The Future of Another Timeline

by Annalee Newitz

  “Tess, you were the only one who remembered Berenice.” Enid reached out to squeeze my arm tearfully.

  I shook my head, wondering at the lost memory, a spray of neurochemicals from an undone time. This was how historical revision worked; only travelers present at the time of the edit would remember the previous version. Now I recalled nothing but the timeline with Enid’s revert. Still, something about the scenario seemed off. I had to say something.

  “Berenice was killed around the same time I saw those Comstockers at the Grape Ape show. Otherwise I couldn’t have remembered her.” I was thinking out loud, and Berenice nodded for me to continue, red hair flopping in her eyes. “That doesn’t seem like a coincidence anymore. We may be dealing with travelers from the twenty-fourth century, doing coordinated edits in 1893 and 1992.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Berenice said. “Those were transitional phases, heavily revised. The spooky part is that I can’t find any records of these guys coming through the Machines in ’92. It’s possible they had a cover story, though. Or they came through in the past and reached ’92 by living in real time.”

  “I bet they were in real time,” Shweta replied.

  “Or they made up a legit reason to be here, the same way we would if we were doing edits.”

  We debated for a few minutes, and then C.L. broke in. “I know we have a lot to discuss, but I wanted to say that I’m so glad you’re here, Berenice. I can’t imagine the Daughters without you.”

  “It’s true.” Anita’s voice was rough with emotion.

  “You are the best, Berenice.” Enid embraced her partner fiercely.

  C.L. brought out some cupcakes they’d made with representations of atoms printed on the icing and we took a moment to celebrate a world with our friend in it.

  At last I got around to describing my experience falling out of the wormhole, and C.L.’s eyes widened with excitement. They unsuccessfully tried to wipe a streak of blue buttercream off their cheek before jumping in. “Okay, this is going to sound weird, but it almost sounds like you were in an archive cave.”

  All of us stared at them. They were referring to the as-yet-unexplained phenomenon that drew geoscientists from all over the world to Raqmu in Jordan. There were hundreds of these caves, dug into the soft sandstone of the city’s canyon walls. Somehow, they could prevent written documents from changing with the timeline. Raqmu was home to records of all the times we’d forgotten throughout history—some cut into stone and hide, others in densely printed books and digital storage. Now that I thought about it, C.L. was right that the place I visited looked a lot like some of the smaller archive caves, especially the ones devoted to minority history.

  C.L. continued to muse. “What if the Comstockers really are sabotaging the Machines and this is the first sign?”

  I nodded eagerly—this confirmed what I’d been thinking.

  C.L. met my eyes and spoke again. “Maybe the Machine took you briefly to Raqmu? As you know, I’ve been studying the Machine at Raqmu, and I’ve found—”

  Abruptly, the door to our conference room banged open. A woman stood there, her short black hair mashed up on one side like she’d been sleeping on it. Her skin was dark brown, and her eyes bright blue; she wore a vibrant Hawaiian shirt over a gray technical jumper. Before she spoke, I knew she was a traveler.

  She settled heavily into the last remaining chair, looking at each of us in turn. “Daughters of Harriet. I’m Morehshin.” Her accent was unfamiliar but easily understood. “I have come from the future. I will give anything, even my life, to help you.” She withdrew something small from her sleeve and set it on the table. It was almost impossible to look at, but with great effort I perceived what seemed to be a spherical globe of water throbbing and rolling slowly on the fake wood grain. Had she brought this thing with her from the future, despite all the limitations we thought we understood about how the mechanism worked?

  We all started asking questions at once.

  “Where is your mark?”

  “What is that thing? Is that a weapon?”

  “When are you from?”

  “What past do you remember?”

  She drummed a military rhythm on the table with her fingers, and the jumper parted over her traveler’s tattoo. “As you can see, I’m from exactly 512 years in your future. I came because my … colleagues and I believe that this era is the last common ancestor of our timeline and one that is strongly divergent.”

  “What do you mean, ‘strongly divergent’?” I asked. I had never met a traveler who made these kinds of claims. Usually we talked about editing, not diverging.

  “I didn’t come to change a few laws in the United States, or study the price of meat. This is something bigger. I had to come a long way back to make it happen.”

  Our conversation about Raqmu and the archive caves was completely forgotten. I’d met future travelers when they gave lectures sponsored by the geoscience department, of course. But none had ever come to find the Daughters of Harriet specifically. If what Morehshin said was true, people still knew about our working group half a millennium from now. A hot, unfamiliar sensation of optimism spread through my ribcage. We had made a difference. Things would get better. Wading through the garbage can of history had actually been worth it.

  Morehshin spoke again. “Obviously I’m not going to tell you about the past that I remember. It’s irrelevant anyway, since nothing I remember has happened yet.”

  “What’s that?” Shweta pointed at the unidentifiable blob on the table, roving slowly.

  “Evidence that I am serious. One thing I will tell you is that there’s a lot you don’t understand yet about the Machines. We can pull certain objects through with us—more than garb. And people. We can travel together, up to five at a time.”

  C.L. was excited. “I thought that was one of the hard limits on the interfaces—no simultaneous travel. To stop people from bringing an army through, or maybe to prevent mass temporal abandonment when things get tough.”

  Morehshin shrugged. “Your ignorance is not my problem. I’m here because of the edit war. The one you first described in your writing, Anita. In the subalterns’ cave.”

  We all looked at Anita, whose face was morphing from disgruntlement to shock. “What … no. I haven’t left anything in a cave.”

  “Somebody named Anita from the Daughters of Harriet left a detailed history of the edit war, starting with the Comstockers. Is that you?”

  “No … it’s not me. At least, it’s not me now.”

  Morehshin sucked in her breath at Anita’s implication. Exposing the future was a major violation, and apparently the taboo still held in this traveler’s present. Nobody was sure what to say next.

  I broke the silence. “I’ve been tracking the Comstockers. What can you tell us about this divergence?”

  “Nothing. Obviously. I’ve already been foolish with my words. But … we need to kill Anthony Comstock.” She pointed at the blob on the table. So it was some kind of weapon.

  “You’re about a century too late for that.” I folded my arms.

  Next to me, Anita looked like she’d eaten hot coals. Her voice came out in the clipped phonemes she used for arguing with old, tenured white men at academic conferences. “In addition, evidence suggests that killing and saving individual lives doesn’t affect the timeline. The Great Man theory has been disproven. Only social movements and collective action can change history.”

  Now Morehshin looked frustrated. When she spoke, her unidentifiable accent thickened. “You take your sterile pleasure in hell, don’t you?” I got the feeling that she’d translated directly from some nasty future curse. “You know nothing about travel. You haven’t cracked layer one of the Machine interfaces. We have centuries of data demonstrating that we can change the timeline by targeting key individuals.”

  Anita glanced at Berenice, and I knew what she was thinking. This traveler could be lying or wrong. Or she could be right. It was true that that we barely understood how
history worked. Theories of timeline change went in and out of style; every geoscience student read about the many hypotheses that had been adopted and discarded, only to be adopted again with seemingly more nuance. Clearly the geoscientists of Morehshin’s time were in a Great Man phase. At least her sophisticated Machine techs hadn’t managed to deposit her in the right period. We still had a chance to stop her from killing anyone, and possibly making things worse when a more profoundly devious bastard rose up to take Comstock’s place.

  “We have centuries of data too.” C.L. tapped their ancient laptop with a finger, as if all of history lived on its sad little hard drive.

  I piled on. “Your data can’t be that great, if you overshot your target by over a century.”

  Shweta made a wiping gesture with her hands. “Let’s stop arguing about theory. Can you tell us why you want to kill Comstock? That might help us understand your mission.”

  “We believe that he’s the reason for the divergence. He started the process…” She searched for words. “He started misogyny? Does that make sense?”

  Now I was really confused. “There was misogyny before Comstock. Can you be more specific?”

  “No. I cannot.” Then her face softened. “But I will say that in my time it is worse. Much worse. We are dying out.”

  I watched panic and mistrust distort everyone’s faces. Maybe the Daughters weren’t going to fix the timeline after all.

  “Humanity is dying out? Like a species extinction?” C.L. sounded intrigued.

  “Not humanity. Women. Queen type women who are … on our side.”

  “Queen type?” Anita twirled a pen between her fingers. “You mean women with power?”

  Morehshin shook her head. “More than power, but also less. You know I am saying too much already. I hope you will help me. This is our only chance.”

  I thought about my disastrous conversation with Beth at UCI, and wondered if I’d sounded as crazy to her as Morehshin sounded to me now. Recalling Beth’s rejection, I felt a rush of sympathy for this traveler with her strange curses and stranger story.

  “I know how to find Comstock, if you’ll promise not to kill him. I have a better plan. Maybe you can help.”

  Morehshin pocketed the thing on the table. “We are all sisters.” She said it like a formal invocation. “Let us act as one.”

  “Does that mean you won’t kill him?”

  “I won’t kill him. Unless your plan is bad.”

  “So what is your plan, Tess?” Anita sounded dubious.

  “I told you I’ve been organizing with women in 1893. It’s collective action. For Comstock, there are things worse than death. We’re going to destroy his reputation.”

  Morehshin’s snarl became a grin. “His individual reputation?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “I’m harmonized.”

  I wondered how Morehshin had studied twenty-first-century English. Probably from flawed historical documents, or incomplete media files left in the archive caves. Sometimes she spoke in perfect idioms, and sometimes she sounded like bad translation software.

  I looked at Anita. “I’m going to take her back to 1893 with me. It can’t hurt.”

  “What the fuck, Tess. Of course it can hurt. Plus, you can’t take anyone with you anyway.”

  “Well, Morehshin says she can take more than one person back. If she’s wrong, then we know she’s a fraud. If she’s right, then we’ve got a valuable ally in this edit war.”

  Shweta took a deep breath. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think Tess is right. Berenice was dead, and she’s probably not the only one. We need to do everything we can to stop the edit war and prevent these Comstockers from destroying the Machines.”

  Morehshin nodded. “We need to follow this thread back to its beginning. It’s the only way to survive.”

  Several other Daughters were nodding too.

  We called a vote and it was unanimous. Morehshin would come with me to fight the Comstockers, without using violence. Whether we faced a strong divergence, a plot to destroy the Machines, or simply a melee in the edit war, we were on the same side. Unless Morehshin decided to go all Great Man assassin on me. I glanced at her, registering that her irises had no imperfections in them at all. It was as if she’d been engineered. I looked down at my hands, the knuckles slightly swollen, skin creased. Would I be able to stop her, if Morehshin decided murder was the only way? Then, guiltily, I wondered if I’d actually want to.

  We arrived in Flin Flon two days later. I still had official permission to continue research on the Columbian Exposition, and I wrote Morehshin into the meager budget as a research assistant. After the usual flight delays, followed by scheduling difficulties at the Machine, we were in position. Rumor spread quickly that a traveler from the future would be demonstrating new functionality, and several off-duty techs showed up to watch. This was a lot more unusual than a traveler covered in cyanobacteria. Many people didn’t believe group travel would ever be possible. I braced myself for a disappointing plan B, where the wormhole didn’t open and I had to go through alone.

  Around us, the tappers thrummed to life, four joining in to beat a light rhythm on the rock. Morehshin put her left arm around my waist and scratched the air overhead with her free hand. A black square materialized beneath her fingers, like she’d revealed a circuit breaker box hidden in the fabric of reality. Instead of switches and buttons, the square glowed with thin strands of rippling fluid. I could hear a few gasps in the room, and I realized that my own mouth was hanging open. Abruptly, Morehshin mashed her hand into the square, and her fingers took on a faint luminescence. I thought of all the rules I’d memorized in school about how the Machine worked. One of the best-known limits was that it never sent multiple contemporaries to the same place at the same time. Trying to send several people sequentially to the same time didn’t work either—it had been tried repeatedly, with occasionally disastrous results.

  Morehshin’s arm tightened around me, the floor rushed with silty water, and the air exploded into wormhole nothingness. Then we stood, still touching, in a dark, smoky cabin. We’d made it back to 1893. Together.

  FIFTEEN

  BETH

  Irvine, Alta California (1992 C.E.)

  A week before school started, my father called a family meeting to discuss what he called “our agreement.” Ever since fourth grade, when teachers started giving letter grades instead of stars and sad faces, I’d been under contractual obligation to get straight As. If I failed to keep my end of the bargain, I would be placed on restriction until the next report card came. I can remember my mother’s earnest face as she explained it to me when I was eight, quoting from a book she was reading about how to maintain student discipline. I’m pretty sure my parents still had the paper I’d signed back then, consenting to their terms.

  The contract had led to a lot of lonely months in my room during elementary school, imprisoned for a B-minus in penmanship and a C in language arts. Eventually I’d learned all the tricks to getting As, almost none of which had to do with being smart. Which was why my father had to detain me for new reasons all the time. But not today, apparently.

  “You’ve stuck to our plan to get straight As in school, Beth, so we’re going to extend weekend curfew to 1 A.M. As long as you keep your grades up, and start working on your college applications when school starts.”

  My mother looked up sharply from a pile of open binders on the table, made an indistinct noise of affirmation, then returned to color-coding her semester calendar.

  My father was looking expectantly at me, and after years of dodging bullets I knew what he wanted to hear.

  “Wow, thanks! I already started working on my college applications.” Then I gave him the nice daughter smile and he nodded.

  Apparently, I was in their good graces. But I knew from years of experience that these promises of freedom were often quickly followed by new infractions of as-yet-unknown laws. Possibly it would turn out
that we’d always worn shoes in the house, and I was supposed to be cleaning the windows every week. Or I’d get home at 1 A.M., only to discover that I should have known the rule only went into effect after I’d put those college applications in the mail. I watched my father eating, totally absorbed by the curried shrimp he’d made, his hands covered in scuffs and scars from decades of working on cars.

  When we were in friend mode, my father would tell me how much he hated his job. He’d never had a chance to do what he really wanted because his parents didn’t have the money to pay for college. Plus, when Grandpa went to jail, somebody had to run the shop. So he’d been stuck fixing cars while my mom got her B.A. and teaching credential, all paid for by her middle-class parents. Now that the repair shop was thriving, he was trapped there for life. He’d never get to be a writer or a chef or a musician. When I was younger, I used to wish that one day he could go back to college. Then he would be happy. And maybe I wouldn’t feel every muscle in my body bunch up when he walked by. Lately, though, I’d started to think that nothing would ever make him happy.

  Suddenly he stopped eating and narrowed his eyes at me, as if I’d already done something wrong. A familiar nausea crept up my throat until it felt like I was being strangled from the inside. I had to get away, so I used the least controversial excuse. “I’m going to go upstairs and read.” I put my dishes in the washer and raced up the stairs, freshly vacuumed carpet squeezing between my toes.

  As I fled, I could hear my mother’s dubious commentary. “Do you think she’ll actually do her applications without you pushing her? You know how bad senioritis can be. I see it in my students all the time.”

  “Let’s give her a chance. She’s not always lazy, even if she’s done the minimum required to get those grades.”