We find her dad on the other side of the emitter array with a smile of relief on his face.
He hugs his daughter, then turns to look at the now vacant tunnel to the outdoors. “What do you think happened to Einstein? I didn’t see him go over the edge.”
“I don’t know. I hope he’s out of security guards now. It’s time to get that warp clock back.”
Piper takes both of our hands again. “Come on. I’ve got an idea for that too.”
27
“If the purpose of life isn’t learning to love one another better, then I’ve completely misread all of the encounters I’ve had in time. And if I’m wrong, I’ll stay wrong. I’d rather be remembered as a kind-hearted fool than an uncaring genius.” -Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 1942
The robotic Albert Einstein is in poor shape.
We find him standing outside his kiosk looking mildly unbalanced. I suspect a lot of that issue is because I broke his arm off, but at least some of it looks mental. Despite the turmoil of our day and the hell he’s put us through, I can’t help but feel a little bit sorry for him.
“Mr. Einstein!” Piper calls to him as we get close. “Mr. Einstein!”
The robot looks up and pivots to face her. His face contorts into a smile.
“We have a deal for you.” Piper lets go of our hands and forges ahead to face the android. “If you let me have the warp clock, I can make more people come to your park.”
Einstein’s back straightens and his eyes widen. He takes a few steps closer. “The Improved Attendance Directive is our chief priority.”
“I know,” Piper says. “If you let us use the warp clock and call our friends, we can bring more people to visit. We’ll even buy lots of tickets.”
“Could I interest you in an annual pass?” Einstein asks.
Piper turns to look at us. “Well, you’d have to ask my dad. He has the credit card.”
Einstein turns to us expectantly.
I put a hand to the side of my mouth and whisper to my other self. “I feel like there’s a lesson here somewhere about how credit cards work.”
“I’ll leave that conversation for the teenage years,” he replies. “You have to pick your battles.” He turns to Einstein. “I think an annual pass would be excellent. I’ll take two.”
“Same from me,” I reply. “In fact, if you let us operate the warp clock, I’ll buy a lifetime membership.”
Einstein grins a wide smile. “You are in luck, because we offer a universal lifetime pass good at all of our affiliated parks. That would make today a very good sales day.”
I can’t help but smirk. He’s a crackpot old robot and a few circuits short of true intelligence, but at least he’s dedicated to his job.
Turning around, the android hobbles back to the ticket office on rickety joints. I follow him inside, cautious of any more surprises. Once in the door, the robot stands aside.
I size up Abraham’s device. The core of the clock continues to vacillate between flashes of brilliant color and moments of darkness.
“I just need to undo what you’ve done to our chronometers.”
“I’ve darkened all frequencies that indicated they were temporally linked to external devices,” Einstein says. “If you tune the clock to reconnect with those frequencies, the corresponding devices in those timestreams will once again be usable.”
“I don’t exactly know what you’re talking about, but if you mean getting rid of the dark spots in the middle of this thing, then I think I can manage that.”
Extending my hands to the rings around the edge of the clock, I move one of them clockwise. A purple glow brightens within the clock. The next ring increases the blue hue. Studying the colors represented in the sphere, I notice most of the red to yellow spectrum is missing, and the vibrational hum of the device is sporadic. I find the dials that increase those colors, and the frequency of the dark spots reduces. After a few minutes of adjustments, the dark moments stop altogether, and the light in the center of the clock glows pure white. It hums evenly. I step back from the device. Did it work?
“I have fulfilled my end of our bargain,” Einstein says. “As for yours?”
He’s watching me expectantly.
“Um. My wife has my wallet. You take PayPal? Bitcoin? What are you running these days?”
“I’ve created you a user account. An eBill will be sent to your universal public profile.”
“What if I don’t have one in this time—”
“Mom!” Piper’s shout echoes across the parking lot.
Looking out the window of the office, I spot vehicles arriving in the parking lot. More are racing into view, some with men and women in riot gear hanging from the sides. The motorcade of vehicles is a welcome sight, but not as much as the two figures climbing out of the lead vehicle. Both of them are Mym.
I turn to Einstein. “You’re about to get the influx of visitors you wanted.”
Piper ducks under a turnstile and races toward her mom. One of the Myms goes to one knee and opens her arms wide. Piper rushes into them.
The other Mym is scanning the fence. Searching.
My Mym. I step past Einstein and off the step of the ticket office. As I come around the corner, Mym spots me. She doesn’t wait, but breaks into a run to get to me.
“Ben! You’re okay!”
I grin as she rushes through the turnstile and into my arms. I didn’t realize just how much I missed her till this moment. I wrap my arms around her as tightly as I can.
After the initial embrace, she pulls away and searches my face. “You’re not hurt? That video . . .”
“That part takes some explaining,” I say. “But I had help.”
Piper’s dad limps up to us and smiles at Mym. “He said you’d come. Not a single doubt.”
Mym reaches for his hand and holds it. “We got here as fast as we could. This timestream is really obscure. Once the chronometers were reactivated, it still took us a week to find our way here. We didn’t want to make you wait that long though.”
“Grateful you didn’t,” he replies. “I’d guess the resort’s accommodations are a bit less than five star anymore.”
A squad of armed ASCOTT agents rushes by, scouring the park for threats. Someone shouts when they discover Einstein and several of them take up defensive positions, training their weapons on the ticket office robot.
I detach myself from Mym and move toward the kiosk.
“Hey! We have an arrangement with the robot,” I shout. “Don’t shoot him!”
The one-armed android meanders toward the agents. “Welcome to Yesteryear Adventure Park. If you would like to purchase speed passes to our most popular attractions, I would appreciate if you form an orderly line. I regret that our online purchasing system is temporarily unavailable.”
“Stand down, synth!” one of the agents shouts.
Einstein continues toward the agents. “You are speaking with the Ticketing, Reservations, and Information Kiosk. If you would like to speak to a representative—”
Gunfire erupts from one of the agent’s weapons, then another. Einstein staggers back, showering sparks on the concrete. There are now gaping holes in his outer case. He pivots slowly toward me and raises his hand before being hit with several more bullets. The robot tips and then falls, crashing to the ground in a heap.
Piper shrieks.
I turn to find my older self hugging her tightly to him. Piper’s eyes are glued to the robot.
Looking past them, I spot a new cluster of men near the gates.
ASCOTT director Jermaine Clevis has arrived. He strides forward flanked by several bodyguards. When he reaches my position, he sizes up the smoking wreck of Einstein, then looks around the broken-down theme park. “Mr. Travers. Of all the timestreams to find you in, we never would have thought to look here.” He turns to shout to his agents. “Any sign of our Tempus Fugitives?”
I answer his question myself. “Your team is going to have their hands full rounding them up. I c
an show you where they are, but the first priority needs to be a rescue operation.”
I explain where Abraham is, and what Franco, the Gladiator, has going on in his timestream.
“An arena? Full of history’s villains? What an outrageous idea,” Jermaine replies. “I’ll have my men on it immediately.”
He’s true to his word. After I show him one of the maps and the locations of the time gates, his agents swarm through the park to apprehend the escapees.
I locate Mym again and take her hand. The other Mym and Piper’s dad are now speaking quietly near the turnstiles.
“I talked to my future self on the way here,” Mym says. “It sounds like they had a challenging go of it. Life hasn’t exactly gone according to plan.”
“Yeah, I need to talk to you about that.” I hold both of her hands as I face her. “There’s a reason Piper chose your dad’s funeral as the day she returned to. It wasn’t coincidence she picked that day.”
“I know,” Mym replies. “I—I was sick the day after you were taken. I thought it was just nerves at first, being worried about you. But then I took a test.” She looks up at me, searching my face. “You know what it said already, don’t you?”
“I know, and I couldn’t be happier about it.”
Mym smiles. It lights up her face. “You aren’t upset? It’s going to change . . . everything.”
I nod and take a deep breath. “Well, if the last few days have taught me anything, it’s that learning to be a parent is no joke. But I think I’m ready. I don’t know if our daughter will turn out exactly the same as this Piper, but if she does, I’d be thrilled.”
I look for our alternate daughter and find that Piper is standing over the disabled robot. We walk over to her and I rest a hand on her shoulder. “How are you doing, kiddo?”
Piper keeps her eyes on the robot. “Is he dead?”
I glance from the broken android to the still-blinking lights of the ticket office. “I don’t know that it was ever really alive, so it’s hard to say.”
“It wasn’t really his fault though, was it?” Piper asks. “Trying to fix the past. Lots of people wish they could do that.”
“And for lots worse reasons,” I say. “But I don’t think he picked the right friends.”
“You think if someone else had offered to help him, maybe it would have been different?”
“I don’t know. Hard to say what anyone else’s future will turn out to be.” I look to where my alternate self was last talking to his wife. He and the other Mym are hugging. Piper notices too and beams.
I wrap my arm around my Mym and kiss her. The future just got a lot more fun.
By midday, ASCOTT teams have reactivated and entered each of the time gates. Finding Abraham was top priority, and thanks to the nature of time travel, when they rescue him from the Gladiator’s arena prison, it’s only a couple of hours after I left him. They capture the Gladiator the moment he reappears from the involuntary trip I sent him on.
Piper and Mym are equally thrilled to see Abraham exit the time gate.
He meets us with a weary but undaunted smile on his face.
“I had confidence that you would find a way to stage a rescue,” he says to me. “Your talent for survival and thinking on your feet continues to serve you well.”
“I couldn’t have done it without your help,” I say. “And Piper was the real hero. If it hadn’t been for her, I never would have had a chance to save anyone.” I turn to my alternate daughter. “I assume you two know each other?”
Piper smiles at Abe. “I’ve learned a few things from him.”
“Our paths do tend to cross from time to time,” Abe says, returning her smile. “You have a bit of competition in the chronometer repair department. Piper is even building her own custom device at my shop.”
I consider the old watchmaker. “You’ve known I had a daughter before all this? And you never told me?”
“I figured that’s what you might call family business. I assumed you’d want to find out on your own.”
“Oh, speaking of chronometers . . .” Mym reaches into a bag she has slung over one shoulder. “I brought some spares.” She hands one to each of us. “Pretty sure you’d like the option again.”
I gratefully slip the chronometer onto my wrist and latch the band. It feels good.
“Who’s taking home the warp clock?” I ask. “I’d like to keep a close eye on that thing, especially now that we know its existence is public knowledge.”
“I’ve been meaning to develop a fail-safe for the system,” Abe says. “I think now may be that time. If you don’t mind, I would appreciate being able to ensure this sort of event never happens again.”
“You won’t get any argument from me,” I say.
Mym smiles at him. “Well, as long as it’s staying in the family. Sorry to tell you, Abe, but you’re stuck with us. We count you in that category too.”
Abraham grins. “There are worse fates, to be sure.” He heads for the ticket office to see about disconnecting the warp clock.
The Tempus Fugitives are rounded up. It takes the ASCOTT teams multiple trips to 1777, but all of the escaped convicts are brought in. Director Clevis approaches me as the agents load the prisoners into vehicles.
“It seems you’ve managed to increase the number of escapees for us, Mr. Travers.” He gestures to where Smiley, Epaulettes, and Wiggy are being held. Their doppelgängers from the alternate timestream are being loaded into a parallel vehicle. The criminals are giving their own selves dirty looks.
“Sorry if they take up a few more jail cells at Rookwood this way,” I say. “But it beat the alternative. You have any idea what will happen to all these new timestreams they created?”
Jermaine sighs and crosses his arms. “We’re going to survey the damage. If their activities yielded results we can live with, we may end up adding them to the list of approved timestreams and allow visitors. It seems this park robot they were following did have some noble intentions. But we all know that doesn’t always make much difference when it comes to results. In the end, some of these timestreams may bear very little resemblance to the originals they came from. They made some drastic changes.”
I spot Vanessa being lined up behind Sal and a very dejected-looking Jorge. They are being loaded into one of the vehicles. “That woman saved my life. When it comes time for her hearing, I’d like to be there.”
Jermaine runs a finger across the palm of his hand and scribbles something, no doubt seeing more than I do from his perspective. “I’ve made a request. I suspected you may want to be present for all of the hearings, considering what happened here. I trust you know that we discovered two bodies in the duplicate timestreams. Are you aware of their identities?”
“I am.”
“And what would you like us to do with the deceased?”
“I’d like to have custody of them,” I reply. “I know of a place they should go.”
“Very well,” Jermaine says. “I’ll have my people arrange things per your request.”
I’m glad he doesn’t ask me to explain the situation in more detail. I imagine there will be time for that later.
Another group of technicians has arrived in the park, but these don’t look like ASCOTT agents. Dressed in gray with matching company logos on their jackets, the team is analyzing the ticket office.
“Who are those people?” I ask.
Jermaine makes more invisible notes on his hand. “Representatives from United Machine. The system running this park was one of their early designs. They mean to study the anomaly that occurred here and determine what it means in terms of their synthetic intelligence programs. And of course to keep it from happening again.”
“Do they have any idea what happened?” I ask.
“Their speculation is that the AI running the park may have developed its own survival instinct over the years it was left abandoned, and used that to make new decisions and strategies. While it wasn’t able to untether itsel
f from its core programming, it’s clear that this system was far more advanced than was ever intended. It may be that you have inadvertently discovered one of the evolutionary steps of the technological singularity—a leap ahead for robot kind, as it were.”
“I’d rather I hadn’t,” I reply. I begin walking us over to where Mym is talking with Piper.
“I’m sure that when the investigation is concluded, you’ll be given credit for your role in the discovery,” Jermaine says. He rests a hand on my shoulder as we walk. “Who knows, Mr. Travers? Perhaps one day you’ll even be famous.”
When I reach Mym and Piper, I turn and shake Jermaine’s hand. “Thanks for the rescue, director. Tell United Machine they can keep the credit. We’ll just head home.”
“It could be an astounding discovery. If you wanted to consider becoming a member of ASCOTT, I’m sure I could speak a few words in your favor and make sure that you get the recognition you deserve from the scientific community.”
“I have all the recognition I need. As long as the people I care about still like me, I’m plenty famous enough.” I move to Mym’s side and take her hand. I drape my other arm around Piper’s shoulders.
“Famous among a rather small group of time travelers,” Jermaine argues.
“Not a group, director. We’re a family.”
28
“It’s easy to imagine that time travel can fix any issue, but truth be told, there are some problems that can only be solved by living one day at a time.” -Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2021.
“I don’t know how he felt at the end,” I say. “I don’t know what it was like to die. I don’t think I’m ready to know.”
Standing in this grassy prairie, I feel a long way removed from the events of the last few days, but the reality is still with us, etched in granite. Mym slips her hand into mine and looks down at the gravestone.
“Some part of you must have been more ready than you think. At least he was.”
It’s a strange feeling to think that only a few pivotal hours separate the life I’m living now from the life that ended in 1777. It was a single twist in the timeline, but one that gave me a second chance.
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 187
