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No pulse beat beneath the skin.
No pulse beat beneath the skin.
Kin concentrated, waiting for the familiar thump to barely register with his senses. Not his heartbeat, but something equally important: a Temporal Corruption Bureau retrieval beacon, one fine-tuned to his specific biometrics.
he always adhered to timeline corruption protocols.
Kin Stewart used to be a time-traveling secret agent.
Kin Stewart used to be a time-traveling secret agent.
Eighteen years ago, give or take a few months. At least that’s what his instincts told him. But even now, he wasn’t sure where he was or what just happened, let alone who he was supposed to be.
“Come back to me, Kin. Family is here. Metal thingy is there. What is it about this?” Heather’s voice was soft. “I’ve found you passed out three times with it. You’re obsessed.”
“And Janeway crashes the ship,” Miranda said complete with hand gestures, “to restore the timeline. You can’t top that.”
“Tell you what. Tonight we watch Star Trek II for First Monday. Tomorrow, we’ll watch those Voyager episodes. Bonus family viewing.”
“I was going to say we try Doctor Who. I know Mom will like it.” Her eyes dropped to her plate, aimed directly at the small piece of remaining garlic bread. “You might, too, Dad.”
“I was going to say we try Doctor Who. I know Mom will like it.” Her eyes dropped to her plate, aimed directly at the small piece of remaining garlic bread. “You might, too, Dad.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get—”
Heather’s voice came with a quiet persuasion, eyes staying solely on their daughter despite speaking to him. “Maybe we should try Miranda’s suggestion.”
Miranda continued looking down. Even Bamford, who’d been snoring away in her dog bed, seemed to go quiet. Heather’s phone began vibrating violently on the table, an insistent buzz that caused the flatware to dance against the dishes. “It’s the firm,” she said, looking at the small screen. “I gotta take this. But Doctor Who sounds good. I keep hearing about it.” Heather’s voice gradually disappeared as she made her way to the home office upstairs, her tone shifting into an efficient professionalism that seemed at odds with the woman who was just debating Star Trek as a means of family bonding.
“Dad, this show. It’s about...” Miranda’s warbled voice trailed off and Kin noticed her taking short, quick breaths. “It’s about time travel.”
She thought the journal was filled with tales, like her Doctor Who or Heather’s Star Trek shows. Yet they weren’t fiction,
Science fiction. She thought the journal was filled with tales, like her Doctor Who or Heather’s Star Trek shows. Yet they weren’t fiction, they were details of a very real future: case histories, equipment specs, protocols, any facts he possibly recalled in a mad scramble to document things before his brain erased them. That ink had dried about sixteen years ago, shortly before he’d met Heather.
“I’m fourteen. I know how the world works.
The man shook his head, then spoke inaudibly again. Suddenly, an orange glow materialized, a semitranslucent brightness floating in front of him.
Even in the purple hues of dusk, Kin saw the distinct outline of a holographic interface, and once the image registered in his mind, a stinging pain drilled into his temple, causing him to fall to his knees.
my science teacher says that nice sunsets are because of pollution. Chemicals in the air.”
All of them remained out of earshot, which probably was a good thing, what with the whole timeline corruption thing.
Time-jumping without the additional boosters create a destabilizing effect on a cellular level.”
“In my time, it’s been two weeks since you left. Standard detection span for your two-week mission. I came to work, activated the beacon sensor, and got a ping at this geotemporal location. Detected yesterday afternoon at sixteen forty-one. Right geography, wrong year, but we have to go to the point of detection. It’s pretty beat-up, so something must have jarred one last transmission out of it.”
They’d create a grandfather paradox, possibly undoing the space-time continuum and sending them all into oblivion.
They’ll run their temporal scans to check for any timeline deltas.
“Of the house you’re renting. I assume, what, you’ve got the basement apartment of that family’s home? Property ownership is a timeline corruption, obviously. You know the rules.”
A paranoia surfaced, bringing anxiety and suspicion with everything he saw. If Markus blended in, who else might be here? How else could they monitor a whole family of timeline corruptions?
But any particular trace or fragment—timeline charts scribbled on pinned sheets of paper, remaining pieces of equipment, the damaged beacon—it all had to be hidden, preserved, safe from plain sight.
Did a missing past even matter anymore compared to human touch in the here and now?
“Heather,” Kin said, eyes closed. The details of missions had started to come back. Initial scouting from afar. Identifying movement patterns, target sleep cycles, behavioral habits. Using intel from Mission Control to track them down in isolation before apprehending and/or executing. Meticulous. Relentless. Precise. That might all be happening now, only this time with his wife, his daughter as targets. Fear of losing Heather’s trust poked at him, yet fear of the TCB finding them eclipsed that, taking the only spotlight that mattered. “I understand everything you’re saying. I am present. You
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“‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.’ Spock says it. In Star Trek II.”
Her long fingers swept through her hair. “‘ The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.’ Spock says it. In Star Trek II.”
Kin’s heart pounded, his chest a bubble about to burst, not because of anxiety but from seventeen-some years of shared life. Of course she would quote Star Trek to him in a moment like this. “I love you, Heather Stewart. Never, ever, ever change.”
Markus shrugged and leaned against the car frame. “Your family is safe. Despite the level of timeline corruption, our regional AD and the national oversight committee have elected to let them be. The only condition is that they can’t have any knowledge of the future or the TCB. Zero contact.” “How generous.” “It is. Our whole agency is built around eliminating timeline corruption. You were never supposed to be here, but we can’t do anything about that now.” Markus looked up, meeting him eye to eye. “They’re not heartless, Kin. These are people like you and me, and you’ve put them in an
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“I don’t know the plan. That’s not my job. But they’ll do whatever it takes to minimize the timeline corruption for anyone you’ve ever interacted with.”
The psych team always tells us that people revert to their patterns.
“Or maybe nothing happens. You’re getting dramatic.”
“Or maybe nothing. Maybe she’s just a few minutes later getting home, she goes to bed at the same time and nothing changes. The psych team always tells us that people revert to their patterns. Thing is, we can’t control what happens to them while they’re returning to their habits. The variables, we’re here to control those. We can’t undo the things that have happened because for every single thing undone, a hundred more get created. Our job is to eliminate timeline corruption.”
“No, your job is apparently to destroy families.”
“That’s not fair. Kin, you are a timeline corruption. You knew better than to get involved. Who was your wife supposed to end up with? What doors did her relationship with you close in her life? In everyone else’s?” Markus cleared his throat and straightened up, though he didn’t look Kin in the eye. “And your daughter. She’s the ultimate timeline corruption.”
People revert to their patterns.
“The doctors said that personal memories were the most likely things to disappear during your stay here. But everyday habits stick with you. Chopsticks. Coffee with honey. Arsenal. Like muscle memory. See? People revert to their patterns. I can’t believe they use forks still, it’s such a pain. Well,” he said, holding up his chopsticks before turning away, “duty calls.”
“That’s timeline corruption,” Kin called out as Markus began to walk away. He stopped and turned to face him. “That thing you said about slowing people down. You’ll do the same thing ordering food. I should turn you in.”
“Protocol Seven-Fifteen—era visitation. Walk on empty streets. Don’t buy when there’s a line. Don’t sit in a crowded place. Execute with zero impact. Midnight is the perfect time for that.” Markus’s eyes lit up, flashing as if he forgot that lives hung in the balance for a moment before returning to reality. He glanced at his watch. “Two a.m., Kin. Then we leave. You can bring some keepsakes if you want.” Kin continued glaring at his supposed friend until his silence was met with a short nod and a silent march.
“Life lesson number two,” Heather had countered. “Jean-Luc Picard is the best Star Trek captain there ever will be.
The Timeline Monitoring team confirmed that the archival delta—the difference between archived timeline records and the current timeline—hadn’t reset to status quo yet.
The combination of images and texts made for a dizzying array of color, and it took Kin several seconds to parse out which department sat where among the rings.
Three rings of workstations, holos of data and security feeds and scurrying people, all towering over him. In the middle floated a massive grid of information. The combination of images and texts made for a dizzying array of color, and it took Kin several seconds to parse out which department sat where among the rings. Security Overwatch, which monitored gravitational field shifts caused by temporal distortions. Timeline Monitoring, which tracked and pinged for discrepancies and specific timeline changes. Mission Oversight, which relayed information between retrievers and other internal teams. And about three dozen people from various other departments dashing back and forth creating a wall of cross-chatter.
“Archival delta eliminated,” another voice said. “Timeline is clean. Let’s get the good guys home and bring the bad guys in.”
“Need-to-know. Field agents don’t, in case you’re caught or interrogated.”
“Need-to-know. Field agents don’t, in case you’re caught or interrogated.” The grin on Markus’s face beamed out, like he’d been bursting at the seams to reveal these secrets. “Are you saying you didn’t like leaving notes at drop points? Bet you didn’t know electronic signals are benign. But it’s true, in and out of the accelerator at headquarters without disturbing the timeline. We can even download video from the past, though we can only send text in bursts back. Everyone in this room is need-to-know. That now includes you. So congratulations. No one will try to kill you and you won’t get seizures. It’s win-win.”
In the TCB’s fifty-some year history, the longest an agent had been marooned prior to Kin’s case was thirteen months—and that incident was decades old, prior to the subcutaneous beacon. They offered theories about why he went undetected for so long—a combination of causality from the beacon’s activation in the garage and the incremental accumulation of his life leaving micro-traces of temporal footprints, not the detectable shock wave produced by jumping in and changing history in bursts. Doctors poked and prodded him, marveling at how his brain managed to not implode given the duration of his
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Markus had said something about how electronic signals traveled temporally without impacting the timeline, and now a new idea stared him in the face.
Digital-temporal portal. A fancy way of saying viewing the web across time—not an archive, but the actual websites that Kin used. Markus had said something about how electronic signals traveled temporally without impacting the timeline, and now a new idea stared him in the face. A way to look into the past, as it was happening, to find his family.
The words petrified Kin, leaving him staring at the text in front of him as it lost focus and meaning. He forced himself to read the words again, then a third and fourth time before getting stuck on the phrase, “passed away peacefully.”
Obituary: Heather Jodie Stewart (Rivers)—Heather Stewart, age 39, passed away peacefully yesterday from complications related to brain cancer at Oakland General Hospital. She is survived by her daughter Miranda Elizabeth Stewart. Born in San Diego, Ms. Stewart was an enthusiastic and kind soul who loved the outdoors, animals, and science fiction. In high school, she was an all-American volleyball player and received a scholarship to UC Berkeley, where she eventually earned a BA in economics and graduated from their law program. She practiced tax law at the firm of Newman & Lambert until her final days. A memorial service will be held at Oakland Memorial District and Cemetery.
The words petrified Kin, leaving him staring at the text in front of him as it lost focus and meaning. He forced himself to read the words again, then a third and fourth time before getting stuck on the phrase, “passed away peacefully.”
Through the DTP’s timeline feature, he zeroed in on a date about two years after his departure, then opened a normal search engine window and punched in Miranda’s name and her high school.
Gone was the bright student who talked about programming projects and Doctor Who.
Only four quick steps existed between him and Miranda: log in. Activate DTP. Run the scripts. Make contact.
That potentially created a footprint of timeline corruption spread far too wide.
That still didn’t give him any guidelines for telling Miranda how to stop her downward spiral. He’d pondered other ways to try to rescue her from the brink; those all depended on influencing other people, counselors or lawyers or whoever. That potentially created a footprint of timeline corruption spread far too wide.
You’ll need proof, I know. Here it is. The last meal I cooked for you was lasagna with quinoa. I told you about it right before you went to Tanya’s to work on your programming project. And that night, you and Mom argued about Star Trek. I hope this counts.
The next few hours sped by. Six months of Miranda’s life unfolding email by email over thirty messages.
The next few hours sped by. Six months of Miranda’s life unfolding email by email over thirty messages. She started off hesitant, revealing only tidbits of her life, such as how Heather’s mother had moved up from San Diego to stay with her or how she slept with Bamford on Heather’s side of the bed every night for a month until the dog stopped whimpering at night—or how she finally took her dad’s advice and spoke to a grief counselor for teens.
How easy it was for humans to fall back into their patterns, wherever or whenever they were. Except, apparently, being in mad, passionate love. That part wasn’t quite as simple.
“Maybe you missed it in your file, but I happened to work in IT back in twenty-one-A.”
“I know PHP and Ruby and Python and JavaScript inside and out. You’re telling me that our network people know dead programming languages from more than a hundred years ago? They ask me for help when they can’t crack old code.”
This wasn’t just the right thing to do by his daughter, this was the smart thing, the sensible thing, the good thing that righted the wrongs committed by fate.
I don’t care if it’s timeline corruption, Miranda is innocent in all this.
“A year and a half? You’ve only been back for a few weeks. Is this why...” Markus stepped forward, a suspicious look on his face. “Penny says you flip between being all nostalgic about things you two have done together, then shutting off cold for hours. She thinks it’s the trauma recovery period. But it’s not that, is it? You are literally bouncing between Penny and Miranda. People aren’t supposed to have lives in two eras. You know that, right?”
“Time travel is bad for relationships.”
“Her life isn’t a novel that you can sit down and read in one sitting,”
