Erasing Time

by C. J. Hill

  How odd.

  Sheridan blinked some more, hoping this might further change the scene. A man with fierce eyes and black-and-gray-striped hair stepped away from the others. He came toward her, frowning.

  Sheridan watched him, trying to keep him in focus. “Apparently, I didn’t make it to heaven.”

  “What?”

  It was only then that Sheridan noticed Taylor suspended next to her in the glass booth. She groggily lifted her head and opened her eyes. “Where are we?”

  “My first guess is hell, but I’m not sure yet.”

  The man in front of the wall spoke to them. “Wet es yerr yama?” As his lips moved, Sheridan could see his nostrils flaring but couldn’t make sense of what he’d said.

  “What?” Taylor asked, half slurring the word.

  “Yerr yama?” he repeated. “Wet es yerr yama?”

  What language was he speaking?

  Taylor gave a shudder and jolted into wakefulness. She put her hands along the glass wall in front of them, leaning toward it. “Where are we?” Her voice rose sharply, as though just realizing she should be panicking. “Let us out of here!” She hit the wall with the palm of her hand. It made a pointlessly small smacking sound.

  The man with the black-and-gray-striped hair turned to the men behind him and motioned a couple of them forward. “Jeth, Echo.”

  Two men broke away from the group and walked toward the glass wall. The first guy was perhaps only a few years older than Sheridan, with broad shoulders and light-blue hair that grew darker toward his shoulders. A turquoise crescent moon curved around his left eye and down his cheekbone, making his blue eyes stand out with vibrant color.

  He studied them with open amazement, his gaze taking in their every detail.

  The other man was middle-aged and slightly shorter. Dark-maroon hair receded over a high forehead, and a row of large green dots traveled down his face. He smiled up at them. “I. Am. Jeth. Don’t. Be. Afraid.” He enunciated each word slowly. “We. Are. Not. Hurting. You.”

  “We’ll be the judge of that,” Taylor said. “Get us out of here.”

  Jeth looked at them blankly. “The judge?”

  “Let us out!” Taylor shouted.

  Jeth’s speech relaxed as though he was finally confident they could hear him. “We have a few questions before you’re released. What are your names?”

  Taylor kicked the wall, with no better results than when she’d hit it. “Let us out now!”

  Sheridan put one hand against the wall’s surface, looking for a door out. She didn’t see one. They were in some sort of cage, and screaming and kicking wasn’t going to help them. “I’m Sheridan Bradford.”

  A whole roomful of brows furrowed.

  “And the other girl with you?” Jeth asked.

  Taylor was still kicking the wall, so Sheridan answered for her. “Taylor Bradford.”

  Now not only did the brows furrow, but heads shook and gazes dropped. Only Jeth and Echo seemed unruffled by the news. Jeth shook his head philosophically, and Echo—although he tried to hide it—smiled.

  The men in the background turned to one another, talking in so many different conversations that the room rumbled with noise. The man with the black-and-gray-striped hair marched from one group to the next, spitting out words. He looked like he wanted to hit someone.

  Sheridan brought her attention back to Jeth and Echo. “Who are you? Why are we here?”

  “You’re here,” Echo said with a smirk, “because the Time Strainer doesn’t work as well as it’s supposed to.”

  Taylor took a break from smacking the walls. “Time Strainer?” she repeated. “What are you talking about?”

  “The year is 2447,” Jeth said.

  Taylor shook her head, but her eyes grew worried. “Time travel is impossible. It’s a scientific fact.”

  Jeth gave a bemused shrug. “We were surprised too.”

  This wasn’t happening. It was an elaborate prank. Someone had made that big ball of light appear in her room, had brought Taylor and her here, put them in this glass cage, and rigged things so they floated in air like gravity didn’t exist....

  Oh no.

  You couldn’t make people float in air. This was real.

  They were in the future.

  On one hand this was probably better than, say, being dead. Even as fear pushed through Sheridan, pounding in her stomach and making her ears ring, another part of her breathed out the word opportunity. Some people dreamed of the future, would give anything to see it, and here she was in it. The future.

  She saw a stark white room and a dozen people who looked like clowns who had gone bad.

  It was no good being optimistic about this. She didn’t want to find out about the future. She wanted to go home.

  Jeth was explaining the Time Strainer to Taylor. “The scientists expected it to retrieve a man—Tyler Sherwood—but instead it brought us you.” He shook his head. “It’s the machine’s first use. Obviously it still has some problems.”

  Taylor had gone so pale, her red lipstick looked like two bright slashes across her mouth. She gaped at the men and didn’t speak.

  Usually Taylor said whatever she thought, uncensored. Sheridan was the one who chose her words carefully. But in Taylor’s silence, Sheridan found herself stepping into her sister’s role. “Problems? What sort of crappy search engine does your machine have? It can make people time travel but it can’t tell the difference between a man and two girls?” Her voice rang with accusation. “Like what—it just grabbed the first two people whose names sounded remotely like the right ones?” She rubbed shaking fingers across her temple and took deep breaths. “You’re going to make sure this thing is working before you send us back, aren’t you?”

  She suddenly had visions of ending up in a time and place where people who unexpectedly popped into existence were burned as witches.

  Echo sent her an apologetic smile. “We don’t run the Time Strainer. We’re just here as translators.”

  Jeth had taken a step to the side of the glass booth to get a better look at her profile. “Judging from your clothes, I’m guessing you came from the early twenty-first century. Am I right about that?”

  Sheridan let out a huff of exasperation.

  “Late twentieth century perhaps? They were similar in so many ways.”

  Sheridan glanced at Taylor for direction—for something—but found her sister staring forward with a vacant expression.

  Taylor, who’d always been the one to take control of any situation, floated limply in shock. Sheridan grabbed hold of her arm. “My sister is sick,” she said. “We need to go home now.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jeth said. “The scientists are monitoring your medical information.”

  As far as Sheridan could tell, the scientists were too busy being chewed out to pay attention to anything else in the room.

  Echo must have thought the same thing. He said, “I’ll ask if it’s all right to release you.” He turned and walked to where the man with the gray-and-black-striped hair stood berating the others. Echo spoke to him, motioning toward Taylor. The man spared Taylor a fleeting glance, then turned back to the others and continued his reprimands. It was clear he didn’t care what state Taylor was in.

  Sheridan tugged on Taylor’s arm. “Are you okay?”

  Taylor shook her head and shut her eyes. “No,” she whispered. “No. No. No. No.” Her breathing was too fast, too shallow.

  Sheridan turned back to Jeth. “Do something for her.”

  “We are,” he said, then tilted his head. “What you’re wearing—this was casual wear, yes?”

  Sheridan was about to launch into further protests, this time punctuated by hysterical screams, when a metallic clicking sound echoed through the chamber. A hot breeze swirled around them, and then with a whoosh, she and Taylor dropped to the floor.

  Sheridan landed on her feet. Taylor did too, but wobbled. She kept repeating, “No,” and each time, the word got softer, like pain
was whittling it down. Sheridan held on to her sister to steady her.

  Echo and two black-clad men walked toward the booth. When they were close, the front wall slid open. Jeth motioned for Sheridan and Taylor to come forward.

  Sheridan hadn’t realized how tall everyone was before, but now that she stood on the ground, she could tell that even the shortest men were over six feet tall. She held on to Taylor tighter, as much for security as to support her. Sheridan noticed another thing about the men. Most of them wore white badges with long rows of numbers on them.

  Jeth held out a hand to Taylor. “Come with us.”

  Taylor didn’t seem like she could walk, but Sheridan pulled her forward anyway, and they stumbled out of the glass chamber. The door swished closed behind them. The two black-clad men each raised an arm, holding out dark boxes in their direction.

  A gift? Perhaps it was something people needed here in the future. Sheridan warily reached out to take one.

  Instead of giving her the box, the man yanked his hand away and barked out something she couldn’t understand.

  Echo stepped in front of her, shielding her from the man. Meanwhile, Jeth spoke to both the black-clad men in fast, reprimanding words until they lowered their black boxes.

  Then Sheridan understood. The boxes weren’t gifts; they were weapons.

  Taylor went completely limp. She’d fainted. As Sheridan struggled to keep her sister from falling onto the floor, Jeth came over and scooped Taylor up in his arms. He motioned to the room’s door with a tilt of his head. “Come.”

  What choice did she have? She didn’t want to stay here with the black-clad men, or the man with the black-and-gray-striped hair who was yelling at everyone. Still, she didn’t move. Leaving the Time Strainer would be leaving the link she had with her home, with her own time.

  Echo reached over and took her hand. “We’ll help Taylor. Don’t worry.” He gently pulled Sheridan toward the door. “Come this way.”

  She looked back at the glass booth one last time, then allowed Echo to guide her out of the room.

  chapter

  4

  The group went into a hallway whose ceiling, walls, and floor shone like pale glazed marble. Sheridan wondered how people in the future managed to keep buildings so clean. She glanced at Jeth’s and Echo’s shoes. They looked more like bedroom slippers than real footwear.

  Well, there you had it. In the future, people assaulted their hair with color but kept their floors pristine. All those years of civilization were not wasted.

  It occurred to her that she should find out what sorts of important events were coming. Wars, accidents, natural disasters—things she could warn people about once she got back home.

  Of course, that would be changing the future, and she’d read enough sci-fi novels to know people were touchy about that. Perhaps these men wouldn’t let her go back for that reason. Perhaps she already knew too much.

  Echo still had hold of her hand. He slowed his pace and let Jeth and Taylor pull farther ahead. “While a med helps your sister,” he said in a hushed tone, “one of the Strainer scientists will speak to you. If you can, don’t let him know that you’re twins.”

  With Taylor’s differing hair, eye color, and makeup, strangers didn’t usually pick up on the fact that they were identical twins. Echo had.

  “Why?” Sheridan asked.

  “Let him believe you’re two separate people.”

  “We are two separate people.”

  “You have the same DNA,” Echo said patiently. “To the scientists, that makes you one person. If they think the Time Strainer malfunctioned so badly it brought two different people, maybe they’ll hesitate before using it again.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, but the intensity in his eyes emphasized his words. “You need to understand—the Time Strainer is dangerous.”

  “Oh, I understand,” she said. “I was the one who was just sucked into a gigantic electric crevice. If you know it’s dangerous, why are you helping the scientists with it?”

  “I’m not helping them,” he said. “I’m helping you understand what they say.”

  Sheridan glanced at Taylor, worried that if she didn’t keep her sister in sight, she might disappear altogether. “What language do the scientists speak?”

  “English.”

  Sheridan considered this. “I’m pretty sure I know English, and they weren’t speaking it.”

  Echo shrugged shoulders broad enough that her high school football team would have loved him. “Language evolves. If someone from Shakespeare’s time had visited your day, would he have understood you?”

  She supposed not but didn’t answer his question. “How come I can understand you?”

  “My father and I are wordsmiths—historians who’ve studied the progression of the English language. I specialize in you.”

  Her gaze shot to his face, trying to make sense of that. “You … you what?”

  “I mean, your age,” he corrected. “I specialize in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”

  “Oh,” she said, relieved. “I was about to be seriously creeped out that there were historians specializing in me.”

  He gave her a sheepish grin. “There might be some. I can only speak for myself. So far, I’ve never specialized in Sheridan Bradford.”

  Jeth stopped in front of a white door, waiting for Echo and Sheridan to catch up. Taylor had opened her eyes and was looking around in confusion.

  “You’re all right,” Sheridan told her. “Well, sort of.”

  When Echo reached the door, he pushed a button on the wall, and the door slid open to reveal a large room. A bed was set up in the far corner. Instead of a headboard, a large computer monitor perched above the pillow. A cart sat next to the bed, full of things that were probably medical equipment. Two men were in the room. One stood by the cart; the other sat at a shiny black table near the door. Chairs connected to the table with large black bars, so they stood suspended above the ground without legs. She’d seen chairs like that at fast food restaurants.

  McDonald’s must have set the standard for interior decorating in the future.

  Well, that explained everybody’s hair anyway.

  Echo led Sheridan to the table. She sat down while Jeth helped Taylor into an adjoining chair.

  The man who’d been at the cart came toward them, his gaze on Taylor. “Wet es har kon de-ce-own?”

  Wet es—“What is.” She tried to follow the rest of their conversation but caught only a word here and there.

  After a few moments of talk, the med went back to the cart, opened a drawer, and took out a syringe with a long needle.

  Perhaps these people took their mistakes seriously. Sheridan thought of the dog pound and how the workers put unwanted animals to sleep. Is that what she and Taylor had become, unwanted animals?

  She must have gasped, because Echo whispered, “It’s all right. The shot is to revive Taylor.”

  It worked immediately. When Taylor saw the man coming toward her, she jerked upright and screamed. The chairs weren’t stationary. Taylor’s chair swiveled and slid backward before coming to a stop. She stumbled out of it, backing up with her hands raised in front of her. “Stay away from me!”

  Echo went after her. He took hold of her arm but didn’t force her to come back to the table. “It’s all right,” he said in soothing tones. “The med has no reason to hurt you.” Jeth also stood but spoke to the med, intercepting him before he reached Taylor.

  The Strainer scientist still sat at the table, watching Sheridan intently. He leaned forward, ready to go after her if she bolted.

  Sheridan stayed seated, glaring back at him.

  Whatever Jeth said to the medic, it worked. He retreated to the back of the room, put the needle onto the cart, then leaned against the bed in a bored fashion.

  Echo led Taylor back to the table. She sat down, still trembling. Jeth patted her hand like she was a lost child. “You don’t need to be frightened.”

  Too late for that
.

  The scientist spoke to Jeth, rattling off incomprehensible sentences. When he was done, Jeth turned to Sheridan and Taylor. “How long did you feel you were in stasis before you arrived at our time period?”

  “Not long,” Sheridan said, unsure who to look at when she answered. “Minutes. Hours maybe.”

  Jeth relayed her answer to the man, and he asked his next question.

  Jeth turned back to her. “Are you experiencing any residual pain?”

  “I’m experiencing a lot of residual aggravation,” she said. “Because no one will tell me when you’re sending us home.”

  “Pain?” Jeth asked again.

  Sheridan lifted her hand, using it to punctuate her words. “Aren’t you guys worried about messing around with the past? You could change something important in history.”

  “Pain?” Jeth asked patiently.

  “No,” Sheridan said.

  Taylor didn’t answer. She held her hand to her temple like she was trying to massage a headache away.

  The scientist gave Jeth his next question. “Are you experiencing any cognitive difficulties due to your reconfiguration?”

  Did an intense desire to scream at the top of her lungs count?

  Echo spoke to his father. “Ask if it’s possible to send them back. They should know.”

  Jeth hesitated, then sighed and gave in. He relayed the question to the scientist.

  The two spoke back and forth for a few minutes, and every once in a while Echo asked a question. His blue eyes were intent as he listened, disapproving. A furrow of concern creased his forehead.

  It gave Sheridan a tight, twisting feeling in her stomach. Maybe the Time Strainer had malfunctioned so badly, it would take a long time to fix it. She and Taylor exchanged worried glances.

  Finally the men finished talking and turned back to the table. Jeth steepled his fingers together. “Back in your time, were you familiar with computers?”