The Future of Another Timeline

by Annalee Newitz

  I closed the door quietly, wondering what it would feel like to slam it so hard that the knob came off in my hand along with a splintered collar of wood.

  * * *

  Fall semester was like one of those poorly preserved movies from the 1920s, where missing scenes have been reconstructed with still photographs from the production. I sutured the sound of my father’s voice, raised in anger or something worse, into hazy, scratched scenes. I tunneled through homework, applications, and classes I barely remembered a day after they happened. At least I didn’t lose my 1 A.M. privileges. Lizzy, Soojin, Heather, and I kept going to the backyard parties for punk rockers. Those moments were like brief glimpses of a fully restored print, the grays rich against deeply textured blacks. In the mosh pits, I earned every scuff on my boots and every tear in my combat jacket. But I wasn’t so sure I earned that early admission to UCLA, especially after my parents rewrote the admissions essay five times.

  When I showed them the acceptance letter, my mother gave me a rare smile. “I loved going to UCLA. It’s a great school.”

  My father gave us both a measured stare. “It’s not as good as getting into Berkeley. But at least you’ll have a chance to do better for grad school.”

  I had a vivid memory of Tess, older than my father was now. She’d confirmed what he was capable of doing. Knowing that, remembering the recognition in her eyes, I said something I should have swallowed. “I thought you said that if you’d gone to UCLA your life would be way better.”

  Bewildered rage gathered in his face, and for once my mother noticed. She made a quick cutting gesture in the air. “Go to your room, Beth. That was a nasty thing to say.”

  The silence I left behind, I knew, was more dangerous than a scream. But something was different. My father didn’t come to my room with a list of new restrictions, nor did he spend the next hour breaking things and yelling about me downstairs. Maybe it was that admission to UCLA. No matter what happened, I would be gone at this time next year. My father could no longer claim to be my eternal watchman, ever vigilant. His tour of duty was almost over.

  When the phone rang, my mother tapped on my door and said Lizzy was on the line. It was like nothing had happened. I grabbed the upstairs extension next to the computer, crumpling the curly cord in my hand so hard that it left little half-moon shapes in my palm. One thing hadn’t changed, at least: a clicking sound meant that my father was listening to our conversation from the downstairs phone. He only did that when he was looking for reasons to say I was breaking the rules.

  We had to be on our guard, so I spoke first. “Hey, Lizzy! Did you still want to get together to finish our presentation for class?”

  She got my drift immediately. “Yeah, that’s why I was calling. I figured if we finished it tonight we could actually have some free time this weekend.”

  “I have to ask. Can you hold on?” I made a big show of putting down the phone and walking loudly downstairs so my father would have time to hang up. If I caught him, I’d have to listen to his lecture about why he was justified because I couldn’t be trusted. I found him at the table, morosely reading a novel by V.S. Naipaul. He barely looked up as he gave me permission to leave the house.

  * * *

  When Lizzy picked me up, she was jumpy with excitement. “What are you doing over winter break?” The school called it Christmas Vacation, but the kids who weren’t Christian usually came up with other names for it.

  I thought bleakly about spending two weeks with my family. “I have no idea.”

  “Heather and I want to go to this private show in Beverly Hills. I heard about it from one of the older guys at that backyard party on Saturday.”

  “What’s the show?”

  “I guess somebody from Matador Records is in town and there’s a rich record exec throwing a 1993 preview party for new indie bands?”

  “That sounds … potentially interesting.” I used my bemused scientist voice, which was our code for “holy shit yes.”

  We turned onto the cul-de-sac where Heather’s chocolate-colored house was exactly like all its neighbors. Lizzy killed the engine. “Want to get stoned before we go in?” She gave me her best naughty pirate smile. For the first time since that day with Tess, I felt a rush of unambivalent love for her. This was my best friend, who understood geology and never judged me and was a disobedient badass like Glorious Garcia. I was right that we weren’t going to murder anyone else. That was a seriously fucked-up thing that had happened, but maybe it wasn’t the most fucked-up thing I’d survived.

  I took a hit off the wood-and-plastic tobacco pipe we’d bought improbably at a drugstore. “I am so glad we are getting the hell out of here in…” I counted on my fingers. “Six months? Do you think we could move up to L.A. in the summer?”

  Lizzy blew smoke over her shoulder, into the murky wayback. “I don’t think we can get into the dorms until fall. But maybe there’s a way?”

  We passed the pipe a few more times, and I felt the last remaining toxins from my father’s gaze draining out of me. Beyond the foggy windows, Irvine was evaporating, its endlessly repeating contours replaced by UCLA’s Spanish colonial architecture and the ragged, strobe-lit concrete of East L.A.’s hidden backyards.

  When Heather let us in, I could see the remains of a large family gathering in the dining room behind her, full of aunts and uncles and cousins. Hamid was there too, clearing up dishes. His hair was longer, and when he looked over at me I felt a jolt that wasn’t an alien seizing control of my cardiovascular system. It was only my heart, beating faster. He grinned and I realized that I had forgotten to keep walking down the hall to Heather’s room with Lizzy.

  “Hey, Beth.” He walked to the foyer and leaned awkwardly against the wall where everybody hung their coats.

  Though his family was in the next room, and my friends were waiting pointedly in front of the X-Ray Spex poster on Heather’s door, it felt like we were completely alone. Nobody could hear us.

  “Hey … are you back for winter break?”

  “For a couple weeks, yeah.” He glanced at Heather and Lizzy. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

  My head buzzed with more than a few hits of pot. “Um … sure.”

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  I left Heather and Lizzy listening to records and promised to be back in a few minutes.

  Outside the air was sharp with a damp chill, and I shoved my hands deep into my jacket pockets. We walked for a few seconds silently, our shadows rotating around us as we moved from one pool of lamplight to the next.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about last summer,” Hamid said, his words coming out in a rush. “I guess I just wanted to know what happened? I thought we liked each other and then you stopped talking to me. I was talking to one of my friends in the dorm about it—I mean, part of it, I wasn’t breaking our privacy—and she said that I was a jerk. Was I a jerk? Were you mad?”

  I balled my hands into fists and thought about how there were certain kinds of pain that Hamid could never feel because he literally did not possess the biological parts for it. Still, there were many kinds of pain that we had in common.

  “I don’t really think you were a jerk.”

  “Then what happened?”

  I wasn’t going to tell him, and then suddenly I was. “Something … I mean, there was nothing you could do. But I got pregnant. And it’s all over and taken care of, but … I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Holy fuck, Beth. What the fuck. Oh my god.” Then he paused, as if everything I’d said was sinking in. “What do you mean that it’s over?”

  We turned onto another cul-de-sac where the houses hadn’t been built yet. Clean gray sidewalks led to square plots of gravel where one day there would be condos whose backyards could hold nothing larger than tables bisected by folding umbrellas. I stopped to stare into the invisible places where people like us might live one day. Or not.

  “I got an abortion.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?
I could have…”

  “What? What would you have done? Become a traveler and edited time?” I snarled the words before I could stop myself. I wondered if this was what happened to my dad—if he felt one way inside, but it always came out as rage.

  Hamid scuffed his foot on the ground. “How did you…? I mean, I thought that was illegal.”

  “It is.” I folded my arms and glared at him. “This is another reason I didn’t really want to talk to you about it.”

  Hamid didn’t say anything for a long time. When he spoke again, it was almost a whisper. “I think I can see why you didn’t tell me.”

  “It’s nothing against you. There was nothing you could do.” I wasn’t furious anymore, just talking.

  “I know, but … I’m so sorry. It was my fault.”

  “It was my fault too. It’s not like I grew up in a world without condoms. It was … an unlucky edit.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “I know, but … I want you to know that you are a true friend for taking care of that…” He broke off, his voice woolly with emotion. “I haven’t had very many friends in my life who would do something like that for me.”

  “I didn’t do it for you.”

  I turned away and took a shortcut to Heather’s house through the shrubbery. I thought maybe he would try to catch up to me, but he didn’t.

  SIXTEEN

  TESS

  Flin Flon, Manitoba-Saskatchewan border (1893 C.E.)

  The Flin Flon camp was waking up. Smoke rose from a fire pit at the center of a small plaza created by half a dozen cabins arranged in a loose horseshoe pattern outside the Machine shack. Two carefully smoothed logs served as benches on either side of the hearth.

  Morehshin took in the scene, hands in the pockets of her coveralls. “Smells like coffee.”

  I peered more closely at the fire, and indeed there was a sooty, bell-shaped kettle dangling over the low flames.

  “You again. The singer with rational clothing.” It was Seacake, speaking behind us. He ambled to the fire, looked into the kettle, and then glanced back at us. “Well, do you want some?” He was still wearing his Levi’s, now fully faded into grainy hipster contours.

  Morehshin looked at me in horror. “I can’t … it isn’t…”

  “Sure you can. I have two extra cups.” Seacake sat on one log, and gestured at the other. I noticed that his sarcasm lost its edge when he spoke to Morehshin. “You a traveler too?”

  She nodded mutely, sitting down with me and reaching out to warm her hands over the glowing coals.

  “You’re not from her time, though. Further upstream, eh?” He handed Morehshin a cup, half-filled with brown liquid and steam. Then he handed me one, and his tone regained its usual ironic distance. “You probably want a ride down to Winnipeg again, don’t you?”

  Morehshin shuddered visibly and put her cup down on the dusty ground between her feet. “This drink isn’t for me.”

  Seacake looked startled. “Who doesn’t like coffee in the morning?”

  I scooped up Morehshin’s cup and dumped its contents back into the kettle. “More for everybody else.” She shot me a grateful look, and I wondered about her highly divergent timeline. Was there some taboo against coffee drinking?

  I turned back to Seacake. “You got me. What do you say to another trip down to Winnipeg? Did you get the money I left for you at the general store when I came up a few weeks ago?” In the bush, the best way to pay somebody was usually to start an account at the general store. Seacake would convert my deposit into supplies and food.

  He nodded acknowledgment, and gestured at Morehshin. “She can cook too?”

  “Cook? You mean make food? That’s built in!” I thought Morehshin had used another one of her oddly translated idioms until she pulled the invisible blob thing from the sleeve of her jumper. She squeezed it over her lap, like wringing out a transparent sponge. A bento box rained into existence on her knees, as if it were being 3-D printed from an ultra-fast nozzle. Each compartment contained colorful shapes and lightly browned cubes. I leaned over to look closely, caught the scent, and realized it was some kind of tofu-like protein, sliced vegetables, and a bit of cooked grain.

  “What is that thing?” I pointed at the blob, still in her hand.

  “A multi-tool.”

  Not a bad translation, probably. Seacake nodded approvingly. “Okay, good. That will make cooking very easy.”

  “That’s amazing … I mean, people in my present have speculated that we could alter matter like that, but that is…” I paused, trepidatious. “Can you make anything with it?”

  Now both Morehshin and Seacake were looking at me like I was an idiot. “No.” Morehshin pocketed it again.

  “Obviously.” Seacake rolled his eyes at Morehshin, and she laughed for the first time since I’d met her. Then he hooked a thumb at me. “Her people can only travel into the past.”

  Morehshin’s eyebrows jumped. “You can travel to the future?”

  He sighed. “I am not having this conversation again. Let’s pack up.” He poured himself another cup of coffee, pulled the kettle off the fire, and walked toward the river.

  We were about halfway down to Winnipeg when Seacake told us to stay in camp for a day while he checked traps he’d left deep in the woods. There was nothing for us to do but wait and fish for dinner. Morehshin could make vegetarian food, but I’d grown up with meat. Nothing could replace the taste of roast fish, especially combined with fresh herbs provided by the multi-tool.

  I had a trout turning on the spit when Morehshin squatted down beside me. She’d wrung basil, chile, and olive oil from the multi-tool into one of our pans, and was crushing it up with a spoon before swishing it around gently.

  “Is everyone in your time a vegetarian?”

  “No. But some food is not for me.”

  “Do you mean like the coffee?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Meat and coffee are queen food.”

  I thought about the ancient and medieval civilizations where I’d traveled. Sometimes elites ate very different food than ordinary people. Kings who gorged on corn and deer with every meal ruled over settlements where everyone else ate squirrel and cabbage with humble grains.

  “Well, I hope you don’t mind eating fish.”

  Morehshin made a gesture with her finger like she was drawing a question mark in the air. “I’m getting used to it.”

  Now that she was talking, maybe I could get some answers about the divergent timeline. “Who are the queens? Are they rulers?”

  “It’s not like your idea of a queen in a castle. They aren’t in charge.”

  “Why do you call them queens, then?”

  “I shouldn’t tell you more, but I’m never going back there anyway.” Her body straightened, as if she’d put down a heavy sack. “It comes from the idea of a queen bee. Do you see what I mean?”

  I felt a chill. Queen bees were a reproductive class, often heavily guarded and unable to move. C4L crazies talked in their forums about creating a queen class among human women, locked into camps. The rest of us would be sterile workers, unable to produce offspring with inappropriate ideas.

  Was that what had happened in Morehshin’s time? I couldn’t believe it. “Do you mean women who can reproduce?”

  She nodded and swished the olive oil around again.

  “So reproductive women are dying out?”

  “Not all of them. Only the ones like me.”

  “Like you in what way?”

  “Genetically related. But also … on our side. In the edit war.”

  No matter how much I pushed, she wouldn’t tell me anything more. I was left imagining a world of bioengineered sisters, their mothers trapped in baby-making prisons by Comstocker drones. When I served Morehshin the fish, she didn’t flinch. “Thank you, Tess. I believe we are going to win. There will be no more queens. We will be people again.”

  I hunkered down next to her to eat. “I hope you are right.”

  SEVENTEEN

>   BETH

  Beverly Hills, Alta California (1993 C.E.)

  On New Year’s Eve, Lizzy drove the four of us to Beverly Hills for the Matador Records preview party. We’d gotten dressed up in our fanciest vintage dresses and Soojin had swapped her plastic barrettes for metal ones crusted with rhinestones. I had cheap silver rings on every finger, ranging from chunky 1930s-style dinner rings to a coiled snake.

  I probably should have known this party was going to be a shitshow as soon as we arrived. When we got to the gate, Lizzy told the bouncers we’d been invited by Richard—the guy from the backyard party who had told her about it. Their hard faces melted into juicy winks as they patted us down, joking about how it was an “ass check.” As we walked into the front yard, one made sure to say loudly that Richard’s girls were always the hottest.

  “What the fuck kind of party is this, Lizzy?” Soojin paused halfway up the winding driveway. Her index finger picked out an illuminated tent ahead of us on the vast lawn, where a bunch of white guys were playing what sounded like warmed-over Nirvana.

  “It’s a party with free alcohol?” Lizzy adjusted her studded belts to fit perfectly over her vinyl skirt. Then she shrugged and stuck out her tongue. “You can treat it like a scientific expedition into the heart of commercial rock music.”

  I have a hard time resisting the idea of a scientific expedition, and Lizzy knew that would make me smile. “Onward!” I cried. I raised a fist as if I were hoisting a flag.

  Beyond the awful music tent was an enormous peach-colored mansion built to look like a box nestled inside an artful explosion of Tinkertoys. Triangles and cylinders stuck out of the walls at odd angles, painted in wavy yellow-and-black lines. Plaster rectangles hovered over the massive brushed-steel front doors, hanging from two skeletal towers made with crazily angled struts painted in various neon colors. It reminded me of mall architecture in Irvine, full of roofless pseudo-gazebos that suggested places to sit but contained no benches and cast no shade.