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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The maximum that can be transported between two points in time at any single time is equivalent to the amount that can be comfortably carried by the individuals being transported. We’re not exactly sure why it is, but it seems to be impossible to transport inanimate objects on their own. That includes inorganic intelligences. Some of the AI devices in recent history have actually surpassed the intellect and learning capacity of a dog, but while a dog can be sent back in time, the dog-simulacrum can’t.

What that means is that we should be able to take the operating system with us to the future when we head back. I’d love to see how it’s encoded since my inner geek is working overtime on it. You can encode data in any medium, it’s just a matter of being able to read it back. One of the first computers used movie film to encode and read its data, or at least the programs that it ran.

“Hey, Steve?” I say as an idle thought comes to me.

“Yes, Ray?”

“Do I look like a girl to you?”

“No more than you usually do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, getting incensed.

“It means I still think you have a cute ass.”

I don’t know why, but instead of getting angry, I blush instead. Maybe it’s that, this time, instead of it being a joke, or him being drunk, he is sober and he actually means it. Maybe it’s because I had General Haynes, if only a young version of him, mistaking me for a woman.

And maybe it’s because I like being complimented, even if it is something that has always been a sore point between Steve and I.

“Why do you ask?” he says.

“It’s just that the General thought I was a woman, even when I turned around.”

“Ray, you have narrow shoulders, especially for a guy. You shave two to three times a week, and even if you let your ‘beard’ grow out it is sparse and wispy. And you know it’s not the first time that you’ve been mistaken for a girl.”

I grimace at the reminder. The difference is that the last time I was intentionally sneaking into a seraglio, and I didn’t want to be mistaken for a guy. It doesn’t change the fact that I successfully snuck in, retrieved our target, and got back out again without any problems.

And then there was the time that we’d masqueraded as a married couple so that we could mingle with the guests and an imperial party in rome…

“You jackhole. How many times have you gotten me to dress in drag just because it was ‘necessary’ for the mission?” I say as I spin on him.

“Um,” he says coloring, “well, you see…” He refuses to meet my eyes and something occurs to me. I can feel my eyes go wide as the shock of this thought stuns me. My cheeks begin to flame and I turn my back on him quickly so he won’t see.

That is impossible, I think to myself. There’s no way that he...that we… I forcibly push the thoughts aside and begin walking forward again. Before I’ve taken a couple of steps I stop and say, “Stop staring at my ass.”

“Sorry,” a modified voice says behind me and I feel my world shatter.

“Shit,” I say under my breath. This is so much worse than anything else I could possibly conceive. Steve...likes me. Sure, we get along, but that’s not what I mean. He is attracted to me, and part of it is because he, to a certain degree, sees me as a girl.

Everything starts to become clear now. The nickname that was passing around the boys, the idea that they might think of me as one of the women. He was hoping beyond hope that maybe, some day…

“How many people have you told that I dress in drag?”

“You don’t…”

“Damn it, Steve, just answer the question.”

“Everyone…”

I turn on him, hurt beyond what I should be at such a simple thing. I mean, it’s not like I’m really a girl, but...and then I see his face. He’s miserable, and I hate it when he’s miserable. Regardless of anything else that is happening here, he’s my best friend. I’ve relied upon him to keep me alive more times than I can count, and the number of times that I’ve saved his bacon are innumerable.

In the past ten years we’ve been together we’ve spent eight of them upstream. We are somewhere in time five times as often as we are in our own time. The organization never sends people to the past to take vacations, so we are moving from one death trap into another.

I can feel tears come to my eyes at the thought of the hurt he’s caused me, without me knowing it, and the hurt I’m causing him now.

“I’m sorry, Ray, I am. It just…”

“You’ve been hoping for ten years that I felt the same way you do.”

“What?”

“You’re attracted to me.”

He’s bright red and won’t meet my gaze. It’s all the confirmation that I need. I’d make him look at me, or hug him, or something right now if we weren’t one hundred years in the past, if we weren’t standing in 1944. PDA wasn’t really approved of, let alone between serving officers, in 1944.

To distract myself I take out my hair band. I’d hidden it below my collar because it was an anachronism, and I really shouldn’t have brought it with me. I begin working my hair up into a tight bun, and then tuck the hair band around it to secure it in place.

Then, with an impish smile I begin walking ahead of Steve toward our designated meeting spot on the edge of the compound.

“Damn,” I hear him say wistfully from behind me, “that is so cruel.”

“Oh? What’s so cruel?” I say in a little singsong, adding a slight sway to my step.

“I hate you, Ray.”

“I hate you too, Steve.” My smile could have lit up a room, it’s so big; My face hurts, but I don’t care. Steve likes me...

My smile disappears from my face and I do my best to think about anything else, because the though if him liking me shouldn’t make me happy. And even worse, I shouldn’t have an inkling of a thought that this emotion might be returned.

“Ray?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I’m sorry for sharing our stories without your permission. We just have so many of them, and I’m so amazed by you.”

“I amaze you?”

“Before I joined the organization, I was training in two martial arts, judo and aikido, at the same time and my dad dragged me out to SCA events. I learned my skills the hard way. I learned how to sneak and how to disappear in plain sight. I learned tactics and strategy. I was eight when the organization was formed. My entire life I have been working toward becoming a member.”

“I didn’t hear about it until the day of that mixer.”

“See, you came in with basically no skills, nothing to recommend you, and you keep up with me.”

“Steve, I surpass you most of the time.”

“Oh really? Name one thing you’re better at than I am.” I begin to reply and he interrupts me, “I mean except for Computer and Communications Systems. You really should stop degrading your skill set by calling it typing.”

I stop and think for a bit and then I’m reminded of this one time in medieval England, “Archery.”

“Really, when did you ever...oh.”

“Yes, oh.”

Creating legends was sometimes something that we were called on to do, and Steve was still upset with that shot that I made. Personally I think he was still pissed that Arthur was a real figure and he couldn’t make his legend. An anachronistic blade would have made a perfect Excalibur in 5th century England.

We got to the concealed area where we’d appeared earlier. Steve set the tray down on the ground, out of the way, and settled down to wait. It had taken us about a quarter of the time we had allocated to us for our portion of the process. Frankly, it had taken us a lot less time than I’d been afraid it would. I was worried that we’d have to copy the entire OS by hand. That would have eaten up a lot of time, all things considered.

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I need to expand into Signalling.”

“Signalling..? Oh, you mean Heraldry, Flags, and Semaphore?”

“Yeah,” I say chuckling.

“Why do you simplify things so much?”

“Because I hate the designations the organization uses, especially for your job, what was it again?”

“Weapons, War Machines, and Tactics.”

“See, sneaky stuff is so much better than that.”

“How does someone as imprecise as you learn six languages, let alone six languages in ten years.”

“Five.”

“What?”

“Five languages. I’m a native English speaker. come to think of it, can you really count Middle and Old English as separate languages?”

“So, now you’re saying you only know Four languages?”

“Yep,” I say with a grin.

“Fine, well, since you speak Latin and Romanian I’m upgrading you to every romance language ever spoken, and since you have Old English, you might as well count German as a language you can speak fluently.”

“Old English and German aren’t…”

“You didn’t argue about French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.”
“Yeah, that’s because I see your point. Well, as far as your argument goes. From personal experience, while I can understand basically anything spoken in the languages mentioned, making myself understood...takes practice.”

“This will be the longest.”

“Longest what?”

“Period of time you’ve spent dressed as a woman. Can you handle it?”

“Yes. It’s not a big deal, really.”

“It’s a huge deal. I mean you’d never catch me wearing clothing like that.”

I begin laughing. “you’d look really funny in women’s clothing, Steve. You’re too much the manly guy to look anything else.”

“I don’t know. Maybe if I put on enough makeup.”

I snicker at the thought. Steve would look like a clown if you put enough makeup on him to hide his very masculine features, or so I personally think.

“Are we good?”

“What do you mean, Steve?”

“”You and me, are we going to be okay?”

“We just need a vacation, Man. I mean, we haven’t really had a break from each other for...ninety days or so?”

“I don’t need a break from you.”

“You just need to go find a nice girl and get laid, maybe more than one or more than once. You’re just missing sex.”

“Ray…”

“No, I’m serious. I mean, we can’t...I’m not…”

“You’re a guy, is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Yes,” I say vehemently. “I’m a guy. You and me, we’re just not going to happen, Steve.”

“Ray…”

“No, Steve.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Because I’m not interested in guys that way.”

“Not interested in guys, or not interested in me.”

I sit there quietly, not answering him. Something I promised a long time ago, near the beginning, was I was never going to lie to him. I might not answer, but I’d never lie. He promised the same. I’d never caught him in a lie, and neither had I lied to him. Unfortunately, now that I really wanted to, I couldn’t lie to him, because I just couldn’t betray him like that.

“I can’t be interested in you, Steve.”

“You’re the only woman that I’ll ever love, Ray.”

“I’m not a woman, Steve.”

“Why are you the only one who doesn’t see it? You are the more feminine in most of your actions that many of the other girls, yes other girls. You even do girl-talk with them.”

“I’m just being friendly.”

“Whatever, fine, you win, happy? You’re just a manly guy who no one ever mistakes for a woman, and you might as well cut your hair into a nice, short, manly style and make sure the rest of the world knows it.

“Are you happy? Is this what you want? You want me to hate you?” Steve is actually crying now, and it’s like a punch in the gut. Steve isn’t one of those repressed guys who feel that crying isn’t manly, but he also doesn’t cry all that often. He is my rock, the one person in this world that I can actually rely upon never to fall apart on a mission, and I’ve just driven him to tears.

I scoot over next to him and try to put an arm around him, but she shrugs me off. He’s never done that before. I held him for over an hour while he cried after his mother died.

“Ray, don’t do it unless you mean it.”

“What..?”

“This,” he says gesturing between the two of us. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to be the girl in this relationship and then act like the girl in this relationship. If you’re just my bud, just my friend, fine, but if that’s all this is going to be then I done.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It hurts too damn much, Ray. You are my family, and for some stupid reason I thought, eventually, you’d realize you loved me as much as I love you. So, if you’re just my friend, just this guy I’ve been hanging out with for ten years, then you can go to hell and I’m quitting.”

“That’s not fair, Steve.”

“What’s not fair is you leading me along for the past ten years.”

“Fuck you, Steve. You’re telling me that unless I become the proper housewife for you that we’re done?”

“I don’t expect proper…”

“You just expect a wife,” I’m getting angry now, and I’m spitting my words out at him, “so fuck you kindly, but no. I might, and I mean might, be as feminine as you claim, but that doesn’t give you the right to dictate who I’m going to be. Have you ever considered that I don’t want to be a woman?”

“Why not?”

For the first time in minutes, Steve is absolutely calm. He’s not angry or upset. That question uttered in the absolute deep calm of his current voice hits me hard. I don’t have an answer for him. It’s not something I’ve thought about. It’s just something that I was. I was a guy. Sure, all my friends are girls, but that’s normal, right?

Guys have female friends. So what if I never thought about any of them sexually…

Come to think about it, I can’t think of the last person I’ve thought about sexually...except for Steve while we were walking over here.

My mouth opens, and I work it trying to find the words, but they aren’t there. “There is no reason. I can’t think of a single reason that I don’t want to be a woman.”

His eyes light up a bit, but I cut him off, “that is a long way from wanting to be, or even believing I am, a woman.”

“But it’s a step.”

“No, it’s a question, Steve.”

“What’s a question?” Lois says as she enters the copse of trees we’re hiding in.

“Why Ray doesn’t want to be a woman.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” David says. We all stare at him and even under his dark complexion we can see the flush.

“And why’s that?”

“Well, if he admitted that he was a she, then she wouldn’t be able to talk about the cute guys at the organization anymore cause she’d be taken.”

Lois and I blush matching shades of red and I glare at her.

“What?” she says with false modesty.

“That was a hypothetical.”

“It’s always a hypothetical, or at least you say it is.”

“And what’s this about me being taken?” I say looking even more intently at Lois.

“Oh, well, you see, remember about three prime-months ago?”

I did a quick calculation, figured the missions I’d been on, and came to a value a little over a year ago relative. “That would have been more than a year ago for me, Lois.”

“I keep forgetting. Of course it starts making sense why you seem so flighty sometimes. While the rest of us got together somewhere between one and three weeks ago relative, you wouldn’t have seen us for, what, a month and a half?”

“Usually? Yeah, it’s about that long.”

“So, anyway, three prime-months ago, you got completely smashed. Said it was a really difficult mission.”

“Wasn’t that the Anastasia Job?” Steve says and I go pale, “Oh, shit. Sorry, I promised never to mention that.”

“Anastasia?”

“You don’t always get to be the hero,” I say really quietly.

The silence stretches out for a bit, growing uncomfortable. I’m lost in my thoughts about a little Russian girl. Steve is whispering to the two of them, saying things about ‘accident’ and ‘unintentional discharge’ and all the other boilerplate that they put onto the after action report. I know that in reality I’d always been the one to end that life. There was never any other option since that hadn’t been a flux point.

Steve had gotten me home, and I’d been so grateful to him, that I’d kissed him full on the lips. I could still feel the pressure, and I absently fingered my lower lip as I thought about it. I’d been in costume, again, as one of the maids, but I’d had a modern firearm for my own protection.

“I tried to change history, but that never went into the report. Steve didn’t tell them, and I was in shock and raving so they sedated me for my own good.”

“You did what?” David says. “Are you an idiot?”

“Until you meet that little girl, that Tsarina, then you don't have the right to judge me. I saw what Russia would have become under her rule, and if she’d survived I can tell you that she would have ruled. There was iron in her and a force of personality. She was seventeen, but she made the criminals who came for her quake at her command.”

Steve was looking at me with a strange sad look in his eyes and Lois came and put her arm around me, “You fell in love with Anastasia.” There wasn’t any condemnation or reprisal in her voice and I just nodded.

“The thing is, the more I thought about it afterward, the more I realized that she reminded me of Steve. He has a strength of personality like that. When he pulled me out, I thought, for a moment, that it was her, that she’d survived, and I kissed him. He kissed me back.”

“I’m sorry, Ray,” Steve says quietly. David grabs his arm and drags him off.

“Why?” I begin, but Lois puts her finger on my lips to silence me.

“Ray, why are you punishing Steve for kissing you back?”

I sit there quietly refusing to answer. I try to glare at her, but I can’t stay mad at her.

“Ray, I remember what you told me, even if you don’t. You might have been drunk, but I doubt you lied to me. I’ve never once caught you in a lie, so I tend to believe that you haven’t lied to me yet.”

“What did I say?”

She takes a deep sigh and looks me in the eyes, “are you sure? You might have…”

“Just tell me, Lois,” I say. I’m feeling very tired all of the sudden.

“You told me that Steve was the only man you would ever love, and that there wasn’t a woman left alive who would have you.”

“That’s just sappy enough that I might believe I said it. I must have been drunk.”

“Do you love him?”

“I don’t know. He pisses me off so often.”

“Guys are like that.”

“Me too?” I say, hopeful.

“Oh, Ray, I’m sorry but none of us actually thinks of you as a guy.”

She puts her arms around me and holds me and I just lean into her.

***
I can feel the tension in the air ratcheting skyward as the sun nears it’s zenith. If the other teams can be believed, then that is when they will throw the switch on the machine. Because we killed the computer by taking it’s operating system they wouldn’t be able to shut the device down. We would then just need to work our way to the processing center and then we’d fix the computer. We’d shut down the machine and go home. Simple as that.

The only worry I had right now was that Candy and Andy hadn’t come back yet. Steve was still sneaking furtive looks in my direction so I turned my back on him. I snuck to the edge of the copse to keep watch, hoping to see them come over any minute.

“You know,” Steve says, startling me. I turn and punch him on the arm, he catches my hand and doesn’t let it go.

“We’re not going to be able to finish this today.”

“Hmm?” I say, distracted. When I realize he’s holding my hand I pull it away from him. “what were you saying?”

He chuckles a little at me, “I was saying that we can’t finish this today.”

“Why not?”

“Because the other two teams were over here for thirty-six hours and forty-two hours respectively.”

“So, we just jump forward forty-three hours and finish it then.”

“You know we can’t do that. You usually love being upstream. What’s wrong with this mission?”

“I have to dress like a girl.”

“It doesn’t usually bother you. I mean, your hair is still up in a bun,” he says gesturing toward my head.

“It’s comfortable,” I say, coloring.

“It’s because someone you didn’t know assumed.”

“No, it’s because General Haynes, the same person who thought I was a girl, mentioned in our briefing that he didn’t originally pick me for this mission because I wasn’t a girl...and it terrifies me because I think I know why. I don’t to come back here, I don’t want to finish this mission. I’m scared.”

Steve puts his arms around me and holds me. I push him away because of how much I want him to hold me right then.

“Steve, I’m slipping.”

“No, it was just a hallucination.”

“I’ve never had a time induced hallucination, not in ten years. You know that. I know the symptoms, Steve. I’ve been feeling them.”

“It’s just your mind, or this place.”

“Steve, they started the machine twenty-four hours ago so they could build up enough chronitons.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I was here, even though I wasn’t here.”

“Ray?”

“I never kissed you, but I did.”

“What? You kissed me?”

“Lois remembers me telling her about it. After you pulled me from the rubble of the palace.”

“That never happened, you walked out of there on your own.”

“I know, Steve...because I had the upper body strength to do so.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A wall fell on me, Steve. After they were all dead, I rushed back into the palace, looking for my brass. You know we have to police it and take it back with us. There was an explosion and one of the walls came down on top of me. I was able to push it off and get out.”

“Then how…”

“Because there was another version. In that version I hit my head, and I was dazed and I couldn’t get a good grip on the wall. you pulled the wall off me and I fell into your arms and kissed you.”

“You did what?”

“You kissed me back. Thoroughly.”

“It’s got to be another hallucination...doesn’t it?”

“No, Steve. It’s another me, an alternate me, and I’m remembering what that Ray remembers.”

“And now?”

“Now, I’m remembering being here for two days. We were there when they turned on the machine. We got trapped because the chroniton radiation prevented us from being pulled back to the sphere.”

“Then how will we get back?”

“We assume that when they fire it, that it will give us the ability to go back, since the other two teams were able to come and go as they pleased.”

“Ray, you’re scaring me.”

“Why, because I know things I shouldn’t?”

“That, and you’re making me believe you might be telling the truth.”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure, what?”

I kiss him for the first time. It’s been a hundred times before. It’s the last time because he’s dying. It is the most amazing kiss I’ve ever had and it lasts across every version of myself that I have contact with in that moment.

Millions of me are kissing millions of Steve. Then all of the awareness of my other selves fades out and it’s just Steve and I and we’re kissing. I can feel my heart race and I’m holding onto him as he cradles me. He pushes me up against a tree and I just leen there, my arms lightly on his. I can feel something hard pressing against my hip and for a moment I think it’s his gun, before I realize what it really is and I giggle into his mouth. He takes that opportunity to slip his tongue in, and then everything really does go away. It’s just him and me, and we’re floating in the vastness of the universe. I want more of him pressed against me, I need to feel him consuming me, filling me, completely, so I put my hands to the waistband of his pants. Something grabs my hands and gently pulls them apart and away from him and then he’s pulling back and I’m struggling against him a little, trying to get to his pants again.

“Ray?”

“Hmm?” I say with a playful smile.

“Ray.”

“What?”

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to undo your pants, silly.”

“Why?”

I begin to answer the obvious and then it hits me and I go completely still. My heart is racing for another reason now. My whole body goes cold, and my vision closes down to a single point. Theres a ringing in my ears. I can feel Steve holding me up. In a moment or two everything returns to normal and I can stand up on my own again.

I don’t want to, but I gently push Steve away and turn away from him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything.”

“Come on, it can’t be that bad, can it?”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Then I just nod.

“How can it be that bad. We’ve been through worse than this. We’ll get through it.”

“I’m not sure we will. Or I should say I’m not sure I will.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the other me? The one that I’m afraid I’m slipping into? That other me is a woman.”