Timekeepers

by Dave Weaver

  “On the lowest level of the Centre. We named it after the Greek word for time. It controls every aspect of the jump from start to finish and as I say is linked directly to the Jumper’s own brainwaves. It’ll keep until your next visit. I’ll show you the Guest Room too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The museum where we catalogue and display the various artefacts we take from the different time zones visited. The Jumper always tries to bring something back with them; a weapon, item of clothing or a common ornament of some kind, anything that will add to our understanding of the people who lived then. Most are in almost brand new condition, of course. It’s also proof for the Ministry of Science that we’re continuing to use their funding effectively.”

  “But why…?”

  “Sorry, we call it the ‘Guest Room’ because the only way we can bring these ‘souvenirs’ back with us is by instructing Chrono to download their molecular structure, so they are added to the same projection programme as the Jumper. As long as the object is inanimate it can do this just by the Jumper’s touch. All they have to do then is send the thought-code for ‘Guest’ back to Chrono.”

  As Jack opened his mouth to ask another question, the scientist cut him off good-naturedly.

  “I really think that’s enough information for one day, don’t you? Next time I’ll show you more of the place. We’ll have you back in a few days to run some tests after which we’ll be ready to start writing a programme for your safe return home.”

  They descended to the ground floor in silence.

  As the lift doors opened Lucas motioned for Jack to follow him. Immediately in front of them was a bank of frosted glass doors, each inscribed with the Centre’s ‘T’ logo. Behind these a large hall stretched out before them with a glass-partitioned room to one side of it. Uniformed figures moved about inside it. Jack saw no other exit.

  Lucas turned to him. “We’ve decided it will be better for everyone if you stay at my house for a week or two while we work on your return programme. From now on you’re a typical citizen of Romano Briton until further notice. Stick by my side and don’t go around in public with your mouth hanging open.” Jack followed him through the glass doors.

  Lucas led Jack over to the room then motioned for him to wait while he slipped his arm through a hole in the glass and into a white metal tube. A green light on the top flashed on.

  “Thank-you, Professor Stewart,” a grey-uniformed security guard acknowledged through an intercom, “and the boy?”

  “I’ve authorised him for Code Green security, Officer. If you check under the name Johnson…” The man glanced at the screen suspended in mid air above yet another of the little green boxes and rapidly spoke something Jack couldn’t catch. He looked up at Jack, who did his best to look as ordinary as he could.

  “If you could place your I-Dent in here please, Sir,” the guard addressed Jack, indicating the tube that Lucas had just used.

  “That’s alright, Officer.” Lucas explained quickly, “My young friend’s I-Dent is being updated. I know he should stay on base without it but we’re only going to be at my place and I take full responsibility for him.

  Jack thought the security guard looked doubtful but the man nodded nonetheless.

  “Have a nice evening then, Sir.”

  The seemingly solid metal wall in front of them slid apart with a low rumbling sound. A slab of dazzling late sunlight was thrown across the hall’s floor.

  “Shall we go, Jack?” Lucas indicated the outside world.

  The Institute was indeed housed in a pyramid, and when he’d finished riding another liquid metal walkway down from the entrance hall to the carport below and turned around to get a good look, Jack was, despite instructions, open-mouthed. The building soared into the sky, its dark glass triangular sides towering above him. It threw a long shadow up the tree-lined driveway away from the Centre.

  “Impressed?”

  Jack nodded, taking in the rest of the surroundings before returning to the towering edifice; it looked as if it had been directly transported from some Egyptian skyline into the middle of this green English valley. Although of course, this wasn’t ‘England’.

  “Wow!”

  “Wait until you see my car,” Lucas patted his shoulder. “She’s a real beauty.”

  Jack attempted a game grin of expectation. Right at that moment a mere car was about the last thing he was going to be impressed by.

  Chapter 11

  Lucas was right in that the car was pretty impressive. It had a slender dart body broken in midsection by an egg-shaped glass compartment. Door panels slipped open at Lucas’ touch. There was a concave dashboard with a small array of touch-sensitive pads but no apparent steering wheel. Jack’s seat was a body-shaped indent in the moulded compartment but he felt an invisible cushion of air gently hold his body a few millimetres above it. He recognised the sensation from the hover-bed.

  “Take us home directly.” Lucas commanded. The car rose then moved smoothly out of the covered carport to glide away and leave the Centre behind in the dusk.

  “This won’t take us long so just relax and enjoy the view.”

  Jack gazed out through the bubble at a blur of trees and hedgerows. He admitted to himself that he felt both lonely and a little scared in this new world. Drowsily closing his eyes he was comfortingly in his local park in Nottingham; a kid kicking a ball around with his father. The two would trudge home to see how Forest had got on, with a plate of sizzling sausage and mash awaiting them in the cosy kitchen. His mum would pretend to scold his dad for their being late and he’d lamely blame Jack then they’d all have a good laugh about it. Incredibly, it was the first time he’d thought about his parents, the first moment for ages when he wasn’t either running or fighting for his life.

  The image was so strong he could almost feel the lazy warmth of the kitchen, taste the sausages, reach out and touch his parents’ faces. He forced his eyes open again.

  They were travelling down a broad expanse of garishly lit motorway (hover-way?). Other vehicles sped past in swinging lanes of intense light.

  “Can you guess how this works?” Lucas asked, seemingly relaxed with the auto-pilot’s jockeying for position at dizzying speeds.

  “Something to do with magnetism?”

  Lucas nodded. “The road has a magnetic compound which has a reverse polarity to that of the magnopac in this car. By adjusting the level, we can float on the magnetic field at virtually any speed we choose, within the legal limits of course.” As another vehicle flashed by, a whisker away, Jack wondered just what those limits were, precisely.

  Lucas continued. “Jack, I’d like to ask about your memory.”

  “Okay.”

  Lucas seemed awkward. “Has it always been so powerful?”

  “As far back as I can remember.”

  Lucas smiled. “It’s just that we were very surprised at what we found when we downloaded your memory file. The sheer capacity of recall was quite stunning.”

  “I’ve heard that before, sort of.” Jack told him dryly. Where was this going? He didn’t want be considered a freak in this world as well. Couldn’t he leave all that behind for a while?

  “Well, I don’t mean to put you on the spot. It’s just that in physiological terms, well, I’m afraid you are pretty unique.”

  “So you lot think I’m some kind of freak as well!”

  “Before you tear my head off, let me explain something to you. It might help the way you feel about yourself, and your prodigious gift; you shouldn’t try to run away from it.”

  Jack remained silent.

  “Our shared tribal ancestors were nomadic hunters, Jack. Over millions of years they developed incredibly powerful visual memories finding their way not with maps but by observation and instinct. As they settled to farm the same area again and again that visual memory became redundant. A different type evolved; one for facts and figures, ideas not places, abstract concepts. The primitive memory still lies dormant tho
ugh, and in incredibly rare cases both can become fused together to form a kind of synaptic bridge of stored information directly to the subconscious. When this happens the two types of memory become far more powerful than the sum of their parts. Bi-memory people have re-cognitive powers more than fifty times larger than average. Maybe you have an even greater range.”

  Jack had always known he wasn’t like other people. Until that moment he’d allowed himself the possibility of being a guy who just happened to have a handy knack for remembering facts. Now Lucas had blown away such pretence. These people seemed to know everything, so what they said must be the truth. Though his mind raced through a thousand questions he found it impossible to frame a single one.

  “I see.” He was sick of being told he was ‘different’.

  Lucas seemed to hesitate. “Do you believe in coincidence Jack?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Well I don’t.” The scientist told him.

  They pulled up an exit ramp. The new road traced the rim of a valley of diamond-shaped housing units jutting out from the dusky hills like a string of sparkling necklaces as the last of the sun’s rays caught their surfaces. The car turned into a long driveway indicated by a line of road-embedded blue lights. The outlines of a structure became apparent through the trees. Jack expected another oddly modernist unit but, as they rounded the bend, a sight of something totally different caught the headlights and forced an involuntary gasp.

  A large Tudor cottage appeared beneath a wooded hillside, complete with wattle and daub walls, aged oak beams, a thatched roof and tall brick chimney.

  Lucas stole an amused glance at his passenger’s startled face. He brought the vehicle to rest at the centre of a ring of red lights.

  “Don’t worry, you haven’t gone mad. This is a replica built around a solid steel shell. It’s from our sixteenth century, the Ocardian Dynasty. Around the time of your ‘Tudor’ period.”

  The red lights turned green as a circular section of the driveway detached itself and began to sink, revealing a circular construction of steel grey. They came to rest as a metal cover slipped across the gap.

  A panel slid open in the far wall as Jack and Lucas got out. He was so distracted by standing on solid ground again after the car seat’s weightlessness that Jack failed to realise that they were no longer alone. Looking up in surprise at the sound of feet approaching, Jack saw a girl’s slender figure silhouetted in the light from the open doorway.

  “Ah yes, I’d like to introduce to my daughter. Jack, this is Portia.”

  Jack took in the girl standing in front of him. She wore tight black trousers and a purple tee shirt with a pair of long leather boots snaking up her legs. In the half-light he thought her eyes might be green, half-hidden under a mass of blonde ringlets.

  As he stepped forward to offer a tentative handshake Jack felt the ground begin to wobble then realised it was he who was doing the wobbling. The green eyes grew wide in alarm as he inexplicably sank to his knees.

  “I don’t feel so great…” was all he could manage before feeling his face make surprisingly painful contact with the carport’s concrete floor.

  Again, the dense mist as the giant golden disc of the time portal rose up before him. The flawless face towered above, blinding him with its brilliance. He saw his hand pass straight through its surface as the rest of his body smoothly followed. He could make no sound, a scream of fear stillborn on his lips as he passed through the wavering image.

  He emerged into a dark circular chamber. He seemed to be standing on a walkway surrounding a sloping pit of blue lights. Little green computers like those at the WCTS sat on a series of desks around the curved walls. The portal image had disappeared; there was nothing behind him now but a lift door. The blue lights below began to flash a strobe pattern across his face. Jack stood frozen as they pulsed, unable to look away from the blinding whirlwind as it gradually took on a uniform pattern. A vision formed, a jumble of images indecipherable at first until they took on the substance of a face, neither male nor female but vaguely humanoid. It hung in mid-air above the pit. The eyes slowly opened and jet-black pupils gazed balefully down at him. The lips parted and a machine-like voice boomed across the room:

  “YOU CANNOT SPEAK – BUT YOU CAN LISTEN. YOU CANNOT MOVE – BUT YOU CAN SEE. YOU ARE ASLEEP – BUT YOU ARE NOT DREAMING. I HAVE BROUGHT YOUR MIND UNDER MY CONTROL. I AM CHRONO WCTS TIME MAINFRAME. I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OPERATION AND DATA COLLECTION OF THIS PROJECT.”

  The voice paused and the huge eyes shut as if to give him a few moments to take this in. Just as suddenly they blinked open again.

  “I HAVE INFORMATION, JACK JOHNSON. MY GRID SENSORS HAVE JUST RECORDED THE FOLLOWING EVENTS. THEY APPEAR TO COMPROMISE WCTS SECURITY LEVEL AMBER. PREPARE YOURSELF FOR VISUAL DOWNLOAD.”

  Strangely Jack felt no fear, no panic at this announcement. After all, it must be a dream, mustn’t it? Hadn’t he felt this way before; calm, serene, accepting all? He tried to think where and when, then found he couldn’t think at all as a flood of raw light and sound burst into his brain. Gradually, the blinding images resolved themselves into discernable shapes, the screaming white noise dulled into the rumble of traffic.

  The face, the lights, the entire room he’d been standing in was gone. Now he was on a crowded street as people milled around gaudy shops and sped past him on rippling strips of sidewalk. Cars zipped by above and below, criss-crossing each other on multi-level hover-ways. The focus of the chaotic scene shifted back and forth as if trying to locate a target amongst the late night shoppers and vivid party groups. A retina-shredding blaze of light from a thousand holographic advertisements shone down on the scuttling crowds. The whole scene had a daylight intensity.

  The roving eye stopped. A vision zoomed forward through the panorama of confusion, focused on a single figure moving purposefully. This was no random view of Romano Briton nightlife; it was recorded footage replayed into his eyes. No, not his eyes: directly into his subconscious. Now he could see the subject: a small, pretty girl with striking blond hair, dressed in a long grey coat which partly concealed a white one piece suit. No doubt she also had a nurse’s cap with a little red ‘T’ badge tucked into her coat pocket. It was the young nurse who’d told him to go back to sleep when he’d first awakened. And she was in a hurry.

  As the scurrying figure reached the end of the street and vanished around a corner, another view of her sprang up, heading towards him. It seemed that Chrono had joined itself to every security camera in… Jack cast around for a point of reference and immediately found one; a giant action hologram of two brightly uniformed sportsmen grappling for a red ball. Above them a huge banner rippled over the lanes of darting traffic:

  Zacharias Stadium – Saturday Night Speedball Action!

  Calleva Centurions v. Fulchestorium Falcons

  Face off at 8 – don’t be late!

  So this was somewhere called Calleva; a bustling metropolis. The swishing traffic, noisy crowds in the arcades, clubs and bars, and the continual hard sell of the holograms hanging above them certainly created a frenzied atmosphere.

  The girl stopped opposite a huge baroque tower, its hulking form enshrouded in corroded armour plating. The tower’s few windows were covered in thick metal grills. An eight-lane hover-way full of traffic hurtling through the never-sleeping city blocked her way. She stepped into an underground passage way and reappeared a few moments later, in close up. The slender figure passed through the ugly building’s thick doors beneath a glowing sign that read ‘Calleva State Ministry of Security’.

  Next he was given a bird’s eye view of its dark interior. A long queue wound around a huge hall, the faces tiny white specks against the black marble floor. Jack’s perspective panned up huge pillars of white stone to a glass roof; moonlight shone onto the heads of the shuffling crowd below. The human snake twisted gradually toward a line of metal desks manned by black-uniformed staff.

  A giant neon sign on the wall above them read,
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.

  The girl reappeared, zooming back into focus as she pushed through the queues towards an armed security guard stiffly at attention by the doors of a glass lift. The man raised his gun to challenge then words were exchanged after which he signalled to two of his colleagues to accompany her. The trio entered the glass lift and shot up to the upper floors.

  The focus trailed them though the cavernous building until finally they stood before a large door bearing the legend ‘Silas Borg, Governor General of Calleva State’ in gold lettering. To either side of the door an imposing black marble eagle perched on a column, talons gripping the edges and wings spread wide. Jack understood that whatever the details of this Ministry place, its own security had been completely compromised by Chrono’s hacking.

  One of the guards gave a tentative knock and they entered a large high-ceilinged room. Jack’s personal view followed. The room was bare apart from a circular chair and a large desk console. A band of holographic images hung above it, like coloured bubbles, showing panoramas of the city.

  There was silence as the party waited. The nurse appeared to be trembling.

  A thin dry voice came from the chair. “I expected a visit before now. I hope you’ve got something for me this time, for your brother’s sake.” The chair swung around. A small, slightly built man in a colourful dark green uniform leaned forward. He clicked at the guards. “Leave us!”

  The girl approached the man in the chair. He motioned for her to kneel before him, and Jack saw past her to the little man’s face. It was brooding and sallow face with terrible, pockmarked skin and bloodshot eyes.

  “Well, my dear?” The voice crackled like dead leaves.

  She looked away as she answered. “He’s awake. They took him for debriefing this afternoon. I haven’t seen him there since.”

  “Well, is he still at WCTS or not?

  “I’ve just told you I don’t know!”

  His hand shot out suddenly to grab her under the chin. He forced the pretty face up to his. Jack felt the reddened eyes drill into the girl’s. “You don’t know very much, Patricia.”