A Chronetic Memory (The Chronography Records Book 1)

by O'Hara, Kim K.

  Lexil was already checking the monitors. “It’s accelerating. The disturbances are small, but they are happening much more frequently. And when they are noticed, as this one was, they cause more ripples.” He made some quick projections. “This could become unstable. The damping forces aren’t powerful enough to keep up.”

  “Unstable? What would that mean?”

  “Causality could be completely flipped on its head. That table was there, but nothing caused it to be there. Imagine if that sort of thing were to happen to you so often that you start expecting it. Now imagine that it happens to everyone, and it’s not just tables, but rooms, houses, office buildings.”

  “That would cause a lot of confusion.”

  “And it might also affect natural features like lakes, hills, islands, continents.”

  She stared at him. “Are we talking about the end of the world?”

  “Could be.”

  How could they be talking about this so calmly? The surreal feeling persisted, insulating Dani from the hugeness of it all. “How much time do we have to work with?” she asked.

  “Probably months. Worst case, a little less than a month,” he said.

  She swallowed. “But no big deal, right?”

  He stood up and put his hands on her shoulders. “Dani. We get do-overs, remember? We’re going to fix this. We’re going to figure our way through any difficulties. What would happen to this timestream in the next several months is just theoretical. It’ll never happen.”

  He kept his hands on her shoulders, searching her expression, until she nodded. “I know. I just don’t have any experience with saving the world.”

  He grinned. “You and me both. C’mon. Let’s go get that device. And then, I think, dinner will be ready, if you care to join us.”

  “I hadn’t even thought about eating.” She realized she wasn’t hungry. “Honestly, I think I’m too wound up to eat. I’ll go in and give my apologies to Doc, but then would you mind if I just saw myself out?”

  It was hard to explain, but she had to narrow her focus to just the job that lay before her. So much depended on her success the next day. Her emotions had been wrenching her back and forth, and she couldn’t afford that kind of ambivalence any more.

  His expression showed that wasn’t at all what he was hoping. “Okay. If you’re sure?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ve got the device in the library. What time are you going to be using it?”

  “Just after lunch. We need to make sure all the scanners are back online.” She followed him to retrieve the device. They walked around a big world globe. Had that been there before?

  “Kat will be coordinating with the guy who is going to call in the bomb threat?”

  “Yes. She wondered if you and Doc would like to come to their place, since none of you can actually be inside the institute with me. She invited her uncle too.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t see that it matters where people are when I run the program. Everything will change anyway.”

  “True, but it might be good to have us all together, in case something unexpected comes up. Here’s the device. Take care of it. We don’t get a second chance,” His tone was somber as he handed it to her. He caught her eyes and held them. Was he talking just about saving the world? Or was he talking about the two of them? Second chance, funny. They wouldn’t even get a first chance.

  “You think I don’t know that? What do you think is making me so nervous?” She realized she had snapped at him. She softened her tone. “Hey, I’m sorry. I just think I need to be alone for a while tonight.”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it without saying anything. Finally, he nodded, and she brushed past him to find Doc in the kitchen.

  “Hey, Dani. Are you going to join us for dinner?” he asked cheerfully. He was chopping fresh cilantro.

  “No, Doc. I just came to say goodbye, and thanks for everything.”

  He put down his knife and ran his hands through the rinse-and-dry near the sink. “You’re leaving? Come here and give an old man a hug.”

  She set down her belongings and returned his hug. It was big and warm and comforting, but just for a few seconds. Then it was done. She sighed.

  “Are you all right?” Doc searched her expression. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  No. No, she didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted to ignore it. She wanted to do her job, and do it well, and save the whole world somehow. And in the process, never see this delightful old man and his adopted son again.

  Change the subject. Talk about something else. She glanced around. Lexil’s notes lay near her hand. She patted them. “Lexil made copies of his notes for me. I want to read them, but I can’t help thinking how useless it is to learn anything. If only we could take what we know and transfer it to the other reality!”

  Doc raised his eyebrows. “You’d have to stay in the observation box while the insertion program was running. You’re not—”

  She shook her head. “No, no. I’m not stupid. But if there was some way—” Her gaze lit on her copy of Lexil’s notes. That gave her an idea. Could it work?

  “There isn’t, Dani. It’s too dangerous. Don’t even think about it.”

  “Okay, but what if it wasn’t a person?”

  He looked up at her sharply. “What do you mean?”

  She pointed to the notes. “What if it was, say, a stack of papers? If we left these in an observation box for the other Lexil to find, would he—and the other you—understand what they meant?”

  Doc pursed his lips and squinted one eye while he thought. Then he nodded. “That could work. And our other selves would most certainly be able to understand it. We just wouldn’t understand where they came from. Which parts did he copy?”

  “The parts that show that matter is being removed from the past.”

  “That is a wonderful idea! It gives the other timestream, the right one, a fighting chance.”

  “What do you mean? Is it in danger too?”

  “Yes, of course. If the procedures continue as before, it’s only a matter of time before something important is removed, and the timestream is diverted again. But in another such occurrence, there might not be a Dani to notice the difference.”

  The lighting changed subtly. The wall color switched from gray to a soft yellow.

  “We need to leave it here,” she said, “in one of your sensor boxes. Whichever one you would notice first.”

  “We check them all every day. Anything inside their domes would be obvious immediately. This will work! It has to!” He frowned. “Of course, opening a sensor dome will affect the readings slightly. You’d have to do it quickly. Get Lexil to show you how.”

  She gathered up the notes and her worktablet and went to find Lexil. He had left the library. Probably in the lab. The globe had moved over by the window. Now that she knew what was going on, the changes weren’t so alarming.

  She glanced outside. A tiny bird banked its wings to land on a branch that, abruptly, wasn’t there any more. It fell several inches before recovering enough to fly off and find another perch. The changes were definitely accelerating.

  Would the notes be enough to warn the other Lexil of this danger? Why not spell it out? She found a pen on a table. Her handwriting was rough, unpracticed, but she could certainly leave a message. What should she say? “Hello from another reality”? No. “Your world has been changed, and changed back, based on the observations in these pages.” Better. She wrote that.

  What else? “RIACH must be warned.” No. That was too broad. The message might go to people who wouldn’t understand or who wouldn’t act. Who in RIACH would care and have the power to do anything about it? Kat’s Uncle Royce? Dr. Brant? No, neither of them had the kind of pull to stop anything, from what she could tell. It was the blackmailer who would need to be stopped, and it would take someone outside the institute to do it. Marak. Marak would follow the data through to the end. And he’d need the financial information too. “Contact Ma
rak Wallace and Detective Tom Rayes to stop this,” she wrote.

  There. That should do it. She started to put the pen down, but then, smiling, she scrawled one more line, down near the bottom of the page. It couldn’t hurt.

  She went to find Lexil.

  29

  Escalation

  WALLACE HOME, Lower Queen Anne, Seattle, WA. 1145, Wednesday, June 14, 2215.

  “Things are crazy out there,” said Lexil, as he and Doc arrived at the Wallace house. “We came in the helicar. When I stepped out, a parrot flew by my nose. Oh, and your irisscan has disappeared.”

  “What?” Kat asked. “A parrot?”

  Doc nodded. “The changes to the environment caused by the disturbances are accelerating. Good thing we’re doing this today. In another day or two, we might not recognize things, much less be able to count on them staying in place.

  “How’s Dani?” Lexil asked. “Have you heard from her?”

  “She called on one of her mandatory breaks,” said Kat. “Everything is on schedule at the institute. She’ll be eating in the cafeteria. She’s just waiting for the threat and the evacuation order.”

  Doc cleared his throat. “Dani said you invited Royce.”

  “Yes, I did.” Kat nodded. “I wanted to include him, since he was the first one to take all this seriously. I’ve talked with him a few times in the last few days. He’s been very interested in how our investigations of the timestream differences have been coming along. He was horrified to learn that the institute’s equipment was responsible for the shift, and he was relieved to hear you were helping. He thinks very highly of you.”

  Lexil looked around. No Royce. Well, they had arrived fifteen minutes before lunchtime. Probably wasn’t here yet. “When will he arrive?” he asked.

  “He won’t be coming,” she answered. “He said he had a lunch commitment. He offered, at first, to try to get out of it. It seems odd that people still have plans and appointments, but of course he didn’t know anything when he made the appointment. I just told him today.”

  “I said she should tell him it was the end of the world,” said Marak. “What else could be more important?”

  “So I told him what Dani was going to be doing,” Kat continued. “He asked some questions about timing to be sure people there wouldn’t interfere. Asked if we needed him to request a special assignment for her. I said no, and told him how we had arranged to empty the lab and free her up. And then he said his lunch meeting was with someone from the institute, and he’d better keep it so things would seem as normal as possible.”

  Doc nodded. “I was looking forward to seeing him again, but that makes sense. He has always been a big picture kind of person.”

  “He was worried that Dani would try to stay in the lab at lunch, but I reassured him that she was going to eat in the cafeteria. I should send her a message to remind her of that.” She raised her hand to her temple. Then she put it down again. “Can’t. The institute blocks all the signals from outside. She can’t get incoming calls.”

  “Why would he care about her staying in the lab?” asked Lexil.

  “He said the institute has been increasing the monitoring of employees lately, due to concern about the protests. They’re feeling political pressure. It might flag something if she was seen in the lab, and they might escort her out.”

  “Nice to have someone on the inside, even if he can’t make any changes,” said Marak.

  “Wait. I’m getting a call. Maybe Dani? Nope, Neferyn.” Kat made a face. “Probably calling to confirm. I’ll switch to the house connexion so you can hear.”

  She accepted the call. “Everything ready?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said the voice on the other end. “The timing was a little tricky, but everything is ready to go.”

  “What was the tricky part? Making an anonymous call?”

  “No.” He laughed. “That will be easy. This is an external connexion, untraceable, or I’d never be talking to you! The next call will be to the institute. No, the tricky part was last night. They had some additional monitoring devices set up when we went to place the bombs.”

  “You planted fake bombs?” Kat frowned. “I think the threat would have been enough to clear the place, without those.”

  “Fake? You think I’m going to waste an opportunity like this on fake bombs? Not a chance. These are real, and there’s nothing small about them. They are going to tear the place apart!”

  Kat inhaled sharply.

  The voice on the other end continued. “If it were me, I wouldn’t have called in the threat. I’d have let them all die.”

  “Neferyn!” she said desperately, “this whole arrangement was to clear it out so my friend—my best friend—could be there alone. She will be in the building. You can’t set those off!”

  “Too late.” His voice was calm. “They’re on timers. Can’t get close enough to change that. If you want to call your friend and get her out of there, better do it now.”

  Lexil reached up to call Dani. Kat saw him, and shook her head. He remembered. Dani was off the nexus. He started for the door, then hesitated. “Find out where the bombs are,” he whispered. She nodded.

  “We can’t reach her. We’re going to have to go find her. Where are the bombs?”

  “You’re going to have to hurry, then.” He laughed. Laughed! “One is right by the front entrance. It’ll go off at 1:20. Just enough time to clear the building after my guy calls at 1:05. There are ten others timed at three-minute intervals. They are planted all the way around the perimeter. Yup. Blaze of glory! The whole thing will collapse. I’m going to watch from the hill!”

  Kat ended the call with a look of disgust. “Go!” She told Lexil.

  “Take the helicar!” said Doc.

  “I’ll go with you. I’ll drop you off right at the door,” said Marak.

  Kat started to protest.

  “They’ll be telling me to go report on it soon anyway. Might as well be on the scene where I can help.” He kissed her. “I’ll see you—and Jored—this afternoon!”

  30

  Diversion

  RIACH LABS, Alki Beach, Seattle, WA. 1250, Wednesday, June 14, 2215.

  Dani barely noticed what she had for lunch. She ate only to give herself a reason for sitting in the cafeteria. Lunch would be over soon and then she could make her way to the lab.

  Just a few more minutes now. She picked up her tray and headed toward the exit. If she could be first to arrive in the lab, it would make it easier to hide when the bomb threat came in.

  She left the cafeteria three minutes early, hoping no one would stop her. So far, so good. The back hallway, lengthy as it was, would give her the best chance of getting to Lab D undetected because it bypassed the lengths of Labs A and B, taking her directly to the shorter hallway that contained the doors to all the labs.

  She felt in her pocket for the memory rod. The whole plan, the entirety of the timestream repair, depended on an object that could hide completely in a closed hand. There it was, among the other four objects that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to return to the store room. Soon she wouldn’t need a metal disk to remember Jored. Her spirits lifted. So close!

  The back hallway would take her past the VAO converter. She marveled that such a simple process—recording, rather than just letting someone experience—the past, would have become the source of so much havoc. She hoped that the notes in Lexil’s notebook would be enough to point out its dangers to those in the other timestream.

  It will have to be enough, she thought. It was all they could do from here.

  “Dani!” A voice interrupted her thoughts. She looked up, startled.

  It was Kat’s Uncle Royce. “Kat updated me on all that you’ve discovered in the last few days. I have to say, I’m impressed.”

  “Thank you. I had a lot of help.”

  “So I hear. Seebak and that boy of his. Both of ‘em geniuses, if I’m not mistaken.”

  She nodded. “They are amazing.
”

  “You’ve been to their lab, I hear.”

  “Yes. It’s impressive. Nothing like here, of course.” She wondered how much Kat had told him. So much had happened in such a short time! Did he know what she was doing today? He was a sweet old man, and she wanted to be polite, but she was getting fidgety. She needed to let him know she had to hurry.

  “So this is the day, is it? You’re putting us back on track?”

  Oh good. That made it easier. “Yes, I’m heading for the lab, right now. Did Kat tell you about, uh, getting people cleared out?” She wasn’t sure how to phrase that. She didn’t want to say anything about a bomb threat if he didn’t already know about it. She could just imagine the confusion that would cause, and the explanations it would require, and she couldn’t afford the delay.

  Just then, the speakers in the hallway clicked on. “All personnel, please move to the nearest exit in an orderly manner. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.” The announcement continued with more specific instructions. She was behind schedule. She was supposed to be hidden in the lab by now.

  “Oh yes. That’s your cue, isn’t it? Will you need any help?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But thank you for the offer.”

  “All right then. I’ll let you get back to it.”

  She nodded, and watched him head back the way she had come. Now she would have to hurry. She passed the door to the VAO converter at a fast walk. She heard the machine doing its wind-down noises. It always took so long to shut off! Hurry, don’t stop, she chided herself.

  But the delay had cost her the minutes she needed to get ahead of the crowd. In desperation, she watched the stream of workers go past her on their way out. She needed to cross the hall. She could see the doors to Labs C and D right across from her. But if she stepped into that river, she’d be carried far down the hallway and might not be able to get back until the stream stopped.

  “Excuse me, I need to get across the hall,” she said, trying to push through.

  “This is not a drill. Didn’t you hear the message?” A tall, thin intern grabbed her by the arm. He was stronger than he looked.