The Time Travel Chronicles (11 page)

She flinches at those words and I breathe a sigh of relief.  Any suspicions about my conversation with the Friend are now weighted down under a mountain of worry and self-doubt.

Her heart races against my chest, like a caged rat on a wheel.  I smile, pressing my lips to her hair and shushing her.  “Trust me, okay? You’ll be fine.  I’ll protect you.”

∞

The Objectivist Club

Washington, EC

December 17, 2304

I tweak three different parameters on the simulation board in front of me and then spin it around in midair so Campbell can see the moves I’ve made.  “You already have copies of the two books I mention in the second step.  The ones I sent over before our last session?”

He makes a noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh as I go over to the bar to pour myself another drink.  Campbell will take a good half hour to figure out what to do next, so I might as well stretch out and relax.

“Clever,” he says, after several minutes of surveying the screen.  “If you were thinking about this in practical terms, however, beyond our little game, you do know you’d never get away with it, right?  CHRONOS would have your key. You wouldn’t be able to duck out like you did with that recent stunt.”

“What recent stunt?”  I add a hint of indignation. CHRONOS internal affairs are supposed to be secret, but it’s just show.  We both know Campbell can find out pretty much anything he wants to. 

“You’re lucky they didn’t boot both you and your little blonde protégé.”

“Wasn’t my fault.” I lean back on the sofa, closing my eyes. “Rookie mistake on Kathy’s part, I suspect.  Or one of those odd flukes.  Neither of us were even reprimanded.   The woman died in childbirth a few years later anyway.”

“Gave a boost to your cult leader, though, didn’t it?”

“A bit.”  I add a false hint of modesty to my voice, although to be honest, it only boosted Jemima a
tiny
bit.  A few hundred additional followers, but her entire enterprise still fell apart over land rights and money in the 1790s, once she herded them all up to New York.  If she’d listened to me and predicted the actual day of the event…who knows?   Might have been a few
thousand
new adherents.  And maybe they’d have been less likely to turn on her if they’d been a little more certain that she was God’s special messenger.

When I open my eyes, Campbell is watching me through the translucent game screen with a shrewd look on his face.  “You
might
be able to hide a minor miracle or two popping up out of nowhere across the fabric of history, Saul.  But sticking in an entirely new religion?  That's bound to ruffle a few butterfly wings."

“As I’ve said many times, Morgen, this is all
purely theoretical
. You’re right, it would cause a stir…although maybe not too much if you did it gradually.  Evidence of one minor miracle at a time over the course of several hundred years, combined with a string of dead-on prophecies?  Concrete stuff, not vague Nostradamus hand-waving.  Those two things would lay a solid foundation for a new messiah to effect some pretty major changes when he finally arrived on the scene.”  I nod toward the screen. “And they’d survive whatever countermoves you’re plotting.”

Campbell sniffs and takes another sip of whiskey before turning back to the game.  He’ll sit there for another twenty minutes or so, planning his next move as though it actually matters.  As though he has the power to change anything.  But if he’d been given the CHRONOS gene instead of whatever lame genetic tweak his family chose, Campbell wouldn’t hesitate to act. That’s the thing I admire about him. He has no more use than I do for a society that refuses to cull the weak in order to strengthen the whole.

I close my eyes again and mentally thumb through my agenda.  A healing and maybe a prophecy or two once my plan for the 1893 Parliament of World Religions is approved.  A little test of my agent-of-the-Cyrist-apocalypse, along with its antidote, on some invisible villagers no one will miss.  Polish up my two little books so that they’ll be all ready to deposit with William Caxton in 1476 when I’m free of my CHRONOS tether. 

Within three years, I’ll have all of my game pieces in place for the coup de grâce, without setting off any of the CHRONOS tripwires.

My final move, however, is one CHRONOS is most certainly going to feel. And they won’t see it coming until the whole system explodes in their faces.

Check and mate.

A Word from Rysa Walker

I’m going to be really pretentious and start out with a quote by George Santayana.  He once defined history as “a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.
”  As a former history professor, I’m sad to report that his assessment is dead on.  Even eyewitness accounts can be fatally flawed and filled with bias, making it damned near impossible to figure out what actually happened and why.  Any historian who hasn’t wished at least once for a time machine, to actually be there to observe things firsthand and discover the
truth
of the matter, simply has no passion for the work.  

But actually being on the scene could open up an entire case of canned worms.  Let’s leave aside the whole issue of butterfly effects and unintentional changes and deal with the on-purpose variety. How difficult would it be to simply watch an event that you knew would have tragic repercussions if you had the power to prevent it?   Even those of us who have absolute faith in our ability to screw things up might be tempted to tweak things just a bit, whether for humanitarian reasons or for personal gain.

A megalomaniac like Saul Rand, however, would be convinced that he could do a better job of shaping history.  And he wouldn’t have even a single qualm about doing it.

Saul Rand isn’t the main character of my
CHRONOS Files
books.  He only shows up in person a few times, and the plot revolves around his granddaughter Kate, who’s left to clean up his mess.  But Saul is definitely the catalyst.  The event he’s planning in this prequel tale—the destruction of CHRONOS headquarters—and his decision to use religion as a cudgel to bludgeon history into shape are what set the story in motion. The final book in the series,
Time’s Divide
, is scheduled to launch in October 2015, if you’re interested to discover how his little game wraps up.

If you’re a history buff, Jemima Wilkinson’s story is real.  After her miraculous “resurrection” as the Publick Universal Friend, she built a ministry of several hundred followers, supported in part by Judge William Potter and his family.  Historical accounts tell us that Wilkinson predicted the “dark day” that fell over New England in 1780, the very same day that Potter’s daughter, Susannah, died.  Or did she?  While writing this story, I stumbled upon a second record that suggests Susannah lived for several more years.  Could this be evidence of timeline contamination? 

I’m delighted to have Saul’s story here in
The Time Travel Chronicles
. 
If you enjoyed “The Gambit,” you can find the full
CHRONOS Files
series at Amazon (
http://www.amazon.com/author/walker
), with additional stories in the
CHRONOS Files World
at
Kindle Worlds.
  On my website (
http://www.rysa.com
) you can sign up for my newsletter, which
should
be monthly but in reality is just when there’s a new release or other big announcement.  I love to chat with readers on Twitter, and if you find me there, or on Facebook (
https://www.facebook.com/Timebound
), please, please, please tell me to get back into the writing cave
.

by Ernie Lindsey

T
HE DELICATE TEACUP CLATTERED against the bone white saucer. On a cold morning in late autumn, Dutton Quinn watched his wife push her Earl Grey to the side and begin massaging her temples.

“Headache again?” he asked.

“No. Just another… Forget it. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Wouldn’t understand
what
, Jess?”

“Sometimes you… Sometimes you act like she was never here.”

Her words felt like sharp claws across exposed skin. “That’s not fair. I think about her all the time.” Dutton gripped his newspaper tightly for a moment, then flung it across the kitchen. It thrashed through the air, pages falling, flailing like wounded birds. “Are we
really
doing this again?”

“Doing what?”

“Every. Single. Day. Every goddamn day, I think about how I couldn’t save her. And you pile it on with this bullshit.”

Her voice was soft, as if the words themselves were uneasy about being heard. “You could at least show it a little.”

“It’s been almost a year.” Dutton beat on his chest with a fist. “It’s
in here
. Just because I’m not standing on the street corner with a bullhorn doesn’t mean—”

“Nobody knows that. Not even me, Dutt, and if it makes
me
wonder, then of course they’ll talk. People are starting to ask questions.”

“Like what? Who?”

“Just people, Dutt.”

“
Who
, Jess?” Dutton turned to the bay window. Outside, snowflakes floated through pine boughs and across the dying grass. “I hate this, and I
hate
that you keep doing it to me.” He slammed his palm on the table. Teacups clattered and spoons danced off the edge.

Jess slumped back in her chair, arms crossed. “Don’t take it out on me.”

“Take it out on
you
? You’re the one accusing
me
. I’m not the asshole here.”

Jess shoved up from her seat, the chair legs vibrating against the hardwood floor. “You’re such a jerk.” There were no tears. Those had dried up weeks ago. Now there was nothing left but the hardened, cracked layers of a riverbed gone dry.

He watched her go, and didn’t chase after her. The fights were getting worse.

The front door slammed. Dutton returned his attention to the window.

The drifting snowflakes fell peacefully, quietly reaffirming that Mother Nature took no notice when a star went dark. The world continued to turn.

Life without their daughter, Lucy, was just as gray and cold as the November morning, and there were frequent moments when he wished that he could freeze time and stop it all, because for one brief second, he had forgotten the heartache and loss. That was what Jess was talking about. Those fragile times when he dared to smile around her.

He watched Jess march across the front yard and down the small, sloping hill. She wore running shoes, yellow running shorts, and a blue long-sleeve shirt, hair up in a ponytail. She turned left and picked up her pace. She was graceful. She ran with purpose. She had told their marriage counselor that she ran to forget, but it never happened.

She would be running forever.

Hours would pass before she came back, Dutton knew, and he would have room to breathe, to work without the suffocating blanket of remorse that hung over Jess wherever she went.

He stood, cleared the breakfast dishes, and left Lucy’s unused place setting in her usual spot. The pillow that had cushioned her delicate knees so long ago was pink, decorated with unicorns, and had sat vacant for eleven months.

Dutton felt his bottom lip quiver and turned away, trying to make it through the memory one more time.

Six-year-old Lucy, lying in her hospital bed, the cords, wires, and tubes nothing but medical jewelry decorating her frail frame, accentuated by the never-ending smile on her lips.

“If you could go back in time, honey, what would you do?”

The question was for him, really. He already knew the answer he would give.

Dutton would rewind time, again and again, until he found a cure.

An expert oncologist with a young daughter dying of a brain tumor. What a twisted sense of irony the universe had.

Lucy, with her dimpled cheeks and bald head, had answered, “Unicorns.”

“What about them?”

“I’d go see Noah. I’d help get them on his ark.”

Dutton had smiled and taken her hand. Ever the realist, he’d begun with, “Honey, unicorns didn’t…”

“Didn’t what, Daddy?”

He remembered thinking,
Let her have this one
.

“That sounds like a beautiful thing to do. The world needs more magical creatures.”

Across the bed, back when Jess was still able to cry, the tears poured down her drained, pale cheeks in heartbroken streams.

Dutton shook the images from his mind, wiped his nose with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, and left the teacups and a half-eaten scone in the sink.