QK1 Match 3: This Wasn't in the Job Contract vs Never-Beings
Title: WarpersEntry Nickname: This Wasn’t in the Job ContractWord count: 100KGenre: YA Scifi
Query:
There are three rules for time traveling:
1. Do not double warp.
2. Do not interact with people from the past.
3. Do not allow the past to catch up to the present.
Unfortunately, 18-year-old Galileo Matox is about to break them all. By accident, of course.
Galileo works for ScorpioCorp as a warper, traveling into the past to collect evidence of high-priority crimes. His latest mission? To identify a senator’s murderer. Seems simple enough.
But everything goes to shit before the mission even begins. When Galileo suspects sabotage, he presses the emergency warp button, hoping to save his team—but the attempt fails. Not only does the botched warp drop his crew eight days earlier and 1,510 klicks from the murder scene, it also badly injures his teammate.With his friend quickly bleeding out, Galileo does the only thing he can think of: he swaps his own warp suit for her damaged one and sends the team back to the present, initiating a double warp—Rule #1, broken. Now, Galileo’s stranded in the past—and in an alternate reality.
Enter Avaline Eisenhart, a gifted time-space scientist and daughter of the soon-to-be-dead senator. After negotiating with the girl from the past (completely shattering Rule #2), Avaline and Galileo strike a deal: in return for fixing the warp suit, Avaline will get the chance to study ScorpioCorp’s highly coveted warp tech.
As the countdown to the senator’s assassination draws near, realities blur and timelines merge . . . and Galileo begins to realize he may be responsible for the murder. Except, Galileo’s not sure if he can bring himself to kill the senator, even if letting him live could result in an interstellar war. After all, sometimes it’s the smallest change that causes the biggest ripple.
Trapped in a reality in which he doesn't belong, Galileo must find a way to escape before Rule #3 flies out the hatch and the past merges with the present, thereby unleashing chaos across the time-space fabric.
“Inception” meets “Minority Report” . . . in space.
First 250: Chapter One
03:14:15
Temple City, Enora
Jumping back four days to watch a dog get hit by a hover car is a bloody waste of time. Unfortunately, that's my job.
I swallow an annoyed huff, miffed that Gamma team was assigned this joke of a mission. We could be solving that Leviathan kidnapping case, or figuring out who’s responsible for sabotaging the Interstellar Fleet’s dreadnoughts, or a million other crimes more important than identifying the license plate number of the asshole who ran over Senatori Gable’s pet dog.
Not saying said-asshole doesn’t deserve a dose of justice. But still—kidnapping case, or road rage mystery? One clearly carries more priority.
I wince as Takana’s too-loud voice crackles in my aud implant. “Hasn’t anyone told Senatori Gable live pets went out of style fifteen years ago? Droids are the newest rage. Especially droid horse racing—”
“Maybe some people prefer a living, breathing companion instead of a mass of circuits and synth-fur,” I reply, tracking the dog in question as it sprints back and forth upon the lawn of the senatori’s mansion. At precisely 03:25:00, the dog will leap over the shock fence, plant its furry butt in the middle of the road, and get run over by an incoming hover car.Tilting my head, I can't figure out why the dog reminds me of something . . . something just beyond my recollection’s grasp. An echo of a half-forgotten memory. Doesn’t matter, though. I’m not interested in dredging up old memories right now.
VERSUS
Title: State of Never BeingEntry Nickname: Never-BeingsWord count: 94KGenre: YA Sci Fi/Time Travel
Query:
STATE OF NEVER BEINGis Levithan’s Every Day meets the Fifth Wave.
After a rash of botched missions, teenage assassin Zinnia’s life hinges on eliminating seven of history’s violent criminals. The Department of Retroactive Justice is determined to create an alternate history of peace to secure a safer future, and the last thing they’ll tolerate is an agent who intentionally defies orders and refuses to kill.
Zinnia’s irked by her recent spike in failures, but it’s not by chance that she’s survived eight years in the field as an accomplice, not a drop of blood marring her hands. She’s long feared the collateral damage committed by the agency rivals the atrocities of those it targets, but she’s never had proof. Until—while trapped in the vicious cycle meant to reaffirm her allegiance—she falls for the hooded counter-op who landed her there.
Now, she has reason to evade her assignments. And adventure-seeking Phineas to help her do it. Still, for every failed elimination, she’ll be forced to face another target, as well as a brutal reality: letting criminals walk means allowing them to fulfill the heinous acts she could’ve stopped.
Enlisting the help of Phin’s team, Zinnia sets out to alter targets’ paths rather than end them. But when team members accused of impeding justice cease to exist, she must find a way to alter the agency itself—before she loses more than a future with Phin, she loses the past that brought them together, too.
First 250:
Prologue
The last time I was in Pompeii’s outdoor marketplace I was with my history class, more than two millennia after it crumbled to Vesuvius. It was chaos quietly captured. Adults curled into fetal positions, comforting each other in their final breaths. Children, mid-stride, propelled by hope of escape. I whispered to my partner, Mason: Why can’t we save them all? The response was hurled by Exudatious, the mastermind behind the Department of Retroactive Justice, clad in her grey skirt-suit with winged shoulder pads and dagger heels. We can’t salvage entire civilizations, Zinnia Namida. Nor can we interfere where Nature has written the law. We save people from monsters—humans who died at the hands of other humans. Which meant Pompeii was once the killing ground for a monster; there was no other reason for us to be there.
Chapter 1
“It’s 79 AD. You’re in Pompeii.” Our handler, Persephone, opens her palm and a halogen sphere rises from it. It illuminates the canvas flap that conceals us, the overturned fruit cart it’s attached to, the figs mashed between the white tunics Mason and I are wearing and the cobblestones where we kneel. “You’ve got a two-minute lag time. After that, three minutes forty-five seconds to take out your target.” She leans out from the shadow of the sphere, her eyes catching like flame. “Any longer and you’ll be turned into statues.”
Query:
There are three rules for time traveling:
1. Do not double warp.
2. Do not interact with people from the past.
3. Do not allow the past to catch up to the present.
Unfortunately, 18-year-old Galileo Matox is about to break them all. By accident, of course.
Galileo works for ScorpioCorp as a warper, traveling into the past to collect evidence of high-priority crimes. His latest mission? To identify a senator’s murderer. Seems simple enough.
But everything goes to shit before the mission even begins. When Galileo suspects sabotage, he presses the emergency warp button, hoping to save his team—but the attempt fails. Not only does the botched warp drop his crew eight days earlier and 1,510 klicks from the murder scene, it also badly injures his teammate.With his friend quickly bleeding out, Galileo does the only thing he can think of: he swaps his own warp suit for her damaged one and sends the team back to the present, initiating a double warp—Rule #1, broken. Now, Galileo’s stranded in the past—and in an alternate reality.
Enter Avaline Eisenhart, a gifted time-space scientist and daughter of the soon-to-be-dead senator. After negotiating with the girl from the past (completely shattering Rule #2), Avaline and Galileo strike a deal: in return for fixing the warp suit, Avaline will get the chance to study ScorpioCorp’s highly coveted warp tech.
As the countdown to the senator’s assassination draws near, realities blur and timelines merge . . . and Galileo begins to realize he may be responsible for the murder. Except, Galileo’s not sure if he can bring himself to kill the senator, even if letting him live could result in an interstellar war. After all, sometimes it’s the smallest change that causes the biggest ripple.
Trapped in a reality in which he doesn't belong, Galileo must find a way to escape before Rule #3 flies out the hatch and the past merges with the present, thereby unleashing chaos across the time-space fabric.
“Inception” meets “Minority Report” . . . in space.
First 250: Chapter One
03:14:15
Temple City, Enora
Jumping back four days to watch a dog get hit by a hover car is a bloody waste of time. Unfortunately, that's my job.
I swallow an annoyed huff, miffed that Gamma team was assigned this joke of a mission. We could be solving that Leviathan kidnapping case, or figuring out who’s responsible for sabotaging the Interstellar Fleet’s dreadnoughts, or a million other crimes more important than identifying the license plate number of the asshole who ran over Senatori Gable’s pet dog.
Not saying said-asshole doesn’t deserve a dose of justice. But still—kidnapping case, or road rage mystery? One clearly carries more priority.
I wince as Takana’s too-loud voice crackles in my aud implant. “Hasn’t anyone told Senatori Gable live pets went out of style fifteen years ago? Droids are the newest rage. Especially droid horse racing—”
“Maybe some people prefer a living, breathing companion instead of a mass of circuits and synth-fur,” I reply, tracking the dog in question as it sprints back and forth upon the lawn of the senatori’s mansion. At precisely 03:25:00, the dog will leap over the shock fence, plant its furry butt in the middle of the road, and get run over by an incoming hover car.Tilting my head, I can't figure out why the dog reminds me of something . . . something just beyond my recollection’s grasp. An echo of a half-forgotten memory. Doesn’t matter, though. I’m not interested in dredging up old memories right now.
VERSUS
Title: State of Never BeingEntry Nickname: Never-BeingsWord count: 94KGenre: YA Sci Fi/Time Travel
Query:
STATE OF NEVER BEINGis Levithan’s Every Day meets the Fifth Wave.
After a rash of botched missions, teenage assassin Zinnia’s life hinges on eliminating seven of history’s violent criminals. The Department of Retroactive Justice is determined to create an alternate history of peace to secure a safer future, and the last thing they’ll tolerate is an agent who intentionally defies orders and refuses to kill.
Zinnia’s irked by her recent spike in failures, but it’s not by chance that she’s survived eight years in the field as an accomplice, not a drop of blood marring her hands. She’s long feared the collateral damage committed by the agency rivals the atrocities of those it targets, but she’s never had proof. Until—while trapped in the vicious cycle meant to reaffirm her allegiance—she falls for the hooded counter-op who landed her there.
Now, she has reason to evade her assignments. And adventure-seeking Phineas to help her do it. Still, for every failed elimination, she’ll be forced to face another target, as well as a brutal reality: letting criminals walk means allowing them to fulfill the heinous acts she could’ve stopped.
Enlisting the help of Phin’s team, Zinnia sets out to alter targets’ paths rather than end them. But when team members accused of impeding justice cease to exist, she must find a way to alter the agency itself—before she loses more than a future with Phin, she loses the past that brought them together, too.
First 250:
Prologue
The last time I was in Pompeii’s outdoor marketplace I was with my history class, more than two millennia after it crumbled to Vesuvius. It was chaos quietly captured. Adults curled into fetal positions, comforting each other in their final breaths. Children, mid-stride, propelled by hope of escape. I whispered to my partner, Mason: Why can’t we save them all? The response was hurled by Exudatious, the mastermind behind the Department of Retroactive Justice, clad in her grey skirt-suit with winged shoulder pads and dagger heels. We can’t salvage entire civilizations, Zinnia Namida. Nor can we interfere where Nature has written the law. We save people from monsters—humans who died at the hands of other humans. Which meant Pompeii was once the killing ground for a monster; there was no other reason for us to be there.
Chapter 1
“It’s 79 AD. You’re in Pompeii.” Our handler, Persephone, opens her palm and a halogen sphere rises from it. It illuminates the canvas flap that conceals us, the overturned fruit cart it’s attached to, the figs mashed between the white tunics Mason and I are wearing and the cobblestones where we kneel. “You’ve got a two-minute lag time. After that, three minutes forty-five seconds to take out your target.” She leans out from the shadow of the sphere, her eyes catching like flame. “Any longer and you’ll be turned into statues.”
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