace here in the Northwest. We’ve brought you here because this is the front line, the last stronghold of relative safety before the time of The Order of Zsa.”

  The image on the wall changes and becomes a massive web of lines in a three dimensional format. I recognize it as a timestream chart. I’ve seen a few of the digital maps of time in my experience as a time traveler, but this is the most densely filled image yet. The major zooms in on one particular corner of the multi-layered web.

  “Most of you are from near the Primes from what Kara tells me, and I know most of you haven’t come this far into the mid-millennial streams before. If you have, you almost certainly didn’t come to our corner of the map.” He zooms in farther. “This is negative territory, Epsilon stream. Negative Epsilon Vega to be precise.” He highlights a particular strand of the map. “And as many of you know, there is a damn good reason why time travelers don’t come out this way. Out here we’ve got the goddamn Order of Zsa. The most fucked-up religion ever to spawn a following on this planet, and the leading cause of death for time travelers in the twenty-fifth century. I’ve been living out here for over fifteen years now, holding this front with my team, because for better or worse, this is our home and we’ll be buggered if we’re gonna let a bunch of blacked-out Zealot nutcases take our home streams from us.”

  Major McClure scans the group and steps out from behind his desk, pacing the front of the room. “I know what you might be thinking. You might feel the need to mention that we lost this fight already, or part of it. And you’d be right. We did concede the future of this timestream to the Zealots. We were outgunned and outmanned and we got hunted down like rabbits. We ran. It was not a proud time for any of us, but we survived, and we only fled back far enough in time till we could hold the line again.” He indicates a glowing point on the map. “And hold it we have.”

  The major stops pacing and puts his hands behind his back. “We aren’t looking for a thank you. We figure it’s our duty to keep these yahoos from overrunning the other streams. Do you all sleep safer at night in your homes as a result? Damn straight you do, but it comes at a cost. We’ve scoured the decades of this stream for any bit of Zealot activity before the treaty date line. For the most part, we’ve eradicated any links from this stream to the heart of our system. The primes have been kept almost completely free of this so-called prophet and his anti-time-travel rhetoric. A couple of Zealots have slipped by us, but we’ve found them, hunted them down one by one the way they once hunted us. We’ve held the line.” The major looks at me. “That’s who we are, son. And that’s why we’re here.”

  Cliff clears his throat. “Major, I’m sure the boy is adequately grateful for your sacrifices, if he understands any bit of this. We all appreciate what your men do out here, but you still didn’t answer his question. What has this got to do with us? Why would a chronothon committee chart a race to this end of the universe? No one in their right mind would want to see racers go through what we’ve been through.”

  “They haven’t.” Milo interrupts the conversation. He stands up and taps his glasses. The map on the wall disappears again. “The time gates haven’t been transmitting video from the race since the Hindenburg escape, and even that was altered. I’ll show you the images.” The wall flashes to life and we’re shown a view of the Hindenburg wreckage followed by a shot of the exiting time gate. I see myself in one of the shots, hesitating before stepping through the hangar doorway.

  “These were the last frames of actual footage from the race that we competed in. But that didn’t stop them from broadcasting.” The scene changes to a lush landscape around a lake. Racers are sprinting through the woods near the waterline. I spot Jettison there with Cliff and even the Ivans are in attendance. Jonah is preceded through the time gate by a clean and fluffy Barley who barks happily before bounding through.

  Milo fast-forwards to a scene in a field back in Ireland. “There were three more levels after the Hindenburg according to the footage. There was even a pedestal ceremony where Tad Masterson took first place and Admiral Silas McGovern took second. Ben here was the surprise third-place finisher.” The screen flashes to a shot of the three of us waving cheerfully to the crowd. An experience I obviously failed to ever have.

  “Despite the fact that we are time travelers, there is one thing we are quite sure of. This event will never happen. Silas McGovern died on a space station above the planet Diamatra. The spectators of this chronothon will never know that, thanks to some excellent digital image duplication and what I suspect were synthetically fabricated clones.

  “The reality we know, the race through the Academy, the tunnels of Diamatra, and finally our time here; none of that was ever transmitted. Not to the chronothon committee anyway. Kara and I made sure to freeze the data stream on these race bands before we got into the elevator to prevent anyone fro
m tracking us, but now we know more about where the data is actually headed.”

  Bozzle is the next to speak. “If we’ve been used as smugglers, what have we been smuggling?”

  Milo frowns. “That’s what we aren’t positive about, but we have a theory. We know that the time gates were set up to transport a few of the objectives we’d gathered onward through time. Unfortunately, the code wasn’t specific enough for me to gather what each item was. We do have a clue, in that after each level where an objective was smuggled via the gate, we also lost racers, or almost did.”

  “Sam Tulley and his boy,” Cliff grunts. “Were they part of this?”

  Milo nods. “I believe so. That’s where I need your help. Does anyone know what the Tulleys were carrying the round before they died? If we can pinpoint what their objective was that they smuggled, we may be able to figure out why they were eliminated.”

  “It was something from the tunnels under the castle, I think.” It’s Genesis who’s speaking. The first words I’ve heard her utter since the shooting. Her eyes are red, but she is sitting up straighter, listening attentively to Milo’s conversation.

  Milo shakes his head. “They never made it to the time gate in medieval France, so it would have been something they had the round before. The only team we think got taken out in the same level where they found their objective, was all the way back in Egypt. Ben here is the only one who knew what they were carrying.”

  The major’s eyes fall on me.

  “It was a rock.” The words are out of my mouth before the memory has even fully returned. “They said it was a rock anyway. I never actually saw it.” I recall Dennis’ puffy red face as he blustered about the repository taking his anchor.

  “A rock?”

  “Yeah. A black rock, from a quarry.”

  Milo brings an image on screen that I recognize. It’s the black stone with the green vein through it that I found in the tunnels on Diamatra. “I suspect it would have been much like this one,” he says.

  “That’s Jonah’s anchor,” I say, remembering the store room and the weight of the stone.

  Milo nods. “Yes it is. And as soon as he got to the next level, Traus Gillian tried to kill him.” Milo glances at Jonah and then over to Genesis. “Even though Jettison was the victim of that shooting, Jonah appeared to be the target, and we have one other racer who likewise survived an assassination attempt.” He turns to me. “What were you carrying the round before Viznir Najjar tried to kill you?”

  I think about Viznir’s betrayal on the space station, then backtrack to the skyscraper in Northern France at the Academy of Sciences. “It was a metal ball full of fluid. The objective map called it a ‘gravitan stabilizer.’”

  Major McClure raises his eyebrows, then shares a glance with Milo. He runs his hand across his beard and sits back at his desk, proceeding to shuffle through something in his drawer.

  Milo smiles at me. “That confirms our suspicions.” He points to the wall and walks over to the image of the rock from Diamatra, tapping his finger on the wall. “This stone is a chunk of ore. It’s not what they were mining for on Diamatra, but it’s something very valuable to have found. This green vein running through the stone is made of gravitans—an organic form of gravitites—naturally occurring particles capable of escaping the bonds of time itself.”

  I think of Dr. Quickly and Abraham sitting ankle-deep in the stream with their sifting pans in the 1970s. He was right. They do exist.

  “We’re still missing a bit of information. We don’t know what the Ivans were carrying before they were eliminated, but I suspect it was something they dug out of the tunnels under Castle Gaillard. Marco Thomas and Andre Watts got eliminated before I could figure out what they’d been carrying, but the scene of their elimination held more clues. The assassin, Ajax, buried them in a mine. A mine I believe at least one of the racers extracted more ore from. The gravitan-laced ore was the key to the location choices of this whole race.” He posts up images of the objective maps from the various levels. I recognize Egypt, the Old West circus, even the island from the Caribbean. Each map has a section circled that involves a rock quarry or mine, or some other buried item. “And I believe that we have one more bit of evidence to corroborate our theory.” Milo steps in front of Bozzle. “The data for the next time gate is coded to only allow three more racers to get through. Horacio Amadeus and his cousin, Ariella Cipriani, have already entered. We found it suspicious that only one other racer was allowed to pass. That last lucky bracelet belongs to our tallest, greenest friend here.”

  The tension in the room is palpable as Milo stares at Bozzle. I sit up straighter, wondering what he’s talking about and if something confrontational is about to happen. My eyes flit to the major and I notice both of his hands are concealed beneath the desk. Does he have a weapon? Kara is still in the same position, facing the major’s desk with her hands behind her back, attentive but unmoved.

  Jonah springs from his chair and latches onto Bozzle’s shoulders as he shouts at Milo. “You’re wrong! Bozzle is one of the good guys!” He keeps his arms wrapped around the alien’s neck, determined to protect him from whatever Milo has planned.

  Milo merely smiles and crosses his arms. “You’re right, Jonah. He is one of the good guys. But he’s also an Anya Morey.” He leans against the edge of the major’s desk. “Would you mind telling your friends why that’s relevant, Bozzle? Or do you want me to?”

  “It’s not his fault!” Jonah yells. “If you’re mad because he doesn’t do it like we do, you shouldn’t be. He doesn’t have to!”

  Milo says nothing but remains smiling.

  The alien gently unwraps Jonah’s arms from his neck and rises from his chair. From my sitting position, his seven-foot height seems even bigger. His green, tattooed skin and pointed horns are a stark contrast to the brick walls and pale painted ceiling of the library.

  The alien turns slowly to face us. “The boy is correct, as is Milo Kalani. I am an Anya Morey, and we do not need your time devices.”

  For the first time, I notice that the alien’s elaborately tattooed arms lack the one thing I should definitely have noticed. He has no chronometer or Temprovibe to work with.

  “We are born with the ability to travel in time. My species, my family, we have traveled for many centuries, but on my world we do not use this gift for adventure or for pleasure. We use it only with solemn purpose. Here, on this planet, you have used the gift for many things. Some things I have found to be frivolous. I once saw a human bend time so that he could catch a train. On my world such a thing would never happen. Only the children would be so foolish, and they would be punished if they were.” Milo has set the wall screen back to the image of the windows and Bozzle points out one of them as he continues. “I was invited to this world for this race because I was told it will be an honor to compete with other travelers. I have been honored. I have found many good people here. I have also seen things that I never wish to see again.” He turns to face Milo and the major. “If you believe that I wish to continue in this race, you are wrong. If there is a path away from this place, I intend to take it. I have no wish to finish this competition. Now that these companions of mine are safe, my wish is to return home.”

  The major moves his hands from under the desk and I see he’s not holding a weapon after all, but rather a tablet. He stands and smiles at our group. The first smile I’ve seen from him.

  “Mr. Bozzlestich is an eloquent speaker. He speaks the truth. The Anya Morey have always been an honorable race and careful caretakers of time. Our mission was to figure out why he was invited to participate in this race in the first place. Being able to solidify our theory about the gravitans, I think we now have enough information to go on. Whoever wants these ore samples, likely wants an Anya Morey for the same reason. We know something more as well. Lieutenant La Cuesta, Mr. Kalani, you’ll both want to see this. We gained this information while you were on your mission, and I believe it holds the key to figuring out
the mystery of why the race committee built a time gate in the middle of hostile territory.” He selects something on the tablet and another image fills the wall screen. This time we see a shot of a time gate. Like the starting gate in Ireland, it is constructed between two stone pillars. These pillars aren’t Celtic or ancient, however. They are a simple concrete structure inside an industrial warehouse.

  “We lost three good soldiers getting this footage here, but I think the information was valuable to our cause.” He begins the video and I watch as six figures move toward the gate. I recognize Ariella and her guide, Dagmar Sensaborria, followed by Horacio and Donny, but behind the groups of racers is a young girl. She’s wearing an old-fashioned nightgown and appears to be around Jonah’s age. Her long black hair reaches almost to her waist. The last figure to enter the scene is the man from my apartment. He’s still dressed in all black, the uniform I now recognize to be the garb of a Zealot. The Zealot’s presence seems of little concern to the others. Ariella activates the time gate, and as the colors swirl between the columns, she gestures for the little girl to enter. The Zealot takes her hand and guides her through the gate. The rest of the group follows them and the colors quickly vanish.

  The major shuts the video off and turns his attention back to us. “What was important to show you there was that the people responsible for this operation have gone beyond merely smuggling gravitans. They’ve also smuggled at least one person.” He flashes an image on the screen showing a gray-haired man in black robes and a girl next to him that I recognize from the video. The pair is standing near a podium at some large event and the man is stretching an arm toward the crowd.

  “This is Corman Task, better known to his followers as The Prophet Zsa. He is head of the entire Order. His daughter, Elenora, is the girl from the video. What we don’t know is why she was transported by time travelers.”

  Kara speaks up. “Do you suspect kidnapping?”