Out of Time
copyright 2014 Faeriemage
Time is a cruel mistress, especially if you start playing with her box of toys.

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Time travel is irrevocably tied to quantum theory. More specifically to that subset of quantum theory about the multitude of alternate realities that are supposedly generated for every quantum action.

And then again, it’s not.

Now, I’m neither a mathematician, nor am I a physicist. I’m a field agent, regardless of the fact that I’m categorized as Mental rather than Physical due to my primary skill. Lucky me.

As I sit there, waiting for something to happen, waiting for the world to end, or maybe just waiting for Steve to kiss me again, I ponder what it is that I’m facing here.

One of the problems that can occur with a chroniton imbalance is Slipping. The physicists talk about quantum entanglement and string resonance, but those of us in the field know it as slipping out of time, or just slipping.

Time travel requires making an individual’s chronon energy signature equal to the location where you’re sending them. That includes the specific vibrations, spins, and so on of the chronons in the area. Using chroniton radiation is the only way that we know how to do it. You bombard the individual with chronitons from specific directions at specific speeds and you synchronize the person with another time.

While it is possible to send someone to any time you can pinpoint using this method, it takes a lot more energy when to locations are out of sync than when they are in sync. This is a Bad Thing.

You see, the more chroniton radiation that you bombard a target with, the more unstable that target becomes, temporally speaking. Remember how I stated before that objects like to remain at rest? Yeah, it’s one of Newton's laws. Time is like a giant stream, that moves everything along at the same rate. It’s an entropic force.

Everyone resonates in time with their distinct current of time.

The problem is, that time isn’t really a stream. Time is really a giant ocean flowing from The Beginning to The End. And infinitely broad ocean with a finite length.

The secret that they never tell the public, if they ever told the public about the project, is that everyone slips. Usually, it’s a minor shift to the right or left to a world that is basically indistinguishable from the one you started from. Usually, you’re personal resonance will self correct these minor slippages and you’ll eventually find yourself back where you started from.

However, the more chroniton energy that builds up in your body, the greater the energy that you have, and therefore the easier it is to slip more than just a little. So, they try to minimise the amount of chroniton radiation that they bombard us with when they’re sending us either up or down stream, mostly because everyone wants us to reach our destination more or less intact.

A sync-wave basically halves the amount of chroniton radiation required to send someone upstream. Each additional concurrent wave halves it again. So, theoretically, it should have required about 1/8th of the normal energy to send us here compared to sending us without a wave present, or about one quarter of what a normal sync event would require.

The problem is that the area is infused with chroniton radiation. For it to be hitting me as quickly as it did, I would have to have been just below the assumed danger area when they scanned me before I entered the sphere.

Or even worse, I was above the threshold and the sent me anyway.

“Steve,” I begin, but am interrupted by a flash of light toward the center of the base. I’m barely able to see again when I see Andy running toward us screaming, “Recall now! hurry!”

“Where’s Candace?” I say, still a little dazed.

“She’s gone,” he says, his voice absent of hope.

I don’t get to ask anything more because he dissolves into a pile of ash right before my eyes. “No!” I scream. I’m trying to move toward him, futilely trying to help him, but my brain knows it’s too late, and staying here just got a lot more dangerous for the rest of us. Steve picks me up and runs back to the clearing. David has already placed the recall beacon and he’s holding tightly to lois.

“The discs,” I say and Steve looks around the clearing for them. He grabs the case and I grab onto him and hold onto him like my life depended on it.

Physical contact isn’t ‘necessary’ during a transfer, but it is necessary for me. Steve has no free hands to hold onto me, so he kisses the top of my head and I smile. I’ve never been more glad than at this moment to be so much shorter than steve.

There are screams of anguish coming from the direction of the camp, as well as sounds of gunfire. We’ve only been here for about six hours, even with an extra dose of radiation, and we’re already beginning to slip. Candy and Andy are gone. People in the base have a dose four time higher than we do. I can only imagine what sorts of horrors are only now appearing before them.

In an instant that I wasn’t ready for, the sun, the screaming, everything cuts off and we’re again in the sphere. Lois and I collapse to the ground, holding onto each other while Steve and David look uncomfortable.

“She’s really gone,” I whisper.

“I know. They’re both just gone.”

It’s not rare to lose people on a mission. The thing is, Andrew and Candace were our instructing dyad. Lois and David and Steve and I had all been on the same first mission together. That was the last time Steve or I had been out on a mission with them, but I considered them a permanent fixture here at the organization.

And like that, they were gone. Not only that, but depending on how far reaching the effect was, everyone else might think they never existed.

Steve gently helped us to our feet and we made our way out and into our common room. I collapsed in the alcove that was assigned to Steve and I and I fell asleep.

***
It’s quiet when I wake up, the lighting having been turned out so everyone else could get some rest as well. Steve is softly snoring on the bed beside me, making me smile. I’ve always thought that Steve had a cute snore, and he looks so angelic when he’s asleep. There are some things I need to take care of, and it’s probably best if I do them while everyone else is out cold.

Opening the room into the diagnostic suite I grabbed the portable chroniton detector and ran it over myself. Just as I thought I was well into the red. The clock on the wall tells me that I’ve been out for about six hours, which means that I’m in serious trouble. I scan the other three remaining members of my team, and the results are confusing. Steve, having been in close personal contact with me has the highest reading, but it’s well within the green. Lois and David are basically reading at zero.

Why am I so much higher that anyone else? I wonder. I’ve never been especially susceptible to chroniton radiation in the past, and starting now just seems like an exceptional waste.

Putting my worries aside for the moment, I head to the supply closet, I mean office, to get a new issue of uniforms. The sergeant doesn’t even blink when I request female attire. “We seem to be missing some of your measurements, Ms. Lewis. If you’ll step into the closet please?”

I step into the closed and disrobe. The lasers they use for measurement are invisible to the naked eye, so I just follow the supply sergeant’s directions until he tells me that I can get dressed again.

The gaffs I expect, as I’d worn one in the past to better masquerade as a woman. The bras on the other hand are completely unexpected. It’s embarrassing enough to be issued bras that I don’t need to heighten the embarrassment by arguing with a supply clerk about them.

It’s not until I’m halfway back to the common room that I realize that he’d referred to me in the feminine. I rush back and went into the bathroom. I turn on the light and lock the door, and then, after a deep breath, I disrobe. My back is to the mirror while I do it. I don't even want to look at my own body while I’m stripping.

I then turn around and look at myself in the mirror. The counter blocks my view of my crotch so there’s nothing to spoil the effect of what I see in front of me. I’m a little under-developed for a woman my age, but there’s no mistaking that I look like a woman. My face is softer, though still recognizable. My hips are just slightly wider than I’m used to but my waist is significantly smaller making my hips look huge. They’re still narrower than my shoulders, if only slightly.

The most damning bit of evidence is, or should I say ‘are’ since there are two of them, are my breasts. Putting on one of the bras, which fits perfectly, only brings home what my eyes are telling me. I put on a gaff and then pull on my vintage-looking stockings. Looking at my leg I just as quickly took them off. There was no way I was wearing those sheer stockings with leg-hair showing through. while I’d personally never researched the subject, a timely thought picked up from the other me told me that, while not universal, some women during WWII did shave their legs.

I sat on the edge of the tub, just holding the razor, trying to calm my racing heart. Shaving isn’t what scared me. What scares me is that I’m still slipping, and by wearing this clothing, by shaving my legs, I’m bringing myself closer to the edge. Logically, I know that my attitude doesn’t mean anything, just like my attitude wouldn’t move me through time no matter how hard I focused.

It doesn’t feel that way, however.

Again, I take a cleansing breath and apply the peach scented shaving gel. I’m careful and quick about it, and somehow I complete the task as if I’d been doing it for years. The thoughts of where I might have gotten this skill are pushed away. The fear that accompanies those thoughts is pushed away as well.

Finally done, I pull on the stockings and the rest of my clothing. While still a uniform, it fits me like a glove, much better than they would have traditionally. It was, of course, tailored for me specifically, but I look at myself in the mirror and smile. I put on the makeup that came in an overnight bag with the uniform with an again scarily proficient hand.

These cosmetics are at least period in style if not in composition, and I wonder, for the first time, if maybe Beauty Secrets through the Ages isn’t it’s own skill that is underrated by my male counterparts in the organization.

The thought brings me up short. It was my thought, not my others, and in it I thought of myself as female...I accepted myself as female.

I turn out the light and head out into the common room. After putting my clothing away in my closet space, I sit down at the foot of the bed I shared with Steve and just sit there, watching him sleep. A feeling of peace suffuses me, and whether it is my own personal peace, or the others peace, I don’t care in that moment.

It is peace, and it is the most peace I’ve had since waking up at 5 this morning. There is a stirring behind me and I turn to see Lois crawling out of the bed she’s sharing with David. She gestures for me to follow her and we cross into the kitchen area. The light there will be shielded from the people in the main area of the room.

“I’ve never asked you, Lois. Are you and David married?”

“Not for lack of trying,” Lois says.

“What do you mean?”

“I’d love to marry that man, but he’s still pining for his first wife.”

“He’s married?” I say, shocked.

“He was. About two months before he applied to the program, his wife and daughter died in a car accident. The two of us had been friends for a very long time, since we were kids actually, and he asked me if I wanted to join him.”

“You thought he meant something more, didn’t you.”

“Yeah. But he’s never looked at me that way. It was a shock to him when he found out that we were paired.”

“You knew already?”

“I still remember the first time I saw him. I remember the complete mind destroying power of that moment. He just sort of remembers me coming over to him on the playground and asking to play.”

“He didn’t feel it?”

“It’s apparently stronger for girls than it is for guys.”

“No, it’s sometimes the same, because I can remember how powerful it was for me. It felt as if the orbit of the galaxy suddenly shifted and it began to move around Steve.”

“Ray, have you seen how you’re dressed right now?”

I blush and Lois laughs, “I always knew you were a girl, you know that?”

I just stare at her in shock.

“It’s true. I knew, intellectually, that you were a guy before...whatever this is, at least physically, but mentally, socially, emotionally? You were a woman just like the rest of us. That’s part of the reason we welcomed you in.”

“Don’t welcome any of the other guys paired with guys?”

“You’re the only one I know of.”

I was about to mention another three that I was aware of, but then I remembered where I’d met them, and I wasn’t to even think of that mission again. General’s orders.

That reminded me of something. “We ran into General Haynes.”

“Where? Here after we got back?”

“No, he’s there, in The Pit.”

“What?”

“It’s part of what prompted this,” I say gesturing at myself.

“Do you have breasts?”

“Way to change the subject.”

“Sorry, it’s just they look so real.”

“I’m slipping, Lois.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It looks like I might survive it, but I’m...merging?..with an alternate version of myself.”

“You have alternate versions who are female?”

“Yes, and you have alternates that are male.”

“But close enough that you could slip with just a little excess radiation?”

I grab the scanner and run it over myself and hand it to Lois. Her mouth drops open in shock.

“I’m the only one with any amount of radiation. You, Steve, and David are all safe.”

“Wow, you could swap with a version of you that isn’t even human with this much radiation.”

“So, at least I’m lucky just to be turning female, right?”

“But your mind is the same?”

“For now. I’ve had some...leakage. Also, it would seem that I pulled you along on one of my shifts. The whole drinking-confession-thing? It never actually happened.”

“But I remember it?”

“I know. A different me, and a different you, had that conversation.”

“So, you never kissed Steve?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” I say, blushing.

“You little tramp. When?”

“In the forest while waiting for...them to return.”

“Oh, well, nothing like running for your life to dampen the mood.”

“Or realizing you’re randomly swapping genders?”

“You seem to be adjusting well?”

“That’s because I can’t tell. I have to focus to realize that it’s happening. It all feels so...normal.”

“It’d think that you would be able to tell if something that drastic was happening to you.”

“You’d think, but I am merging with an alternate version of myself, which brings memories along with it.”

“You’re losing yourself?”

“Worse, I’m gaining a whole new life. I’m going to have two full sets of memories when this is over.”

Lois has nothing else to say, and frankly I’m about talked out as well. We spend the next little while cooking dinner for the four of us. The smells of cooking wake the boys and the wander over to the bar and stand there talking to us. I can't help but appreciate the glances that Steve sends my way. It reminds me of something.

“David, do you love Lois.”

“What?” Lois exclaims, but I put a finger over her lips and repeat the question.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“It’s an easy question, David. Yes, or no.”

“Well, I like her, and we never argue, we feel like two halves of the same person. How do you say you love your arm or your hand or your eye?”

“At least he didn’t call you his foot, Lois” Steve says with a chuckle.

“Hush, hon, the adults are talking,” I say to him with a smile.

“So, what you’re saying, is that you literally couldn’t live without her, right? That you’d be lost if she wasn’t a part of your life?”

“Well, yeah, that sounds about right.”

“Then ask her to marry you, damn it. She loves you and always has, and this game you’re playing is killing her.”

“What?” David says looking at Lois and she just nods at him, tears in her eyes.

“You never said anything.”

“But I hinted at it a lot. You sure are dense sometimes. I mean, I joined the program because of you.”

“I thought…”

“David, here’s a hint. Kiss her,” Steve says, grinning like a fool.

David takes her in his arms and kisses her so thoroughly that I’m melting. Steve walks up to me and puts his arms around me from behind. I put my hands on his arms and lean my head back into his shoulder.

“Marry me?” Steve whispers in my ear and I just nod, “sounds good to me,” I say, and then my words register and I pull away from him and run out into the other room.

“Rachel?”

“My name’s Ray, Steve. Ray. I’m your best friend.”

“You’ll stay my best friend, Ray. It’s just that we’ll become more than that.”

“I’m a guy, Steve.”

Something flashes across Steve’s face and then he looks at me in horror. “I completely forgot, how could I forget.”

“Because she’s completely irradiated, Steve.”

“How? When?”

“You all need to keep your distance, Steve, Lois. This is getting bad.”

“Ray, I don’t want to keep my distance.”

“I’m slipping, Ray.”

“I don;t care. You saw what happened to Andy, you saw the anguish when he said Candy was gone. That’s not going to be me.”

“Please,” I say, tearing up a bit, “I can’t lose you, Steve.”

“Why, Ray? Because we’re friends?”

“No, because I’m only just realizing that I’ve been in love with you since the first moment I saw you. I can’t lose that just because I’m slipping. Let me become a woman. I can live with that. But I want you to stay you. I want the you that I spent the last ten years with, not the one that was with this girl me.”

“Ray,” he says, taking a step toward me but Lois and David hold him back.

“Don’t Steve, listen to her, him...listen to Ray,” Lois says.

“Ray finally admitted he loves you, Steve. Let him be. Let him protect you as best as he can.”

I hear a sob escape from Steve’s lips. More than anything I want to go to him, to comfort him, but when how things are going, it will be no comfort.

“I think we need to go back to the point we left from,” I say.

“Why?”

“We need to do this right. Also...I think we need to save General Haynes.”

“What are you talking about,” Lois asks.

“Apparently General Haynes is in 1944, or at least a version of him is.”

“Well, then let’s go back to 1944 and get him,” David says.

“It’s not that simple,” Steve replies and I nod my agreement. “It’s like this,” I continue for him, “the General Haynes that we met in 1944 doesn’t know us, so it’s an earlier version of General Haynes.”

“Then how..?” David begins, but Lois completes the thought for us, “So, we have to get the General back with one of the other groups, but we don’t know which group he should be going back with…”

“And we don’t know the other groups itinerary, since we were just supposed to avoid them.”

“Well, that’s fine, we’ll try to get him off from the group 1 point in 36 hours, and if that fails then we just get him off with group 2.”

David chips in at this point, “Hon, it won’t work. It’s a flex point. Normally, yes, because we wouldn’t be able to do something that hadn’t already happened, we’d be fine to just shove him through the first available portal to the future.”

Lois gets thoughtful. Time is resilient. More so than most people who understand time travel would be willing to allow. Think about the so called Grandfather-Paradox that most people try to use to disprove time. The theory goes, that if you go back and kill your grandfather, then you never existed to go and kill your grandfather. It usually get’s extrapolated from here to say that time-travel is impossible because this sort of thing would just about have to occur, or would likely occur whenever someone time-traveled, ignoring for the moment the morality of killing your own grandfather.

If you attempted to go back and kill your grandfather, either the person you killed wasn’t your grandfather, just someone you thought was your grandfather, or you will simply fail to carry out the task. Your gun will jam, or you’ll have a last minute change of heart, or you’ll be struck by a car and killed while crossing the road to kill your grandfather. The options are truly limitless, but it ends up being that you’re not able to kill your grandfather.

Because it never happened.

That doesn’t mean that timetravelers can’t do anything in the past. The assassination of President Kennedy, not to mention so many other events that even just Steve and I were a part of, proves that timetravelers can have an effect on history.

Actually, I should say that they already had an effect on history, since it already happened. However, it is possible to create a weak-point in spacetime. This is what we call a flux-point, or even a flex-point, but that is the less common term for the same thing.

If your grandfather lived in a flux-point, then you could successfully kill him. Not only that, but you will continue to exist in the future. You’ve just spawned a reality in which your grandfather wasn’t your grandfather.

If this seems dangerous to anyone else, then you’re not alone, because this terrifies the holy living hell out of me...and we’re voluntarily heading into one of these, again, with the intent of trying to make no changes to reality.

“We can’t do it,” Lois finally says.

“Do what?” Steve replies.

“We can’t go back and not change anything. Going back, almost by definition, is changing things. Neither of the first two groups saw us.”

“That we know of,” I say quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“The four of us have only been with the organization for two prime-years. The first time they sent someone back was fourteen years ago. The second was, what, four years after that?” None of the others know, and they just shrug. “Anyway, the point is, none of the people on those teams know us yet.”

Steve smiles and David begins to grin, “so, we can walk around in the open, and as long as we never mention the organization or the project, then…”

Lois finishes it, “...then we will never be noticed.”

“The only ones who they might have recognized are dead,” I say quietly.

“We’ll mourn our dead when we’re done,” David says firmly, and I nod in his direction.

“So, are we ready for this?” Steve says.

“Eat first,” says Lois.

“Yeah, we slaved away in the kitchen for about thirty minutes,” I say with a laugh.

We all head into the dining area and Lois brings the food out while Steve and David set the table. There is none of the normal banter that would have been at a time like this. We’re too worried about what might happen to allow ourselves to be playful. When we’re done Lois and I touch up our makeup and then we head out to the sphere. Steve punches 0 into the panel and we wait.

***
We’re sticking together, and we’re not the only ones. Off to our right I see a group of seven soldiers making their way down a side street. The next time I see them they’re shooting at a T-Rex. Amazingly, their bullets actually seem to be making a difference and I watch in shock as it collapses to the ground.

“Ray?”

“They just killed a T-Rex.”

“Good, come on,” he says and grabs my arm. I quickly pull it from his grasp and move to catch up to Lois and David.

The plan seemed simple enough in the sphere, but now, however, it starts to become obvious that we are out of our depth. If this weren’t a flux point, we’d wander around until we just happened to run into General Haynes, since that was what had to happen.

As it was…

“Lt. Lewis?”

“General Haynes?”

“You have to get out of here, it’s not safe. Go back to your recall point and get out of here. I’ll have to figure my own way back.”

“Wait...what?” David just about yelled.

“You’re not here to save me?”

“Yes, but no, but...it’s complicated,” Lois replies.

“General Haynes, what do you know about time travel?” I say.

“I’m a time traveler from 2028...aren’t you?”

“We’re from 2044,” Steve says, and General Haynes’ face falls.

“But there are two other groups here, one of which is from 2030,” David says helpfully.

“I’ve already been here for eight years, so two years back home isn’t all that bad.”

“What happened in 1936 that they wanted to fix?”

“What are you talking about,” the general asks.

I share a look with Steve and I simply nods.

“General, let’s just assume, for the moment, that you’re telling the truth,” I say, beginning slowly, and calmly, “what were you trying to accomplish here?”

“Well, you see, I invented time travel, or at least here I did. I was trying to get home. They were able to send me out easily enough, but then apparently something went wrong and they weren’t able to retrieve me.”

“What happened to your better half,” Lois says with a little smile.

“My wife is back in the future.”

“No, I mean the other half of your dyad.”

I was shaking my head the entire time, trying to prevent Lois from speaking, but it was too late.

“What’s a dyad?” he says.

“We’ll explain all of that later. How did you know we’re time travelers,” I ask sweetly.

“I saw your hair band. It lifted above your collar while you were leaning forward. I have to say, though, you look much better this way than in that ill-fitting male uniform.”

And then I knew. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know why, but I knew for a fact that this wasn’t me naturally gaining too much chroniton radiation, and I wasn’t the one who was slipping. I was pretty sure that no one else was slipping either, or at least not on their own.

The general was slipping, and he was taking the rest of reality with him. With the sinking feeling in my stomach I realized something else. In order to prevent a paradox of our own creation, we had to somehow make the general normal, bleed off all of his chroniton radiation, and we had to do it in the midst of the biggest chroniton radiation bubble in all of recorded history.