A Chronetic Memory (The Chronography Records Book 1)

by O'Hara, Kim K.

  Dani shook her head. Now that she was involved with the project, she realized that the likelihood of happening upon an indiscretion while scanning an object was so tiny as to be almost nonexistent. But the honeymoon had ended with Dr. Howe’s accident, and the project was now in the dark phase of its existence where researchers were relegated to the bottom of the “most respected professions” lists, just above used helicar salesmen and just below lawyers.

  Scientists at the institute still held Dr. Brant in high regard, of course. But Dr. Brant was no more social than she had been in those early years. When Dani had first arrived, she had made two attempts at casual conversation with the doctor, but she got only brief nods in return. Dani had never seen her acknowledging any of the other interns either. Her mind was probably so occupied with planning and analyzing, she reasoned, she had little time available for human interaction. On rare occasions, scientists and interns mingled at social gatherings, and Dani had not seen any evidence that the doctor even knew which interns were hers.

  Dani realized she was still standing near the researchers. Now who was being unfocused and oblivious to her surroundings?

  Dr. Dural Tasman, in contrast to Dr. Brant, had piercing blue eyes that missed nothing. He always made her nervous, and now she’d been caught hovering. Any moment now, he’d be asking her where she should be.

  “Where should you be, Ms. Adams?” he asked her, with the voice of one scolding a wayward child.

  “I’m scheduled for the chronolab,” she replied, blushing, grateful that she had taken the time to read over her schedule in the lobby.

  He waved his hand in that general direction, dismissing her brusquely, and turned back to his fellow researchers. As she picked up her pace and headed for the lab, she sighed. These people were supposed to be her mentors, and she couldn’t get more than a few words from any of them. How was she supposed to learn?

  At the lab, she started the chronoimager. It would take its usual four or five minutes to run through the daily checks and set up backup files. She checked to make sure the storage rod still had room for the morning images, and glanced at the small copy of her schedule on her eyescreen to remind herself of the object number before going to the library to retrieve it.

  “Object 103192…103192…103192,” she muttered to herself as she walked down the long aisle, past row upon row of movable cases. Case 103 contained the newest acquisitions, but in a month’s time they would be identified, scanned, and cataloged. She would move on to case 104, then 105. There seemed to be no end to the objects.

  Ah, there it was. Dani reached up to retrieve a long iron rod with a handle on one end and two curvy points on the other end. “Object 103192: Fireplace poker, manufactured c. 1991,” read the sign. She carried it back to the imaging chamber where she placed it carefully to match the orientation from the day before, closed the airtight doors, and checked the sensors. All was in order.

  She stepped into the observation box and waited while it integrated seamlessly and silently with her synapses. Her next motions would have been a blur to an observer. In five seconds from start to finish, her right forefinger pulled up the settings screen, her other fingers scrolled through the available dates and times with precise movements until they bracketed the requested time frame: June 6, 1994, at 1:15:00 P.M. Duration, twenty seconds. Angle of elevation, 47.5 degrees.

  As she set the full circle scan, Dani shook her head at the waste. She had discovered yesterday that the fireplace tools had been kept against a brick fireplace in June of 1994, and for 160 degrees of the full circle rotation that brick was the only thing in the viewing field. For a good part of the rest, other iron tools partially blocked the view. Once such blockages were identified, wouldn’t it make sense to narrow the scan to just those parts of the rotation that would yield good results? It would be so simple to make adjustments as she watched with the integrated sensory input.

  For that matter, wouldn’t it make more sense to just pick objects that were in the center of the action and get views all around, like the baseball in the famous photo she passed every day? But such decisions were reserved for fellows and research scientists, and above the pay grade of a mere intern, no matter how intelligent or capable that intern might be.

  Dani worked efficiently, using interval settings to record visual scans. After the first few minutes, she had settled into a rhythm: Set, scan, adjust. Set, scan, adjust. She kept half an eye on the images flashing past at an accelerated rate. In the four hours she had before lunch, she was able to gather seven days of readings at the requested intervals. She was the quickest chronop in the building, which would have felt pretty good if she had had even the slightest hope that she was doing something remotely useful.

  She shrugged. She had wanted a career; this was just a job. Then she chided herself. At least it was a job. And this afternoon held something more interesting, possibly even significant, if her schedule didn’t change while she was at lunch with Kat. By the time she had saved the backups, and returned Object 103192 to its shelf in Case 103, she had begun to feel better. She left the lab humming a cheerful fiddle tune that had hit the top of the charts just the month before.

  3

  Manipulation

  HUNTER’S OFFICE. 1200, Monday, June 5, 2215.

  The connexion icon on the viewwall buzzed. The tall, impeccably-dressed man turned abruptly and waved his hand at the icon, which expanded to become a hologram of the caller.

  “Right on time, Ms. Lowe,” he commended her.

  “Hunter.” She acknowledged him with a look of resignation. Her posture was proper and professional. He could read her expression easily: Make this a business transaction. Let it be over quickly.

  After months of these meetings, her initial fiery defiance had succumbed to fear, and the fear had turned to surrender. She had seen the futility of resistance, and her acquiescence made it easier to control her, but he missed the terror he had inspired in their early meetings.

  Sometimes, he toyed with the idea of exposing her husband’s real background to the world despite the payments she had made so regularly. It would destroy her family, he knew. Lowe would be imprisoned, the company he had built from the ground up would fail, and their finances would crumble. He thought of the children, still in elementary school. They idolized their father. He scowled. He hated their smug trust. He wanted to see them suffer as he had suffered, living in a shabby studio apartment in the worst part of town. He wanted to see them cry. He wanted the man to watch his family be reduced to abject poverty, knowing he was powerless to help. The more he thought about it, the more difficult it was to restrain himself. It would be so easy to leak the news.

  He decided she would have to pay more.

  “The funds have been transferred, Hunter. I trust the group’s discretion will continue.”

  The group. He would have to get the increase approved. He chafed at the delay, but knew he had no real choice.

  “As always, Ms. Lowe.” He waved his hand again and the image vanished. A few more gestures opened a banking icon and confirmed the transfer: 400 million global credits. The corner of his mouth turned up slightly, just short of a smirk. The money was coming in, from hundreds of highly-placed sources, and a good portion of it was his.

  Soon he would be one of the richest people in the world.

  4

  Agitation

  BATELLI’S DELI, West Seattle, WA. 1205, Monday, June 5, 2215.

  Kat had already ordered for both of them when Dani got to the sandwich shop. “You have your choice between beef with provolone or turkey and Swiss,” she offered. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  The restaurant had an old-fashioned feel to it. The owners had decorated the deli to match a two-hundred-year-old photograph. Walking through its doors was like walking back in time. Dani watched as waiters took orders by hand and brought meals to the table. “I’ll take the turkey,” she decided, “although the beef sounds good too. How much do I owe you?”

&
nbsp; “Don’t worry about it. You can buy next time.”

  They settled into the antique chairs that made no adjustments to their body temperature or shape. The unyielding plastic felt strange on her back, but surprisingly comfortable.

  “So the game was bad?” Dani prompted her friend, wanting to talk about something that didn’t involve settings and scans. Most of the interns ate in the cafeteria at lunchtime to gossip and gripe, but she depended on these forays into the outside world for her sanity.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t believe it. None of these kids has ever telecompeted before this year. Including Jored, of course. It’s worth watching, though, if only because it’s so funny.”

  “Well, he’s only seven. It’s mostly about sportsmanship and having fun at that age, isn’t it?”

  “Exactly. And he does that part really well.”

  At that moment, their waiter arrived with the sandwiches and a complimentary apple turnover. It looked delicious. Excellent way to inspire loyalty in new customers, Dani had to admit. As if the whole two-hundred-year-old atmosphere thing wasn’t enough. “Where are his teammates from?”

  Kat shrugged. “They don’t really like to tell you that. Underage players and privacy, you know.”

  “You’d know all about privacy,” Dani teased. Kat’s whole reason for protesting was to keep private lives private.

  “Well, yeah.” Kat grinned. “But the kids talk, and Jored has a vague idea anyway. There are a few from China, two or three from the Balkans—their families have known each other a long time, it turns out—and only a handful from the western hemisphere.”

  “Impressive! Truly international, and at that age! I don’t think any of my telegames, when I was a kid, involved anyone from out of the country. Well, I mean, they would have, if we ever got to championship levels, but we were never that good.” Dani shook her head. “Kids these days don’t realize how much the world has changed.” Then she added, almost as an afterthought, “How do they communicate?”

  “Sometimes in English, sometimes in Croatian, but mostly in Chinese.” Kat laughed at her friend’s expression. “Kids pick up languages so fast.”

  “But he likes it, right?”

  “Oh, he loves it. Almost as much as he loves playing chess with you.”

  Day brightener, right there. “I love spending time with him. It surprises me how much I look forward to it. When we play chess, it’s not really about chess. It’s mostly about talking. He’s so smart. And he likes to hear about the parts of my job that I still enjoy. Reminds me of what attracted me to this field when I was his age.”

  “He asked me this morning when you were coming over again. Want to have dinner with us tomorrow night?”

  Dani didn’t hesitate. “What else have I got going? Six-ish?”

  “That’ll work.”

  They ate companionably for a few minutes, saying nothing. Kat was comfortable like that. But Dani felt like talking after her silent morning in an observation box. “How was your day?” she asked her friend.

  “Great! The fair-weather visitors have starting showing up, so we get to educate them about how dangerous your work is.” She winked.

  When the two had first met, they had kept their conversations to neutral topics. They both instinctively realized that a new friendship had to find common ground before venturing into potential discord or conflict. But now they were sure of their bond, and there were no rules to their topics.

  So it was with no trace of defensiveness that Dani replied, “Do you know how many yottabytes of information you’d have to sift through to find one damaging piece of information? And it’s all so boring.” She yawned, then laughed. “I didn’t plan that yawn, really.”

  Kat smiled. “Jored never hears about that part of it, does he? He thinks your work is the most interesting thing in the world. It’s my job that he gets bored with. To him, it’s just standing outside and waving a sign.”

  “You’re doing what you believe in. That’s what counts.” Dani reassured her friend. “Honestly, I’d squirm just like anyone else if someone decided to look at my life with a chronograph.”

  “There, see? That’s what I mean. People never think it’s about them. It’s about all of us, as much as it’s about any of us.”

  Dani looked at her fondly. “You have such a big heart, Katella. You’re always looking out for people, always making people’s lives a little easier or a little better. Does Marak know how lucky he is?”

  “Well, yeah. That’s how we met, you know. He was doing something the hard way, and I made it easy.”

  “What did you do?”

  “He was standing outside a fence, clearly wanting to be inside, testing the bars for potential footholds, trying to figure out if he could climb it to get one of his famous insider reports. I watched for a while and then I couldn’t help it; I laughed.”

  “Did you know who he was?”

  “Not until he introduced himself, but then I knew. He had already made a name for himself, and his stuff was really good. He’d gotten it into his head that he wanted to interview my uncle for some story he was working on. Hadn’t been able to reach him through the usual channels, so he decided to go see him in person. But when he found the locked gate, he hadn’t a clue what to do. I guess he’d just figured the gate would be open and he could walk right in.” She snickered.

  Dani could just see that. Honest, earnest Marak, who didn’t have a deceptive bone in his body, faced with a locked gate. “Did he ever get inside?”

  “That was the ironic part.” The glint in Kat’s eye was unmistakable. She so loved a good joke. “My uncle wasn’t even there that day. He was down the road, waiting at the marina for me to meet him so we could spend the afternoon on his boat.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I brought Marak along, of course. And I introduced him as the man I was going to marry someday, which was not what he expected at all. But he warmed to the idea pretty quickly.” She activated her eyescreen to view the time. “Hey. Don’t you have to be back at work in a few minutes?”

  “Yes!” Dani gathered her bag, tucking the uneaten dessert into it for later. “I’d better run. See you tomorrow morning?”

  Kat nodded. “Don’t forget about dinner!”

  RIACH LABORATORIES, Alki Beach, Seattle, WA. 1310, Monday, June 5, 2215.

  Back in the lab, Dani was in a considerably lighter mood. She glanced at her eyescreen to check her schedule again, just in case there were any changes.

  AFTERNOON SCHEDULE—Lab D, station 3

  1. Ob:097113 22060917:114417-114941/N36W-15. Rec:VAO Inv/Hist-Comm

  No changes. Good. A real investigative recording awaited her. She caught herself humming again as she went to the shelves to retrieve Object 097113, which turned out to be a small iron padlock. She looked it over, trying to imagine its history. “What have you seen?” she asked it conversationally. “What have you heard and smelled, that might make them want to get sounds and scents from you?”

  It hadn’t escaped her notice that the time frame she was about to bracket was within her own lifetime. Even if this hadn’t been a commissioned investigation, that aspect alone would be interesting. She smiled to think of Kat’s reaction if she knew. Anything more recent than a hundred years ago would make Kat start preaching privacy invasions. She placed the padlock within the imaging chamber, activating the seldom-used audio and olfactory recorders, and sealed the door.

  The requested time frame was for a little more than five minutes. She waited for the sensory integration, set the viewing elevation, beginning time, and duration, then flipped the switch to begin.

  Immediately, she realized her mistake. The view surrounded her on all sides as well as overhead. This was supposed to be a narrow angle, not a full-circle image! She reached to turn off the switch and start again when she caught something around S30E that startled her. A hand reached for the lock and jiggled it, evidently testing it to see if it was locked. Viewing and hearing it as she was, from the l
ock’s point of view, everything around her jiggled side to side, and the fingers obliterated pretty much everything else. Normally, she’d only be able to see the fingers, with the view angle that had been requested. But because of her mistake, she could see the whole hand. Apparently, the lock had held. As the hand retreated, she got ready to change the settings, when she saw the face behind the hand, and realized it was a face she recognized. That hand belonged to someone she knew very well: Marak Wallace.

  She snatched her hand back from the screen. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Time searches were tedious, boring, and completely devoid of anything personal. How many times had she told Kat that?

  Guiltily, she changed the settings to reflect her assignment. As she finished the five-minute recording, barely aware of the events she was seeing, she tried to console herself. It was an honest mistake. No harm done, right? It just felt really strange. She realized that, up to this moment, she hadn’t actually believed these images were of people who had lived and breathed, not really. They had felt more like characters in works of fiction.

  But now? Her whole perception had changed.

  All afternoon, while she completed and dismissed items on her checklist, she wrestled with the possible implications. All Kat’s cautions and worst-case scenarios from the last few months suddenly held new meaning. Nearly every relevant conversation they had had came back to beg for reconsideration. Every time another one popped up, she shoved it under a mental rug and deliberately made herself concentrate on the task at hand.

  But somehow, she knew those thoughts wouldn’t put up with being ignored for long.

  DANI’S APARTMENT, First Hill, Seattle, WA. 1750, Monday, June 5, 2215.

  The rest of the day had gone by in a blur. Dani vaguely remembered checking out of the institute and awaiting her usual tube car to take her under the water and up to her apartment on Seattle’s First Hill. She felt relief that she wouldn’t have to face Kat tonight, and then decided that avoiding her friend was ridiculous. Kat was the essence of open acceptance when they were on opposite sides of her most passionate issues; why would she have any trouble with these new misgivings? She fixed herself dinner and had the apple turnover for dessert.