Here and Now and Then

by Mike Chen

“All right, then. Mr. Stewart.” The AD tented her fingers, a pose that made Kin think of The Simpsons’ infamous Mr. Burns from Miranda’s era.

  “Kin.”

  “Kin. You can drop the act. I’m going to be straight with you.” Her fingernails clacked against the desk as she met his stare.

  “All right.” Kin had never met their region’s AD. Not many people had. Her name and signature had sealed a get-well message shortly after he returned, and he’d wondered if she’d even been briefed about his situation or if he was a mere name and statistic in some unread report.

  There was no question now, though—she knew who he was, and the panic grew like a weed in his mind. Anxiety fought to drum his fingers at his side, but he resisted, forcing them into balled fists. He wouldn’t give the AD anything she didn’t already know.

  “You’re immediately relieved of duty. HR will transmit a severance package for you to review. I think you’ll find it quite satisfactory. It’s very similar to the pension plan we give retired agents. Plus a full year of active pay.”

  She pointed to the corner screen at the far wall and then pulled out the holo to float in front of him to review.

  “For your service and the risks you’ve put yourself through. Take a long vacation. Relax before you look for another job. You’re still welcome to play in TCB soccer matches if you’d like. All alum are. You’re getting married soon, right?” The question sparked a raised eyebrow from Kin. “Penny Fernandez, born in the village of Saxony-Coburn, Exeter, England, raised in London, promoted to sous-chef at Finny Fin Catering seven months ago, sister to retriever agent Markus Fernandez. It sounds like she’s been very patient with you since you returned from your extended leave in twenty-one-A. You two should enjoy yourselves for a while. Maybe help her open that restaurant she’s talked about. She needs a business plan, right? Oh, don’t look so surprised, Kin. A group like us, we know everything about our staff. They—” she pointed out the door, presumably at other agency bigwigs with fancy titles “—know everything about me. Checks and balances. Why do you think we have retrievers and field agents? Our organization is built with internal transparency, safety nets. It’s the only way to handle temporal matters. That’s why we were quite impressed by your ability to cover your tracks.”

  Kin couldn’t tell if she leaned forward because of the nature of the conversation or if she wanted to gauge his reaction. He quelled countless internal questions, driving the noise down to a manageable fervor before selecting a careful response. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”

  “We don’t need to do this dance. And you can sit down. I don’t bite. I’m not mad.” The AD gestured again to the chair, though he remained glued to where he stood. “I understand why you did what you did. I get it. We all do. But our entire organization is based on the elimination of timeline corruption, and what you’ve done is just that. ‘The cause of or passing of knowledge that significantly alters the timeline of any individual, group, or society.’ That’s what we prevent and our rules were clear—no communication. Even then, perhaps we would have let the emails slide. We understand the instinct, the needs of a parent. However,” she said, taking in a breath, “this? That’s completely over the line. Her situation needs to be addressed.”

  A new holo appeared, this time a mere floating image. It rotated slowly, and Kin took in the art, simple black silhouettes against a white backdrop: a woman running to the left with arms outstretched; behind her, a man falling down in midair.

  Above the characters sat the title in bold blue font: Time Flies: An Interactive Tech Demo. And beneath it, the author’s name:

  Miranda Stewart.

  The AD swiped the air and text floated up beside the image.

  Time Flies is an interactive tech demo from programmer Miranda Stewart. This short game lasts approximately thirty minutes and features a narrative set in the Temporal Corruption Bureau, a secret agency that apprehends criminals across time. Sequences include dialogue trees, combat, puzzle-solving, and cutscenes (opening and finale). Conceived, programmed, and written by Miranda Stewart. Art by Tanya Piper and Rose Williams.

  * * *

  Every single muscle in Kin’s body tensed, making his pounding heartbeat seem louder and more present than what seemed possible.

  She’d used his journal.

  Despite everything.

  Or maybe because of it.

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” Kin said, forcing each word out.

  “Let’s examine this,” the AD said. “You wrote to her, and I quote ‘if you want to push yourself so you can make video games, then do it. Maybe it’s impractical, and it will probably be hard at times, but I know you can do it.’ Innocent enough? Perhaps. However, we’ve analyzed the archival delta. Before that message was transmitted ninety-four minutes ago, Miranda Stewart earned a bachelor’s in Computer Science, worked for a business software company for two years before returning to school to become a veterinarian. She never touched any type of creative storytelling. After your message, Security Overwatch detected gravitational shifts all over the world. Timeline Monitoring picked up the changes. Incremental at first, benign, almost invisible to us. It took a deeper look to see what was really unfolding.”

  Kin was just a field agent, the muscle of the operation. But even he knew enough about TCB’s methods to recognize that something massive had happened, something significantly more powerful than time travelers attempting to create their own retirement plan.

  “Since you sent that email, her timeline changed. This project was posted to a portfolio site on her birthday, 2030, just as she was about to finish her master’s in Game Development. Her attempt to find a job began a domino effect that puts every single field agent in danger.”

  “Here she is. Her project is downloaded thirty-two times by potential employers. It is uploaded to four industry websites and lives on her portfolio as well, in addition to backups and redundant hardware. Your words of encouragement beamed every single detail about the TCB into a publicly accessible video game. The history of time travel. Technology. Mission protocols. Even the locations of worldwide branches. She’s managed to include a shocking number of classified details into a mere thirty minutes. Any temporal criminal who found this would be privy to our entire history, our entire operation. Rogue agents. Organized temporal crime syndicates. Anarchists who hire mercs. Black-market time-travel traders. They all just became that much more dangerous.”

  If the AD could peer inside his brain, she would have seen one very specific visualization from one very specific memory.

  His journal.

  “First you code something fun, then you build a world around it to make people care,” Miranda had said. Years later, she took his advice and combined her programming ambitions with the world described in his journal.

  “I told her not to tell anyone about that.”

  “Perhaps she didn’t feel like listening to a dad who wasn’t around.”

  “I am around—”

  “Through illegal means. Which we’ve shut down, by the way. That advice is the last thing you’ll ever write to her.”

  Kin’s fingers began drumming against his hip, a rapid-fire rhythm that was eclipsed only by the speed of his thoughts. “But that’s it—that’s the problem! Let me email her. Over the years. I’ll remind her not to say anything. She’ll make some other game. It’ll never get posted.”

  “And while you do that—if you’re even successful—our organization would be at risk the entire time you’re negotiating with her. I’m not taking that bet. Consider the lives of everyone in this organization, including dozens of active field agents all across the modern age and whatever collateral damage would result from the TCB’s destruction. You think I should be willing to sacrifice all of that, rather than the life of one person who shouldn’t even exist?”

  Heather’s voice sparked in his mind, something s
he said to him during their last afternoon together.

  The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

  Kin refused to apply that logic here. This was his daughter.

  “She doesn’t know,” he said. “It’s a story. She thinks it’s fiction. Her favorite TV show is about a time traveler—”

  “It doesn’t matter. If the wrong person finds it, the entire Bureau is in danger. Anywhere and anywhen.”

  “So? Prevent it from happening. Reject it from the portfolio sites. Hack the source file to make it corrupt and broken.”

  “No, Kin. You’re not getting it. Even if we remove the file, the knowledge is still in there. In her. We don’t know if and when it will get out.” The AD met his eyes. They didn’t register as fury, frustration, or disappointment. Instead, a far more dangerous emotion was projected with shocking clarity from her face.

  Fear.

  “Miranda Stewart is a variable that must be controlled. The knowledge in her mind represents the greatest potential threat we have ever encountered.”

  Pressure returned to Kin’s temples, a grip that took hold across space and time. This one was different; he knew it from the very feel. It had nothing to do with time-jump damage to the frontal cortex or memory triggers that pushed his brain too hard. No, this was the silent grind of his jaw, the increase in blood pressure, the panic-turned-anger in his heart. “What have you done to Miranda?”

  The AD looked back at him, unflinching. “We don’t take these decisions lightly. We don’t take any decisions lightly.”

  “What have you done to her?”

  “She is a variable that must be controlled.” The AD’s words repeated with the perfect tone and pitch of a recording.

  “Answer the damn question.” Kin’s voice roared in a way that an office would never stand for. Behind him the doors opened, and the two Security officers stepped to either side of him. “What have you done to Miranda?”

  “The question is ‘what have you done to her?’ You were given guidelines of noninterference. You made this choice. Whenever you passed this information to her, whether in person or in your emails, you did this. Noninterference. Protocol Eleven Twenty-Three. You dismantle your equipment. You don’t document any knowledge. You never, ever pass it on—in any form.”

  “Stop bullshitting.” Security grabbed his arms. Had his fitness been at the level of a true field agent, their loose grip could have easily been torn away. Fingers dug into his shoulders, tethering him to the front end of the office. No plans came to mind. No visualizations or lists to take down everything in the room. Only white-hot fury in the form of a stare. “What have you done to her?”

  “You used to be an agent. You know how we handle things. We got to work the minute after we detected the timeline change. Your damage is being undone as we speak.” She sighed and nodded to Security before looking back at her holo screens, one of the most powerful people in the world calmly returning to her duties. “Go home, Kin. Get some rest. Get married. Help Penny open her restaurant. Leave the past behind.”

  The Security officers tugged on his body and began pulling him back. As he fought, his cleats dug into the thin office carpeting. “Damn it, tell me. What have you done to her?”

  The AD offered stony silence, although her face softened when she studied him with a squint. Whether she cared or was just curious, he’d never know—he was too busy struggling against the magnetic restraints they’d placed around his wrists. The main hallway echoed with his repeated question, past the small room of offices and into the larger space where the Operations division worked. Eyes bore down on him, the weight and intensity of each one probably wondering why Security dragged the former field agent in sweaty soccer gear out of the office of the TCB’s most powerful person on the West Coast.

  The only person who probably understood stood right outside the elevator, a mix of regret and concern pasted on Markus’s face.

  CHAPTER 18

  Kin stormed through the ticket booth, waving his arm to biotrigger the credit purchase. Lines had already formed to check out the fast food exhibit, though he went in the opposite direction. Signs pointed him deeper into the MOME, up stairs and down corridors until he arrived at the relatively unpopulated Discover Your History exhibit. “Next, please,” a man’s voice came from inside the room.

  Outside, a view overlooking the Embarcadero showed life moving on: people walking to their destination, skycars zooming across the cityscape, and the trains throttling across in the atmotube.

  None of that registered. A week or so ago, Kin had walked across Pier 39 to the MOME, hand in hand with Penny on their way to eat replicated fast food. That night they’d taken their time, arms swinging in unison. Little jokes passed between them, the future completely ahead of them.

  This afternoon, though, was about the past.

  The door slid open to the so-called Discovery Chamber, which wasn’t all that different from the AD’s office. Holo screens and walls surrounded a small desk where a man sat, his hands neatly folded as he prepared to research the digital fossils of the customer’s choice. “Hi there. I’m Edgar, and I’ll be your discovery assistant today. Your name is?”

  “Kin.”

  “Nice to meet you, Kin,” he said, taking his hand with a suave calmness. “Back in the early twenty-first century, the introduction of social media created a digital footprint for many people in the world. Photos, status updates, and videos gave us snapshots of their lives.” Edgar spoke with a banal neutrality, like this was his fiftieth introductory speech today. “Thanks to our archive, we can now revisit the lives of our ancestors. Who do you want to catch up with today?”

  “Her name—” Kin swallowed hard “—was Miranda Elizabeth Stewart.”

  Edgar pulled several holo screens into the space in front of them, all the while spouting out disclaimers about how the subject had to be born before 2050 and there were no refunds even if their archived social media records pulled up very little. Kin nodded a quick affirmative to each of those and then rattled off additional information: birth date, place of birth, high school, even her ID number for the defunct Social Security program.

  “You sure know a lot about her,” Edgar said as screens blinked and flashed. “Grandmother?”

  “Not quite. Close relative, though.”

  “And what is it you’re looking for about her? General history? Getting to know the family story a little better?”

  “Specifically—” Kin leaned forward, his hands rubbing the stubble of hair on his chin “—her adult life. What she did, who she married.” He took in a sharp inhale, the next sentence needing the force of giants to push out. “When she died.”

  “As I said,” Edgar continued, his fingers flying while information scrolled by, “the depth of our reports is really based on how much of a digital footprint this Miranda had. Most people have something, but it really varies. It’s like...” Edgar’s voice trailed off, and his face curled in a knot.

  “What?”

  “Are you sure your information is accurate?”

  Of course it is—she’s my daughter, he wanted to growl. He swallowed the impulse, and the urge dissolved into a few tremors that rippled through his muscles and nerves.

  “I’m not getting anything with that birth date and that name. Or that region, for that matter. Here, I’ll expand the search. Take the range off adulthood, expand the scope of location, and...” More screens flashed, the information whizzing by at a pace only eclipsed by Kin’s heart rate. “Wait, I think I got it.”

  “You did?” The chair bounced as Kin sat straight up. “You found her?”

  “I did.” Edgar twirled his fingers, causing the holo screen to spin around and face Kin. “It’s all right there. Now that we’ve established identity, we can look a little deeper.”

  Kin sat immobilized while reading and rereading the text in a whisper to
himself, as if saying it would make the whole thing more real. “That’s not her,” he finally said at normal volume.

  “Miranda Alison Stewart. Born January 2, 2006, in Oakland, California. Let’s see how Ms. Stewart lived, shall we? She’s the perfect age for the dawn of social media—”

  “That’s not her.”

  Edgar paused, his head cocked at an angle. “That’s the only Miranda Stewart born in the Bay Area in that time frame.”

  “No, that’s not her. Miranda Elizabeth Stewart. Born in San Mateo, grew up in San Francisco.”

  “Kin, I’m sorry but there’s a good chance that whoever kept the records in your family was off by a little bit. It happens.” Edgar’s expression eased up, and his hands folded over. His voice adopted the tone of a school counselor rather than a digital archivist. “That was a very long time ago. People pass their records down from generation to generation, only they move or change names or lose things along the way. Even our server archives are only 99 percent accurate. They’re copies of copies of copies. All signs point to this person being the Miranda you’re looking for.”

  “That’s not her.” Kin’s tone took on a fierceness that rarely, if ever, came out. “I know it. I know every last detail. That’s a different Miranda. That’s not my Miranda.”

  The chair squeaked as Edgar settled back. Kin sensed his eyes studying him, and it surely must have been a slightly unnerving sight: the thin layer of perspiration across his forehead, the tiny tremble in his hands. “Sir, I’m sorry, this is all I can find. You know, our policy is no refunds, but this seems very important to you, and I’m sorry we couldn’t find the data you needed. Let me call my supervisor. I’m sure we can give you at least a partial refund.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Kin stood up, the back of his boots catching the chair’s leg. “Thanks for your time.”

  “Let me check one more thing. This usually doesn’t work, but...” Edgar’s hands resumed bouncing around the holo screens, their translucent glow creating a blur while his fingers poked and swiped. “Well, how about that? This doesn’t make any sense.”