Now, Then, and Everywhen (Chronos Origins)

by Rysa Walker

  His mouth drops. “You’re kidding me. This is a joke, right? You had someone draw these.”

  “No. Swear to God. These are vintage 1960s comics. The first one is the cover of Marvel’s Journey into Mystery #83, where the Mighty Thor is swinging a giant hammer. And the one you’re looking at now is from 1963. The Amazing Spider-Man’s alter ego, Peter Parker.”

  “I know who Spider-Man is.” He stares at the images for a moment longer and then says, “I just never really thought that I looked like him until now. But I guess it does explain these damn glasses.”

  Rich has often complained bitterly about his design team’s decision to give him substandard vision. It could easily have been fixed, either in utero or later. But they argued it would make him more authentic, whatever the hell that means.

  “If my genetic designer decided to give me this Parker guy’s face and body—and his piss-poor eyesight—why not at least let me shoot that web stuff out of my wrists?”

  I laugh. “Exactly how would that help a music historian in the field? I’m pretty sure Edwina would tell you form follows function.”

  “Oh, great,” he says. “That’s just great. Edwina. So now you’re on a first-name basis with the head of our genetic-design team. That’s messed up, Tyson.”

  “Messed up? How?”

  “It’s just . . . I don’t know. It’s kind of like tracking down the doctor who presided at your birth. It’s weird.”

  He probably has a point. There’s no hard-and-fast rule against talking to your genetic designer, but it’s not the sort of thing people tend to do. For one thing, the designer probably wouldn’t even remember doing your adjustment. By the time a historian heads out into the field, his or her design team has encoded thousands of embryos with the chosen gifts selected by their parents. But most of those are fairly straightforward assignments, usually involving a single genetic tweak. Encoding the CHRONOS gene is more involved and actually gives them a chance to flex their creative muscles a bit. I’d been pretty sure that the designer would remember encoding a Viking historian, especially if she’d used that comic as a template.

  “How else was I going to get answers, Rich? Are you telling me that if you’d seen this on a 1963 newsstand, you wouldn’t have tracked her down for confirmation? Thor caught my attention first—I mean, take away the gaudy costume, and that’s one hundred percent Tate Poulsen. But then I start poking around in some of the other volumes, and I see half a dozen other faces that look familiar, including yours. And there’s some villain named the Chameleon, too. No face on that one, but . . .”

  He nods. CHRONOS tends to turn a blind eye to mild hazing, unless it gets physical, and some wit gifted me with the nickname “Chameleon” during my first year in the classroom. It stuck. Back then, the name had been used primarily by obnoxious upperclassmen, but a few of those obnoxious upperclassmen are now senior historians. Most of them matured, but old habits seem to die hard for others.

  For a while, I resented the name, but I can’t deny the accuracy. Of the thirty-six historians currently at CHRONOS and the dozens in the cohorts that preceded us, I’m probably the only one who could pose for a family portrait without anyone thinking I was adopted. My family is fairly typical. On my mom’s side, we’re mostly European and Latino, with a dash of African. My dad’s family is African, Latino, and Southeast Asian, but my great-grandmother on that side had eyes almost as blue as the contacts I often wear in the field.

  Until recently, CHRONOS deemed multiracial historians of limited use and routinely added a variety of physical tweaks to the package of genetic manipulations that allow us to time travel. For example, even though her mother is primarily of Asian descent, Katherine Shaw is a pale, blue-eyed blonde. Abel Waters, one of the senior members of our cohort, has skin four or five shades darker than his brother, who works with CHRONOS security. And while both examples could in theory be due to a random toss of the genetic dice, they were in fact the result of very conscious alterations, performed by the genetic-design team before Katherine and Abel were even born, in order to make them the best possible physical match for the specific research agendas to which they would be assigned.

  My design team, however, left my features neutral enough that the folks in costuming can make a few subtle changes in hair or eye color, and send me out into the field as a person of almost any race. I worked with three field agents of different races during training, instead of the one assigned to most trainees. The stated goal was to give me perspective and allow me to investigate and compare multiple sides with minimal bias.

  While I do think that’s part of it, CHRONOS is also facing pressure to dial back the number of genetic tweaks they’ve traditionally pitched as “necessary” alterations for time travel. It’s not just race or appearance that they adjust. In addition to the elements that allow us to use the medallions, diaries, and other time-travel equipment, our genetic designers routinely increase our intelligence, strength, language aptitude, and a host of other things to help us acclimate to the eras we study. For legal reasons, however, they’re very careful to use the term CHRONOS gene, singular, in all official documents. Otherwise, the agency could be in conflict with the international covenant that restricts parents from obtaining more than one genetic alteration per child.

  “And this Edwina person admitted these books were her inspiration?” Rich asks.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say she admitted it. She did say that her father had a collection of antique comics. And she said artists have to get their ideas from somewhere.”

  He rolls his eyes. “That’s an admission.”

  We both look back at the images on our retinal screens as I point out a few of the other historians who seem to have stepped off the pages of classic comic books. Neither of us realizes we have company until Saul Rand claps me on my shoulder. The move is perfectly calibrated—hard enough to slosh half of my drink onto the table, but not hard enough to look intentional.

  “Are you guys actually working? Drink up, Cham. Rich here may not have a social life, but that’s no reason he has to drag you down with him.”

  And that’s how you know a nickname isn’t going anywhere. If some jerk like Saul has a short, snappy version, you might as well embrace it.

  The short blond woman next to him huffs in annoyance. “Saul! Look what you made him do! And don’t call him that. People will think you’re racist.”

  Katherine Shaw says these words as though no one could ever seriously believe that Saul is racist. To be fair, I’m not sure I believe it, either. I’ve spent a lot of time with racists during my field training, and I think it’s entirely possible that Saul is an equal-opportunity asshole.

  Saul either doesn’t hear her or ignores her. Probably the latter. He spies Campbell and some of his fellow club members across the room and heads off to join them. Katherine grabs some napkins from the buffet and begins mopping up the mess on the table. “I’m sorry. He’s so clumsy.”

  Rich smiles at her. “No need for you to apologize.”

  The emphasis on the word you is so subtle that I don’t think Katherine even catches it. But I’ve been Richard Vier’s roommate for two years, and I’ve heard him rant on numerous occasions about Saul Rand. Those rants have increased tenfold since Katherine moved in with the guy.

  I take the napkins from her. “It’s not a problem.”

  “The drink or the nickname?” she asks.

  “Both. It’s an open bar, and I’m perfectly happy to waste more of Morgen Campbell’s money on a refill. And to be honest, the name has started to grow on me.”

  Katherine raises a skeptical eyebrow, but it’s not entirely untrue.

  “Okay,” I amend. “Let’s just say I don’t object to friendly use of the nickname.”

  “And that’s definitely Saul,” Katherine says, beaming. “He’s too friendly for his own good. Like an overgrown pup. He wags his tail and now half your drink is on the table.”

  The only thing that keeps me from laughing out
loud at the image of Saul as a big, friendly dog is the look that Rich gives me. Although from the way his mouth is twitching, I think he’s finding it hard to keep a straight face, too.

  I offer to get refills, and also a drink for Katherine. She declines, and glances over to where Saul is talking to Campbell. I’m certain she won’t be here when I get back unless I throw Richard a lifeline.

  “Hey, Rich, while Katherine’s here, maybe you should discuss that joint research idea you and I were talking about the other night. The nexus of gender movements and music, right?”

  I grab both of our glasses and stand up before he can kick me under the table. He came here fully intending to talk to her about the project, but I’ve known him for the better part of a decade. While Richard Vier is one of the most skilled CHRONOS agents I’ve seen in the field, Katherine is his kryptonite, or whatever the equivalent is for Spider-Man. Without a nudge in the right direction, he’d spend the rest of the night thinking about what he would have said if only she’d stuck around for a few more minutes.

  “It’s actually gender and race,” Rich says, raising his eyebrows for emphasis.

  Which is his signal that he’s finally decided he wants me to sign on for this project, too. He’s been weighing the pros and cons of that for the past few weeks. On the one hand, he’d like to spend some time alone with Katherine. But on the other hand, she’s much more likely to say yes, and much less likely to catch flak from Saul, if I tag along.

  When I get back with the drinks, Katherine is staring at something I can’t see, so Rich must have sent the proposal description to her retinal screen. He does the same for me, even though I helped him brainstorm ideas for a project that would pull in her research agenda without exposing his underlying motive.

  “I like the title,” she says. “You Say You Want a Revolution: The Nexus of Sex, Race, and Rock ’n’ Roll in 1960s America. Pretentious enough to pass academic muster with the snooty types on the committee, thanks to the colon, and you included the word sex to pull in the rest of them.” Katherine grins up at Richard. I’m really glad for his sake that it’s dark enough to at least partially camouflage his blush. “So I take it they’ve already given approval?”

  “I got tentative approval today,” he says. “Angelo was the one who suggested I talk to you about adding it to your schedule. He said you were thinking of observing a mid-twentieth-century countermovement to compare to the antisuffragists of the previous century.”

  This version of events is not entirely accurate. I was in the room when he first pitched the idea to Angelo, and it was the other way around. Richard stammered like mad when he suggested adding Katherine, but if Angelo noticed, he didn’t mention it. Or maybe he decided to ignore it. Angelo is Katherine’s mentor, too, and he clearly regrets pairing her up with Saul as a research partner. Anything that puts distance between the two of them is probably okay in his book.

  And I don’t think Rich needed to worry about anyone questioning the proposal too closely, anyway. The committee is little more than a rubber stamp. They’ll approve almost anything, as long as it’s reasonably risk-free, has a pretentious-sounding title, and is at least tangentially connected to your research specialty. The members are mostly middle-aged former historians who are now stuck in desk jobs and classrooms, but they’ve all been where we are. Out in the field, curious, eager to track down leads and solve history’s mysteries.

  “It’s an interesting proposal,” she says, a bit hesitantly. “But I’m worried that I can’t contribute much on the music side. I’m not well versed in 1960s pop culture.”

  “Not a problem,” Richard says. “I’ve got that part of the research covered. And I can send you over a playlist so that you’ll have at least a passing familiarity. It’s the one I put together for Tyson last year.”

  Her blue eyes grow hazy again as she focuses on her screen. “These are some powerful newspaper images. What made the KKK so angry at this band that they torched all their records?”

  Richard opens his mouth to answer, but I jump in. “The Beatles were adamantly against segregation,” I say, giving Rich a sharp look across the table. Left to his own devices, Rich would bombard her with tons of background information, just as he did me. Under normal circumstances, I’d let him roll with it. He knows this bit of history better than I do, and it would give him a chance to show off. Katherine’s a historian, so she’s not put off by minute detail. But if Rich tells her the full story of why the KKK is burning records by the Beatles in 1966, he’s going to end up talking about religion. And that will almost certainly give Katherine the bright idea to bring in Saul and make this a four-person research project. Religious extremism is one of Saul’s specialties.

  “That’s right,” Richard says, apparently catching on to my logic. “They refused to play segregated venues on their previous American tour. This time, a black trio, the Ronettes, was opening for the group, and there were rumors that one or more of the Beatles had dated one or more of the girls in the group—pretty sure those were at least partially true rumors.”

  “So, were women actually in the KKK?” Katherine asks.

  “Generally not,” I tell her. “Although there were a few exceptions, most groups didn’t allow women as members. They all have a Ladies Auxiliary, though. Bake sales, organizing activities for the kids, and so forth. In the klavern I joined with Glen for my final training project, the Grand Dragon’s wife headed it up. I got the sense that’s the usual pattern. Plus, a lot of people come to the cross lightings, as they prefer to call them, just for fun. And by 1966, there’s a lot of chatter in their newsletters about how the feminist movement is wrecking things for real women. Of course, I don’t know how much of that is—”

  “Is driven by the men?” she asks with a wry smile. “Probably not as much as you think. I spent several weeks with the Werk Glaube und Schönheit—basically a Junior League for young Nazi women—during field training. They had odd ideas on women’s empowerment, both in their literature and the conversations I had with members. But I got the sense that it was mostly organic. Subservience was a part of their personality by that point.”

  “It doesn’t have to be just the Klan, though,” Richard adds quickly. “There was a strong backlash by younger women, fans of the Beatles. We could see about attending some of their protests, too.”

  Katherine nods absently. I don’t think he needs to sweeten the pot, though. She’s already interested.

  “Can I give you an answer on Monday? I need to check my jump schedule to see if I can squeeze this in. And,” she adds, glancing toward the tall, dark figure on the other side of the room, “I need to make sure it’s okay with Saul, of course.”

  In one sense, it’s a perfectly reasonable thing for her to say. Saul isn’t just her usual research partner, but also her partner-partner. I’d like to think that if I ever slow down enough to get to that stage in a relationship, a girl would extend that same courtesy to me, as I would to her. What bothers me is Katherine’s expression, which tells me that Saul’s decision on this jump will be the deciding factor.

  “Speaking of,” she says, “I should probably get back over there.”

  “Sure, sure,” Rich says. “Take your time. I mean, on the decision. As long as I get back with Angelo by midweek, we should be able to hold on to these jump-slots.”

  Once she’s gone, he turns toward me. “Hey, that went even better than I’d hoped! She seems interested.”

  He means interested in the project, but I can tell he’s also hoping it’s something more. I nod and smile, clinking my glass against his. Rich is an eternal optimist. It’s one of the things I like most about him. And even though I’m almost certain that Katherine Shaw is too far gone for him to stand the slightest chance with her, the guy is my best friend. No way in hell am I going to be the person to point that out.

  FROM A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHRONOS, 4TH ED. (2302)

  The scientific principles of time travel were discovered in the mid-twenty-second centu
ry by a small team of researchers, headed by Ian Alexander, Ryan Jefferson, and Madison Grace. Funded primarily by the US government, the specific details of their research were never fully revealed to the public, although media outlets published a flurry of exposés in 2161, claiming that government operatives had been manipulating the timeline to benefit US and European interests for at least a decade.

  The most prominent of those media outlets, the New York Hourly Intrepid (published as the New York Daily Intrepid before 2046), has since disappeared almost entirely from the historical record. The masthead suggests that the journal was in circulation for nearly 250 years, but the only record we have of their investigation into timeline manipulation, or of their very existence, is contained in a cache of government records that were protected from chronological tampering and released to the public in 2270.

  It is still unclear exactly how much history was altered in those early decades of time travel.

  ∞2∞

  MADI

  BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  NOVEMBER 4, 2136

  Late-afternoon sunlight ripples through the willow in the backyard, creating playful dots that dance across the lawn. This view has become part of my regular routine over the past few months—pour a glass of wine; make a simple dinner of cheese, bread, and fruit; and carry it out to the table on the patio to watch the sunset light show.

  Tonight, however, I have guests. Dinner will be pasta and a salad, the best that can be hoped for given my limited cooking skills and the ancient food-processing unit in the kitchen. It was top of the line forty years ago, but a much better replicator came standard in the one-bedroom economy flat I helped move my mother into before I left London.

  “This is all private land?” Alex asks as he exits the house onto the patio.

  I nod, ignoring his slightly judgmental tone. “It’s been on my father’s side of the family for generations. Part of my job while I’m here is to get it ready for market.”