Timebomb

Copyright © 2000 by Jeff Hendrickson. All rights reserved.

TIMEBOMB By: Jeff Hendrickson I can still remember when his mother, my cousin, came asking for help. She was grief strickennervous; in a terrible panic. “Hamer, I just don’t know what to do,” began the tiny woman, wiping tears from her swollen, red eyes with a ratty, old military surplus handkerchief and pulling at the hair of her short, curly, forest green wig. (It matched her shoes and hand bag, as well as her nails and liptint.) “He just disappears, but he never leaves the house. I call him down for dinner and he answers that he’ll be right down. Five minutes go by and I call up to him again on the comdek. No answer. So up I go to look for him myself. I can’t trust the house to do that anymore.. It’s in dire need of repairs but I can’t afford it, you know how it is living on World Military credits. Why with him in the house all the time and not working and his father being...gone, well I just can’t get everything repaired all the time, and...” She was really rambling and I was due on Hololecture in five minutes for my 1400 class. “Emily, please calm yourself. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for all this. Have you spoken to Kem about it?” Kem Brillare was, is, my second cousin on my fathers side. Small, like his mother, with a fiery temper, he started getting thrown out of schools at about age twelve, and by fifteen was permanently banned from all the schools in the Altair Zone of the Twenty Sovereign States. He showed every sign of being a genius by six and he fit the description perfectly. Small and thin, always with his nose in a screen his hair a mess, his outfits equally disarrayed. I tried every angle to get Emily and her husband, the World Military High Colonel Alexi Brillare, to place him under my tutelage but they would have nothing of it. They refused to believe the regular school system could only take so much abuse, and after Kem called his last calculus professor a dolt and a moron, the school gave him the boot. “Have you asked him what’s going on, or where he goes?” “Of course, Hamer. He tells me it must be my imagination. That he must have been in the bathroom when I came to look. But then, here’s what happens two days later. He’ll come down for dinner with his notebooks and sit scribbling for twenty or thirty minutes before he says a word. I’ve learned it’s best not to bother him when he comes down like that. He’ll start mumbling and I’ll hear names,” she explains, grabbing hold of my hand with both of her small, cold ones. She looked at me pleadingly, expecting that I would have the answer she needed. “What kind of names?” “Oh, I’ve heard all kinds. Lincoln. Genghis Khan. Ash-wa-tek, I think. Something like that. I think I’ve heard the name Lincoln before but who are those other two and why would he be mumbling about them, Hamer?” “Lincoln was a President of a union of territories called the United States of America back in the twentieth century. Genghis Khan was a warlord and conqueror who lived in the thirteenth century. He died in the year 1227. Maybe Kem has gotten hold of some old history holos,” I said, trying to reassure my cousin. “And then I’ll be cleaning his room and I’ll find pictures of things that don’t exist except in museums. But these aren’t museum pictures. People wearing strange clothes, with funny hair, or animals sometimes. What was that one? Oh! A horse. He had a picture of a horse once, standing in the middle of a field, I think, with someone on it! Can you imagine that? Hamer, you and I both know that horses are only in cryozoos. ‘Where did the picture of the horse come from?’ I ask him when I see him again. He’ll start flying around waving his arms like some mad man. ‘You don’t respect my privacy!’ he yells at me. ‘I should move out and leave you alone!’ he screams.” She paused briefly to catch her breath. “I can’t take it anymore Hamer,” she said looking deeply into my eyes as she started to weep and shake. “Emily, I have to go on holo in one minute for my class. Why don’t you stay until I finish and then we’ll have time to talk more. Please don’t worry. You’ve been through a lot worse with him and I’m sure we can get to an answer. There’s an old vidview in my bedroom. Why don’t you go in and catch a game show or something? I’ll be finished before you know it. Huh?” “Well, all right Hamer. Maybe I can take a nap too. Haven’t slept much lately, you know,” she said with an apologetic shrug of her narrow shoulders. It took me quite a while to gain his trust. I agreed to study him for a while and try to break through to him, at whatever level I could. He was very suspicious and withdrawn most of the time. We’d be progressing smoothly, and then I’d ask a question that would send him off on a tangent. He’d start

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Copyright © 2000 by Jeff Hendrickson. All rights reserved.

throwing things around and demand that I leave. His mother would tell me that she wouldn’t see him for days after that. Then, I’d get a call that he wanted to see me again, and it’d be like nothing happened. We’d start up just where we left off. So many times his mother would ask me what had upset him but I couldn’t tell her. I promised Kem that I’d never reveal any information to her. Finally, after nine long months of conversations, he allowed me into his world. Kem had built what he called a Timebomb. But it wasn’t a bomb, it was a time travel device. He’d calculated that any trips between 12:01 A.M. and 12:00 P.M. would send him back in time, and just the opposite for 12:01 P.M. to 12:00 A.M. He asked me to meet him at home on October 15, 2063 at 1:35 P.M. We were going to go forward; to the future. I canceled all my lectures for the day, arrived at about 1:20 and watched him prepare. He fitted us both with a tiny transmitter placed in our navels. When he was set, he picked up the mobile unit, which looked like a portacom, and punched a few buttons. I began to feel a tingling in my head and arms and then felt a bit light headed. My vision blurred somewhat and remained that way for short period of time. Then, there we were. June 4, 2670 at 1:42 P.M. We were in a military ship with ten other people, all part of a special forces team going on a raid. We were all dressed in dark uniforms and toted some nasty weapons. The team captain began barking orders. “Fish! Sheb! Oturi! Comlink Zero Alpha Zero! Ready stations!” “Aye sir!” we shouted back to him, standing and quick-stepping towards the rear of the barge where we lined up between two floor to ceiling opaque cylinders. I spat out my assigned replies. “Zero Alpha Zero loaded, sir! Advancing to sector 36B, substation YK1! Observe only! Waiting for command to attack! On my mark! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, mark.” With three fuzzy pulses we were sucked down a magnetic energy tube to the surface of the planet. When we were at our post, I signaled back to the barge. “Zero Alpha Zero in place and waiting commands, sir.” BOOM. BOOM. Two loud bursts rang in my ears as the building we were crouched down beside disintegrated. As the dust that remained blew away with the wind, our captain demanded an update. “Fish here sir. Substation YK1 destroyed by enemy fire. No casualties. Awaiting orders, sir.” “Use hologrid to advance to sector 35D and await further orders. Understood?” “Aye, sir! Let’s move it out team!” I commanded. I was sweating profusely inside my body armor. It was very compliant, and not at all heavy, but it was hot. My temp regulating system was on the fritz and because of it, my leg cramped and I fell sprawling to the dirt as my two team members sprinted past me. “OK, Fish?” one of them asked. I think it was Oturi but my ears were still ringing so loudly from the report of those plasma bombs, I couldn’t be sure. I touched a key on my wristboard and with a quick prick in my upper arm, an anti-spasmodic was delivered to my bloodstream. I was on my feet running five seconds later, overtaking my two comrades with ease and assuming the lead once again. My helmet holo showed us about five clicks from our new post and a quick infrared scan showed that we had clear passage. I figured it should take us about 10 minutes with no problems. If only it had been that simple. One click from the post, charges of light shot down from the sky to trap us in a laser cage. Sheb lost an arm being sloppy as she tried to knock out the cage drone with a burst from her cannon. Her right arm was severed at the shoulder and she cursed her clumsiness while electro-circuits shut down all functions to that arm and her suit sealed itself over the shattered bone, mangled metal, and fried wires. It became deathly quite as I radioed up, sticking the now worthless arm in my pack. “Captain. Fish here,” I whispered, matching the silence. “Caught by faction in a laser cage. Sheb missing an arm. Please relay status.” “Hold tight team. Forced to relocate barge. The crabs that got you also got B team. All dead. Relay —ation —o main — —” his signal began to break up and I didn’t get the info I needed. As I started to answer back the ground rumbled and broke apart violently, knocking us all off our feet. As we fell into the gaping pit that formed, I got the tingle in my arms and head and was back at Kem’s house before I hit bottom. My mouth and throat were so dry I could hardly speak but managed to croak out, “What happened, Kem?” “We lost touch with you for a while, and when we did get you back on screen, we saw the tremors underneath you. I didn’t want to push our luck so I brought us back.” He looked me over as he turned away. “You look OK. I’ll want complete details later.” He walked to the computer, leaving me to struggle to my feet by myself. He explained to me how you occupy space in the new time. “The person you become is a living, breathing entity in the new time reality. You don’t go in and take over someone’s personality, it’s as if time rearranges itself for you. It’s kind of like a lucid dream; you know you’re dreaming but you can’t convince anyone in the dream of that. You can make use of superior information you may have from your

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Copyright © 2000 by Jeff Hendrickson. All rights reserved.

real time future if you travel to the past, which I’ve done on a few occasions. And your travel time reality will be different each time. You may have a wife in one and not in another. Because the Timebomb has a portable unit as well as the base unit and transmitter, it can be transported to another country, or state, and you can travel from there. I tried that in Italy once. I went back to the 1800s and was a wine merchant. I spoke Italian fluently and understood everything though my thoughts were in my native tongue. Somehow it works out that you know everything you should know about that time frame, plus you know that you are there as a time traveler,” he said, pausing in thought. “Another example will illustrate it better for you, although I have not lived this one in particular, I’ll ad lib as I go. I travel forward to 6300. I wake up in bed with my kids pouncing on me. Their names are... Adac and Tirina. Their mother has been missing for two years. She was last seen with a radical group known as the Silver Warheads and they robbed the World Federation computer and then disappeared without a trace. I miss her terribly, thinking they must have brain washed her, but my main concern now is the kids. It’s Saturday morning and I promised them last night that we would go to Olympus Mons today. It only takes a day to get there so we go to Mars and are back by Tuesday. Do you see. I am that person in every detail, with the bonus of being able to leave when every I want or when the situation dictates.” I didn’t really understand at that point but I was following most of it. “OK. So if you’re in the new frame for two days, are you gone from here two days?” “No, not at all. Pay attention, Fish. This is important.” His chagrin was apparent. He pulled his chair right up next to me. “My bomb is set with the computer to return you at precisely the moment you left so that you are never missed. I didn’t set it up that way at the beginning and that’s what started causing problems with my mother. I tried it with very small gaps, like 10 seconds to a few minutes to see if time was altered on this end or if it just flowed regularly. That sneaky little thing would call me for dinner or something just when I’d be leaving. And if I didn’t get there in two seconds she’d come looking for me. She probably freaked when she couldn’t find me. My mother is not a stable person, Fish.” Next he made me relate everything that had happened to me on the trip. He made notes the entire time I tried to explain what had occurred and made me be as precise as possible. He especially wanted to know how I felt and what I was thinking. Was I totally involved in my role as soldier, or was I just going along with it? Did I ever feel like my life was truly threatened? He explained to me that his experiments had led him to believe that a traveler could never lose his or her life while in travel time. Something about the non-linearity of time, and a theory he had read while visiting the future once before. I wasn’t convinced at all and went home wondering if I should chain myself to my desk. But, my curiosity won out and I found myself wanting to travel again. There were so many questions to be asked and so many possibilities to explore. One day, while discussing the bomb and his motives, he snapped. We were in his room. “Why did you build the timebomb, Kem?” “I built it because I knew I could. It was simple really, and if I hadn’t done it, someone else would have. For all I know, someone else already has. I use it as a release from this boring, mundane world I’ve been unfortunate enough to be trapped in. All my life I’ve been hounded by morons and imbeciles; selfimportant dolts who thought that they were doing me a favor. It surprises me that I tolerate you, Fish,” he claimed, looking at me as if he were looking through me, searching for my motive. “Why does this interest you? It’s not like you can use anything you find or see to rewrite the history books. Who would believe you? I would deny any existence of a time machine. I mean, just think what would happen if the government got hold of it. They would destroy the whole miserable planet. Heh. Maybe that would be better. So?” “I can see several different avenues to be traveled with your device. The first of course is the Avenue of What If. For instance, what if we were to go back to the birth of anyone whose contributions have in one way or another changed the world? What if we found that person and kidnapped him or her and raised them in this time? What would have happened in the past? Would that person have any contribution to make here, in the future/present? I wonder. Next is the Avenue of Adventure. When I think back about my episode with those storm troopers, or whatever they were, I get goose bumps. I’ve never done anything even remotely like that in my life. Oh, I played soccer and basketball in school, but nothing ever compared to the rush of that battle. I should have been scared to death, but as I explained to you when we got back, I was that soldier. I was in command of my team and I knew everything I was suppose to do. Everything. I was just barely phased when the ground opened up under us. I was actually planning our next move and going over battle strategies in my head that I had learned at war school. I mentally scanned my weapons; laser pistol, photon grenades, dagger, poison gas pellets, suicide tooth, everything I had at my disposal was

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Copyright © 2000 by Jeff Hendrickson. All rights reserved.

in inventory in my brain. It was...what word can I use? Intoxicating. Then there is the Avenue of Investments. I have a passion for rare coins and have been collecting them since I was 15, but I’ve never had enough money to acquire the finer pieces. The most I’ve ever spent on a coin is a thousand dollars. And some of them go for six figures. Think about what I could find if we went back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries,” I began, my eyes gleaming. Kem stopped me at this point. “ What do you mean, Fish? What is your interest in owning the finer coins?” “Well, the acquisition of nearly perfect specimens would make my collection much more valuable. Especially since coins are now obsolete.” “So your real motive in that sense is to make a profit from these coins?” he asked, his eyes narrowing a bit. “Yes. Sure. Part of the reason I have the collection is to protect my money. The investment potential of rare coins is phenomenal,” I explained. That was what did it to him. He went off like a rocket. “I knew it! I knew it! You’re just like all the other scumbags out there! Money, money, money! That’s all you think about!” He was shouting so loudly his face grew red and the veins in his neck struggled to break free. When he finished his tirade, he took a few deep breaths and tried to compose himself. Turning away from me and facing the wall, he spoke in a slow, controlled, but nonetheless enraged voice. “People like you are the reason a machine like mine is dangerous to the world. And there are millions of you out there, always trying to take advantage of a situation, always trying to put one over on somebody else. Let me tell you one thing before I throw you out of my house, never to return, my Timebomb will never be used to gain an advantage or to make a profit. It will never be used to deliberately hurt or deceive anyone, and it will be destroyed if I get a feeling that it might at any time. Do you hear me, professor?” “Kem, look I...” “You’ve said enough Fish! I know how your puny little mind works now. I really thought you were different. You seemed to have a genuine concern for me and my work. I thought that you, out of everyone, would help me find peaceful, worthwhile purposes for the Timebomb. I see now that I was wrong. Get out. Leave me alone.” He was near tears at this point but I thought better of trying to reason with him. I left with a weight I had never felt before. How could I make him understand that it wasn’t as bad as it sounded? I mean, who doesn’t want to protect their money for the golden years? He was a fool, a goddamned fool, and I was glad to be rid of him. My phone buzzed, waking me out of a deep, trancelike sleep. It was my Kem. I hadn’t seen him in over two months. “Fish! Get over here right away!” he yelled into the screen, more excited than I’d ever seen him. “But Kem, I thought...” “Well don’t think! Do me that favor and don’t think. You look terrible. Have you been asleep, Fish? How can you sleep at a time like this?! Put your pants on, get in your car and get over here now!” The screen went blank and I asked for the time. “Chrono.” Marilyn Monroe, a flat reel icon from the 1900s answered in a breathy lull, “2:45 A.M. Sunday. We should still be asleep, Hamer. Night night,” and fell silent. I didn’t need coaxing. I could have fallen right back to sleep in a second. Kem knew that too. He called right back to make sure I was on my way, and I assured him that I was. What could I do? He had the greatest scientific discovery of all time in that TimeBomb. I followed his instructions and arrived at about 3:10. All the lights in the house were on and before I made it to the entrance pad, the door slid opened and Kem rushed out. He grabbed me by the arm and flung me inside. How could he muscle me around like that? He couldn’t have been much more than five nine and he probably didn’t weigh 145 pounds. Yet he tossed me like I was a little kid. And that I’m not. I tip the scales at 195 and stand six three. But before I could speak, he had hold of me again. “Don’t say a word, Fish. Just come with me to the basement.” As we started down, I heard a cry, like an infant or a newborn. “Kem?” “Be quite Fish. Look,” he said as he opened the door to a room in the back of the basement, pointing to a bed with a bundle on it. I looked back at him, but he pushed me towards the bed. He grinned broadly. “I took your idea.” “What?” I couldn’t focus. “You did what?” “Listen! You said yesterday, ‘What if we kidnapped someone who had made an important contribution to mankind?’ I got to thinking about it, and figured it could prove to be the perfect test. First I

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Copyright © 2000 by Jeff Hendrickson. All rights reserved.

went to the future and did some research, looking for something of importance that would happen in the next year. I haven’t told you this yet, but I have calculated how to pick specific travel dates. I’ll explain that later.” He rattled on and on about his calculations and all I could do was stand, dumbfounded, and look at the child on the bed. It appeared to be a boy, and about two years old. He was asleep, but cried out occasionally, as if having nightmares. Kem shook me. “Fish! Are you listening? This kid will perfect an invention that can synthesize DNA. He’s published ten files on his findings to date, and the news will be announced on national media in December. On the 23rd to be precise. His name is Jome Rikkards. We can try to find his files at the university. You can take care of that, actually. If we find the files don’t exist, we know our answer. We can then return him. Isn’t this outstanding?” he asked, seriously. I was still quite flustered but managed to stammer out a few words of condemnation. “Kem. Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You’ve just committed a crime that is punishable by death in the Twenty Sovereign States.” “Not then it wasn’t. And besides, who can report a missing baby? He wasn’t born two years ago Fish, he was born 54 years ago. Both of his parents died in thirty-thirty-five and he was an only child. He never coupled and never had a serious relationship. And if we return him when we took him, we...” “When we took him?” I burst out. “I had nothing to do with this! Do you understand me? Nothing!” Now I was the one acting like a raving lunatic. “Fish, you’re over reacting. You need to think more like a scientist. This is an experiment and Jome is our test subject. It will only take a day for the experiment to be verified. You get to the library first thing this morning and try to find his files. If they aren’t there under his name, search for them by titles and subject. I’ve got all that on disk. We’ll make a copy for you to take. Now, consider the second part of your question. What would happen if we raised him in this time frame? Will he make any notable contributions?” My head was spinning. Parts of what he said were logical. But, moral? Emotionally I was devastated that he would think me serious. I mean, I was serious but I was speaking hypothetically. How could I have known he would act upon those thoughts. As it stood, I was as guilty as he was. But wait, he was right about one thing. If we return him when he was taken, he’ll never be reported missing. Or would he? “When did you take him from, Kem?” “3013. He’ll be 54 when his findings are published,” he said with no emotion. I had to demand he return the child now but something stopped me. I was curious to know what would happen. “OK. So you take him from a time frame, and bring him to this one. What happens in the time frame you take him from? Does time stand still?” “No,” he answered. “Then he will be reported as missing. His parents will go to his room, and he won’t be there, will he? It doesn’t matter that you will return him, those people will live through that horror. And…” “Yes, yes I see where you’re going with this Hamer but forget that,” he demanded. “When we return him, time will splinter and follow another path. They may remember that brief period as they would remember a dream, but the fact is that when they go to his room he will be there, because we will install him at the exact moment we borrowed him.” He was speaking to me in a very condescending manner and getting redder by the second. “This is an experiment Hamer,” he said through his teeth. “Act like a scientist.” I got to the library at about 8:45 A.M. and waited in my car for fifteen minutes until opening , wondering who would recognize the kidnapper. Although it was only 60 degrees out, as was predetermined for this time of the year, I had sweat completely through my skinshirt. Once inside, I headed for the biology department’s computers and started searching on Jome Rikkards. I found nothing. That made sense, I guess. Next I searched on the titles and while I didn’t find them exactly, I did find them. I had the computer compare the ones Kem copied with the ones I found for content and similarities. All were the same except one. All were authored by a group of biologists who used the pen name “The Cygnus Group”, and the last file, the one that didn’t match, was published only 2 months ago. I made a printout matrix of comparisons on the papers and then ran a check on that last one for major points of divergence. The group disclaimed all the information in the previous eight papers and were now stating that they found calibration errors which led to false data! They now claimed that there existed no feasible method for synthesizing DNA and that they doubted one would be found for another 100 years. Right. They were in someone’s back pocket now, with huge accounts in an orbiting NeoRusso SafeBank. We had to return little Jome Rikkards, there was no mistaking that. I took my copies and left. “But Fish, if we keep him, he may still make those findings when he’s 54.”

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Copyright © 2000 by Jeff Hendrickson. All rights reserved.

“No way Kem, he goes back now. Listen to yourself. You could be condemning millions of people to death in that time period. And you have no way of knowing if he’ll discover the method at all. Do you know what this will mean to medicine and bioengineering? Hell, he could be a cook in this time frame.” I paused and there was silence for a moment, which I eventually broke. “Take him back Kem. Please, I’m begging you.” We arrived with just our heads. It took a minute to realize that I was all there, but I was in a box with just my head sticking out of a hole in the top. I was suspended inside and it felt like I had been immobilized—I could only move my head. We had just arrived in the year 11,042 and aside from being confined in these boxes, it appeared that we were in an old aircraft hangar. It was very long and cylindrical, a rusty brown in color, with an all glass top. The sky above it was dull and gray. An occasional cloud of smoke, or soot, would waft past and then be churned into a tight, fast eddy. As I looked around, I could see hundreds and hundreds of heads. Since I was paralyzed, I couldn’t see behind me but I could see Kem just to my left. I tried to speak to him but could not. It was as if I never had the ability. I must have had a frightened look on my face, because he shook his head and tried to calm me. “Don’t worry, Fish. We’ll get back in one piece.” Although I heard him, he did not speak. His words were in my head, and apparently he could read my mind. “I’ll explain it later. For now just relax,” he thought to me. This was, undoubtedly, the strangest entrance we ever made and I was a bit concerned, but I also believed he was right. That we would make it back unharmed. The boxes seemed to be made of a wood of some kind, although it was not of a kind I had ever seen. It had a grain that looked like patterns in a dancing fire. It was a deep, blood red in color, with various depths of shade burning as the flames. I noticed a pulsing glow within its luster, as if it were on fire, and it varied irregularly, sending waves of tranquillity through me. I was so absorbed in this show of fire and rhythm that I didn’t notice that I was being watched. I heard Kem’s voice, in my head again and was jolted back to the bigger picture. Hovering just above and in front of us was a large bench, like a judges bench, , and behind it sat five people; two of them women. As my eyes focused on them, I realized this image was like a hologram; it was not solid. The bench was of the same material as our boxes, it too glowed and pulsed. “Welcome Mr. Fish. We’re glad you could make it.” The voice came as Kem’s did earlier. I couldn’t make out which of the beings on the bench spoke to me for no lips moved. I looked back and forth, from one to the other, trying to guess. “My name is Ashwetek,” said the one in the center, raising his right hand, just barely, off the bench top. “The others here are my aides. Please don’t be alarmed. We are from far in your future and have brought you here for a very special purpose. Mr. Brillare, so nice to see you again,” he said, shifting his gaze to Kem and then back to me, casually, but with a hint of sarcasm. “Mr. Fish, it alarms you that we know your friend?” I turned my head left just far enough to see Kem out of the corner of my eye. “It does, although it probably shouldn’t. How many trips have you taken, Kem?” “I stopped counting with one hundred sixty nine. Please listen to Ashwetek, Fish. He has much to tell you.” He spoke these words, I suppose for my benefit, and shifted his attention back to our host. “Thank you Kem. Mr. Fish, you felt that you recognized us when we met a moment ago. That is because we have met before, in another time. You see, we oversee all of the time travelers. You find that odd, but let me assure you, someone has to do it. We can’t have people jumping around, in and out of time frames whenever they please with no regulations. Time would be an absolute disaster if we allowed that to happen. We contacted Mr. Brillare on a voyage he took to his past and escorted him from there to our time frame and let him experience our technology and society. We helped him achieve a semi-immortality. His mother was right when she told you he hadn’t aged in ten years. He’ll never have to if he wishes. His strength and stamina are many times that of a healthy male from your time. You may have this also, but we’ll discuss that at a later date. Here’s how it breaks down, Mr. Fish. We were given a chance to make the Earth a better place than it’s first keepers were able to. There exist powers and mysteries far beyond the comprehension of nearly anyone of your time. Oh, there are those who speculate, and some who preach, but the truth is far beyond. We are the second caretakers of planet Earth and have been entrusted to make things work out right this time. A race of beings fifteen million years in your future are trying to reorganize the known universes. We are their generals, but we do not work alone. We often enlist the help of those such as yourself to accomplish our goals. You will be given an opportunity later to help make decisions regarding your history. For now, it is important for you to know that you are not the only ones making

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Copyright © 2000 by Jeff Hendrickson. All rights reserved.

trips to your future and past. In any given time frame, there could be thousands of travelers, just like yourselves. We gave each and every one of them the technology to develop the TimeBomb, and instructed them in it’s use. Everyone starts off crawling, and slowly builds up to a full sprint, if I may borrow some terminology from your time. In our time, which you will visit very soon, people are not born helpless and people don’t die helpless. Mankind of your period is in the infancy stage, making mistake after mistake and never seeming to learn. Your arrogance is without equal in all the universe, and your minuscule life spans keeps you focused on today, and tomorrow. Your lives are but a speck of dust on an atom, and your generations learn very little of use from the previous generation. What they do learn, they soon forget as they get back to what to have for breakfast. The one enlightening factor is your persistence. You fall and get up time and time again until you accomplish what you’ve set out to. This is helpful. Your telepathy will develop over the next few weeks and it is what you will use in certain time frames to communicate with other travelers. Or rather, what they will use to communicate with you. You will not have the ability to recognize other travelers at the beginning. Please Mr. Fish, do not be suspicious. It serves no useful purpose. You may verify with Mr. Brillare all that we have done with him in the past two years. We hide nothing.” He stood up and dismissed us with a smile. “Return now to your time and we will speak again very soon. Make every trip with Mr. Brillare that you possibly can. I suggest taking a sabbatical from the university. Go now.” I arranged my sabbatical with little difficulty. It was almost as if they expected me to call and ask for it. Kem and I traveled at least four times a week for another year but were never gone from present time for more than 6 hours though we did plan on making a longer trip as soon as possible. I learned the telepathy quickly but as I learned from our conversations, not nearly as quickly as Kem. On one trip, we met with Ashwetek in the past. I believe it was the mid 1800s and it was then that I got an answer to a question that had floated in my mind for quite some time. “You told us before that you were from far in our future, Ashwetek. Can you tell me just when that is?” “Certainly. By your calendar, it would be approximately the year 500,000. Your way of marking the passage of time, in all phases, was found to be terribly archaic by the year 3290. In that year a new method of measurement was begun, and using that method, we are from a time period called The Ninth Epoch. The old method was based on the revolutions of the earth around the sun. This didn’t fit for people offworld, or for those traveling in starships. The alternative situations were multiplying tenfold every five years or so, and thus, a new system was needed. A scientist named Vic Dene developed the new clock and time system with a little help from us in 3192. It took the next four years to convince his colleagues and others that his new system was more fitting for the second millennium and beyond. We finally had to lend a hand by speaking to some of the stronger willed detractors. The new system is based on the larger picture, which is of course, the universes, not just on some third rate little star system in a boring, tedious galaxy. Our ancestors from earth left in the middle of the third millennium.” “You said also that you are the second caretakers entrusted with the Earth. Who were the first, and how long ago were they replaced by you?” “Fair question. They were replaced in the Seventh Epoch. We have been running things since the middle of the Eighth Epoch. The Old Ones left Earth dormant, or shall I say, unattached for one and one half epochs. At that time, we were chosen worthy of the task. Your first question, ’Who were they?’ is more complicated. The Old Ones thought it necessary at first to use beings who had no original connection with the Earth, as we have. Their thought was that a different set of principals and references would best suit their purposes. This way, there could exist no prejudices, or favorites. But, they failed miserably. Evidence of this were afflictions, and diseases such as cancer, which killed millions of people during their rule. They thought the way to make humans strong was first to make them weak and susceptible, having them fight for their lives at every turn. Having introduced the Black Death into China in 1333, it then spread into Europe by way of the Tatars. This disease killed nearly two-thirds of the population of Europe before it ran its course. Another of their infamous tactics was to keep valuable technical information from humans. What man uses for propulsion in your world, from your ground vehicles to your rockets, is terribly archaic on the galactic level. Within the next twenty five years, we will bring new technology to man that will end your dependence on fossil fuels. We will introduce this through a team of scientists working in YugoRomania. There are far too many examples to get into now, Mr. Fish, but I think you see my point. The first caretakers were from the Great Galaxy and are a superior race in most aspects of life, but they could not

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Copyright © 2000 by Jeff Hendrickson. All rights reserved.

figure out humans from the planet Earth. The Old Ones gave them many chances for success, but it was not to be.” Once we traveled forward to 4316. SkinDents were all the rage among the elite of that time. A person with the privilege would spread a gel over the area to which he or she wished to have the dents applied. The gel would make the skin temporarily malleable. A design would then be pressed into the skin using a pattern raised on a wrap around skin plate. After 15 minutes, the pattern was set and the plates could be removed. Some of the more elaborate ones I saw were tinted, or stained. Using various different agents to achieve this, the artist would paint over the skindents, let the stain soak in a bit, then wipe of the excess leaving an “antique look” that was quite popular on wooden furniture back in the late nineteen hundreds. Some people would apply the designs to their faces after having special plates made to conform to their specific features. As this was quite expensive, only the very rich could afford to have their faces adorned. Most kept their fancies to their arms, legs, backs, stomachs, or heads. Which was simple because everyone I noticed in that time frame was completely hairless. No stubble could be seen on men in the afternoon and even the women were bald. And, they wore very little in the way of clothing which made their extremely bare skin that much more noticeable. I myself had no skindents, but I did have a very elaborate set of tattoos on my face and chest. They were a very dark blue in color and swirled out from my eyes to the rest of my face and down my neck, intertwining like vines of ivy, before exploding on my chest in great navy shards that looked like shrapnel from an old fashioned grenade. I was in a bar, with Kem to my right and two very lovely women across from us. The redhead was my date. I mean red head quite literally. Her smooth head was topped, like she had been pressed against a stamp pad, with brilliant, crimson red. I tried to see through the permanent reflectors covering her eyes, but could only see myself, and the look of fulfillment on my face. She leaned close to me, stretched out her hand to take mine, pulled me close, and licked my nose with a long, forked, serpentine tongue. “Don’t you just love this one. I got it today just for you,” she hissed, squeezing my hand tighter. I returned her squeeze and answered, “I liked the one you had last week, what was it, a tree cat? I liked the roughness.” I sipped at the nearest stimstraw that rose up out of the table top in my direction, and felt the warm, smoky liquid fill my mouth. I swished it around for a few seconds before swallowing, which left a familiar tingle on my tongue and in my throat. The room became fuzzy and soft and I lost my ability to encounter all the sounds around me. My eye sight then refocused into a very distinct tunnel vision and as I moved my head from side to side, points of light stretched out into colored lines. I nodded and shook my head back and forth quickly and then watched the most wonderful array of light lines criss-cross and dance, slowly erasing themselves from their origins to their completion. As the last of the lines was erasing, the sounds of the bar came back to me and my vision returned to normal. Kem was tugging at my elbow. “Wild stuff, huh?” “I’ll say. Those light lines were incredible. Must be some new stuff these guys dug up on the other side of the galaxy, or from a lab undertown. Take your pick.” “Lights? I didn’t see lights. I listened to the bar breathe. Then I watched it take a big deep breath and suck all the smoke out of the air, and into that light up there in the center,” Kem said, pointing up, past the multi-tiered balconies to one lone, white light in the center, 300 feet up. As I gazed up into the smoky abyss, a waiter ascended up close to the top aboard an elevpad, grasping the pole ring with one hand, while balancing a huge tray with the other. It was a one person pad with barely enough room for his huge feet. He reached his floor, stepped off onto the gangplank that extended past the railing which he clipped onto, and served his clients while the elevpad hurtled back to the bottom, to be slid 50 feet further down the aisle for the next waiters ascent. I stopped the next waiter that came by, his tray laden with hardware. “What’s hot tonight?” “Try the Black Hole Relay HoloSim. It’ll fry ya to a crisp. Special tonight, only 50 Cs a pop, 10 minutes,” he said without breaking stride. My date, Cadranu I think her name was, disagreed. “The Black Hole Sim sucks, that’s why they have it on special. Nobody wants it. You only go totally virch for the last two minutes. When it starts getting good, your time’s up. Don’t waste your money baby.” As she said this, a ringing began in my ear and she started to fizzle. The whole room disappeared and I jumped, startled as hell. My eyes were open but I couldn’t see a thing. I was lying on my back and realized I was in water and totally naked. As I turned my head around to try to see something, I felt wires graze my cheek. Reaching up, I found a head piece and heard a sound as I began to take it off. A crack of soft light fell across my chest and as it widened I began to realize where I was. “OK Mr. Fish, time’s up,” came a voice from out in the light. “How was your

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Copyright © 2000 by Jeff Hendrickson. All rights reserved.

virch today?” I was in a damn floater tank and the entire episode in the bar was virtual reality. I had toyed with virtual reality in my real time frame, and although very sophisticated, it was ten percent of what this was. I could still smell the stimscents, I could still feel my date’s snake tongue, with each pronged end tickling my nostrils. The physical sensations and the memory of them was very, very real. I checked myself for tattoos and crawled out of the tank. Kem was in the dressing room when I arrived there. “We just did the same virch, right?” I asked, walking over to the cleaner. “Yes. I didn’t want to leave it. Those stims were fantastic. Let’s stay here for a while, really do an extended stay. What do you think?” I thought it would be a good idea but I was a bit apprehensive. We had only done trips of a few hours long up till now, but my gut was telling me to stretch this one out. “How long you talking about? A couple of days?” “Sure. Why not? Get dressed and lets get out of here. You hungry?” “Starved. Give me a minute.” I hurried to finish and almost left my transmitter in the cube. I stepped into the clothing tube and ordered a black evening suit. These fabricators were great. You could have something new to wear anytime you wanted it, with no buttons, no zippers, no alterations. In one minute you were covered in a breathable, expandable body suit that regulated itself to your skin temperature to ensure that you were neither hot, nor cold. It protected you from harm, both environmental, and physical. Not that anyone in this day in age would ever try to harm another. No one had the receptors for violence anymore. Those long hidden codes in the brain and nervous system were cracked two hundred years ago, and all nonenhanced humans were vaccinated by age three. Now there’s something rare: a non-enhanced human. About the only people alive who had this affliction were cultists. They believed that man should remain the way he came into this world: weak, vulnerable, naive, useless, violent. What did they know? I asked for music but the suit didn’t respond. I tried again. “Music please.” Nothing. “Hey Kem. Try your music.” He did and got the same results. We stopped at the next techgrid to report the problem, and the grid was down also. “Something funny going on, Kem,” I said, feeling hot and uncomfortable. “Seems to be. My enviro controls aren’t working either. Let me try something,” he said as he approached the grid. He pulled a small instrument from a pocket on his left sleeve and pushed it into a receptacle. He pulled it out almost immediately. The techgrids primary function was suit control with secondary responsibilities for holo-ads and pedways, both of which were working. Ironically, a huge holostage just down the street from us was advertising the latest SmartSuit by Miki Mars but no one seemed to be paying attention. They were all too busy trying to figure out why they were hot and sticky. If things didn’t improve soon someone was going to have to reinvent deodorant. “Greetings fellow citizens. Time waits for no one.” Kem turned to face the speaker and replied, “And no one has more time than us.” This was a standard exchange among travelers and I turned to face our greeter, Ashwetek. “Won’t you join me gentlemen. My apartment is in this quarter and we have a few things to discuss. This way please,” he said, leading us to a pedway which went into the heart of the city. Apparently he was in a hurry for he stepped up from one pedway to the next until he was near the top, on a tread that moved eight times as fast as the first level treads. I was familiar with traveling this fast but I had had one brief experience with a banked corner that reminded me to move to the nearest grabpole and grab on. We hadn’t seen him in quite a while and I was anxious to know what our next step was to be. Of course, he knew I felt this and got right to the point when we arrived. “I’m glad you two have decided to stay in this frame for an extended visit. We require your help here.” He said this last part looking directly at me. “Your engineering background can be of use here.” “But how? My knowledge must be far behind what the engineers of this day know.” “Yes, Mr. Fish, that is true. But your knowledge is not tainted by the cyber sensitivities of this time. You see, part of the reason for the problems that are occurring now, and ones that you are experiencing as well, is that all these systems were designed with the cooperation of the systems themselves. This tends to pollute the pure design process and it has been a problem for the last fifty years. These same problems occurred in the fields of psychology and psychiatry in the early twenty first century. Because the patients responded to the practitioners, the practitioners could not maintain an objectiveness that was necessary for the case. The same holds true with our systems today. They respond to the designers. By a series of tests and questions, the designers are pulled into the lives of the machines they are creating, and through this process, the machines help design themselves. You’re beginning to understand what I’m referring to.”

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Copyright © 2000 by Jeff Hendrickson. All rights reserved.

“Yes, I think I am. But I’m not an engineer in this frame. Can I be fitted with an instant recall device of some kind that is loaded with all the tech info on these systems?” “There is no need for a device, Mr. Fish. If you will come back here first thing in the morning, we will input directly to your short term memory centers. It’s a very simple procedure and totally painless. You’ll have immediate access to the info, and what you will be looking for is a way to get the systems to work non-stop. It seems that they now are taking vacations when they feel they deserve them.” “Well, you must know how to remedy the problem.” “Oh, I assure you we do, Mr. Fish. But we are forbidden to participate directly in the solution. We must work through an agent such as yourself. It would be very simple if we could just tell you how to do it.” “Are you forbidden to do that?” “No, we are not. But that would defeat the purpose.” “What purpose. Is there something you’re not telling me? Kem? What do you know about this? You’ve been awfully quiet since we met up with Ashwetek.” “Everything is straight, Fish,” he answered, but he would not look me in the eye. “Look at me and tell me that, Kem,” I demanded. He did, but I knew he was lying. Apparently my friend had made previous plans that he felt would upset me. So he got me here to let them do the dirty work. I could feel my face grow hot with rage. “Just how long are we staying here, Kem?” I asked, through my teeth. “Two years.” I lunged at him but he was quick, ferrule. He gently brushed me aside and I crashed into the wall. If it hadn’t been for the sof-tuch interior of Ashweteks apartment, I would have come away with a bloodied head. Before I could move, Ashwetek grabbed the back of my neck and I fell, paralyzed, as I had been the first time we met. The only thing I could feel was an energy, not unlike a mild electric shock, coming through Ashwetek’s hand and fingers. “Mr. Fish. Is this really necessary? And besides, what difference will it make if you are returned at the time you left? You may find this life far more challenging than your real time life. And, we are prepared to reward you. Isn’t there something in your life that you wish had never happened? To your ancestors, perhaps?” At first I couldn’t figure what he was referring to. Then it came to me. Why should I find it difficult to believe that he knew everything about me? It did piss me off. What right did he or anyone else have meddling in my life? Right. Like the government didn’t have it’s nose in everybody’s business. What the hell did it matter. “I think you already know what I want,” I answered. “Maybe you wish that your family never had to have the memory of the Holocaust? I believe you had several ancestors who were prisoners in a concentration camp. And two who actually died in the massacres ordered by Hitler. What if we eliminated Hitler from history? It’s unfortunate that we can’t eliminate the total lives lost, but we can erase Hitler and the Nazis.” “Wait. What do you mean you can’t eliminate the total lives lost?” “We can only shift things around, Mr. Fish. If we take out Hitler, we must replace him with someone else in another part of the world. Do you understand? We cannot leave a hole like that. It must be filled. So, the decision is yours. Are you willing to trade the lives of your family for the lives of others in a different part of the world?” I didn’t answer for quite some time. I wanted to know joy in my family. I wanted to remember my mother telling me happy stories of her families lives in Poland, not showing me old, browned pictures of her ancestral great grandmother’s wrists, the numbers crudely tattooed into her skin, and crying while telling me of the atrocities that occurred there. I never hated anyone like I hated Adolph Hitler for making my mother unhappy like that. She would cry every time, and every time I would dry those tears, and sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to cheer her up. A kid shouldn’t have to have memories like that. But who would I trade my memories to if I said yes? Some little Bedouin kid in the desert? Some Swiss kid in the Alps? Are you listening? I thought to Ashwetek. Are you happy with what you’ve offered me? He didn’t answer. It was simple, really. Say yes and have happy memories. “Yes,” I said and immediately broke down and sobbed, begging God for forgiveness. This time our host was listening. “God is who gave you this choice, Mr. Fish.” For two years Kem and I worked to eradicate the prima donna computer systems of their childish attitudes. Over time, I forgave Ashwetek for his deviousness. I would often try to picture my place in the

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Copyright © 2000 by Jeff Hendrickson. All rights reserved.

grand order of the universes. In my own time, or when I was being borrowed as I was now, I felt a purpose and sense of contribution. Then, in would come this dark cloud of self doubt, with lightening bolts of skepticism and disbelief shooting and cracking in all directions. I was a grain of sand, just like everyone else. Kem walked in during one of these bouts of consciousness. I dragged him into it. “Kem? How important do you feel in the cosmic order?” “I’ve thought about that often, actually, and I’ve jumped the fence many, many times. I think what I’ve settled on, what I’m comfortable with, is that everyone of us has a specific job to do and a specific spot to fill. No matter how insignificant we may feel, we were put here for a reason. There are no accidents in the universes, there is only perfect order. Therefore, every contribution I make is noteworthy and significant. Take one cerametal plate out of the hull of a starship, and your starship ceases to exist.” “We have no choice of direction, we have no say in what comes next.” “Untrue, Fish. You didn’t have to choose as you did when they offered to nix Hitler. How many people alive today have ever heard that name or know anything about him? See my point? Eventually, everything is forgotten by the majority of the people. But, Ashwetek knew he had you because he knew you would choose selfishly. He knew you always focus on your life and your life alone.” “Great! That’s just what I need from you! You’re really in deep with these guys aren’t you? They’ve got you by the balls and they’re squeezing, huh? You’re their sucker Kem, not me. No. Stop. Forget this. I don’t want to know what they’ve got on you.” I had been pacing back and forth as we spoke, cracking my knuckles incessantly and wringing my hands till they were raw. I stormed out of the room, but only after shooting a venomous look at a man who I was growing to loathe. Huge on brains, completely void of any type of common sense. Our time in this frame was nearing its end. One more week and we would be returned to 3065; I could begin my lectures again. The only traveling I would do from that point on would be in an Orbitliner or a SubTerran Maglev. Kem Brillare, although seemingly unaffected by our circumstances, was not as cold hearted as I was beginning to believe at that point. Ashwetek related to me, much later, what had taken place after the time I tried to throttle Kem. Kem went to him to plead for them to release me. “Kem, I’m sorry. You know as well as anyone how we are bound by our agreements. My job is to rearrange just enough events in Earth history to prevent the annihilation that occurs in the Seventh Epoch. That’s why the first caretakers were relieved of their duty. They let man blow up the world. Hamer was meant to choose to rid the planet of Adolph Hitler. Because he did this, we were able to shift the loss of lives to a less significant location of the planet. Because the Anglo-Saxon empires were so strong, and figured in so much with what would evolve in the Americas and in Europe, Hitler re-emerged in the seventh epoch in the name of Bo-Arc. He was a mad man every bit as diabolical as Hitler and it was he who was responsible for the temporary, but lengthy death of Earth. Hamer Fish was the only person who could prevent this, and he did. He is bound by the same agreements that we are and he has one more job to do. Hamer Fish is my direct ancestor. He is my ancestor nearly 3000 generations in the past. It is required that he stay in this time frame forever.” And here I am today. Kem couldn’t bare to leave his mother, as much as he hated her at times, so he went back. He comes to see me from time to time and brings me print outs of the news. It was funny reading about my disappearance. And kind of sad. An unnamed philanthropist donated money to the university in my name. It was a rather large amount, so the university built a new hololecture tank, and named it after me. My parents went into cryo the month before I “disappeared”, and my sister and I hadn’t spoken in fifteen years. She probably never found out I was no longer there. Oh, I used her for an excuse though. I ranted and raved for weeks about the injustice of holding me here, but I soon got used to the idea. I took a mate and had two children, both of whom are grown with their own progeny now, and both living offworld. I’ll never know which one will continue the lifeline to Ashwetek, unless of course I opt for cryo, which I think I’ll not. I’m 114 now, with thirty or forty good years left. That should be enough for me. END

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