A Chronetic Memory (The Chronography Records Book 1)
Page 1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright for Kindle
Dedication
Acknowledgments
1 Collision
2 Isolation
3 Manipulation
4 Agitation
5 Intention
6 Appreciation
7 Acquisition
8 Confrontation
9 Desperation
10 Direction
11 Anticipation
12 Collaboration
13 Disruption
14 Alteration
15 Detection
16 Deductions
17 Suspicion
18 Realization
19 Recollection
20 Introduction
21 Interception
22 Explanation
23 Preparation
24 Decision
25 Neutralization
26 Information
27 Revelation
28 Distraction
29 Escalation
30 Diversion
31 Apprehension
32 Explosion
33 Confirmation
34 Interruption
35 Restoration
Author Bio & Note
A Novel
Kim K. O’Hara
© 2014 by Kim K. O'Hara
All rights reserved.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or borrow it through a subscription service, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to www.amazon.com and purchase or borrow your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Sign up for new book notifications at
www.pagesandnumbers.com Contact the author at
kimkohara.author@gmail.com Cover design by Sam O’Hara
www.samofsorts.com
To Mom,
who always encouraged me
to follow my dreams.
I wish I had finished this
while you were still alive to see it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Kellianne Rumsey, who has encouraged me with just the right blend of belief and ultimatums, and without whom this novel would never have been imagined, continued, completed, or published; to my husband, Michael O’Hara, for doing without me for long hours as I worked to complete this book and carrying many family obligations on his own during that time, and also for being a sounding board for my ideas and questions; to my daughter, Sam O’Hara, who read my final draft, gave me feedback, and showed me how much she believed in me by pouring her considerable creative talent into my cover design; to my other daughter, Jennifer O’Hara, who inspires me with her own writing; to my twin sister, Kathy Kreps, who offered me practical feedback during numerous stages including reading the entire final draft; to friends Kermit Kiser, Daniel Myers, Annie Bouffiou, Peggy Holstine, and Zerna Beebe, who served as my beta readers and proofreaders and gave me both corrections and suggestions (which undoubtedly improved the book you hold in your hands); to Grace Friberg, who graciously donated her time for the cover photo shoot; and to the NaNoWriMo community as a whole for inspiring this venture in the first place.
1
Collision
HARBOR AVENUE, Seattle, WA. 0120, Monday, January 20, 2205.
A helicar horn blared at the bottom of Fairmount hill and kept blaring. For seven long minutes, it cut through the icy early morning air. A blast of wind hit an icicle-encrusted evergreen branch. The brittle limb gave way and plummeted earthward. With an ear-shattering whump it hit the hood of the crumpled red helicar. The horn stopped.
The faint sound of emergency sirens crescendoed. Helicars with flashing lights landed carefully on the frozen roads. Their occupants emerged and swarmed away from the red helicar, focusing instead on a larger blue vehicle that lay crushed on the beach below.
After a few moments, one of the rescuers backed away from the blue vehicle and peered around. He spotted the other car and pointed toward it, yelling. Another paramedic joined him, and the two began picking their way up the icy slope, heads down.
They didn’t see it when a gloved hand with metal rescue knuckles smashed through the back passenger window of the helicar. Brushing the glass aside, it grasped the front door handle and yanked. The door opened. A lone woman lay slumped over in the driver’s seat. The stopsafe force field that had saved her life had deactivated after the impact, settling her against the cushioned wheel.
The man who had opened the door shook her shoulder. “Marielle.”
She opened her eyes and blinked. “Wha—?”
He had taken out his hand scanner to check for nerve or spinal damage. It whirred for a few seconds, then turned green. He stuffed it back in his coat pocket. “Marielle, can you move your legs?”
“Yes, I thi—wha—happ’nd?” Her mouth wasn’t working right. “Am I drunk? I feel drunk.”
“You were in an accident. You overshot the landing and hit another helicar.”
“No! Were they—was an’body hurt?” She struggled to get the words out.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Iss so dark. Izzit late?”
“So late it’s early. What were you doing out at one in the morning?”
“I—don’ know. Can’t ‘member.”
“You don’t remember hitting the helicar?”
“No. Nothing. Who—who was in it?” The grogginess was dissipating. If she concentrated, she could make her tongue cooperate.
“It was…” He hesitated, looking at her carefully, assessing her ability to hear the answer.
“Who was in it?” she demanded.
“Marielle, it was Elena and Nicah.”
“Are they— are they okay?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Nicah didn’t make it. Elena is hanging on, just barely. They’re taking her to the hospital. Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Let me help you to my car. I’m taking you home.”
2
Isolation
RIACH CAMPUS, Alki Beach, Seattle, WA. 0740, Monday, June 5, 2215.
Danarin Adams threaded her way through the holographic picket signs on her way to work. As she bumped and jostled between the sign holders, she muttered quiet apologies to most, with friendly nods for those she recognized. Some of them had been there almost every day of the six months she had worked at the institute. There were even a few of the protesters she‘d call friends.
Oddly enough, she couldn’t say the same of any of her colleagues. The research scientists reminded her daily, in a thousand little ways, that she was only an intern. She might have found friends among the interns, but they were all isolated from each other by individual task lists.
“Hey, Dani!” Katella Wallace waved amid the sea of signs. “Are we still on for lunch today at that new sandwich place?”
Dani laughed to see that Kat had changed her own sign into a giant waving hand to get her attention. “I’ll be there,” she replied, “and I want to hear all about Jored’s game last night.”
Kat made a face as Dani caught up to her and started to check through the security gate. “I’m not sure you do. It was even worse than the last one.”
“Tell me anyway. He’ll expect me to know.” She paused to let the irisscan identify her while her bag went through the scanner. The gate opened. She waved to her friend. “See you later.”
The noise of the protesters died away as she walked the thirty-five
meters from the gate to the main entrance. On her left, block letters identified the massive building as the headquarters of the Research Institute of Anthropology & Chronographic History, home of the famous TimeSearch project. Chronographic history was a window to the past, one that had fascinated her ever since the first reports of the breakthrough had played on her family’s viewwall.
In those days, all the newscasts had been optimistic. “Inventors Seebak and Howe,” they said, “have patented a device that will allow us access to the past in ways we are only beginning to imagine.” The details were even more intriguing. Any inanimate object could generate sensory streams of events that had occurred near it when researchers tuned in to selected times from its past. Talk shows interviewed scientists on national broadcasts, and soon such phrases as “chronetic energies” and “temporal quantum entanglements” were common household words, though few knew the science behind them.
It hadn’t taken long before the business community jumped on board. As a child, Dani wasn’t even aware of businesses vying for sponsorship opportunities. It wasn’t until later that she found out about the plans of a performing arts center to recapture the sights, sounds, and smells of Shakespeare’s openings or the plans of packed vacation resorts to offer the sensory inputs of a long-gone pristine beach, forest, or mountain. Universities wanted the new technology for research. Law enforcement and courts wanted it to find and convict murderers and kidnappers. But Dani didn’t know all that back then.
Eleven-year-old Dani knew only that her teacher laid aside his lesson plans in science to explore the new possibilities. In history, they discussed what historical events should be recovered first.
She heard about a national essay contest for high school students: What object would you choose? What moment would you recapture? The winning essay writer would be flown to Seattle with his or her parents to watch the chronograph in action.
Dani smiled, remembering how much she begged to enter that contest. At that age, she wasn’t eligible, but that didn’t stop her from trying. She sent in her essay anyway.
The heavy iron doors of the institute swung open at her approach, and her smile faded. With a last, wistful look outside, she entered the cavernous maw to begin her workday.
RIACH LABORATORIES, Alki Beach, Seattle, WA. 0750, Monday, June 5, 2215.
The door whooshed to a close behind her as the lights adjusted from “dim” to “softly lit,” a preference she had indicated at her initial orientation, when her bosses were still acting as if she would be a valued employee. She reached into her bag for her lab coat, powder blue to mark her status as an intern. It was a smooth routine by now, putting on the lab coat, pressing her left temple to switch her connexion device from the city’s nexus to the institute’s private one. Signals from outside didn’t reach well through the thick cement walls without a boost.
On the opposite side of the entry, a small segment of the viewwall shimmered into focus to reveal her daily task list. She knew the task list would be repeated when she got to the chronolab, but she looked at it anyway, out of habit, while she donned her lab coat.
For all the secrecy that shrouded the institute, most of its electronic documentation would have been unintelligible to anyone who gained unauthorized access. But Dani glanced over her first two tasks and deciphered them easily.
MORNING SCHEDULE—Lab D, station 3
1. Ob:103192 19940606:131500-131520/FC El+47.5 Rec:V Samp/Routine
2. Ob:103192 19940606:133000-133020/FC +47.5 Rec:V Samp/Routine
She sighed. More tedium. Routine sampling of object 103192 at her usual scanning station, beginning where she left off yesterday, at 1:15 P.M. on June 6, 1994, for twenty-second durations every fifteen minutes. Full circle visual recordings at a 47.5-degree angle of elevation. Because all the visual recordings used a 95-degree angle of view, 47.5 degrees ensured that everything would be captured from the horizon up, with a ten-degree overlap directly overhead. Those settings provided a full upper hemisphere of visual data. She skimmed ahead. The rest of the morning was filled with more of the same, jobs for an intern, no creativity required.
Ah—here was something more interesting. Actually, it was a little astonishing to see it on her task list.
AFTERNOON SCHEDULE—Lab D, station 3
1. Ob:097113 22060917:114417-114441/N36W±10 El-15. Rec:VAO Inv/Hist-Comm
A historical investigation! And commissioned, no less. Normally, investigations were “Inv/Event-Potential,” where someone (with a title way above hers, she thought wryly) spotted a conversation or encounter from an earlier sample that should be recorded with audio for later analysis. But a commissioned investigation meant that an outside agency had brought in a specific object and wanted a recording to study a genuine piece of history, one that was meaningful to the client. These would require that all the recording devices—visual, audio, and olfactory—be engaged.
The barest touch of her childhood sense of wonder brushed her consciousness. Perhaps today wouldn’t be so bad after all.
She turned left down the corridor toward the chronolab. The marble walls reflected the muted glow from the recessed lighting. Four framed images displayed scenes from history alongside the objects that had revealed them. These were the famous promotional images that had first heralded the invention, twelve years earlier.
First on the right was a signed baseball in a clear protective case, in front of an image of the fast-approaching outfielder’s glove from the 2089 World Series, just before the game-ending catch. The cheering crowd in the background captured the triumphant moment, and bold lettering above the image proclaimed, “FRESH PERSPECTIVES.”
A few steps farther, on the left, was the photo of an old fiddler in the Appalachian mountains in 1934, taken from below, and the tile fragment that used to be part of his floor. Dani read the title, “HERITAGE RECLAIMED,” and remembered how the whole song had been played on the viewwalls at school. It had inspired a resurgence of fiddlers and fiddle music.
Dani moved more quickly past the next display on the right. Even though she understood its importance, it was a little too gruesome for her tastes. She already knew what was there. Under the title, “CRIMES SOLVED,” there was the famous axehead. The photograph from the morning of August 4, 1892, was of a blood-spattered Lizzie Borden calmly washing her hands, thus forever putting to rest the mystery of who killed her father and stepmother. Although she knew there was value in solving such things, Dani didn’t see the point of displaying it so prominently. She shuddered and moved on.
She loved the last photograph on the left, of Chef Solveig Rendahl, from July 2146. She lingered to absorb a bit of the chef’s contagious joy at creating a perfect pound cake, smothered in simmered summer blueberries. Her image was displayed next to the whisk that sourced the shot. Chef Solveig’s sugary confections were still considered the crème de la crème of desserts for special occasions, and the exhibit was the delight of schoolchildren, not just because they got to see and hear the famous chef, but because when they sniffed the air, they could actually smell her creation. The photograph displayed under the title, “AUTHENTIC ATMOSPHERES,” didn’t include scents, of course. Scents were “played back” using chemicals blended according to the specs on digital recordings.
Back before the controversies started, these photos were part of a traveling exhibit and the main spark for Dani’s fascination with the new technology. Again she wondered: How could that excitement have faded so quickly?
As she passed through the doors at the end of the hallway, she got the barest nod from the three scientists clustered near the diagramwall. Before she had ever met them, their names were familiar to her. She had seen them on the spines of her college textbooks, scanned for them in scholarly journals. They were the authorities in her chosen field. Calegari. Brant. Tasman.
When he spotted her, Dr. Nikoli Calegari frowned a little and moved his ample body sideways to hide his scribbles from her view. Not that she could read them anyway—his handwriting
was notoriously illegible.
Dr. Marielle Brant’s soft eyes flitted in her direction without focusing. Dani liked the dark-haired doctor, with her gentle nature and easy laugh. She had, in fact, long admired her as one of the early pioneers of the new science. Dr. Brant had been an assistant to Dr. Mitchum Seebak and Dr. Elena Howe when they had first invented the process. The only names more well-known than Calegari, Brant, and Tasman were those of Seebak and Howe.
Dr. Howe had been a bright star, the warm voice that convinced the multitudes that new worlds awaited discovery. She had taken the photos that Dani passed every day in the entry hall. Hers were the video, audio, and olfactory tracks recorded and played for potential investors and schoolchildren. But a helicar accident one frozen morning in late January 2205 had put her in a coma and claimed her life twenty-eight months later. She had never awakened.
Just a few months after the accident, while Dr. Howe was unconscious, her longtime partner had been discredited and dismissed, for reasons that had never been explained, even to insiders. Dr. Seebak’s abrupt departure left a void that Dr. Brant stepped into reluctantly. In Dani’s studies, she had learned that the other researchers in those early years had enormous respect for Dr. Brant’s scientific expertise. A few protested that at twenty-five years old she didn’t have the maturity, but there was no doubt that she knew the technology. She continued in the paths of her predecessors, with work that was both innovative and revelatory. It soon became obvious, however, that she was no Elena Howe. She disliked crowds and avoided public appearances.
The resulting lack of good publicity had left room for others with less favorable opinions to step into the spotlight. Pundits and commentators had started putting into words what everyone was thinking: What would be the fruits of unbridled access to the past? Politicians took up the cause. Who among them didn’t have some dirty laundry? Those who lived on the shady side of honor feared the freedom given the scientists and campaigned to limit viewing windows to a hundred years or more in the past. Even those with nothing to hide objected to the invasion of privacy.