Now, Then, and Everywhen (Chronos Origins)

by Rysa Walker

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Tyson, it won’t matter. I don’t know why those people are there, but I can promise you that they aren’t CHRONOS agents from our future. If we don’t fix this, the government will shut us down and there won’t be any CHRONOS agents at all. They may well shut us down anyway. I guess it’s possible that someone might eventually get hold of the technology for private commercial use. But if so, it’s not the CHRONOS we know. We wouldn’t allow a kid there. And we wouldn’t be simply standing there watching people get murdered.”

  “Really?” I say. “Really? Because at least half the agents I know have done precisely that. How many have made a jump to Ford’s Theatre the night Lincoln was killed? Timothy and Evelyn just filed a jump plan for the Kennedy assassination, and they’re far from the first. Dealey Plaza probably has a dozen agents in the crowd by now. Moehler went back to view the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, and I doubt he was the first, either. Glen was embedded in the local branch of an organization that killed those four little girls in Birmingham. And none of them ever lifted a finger to stop those murders.”

  Angelo seems taken aback by my tone. For that matter, so do Rich and Katherine.

  “But that’s . . . different,” Katherine says. “That’s history. We can’t change it without screwing things up, without ending up in exactly the kind of situation we’re in right now.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe this is their history. Did you ever think of that? My point is that we’ve simply observed things that are morally wrong on many occasions. And not just on a small scale. Slavery, war, genocide. And I don’t think any of us approved of those things. So we can’t discount the possibility that those people are from a future cohort. Maybe they’re trying to figure out how we screwed up the situation so badly.”

  Angelo stares down at his shoes for a moment, and then looks up, meeting my eyes squarely. “Valid point. But if they try to stop what you’re doing—if they interfere with history—then you’ll know, won’t you? Rich is officially in charge on this jump, and Katherine is your senior as well, but ultimately, it’s your call because you’re the one who has to pull the trigger. Use your judgment. And be careful, okay? All of you.”

  Then he leaves, possibly because he can see that I’m not entirely happy to be the one stuck using my judgment, and therefore the one who will potentially have someone’s death on my conscience. Katherine also doesn’t seem particularly pleased. Her mouth twitched downward when Angelo said Rich would be in charge, and I’m guessing it’s because she has exactly the same amount of experience. I jot her reaction down in the column against Timothy’s theory about her personality traits.

  The door has barely closed behind Angelo when three people from costuming show up with appropriate 1960s garb for the three of us. They’re also carrying overnight bags, which should have identification, cash, and everything else we’ll need for a few days in 1966. The two costume techs I recognize both seem disgruntled, probably because they’re used to shoving us into one of the Juvapods to take care of basic chores like hair or makeup, and that’s not an available option in the isolation units. The time shift clearly hasn’t happened for them yet, and I don’t know if they’re even in a job category where they’ll know about it. CHRONOS bureaucracy can be a bit opaque. Right now, they probably assume we’ve broken some sort of rule that landed us in the tank.

  I’m assigned to the third guy, who is super chatty and introduces himself as Jamal. I don’t remember seeing him before, and I soon find out that he’s fresh out of training. Jamal is still pretty psyched about the new job and asks if I’ve ever traveled back to prehistoric times, because there’s this neat VR game he’s playing where you’re one of the dinosaurs. He seems a little disappointed when I tell him that there aren’t even stable points going that far back. After a jump of that magnitude, a historian would need to rest up before the return trip. No one is crazy enough to want to spend a day or two in an era where a T. rex might decide you look like a tasty lunch.

  Once he has my lenses in and my hair tamed with the gloopy stuff, I go into the back room to change into a rather dull black suit. On the plus side, the jacket has a reinforced pocket to hide the light of my CHRONOS key, and there’s a shoulder holster for the pistol.

  “There are extra lenses in the overnight bag,” Jamal says when I come back into the room. “You might want to carry a pack in your pocket, though. Just in case.”

  “You look like a cop,” Rich says, glancing over at me.

  “He’s security,” Jamal says, a little defensively. “That’s what he’s supposed to look like. We had a photograph from the event.”

  “Rich is joking,” I say.

  Katherine looks at me out of the corner of her eye as her costume tech sprays a toxic-smelling vapor cloud onto her hair. Then the three pack up their gear.

  “He’s right,” Katherine says after they’re gone. “You do look like a cop. Isn’t that going to be a problem if you need to get information from the Klan guys who are protesting out front?”

  Richard snorts. “This is Memphis in the mid-1960s. He’s got identification as a security officer, and he knows their passwords and hand signs. If anything, being a cop improves his cover.”

  I nod. “It’s true. Scoggin said some of the security at this specific event were Klan or at least sympathetic to the cause when he was talking to his men at the bonfire.”

  Katherine glances down at the pockets of my suit jacket, and I realize she’s looking for the pistol. I pull the coat back to reveal the shoulder holster.

  Her brow furrows. “Do you know how to use that thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think you can use it?” she asks. “On an actual person? I saw your expression when you were talking to Angelo about it. You looked a little hesitant.”

  “Of course, I’m hesitant. The truth is, I’m not entirely certain I can shoot those people with CHRONOS keys if they show up. I definitely couldn’t shoot the kid, even just to wound. But those two guys in the photograph outside the Coliseum? If that’s Phelps and Scoggin, like I think, then yeah. I can absolutely pull the trigger.”

  FROM THE DIARY OF KATE PIERCE-KELLER

  November 19, 2070

  Kiernan Dunne died one hundred years ago today, at the age of ninety-two. That information wasn’t in the letter that Other-Kate packed away with the photo album she sent when she returned the three medallions. That letter was written when both of them were still alive.

  For the longest time, I didn’t check online for their obituaries. I wanted to think of them as still alive, somewhere back in time. But eventually curiosity got the better of me.

  I think of him often. Not because I wish things were different. Trey has been the best husband, best father, best friend I could ever have wished for. I love him. I would choose him again, even if there had been no alternate version of me, pregnant with Kiernan’s daughter who would grow up to be an artist. That talent definitely didn’t come from her mother’s gene pool. I can barely draw a stick figure, so I’m sure that’s true for any alternate versions of me.

  My mind naturally strays to Kiernan, and to Other-Kate, anytime I think about alternate paths. Alternate realities. Is there some other timeline where the Harry Keller I met in Delaware was the father of the two little boys running around by the pond—and they will always be little boys in my mind, even though they’d be middle aged by now, with kids of their own, if that reality exists. Is there some splinter universe where Connor was around to see his grandchildren?

  I don’t know. I suspect that I will never know, and it’s hard for me to simply accept it on faith. But I desperately want to believe. And I keep looking for evidence to give me some grounds upon which to base that belief.

  There’s a book in the library called The Physics of Many Paths by Stanford Fuller. It’s not one of the out-of-timeline editions we rescued from oblivion. I picked it up at a bookstore, even though I never paid much attention to Stan Fuller’s program
when it aired. The book sat in a corner, untouched, like so many of my impetuous bookstore purchases, until last week when I saw something online about the author coming to town as part of a symposium on the Many-Worlds Interpretation.

  Stan Fuller claims that he can see the “Many Paths” that gave him the title for his book and his video series. These realities appear as layers, unclear and chaotic until the paths begin to align. Thirty years ago, Stan Fuller made a good deal of money from that purported ability, although I think that was due more to the skill his brother (and cohost) displayed in picking their cases wisely.

  I’m having to work my way through the book slowly, but so far, I’m impressed, even though it never sold many copies. Of course, I am probably far more capable of imagining these different paths, these other realities, than most people, because I’ve seen them, too.

  And most importantly, because I want to believe those two little boys still existed, somewhere, even after I fixed the timeline and made them disappear.

  ∞18∞

  MADI

  BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  NOVEMBER 11, 2136

  “You felt it, too, didn’t you?”

  Jack and Alex both jump, almost in unison, and turn to face me.

  “Damn,” Alex says. “Give us a warning next time. First the alarm goes off, and then you scare the hell out of us.”

  The amber light behind the glass doors of the bookshelves is pulsing as the computer blares out an odd sound. Part of a song, maybe? Ba dum. Ba dum. Ba dum ba dum ba dum ba dum.

  “How’s she supposed to warn us?” Jack asks. “Normally, we’d still be staring at the stable point.”

  I nod. “Exactly. Why aren’t you staring at the stable point? It’s only been a few seconds since I left. And can you turn that noise off, please?”

  “The noise—and the light show—is why we’re over here,” Jack says, coming toward me. “Are you okay? You don’t look okay. What happened to your dress?”

  I glance down at my torn sleeve. “Oh. I was pushed in front of a parade float. On accident. This kid in a fur hat—the kind with the animal’s tail hanging down the back?”

  “A coonskin cap?”

  “Yeah, I guess? Anyway, he bumped into a fat man, who stumbled into two other people, who then stumbled into me, and I wound up sprawled on the pavement. The truck was able to stop in time. Although I guess that’s obvious. Otherwise I’d have far worse than a torn sleeve, wouldn’t I?”

  I laugh nervously. He reaches out to hug me just as I sink down into one of the desk chairs. The result is an awkward half hug, with my face pressing into his ribs. Crossed signals again.

  Alex is staring at the oldest of the computers, an absolute antique, which I’m amazed to discover actually works. I can’t see the display, so I wheel my chair a bit closer. “Before you ask,” Alex says, “I didn’t touch it. We got this weird queasy feeling. Then the lights in the entire room pulsed a few times, and this thing turned on all by itself.”

  “I felt the same sensation—the queasiness, I mean—as I was about to blink out. Only it started with a feeling almost like a fist punched me in the stomach. A really big one, too. I thought it was a delayed panic attack from nearly being hit by the truck. What does all of that mean?” I point to the display, where lines of data are flying upward.

  “We don’t know,” Jack says. “The program launched automatically when the computer started. That heading at the top, though . . .”

  I look closer and see the word Anomalies. Below it, new lines of information keep marching steadily toward the top of the screen. Alex taps the display and drags his finger down several dozen times until we see the beginning of the feed. When he lifts his finger, the scroll begins again, so he swipes once more and keeps his finger pressed against the display so that we can read it.

  03241965 James Arthur Baldwin 323534539367372976214409017742 ✓

  The next line is 03241965 Mary Allin Travers, with the name again hyperlinked and followed by the same string of digits and a blue check mark. Below that are three more lines with the same date, different names, and the same long number string, but none of these have the little blue check mark.

  “I don’t know the other names, but Baldwin was a writer. He dealt with race and social justice issues, back in the 1960s,” I tell them. “And I’d have to count those to be sure, but those strings look about the same length as the numbers I see in the last part of a stable-point entry. Montgomery was one of the places I popped into that first day with the key. I remember because the stable point was between these two buildings with curved roofs. I didn’t go out into the crowd, but a band was playing. They were singing ‘This Little Light of Mine.’” I didn’t see anyone or say anything. I just stood there for a moment and listened.”

  “Can you click one of the links?” Jack asks.

  Alex clicks the James Baldwin link, and two news articles pop up, side by side. On the left is a biographical piece—born in 1924, died in 1987. The article on the right begs to differ, however, with a headline that proclaims, “Five Killed at Stars for Freedom Rally in Montgomery.”

  When Alex clicks the link for Mary Travers, we get a similar result. The biography says that she was a member of a folk group called Peter, Paul, and Mary and lived until 2009. Next to it is the same article about the Stars for Freedom concert, which was held where the participants in the Selma march stopped for the night, in the field of a local church in Montgomery. According to the article, Baldwin, Travers, and three others were killed by a sniper. One other person was wounded. All five fatalities died from a bullet wound to the head.

  There are no alternate biographies for the others killed, the ones who didn’t warrant the blue check mark. Instead, there’s the article listing them as casualties of the attack in Montgomery on the right, and very different obituaries, the last one written in 2015, on the left.

  The eighth name on the list has a blue check mark, and it’s one that we all recognize.

  “Is that an anomaly, though?” Jack asks. “Martin Luther King Jr. actually was killed in the 1960s. Or maybe in the 1970s, but definitely around that time.”

  Alex taps the link. Both show that he was assassinated, but the one on the right shows it happening three years earlier, in 1965, and in Ohio, rather than 1968 Memphis.

  These events happened in the US, both in 1965. How could they possibly be the result of my jump to Liverpool in 1957? If the time shift had happened during the jump to Montgomery, that might make sense . . . although, even then, I didn’t interact with anyone. I was barely there for thirty seconds. And I was never in Ohio at all.

  Of course, I’m now remembering Nora’s comment about butterfly wings setting off chain reactions, and I’m a little less certain. Maybe the Coonskin Cap Kid grew up, moved to the US, and became a serial killer. Maybe he developed a taste for murder after nearly getting his first victim at age seven. Or maybe someone did see me on that jump to 1965 and was so freaked out that they went on a shooting rampage. And Dr. King was at the rally in Montgomery.

  “This can’t be anything Madi did, though,” Jack says, echoing my thoughts. “She was in the UK. In the present. Right?”

  “Umm. Mostly. I talked to my mother, and to Nora, both in the present. But the parade I mentioned was in 1957. I wanted to check out that stable point while I was there, since we were talking about cataloging them. That was in Liverpool, though. All the way across the ocean.”

  Alex shrugs. “Normally, I’d say it’s really unlikely that something a person did in 1957, especially so far away, could have such a major impact eight years later. But you were in the middle of a time jump, and it looks like something is now broken. And you were at one of these locations, even if it was earlier. Seems like a pretty unlikely coincidence, so I’m going to have to assume something you did caused the rift. Probably.”

  He lifts his finger from the display. As the names begin scrolling again, one of them jumps out at me, probably because he was the next to earn the blu
e check mark.

  “Whoa. Stop.” I reach out and tap the name. As with James Baldwin and Mary Travers, two articles pop up. Both newspaper articles say that John Winston Lennon was killed. One is dated 1966, however, and the other, 1980.

  A stream of curses that would put Nora to shame flies from my mouth. Jack and Alex both seem a bit surprised. So does Lorena, who is now standing inside the double door that leads to the hallway.

  “What happened?” Lorena asks. “I was getting Yun down for her nap when I got that feeling again. Like before, when Madi created the double.” She glances around the room, maybe looking for a duplicate me.

  “We’re not sure yet,” Alex says. “But whatever it was seems to have autolaunched a program on this old computer. Want to get RJ in here, too, so we can all discuss this together?”

  “He went back over to Joey’s house to grab the stroller. We forgot it was in their storage room. He should be back any minute, though.” Lorena peers in over my shoulder. “What’s this?”

  “Anomalies,” Alex says. “Which are probably connected to Madi’s jump.”

  “I think you can go ahead and change that probably to definitely,” I tell him. “This guy was at the town festival. In fact, the truck that nearly hit me was the one carrying him and the other members of his band. A group called the Quarry Men, although that’s not the name they were using when the group eventually became famous.”

  “Was this Lennon guy hurt?” Jack asks.

  “No. Not at all. He and the rest of the group were out in the churchyard five minutes later, playing for the crowd. I didn’t even speak to him. But it must have changed something, somehow, if he died in August 1966, instead of December 1980.”

  I really wish one of them would argue against my point. Try to convince me that it’s not connected to my trip. But, of course, none of them do, because that would be totally irrational. Jack does give me a sympathetic look, though, like he wishes he could say it.