Now, Then, and Everywhen (Chronos Origins)

by Rysa Walker

  When the armed man comes up the sidewalk, I speak first. “Did you see him, too?”

  “See who, ma’am?” His voice is a slow drawl, and as I answer I’m painfully aware of my own accent. It has only a tinge of Brit, but it’s completely out of place here. No point in faking it, though, since I already started speaking and I’m crap with accents.

  “I thought it was fireworks or something, but then this guy jumped down from the roof and took off through the backyard. He had a gun. Hopped the neighbor’s fence, too. I was going to call the police, but our phone’s not hooked up yet. Was anyone hurt?”

  “No, ma’am.” He shifts the rifle to his other shoulder. Its appearance is just as menacing as the gun in the attic, far more menacing than the tiny and at least equally lethal device I have in my hand. “Did you get a good look at him?”

  “Short guy. White. Kind of thin. Might even have been a teenager. Had on a . . . flannel shirt, I think. Jeans.”

  He nods, then sticks two fingers into his mouth and whistles. “Do you mind if a few of us cut through your yard?”

  I tell him I don’t mind at all. Six or seven guys respond to his whistle and begin tramping through the yard. When I try to go back inside, I realize the door has locked behind me, so I reach inside my shirt for the CHRONOS key.

  As I’m locking in the attic stable point for thirty seconds after I left, I see a flash of orange light across the street. It’s Campbell.

  “That key in your pocket belongs to me,” he says. “Give it to me, and then you can go back and tell Saul we’re even now. Although, like I told him before, the player he lost was an accident. If you don’t hand over the key, they’ll dock points. The rules are clear. Don’t you blink out on—”

  I do blink out on him, which is nothing short of a miracle, given how badly my hand is shaking.

  Tyson opens his now-brown eyes, which I like better than the blue. “What happened?”

  “Maybe you should finish what you were saying about time chess. Because I’ve never heard of it. Campbell seems pissed—okay, mildly pissed—that we killed his player. And he seems to think I’m playing for Saul Rand’s team.”

  “You know Rand, too?”

  “He was in the diaries. And . . . is this time chess the same thing as The Game?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “That’s what we tend to call it at CHRONOS. A lot of the historians play. But . . . it’s done with a simulator.”

  “What’s the objective?”

  He makes a sick face. “Changing history. Causing a time shift. You get a set number of moves in each round. Concrete actions you can take. You alternate moves with your opponent, trying to be the first to flip the timeline to achieve a concrete goal. But getting back to Rand, he’s an asshole. There’s no doubt about that. But I don’t think he’d be part of anything like this. CHRONOS runs us through a whole battery of psychological tests. They don’t send murderers back in time.”

  I make an extra effort to keep my expression neutral, but it’s probably a good thing that Tyson’s vision is blurred. Whatever psychological safeguards CHRONOS may have, Saul Rand evaded them. He would definitely be part of something like this.

  “Anyway, he’s in Atlanta right now. In 1911, I think.”

  “But this is a younger Campbell,” I say. “Maybe it’s a younger Saul, too. Maybe this is something they did years ago—”

  “First, there’s like a thirty-year age gap between the two of them. Maybe more. If Campbell is in his twenties, Saul hasn’t even been born. And second, like I said before, the time shift means that can’t be the case. The shift just happened. Everyone under a CHRONOS key felt it at the same instant, no matter what time they were in.”

  “That makes absolutely no fucking sense,” I tell him, as I fight an ultimately losing battle with another sneeze.

  “Gesundheit,” he says. “The way it was explained to me is that each key has a chronometer showing how long it has been in operation. They were turned on at the same time.”

  “But if the people who caused the shift were wearing a key, they’d have felt the shift when all of us did. Wouldn’t the game be over, and they’d go home?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “You’d think so.”

  I shake my head to clear it. “Let’s untangle this later. I need to take this key back to Alex. Campbell was pretty insistent that I give it back to him, so maybe it will tell us something. I can check the stable points, too.”

  “How are you going to unlock it?” he asks.

  “Um . . . the same way I unlocked the one I’ve been using? By placing it in my palm.”

  “Valid point. Guess that’s a security feature that doesn’t apply to you.”

  I hadn’t really thought much about the various security protocols that were mentioned in the diaries and how they might affect Tyson. It’s stupid, but I keep thinking of both diaries as things that happened strictly in the past, probably because the women who wrote them are both long dead in my time.

  “Can you even jump out from here?” I ask. “Or do you have to get back to a stable point?”

  “Normally, no,” he says. “That’s the one security protocol that Angelo waived for this trip. We’ve generally been trying to use the stable points because that will be less he has to explain to the board eventually. He said to consider it an emergency exit. And ironically, it’s done me absolutely no good in that respect. The one emergency I land in and I can barely see the thing. Although it seems to be clearing up a bit.”

  “You’re going to get it checked out before you make the next jump?”

  “I won’t have any choice. Angelo will make certain it’s healed before he lets me join Rich and Katherine.” He stops and looks at me, head slightly tilted. “And like I said, my vision is clearing up. Is it Katherine or Rich?”

  “What?”

  “You flinched when I said their names.”

  “I’m not answering any questions about that. Maybe when this is all over, but—”

  “I think it’s Katherine. I mean . . . logistically, if you’re in the past and you have an ancestor at CHRONOS, it would have to be a guy. We don’t stay in the field nine months. But Rich isn’t really the type. It’s not Rich, is it?”

  “God, you’re really not going to give this up, are you? No. Okay? It’s not Rich. But he’s in love with Katherine, even if it’s not requited. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to interact with him, either.”

  “Poor Rich,” he says. “Is there anyone across space and time who doesn’t know he’s in love with Katherine? And I see your point. But she’ll be in Memphis. She’ll be in Ohio. They both will. The only reason she and Rich aren’t here with me now is I realized the sniper was targeting blondes. And she and Rich are only on this assignment because they were part of the original Memphis jump, and because they were two of the twelve agents who weren’t in the field when the shift occurred. Neither of them is going to be much help, since they’re only armed with these.” He taps the watch on his wrist and then adds, when he sees my expression, “There’s some sort of neural disruptor inside. But the CHRONOS field blocks it. Generally, that would be a good thing, but it’s kind of a mixed blessing in this case. My point is, they’d be okay as backup if we were facing the Klan, which is what we thought to begin with. This is a whole new wrinkle, though. Neither of them has weapons training, and we’re kind of trying to solve this quietly. There’s already some political pressure to shut down CHRONOS, and—”

  “And you want backup that can actually back you up. Understood. Which trip are you tackling next?” I change the subject in part because I want to know, but also because I really don’t want to talk to him about shutting down CHRONOS. Undoing CHRONOS, never creating these keys in the first place, is still my primary objective when this is all over. Of course, I have no idea how I’ll accomplish that, if the technology was created by some future version of AJG Research in the timeline next door.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Tyson says. “The original pla
n was to hold off on Ohio until the end. We need to tread lightly, because I was there when the shift happens—and oh, wow. I forgot to tell you there were five people with keys there, although I don’t see how they were with CHRONOS. They had a kid with them. It’s like they were observing Dr. King get shot.”

  “Damn. How many people could coast in on a single one of those bubbles that Alex spotted? Now I’m feeling like I carried in an entire caravan on my back.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. I’m not even sure how to factor them or the whole Campbell situation into the simulations we were running. Anyway, the plan was to do Memphis first, but these events may change that.”

  “That’s the Beatles concert, right?”

  “Yeah. But when Campbell and Bailey were talking, he said something about killing Lennon in 1957 instead. He said that Saul wouldn’t be able to kill him in 1966 if they did it in 1957.”

  “That was my other jump! The one with the clear bubble. Liverpool, 1957. And . . . you mentioned a kid. What did he look like?”

  “Preteen. Kind of pale. Dark brown hair. Dark eyes.”

  “I may have seen him, too. But Lennon wasn’t killed in 1957. We know that. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been around in 1966. Maybe Campbell is planning on doubling back and trying again?”

  “Maybe. But I’m still not seeing how Saul could be part of this. I suppose it could be his father, or . . .”

  “Is his father named Saul?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t think so, but Campbell just said Rand.”

  “And outside in about . . .” I glance at the time on my key. “In about two minutes, he’s going to say Saul.”

  “Okay, then. I still don’t see how it’s Saul, given the restrictions on us when we jump, but okay. Anyway, to get back to your question, in The Game they don’t have to tackle the challenges in chronological order, but they can’t double back. You’re not allowed to make the same move twice. In some scenarios, you can go back to get your wounded, but if you screw it up during your turn, there are no do-overs. That basic rule applies even in some of the more flexible expansion modules, so if these players are following—”

  “I think we can safely say they’re not following the rules if they’re sacrificing . . .” I stop. “Wait, if it’s time chess, are you suggesting that they have pawns? You guys play a game that has actual human pawns?”

  He sighs. “It’s normally a simulation. But yes. I’ve played. I guess I’ve even been used as a pawn the few times I’ve played with a team, although they don’t use that term. It’s an extremely complicated simulation, and I haven’t played much. Katherine could probably explain it better than I can.”

  I ignore that comment, because I think he’s trying to get more information out of me. “Why wouldn’t Campbell’s team have done the earlier jump first?”

  He shrugs. “Maybe for the style points?”

  “Style points?”

  “Yeah. If you don’t actually succeed in making the historical change you wanted—stopping the Civil War or whatever—in a given round, then the winner of that round is determined by points. Same for the game as a whole. Going backward chronologically, playing with a smaller support team—of virtual players, I mean—really, there are dozens of ways to get style points. I saw someone win one time because she managed to have a dog play a pivotal role in delaying the Industrial Revolution. That was Campbell’s daughter, actually. Aside from Saul, I think that’s the only time anyone has beaten Campbell—in public, at any rate.”

  We spend the next hour swapping information—with him telling me what he knows about this time-chess game and me answering a few of his questions about information in the diaries. I try to keep it vague, but probably end up spilling more than I should. Every few minutes, I scan forward to make sure that nothing has changed, that Campbell or the police aren’t lurking outside. Tyson tells me about the original project they were on, about his undercover work with the Klan, and about the jump to Ohio where he saw Dr. King get killed. I get the sense he’s holding something back about that jump, but I don’t press. There are plenty of holes in what I told him, too.

  While I’m hesitant to bring up Katherine at all, I need to know how big of a sea of conundrums I’m sailing into. Based on both of the diaries, anything that drives a wedge between Katherine and Saul before New Year’s Eve is likely to result in my erasure. So I grit my teeth and ask, “Are you going to tell Katherine that Saul is involved in this?”

  “Well, if it’s him, if he’s somehow managed to break the rules this badly, she’ll have to know eventually. She’s his partner. They live together. And if it is Saul, he’ll be in Memphis, based on what Campbell said. So will Katherine. It’s going to be a bit hard to hide. But I think we should hold off on telling her what we suspect until we have some proof, partly because I don’t even know what I suspect at this point. It’s just Campbell’s word, and that’s not worth much.”

  “Okay.” I pile the first aid kit and other items back into the bag. “You should try the key again. When I scanned forward earlier, you were gone about ten minutes from now. But first, we need to establish a place and time to meet in Memphis. Privately.”

  He transfers a batch of stable points to my key, most of them at the Coliseum, but also one for the Peabody Hotel. “Let’s make it eleven,” he says, “just to be safe. Katherine and Rich will have to head to the airport shortly after ten, in order to be there when the band’s plane touches down. And I have to meet up with the Klan at two.”

  “Are you still meeting them? I think we can assume the Klan didn’t kill Lennon, based on what we’ve seen here. Right?”

  “Maybe. Again, though, if whatever game these people are playing follows roughly the same rules as time chess, there’s a huge points difference between taking an action directly with one of your team members and convincing an actual historical character to take that same action. That’s almost as important as how many moves it takes you to accomplish a change. So I’m almost certain that goading members of the KKK into killing Lennon would be Saul’s first choice. And sadly, they’re pretty damn easy to goad.”

  MADI

  BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  NOVEMBER 17, 2136

  Yun Hee is snoozing on the couch next to Jack, who has been tasked with babysitting while Lorena is with RJ and Alex. Lorena debated taking her downstairs. Alex pointed out that RJ loves kids, and he’d probably enjoy having her around. And Yun Hee clearly misses her daddy.

  But the man downstairs isn’t really her daddy. He won’t scoop her up in his arms and tickle her feet. He won’t know to call her June bug. And even at ten months old, she’d probably sense the difference.

  “Are you okay?” Jack says.

  I half nod, half shrug, and he motions for me to come around to the other side of the couch so he doesn’t risk waking the baby. Before I sit down, I pull the extra key out of my pocket.

  “I brought back a present.”

  He takes the key and examines it. “This belonged to the sniper?”

  “Yeah. And . . . he vanished when I yanked it. At least now you’ll have one if you need it when I’m away.”

  “You’re only away for a few minutes at a time.”

  “You want me to stay gone longer?”

  He presses a kiss against my temple. “Nope.”

  I give him an overview of what happened, including Tyson’s description of the game.

  “How long were you in 1965?” Jack asks.

  “Between the two jumps? About nine hours total.”

  I center the new CHRONOS key in my palm. There’s a slight tingle, but nothing happens. I pick it up, wipe the back off against my sleeve, and then try again, thinking maybe it’s still damp . . . although I’ve definitely used the other key when it was wet or I’d never have gotten back from Estero.

  Still nothing.

  “Can you try this?” I hand the key over to Jack. It doesn’t work for him, either. We can both see the light, as we do with any other key. But
the interface won’t open.

  “I’m going to carry Yun Hee to her crib,” he says. “Then I’ll see if I can get Alex to take a short break, so I can catch him up and maybe get him to take a look at this key.”

  “Is Lorena doing okay?”

  “Yeah. I was down there for a few minutes earlier, and she was in the living room. Talking to RJ about old movies. They seem to have hit it off rather well.”

  “Which probably shouldn’t be a surprise. And it’s not making Lorena crazy?”

  “She said she was going to basically treat this like a first date. Do you want me to bring you up anything?”

  “Some herbal tea, maybe? I know it’s not that late here, but I’m kind of wiped out. I need to get a shower. And at least try to get some sleep.”

  I crank the water up a few degrees higher than normal, scrub my skin until it’s nearly raw, then slip into my favorite nightshirt, the one I’ve had since my teens, now so old that it feels like a second skin. I’m exhausted, but my brain is still buzzing. Part of me wants to jump straight to Memphis, and then to Ohio. To get this over with, one way or another. But I need to recharge. I need to untangle my brain. I need to forget the sight of that man as I pulled the key over his head. The sight of him dead. The sight of him erased.

  When I step out of the bathroom, Jack is waiting with a tray. There’s the herbal tea I suggested, as well as a bottle of Shiraz, a wedge of cheese, grapes, and a bar of dark chocolate.

  “I was going to add ice cream,” he said. “The ultimate comfort food. But the food unit spat out something that looked a bit like frozen calf slobber.”

  Tears are very close to the surface, and I do not want to go down that path. So I opt for levity, instead. “Are you going to spoil me like this every time I have to shoot someone?”