“Yes, It’s five. Get your pretty little ass out of bed.”
I sit up and glare at him, but he just laughs. Once, when we were more than drunk, he commented that I have a cute ass. He thinks that it’s a shame that I wasn’t born a girl, because my behind is wasted on a guy.
Granted, I’m not much of a guy, but I am male, and happy to be so.
He uses the line whenever he wants me to get in gear, because he knows that it pisses me off whenever he talks about my gluteus. Somehow, I’ve got to find something just as humiliating for him so that he’ll stop.
“What’s the rush?”
“We’ve been activated. Apparently we have skills that they need.”
“Skills? What skills do you have that they could possibly want?” I assume, of course, that he’s the one they want, and I’ll be dragged along because they need him.
When you’re playing around with time there are certain things that you have to keep in mind. The first is that a single human sent back is unstable. It took a number of failed experiments before they realized this. However, as long as you send people back in pairs, they are a lot more stable.
They’re the most stable when they are a resonating dyad. You know the old myth about love at first sight? Well, science has determined that is just you recognizing that your chroniton particles are syncronized with the other person’s. Your body literally sings out to the other person in a Einstein-Rosen bridge sort of way. Think of it like a wormhole of the soul. This resonance not only makes you stable when out of your own time, but is really easy to pick out from the background chroniton radiation.
“So, any word on what it is? We weren’t scheduled to be sent upstream for another week.”
“Ray, when they say to hop to, I don’t ask why.”
“That’s what I love about you,” I say. The sarcasm drips from my words, “why think when they do it for you.”
“I know, right?” he’s laughing even before he finishes and I can’t help but join in. It’s not that I hate the guy, since we get along really well, it’s just that I hate being paired with a guy. Any guy.
We’re not the only ones walking around the campus at this hour of the morning, but we are one of the few dyads walking around. In fact, I notice that Candy and Andy, and Lois and Clark are the only other dyads walking toward the central building on campus, the sphere.
Candace and Andrew hate being called by the nickname, but with those names it almost begs to be assigned, and so it was.
I’m personally not even sure of the reference that it came from, but David is this tall guy with glasses. He’s a little built, sure, but nothing really noteworthy. It’s just that when you have a girl named Lois, and a tall guy with glasses it begs the nickname Lois and Clark? I don’t get it either.
We walk into the cool, still, atmosphere of the sphere not thirty seconds behind Lois and Clark. “Hey, any idea what’s going on here?” I call out to Lois as they stand waiting to go through the scanner.
“You don’t know?”
“Steve didn’t think to ask, and I was still asleep.”
“You really need to get a new partner, Ray,” David says from the other side of the scanning booth as Lois steps in.
“It’s something I’ve been telling the brass for years, but they never really listen.”
“It also doesn’t help when you two have spent more time relative than the brass has. What ratio are you up to now?”
“Five to one,” I say, grumbling.
David blinks and then begins laughing, “What happened to the mandatory vacation when you hit three to one?”
“The Jefferson Incident.”
David’s eyes get momentarily large and then he smiles weakly. No one who was part of that charlie foxtrot speaks about it. People who weren’t part of it just wouldn’t understand. That and we’ve received orders not to talk about it by top brass. “Why didn’t they just send you on your mandatory sync vacation after that?”
“Our ratio was at five to one when they were finally able to retrieve us. It’s remained pretty constant since then.”
Time travel is based upon windows of synchronization. From the beginning of the window in the past to the beginning of the window in the future you have a distinct period of time called a synchronized time window or sync-time for short. The most common sync-time is ten years. No one I’ve talked to knows why that is, since the math doesn’t even make any sense, but there you go.
The frequency that a specific sync time will re-occur is called a synchronized time wave, which of course we shortened to sync-wave.
I mention the beginning of the window, because here is where things get a little weird. Time flows at different rates on either end of the link. The most common rate is ten to one, again without any real reason, or none that I know of, so, if you spend what appears to be ten hours on the other end of the link, then you only really spent one hour according to everyone at home.
To stay at a one to one ratio, you would then have to spend nine hours at home. Since we just come back to sleep, no one wants to run the risk of an over-run, we end up with a 1 hour difference.
So, while the local time suggests that Steve and I have been partnered for about two years, with our current ratio that actually meant we had been doing this for ten years. There’s a reason why most dyads end up getting married. You spend that much time in someone elses company with everyone else just shuffling around it starts to make sense.
What really throws me for a loop is that while I feel like I should be going to my ten year high school reunion, most of my classmates aren’t even halfway through college.
“That’s rough,” David says, “wait...that means that you guys are coming up on your ten year anniversary.”
“Ha, ha, ha.” I say without humor.
By this point I’m standing waiting to enter the scanner. Lois steps out and I can hear David whisper, “ten years,” to her before I step into the booth.
There are two things that will prevent them from sending an agent upstream, one of which, as a guy, I don’t have to worry about. The one I’m always worried about is a buildup of chroniton radiation.
Sitting in one place, temporally speaking, is easy on the human body. We’re used to it. Going up or down the time-stream on the other hand is, well, another thing entirely. All of us in the program are bombarded with chronitons every time we either head out or return. Most of the time, this isn’t an issue.
Our bodies cleanse themselves of the excess when we’re given any sort of time on either end of the link. Traveling with less than four hours at either end is considered a no-no.
Occasionally, however, the particles don’t go away. If they start to build up, at all, then Bad Things Happen, capital letters and all. Most of the time, changing your own past is basically impossible. If you get chroniton sickness...changing your own personal history is the least of your worries.
It had happened once in the forteen year history of the program. Once was enough for them.
There is a moment when I’m in the booth, when the lights all go out, that I’m afraid that the red lights are going to come on. I’ve seen it often enough, someone has developed a slight imbalance, and so they’re put on the no-fly list for six months. Then the lights come on and I’m released back into the world. This time is no exception.
I smile at Lois and bump fists with David while we wait for Steve to be scanned. “So, what is this trip?”
“We’re going to The Pit,” David replies, all humor leaving his expression.
“What? There’s no fucking way I’m going to The Pit. They can find someone else with whatever combat/infiltration/whatever skills that they need for this...insane idea.”
David looks uncomfortable, and Lois actually looks sorry for me. I feel a sinking feeling in my gut when I realize it’s not Steve that they need. “Me?”
“First time?”
“They’ve never needed me. I mean, my ‘special skill’ is only useful during the last two hundred years...okay, a little less considering that the typewriter was invented in 1866, but still.”
“How did you get into the program with that skill,” David exclaims, and Lois punches him in the arm. All of the girls know what my ‘skill’ is. We get some downtime occasionally, and when we do I find hanging with the girls is more relaxing that trying to relate to people with training in ancient weapons, martial arts, blacksmithing, or any number of other skills deemed necessary by the PTBs.
There are just a higher percentage of girls who were there for the same reason I was; that they resonated with someone that had skills that they needed.
I’m not being sexist, trust me. There are some of the girls who know how to swing a sword and could easily kick my ass in a fight, but they don’t hold it against me that I have a useless skill, or should I say mostly useless. Apparently they’d tapped me to be a part of this mission, so it wasn’t completely useless.
“Steve, you asshole, why didn’t you tell me that they wanted me for this one.”
“Because I wanted to see your face when they told you.”
I punch him in the arm and the three of them laugh. The scanner behind us we move toward the center of the sphere and the briefing room we’ve been assigned. Each team has a briefing room assigned to them while they’re in the field. It acts as a common room, sleeping quarters, and meeting space for the duration of their mission. We’re allowed to leave the sphere, but with the time limitations we rarely do.
Andy and Candy are already in the room when we arrive. General Haynes walks into the room from the far side the moment that we enter the room. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, have a seat.”
We all sit around the table in the center of the space, and it feels empty. The next smallest mission I’d ever been on before this one had fifteen dyads. Even that number had made the room feel empty. It only really starts feeling crowded when you get up to about a hundred operatives or in other words fifty dyads.
As soon as we’re seated, General Haynes begins. “Janette got pregnant over the past month, so she has been replaced by Ray here. We would have considered Ray as a better candidate if it weren’t for some peculiarities of this mission.”
“Yeah, we’re going to The Pit,” I grumble.
“Stow it, Ray,” the General says, “Yes, you are late to the party, but you are going to The Pit. Since you’re the one who’s grumbling, why don’t you share with us what you know about it, Ray.”
“The Pit was a research laboratory opened by the US government into the as yet unnamed Chroniton particles that they had just discovered. Unfortunately, like with most radiation, they didn’t yet understand the implications of it at the time and were just looking for a weapon to use against the Axis powers.
“In 1944, they thought they had cracked the ‘code’ so to speak, and turned on their Chroniton generator. The Pit ceased to exist. Beyond that, it wasn’t until we began here that anyone even knew it had ever existed. With the seven year sync rate, we have attempted to enter The Pit three times.”
“Those are the basics. There is more information that you didn’t know,” the General begins, “the first is that there are three sync waves between us and The Pit that will be converging on this space-time in about two hours.”
“What?” I yell, and Lois leaps to her feet, “Three? I’ve never even heard of two before.”
“That’s because most of the time we only need to hit any one of the sync waves between us and any other point in space-time. With a truly unstable region of space-time, we might make sure that we have a double locus.”
“Is The Pit really that unstable?” Candace says quietly.
“If I thought this could wait ninety-six years for a quadruple locus, then we’d be waiting a hundred years. There is the other problem. We’ve determined that The Pit is in an unstable pocket of space-time. It both is, and is not, currently in 1944.”
“How many sync waves actually exist between two points,” I say, realizing that it’s suddenly become very important to hear the truth, especially with what Steve and I had been through with the Jefferson Incident.
“The largest number mapped so far is twenty-eight. The fewest is nine.”
I began to laugh, “So, even with the fewest, you’re always guaranteed to have a sync wave every ten years.”
“Well, usually it’s only after we have twelve or so waves that we get that sort of distribution, but you see what we’re talking about.”
“The Pit must be on the high end, then.”
“Actually, they are the only one we know of with only nine. We are just in the middle of a convergence of waves right now. We missed the first three waves at eleven, six and two years before we began the project. There was a double locus the first time we tried to link up and a single the previous time. The last of the waves will be in eight years.”
“I count ten waves in that.”
“With the span of time, one of the waves synced twice.”
“All of the background is cool and all,” Steve says, “but you said something about The Pit being unstable?”
“Yes, which is the main reason we can’t wait a hundred years. The bubble it is in is unraveling. If it was just going to deposit The Pit back where it came from, then we’d just let it go. The problem is, as long as the chroniton generator is running it will...as close as the scientists can describe it, it will bounce. Every time it bounces, it takes more of the surrounding space-time with it back into the bubble.”
“That sounds Bad,” David says.
“Why me?”
“Excuse me?” the General sputters at my non-sequitur.
“Why do you need someone who can type?”
“Because the generator is controlled by a computer. It’s a text interface linked to a mechanical typewriter.”
“Still doesn’t explain…”
“Because you need to enter in over ten thousand lines of code in order to re-initialize the system,” Andrew shouts. “I’m sorry, but you’re coming whether you like it or not, Rachel.”
“What?” I say.
Andrew, David, and Steve all color. Even the General looks uncomfortable. The girls look as bewildered as I do.
David is the first to speak, “Ray, well, some of the guys joke about, you know, how you’re almost useless. You know, how you’re here as a pair, not as a prime?” I wince at the slang term. It’s a crass reference to a woman’s body and used about someone who is here to ‘look pretty’ and ‘keep their man coming home.’
Hey, I knew I was useless, but to call me a that…
“You knew?” I say turning on Seve.
He just nods, his face ablaze.
“What the hell, you dumb mother-fuckers? Steve and I have been on more missions then the next two dyads combined. We were one of only two dyads to even survived the damned Jefferson Incident…” I felt my stomach drop out when I realized what I’d said, and in the front of top brass as well.
“That is enough!” the general roared. “Andrew, consider yourself on report. After this mission, you’re confined to barracks pending a formal review of your actions.”
“but…”
“No ‘buts’ Andrew. One in a room is enough.” There were some snickers around the table. “As for you, Ray, let me explain one thing, and one thing only,” the General said turning in my direction, “from this moment further, you aren’t even to think the words ‘Jefferson Incident’ in the same minute. Yes, you are fucking qualified. True, you only have one rare skill, but since you can out shoot anyone in this room with any handheld weapon from any time period except for your partner, I don’t give a damn whether typing is useful most of the time.”
“When did you learn to shoot,” Lois asks and I look at the General for permission. He frowns but nods.
“Well, when you spend three years as a soldier for the Colonies in the revolutionary war, you tend to pick up some skills.” Something clicked for the other two dyads and Lois’ face went very pale.
“Three years…” Candace whispered. “But I thought time sickness…”
Steve laughs ruefully and I just smile, “yeah, consider us part of the reason the regs changed six months ago.”
“Now that’s out of the way, let’s get you all to costuming and get the final briefing out of the way so we can get this all taken care of as quickly as possible.
“Be thankful you don’t have to wear a skirt,” Lois says with a laugh.
“Don’t tempt them,” Candace says from behind me, “I mean the guys already seem to consider you one of us.”
“Nah, he’s not pretty enough,” Steve says.
“I don’t know,” Lois responds, “with a little makeup, and some padding.”
“Har-de-har-har,” I say, but I’m smiling. I like Lois. She’s a good friend, and although I haven’t spend much time with Candace yet, I can tell she has a wicked sense of humor.
“You’ll be going in as army personnel this time.”
“There are people still alive in there,” Andrew asks.
“Our last team said there were,” the supply sergeant says, but then clams up. We go and get dressed. I tie my hair into a low ponytail and tuck it into the back of the shirt. I could get it cut, but I’m hoping for people to overlook it, since we’ll be appearing in the midst of a crisis. Those are the best jaunts, in my opinion, since we’re usually able to move around unnoticed, if not unseen.
We shuffle into the room and take our seats again, looking suddenly anachronistic amidst the modern fixtures of the room. When we’re in our seats the General again enters the room. “You are to keep interaction with operatives to a minimum.”
“Did you say…”
“Yes, we’ll be sending you back into the same timeframe as the other two teams went back into. You can’t tell them the outcome of their mission. Any action you take with a member of a previous team will likely mean a shift in local time.”
“What in the hell were those people thinking? They actually created a flux point in space-time?” Andrew blurts out.
“Unfortunately, yes. So, keep that in mind, and hopefully the program will still be in one piece when you get back here. From what the previous team said, the computer system had been completely wiped by the time they got there. We’re not sure what happened to cause the problem, and since we’ve never been able to send anyone back to before the event began, we have limited knowledge, comparatively, over everything before the event.”
He spends the next half an hour going over the plan we’re to execute when we get to the other side of the link, including where to go, and all other related information. Luckily for us, as long as we were inside and wearing the proper uniform it was unlikely that we’d be stopped and even asked for our papers, even if those papers were in perfect order.
We were given one last bit of information from the General before we went out to the link platform, “From this moment forward you’re under strict operational security. No information about the mission is to be passed to anyone outside your group. You are restricted to the sphere for the duration. Communication with anyone outside your group is to be limited to the absolute minimum necessary to do your job. Before we return you to the past, you’ll key in the offset, in minutes, for your return trip. Under no circumstances are you to speak to control until your announcement that you are done. Provided the math is correct, you will have a total of 3 days, 8 hours and 23 minutes available to you upstream.”
We nod solemnly and walk through the black door at the back of the room.
As we take our places on the platform at the center of the spherical chamber that gives the building it’s name I wonder, not for the first time, what this would look like in a big budget hollywood movie. I’m sure there would be streams of ‘chronitons’ flooding the room as they saturated the environment with them in preparation for punching a hole through reality.
I’m sure they would be blue-white and stream around in ever faster circular patterns. We’d be illuminated by them and then the door would open, a black only ever imagined and never seen. It would suck us in and disappear with an audible pop...or something like that. I’ve come up with many variants over the years.
In reality, technology is sort of boring. We stand there for a few minutes and then from one instant to the next we’re somewhen else.
“Meet back here in sixteen hours,” I say to the group and we head out to accomplish our various tasks.
The area isn’t anything like I expected, but should probably have. It’s in a giant sinkhole. There are trees, both on the rim around the camp, as well as all through the base where we are currently located. The sounds of people moving around can plainly be heard, and it feels like a living breathing military base.
“Well, shall we,” Steve says, gesturing toward the processing center.
“Let’s,” I say with a chuckle. As we walk, I notice a number of things that just feel wrong about the base. Everyone else mentioned, the sun was always stuck at noon. It is just rising over the edge of the sinkhole as we walk across the compound. I notice a man I’ve never seen before in a WWII uniform, but using an iPod. As we walk, the iPod shifts to a walkman, and then a transistor radio, and then disappears completely.
I consider bringing it to Steve’s attention, but dismiss it as an overactive imagination.
That’s not the only thing that changes as we walk toward the center of the compound, but the closer we get to the center, the more everything settles down. I begin to get worried, but for a different reason.
“Steve, I think I might be slipping.” I say in a worried whisper.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I was seeing anachronisms all over the place.”
“It’s settled down now, though?”
“Yeah.”
“Relax. I’m sure it’s nothing. Let’s get this overwith and then we can get you all shrink-wrapped at home.”
I snort and put it out of my mind. It might just be all in my head. I’m not the first operative who’s thought they were slipping. It could easily be the stress of this operation as well, or the fact that we know there are only four other people we can rely upon until we declare the mission complete. The sun seems to be moving, though, which is truly a cause for concern.
“Steve...I think we might actually have arrived a few hours before,” I say, gesturing toward the sun.
“All the better. If this is really a flux point then we could just stop the event in the first place..”
“Steve, don’t even joke about that. We have to ensure that there is as little change as possible. The event has to occur as planned, the computer has to be wiped, the other teams have to fail, and we have to do it.”
“Are you trying to say..?”
“It was us all along. We’re the reason that it all happened. We’re the reason all these people are going to die.”
“We’ve got to tell…”
“Who? Who are we going to tell. We’ve been cut off intentionally. If we attempt to contact anyone else, then it could break things even worse.”
“I have just one question,” Steve says after letting it all sink in.
“What’s that?”
“How did General Haynes know what was going on well enough to institute the protocol?”
I don’t have an answer for him so I let it sit in the air, hovering between us. We enter the processing center and I come to a dead stop, just staring at what’s in front of me. I turn to look at Steve, who’s looking back at me.
As typing is my only skill, I make damn sure that I know what I might run into, the types of systems or machines, that might possibly need my skill. Sure, I can mix a mean vodka and tonic, I can speak fluently in six languages, make myself understood in another ten and swear in another fifteen more. I can fire and service any handheld firearm. I can even make a siege weapon if pressed. There are certain skills that you pick up when you’ve spent eight years in the past, going from one hotspot to another.
But typing is the one thing I do better than just about anyone I know. Because of that, and the knowledge that I have in my head, I know that the first terminal server with a monitor and traditional keyboard wasn’t likely to appear in 1944 in the US.
That being said, a teletype terminal with what had to be a combination of a number of different early electronic computer models into something that was, apparently, electronically programmable from the terminal.
Nothing like this machine ever existed. Nothing like this machine should have existed, especially since some of the part that I noticed integrated into the amalgam were being currently developed...in Germany.
Sat down at the terminal, and received an even greater shock that the one that this room represented. There, on the bottom line of the paper, was something that wouldn’t be implemented for another thirty years, at least.
C:\>
“Steve,” I said in a hoarse whisper.
“What is it?”
“Please, tell me I’m not seeing this. Please tell me this is a hallucination, or better yet, that I’m slipping free.”
He walks over and stands there, looking over my shoulder and says, “So, it’s a DOS prompt, I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“It’s 1944.”
“And?”
“MS-DOS, the one most people call DOS, wasn’t first released until 1981.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah...but I wonder,” I say and then began typing DOS commands into the terminal. The print head moves slower than I do, so I had to modulate my speed a little. A part of my mind, just along for the ride while I’m trying to get a listing of the operating system calculates I’d likely slowed to about ninety words a minute so I didn’t get ahead of the terminal.
“Lieutenant!” I hear a barking voice behind me and I leap to my feet and turned around. Upon seeing the general’s stars I salute. “Sir!”
“You’re obviously new at Camp Pit, so I’ll cut you some slack. that being said, the next time I see you, I expect you to be in the proper uniform.”
“Sir? I am in uniform.”
“Yes, you are in a man’s uniform. The women under my command are to be properly groomed and in the women’s uniform.”
“Sorry, sir, it won’t happen again, sir,” Steve says from the back of the room.
“Can’t the lady answer for herself, Lieutenant...Mace?”
“It’s just that she has certain...feelings regarding equality in the armed forces, sir,” Steve says with a smile that turns into a smirk as soon as the General’s back is turned. “We’ll Lt. Lewis, I can understand that. I have a feeling that some day both men and women will be allowed to wear pants in this army. That day, however, is not today. I assume you know the proper female uniform you should be wearing?”
“Yes, sir,” I say, with a sigh.
“Good, and make sure your hair doesn’t extend past your collar. While comfortable, I’m sure, you shouldn’t be tucking your hair into your shirt. It’s just not done...also, make sure you’re wearing the proper WAC patch the next time.”
“Yes, sir,” I say saluting again.
“So, is there something that I can help you with? You obviously have training on the directory system, and from what I can see you seem to be looking for something.”
“We were told to find the...operating system I think it was called,” Steve says, trying to draw attention away from me.
“My, but you are well informed, and I can see why you have an Army officer accompanying you.” The general walks over to a cabinet off to one side and opens it up. There is a rack of black vinyl discs that look like nothing more than records.
“I assume that this is about the orders to lock them up for safe keeping during the test today?”
“Yes, sir,” I say, visibly relieved.
“Well, good. Lt. Mace, if you could carry these for the lady, then I think you’re done here for the time being.”
“Yes, sir,” I say and we both salute.
After the general leaves Steve leans over to me and whispers, “so, did you notice who that was?”
“No, someone famous?”
“You could say that. Sure, he’s a couple of decades younger looking that that was General Haynes.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
“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.
Here is how I see the reference I made to Lois and Clark IE superman:
Comic book characters change, especially after a retcon. Storylines progress, and what was considered “canon” over time changes as well. Consider for a moment that there was a period of time where Clark Kent was a news-anchor on TV.
That being said, I predict four reasons why, over 30 years, there could be enough of a change that this wouldn’t be something ‘everyone’ knows.
Option 1: The comic book craze in TV and movies dies down in exchange for some other fringe media.
Option 2: Superman and Wonderwoman become the assumed pairing. The Lois character is phased out over the course of two retcons and then dropped entirely.
Option 3: They decide to add to their roster of gay superheroes and make Superman gay. Lois’ name is change to Lewis Lane who is still a reporter.
Option 4: They make Superman asexual, having no personal romantic relationships.
While the last one is unlikely, it is still possible.
“We have to,” I reply, “this is our General Haynes. In order for nothing to change, he has to be part of the program for the next fourteen years of his life, which is the last fourteen years of our reality. Can you really imagine the damage just dropping him from the program would cause?”
We’ve moved to a nearby building. The sound of gunfire has receded a little, as have the thunderous footfalls of dinosaurs and other, less recognizable, creatures. If I hadn’t been sure that they were fantastical, I would have assumed that I saw a dragon appear in the air for a moment or two before plummeting to earth.
“But we’re...but he’s…” Lois begins, but is unable to formulate an accurate description. I can’t blame her. How do you describe something, without a lot of math, that just doesn’t make any sense to the rational mind.
“I can hear you,” the general calls from the other room. I walk out to join him, since our conversation is getting us nowhere.
“How much do you know about the theory of time travel, General?”
“Call me Chris…” He pauses as if waiting for me to return the favor. I don’t and he finally continues with a sigh. “Well, apparently not as much as I thought, since what I’ve already seen here shouldn’t be possible.”
“What did the device that you used to get back here look like?”
“It was a platform in the mojave desert. We thought that...I thought that putting it out there would keep it away from not only prying eyes, but keep it from adversely affecting the surrounding area. Same with this pit of a base. The walls rising all around it channel the energy…”
I smile as he comes to the same conclusion I did earlier.
“The energy waves are rebounding from the rock and multiplying, aren’t they. Like bad acoustics in a concert hall. It goes from music to noise in a fraction of a second.”
“Yes, and unlike sound waves, chroniton waves propagate in four dimensions instead of only three.”
“Wait...that means...what have I done? I only planned…”
There is a sudden sinking feeling in my gut.
“You were standing at the center of the Pit, weren’t you, when you turned this on.”
“And except for the time that I spent with you in the processing center, where I went to shut the computer down by the way, I have spent the entire time there as well. That’s not a good thing, is it?”
“What do you know about the side effects of excess chroniton radiation?”
“There are side effects?” he says almost tongue in cheek, and then he sees my expression and sobers, “How bad?”
“Well, you saw the dinosaurs out there.”
“Hallucinations?” he says, hopefully.
“It is one side effect. Someone here has so much chroniton radiation that they are punching holes in reality so big that dinosaurs are stepping through from a timeline where there never was a mass extinction.”
“But that is so unlikely. If it hadn’t been a meteor, it would have been a virus, or a natural ice-age or…”
“But not impossible, right?”
“Of course it’s not impossible.”
“Every possible outcome of every decision since the beginning of time and until the end of time already exists out there, and this person is either consciously or unconsciously punching holes to those realities.”
“It’s me, isn’t it.”
“Or one of your assistants.”
“I was the only one in the center. I thought I set up the coordinates properly.”
“You were trying to go back to where you started?”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
The more that I learned, the more I realized that we had an impossible task. Not just an unlikely one. That first experiment, the one that failed, should have been the end of this program, since even if they’d brought him back, he would have been the chroniton equivalent of walking nuclear waste.
Hell, he was that equivalent now. With how much energy he was generating here...how hadn’t he punched a hole in reality before this? He would have to have been a walking flux point for...years.
Suddenly all the anachronisms began to make sense. He was a weak point in time, and the best thing we could do for reality wouldn’t be to take him back with us, it would be to kill him, because as soon as he was inanimate he’d stop being a focal point for all of this craziness.
In all the time that I’d been an agent, all of the missions I’d been called upon to do, I’d never felt the nausea that killing this man brought upon me. I went outside and was violently ill all over the side of the building.
“You know how we were told that it was a simple matter of turning off the machine and everything returns to normal, disaster averted?”
“Yeah,” Steve says warily. Lois and Dave are looking back and forth between themselves, sharing meaningful looks. Lois looks worried when she turns to look at me fully.
“What weren’t we told?” Lois says. She is too calm. This almost seems as though she knows the other shoe is about to drop.
“We weren’t told that the machine is already off.”
“What!” Steve yells and Dave is out of his seat opening his mouth to speak.
“Sit the fuck down. Now!” I say, getting angry. Here they are, acting as if it is the end of the world. What they don’t realize is it is the end of the world, just not for them. “there are going to be no more outbursts of any sort, or I’m going to shoot the offending party.”
“Ray,” Steve mollifies, but I’m having none of it, “I mean it, Steve. I’m this close to just killing all of us and hoping that the timeline sorts itself out.”
“How would that work, I mean we wouldn’t be killing…” Lois began, but then her face went pale, and then a little green. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Been there, done that,” I say.
The boys, like usual, are a little slow on the uptake. This isn’t anything against guys in general, it’s just that those of us who have a Mental classification are required to have a lot more knowledge on the theory of time travel than the Physical grunts.
“What’s going on?” Dave says, getting worried.
Lois answers for me, “One of us is the reason that everything is going to hell in a handbasket. And since it is an excess of chroniton radiation, making us inanimate would be an expedient method of solving the problem.”
“No, not one of us, Lois. Two of us, by which I mean the General...and me.”
“We’re not killing Ray,” Steve says rising to his feet again, and I glare at him. He sits back down.
“We may not have a choice,” I say. I will not cry, I think to myself as I watch Steve’s face crumple. I’ve seen him face down a charge of heavy cavalry alone and never seen him so defeated as I see him in this moment.
“We may not have an option, Steve. You saw how high my readings were. I’m basically dead already. You just barely enter the yellow and they don’t send you out for six months. How long do you think it will take for me to be able to go out again. And forget me having children.”
“But...wait, the other you can have children?”
“There is no other me, Steve. Not anymore.”
“How do you know?” He says. I just glare at him and he has the good grace to blush.
“You’re a girl?” Lois says with entirely too much joy in her face.
“Physically, yes, at the very least. Anything else would have to wait for a full medical examination.”
“Don’t you know, I mean you merged with this other you…” Steve says. He is hoping that all of his dreams are coming true. How do I tell him that our story isn’t a fairy tale? How do I tell him that it shares much more in common with horror.
“It’s not that simple. I’m not this other person. I don’t know what’s going to happen. All I do know, is that there are two people causing this right now and the other one is the General.”
The import of my words is sinking in and I smile sadly at them. They haven’t reached the next logical conclusion, the one that I already knew. I sit there quietly, waiting for them each to come to the understanding of the core problem.
There is something that they don’t realize, however. What they don’t realize is something that I’m only now beginning to realize, and it defies logic. I’m hoping that my theory is wrong, but I have a feeling it isn’t. If it’s not wrong, then killing the two of us isn’t just the easiest option, it’s the best option.
“Wait,” Steve says. This is a flux-point. We can alter the outcome. We just have to figure out how. There has to be an action we can take that will…”
I shake my head and try to speak, but nothing comes out. Lois speaks for me, “It can’t work that way, Steve. Even if we get her back to our time, she’s done with the program. There’s no way she can ever go back again, and with the levels we saw it will be lucky if she doesn’t end up living for the next decade or so in a concrete bunker somewhere while she bleeds off chroniton energy.”
“So, we kill her, you know, suffocation or something, and then revive her,” Dave says.
“How long does it take for a formerly living organism to bleed off Chroniton energy, Dave?” I ask quietly. “A second? A minute? Five minutes? How dead do I have to be to speed the process, David?”
“That’s enough, David,” Steve says stepping between the two of us. David looks helplessly in Lois’ direction, but there are no answers there.
“It get’s worse,” I say.
“How could it get worse?”
“Well, we could completely end the project if we kill both the general and myself.”
“We’re not killing you, Ray.”
“Why not? It would solve the problem.”
“No, it wouldn’t. I can’t live without you.”
I smile through my tears, knowing my makeup is running, but not caring. I love this man, and I just hate that it took me this long to realize it. If I had a chance to do everything over then I’d make sure that we made the most of every opportunity before us. I wouldn’t allow my own hesitation to take away all those little moments that we could have had together.
I’d be a better person.
Unfortunately, that’s a losing proposition because I think that I know how this all ends. There won’t be a fairy-tale ending for me. Not this time.
“Ray, promise me something,” Steve says, a blatant desperation in his voice.
“Steve…”
“Promise me that you’re not going to just give up. Promise me that you will keep fighting until the end. None of this fatalistic crap. This point in time hasn’t been written yet.”
I nod. I can’t voice it, but I nod for him, and he kisses me. I push away as fast as I can, “You can’t do that, Steve. It’s not safe.”
“Damn safe, Ray. I want to spend as much time with you as possible.”
“We’ll have the rest of our lives together.”
“Ray, you’re lying to me. For the first time since we met, you’re lying to me. I don’t know what you know, but I know that you’re lying through your teeth. You know that you can’t make it through this alive.”
“Steve…”
“I want to change it, but if I can’t I’m not missing another moment of what we could have together.”
On some unspoken word of agreement, David and Lois leave the room. Steve takes me in his arms and kisses me like it’s the end of the world. The very fact that it is the end of the world doesn’t lessen it in anyway, but it does make it more bittersweet.
After his initial force, he becomes perfectly gentle with me, and I melt into him. It is the best and worst moment of my life and in that moment I forget all about what I know and what I assume and I am just Rachel and he is just Steve and we are one.
Steve made me feel like a woman as well, but that thought destroys the smile on my face. I love Steve, and I’m afraid that I’m going to break his heart. There is a pounding on the door and I open it to find Steve standing there with General Haynes. There is a huge smile on his face.
“There is an industrial freezer on the base, in the mess. It’s probably still running, or at least cold enough.”
“Cold enough for what?”
“Well, I figured since the general built his own chroniton generator that he must have more than a passing knowledge of the theory behind it.”
“But…” I begin, but then shut up. That first group did successfully send a person back in time, so they had to have at least part of the theory right.
“The rate that chroniton radiation leaves the body is accelerated by dropping the temperature of said body,” Chris says.
“Right, but there is so much chroniton radiation in the air…”
“It’s lined with lead,”Steve says.
“Wait...they lined a freezer with lead? Why in the world…”
“To protect the food from chroniton radiation,” Chris says with a grin.
“That has to be the stupidest reason to do something I have ever heard,” I say in shock.
“I agreed with you, but the brass didn’t believe me when I told them it was only animate creatures who can really be affected by chroniton radiation. My theory is that it has to do with the electrical field that a living body generates.”
It didn’t explain why a robot couldn’t be sent back, but I let it pass.
“Regardless, the faster that the body drops below seventy degrees, the faster that it will shed it’s excess chroniton radiation.”
“Faster, yes, but how long?”
“No longer than about fifteen or twenty minutes,” Chris says. He knows what that means just as much as I do. This isn’t a magic bullet. This is a virtual death sentence. Without a modern trauma center, both of us are probably dead. Even with one, our chances aren’t that good. Our core temperature has to drop below seventy degrees fahrenheit or about twenty degrees celsius. We would be dead as soon as our bodies dropped much below ninety fahrenheit or thirty celsius.
And we had to stay below that temperature for about twenty minutes, just to be sure.
“It’s not going to work,” I say, sadly.
“Yes, it will. Lois and Clark went back alone to get Michael and Michaela. We’re breaking protocol, but to hell with it. We’re not losing anyone else.”
Steve wraps me in his arms and holds me, but the general and I share a look. Both of us know that this will likely mean a grave, and not salvation, for either of us.
“When do we leave,” I ask, trying to sound hopeful.
“I gave Lois and Clark the location of the mess, so they should be able to meet us there, especially since they’ll be coming back at the same time they left, again. I’m sure the controllers are wondering what in the world is going on.”
“Nah, I spent four days in the control center, remember. Mostly they’re just trying to stave off boredom and finish with their shifts so they can go home.”
He laughs at that, and I’m glad that I can continue to bring him joy. We step outside the building and I make the mistake of looking up. I see a warped reflection of the ground. It’s as if a metallic dome had been put over the top of the sinkhole. It is likely that the first team, and possibly the second, are on site. We are on a timer, now, and every minute counts, or so it seems.
I see a flicker of motion out of the corner of my eye, and turn to look, but there’s nothing there. I see a bush moving gently, but that could as easily be a breeze as anything else. I ignore, for the moment, that the air is completely still.
There’s movement to my right and I turn that direction just in time to see a grey, scaly, tail move around the corner.
“Guys,” I say, quietly, “I think we have company.”
“Another dinosaur?” Chris asks, bouncing a little like a kid in a candy store.
“No, I think,” and that’s the last thing I say before I let out an eep of surprise. I’ve been lifted off my feet and yanked backwards by something strong and ropy feeling. My arms are pinned to my sides and I look down. It’s a tail. Up close, I can see the scales are black and white, but so fine for something this large that the blend into a grey at any distance. My view is whipped around and my hairband breaks loose. I don’t have any time to worry about it because a large triangular head comes into view.
“Mmmm,” a sibilant bass voice says, “a tasty little morsel. And blonde too. It’s been ages since I could eat a natural blonde.”
“What in the hell?” I say. My shock seems to have worn off to be replaced with perplexity.
“Oh, so you humans are the only intelligent beings on the planet?”
“I don’t believe in dragons,” I say with a little smile.
“You can disbelieve gravity, but it will still kill you.”
“Oh, so you’re a learned dragon?”
“When you’re alive as long as I am, you tell me that knowledge won’t become the only thing that gets you up in the morning. There are only so many sunrises that you can see without it all becoming a little blase.”
“Oh, well, then you know all about time travel,” at his nod I continue, “and chroniton radiation?”
“Well, of course...why do you ask?”
“I was born male.”
“And? You’re not the first trans-woman I’ve eaten.”
“This body was, as far as I can tell, born female.” While not strictly true, it had the desired shock value attached and the dragon, for that’s what I assumed it to be, dropped me to the ground.
“Well, excrement.” the dragon says and I can’t help but laugh. The thought of something the size of this monster saying a euphemism is just humorous to me for some reason. Steve and Chris come running around the corner and stop in their tracks.
“Well, one of those two I can eat, I assume, unless everyone here has been overdosed with chronitons,” the dragon hisses.
“Run, Steve!” I scream, realizing too late the danger he’d just put himself in. I pull out my side arm and begin firing at the dragon’s neck. He casually turns his head to look at me and I stop shooting.
“Don’t think I won’t kill you, little morsel. Just because I can’t eat you while you’re still wriggling and fresh doesn’t mean I would pass up leftovers.”
The casual tone with which he says this is more chilling than the words that he speaks.
“Only humans would be so arrogant as to assume that just because they’re the only ones to have achieved time travel that they’re the only ones who understand it. Some of us aren’t quite that reckless,” the dragon grumbles and slips around the corner so quickly that it would almost be possible to assume that this was a nightmare and not a living breathing...something. My mind fails to come up with a metaphor strong enough to describe the hell I am living in.
There are some sounds of gunfire from around the corner and I run to see, hoping that Steve is still safe, and that he can survive long enough for something, anything, to save him. Like a meteor, or a laser pistol, or something.
A squad of soldiers has formed up in the next intersection over and is firing as fast as they can work the levers on their rifles. The bullets aren’t even penetrating the beasts hide and I wonder, idly, what it could be made out of. The thought makes me chuckle darkly. Here I’m looking at a beast out of myth and legend, a being that heavy cavalry was said to be able to kill, provided they hit the right spot, and I’m wondering if a few ounces of lead can penetrate it’s hide.
The dragon wins, of course, and decimates the squad. One second they’re there, firing at the dragon. I think I see a smile split it’s face, and then it launches itself into the intersection and bits and pieces of bodies are flying in every direction. Miraculously, there is one soldier still standing, unharmed, in the middle of it.
In the next moment I realize that it wasn’t happenstance but planning as the dragon picks the soldier up by it’s tail. Oh, do struggle and scream,” the dragon says in it’s deep sibilant voice, “it makes the meat taste better.”
I turn away from the scene just as the soldier begins to scream. The sound is cut off by a resounding crunch. I turn to see a leg hanging from the beasts jaws. Just as I turn it disappears with a slurp. Somewhere inside me I know he was watching me, waiting for me to turn so he could show me that. I dry heave and collapse to the pavement while the dragon laughs. I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life that feature that laughter.
“Where was I,” the cold cruel voice of the dragon intones.
“Fire!” I hear David’s voice call out behind me and four guns sound as one. Holes appear in the dragons head, and he lets out a bellow of shock that shatters windows all around us. My ears are ringing so badly that I can’t hear the follow-up shots, but the dragon jerks as shot after shot pierces it’s body. It turns toward us, all of it’s lithe motion missing in the painful jerking motions it attempts to make. Still, the hail of fire passes all around me and I drop to the ground. My eyes are locked on the form of that beast as it’s ripped apart. A little smile splits my lips and I say, “Fuck you very much, asshole.”
Distantly I hear some laughter behind me and I turn to see Lois and Clark and Mike squared holding the large fifty caliber rifles that are standard for any mission to a time before mankind began trying to tame the universe.
Steve appears out of nowhere and helps me to my feet and Michaela walks over to me. “Ray?”
“Hey, Mif.”
“You’re a girl.”
“Yep,” I say with a smile.
“You slipped.”
“Um, well, didn’t you guys explain what was going on?” I say turning toward Lois and Clark.
“Well, we sorta forgot that time wasn’t of the essence,” David says.
“And we rushed when we didn’t need to,” Lois finishes.
“You should have at least waited the customary four hours,” I say and they just look embarrassed. “I assume one of you two brought a portable scanner in your bag of tricks,” I say looking at each of the Mikes in turn.
“Of course, Rachel,” Mim says and I glare at him. Mif laughs.
“What’s this whole ‘Mif’ thing?” Steve says.
“that’s easy,” I say. “Mike, female, can be shortened to Mif and Mike male can be shortened to Mim, so we just call them Mif and Mim, at least the other girls and I do.”
“Finally admitting you’re a girl,” Steve asks and I punch him in the arm. “As if you had to ask, asshole.” He’s just grinning at me and I can’t help but return the smile.
We make our way to the mess hall. The power is still on, something at least I was worried about. Apparently the base is large enough to have it’s own power generation. Mike squared check out the freezer and then verify the radiation levels on the inside, which were negligible, and then on each of us. Steve was a little high, but nothing that a little time in the freezer with me wouldn’t cure. Everyone else was fine. Well, everyone excepting the general and I. We were still ridiculously high in the red.
“You’re sure about the math on this,” Mim says.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Chris replies.
After that they close the door. Steve only needs to be in here for about five or ten minutes to be within the safe line so he stays over by the door. To speed the hypothermia process the general and I are soaked completely through. I’m shivering within seconds and I can see Steve straining to come over and hold me, to try and warm me.
“It’s going to be ok, Ray.”
“I know,” I stammer out.
“You look so cold right now.”
“That’s just because I’m freezing,” I stammer, but jaw chattering uncontrollably. Chris laughs but Steve looks like I’ve stabbed him in the gut. After a minute or so, the shivering stops. It doesn’t feel as cold to me anymore. Steve leaves around that time and I realize I’m losing track of time.
“This will be an adventure, huh?” Chris says, but I don’t have the energy to reply. I lie down on the floor and close my eyes. I don’t want to die with my eyes frozen open. It’s been a long time since I prayed, but I do so now. I pray until my thoughts begin to wander and then quickly close it. I’m feeling tired and I just begin to drift. I can imagine the flurry of activity that is about to occur, or at least will twenty minutes after my core temperature reaches seventy degrees.
Logically, I know I should have time. It is frozen in here, well below zero, and they cranked the thing as low as it would go. A small portion of my mind wonders if this is an anachronism. I’m not sure since I’ve never studied refrigeration technology.
It’s possible that it is, but then again possible that it isn’t.
Steve’s going to miss me when I’m gone. I’ll miss him, too, but I’ll be dead. I’m not sure if I go on after death, but I am sure that people have been doing it for years and I’ll have to be able to get over him. There would be more ghosts otherwise.
I just wish that I could make love to him one more time.
I wish I could have his children and grow old with him.
I wish...
Just trust me. Have I ever let you down in the past...when it really mattered :)
There’s something important I have to say, but I can’t remember what it is. There was something, something that I was thinking just a moment ago, and I can’t remember. All this pain. It’s too hot. A cloth seers my face and my eyes and they can open again. I blink and bring everything into focus. Steve is standing over me. I remember what was so important to say.
“I wish I’d married you when I had the chance,” say and he laughs.
“Her core temperature is coming up nicely,” a voice says. My mind is still waking up and I’m not sure who it is. It hits me then. I was dead. Actually, truly, dead for somewhere close to an hour. Someone is massaging my my limbs, I assume to improve circulation as quickly as possible.
“That hurts, you know,” I say to whomever is torturing my poor extremities.
“Can’t be helped,” Lois replies. “Not if you want to walk again.”
“You’re just making that up,” I grumble and there is laughter in the room.
“What are my numbers?” I ask. I have to know if it worked.
“You’re lower.”
“Where?”
“You’re at the top of the green, but you are in the green.” Mim says. There’s something in his voice that worries me. I look at him with concern in my eyes. The next thing he says is supposed to assuage my fears, “We haven’t revived the general yet.”
“Then go get him,” I say as forcefully as I can. Leave Steve here with me. He can raise my core temperature some.”
There is a shocked gasp and a couple of chuckles.
“Wait, I said that aloud,” I say. I’m still a little out of it, apparently.
“If certain parts of me wouldn’t freeze off if I tried it, I’d be all for the excuse, my little popsicle. We’re just going to leave you in the thermal blanket for now.”
“Go, save the general,” I say again and amazingly they leave. I think that I fall asleep because the next thing I remember is Steve kissing me on the lips.
“Good morning, Sleeping beauty.”
My arms and legs don’t feel like they’re on fire anymore. I feel alive, if still a little lethargic. It’s something hard to describe. There’s a knowledge that I intentionally stepped over the edge into the abyss and then was pulled back by my loved ones.
It’s a heady feeling, especially since I’m no longer slipping. It means I’ll likely be stuck in this body for the rest of my life, but remembering the moment or two that Steve and I stole, it is something that I can live with.
As of yet, I don’t know if there’s been any permanent damage, but I wouldn’t be able to tell. I’ll have to wait and see if anything crops up to prove to me that the damage is there.
I hear them talking in the other room. There’s a tension to their voices. They are trying to revive the general. It’s not that there’s any specific problem but we did something the human body is simply not designed to withstand. Freezing kills you. Freezing is supposed to kill you. I hear them call for this drug and that drug. The steady tone of the heart monitor turns into a beep and there is a sigh of relief from someone.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding in.
The hard part is over. Since I know the general has never been on a mission, he should be fine as long as he is somewhere near the middle of the yellow. If he’s in the green, all the better, but as long as he is out of the red then we should be fine sending him back with team 1.
I look at the clock on the wall. We have another thirty hours to get him imbedded with team 1, or more specifically, we have thirty hours to discover team 1’s recall point so that we can shove the general into the midst of it at the last possible moment. He’ll go back with them and that will be that.
I hear the rest of my team congratulating each other in the other room. They don’t realize what I have yet. We’ve only solved half of the problem, because the bubble still exists, and if the machine really is off...then I’m afraid that this might actually be unresolvable.
All we’ve done is prevent time from unraveling from this point. We cauterized the wound, but there is still a gaping scar. It’s not going to heal if we leave it the way it is. Well, I can live with that. Almost I just want to find teams 1’s rally point and then leave the general to his own devices. I would if I wasn’t certain that this was still a flux-point.
I hate knowing more than anyone else. If I make it through this, I promise that I’m never going to have the most knowledge about any of these missions. I’m going to be fat, dumb, and happy...maybe not the fat part. I’m going to live a long time, and I’m going to be deliriously happy with Steve.
Much sooner that I thought possible they’re releasing me from the restraints and I move into the general’s room. I wonder if I looked that bad while I was recovering. I grab the scanner and run it over his body and take a look at the reading. He’s just a little into the yellow and I heave a sigh of relief. Neither of us is in danger of slipping anymore. We shouldn’t, either of us, be traveling any time soon, which means that Neither should Steve be traveling without me.
“Where is the base housing,” I ask the general.
“On the north end,” he says a little groggily. “Why do you ask? You can just take me back now, right? That was the point of this?”
“Chris, you’re not going back with us.”
“What? I need to go back…”
“Relax,” I say, putting my hand on his shoulder. “We’re taking you back, or I should say we’re sending you back. There are two other teams operating in the Pit right now. One of them will go back in about twenty-eight hours, and the other will be going back in thirty-four. We want you to go back with the first group.”
“Why?”
“Because they will be going back fourteen years earlier than my group will.”
“Oh,” he says, and he smiles. We’ve explained this to him before, but I know how loopy you feel while everything is still waking up. It’s a little like coming out of anesthesia.
“So, because neither you nor I can travel right now, you more than me, we need a place to hole up while we wait.”
He provides direction to his house, and I mentally jot them down. It’s not that hard to follow, this was a purpose build army base after all; straight lines wherever possible. In a couple hours, when he’s ready to move, we make our way out of the building. We make our way through the blazing sky and the abnormal entities. It seems that they are dying out since two of the foci have been removed from the equation.
I idly wonder, as we walk, whether it was he or I who called the dragon into being.
There are still strange things happening, but they are of a more normal variety. I see a man pull a phone out of his pocket and then put it away. As soon as he does he points his group in a different direction.
He’s wearing modern combat fatigues.
“Steve,” I say, quietly, and point in their direction.
“One or two,” he asks.
“If I had to guess, I’d say team 1, but that’s only because team 2 would have to have been sent in stealth like us.”
“Why?” Chris asked.
“Because of something you haven’t discovered yet, and we won’t tell you,” Mim replies.
“Fine, leave the old guy out of the loop,” he grumbles and the rest of us laugh. The team is almost out of sight.
“Steve and I will follow team 1, or at least long enough to find out if they are team 1. Lois and David, get everyone to the General’s place. We’ll meet up with you there.”
They move off and Steve and I move toward the direction that the assumed team 1 went. I link my arm with his and lace our fingers together.
“Not that I’m complaining, but why did you do that?”
“Well, Romeo, because you are a big strong man, and there are monsters about.”
He laughs but doesn’t let my hand go. For the moment I ignore the fact that this ‘wasn’t proper’ in 1944 and play off the preconceptions that the other team will have. With the fact they’re using modern gear out in the open, I have a pretty good idea that they have no plans to blend in. They have a mission and they’re going to accomplish it.
They were at least in pairs...if it wasn’t in obvious dyads. I’d only seen two women in the sixteen man squad. For whatever reason same sex dyads were less common than the already uncommon pairings that existed.
Only about one in ten people have the possibility of pairing with any one other person on the planet. Only about one in eight of those will pair with someone who is geographically close. We still haven’t figured out how to make someone realize a pair remotely, so trying to get them with all of other people on the planet is an unlikely proposition, so we rely almost entirely on that one percent who can pair with someone from the same relative area as they are.
The problem is, only about a half a percent of people who can pair with someone in a relatively close area has skills that the organization is looking for. For the mathematically challenged, that means that about 6 in 100,000 people can pair who also have skills the organization is looking for.
It’s amazing that they have as many teams as they do, really. Gotta love volunteerism. Still, the disparity in same sex couples is even worse. Out of every one hundred dyads one will be same sex.
With my gender swap, the odds will go down just a bit. Maybe, they aren’t really as low as we think they are. Maybe there are other factors in play. Maybe people who already have to deal with a society that still can’t accept them as people aren’t as ready to volunteer to save it.
Maybe it’s not even that. There are a large percentage of the people who apply to the organization who never find matches. The thing is, all of the ‘matching’ parties that they throw are voluntary attendance. Maybe it’s just that most people who are actively searching for someone of the same sex don’t attend a party that is catering to connections with the opposite sex.
Maybe there are a lot of transgender people out there who would be happy to attend if they knew that people like me, people who never knew what they really were because they were in denial for so long, were already in the program.
So many maybes and I have no real answers. My thoughts have distracted me from the task at hand. Steve pulls me around into an embrace which startles me out of my reverie. “What’s going on?” I whisper to him.
“They’re taking out a deinonychus.”
“Really,” I say, turning him a bit so I can just barely peek around his shoulder. “They really do have feathers,” I say in a bit of awe.
“You always were a dinosaur nut,” he says with a little chuckle.
“How come they never sent us that far back?”:
“Because our skillset doesn’t really translate well,” he says and I listen to the rumble of his voice in his chest. It distracts me enough that I don’t really listen to what he’s saying. As they’re taking down the one in front of them, another sneaks up behind. It must have been something about the T-Rex, or about the guns, but it’s taking a lot of shots to actually take this much smaller dinosaur down than it did the much larger.
It also might be that they got a lucky shot on the larger creature. I always did think those huge holes in the skull would be a weak point.
“Behind you,” I scream out, and half of the squad turns and looks just as the lizard leaps on top of one of the soldiers. I’m feeling sick to my stomach at my realization that this gives them an odd number of people and the soaring I felt when I realized the implications.
“We need to get the general down here, now.” I whisper to Steve.
“What are you talking about?”
“They aren’t in dyads, just pairs. They just lost one.”
“Damn, but you’re cold,” he says, but his smile takes any of the possible sting out of the words. “It will have to be you. It will look a little less weird if I’m by myself than if you are.”
“I can get that,” I say with a smile, “and when you walk over to talk to them, as soon as they take out this pack, let them know I’m bringing our commanding officer back.”
“Our commanding officer?” he says confused and I just look at him for a moment with an eyebrow raised. Then he rolls his eyes, “stealth, got it. All we are is local soldiers. The general is the one going back with them. He’s the timetraveller.”
I give him a peck on the cheek and then go running off toward where the general is located. After about a half block I take off my heels and run barefooted, knowing that I’m destroying my nylons by doing so. My heels are only about two inches, nothing really vertiginous, but it is much easier to run without them.
I’m out of breath by the time I get to the general’s house. I make a vow to myself to spend more time running when I get home. I do so every time that I have to run somewhere on a mission, but I never do. Part of the problem, I am sure, is the fact that I spend five times as much time upstream as I do in prime-time. With how high my radiation levels currently are, that’s not going to be an issue for the next six months or so. I fully expect to be in the yellow by the time I return home.
“General,” I call out as I enter the door, having caught my breath.
“What is it,” Lois asks, concern painting her features.
“We have an opening for him with team 1, but we need him there as soon as possible.” I slip my shoes back on as I wait for them to get the general. He is sleeping in the back room. Apparently dying affected him more severely than it did me. Who’d a thunk? I can die with grace and vigor.
Mif directs me to a jeep in front of the house. They used it to get the general here. It wouldn’t do for a lady to be seen driving a general about. Mim is wearing no rank insignia, so he makes for a perfect private driver. I groan at my own pun. I make sure not to voice it aloud.
The silence of the streets is erie. There are none of the animal sounds, strange as they were, or gunfire that were so common even a couple of hours before. I assume that team 1 has successfully fought off the deinonychus attack, at least I hope they have. When we drive up, they are bandaging the survivors. The one I saw attacked looks to be the only death.
I whisper furtively to Chris, “general, we are just soldiers as far as that team is concerned. You need to tell them that you know they are timetravellers. Do whatever you can to get them to understand and take you with them. Now, I want you to command us loud enough that they can hear, to go back to your house and wait for me.”
The General gets out of the jeep and straightens his uniform. “Lt. Fields,” he calls out.
“Sir?” Steve replies from his spot next to the squad.
“Return to my house, take these two with you. I want you to wait there for me, or until all of this strangeness passes.”
“Yes, Sir,” Steve responds and salutes. The general returns his salute. The last I see of the general, he’s approaching the squad. I have a feeling that he already did this in our timeline. He is already having done this? Timetravel almost requires it’s own verb tense.
We drive back to the general’s house. We’re not going to wait there.
“So, we’re done then?” Mim says as we go through the door.
“You dropped the general off with team 1,” Lois asks.
“Yes,” I say, “we’ve accomplished everything we intended to.”
“Then let’s go home,” Steve says and wraps me in his arms. “We have a wedding to plan.”
There are general congratulations all around and I accept them as graciously as I possibly can. We pile into the jeep. It’s a tight fit, but neither Lois nor I have a problem with sharing a seat. Mike squared laugh at us. They’ve been married for...three prime-years? Sometimes the math is difficult for me.
We laugh and carry on as if we were just as carefree as we appear to be. Everything from this point on is anticlimax. We arrive back at the rally point and signal for a return request. While waiting for the return I happen to stick my hand in my pocket. There’s a piece of paper there with the general’s signature on it. I have no idea when it appeared there. It’s likely it’s been there since I picked up this uniform. I wonder if all of my pockets have this message in them, just to make sure.
The note says: the lockout code is #99832467. It will allow you to enter a negative number into the return panel. Enter the negative number twice in confirmation. Good luck. I’m sorry.
My stomach sinks. All along, I have been hoping I would be able to avoid this. I had been hoping that I would be able to go home, and that it would all be over. My other self..my self had been telling me that it wouldn’t work that way. The moment I slipped over to this individual, my life became a closed loop.
The individual that I slipped into was the individual that I was now. I am a walking talking paradox. My life will last forever. My life ends the moment that I use the code that the general just gave me.
I slip the code back into my pocket and I reach out and grab Steve’s hand. He holds my hand and smiles at me. I smile back, able to be happy for him. His life will go on. He will find someone else. He’ll likely not have the same connection, but he will be alive. That makes me feel so happy that I feel like my heart will burst. The transfer is over faster than I want it to be, and they all move toward the door to the common room. I hang back and watch them go. As soon as I begin using the panel, the doors entering the sphere will lock. I’m relying upon that. There will be no long goodbyes. There will be no ‘Death of Spock’ moment with Steve pressed against the glass as I disappear.
The moment the door clicks shut, however, he’ll know.
I begin crying as they approach the door. Just before it closes I yell out, “I’m sorry,” and mash down the # key. I punch in the code and a panel I’d never noticed before opens up. There are four buttons there. One of them is a - sign. I hit that, and then I type in a rough amount of time for when the machine was actually activated. I punch the time in a second time, as the note said, and then I wait.
It’s the longest wait I’ve ever had. I’m beginning to worry that I did something wrong, but then everything flashes and I’m back in the copse of trees. My stomach lurches and I vomit in the bushes. It’s not anything to do with the transition. It’s the knowledge that I’ve effectively trapped myself in the past. Sure, I could try and hitch a ride with team 3 when they go back...but that would be a truly awkward meeting...also, I know it won’t be possible, since in about 24 hours I’m going to cease to exist, merged with my younger self.
It’s sort of nice being temporarily omniscient. I already know what I did. I already know what I have to do. I make my way across the compound to the machine. I see General Haynes walking around in the control booth, but I know, somehow, he’s not who I came here to see.
I make my way into the guts of the beast. It is a weird amalgam of the refined and the rough. Some things here were obviously off the shelf, and others were custom made, some of them looking like they were build in place. It is a mess of wires and pipes and catwalks. There, in the center, is a mass of flesh that could only charitably be called human.
“Hello, Chris,” I say quietly. The almost boneless face turns so it can see me.
“Who are you?”
“We never met, although for me I already killed you. I’ve killed you so many times. I’ve never killed you, or met you, before. I’m tired of this. I’m tired of the running around. I want it all to end.”
“Then kill yourself.”
“Never had enough courage. Never had enough despair.”
“I don’t want to die,” the thing says.
“You won’t. You have a life after this. You cloned yourself, remember?”
“I did?”
“Yes, you did. It wasn’t intentional. The radiation caused a disease called time-slipping.”
“Please, what will happen to me when I die?”
“Even I don’t know that, and I’ve been killed more times than I can count.”
“Will it hurt?”
“I hope not,” I say and shoot the wretch in the head. I shoot him a couple of times through the body to make sure. I feel so disconnected from my actions at this point. There is one more thing I can do before I can rest. This has been such a long life. It’s only at this point in the circle that I can remember everything, remember every different cycle through the loop; remember the times I twisted and ankle because I refused to take off the shoes while I ran; remember the times that Steve died because the dragon ate him; remember the times that I didn’t fully slip and Steve still loved me. Those are the most painful for me to remember, because it reminds me that Steve and I were made for each other.
I walk into the control room and over to the general.
“You’ll not understand why I’m giving you this for a long time, General Haynes, but keep it in mind, and when the time comes it will make sense.”
He pulls me into a corner away from the other techs.
“You’re from the future, aren’t you?”
“Yes, and you’re going to meet me again, tomorrow, but I won’t have met you yet. No matter what you think, no matter what you see or hear, I am a woman. I’ll be typing on the teletype. If asked, you know I’m a timetraveller because you saw my hair band.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because it’s important.” I kiss him on the cheek and then walk out of the room. I head into the woods on the periphery of the sinkhole. If I am going to try to end it, I want to do this in the woods that I’ve grown to love over the years in a single day I’ve spent here.
I take out my weapon and I stick in my mouth. I know, that not once have I ever thought to try this. Maybe it will end this. I can taste the gun oil. I put my thumb on the trigger and begin to apply pressure.
The thought makes me laugh. I got the surgery six months ago on my eighteenth birthday. Even if I’m read, it shouldn’t matter anymore. Physically, I am the woman that I’ve always been. I am woman hear me roar…
It’s just a glance, but in that glance, in a chance meeting of our eyes, I know that everything in this world has changed. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, and I’m sure that everyone around me will hear it over the music.
He’s tall. So much taller than I would be in stocking feet. I’m glad I’m wearing my four in heels. We might, just might, be somewhere approaching a parity in height. He’s wearing a uniform. It’s not military, something I would recognize having been an army brat my entire life. Dad was a general, and he would never have let me live it down if I couldn’t at least recognize the ranks and branches of the people that he had to entertain occasionally.
There’s something dangerous about the way that he holds himself that sends a thrill through me. If the world revolved around me before, it doesn’t anymore. I can feel a gravity pulling me from across the room.
I stand and smooth out my red dress and casually walk over to him.
“Hi, I’m Rachel,” I say, offering my hand.
“Steve,” he says with a glorious smile and takes my hand gently. He doesn’t shake it, like I half expected, but he doesn’t let me go either. He just turns to an older man standing next to him and says, “She’s the one.”
“Did I win something?” I say playing up my blonde locks.
“In a manner of speaking,” the general says. He’s wearing a standard Army Class A uniform.
“Well, lay it on me, General,” I say with a coquettish smile.
Something about trying to end myself brought on something I can only describe as inspiration. I know, not just assume, I know how to fix this. The problem was never in the Pit. The problem was with me. In order for the General to get back to the future, I needed to be the woman he assumed that I was. Slipping is linked to your emotional state.
As long as I was already a woman, it would all work it’s way out. We’d only have to ‘kill’ the general. The rest of us would be safe from over-exposure. It would all work out, as long as I was a woman before the mission started.
From what I’d read about the subject, and believe me there was a lot of literature about it in the organization, I was transgendered. The issue, was letting myself know early enough to make a difference. I had a feeling that I’d be able to do that, I just needed a little preparation first.
It was a little wooded park outside of Washington DC, and a favorite location for agents to materialize into when they had a mission in DC.
“She’s yours, both of yours,” I say, handing the child in my arms to myself.
“What are you...wait, Ray?”
“You still let him call you that?” I say looking at my alternate self.
She blushes but nods. I have to smile at how pretty I look. Not the same as the face I see in the mirror every morning, but still pretty. At least I know that this plan of mine will work. In the nine months since that moment of clarity, I’ve had my doubts.
“It’s a good thing you all left that scanner behind in your rush to leave the Pit. I was able to verify that she’s in the green.”
“What...how...who…” Steve says, but my other me is engrossed in the baby. “She’s ours, Steve,” she says reverently. “She’s an alternate me, aren’t you,” she says, looking at me.
I nod.
“Are you coming back with us,” Steve asks, and Rachel uses her free hand to punch him. “Don’t get any ideas, Steve. No matter how twisted you think I am, I’m not having a threesome with myself.”
Steve looks sheepish and Rachel and I laugh.
“Take in the sights,” I say, “You’ll likely never get a vacation in the past again. You do have four hours...or so,” I say, smiling. I show them where the stroller is, and I hand my diaper bag to Rachel. As I watch them walk away, it feels like a hole has been ripped through my heart. She is such a small thing, so beautiful, but she needs parents. She needs her own parents.
“What’s her name?” Steve calls back.
“Gloria,” I say and Rachel laughs. It’s the name we’d already decided we should name our first daughter, if possibly for different reasons.
In actuality I likely look younger than eighty, but I can live with that. I knock and a little boy answers the door.
“Hello, Ray. Is your mother home?” A woman I remember so well, even if I haven’t seen her in over ninety years, answers the door.
“Can I help you?”
“My name is Gloria, and I’m here to help you.”
“Come inside, then, Gloria.”
I enter and sit down. It’s like being transported back in time, and I have to laugh at the thought.
“Can I get you anything, Gloria?”
“No. I’m not staying very long, or I won’t unless you want me to. What I have to say is going to be a little hard to understand, and it may not be believable, but your son is transgender.”
“Well, you don’t pull any punches,” my mom says with a little laugh.
“When you’ve been around as long as I have, you can either decide that you have all the time in the world to beat around the bush, or you can realize that every moment is precious and just get to it. I noticed that you’re not surprised?”
“I was thinking something like this. I have a degree in child psychology after all.”
“Well, then, I’m going to have to try a different method. Your daughter needs to transition before she turns eighteen. She’s going to be joining the Preservation of Time Authority then, and if she doesn’t transition before that point, she will die.”
“What?” my mom says, truly shocked for the first time and then she really looks at me.
“Ray? I should have known. You look so much like my Grandmother.”
“It’s easier if you call me Gloria,” I say, the tears coming fast. My mom moves onto the couch where I’m sitting and puts her arm around me.
“How long have you been waiting to come and tell me this,” she says in an awed whisper.
“Eighty eight years.” I say, silently crying. I’m sure I look like a mess. Old women never look beautiful when they cry.
“Well, Gloria, you are my mother from now on.”
“Didn’t grandma die?”
“No, she just got lost for a very long time,” my mother says and hugs me tightly.
“Mommy, what’s wrong?” Ray says as he...she comes into the room. I’m not too late, I see. She might be genetically and physically male, but that outfit screams female. It’s a wonder that I never noticed it before, when I went through this the first time.
“Ray, this is your Grandmother. She’s finally come home.”
“Oh, do we?” she says with a sly smile that I return. I haven’t told her, much, about her life, but she’d have to be a fool to think that there isn’t something special about tonight and one thing I never was, was a fool.
“You little imp, of course we know that. You’re eighteen, you’re fully healed, and from this moment forward you are what you have always been, a woman.”
“Oh, gran,” she says, tearing up a little.
“Don’t give me that. You don’t want to ruin your perfect makeup.”
She hugs me and we give air kisses and then we head out the door like a couple of old cronies...which in a way we are.
We get to the club and part company at the door. I take a spot at the bar and settle my old bones down.
“Can I help you, ma’am,” says a man who has walked up to me. It’s sort of obvious he wants me to leave. He’s wearing the uniform of the organization.
“Oh, no. I’m just here to watch my granddaughter. She’s about to join you all, you know.”
“You know the odds…”
“Let’s just say I have inside information and leave it at that,” I say, staring the man in the eye with all the weight of my 124 years. He just swallows and leaves me alone. I can almost feel the moment when Rachel sees Steve for the first time. I quietly make my way out of the club and go home. The smile on her face was harder for me than I thought it would be.
I experienced the history of this country, the last hundred years of it, first hand. I saw the return of the soldiers and experienced my own portion of the baby-boom. I went to woodstock and I saw the moon landing...on TV of course. I was at the cape when the challenger disaster happened, and in Houston. I’ve swum naked in the ocean and I helped to organize the technological revolution in silicon valley. I’m a programmer after all.
I have lived, and the 126 years of my life are catching up with me.
I settle on one of the seats in General Haynes office to wait.
“Hello, Gloria,” he says, startling me awake.
“Hello, Chris. How are the kids doing?”
“They’ve just returned from the Pit. It’s finally over, isn’t it? This is the last time you’re coming in?”
“I’ve done what I could to guide their lives here, more than I should have,” I say, quietly. “There’s just one more thing that you need to do. They need to go to Washington DC on the time and date and this paper. I’m not even sure that I remember it well enough to tell it to you,” I say handing him the slip of paper in my hand. My hand is shaking. He meets me more than halfway, for which I’m grateful.
“What’s there?”
“Their child,” I say, quietly and Chris gasps. “Still have things that can shock you, do I my old friend.”
“Well, you certainly came here the long way, Ray.”
“It’s Gloria,” I hiss.
“No, Ray. I know who you are, and so do you. There’s no one in this office, and you deserve to be known.”
“There will be no-one to know. Let my two girls know I love them.”
“Ray?”
I don’t respond. My thoughts wander. I smile thinking of the life I’ve lived. I think of my daughter in the arms of my granddaughter. I love you, Steve.
“You have a lot to live up to, little Gloria,” I say. “Your namesake really lived life. She was in the WAC during WWII. She traveled this country from sea to sea after the war. She was a programmer for most of her life, and made some significant innovations, things that improved the lives of many. She was a deep sea diver, and a horseback rider. She tells me that she only ever loved one man, and that I can believe, because I love your father like that.
“She tells me she went over the Niagara falls in a barrel, but I’m not sure I can believe that. She lives life to the fullest, my little Gloria, and I want you to meet her, because I’m sure she can impart some wisdom to you before she leaves us. I know she left me with my fair share of it.”
“Rachel,” General Haynes calls out. I smile for a moment, but then I notice his face, how distraught he looks and my smile fades.
“We didn’t want to tell you before, because of how important this mission was,” he says looking at Gloria, “but your grandmother died telling me about the mission. She fell asleep and we couldn’t wake her.”
“She’s dead?”
“Yes, but she wanted you to have this little girl. I think she stayed alive this long just for that purpose.”
I nod, crying, but these are tears of joy. I knew my gran was amazing, but before this moment I never knew that we were the same person. Somehow, the way that the way the general had said that phrase, the way he was looking at me, maybe even some little hints that she’d given me over the years, I knew that we were the same person.
Everyday, for the rest of my life, every moment I got, I would tell our daughter what a wonderful mother she had. And everyday for the rest of my life, I would try to live up to my own example.
“Hey, Steve,” I say in my most cute voice, “can we learn how to scuba dive?”