Erasing Time

by C. J. Hill

  “Tell me,” Echo said, “how many animals from your time period talked?”

  Sheridan’s gaze darted to his eyes to see if he was joking. He wasn’t. “None. Why would you think animals talked?”

  “We have documentation—movies, pictures, stories—that show some animals spoke....” He let the sentence drift off, puzzled.

  “Echo,” she said, “have you ever tried to talk to an animal?”

  “Animals are extinct. The flesh eaters of your time killed them all.”

  She stopped walking, and his hand pulled away from hers. “No. That can’t be right.”

  “I would have liked to see them,” he said, stopping too. “We have programs with computer-generated animals in the Virtual Reality center, but it isn’t the same.”

  Sheridan shook her head—short, quick denials. “People loved animals. We kept them for pets. And we couldn’t have killed all of them. We tried to get rid of mice and rats, and it was impossible.”

  “They’re all gone,” Echo said. “Even the rats.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “You’re wrong. Just like you’re wrong about animals talking. They didn’t.”

  His eyebrows drew together. “We have stories dating back thousands of years. Aesop’s fables. ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ ‘The Three Little Pigs.’ Your time period had Bugs Bunny, Winnie-the-Pooh—”

  “Those are just children’s stories.”

  “Yes, but adults told them to their children.” He cocked his head. “Do you expect me to believe that for generations, across human culture, parents routinely lied to their kids about the communication capabilities of animals?”

  “Yes.”

  He raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “Who would hire three pigs to work construction jobs? They couldn’t hold hammers with their little cloven hooves.” She let out a frustrated sigh. It was unbelievable, really, that she was standing here discussing pig careers. “Don’t you have any nature shows from our time period? Maybe a National Geographic magazine or two?”

  Echo took hold of her hand and resumed guiding her down the hall as though it wasn’t worth arguing about. “Only the records that were transferred from silicon to holographic memory were preserved over the centuries. Unfortunately, most of your programming was destroyed during the information wars of the twenty-third century.”

  “Information wars?”

  “Attacks on computer systems. When a civilization’s internal neural network is destroyed, it’s easy to take over. That’s why information isn’t available to the public anymore. It’s too hard to defend. It’s lucky we salvaged anything from your time period.”

  “Wait—what do you mean, information isn’t available anymore?”

  He wasn’t listening, though. His pace slowed to a standstill and he let go of her hand. He looked at her as though the reason for her denials about animals speaking had suddenly become clear to him. “You were one of the flesh eaters, weren’t you?”

  She nearly denied it. She didn’t want to give him the least bit of leverage in the argument. But he might ask Taylor about their eating habits, and then he would think Sheridan was a flesh eater and a liar as well.

  She lifted her chin. “Believe whatever you want. Apparently that’s what you do regardless.” She set off down the hallway, even though she didn’t know where she was going. “If the animals are really gone, though, couldn’t your scientists have used the Time Strainer to bring some back instead of abducting random people?”

  Echo let her walk a few steps, then took hold of her hand to stop her. He put his other hand on a button by a door, opening it, then led her inside.

  Rows of computers and chairs filled the room. Taylor and Jeth sat in front of a computer watching something on the screen. Taylor looked up when they walked in, and relief swept over her face. She stood up and gave Sheridan a hug. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

  Sheridan returned the hug, then pulled away. “Taylor, tell the truth—did animals ever talk?”

  “What?” Taylor stared at her, perhaps mentally revising her assessment of Sheridan’s health.

  “Animals. Did they or didn’t they wear clothes and speak English?”

  Taylor put her hand across Sheridan’s forehead, checking for signs of fever. “Uh … no.”

  Sheridan turned to Echo and gave him a pointed look. “I told you so.”

  He crossed his arms and walked over to where his father sat, as though standing there reinforced his position. “Two testimonies don’t erase the records.”

  Taylor’s gaze slid back and forth between Sheridan and Echo. “What records?”

  “‘Little Red Riding Hood,’” Sheridan said, “and Winnie-the-Pooh.”

  Jeth leaned back in his chair, considering this. “Perhaps by your period in history, animals chose silence as a sort of resistance.”

  Taylor held her hand up to interrupt the conversation. “Hello—animals don’t talk now, do they?”

  “No animals are left,” Echo said. “The people of your generation ate them.”

  Sheridan wrinkled her nose. “Like I would eat a rat.”

  Taylor went back to her chair and sat down. “If all animals were extinct, the earth’s ecosystems would have crashed to the point that they couldn’t sustain human life.”

  “The ecosystems did crash,” Echo said. “That’s why people live in enclosed cities now—to protect the Agrocenters.”

  “And pollination happens how?” Taylor asked.

  “Done by pollenbots. Miniature droids.”

  “Right,” Taylor said, in the tone she used when she’d decided someone was so delusional there was no point arguing with them. Jeth and Echo didn’t know the tone, but Sheridan did and it gave her hope. As long as Taylor doubted Echo’s explanation, it wasn’t necessarily true.

  “How was food produced in your day?” Jeth asked, leaving the subject of the animals’ demise behind.

  “I don’t know much about it,” Taylor said. She ran her hand through her hair wearily. “Look, is there—”

  Taylor didn’t finish. Both Echo and Jeth were glancing about the room with puzzled expressions.

  “It’s a saying,” Taylor said, and her voice sounded tight. “It means, ‘Listen.’”

  “Look means listen?” Jeth’s eyebrows furrowed together with obvious skepticism.

  “Listen,” Taylor said slowly, “where are Sheridan and I going to stay?”

  Jeth stood up from his chair, stretching. His maroon hair swayed across his shoulders. “I suppose it’s time we talked to the scientists about your accommodations.” He motioned to Echo. “It’s better to ask in person.” Then the two of them walked toward the door.

  “Don’t leave this room,” Jeth called over his shoulder. “The scientists wouldn’t like you wandering the building unescorted.”

  Sheridan didn’t care what the scientists liked. Perhaps this was evident in her expression. Echo looked at her and added, “The Enforcers wouldn’t like it either.”

  chapter

  6

  Jeth and Echo walked toward Lab Fifteen. Echo waited for his father to say something about the girls being identical twins—the coincidence of it, or the irony. Jeth didn’t. Was it possible his father hadn’t noticed? Echo decided not to ask. The subject would lead to his brother.

  “Taylor and Sheridan are quite beautiful,” Jeth said. “I had expected girls from that era to look sickly and weak, malnourished from a constant diet of sugar and fat.”

  “Historians must be wrong about their diet.” Echo didn’t say more about their eating habits.

  “I suppose we’ll find we’ve miscalculated lots of things,” Jeth said. “I expected the girls to be happy to be here, away from the anarchy and danger of their time. Instead they’re quite unplugged about it.” Jeth mulled this over. “I guess the unknown is always feared.”

  “They have a different way of thinking about things. It might be hard for them to underst
and our culture.” Echo was midway through this sentence when he realized the mistake he and Jeth had just made.

  They hadn’t been thinking of the twenty-first-century culture when they left the girls alone in the Infolab. Back in the early twenty-first century, people didn’t have crystals implanted in their wrists. They could move around freely without being tracked. The girls were upset about being brought here, and in all probability they had bolted from the room as soon as Jeth and Echo turned the first corner.

  “Sangre,” Echo swore softly under his breath. At this very moment Sheridan and Taylor were probably wandering around somewhere, untraceable because they had no crystals, trying to … but what would they try to do?

  They couldn’t understand the language, had nowhere to go and no way to even activate food dispensers.

  And if the wrong people found them …

  Echo stopped in the hallway. “We should go back and make sure the girls haven’t escaped.”

  “Escaped?” Jeth said the word with disdain. “Where would they escape to?”

  “Nowhere, but they don’t know that. They don’t understand our society.”

  Jeth and Echo had reached the elevator, and Jeth pushed the button. “I didn’t find them stupid. In fact, I was surprised at Taylor’s intelligence. She learned the computer functions after seeing me do them only once.”

  Echo didn’t move toward the elevator. “I never said they were stupid. I said they didn’t understand.” The elevator door opened. Echo remained where he was. “I’m going back.”

  Jeth stepped into the elevator and waited for Echo to follow. “They ought to have time alone. If one of us stays to guard them, they’ll feel like prisoners. It’s better to let them know we trust them.”

  Echo sighed, looked down the hallway, then stepped into the elevator. As he watched the floor numbers change, he told himself he didn’t have time to worry about these girls. He had other problems. He had plans to make.

  It didn’t work. He worried about them anyway, kept thinking about what it would be like to wake up and find yourself uploaded into another century.

  A few minutes later, they reached Lab Fifteen. Several scientists were there, going over data at various computer terminals. Jeth headed toward one of the lead scientists, and Echo followed.

  The man’s name was Anton. Echo remembered him from this morning because of the red slash zigzagging across his face. Those had been popular last year. Half the city had gone around looking like they’d been gouged in some horrible battle. But lately the color red had fallen out of style. Scientists, like wordsmiths, it seemed, didn’t keep up with fashion trends. Echo might have been wearing red himself if his brother hadn’t been so attentive to fashion cycles.

  And now that his brother was gone …

  Echo felt a sharp pain at the reminder and shook off the thought. It was better not to think of his brother. Every time Echo’s mind wandered in that direction, he felt his concentration, his strength—everything—caving in.

  Think about now, he told himself.

  Anton scrolled down through equations on the screen without noting the wordsmith’s arrival. “Bien … bien … bien,” he muttered. “Sangre, if we’d made a mistake, the stabilizer gains would be off phase.”

  Jeth made a small coughing noise, and Anton looked up. When he saw it was the wordsmiths, he returned his attention to the screen. “Is there a problem with the time riders?”

  “No,” Jeth said. “They’ve recovered from their shock and are already adapting.”

  “Bien.”

  “We’ll need to put them somewhere. Have they been assigned rooms?”

  Anton momentarily stopped scrolling. “We’d planned on keeping Tyler Sherwood here at the Scicenter, but nothing flies right the first time you toss it in the air.” He straightened, caressing the small of his back with one hand. “We should have planned for a failure. We should have strained someone less important the first time.”

  Echo glanced at the computer, his eyes taking in the rows of numbers in a casual manner. “You can’t find Tyler Sherwood at all?”

  Anton frowned and bent toward the screen. “It’s not a simple procedure. Helix says we should go back farther in time, where Sherwood’s signal is more accessible, but if we took him before he was through making his contribution to science—think of the history implosions that could occur. We only have a poquito of time, the smallest of slots to work with. A miscalculation too early could bring us a child.” Anton swiped a finger across the monitor, and the screen changed. “We need to pick up Tyler Sherwood’s signal toward the end of his life.”

  “I’m sure you’ll accomplish it,” Jeth said. “Until then, we’ll take the girls to the Histocenter and work with them.”

  Anton looked around the room, this time lowering his voice and leaning closer to the wordsmiths. “Helix wants us to do a memory wash on them today and erase our mistake altogether, but the rest of us think it’s too early for that.”

  “A memory wash?” Jeth’s shoulders sagged as though the air had gone out of him. “That can’t be necessary?”

  “It’s not wise,” Anton agreed. “You don’t destroy the first experiment just because it didn’t work. You study it to find out what went wrong. That’s the problem with having government officials in charge of the program. They don’t appreciate how science works.”

  Jeth held up one hand in a gesture of protest. “We have the opportunity to learn about history from the girls. Helix must understand that.”

  Anton grunted. “Unfortunately, government officials don’t appreciate history either.”

  “Why do a memory wash?” Echo’s words came out harsher than he’d intended. “The girls haven’t been convicted of any crimes or fanaticisms.”

  Anton’s gaze circled the room again, and he lowered his voice even further. “To keep it a secret. If the public found out about the Time Strainer, it would be one outrage after another. Half of Traventon would be furious we tampered with history, and the other half would be furious we’re not using it to bring their favorite rock band back to life.”

  That, Echo thought, was a generous assessment of the public’s reaction. More likely, 80 percent of the people would think only of rock bands. The other 20 percent were Dakine, who would devote themselves to stealing the Time Strainer so they could use it to alter history to their advantage. Hadn’t the government officials considered that?

  Probably not. Just like they hadn’t considered that there were some things a memory wash couldn’t fix. Even if the girls’ memories were erased, their culture would still be hard-wired into them. They would still speak old-twenties English. They would still have a residual knowledge of how things worked back then and no knowledge of how things worked now. If the scientists didn’t consider this beforehand, they’d realize it soon after. And then what would they do with the girls? Terminate them?

  “Delay the memory wash,” Jeth told Anton. “You might still collect useful information from them. They came from the same period as Tyler Sherwood.”

  “Yes.” Anton said the word slowly, as though he was running intense mathematical equations as he spoke. “That is a peculiar coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “Think what a freeze it would be,” Jeth added, “if you erased their memories and then needed information from them.”

  Anton nodded in measured agreement. “We’ll try to convince Helix not to do the wash until we have Tyler Sherwood here.”

  Jeth smiled. “I’m sure that won’t be long, so we’ll study the girls while we can.” As he turned to walk away, he added, “Beep me when you have Tyler Sherwood, and we’ll come back to translate.”

  Anton nodded again, still with the deep-mathematical-equations look on his face. He didn’t say good-bye as they left.

  Back in the hallway, Jeth set a quick pace to the Infolab. “A memory wash,” he said with scorn. “Government officials and scientists have no understanding of the importance of history. None at all.”

 
; “It’s a good thing that the government works so slowly,” Echo said.

  “Not slowly enough,” Jeth said.

  chapter

  7

  As soon as Jeth and Echo left the room, Sheridan sank into one of the chairs. She felt overloaded, numb. “Is this really the future?”

  Taylor was pacing back and forth in front of the row of computers. “What else could it be?”

  “Maybe it’s a bad dream—some sort of psychotic nervous breakdown from too much studying.”

  “Great,” Taylor said. “That means I’m the one with the breakdown. You never study.”

  Sheridan lifted her chin. “I do too. I study all the time.”

  “You read novels.”

  “I’m in honors English. That is studying.”

  Taylor sighed and waved her hand in dismissal. “I’m probably in some sort of coma right now, while you’re off reading Wuthering Heights and eating potato chips.” Another sigh. “I should have been an English major. A fat lot of good physics did me.”

  Neither of them spoke again, but even their silences were full of meaning. Taylor was working things out in her mind, and Sheridan waited for her evaluation.

  Taylor kept pacing.

  Finally Sheridan prodded her. “Do you think animals are really extinct?”

  Taylor turned on her heel and walked back in the other direction. “The chances of a complete extinction are somewhere between not likely and utterly impossible. People couldn’t have survived for hundreds of years—even in protected cities—if the rest of earth’s ecosystems had been destroyed. Plants, insects, and animals are interdependent, so the fact that there is still oxygen on the planet suggests that to some degree they are still alive.”

  “Then why do the people here believe—”