Alt.History 102 (The Future Chronicles)

by Samuel Peralta

  He tossed me the socks and said, "Yes, you can go now. Don't forget your shoes. And I want that hatchet."

  I held it out to him, now even more confused. If he wanted it, why had he handed it to me in the first place? Was it some sort of test?

  "No! Not now." He enunciated each word carefully and shook his head slowly, like he was talking to an idiot. "Give it to me in the future."

  Saul took one last glance at his handiwork on the couch and then back at me. There was a note of envy in his eyes. "I have to go clean up and get back to the stable point. Things will be so much easier when I can just make my exit from anywhere, the way you can."

  As he left the room, I almost called after him. To tell him the truth. That things weren't going to work out the way he thought they would. That not only would he be unable to jump from A to B to C—he wouldn't be jumping at all.

  But then self-preservation kicked in, and I just pulled up the stable point for my room back at Saul's place. If he managed to work out that little kink in the system, he wouldn't need Prudence. He wouldn't need me.

  Hell, I might not even exist.

  Miami, Florida

  February 11, 2027

  There wasn't all that much blood on me, but mentally, I felt like I'd been marinated in the stuff. I still felt that way days later.

  The tap on my door came after I showered and changed, when I was pulling on a fresh pair of socks.

  "Simon!" Saul's smile was wide and he held his arms open, almost like he was going to hug me. But then he stopped. "I believe you have a little memento for me?"

  I nodded toward the pile of bloody clothes, in the corner where I'd dropped them earlier, with the hatchet on top. The pile was closer to me than it was to him, but I was a little concerned that if I had that hatchet in my hands, I might wind up needing a second shower. There'd be no time travel conundrum if I killed the son of a bitch now.

  On second thought, I wasn't so sure I liked the idea of him holding the hatchet, either—but it was too late.

  He ran one finger along the edge of the blade, still matted with Andrew Borden's blood and hair. "I was a bit angry at first, you know."

  I had a pretty good idea what he was talking about, but playing dumb seemed like the best option. "About what?"

  "About you choosing not to tell me I'd end up stranded. Unable to use the damn key at all." He tapped the hatchet softly against his palm a couple of times. "But then I realized you couldn't have told me without some risk of screwing up everything. You may not have been thinking about that. You were probably just thinking about your own ass. But it's all tied together, I guess."

  Saul scooped up the bloody clothes, which surprised me a little, since that was the type of task he'd usually delegate to Belle or one of his other employees. He had vast piles of money and they believed that he was one step removed from a deity, but maybe he was worried that wasn't enough to make them ignore blood-drenched clothes and a hatchet.

  He turned back when he reached the door. "It's like I said before, Simon. At your testing. We're alike, you and me. We have the courage to fix things. To make them better. And here's a little factoid you may not be aware of. A few weeks into Lizzie's trial, some kid on the street corner was trying to sell extra papers. He comes up with a rhyme. You know it, don't you?"

  I nodded. "Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks."

  "And when she saw what she had done," Saul continued, "she gave her father forty one."

  "Yeah. I know the rhyme. I just don't get your point."

  "The point is that the kid was wrong. Although we'll never know why seeing Esther startled Andrew Borden's bastard son, it must have made him decide that whatever Lizzie and her uncle were paying him, it wasn't enough. But before Esther scared him away, back when Willy Borden was the one swinging this little hatchet, he only whacked Abby eighteen, maybe nineteen times. Andrew got just ten blows. They were still just as dead, mind you. That's the part I fixed. Otherwise, CHRONOS would have been up in arms about history getting wrecked. But even though the kid on the street corner had the number wrong, his version is what everyone remembered. It was passed along from generation to generation, even to my time. I saw the opportunity to make an improvement, so I took it. And you know what? They didn't even question it when we got back. That stupid verse was the history that most of the low-level workers at CHRONOS knew, even though it was total bullshit. I made the crime fit the rhyme. I made it a better history. It took a little extra bloodshed to do it, but it tied up the ends nice and neat, so it was worth that extra effort."

  Saul didn't say anything for a few seconds, and I was pretty sure he was waiting for me to draw some sort of grand lesson from this. "So…you're thinking once you're done with the Culling, that's how things will seem to people in the future? A little extra bloodshed, but an improved history?"

  "No, Simon." He looked a little sad. "Think about it. Anyone not under a key won't have the slightest clue that we changed history. That we altered the course of their little world. What I'm saying is that we'll know. And that's all that matters."

  The Farm

  Estero, Florida

  March 25, 1902

  "Bloody hell, Simon!" Kiernan punched me in the upper arm, hard, the second I blinked back in.

  "What did you do that for?" I yelled, grabbing my arm.

  "For blinking out like that! I was about to grab the key and start lookin' for you."

  "I was gone what? Two seconds. You're such a wuss." I scooped my spare key off the ground where he'd tossed it earlier and jammed it back into my pocket.

  "At least I'm not stupid enough to blink into a murder scene."

  I went back to the Farm planning to tell Kiernan the truth about what happened in Fall River. But the temptation to share it with Kieran vanished with that comment. It would just start him rambling again about how I'd be better off staying away from Saul. Right then, the memory of Saul, drenched in blood and holding that hatchet, was evidence on Kiernan's side, and I didn't really want to hear any more.

  And I couldn't help but wonder whether Saul had set me up all along. Did he mention the Lizzie Borden case because he remembered seeing me there? Or did he remember seeing me there only because it occurred to him that having someone around to dispose of the hatchet and help him clean up a bit would make the whole thing run more smoothly?

  What I said about double memories eating away at your brains? Conundrums will wreck your mind even faster.

  So I shoved those questions far away and focused on what I did know, which is that Saul was right on his key point. Sometimes, history needs fixing. It needs a guiding hand. History should have a purpose, not just one dumb accident piled on top of another.

  I believe that, even to this day. I just grew smart enough over time to question whether Saul's hand should be the one on the wheel.

  "Jeez, Kiernan. I can't believe you fell for it!" I faked a laugh and rubbed my sore arm. "I didn't jump to Fall River. I jumped back to Saul's. Watched the rest of it from there, since you were being such a wet blanket."

  Kiernan gave me a dirty look, then huffed and fell back onto the grass again. "You are such an ass, Simon." He lay there for a moment, staring up at the clouds, and then said, "So?"

  "So what?"

  "So…who did it? Was it the uncle?"

  I considered just blinking out, not giving him any sort of answer. But I knew him well enough to suspect that leaving the question hanging in Kiernan's head would mean he'd eventually go looking for the truth on his own. Better to give him the answer he wanted to hear.

  "Nah. You were right all along, it was Lizzie. It went down exactly like the poem said. 'Lizzie Borden took an axe...'"

  A Word from Rysa Walker

  This short story is set in the world of my time travel series, The CHRONOS Files. Time travel books don't automatically fall into the realm of alternate history. Sometime, the focus is on the "stickiness" of history, and no matter how hard the characters try to change it,
history just happens. In the CHRONOS universe, however, history is mutable. The actions of one rogue CHRONOS historian, Saul Rand, result in the insertion of an entirely new religion that he's designed to help shape the world to his liking.

  Simon Rand, the protagonist of "Whack Job," is in many ways a pawn in Saul's game. But he's also the ultimate time tourist, who uses his CHRONOS key to jump smack in the middle of pivotal historical events—not necessarily to change them, but simply for the thrill of being there. In this story, we get a glimpse into Simon's past and one of the events that whetted his appetite for shock tourism.

  The historical accounts of the day Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered are largely accurate as they are presented here. Although many experts do believe that Lizzie herself committed the murders, there's a good deal of evidence to suggest that she was, if not entirely innocent, at least not the one wielding the hatchet. In his book, Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter, Arnold R. Brown presents a compelling case that the actual murderer was William Borden, who was reportedly Andrew Borden's illegitimate son by his brother's wife.

  If you enjoyed this story, you can find more CHRONOS Files at

  http://www.amazon.com/author/walker

  Rysa Walker is the author of the bestselling CHRONOS Files series. Timebound, the first book in the series, was the Young Adult and Grand Prize winner in the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards.

  Rysa grew up on a cattle ranch in the South, where she read every chance she got. On the rare occasion that she gained control of the television, she watched Star Trek and imagined living in the future, on distant planets, or at least in a town big enough to have a stop light.

  She currently lives in North Carolina, where she is working on her next series, The Delphi Project. If you see her on social media, please tell her to get back into the writing cave.

  For news and updates, subscribe to the newsletter at rysa.com/contact.

  Drought

  by J.E. Mac

  Gold brought speculators to California. Oil brought them to Los Angeles. Water is why they stayed. At the turn of the century, Los Angeles found its continued growth threatened by lack of water. A shady deal which has come to be known as “The Rape of the Valley” diverted the Owens River to Los Angeles. It ceased development of a federally-funded irrigation project that would have brought prosperity to Owens Valley farmers, and instead made some that had been associated with the early development of Los Angeles very wealthy. But what if “The Rape of the Valley” had never occurred?

  DEATH VALLEY—what a misnomer that was. Sure it was hot as the blazing inferno of Hell itself. But most of us came out here to survive. If it was death you were seeking, well, I was heading in that direction.

  “When are we getting to Los Angeles?” Lindz asked. She tossed the length of her blonde hair, bleached nearly white from the sun, over a shoulder. A few locks stuck to beads of perspiration on her forehead. The errant strands resisted a swipe of her hand as she tried to pin them behind an ear.

  “We’ll be there soon enough,” I said.

  “Yeah, but when?”

  I cringed at the pitch of her voice. Soft, like a mewling kitten, with a tone that raked my memory like razorblades on concrete.

  She was gaunt, even for a seventeen year old Valley Girl. Her legs, shoved into cut-off Daisy Dukes, were glowing pink. She’d feel that later tonight, and probably well into tomorrow.

  “When we get there,” I said, readjusting the strap on my pack and hefting it onto my shoulder. “That’s when.”

  “I can carry the pack for you. Vitality of youth and all that.”

  “I’ve managed before. I can very well manage now.”

  “I’m going to have to learn how to do it myself. Might as well start now.”

  With a dismissive gesture, I waved her away. “Later.”

  We marched on. The shuffle of feet through loose dirt and gravel was the only indication she was still following. In front of us, the harsh sun led the way to the coast and a distant hope for cool breeze, and with it a faint promise to quell the blistering heat.

  “Pop…” she said. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “You’re going to anyway.”

  “You didn’t want me to come, did you?”

  I clenched my jaw. Or maybe it did so of its own accord. What the hell do you say to a teenage girl bent on getting her way? ‘No’ was out of the question; ‘no’ was the only invitation a teenager needed.

  The commune thought it was a good idea to bring her along. A bonding experience. Father and daughter. “Besides, you can introduce her to your contacts,” they had said. But they had their motives. They weren’t foolin’ no one.

  Lindz was… let’s say, beyond attractive. A father’s not stupid. The commune knew it. Saw it. Maybe they thought we could get a hand-out or something of value in exchange…

  But I didn’t much like to think about that. Or even consider it. Not simply because she was my daughter.

  We were above hand-outs.

  We had survived.

  Angelenos needed us. Not the other way around.

  “Los Angeles isn’t a place for children,” I said.

  Lindz sucked in her cheeks, a habit she had picked up to try and hide their roundness. I guess, she thought it made her look older.

  “I’m not a child,” she said.

  No. She really wasn’t. And that was a whole heap of things to be afraid of.

  For hours we traversed endless scrubland in silence. Only the occasional panting breath, the swish of nylon pack against skin, the exhausted sigh pleading for relief from the oppressive heat reminded us of each other’s presence. She had a lot on her mind, I’m sure of it, many more questions she wanted to voice, but she also knew I had no intentions of answering any.

  We met a paved highway, a dark scar cutting through miles of low shrubs and desert as far as the eye could see. Sand and dirt had blown over the asphalt, partially burying it. Heat ripples rose from beneath, as if an arrow of blurred sky could point to our final destination.

  The occasional caw of a circling hawk provided a faint reminder of life. Not many people travelled out here. There was really no reason. Not anymore.

  We followed the highway to an eventual end, winding back and forth up the side of a mountain, until it disappeared over a low rise. The smell of salt hit us square and battered our sunburned cheeks with cool breeze. I staggered against the pressure and rose to full height.

  Below us a city stretched out to the ocean, contained within the walls of a mountain range, like a giant child’s sandbox. Buildings rose, toys left scattered and forgotten.

  Lindz beamed. I felt like a withered dried out root. Somehow she only glowed with perspiration. Heat bounced off her. The eternal spring of youth provided protection from the elements.

  Rubbing flakes of dried skin from my brow, I sighed into my hand. I had been afraid that this might be her reaction.

  It was difficult not to get excited, seeing life rise up from the desert after having travelled through miles of nothing. This was Lindz’s first time seeing Los Angeles, her first time seeing civilization that wasn’t her own. She had heard the stories, the warnings, the history, but now she was gazing upon what had been mythology with her own eyes, making the tales real.

  “Are those the D-Sal plants?” She pointed toward the coast. Giant stone monoliths dotted the shore like parapets protecting the land from an oncoming charge of frothing waves.

  I nodded which prompted laughter from Lindz.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  She covered her mouth trying to stop her giggling conniption. “They’re plants.”

  I gave the D-Sals a long once over. “Yeah, so?”

  “The way the elders described them… I pictured plants. You know, green with leaves.”

  Never dawned on me before, but yeah, I guess I could see the confusion. The D-Sals were the lifeblood of the city, converting salt water into fresh drinking water. I gue
ss it made sense for a child to picture something natural. Something Mother Nature might endorse. But there was nothing natural about this place.

  Life budded up from the desert, haggard and rough edged. Barely upright structures stood against the landscape, half buried in dust and sand. The miracle wasn’t that life was thriving, but that it could exist here at all.

  A spring oasis, Los Angeles was not.

  “Stay close,” I said, grabbing Lindz by the hand and leading her down into the city.

  We passed through what should have been its heart, but there was no visible center to the endless sprawl of heartless beast. Los Angeles reminded me of a ghost town. Something that had once been great. Or perhaps never great at all. Signs of life were evident, but actual life… that was something a little harder to come by.

  As we lost sight of the coast (but not the D-Sals towering over it), Lindz slipped her hand from my grasp and started walking ahead of me. Drained from the journey, I struggled to keep pace.

  “Don’t wander off,” I said.

  Already fifty feet ahead, Lindz turned and glared at me.

  “Race you to the D-Sals!” she blurted.

  She ran, putting distance between us. I sprinted after her. Over my gasping breath, I could hear her laughing. She yelled over her shoulder, teasing as she raced ahead. I was losing ground. I wanted to blame the day, the heat, anything. But it was more likely age. And the pack weighing me down didn’t help any.

  The surroundings were slowly crawling in my periphery. Subtle shifts of movement, the way one might casually notice an infestation of roaches. A curtain askew that moments prior had been a wall of fabric. Venetian blinds forming a V-shape instead of familiar parallel lines.

  The signs were present.

  People.

  In hiding.

  All watching a sun-pinked blonde running down a trash strewn sidewalk.