Relativity Synchronization:
The Sixth Cause

2044: The Past Unfolds

“Did you get lost, bub?”

Chris walked into the hotel to find Charlie eying him with amusement, like he was a tourist who got scared of the dark and came running back to the perceived safety of the Hotel Rangely.

“What do you mean?”

“Well you’ve only been gone ten minutes and shit, it takes longer than that to get down to 38th from here. Can’t you read a map?” Charlie folded his ever-present newspaper and put it down on the counter between them.

“I … my head … I’ve got a headache like you wouldn’t believe. I decided to wait until tomorrow.” Chris put his hand up to throbbing left temple and winced at the pain there. “I feel like someone smashed in my temple with a crowbar.”

“You need somethin’? I got some painkillers here. How about …” Charlie started rummaging around in a drawer beneath the counter and Chris heard the plastic clinking of pill bottles being moved around.

“No. No thanks. I … I need to lie down. I think getting some decent rest should do the trick. I’ve been stressed out all day.” Tiredness pervaded his bones, leaving him feeling washed up and disjointed.

Chris walked up to his room, trying not to jar his throbbing head. Ten minutes? That’s not possible. He was sure it must have been at least a half-hour between when he left the hotel and whatever happened with the cops in front of Jones Drugs & Merchandise. How had he been gone only ten minutes? The clerk must have been mistaken.

He wasn’t mistaken, and Chris knew it. He could feel it. He was aware of every moment, every second in time, and he knew as well as the greasy hotel manager he had only been gone ten minutes—but that somehow he had also been gone for thirty. Maybe I actually am crazy, locked up in some white padded room. It would be a relief to know this is all going on in my imagination. But he knew that wasn’t the case—as much as anyone can know whether or not they’re crazy. Everyone he had met was too real, too here, to be a figment of his imagination. Now was real, and there were things going on in him that he had absolutely no comprehension of.

Chris locked his door and lay down on the bed without taking off his shoes or wet coat. Why didn’t I run? he thought. Why did I need to kill him? He remembered the rage he had felt during the second freeze. It had the same strange edge as the paranoia he had felt with Rat—something foreign, yet a part of him. Some external self, acting through him to preserve him. Or itself.

Memory replayed itself in his head. Everything had stopped. The hammer on the pistol, frozen in mid fall; then he had reached up and touched the man. That touch had instantly killed him—an old man’s body falling to the ground. Emaciated and brittle, the impact of the fall had broken several of his bones. And then the blackness took over and he found himself walking into the hotel lobby, twenty minutes before his encounter with the cops. Once again he had to question his sanity, for he had just lived out the impossible.

Once you have ruled out the impossible, the remaining answer is correct, no matter how improbable. As the thought streaked through his mind, Chris wondered where it had come from. But he did know why he killed him, and it wasn’t because of the rage—that had only helped him do it. He killed Chuck because he knew without a doubt that if he hadn’t, the two guards would have reported him, and PolCorp Securities would have hunted him down and killed him before he had the chance to find out who he was or what was going on.

Now all they had to go on was the video footage from their head cameras. It was still bad, but at least the testimony of the guard who killed Chuck was unlikely to be taken too seriously. Or so he hoped. What he had done seemed to him like magic—which no one would take seriously. Unless they know what I can do, Chris thought to himself. But no, they didn’t know. If they did, he was pretty sure they wouldn’t have allowed him to leave the hospital. Am I a magician? Do I have some undiscovered technology in me? Or am I … something else?

Answers would come with his meeting with Dr. Jameson, the day after tomorrow. He considered not going, the now-familiar paranoia chiming in the back of his head. He’s one of them. He works for them. It’s all a setup.

Chris fought the voice and won. I have to know what he knows about me. Jameson had warned him to avoid the authorities and, anyway, the doctor had him right where they wanted him before he woke up. They had, in fact, had him for forty-one years. Why would anything change now? Had they wanted him enough to engineer this chaotic trip through this world? But for what purpose? They could have spent a lot fewer of their resources by keeping him at the hospital.

No answer came from his consciousness. How had he … what was it? Stopped time? No. It was altered. Altered, Chris thought again, and laughed. He had no doubt that he was the one who had done it. He felt himself doing it, but it felt like his heartbeat; he had no control over it. I did this thing … I manipulated time. But how? Chris felt his eyes grow heavy and the torpor of deep sleep blinded him to the world as he succumbed to exhaustion. Massive culture shock had mounted all day and it beat him into submission as he collapsed onto his sheets.

Chris woke up feeling energized and refreshed. It surprised him that, according to the clock in his room, he had slept for nearly a full day. He didn’t care, though. A path had revealed itself to him as he slept and burned in his mind as he got dressed. Deciding to go to the library had been a good decision. He now knew what he must do to survive in this world. With a confidence in his step that had been missing the day before, Chris went downstairs to the lobby.

He tapped the newspaper hovering at the front desk. “Is there a library around here?” he asked Charlie.

Shaking his head with a chuckle, Charlie answered “Man, I haven’t seen a library in years. I hear the Omni Institute over on the east coast kept the Library of Congress around as a museum, but travel has been restricted to the Eastern Province since the war back in thirty-nine. Where you been, anyway? Everybody knows this stuff.”

“In a coma, actually. I’ve missed out on a bit of recent history. Look, is there anywhere I can do some research? I’ve got some catching up to do, you know. For the Company.”

“Shit, if the Company wanted you to do research they should have put you up in a better hotel. Most of the ones downtown have Net Termies in every room. I’d let you use the one back here, but it’s ancient—Windows Based from like two thousand and five. Shit, it’s the same system I learned on when I was seven years old; it can’t handle anything but the Rangely’s records, and it can’t do that half the time.

“Here,” the clerk took Chris’s map and marked another spot a few blocks from the hotel. “This here’s the closest Punt. It’s open from seven a.m. to midnight every day. No kinky stuff on the P.N.T.’s, but then, you won’t be wanting that anyway—that is, if you’re on Company business.” He sized Chris up then grinned at him. He didn’t believe for a minute that that was why Chris searched for a terminal.

“What’s a punt?” Chris asked, feeling a brief tinge of yesterday’s culture shock again.

“P-N-T. Public Net Terminal. Jeez, man. Were you really in a coma? They’ve been around for like twenty-five years. Since Microsoft crashed and all their ‘ware became freaking freeware. That’s when the whole thing with ‘free’ public infrastructure and shit happened.” Charlie chuckled, “Turns out all those crackers and net freaks that wanted free code weren’t so happy with the results when they got it. Ha, free costs double.” Charlie snapped out of his rant and looked back to Chris. “So, a coma, eh?”

“Afraid so. Thanks. Oh, and if anyone comes in here looking for me, PolCorp or anyone, I’m not here. OK?” Chris had no idea what Charlie talked about, but refused to let himself be daunted.

“Hey man. I ain’t gonna cover your ass.” A suspicious look crossed into Charlie’s eyes. “Who the hell are you anyway? I don’t need to …” The clerk trailed off as Chris slid five crisp hundred dollar bills across the counter. It’s all business in this world. I have to hope that PolCorp isn’t offering more than this. “When I check out, I’ll give you five-hundred more. That is, unless I’m smeared all over my room because you ratted me out. I don’t know, will PolCorp do clean up in a private establishment, or will you be the one scrubbing my guts off the walls? For some reason I don’t think she’ll do it—” Chris nodded toward the permanent fixture of the cleaning woman, dozing in front of the TV behind him, who let out a sharp laugh without opening her eyes before falling silent once more. “I like you Charlie, and I hate the thought of you having to waste your day picking through the bloody mess my guts would leave behind. I know that the next shift won’t do it either, seeing as how it was you that checked me in the first place.”

Charlie pocketed the money, swallowed hard, and pecked at his computer for a minute before smiling his brown smile at Chris. “Well, whaddya know. According to the hotel records here, you checked out an hour ago because of a problem with your plumbing. You must have been pissed—there was shit all over the room. Needed to close it for a week for cleaning. Ain’t nobody allowed in there now. Heh.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, what can I say? You’re a prudent man with lots of cash. As long as your money holds I’ll be your best fuckin’ friend.” He picked up his paper again and closed the conversation by opening it in front of him.

“That’s quite kind of you, but the room will do for now.” Chris started upstairs when he thought of something, and went back to the desk, refusing to leave Charlie alone till he’d gotten some more answers. “Won’t all of this show up in GeoCorp’s records?”

“Well, I guess it would if the Rangely was owned by GeoCorp.” Charlie smiled as he lowered the paper.

“You mean it’s not?”

“Nope.”

“I thought everything was owned by them.” Chris mulled this over. This significant little tidbit surprised him.

“Well, they own everything important, yeah,” Charlie shrugged. “I guess they figured a shitty hotel in the suburbs wasn’t worth the effort of buying it from my granddaddy, who didn’t want to sell.” The clerk inflated with pride at this and Chris realized that as long as he professed a dislike toward GeoCorp, he would have help.

“I have to be honest with you Charlie, I don’t like GeoCorp. I’m only working with them until I figure out how to strike out as an independent. I have to make sure that my tracks are well covered. So what about the hotel records? Can GeoCorp still get at them through the Net?”

“Heh,” Charlie smiled mischievously. “That’s the only good thing about working on a forty year old terminal. Nothing in the Cybernet uses Windows anymore, so it should be pretty hard to hack. Anyway, I issued you a full refund for the shit-filled room, which I will, of course, keep as a token of your good will,” Charlie gave Chris the first friendly smile he had seen from the mash-faced, bitter little man. “For years those GeoCorp assholes have muscled over the lowers like me and the people who live around here. You ain’t got nothing to worry about.”

“Thanks, Charlie,” Chris said, glad to discover a tentative ally.

“Like I said, you got the cash, I’ll be your best fuckin’ friend.” Charlie leaned over the counter towards Chris. “Hey, you’re not even really with the Company, are you? I mean you say you’re using them to go independent, but that don’t smell much like the truth. Smells more like a bathroom after a bulimics’ convention.”

Chris smiled and slid more cash across the counter. “What do you think? Anyway, two thousand up front should be enough to keep you from asking too many questions … Just the business side of our friendship, right Charlie? Secrets are expensive.”

“Alright, alright. Fine, I won’t ask. Keep your money though. I’m serious about helping you. Remember, if you want talk, I’m here every night from—”

“I remember. Nine p.m. till nine a.m., and the rest of the time, besides.” He laughed; saying something like ‘I remember’ made Chris as happy as he’d been for two days. “I’ll see you in a while, Charlie. At least I hope I will.” As he walked towards the main lobby doors, Chris noticed that the clock above the door read eleven fifty-three p.m. The research would have to wait until the morning. Sighing, he turned around and headed back to his room.

Chris lay in the bed, but he didn’t sleep. He wasn’t tired. After the twenty-one hours of sleep I got, I’ll be awake for a few days at least¸ he thought to himself.

So instead he lay awake, staring at the water-stained brown ceiling and getting up to look out the window. The night’s fog lifted, and if he looked up while pressing his face against the cold glass, he could see the half-disk of the moon peering through the thin, yellow cloud cover.

The lights from Denver North, now revealed in all their glory, illuminated his room with an ethereal haze of blue, green, red, and yellow, overpowering the little table lamp and casting the illusion that the massive corporate billboards warred on his walls. Finally, Chris moved the room’s little table to a spot in front of the window, pulled out a wrinkled pad of Hotel Rangely stationary, and began to work out formulae.

He worked through everything he could recall about Aerospace Physics in attempts to understand what he had done in front of Jones Drugs. Every time he found a promising lead it required that he be able to do the impossible and personally generate an event horizon. Chris chuckled. I don’t feel like a black hole. He tried to find a line of reasoning that led in a different direction.

He pushed and pushed until finally it broke. His first line of reasoning was right. If he could generate an event horizon, he could theoretically stretch relativity to the point that he could achieve faster than light travel. And if he could travel faster than the speed of light, then theoretically—if he remained still on the three-dimensional axis and moved on the fourth—then he would be capable of doing what he had experienced.

The only problem with this theory was that it also involved some sort of machine or device that would allow an organic being to attain such speeds, but once again, that did not explain what had happened at the drugstore.

That frustrated him—the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Whatever had happened in that parking lot was of his doing, not some machine. It was as natural as breathing to him, even if he couldn’t figure out how to do it voluntarily. It was part of his mind, or … soul? Chris had never been a religious man, but had always held some secret hope that he would come across something that defied any sort of scientific theory. He never thought of the possibility that he might find that something within himself.

He tried several times that night to duplicate the freezing that had happened with the two PolCorp guards. Once he felt like he brushed … something, just beyond the time-space continuum as it is recognized by humanity. A void filled with something intangible, but then it was abruptly gone again. I’m tired, Chris thought. Imagining things.

But he wasn’t tired. He did feel like he had woken from a refreshing forty-one-year nap. He looked again for the sense of nothing—the nothing/something he had felt before—but it escaped him, like a dream evaporating upon wakening. He felt the impression of it, but the details fled his mind. Like everything else in my head—there, in its shape, but invisible in its details.

Could this be why I didn’t age? Chris thought. Maybe this is something that I was born with, that only came out after I’d been shot—maybe it needed this world to come out. Maybe … maybe … maybe …

But no answer came as Chris waited for dawn, feeling only the emptiness where his life’s memories should be. I need answers, Chris thought as the sun rose over the steel and Plexiglas of North Denver. And I need them soon, before I really do drive myself crazy.

Chris was up and out the front door of the hotel at six forty-five. Charlie hadn’t been at the front desk, replaced by a little hand-written sign that said “Back in five.” The old cleaning woman was still there, of course, asleep in front of the morning news on the ancient TV. The sound fritzed and the anchorman could hardly be heard above the sea of static.

He found the P.N.T. five blocks down the main strip that led to the GeoCorp Administration Building, attached to an Airbus terminal, with shuttles leaving every two minutes to Denver North. There was a sign for schedules to Denver South, as well, but it said only “ALL BUSSES CANCELLED” in large, red-lighted letters.

Chris had passed quite a few ground cars on his way to the terminal and he wondered how they managed to get into downtown—from the streets around the hospital, it seemed unlikely that anyone could drive a car through the rubbish and broken machinery that littered the streets there. The answer: the terminal itself was huge—two city blocks and twenty stories, of which the bottom eighteen was all parking. A mall and the actual terminal took up the top two floors of structure.

Chris took the lift to the airbus depot and spotted a sign marked “P.N.T.,” with a graphic of a figure sitting in front of a computer. The P.N.T. took up the entire western third of the top floor. There was only a low, dividing wall between the rest of the bus terminal and the rows and rows of cubicles that made up the main part of the P.N.T.

A sign at a little booth in the front entrance said, “One hundred dollars for thirty minutes or one hundred and fifty for one hour, prepay only.” Sitting behind the sign was a tired-looking Korean teenager who put on a plastic smile that didn’t reach his eyes—eyes that instead spoke with venomous hostility of the injustice of a world where he had to deal with assholes and bums who treated him like shit. “Welcome to the P.N.T., sir. How may I help you?” He sounded like he read a script, unsure of his lines.

“I need a terminal, please.” Chris tried to be polite and friendly, to help ease the boy in front of him. Those hostile eyes bored straight into Chris’s soul and exposing his inner monsters.

“How long, Sir?” He replied to Chris’s politeness by warming slightly and notching down the hate in his eyes.

Chris sighed, not wanting to go through this again. “I’m not really sure. I’m sorry.”

“No problem, sir. You’ll be on terminal double zero three nine. Fill out this form here, and I’ll need to see an identification card please.” The kid, whose nametag said Kim, pushed a form across the desk towards Chris.

“Oh,” Chris said. “The thing is, I lost my I.D. I, uh, need to apply for another one … I’m sorry to be a hassle.”

“No problem sir,” Kim smiled again, this time almost genuinely. “Then instead I can give you terminal zero five zero six, that’s in the next room—” He gestured vaguely over his shoulder, “—and you can fill out this form here—” he slid another form over to Chris and pulled the other one away in one motion, “—which stipulates that you are who you say you are and can be checked by PolCorp at any time to prove your identity—don’t worry, they never check—and if you sign here, here, and here, then pay the five hundred dollar deposit you will be all ready to go. Here’s your pass code for this session—use it to log on.” Kim handed him a small, red card that said:

HERCULEANPEDAGOGUE

Chris signed the name Geoffrey Garret—he didn’t know where it came from, but he liked the sound of it—paid the deposit, and followed the signs through the maze of cubicles to another room, far to his left. He saw several images of hard-core porn out of the corner of his eye, and wondered what Charlie thought was so “kinky” that it wasn’t allowed on public terminals.

The next room was smaller, though still vast, and noisier than the main P.N.T. area. The terminals looked older and dirtier. The dusty scent of overworked drives filled the air. With no dividing cubicles, the room was set up with ten terminals each on twenty or so tables. Through the open windows came the din of traffic flying around the bus terminal. There were a dozen people spread around in here, pecking away at keyboards; one man peered over a woman’s shoulder near the back wall.

A lone PolCorp security guard reclined at a desk at the far end of the room, looking at the ceiling like a despondent child. His feet beat to the rhythm of music only he could hear. Chris imagined he had committed some atrocious folly, either perceived or real, to earn this beat. Library cop, Chris thought out of nowhere, and smiled. Keeping the silence—and not even doing that well. The thought amused him, and to a small degree some vindication for how harassed he had felt by PolCorp and yesterday’s events.

Chris found the terminal with the digits zero five zero six hovering over it like the clock at the hospital and sat down, the numbers flickering out of existence as he did so. It occurred to him as he sat down that he may have no idea how to operate such a computer, but as the hologram flickered out the screen flickered on, revealing a blinking prompt that stated: “Pass code?” Chris stared at the computer. There wasn’t a keyboard.

He ran his hand over the space in front of the monitor, and asterisks appeared on the login. Chris ran his hand back over the surface and spotted a slight discoloration appeared under his fingers. Holographic letters were on the otherwise blank surface. He smiled and typed in “HERCULEANPEDAGOGUE” and the screen went blank, before bringing up the face of a beautiful Asian woman. “Good-morning!” she said to Chris. The monitor had the same three-dimensional feel as the screens at Jones Drugs, creating the uncomfortable illusion that he sat a foot away from this woman’s disembodied head.

The feeling passed as the woman faded and another blinking curser appeared, this time, “Find It!!” floated at the top of the screen in green bubble letters. Without hesitation, Chris typed in “Dr. Christopher Nost.” A long list of hits appeared, hovering within the flat monitor. Chris went to the first one, an article from July twenty-third, two thousand and three:

The ‘Memory Lost’ Murderer Shot after Conviction

Dr. Christopher Nost was shot by an unidentified assailant today, only minutes after his conviction in the much-publicized murder of Lucille Frost. No arrests have been made although several witnesses report seeing the assailant gunned down by police. Authorities will not comment on the incident but say they have several leads.

Judge Miller expressed sympathy for Dr. Nost after the conviction and reduced his sentence to the minimum 10 years in a minimum-security prison. He spoke bluntly to the court when he told those present that he had reason to seriously doubt Dr. Nost’s guilt.

Dr. Nost was shot while leaving the Courthouse, just as his attorney, Alan Dunwich, was addressing the assembled press …

Chris stopped reading—the rest of the article looked like interviews with witnesses who didn’t see anything—and went back to search “Lucille Frost,” and read the first article, dated August fourteenth, nineteen ninety-nine.

Head of Research Team Murdered in Office

The head of an Aerospace Physics research team based in Colorado Springs, CO. was found shot to death in her office around 7 pm Monday night.

Lucille Frost, 39, had led a team of 20 scientists for only about 18 months, but in that time managed to make her elite think-tank the forefront of Aerospace Physics, and was currently spearheading a privately funded project that was meant to revolutionize current theories on deep-space travel. Benefits to society had already been seen with the new high impact lightweight alloy the team designed in their first weeks of research. They had been known as ‘Lucille’s Team’ throughout academia in the short time they existed. The entire project has now been put on hold indefinitely while the murder investigations are under way.

Frost left behind two children, who at this time cannot be found. A kidnapping investigation is also underway over the fate of Mary, 10 and Markus, 16. Her ex-husband was not available to comment.

The article ended with a picture of Frost, taken in a park. Her face tickled something at the back of his mind but failed to spark recognition. Chris panned down through the other hits before he came across:

Arrest Made in Frost Murder

One of the leading physicists on Dr. Lucille Frost’s team was arrested on Tuesday as the prime suspect in her shooting nearly three years ago.

Dr. Christopher Nost, thought by many to be the backbone of the “Deep Space Dream Team,” was arrested without incident in his home in Colorado Springs.

“We have ample evidence which we have collected over the past three years—all of which points to Dr. Nost,” said Colorado Springs Police Chief Randal Holms. “We also have multiple reports from witnesses who say Frost and Nost got into frequent, heated arguments over how the project was run.”

“One witness claims that Nost once told Dr. Frost that he believed she was sabotaging their collective efforts. Many of his colleagues also say that Nost was bitter about having his ideas repeatedly rejected by the project head.” The prosecution, despite evidence, does not have an easy case against Dr. Nost, who suffers from a rare neural disorder that reduces his memory span to a little more than a year.

Dr. Eric Jorgensen, one of the world’s premier neurologists, was contacted via a phone call to his office in Sweden Tuesday night. Dr. Jorgensen has had Nost as a regular patient for the past 6 years and will be testifying on his behalf.

“It is an incredibly rare condition, and it is almost impossible at this time to identify a cause, but I can assure you that whether or not my patient is guilty, he has no memory of the event either way,” Jorgensen explained.

He went on to say that Nost’s condition is all the more unusual because he is capable of retaining learned, or abstract and conceptual memories. “The formulae and equations that Dr. Nost uses in his research, for example, are not affected, nor are his abilities to write or drive a car,” Jorgensen explained. “But he cannot remember his own family, or his childhood with them.”

“However,” Jorgensen pointed out, “if Dr. Nost were to come up with something new, some sort of breakthrough in his field, well, let’s just say he should write it down.” Dr. Sharon Peters, head of the University of Colorado Physics department and the person who discovered Lucille Frost’s body in the parking lot, expressed regret when notified of Nost’s arrest.

“I don’t think [Nost] could have done it,” she told reporters at a press conference held two hours after the suspect was taken into custody. “Either way, I think it is safe to say that without both Frost and Nost, the Deep Space/Light Particle project will have to be cancelled until other suitable minds can be found. Despite their personal differences and radically different theories, those two were without a doubt the heart and soul of the project, constantly keeping the other in check.”

Peters further pointed out that she was in the building around the time of the murder and although she heard no gunshots, the man she saw leaving Frost’s office was, she claimed, not Dr. Nost. Nost’s mother has been notified of the arrest, but has declined to comment.

As Chris finished reading, he became aware of someone standing behind him.

“Old news, huh?” a feminine voice purred behind him. “Now why would you be hunting through that stuff?”

Chris closed out the screen. “What’s it to you?” he asked, turning around.

Chris froze when he saw the woman standing behind him. She was young—probably in her early twenties, with reddish hair and an aquiline nose. Her body was well toned and easy enough to see under her tight, thin, slightly glowing bodysuit. She exuded an air of womanliness that was hard to see past.

It was not her sexuality that gripped Chris by his guts though—she looked exactly like the picture he had just seen of Lucille Frost. Despite the difference in age, the resemblance was uncanny. Chris swallowed and said nothing more, his hand nervously brushing the keyboard.

“Curiosity, really,” the woman said. “As I was going by I saw my name on your screen, so I stopped to have a look. When I saw you were reading about my grandmother’s murder, I couldn’t help but wonder why you were reading about it.”

“Your … grandmother?” Chris asked. “That explains the striking resemblance.”

“Yes, I know. I look exactly like her. Everybody who sees her picture says it.” She looked at Chris with a scrutinizing gaze, bit her lower lip, and stuck out her hand. “I’m sorry. My name is Mary. Mary Frost.”

Chris looked at her hand the same way he had looked at the PolCorp mini-gun the night before, then took it and shook it. Her firm grip startled him. “I’m Geoffrey Garret. I was doing a little research on the project your grandmother was working on. I … I’m a scientist.…”

Mary looked at Chris, a glint in her steely blue-gray eyes. “Garret?” She looked at him, through him, for almost a minute. It felt to Chris like an eternity that he was locked in her gaze, unable to look away. “I was looking for a Garret, actually, but I don’t think you’re him.”

“I doubt it,” Chris said, trying to mask his relief. “I haven’t been in the city too long.…”

“Oh no?” She smiled, like a cat that had no intention of killing the mouse, just to play with it until it’s dead.

“Well, no. I’ve only been around here for a couple of days.…”

Mary leaned in close to Chris without warning, one hand cupping around his neck, and ran her tongue along the edge of his ear. Chris tried to pull away from her, but her grip, soft though it was, was solid as granite. “I know who you are,” she said, looking into his eyes, inches from his face. “I know what you are looking for, and you will find your answers.”

He shuddered. “That’s not possible. Look, I don’t know what you think you know, but you’re wrong.”

She leaned in closer until her lips were brushing against his ear, “It is you who are wrong. You, to whom the truth will be revealed. You see, I know what you are, Chris,” she whispered before pulling back and looking at him once more. “Anyway, don’t trust Jameson. He’s a liar and worse. If you let him in,” she tapped a finger against Chris’s temple, “he’ll try to twist you and then destroy you. Meet him if you must—but be wary. Know that he is evil.”

Mary Frost turned and walked casually away, her body swaying under the glowing red fibers of her clothing. As she reached the door she turned one last time to look at Chris. “See you around, Doctor.”

Chris sat and stared blankly at the computer screen for a long time. He desperately wanted to go back to the hotel and think out what had happened, but there was too much still he needed to know. He reached back to the keyboard and reactivated the screen, typing in “time travel theories.”

Over a million hits came up. Skimming over them, most looked like either links to fiction sites or to science sites that needed a password to enter. Shaking his head, Chris tried again with a new search string: “time phenomena and travel—public domain, facts.”

This time there were only a few hundred thousand. Most looked to be hack sites reporting supposed “slips in time,” but skimming through them, Chris saw nothing that compared to his experience of the night before. There were several public theories on manipulating time as well, but all seemed to be based on various crackpot ideas—which Chris could see were faulty—or facilitated by the use of some unwieldy device. It seemed that in this day and age anyone could publish an article and have it posted as “fact.”

Sighing, he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his brow. What else would be a good search string? He hesitated for a moment and tried “control time, spirituality.” He could still feel the presence of that place that he almost reached last night in his hotel room. The first hit was titled The Evolution of Gods, Using Kronos as an Example, 1972©. Chris went to it, laughing at himself.

It was a history of Kronos, the Greek god of Time, written by PhD. Historian Patricia Fahey. It followed the evolution of the deity from its origin as Zr’van, an ancient Iranian god of time, said to be the creator of all the paths which lead to the crossing point into the beyond. This place was described as a “void, filled with all things,” named the Cinvat Bridge.

The article continued to describe, from a theologian’s point of view, how a god must adapt and change to the society that worships it and the world it lives in or become obsolete and perish. Its underlying tenants seemed to be the evolution of thought itself—growing and changing to match the society it dwelt in or the alternate path, fading into obscurity as it became outmoded. This becomes apparent, Fahey explained, when looking at classical gods that later become saints, the Egyptian to the Greek, or, as in the example cited, the Iranian to the Greek. The failure of the gods to do this, Fahey wrote, is the reason why religion begun to fall out of popularity with the majority of Western Culture for the first time ever. Even the rise of Christianity supports this theory as religion grew toward faith and away from a pantheistic belief structure.

Chris shook his head, laughing to himself as he finished the article, but something in the back of his mind made him go back to the first section of the thesis again. A void filled with all things, he read again, trying to remember something—a dream … A void of bright darkness and roaring silence, filled with pores to let the substance of time into the physical universe …

“Sir? Mr. Garret?” the voice shattered his musings, making him lose the idea about to be birthed.

Chris looked up in annoyance at the man standing behind him. He wore the blue vest of the P.N.T. employee, and his nametag said ‘Dwayne.’

“Yes?” frustration carried across in his voice.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Garret, but the P.N.T. is closing for the evening. We open again 7a.m. tomorrow. You’re more than welcome to come back then.”

“What? You must be mistaken—I’ve only been here a few hours.…” he trailed off as he noticed that the view through the windows showed nothing but darkness and the cacophony of vehicles had faded to a distant whisper.

“Well, you were gone for most of the day, but you never signed off your terminal. I didn’t even see you come back—we were beginning to think you ditched out on the bill. I was getting ready to transmit your papers over to PolCorp when I noticed that there was renewed activity at your terminal. Rather lucky for you, sir. Even if you had paid they would have had to run you in if I had completed the transfer.”

Chris looked up at the clock. It was five minutes to midnight. Lights were already shutting off in the building, and as he looked around, a harmonic chorus of “Goodnight!” rose from the terminals as pretty Asian faces nodded goodbye with a little regret in their eyes, before they winked out.

“I … lost track of time. How much do I owe you?”

“Five hundred and ten dollars, sir. I’m sorry we need to charge you for all the time you weren’t at your terminal. Had you signed off …”

“It’s no problem. My fault, I should have remembered to sign off and wrap my bill the first time I left.” Chris pulled six hundred from his pocket and handed it to Dwayne. “Thanks for your time. Keep the change, Dwayne.”

He decided to take his time walking back to the hotel. Stopping at an all-night convenience store at the base of the bus station tower, he wandered around and ended up buying a pack of cigarettes.

He couldn’t remember if he had ever smoked them before but it seemed like a good time to start. Desiring nothing more than the feel of an open sky above him, he walked the unfamiliar streets of the city for close to two hours, lost deep in thought. He didn’t make it back to his hotel until after two in the morning. With the light from the waxing moon streaming in behind him, the lobby seemed an eldritch place, somehow separated from the bright lights and fast-paced world outside its front doors. He stopped, enjoying the quiet mystique of the moment; entranced by this vision of the world he had come from.

“Looks like you had a rough day,” Charlie said wryly.

The words broke Chris’s reverie and snapped him back into the moment. But the connection had already been made and ideas were starting to queue up in Chris’s mind. As preposterous as the thoughts flooding his mind were, it relieved him to be starting to piece together answers. A few more questions and he knew that he would have all of the pieces that he needed to figure out who and what he was.

Chris walked by the front desk without responding, silence the only sound he was capable of making at the moment, lost his thoughts.

“Hey, you OK, buddy?” Charlie peered at Chris. “You need anything? You don’t look so good man.”

But Chris still said nothing, and went upstairs to lie sleepless on his bed, thinking of a time, memory, and a place called the Cinvat Bridge.

2873: Yuri Yakavich’s Hunt

Endless letters and words scrolled in front of Yuri. Time streamed by his tired eyes as he analyzed history for the telltale signature of Alexander Zarth in Christopher Nost’s era. Blank again. He rubbed at his eyes. He had gone through some of these files so many times that he could about cite them from memory.

History surrounding major paradoxes was always problematic to delve into from a researcher’s point of view. Time Corp was very hesitant to send in observation teams because of the off chance of a further paradox being created. The old theory about the act of observation changing the observed dominated the methods of thought that held sway with the current administration.

This meant that Yuri had only the standard historical trail to work from, and that, unfortunately, included all of the background static created by standard progression of time. Trying to find someone like Alexander Zarth at the nexus of a paradox was a lot like trying to find a specific needle in a needle factory storage bin. In the middle of a city built out of needles. Yuri chuckled to himself at the mental imagery.

Although the one thing that Yuri had going for him was that he was an incredibly lucky man. Several times before he had managed to pick Zarth out of the background and pinpoint him for various field agents. Once you do something enough times, it starts to become reflex, almost like a habit. But this time it seemed like someone was actively masking Zarth’s presence from his searches. It was disquieting how well it was being done, too.

Yuri knew that Zarth was there as surely as he knew his own name. But his supervisors were running out of patience and Yuri knew that reviewing the information available to him for a thirtieth time would yield the exact same results as the previous twenty-nine. All of these pressures had been building up on Yuri, shaping his thoughts and guiding him in a cycle of hopelessness.

Yuri’s sour frame of mind continued as he walked into Director Arbu’s office. Under the pressure he felt, it was understandable that he was about to make a mistake large enough to change history.

Director Arbu sat behind his desk, scanning files on his computer. He was an older man, in his mid-sixties, but still in excellent physical shape. Shaggy silver hair, streaked with a few remnants of his original black, framed a scarred but strong-featured face.

A retired warrior, seasoned and battle hardened, Arbu had very little patience for incompetence. His piercing gaze caught Yuri as he looked up from the monitor in front of him and smiled. “What progress have you made, Yuri?”

Standing stiffly to attention and speaking with an air of complete sincerity, Yuri lied. Meeting Director Arbu’s steel gaze, he said without blinking, “Sir, I believe that I have found the trail that will lead to both Alexander Zarth and the renegade Dr. Garret. It is in nineteen ninety-seven and focuses around the mission of Lucille Frost. As I have not pinpointed either’s exact location, I would like to request that I personally handle this mission.”

Despite the highly irregular request—he had to hope that he could sneak it through without Arbu figuring out why he tried to get a field placement—he kept his gaze steadily exuding honesty and determination. If this did not work, then Yuri would be forced to take a much more difficult path.

Director Arbu leaned back in his plush synthetic leather chair and studied Yuri for a moment. Yuri felt the gaze opening him up and reading his mind. He felt the bottom of his stomach crash down as he knew what his boss would say. Director Arbu sighed. “Agent Yakavich, let me be blunt with you. You are our best intelligence agent and risking you in the field would reflect poorly on my judgment. Requesting this also reflects poorly on your judgment. Obviously, you are frustrated and too tired, which is why I think you are suggesting pitting yourself against a criminal and a renegade who are both more highly skilled than yourself.”

Yuri braced himself. He had one gambit to play, and even though it would probably not work, he had to try to use every card at his disposal. “I have to respectfully disagree, sir. I would like to remind you that five agents before me have failed to apprehend the criminal after I pinpointed his location for them. They were unable to complete the task of finding him. Based on that one fact. I would feel safe saying that there is no other agent more qualified than myself to deal with this situation. Perhaps a field team would be in order to support me, sir? Since I would agree that my field skills are not the best.”

Leather squeaked as the director shifted in his chair to lean forward. He placed both of his elbows on his desk, clamping his hands together and staring at Yuri over the knot they formed.

The silence stretched long enough to make Yuri uncomfortable before Arbu broke it. “Yuri, you are tired and foolish. Five field agents failed, yes? And each of them had better control and much higher combat skills than you. If you were to go back, we would lose you. That is a statement of pure and simple fact; please, do not bridle at it. I will assign the task as I see fit. Thank you for your report. You are dismissed from the operation.”

Slack jawed, Yuri stared at his superior. He was being taken off the case. Not only had he failed to get assigned, but also Director Arbu had read him so well that he had chosen to remove Yuri for his own safety. “I see, sir. Thank you.”

Yuri turned around and walked out of the office with clenched fists. As he walked down the hall away from the office he came to a decision. It took him less than ten minutes to prepare himself and illegally travel to the twentieth century.

Two minutes before he left, Director Arbu had placed an agent on a mission to track Yuri’s illegal movements in the twentieth century. Yuri didn’t realize it, but he had lost before he even knew he played the game.

Time: 1997
Location: Classified
Operation: Classified

Agent Holly watched Yuri leave the fast food joint with a greasy bag tucked under his arm. He got bored with this assignment, as his target had spent the preceding month basically in a repetition of the same routine. Wake up at the crack of dawn, eat greasy food at a diner, go to the library all day, eat greasy twentieth century fast food, then go to sleep after it got dark. Bio-monitor tracking all night long showed never a single variation in his sleep pattern.

Following the most elite of intelligence officers was not what Holly would have thought of as a boring mission. This should have been cloak and dagger. There should have been constant time shifts to shake any followers. Following a renegade agent was also not something Holly would have thought could be boring. A renegade agent, well, frankly, should be doing something illegal. Yet somehow this combination of renegade and intelligence officer put him to sleep on a daily basis.

Perhaps if Holly had been freshly assigned, and not locked into a month long routine that took his edge off, he would not have made the mistake he was about to make. But, he was bored, and he did make the biggest mistake of his career.

It happened thirty-two days into Holly’s operation, between Agent Yakavich’s evening meal at a seemingly random burger joint and his return to his hole in the wall hotel. Yakavich turned off the main roadway that ran towards his hotel and drove down a dead-end road that led only to a C-Twenty government building. Yakavich made his move—or at least made a move of some sort. A move that Holly could bring him down for. He stayed far back, using illegal C twenty-nine technologies to mask his car.

Yuri pulled into the building’s parking lot. The building had several scaffolds and cranes around it. Pieces of the upper stories were jagged and missing. The building had suffered some damage and was being rebuilt. Waiting in the shadowy edge of the parking lot stood the dimly lit silhouette of a female figure. Yakavich got out of his car with a briefcase, scanning the lot for other people. Holly recognized the model of the briefcase. It was also an illegal C twenty-nine piece of technology.

Holly jumped to the only conclusion that he could with the evidence at hand: Yakavich passed future information to a native local. Holly reached into his jacket, pulled out his pistol, and started moving towards the two figures at the far side of the lot.

As he snuck up on them, he laid down a dampening field to block Yakavich from escaping by hopping into the time stream and stepping to a different time. He got within easy earshot and started listening to the conversation, trying to gather more information before making a decision on his course of action.

Yuri kicked the briefcase and it slid across the ground to the shadowy figure. “It’s all there. Information covering the next forty-five years. It should be everything you need.”

A female voice came from the shadows. “Thank you, Yuri. What you have risked to help me in my situation … I appreciate it. I appreciate it more than you can ever know.” She sounded sad.

Yuri smiled grimly. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve broken so many of the laws of time travel at this point that I figure—how much damage can one more broken law do? If I ever go back to my home, I know I’m sitting on a lifetime of imprisonment.”

The woman in the shadows reached down and picked up the case. Her movements were sensuous but also very sure. “Yuri, this gift will let me change history. I can undo what would have happened over the next several years and make things go the way they should. Make them go the way we need to in order to ensure our ends are met. Please, don’t feel like you are breaking the law, you are freeing the chains which have bound us.”

Red rose in Holly’s vision. He had taken this job because he believed truly in his heart of hearts that agents needed to be guardians to the time stream. Guardians who protect it, and who stop people from manipulating time to their own ends. That someone he had admired a month ago should turn against their core mission … Holly really didn’t stop to think.

This was a potential class six paradox unfolding and his training took over, mixing freely with the rising betrayal he felt, and leaving his mind behind in the quagmire of boredom created over the last month. He raised his pistol and shot them both in the head. Two clean shots, surgically executed, before either could respond. He holstered his pistol and purposefully walked to the woman, now lying face down in a pool of blood, and pulled the briefcase from her limp fingers. Releasing the field he had created, he grabbed Yuri’s body, jerking his head off the ground by his hair, and hopped forward with his two packages to the future.

The next morning, one of the other scientists from the building found Lucille Frost lying dead in the parking lot when she left from an all night shift to grab a cup of coffee from the twenty-four hour coffee shop down the road. The only other scientist in the partially reconstructed building was Christopher Nost, who was there all night trying to reconstruct the files he had lost in the blast weeks before.

2044 A.D.: New Denver, Colorado

Machine gun fire echoed through the streets as Alex watched the scene unfold before him. Christopher Nost vanished from the street and the move saved his life as concrete directly behind where he had been standing exploded from stray heavy-caliber fire.

Alex felt the flux hit the time stream as someone jumped. Interesting. It seemed likely that Nost was developing some subconscious control over the nano systems in his body. An impressive feat, considering that the first generation machines Nost had created were unstable and in most subjects wiped out the memory chains, making the ability to use the machines transitory at best. There seemed to be a trace of a second jump, but not forward or backward.

Alex filed that one away to puzzle out later. The scene in the street ended in a fiery disaster as Alex wandered away. The situation here in twenty forty-four was interesting to say the least. Something odd was happening with Nost. He had awakened unaffected by aging, something Alex had never heard of before. First generation machines definitely were not supposed to do that. Hell, no time machine granted the user that ability to Alex’s knowledge.

But it had happened somehow. And James Garret had been there, studying the phenomenon. He would be a slippery fish to catch when the time came. Flexing his will, Alex hopped forward, past the earthquake, to the Rangley Hotel and activated his holographic disguise kit. Bringing future technology back was always so much fun. His face seemed to fold in on itself, reassembling itself to be bald and squished a bit. He seemed to resemble nothing so much as a pit bull.

Hair appeared on his ears and the back of his hands. He worked his muscles and stretched his jaw, getting back into the character of his Charlie disguise. Drunks and barflies at inns and hotels around the world knew him in this guise, depending on where and when you went.

Observation of Nost gave him some interesting tidbits. The first being that apparently Chris had no idea yet that he could travel, even though he had done it at least twice. The second was that some event had triggered shell shock and Chris’s memory was now fractured.

It seemed that the fracture went way beyond the medical knowledge of what first-generation time nanos did to the brain. But Alex worked on Chris, helping him learn the tools that would ensure his eventual survival. At least that’s what he hoped he was giving him. If he were miscalculating this, Nost would end up a splattered bug on the windshield of time, as would the rest of humanity along with him.

Humanity was at stake here and either Chris would master himself or not. If not, the results would be disastrous to the time stream and would result in the destabilization of history. Of course, history shattering was only theoretical. Since history was currently intact, no one knew what would happen if it hit the ‘shatter’ point.

He watched a future version of Chris go up to the room and raised a single eyebrow. Now, this was finally getting interesting. He grabbed a broom and started sweeping ineffectually at the rubble from the earthquake, waiting for the current time frame Chris to arrive.

He stopped sweeping when he saw Chris come up to the front door. The man looked battered and shaken. Worse than shaken, more like he was concussed and had no idea where he was.

Alex decided to go for broke and said mischievously, “I didn’t see you leave again.” He looked Chris up and down, feigning shock at the man’s condition. “Man, you look like shit. What the hell’d you do in the last fifteen minutes?”

“What are you talking about, Charlie?” Chris got a queasy look on his face as what Alex said registered.

“I mean, you walk in looking sharp fifteen minutes ago, you walk in now looking like shit. Don’t tell me, you’ve been in a coma,” he snorted and watched Chris’s reaction, hoping that he fed him enough so that the time travel would finally click. It didn’t. Oh well, Alex figured, it would click soon enough when he encountered his future self upstairs.

Chris looked at him, so he shifted his stance and feigned at discomfort, playing to his part. “Hey, man, fuck you. I didn’t mean nothing by it. I’m curious, is all, to how you could get all jacked up like that in fifteen minutes…”

Chris spun around and started purposefully up the stairs toward his room, pulling an old gun from under his coat as he went.

“Holy shit, man, I haven’t seen a Glock in years!” Alex said to his retreating back. Well, worst-case scenario, he’d have to intervene. Best case, Chris had pieced together the secret of time travel. Alex let him go to confront his future self and got back to an honest day’s work cleaning up the damaged hotel.