by Mike Chen
To the right of the grid sat the Tentpole Protection Board, with its list of historical figures and events that had to remain continuously monitored for changes regardless of morality. To the left, a facial rendering of the mission target calibrated from security footage, along with a list of known vitals and relevant data—the merc had been hired by an undetermined party to execute a stock transaction. A large 2 displayed next to his face, indicating a sphere of influence level two: time corruption isolated to financial gain with some generational impact and zero time-evolved casualties.
Simply money in the bank.
Markus yelled, breaking Kin’s thoughts. “We’re here. Any luck?”
“Geolocation in Chinatown. She hasn’t moved in eight hours. Coordinates are an alley between buildings, but retriever Sydney can’t locate her.” A man standing on a dais looked down on them, holos floating all around his head. “Thanks for coming, Agent Stewart, but I think you’re too late.” He spoke to the hovering projection of a man in a clean white shirt and a big desk. “Inform the AD we have a missing, possibly deceased agent. Send a flag to Civilian Integration—prepare death notification protocol just in case.”
“Cover story?”
“Depends if we ever recover a body.”
The discussion continued, the logistics of time-jumping a corpse while preserving its integrity—if they even managed to find it. Terms like binding and shielding and collagen quality flew behind him, all spit out with a clinical tone that made Kin’s stomach churn. The topic turned to informing the family: “funeral stipend” and “counseling stipend” and “trauma recovery period resources.”
Was that how they told Heather about losing her husband? Or Miranda about losing her father?
Was that how they were going to talk to Penny if he hadn’t come back?
“Incoming message,” called out a voice from the top tier.
Holographic text flew above, and Kin’s restored eyesight read it with startling clarity.
From: Sydney, Catalin (Retriever): I can’t explore too much because walking tours keep coming by despite the empty stores. But she’s not here. The beacons are accurate within six inches and it’s just pavement.
Empty stores? In Chinatown? Kin’s Bay Area experience started a few years after 1991, yet the idea didn’t sit right. He shut his eyes, agent mode taking over.
1991. Closed shops. Chinatown. Facts and figures visualized, pulled from books and newspaper clippings and clunky HTML web pages, all those early days spent in public libraries now filling in blanks with metabolizer-boosted cognition.
1991. Something about that year. Something about those buildings.
Something...underground.
“She’s there,” Kin finally said.
Markus turned to him. One by one, every set of eyes in the monitoring stage followed suit.
“She’s there. 1991. The country’s in a recession. Some of those mom-and-pop shops probably shut down, the restaurants and bars, too. California buildings don’t usually have basements but those spaces were built decades earlier. Some doubled as speakeasies. Chinatown has some old tunnels and rooms underneath those shops. The coordinates are right.” Kin looked at everyone staring at him. “Check beneath the surface.”
“Pulling up building records,” a woman one level up said. Blueprint holos flipped by in rapid succession. “There. There’s a sealed tunnel that links several buildings in the neighborhood. Sending.”
Kin and Markus watched as real-time messages flew back and forth in holo form, the team in 2142 firing off instructions and guidelines while Sydney provided updates over email. The room went silent, the only hum coming from the ventilation overhead.
“Retrieval ping detected,” someone yelled overhead.
Above them, a new message appeared.
From: Sydney, Catalin (Retriever): I’ve got Agent Melete. She’s dehydrated, injured, but alive. The target was found deceased next to her in this tunnel. I’ll put a stop onto the target’s stock purchase. Send Apprehension Squad to Neil Marin of Montpelier, Vermont, with charge of hiring a temporal merc for purposes of financial seeding.
“Archival delta eliminated,” another voice said. “Timeline is clean. Let’s get the good guys home and bring the bad guys in.”
Chatter returned as the crew barked orders about dispatching the cleanup squad to Vermont, and Kin wondered if he should have chosen this path instead of hopping through time. Arresting the usually white-collar criminals behind time mercenaries might have been a safer career choice.
Except without time travel, Miranda would have never been born.
“Bank robbers,” Markus said. “That’s all they are these days. Everyone knows that it’s too easy to get caught doing anything bigger. You remember those tales they told us in the academy? Epic adventures of saving President Bosworth in 2040? All we get are bloody thefts. At least your business with the senator that time made it to sphere level four.” He looked almost wistfully at the Tentpole Protection Board and its column of bright green status quo indicators. “I’ve never seen that board change.”
But he could see Miranda again, Kin was thinking, almost entirely oblivious to Markus’s chatter. All he needed was an accelerator. The rest would work itself out. “Bank robbers. Sounds fun.” Kin sat up straight, puffing his chest out. “You know, I feel a lot better. Metabolizers are patching up my knees. Pain free. Give me a week and I’ll be ready for my next—”
“Easy there, champ,” Markus said, his mood considerably lighter than just a few minutes ago. “I know you like all the action stuff. Thing is, your body doesn’t agree with you. All that time without metabolizers. The report says that you’ve got one, maybe two time jumps left in you before time travel degrades your cells—and that’s if you had extra boosters and stabilizers and a doctor by your side the whole time.” He turned the floater chair around and began pushing Kin back to the hallway. “Pretty sure the TCB won’t spare the resources for that. I think they have something in Research lined up for you. But at least you won’t get shot at. See?” He pointed at the lingering holographic text behind them at Mission Control. “Still a hero.”
“I’ve never seen transmissions like that before.”
“Need-to-know. Field agents don’t, in case you’re caught or interrogated.” The grin on Markus’s face beamed out, like he’d been bursting at the seams to reveal these secrets. “Are you saying you didn’t like leaving notes at drop points? Bet you didn’t know electronic signals are benign. But it’s true, in and out of the accelerator at headquarters without disturbing the timeline. We can even download video from the past, though we can only send text in bursts back. Everyone in this room is need-to-know. That now includes you. So congratulations. No one will try to kill you and you won’t get seizures. It’s win-win.”
“I can’t...” A million different ideas flew through Kin’s mind, lists upon plans upon options—nothing yielded a clear solution. He probably should have felt anger or guilt or disappointment, except too many emotions came and went for him to process it all. “You mean, I won’t be in the field?”
“Doctor’s orders,” Markus said. “Or at least as best as I can understand it. They started using some technical neurobrain fancy terms. I tuned out.”
“No time-jumping.” Kin’s eyes closed, weighted by the idea of the door to his previous life slamming shut.
“You, my friend, are getting a desk job. And you know the biggest problem with all of this?”
He didn’t have to answer Markus’s question. The problem came in the form of a century-wide gap with his family.
Markus gave a dramatic pause before breaking into a grin. “Desk work doesn’t keep you in shape. And we need you for the weekly soccer matches. So don’t be getting lazy on me.”
Kin stayed silent the rest of the walk. Markus didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy talking about soccer, the word
s coming at such a fast clip that Kin wasn’t sure if they were an intentional distraction or if Markus really pushed Miranda and Heather aside that easily.
As Markus continued, Kin told himself to give his friend the benefit of the doubt. For now.
CHAPTER 10
Three more days had passed, and since then Kin had talked with agency counselors about his feelings of loss, the Research department about his new desk job where he’d be providing insight similar to what he’d done for Mission Control, and staff doctors about his health considering the large gap in his metabolizer usage.
In the TCB’s fifty-some year history, the longest an agent had been marooned prior to Kin’s case was thirteen months—and that incident was decades old, prior to the subcutaneous beacon. They offered theories about why he went undetected for so long—a combination of causality from the beacon’s activation in the garage and the incremental accumulation of his life leaving micro-traces of temporal footprints, not the detectable shock wave produced by jumping in and changing history in bursts. Doctors poked and prodded him, marveling at how his brain managed to not implode given the duration of his stay. Their theories about why Penny and his personal life completely disappeared (“Clearly, your brain protected itself from its most emotionally powerful discrepancies”) didn’t settle or comfort him, nor did their theory that the last six months of renewed headaches and dizzy spells was a result of his brain purging the final future memories, leading to either a single-era focus and/or a fatal aneurysm without metabolizer intervention. They even projected what would and wouldn’t heal or regenerate—his knees would heal almost entirely, he wouldn’t need glasses after another week or so, but he’d be stuck with the gray in his hair unless he dyed it or used 2142 semipermanent color treatments.
Department by department, each group picked his brain. Resources wanted to know exactly when flip phones gave way to smartphones. Research asked about tricks on searching through social media. Logistics had him troubleshoot their attempts at programming in popular twenty-one-A codes. For three straight days, all he did was talk about himself.
He didn’t, however, talk to Penny. Didn’t even activate the holo message. He thought about her a lot, in the way adults looked at high school photos to relive their past. Resurfaced memories all filled in the blanks about who she was and how they lived their life together, crafting a rich and vivid picture that failed to animate. He even realized that the dream he’d had right after Markus visited was their engagement party, metabolizer-boosted clarity broadcasting it all in startling resolution but without the feelings to bring it to life. Instead, the way they’d looked at each other that night remained only a dream fragment. In its place was a different persistence, a repeated question that wondered if that feeling could ever be real again—and if not, what exactly took its place?
The counselors offered a simple answer. “Don’t forget your cover story and take it slow.”
Markus was more blunt. “Play it.”
Kin sat, clad in street clothes and discharge notification floating beside his hospital bed, staring at the black disk.
“If you don’t play it then I will.”
The more Kin reintegrated into this world, the more Heather and Miranda weighed on him, as if the mere act of activating a holographic message seemed like betrayal.
Or saying goodbye.
Same difference at this point.
“You’re going to see her in an hour. You have to do it now.”
Kin nodded, stifling the feeling in his gut. The device beeped and booped before a miniature Penny appeared.
“Hi, Kin,” she said, her London accent matching his memory exactly. Her hand rose and dropped, fingers fluttering in an awkward wave, and one side of her mouth tipped upward, like it always did when she was nervous. Which wasn’t always her modus operandi; at work, she directed servers and line cooks with a focus and a force that might have even impressed Heather.
The way she commanded a presence when in a kitchen, especially when the spotlight was on her, or the way she practiced her restaurant pitch for the loan application like a sales professional, her inner drive stuck out. It was like night and day compared to the woman projected before him now.
Unlike Heather, Penny’s gumption drained when things got personal.
He waited for her next nervous tell, a repeated pushing of her brown hair behind her left ear—never the right.
The movement triggered a memory, one that brought a weary smile to his face. That same awkward wave, the upturned mouth, the hair behind the ear. Her cheeks burned as she walked in front of Kin, and it took him a second to realize that Penny—who knew nothing about soccer except for what she heard from Kin and brother—was wearing a Tottenham Hotspurs shirt. She’d strutted out, her posture a result of embarrassment more than nerves, stiff arms betraying the forced nature of her walk, and when she turned around, she couldn’t stifle her laugh, the name BAMFORD across her back.
Logan Bamford. Tottenham’s best player. Markus’s favorite player, the one who prompted him to run around the room chanting “Bammy, Bammy, Bammy, Bammy, BamFORD!” whenever he scored. And he always scored against Arsenal, leading to nonstop curse words from Kin each time, and that night Markus somehow convinced his sister to wear that shirt.
Penny had the moxy to keep a catering service moving like clockwork and draw up plans to launch her own restaurant, but never enough to say no to her family.
Did Kin really name his dog after Bamford, of all people? Or was that another way of holding on to Penny? A surge of affection radiated, though tempered by a sinking feeling as he remembered the dopey brindle greyhound who once yelped in fear because of a dewclaw caught on a knitted blanket. He figured he’d better get used to this; with his mind now able to process both eras clearly and cleanly, his heart had to sort out the rest.
He snapped out of the memory and focused back on Penny’s hologram. The sinking feeling disappeared; in its place came a rush he hadn’t felt in quite some time.
“Markus told me what happened. You boys and your government institutions. He said you’re recovering in their hospital. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why the Mars colonization project is so guarded that I can’t even see you.” Mars colonization—the cover story for working in a secret time-traveling law enforcement agency. Kin told himself to definitely remember that detail until it became habit again.
Her third tell came, biting down on her bottom lip and her hazel eyes pointing to the upper left—a move that her brother occasionally used, too. “So, you missed walking down the aisle with me. Suppose I can forgive you for that one. Standing me up. Only once, though. Radiation blast is a suitable excuse. Besides, I need time to rewrite this business plan for the restaurant loan, so you know, silver lining.”
Radiation. His own personal cover story.
Penny tilted her head up, standing tall in her red dress and black tights—he remembered now, he’d noticed fashion similar to his era with Heather, and she’d called it sixties mod. The only real difference was that modern fashion’s textile pixels adjusted color to lighting and special occasions.
Even at a holographic six inches tall, the welling tears became clear as Penny shifted her weight, left to right, and then right to left, back and forth. “Markus says they’ve got you knocked out, that you’ll be okay in a few days. Your burn scars will heal. He said you might look a little older and you need old-fashioned spectacles for a few weeks, but that makes you look, um, distinguished. So, it’s sexy. You know, I was baking chocolate chip cookies for every day that you were gone, then I wound up with a hundred cookies, and Markus told me to hold off for a little bit.” Her laugh was barely audible, though Penny’s bright cheeks rose to counter the tears streaming down them. “I’m tough,” she said, straightening up and throwing a mock bicep flex pose. “I’m tough, though. I know you’ll pull through this. In the meantime, I made a list.” She smiled, and
Kin found himself beaming back at the projection. “My list is called ‘seven reasons why I miss Kin.’ One, a cat doesn’t keep the bed as warm at night. Two, I still haven’t convinced you that real cooking is better than insta-meals.”
“She doesn’t know I cook now,” Kin muttered, his furrowed brow catching Markus’s eye.
“Three, Markus keeps asking me to watch soccer with him and I hate that and I do it anyway. Four, someone has to rein in your gut instincts. Five, Paw-cific Heights Cat Rescue is looking for kitten foster volunteers, and if you don’t come back soon, I might give in and bring Akasha some friends. Six, we might get a better interest rate on the restaurant loan when we’re legally married, so I kind of need you around. And seven...” Eyes closed, Penny sucked in a breath and held it for several seconds. “I love you. I love the soccer and insta-meals and how you can’t wake up in the mornings and your awful Bombay punk music you play when you work out.” Bombay throwback punk was the proper musical genre. Those bits of info returned at frightening speed. “I love all of it. Come home to me.”
Kin took in the words, the depth and sincerity of them; he wanted his own feelings to match. But layers upon layers of memories—new and old—pulled him in every possible direction, making it impossible to get there.
A tiny clap came as Penny brought her hands together, fingers intertwining. “So. You can’t see this, but Markus is waving at me to hurry up because I guess he has to leave. I don’t know if you’ll wake up tomorrow or a week from now, so I guess, just—I love you, and I’ll see you soon.”
Penny raised both hands, twittered them in a wave, and then disappeared. It took a few seconds to realize that the quick, irritating rhythmic beeping noise came from his heart monitor. Tears blurred Kin’s view, and the room faded away, replaced with replays of the wedding he did have—with Heather. His thoughts jumped to the last six months: the dizzy spells, the fainting, the cover of PTSD for whatever the TCB’s doctors would diagnose.
