Time Series: Complete Bundle

by Claire Davon

  She liked science fiction and had read all the classics, and more. This was reminding her of Looper, or something from Fritz Leiber and his time series.

  Or Terminator. Most likely Terminator.

  Not a happy thought. At all. She had no desire to be Sarah Connor.

  Sarah Connor didn’t time jump though; she was just a woman caught in circumstances and made the most of them.

  A good role model. She could emulate Sarah Connor, the one in T2, anyway.

  Rogald looked at Fiona. “Did she get timesick?”

  It didn’t surprise her that that seemed a reasonable question to all of them.

  “Happens the first time, every time,” Sonder said.

  Rogald looked at Fiona, up and down, seeming to be taking her in. She wasn’t sure where she fell on his scale, but decided she was probably lacking something.

  “That was your first time, then.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, her exasperation hitting maximum, and beyond. “Yes and yes, and I am still not sure you dudes are real. Could someone please tell me what the hell is going on? Short, easily digestible sentences please.”

  Sonder chuckled and put his hands on her shoulders.

  “Let me. I can explain.” He cast a glance at the rest of the Guardians and then over to the Liberators. “Unless anyone objects.” His tone indicated it didn’t really matter if they minded.

  “Please. Short sentences.”

  He moved to Illiria and punched something on his wrist. A data screen appeared in front of him, human size, blue and fuzzy until it resolved to something like a movie screen.

  “At some point in our future, we’re not sure when we will find two artifacts, devices in a remote area of Alaska. As you have seen from the bases they are definitely not created by mankind, or if it is created by humans, their technology is greater than anything we have ever seen. It isn’t discovered by any of the governments at that time, which I think turned out for the best.”

  She saw images flickering, the wrist devices, and some bigger things she imagined were also devices or portals and a box, or at least it looked like a box, about room sized.

  She studied the screen, frozen on the room-sized box, for a minute, trying to make sense of it. “Okay. Two boxes, and lots of wrist devices, but why? Who?”

  She looked at Sonder, who only shook his head, and returned her gaze. His eyes were compassionate, but she could see a thread of worry in his pose.

  He held her eyes for a moment, and then returned to his wrist and punched in a few more things.

  “We don’t know more than that. All we know is that there were devices and they triggered the bases and left us with these.” He showed another slide.

  The next image was a familiar one of the place they had last been.

  “That can wait. What is this about time and time jumping? How do your wrist things do it?”

  Sonder only shrugged. “We don’t know. We can’t take them apart. We just know, once we are part of the team, how to use them. These things give us the ability to jump as far in the future or the past as one of the members of our team has lived. Kind of a built in stopper. We can jump within lifetimes but we don’t seem to be able to go more than a hundred years in either direction from when we were born. We get…insubstantial. However, the bigger portals, the non-portable ones, well…”

  “Your headquarters is one million years in the past,” Rogald said. “Ours is a million years in the future.”

  She coughed and looked at Sonder.

  “A million years in the past? Bet the moon is closer.”

  “It is,” Gire said. “It’s pretty cool. The man in the moon is big.”

  “Ours is on Mars.” Rogald said it quickly.

  She coughed again and sputtered as the words sank in.

  “Time jumping, and…”

  “Parallel universes. Other dimensions. Advanced technology. All or none of those. We don’t know.” Sonder again, who darted a quick glance at Rogald as he picked up the thread again.

  “Oh, sure, of course.” Only her childhood reading and heavy watching of science fiction TV shows and movies kept Fiona from freaking entirely.

  “The time displacement occurs through a sort of parallel dimension of time, we think. We don’t understand how it works.”

  “I hope not.” Fiona thought about the modern-day scientists. “The guys on the Science Network would have a field day with this.”

  ‘”There are far more things to this universe than we have any understanding of.” He pointed to the sky. “They left very little behind, but enough for us to know they are incredibly advanced.”

  “You don’t know anything about them? The ones who left us with this technology?”

  “No, unfortunately. They only left behind the bases, and the wrist portals and coordinates.”

  “Not helpful. Why two groups?”

  The shrug was poetic in its conveyance of a lack of understanding.

  “We don’t know. We get notified of time disturbances. Sometimes there are going to be survivors, which we can utilize. They have to decide if they want to be with us, or them. They,” he looked at Rogald and narrowed his eyes. “They try to disrupt the time flow, try to put their will into it.”

  Rogald snorted. “You are the ones who try to insert your will.”

  Sonder shrugged again. “We keep the time flow clear and free of their disruptions, make sure that what was supposed to happen, happens, and fix things if they don’t go according to plan.”

  “Fix as in.…” The picture Fiona was starting to form in her mind was terrifying.

  “Make sure that if it’s someone’s time, it is someone’s time,” Illiria finished.

  She paled as a full understanding washed over her.

  “Someone, as in me. Someone, as in there weren’t supposed to be any survivors in the trolley crash.”

  “There were survivors,” Illiria corrected. “Not everyone died. There was just one too many. There was a time rift.”

  “Usually, the time rifts are caused by the Liberators.” Gire now, almost hopping up and down in his eagerness to insert his commentary.

  “Or the Guardians.” That was Rogald.

  “We put things back in order.” Sonder’s rebuke was mild, but there was clear history behind his words.

  Then, Illiria’s voice. “You were not supposed to survive the crash. You were not supposed to shift do what we do without the advanced technology.” She said it baldly, without inflection.

  “Guardians want everything to stay static,” Rogald interjected. “They don’t think that the tech should be used for anything other than keeping things the way they are. Imagine! We have the chance to fix things and all we do is make sure time runs the way we think it’s supposed to. Boring.”

  “You want to alter things, you want to fix the timeline without thinking about what the consequences might be. It would be a disaster. You could save JFK, you could kill Hitler, you could do these things, and who knows what that would mean. It could shift something that would mean nuclear war–or worse.” Illiria walked towards Rogald, punching towards his body with her index finger.

  “The Butterfly Effect,” Sonder said.

  “This is your butterfly,” Rogald said, gesturing to Fiona. “Right here. We all saw her shift before you did. She could be the Traveler. She can change things, she can fix them!”

  “She can change them,” Illiria corrected, “If your supposition is correct, and we don’t know that it is. She can’t fix them. Who knows what would happen if she did. You think it would be better, but it could be far, far worse.”

  “Why can’t you.…” Fiona shrugged helplessly. “You all can jump, with those things. Why can’t you fix…whatever?”

  “Yes, we can jump. But there’s something that happens, we are not exactly sure when, about two hundred years from now, that we can’t see. None of us are old enough to go past it and we don’t have anyone from that time frame to jump into it. Any tim
e we have tried we have been stopped before we could reach that time frame.”

  “A thing?”

  “Apocalypse,” Sonder put in. “We think. We can’t jump there without someone from that time. We cannot reach that time frame with our wrist devices even if we had someone who could take us there. The big ones take us only forward and back to our bases. We have seen, things, but we don’t know.”

  “She could, though. She can do it without these,” Rogald gestured with contempt to the wrist machine. “She can go and find out and stop it. She can fix things.”

  “Or destroy them. We don’t know what it is. We don’t know what happened. As long as we don’t know, we are going to stay the course. Damn it, Rogald, it could destroy everything.”

  “Or save it.”

  “Or make it worse.”

  Rogald turned to the leader of the Guardians, who still had her finger pointed towards him. “Illiria, isn’t that what we’ve been waiting for? All the times you check on things, all the times I try and change them, and you stop me, isn’t that really what we’ve been doing? Looking for an answer? This is our answer–she is our answer.”

  “I thought you wanted her to bring back antiques created by Leonardo Da Vinci, but you’re talking about the Event. You want her to jump to the Event and stop it.”

  It was Sonder’s voice. He moved to Fiona’s side and, in a move that surprised her, took her hand in his and laced his fingers with hers.

  “Of course. What else would you do with a freelance time jumper? With the Traveler?”

  “I am not yours to ‘do’ anything with.” Fiona tried to keep her voice level, but she knew it came out strident.

  It was the first time Illiria had looked at her with anything other than veiled contempt. She gave Fiona almost a glance of pity laced with a reluctant respect.

  Rogald turned from his stare down of Illiria to look at Fiona again.

  “Fiona, you have no idea what this means. What you mean. There is no question you will be used. Which of the groups uses you is the only question. If you really can do what you seem to be able to, your power is something we have been searching for in vain, until now. Our records of ‘The Event’ are sketchy and mostly based on uncertain data since none of our jumpers, in any age, have any direct knowledge of it, but it is real and it is very, very scary. The only other thing that is clear is that there is supposed to be a jumper, someone that can do what we do but by him- or herself. The Traveler. You. Finally.”

  To Fiona’s surprise, Illiria nodded.

  “It is scary, Rogald, we agree on that. The time stream is not ours to try and fix. If she is the Traveler, then the fact that she can change it is far worse. We can’t.”

  “Why not?” he shouted, throwing an arm towards Fiona. “Why not? We haven’t had the ability until now, the portals won’t take us there and we have no people from beyond it, but why not? Why not her? She can jump by herself; she might not be limited like we are. This is our chance, Illy. Maybe our only one.”

  “You don’t know that she can do it.”

  “You don’t know that she can’t.”

  Illiria inclined her head. “I grant you that. It’s too risky. We have no idea what this girl is capable of. We don’t know what she could change, with unrestricted time jump ability, and what that would do to our future.”

  He seemed to pounce.

  “So you admit that she intrigues you for the same reason she intrigues me. You saw it, Illiria. We all did. She shifted, just before the rest of you did. She shifted, without any help. You saw it. She is a miracle.”

  Illiria said nothing.

  “I think that this has gone far enough.” Sonder again. “The person you are talking about is right here, and she has a right to make the decision about her future. It’s her life.”

  “It’s ALL of our lives, damnit, Guardian!” Rogald shouted.

  “Not our lives. Our descendants.”

  “It will happen and it will be the end of everything.” Rogald shuddered. “You’ve seen the picture.”

  “I want to see that picture,” Fiona said, trying to follow the thread of conversation. “If I’m hearing all of you correctly, it hasn’t happened yet and won’t happen for a few generations.”

  “But it will happen.”

  “That is the nature of time. Things happen, and then they are history.”

  “Not if you’re a time jumper.”

  It was much too disorienting. She was trying hard to keep it all straight, but everything was coming at her so fast it was like a whirlwind of information buffeting her with its force. “Screw this,” Fiona said.

  Rogald made a gesture and one of his team members nodded. He pressed a button and a moment later, vanished.

  With a set, grim smile, Rogald turned to Fiona. She felt Sonder’s grip tighten and heard Illiria take in a breath.

  “Traveler, you are coming with me,” said Rogald. He reached for Fiona, trying to dislodge Sonder at the same time. “Single or double, it doesn’t matter. You don’t count towards the limit. Better safe than sorry, though.” He motioned towards two of the remaining people.

  Gire and Illiria started to move at the same time Rogald’s two people started towards them, clearly bent on taking her, with or without Sonder.

  Everything slowed down, and stopped, except Fiona. Even Sonder froze. The mist, reminiscent of Brookline, started to descend.

  Fiona tugged on Sonder’s hand, but he didn’t move. It was still flesh and still warm. Everything seemed to go opaque, misty like the air, and then there was a slight howl of displaced air, and the world tilted. The scene around them vanished, replaced by…nothing. Again.

  There was nothing around them in any direction, and it was the kind of dark that scared small children.

  She wasn’t going to scream again. She wasn’t. She knew intellectually that Sonder had to be there, but she couldn’t feel him. She couldn’t feel anything.

  Plop.

  Chapter 11

  They were standing in the same positions they were when she shifted, but within a second Sonder moved, scooping Fiona up and pulling her to the ground, shielding her with his body.

  “Sonder, Sonder, Sonder!” she cried, feeling his warm bulk over her and his arms tight around her.

  “Fiona, we–what happened? Where are they?” He lifted his head and looked at her. “You did it, you really did it. You can shift without the devices.”

  There was a look in his eyes like reverence, or fear, or both.

  “I did. I must have. I didn’t do it consciously, but yes, I did it.”

  He got to his feet in one graceful move and pulled her to hers. With a protective arm around her, he turned to take in their surroundings.

  They were in a forest, not a densely packed forest, but a forest with mature trees and scrub and vegetation in between the trees. There was a thick coat of leaves on the ground, covering bare dirt.

  “Where are we? And when? Do you know?” Sonder asked.

  Fiona took a few minutes and looked around, drinking in the trees, the leaves and the fresh air with a tang of fall in it. There was a tree in front of them, and in the distance, they could see a mountain, and a bigger range behind it. Behind them and to their right was a large sprawling house and barn, showing signs of wear and in need of paint.

  She knew then. She’d seen pictures from when her mother was a girl. “Pepperell.”

  He just looked at her, and cocked an eyebrow.

  Oooh, that was a nice move. She wondered what he would look like with his eyebrow cocked, but with a different kind of meaning. Preferably one when he has no clothes on.

  She shivered at the thought.

  “Are you cold? I could find…something.”

  He looked around helplessly.

  “Pepperell is a Massachusetts town on the New Hampshire border. My mother spent a few years here when she was a girl. It’s probably built up now, but back when she was a kid, it…” she gestured around, “...looked like this. He
r parents were big into photography, so we have a million rolls of film that were shot throughout her life, and this town is no exception. Small town, lots of forest. There are caves somewhere, but I never went to Pepperell, so don't know where they are. There’s a story about one of the houses, that it’s haunted. I guess I wanted to go somewhere safe, and quiet, and thought of Pepperell.”

  “Nice.” He said it approvingly. “They haven’t had time to do a thorough background check on you and, even if they do, they are not going to put the pieces together right away. We have a little time.”

  It sounded funny, the idea that they had little time when time seemed to be abundant, but she let it pass for now. Instead, she gestured to his wrist.

  “What about that thing? Can it track you?”

  He looked down at the black device. “It’s off and I am going to keep it off. I don’t always need it. In this case Illiria was the one that jumped, and my time device was to help get us back. Unfortunately, the best answer is that I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. We’ve never had a situation before where one of us was separated from the others like this. When we travel, it’s always together. I’ve never had to test it.”

  It would have to do. But even while she thought it, she felt another shift, one that seemed to cloud her time path, obscuring their destination. She concentrated on the shift, pouring energy into it and felt a dark wall slide shut in the route between where they had left and where they were now.

  She was going to have to learn a hell of a lot more about what on earth it was that she could do. But, for now–Sonder.

  He looked around and nodded, a smile widening on his face.

  “Damn, this is green. We’ve jumped to places with forests, of course, usually Asia or Africa. I’ve never been to an East Coast forest before.”

  The question, sitting there begging to be asked, was too tasty.

  “Come on. We are too near the house. If I am right, this path,” she gestured to a path branching off from the driveway and leading down the hill, “should take us into the forest. We should get off the main path.”