Now, Then, and Everywhen (Chronos Origins)

by Rysa Walker

  But that’s stupid. I’m only here because someone already decided to shoot Lennon. So there’s no way anything I do now causes the rift.

  At least, I don’t see how it could, but then I’m not the team expert on temporal conundrums. It’s still twenty minutes until six, so I head down to the phone booth on the corner and call the hotel room back in Memphis to get Rich’s opinion. He and Katherine aren’t back yet, which sucks, because a standard phone line is my only way of contacting them in this era, short of sending a message to CHRONOS and having them relay it to Richard via the diaries. Normally, I’d go that route, but given that this isn’t a standard mission, I’m not sure how Angelo would feel about me pulling in other support staff. I could also jump back to headquarters and research it myself, I guess, since the usual safety protocol isn’t in effect. But I don’t know if the override will extend to any local points I set here in Collierville, and I need to get back here, preferably without having to rent another car and drive for an hour. So I just leave a message with the front desk at the Peabody, with the vague statement that I’ll be delayed because I have to attend a late meeting, and head back to The Dixie Chicken. I’m pretty sure Rich and Katherine would both agree that this meeting is my best chance to get information on the plot to kill Lennon, even though I hadn’t been expecting to find Phelps and Scoggin here.

  Anyway, Angelo said to use my best judgment. It’s telling me there’s no way anything I do right now, after a massive time shift, could have caused the rift. If that’s wrong, then our timeline is illogical and should probably end anyway.

  Five men, including two who match Glen’s description of Buster—fat, tall, and balding—are at the counter placing their orders when I step back inside the restaurant. Billy gives me a little wave and then nods his head toward a door at the back of the room. I’d assumed it led to a storage area, but the door is open now, and I see two long tables inside a dimly lit room. Three men are already seated, digging into their chicken dinners.

  I’m a little hesitant about going in, but then my eyes adjust to the lighting, and I realize that one of the three men is Lenny Phelps. He’s sitting next to two tall, beefy guys who could be brothers.

  “Hey, Troy!” Phelps says. “I’ll be damn. What the hell you doin’ in Collierville? You planning to sell Roberta some of them Cutco knives?”

  The guy on his right snorts. “Roberta don’t need no more knives. She’s dangerous enough as it is.”

  That earns a few chuckles from everyone except Phelps, so I’m guessing Roberta is his sister, and the guy on his right is Billy’s dad, the klaliff, or vice president, of the group.

  “Don’t have them with me, but if anyone here’s in the market, I’ll drive back over with my display case. It’s been a slow month. And no, I didn’t even know you were here,” I say honestly. “I’ve just gotta kill the weekend in Memphis, due to an appointment Monday morning, and I remembered what Scoggin said about that concert. My uncle told me I might want to look up Buster Wilson while I’m in the area. Apparently, they had an adventure a few weeks back, and Uncle Glen thought he might be able to help me get in on the action.”

  “Well, you won’t have to look far,” Phelps says. “Buster’s ordering dinner right now. But I can promise you won’t get a decent conversation out of him until he’s polished off his fried chicken.”

  Maybe it’s the smell of the fried chicken and hush puppies in the room. Or maybe it’s just the way Phelps says the words fried chicken. Whatever it is, I get a vivid flashback to standing in front of the courthouse in Spartanburg, holding the bag with the judge’s lunch, while Phelps looked at me like I was something nasty on the bottom of his shoe.

  Pasting on a big grin, I say, “Can’t blame him for giving priority to dinner. Not one bit. Just finished off a three-piece myself.” I hold up the paper cup. “Good banana pudding.”

  We go through a round of introductions, and, as I suspected, the guy on Phelps’s right is Bill Meeks, Billy’s dad, and the other guy is his brother, Frank. The fact that they don’t bother with all of the password-and-handshake hoopla is reassuring. If Phelps had any doubts about me, he’d have at least made a show of it, since he’s the one vouching for me.

  “Is Scoggin with you?” I ask.

  Phelps gives me an odd look. “Why would he come with me to visit my sister?”

  “No reason. Just thought after everything he said at the bonfire the other night, he might be interested in helping put a little fear of Jesus into those mopheads.”

  He laughs. “Nah. That was more to pull out a crowd than anything else. Get a bit more cash into the legal-defense fund. He’s happy to leave the piddly crap for you young’uns still tryin’ to prove yourselves. And young enough to run so you don’t get caught. I’ll introduce you to Buster, and you’re welcome to join us protestin’ out front, but the one you need to talk to if you want in on the real action is out there behind the counter.” He nods toward the open door, where I can see Billy Meeks at the soda fountain. “Billy’s got the whole thing planned. They picked a box of tomatoes last week and left ’em out in the trunk so they’ll be nice and soft. Got some light bulbs to hurl off the balcony. Couple fireworks, too.”

  “Roberta told Billy he ain’t goin’,” Bill Meeks says. “She thinks it’s too dangerous.”

  Phelps rolls his eyes. “Let me deal with Roberta. Maybe I need to remind her about some of the shit she got up to when she was his age.”

  Bill casts an uneasy eye toward his son out in the main dining room. “Well, to be honest, Lenny, I ain’t too keen on him gettin’ involved, either. He starts classes at UT in a coupla weeks. Some fool stunt like this could keep him out, and then he winds up drafted.”

  Phelps sniffs dismissively. “Billy’s eighteen. I reckon he’ll do as he pleases.”

  Bill seems like he’s going to argue the point some more, so I jump in quickly with a question. “So this is just a harassment thing? Rotten tomatoes and the like? You’re not here tonight to plan something more . . . substantive?”

  “Substantive,” Phelps says, nudging Bill with his elbow. “I think we got another college boy here. You mean a wreckin’ crew?”

  “Yeah. After what you said at the bonfire . . .”

  Phelps shakes his head. “You think we’re going to do something major with the feds watching us this close? You think we’d take that kind of risk over a smart-ass remark by some hippy singer? That’s definitely not the sort of publicity we need right now. You kids may be all hot-blooded and rarin’ to go, but you need to cool your jets. I get it, though. Like I said at the bonfire, I’d just as soon line all four of ’em up and shoot ’em. But this ain’t the time.”

  FROM THE GENETICS WARS: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY, BY JAMES L. COLEMAN (2109)

  The First Genetics War began in Africa, in 2071, between Akana and the small nation of Tchad, a member of the East African Union (EAU). A series of border skirmishes had been going on for several years, and the Akan government accused Tchadean forces of systematically raping women taken prisoner during their incursions onto Akan territory. The Tchadean government vehemently denied this charge, and the Akan military was reluctant to launch a direct attack, for fear of upsetting their shaky peace with the EAU. An Akan scientist named Elizabeth Forson, whose cousin had reportedly been raped and murdered in one of these attacks, approached her government with an alternative plan for retaliation. She had developed a virus that would genetically target Tchadean males, killing some and rendering many others sterile. According to testimony by her subordinates at the postwar trials, Forson believed the virus to be a very poetic form of justice given the nature of the crime.

  Within six months, border incursions ceased almost entirely as the virus swept through the Tchadean ranks. The civilian population, including male children, were also hit hard, and the gender-specific nature of the virus prompted an investigation by EAU intelligence forces. When the plot was revealed in 2073, Tchad declared war on Akana, pulling in the EAU as a resul
t of their collective security agreement. International sanctions were also enacted, because Akana’s use of the virus violated a UN biological weapons treaty.

  A massive war, using mostly conventional weapons, erupted on the continent. In 2074, the EAU army, bolstered by troops from several UN members, invaded Akana. The government surrendered, but Forson and several other high-ranking officials escaped to the south.

  Once the hostilities ended, the UN assumed a peacekeeping role. Angry that Europeans had yet again interfered in African affairs, Forson designed another biological weapon, this one aimed at individuals with specific genetic markers inherited from Neanderthal ancestors. The UN peacekeepers of Asian and European descent contracted the waterborne virus, which mutated within days to airborne transmission. Most of those who contracted the disease died in a matter of days. The vast majority of sub-Saharan people, who lacked the Neanderthal DNA, were untouched. A popular uprising in Akana ejected the remaining EAU and UN forces.

  Several infected people traveled back to UN headquarters before the quarantine was put in place, carrying the virus with them. Researchers immediately began work on antiviral countermeasures. By the time they found a cure, the plague had spread to most population centers around the globe. The death toll, which includes casualties from a tactical nuclear attack against Akana in 2079, is estimated at 730,000,000.

  ∞20∞

  MADI

  BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  NOVEMBER 11, 2136

  The other version of me vanishes a few seconds after I blink into the library. She doesn’t look very happy about it, but unlike the first duplicate me, who vanished after my trip to Estero, this one almost certainly understood that she was going to lose this round of quantum Darwinism.

  Jack is watching when she disappears. And I’m probably imagining it, but I’d swear he looks a little wistful. Like he’ll miss her. And that kind of bugs me, which is truly ridiculous.

  One glance at the computer, however, tells me I’ve got far bigger problems than being unreasonably jealous of my former other self. The Anomalies file is still on the ancient display, and the totals don’t appear to have budged in the slightest.

  “Damn it.” I pull up the interface on the key again. “Guess I’m going back to Nora’s house.”

  “You should really take a break first.” Jack goes over to the liquor cabinet near Grandpa James’s desk. “Maybe a little bourbon. Or brandy?”

  “Neither. I need to get this over with.” I nod toward the computer. “I’ll take a break when that database no longer exists.”

  He pours the brandy anyway, and I can tell he wants to argue that we need to talk all of this through. Make sure we have the best plan. But he’s not the one stuck with making the jump. My hand is already shaking so hard that it’s difficult to keep the display stable. And while I know that probably supports his assertion that I should take a break, I need to keep moving. Otherwise, I think there’s a very real risk that I’ll lose my nerve.

  Once my hand is steady, I pull up the location in Nora’s front room and begin rolling the time back to last night. The stable point is dark, though, and it shouldn’t be, since we were in that room until around midnight. Then I remember that my days and nights are no longer in sequential order. Since I went backward a day when I returned to the present, it’s tonight that I’ll read Kate’s diary to Nora. Although the wee hours of tomorrow morning might be the best time to jump in, after Nora is asleep and I’m in bed next to Mercury, watching the video that looks disturbingly like Thea and this Prudence person.

  “Is something wrong?” Jack asks.

  “Aside from everything?” I shake my head. “It’s just that I have a lot to tell you guys once this is fixed. But I can’t think about that now.”

  When I look back down at the stable point, however, I realize that something is wrong. The furniture in Nora’s front room is entirely different. In fact, the very shape of the room has changed. Someone has knocked out the wall separating off the dining area, turning it into one large room. And that room is dark. Abandoned, even. I scan forward for days and see no sign of activity, aside from lights coming on at set times, probably due to a security setting.

  Nora’s not there. This doesn’t even look like her house anymore.

  And more to the point, I’m not there to intercept with the warning.

  “Alex, check the database for my grandmother Nora Coleman Grace. Born—”

  “Already did that,” he says. “She wasn’t affected.”

  “She may not have been erased, but she was affected. Her house isn’t her house anymore. The stable point I set in the front room looks completely different. And we’re not there.” I stop, thinking back to my weird reactions after the time shift. “But I think I already knew that. Sort of. I kept getting a foggy, disoriented feeling every time I thought about the visit, and I had this really strong sense that I’d never gone at all. That my mother and Nora hadn’t been there. That I tried calling, too, but I couldn’t find either of them. And now this stable point isn’t showing Nora’s house.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Lorena says from the doorway. She has Yun Hee on one hip and a shawl slung over her shoulder. “How can there be a stable point at her house if you were never there?”

  “Because there’s a CHRONOS field around the key,” Alex says. “The stable point is just a geographic location combined with date and time. Even if Madi wasn’t there to set the stable point in this timeline, that doesn’t change what’s on the key.”

  “But . . . the change is fairly recent. It was still Nora’s house two Christmases back. Before I jumped home, I saw myself at her house on Christmas Eve. Nora was there. And my dad. I couldn’t hear what we were saying, but everything about that moment was exactly as I remembered it.”

  I enter in that date—December 24, 2134. Sure enough, the Christmas tree is in front of the bay window. And it’s definitely Nora’s tree. I recognize the silver garland and the angel on top. I begin scrolling forward to the point where my father and I enter the room, but Yun Hee starts to whimper again, reminding me that my actions erased that child. My hand shakes, breaking up the interface.

  Lorena sinks down onto the couch and flips the shawl over the baby. After a moment, Yun Hee hushes and begins to nurse. I put the key down on the desk and take deep breaths, searching for some inner calm.

  “If you’re thinking about going back two years,” Alex says, “that’s not a good idea. It could make things worse.”

  I give him an incredulous look. “Worse than this?”

  “Alex is right,” Jack says. “We need to find a way for you to undo what happened. Adding levels of complexity isn’t going to help, and it could easily make things worse.”

  Lorena says, “Go back to this morning. Before any of us woke up. Leave a note on the desk here in the library, telling yourself not to make the jump. We’ll all get screwy memories, but I don’t see any way to avoid it.”

  “And then what? Do I just hang around with you guys and the other me?”

  “If you want,” Alex says. “Personally, though, if I could use that key, I’d spare myself the suspense and agony. Just jump back to now. The other you will vanish.”

  “You assume. The other me could win this toss of the quantum dice.”

  Alex gives me a little shrug of admission. “Maybe? But that’s going to be true no matter what you do.”

  I sigh. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be difficult. My brain is all jumbled. And . . . to be honest, being the one who blinks out of existence doesn’t sound so bad right now. Seems a bit like poetic justice.”

  “Stop it,” Jack says. “You’re acting like you’re the only one to blame for this, and you’re not.”

  I’m inclined to argue the point. Yes, the others seemed to be fully on board for the project, but I’m the only one who can actually use the key. If I’d been more careful, more cautious, less curious, this wouldn’t have happened. I suspect that Lorena might agree with me on
that point, since she and Yun Hee will almost certainly cease to exist if they walk outside the front gate.

  But laying blame and harping on what I should have done—or should not have done—isn’t going to solve anything, so I close my eyes and draw a few deep breaths. When I open them, Jack is standing in front of me. He gives me a grim smile and presses the glass of brandy into my hands.

  I drink.

  My stomach churns, but I manage to keep it down. Then, I cross over to the desk on the other side of the room. There’s a notepad on the right-hand side—From the Desk of James L. Coleman.

  I blink back to the library stable point this morning at five a.m., grab the notepad, and quickly scrawl a message:

  Don’t make the jump to 1957 today. In fact, don’t jump at all. Call Nora instead. And Mom—but she isn’t going to tell you anything.

  If I’m the one who disappears, the others will probably remember what happened eventually. But if they don’t, just tell them you’re not using the key again.

  And don’t use it again. Ever.

  Destroy them both, along with the diaries.

  Madi

  I realize that the signature at the bottom is ridiculous as soon as I put down the pen. I mean, seriously, who else would the note be from? Plus, I’m pretty sure I’d recognize my own handwriting. I’m tempted to tear it up and start over, but I know I’m just stalling. Putting off the moment when I have to go back and see whether this worked.

  So I center the key in my hand and scroll forward to my time of departure plus five seconds. Usually, I pan around to check things out, but I don’t have the nerve. As soon as I see that there’s no physical obstruction at the stable point, I blink in.