Now, Then, and Everywhen (Chronos Origins)

by Rysa Walker

  When I open my eyes and turn around, the Anomalies file is still on the display. The other me must have already checked out. Yun Hee is peacefully sleeping in Lorena’s arms on the couch. Everyone else looks slightly ill.

  They’ve had time to get used to the news, however. I barely make it to my bathroom down the hallway before the brandy jumps ship. As I’m splashing water on my face afterward, the tears that have lurked right below the surface since I saw my dad earlier begin to spill over.

  I should have gone back to save him. I should go now. What difference would it make, when the timeline is shot to hell anyway?

  But Jack and Alex are right. It could be worse. The deaths and erasures could be higher. And for all I know, I could be unraveling the timeline more each time I use the key, each time I try to fix what I’ve already broken.

  Jack is leaning against the bedroom wall when I emerge. His face is pale and his eyes are red rimmed, so I don’t think I’m the only one who’s been crying. When he pulls me into his arms, I break into tears again, pressing my face into his sweater. I’d give anything to just stay here, exactly like this. To never have to go back into that library and see that cursed computer with its millions of wrongs I don’t know how to right.

  When my tears taper off again, Jack says, “We need to go back to the others. I’ve . . . I’ve got something I need to say, and it’s going to be hard enough to say it once, let alone twice.”

  I give him a questioning look and take a step back. Cold fingers of dread grip my stomach. “Okay.”

  “Wait. There’s something I need to tell you first. Just you, because it doesn’t pertain to the others. This.” He points to himself and then to me. “Us. This was real, Madi. Real. Whatever else I’ve done, I never wanted to hurt you. When I agreed to this, I didn’t count on falling in love with you, okay?”

  I have no clue how to respond to that. After a moment of just staring at him, stunned, I back out of the room and head toward the library.

  When he agreed to this? What the hell does that even mean?

  I hear Jack’s footsteps behind me and pick up my pace, because I’m really afraid he’ll stop me and say something else that makes my already-jumbled brain even more confused. Lorena is still on the couch, holding the baby as she looks out the window at the bank of trees across the street. Alex is at his computer, not the ancient beast scrolling through the names of the dead and never existed, but the new system he brought in earlier this week. A massive 3-D model of something I don’t understand in the slightest surrounds him.

  When Jack says his name, Alex holds up a hand. “Give me a minute. I need to wrap this section up.”

  I sit on the other end of the sofa, avoiding Jack’s eyes. I’m certain that I don’t want to hear what he’s about to say, and equally certain that I have no choice.

  Alex moves one of the objects off to the side and enters something into the terminal of the computer with the anomalies database. Then he turns to Jack, who is pouring another brandy. “Okay. What’s up?”

  “Yeah,” Jack says. He takes a chair from one of the other desks and turns it around to face us. “It’s just . . . I can’t let Madi keep thinking she’s to blame for all of this.”

  Alex says, “You’re right. My name is in that book, too, and unless Madi is planning on getting a PhD in temporal physics in the next decade or so, she couldn’t have created the device without my help.”

  “To be fair, RJ’s name is in there, too,” Lorena says dully. “And we all know it wasn’t included just because he handled the business side. If we actually created that thing, it wouldn’t have been possible without me working on the genetic side of the equation. The key is useless without someone to use it. So, apparently, Jack and Yun Hee are the only ones in the room who aren’t on the hook for this.”

  Jack laughs. It’s a bitter sound. His hand tightens on the glass, and I can tell he’d like nothing more than to hurl it against the wall next to him. But then his eyes fall on Yun Hee, sleeping, and he puts the glass down on the desk.

  “You’re wrong. I own this every bit as much as the rest of you, if not more so. In fact, if not for me, the three of you wouldn’t have met until 2148. You’d have finished work on the time-travel device a little over ten years later. And since there’s nothing in A Brief History of CHRONOS to suggest otherwise, I’m going to guess there wouldn’t have been a time shift. At least, not one like this.”

  We all stare at him, and then Alex says, “You buried the medallion in the backyard, didn’t you? To speed things up. But why?”

  “No, actually, I didn’t have anything to do with that. The dog threw the team a curveball. They thought there might be a device somewhere in the house, but didn’t know where. And that setup inside the pool wall disperses the chronotron signal and expands the radius to cover most of the property—which is why Lorena and the baby are still here despite the time shift, but also why most of the team thought the field was being generated by something other than an actual CHRONOS device. No one even knew there was a second key buried out back, because it wasn’t activated and therefore didn’t send out a signal. My job was simply to get the data from the old project into your hands earlier. To get the three of you talking earlier and see if maybe we could push fast-forward on this research. And if I was successful on that front, they’d pull you in officially and get the device they have in their archives into your hands.”

  “You keep saying they. Who exactly is this they that you’re part of?”

  He’s been avoiding my eyes, but he finally looks at me when he answers my question. “I told you I was part of a military family.”

  “You also told me you weren’t in the military.”

  “And that wasn’t a lie. I don’t even work for the government. I’m a history grad student, just like you. My dad is a civilian now, but he’s still a contract worker with the Department of Defense, working on long-range threat assessment. Every indicator they have says the Alliance of the Southern Hemisphere is fracturing, with several of the regional leaders jockeying for power. They can’t compete with us in conventional or chemical warfare. Their only edge is biogenetic weapons, and one of the key players in the alliance, Akana, has a history in that regard.”

  “You’re talking about the war with Tchad,” Alex says. “In the 2070s.”

  “Yeah,” Jack says. “Although technically it was with the entire East African Union.”

  This is sounding eerily familiar. I’ve never tended to remember many details from the war and foreign-policy side of history—it’s bloody and it’s depressing—so I don’t think it’s a memory from a world-history class. Also, it feels much more recent. My mind keeps trying to pull up the details as Jack continues.

  “Eight months ago, when I was home for a visit,” Jack says, “my dad showed me the most recent simulation. That was illegal, to be honest—I don’t have any sort of clearance, let alone one that would give me access to that type of information. I thought at first that he just needed someone to talk to about it. To get it off his chest. But . . .” He shrugs and takes a sip of his drink. “Anyway, when I told you earlier that it could be worse, I wasn’t kidding. Thirty-two thousand deaths isn’t even a drop in the bucket compared to what I saw in that simulation. We’re talking hundreds of millions.”

  “But what does any of this have to do with the CHRONOS device?” Alex asks. “If this hypothetical war hasn’t even started yet, why would they need a time traveler to undo it?”

  “It’s not about undoing anything. The hope is to make sure the balance of power is in our favor from the start. To give us a chance to create antidotes and shore up our defenses before the attacks begin.”

  “I just don’t get how your father even knows the keys exist,” I say. “You said this group knew there was a CHRONOS key in the house. Has someone been spying on me? I mean, aside from you.” He flinches a little at the jab, but I’m actually pretty okay with that.

  “They probably detected the chronotron parti
cles,” Alex says. “And the US government funded the research back in the 2090s. Like I said before, I think it’s possible they had one of these devices.”

  Jack nods. “They had two of them until the 2092 attacks. The prevailing theory at LORTA—that’s what they call the Long-Range Threat Assessment group, which is part of DARPA. That’s the—”

  “We all know what DARPA is,” Alex says, although I’m actually not too clear on that point. I have a vague sense that it’s a high-tech research arm of the Department of Defense, but I have no idea what the acronym stands for.

  “Okay,” Jack says. “Anyway, the analysts at DARPA are pretty much evenly split between thinking the 2092 attacks were by aliens and thinking they were a cover for some group, or possibly a nation, that was trying to destroy the time-travel research.”

  “Aliens?” I say. “Seriously?”

  Jack shrugs, looking a little sheepish. “My dad actually thinks it could be both, as in aliens trying to destroy time-travel research. Or more likely, steal it and cover their tracks. He’s never given me a good answer why he believes that, but then he knows a lot more classified stuff than I do, so . . . let’s just say I wouldn’t discount the possibility. But anyway, the vast majority of people at DARPA would tell you that what happened at the lab was a very good thing. I mean, not the attacks themselves. They don’t generally applaud things that result in casualties. But they were glad that it put an end to the research. Back in the 2090s, a congressional oversight committee was pushing really hard to terminate the project, arguing that time travel was too risky, that the government wouldn’t be able to properly safeguard the technology. They weren’t getting a lot of traction, though, because they had classified information they couldn’t share for fear that it would leak to the public and cause a mass panic. See, they knew there had already been changes to the timeline. Everything was, for the most part, patched up, but it had apparently been a close call. A lot of people could have been killed. And erased.”

  “How many is a lot?” Alex asks.

  “Enough to make this current time shift look like a tiny blip. At least as many casualties as we’re likely to see if we end up in a full-scale genetics war. And the simulation my dad showed me . . .” Jack trails off, looking over at me. “You’ve got to understand that this isn’t just idle conjecture. The projections are based on intelligence not just from our own agencies but backed up with data from the entire Northern Alliance.”

  His eyes stay on me as he speaks, clearly pleading with me to try and understand why he lied to me. To be honest, though, I’m more interested right now in the changes to the timeline that he mentioned than I am in his excuses. So I nudge the conversation back in that direction. “When did this other time shift occur?”

  “During the Patterson administration, back in the early 2000s. Only a handful of people in the government knew what really happened. The administration passed it off as a terrorist attack. Which may be why the LORTA crowd is suspicious about the official explanation for 2092—they know it was used as a cover earlier that century. The key they had wasn’t found in the rubble. Nor was the body of the guy who’d had some success using it. But the oversight committee had read the classified documents. They knew how close we’d come to a total catastrophe and didn’t think it was wise to go down that road again. My dad said he viewed the bombing of the temporal-physics lab as the one silver lining of the 2092 attacks.” He glances around the library. “And . . . Kate Pierce-Keller was at the center of the whole thing.”

  I sit there quietly for a moment and then sigh. “Of course she was. I should have known that breaking the timeline would turn out to be a family tradition.”

  “No,” Jack says. “You don’t understand. Kate was the one who fixed it.”

  FROM THE NEW YORK DAILY INTREPID (MARCH 27, 1965)

  Klan Leader Declares Liuzzo and Reeb Murders a Communist Plot

  (Birmingham, Ala.) At a press conference held at the Dinkler-Tutwiler Hotel, Robert M. Shelton, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, claimed that the recent murders of two white civil rights workers were part of a “Communist plot to destroy the right wing in America.” Furthermore, Shelton asserted he had specific evidence proving the murders were committed by Communist agents hoping to tarnish the reputation of the Klan.

  Rev. James J. Reeb of Boston died on March 11 from injuries sustained when he was clubbed in Selma two days earlier. Mrs. Viola G. Liuzzo, 39, of Detroit, was shot in her car near Lowndesboro, Alabama, on Thursday night. Federal charges were filed yesterday against four Alabama Klansmen in connection with that shooting.

  Shelton noted that the $200,000 bail ($50,000 for each of the four defendants) was raised by his organization and “some other of our friends.” Collie LeRoy Wilkins Jr., 21, of Fairfield, remained in jail due to violating probation on a previous weapons charge. William Orville Eaton, 41, and Eugene Thomas, 43, both of Bessemer, and Gary Thomas Rowe Jr., 31, of Birmingham were released on bond yesterday.

  A preliminary hearing is set for April 15 at 11 a.m.

  ∞21∞

  TYSON

  MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA

  MARCH 23, 1965

  My shoes squelch in the mud as I round the corner of the building and set another observation point at Campsite 4, located at the Catholic mission in downtown Montgomery otherwise known as the City of St. Jude. The rain has been intermittent since I arrived at the stable point near the state capitol around noon. Just a light drizzle, really, so the weather must have been bad for the past few days, or maybe the field is just perpetually muddy. Tomorrow, when the marchers and the troops protecting them arrive, there will be well over seven thousand people here, by most accounts. These soggy fields will probably look like they were the site of a buffalo stampede by the time the marchers depart Thursday morning.

  The City of St. Jude was founded back in the 1930s specifically to minister to African Americans, and the campus is bustling today. School is in session, just as it will be tomorrow when the marchers arrive. It must be recess now, or phys ed class, since a bunch of kids are playing kickball on the muddy field where the marchers will eventually camp, as two nuns watch from a nearby bench. St. Jude’s Hospital, the first integrated hospital in the Southeast, has a steady flow of traffic today, as well. It’s where Viola Liuzzo will be taken Thursday night, assuming we manage to set the timeline straight. Otherwise, the medical personnel there will be tending to the sniper’s victims after the Stars for Freedom rally.

  I suspect that the workers here at St. Jude are on edge today, however. When Dr. King contacted the parish priest to ask if the marchers could camp here on the final night of their five-day journey, there was really never any question that the priest would say yes. There was also never any question that the mission would face a financial backlash for doing so. Many of their regular donors were white middle-class residents of the city who viewed funding a school and a hospital for underprivileged blacks as part of their civic or religious duty. Funding an institution giving open support to black “agitators” working for the right to vote, however, was apparently a bridge too far for many of them. In the previous timeline, the mission nearly closed in the aftermath of the Selma march, until tempers died down and fund-raising returned to fairly normal levels.

  I’m not sure what happens to the place in this timeline, and that’s more than a little disconcerting for me. For the past decade, I’ve studied race relations in the mid-1960s almost exclusively. I know this period of history inside out . . . or at least I did. After tomorrow, I’ll be on much shakier ground. I read through a brief revised history of the civil rights movement—one in which Viola Liuzzo lives and King dies three years earlier—while we were getting ready for the trip and added a few other books and articles to my diary so I could consult them while we’re here. But it’s not the same. I don’t understand the connections yet, how one action leads to the next. That’s what makes it history. Otherwise, it’s just a string of random events.

  Before the
time shift, thousands of troops, both state and federal, would be guarding the City of St. Jude tomorrow night. In this reality, President Johnson still nationalizes the Alabama National Guard, but a significant number came down with a nasty stomach bug or food poisoning two days ago, just after the march began in Selma. One newspaper image showed a line of guardsmen standing off to the side, vomiting, while others were carted away in military vehicles. The illness never spread to the federal troops or the marchers, leading historians of this new timeline to suspect that the Alabama National Guard’s rations were tainted, possibly on purpose. One of the marchers swore she saw several bottles of ipecac syrup in a ditch before someone came along and scooped them up. It could even have been the members of the guard consuming those rations who did the tainting. Many of them were furious about being called up against the wishes of their governor for a purpose they opposed, and puking your guts out on the side of the road would have been a perfect, if somewhat unpleasant, way to get pulled off the detail without risking a court martial.

  Even with the mass defection, this area will be heavily guarded tomorrow night. There will be at least a thousand troops in the area, possibly more. Even so, the sniper was never apprehended. Witnesses believed the shot came from one of the houses across the street from the field, although they couldn’t entirely discount the possibility that the shots were fired from a vehicle on one of those streets. If the gunman got away, even when there were hundreds of observers on the lookout for troublemakers, I’m not confident I’ll fare any better at finding him.

  No one has paid much attention to me wandering around. The cord that holds my CHRONOS key hangs down from my hands, and to a casual observer, I probably look like a guy taking a morning stroll while praying the rosary. The only person who seemed to notice me at all was a girl about my age who was getting out of a cab when I walked by, and that’s possibly because I was also looking at her. She was pretty, with blond hair, wearing jeans and a blue flowered shirt. Not a pale blonde, like Katherine. This girl’s hair was more of a honey color. But it was still close enough that it got me thinking about the three blond women the sniper will target tomorrow night, which is the reason Angelo changed his mind and let me do this jump solo.