Time for the Lost

by Chess Desalls

  My stomach clenched with disgust. An alarm went off in my head, a reminder. My love? How long had I loved her?

  Surely I hadn’t loved her when she was a child. I gritted my teeth as I rotated my head to the left and right. I wasn’t that kind of person. I had many faults, but I wasn’t a perverted monster.

  Yet I felt something tangible that I couldn’t ignore. I’d suspected my feelings for Calla had something to do with the Daily Reminder I’d destroyed. There’d been talk about a photograph. But I couldn’t remember what was pictured there. Calla had said I’d destroyed it at her TSTA hearing. Commissioner Reese confirmed that the Daily Reminder had been destroyed, as if it hadn’t existed. I couldn’t remember, but Calla did. Did it have something to do with me and her? Us? Had there once been an us? One that I couldn’t remember? If the Daily Reminder was destroyed, why was it that Calla could refer to it? If she remembered, then something, some change in the past still existed. It continued to affect both of us, even though Commissioner Reese said the Daily Reminder—once destroyed—would be forgotten.

  Pain flickered behind my eyes. I drew closer to the mirror and rested my hand on its frame for support. As a result of all the traveling I’d done lately, my eyes had faded again. My hair was dark, like my mother’s, but my eyes no longer resembled hers. Not only because they were bloodshot. Aborealians had eye colors that imitated precious gems and stones, all rich and vibrant. Being of Aborealian descent, my mother had eyes that were a bright, emerald green. As were mine prior to using the travel glasses, and then once more after suffering through the Fire Falls. Continued use of the travel glasses had once again sapped my eyes of their color.

  The glasses Calla wore likely did the same to hers. Muscles around my jaws twitched. I wished I could stop thinking about her. Was she traveling to the past or future? What was she searching, and who was she trying to find?

  I sat back on the edge of the bed, struggling. Should I travel back in time to find the answer? Was Calla the only person with memories of what was pictured on the Daily Reminder? What about the commissioner and others present at the hearing? What about Ray? He was present for Calla’s hearing. Would visiting Ray be risky now that he was a member of the elite intelligence team that supported the TSTA’s Special Forces missions? Was he looking for her, too? All the jealousy in the world couldn’t keep me from hoping so. He was the better man, the safer choice. So, then, why hadn’t she chosen him?

  I squinted and blinked as the questions amassed inside me. Blinding pain seared the backs of my eyes. A tingling sensation followed as stars blurred the corners of my vision. Why hadn’t Calla felt the Uproar until it attacked her? Had loving her taken that ability from her; or was my theory correct that sensing the Uproar was an inherited ability similar to travel talents? Was she was safe from the Uproar now because I was not near her? Did I try finding her again? Or did I stay away?

  I pinched the bridge of my nose to dull the pain and endless questions. I had to decide. Aimless wandering wasn’t doing anyone any good. I had to form a plan. The answers I needed had to be somewhere, somewhen.

  I stood up and paced the room as I searched, stepping over the blanket of my unmade bed that draped across the floor. Pillows sagged. Curtains drooped. Aside from Calla’s backpack, I had no bags, which I was certain fueled the hotelier’s suspicions that I was in trouble.

  My travel glasses lay on the floor. I lifted the pair and turned them in my hands. In them, I’d captured many memories. They’d allowed me to travel through time and space, all by searching for a place—or person—I desired. The more details for the search, the better. I’d learned how to record important moments, places, people and conversations in the travel glasses by burning them inside with my thoughts. Sometimes the glasses had captured feelings.

  My heart pulsed; each thud pounded in my ears. More than my own recordings were stored. Some of the recordings were Calla’s—recordings that she’d burned into the original pair of travel glasses invented by my uncle, Edgar Hall. She’d taken that pair from me when she escaped my palace, like a thief in the night masked with affection. To be fair, I’d stolen the glasses from Edgar after he’d altered them and refused to give them to me, having replaced the time-traveling pair with ordinary sunglasses. But I hadn’t tricked him—played with his emotions—to get what I’d wanted. Her kiss, delicate and cruel, still burned in my mind.

  During Calla’s TSTA hearing I’d noticed that some of the data I’d recorded into my current backup pair had malfunctioned. So I’d asked for the original pair to replace the missing data. I hadn’t realized Calla had learned to record, and that she’d captured some of her own experiences inside the glasses. I’d recorded what I remembered of her memories into the pair I had now. Some of those memories included me, my past-self with whom she’d fallen in love and who had loved her in return. I was certain those memories had something to do with the photograph—the Daily Reminder—that I’d destroyed at Calla’s hearing, so she wouldn’t be held responsible for the infraction that involved me.

  Later, Calla had fallen for me, the living and breathing version of me, one that wasn’t a shadow of my present-self. One that wasn’t a silhouette.

  I placed the travel glasses on my face and searched, resurrecting a memory I’d recorded of her during the time we spent together behind the Fire Falls. She’d told me about her time spent at the Workshop in the Woods, Edgar’s Nowhere. I suppose he’d explained time travel to her the best way he could, even though he was lost—as close as one could get without disappearing altogether. He’d cared for Calla when she had no place to go. He’d left an impression on her. As did his death.

  I tapped my fingertips against the pain building in my temples as my recording focused on a place surrounded by rock.

  “I had a dream about him last night, Valcas—a dream about Edgar,” Calla said. Her dark eyes were sharp and serious. My pair of travel glasses had captured her face perfectly. “He told me that he would have taught me differently about time travel if he’d known I was a Remnant Transporter. What do you think it means?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “You’ve been through a lot. Your mind may be mixing things up and replaying them back to you in different combinations. I’ve never considered the interpretation of dreams to be a fruitful endeavor.”

  “But why now? We’re so close to figuring out how to escape the Falls. It’s almost as if Edgar wants to warn me, to say something to me.”

  I held her close, unsure what else to say on the matter.

  My present thoughts mimicked those of the recording of me inside the glasses. Of course Calla would think that, likely hopeful that she would be able to see him again, to learn something that would make sense out of the mess I’d help to make of her life. It was still possible for her to see Edgar again if she wished, a past version of him that wasn’t lost.

  I blinked, testing the idea as it ran through my mind a second time. A past version, a silhouette of the inventor who wasn’t lost. Someone who’d trusted and cared for Calla. I squinted in the darkness. My eye pain had subsided. I almost smiled. A plan had emerged after all, thanks to the crystal-clear memory inside my travel glasses.

  My decision solidified as I stood up. I would return to the past, Edgar’s past. It sounded like a simple plan. And it would have been, had Edgar also trusted me.

  I hesitated, sliding the room key back and forth in my fingers, trying to decide on a specific period in time to begin my search.

  Edgar was dead, so I would need to visit one of his silhouettes. I preferred to gather information from a version of Edgar that existed before he became lost. One that had trusted me. That would be going way back according to how my world’s timeline worked. It would be pre-travel glasses. Before he’d altered the pair of dark lenses my mother had gifted me.

  I needed to search for a version of Edgar with brown hair, lightly salted with gray. By that time, Shirlyn would have been convicted by the TSTA for having created a Daily Remi
nder, which she then inserted into the past of a Venetian she claimed to have fallen in love with while visiting seventeenth-century Venice. She would be living out her punishment, in prison.

  As a result, Edgar would be fiercely absorbed in perfecting his youth elixir, so that he could live long enough to welcome Shirlyn when her sentence ended. He and his wife, Elizabeth, would have divorced by then. Edgar would be on his own, but I didn’t know whether he would be at the Workshop in the Woods; whether he’d stumbled upon the un-place; or whether he’d known someone who’d escorted him there. As far as I knew, it had never been confirmed whether Edgar had the World Builder talent. Usually finding out about such a talent coincided with a surprise hearing before the TSTA.

  I sighed, wondering why I was having so much trouble constructing my search elements. It was usually much easier than this.

  All this I pondered as I paid for the room at the front desk. The girl there had smiled at me. She looked embarrassed, I think. Frightened, maybe? Per my usual, I did my best to forget about such things, and what they might have meant.

  After scouting out a large, open field, I regained my focus, slipped on the travel glasses and ran.

  My muscles tensed and lengthened with each stride. White light replaced the blue of the sky and green of the grass and trees. Despite the blinding glow, I saw what I suspected Calla did not see during travel: the spirals. Dark lenses reduced the glare of the Blanching Effect—the brightness of the Everywhere and Everywhen. From years of traveling, my eyes had also adjusted. With them, I could see the bend in time through which I would travel to reach my destination. This allowed me to change my course when necessary—especially if I saw something that I would need to escape.

  WHITE LIGHT faded, revealing a grove of trees similar to those I’d seen when Calla traveled with us to Edgar’s Nowhere.

  “Excellent,” I muttered to myself as I inspected the grounds. Pine trees, the silver brook, Edgar’s bizarre vegetation—seemingly well-tended—and a small workshop. All were there.

  Remembering that there would be no impact from my arrival at Edgar’s workshop, I didn’t bother grounding. Instead, I removed my glasses from my face, made haste toward the workshop door and knocked. Through it rang an exclamation, the scrape of what sounded like a chair brushing along floor tiles, and then the shuffling of feet.

  When the door opened, Edgar looked up at me over round spectacles and blinked. “Why, Valcas,” he said. “I certainly wasn’t expecting you. Do come in.”

  The laboratory bled bottles and vials, heating devices, tables and chairs, everything an inventor needed to run his experiments.

  “Please sit down,” he said, brushing tubing off a chair and onto a pile of rumpled lab coats. “To what do I owe this honor, Valcas?”

  “I’m searching for someone. I need your help.”

  Edgar stopped wringing his hands long enough to sit down beside me. “What about your parents? Are they not able to provide assistance in this matter?”

  I swiped my forehead and swallowed, struggling to find the words. “My mother’s not fond of my current mission. And my father is dead.”

  Edgar’s eyes grew glassy. “J—Jim, er, James…he’s gone?”

  I nodded, placing my hand on his shoulder. “The good news is that his death has not yet happened in your time. I traveled back to your past just now, from the future.”

  “The good news?” Edgar’s momentary gloom brightened. “The future! So, then, James currently lives?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Thank goodness, for I still have to thank him for my new surroundings. I must send a letter to him at once.” He gathered papers and writing tools that had been scattered across the table—loose pages of parchment, browned at the edges, some already rolled into tubes and tied with twine.

  I winced as I watched him sort the materials into piles. Was Edgar already on his way to becoming lost? I knew nothing of my father helping out with Edgar’s workshop in the woods. Yet, it was not impossible. “Did my father build this place for you?”

  Edgar looked out a window above his lab table. “The divorce is final.” He hung his head. “I avoided the paperwork because I wanted Elizabeth to take everything, so that Shirlyn will have something—when she’s free. I needed a place to work on my experiments in the meantime.”

  “This is not an un-place?”

  Edgar blinked. “An un-place? No, no. I live in a real place.” He looked around the room. “At least I think it is…right now.” He stepped to the kitchenette near the lab table and brought back a steaming pot and a mug.

  I stared at Edgar, convinced that the Workshop in the Woods was a Nowhere, with the brook’s still silver waters. From what Calla had told me, vehicles of travel also didn’t change here—yet another sign of a Nowhere. There were Nowheres all over the worlds. Sometimes people stumbled upon them by accident. This happened in times of desperation or fear—when search terms became muddled. More advanced travelers, such as Ivory, could pull in physical elements from different places and times to create a Nowhere as a place of escape. Other times, un-places transitioned into Nowheres after the person or persons living there became lost. From there, the lost seemed to disappear, leaving their Nowheres behind. Where they went from there was anybody’s guess.

  The transition from un-place to Nowhere was what Calla, Enta and I believed had happened to Edgar, here in this place that he was now telling me his brother, my father, had built for him.

  I knew from experience that World Builders could create new, real places that expanded the Everywhere and Everywhen. Was it possible that World Builders could build Nowheres and un-places too? I hadn’t considered that an option. The thought was maddening, not to mention brilliant. My appreciation for my father grew stronger.

  But that wasn’t why I’d traveled to the Workshop in the Woods.

  Edgar poured a dark broth into the mug and nudged it toward me. I sniffed the liquid, and then sipped. It was terrible.

  “The flavor comes from a particular variety of leaf I’ve cultivated over the years,” Edgar said. He frowned. “Many years…”

  “Refreshing, thank you.” I covered my mouth and resisted the urge to push the mug to the side. “Edgar, I realize that you and I haven’t been close even though we are family. But I’ve always admired your work.”

  Edgar paled. His lips trembled before pulling into a smile. “My work?”

  “Yes, in the area of time travel. You’ve invented valuable technology—”

  He beamed. “In the future?”

  “Yes, the future.” I proceeded carefully, not wanting to reveal the invention of the travel glasses, surprised he hadn’t asked how I’d arrived. Perhaps mentioning my father’s death had distracted him more than I’d intended. “I’m unsure whether you had TSTA rules in mind during development, but you must have studied more about time travel theory than I have.”

  “It is one of my favorite pastimes. What is it that you’d like to know?”

  “What do you know about Daily Reminders left in the past?”

  He sulked. “The past cannot and must not be changed, Valcas.” He stood up and squeezed his head with his hands. “A Daily Reminder led to my daughter’s imprisonment.”

  I cringed, feeling foolish. Sometimes my insensitivity knew no bounds. I should have found a better way to bring up a topic that I knew involved Shirlyn.

  “Had I done a better job of warning her,” he continued, “her present situation could have been avoided. It’s all my fault!”

  “I apologize. I wasn’t trying to bring up painful memories. The reason I need your help also involves a Daily Reminder. Two of them, in fact.”

  Edgar, visibly shaken, sat back down. “Have you been charged? There will be a hearing—”

  “No. I had nothing to do with it, at least not my present-self. The hearing has already taken place. One of the two Daily Reminders no longer exists—I destroyed it myself.”

  My uncle stared at me, speechless. �
��How do you expect me to help?”

  “I need to learn more about the nature of Daily Reminders—the written accounts that implant memories in the minds of silhouettes, memories that never should have existed because they were untrue—nonexistent—in the silhouettes’ lifetimes.”

  I motioned to sip the tea in front of me, then remembering how awful it was, abandoned that idea and looked up. “One of the Daily Reminders was left in my past, an item kept by my silhouette. I feel I know something of its existence. I remember having destroyed it at a TSTA hearing; but I can’t remember what it looked like or what it said.” I clenched my jaw, ready to admit something I’d never revealed to anyone. “I feel that even though the reminder has been destroyed, it has forever changed me—that the memory had meaning. It lives in me, despite the fact that I can’t remember it.”

  Edgar covered his lips with both hands. “And it always will. You are changed. As I’ve said all along, the past cannot and must not be changed. Once the change has been made, it has always been. Even where and when the Daily Reminder has been destroyed, some remnant of its memory lives on. A silhouette of that memory remains in your heart.”

  “Then the TSTA’s rule against the creation of Daily Reminders is a sound one. The TSTA knows that the reminder—the memory, change, whatever you want to call it—is never fully destroyed.”

  “The question is whether it can be completely overwritten,” said Edgar as he sunk more deeply into his chair. “Even if a Daily Reminder were truly destroyed or overwritten, is what happened ever completely eliminated?”

  “Where else would they be—the events that happened but are not remembered without a Daily Reminder?”

  Edgar shook his head. “I assume the events become part of the Everywhen.”

  Perhaps. I’d assumed only World Builders could expand the Everywhere and Everywhen, but at some level, everything one does and says, every moment that transpires, becomes part of place and time. I could accept that.