by Rachel Ford
“How long have you been doing this, then?”
Winthrop considered. “Well now, I must be going on a hundred and fifty years.”
Chapter Three
“Wait, what? How is that even possible? You’d be dead.”
“I haven’t lived it linearly,” he explained. “I’ve been all over the spacetime continuum. Well into the past, and far into the future – ours, and many others.”
“But you’d be dead,” Nance repeated, “if you were doing this – doing anything – for a hundred and fifty years.”
Winthrop studied her, confused for a moment. Then, his eyes widened. “Oh, I forgot: they haven’t invented Compound L yet in your timeline.”
“What?”
“It won’t be invented for another nine hundred years or so, your time. But it’s a compound that regenerates cells. That’s essentially all aging is, you know: your cells stop regenerating like they used to, and your body breaks down, until, eventually, it kills you. Compound L supplements the body’s natural regeneration.”
“You mean…you don’t age?”
“Basically, yes. Technically, time is passing, so you are aging. But instead of your cell growth degenerating as the time passes, you replace old cells with new, robust ones. It’s the fountain of youth, in an injection.”
“Impossible,” Nancy said, her brow creased with skepticism.
“It does have rather a quack-medicine ring to it,” Winthrop conceded. “But I assure you, Miss Abbot, it’s very possible. Our agents all use it. We have to: sometimes, we’re gone for months or even years at a time. For most of us, we still maintain some presence in our regular lives. Without Compound L, we’d seem to age overnight. It would cause chaos in our real lives. And the agency would have to train new agents all the time if we aged out.
“It’s much more efficient this way, and completely effective. Special Agent Tiverson – you haven’t met him yet, but you will – has been on it for nine hundred years. And he doesn’t look a day past two and thirty.”
“Impossible,” she repeated.
Alfred wrapped an arm around her. He would have teased her for that mechanical response, if the news hadn’t been so difficult to wrap his own head around. He might have said that incredulity had tripped a circuit in her brain, and was causing her logic module to malfunction. He might have asked her if her programming was equipped to deal with such startling revelations. Instead, though, he heard himself saying, “Impossible.”
“Well, you’ll see for yourselves, of course, once you go on a mission. But come, this is your first visit to IBTI headquarters. Let me show you around – and get you checked into your rooms.”
“Our…rooms?” Alfred wondered, grateful for a topic that at least made sense. “You mean, we’re staying here?”
“Of course. You’re welcome to remain as long as you like while you make up your minds.”
“What if we want to go home to think it over? Will you stop us?”
Winthrop seemed perplexed by the idea. “You can leave, of course. You’re not prisoners, Miss Abbot.”
“Nancy,” she said. “Call me Nancy.”
He nodded. “Nancy, then. You can go whenever you like. But don’t you want to at least see the facility before you depart?”
“I suppose I do,” she admitted.
Alfred was glad to hear it. As much as he wanted to get home, as much as he wanted to return to his normal life, some part of him could not deny curiosity. It wasn’t every day you met an agent from the past, who had been to the future. It wasn’t every day you were invited to join an interdimensional time travelling organization.
Winthrop beamed. “Excellent. Well then, follow me.”
They’d arrived in a pristine reception area, where a prim secretary sat behind a glass desk. Now, he led them from the council chamber, past this secretary. “Good morning again, George.”
“Agent Winthrop. I assume the meeting went your way, then?”
“It did at that.”
George – Alfred didn’t know if the man had a last name; so far, he’d heard him referred to only by the first – nodded. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Winthrop nodded.
“Welcome to the Bureau, Miss Abbot and Mister Favero.”
“We haven’t agreed to anything yet,” Nancy hastened to clarify.
“No, we’re just on a tour now,” Alfred added.
George seemed nonplussed by this. “Oh. Well, umm…enjoy the tour, then.”
“We will,” Winthrop declared airily. Then, he led them to a set of large double doors, and they stepped outside. “You’ll have to forgive George. Not many people hesitate when offered a position with the agency.”
“They leap before they look?” Nancy wondered.
Alfred smiled at the incredulity in her tone. That was definitely not his Nance’s style. She could be spontaneous in the right circumstance, but an overthinker of epic proportions when it came to big decisions.
Winthrop nodded. “I suppose you could say that, yes. But our mentorship program makes sure no one winds up over their heads.”
The taxman, meanwhile, was taking in their surroundings. They’d stepped into a kind of courtyard. Sleek buildings, constructed of some sort of non-reflective silvery material he couldn’t readily identify, sprawled out in every direction across a massive campus. Colorful mosaic walking paths connected the structures, and a handful of hovercraft navigated the skies. In the central courtyard, a great fountain burbled away, disturbing an otherwise tranquil pool. Long, purple, eel-like fish navigated the waters, slithering this way and that in the clear blue-greens.
Alfred blinked, one part transfixed, the other horrified. He’d never seen anything so glorious, so futuristic, and it thrilled him. On the other hand, it reminded him of one of Nance’s sci-fi shows, and that made him profoundly uncomfortable. Was this some kind of waking nightmare, some terrible, lucid dream?
“What year did you say this was?” Nancy gasped.
“I didn’t. We provide a set of coordinates to agents, but the year and locale is a secret. Only the highest levels of the bureau know when and where we are.”
“So…this could be some future version of Earth?”
Winthrop shook his head. “You can’t see it during the day, but this place, this planet, has three moons.”
Nancy nodded thoughtfully. “Three moons, huh?”
He smiled. “You can forget about trying to figure it out by process of elimination, Miss Nancy. Three moons narrows the list of possible locations by quite a bit, but it still leaves billions of known contenders.”
She grinned. “It’s a start, anyway.”
“Well, I suppose you’ve got time on your side, at least,” he deadpanned. When neither of his guests responded to the pun, Winthrop sighed and changed the topic. “At any rate, accommodations are this way.”
They moved in the direction he indicated, and Alfred found himself mesmerized. The campus was magnificent, with the perfect blend of construction and greenery. Although, technically, much of the vegetation around them wasn’t actually green. There was a type of fern with long blue fronds that grew in the shade, and a purplish flowering shrub adorning the pathways. The trees ran the spectrum from pale yellow to a deep olive, almost black. Red and silver vines, sporting small, fragrant flowers inched up the faces of some of the buildings. Of all of the growing things here, only the grass retained an earthlike green hue.
The buildings were remarkable in their own right, though. He’d already noticed that they seemed to be constructed of some kind of material not known to men of his era. It was smooth and silver, reminiscent of Earth metals, but somehow…different. Lighter. He couldn’t explain it, exactly. If buildings could be made of storm clouds, he supposed this is what they’d look like.
Finally, curiosity got the better of him, and he asked, “What kind of metal is that?”
“It’s not metal,” Winthrop said. “It’s actually nothing that exists on Earth nat
urally.”
“Oh.”
“It’s so smooth,” Nancy marveled. “I don’t even see construction joints anywhere.”
“There are none.”
“Really?”
“You’ve heard of 3D printing, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s a Vularian building technique.”
“Vularian? Another alien species?”
“Ah, that’s another one of those problematic phrases, Alfred.”
“What?”
“In that context. You’re assuming an Earth-centered universe. The Vularians are no more alien than our own species, unless we center our experience at the expense of the rest of existence.”
The taxman frowned. He understood, on some level, what the other man was saying. But none of it answered his question. “They’re not human, I mean?”
“No, they’re not human. They come from the Vular sector. Well beyond the milky way.”
“So,” Nancy said, bringing the conversation back to the original point, “the Vularians 3D print their buildings?”
“For all intents and purposes, yes. It’s extremely efficient – these buildings were finished inside a day apiece. And the material is only one centimeter thick, but it can withstand most of the winds and earthquakes you’ll encounter on inhabitable planets.”
Now, he directed their attention to a giant glass aquarium, situated behind a series of buildings. “Ah, but you’ll want to see this. It’s the housing sector for our Ki’drel visitors and residents.”
“An aquarium?” Nance wondered.
“The Ki’drel are an aquatic people,” Winthrop explained.
“Oh. Will we meet any Ki’drel?”
“You already have: Presider Ki’el.”
“Oh,” she said again. “Wow.”
She sounded a bit stunned, and Alfred wrapped an arm around her. He understood her sense of being overwhelmed – did he ever – and he wanted her to know she wasn’t alone in it. Nance smiled up at him, and the tension in her forehead relaxed a degree.
Winthrop seemed to pick up on it, too, because he said, “It is incredible, isn’t it? I forget, sometimes, just how wondrous it actually is. It’s humbling, really, to think of how small our little part of the universe is.”
They walked in silence for a few more minutes, ogling the hovercraft that sped past overhead, studying the strange flora all around them, catching sight now and again of alien fauna.
Nance broke the stillness. “Agent Winthrop?”
“Yes?”
“What kind of work do you do?”
He nodded, as if he understood the meaning behind her question. “Well, stopping timeline corruption is an important part of my job, Miss Nancy. I know your incursions have not caused much mischief, but you’d be surprised how rarely that’s the case.
“Still, I do more than police errant time travelers, which I think is what you’re asking.”
“Yes,” she nodded.
“I’m assigned to the Earth division, mostly. In the future – Earth’s future, across most of the timelines – we figure out time travel. Sometimes it’s just time travel, sometimes it’s interdimensional travel too. But someone, somewhere along the way, figures it out.
“Usually more than one someone, like in your particular timeline – our timeline. It’s not so bad during your era. It’s easy to contain because there’s not many people involved.
“But…” He paused now, frowning. “Are you sure you want to know?”
Nancy nodded emphatically. Then, though, she glanced at Alfred. “Babe?”
The taxman considered. He was curious – deeply curious – about the future of humanity. Still, the old adage curiosity killed the cat played out in his thoughts. Then again, his mind argued, ‘knowledge itself is power.’ “Tell me.”
“There’s going to be war in humanity’s future.”
The taxman snorted at the benignness of that revelation. “Has there ever been a period of human history when there hasn’t been war?”
Winthrop blinked. “Well, um, you’d have to clarify if you mean history up until your point, or history at any point. Because, if it’s the latter-”
“Never mind,” Alfred hastened. “What I mean is, we fight a lot. That’s not a surprise.”
“No. But in this war, there’s a temporal component. There’s a lot of players, and they’re all vying for control of the timeline. It’s always in flux, because they’re always changing something.” He shrugged. “It’s like babysitting toddlers. Except, they’re toddlers with nuclear – and worse – capabilities.”
“Wait, worse than nuclear?”
Winthrop shook his head darkly. “Miss Nancy, you have no idea.” Then, though, as if fearful that the tone of the conversation had gotten too grim, he smiled, “But don’t worry about that. The IBTI’s got it under control. And it’s not so bad as it sounds. Anyway, you wouldn’t be assigned anything like that. Not as new recruits. And warzones are voluntary assignments.”
Chapter Four
“Well,” Nance was saying, “this sure beats any hotel I’ve ever been in.” They were seated in the sitting room of their temporary flat. The lodgings were quite impressive, with spacious rooms and luxurious furnishings. Alfred felt more like a guest in a space-age palace than a prospective agent.
“Yeah, me too.”
“So…what do you think, babe?”
He blew out a sigh. “I don’t know, Nance. It sounds crazy. Incredible.”
“I know,” she nodded. “But, I mean, they seem like they’re doing good work.”
“Yeah. They’re a little heavy-handed. I don’t see any reason to take our generator.”
She flashed him a bemused grin. “Don’t you, Mister Favero?”
“No,” he maintained, “I don’t.”
“After the Lorina case,” she teased, “I’ve half a mind to take it from you myself.”
He grinned too. He had, perhaps, bent the terms of their agreement on when the device could be used in that case. “I thought I was done being in trouble for that one.”
“I don’t think I agreed to that.”
“Oh, I remember it clearly.”
She laughed. “But seriously, babe…what are we going to do about this? If we don’t agree, we’ll lose the device.”
Alfred shook his head at that. “I still don’t believe we’d sacrifice it for Justin.”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I mean, would you let him die? If you had the device, and could save his life?”
Alfred thought of all the times Justin had harassed him and Nance. He remembered all the creepy, inappropriate things the other man had said. He recalled all the times he’d wanted to strangle him himself. And, despite it all, he sighed, “No, I guess not.”
“Me either. I’d probably regret it afterwards.”
“Oh, we’ll definitely regret it.”
“But I’d save him.”
“Me too.” Alfred scowled at his own weakness. “So, that leaves us two options: lose the device, or join the IBTI.”
“Maybe we’re better off without it,” she reasoned. “I mean, it’s a hell of a responsibility. Maybe it would just be easier to give it up, and not worry about timelines and repercussions anymore.”
Alfred considered this. He had used the device when, perhaps, he might not have needed to. But he’d also saved Nance’s life with it. And the thought of what might have been – what would have been, had he not had the device – filled him with a kind of horror. “Nance,” he said in a minute, “the thing is…without the generator, you’d be dead.”
She pondered this for a moment, then nodded. “I know, babe. But what are the odds of us running into a homicidal tax cheat twice in a lifetime?”
He swallowed. He didn’t bother explaining that this was a lot more likely than she was allowing. She already knew his theory on tax fraud being the gateway drug of crimes, the slippery slope that led to all other depravities. She knew that their line of work was cat
ching tax cheats, which necessarily meant frequent encounters with the worst society had to offer. But none of that was as important as one simple point. “Any chance is too much, babe. I don’t want to lose you.”
She smiled at him now, a tender look in her eyes. “Well, I did need it to save you, too.”
It was now that a knock sounded at the door. Alfred started at the suddenness of the noise. Collecting himself, he called, “Come in.”
Roger Winthrop stepped into the room a moment later, his pale cheeks flushed with excitement. “Forgive me, Nancy, Alfred: but something’s come up. An opportunity, a new case. And – I know you haven’t made up your minds one way or the other. But as soon as I heard about it, I couldn’t help but think it’d be perfect for you: a good, straightforward case, to wet your feet. I ran it past Ki’el, and he agrees: if you’re interested, it’s yours.”
They were interested. “It’ll be a good way to see if we’re cut out for this,” Nancy reasoned. “It’s one thing to talk about losing the device, but we need to know if we can actually handle being IBTI agents.”
“True,” Alfred agreed. “But Nance, we’ve had no time to prepare for this.”
“How would we prepare?”
“I don’t know…training, maybe?” Alfred envisioned himself enrolling in the gym, maybe taking up running or even a martial art. The more he thought about that, though, the less likely it seemed. He’d had gym memberships before. They were only less a waste of money, in his mind, than lottery tickets, and for the same reason: he had about as much chance of winning the lottery as he did hitting the gym. “On the other hand, I guess we’ve kind of done this before. And there’s nothing wrong with on-the-job training.”
It was agreed, then, and Winthrop was delighted. “I’m so excited for you. Your first mission. Oh, I remember my first time on the job. It was…well, I can’t tell you about that. It’s classified.”
The special agent hustled them to a new facility. “This is where we jump from,” he explained. “It’s our mission launch site. You’ll be outfitted with supplies and clothes, briefed, and then sent across.”
