The Rewind Files

by Claire Willett

  My mother gave him a long stern look before nodding in agreement, a small hidden smile on her face. She enjoyed having this effect; she got a kick out of prodding dissent out of the handful of people still left in this building (or, you know, the world) who dared to publicly disagree with her. I could see this young medic rising in her estimation as he stood there and pointedly held his ground.

  “Four days then,” she said. “No more.” Her tone would have frozen lava, but as she left she was smiling.

  * * *

  The visits started immediately. Apparently my mother did not believe that work was work if I was doing it in my pajamas, so she sent an endless parade of staff members over to my apartment with files to review. I did not feel this qualified as “bed rest,” but I knew better than to bring it up.

  The Director was first. In his defense, he had clearly been bludgeoned into it by my mother.

  “I told her to give you a break,” he said. “But since that obviously wasn’t going to happen I thought I should be first in line to give you your mission briefing before the conquering hordes descend.”

  “I’m really fine,” I protested, slightly half-heartedly. He smiled.

  “You’re like both of them, you know,” he said. “You’re a pragmatist like your mother but you’re also fearless like your father.”

  “Fearless? Hardly.”

  “Really? How did you feel when you were standing on that transport platform, breaking all the rules in the book to go in and rescue Grove?”

  “I didn’t really feel anything by that point,” I admitted. “There just wasn’t another way. I figured I’d deal with the consequences later.”

  “You were certain you were going to get fired,” he said. “But you went anyway. You don’t think that’s bravery?”

  “Anyone could have done it,” I protested. “The problem was only Grove’s signal. Anyone could have jumped him out, it’s just that it was 3 am and nobody else was there.”

  “Trading clothes with Calliope was quick thinking,” he said. “The white lab coat. That was a very Agent Carstairs move.” I looked away to hide a smile, irrationally pleased by this.

  “And you conducted yourself impressively in the committee meeting — intermittent obscenities aside,” he added dryly, and I winced. “It was a pleasure to watch your mind at work. You stand in front of a dilemma and you watch and wait and you flip through a mental file of possible solutions until the right one pops up. Isn’t that right?”

  I stared at him. “How did you know?”

  “That’s how Katie always explained it to me. You have her brain. She never has to force it, your mother. She just closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath, and waits. She always told me it was like turning the pages of a book. And sooner or later it would flip to the right page and she’d have an answer. Your father was less patient,” he laughed. “He’d want to jump in right away.”

  “They were good together,” I said, though it was more a question than a statement, and he smiled.

  “They were,” he agreed. “We don’t come across a pair like that every day. Your mother is the most brilliant person I’ve ever met — one of the great minds of our time — but she had to learn from your father to be able to trust her instincts. She lived in her head.”

  “When we first paired her with Carstairs, oh, she was livid. She stormed into the Director’s office and screamed that she refused to work with such a brash, reckless puppy dog who would get them both killed some day. But I think secretly she was a little pleased to have finally met someone who would stand up to her. We’d had the devil of a time finding anyone who would set foot in her office twice. But she loved Carstairs because he wasn’t afraid.”

  “That’s what he gave you,” he said, smiling kindly. “You think you want to be a desk agent for the rest of your life, but you don’t. You only tell yourself that because it seems like the easy path. But you showed yourself who you really are on that transport platform — in that Ohio town — pulling Grove through the Slipstream just in time. We would have lost one of our top agents if it weren’t for your quick thinking, and whatever you tell yourself now, it took great courage to do all those things. You thought you would lose your job and you did it anyway.”

  “What’s intriguing about you,” he said thoughtfully, “is that you have the best of both of them in one person. Your parents needed each other to be the complete package. You have it all in yourself.”

  He smiled, patted my hand affectionately, and pulled a handheld out of his bag to set on the couch.

  “Give yourself a day before you dive in,” he warned. “Don’t read this until tomorrow or it will make your head hurt again. We’ll see you on Friday for your staff briefing.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any way I can get out of this,” I said, half-pleading, and he stopped at the door and turned back.

  “I know this isn’t what you wanted,” he said. “This isn’t what you came here to do. There are plenty of other agents who love field work, who love the human element, who love the unpredictability and adventure. You don’t. You love the math. That means you’re the one we need. We need someone in the field who can spot a Chronomaly the second it happens. Or, ideally, before,” he added dryly. “You’re an apprentice and you have a more intuitive grasp of GC coordinates than ranking officers twice your age.”

  “This is partly a test, isn’t it?” I said. “You want to know if I can do this before you promote me.”

  “I know you can do this, Agent Bellows,” he said. “The only person who doesn’t think you can stop a war before it starts is you.”

  True to his words, nobody else came to bother me that day. I spent a blissful afternoon in total silence, slumped on the couch watching old movies and drinking beer with no pants on.

  Mark from Wardrobe came the next morning, along with Mrs. Graham from Etiquette & Customs. They were both 20th-century specialists who I vaguely remembered from my final exams. Mark was tall, handsome, and gay, with a shaved head and an incredibly elaborate glossy black handlebar moustache which together made him look like a 19th-century carnival barker.

  Mrs. Graham (“I don’t think anyone actually knows her first name,” my mother had told me once, “even the Director calls her Mrs. Graham”) was slight and bird-like, with impeccable white hair and the pep of a woman seventy years her junior.

  I was a little embarrassed to let them into my messy bachelor apartment, but they were completely oblivious; Mark bustled around with fabric swatches and outfits on metal hangers, creating a mini boudoir in my dining room while Mrs. Graham briefed me on social customs.

  “You’re going to Washington D.C. in 1972,” she said. “Have you been over your file thoroughly?”

  “I have.”

  “Tell me what you know about your identity.”

  “She’s a junior-grade secretary —”

  “Wrong.”

  “What?”

  “Not ‘she.’ You.”

  “Fine. I’m a junior-grade secretary at the White House who just moved to the city from Kansas City, Missouri. I have wealthy Republican parents, a degree in American History and a typing certification, and I came to the city to get a job with the Nixon administration.”

  “You came to the city to meet eligible men,” she said. I rolled my eyes.

  “I refuse to use that as my cover.”

  “It’s much more plausible.”

  “Not for me.”

  “You’re not being you, Agent Bellows,” said Mark, holding up three identical-looking fabric swatches to test them against my hair. “The first secret to successful field work is to inhabit the character. Regina Bellows the 22nd-century time travel agent and Regina Bellows the 1970’s secretary are two completely different people.”

  “With the same brain,” I pointed out. “And the same body. And the same voice. And —”

  “Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Graham impatiently, “but we’re getting off-track. Your job, Agent Bellows, is not to saunter
into the past and condemn it as primitive. Your job is to get information. And if people are suspicious of you — if they find your manners alien, your attitude off-putting, your motives suspect — you will get nothing and you will be of no use to us. We all saw the micro-cam footage of your little adventure in Ohio. On a long-term mission, such shenanigans are unacceptable.”

  I shut my mouth, chastened slightly. She was right, of course. I was there to do a job. A giant, terrifying, history-changing job with incalculably massive geopolitical ramifications, the traitor voice in the back of my head whispered evilly. But this was the part that had always challenged me with field work — I wasn’t a particularly good actor, and I didn’t really like people that much.

  My father had been charismatic, engaging, and wildly improvisational. There was no tight corner he couldn’t talk his way out of. If he had lived, I thought suddenly, it would probably have been him right now being fussed over by Mark and Mrs. Graham. This was right in his wheelhouse.

  My mother was chillier and less charming, true, but she was also so prudent and unflappable that she was impossible to trap in a tight corner to begin with. Some people are good at getting out of traps. Some people are good at not falling into them. Together they had been indestructible. And here I was, sharing their DNA in equal parts, but completely at a loss in this situation.

  “The hair works as it is, I think,” said Mark contemplatively, interrupting my thoughts.

  “I believe it does, yes,” agreed Mrs. Graham. “A chignon for evening, my dear.”

  “I have no idea what that is.” They ignored me and went on talking to each other.

  “You’re a Republican government employee,” said Mark. “So this is not going to be the beads-and-bell-bottoms look here.”

  “Nixon distrusted anyone who looked too countercultural,” said Mrs. Graham. “She’s going to need to look polished and conservative and just ever-so-slightly behind the trend. Not dowdy, but not flashy either.”

  “You need to blend in,” she said to me. “A White House secretary wouldn’t wear anything too attention-getting.”

  “No trousers,” said Mark thoughtfully.

  “In 1972, in the workplace? Most definitely not. Skirts only, hems at the knee with stockings. Let’s give her a dark skirt suit —”

  “Chocolate brown, I think. She can wear blouses or turtlenecks with it.”

  “What about a wrap dress?” she asked.

  Mark shook his head. “Diane von Furstenburg is just now showing them on the runway. A secretary wouldn’t be able to buy a knockoff version yet. Too fashion-forward. I think a sheath dress with a matching coat for evening,” he said thoughtfully, “something that looks like a pricey investment piece she saved up for and bought five years ago and keeps in pristine condition.”

  “Perfect. Just the thing.”

  “Has anyone talked to you about underwear?”

  This was getting ridiculous. “My mother told me I should always leave the house in a clean pair in case I got in an accident and had to go to the hospital.” Neither of them was amused.

  “The lines created by period undergarments are very important,” said Mark seriously. “A 1940’s bra and a 1970’s bra look very different.”

  “Well, yes, to a period fashion expert they probably do,” I said, “but what are the odds anyone I meet is going to see my bra? I’m not Mata Hari here, I’m not seducing men for information.”

  “The wrong bra will affect how all of your blouses fit,” said Mrs. Graham sternly. “Pay attention.”

  This went on for hours. I’ll spare you an account of Mark’s self-guided tour through my underpants drawer and my ensuing mortification, but I did eventually end up with both a complete wardrobe and the conviction that I was apparently failing at being a woman on literally every level. By the end of the day I had four suitcases packed with the following:

  One chocolate-brown wool skirt suit, with a knee-length skirt;

  A green-and-yellow checked day dress with a green jacket lined in the same fabric;

  A pair of crisp khaki slacks and a pink cotton button-down shirt (“Only for the weekend,” Mark had warned me in foreboding tones. “You cannot wear these within five hundred feet of the White House.” “Why, will they detonate?” I asked, suddenly interested, only to receive another death glare from Mrs. Graham);

  A powder-blue silk blouse with short sleeves;

  A long-sleeved red silk blouse that tied at the neck;

  Three turtlenecks in burgundy, white and teal;

  Two knee-length pencil skirts, one in gray and one in black;

  A black sheath dress for evening with a cream wool coat lined in a sharp emerald green;

  A pair of comfortable cotton pajamas for regular wear (it seemed like the wrong moment to tell Mrs. Graham I slept naked) and a flimsy black lace thing you could literally see right through, which I caught Mark sneaking into one of the suitcases with a wink while Mrs. Graham wasn’t looking (“The best agents are prepared for any situation,” he said primly when I thrust it in his face after she left);

  Two bras, four pairs of underwear, a black slip, a white slip, a nude half-slip and two pairs of hose (black and tan);

  Brown heels and black heels for day, fancier black shoes for evening, and a pair of flat penny loafers for my weekend khakis.

  Their early enthusiasm for my curly hair faded a little as Mark valiantly attempted to actually style it. “What do you use on this?” he said in horror as his comb snagged for the fifty-fourth time, causing a yowl of pain.

  “I usually just shower at the gym before work,” I said. “I use that pink stuff in the stalls.”

  “You put that in your hair?”

  “It says ‘For Hair, Face and Body’ right on the dispenser!” I said defensively. He gave a truly award-winning exasperated sigh and looked at me with pitying eyes.

  “Nobody actually uses that on their hair,” he said witheringly. “You have curls, you need something that weighs down the hair follicles to prevent frizz. How has no one taught you this?”

  This got an enormous laugh from Mrs. Graham. “Come now, Mark, cut the girl some slack,” she said. “You’ve met her mother.” They both found this utterly hilarious, but I was not amused.

  “I’ll leave you some products for your hair and face,” he said. “There’s a diagram in the suitcase to help you do the makeup. It has brands and colors you’ll be able to find in any period department store.”

  “Um, I think I can handle putting on my own makeup without a diagram,” I said a little too sharply. “I do have an advanced degree in 20th Century culture, you know.”

  “All right, smart girl,” he said dryly. “Then tell me what you do with this.”

  He pulled a bizarre implement made of twisted wire out of his bag and handed it to me. I looked at it. Then I turned it upside down and looked at it again. It had a handle a little like a pair of scissors, but it ended in a strange curved clamp instead of blades.

  “What would you use that for?” Mrs. Graham asked. I considered it carefully.

  “Well, it depends if this padding on the ends here is flame-retardant,” I said. “If it is, I would assume this is some kind of archaic tool for a very delicate welding operation. Look, you would grasp the handles here and the clasp would lock onto the metal — maybe needles or wire or something very fine — so you could pull it out of the forge and —”

  “It’s an eyelash curler,” Mark said coldly. I was silent. “The diagram is in the smallest suitcase,” he said after a long, uncomfortable pause.

  I thanked him meekly and shut up for the rest of the day.

  In between patronizing visits from various colleagues who all began by apologizing for intruding on my bed rest but immediately proceeded to stuff my brain full of more information than it could currently hold, I read the file the Director had left me over and over and over again.

  To reassure myself, I pored over the chart readouts until I had them memorized. “This is just
a math problem,” I said to myself every time I felt my heart start to clench in panic. “All of this is just window dressing around a math problem.” But deep down, I wasn’t sure I believed that.

  I don’t want to get too deep into theology here, but one of the things time agents tend to wrestle with quite a bit is the notion of human agency. Free will.

  If I can look at a chart two hundred years in the future and see what you’re about to do, does that mean it was predetermined? That it wasn’t your choice to do it? That you have no free will?

  What if I go back in time and alter the course of your life to ensure a specific action, like I was doing now? Was I interfering with the God-given free will of real living and breathing people by helping Congress make a permanent structural reconfiguration of the Timeline, even if it would prevent a war that took millions of lives?

  Not if the war was the Chronomaly all along, I told myself. If the war was never supposed to happen, then we’ve all been living in the fallout of someone else’s interference and all I’m doing is resetting the clock. That’s all. I’m taking us back to where we were supposed to be.

  For it had become clear to me, as I ate, slept and breathed those pages of GC coordinate charts, that our first instincts had been right. There was absolutely no way the Third World War was a naturally-occurring event. Once I knew what I was seeing, it was all so clear. And as soon as I sat down at my desk on Friday morning to pull up the field site coordinates, I realized why nobody had spotted it until now.

  “Are you absolutely, positively, 100% sure?” said the Director, frowning. We were on a park bench about ten blocks from the office. I had asked to meet with them both outside, paranoia perhaps beginning to get the best of me.

  “If she says she’s sure, she’s sure,” said my mother crisply. “Regina knows this data like the back of her hand.”

  “We’ve sent in agents to patch during World War III before,” I explained. “Just small stuff. If the system had read it as a massive Chronomaly, the transport wouldn’t have opened automatically. You have to do a manual override to send an agent into a hot spot like that, and we have no reports of manual overrides in that era. Not ever. World War III is actually pretty quiet. Which, knowing what we now know, is suspicious in and of itself. There are only two explanations. One is that for some reason, nobody in the early days ever really messed with it. Which, given the levels of interference in the first two world wars, is unlikely.”