Borrowed Time- the Force Majeure

by E W Barnes

  “What she means is that he was charmed by an attractive woman wanting to talk with him and who was fascinated by his legal knowledge,” Jonas said with a smirk.

  “I was fascinated by his legal knowledge,” Miranda said. “That was not an act.”

  “Were you able to talk about the debtor provision?” Sharon asked.

  Miranda nodded. “And about his plans for including them in the U.N. resolution.”

  “That’s marvelous!” Sharon said as Caelen cheered.

  “Does this mean we’re done here?” Jonas asked. He was clearly focused on the shift back to 1215 to retrieve the first aid kit.

  “I suggest we wait before we shift back,” Miranda said. “When the resolution is adopted, they will make it public in the newspapers the following morning, won’t they, Jonas?” He nodded and Miranda continued. “We can learn then if we were successful, rather than going back to 2023 to confirm it.”

  “If we're unsuccessful, could we do anything about it here?” Sharon asked.

  “Probably not,” Miranda answered. “But it’s possible we could find out why we were not successful and use that knowledge to try again.”

  “The ratification takes place tomorrow night, right?” Caelen asked. “So, we simply need to lie low until the day after tomorrow.”

  “Right now, I’m only thinking about tonight. What’re we going to do for dinner?” Sharon called out over her shoulder as she headed toward the room she shared with Miranda. She wanted to doctor her hand and take painkillers to dull the throb.

  “We have that all taken care of,” Jonas said. “Miranda and I picked up dinner on our way back from Mr. Cassain’s hotel. We have roasted chicken and vegetables, fresh bread with butter, and a bottle of wine.”

  As Caelen, Miranda, and Jonas set out dinner, Sharon went to the bathroom and took the bandage off her hand.

  The wound did not look good. It had bled again after the woman grabbed it, and it was still oozing and bruised from where she dug in her fingers. The swelling and redness had not changed. Sharon cleaned the dried blood and ooze and applied more antiseptic cream and a new bandage. She turned her glove inside out and washed the blood from it, hanging it to dry on a shower curtain hook.

  She had painkillers in her good hand when she returned to the sitting room. She swallowed them after they toasted to a successful mission.

  Their dinner conversation was understandably focused on the blond woman and Mr. Cassain’s assistant. Jonas again dismissed Sharon’s sense that the woman was a time-traveler and believed her meeting the assistant on the park bench was a coincidence.

  “They were ahead of us in the crowd at lunchtime. She could have met up with him on the way to the restaurant and we just didn’t see her,” he theorized.

  “But what if she was a time traveler, a TPC agent? What was she doing with Mr. Cassain’s assistant?” Sharon asked.

  “If she was a TPC agent, it would be inappropriate for her to interact with someone from this time frame in that way unless it was part of her mission,” Miranda started.

  “I suppose it could be a genuine relationship,” Caelen mused. “Like your grandmother and grandfather,” he nodded at Sharon.

  “Let’s assume it’s not a genuine relationship,” Sharon said. “Because if it is, then it probably has nothing to do with us and we don’t need to worry about it. If it’s not, then what does the TPC get by an agent entering into a relationship with someone in this time frame?”

  “Someone who is also Mr. Cassain’s assistant. That’s too much of a coincidence,” Miranda started.

  “They figured out what we’re doing…” Sharon realized.

  “They probably don’t know the whole plan—that's why we've been avoiding the upload of Mrs. Bower's analysis—but they know we were in 1215. They may have figured out why and anticipated the change to the U.N. resolution,” Miranda said.

  Jonas could barely breathe. “They’ll catch us, we’ll fail, and we’ll be terminated! What’re we going to do?”

  “What can we do?” Sharon asked him.

  “We can go back, back to 2204, and pretend like none of this happened.”

  “Go back to a TPC where you’ve been placed on leave? You’re ok with that?” Caelen asked.

  “At least I’ll still be an agent. If they catch us now, they’ll terminate us, guaranteed.”

  “We’re so close, Jonas. If we can correct the timeline, you’ll go back to being an agent like you love, working for the TPC that you know and admire. Isn’t that worth the risk?” said Sharon at her most reassuring. He was close to panic.

  “I don’t do well with risk,” he muttered.

  “This is all supposition, remember,” Miranda said. “We’re making guesses based on very few facts. Our guesses could be wrong.”

  Jonas calmed down. “You’re right, you could be wrong,” he said. “And, no offense, but I hope you’re wrong.”

  ◆◆◆

  The next day was cold but clear. With the clouds gone the temperature dropped. They decided not to leave the safety of the suite except to get food. Sharon spent the day huddled in a chair next to the radiator watching out the window. She wrapped herself in a blanket and tried not to worry about the mission, her throbbing hand, or TPC agents finding them.

  Jonas, having developed a fondness for the bakery that offered the baguettes and strawberry jam, volunteered to get breakfast. A few hours later, Miranda offered to pick up lunch and set out with almost the last of the money they’d brought with them.

  “I don’t know what we'll do for dinner,” Jonas said to Sharon and Caelen as Miranda left.

  Miranda had been thinking along the same lines because when she returned, she brought soup, a large loaf of bread, and a selection of meats and cheeses.

  “If we’re careful, we can stretch this out for multiple meals,” she explained. Jonas looked dubious. He preferred his meals on the generous side.

  The afternoon passed slowly. Sharon was sleepy and couldn’t seem to get warm no matter how close she crowded the radiator. When dinner time arrived, she accepted only a cup of soup warmed up on the hot plate, explaining that she wasn’t hungry.

  She slept fitfully, tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable. She got up as quietly as she could to not wake Miranda and stood at the window. Out there across the darkened rooftops in the cold quiet of early morning Paris, the fledgling United Nations was taking a momentous step forward for human rights.

  When she woke again it was late morning. Miranda was not in the room, though she could hear the quiet murmur of conversation.

  “Good morning,” Sharon said, yawning as she joined them. They others were crowded around an open newspaper.

  “The resolution has passed,” Miranda said.

  “And?” Sharon asked.

  “They did not include the debtor provision.”

  “Oh no, not again,” Jonas whispered.

  Caelen handed the newspaper to Sharon. The text of the resolution had been printed under a celebratory headline.

  “How could we fail?” Jonas asked, dismayed. “The TPC stopped us, didn’t they? We should go back now, before they catch us.”

  “I assume you plan to find Mr. Cassain again?” Caelen said to Miranda as if Jonas had not spoken. Jonas’ face went white and then blotchy pink at being ignored.

  “That seems the most logical way to find out what happened.”

  “We’ll come with you,” Caelen said but Miranda shook her head.

  “No, I think it needs to be just me. If the blond woman is a TPC agent, or there are agents here, we're more likely to be spotted if we're all together. It makes the most sense for me to do this alone.”

  Sharon had a bad feeling about Miranda going alone but said nothing. Another afternoon passed slowly. Finally warm, almost too warm, Sharon paced the room, while Jonas watched out the window. Caelen read the paper from cover to cover and Miranda reviewed information on her tablet.

  Eventually, it was time for Miran
da to leave. Her plan was to go to Mr. Cassain’s hotel in the hopes she might meet him in the lobby bar again. They saw her to the door and when it closed, Sharon shuddered with the terrible thought that she would never see Miranda again. An arm was laid gently across her shoulders.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Caelen said.

  Sharon leaned against him. Now more than ever she missed the closeness they’d shared in the timeline he did not remember.

  “What are you doing?”

  Jonas had come out of the bathroom. He looked at them in shock.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “How long has what been going on?”

  “This… this… personal thing. Is that where you were yesterday? Is that why you were gone so long, because you were out somewhere… hugging?”

  “We told you where we were,” Caelen said calmly.

  But Sharon wasn’t calm. Pain and fatigue had eroded her patience.

  “No, we were not out there somewhere hugging. And even if we were, what business is it of yours?”

  “Well, uh, it’s my business, um, because we’re in this mission together and we can’t be… be… be wasting time with… with personal stuff.” Sharon had never seen him so angry.

  “You’re overreacting, Jonas,” Caelen said. “There’s nothing like that going on.” He was so quietly assured and sincere in his statement that Jonas settled down.

  “No, there’s nothing like that going on,” Sharon echoed Caelen. She went back to the chair by the window and watched until nightfall. She didn’t speak to Jonas or Caelen for the rest of the afternoon.

  Sharon’s fears about not seeing Miranda again were unfounded. Two hours after she’d left, Miranda returned. Her cheeks were rosy with cold and she shed her coat to stand by the radiator as soon as she entered the suite.

  “I met with Mr. Cassain again,” she said as she held her hands close to the heater.

  “Did you find out what happened with the resolution?” Jonas asked.

  “Yes, I did. Mr. Cassain’s assistant argued against adding the debtor provision. He said it was something that local governments could regulate. That argument convinced Mr. Cassain, and he opted to not include the provision. Mrs. Roosevelt and the committee agreed.”

  Miranda’s eyes had shaded to the familiar orange of alarm.

  “The blond woman,” Sharon said.

  “What about the blond woman?” Jonas asked.

  “She must have told the assistant what to say,” Caelen said. “She found out who he was, seduced him, and prepared him to deflect the debtor provision. He was ready when his boss proposed the language we wanted.”

  “Which means she knew what to expect and how to thwart it,” Miranda added.

  “She is a TPC agent. It's the only explanation,” Sharon said. “We need to get out of here, now.”

  They prepared to leave as fast as they could, gathering together all they had brought. They piled everything on the floor next to Sharon. Jonas scoured every inch of the suite, determined nothing would be left behind again.

  “Is the remote control set for the right day and time?” Sharon asked Jonas. They had given her both devices to hold while they gathered all their things.

  Jonas nodded, eyes wide.

  “Ready,” Miranda said after coming from the room she and Sharon shared to make sure nothing was left behind.

  “Me too,” Caelen said, stepping up next to her, scanning the sitting room one more time.

  There was a sharp knock on the door. Jonas jumped.

  “Hello? Hello? It is Madame Poulet. Is anyone in?”

  “Should we answer it?” Jonas whispered.

  “No, let’s go,” Sharon hissed.

  “We can’t just disappear,” Miranda murmured. “We need to answer the door and politely send her away.”

  “I can hear you whispering in there,” Madame Poulet said angrily. “I am coming in.” There was a jingling sound and metal against metal as she inserted a key in the lock.

  “I’ll do it,” Jonas said, reluctantly letting go of his bag.

  He opened the door a crack.

  “Yes, Madame Poulet,” he said, his voice quavering only slightly. “Can I help you?”

  “There is someone here to see you, you and your friends,” Madame Poulet said.

  Before Jonas could ask who, the door was pushed open. There were two men dressed as gendarmes but who Sharon immediately sensed were TPC agents. Behind them stood the blond woman.

  One of the men grabbed Jonas and the other advanced into the room. The blond woman pushed Madame Poulet to the side to follow the second man.

  There was only one way to save this situation, to save Jonas, to complete the mission. Sharon pushed the button on the remote control.

  Jonas’ shout of “Wait! No!” echoed in her ears as the room faded, warping like a mirage before it resolved into the familiar lines of Sharon’s library.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “We have to go back!” Sharon was sobbing, pushing buttons on the temporal amplifier. “Just five minutes earlier. We have to go back.”

  “We can’t go back,” Caelen said, gently taking her hands.

  “We can’t leave him there!”

  “Those were TPC agents,” Miranda said. “He’s no longer there, they will have shifted him to the future. And they will be waiting for us if we try to rescue him.”

  Sharon sank onto the couch across from the bookcases, head in her hands. Miranda and Caelen joined her, sitting in either side of her, each lost in their fear for their friend.

  “What do we do now?” Sharon asked finally.

  “We complete the mission,” Miranda said, going to the bookcases. “Let’s see where things stand.”

  “Did we have any impact on the timeline in 1948?” Caelen asked as Miranda accessed the temporal amplifier control panel.

  “I can’t tell,” Miranda said. Sharon joined her, tears still shining on her cheeks. The control panel was blank and no matter which buttons she tapped, no data appeared on the screen. A cold shiver ran down Sharon’s spine.

  “Mrs. Bower?” she called, realizing as she did that Mrs. Bower had not appeared as usual when they arrived. The hologram materialized and the tension in Sharon’s shoulders eased.

  “Hello, Mrs. Bower,” Sharon said.

  “Hello, Sharon. If you are seeing this recording, it means you have shifted back, and I did not appear automatically. I made this recording to activate if the Temporal Amplifier Holographic Interface and Security Program was disconnected. My program has likely been blocked and I am no longer accessible. This means the TPC has taken control of this temporal amplifier.”

  “What do we do, Mrs. Bower?” Sharon asked in a shaking voice forgetting the recording couldn’t interact with her.

  “If you still have the Director’s Prerogative override device, you can still use it. It countermands TPC control instructions,” the recording paused. “However, I suggest you hurry.”

  The recording of Mrs. Bower disappeared. Miranda pulled her touch screen tablet from her pack.

  “The shift brought us back to the morning of the day the upload will take place. We only have a few hours.”

  “How is that possible?” Caelen asked. “The remote control was programmed to bring us back to yesterday.”

  “Could the TPC taking control of this temporal amplifier affect the remote control programming?” Sharon asked.

  “Possibly,” Miranda answered.

  “Probably,” Caelen said.

  “We need to act quickly,” Sharon said. “Do we go back to 1948 and try again? Or give up on the U.N. resolution and go to 2126?”

  “We can’t go back to 1948,” Caelen said. “They know we were there. They will track us and find us.”

  “It would have the element of surprise, though,” Sharon argued. “They might not expect us to try again.”

  “I think they will have planned for e
very contingency,” Miranda said thoughtfully. “And while we don’t know where they are, they know exactly where we need to be—close to the development of the U.N. resolution. It doesn’t matter from what angle we approach it, that’s where we need to be, and they’d be waiting.”

  “I agree,” Caelen said. “We have to focus on 2126.”

  “What do we need to do to prepare?” Sharon asked Caelen.

  “Fortunately, we don’t need to do much. By that time in history, there were few cultural norms related to how people dressed. You can wear your 21st century clothes or your 13th century clothes, there are no expectations and no judgments.”

  “What about money? How are we going to find a place to stay, get food, etc.?”

  “By 2126 the barter system supported by blockchain was already established, like what we have in the 23rd century. Everyone on the planet has access to a base income and they barter their services to add to it as they wish.”

  “Doesn’t that require that you sign-in somehow, identify yourself to get access?” Sharon asked. Wouldn’t that mean the TPC could track us?”

  Caelen looked uncomfortable.

  “Yes, it does, but I don’t know how else we can function in that society. It’s set up for ease of access, not for anonymity.”

  “What you’re saying is that we’ll be able to get what we need, but it will only be a matter of time before the TPC catches up with us.”

  “Yes. But I don’t think we’ll need to access the system,” Caelen said. “If we time it right, we won’t need food or a place to stay.”

  “We need to act fast while we are there, then,” Miranda said. “What’s the plan to ensure there's a debtor provision included in the World Government resolutions?”

  “That will be easier,” Caelen answered. “The World Government requested submissions and suggestions from all citizens for the resolutions in 2126. We can each submit the provision for consideration.”

  “How can we submit anything if we’re not actually citizens in the time frame?” Sharon asked.

  “The opportunity was open to all people on the planet, no exceptions. There were no sign-in requirements, or other conditions. The goal was to allow everyone to participate,” Caelen responded.