Zachary Kyle regarded him for a long moment. “Interesting. An AI?”
The Librarian fixed him with a withering look. “I am a Librarian, not a Neanderthal.”
“Sorry.” Zachary Kyle flinched. “So, uh, what was your theory?”
Mollified, the Librarian transited to a more professorial pose. “Keryl—or rather, Charles—is supposed to be dead.”
I felt a bit faint, Maire make a choking noise, and Zachary Kyle’s jaw dropped.
“But—how did you figure that out?” he asked when he had regained his voice.
“Young man, my data files extend back approximately 600,000 years. Do you think you are the only civilization ever to discover time travel?”
“Well, we’ve never met anyone else…”
“Which only proves they are wiser than you, my good sir. Regardless, Charles’ being in this era the first time created a time rip, which your agency attempted to resolve by returning him, through whatever means were necessary, to the 20th century. But it did not have the desired effect; Charles was supposed to die that that day. When he returned, however, he did not land where he had left, and thus avoided the enemy troops who, in the normal course of events, would have killed him. Ergo, the last twenty years of his life have exacerbated, not mitigated, the temporal damage. Eventually, the only way to try to repair the continuum was to return him here, where his future is still fluid, and he is no further danger to earlier eras.”
I was utterly befogged, and Maire seemed lost at sea. I walked over to her chair and took her hand in mine, which she gripped with an intensity that hurt my fingers.
“That’s amazing,” Zachary Kyle breathed. “Your analysis is almost perfect.”
The Librarian frowned. “Almost, young man?”
“Almost,” he conceded. “It doesn’t cover why I’m here.”
I intervened before the Librarian could open his mouth again and take the conversation so far away I might never be able to participate.
“Wait, before you get into that, I have to know. When you sent the door, I was in a lot of trouble. And my partner had been shot. What happened to him?”
“Oh, he’s fine,” Kyle responded. “We couldn’t risk your wanting to go back and save him the way you saved your friends in World War I.” World War I? There was another one? “So we dropped in a couple of agents disguised as federals. They saved your John Naylor and arrested the others. He got a promotion and the gang got life for your murder. Of course they never found your body, but with one wounded agent and a war on the way, no one raised a fuss over details.” He brightened. “You got a nice funeral, by the way. We looked up the records.”
“Thank you,” I said with a marked lack of sincerity.
“So why are you here?” Maire asked quietly. “Or do I not want to know?”
Agent Kyle sighed. “Actually, none of you wants to know. It’s bleak.”
Maire squeezed my hand, but relented enough for blood to flow into my fingers. “How bleak?”
“Here it is. Bringing Charles back solved the time rip problem as far as he was concerned. But in doing the research, we found something very frightening. A larger time rip, much, much larger, is starting to form. Someone in this era is performing time travel experiments on a massive scale, bringing in dozens, maybe hundreds of subjects. If this continues, within the next four to six months the time space-time continuum is going to rip somewhere along the line and the universe as we know it will cease to exist.
“And Charles, we think you’re the only man who can stop it.”
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About the Author
Brian K. Lowe has been writing since he was a child, the same time during which he was devouring the kinds of books that eventually he would write. A fan of comic books, pulp magazines, 1930s screwball comedies, and kaiju movies, he thinks he has a good grasp of what life must have been like in Depression-era America. He is almost certainly wrong.
Brian lives with his wife of 35 years in Southern California. He may be reached at brianklowewriter(at)aol.com.
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Copyright
The Secret City
Book 2 of The Stolen Future Trilogy
Written by Brian K. Lowe
Executive Editor: Michael A. Wills
Editorial Assistant: Ivy M. Wills
This story is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, locations, and events portrayed in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination, fictitious, or used fictitiously. No claim to the trademark, copyright, or intellectual property of any identifiable company, organization, product, or public name is made. Any character resembling an actual person, living or dead, would be coincidental and quite remarkable.
The Secret City. Copyright © 2018 by Brian K. Lowe. This story and all characters, settings, and other unique features or content are copyright Brian K. Lowe. Published under exclusive license by Digital Fiction Publishing Corp. Cover Image ID 181146943 © Camille | Adobe Stock Images. This version first published in print and electronically: October 2018 by Digital Fiction Publishing Corp., LaSalle, Ontario, Canada. Digital Fiction, Digital Science Fiction and its logos, and Digital Fiction Publishing Corp and its logo, are Trademarks of Digital Fiction Publishing Corp. (Digital Fiction)
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