Relativity Synchronization:
The Third Cause

2044: Rude Awakenings

Chris’s eyes fluttered open, the dreamland in his mind evaporated as his pupils adjusted to the waking world. Where am I? Scouring his mind, searching for memories, he found only nothingness, a blank slate. He couldn’t remember anything from before the moment he opened his eyes. He knew his name and could recall any number of theories, equations and formulae, but nothing else remained.

No faces, no events, places or objects, just impressions that those things had at one point existed. Only one name endured: Christopher Nost. That’s me, he thought vaguely, and smiled sardonically to himself. I know who I am but the rest of the world is gone. Too bad for the rest of the world, I guess.

Chris looked around the windowless room. The walls and floor were piercingly white and a pervasive smell of sterility under laid the pine scent of the air. Hospital. The word drifted into his consciousness along with images of faceless people, sick and dying.

Am I dying? he wondered.

Not far from where he sat on the edge of the bed the numbers ‘14:27’ hovered in the air over a similarly white nightstand. Cautiously, Chris reached out to them. They flickered and remained. The seven shimmered and changed to an eight. Ah, Chris thought. A clock. For some reason an image of a white disk with numbers around the edge came to mind. And that image brought a cold fear to his gut. He suppressed the thought and looked at the floating numbers again.

Another word drifted through his thoughts. Hologram. Once again he passed his hand through the display. This time, he kept his hand there, moving it rapidly back and forth, until the image disappeared entirely. He stopped and a moment later the numbers ‘14:29’ flickered back into existence.

A cough came from behind him. Chris turned to see a woman in a nurse’s uniform standing in the doorway, looking excited and nervous at the same time. “Dr. … Dr. Nost?” she said, her startled gaze never leaving his face.

“Yes? I think so, anyway.” Chris looked into himself and realized where the ‘doctor’ came from. Ah, PhD in physics. Hence all the math spinning through my brain in place of memories. Chris shook his head in frustration, trying to jar his memories loose. “Look, maybe you can help me. Where am I? What’s going on? Why can’t I remember anything about my past?”

Her attempt at a reassuring smile faded, but the look of shock in her eyes remained. “Um, I know you have lots of questions, but I can’t really answer them. I’m sorry. The doctors are on the way now and they should be able to take care of everything for you.” She spoke as if to an infant who couldn’t actually understand. That way of speaking tickled something in Chris’s memory, but it fled again before he could grasp it.

“Fine. Can you at least tell me how long I’ve been here? Can you tell me anything about myself?” Chris shook his head in frustration, that can’t be right; denial ran through his head.

She walked across the room, tapping on a tablet as she went. She pulled up a stool and sat in front of him, putting down the tablet to pick up a blood pressure cuff. “Well, Dr. Nost, according to your chart you have a doctoral degree in Aerospace Mechanics and another one in Astrophysics. And you’ve been here for 41 years, two months, and five days.” The nurse spoke while she hurried about performing what appeared to Chris to be an ordinary physical.

“What? There must be some sort of mistake. I …” Chris felt the walls in his mind crash. Fear rose in his belly and his only defense kicked in as rage, making his blood pump hot.

The nurse looked flustered and a little frightened, realizing she had said something she hadn’t meant to. “Dr. Nost, I’m sure you’re confused. Please, sit back down until the doctors get here. I’m sure they will have all the answers to your questions.” She backed toward the door, looking scared.

Chris realized he stood, clenching his fists. He swallowed and sat back down on the bed. He took a deep breath and felt the anger drain out of him, revealing his fear and confusion. “I’m sorry. I’ll wait.” The nurse darted back to the bed and grabbed her tablet, then hurried out of the room.

The flicker of the clock shifting times sparked something in Chris’s mind. He raised his hand until he held it in the air before his face. Smooth and strong, the back of his hand had a healthy color.

There must be some sort of mistake. If forty-one years had passed he should be elderly, but he didn’t have the hands of an old man. Even if he had graduated college as a child prodigy, that put him at sixty years old. Yet he had the hands of a young man. He looked around the room for a mirror, but saw nothing. His gaze at once came across the red numbers hovering over the stark white bed stand and he shivered. There must be some sort of mistake.

The door opened, revealing a thin-faced man in a white doctor’s coat and wearing a smile that didn’t reach his gray eyes. He looked familiar somehow, but once again the image vanished before it quite materialized. Behind him stood a dozen men and women all wearing the clinical white smocks of medical practitioners.

Enter the legion of the blessed attendants and confused hangers-on … thought Chris.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Nost. We’re so happy you decided to join us,” said the man standing in the foreground, obvious leader of the legion in white.

Those eyes are like steel. Cold and hard … Chris looked away. Why does he seem so familiar? “Who are you? I mean besides a doctor.” Chris forestalled the man’s speech. “Where do I know you from?”

“My name is Dr. Garret Jameson. I have been your … caretaker for the past eleven years. These—” He gestured to his entourage still crowding the doorway behind him, “—are my associates.”

Chris raised an eyebrow at the word associates. “Are they going to break my kneecaps if I don’t pay up on my gambling debts?”

Doctor Jameson laughed. “They might put casts on your kneecaps should you find them broken. As to the breaking itself, I’m afraid my esteemed colleagues get a bit squeamish if it comes to imparting violence. No, overall we are rather poor enforcers. As to where you know me from I have no idea. I wasn’t born until two years after you went into your coma. Perhaps while you were in your coma you subconsciously became acclimated to my presence. We do have a limited amount of time, so are there any other questions I can answer for you?”

“The nurse said I’ve been asleep for forty-one years. I can’t believe this is true.”

Dr. Jameson sighed. “I know that this is difficult for you to accept, Dr. Nost, but it is indeed true that—”

“How is that possible?” Chris interrupted. “I mean … It doesn’t feel right. I don’t look like I’m in my sixties or seventies.” He looked with wonder at his hands again. They were young hands.

Dr. Jameson handed Chris a mirror. “Yet you are. Seventy-four to be precise, Dr. Nost. You haven’t aged a day since you arrived at this facility over thirty years ago. The only reason that we know your age at all is because of your birth records. As far as I know, you did not age in the prison hospital the twelve years before that, either. Perhaps ironically, it was the lack of aging that saved your life. You see, once the governments fell …” Jameson shrugged.

Chris’s head swam. His earlier fear subsided into the quagmire of utter confusion. “Just a minute. You’re telling me that I was in prison before I got put in this hospital?”

Jameson tapped the tablet he held in his hand. “Well, yes and no. It seems you spent your entire sentence hospitalized and in the exact same state that you were in when we received you. Public record has it on file that you were shot right after you were convicted.”

Chris took a deep breath and tried to center himself. “Do you know what was I convicted of?”

Jameson’s eyes looked to the wall beyond Chris, breaking contact. “First degree murder. Something I recommend avoiding in this society. PolCorp’s policies are to carry out immediate sentencing, including the death sentence, administered by the arresting officer.”

God. A corporation that can legally kill you for any reason they want? Chris’s mouth went dry. “Why don’t I remember any of this? Is it because of the coma? Do I have some form of partial amnesia?”

Dr. Jameson bit his lower lip. “I doubt that it’s because of the coma. You see, you had a pre-existing condition. When you were …” he flicked at the screen of his tablet, quickly reading through records, “twenty-nine, you began to experience a very unique form of memory loss. Your conceptual memory is seemingly perfect, but as far as anything else is concerned you forget everything after approximately thirteen months. It is a similar condition to that found in some victims of brain damage, though the more common term before total loss is substantially longer.”

Those steel gray eyes once again locked with Chris’s. “Really, you are an all-around mystery to us, Dr. Nost. As I was saying, after your prison term expired, you were transferred here. When the governments fell a few years later they were going to pull the plug. One less expense, you see. My predecessor convinced GeoCorp that you could be an asset worthy of study. Potentially a high profit yield research project if we could unlock your enigma.”

Dr. Jameson smiled. “We can make holographic clocks, Dr. Nost, and even implant computers that interface perfectly with the human brain. But to halt the aging process is a mystery beyond us. It seems that it is something you alone are able to do.”

Chris’s mind rebelled at what he was being told. Learn about what is happening now … What led to the world you’re going to have to live in. Deal with the rest later … “Fine. I’m weird. What about everything I missed? What do you mean by ‘when the governments fell’?”

“It was about eighteen years ago. The governments and the global corporations had been feeding off of each other since before your … accident. In the end, the governments got weaker and the companies got stronger until …”

A cough came from Dr. Jameson’s entourage, and he trailed off, glancing at the holo-clock.

Chris knew his time to ask questions ran thin. “So this GeoCorp, it’s the company that runs America now?”

“This part of what used to be America, yes.” Dr. Jameson cleared his throat. Chris saw that he played with what at first looked like a wedding ring, but looking closer he saw closely woven gold fibers imbedded in the man’s finger.

“I apologize, Dr. Nost, but we cannot speak here anymore. Every moment of my time at the hospital is accounted for, you see.” He glanced at the gold ring.

“I truly am sorry. We have grown quite fond of you around here, despite Company policy. Some of the nurses even took up calling you Sleeping Beauty. As it stands, it is good that you woke up when you did—it became increasingly difficult for us to convince GeoCorp to keep you alive with every passing quarter. You were not cheap for the Company, and we could not find anything different about you that would halt the aging process or halt muscular atrophy.”

Chris hadn’t thought of that. He looked down at his body and saw the doctor was right—his muscle tone was the same as a normal thirty-year old. “Not bad for lying in bed for forty-one years,” he said. This is out of control. Fighting back tears he tried to control the fear and confusion that were threatening to usurp his rationality. Just what the Hell am I that I can ignore the effects of time?

“Indeed,” the doctor looked at the hovering clock, a worried expression on his face that still didn’t touch his eyes. He fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a wad of paper Chris recognized as money.

“Here,” Dr. Jameson handed him the wad. “There should be about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars here.”

Chris’s eyes widened as he took the money and the doctor laughed. “Believe me, that’s not quite the same amount it was before you … as it was in your time …”

“I guess it wouldn’t be,” Chris laughed ruefully, trying to cover his growing anxiety. He looked around for somewhere to put the money and realized he still wore only a hospital gown, so he sat there, clutching the wad of bills in his shaking hands. Once again he had to take a deep breath to regain control of his body. “I … where am I supposed to go?”

One of the other doctors pulled some clothes out of a closet in the far end of the room and handed them to Chris. Made of a dull gray material and shaped to an amorphous cut, they didn’t look like his clothes. But then again, he couldn’t remember what he used to wear.

As the group of doctors began to walk away, Jameson leaned towards Chris. “Find a hotel until you can find a job. Stay away from the south side of town. There’s a gang war going on down there and the police have announced that they will no longer be patrolling the area.”

Jameson glanced around the room, then back at Chris. “Look, I’m sorry we can’t be of more help, but I really must be getting back to my rounds. I will already be getting docked for the time I’ve spent with you.” Dr. Jameson handed Chris a card and walked out of the room.

Chris looked at the card. It was not, to his surprise, the doctor’s business card. Rather, it was a card from a local restaurant, with handwriting on the back.

 

LITTLE PARIS COFFEE COMPANY

1655 N. CHERRY LANE

 

Chris flipped the card over. On the back the doctor had written in bold, elegant script:

 

MEET ME HERE ON THURSDAY AT 1500.

AVOID THE COMPANY AND THE HOSPITAL.

YOU DO NOT WANT THE COMPANY TO

CONTINUE THEIR RESEARCH ON YOU.

GOOD LUCK. –G.J.

 

Chris tossed the card on the nightstand and got dressed in an ill-fitting gray business suit, with a white shirt and long black woolen overcoat. He wondered what time of year it was and swore to himself. Why should I worry about what season it is? I don’t even know where the hell I am. Once he was done getting dressed he picked the card back up, along with the cash, and shoved it in a pocket.

As he left the room, he looked around in the hallway for someone to ask, at that moment realizing how little he knew about his circumstances. The hallway seemed deserted; the whirring little cameras that monitored every hallway intersection were the only signs of life.

He found the elevator, two massive brushed aluminum doors at the end of the hallway. Once he was inside he glanced at the number panel. ‘Sixty-six’ was glowing red. Surprised to see the numbers went all the way up to one-eighty-one, he took a moment to clear his mind then hit the ‘L’ button.

So it’s 2044, what am I supposed to do now? Forty-one years asleep and I still have the better portion of my life left to figure out how to survive in a world that seems hostile to its inhabitants. And they have the advantage of knowing how everything here works.

Chris realized with a start that he was feeding himself on a growing cycle of self-pity and anger. And paranoia. Enough! Get out there and do it. Otherwise you won’t need this world to chew you up—you’ll do it to yourself.

Chris still stood in the elevator, even though the doors had opened, staring at the wall. He shook his head, then stepped into the lobby and looked around. The image of a hospital lobby he had in his mind didn’t resemble this. Vast and empty, massive marble pillars stretched up to support the ceiling fifty feet overhead. At the far end he could see through the revolving doors emptying into the street, though a haze of rain hid the details beyond. Near the elevator, to his left, a security guard sat at a sprawling circular desk stacked high and wide with a bank of security monitors.

The pudgy man wore something that looked faintly like a thin bulletproof jacket over his uniform. An automatic rifle leaned on the wall behind where the man sat, within easy reach. A little video camera nestled on the guard’s helmet with a ‘G’ contained in an upside-down, gold triangle. The emblem was also on his sleeves, and, Chris saw, behind him, between the elevators and above the guard’s desk, thirty feet high. Below the triangle on the wall read “GeoCorp,” and below that: ‘Bringing the Future of Tomorrow, Today!’

“Can I help you?” With the unfriendly offer, the guard eyed Chris and rested one hand on his gun while he made it.

“Um … yes. Sorry to disturb you while you’re so busy, but could you tell me what day it is?”

“Monday. Now get out. No loitering, or I’ll need to throw you out, and believe me, that would be a real shame.” The man smirked and hefted his rifle.

“Yeah. Thanks. Asshole.” He said the last under his breath. The guard glared but said nothing as Chris walked to the door and out into the rain.

2873: James Garret’s Laboratory

Another beautiful twenty-ninth century day shimmered around him. Recycled air breathed through the city’s cycling vents. The sun shone through the rebuilt atmosphere; the sky embraced the world in its rich deep blue arms. Today’s weather patterns called for bright and sunny so there were no clouds in the sky. That would be next week, when the Environmental Control Agency called for heavy rain.

Patting his pockets one by one, James checked through his mental equipment list. All present and accounted for. With a quick flex of his mind he accelerated his personal time stream to about two hundred times the relative Terra flow and walked out of his lab.

The frozen world around him was peaceful, in a beautiful harmony of stillness, which the supposedly utopian society he lived in never managed to actually achieve. At least not from his perspective.

At the end of his driveway a motorcycle waited, already infused with his phase nanos. He hopped on and fired it up, walking it forward as the ancient monster’s engine lumbered to life and warmed up.

Vehicles like this were one of the major reasons that the Environmental Control Agency had been born. The Earth had been torn to shreds by a humanity too young to truly grasp what it was doing to the world it had to live in. Luckily, the technology to keep the human race alive on a healthy planet had been born in the nick of time, and now everything was artificially controlled.

But phase time changed the rules of what James could use as tools. An electrical engine would fry in the accelerated time, with the nanos burning out the more delicate modern technology, so he had been forced to rebuild an archaic internal combustion engine. The major problem he’d had to overcome with the combustion engine had been airflow. In accelerated time flow, the air moved slower than the time field and if he stood still too long the air supply would exhaust itself. Igniting sparks in the engine only compounded the problem by using up the air faster, so he had to stay in motion. The simple solution was to shift time flow after starting the bike, but he didn’t know if he was under surveillance and didn’t want to risk being spotted.

Once the engine warmed up and he no longer had to trot the bike around to keep it running, he gunned the throttle and headed out on the highway, dodging through the frozen traffic faster than the near frozen cars’ proximity sensors could detect him.

After about an hour of travel on his subjective time scale, he arrived at the Time Corp base headquarters, and on a spot of luck, a car headed through the gate. He smiled at the good omen that he didn’t have to resync time to wait for an opening to enter the complex.

Any point that he had to sit in Terra’s time stream would only increase the odds that he would be spotted while at this task. He dodged through the gate by the side of the car and pulled into the main lot, circling it until the cameras that watched the lot were cycled away from where he needed to park.

As he rolled in to park, he killed the engine and let the bike drift to a stop so it would have a fresh field of oxygen to draw from when he left. It would have to, since he had a very short window of opportunity before the bike would be spotted and the gate would close again.

Hopping off the bike he popped a concentrated energy pill, dropping about five thousand calories into his system. He had designed the pill for his own metabolic system and had manufactured three of them for this job. Reaching into his belt back, he pulled out a mini scuba mask affixed to a six-inch air tank and put it over his mouth.

Now, for the hard part. Focusing his will, he pushed against the time stream as hard as he could, accelerating himself until he felt the physical effects of the strain on his body. As though on cue, he felt the pill kick in and a surge of cold energy washed through his system. His HUD clocked his relative time at just over a factor of one thousand times Terra’s standard time flow. He smiled and walked into the Time Corp’s headquarters.

First, the lobby. Scanning the area quickly he found the security guard walking back from the restroom towards the front desk where he should be stationed. Grabbing the guard’s security badge, he worked his way through the building; methodically stealing badges to work past higher and higher level security checkpoints. At each point he had to push some of his own nanos into the security systems so that they could let him through a bit faster.

Not accelerating to the security checkpoints drained his energy. If he moved too rapidly, he would fry out the systems and make this whole exercise useless. Working hard and fast, he made it to the top of the building without any major problems.

Terra’s time flow showed three seconds had elapsed when he found himself in the head Administrator’s office. Leaning over the frozen man, Director Arbu, he accessed the computer, scanning through the files surrounding his wife’s death.

He didn’t bother reading yet, instead just having his HUD record all the files. That had been another stroke of luck for him when originally designing the HUD to utilize the body’s cells as its circuitry board instead of using electrics with it.

The last file scrolled by his eyes and then he closed out the files, returning Director Arbu’s monitor to the display it had been on when he walked up. Less than five seconds had elapsed so far. Another stroke of luck then, that Arbu had not been looking at his monitor when James arrived. Two seconds Terra time was too long and he surely would have noticed that something was amiss. He grimaced and started moving as fast as he could back downstairs.

There were only two seconds left in his window before the bike would be noticed, even in phase time. If he hopped back to reset it, all the alarms would be triggered and the time it took the Corp to discover their files had been stolen would speed up.

James Garret pushed himself even harder, making it further into phase time, pale and sweating. But he raced against time and he couldn’t afford to lose this race. He sprinted between doors, and a few times even got lucky, managing to make it between thin gaps as other people were walking through check points.

He made it back downstairs, replacing all of the badges he had stolen as he went, with fifty milliseconds to spare. He sprinted across the front walkway of the building, hopping the railings around the perimeter and running across the water of the fountain rather than wasting time going around.

He made it to the bike and threw himself onto it. Seventeen milliseconds left. It took him three milliseconds to have another energy pill in hand. Taking as deep a breath as he could, and then holding it in, he ripped the oxygen mask off of his face and affixed it to the intake on the bike, popping the energy pill he’d palmed a few milliseconds ago.

Eight milliseconds left. He fired up the bike, listening to the sweet sound of it rumbling into life. It took the bike seven milliseconds to fire into life, and he sped out of the lot and drove back to his home, finally holding the information surrounding his wife’s death.

Leaving the bike in his driveway, he stumbled back into his house, barely able to retain consciousness. Pale, drained of all energy, his hands shook. The theft had exhausted him, and even with a boost of ten thousand calories metabolized into his system, he felt utterly wiped out. He collapsed into his chair and leaned back, taking the weight off of his drained muscles. He stared at the ceiling for a moment, allowing himself a second to relax.

The base white of the ceiling, unmoving and all encompassing hypnotized him. He drifted off to sleep. With a start, he snapped back into full wakefulness, focusing away from the ceiling only with a great effort of willpower.

Gathering his mind back to here and now, he allowed himself a wan smile. He had actually done it. A scientist, untrained in the rigors of physical combat or espionage had just bested the Time Corp and succeeded in breaking into their headquarters to steal information. Highly classified information, no less. He laughed aloud.

Calling up the information on his HUD, he started to review what he had stolen. Everything that he needed to know about the events surrounding the death of his wife lay there in front of him. Finally, he would be able to solve the riddle of how to unwind time and replay it in such a way that he could bring the love of his life back to him.

But there is only so far he could push the human body, no matter what boosts he gave it to help it weather the course. He may have intended to work away the night, but he had gone well past that breaking point for his untrained body. He fell asleep.

Time: Classified
Operation: Classified

Wanda settled down in her position, spot-checking the pistol’s scope to make sure she had it aimed correctly in the makeshift housing built onto the tripod. Seated in her roost, she had the entire courthouse exit area covered.

She had chosen an optimal perch. Not only did it give her a perfect sighting on her target area, but it had multiple exits and she would be able to hear anyone who came from the level below her.

The wait before the target came into sight should be a brief one, and then the deed would be done. Despite all the paradox surrounding this mission, she could, and would, achieve the task she had been set. She settled her nerves and focused into perfect stillness, ready for the shot.

To all outward appearances she was a perfect sniper, locked into a death trance, awaiting her kill. Internally though, she warred with herself, trying not to think about her assumption that something would happen here to result in her death. Thoughts and contradictions played out in her mind, clashing with each other. Visions of how she would die kept playing themselves out in her mind’s eye and she clamped down on her imagination, a hard won struggle.

Her attention drifted and she had to fight with herself to snap her focus back to the job at hand. She knew such conflict proved deadly to an agent under fire.

She almost missed it when the crowd gathered, but caught the movement in time to reposition herself for the shot. Oddly enough, the target had not exited yet, though quite a mob stood on the courthouse steps. She scanned the crowd, catching brief glimpses and forming impressions of the faces she saw.

People were definitely upset by the verdict, which firmed her faith in the validity of the mission. The man had obviously not committed the murder. But now he had to die, and she would make sure, for the sake of history, that he did. Police formed contact point lines to act as crowd control and it looked like some movement came from the inside of the courthouse.

And then the impossible happened. She saw the target in the crowd, instead of in the courthouse procession. The target kept his head ducked and seemed to be moving into the heaviest density portion of the crowd.

Watching him, she managed to get a quick scan of his eyes as he looked around himself to make sure no one observed him. His retinal pattern checked out positive. And there was no aging. This was her target. Odd, but that would explain why the crowd had grown into such an uproar.

Adjusting her sights, she took a bead on him and eased back the trigger. He pulled a gun out of his jacket and aimed it towards the courthouse. That was odd. Very odd.

But she didn’t have the time left to analyze the situation or change her point of aim. And skipping back in time would only add another small but important weight of paradox into history’s already weakened fibers. Not a risk she could justify taking.

In a moment of perfect stillness everything unfolded for Wanda Garret. The target pulled the trigger of his pistol. His wrist jerked back as the recoil hit his arm, and a bullet screamed out, marking someone unseen for death. As this happened, a shadow darkened Wanda’s sight.

Someone had managed to sneak past her alert system and, improbable as it seemed, stood behind her. Wanda jerked and pulled the trigger as her body tried to pivot to assess the threat looming behind her. Her pistol slammed back against her shoulder as she lost control of the gun, then it spun out of its tripod and went sliding across the floor to the opposite corner of the room. Well out of range for her to grab.

Reality crashed back into full motion for Wanda. Screaming and sounds of panic came from the direction of the courthouse below. She laid on her back staring down the barrel of a gun.

When a gun is pointed at your face, it can be very difficult to look at anything but that black tunnel that signifies your death, concealed in its shadowed chamber, there and waiting for you. She tried to jump through time, but something blocked her from slipping the time stream to safety.

A man loomed over her, dressed in dark clothes and looking like nothing so much as a classical private detective. He wore a rumpled trench coat, battered fedora, and had an unlit and dented cigarette hanging from his lips. He stood a solid six foot three, towering above her. Rugged good looks combined with a crooked nose, broken at some point, completed the effect.

As he stared down at her he slowly winked. “You missed, Wanda.”

She gasped as recognition sparked. She knew exactly who this man was. “Alexander Zarth. Pleasure to finally meet you. Though I would have preferred a less … intimate setting.”

Alex chuckled softly as he looked down at her. “The pleasure is all mine.”

He pulled the trigger.

1972 A.D.: Denver Colorado.

Alex mopped his sweaty brow and looked down at the job foreman. No one enjoyed working in the hot day. Noontime sun beat down on the man, as he sought refuge from it in the lee of the site’s main office. Workers milled about below, lifting, dropping, or in one memorable case sleeping, around various positions on the site.

No eyes were on him at the moment. With an impish grin, Alex sighted the Denver Courthouse from his perch and installed the Hazer in the grid work of the buildings girders. Once the Hazer had blended with the girder to the point that he could no longer see it, except on close inspection, he ran a system check. Reality shifted by about a quarter of an inch as he activated it, then everything settled down to look normal again. He grinned and deactivated the unit.

Over the course of the afternoon, his nano machines worked their magic, imbedding the Hazer’s circuitry into the building’s central wiring. By the time he finished working on masking the Hazer, its circuitry was seamless with that of the building, making its activation invisible against the background electrics already running.

About fifteen minutes before the shift ended, Alex winged a screwdriver out of the aperture in front on him, aiming about two degrees off, right at the foreman’s back. With a satisfying thunk, it walloped the man in the back and he screamed in outraged pain. Alex deactivated the Hazer again and headed downstairs to get into a fistfight.

He came out from the building’s half-constructed entrance and bellowed, “I am goddamn sick and tired of working my ass off while you hide in the shade and dodge having to work!” Challenging a foreman’s authority was about the fastest way to get into a fight. Getting into a fight in which the foreman threw the first blow was the easiest way to get fired without leaving a paper trail behind.

As he strode up to the foreman, the other man cocked a fist and threw a punch at him. Alex easily sidestepped the blow and threw his hardest uppercut straight into the man’s solar plexus. The foreman crumpled around Alex’s fist then slid to the ground. Ten minutes later Alex had been fired and he walked away into the future. It amazed him how well he could hide in the system by being willing to do an honest day’s labor and then get into an honest fight.