Rewinder

by Battles, Brett

  I expect her to get up and walk out. What happens instead is that she stands up, pushes a button on the device, and disappears.

  Despite my promise, my chair flies backward into the wall as I jump away from the table. I want to yell, but I can’t even take a breath. She was there, standing by her chair, and then she was…gone.

  With effort, I calm myself enough so that air can flow back into my lungs.

  It has to be some kind of trick. An illusion created by projections, perhaps. I’m half convinced she was never actually in the room, but then I remember that we shook hands.

  I slowly approach the table again. When I reach it, I lean forward and wave my hand through the air where she was standing. Empty.

  I eye the door and consider fleeing, but my curiosity is strong enough to keep me there. If this is some kind of test, the moment I step out of the room I’ll probably fail and be removed from the program.

  Without turning my back on the table, I fetch my chair and take my place again. My foot taps nervously on the floor while I wait for what happens next. Several seconds pass before I feel a slight movement of air on my fingertips. A split second later Marie reappears in the same spot she was in before.

  I jerk back again, but am able to keep myself from jumping to my feet this time.

  “Good,” she says. “You’re still here.”

  My hand rises, reaching to see if she’s really there.

  She holds out her arm. “Go ahead. You have my permission.”

  When my fingers touch her warm wrist, I yank my hand back.

  “How did you…where…” I barely get these words out before I feel my throat tightening again.

  “May 9th, 2009. Three p.m.,” she says. “The first anniversary of your sister’s death. You visited her grave. Alone.”

  “You contacted my father, didn’t you?” I ask. He was supposed to go with me that day but couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  “I’ve never spoken to your father.”

  “Okay, maybe not you, but someone here. They were probably making the call before you…you left.”

  “Would your father have seen you trace her name on the headstone? Would he have seen you take the blades of grass from above her grave and stick them in your pocket? Would he have followed you after, when you wandered through the village and stopped behind the mechanics shop and cried?”

  I stare, dumbfounded. She can’t know this. She can’t know any of this.

  “Someone told you,” I whisper.

  “We both know that’s not true.”

  “I don’t believe you. Someone must have seen me. You must have found out who.”

  With a patient look, she says, “All right. Why don’t we try a different date, then?”

  I open my mouth to give her one, but quickly shut it. What I almost chose was another date she can easily find information on. What I need is something with details only I know. I think for a moment, then say, “December 13th, 2013, 4:15 p.m. The Shallows.”

  “Don’t go away.”

  After a few taps on the Chaser, she disappears again. This time I barely move when she vanishes. I wait a few seconds, check the air above her chair again, and confirm it’s once more empty.

  When Marie returns, she’s holding the Chaser in one hand and clenching something in the other.

  She says, “Quarry,” and sets an old cookie tin on the table.

  It’s impossible.

  There’s no way.

  And yet as I pick up the tin, I know it’s the same one I kept hidden in the rocks at the edge of the old abandoned quarry. The scratches, the dents, the worn paint are all exactly as I remember them.

  I’m scared to open it but I do anyway. Inside are pictures of my mother and sister, a few odd coins, and the dried blades of grass from my sister’s grave. In the excitement and mystery of the day I received my test results, the tin was the one thing I forgot to get before leaving to meet with Lady Williams and Sir Gregory.

  “How did you find this?”

  “You told me where to look. December 13th, 2013. I just had to follow you to the quarry.”

  “Follow me? I don’t—”

  “Is that yours or not?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “Not a fake?”

  I shake my head.

  “Good. Now I need it back.” She snatches it out of my hand and closes the lid.

  “Wait. What are you going to do with it?”

  “Is December 13th the last day you saw it?”

  “No. I stopped there at least once a week.”

  “Then I need to put it back so it’s there when you return.”

  “Return?”

  “I guess, grammatically, the correct word should be returned, but things can get a little…mushy.”

  Before I say anything she’s nothing but empty air again, but she’s gone only a few seconds before she returns without the tin.

  “Will you please explain to me what’s going on here?” I say.

  “Let me ask you, Denny—what’s the most reliable form of historic data?” she asks.

  I think for a moment, remembering my history lessons at school. “Um, eyewitness accounts.”

  “Correct. So wouldn’t eyewitness accounts be the best way to trace the lineages of the great families?”

  “Sure, but it would be impossible to always find—”

  “So a tool that would allow a Rewinder to actually witness events would make the job easier, would it not?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  I stop myself. She can’t possibly mean what I’m thinking she does.

  “You know the answer,” she says.

  “You want me to believe that…” I can’t get the words to leave my lips.

  “Believe that…” she says, locking eyes with me.

  I stare at her for several seconds before I whisper, “That you go back.”

  “Finish it. Go back where?”

  “In…in…in time.”

  Marie smiles as she leans back. “So now what do you think a Rewinder does?”

  I remain silent, both afraid of and excited about the answer.

  “When you complete your training, you, Denny Younger, will be one of those who travels back.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  I MEET UP again with my fellow Rewinders-in-training at dinner in the communal hall. The shocked look on their faces tells me that they, too, have seen the impossible.

  Hard science has never been my specialty, but I didn’t leave my meeting with Marie without asking, “How does it work?”

  As expected, the answer she gave was full of words I didn’t understand, and concepts that tie me up and bury me under their incomprehensible weight. I came away knowing only that the Chaser device is the key and it’ll be my passport to everywhen.

  Dinner is eaten in silence, the only noise made by our forks and knives clicking against our plates. By the time I’m lying in bed in my small, private room, I can’t even recall what we were served.

  I stare at the ceiling, still half convinced Marie’s demonstration was an illusion, and that there’s a logical answer that doesn’t involve trips into the past. But I can come up with no decent alternative, so my mind begins to drift from how could this be to why am I here?

  Obviously, there was something on my initial test that caught the institute’s eye. But what? What answers did I give that brought them all the way across the continent to test me again?

  Thirty-eight hours ago, I was just another new adult from a lowly caste, waiting to be told what society thought my life should be. If given a billion chances, I would’ve never guessed where I am now.

  __________

  FOR THE NEXT seven days, we’re subjected to a regiment of lectures in the morning and testing in the afternoon.

  During the lectures we learn that the existence of the Chaser device is known only to those working for the institute and the king himself. “This is the secret we must guard at all costs,” Sir Wilfred tells us on day two.
“If a Chaser were obtained by the wrong person, the results could be catastrophic. For this reason, you are all restricted to the institute grounds until the end of your training. After, any outside travel will need special permission. And know this—it would be an extreme understatement to say the penalty is severe for exposing our secrets to outsiders. Have I made myself clear?”

  On another day, he tells us this penalty is not the only threat we live under. “If, at any time, you use your Chaser for something other than institute business, you will face disciplinary actions that could result in your removal from the program.”

  “So we’d be kicked out of the institute?” Lidia asks.

  The look on Sir Wilfred’s face is the most serious I have ever seen. “No one ever leaves the institute. The responsibility you’re being granted is so much larger than you can even imagine. If you feel you cannot handle this, you must let your supervisor know immediately.”

  I’m fairly certain these first lectures are designed to scare us, something I find unnecessary. I don’t know about the other trainees, but there are so many inherent dangers in traveling into history—disease and war, just to name a couple—that I don’t need any added threats to put the fear of God in me.

  As for the afternoon tests, the best word I know to describe them would be thorough. Each exam contains hundreds of question and is focused on a different period of history. Even with all the independent studying I’ve done over the years, I’ve never been more aware that my education has been insufficient. There are questions about things I’ve never heard of, points of history so precise I wonder how anyone can even know the true answer. But then I remember Marie disappearing in front of me, and realize that every detail of the past is knowable. For every test, we’re given four hours to finish. I’m lucky if I’m able to get halfway through in that time.

  When we’re not in the lecture hall or taking exams, we’re encouraged to study. There’s a grand library, three floors high and more than twice as large as the library near my father’s house. It’s located in an annex to the main building. Like several of the other trainees, I’m there as much as possible, poring through the books until my mind forces me to return to my room and drop into bed.

  On the eighth day, the schedule changes, and we’re told we’ll be spending mornings with our private instructors and afternoons improving our physical health.

  Lidia is opening the door to room 18 as I near my own. She glances at me and smirks. “Don’t get too comfortable in there. They’ll probably kick you out soon. I can’t even understand why they chose you. You’re out of place here and you know it.”

  Over the past week, she’s said similar things to me, often in front of others. I’ve been brought up not to respond to taunts from those “better” than I so I have, to this point, kept my mouth shut.

  But I can hold my tongue no longer. “They wanted me here. You probably just bought your way in.”

  I pull open the door to room 17 and hurry in before she can respond.

  Marie is already sitting at the table, her back to the door. In front of her are a stack of books, a closed leather sheath, and a monitor and keyboard. When I take the other seat, she opens the sheath, reads the top sheet of paper, flips it over, reads the second, and then goes through the same routine with the third.

  Before she even finishes the last, she says, “I’m impressed.”

  “I’m sorry?” I say.

  “Your tests. You’ve done very well.”

  “Right,” I say, sure she’s trying to be funny. “I’m a genius.”

  She looks up. “I didn’t say that. But you are far above the average for your group. In fact, you came in first.”

  Now I know she’s lying. She’s just trying to pump me up before dropping the hammer and telling me the institute has made a terrible mistake.

  “Here,” she says.

  She pulls one of the papers out and sets it on the table so I can read it. It’s a list of all those in my group, with a number next to each name. My number is highest, by a considerable margin.

  “Believe me now?” she says.

  I pick up the paper and stare at it. “There must be some kind of mistake. I didn’t even finish any of them. I—”

  “No mistake. The tests are extremely difficult. No one has ever finished them.”

  I lay the paper back down and allow myself to think that maybe I did do better than I thought.

  “Your results will make our mornings much easier,” she tells me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The tests are designed to reveal the gaps in your knowledge. And our sessions are, in part, meant to fill those gaps.”

  Perhaps I’ve done well by their standards, but there’s no question my gaps are considerable. “How long will that take?”

  “As long as necessary.” She returns the paper to her sheath and pulls the keyboard toward her. “I thought we’d start with something recent—the late twentieth century. We’ll focus first on our alliance with the Russian Empire and the Mediterranean conflict of the 1960s.”

  __________

  THESE MORNING SESSIONS are mentally draining but I love every minute of them. The afternoons, however, I could do without.

  “Stamina is the key,” we are told, so our physical training sessions always begin with a run. At first, it’s “only” a mile, but within a week we’re doing two and then three and then four. The rest of our time is spent building our strength. One day is chest and arms, and then abs, backs, and legs before the cycle starts over again.

  By the time I finish dinner each evening and drag myself to my room, all I want to do is sleep, but every day Marie gives me something I need to read before the next session, so it’s always several more hours before I can finally lay my head down.

  Marie and I work backward through the twentieth century as the British Empire continued its expansion, annexing the whole of Central America and much of South America after the victorious Spanish War of 1903. From there, we move into the nineteenth century and the rise of the industrial world, led by Britain and fed by the vast resources of its American territories.

  While much of what I learn touches on areas I’ve studied in the past, what Marie presents is a full version, what she calls raw history. It’s not long before I realize that the past I thought I knew, the one all regular students are taught, has been sanitized and dressed up to serve the interest of the realm.

  Case in point—the slave industry here in North America. I, and everyone I know, think that when King James III abolished slavery in 1841, those who had been in servitude were offered the choice of assimilation into British society here in America or a voyage back to Africa, where their ancestors were from. The truth, according to what Marie tells me, is quite different. The choice was offered only to a select few. Most were forced onto boats and shipped across the ocean, where they were dumped in a land they did not know with a language they did not speak. Localized wars broke out near many of these reintegration sites, and more than half of the former slaves were slaughtered. Of those who survived, another third died from hunger and disease.

  This is not the history we were taught.

  “What do you know of Queen Victoria?” Marie asks.

  “She became queen upon the death of her uncle, King William…” I pause, closing my eyes to remember. “…the Fourth, in the late 1830s.”

  “Eighteen thirty-seven,” she says.

  “She was queen for three years until her assassination by Edward Oxford.”

  “The date?”

  Every student knows this one. “June 4th, 1840.”

  Oxford lay in wait for the queen and her husband, Prince Albert, to ride by in their open carriage. The first bullet took her life, while the second ripped through the prince’s shoulder, puncturing his lung. He lived, but only for a few more months. Officially his death was caused by infection from the wound, but the popular story was that he died from a broken heart.

  “And the succession?” she as
ks.

  “James the Third took the throne.”

  She cocks her head. “Surely you were taught more than that.”

  From a young age we’re expected to memorize the order of royalty. Any kid older than eight can recite it, up to at least the early eighteenth century: The four Georges (I, II, III, IV), William IV, Victoria, James III, James IV, John II, Catherine, James V, and, the current king, Phillip II. But she’s right. I do know more.

  “There was something about one of her uncles,” I say as I dig into my memory. “The king of…Hanover. Right?”

  “Correct. Ernest Augustus. The queen had produced an heir the year before she died, a daughter. But since she was still a baby, he claimed the throne should be his.”

  “But that didn’t happen,” I say. “He died before he could be crowned. So did the child.”

  “Correct, again. And how did they die?”

  “Some kind of disease.”

  “Pneumonia? Is that what you’re looking for?”

  “Yes. Right. Pneumonia.”

  “Then you’ll be surprised to learn the king of Hanover was poisoned.”

  “Is that true?”

  “It is.”

  “What about the girl?” I ask.

  “Suffocated.”

  Though the revelations are unexpected, they occurred nearly a hundred and seventy-five years ago, so I don’t feel the need to get too worked up over them. Still, I’m curious enough to ask, “Why?”

  “Why would you think?”

  I shrug. “I guess someone didn’t want either to take the throne. Would it have been that bad if one of them had?”

  “It wasn’t a matter of good or bad,” she says. “Let’s say you’re member of a group that’s not happy with the direction the empire is heading in, and you want to do something about it. Say, in the wake of the queen’s death, confidence in Parliament plummets and a special election is quickly held.”

  I know this isn’t conjecture. It’s what happened in the aftermath of Queen Victoria’s assassination.

  “Now,” she continues, “say that your group is able to secure a majority of seats in the lower house, and at the same time gain influence over a large number of those in the House of Lords.”