Alt.History 102 (The Future Chronicles)

by Samuel Peralta

  Columbus realized they had run nearly in a circle, bringing them back to the furthest end of the beach. Except now, they were on the cliff overlooking the shore.

  Doru let out a gasp and made the sign of the cross when he saw wreckage strewn about on the beach below. A body like no other he’d seen before. It was so big he initially thought they’d come across the Leviathan’s bones. Half of its body lay in the water, while the other half lay in the sand in quartered pieces and debris.

  On each side of the broken white tube was a long, single row of windows and triangular wing-like shapes in equal length to the body. Its nose looked like a whale’s head scored by giant claw marks and fire. Its tail had a fin with a blue circle and words painted on it.

  “What is that, Cap’n?” asked Doru, sounding out the words scrolled across the dead PAN AM on the beach below.

  “I’m not sure,” Columbus answered, stepping down onto the sandy decline to take a closer look, wondering what the painted blue stars, red and white stripes, and the numbers N431PA on the tail of the wrecked ship signified.

  “Is it a boat?” Doru asked.

  “No, not a boat.”

  “I wouldn’t go down there if I were you,” a voice shouted from somewhere up in the trees behind them. “They’ve set traps, and it’s called an AIR-O-PLANE.”

  “Who said that?” Doru said, scanning the trees with his eyes, but didn’t see anyone. “Show yourself.”

  A young girl leapt down from the trees like a mountain cat wearing strange clothing and a big green helmet too big for her head. She poised to strike with her spear, pointing it at them. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Doru,” Doru put his hands up.

  “I am Christopher Columbus. What’s your name, child?”

  “Christopher Columbus? Ha! Yeah, right. And I’m Peter Pan. Who are you supposed to be, Robin Hood?” the sun-kissed child laughed at Doru’s clothes.

  “Who?” Doru said, looking at Columbus. “Who’s—”

  “My name’s not Peter Pan, it’s Riley, and I’m a tracker, the best tracker on the island. You’d better get out of here before the Eyeballs come back. They’ll take you, keep you in cages, and do all kinds of horrible things to ya. They’ll even eat ya. Eat ya, eat ya!” Riley growled with gnashed teeth.

  “I’ve seen them,” Columbus said, ignoring the child’s excitement. “What is this place? Where are we?”

  Riley lowered her spear and looked around, wild-eyed. “I’m not sure. I’ve heard some call it The Meridian; others have called it the Inbetween.”

  “There are others here?” asked Doru.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes they’re captured, sometimes they…move on. Do you remember when you’re from?”

  “Yes, but we don’t know how we got here,” Columbus answered. “Is there a way off this island?”

  Riley snickered. “No. No one ever leaves.”

  “Can you help us until we find a way, then?” Doru asked.

  Riley gave the men a measured glare. “Are you really pirates?”

  “We’re seafarers,” Doru nodded. “Yes.”

  “Fine. Then there’s something you need to see. But…if you try anything funny, I’ll sic the Eyeballs on you. Deal?”

  “I’m savvy,” Doru agreed.

  “Savvy,” Columbus nodded.

  “All right; follow me.”

  THE KING’S DEBT

  King Ferdinand sat slumped at his table, drunk, with the smell of smoke from the queen’s pyre still clinging to his linen.

  A rapping sounded at the door. “Enter!” he slurred. A servant entered with the king’s dinner, a tray filled with wine, and a dish with a large fish and lemon and persimmon garnish. He placed it in front of the king and stepped back in an obsequious manner. The king sneered when he saw the new boy’s face. “Where is Carlos, the boy who brings my dinner?”

  “He fell ill, my lord,” the boy answered. “His father said it was the flux. My name is—”

  The king silenced the boy with an angry wave of his hand. “Enough. I’m hungry. Well, come on, you’ve been instructed, yes? You know what to do.”

  “Yes, my lord.” The boy filled a cup with wine and drank from it.

  The king impatiently studied the boy’s face. When the boy swallowed the drink, the king waved at his tray. “Okay, now the food.”

  The boy leaned in with a fork, tore a piece from the fish head, and ate it. “Good fish, my lord. Fresh.”

  “Leave me now; the sight of you is making me sick.”

  The boy remained where he stood with a dignified smile.

  “Well, do you have shit in your ears or in your head? You heard me, boy. Which one is it? I told you to leave me so I can eat.”

  “Forgive me, my lord, I almost forgot one thing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “The Order of the Dragon always collects their debts.” With a single step, the boy snatched the knife from off the tray and stabbed down on the king’s hand with it, nailing it to the table.

  The king flailed and kicked at his attacker as he attempted to pry the blade from his hand. “You little cunt! I will have your mother’s head on a spike by morning, you little shit! Guard! Guard! The Order of the Dragon can swallow my royal co—”

  The door swung open, and two black-veiled men entered.

  “Who are you? How did you get in here? Guards! Viktor!”

  PAID IN FULL

  In the aftermath of the king’s raids, parts of the city stood smoldering. On days when the sun hid, the city felt as dull, gray, and wet as a morgue. The scars of the raids also remained on display throughout the streets of the war-torn ghettos, markets, and villas. The sodden dead bodies went uncollected and shoveled off to the side for the queen’s funeral procession until someone eventually came for them. Drunkards, peasants, and families slept in the alleys because they no longer had homes. A man left to die in the gutter moaned from a stab wound he’d received from a mugging the night before. A wild dog stopped to piss on a nearby wall before joining a pack of mutts gnawing on a dead woman’s carcass.

  Survivors of the raids would eventually fill the court square to continue cleaning and rebuilding their city as the king ordered, but noon was still hours away. Viktor Marcos exited a brothel into the rain and kicked a sleeping man down its steps.

  Tripping over his own feet while he crossed into the alleys and grumbling about whores, he heard someone shouting over his inebriated thoughts. The one voice grew into many; they came from all directions.

  Viktor didn’t like the feel of rain on his skin, and he didn’t like the whores who made fun of his ogre-like features and laughed at him. Marcos swatted at the noise and cursed the rain as he continued walking through his own disoriented fog. The shouting and hysteria grew louder. Through the pattering of rain on his ears, he heard the muddled voices holler, “The Key is Red, The Baker’s Bread, The Pee in Bed!”

  “The Pee in Bed!” Viktor chuckled to himself. “Stupid people. The Pee in—”

  “The King is Dead! The King is Dead!” a boy running past him gloated. The king…is…dead?

  Viktor finally understood and an uncontrollable rage came over him. He swore he’d find, torture, and kill the man who’d dare lay a finger on his master. It only lasted a moment, until he remembered where his drink money had come from. His stomach clenched, and the contents of his belly spewed out at his feet.

  Viktor traced his memories back through the events after the queen’s funeral, when he and his men escorted the king back to his chambers, and stationed themselves at his door. The details were skewed, since he’d already been drinking during the procession.

  Thoughts of a whore from the brothel, a fistfight, and a joke about a chicken intermittently interrupted his train of thought. He remembered Regent Tomas arriving at the castle shortly after the procession to meet with Ferdinand and pay his condolences. No, he stormed in; there was a commotion. Muffled bickering echoed despite the closed doors. When Regent Tomas left the
king’s chambers, he handed Viktor a purse filled with plentiful silver and gold, and told him his services were no longer needed for the night—something about the king not being sound of mind and needing privacy to mourn his queen.

  That had seemed odd at the time, especially on the night of the blood moon. But not odd enough to ignore the weighty purse in his hands. No doubt the money was a pittance to the advisor. Viktor's eyes had already been drawn to a striking cloak pin, bejeweled and shaped like a serpent, that certainly cost ten times' the worth of the regent's gift. But to Viktor, it was about more than money. He'd never regarded Regent Tomas kindly until that moment.

  Regent Tomas, a man who did not entertain omens like the king, bestowed a confident smile upon Viktor, and assured him he’d already fortified the castle so strongly that a mouse couldn’t empty its bowels without being seen or heard by one of his men. He hadn't argued with Regent Tomas further.

  But Regent Tomas killed the king, Viktor was sure of it.

  Viktor turned and rushed back to the court square, his large, graceless form knocking people out of his way until he reached what they were gawking and pointing at—His Majesty's disemboweled and twisted body impaled on a pike.

  Viktor fell to his knees, into the mud and the king’s spilled organs, and sobbed. “Forgive me…my king. Forgive me!”

  A purse filled with coin fell between Viktor’s legs, and an unidentifiable voice said in passing, “You’ve done well. You will hear from the Master and the Order soon.”

  A Word from Artie Cabrera

  If you’ve been following history, you’d know that Christopher Columbus wasn’t a nice guy, nor was he a hero by any means. I didn’t write this story with the intention of making him one. However, while researching conspiracy theories for compendium stories based in the world of I’m Not Dead, I came across a few articles about UFOs in ancient arts that claimed Columbus had encountered a UFO on his last voyage. Note: I don’t believe everything I read.

  With that in mind, I wanted to take the concept a step further, only because the article didn’t elaborate on the sighting other than to say that it happened. Even if the article was utter BS, and it most likely was, it was a story I wanted to know more about. I also wanted to know more about Byzantine and Medieval arts depicting UFOs. Madonna with Child with the Infant St. John painting is a popular one. Scholars have debunked them all, of course. So what? Again, you do what you want with that, it’s still fun to debate at the punch bowl.

  I speculated so much I didn’t realize I was basically outlining a story. I wondered how an encounter with a UFO would affect a civilization still living in the dark ages, hundreds of years before the development of technological advancements, and modern education. How would societies in the 15th century handle such dramatic implications, especially under the rule of usurpers and the Spanish Inquisition, when thinking outside the box was considered an attack on religion and its delegates? Well, those people died for having a different way of looking at things. Also, how would it affect the supernatural fanatics and those who participated in alchemy?

  Immediately, my story became about the dynamic between characters who’d gone great lengths to bury these implications, those who’ve tried to bring it to light, and those who were caught in the middle. I also wanted to explore the theme of secrecy and corruption, and how those in power withheld information from their people simply because they just didn’t think they could handle it—and also because it would threaten whatever fiction they’d devised to keep their people under control, a theme that is familiar in the 21st century.

  Playing off these ideologies had been fun, but I also recognized the opportunity to go beyond halfway through the story. I took liberties with theories about the mysterious Bermuda Triangle, the lost city of Atlantis, and then broadening them into a greater adventure reminiscent of classic Sinbad stories, where giant sea creatures existed, and mythological monsters roamed the land. In some ways, I feel guilty about giving Columbus cool stuff to do, because if you’ve been following history, you’d know he and his crew weren’t nice people. I really had a different fate for him in mind, but by the time I got to the end of the story, I just couldn’t execute it. This new world opened up to me, and took control. Suddenly, I was a stranger much like my version of Columbus, standing on the shores of the beach, asking myself, “Now what?”

  Artie Cabrera is a writer, musician, and graphic designer. He worked and performed in the music industry for twenty-years before writing his first book, I’m Not Dead: The Journals of Charles Dudley.

  http://www.amazon.com/author/artiecabrera

  Whack Job

  by Rysa Walker

  What if a time traveling historian decided to make a real historical event fit the pop-culture version? Simon Rand is well-accustomed to altering history. In fact, the CHRONOS key around his neck has allowed him to alter the timeline to include an entirely new religion—one that his grandfather, Saul Rand, claims will result in a better future than generation after generation of haphazard mistakes and blunders. But it takes an accidental jump into an infamous 1890s murder scene to show Simon the lengths to which Saul is willing to go in his quest to "fix" history.

  YOU WEAR A CHRONOS KEY and sooner or later you'll get stuck with a double memory.

  Everyone around you, the vast masses of humanity who aren't under the CHRONOS field, will go on with their little lives as though nothing has changed. But you'll know better. You'll know that the movie marquee at the corner of Fifth and Main has shifted. Might be the same film, but a different actor. Or the theater might be at the corner of Third and Main now. Different headlines on the newspapers, different entries in the history books.

  That Cyrist temple on the corner wasn't there either. In fact, the entire Cyrist religion exists only because you went back and dropped off the documents that founded it.

  Different leaders, different faces on the bills the cashier hands back to you. But unlike the cashier, you'll still remember that Hamilton used to be on the twenty—in fact, if your wallet was under a CHRONOS field when the time shift happened, chances are you'll have a couple of bills to prove it.

  For me, these alterations are mostly an inconvenience. I have to clean the Hamilton twenties out of my wallet if I don't want a hassle next time I order breakfast. Most annoying of all, the effort I've put into learning when and where the action is might be entirely wasted if one of the tweaks I engineered pushes that riot I planned to attend back six weeks later or means it didn't happen at all. Or I find out a baseball team that my buddy Kiernan and I have followed for years now has a different goddamn name or plays in a different city. Dumb stuff like that.

  But I'm better than most people at going with the flow. Some folks with the CHRONOS gene expend way too much effort trying to piece together what happened when. They let the changes nibble away at their brain cells. Personally, I've never seen the point. Once a shift has happened, it is what it is. Either accept it or roll the dice again.

  My grandfather, Saul Rand, claims I inherited my ability to roll with the punches from him. He says double memories never bothered him either, but I suspect it's not nearly as hard to keep your marbles lined up when your days follow a normal sequence, and you stay in one place and time, as he does. Cyrist International may have been Saul's brainchild, but if not for me—and yes, I'll admit, if not for Prudence and a few others—Saul's entire plan would have collapsed.

  CHRONOS, the 24th century organization that sent Saul and a few dozen other historians back to study events as they happened, had all of these rules and regs about when and where the historians could jump and what interactions were okay. Observe it, don't change it. That sort of garbage. But Saul made a little miscalculation when he destroyed CHRONOS. He was hoping that he'd be able to jump from one time to the next without being tethered back to home base. Instead, the explosion grounded him and all of the other historians permanently.

  That means Saul has always had a fairly linear life, and it's entirely possi
ble he'd be as much of a blithering idiot as the sainted Sister Prudence if he'd spent as much time bopping between centuries as I have. Still, despite his ego, which is first and foremost among his many faults, I have to hand it to Saul for figuring out a way around the CHRONOS restrictions for those of us who inherited the gene. Saul is the one who had the guts to blow the place up. He was never one to shy away from making the tough calls. Even if it meant getting his hands dirty.

  I didn’t inherit much physically from Saul. He's tall and thin, with dark hair and looks that tend to make women fall down slobbering at his feet—although controlling a religious institution worth billions probably helps a bit in that regard. As for me, I get by mostly on my charm and quick wit. But I do believe that I inherited Saul's tenacity. I call things like I see them. I do what I have to do. People who get in my way generally don’t do it a second time.

  I've known a dozen or so people who had the ability to use the key—although, modesty aside, I've known only one who came close to using it as well as I did. But ability alone isn't enough. Saul taught me that when I was barely fifteen. You need to have the huevos to actually use the key. To take action when it needs to be taken and whip history into shape.

  Otherwise, what's the point in even having the key?

  Miami, Florida

  February 7, 2027

  It was maybe the seventh or eighth "vacation" I'd spent with Saul. He'd send June or Patrick to the Farm to fetch me, and I'd pack up a few things and head to his place and time in Miami. It was weird at first, shifting between 1900 and the 2020s, but kids adapt faster than adults. After a few months learning the ropes, Saul had me running more of his time travel errands than June and Patrick put together.