The Temporal Key

by Adam Benson

  Harold and Clyde crawled back out of the ship and continued walking around the hangar together. As they walked along, they two of them suddenly felt the hairs raise on their arms, and then a quick static charge popped between one of the components and the ground.

  “Who did what?!” Colonel Turner yelled.

  “That wasn’t us!” George called out from inside the tube.

  “Well, somethin’ just discharged!” Clyde yelled out, his heart still racing from the shock.

  “Alright, everybody step back from what you’re doing!” Colonel Turner yelled. “Let’s make sure we’re not inadvertently about to blow ourselves up!”

  From up in the rafters Dayk and Thalia watched as the alarmed commotion started below. Dayk's feeling that something was getting near was increasing. He had never experienced a presence like this in all his years of time travel, and yet somehow it felt familiar as well. He began to glance at his arm every couple of hectoChrons to watch the radiation levels slowly rising around him. The area was hotter than it had been at Naomi's house, but they were closer to intense sources than they were before. There was one radioactive source twenty-three meters from the hangar that was unusually strong for being in a shielded container. Most of the gamma radiation was contained by the lead, but the higher energy xion and rhon particles were unknown to these scientists and continued to flood the area with radiation. The xion radiation was what primarily interfered with the telepathic signals, and there was a heavy dose of that glowing from the building next door. But then he noticed something else. The hairs on his body were slowly beginning to rise and his skin felt like it was crawling off of his body.

  Dayk! Said Thalia. Do you feel that?

  The question hit him hard. He did feel it.

  It's like something's coming this way. She thought.

  I've been feeling that way all day. He admitted.

  So, have I. She said.

  Something's coming this way! They thought in unison.

  Static electricity began to build inside the hangar, and small arcs started popping across any path to the ground. Several of the broken pieces of technology suddenly appeared to be powering on one at a time with a weak, dim glow. A breeze began sucking its way through the hangar, like it was tugging everything toward some central point, but without a defined direction.

  There's a wormhole opening! Dayk thought frantically.

  All the men in the hangar began looking around frantically trying to figure out what was going on. Each of them thought that one of the other of them had found a way to power the ship on, and somehow the whole thing was coming to life in broken pieces. Some of them started looking for the source of the sudden strange occurrence and were trying to find a way to shut it off!

  "Who did what!?" Someone yelled loudly! "Reverse what you did! This thing's powering up!"

  “Everybody out! Now!” Colonel Turner yelled. The scientists inside various sections of the Chronis came scurrying out, and everyone began cautiously backing away from the broken ship as it seemed to come to life.

  High above the men, Dayk and Thalia watched below as the room suddenly started bustling in an unexpected way. The unusual atmospheric disturbance and the men scampering around frantically trying to find out what had suddenly caused the broken ship to come on, raised the level of intensity that they felt as they watched from above.

  This isn't right! Dayk thought. They're not supposed to be here for another three hundred and sixty kiloChrons.

  Maybe they're just coming early. Thalia thought naively.

  No. These missions don't come early. That's part of the plan. This isn't right. He went on.

  What are you saying? She asked. She sensed Dayk's panic and was beginning to feel it a bit herself.

  Thalia, rescue missions only return after the end of a ten-day mission. They do that specifically to be predictable. This is unpredictable behavior, and this never happens.

  Wait, what do you mean this never happens? What about the Vortex? You said they were fifty years late collecting that ship! Thalia argued.

  That was a miscalculation. Dayk retorted. Besides, even that rescue was on time, it was just the second ship that retrieved the broken vessel that was fifty years late.

  Couldn’t this be the same thing? She asked. Just a mistake?

  I don’t think so. Something doesn’t feel right about this. Dayk insisted. This... is... WRONG! He said, and suddenly he disappeared behind his cloaking device.

  Thalia almost felt abandoned by his quick retreat. Wait Dayk! She yelled, and then vanished behind her own cloaking device. Dayk! Stay close! Don't leave me here! She cried.

  I'm not leaving you; I'm just raising my cloak. He yelled back. We better move away from the recorder! He said, and then grabbed her invisible hand and started crawling further away down the catwalk, toward the building that was glowing with xion radiation. When they made it to the wall they turned and watched below.

  As the men below scrambled around the broken ship, suddenly large arcs of electricity began to burst across the room and discharge with a bright blue flash.

  "Look out!" Someone yelled as another bolt flashed across the hangar.

  “Everybody get the hell out of here!” Colonel Turner yelled above everyone else.

  Then all of a sudden, everything felt still and dark. It was as though the whole world stopped, and then a bright blue swirling spherical vortex ripped an abyssal hole in the fabric of space-time! There before everyone hung a terrible twisting fissure that lit the entire hangar in an ethereal blue glow and appeared to be sucking time down it's greedy throat. It hung in the air for only a chron before a bright blue flash slammed through it like a bullet suddenly stopped by gelatin, tearing the swirling hole shut and leaving a polished silver disc hovering ominously in its place.

  All the men stood, staring transfixed on the floating ship above them. It hung there in the air without doing anything at all. There was a buzzing hum that accompanied its presence, whirring on like some energy engine idling patiently. There was no apparent doors or windows on the disc. In fact, there were no seams anywhere to be seen. It appeared to be one solid shape, and it wasn't long before all the men saw the disc for what it was; a working version of the crashed ship that lay in pieces before them.

  After it hung there for several moments, the ship unexpectedly burst outward with pinpoint beams of three-dimensional light that scanned the entire hangar faster than the eye could keep up with. The beams seemed to emanate from every point on the surface of the ship's hull. The whole thing looked like a blurred coating of light that suddenly engulfed the entire room and the air that filled it, and then was gone as quickly as it appeared. Everyone in the room jumped and screamed at the abrupt scanner, terrified by what had suddenly appeared in the hangar with them.

  One of the scientists dropped his tool and began running toward the hangar door, screaming as he went. A few of his compatriots slowly began to follow suite, but before any of them got very far another series of bright, pinpoint beams of white light suddenly shot out from random places along the hull of the ship. Each one of the beams landed directly on the motor cortex of each person's brain and as soon as the beams hit them, they were suddenly frozen in place, completely immobilized.

  Frozen in place as they were, they were still completely conscious and aware of what was going on, and the men who continued to face the ship were still able to see what was happening in front of them.

  After a few painfully slow seconds passed, the petrified men watched as three quick flashes of light suddenly materialized three aliens at seemingly random places throughout the hangar. One at a time they appeared until all three of the small aliens had taken positions around the immobilized men.

  Dayk and Thalia watched intensely as the small grey men materialized in the hangar around the primitive humans standing paralyzed by the suppression beams. One by one they began to fan out through the hangar laboratory to start the recovery process.

  Then Thalia saw hi
s face.

  It's Captain Nocta! She thought.

  What?! Where!? Dayk thought, looking around at the three men who had just got off the ship. As soon as he asked, he saw him. There was Captain Nocta standing in a commanding position below them. Oh, that is not good. Dayk thought loudly. That is not good at all. Terror moved through his body and came out prominently in his telepathic voice. The mathematical implications of Captain Nocta's presence was a huge temporal conundrum. This wasn’t just an unexpected manhunt, this was the first evidence of the anomaly.

  The Wet Man

  2.5 Million Years in the Future, & 20 Years Before the Chronis’ Crash in Roswell

  Rain was pouring down in the forests of Aldartal. The sun had long since set, and nightlife had taken over. The heavy drops of fat rain splashed loudly on the fallen leaves that covered the ground, and the descendants of frogs croaked loudly along the forest floor. While the night was moonless and dark, the forest glowed with hotspots of dimly lit color that emanated from homes, restaurants, mist bars and a wide assortment of other late-night establishments, all nestled randomly on tall spires, high above the trees, or grown into the tallest trees themselves. Some places glowed from very near the ground, and others glowed upward from below the ground into the night sky.

  Music and activity could be heard clearly from several of the more active night clubs, but the rain was keeping people indoors. Teleportation had eliminated the need for anyone to ever get wet or get caught in the rain. If someone felt like going out, they would simply teleport directly into where ever they wanted to go. Few people ever wanted to get wet under the kind of drenched sky that was covering the rainforest city on this night, and so no one was wandering out and about.

  Except for one man.

  From a kilometer away, he slogged through the night. The rain had found him as he made his way through the dark toward a place deep within the city limits. At last he arrived at the base of a giant neo-Sequoya. High in the tree was a late-night mist bar that glowed cool blue up in the canopy. The man pulled a small device from his pocket and tapped a command into its holographic panel. The panel flashed green and then suddenly the man disappeared in a flash of teleportation energy.

  High up in the mist bar called the "BluFly" the man materialized into a crowd of intoxicated people. The small device in his hand continued to glow green, counted down for a couple chrons and then turned red. He folded it shut and put it back in his pocket before making his way through the crowded bar.

  The room was lit by genetically engineered fireflies that were designed to congregate around floating spheres that emitted mild pheromones. Music thumped through the canopy and happy grey people laughed and danced along tiered platforms that made up the floor high in the tree. The edges of the club overlooked the forest below, guarded by a sleek concave rail that meandered around the perimeter. The bar itself wrapped around the main trunk of the tree and recessed into it, and unlike the rest of the room, it was dimly flooded with artificial light.

  The mist bars served vaporized mist concoctions that were freely blown into the atmosphere, but which were only potent within a few centimeters from the source. Beyond a certain range, it's only affect was to add a pleasant fragrance to the air, but up close it gave people who breathed the vapors a euphoric high that was pleasantly intoxicating. It was a social drug that had been popular for over four thousand years and was usually emitted at almost any kind of social gathering.

  Holographic games levitated in between thick branches that grew through various parts of the club, and the holographic images would glow twice as bright as clouds of mist past through them. Groups of men and women played them raucously, cavorting and carrying on loudly. People gathered around vapor points, breathing in mist and having deep conversations, both verbally and telepathically, about absolutely nothing. Some groups wore wild phosphorescent lenses over their large eyes that would pulse along with the music and enhance the wearer's euphoria at the same time. The glasses were designed by the same company that manufactured the drug, and thus the two were specifically made to complement each other.

  The jovial party atmosphere had only one member out of place, a drenched man making his way as coolly as possible through the crowd. Some people caught sight of the stranger and wondered, but then quickly went back to their own conversations. Most people were too wrapped up in their own good time to notice him in such a dimly lit environment. He walked slowly around the tables and groups of people looking everywhere for his quarry. He was coy enough to remain generally unnoticed, but thorough enough to find what he was looking for. By chance he turned and glanced toward the far side of the bar where a small group of men stood breathing vapor and talking rudely about one of the other people they worked with in the Elite Guard. He ended his search and cautiously walked up to the group of men across the way.

  "Excuse me." The man said, tapping one of the larger men in the group on the shoulder. "I need to have a word with you."

  The large man turned around very inebriated with a lingering grin on his face and met the eyes of an older, very wet man, with rain drops dripping down the side of his head, and his Temporal Sciences flight suit working very hard to dry itself. The large, muscular, grey man's grin faded away as he tried to recognize the wet man trying to get his attention.

  "Can I help you with something..." He slurred, scanning the man's uniform for some sort of identification or rank insignia. There was none to be found, and his flight suit was clearly Temporal Sciences, but unlike any he had seen before. He didn't recognize this fellow. "...friend?"

  "Can we speak privately for a moment?" The man asked.

  "Why are you wet?" The very high, muscular man asked.

  "Who's your friend?" One of the other men interjected.

  "Please, Mr. Nocta. There is a very important matter that I need to speak with you about as soon as possible." The man insisted.

  "Who is that?" Another friend asked as Nocta stared curiously at the stranger before him.

  "I just need a few hectoChrons of your time. What I have to tell you is of the utmost importance." The man insisted.

  "All... all right." Nocta said as clearly as he was able. "Hey... hey guys. I'm... I'm gonna talk to this TSC guy for a hecto. I'll be.... right back..." He said, slurring his speech to his friends. He stumbled away from his table and began following the wet man across the club to a more secluded area behind a series of branches that moved up through an area in the floor and were surrounded by two blue firefly spheres. The breeze blew in strong from the rainy night air, and the drops of rain audibly splattered onto the thin leaves of the sequoia.

  The man led him to an empty table that overlooked the forest and the city far below and sat down. He motioned for Nocta to have a seat opposite him. Nocta looked around only slightly confused, and then took a seat across from the stranger. The man pulled a device from his pocket and again began tapping commands into the device's holographic panel.

  "What... what is that?" Nocta asked belligerently.

  The man continued to tap into the device, until suddenly a thin yellow sphere of light burst out and surrounded them. The shield was barely perceptible in the otherwise dimly lit club, and everyone was too intoxicated to have noticed it anyway. As soon as the sphere appeared the music and social din of the night club fell dead silent. The only sound was their breathing. The man set the device on the table in front of them.

  "What is that?" Nocta asked again. The technology looked more advanced that what he was used to handling, but only by a little.

  "Mr. Nocta." The man said. "If you would be so kind as to sober up for a few hectoChrons." He passed across the table a small hypo spray and motioned for Nocta to use it. "Please." Nocta took the familiar hypo spray and cautiously placed it on his wrist and injected it. Within a few chrons his head cleared up and the effects of the mist had dissipated. Nocta was instantly sober. "Feeling better?" The man asked.

  "What's this about?" Nocta asked as his head came out of the fog.
He turned and looked at the room around him. A silent party was going on right next to him with lights and dancing, but the entire, exciting room was as quiet as anything he'd ever experienced.

  "The Temporal Sciences Center will soon be looking for pilot candidates. You're going to apply for the transfer." Said the wet man.

  "What?" Nocta felt suddenly at an extreme disadvantage. He tried to listen to the man's thoughts to gain insight, but no matter how hard he tried, he could sense nothing from the wet man's telepathy. He could sense that he was telepathic, but the thoughts were completely blocked from him. "Who are you? Why can't I read you?" Nocta asked the man.

  "Who I am isn't important, and you can't read me, because you're not authorized to read me." Said the man, scrutinizing him. "Sometimes people's deeds become clearer through the lens of history. We are looking for people we know we can trust through that lens. It is what we know of you that brings me here today. Join Temporal Sciences and become more than just a member of the Elite Guard. The pilot program will offer you the chance to achieve the rank of Captain, which, as you know, is the highest rank and honor that a member of the Elite Guard can achieve without having graduated from the Academy. Captain Nocta has a nice ring, don't you think?"

  "Alright. Why me? Why here in this bar?" Nocta asked, with a deep suspicion in his voice. "Why wouldn't you approach me when I'm on duty at the Center? Don't you think this is a little unorthodox, coming to me in a bar? Generally, this kind of affair is strictly confidential. Positions within the Center aren't public information, and don't you think...." He was cut off.

  "Mr. Nocta. We're inside an atmospheric dampening field. Sound waves in and out are dissipated as soon as they hit the field. It's impossible for anyone to hear us. And as for our thoughts, right now your thoughts are being encrypted by me. Only you will be able to access anything that happens within this sphere. And the bar... Who will remember two men talking in the corner of a bar?" The man said. Nocta glanced down at the device emitting the dampening field. He wasn't aware that technology like that even existed.