Red, White, and the Blues

by Walker, Rysa

  “Katherine, too,” I say. “I don’t like it, either, but we’re short on options. Time is limited, and we need a base of operations with modern technology. Well, not modern from their perspective, but still far better than anything we’ll find in 1940. And speaking of technology, can you extend the CHRONOS field on one of the diaries on the shelves the way you were planning to do for Lorena? You won’t have to worry about whether it can get through security scans, since I’ll be taking it back to well before those were even a thing.”

  “No promises,” Alex says, “but I’ll see what’s in the cabinets to work with.”

  After he retreats back into his den of digital displays, RJ heads off to fill Lorena in on what’s happened, and I go up to my room to put on the one and only dress I own that isn’t several centuries ahead of the fashion curve for my jump to Seneca Falls. I ask Jarvis to set the filtration system on high in the four remaining bedrooms in the house so that they can air out a bit and check the closet next to the laundry room for extra linens. Then I head to the kitchen and start a carafe of coffee. As it begins to brew, Jarvis informs me that my nineteen-minute timer is up. Katherine blinks into the living room as I watch through the kitchen door. She’s dressed in a robin’s-egg blue suit and heels. A matching blue hat, which looks a bit like a folded dinner napkin, is attached to the right side of her head. She staggers forward and collapses into a nearby chair. Something roughly the size and shape of a pencil is clasped in her right hand. Richard arrives a second later and stands there, staring at her.

  He seems to be frozen in place, and when it’s clear that he’s not moving of his own volition, I call out from the doorway, “Rich! Get out of the stable point. Tyson’s coming.”

  Richard takes a step forward just as Tyson appears. Tyson’s shoulder clips the back of his ankle, and he stumbles, nearly falling over the coffee table. In addition to the CHRONOS key in Tyson’s hand, I spot a second key hanging from his wrist by a black cord.

  “What the hell is that thing?” Tyson asks, nodding to the object Katherine is holding. “And where did you get it?”

  The question seems to snap Katherine out of her stupor. She looks around the room, first at Tyson, then at Rich, and finally at me. “It . . . belonged to Sutter. We ran into some trouble at the OC. He’s still in the security business, but he’s apparently working for Campbell in this reality. Same creepy eye, though. Richard tapped the Timex gadget Angelo gave us and knocked him out so we could escape, and I decided to grab this in case we needed a weapon.”

  “Yeah, well, I think we’d have been better off if Rich had tapped the Timex gadget again and just knocked out that guy on the mezzanine. That thing fried a hole the size of a pizza in his back, and it would have led to a whole lot of questions. Although that’s still an issue, since the officer saw both of us blink out—he was a split second away from shooting me. If you hadn’t stepped out of the way when you did, Rich, I’m pretty sure our team would have been down one player.”

  Richard pales and looks over at me. Would he have moved out of the stable point if I hadn’t reminded him? I don’t know, and I get the sense he’s wondering the very same thing. It’s one of those chicken-or-egg time-travel questions that make my head hurt.

  “Sorry,” he says to Tyson. “I was just kind of . . . stunned from seeing Katherine shoot the guy. And I tried to use the watch gadget again, but Angelo was apparently right when he said it would require a while to recharge after use.”

  Katherine nods. “I saw Rich tapping the watch, but it wasn’t working. And the guy was firing the rifle down into the lobby, so I decided to try this thing. There’s just the one button, right here on the side.” Tyson and Richard both flinch when she holds the pen out toward them. She stops and gingerly places it on the table next to the chair, being careful to point it away from us. “And you’re certain the man was dead?”

  “Oh, yeah. No question at all about that.” Tyson holds up the second key. “Dead and also erased, so there’s no way they can go back and intervene to save him. That means we’ve taken out three of their observers, so they’re probably not going to be pleased. Alisa implied Saul might be seeking revenge on Jack for killing that guy at the concert. He was apparently one of their observers. But she said that would be after the timer started, so I don’t think we can count on them playing by the rules.”

  “When did you see Alisa?” Rich asks.

  Tyson brings them up to speed, and when he finishes, I nod toward the three piles of linens on the sofa. “I’ve no idea how long those have been in the closet, but if you each grab a stack, I’ll take you upstairs so we can figure out who sleeps where. There are plenty of rooms, but most of them haven’t been used in years, maybe even decades. I’ve set the ventilation system to air them out a bit. Hopefully it won’t be too bad.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Katherine says. “I spent two weeks in the sixteenth century during training, and even though I drenched myself in bug repellent, I still came back with bedbug bites. This isn’t roughing it. I’m sure you’ve had far worse assignments, too. Although . . . do you think they might have an extra blanket? I sleep better in a cool room under a mound of blankets.”

  “Sure.” I go back to the linen closet and return with the heaviest of the two remaining blankets. As I hand it to her, she scans my dress with a skeptical eye. “Is that what your costume department put together for 1940? The hem seems much too long.”

  Her tone is casual, despite a slight hint of judgment. I haven’t been able to talk to Tyson privately and have no clue how much he’s told her about my actual identity, although the fact she thinks I have a costume department suggests that he hasn’t told her much, if anything. I shoot him a look that makes it clear he needs to be the one fielding her questions.

  “She needs to get her friend to a safe location first,” Tyson says. “The guy who’s stranded in Memphis? He’s the person the sniper was aiming at.”

  “Oh. The accidental traveler.” Katherine frowns. “That actually makes the fashion situation worse. It’s definitely wrong for 1966.”

  “But it should be fine for the 1930s,” I say with a touch of annoyance. “From what Tyson says, the cash we have on hand will be worthless after the timeline diverges. And I won’t know what to expect after that point. The time period before the rift is a known quantity.”

  Katherine starts to ask another question, which is perfectly reasonable, since what I just said makes no sense at all without the additional information about Kate and Kiernan Dunne. But I cut her off, pointing to the staircase closest to the front door. “All of those bedrooms are empty. They each have a bathroom, if you need to freshen up. Pick a suite, then let’s meet in the library, at the other end of the hallway, so that I can introduce you to the other people in the household before I go.”

  Inside the library, the computer is still whirring merrily away, compiling its list of people who will never exist and events that will never happen, along with a separate list of those that shouldn’t exist and happen but nevertheless will in this twisted reality. I sigh and ask the question I’ve been putting off. “Jarvis, scan public records for Nora Grace.”

  A few seconds later, he says, “I’m sorry, mistress. There are no public records for your grandmother.”

  I knew he’d say that, but it’s still hard to hear. “How about the other members of my family?”

  After a short pause, he says, “There are no records for your mother, but Thea Randall is currently living near Miami, Florida. The number you have for her is still active.”

  Alex pushes away from his display and turns to look at me. “That raises two major questions. First, who owns this house? I mean, nothing inside the house changed, since it was under a CHRONOS field, but it also exists in the world out there.”

  “True. It’s almost as if this place is a building in the Harry Potter stories that is invisible to Muggles.”

  He gives me a confused look, so I guess he hasn’t read those books. “Anyway, the hou
se should still be subject to tax obligations, utility bills, and so forth. If Nora Grace doesn’t exist, who’s keeping that current? In addition, I’ve been looking through the changes since 1941, and they’re staggering. We’re currently at war with something called the Eurasian Union, which isn’t going particularly well for our side. Maryland isn’t even a state anymore. The Cyrists seem to have had a major resurgence and are the fourth most popular religion worldwide. So my second question is . . . with all that going on, doesn’t it seem peculiar that your other grandmother would have the same contact info?”

  “Good questions,” I say. “Jarvis, who owns and pays taxes on this house?”

  “The title for this building has been held by Cyrist International since 1992. It has, however, been exempt from taxes since 2017, when it was registered as a Cyrist shrine.”

  The three historians are now at the library door. “A Cyrist shrine?” Katherine says. “Why?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” I say, even though I have a strong suspicion this is connected to Thea’s final comment when we last spoke and that amber stone on the bracelet she was wearing. I can’t deal with it now, but I’m going to need to call her mysteriously still-active number fairly soon.

  After I make introductions, Tyson hands Alex a black rectangle not much larger than his hand. “Do you think you can patch your system into this?”

  Alex gives it a dubious look. “That depends very much on how backward compatible it is. And how intuitive. I’m a physicist, not a computer scientist.”

  Katherine steps closer to examine Alex’s network of displays. “I might be able to help. Not with the antique over there,” she adds, nodding toward the Anomalies Machine, “but with porting the data from your main system over to the SimMaster.”

  “Well, whatever we’re going to do,” Tyson says, “we need to move fairly quickly. We’ve got a little less than three hours before we have to plug in the files Alisa gave me. We all need to be present when that happens in order for it to sync up with our keys, and we need to have our three initial predictions ready to enter by then.”

  “Is the time limit determined by the simulation machine, or will it be reading each of our keys to make sure no more time than that has elapsed?” I ask.

  Tyson isn’t sure, so I tell him I’ll be back within two and a half hours, just to be on the safe side. I’m about to pull up the stable point for Seneca Falls, when I remember the photo album on the desk. I pull out two photos—the one of Kate in the suffrage parade and one of the entire family at Christmas that’s dated 1970—and stick them inside one of the CHRONOS diaries, which I then shove into my bag, along with Jack’s change of clothes.

  When I turn around, Katherine is running her finger along the edge of one of the shelves a few feet away. “Odd that these books are under a CHRONOS field. Apparently, the entire house is as well, or else your friend’s memory would have been wiped,” she says, nodding toward Alex, “and you wouldn’t have a computer that tallies up the anomalies. What exactly is this place?”

  “It’s the original research site for CHRONOS technology,” Tyson says.

  Katherine frowns. “But we’re not allowed to jump to that era. Why would Max have been researching—”

  “It’s Madi, actually. Madison Grace.”

  Katherine’s eyebrows shoot up at my statement, as I expected they would. She seems to be trying to figure out whether I’m joking, but I don’t have time to walk her through the entire chain of events.

  “Go ahead and tell her what she needs to know,” I say to Tyson. “She’ll find out most of it eventually. And at this point, the odds seem pretty solid that I’m going to end up having to spend the rest of my life under a CHRONOS field either way.”

  FROM THE PEOPLE’S GUIDE TO US HISTORY SINCE 2000, 15TH ED (2136)

  At the conclusion of the First Genetics War in 2097, members of the United Nations entered into a unanimous international accord banning all genetically targeted bioweapons. The issue of genetic enhancement and modification, however, continued to be a source of disagreement between nations. While there were some regional accords on the issue, they were limited in scope and difficult to implement in the absence of international norms. The failure to place meaningful restrictions on the type and number of alterations made for a fragile peace.

  By 2110, small conflicts began erupting between member states over the failure of some nations to adequately track their citizens with significant genetic alterations. Human rights concerns loomed large as well, given the widening gap in wealth between those who could afford alterations and those who could not. Refugees from the United States poured into the Western Alliance, claiming that their status as unenhanced kept them from obtaining decent jobs that would support their families. As they could not afford to purchase enhancements for their offspring, this created a permanent underclass.

  ∞12∞

  KATHERINE

  BETHESDA, DC

  NOVEMBER 18, 2136

  The bank of computers that the physicist, Alex, is using as the core of his system is much older than anything I’ve worked with in the past, but the data structure is fairly similar to the one used in simulation machines. Some version of Temporal Dilemma has been in play for over sixty years, and customers pushed for backward compatibility so that classic simulations could be replayed by each new generation with the same limitations as in the original. This was partly due to requests from professional players engaged in tournament play, but many casual TD aficionados also like the fact that they can beat their uncle’s score on his War of the Roses scenario or whatever and not have him claim they only won because he was playing on a much slower system.

  It only takes about twenty minutes for us to find a work-around, or at least what we hope is a work-around. We won’t know for certain whether it actually works, however, until we plug in the disk to initiate the system and begin the game, and we can’t do that until Max—or rather Madi—gets back from 1935.

  In one sense, I wish it had taken longer to sync up the computers. That was something that required me to focus intensely on each concrete step of the task. Now I’m stuck thinking about the overarching problem, and it’s not just Angelo vanishing that keeps popping into my mind unbidden, or that brief glimpse of a man who might have been Saul at the OC, but also a tiny pinprick of light streaming out of the ink pen from hell and blowing a crater the size of a dinner plate into the back of that man in Memphis. I believed the device would do something, or I wouldn’t have tried it. But I never imagined it would do that.

  I don’t regret killing the man. He was shooting into the lobby. There were families with children down there. If I were in the same situation, knowing what the device could do, I would use it again. But that doesn’t stop the scene from replaying in my mind every time it’s unoccupied for more than a few seconds.

  Alex is an odd duck. He may not be a computer scientist by training, but I suspect he would have been a very good one. I get the feeling he’s more comfortable working on his own than as part of a team. Or maybe I just make him uneasy. Based on what Tyson and Madi have just revealed, my being here could cause an entirely different rift in the timeline. It’s a bit mind-boggling to realize that at some level, in some reality, the responsibility for all of this—the time shifts, CHRONOS, my very existence—lies with the young man staring fixedly at a 3-D model of something I’m quite certain would make my head pound mercilessly if I asked him to explain it.

  I can’t say that I see any of myself in this Madison Grace. Or any of Saul, for that matter, and I assume he’s somewhere in her gene pool as well. Nor do I fully understand how I could be Madi’s ancestor when she was born more than a century and a half before I was. Okay, yes, I get how it’s possible in the technical sense. But how do I end up in a situation where I willingly stay behind in the past? Is it as a result of this time shift? Do we fail? Am I pregnant right now?

  My head is swimming with those questions and a host of others, but I suspect that the
most I’ll get from anyone here are vague answers. I understand their reluctance to tell me more than the bare minimum. The more I know, the more likely it is that some action I take will keep a necessary chain of events from unfolding. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to know more, however.

  Tyson, Richard, and the guy they call RJ are working on mapping out our strategy for opening moves. I need to be over there. Tyson and Rich rarely play The Game, and RJ had almost certainly never heard of it before this fiasco began. But I have to clear my head first. Maybe get some of the coffee I smelled when we first arrived.

  “I’m going down to the kitchen,” I tell Alex. “Can I bring you anything?”

  He shakes his head and taps a thermos on his desk. “What color is the key for you?”

  The question takes me a bit by surprise. Not because I’ve never heard it. On the contrary, it’s all historians can talk about for the first few weeks after we begin practical training. It’s more hearing this man ask it, when he may well be the person who decided to color-code our response to the key in the first place. Even Angelo didn’t seem to fully understand the logic behind it.

  “I see the key as a pale orange.”

  Alex sighs. “Well, that’s going to complicate things a bit. It’s orange for Madi, too. Hopefully, I’ll be able to tell them apart.” His forefinger flicks at the display hovering in front of him, sending a cluster of colored bubbles flying toward me. “Can you spot yours?”

  I stare at the bubbles for a moment. There are purple bubbles and amber bubbles, some of which have clear bubbles tacked onto the side. There are also two teal bubbles and two that are the pale-orange color I see when I look at a CHRONOS key. I always had a difficult time explaining the shade to anyone until I took a jump to the mid-1970s for a women’s rights march in Chicago. It was a hot day and I purchased something called an Orange Creamsicle from an ice-cream vendor. When I opened the wrapper, I began laughing, which was probably rather confusing to the other marchers in line. The ice-cream pop was the exact same color as the medallion. Once I was back home, I managed to get our food unit to spit out a fairly decent replica so that I could show Saul.