Here and Now and Then

by Mike Chen

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.

My whole goal with writing has been to bring stories about relationships against the science fiction backdrops that have been part of my brain since watching Star Wars and Robotech as a kid. Thank you for joining me with this, and if you have voted for HERE AND NOW AND THEN for Best Science Fiction in Goodreads Choice 2019, extra special thanks and high five. I hope you also join me for A BEGINNING AT THE END, coming out January 14, 2020.

The notebook. His journal. The epiphany caused a jabbing pain against his skull, forcing him to steady himself. He’d completely forgotten it, how he’d pulled it out some six months ago, studying it in the garage to restore lost details. He’d fought off the oncoming headaches, desperate to mine specifics of his missing past. It didn’t work, as if his body didn’t want him to remember. Then sometime during the last few weeks, that moment also evaporated from his brain. Until now.

The journal was a later-round addition. I needed some cheat to add in world-building details and this became a mechanism for including that. As I worked it through the draft, it also made sense for this to become part of Miranda's story, as it represented this dichotomy of lives that she's about to discover.

“No. Your first name is Quinoa. When you were born, the trend was food-inspired names. You’ve always hated it, which is why you’ve always insisted on going by Kin.” The very mention of the fact prompted a familiar sting to the side of Kin’s head, not nearly as bad as before, but enough to demonstrate what Markus meant about being told information. “That’s funny,” Kin finally said, his voice reduced to a dry gravel. “Quinoa was a big part of my recipe last night.” “You cook? Oh. That’s...” The harsh creases of Markus’s expression lightened, almost forming a smile before returning to its serious default. “That’s interesting. And you kept your name.”

One of the ways I approach world-building is to take mundane things from our world, see how they were treated years ago, and see how I can project that into the future. In this case, naming trends seemed to have no real rhyme or reason to them; they followed seasonal trends or pop culture or flowers or whatever. So with this freedom, I just decided that in the early 22nd century, people named their children after food and cooking. A reader did tell me the other day that they encountered a young boy named Quinoa. It wasn't me!

The first human to travel through time was Albert Beckett, the scientist who cracked the calculations necessary to create a dampening field that enabled particle acceleration at lower energy levels. In November 2098, the United Nations formed the Temporal Corruption Bureau as an independent overseer of time-travel technology and temporal security, with its existence only on a need-to-know basis within the intelligence community.

This is a huge Quantum Leap reference, one of my favorite time travel stories. Sam Beckett, as played by Scott Bakula, is the time traveler trying to set right what once went wrong, and his companion Al, as played by Dean Stockwell, his holographic helper across time.

“It’s my lucky penny.” “It must—” Markus cleared his throat before starting again. “It must be very important to you,” he said at a slow deliberate cadence. “Actually, I can’t even remember how I got it. Not yet, anyway. It’s been with me through a lot. Why do you care? It’s just a penny.” “Only curious. What people consider keepsakes, that’s all.” Markus began rambling about a psychology course he’d taken in college while assessing his standard-issue time-jump equipment, but Kin tuned out. Other, more important things started bubbling up in his mind.

After the original drafts of this story, I received editorial notes to add more layers of connection between characters. The lucky penny was part of this building process, and the idea was simply about how powerful symbols can be as we retain them through culture. Symbols communicate so much in a single image. In this case, it communicates an entire relationship between two people.

Penny’s left eyebrow arched up at the mention of radiation. Another agent method came to mind, a simple defuse-and-deflect technique: change the subject. “We’ve only talked about me. How was your day? Is that...” Kin took a second to take in and decipher the aroma permeating the apartment. “Chicken fricassee?” Penny’s head tilted at an angle. “Did the coma turn you into a chef?”

In summer 2015 as I was sending query letters to literary agents, I felt like I was running out of road. I'd lamented to my critique partner about this and spent way too much time thinking about what to do next when I went to a cafe in the Bay Area (Estel's German Bakery in Los Altos). On the chalkboard was the daily special: chicken fricassee. I took this as a sign to keep going and I literally got my first offer from an agent days later.

Sometimes I feel like I can’t move forward with things. Because it’s not right that life is happening without her. But I keep telling myself that she would want us to change and move forward. She’d say an awesome quote and it’d make it all right. So I’m nervous because of how I feel. But I’m also nervous because it’s like this big life thing without Mom and I wonder how can it really be me without her. But then I remember that we’re all different people all through our lives, but that’s okay, as long as you remember all the people you used to be.

I got a note from a reader about how this passage helped her process the death of her mom. As a writer, we do not expect these things but they mean everything because we have these feelings about books we love too. And of course, the last line ("we're all different people...") is a riff off of Matt Smith's final speech in Doctor Who. I will always credit that when people bring it up to me, that's Steven Moffat's dialogue, Miranda is just quoting it.

I told her the other day that I was thinking of double-majoring in Computer Science and Comparative Literature. When she asked why, I told her I wanted to make video games. You know, program something fun with a really cool story rather than making, like, accounting software. She thinks games are children’s toys still and she went on and on about so-and-so’s grandson who works for Apple and makes a gazillion dollars a year. But maybe she’s right. Double-majoring does sound like a lot to balance. Even though I won’t have soccer practice to worry about.

Miranda's interest in video games was a late-game change. Originally, she wrote fan fiction and moved forward to writing in college and after. My editor thought this was too meta for a book, so I moved it to a lateral creative path. The main thing was to give her something that ensured storytelling in her future, whatever the medium. Also, I love video games, so I'm very proud of her. :)

“Penny!” she exclaimed, arms already outstretched. Edith Fernandez stormed through the open door, crossing the threshold and wrapping her daughter in her arms. “Hi, Mum,” Penny offered, her voice filled with a pep that didn’t reflect how she looked. “We’re so glad you made it. You know, your father thought you might not show. Figured you’d be obsessing about that silly restaurant idea.” “I wouldn’t miss Benny’s birthday party—” “That’s what I told him! ‘I know Penny gets carried away with her ridiculous ideas, but she wouldn’t let her family down like that.’ Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m decorating the cake. Sorry, sorry to come and go. You know me, attention to detail. But you can help me later. Markus said you tried the Mars spices in a dessert but got the ratios wrong.”

Penny's parents are textbook narcissist parents. If you look at how Markus and Penny react, those are two of the usual reactions (the third being to cut off completely, which can be a healthy choice depending on the level of toxicity in the relationship). Penny is driven to be defiant while Markus plays peacekeeper. Personally, I think Penny is right but I understand why Markus does what he does.

Penny’s bravado disappeared once they were alone, as if her furious confidence only surfaced when powered by the bubbling cauldron of sibling rivalry. But with Markus gone, the new reality of their lives settled in, seemingly stealing all of her words. In the morning, they’d dropped the kittens at the rescue and bought supplies, including stops at antiques stores to purchase whatever twenty-one-A era cash they could find. In the afternoon, they reviewed time-travel logistics and the massive amount of noninterference guidelines provided by Markus. In between, Kin cracked open the topic of Heather, just so Penny might be able to release whatever pressure built up in her mind. Per her family style, she gave a stoic tight-lipped smile and said, “I’m fine,” when she was clearly not.

In many movies, you see the heroes get to this point and they're very "LET'S GET EM!" without any thought of the emotional trauma that came right before. That always bugs me, and I wanted this scene to play out very differently. Penny is coming off a very big, very emotional choice and a nice little speech but here is the moment reality hits her. It was very important to ground it in a realistic reaction when the adrenaline subsides and the "WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING" sets in.

“It’s like that show you like. Doctor Who.” “But that...” Miranda’s voice lowered enough that it nearly matched Kin’s. “That show...” Her voice trailed off, creating a vacuum long enough to make Kin check the comm. “Miranda?” “That show is about time travel.”

This moment is one of the first beats I envisioned when writing this book. When outlining a story about time travel, I always wanted to use Doctor Who as a bit of language between the characters (mostly because I love Doctor Who so much). I pictured this moment very early on during drafting and it's stayed this way pretty much since the beginning.

“You know what?” Kin turned the key and roared the engine back to life. “Ignore us. This is up to you, not me. We can turn around, and I can drop you off, and you can live like this never happened. I may travel through time, but the future is never 100 percent, that much I can tell you. Maybe you’re the exception that finally wins out. Maybe you delete the file fast enough, the info never gets out, and TCB lets this go. I can’t say. I can only tell you their plan, but the decision is up to you. This is your life. You decide. We can go back, or we can keep going west toward San Francisco. Toward the airport. Where to?”

Here is Kin's big moment -- not any of the hero stuff, but finally realizing that he has to let go and give his daughter a choice about what she's doing with her life. As the parent of a young child, this is something I constantly grapple with, and I imagine it's not going to get any easier as she grows up and finds who she is. But ultimately, with everyone, allowing that space to have choice is very critical and when we DON'T do that, that's when things turn toxic.

Kin and Penny kept their distance, huddling for warmth some ten feet back while Miranda knelt at Heather’s grave. The wind carried only fragments of her muffled voice, and it wasn’t clear if she was saying goodbye or explaining the situation.

In the original version, Heather survived to this point but when they arrived, she was in a hospital dying of cancer. It gave a moment for all the characters to be together and for Kin to seek forgiveness from her. My editor and I had a big talk about Heather's subplot, which included her getting remarried (to a Deep Space Nine fan named Carter) and having a life, which would then be shown from Kin's side as he processed this alternate timeline playing out for Heather. Ultimately, my editor said it either needed to be longer or cut for space. We decided on cutting it (and thus, Heather dies early in act 2), but I knew she still needed some emotional redemption, a scene to show her impact on Kin, Miranda, even Penny. So some of the dialogue from the hospital scene was lifted and rebuilt into the graveyard scene. I've had readers tell me they were originally furious when Heather dies but felt happy with this resolution, which was a huge relief. :) Also, Penny + Carter = Penny Carter, the original planned companion for Doctor Who season 4 before Catherine Tate signed on to come back as Donna Noble.

When I left you, I became Veronica Bamford. Bamford. I miss that dog.”

When my wife and I were thinking about baby names, one of her top picks was Veronica, which I vetoed. One of my top picks was Miranda, which she vetoed. We wound up with Amelia, which is perfect for our daughter. But those names live on here.

Two images of Miranda greeted him; the left frame holding her high school portrait, the Miranda that he’d left; and in the right frame was an old woman, life aged into her wrinkles and smile, the image captured off the holo she’d made during her final days. In between the two sat a weathered old coin.

There was an original epilogue with Miranda on her deathbed when a mysterious courier shows up with a card that simply has a drawing of a TARDIS on it. She sees it and then passes, knowing that her dad made it safely home. The idea was that Markus did this because giving her this information 60 seconds before her death would not affect the timeline in any way. I actually opened with this scene to create a closed loop with the book but it was deemed too obtuse and more of an easter egg than anything else, so we cut it. I should post it in my newsletter someday.