Prelaunch: Center for Temporal Research, 2116 CE.
I lay back gingerly on the cushion as the technician adjusted the launch helm over my head.
“Anxiety spike,” I said. My heart was pounding despite the drug cocktail. I wanted to tear the helm off and just run out the door. Leave my post-doc behind. Of course I’d never get another chance at a university job, but that would be fine. I’d go on UBI, maybe write erotic historical fan-fics for kudos—
“It’s only natural to feel anxious,” said the technician, cheerfully. His good humor made me feel a tiny bit better. “But haven’t you done this before? You look familiar.”
“Three times, now. But anxiety doesn’t have to make sense. Tell me the statistics again.”
“Sure.” The technician patted me on the shoulder. I felt a little calmer at his touch. A little. He was kind of cute, it occurred to me. “Probability of a safe return is 99.92%. Of the remaining 0.8%, at least 9 in 10 cases are thought to be due to an operative choosing deliberately not to return their consciousness to their body.”
“So there’s one chance in 10,000 I’m screwed.”
“Pretty much. You want to abort? It’s up to you.”
Yes, I thought, please, please—
I opened my mouth, but the wrong words came out. “No,” I said. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
Timeline insertion: Qurnat as Sawda’, 1978 CE.
Frank Harrelson lifted his glass to take a sip of Bordeaux, and my consciousness emerged like a blossoming flower from the fertile soil of his mind. He was quite calm, bored even, and the stabilizing influence of his brain chemistry made my anxiety of a meta-moment ago seem silly now.
Frank was ostensibly an American lieutenant colonel attached to the UNIFIL peacekeeping force as a liaison, but he was really the CIA’s Beirut control officer, which was why he had been invited to the diplomatic reception in this ancient castle in the Lebanon Mountains. Of course, my purpose here had nothing to do with diplomacy or espionage. I was looking for the Bast Statuette, a prized possession of Georgi Jerjerian, the Lebanese billionaire who owned this castle. If I could get my hands on the statuette for five minutes, I’d be able to return to my own timeline and leave Frank to deal with the intricacies of Lebanese civil war politics.
For now, though, I was stuck here at the sideboard in the main reception room, a glass of wine in my hand, pretending I cared about baseball. The Soviet military attaché was enthusiastic about the Dodgers’ prospects this year. He droned on and on until I started to wonder if I’d been selected by GRU special ops for an experiment in weaponized boredom. Perhaps the attaché had an ulterior motive, but I couldn’t figure out what it might be. Neither of us were major players here, both only present as a diplomatic courtesy to our respective nations.
The attaché gestured like he was swinging a bat, talking about Ron Cey’s power numbers, but I was contemplating some ludicrous James Bond escapade, like going out a window and scaling the castle wall to one of the private floors. On the con side, I had no equipment and no experience rock climbing and would likely fall to my death, but on the pro side, at least I’d be able to ditch the Dodgers fan.
That was when I felt a presence behind me. I turned and one of Jerjerian’s security men was standing there, big and bulky in an Armani suit that showed the bulge of a pistol beneath his lapel.
“Colonel Harrelson? You’re wanted. Upstairs.”
Well. That was easy. Too easy. But I could scarcely turn down the invitation. I put down my wineglass and told the attaché, “Prosti, drug. Nado idti.” Then I turned to follow the security man.
He led me out of the reception hall. We walked through what seemed like a mile of thousand-year-old castle corridors illuminated by bare bulbs. Then up a flight of stairs to a landing which opened onto a modern foyer with marble flooring. Mondrians and Rothkos hung on the walls.
“Good luck,” said the security man, smirking, and he turned back down the stairs, leaving me alone.
Good luck? There was nothing here except for a heavy wooden door. I hesitated, not sure if I was supposed to knock, and then I pulled it open to reveal a large dark room, a den furnished in 20th century bachelor-modern, all black leather and chrome. There was no one immediately visible, so I strode inside.
The only light in the room came through a majestic picture window on the far wall, from the shimmer of stars and the mystic sigil of a thin crescent moon floating above the mountains in the west. My gaze was immediately drawn to the Bast Statuette, the one and only, an exquisite piece of cast iridium on a pedestal by the window, gleaming coldly in the starlight.
Of course, it was quite impossible that the artisans of Bubastis could have forged an iridium statue in 1,000 BC. That was why Center wanted me to obtain it. Back home, banks of temporal capacitors were charging up, ready to release the enormous amount of tau-energy required to shift the statuette physically back to Center. My own consciousness would hopefully return rather more easily along the same vector, leaving poor Frank here to deal with the consequences, but I trusted he was slick enough to avoid any blame. I reached out my hand—
“Not so fast, Colonel.”
The voice came from behind me. I should have been surprised to see her, a slender figure in black, but I felt I’d met her before. It was hard to be sure, though, as déjà vu was a regrettably common occupational hazard for time-travelers. Her Saint Laurent tuxedo suit was almost invisible in the dark room, but her pale features stood out in the starlight.
“Mademoiselle Duquesne,” I said. “Je suis enchanté.”
Frank’s CIA briefing said that four years ago she had been a figure of controversy in France, plucked at age fifteen from the front page of Elle Magazine by Jerjerian to become his mistress, supposedly sold off by her parents for an enormous sum. Well. That explained who’d summoned me upstairs, anyway. As to why—
She took a gliding step towards me. “I’m no more Chloé Duquesne than you are Frank Harrelson. Or perhaps I should say I’m no less.”
She took another step, raised her hand and placed it against my cheek. Tingles went up and down my spine, like evil ASMR.
I pushed her hand away. “You’re a temporal agent, too? From another timeline? But it’s supposed to be impossible! A googol to one against—”
“Don’t you get it? It’s not a random meeting. It’s down to her. She called us both here, though back at our respective home bases they must think it was their own idea to send us.”
Over her shoulder the Bast Statuette shimmered in the starlight. No way, I thought. It can’t be. But Chloé was still talking.
“She shines like a beacon across the metafabric… attracting attention. There are probably operatives from any number of crosstime agencies homing in on her as we speak. I got to her before you did, months ago in this timeline, but I was foolish enough to touch her. She trapped me here.”
“Trapped you?”
“Yes. I can’t shift anymore. She’s got me locked down. I think maybe she wants a pair of hands for something. But she doesn’t communicate in words. So I’m stuck here in crazy Chloé’s pretty little head… waiting. I was bored half to death till you showed up.”
“Cutting a swathe through the security men?”
Chloé grimaced. “My host has, ah, appetites. Between her and the statuette, poor Jerjerian is so freaked out he doesn’t dare enter the same room with us anymore.”
“Serves him right, from what I hear. Frank is gay, though, so I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
She laughed. “Chloé will survive. I didn’t call you up here for that, anyway. I do get one benefit from Bast. She can detect temporal intrusions, and I can tell when she does. I sensed you and your team shifting in, and I figured you were on a follow-up mission from my timeline, so you could maybe take me home by shifting out with me.”
“I— wait. My team? I haven’t got—”
The door opened, revealing a shadowy grey man silhouetted in the light from the foyer outside. The man reached toward us, and though he was a good fifteen feet away, I was convinced he’d be able to touch me in a moment. I flinched away from him, and—
A flash and a bang stunned me for a moment. The picture window shattered. A moment later three hooded figures with scimitars strapped to their backs appeared in the casement, abseiling down from an upper story. Glass shards tinkled all around us. From the way the grey man recoiled I got the idea they weren’t on the same side.
Chloé leapt toward me like a cat, clutching me in an embrace, the statuette under her arm. “Shift!” she said, “Take me with you!”
The lead hashashin was standing facing us, with a scimitar in one hand and an Uzi in the other. He raised the gun. I didn’t have time to establish a vector home, so I had to risk a random harmonic shift to an unknown destination—
—though you can never remember it when you’re embodied, there’s an eternal instant during timeline-shifting when you’re outside of time and space, outside of the metafabric, even, and you can see everything and feel everything and be everything and you know you’ve had this godlike perspective before, and you’ve always had the option to stay here above it all, but you see a faint golden spark, almost drowning in darkness, and you need to save it, so even though you’ll be giving up godhood, forgetting everything, choosing a timeline to inch along as a boring old flesh worm, you make up your mind, and of course she’s there, standing behind you, looking on and smiling as you dive back in, as you drown yourself in space and time and matter and energy and personality and memory and—
First Harmonic: New York City, 1961 CE.
Raoul Kadima, Katangan special envoy to the UN, was cooling his heels outside the secretary-general’s office atop the Secretariat Building in Manhattan, waiting for an audience. He wasn’t expecting anything good to arise from the meeting, it was far too late for that, but his president insisted on observing the forms, so here he was, 6,000 miles from home, waiting to enter the enemy’s lair.
At last, one of the secretary-general’s aides, a pasty-white Swede, admitted him to the inner sanctum. “I’m sorry for the delay, Mr. Kadima,” he said. “Mr. Hammarskjöld will see you now.”
The aide remained in the lounge outside as Kadima entered. The secretary-general was seated behind a large desk. Off to the side, his assistant, a young woman with ash-blonde hair waited. Kadima noticed a metal statuette on a shelf behind the desk. It seemed out of place here, though he was sure he’d seen it before.
“In the circumstances,” said the secretary-general, “I’ll not say this is a pleasure, Mr. Kadima. I should tell you that I shall be flying to the Congo tonight. I owe it to the men your government is holding hostage.”
Hammarskjöld held out his hand and Kadima shook it. The secretary-general looked him steadily in the eye like an honorable man, not like the jackal Kadima had been expecting. He introduced his assistant, Inga Nilsson. Kadima bowed over her hand, and when he touched it, a weird sensation rushed through his body, like a high voltage current from the base of his spine. The tension he’d been feeling, the anger and the guilt, the terrible burden of history he’d been conscious he was carrying, it all went away as another mind rose up to surround his own in comforting embrace—
When I emerged from the depths of Kadima’s consciousness I nearly fell over, but Inga held me upright until I recovered. Of course, she had just been Chloé a meta-moment before, just as I had been Frank. On the shelf behind Hammarskjöld, the statuette glittered, attracting my gaze. The inexplicable fact of its presence made me feel dizzy, like I was looking down at myself from a very great height.
“Mr. Kadima,” said Inga. “Are you quite well?”
The sound of my host’s name helped me center myself. “Chloé! Inga, I mean. We made it! But why here of all times and places?”
She shrugged. “Her idea, I suppose.”
Hammarskjöld looked at us like we’d gone insane, but I ignored him. I had the feeling that we didn’t have much time, and I needed to know what was going on.
“That grey man,” I said. “Who was he?”
“I don’t know. Someone opposed to her, though. I think those— those assassin guys? I think they were hers, called from some other timeline. Some kind of self-defense reflex.”
“Oh. I hope Frank and Chloé are okay.”
“Listen here,” said Hammarskjöld. “What’s going on? Do you two know one another?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Urgent business with your assistant. Can’t stop to chat.” Then I remembered my history, what was about to happen to him, and I felt the urge to intervene. “Listen, Mr. Secretary. There’s a Soviet spetsnaz team waiting for you in the Congo. They have a SAM launcher. I wouldn’t do any flying over there if I were you. In fact, I’d stay right here in New York, where it’s safe.”
“What?”
“He’s right,” said Inga. “You really should stay home. Your Irish peacekeepers will be fine. Tshombe would be cutting his own throat if he harmed them. You’ll see. Just don’t do anything and it will all work out.”
“Inga? What is this? How can you—”
“Pardon us. We’re out of time.” She scooped up the statuette in her arms.
We left Hammarskjöld behind in his office, still flabbergasted. I still had a mission to complete.
The aide looked up in amazement as we strode past him towards the private elevator on the far side of the lounge. “Inga!” he cried, “where are you going? Has something happened? And what is— what is—” The aide’s voice slurred and trailed off. An alien darkness settled over his features like a cloud of shadows. The grey man arose from his chair.
He raised his hand. “Mr. Kadima! Miss Nilsson! Please wait. I wish to speak with you.” His voice sounded creepy and inhuman, like it was coming out of a vocoder instead of his mouth.
I glanced at Inga, and she shrugged. Every timeline shifter feels the pull of the silver cord linked from their point of origin. Given just five minutes of peace, I could line up the shift home.
“Very well,” I said. I was already starting to work out the vector in my head. We were a good twenty feet away from the grey man, and I started to walk back to a more comfortable speaking distance, but he held up his hand.
“Please don’t,” he said. “I don’t wish to provoke her at this time, and my physical proximity to Miss Nilsson will surely have that effect.”
“Okay. Let’s start with the basics. Who are you?”
“Call me… Atum’s shadow.”
“Another Egyptian god?”
His laughter was horrible and inhuman. “Yes. The designation amuses me.”
“What do you want?”
“The same thing as your agency, Mr. Kadima. I want the statuette.”
“Why?” I glanced over at Inga. She was staring intently at the grey man, focusing on him like a mongoose facing a cobra.
He answered, “She is terribly dangerous. I believe Miss Nilsson has already suffered from coming in contact. In my care, her influence would be shielded and made safe.”
I was halfway home with my shift vector.
“You’re asking me to give up my mission on your unsupported word?”
“Actually… no.”
“No?”
The grey man smiled. “Actually, I was just occupying your attention until I could assemble forces capable of neutralizing the statuette and seizing it regardless of your intentions.”
He approached with a curious shuffling stride, like he was unused to walking. I did nothing. I wasn’t paralyzed; it just seemed pointless to act. He drew a short, curved knife as he got close, and I thought, Oh well, I guess he’s going to kill me now, but I still didn’t move.
A sound like a faint tuning fork rang in the air, and the grey man paused, his knife pulled back for a stab at my chest. I glanced behind me to see a cat-headed woman standing where Inga was, superimposed over her form like a double-exposure. And my lethargy evaporated like early-morning fog in the light of day.
I tried a thrusting side kick, and caught the grey man in the midriff, sending him stumbling backward several yards and knocking him down. He didn’t seem very well coordinated. I turned back toward Bast, but she had vanished along with the statuette, leaving Inga behind looking confused and unsteady.
The grey man clumsily got to his feet, but he didn’t try to resume his attack. “Two can play at summoning,” he said, and around me I heard a rhythmic beat, growing steadily louder. Through the windows of the 39th story of the UN Secretariat building I saw a Hind MI-24 gunship descending, its gatling gun prominent in a turret under its nose.
Just another minute would have been enough for me to shift home. But it was a minute I didn’t have to spare. For my host’s sake and for Inga’s, I dropped us both flat to the floor, though the odds weren’t good we’d be missed if the gunner knew what he was doing. My last thought in Kadima’s body was to hope that the gunship wouldn’t shoot Hammarskjöld through the walls of his office, seeing as we’d gone to the trouble of saving his life. And then I shifted out with Inga in my arms, another random harmonic, and—
—you’re back above the metafabric, looking down on countless myriad timelines with a god’s-eye-view, and as always she stands behind you and he looms before you, his shadowy form cold and menacing, his darkness threatening to overwhelm a shimmering, delicate golden thread, and you see where you have to go and why, and as always you dive back into a world and into a body and into the welcoming mind of a stranger—
Second Harmonic: Alexandria, Sixth consulate of Flavius Theodosius Augustus (415 CE).
Melantha had her ear to the door while Aspasia fretted behind her. Aspasia was simultaneously afraid they’d be caught and frustrated that the door was too narrow for her to listen too. Behind the door, their mistress Hypatia was talking to Orestes, governor of Egypt. He said something in a low voice Melantha didn’t catch.
“I’m aware,” said Hypatia. “What I don’t understand is why you can’t do something about it. You’re the Praefectus Augustalis, after all. The whole provincial army is yours to command.”
“Yes.” Orestes raised his voice a little. “And six out of ten of them are loyal to Cyril’s parabalani fanatics. If I acted against the bishop, my own men would crucify me on his rooftop. Madam, I will be leaving Alexandria tonight with my family. A dromon is waiting in the harbor. We sail at midnight. Please come with me, Hypatia. You know I have your best interests at heart.”
It was her turn to mutter something Melantha couldn’t make out.
“Very well,” said Orestes. “I honor your resolve. May your gods protect you and keep you from harm.”
Melantha heard the clatter of the governor’s departure as he left through the main door to Hypatia’s study. She was about to retreat with Aspasia when the inner door swept open and there she was, their mistress looming over them.
“Girls! What have I told you about eavesdropping? Although in this case—”
There was a loud clang from within, and all three of us turned to see what it was. The figurine of Bastet their mistress kept in a place of pride in her study had suddenly fallen from its pedestal to the floor.
“Goodness!” said Hypatia, but Aspasia was already shouldering her way past. She reached out her hand to pick up the fallen statuette, and as she touched it I awakened within Melantha’s head.
Like they say, once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a ubiquitous crosstime statuette manipulating events. Knowing where I was, and when, and who I was dealing with, I stood up straight and addressed the philosopher in my host’s native Greek.
“Listen, Hypatia. As a daimon from beyond space and time who has briefly possessed your servant Melantha, I must tell you that any notion you may have of your death serving as a warning signal to the religious is mistaken. On the contrary, if Cyril’s mob kills you, it will herald a retrogressive period so profound that generations to come will name these centuries the dark ages.”
“I— what?” Hypatia was understandably taken aback.
Aspasia chimed in. “We must add our voices to that of your friend Orestes. We urge you to take yourself to his ship with all speed. And we hope you’ll find the compassion to save your servants as well.”
“I was about to tell you— I mean, to tell them to go and leave me behind, but—”
“Good. Take them with you. Just give us five minutes, and we’ll leave your servants in peace.”
I was already trying to line up my home vector for a proper shift.
“What’s your name, anyway?” I asked Aspasia, in English. “Your name as an operative from the place you come from.”
She was silent for a moment. “Does it really matter?”
“I suppose not. If I can’t manage the shift home, neither of us will ever resume our original identities. And if I can— well, we’ll talk then. What’s going on with Bast?”
She put her hand on the statuette. “Her influence has been growing weaker every shift. But… she seems pleased. I think we’re doing her will.”
“Really? But what’s the point? There are googols of worlds in which Hypatia was killed by the mob, and as many where she escaped. Changing the course of a single world should have no impact on the metafabric. And even in the worlds we visit, there’s no telling the consequences of our actions. For all we know, the Byzantines will have a nuclear war with the Persians in 500 years due to Hypatia’s survival.”
She shrugged. “I can’t explain it. I just feel like it’s working out as she intends. Perhaps some decision points are more important than others. Or some timelines.”
“You have faith, then.”
Aspasia smiled, and ran her finger down the curve of the Bast Statuette’s back to tap her tailed backside with a nail. That faint tuning-fork resonance sounded, quivering in the air. “I suppose so. Are you still trying to return us to your Center?”
“Yes. Halfway there. Any insight into Atum’s shadow?”
“No. He seems to be able to track our movements in meta-time with only a small delay, though. So I’d expect—”
Hypatia had been watching us with fascination, probably trying to figure out what language we were speaking.
“Excuse me,” she said, “excuse me—” and she shuddered; shadow surrounded her, and there he was, the grey man again. I felt really angry this time; it was totally unfair for him to take over Hypatia, just when we’d convinced her to save herself. But perhaps he would leave her be if we escaped him here.
“Give it a fucking rest,” I said.
“Oh, I will,” said the grey man.” As soon as I secure the goddess.”
“Take the damn thing after we leave. Or go elsewhere for it. It’s present in a zillion timelines, isn’t it? Why follow us around?”
He made that dreadful sound again in place of laughing. “As your companion shifts, so does she. Elsewhen, it’s just an out-of-place chunk of iridium.”
“Too bad for you, then.” I meant it as an envoi, because I’d almost finished lining up the shift back to the Center.
“Oho,” he said. “I see what you’re doing. Don’t imagine home awaits you.” The grey man drew his knife, but all he did was make a slashing gesture with it, from a safe ten feet away.
And the pull from the Center, the silver cord that allowed me to return… it fell limp. Severed. I tried to salvage the memory of my vector home, but it wavered and broke apart like a half-remembered dream after waking.
“Now then,” said the grey man, but Aspasia strode in front of me, the statuette under one arm, and raised her hand. The darkness surrounding Atum’s shadow receded, and he recoiled as if he’d been struck.
“We’ve got to go,” she said. “She can’t hold him for long.”
So we shifted and—
—rising above the metafabric, even your godlike perspective can’t perceive her intentions; it seems that step by step, with every minuscule darning of a hole in the weave, her power lessens and his grows stronger and yet you sense no concern from the warm presence that stands behind you, only growing satisfaction, but the golden path is still in jeopardy from the encroaching darkness, and so you dive once more into linear time—
Third Harmonic: Otrar, 596 AH (1218 CE).
“Yes, Your Excellency. I realize this delegation are merely barbarian infidels. But permit this lowly servant to remind you that they have been given permission to trade by the Great Shah himself, and moreover, a force of 200,000 barbarian cavalry under this Genghis Khan have assembled behind his banner no more than two weeks’ ride from here. I must suggest that executing his trade delegation out of hand might not be the most prudent course of action—”
Fourth Harmonic. Athens, Second year of Eponymous Archon Euipos (460 BCE).
“Esteemed Perikles, I have urgent news. The Spartans have learned of the Megaran treachery and will meet our expeditionary force with the full might of their army. I cannot recommend any further domestic military adventures. Rather, I believe that placating the Spartans with concessions will yield superior results in Attica while our attention is focused on Asia Minor and the Persians—”
Fifth Harmonic. Tenochtitlan, Year 1-Acatl (1519 CE).
“Great Moctezuma, I bring auguries from the temple of Huitzilopochtli. The portents are clear. These white persons come with evil intent, sent by the star demons to destroy us. The ocelotl and the cuauhtli must be summoned to fall upon the vile creatures in ambush. Under no circumstances must they be allowed to reach the capitol, for they bring with them a terrible plague—”
Sixth Harmonic. Washington, D.C., 1918 CE.
“Yes, Mr. President. I know the French are most importunate to extract reparations. And Lloyd George is as pompous and blind to the future as ever he was during the war itself. But the Germans have exhausted themselves. They have capitulated as a bankrupt state. They simply have no money left to spend, and anything we inflict on them in the form of obligations will cause extreme damage to their civilian population for generations to come—”
Final Harmonic. Time and location unknown.
I wasn’t sure where I was, or when, or who. My companion was beside me, but I couldn’t even remember his name, and I thought he was as confused as me. He put his hand on my shoulder, and I put my hand over his, and that simple contact helped calm us down. And then the grey man appeared before us.
“Finally,” he said. “Her power is spent at last. The time has come.”
The Bast Statuette was there, between us, and I readied myself to defend it, but my companion shook his head and stepped away from the iridium figure, so I went with him, ceding the prize to Atum’s shadow.
The grey man hastened forward as fast as his stumbling stride would allow. As we watched, he sank to his knees in front of the figurine. He threw his head back, and his mouth gaped open wide. A black shadowy serpent emerged from between his jaws, and it quickly writhed its way around the statuette, entwining it completely in its coils.
My companion took my hand. I looked in his eyes with a dawning realization and smiled back at him. Together we shifted—
—and from this vantage, the rearing serpent shadow seems to loom over you like the star-studded arch of the heavens itself, and she fades from your consciousness, a spent force, and yet you feel her satisfaction as the great golden road extends before you from the past to the future, infinite, indestructible, while the dark serpent rages above you, frustrated, and its head rears back to strike, cosmic poison dripping from its ruby fangs, and you know there’s nothing left to do here, so you descend once again with your companion beside you—
Timeline reinsertion: Qurnat as Sawda’, 1978 CE.
Georgi Jerjerian and Chloé Duquesne were making out in Georgi’s study on the second floor of his castle, her tongue in his mouth, his mustache tickling her nose. They broke their clinch after a breathless minute, and she looked over his shoulder and saw that strange, sexy statue he’d gotten from somewhere and—
I emerged from the depths of Chloé’s mind, and I could tell the operative who had once been Chloé in another timeline had just emerged as Jerjerian.
It all came rushing back, or most of it did, anyway. It was hard to be sure. Jamais vu was a regrettably common occupational hazard for time-travelers.
“Je pense que nous—” Georgi caught himself and switched to English, which neither of our hosts was fluent in. “I think, I think we should stop.”
I understood. If we integrated with our hosts as usual, we’d probably spend the next half hour screwing, and who knew if we had that long before— before what? I thought there was some urgent thing we had to take care of, but I couldn’t recall what it might be. I shrugged. Probably it would be best to see Lebanon’s new constitution safely signed with all parties satisfied with the results.
“Oh well,” I said. “A pity. This Chloé’s older, and she’s a more stable personality, too. It wasn’t Jerjerian who bought her from her parents, it was her swooping down on Georgi at a fashion show in Paris. He’s way less of a jerk and— whoa, they’re in love! There’s a bunch of diplomats downstairs waiting for them, but they couldn’t stand it anymore, they had to come up here and make out.”
“Ha,” said Georgi. “Hammarskjöld is probably wondering where the hell we wandered off to. I suppose we should probably oblige him with an appearance. But there’s no hurry, after all. We have all the time in the world. We can always come back for the statuette later on. Much later on, if you know what I mean….”
I smiled and took his hand and together we walked down to the reception. As we approached the ballroom, we passed two figures leaning against a wall in the corridor, almost as passionately engaged as Georgi and I had just been; it was Frank and the Soviet attaché. The attaché was facing the other way, but as we approached, Frank opened his eyes. There was a moment of recognition as our gazes met; I wondered if somehow he’d retained some meta-memory of our time together. It should have been impossible, but at this point I couldn’t rule anything out. At that moment the attaché noticed us too, and he started violently, flinching away as if he had something to be ashamed of.
“Don’t mind us,” I said. “Go on. Hit a home run.”
Extraction: Center for Temporal Research, 2116 CE.
I opened my eyes to see the technician smiling down at me.
“There,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you it would be just fine?”
And then the expression on his face changed subtly, and he bent over and kissed me, which I thought a bit forward, but not at all unwelcome. A moment into the kiss, a cascade of meta-memories slammed into my forebrain, and I remembered everything. Well. Perhaps not everything. Most of the weird stuff was already fading, like a dream shredding itself upon waking. I knew things hadn’t gone as planned, that I’d met another operative and—
When our lips parted, I said, “Chloé? Is that you?”
“One and the same,” he said. “Carlos, now. Thought I’d follow you home. Just so you know, Carlos here was planning to ask you out on a date. So that’s cool.”
“Oh.”
He checked a display. “And hey, looks like you— we, I mean, looks like we successfully acquired the statuette, too. Mission accomplished! Though I suppose she isn’t in it anymore. Just a chunk of iridium, now.”
“She? Who’s she?”
Carlos frowned. “She? Did I say that? I feel like it meant something when I said it. But now— I don’t know.”
I sat up, removed the launch helm. “Well, I’m not going to put it in my report, anyway. Good thing it all worked out.”
“Yeah. Good thing.” He still looked troubled. I reached out and tapped him on the nose and he smiled.
“About that date,” I said. “I know a great Lebanese place in town. How does shawarma sound?”
“Like heaven,” he said.
 |
Laurence Raphael Brothers is a writer and a technologist with five patents and a background in AI and Internet R&D. He has published over 50 short stories; many of them are linked for free reading from his website. His noir urban fantasy novellas The Demons of Wall Street, The Demons of the Square Mile, and The Demons of Chiyoda are available from Mirror World Publishing, while his new standalone novel The World’s Shattered Shell has just been published by Water Dragon. Pronouns: he/him. |