In Times Like These Boxed Set

by Nathan Van Coops

  I jolt awake on my cot. My heart is pounding under my ribs and I put a hand to my chest in silent appreciation of my still functioning body. What kind of nightmare was that? The silhouette of the dark shape on the cot across from me rises and falls gently with each breath. I roll onto my back and contemplate the ceiling of the tent, listening to Abraham’s light snoring. Eventually, my heartbeat slows and my eyelids drift closed. This time I find only black, dreamless sleep.

  7

  “Gravitites must be removed from your anchors prior to use. Can’t jump to an object’s future if it comes with you. Good news is, you’ll see it again on the other side. Keep careful track of your jump photos and anchors that you’ve used. A single note can save your life.”–Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2080

  The sounds of the morning are boots scuffing dirt and the occasional shouts of men giving orders. Someone has a hammer. The metallic ringing of steel being pounded rhythmically into the ground drives the last hope of sleep from my mind. I roll over on my cot and open my eyes.

  Abraham is in his camp chair, sipping a steaming mug of coffee and reading the newspaper as if nothing in the world could disturb his calm. I stretch my arms, then let them fall limp to my sides. Abraham sets the paper in his lap and appraises me.

  “Sleep well?”

  “I’m not sure how I slept at all. I can’t decide if they designed these things for sleeping or for just torturing your back.” I twist and struggle my way off the canvas cot.

  The lantern is still on, but the tent is now lit well enough with the dawning sun to see without it.

  “Perhaps you will find more comfortable accommodations during your race.” Abraham’s eyes are kind, but I can tell his comment holds more hope than truth.

  “Have you had any word from the trainer?” I pour a little of my bottled water on my towel and use it to dab my face.

  “Yes, actually. Charlie should be here any time now. He said he’ll want to get started immediately, so I’m to have you ready.”

  “Hmm,” I mumble, before succumbing to a yawn.

  “So. Are you ready?” Abraham examines me over his reading glasses.

  “Yeah, sure. Ready.”

  “Splendid,” he replies, and goes back to reading the paper.

  I consider the man as I’m pulling on a clean shirt and can’t help but wonder if his state of ease is partly affected to keep me calm. I grab my socks and shoes and have a seat on the edge of the cot to put them on. Then again, he can be as calm as he likes, he’s not the one who has to compete in this thing.

  I’ve just finished tying my sneakers when the flap of the tent is flung open by a broad-chested man in cargo pants. His ruddy complexion and freckled skin suggest decades of life spent outdoors. He reminds me of my high school baseball coach. He looks from Abraham to me and back to Abraham in the matter of a second.

  “Right then! Should we get started?”

  I push off from the cot and stand, offering a hand to the man. “I’m Benjamin.”

  “Of course you are.” He takes my hand. “Charlie Barnes.” Charlie looks back to Abraham, who hasn’t moved from his position. “Abe. Good to see you.”

  Abraham nods cordially and goes back to reading his paper.

  “Okay! Let’s get to it.” Charlie spins and disappears back outside. I snatch up my water bottle and follow him into the sunlight.

  During the night, the landscape has transformed. The pasture is filled with tents and portable dwellings of every shape and color. Any direction I turn, I see people erecting poles, hammering tent stakes or offloading supplies from vehicles. There are more than a few RV’s and, more shockingly, one large boat parked nowhere near the water but beached at a slight list to starboard in the high grass near the fence line.

  I feel like I’ve awoken inside a traveling circus. The people we pass interest me just as much. The new tent city is teeming with citizens of all ages and shapes. I spy a lanky man in a silver cape, directing a pair of teenagers who are unloading luggage from the back of a van. A dog wearing saddlebags trots past me and disappears into a tent decorated with rainbow streamers. Why does that seem familiar?

  Charlie leads the way through the sprouting abodes with determined strides. He comes to a dark-green canvas tent roughly the same size as Abraham’s, and plunges directly inside. The interior couldn’t be more different. Where Abraham’s tent was spacious and outfitted with amenities for comfort, Charlie’s is clearly meant for utility. It’s packed full of storage cases with sturdy locks, and in the center, a portable table that’s already buried in timestream charts.

  “Did you list your inventory yet?” Charlie begins unlocking one of the crates.

  “Uh, no. I didn’t write it all down.”

  “Okay, no problem. I’ve got a checklist we can use.” He pulls a laminated, spiral ringed manual from the crate and flips it open. Next he pops the cap off a dry erase marker and sits down at the table. “Let’s hit the basics first.” He gestures toward the other camp chair, and I sit.

  “All right. I assume you have most of this stuff covered but we’ll go over it anyway. You have a pup tent?”

  “Um, actually no. I’ve got a sleeping bag.”

  “Going to rough it, eh? I’ve known guys to try that. I always preferred the tent, though. You never know what’s going to try to crawl into that sack with you. You got bug spray?”

  “No. I forgot that.”

  “No problem. I think I’ve got spares. Okay, running shoes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Firearms and spare ammunition.”

  “No . . .”

  “You didn’t bring a gun?”

  “Didn’t know I’d need one.”

  “You bring any kind of weapons?”

  “I have a pocket knife.”

  Charlie leans back in his chair and appraises me. “Okay, well that’s your call I guess, but I would go in with a bit more than that.”

  “What would I be shooting? I thought this was a race.”

  “Yeah, it is. But it’s a race that could take us through some pretty dangerous territory. There’re snakes to think about, sometimes bears, mountain lions, regular lions . . .”

  “They’re going to make us race with lions?”

  “You’re not racing the lions, but you’re sure gonna wanna get away if you see some. This race can take you damn near anywhere. That means you ought to be ready for anything. It’s a lot easier to feel ready for anything when you’ve got a twelve-gauge in your hands.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Charlie strokes his chin. “I guess we can make do with my gun. Okay. First aid kit.”

  I shake my head.

  “Canteen, water purification tablets, and desalinization capsules.”

  “I have the canteen.”

  Charlie checks off the box for canteen. I’m beginning to feel like a disappointment as he rattles off another list of items I don’t possess from his checklist. At the end of it, he lays the list down on the table and studies me.

  “Harry said you were green at this, but did he fill you in on what this race is like at all?”

  “Not really. I got the impression that chronothons weren’t really something he paid much attention to.”

  “That’s true enough. Scientists of his sort don’t really spend much time with this crowd, but I would have thought maybe Mym could have filled you in. She’s pretty knowledgeable about most anything to do with time traveling.”

  “Yeah, well, she and I aren’t at an all time high on the communication front right now.”

  “No?” Charlie’s jaw works, then he leans back in his chair. He lays his palms flat on the table and looks at me. “I hate to have to ask you this, but I need to know we’ve got the basics covered. You do know how this works, right? Time travel? In general?” He glances at the chronometer on my wrist. “You can use that thing, right?”

  “Yeah. I’ve only been doing it a few weeks really, but I have the basics.”

  Charlie
nods but raises a palm toward me. “Do me a favor and elaborate a bit. Explain to me what you know, just so we’re on the same page.”

  “Okay.” I shift in my seat, trying to pick a place to start. “So basically, time isn’t linear. We can jump forward or backward and navigate to the same or different time streams if we use anchors from the time and place we want to go.” I lay my fingertips on the edge of the table to indicate touching an anchor, then simulate moving the dials on my chronometer. “You select the increment of time you want to jump, stay in firm contact with your anchor, and the chronometer moves you forward or backward to the point in time where the anchor will be. You end up in the same position relative to the anchor as when you left, only in a different time.”

  Charlie chews his cheek a little. “All right. You know about getting the gravitites out of the anchors, right?”

  “Yeah.” I pull Mym’s silver degravitizer out and set it on the table for his inspection. “Stuff with gravities in it can time travel and stuff without gravitites won’t, so if you’re carrying your own anchors and decide you want to use one, you have to get the gravitites out first so the anchor won’t try to come along for the ride when you activate your chronometer.”

  “What about paradoxes, and creating new timestreams? How do you avoid those?”

  “Well, you can’t do something you never did, or . . . not do something that you know you will do. Dr. Quickly would say ‘What happened has happened.’ We can’t change our own past, just choose to live somewhere different.”

  “And why don’t we want to create paradoxes?”

  I contemplate my answer before responding. “Because it’s universally irresponsible?”

  One of Charlie’s eyebrows rises slightly but he nods. “That’s one way to put it, I suppose. Harry doesn’t spend much time in centuries beyond the twenty-first so he doesn’t deal with this too much, but the powers-that-be get to be real sticklers about time travelers making new timestreams or causing paradoxes. Harry was always damn careful just by his nature. He’s not the type to get into trouble with a race committee or anybody else, and it’s not likely that he would care about their mutterings anyway, but it will definitely get you disqualified from this race. Possibly worse. Not to mention the personal harm you can cause by making new versions of your life, or trying to get your brain right after a bad paradox.”

  I do my best to look attentive. “No paradoxes. No problem.”

  Charlie stands and scratches the back of his head. “Well, okay. Sounds like you’ve got the gist of it. Would’ve liked if they could’ve set you up better race-wise, but no matter. We’ll get things sorted out. I told Harry I’d help you, and that’s what I’m going to do. I have a lot of my gear from my races. Wasn’t sure what we’d need, so I brought most of it. Looks like that was a good choice. I’ll get your help unpacking it.” He scans the crates. He picks up a paperback with the trophy race logo on it and tosses it into my lap. “You’ll want to brush up on the rules.”

  I thumb through the couple hundred pages of lawyer-speak. “Is there a Cliff’s Notes version of this thing? This looks pretty technical.”

  “There’s really only a couple basic rules. Race has to stay linear, so like we said, no creating paradoxes or new timestreams. You also aren’t allowed to jump back in time more than a designated amount before the gate deposited you in the level. It’s not often you’d want to, but people used that to cause disruptions in the past.”

  “How?”

  “Well, in the very first chronothon, before they made that rule, a guy named Dorchester was first through the gate. He immediately jumped back two years and started constructing a thirty-foot stone dome around the gate exit. By the time the next racer came through, he had the thing all wired with trap doors and everything. Oh, that’s the other main rule. No inflicting grievous harm on other racers. Come to think of it, Dorchester was responsible for all three of those rules . . . There’s a fair bit of other stuff in there too, of course, but I guess that can wait. We ought to go check the roster. They should’ve posted it by now.”

  “The roster?”

  “Yeah. Let’s go check out our competition.” Charlie locks the crate and pushes his way out of the tent again.

  I trail behind him as we weave around more tent lines and dodge people bustling about the camp. We pause at the main thoroughfare for a lifted sport utility vehicle that rumbles past blaring music. A trio of young guys, and an attractive blonde woman are inside. The tires are as tall as my chin.

  We pass a much larger tent that’s open on all sides with rows of tables and benches set parallel to one another. A food truck is parked at the far end and servers are dishing out plates to a line of patrons.

  “Looks like that’ll be the mess tent. We can stop in there on the way back and see what they’re serving.”

  My stomach growls as if triggered by proximity, but we continue toward the stone arch at the end of the pasture. A small crowd is standing near the right pillar, discussing the contents of a sheet of paper secured to the stones.

  Charlie elbows his way through, getting occasional nods from people who recognize him. I slide up behind him and look over his shoulder as he runs his finger down the column of racer names. I count about twenty in the racer column. I recognize Horacio and Ariella’s names on the list. My own name is near the bottom, and Charlie’s is directly next to it in the guides column.

  “Looks like Cliff is back as guide for one of the Marsh kids.” Charlie snaps a photo of the list with his phone. “They could be allies for us.”

  “We can have allies?”

  “Yeah, it never hurts to have help. It’s a competition, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be sporting about it.”

  We make our way back to the mess tent and get in line at the cafeteria-style buffet. Charlie is intently scanning the other people in line, and the diners at the tables.

  “See anybody else you recognize?” I ask. I glance about also, but see no one I know.

  “A few. Not many. Lots of rookies this round. There were a couple veterans on the racer list and a half dozen former racers on the guides list. The rest were pro guides or rookie racers.”

  “What’s a pro guide?”

  “Most of the time, guides fall into two categories: former competitors who have enough experience to qualify as guides, or people who have been through the guide training course and been certified as pro guides.”

  “Is there an advantage to one versus the other?”

  “I’d like to think race experience is an invaluable asset, but I’m obviously a bit biased. I have to admit, some of the pro guides are pretty talented. They get a lot of language training, and a more structured training regimen than we race veterans have. We all take the same exam to get certified, so you have to pass that either way, but they do usually score higher.”

  “Sounds like being a guide is harder than being a racer.” I pick up a tray and some utensils.

  “Good. It is. Glad to know I’ll be appreciated. Racers get all the glory, but guide work has its benefits, too. And the pay is great in most cases.”

  “Oh yeah. We never talked about how much I’m going to need to pay you for this.”

  Charlie pats me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll work something out. I promised Harry I’d help you, so that’s the main thing. I’m sure we can manage some kind of payment after.”

  “What’s a usual rate for a guide?”

  “Eh, two or three mil I guess.”

  “Mil? Like million? Dollars?”

  Charlie smiles reassuringly, “Don’t worry. Like I said, we’ll work something out. We win this thing, there’ll be plenty of cash floating around.”

  “Okay.” Three million . . . I guess I may need to win after all.

  The women at the buffet serve us scrambled eggs and sausages with cheese grits and pancakes. I get a double portion of sausage links just for good measure.

  A fifty-something man with a rough stubble beard spots Charlie from
outside the tent and ducks under the side-flap to greet us.

  “Barnes! I thought you knew better than to show your face around here.”

  “Cliff! I saw your name on the guide list, but couldn’t imagine you’d really be that stupid.”

  Cliff grins and grabs Charlie’s hand, clapping him on the back with his other hand and making Charlie’s juice slosh over on his tray. Charlie doesn’t notice. He sails into more insults of Cliff’s spreading middle and general ineptitude and Cliff laughs, a deep guttural chuckle that wells up and overflows with gusto. Finally Cliff looks over Charlie’s shoulder to me. I smile in greeting.

  “This your protégé?”

  Charlie turns to me. “Benjamin Travers, meet Cliff Sutherland.” I extend a hand. “Cliff’s one of the most veteran guides you can find in this game. Won the fifth Chronothon as a racer and had multiple second place finishes.”

  “An honorable place to finish, too,” Cliff says, taking my hand and nodding at Charlie.

  “Don’t rub it in, you old bastard,” Charlie growls.

  Cliff grins. “Well, if he wants an education in how to finish second, there could be no finer teacher than you, Barnes. How many was it? Four?”

  “You know the record. Get out of the way, you pompous ass. Let us eat in peace.” Charlie climbs over a bench and settles in at a table. I join him and Cliff slides in on the other side.

  “Maybe you’ve got greatness in you as a guide, Barnes.”

  “We’ll see. I saw you’re guiding one of the Marshes.”

  “Yeah, Jettison Marsh. He’s a good kid, pretty sharp. His sister is racing, too. Their father asked me to keep an eye on them. They’ve been training pretty hard so they should be in good shape for whatever this race throws at them, but their father thought I’d better be along anyway.”