The Temporal Key

by Adam Benson

  "It still doesn't explain why you would choose to approach me like this?" Said Nocta suspiciously. "Don't you think that a secure location within Temporal Sciences would be a better platform for recruiting than a bar? You can see how this might appear to be exactly the kind of thing someone attempting to infiltrate Temporal Sciences would do, can't you? It's my job to look out for infiltrations into the TSC. How do you think this event would look on an official report? Doesn't it seem highly suspicious to you?"

  "Have you ever considered that perhaps Temporal Sciences uses different methods of recruiting, and that those special recruiting methods are used for a reason?" The man replied. "Our ability to use foresight puts us in a unique position to see potential in people long after their service to us is complete, and then offer them a chance to make the decision for themselves by simply planting seeds when they least expect it. I have not asked you for access into Temporal Sciences. Nor have I requested an exchange of information from you. All I've asked of you is to do what's best for yourself and apply for the pilot candidacy. The simple act of bettering yourself will be the best way for you to serve the Temporal Sciences Center, the Academy, and the Elite Guard.”

  This was no chance encounter, and this man was no ordinary stranger. The pieces were coming together. Advanced technology, cryptic knowledge, clandestine appointments; this man was from the future. He knew a lot more than he was letting on, and Nocta suddenly got the sense that this was more than the regular recruitment call. "When are you from?" Nocta asked the man, his eyes widening in subtle fear.

  The wet man didn't say a word in reply. He sat there briefly scrutinizing Mr. Nocta as he watched the wheels turning in his head. After a moment, he picked up the device from the table and tapped a command into the holographic panel and suddenly the music was blaring loudly, and the club had seemed to come back to life all around them again, and the sound of the rain sizzling on the force field around the bar was buzzing steadily in his ear. The man stood up and looked around the bar one last time.

  "Apply for the position. Do it as soon as the enrollment opportunities are listed. You are important." He said one last time. Then he tapped another command into the device in his hand and teleported away from the bar.

  Nocta sat alone at the table for a moment longer, with the noise of the crowd drown out by the magnitude of his own thoughts. He had just had an encounter with a time traveler. He worked with time travelers every day, but this was different. This was an encounter. Men like him generally didn't have temporal encounters like this one. Time travel was such a closely guarded secret amongst such an elite group of scientists that the only people experiencing temporal encounters were the people who worked within the Center as time travelers. He was being secretly recruited by the Temporal Sciences Center of the future. This was important!

  But had it been real? Mist often caused vivid hallucinations. As soon as the sweet smell of the vapor hit his nose again the effects of the hypo spray started wearing off and the intoxication quickly set back in. The atmospheric dampener had done more than keep out the sound waves, the mist had been held out as well. And while mist wasn't potent at a distance, it was just enough to cause the drug suppressing his intoxication to metabolize completely out of his system in less than a hectoChron. By the time he got back to his table, he was more intoxicated than when he left. But the seed had been planted, and that's all that mattered.

  Fugitives

  From high in the rafters they watched as the three-man rescue crew below began fanning out from beneath the hovering ship and in amongst the frozen primitive humans around the cluttered wreckage. At first, they seemed to be surveying the room, looking it over from every angle, studying the place they had just landed after a yearlong trek through time. Then they began to move with more purpose, making their way quickly to strategic areas around the hangar.

  I’ve got everything! Thalia thought excitedly. All of the ship’s sensors, the computer core; my cloak is getting a charge! So much of this I wish I’d had the last few sols.

  It’s the Paentus, Dayk quietly replied.

  I know that! Thalia scoffed. It’s just been so long since I’ve felt the real world… She trailed off, enjoying the new flood of information as it poured into her cybernetic systems. It just feels so good to be connected again!

  Well, then you know that ship has been decommissioned for about eight years. Dayk said solemnly. And why are they armed?

  “What?!” Thalia whispered. She looked down at Captain Nocta and quickly spotted the small weapon held at the ready in his right hand. Why are they armed? She asked again rhetorically.

  This is no rescue mission. Dayk reached around invisibly until his hand caught onto Thalia’s cloaked arm. Come on, he said. We need to get far away from the recorder. The ship already knows it’s there, if we move it now, we’ll be spotted. Let’s get down the ladder and get out of here.

  Thalia felt Dayk brush past her as he moved past her to the ladder. She immediately followed behind him. What are we going to do?

  I don’t know yet, Dayk replied. They’ve never sent an armed agent back in time to collect his own body before. This whole situation is unorthodox.

  Any ideas as to what Nocta’s even doing here? Thalia asked as they approached the halfway point.

  No idea. He was never assigned to any mission on our team. And for dhregh sure he was never assigned to a mission that took place in his own future, Dayk thought back to Thalia as they crawled along. This shouldn't be happening.

  So, then what are we going to do? Thalia asked again.

  Before he could answer, telepathic commands were being broadcast widely throughout the room. It was Captain Nocta's thoughts. You two start collecting the ship. I'll check the rafters for the two fugitives. He commanded.

  That was meant for us, Dayk thought. No other reason to broadcast publicly.

  How did he know we were up here? Thalia asked in a panicked thought. And why did he call us fugitives?

  The recorder! He shouldn't be able to detect us with the cloaks on. Dayk said, feeling the terror ripple up his spine.

  What about the ‘fugitives’ part? Thalia asked a little louder.

  I don't know! Dayk responded. I've never committed a crime in my life!

  Is this part of the anomaly? Did we actually change the future?

  I don’t know Thalia. Last I looked at the key nothing had changed except for the anomaly, and that happens in our future, not Nocta’s past.

  In a flash Nocta teleported up from the floor and onto one of the adjacent rafter catwalks that hung loftily above the hangar. Dayk felt his heart pounding in his chest as he watched Nocta slowly make his way across the first catwalk with his weapon at the ready.

  No time now! Dayk said. Get to the ladder!

  Far below the rafters, two of the rescue team, Lieutenants Etos and Soomber moved out into the debris, walking around the frozen but conscious primitives watching in fear as “aliens” began stealing back their prize. It was Lieutenant Soomber who collected the first of the Chronis’ remains. Using his enhanced vision to see the resonance signal created by the smashed ship, he drew a circle in the air around the objects he wanted archived and immediately the ship’s very powerful archiver began dematerializing a large section of the crashed ship’s hull. Multiple bright blue beams of archiver light shot out from the hull of the ship hovering just above them. The Paentus’ had an almost limitless storage capacity and could easily collect the remains of its fellow time ship. One by one the pieces of the Chronis dematerialized and vanished from the ground.

  Etos and Soomber moved quickly through the wreckage, identifying and dematerializing every future thing they came across, and in some instances, the primitive technologies that were attached to them. One by one the pieces of the ship disappeared from the hangar.

  Soomber made his way over to a series of lab tables, where microscopes and other scientific instruments were being used to analyze small pieces of materials and tiny parts, while
Etos focused on the larger pieces of the wreckage. He marked microscopes and associated glass slides, drill bits with traces of advanced materials on them, pieces of cloth that were used to wipe up fluids, and anything else on the table that had samples of their advanced technology. All of it was dematerialized by the archiver and stored into memory. Along the wall was a large refrigeration unit in which three long crates contained the remains of the Chronis' fallen crew members. The entire machine was added to the collection. If bits and pieces of the primitive technology were mixed into the fold it didn't matter. Whatever anachronistic elements were returned with the ship would be donated to the historians of the future for further study.

  It looks like they have biotechnical samples in an adjacent building. Soomber said to Etos as he scanned the area in his hologram. We’ll have to get those directly with a portable archiver.

  Most of the big pieces are up, Etos replied. You get the samples, and I’ll wipe the data from their recording devices.

  We’ll get to that in a chron. Captain Nocta said from above. Right now, I need you two to help secure the area. If the fugitives are in here, we can’t have them getting out.

  As Lieutenant Etos moved around he caught a glimpse of the tale tell red glow of their technology emanating from the pocket of one of the men standing frozen around the crash. He reached in the man's pocket and started digging around to retrieve the object. The man moaned a terrified groan through his frozen jaw as he felt the alien hand moving around in his pocket. Etos pulled the technology from the man's pocket and dropped it to the ground, where he quickly marked it for archival and a blue beam zapped it from the floor. He gave the frozen man a sneer before moving on to finish his task. The man could hear his colleagues grumbling at him through their own clenched jaws as they also discovered that someone besides the aliens was trying to steal artifacts from them.

  Within two hectoChrons nearly the entire ship had been archived, and only 0.435% of the original mass of the ship remained. That small percentage would easily account for items taken into the biology lab, two missing passengers, and a small amount of supplies that they would have had with them. From a rescue perspective, any percentage remaining would have meant failure. And failure was not an option.

  Dr. Dayk! Dr. Thalia! Nocta called out telepathically. We're not here to harm you. We just want to get you back to our own time. He said as he kept walking forward. There was no reply. As he looked across the catwalk his eyes scoured around the ceiling structure looking for anything that might reveal the two missing crew members. Then his eyes caught a glimpse of something glowing red across the way on another catwalk.

  In a flash Nocta teleported from the catwalk he was on to the catwalk directly over the wreckage, and their own ship, the Paentus. He stooped down and looked at the holographic recorder sitting on the platform, recording everything that was going on. This is where they were hiding, but he had a good bet that they weren't still there. Nocta stood up and marked the recorder for archival, and in a nanoChron a blue beam caught the device and dematerialized it.

  Dayk and Thalia were quietly climbing down the ladder with their cloaks still active. Dayk looked back up as the blue beam of the archiver caught his eye, and he watched Thalia’s recorder disappear from the catwalk. “We better keep our telepathic chatter down,” he whispered up to Thalia. “They know something we don’t”

  Nocta began quickly walking down the catwalk toward the ladder. He moved both quickly and cautiously, as though he expected to bump into an invisible wall. But nothing came. When he got to the end of the catwalk, he looked around back and forth for the two hidden time travelers.

  They're not up here. He called down to his team mates.

  Are you sure? Asked Lieutenant Soomber.

  No, but I have a strong feeling that they knew we were coming and fled. Captain Nocta said as he teleported back down to the floor. They were up there, though. They're just not now. There’s residual heat from their bodies in the metal near where their recorder was, and it moves down toward the ladder.

  If they’re on foot down here, then their boots and cloaks will mask any further heat signatures. Soomber said mater-of-factly.

  Dayk and Thalia had made it to the floor of the hangar as well and started tip toeing around the perimeter of the building toward the door on the other side.

  Cover the exits. If they try to leave on foot, we'll have them, and if they try and use our teleporter then we'll have them as well. Captain Nocta commanded. I have to clear the locals. You two get on it.

  Lieutenant Etos and Lieutenant Soomber spread out and both stood guard at the only two doors that went into or out of the hangar. Etos stood in front of the giant sliding door at the front and Soomber stood directly in front of the small side door that Dayk and Thalia had used to follow Naomi in.

  “How are we going to get out of here?” Thalia quietly asked Dayk. Her whispers were almost inaudible through the cloaking devices. “Are we just trapped until they leave?”

  “They won’t leave without us,” Dayk quietly replied.

  “Can’t we just use their ship’s teleporter?”

  “No, it’ll trace us, and they’ll have us in a chron,” Dayk said as he calculated all the possible ways out in his head.

  Captain Nocta walked into the middle of the crowd of petrified ancient humans and looked around at the pathetic group. He gave each of them a sneer of disdain as he started scanning all of the men’s memories for any clue to the whereabouts of the fugitives, but none of them seemed to know anything. He drew imaginary circles in the air around each one of the men in the hangar with his finger. Suddenly a hot white light seemed to pulse off the hull of the ship. It flashed very quickly and seemed to engulf the entire ship hovering before them. After only a few short seconds, each of the men slowly became more catatonic. Their frozen expressions melted into a blank stare as they stood there in the flashing light, and the last four days began to vanish into a dream like vapor that lost all of the color and sense as they drifted deeper into the hypnosis.

  Once we find them, we can get the remaining objects from the other building and then get back to real time. Nocta said to his team as he finished memory-wiping the ancient humans.

  No one's come to this entrance. Lieutenant Etos said.

  Still clear here. Lieutenant Soomber said. They might not even be in here.

  Oh, they're still in here. Nocta said. Stay where you're at and we'll wait them out. They can't stay in here forever.

  Dayk and Thalia had been watching all of this from the corner of the hangar directly across from where Lieutenant Soomber was standing watch over their only escape route.

  "They're going to catch us." Thalia whispered to him from behind her invisibility.

  "Just keep your thoughts quiet, and don't give our position away." Dayk answered her. "They know we're cornered, but they can't stay in here forever either. Other men are bound to come in here sooner or later, and at some point, they'll end up with a temporal catastrophe on their hands. As long as that ship's here, our cloaks will have power. We can stay hidden." His whispers were as quiet as he could make them, but it wasn't quiet enough.

  Sir, I'm picking up chatter from the far corner. Lieutenant Etos said, listening with his hearing enhanced to pick up the smallest of sounds.

  Where at? Nocta asked moving quickly over to Lieutenant Etos position.

  There sir. Etos pointed almost directly at Dayk and Thalia.

  "Oh no." Dayk said shortly under his breath. He grabbed at Thalia's invisible hand and then started pulling her back along the wall away from where they had been overheard. His heart began to race, and he could feel her pulse beating quickly alongside his own. They were running out of options and had nowhere else to hide. Captain Nocta may have been right. They might not be able to hide in there forever, in fact, Nocta might have more of an advantage than he'd previously considered.

  As they moved quietly as they could along the back wall their panic level rose. Dayk's hand sq
ueezed tighter and tighter around Thalia's as he tried to move quicker and quicker around the perimeter. Then suddenly, while he was trying to squeeze himself behind a pallet of military parts, he dragged Thalia too hard and she slammed into the pallet and sent loud metal parts bouncing along the ground around her.

  "Dayk!" She whisper-screamed as the metal parts clanged all around them.

  Back there! Soomber said pointing toward the back of the hangar.

  Before anyone could react, Captain Nocta commanded the Paentus to erect an electrostatic force field that separated the back half of the hangar from the front half where the doors were, sealing any chance of escape.

  Come with me. Nocta commanded his two subordinates. Soomber and Etos left their posts guarding the doors and all three started moving passed the frozen and now catatonic ancient humans and toward the humming static field that cut completely across the hangar. When the three men made it over to the force field all three immediately teleported across to the other side of the nearly invisible shielding. "Dr. Dayk. Dr Thalia." He yelled. "Come out! Surrender and come back with us now!" Nocta yelled out into the darkness.

  There was no reply.

  Dayk's mind raced as he tried to find scenarios that would allow him to elude capture by these renegade time travelers and still return for the real rescue team that was due to come in four sols. Nothing was coming to him. All he could see was capture by these men who had no reason to be in this place and time.

  Dr. Dayk. Dr. Thalia? Nocta called out telepathically. Against the wall the telepathics were slightly littered with static from the radiation emanating from a building very near where they were now.

  The static! The radiation! Dayk had an idea! Still holding Thalia's hand, he moved his fingers up her body until he found her head. He felt her try and pull away from his awkward touch, but he managed to grab her and lean in as close as possible to her ear. "Thalia." He barely whispered. "Let's use their teleporter. Stay with me."