So, I'm sitting splat in the middle of this pub, this thinly-disguised excuse for a fuck club, this neon haze-filled, hormone-ridden anomaly growing on the dark side of a space station stuck in a half-assed orbit around Saturn, and I'm thinking to myself: why the hell aren't I getting triple-bypass surgery? It's not that the place is that bad, mind you. Fuck clubs are magnets for the younger, more devastatingly beautiful generation—those who were borne from all the latest templates and who have absolutely no inhibitions when it comes to flaunting their pre-programmed glory for a room full of horny strangers. I could sit here for the rest of my life just getting by on the sheer quantity of bare female ass—but I'm old, you see, just past fifty, sitting bloated and drunk in my cheesy plastic overcoat (the XTC management has a thing for erotic costumes—call it a fetish). I must look like a pervert, a relic trying to fit in with the cool kids. Hell, I feel like a pervert, even though everyone here is supposedly nice and legal.
Ah, but all is not lost. There's a relatively good selection of potent, organic Earth-style alcoholic drinks being served regularly by this naked brunette with perky, handful-sized breasts and the firmest, most perfectly shaped rear you ever saw. She smiles at me as she unloads the latest in a barrage of beers, gins, and vodkas—my most recent paycheck now gone to hell—onto the small rounded piece of faux-wood which I've claimed as my table for the evening.
"Forget your costume at home?" she asks.
I flash her, revealing my naked puffy body for a brief moment before hastily covering up again. "I've improvised."
"It's going to take an entire evening to work all this off."
"Sorry, sweet thing. I got work tonight. Gotta keep my editor satisfied or else he goes supernova."
She kisses me on the forehead. I think her name is Elena, though it's been a while since I last spent the night with her. Almost a year since I've been out in this neck of the woods. But God, she's still as cute as I remember. I stroke her thigh briefly. Just the right amount of muscle, the right curves; she's got an athletic template—like most people these days—and it looks good on her, probably looks even better when she's in bed and careening towards an orgasm with all the spunk of an Olympian.
Elena Whatshername holds my gaze for a moment, waiting for me to change my mind. When I don't say anything, she cocks her head slightly to the left and puts on her pouty schoolgirl look. "Well, don't work too hard. I don't want to see anymore gray in that magnificent head of hair you've got there. I'm not seeing anyone tonight. Call my room later if you change your mind."
"Sure thing."
One last squeeze and she's gone, weaving her way between the two dozen other tables occupied by men far younger and far more attractive than I. They pinch and squeeze and politely ask for her room number; she's had all her shots, so there's nothing she can pick up besides a cheap one-night stand, maybe some extra credit. Most of these men—hell, most of these boys—however, wouldn't know how to treat a lady proper if she had instructions tattooed on her cunt…which is probably why Elena puts up with a 50-year-old bachelor like myself when she could just as easily be sucking down the juice from some young twenty-something with a freshly-charged credit card. I may be fat and bald, I may sometimes lose my breath during foreplay, but I know how to make an evening last. At least, that's the story I'm sticking to.
Hell, I'm going down the familiar road again. Pretty soon I'll be feeling sorry for myself in one of the nearby restroom stalls (I always sit close to the men's room—force of habit) as I hurl up my weight in booze and fast food.
Time to get down to business, I tell myself.
And business is, somewhere in the background, why I'm here tonight. With drink in hand, I shift in my chair and look out across the pit, above and beyond the neon-colored soap suds shrouding the ravers, dancing, touching, kissing, fucking. I look for that lone figure sitting at one of the personal tables near the rear wall of the club, where the view of Saturn is unobstructed. They said he'd be wearing an angel costume; one look at him and I believe he is an angel. Too out of place, too respectable looking. Young and yet somehow not naive, not here to relieve his hormones in any mouth or cunt that happens to pass his way. He's tall, lean, has a slightly overenthusiastic muscle build, and long blond hair tied in a tail. His costume is a jab at his own masculinity: boots, a pair of shimmering, skintight stockings that reach his thighs, and a pair of glittery wings attached to a long-sleeved, collared spandex athletic top that looks as if it shrank a dozen sizes in the wash. Chest, abdomen, butt, and crotch are all blatantly unobstructed. He may not be here for the skin, I think to myself, but he knows how to pimp himself regardless.
The last of my drinks is now a lingering memory at the back of my throat. I set my glass down and fumble in my pocket for the multi-unit I'd almost forgotten back at the hotel room. A quick tap of the wake key and my notes pop up onscreen, right where I left them:
I take another look at Chronos and I'm sure he could be the man I'm looking for. If not, the worst that could happen is I approach him, he thinks I'm hitting on him, and he clocks me one in the jaw. Fortunately, there's so much liquor in my bloodstream right now I probably wouldn't feel a thing until tomorrow anyway.
Tucking the multi-unit back into my coat pocket, I make my way around the pit, past perky waitresses and slick-skinned patrons, skirting the sea of sex, ascending the steep ramp that leads me to the private tables. Chronos is totally non-responsive as I take a seat beside him and clear my throat, trying not to notice that, in its relaxed state, even, his cock is several inches longer than mine. My ego assures me it must be a prosthetic, part of his costume.
A pause, a quick rehearsal of my lines, and then:
"What's the deal with JON?"
Chronos doesn't answer me directly, nor does he even turn his head in the slightest to acknowledge my presence. I'm either not worth the effort or else he's friggin' deaf. Somewhere amidst the low purr of the air filtration system, the background cacophony of drunken, carnal moans, wet skin slapping against wet skin, he decides to whisper a reply in a single, subtle note:
"You tell me."
Give this guy an Oscar; he memorized three words. "It's an acronym. The lead singer thinks he's a descendant of Jim Morrison. When once the band was coming up with its signature neo-retro sound, he was quoted as saying, ‘it's Jim or Nothing.' This led to the rhythm guitarist quitting and the name ‘JON' being adopted by the remaining members."
"Which is why everyone considers them a covers band now," says Chronos. "Even the original material is disregarded as repeat rock." He faces me now, and I can see that he's smiling; this amuses him somehow but he's playing along anyway for the fuck of it. His dark green eyes catch the light of the nearest viewport as if the solar system dances just for him. I have to admit I'm caught off-guard—but only for a second. Once I figure out how to breathe again, I realize Chronos has just got exotic looks, a damned good template, nothing more, and he knows how to make his facial features radiate charm, charisma, power. If I'd been born a woman, I'm sure I'd have half his cock jammed down my throat right about now. If I'd been born a woman.
Another disgruntled man-child, I hear myself thinking as I continue checking out his face for even the slightest wrinkle. Probably just turned twenty-one…shit, he looks more like an out-of-work fashion model than a notorious time chaser. Any hope of a real story quickly dissolves, and I realize I'm going to have to shovel horse shit to make my deadline.
I offer my hand. "Name's Demis. I'm from SkyOne."
Chronos shakes my hand and chuckles. "One of the big boys, huh?"
"I've done fairly well for myself." I trail off, waiting for him to offer me some insight. Instead, he merely studies me, leaning his arm on the table and waiting patiently. I find myself falling into his gaze again, so I turn away briefly and clear my throat as I pull out my multi-unit. "Word has it that you go by the name Chronos."
He nods, still smiling slightly.
I think I'm getting a nervous twitch around my right eye. "Okay. The Chronos, as in Chronos: the Time Patrol's Most Wanted Chaser?"
"Really, now? Is that my reputation?"
"I would think that if you're really who you say you are, you'd have paid attention to a newscast or two." A sigh escapes my lips. The kid's probably drunk, though his table is occupied by a single glass containing—I find out when I blatantly take a whiff—ice water.
I wait.
So does he.
I clear my throat again and gaze over my shoulder. I could use Elena and another drink right about now. "I'm just supposed to believe that you're Chronos, then?"
"You believe whatever you want to believe."
"Granted, you fit the description. But no one's ever really seen Chronos. It's all urban legend. They all say you're tall, blond, you've got this stare so that you just know you're you—but then again, anyone with good enough looks and enough free time on their hands can mold themselves to match that description. The fashion industry would be long dead otherwise."
Chronos takes my skepticism in stride. "There should be questions, right?"
"Yeah," I reply, scanning my notes. "Questions that only you would know the answer to, since you're not from this stream and therefore don't exist. No one else can know them unless they'd traveled to your birth stream. But then again, if you have enough money and you can make the right connections…I know a guy who knew a guy who did just that to avoid paying back taxes on his estate." I pause just long enough to take another glance at Chronos, who folds his hands on the table and holds me in his gaze. There's something there behind those eyes, something large and deep…something I've never seen before, period. If this guy is a scammer, he's the best in the business. If he's an actor…well, I've already given him an Oscar, haven't I?
"You're human, I assume?" I murmur, looking away again and pretending to be busy jotting down notes.
"Sure thing."
"Born where?"
"San Francisco, California. Earth."
"When?"
"November 10, 2279."
I put my multi-unit down. "2279?"
"Yes."
"That makes you nearly three-hundred years old."
"Lucky me."
There's just a little sarcasm in my voice as I laugh and say, "You bear it well."
"It's hard to get past my appearance, I know—"
"What's hard to get past? You're telling me I'm supposed to believe you're a day over nineteen—twenty at the most—when I don't think you've even started shaving yet—"
Chronos cuts me off: "You're thinking in terms of old style age. Wrinkles, sagging skin—you're only old if you're old. I don't look old enough so I'm full of shit, right? And you, a middle-aged tabloid reporter, having to come out here on a limb because you haven't had a really hot story in too long, your editor thinks it's time to put you out to pasture unless maybe, maybe you can come up with an exclusive that nobody's been able to get in almost three centuries. An exclusive that only Demis Matheson could possibly get. So you follow a lead or two, a friend of a friend of a friend drops the hint that he can get you an interview with Chronos, the human sector's only time chaser to have jumped multiple streams without being caught by the feds…you come here to meet me in person, and when you do, you suddenly want to call it a night simply because I don't look the part. Sounds like an awful waste of time, doesn't it? For the both of us."
I feel myself get all tense inside. Chronos has touched upon most of the major points of my life (the most recent stuff, anyway). Still, I'm not inclined to believe he's anything more than a well-researched pain in the ass. Not unless he offers some proof. "Have you been talking to Ben? Did he put you up to this? A joke, right?"
"Do you want the story or not?"
I'm starting to wonder if he gets the point. "It depends on what kind of story. We can sit here bullshitting all night, but where's it going to lead us? I need proof. I need a goddamned story."
Chronos nods, his smile returning. He turns and faces me fully now. "Sure thing, but we're going to have to make a little pact, okay?"
"A pact?"
"Yes. I prove my identity, and no matter what happens, you stick around for a while as my, um, publicist."
"Prove to me that you're really Chronos and I will write a fucking novel about you with all the proceeds going to your favorite chaser cult." I'm half serious, thinking to myself that if the man sitting before me really is Chronos, I'll probably have to paddle to the restroom there'll be so much piss in my pants.
"Do I have your word?"
"Yeah, sure. What do you have in mind?"
Chronos slides his chair back now, stands up. "Let's…step outside for some fresh air."
I blink, uncomprehending. "We're on a space station."
"So?"
Chronos walks up to one of the viewports, leaving me hanging in the process. I don't understand what the hell he intends, and he's not making any attempt to explain.
I get up after a moment and move to his side. "Well?" I ask, my patience wearing dangerously thin.
"Do you get space sick?"
"Not typically."
"Good. Hold on."
I'm about to say something else when suddenly Chronos links my arm in his and lunges at the viewport—no, through the viewport. For a sickening moment I feel myself being knocked into the vacuum of space—and then, half a heartbeat later, my body, my senses—everything around me dissolves into nothing. Without eyes I can't see; without ears I can't hear; without skin I can't feel what's happening…but somehow I can still think. I can still worry about why the fuck I'm a disembodied galactic burp. There's a moment of frantic scrambling (pretty hard to describe when you have no senses to go by) before I feel Chronos' presence somewhere nearby. He's pulling at me; I can feel his mind embracing my own. He's communicating with me:
Settle down. The Guard will mistake you for a comet if you keep this up. Now, where do you want to go?
Anywhere but here, I think. I try to yell a profanity in his general direction, but that proves useless as my vocal cords are now a fragment of my imagination.
Back in your body, huh? Why not relax out here for a while? We can take as much time as we want, and when we're finished, we can return to any stream we choose at any moment we choose. That's right. You and I are on the other side, so to speak. Out of the loop. Purveyors of nonexistence. Still not thrilled? Okay, then. I know a place.
You feel like you're falling at the speed of light, imploding, being packed down into an impossibly small space as your body re-materializes in the physical world. I have to admit that I'm taking it like a bitch and screaming bloody murder as I fall head-first into a soft hardness—sand, I realize after a moment's confusion. It's kind of hard to sort it all out because my senses are turned up full, amplified a thousand times so that every breath of the wind, every grain of sand clinging to my skin, every subdued sound filling my ears is like a sharpened knife point. The logical half of my brain is telling me to calm down, open my eyes and see what's what. I'll find more answers that way than if I merely lie in a heap on the ground and whine like an infant.
I push myself onto all fours—and I puke my guts out. Five minutes of this and I can finally open my eyes. I see Chronos squatting nearby, his costume gone, the wind tousling his now unbridled hair and giving him the appearance of some dangerously calm animal out on the prowl. We're planetside, on a beach, apparently. As I wipe my chin with the back of my hand, I manage to get to my knees and look up into the night sky where several artificial satellites orbit, providing a pale bluish light to make up for the missing moon. Closer to home, there's the glowing nightclub strip; in the background, the sound of waves washing ashore.
"Earth…how the fuck…" It's almost too much to believe, but here I am. Nearly a billion miles from where I should be according to all laws of physics. I start to stand up, to ask Chronos how the hell this can be possible, but I realize when I feel the breeze on my cock that I'm as nude as he is.
My plastic raincoat has failed to make the transition.
Something like "goddammit" escapes my lips and I fall back into a sitting position, covering myself with my hands and glaring at Chronos. The dizzying vertigo is rapidly giving way to angered embarrassment, as there are other people out on the beach, some of whom are looking in my direction and no doubt wondering what my fucking problem is.
Chronos' shame is nonexistent. He looks as if he's never been more at ease. "Don't worry. This is a nude beach. Comes in handy when you need to come and go in the buff. No questions asked."
My thoughts are racing. There's no longer any doubt in my mind: Chronos is the real thing. Or else I'm really, really plastered. In either case, I have to deal with it.
Chronos grins, reaches down and grabs a handful of sand, which he lets sift through his fingers as he speaks. "You wanted proof. Actual facts to back my story. I'm giving it to you. A front-row seat, if you will."
"Story?" I whisper loudly. "This isn't a story—it's a fucking phenomenon! I mean…we just set a universal record for the lightest trip across the solar system! Holy shit, I don't even know where to begin!"
"At the beginning, naturally. This is just an example, your proof. A little demonstration of time and motion, which are synonymous."
"What are you saying?"
Standing, Chronos offers me his hand. "I'm saying that you and I just took a nice little trip through time. Now, I want you to go home—or try to at least, 'cause you'll probably find out real soon that Demis Matheson doesn't exist anymore. At least, not in this stream or any other stream governed by the Patrol."
I get to my feet, though I'm remaining slightly hunched in a feeble attempt to hide my noticeable potbelly and graying pubic hair. "We've streamed? Are you serious?" Stupid question. I could see it in Chronos' expression: of course he was serious.
"See, time streaming, it's not just one straight line," continues Chronos as he takes a few steps and then stops, lifting his foot into the air and letting the sand slip between his toes. "It's something else entirely…and I want you to help me make this common knowledge."
"Okay, but…I mean…how…" God, I'm babbling, prickling from head to toe. "My things are all gone, my clothes, my notes, my ID card. Shouldn't you whisk us back to XTC or something?"
Chronos folds his arms. "There's no reason to go back to the station right now. Here's where you need to be. Right now. You." He points at me. "That's all you need to get the story right. When we're through, I'm sure you'll remember more than a thing or two. Now, go home like I said. When you've seen the truth, come back here. I'll be waiting." With that he turns away and starts towards the water. After a few steps he stops and turns back to face me. "Oh, and by the way, if you're thinking of reporting our little trip to the Patrol…don't. You'll only make yourself look like a basket case, and you'll sure as hell miss out on a cool story."
His instructions are clear, but even still, I stumble after him like a boy after his departing father. "Wait—where the fuck are you going?"
"For a swim."
"But—you can't just leave me here! What about my clothes? My things? Chronos!"
Momentarily, I quiet down as I notice a young couple glaring at me from where they sit together on the beach. I ignore them, though, and watch in disbelief as Chronos wades into the pitch-black water, finally diving in when it's deep enough. After a moment he's gone from sight. The only indication of his presence is the occasional appearance of a sleek, muscular body as it slices through the water like a dolphin.
I can't very well go in after him, so I take his advice and head back up the beach, eventually stumbling onto a paved sidewalk that leads to a small community area. There's a dimly-lit public restroom at one end, with a telephone booth built into its side. I make my way there hastily, shutting myself inside the booth and punching in the code for a collect call. Ben's number comes to mind, since he was the one who gave me the lead concerning Chronos in the first place. Fucking better be there. (How the hell am I going to explain this one?)
"Hello?"
"Holy shit, Ben! It's good to hear your voice!"
"Who is this?"
"It's Demis. Look, I don't have time to explain right now. I'm sorry for waking you up—just come down and pick me up. I'm at—fuck, where the hell am I? It looks like Newport Beach. I'm near a restroom, across the street from a nightclub called The Horizon—"
"Sir, I think you have the wrong number. I don't know anyone named Demis."
"What? No, Ben—it's me, Demis! Goddammit, get the wax out of your ears!"
"Hey, it's going on midnight. I don't need this—fuck off, pal."
The connection terminates unceremoniously, leaving me quite alone to fend for myself. A small part of me insists that this is a joke, friends fucking with friends for the hell of it. So I call three other people; two of them accept my call, and you know what? They don't have the slightest clue who I am. I hang up and lean against the inside of the booth and try to puzzle it all out until someone knocks on the glass and asks to use the phone. I take my leave and head for cover under a tree, where I gaze up and down the street and seriously consider trying to make my way home.
I'm back on the beach before I can finish the thought.
Chronos is there, waiting for me just like he said. He's sharing a towel with some college girl, laying on his side and chatting jovially with her. She's looking at him (or should I say she's looking at parts of him?) like she wants to do more than just chat, and, in fact, reaches out at one point to grasp his penis.
That's when I butt in.
The girl looks disappointed; Chronos merely glances up at me and then gets to his feet.
"Sorry, I have to go," he tells his female companion as he helps her up.
"So soon?" she murmurs, brushing sand from her butt and giving me a look.
"Afraid so."
"Can I kiss you goodnight?"
Chronos nods—but instead of kissing him on the mouth, the girl crouches and plants one on the tip of his semi-erect cock. Then, grabbing her towel, she straightens, gives me another dirty look, and jogs off.
I walk with Chronos a ways until we're relatively out of earshot of the nighttime nudies.
Then I start gushing:
"I'm convinced. You're the real thing. Joke or not, nobody else could do something like this and be so damned cool about it. And then there's the instantaneous space travel thing—but I have a million questions, but I don't know where to start. You suggested the beginning, so…" I set myself on the sand and gesture for Chronos to do the same. "…let's start at the beginning. Tell me how all this shit works. Tell me how you've gone from point A to point B and everything in between. Christ, man, tell me what the hell is going on."
Chronos joins me on the sand.
Hence, we begin.
I began as Storm Anderson.
Born in San Francisco at the height of the overly-indulgent body template fad, I was to be a vigorous blending of my parents' favorite runway models and sports stars. Prominent muscle build, efficient metabolism, well-balanced facial features, impeccable coordination, dick several sizes larger than the norm—they paid a pretty penny to have me cooked up into a delectable portrait of vanity. And it wasn't just the genetic template, but everything else that goes along with being the perfect child. I was a veteran model by the time I hit the fourth grade; I was a seasoned dancer, a solid gymnast, a world-class athlete performing around the globe by the time I was thirteen, and when it came time to get my first car, well, let's just say I didn't need to haggle the price down on the showroom floor.
I hated every minute of it.
Between school, practice, and photo shoots, I had about five minutes a day to do what I wanted. My first time with a girl was in the janitor's closet at a modeling agency—five minutes to learn how to become a man before we were discovered, quickly scolded, and rushed off to our respective shoots. One day, when my dad caught me playing hooky from gym, he cleared out my room—toys, books, video games, medals, trophies, and certificates—and left only a mattress for me to sleep on. If ever I had an afternoon free to bum around the mall with the guys, my mom would call me an hour in with news that they needed a boy with my body type down at the studio.
By seventeen, I'd had enough. I demanded a seat in a public school. I showed up at the studio or in the gym when it suited me. I started going to parties, meeting girls; I never really got into the drug scene, but I was always on the fringes, always ready to slip over the edge. My parents reminded me that I was young, extraordinarily beautiful, and genetically predisposed to dominate any arena of my choice. I ignored them and did the bare minimum required to graduate. The day I turned eighteen, I moved out of my parents' place, stayed with a girl I'd met through the modeling agency. I let my parents keep all the money—I needed to do for myself, me and my girl, the two of us working, saving up for a place of our own.
But the real change came a year later. A year out of my parents' place, a year away from all the glitz and glamor my template had afforded me, I switched from office clerk to computer grunt at a local time joint called Timewise.
I remember the day that started me on my journey towards becoming a chaser: I was standing inside streaming booth number 32 and admiring the handiwork of a time-sick customer who'd only moments ago taken it upon himself to vomit all over the helm, as well as a formidable portion of the booth itself.
What a fucking mess, I thought. Bits of undigested lunch meat and what appeared to be rice were smeared over the controls like a grotesque marinade. And I got to clean it up.
I pulled a pair of gloves from my coveralls and got to work, cursing my luck. It was to be expected, though. Timewise was a small venue, an upstart in the streaming business. Bad management had brought about routine downsizing, resulting in the remaining pool of employees "consolidating their efforts." Simply put: I held a mop and bucket about as often as I held a multi-unit.
Ten minutes of diligent work and the booth smelled presentable again. I knelt before the helm and popped off the access panel to the data bay. A quick scan of the system revealed that an upgrade was in order. I whipped out my multi-unit and punched in a request for the then-current time codes. Thankfully they'd been transferred to Timewise's servers already. The company may have been ailing as far as management was concerned, but at least they kept up with the current codes, which allowed them to offer the most up-to-date, secured streams—even though that was probably only because the technology was government-regulated—without me having to fetch them from the official servers first. Get too out of date and you're shut down because you become a security risk for cyber hackers or time chasers to exploit. (Which was, I'm pretty sure, Timewise's eventual downfall, though I haven't been in that part of town for ages, so I can't confirm.)
Anyway, I was doing my job, watching the megabytes flow, when my co-worker and friend, Jason Dang, barged into the booth.
"Anderson! Get a move on! Some fat kid wants to re-live his first buffet!"
I glanced over my shoulder; Jason—tall, sporty, Asian—stood grinning in the doorway. He held a broken power coil in his hands, which he hefted like a football. "You know," I said, "I started streaming when I was eight years old and I never spilled my guts like this." I followed Jason out of the booth, disposed of my soiled gloves in a nearby recycle unit.
Jason shrugged. "Then again, you probably never inhaled a whole sub sandwich five minutes before you sat in the chair."
I sighed. "Life is great. Fat old guys trying to cling to their college days or zit-faced teenagers wanting to re-live their first and only fuck for the hundredth time in a row—that's all I see everyday."
"Yeah, well…you and I both make decent money doing this crap. Nothing to blow our noses with, but it's keeping you and Trudie in that posh penthouse of yours, right?"
I laughed, nodded.
"So, shut up—it's quittin' time in an hour."
Jason and I entered the main lobby of the cafe. The interior of the place was a tacky remake of ancient Egypt meets the modern era. You had plastic pharaohs and hieroglyphs on the walls; streaming booths were speckled at regular intervals around a central dining area, which was comprised of a dozen circular tables. Faint easy listening music wafted in between sounds of idle conversation, plates clinking, and curtains swishing as customers went about their business.
We were halfway across the lobby when there came a sudden change in the overall mood of the place—people's attention became disjointed, voices scattered, hushed, faded beneath a louder argument taking place at Timewise's service desk.
"Aw, crap," Jason muttered, grabbing my arm and halting me in my tracks. "Another one of them."
I scanned the lobby, spotted a pale, twenty-something woman holding one of the cashiers at gunpoint near the front desk. The woman looked anorexic, was skinned in black spandex and chains—the latest cyber-grunge garb—and wore a prominent tattoo on her forehead that marked her as a member of some sort of anti-conformist group.
In this case, a time chaser.
Curiosity got the better of me. I left Jason's side and pushed forward through the crowd to get a better view of the scene. Now that everyone had taken notice of what was going on, the time chaser's nervous demeanor increased tenfold. She was obviously inexperienced, and evidently coming off some sort of heavy psychotropic high—a common symptom among those who abused the streams. Namely wannabe chasers, those who go for the pure euphoria rather than for the principle of freedom. These kinds of people can be dangerous when they don't keep their thoughts in order—and this chick looked about as out of order as you can get.
"Everyone stay where you are!" she shouted, her hands starting to shake slightly. She nevertheless kept her gun pressed relatively firmly against the cashier's temple. "Don't move! Just…just everyone on the floor! Now!"
Several of the customers uttered frightened gasps; I merely sighed and slowly lowered myself onto the floor like everyone else. You see, every so often these sorts of people would come waltzing into the cafe demanding to be given access to the latest time codes in the hopes that there was some secret way, some bit of encoded data that would allow access to alternate-running time streams—even though that's legally impossible, because as you know, commercial streaming only allows you to jump backwards in your own birth stream. And besides the point, the codes are so heavily encoded it would take a crypto-genius ten years to figure things out, and by then, the encryption would have been routinely changed dozens of times so that such attempts at breaking the codes would have proved worthless. Even the supposed techie guys like me never actually saw the codes. We only maintained the equipment they ran on. The technology's inner workings remains propriety. Miss Time Chaser either didn't know that, or was naive enough to believe she could actually succeed where countless others had failed.
She had the cashier secure the main entrance.
"The codes," she said, pulling a data card from her knapsack. She shoved it into the cashier's quivering hand. "I want everything you got…now!"
The cashier—a leonine female—was new (as well as young). As such, she didn't have her full growth on her yet. The result was a furry humanoid adult of comparative strength and size. "I-I…there are hundreds of terabytes—and the card has to be formatted, which could take twenty minutes…" She was stalling, of course. Trying to drag things out until the Time Patrol arrived.
The chaser looked slightly caught off-guard. Her right eye twitched involuntarily as she licked her lips. For a moment it looked as if she might just forget the whole idea and leave, but then she seemed to work things out in her head and she shoved the cashier forward. "Don't gimme any bullshit! Just…just start downloading!"
"I…there's a keycard," murmured the cashier. "I don't have the keycard."
As a security measure, no single person was in charge of the data vault. The keycard was attached to a dog tag which the wearer tucked down into his or her shirt and which was rotated at regular intervals—and at the moment it rested against my chest.
"Mother fucker," I breathed, for the first time feeling a bit endangered. I could feel the card pressing ominously against my skin.
The chaser experienced another brief epileptic episode before calling out across the lobby: "Well…fuck! Who has the keycard?!?"
Nobody moved. I bit his lip.
"You got five seconds!" The time chaser shouted. "Whoever has the keycard…you got five seconds to stand up or I blow this bitch's brains out! One! Two! Three—"
I swallowed hard and got to my feet, arms hanging at my sides, relaxed as possible, easy-bitch-don't-shoot.
The time chaser's eyes focused on me. "You…take…take me to the data vault. Go!"
There was a brief moment of eye contact between me and the frightened cashier, whose eyes said clearly, help me. Don't let me get killed so close to quitting time. I could only sigh and hope she didn't freak out before the feds arrived. I turned slowly and began walking towards the rear of the lobby. I remember passing a middle-aged man in a business suit, an overweight woman who was breathing heavily as if she were on the verge of fainting, a high school girl with her hand clasping a small crucifix attached to a bead necklace—all huddled on the floor, come to Timewise as customers and instead finding themselves prisoners. And they all had the same stare, that universal expectation: You've got the keycard, you've got control. Handle the situation.
When I reached the data vault door, I was surprised to find the time chaser (and her hostage) a mere three feet behind me. I figured she'd want to stay near the entrance—she seemed to realize the inefficient position she'd put herself in, and glanced anxiously back and forth between the lobby area and the vault as she tried to keep track of two situations at once. I was tempted to lunge at her when she wasn't looking; I definitely had the advantage as far as height and body mass were concerned—it was just wondering how loose my captor's trigger finger was that kept me minding my manners.
"Get busy," the time chaser said with a nod at the door.
I unzipped my coveralls and pulled out the keycard. I inserted it into the reader.
"Voice authorization required," came the security system's androgynous drone.
"Anderson, Storm. System maintenance administrator," I answered.
There was a brief pause as the computer did its thing, matching my voice with the recorded audio print. And then, "Access granted."
The door clicked and swished open, revealing the two dozen softly humming server racks that made up Timewise's data vault. The time chaser handed me the blank data card and reminded me again to start downloading immediately. Meanwhile, she kept her stance at the edge of the lobby.
"Just keep still, everybody!" she shouted. "Just…keep on the floor and nobody will get hurt!"
I went to the nearest terminal and began the process of formatting the data card. As I worked, I found myself routinely checking my captor's moves and imagining myself in her place. How would I handle the situation if I desperately thought I needed to steal Timewise's codes? There were more efficient ways to do this, most of them involving hacking in from the outside, over a fiber-optics line—it would have at least negated the risk of having to put a laser through someone's head.
"You got a name?" I asked, trying to sound mellow as I slowly seated myself on the floor beside the server. I admit it was a mustered calm; I looked far more at ease than I really was.
The time chaser flinched. Or maybe it was a glare. "Hey…hey. I didn't tell you to sit down, fucker."
I spread my hands. "It's going to be a while. I've been on my feet all day. You should probably sit down too." I looked up at my captor and wished I could see myself through her eyes. Firm? Persuasive? Handling the situation or silently pleading for my life? There was no way to know what my body language betrayed (although I suppose if I really wanted to, I could hop on back during my next stream…just to see).
A moment of silence passed. I looked away, checked the server's progress.
"Jennie."
I looked up again. My captor was looking at me, her head twitching slightly, her eyes fixed on mine—and for a moment I felt a pang of emotion I couldn't describe.
Such need…such desperation.
"What?" I asked, blinking, the feeling vexing.
"My name…it's Jennie."
"Oh." I swallowed. Suddenly I felt as if I were the captor and she the captured. It made no sense…but somehow I'd gained some sort of advantage. "I'm Storm."
"Storm…" Jennie echoed.
There was something almost mesmerizing about the way she was looking at me. Overwhelmingly sad, a deep remorse, a wish, a hope—something deep. Burning. I had to look away.
She wouldn't let me though. Her gaze held mine as if it were something tangible. There was passion behind the rail-thin facade, power in the lean countenance.
"I wish you could know…" she said. "I wish you could see…what I've seen…you don't understand now, but…you can't know what it's like. To truly be free, to be alive…"
I didn't know. My childhood had been spent at the whim of my parents; my adolescence had delivered me into frustrated youth. All I knew was what I was told to do, on the dance floor, on the podium, in front of the camera. At this moment, with Jennie holding me hostage, I felt for the first time the source of my own unmaking. The room seemed to melt away, leaving only Jennie's face in slow-motion as a dot of red light suddenly appeared on her right cheek, traveled up towards her forehead…
"…unless you break free. It's not just one way. It's not just backwards or forwards along some fixed birth-to-death fate. It's every direction at once, exploding…from the center. Everything at once, Storm…and they don't want us to know…"
The sight was now fixed on Jennie's forehead. One last movement of her lips:
"…the truth—"
—and suddenly I snapped out of my trance. A quick, searing noise ripped through the air, and Jennie's head erupted in a geyser of blood, her body stumbling forward, the cashier screaming as four men clad in heavily-padded bodysuits and armed with laser rifles swarmed into the space between the lobby and the data vault.
The Time Patrol had arrived.
I was supposed to pop naked out of a cake. The whole thing had been planned as a surprise for Trudie's twenty-first birthday, it had been her half-serious wish for years—but instead I arrived home four hours late with blood on my clothes and death on my mind.
"What happened to you?" Trudie asked as she let me in. She was half asleep, her hair mussed, her oversized T-shirt rumpled.
I went straight for the love seat at the foot of the bed.
"There was a holdup today," I murmured, leaning back and unzipping the upper portion of my coveralls. I closed my eyes.
"Oh my God," Trudie breathed, pulling random wisps of hair from her face as she came to me. "Are you okay? What happened?"
I sighed, shrugged. "They blew her head off."
"Shit."
"Some time chaser chick. Cops said they'd been on her heels for a while. Dunno what she did, but whatever it was, they took care of it in front of twenty-six customers."
Both of us fell silent for a moment, Trudie leaning against me and gently running her hands along the top of my head (I had a buzz cut back then). We all know public displays of the Patrol's power are somewhat routine, but it's never easy having to watch that power being enacted. It reminds you how delicate the whole time streaming concept is, and how dangerous it can be if you don't play by the rules. Chasers get little sympathy from the rest of their respective societies because they supposedly risk the healthy continuum of the universe for the sake of addiction. Addiction to the rush of jumping from time to time, no boundaries chaining you to your God-given birthstream. Some say it feels like flying through outer space—only your body is your starship. Others liken it to having a decade's worth of orgasms crammed into a blissful singularity (How was it for you, Demis? Ah…sorry to hear that. First times can be rough.)
Eventually I broke the silence with a forced smile. "Happy birthday," I told Trudie.
"Inverted romantic," Trudie replied, tapping her finger against my chest and leaning in close for a kiss. She called me that whenever I shifted moods suddenly. It was her way of letting me know she was interested in helping me deal with my turmoil—by changing the subject. I returned her kisses, felt under her T-shirt, found she wasn't wearing any underwear. I wasn't in the mood for a fuck, but it would take my mind off the Timewise incident. Something life-affirming.
"You know," I whispered into her ear as I helped her pull off her shirt. "There was supposed to be a cake."
Trudie was tugging at my coveralls now, brushing her lips over my abs as she helped me undress. "I know…Jason told me last week."
Fucking Jason. "Figures. I hope you're not too disappointed."
"You can make it up to me."
Already the incident at Timewise was forgotten. At least, in Trudie's mind. It was enough for me, though. I stood, cupped her buttocks with my hands, and led her towards the bathroom. It was cramped, but there was just enough room in the shower stall for two.
"High steam," Trudie instructed as she nibbled at my chest. As I complied, punching in the temperature preset, she slid down onto her knees.
"Hey," I said as she started stroking me. "This is supposed to be your birthday."
"Oh, quiet," she replied, and took me into her mouth.
I fell silent, leaned against the wall of the stall and closed my eyes. It was our way. Trudie was my friend, a fellow ex-fashion model riding on the raw sex appeal of her template—but that was all. No heart to heart, no spiritual connection…only casual support, physical attention, partly because that was who were were, and partly because that was who we were programmed to be. There was no need to attempt conversation, for the scope of her empathy was limited to what she could see or feel. If her partner looked sad, she had sex with him to cheer him up. If he looked happy, she had sex with him to keep him happy. For a while, since that first time in the janitor's closet, it had been all I wanted in a woman—all I knew how to want (again, we come back to the underlying influence a tweaked template has on one's thoughts and emotions; my fashion model's genes drove me to seek out beauty, to put flesh before soul). Not always, though.
Not tonight.
Trudie's relentless tongue caused me to tremble. Not to brag, but I'm pretty big when fully erect—my father's inability, no doubt, to resist from passing along his exaggerated notion of male pride when he was taking his turn with my template. Consequently, any of the women I've ever been with have had to learn quickly: Don't try to jam it down your throat. Trudie knew this, and so combined her oral and manual techniques in a way that was usually sublime. On this night, however, I looked down to watch her performance, and I felt…wrong. All the right elements were there—her free hand tickling my thighs and belly, the water cascading down her slim, athletic body as she writhed in earnest, eager to spur me towards completion—I just wasn't feeling it. Not in any sort of meaningful way.
Efficient little machines, I thought. Both of us. All body and no mind. Typical blonds. We weren't dumb or ditsy; we were just young, horny, pretty to look at, divine to fuck. Trudie had probably loved me, in some shallow way. "He's my boyfriend," she would say with pride when friends were around. Like it was just a game. Mr. Tall, Blond, and Handsome…I often wondered if she knew that sometimes the only thing keeping me around was the simple comfort of having a warm body pressed against my own on a sleepless night. She could have been anyone, so long as she was there. I know it sounds bad, but that's what Jennie unlocked in me those few brief moments in Timewise's data vault.
An imminent rush in my groin brought me back to the shower. Muscles clenching, head thrown back, I reached my climax with an unexpected image of Jennie in the darkness behind my eyelids. Trudie mumbled something from between my legs, started humming deep in her throat—a trick I usually relished—but now it only served to sharpen the alienating image wavering inside my head.
"Stop," I moaned abruptly, grabbing Trudie's head, pushing her mouth away. She looked up at me curiously, my fluids running down her chin.
"What?" she murmured, swallowing, wiping.
"Nothing," I told her. The counterfeit smile was back on my lips as I grasped her under the arms, helped her stand. "Let's just finish up here and get to bed so I can give you your backup present."
My mind was a million miles away, but you know how it is once your woman takes you to bed, buries your face in her snatch. Trudie was already slick and swollen—it was good eating.
Too much detail, you say? Ah, well, the small details tend to stand the test of time—and I suppose I do have a fascination with carnal sport, both of us models, athletes, overflowing with youth; she was utterly ignorant, and I was totally alienated. Feeling one way, acting another, saying things that had nothing to do with anything.
I lay awake in bed long after Trudie, satisfied by my return performance, had fallen asleep. With considerable envy I studied her naked form, serene and still (save for the steady motion of her shoulders as she breathed), illuminated slightly by the night light strip that ran along the edges of the bed. I've never been able to fall asleep like that. She'd kissed me goodnight, stretched, and rolled onto her front.
That had been that.
The Net was of little assistance. Most of the video feeds were sitcom reruns. There was a political talk show on SkyOne, though. Something to do with the Time Patrol—so of course I shifted onto my back and adjusted the volume on my visor.
"…in light of the recent attack on the UniGuard facility, the Time Patrol has found itself the subject of increasing pressure from intergalactic governments who believe it is time—no pun intended—to change the way streaming codes are handled across the board. Tighter security is a nonplus. Many believe the Patrol should be decentralized. And of course there is the school of thought that the technology itself should be withdrawn from the public, restricted to government use only.
"Here to offer his insights into the Patrol, where it stands now, and what's in store for the consortium's future, we have Foreman Daniel Ketch with us in the studio. Good morning, Foreman."
"Good morning."
"Now then: The recent attacks have certainly served as a reminder of just how delicate an operation it is to maintain and protect the space-time continuum. With this and the numerous other attacks or thefts involving time codes seeming to be on an increase, is the public's concern warranted?"
"Well, it's certainly a delicate operation. The very nature of time, and the technology that allows us to stream into the past…we're talking physics. We're talking energy. The physical foundations of our universe—there is always going to be access to the technology no matter how many officers we put out in the field. Should the public be concerned? Yes, of course. Should they be worried? I don't think so. We're in a unique position today, as there have never been so many varied forms of government working together to reach a common goal. The human sector, the Geckos, the amphids, the leonines, sylphids, dualmans—so many societies have come together to cooperate with one another in making sure our universe's time streams are kept in working order. That cooperation has allowed for faster response times, more effective security measures between transportation ports…as hard to believe as it may be, streaming actually becomes safer and more secure with each passing day."
"You mentioned the various forms of governments, humans and non-human, working together to establish a universal police force—if I'm correct?"
"Yes."
"This law-enforcement body, the Time Patrol…it's come to many skeptics' attention that while the supporting members of the Patrol are comprised of various intergalactic species, the central Patrol coordination sector—directed by yourself—is made up entirely of human employees. So if you live, say, outside the solar system where humans aren't the dominant species, you get a strong notion of ‘The humans dominate the Patrol, the humans dominate the time codes.'"
"Interesting choice of words. You have to remember that there will always be someone who isn't happy with the way the government is run. You can't please everyone, though it is a priority to strike a balance between opposing opinions. There's no perfect candidate to be elected into office. Allow me to put it like this: Streaming technology was largely developed by human scientists, engineers, physicists—and at a time when the Outer Wars were at the forefront of many alien societies' political and financial agendas. We streamlined the technology. Subsequently, it became appropriate that the human sector be responsible for itself. Hence the Time Patrol was founded. I think it is as simple as that."
"I'm sure, Foreman, that the general public understands the why of the Time Patrol…what I think is being questioned is the Patrol's system of checks and balances. In essence, ‘Who polices the police?'"
"Well, naturally, the human government is the regulatory body here. That of course means that we are governed by the same rules and regulations that, say, govern Earth's CIA. As easy as it might be to believe in a police agency that is allowed to wander freely throughout the universe, it just doesn't exist. We are here to serve the people."
"I'm going to shift modes. The Brotherhood of the Gecko Tree. Many of the intelligent reptilian groups feel their species is being unfairly persecuted in the hunt for genuine time chasers on their homeworld. I quote the Prime Minister of the Gecko homeworld as saying ‘The humans seek to stronghold the central forces that govern the universe. They seek to become the gods of time through persecution of any species that is not their own or that does not conform to their policies.'"
"The Geckos merely represent a statistic—nothing more. The Patrol seeks to curve any criminal activity that might affect the flow of time. It is our belief that every species in the universe should be allowed to live out its natural life cycle untainted by the notions of one man."
"So…then, let's say someone—either a citizen of Earth or the Earth Colonies—breaks time law and manages to escape into the Outer Worlds, or, say, a neighboring galaxy even…how does the Patrol deal with criminals who aren't within the human sector?"
"Well, among other things, the human government has negotiated extensively with alien governments in multiple galaxies. The key is to have a standardized system of communication between police forces, especially at crucial wormhole access points…"
Politics. I clicked off my visor and placed it back in its cubby, which retracted into the headboard with a soft hiss. Rather than ease my thoughts, or perhaps offer some enlightenment, the SkyOne broadcast had simply stirred me up more so. It seemed like all the news focused on in those days was the evident time streaming craze and how it was supposed to make or break the human sector's ties with anyone on the outside. I suppose I wanted to know why it was so important that every intelligent species in the universe be fighting over stream access. Besides the perk of merely possessing something someone else doesn't.
Shifting on the bed, turning away from Trudie's sleeping form, I recalled Jennie's eyes. I thought of how deep they had led into a hunger so alien and yet so familiar. Something inside me, something that had been with me for my whole life, perhaps. It was only now beginning to extrude itself.
Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night with the blood rushing in my ears. I would sit up, feel my heart hammering in my chest, hear my breath coming in gasps. I would look around the room for a few seconds and wonder where the hell I was, wonder who the hell I was. If Trudie was there with me, I would wonder who she was as well, and I would feel…alone. Like an alien must feel, suddenly transplanted from across the galaxy and into a new world with no friends or family. I might be able to speak the native language here on Earth, but there's sometimes no connection, no point of reference otherwise.
On this night of nights, the feeling was creeping in again.
I shuddered and got out of bed. It was an odd feeling: My body told me that the air in the room was comfortably warm—yet there was a chill. Upon further consideration I discovered that it was coming from within, not without. Delayed reaction from Timewise, I told myself.
I went to the small meal counter that was embedded in the wall opposite the bed. Taking a seat upon one of the two stools, I requested a glass of water from the autocounter. I downed it in a single drift. Then, instead of going back to bed like I probably should have, I paced around the room for several minutes, eventually picking up the phone and calling Jason. I suggested a game of basketball down at Gymbo's, and Jason, being the proverbial night-owl he was, willingly accepted.
Gymbo's was bustling with activity, as usual. Despite the human tendency to sleep at night and work during the day, many of the alien species prefer just the opposite. As such, Jason and myself were something of a minority.
We met on the courts, both of us dressed down in gray sweat suits, and practiced layups for a while before getting into a more intense one-on-one.
As we played, we talked:
"Why is it that only nuts seem to see the future?" Jason asked.
"I couldn't answer that," I said. "If I did, I'd be a nut."
"So this Jennie chick was really fucked up, huh? I mean, she was obviously tweaked out on something—but to get pulverized like that…" Jason paused. "What kind of weird shit did she say while you guys were back there?"
"I don't really know. I was downloading, trying to keep an eye on the cashier…what's her name?"
"Bayl, or something like that. Don't think she's coming back in on Monday."
"Wouldn't blame her. It was just weird, though. You know those thrill-seeker vids they have on the Net sometimes? They're always talking about how they've figured out a way to go into the future, but none of them can prove it. They say it sets you free, makes you an immortal because your body isn't linked to your birth stream anymore—"
"—yeah," Jason said, "and then you never hear about these guys again 'cause the gamma radiation or whatever it is fucks up your DNA and you end up growing big-ass tumors all over your body until finally your cells mutate into a steaming lump of shit."
I grabbed the basketball, made a rim shot when I'd been going for a dunk (hey, it was one in the morning). The ball shot off across the court and, since neither of us felt like retrieving it, ended our game.
I went courtside and patted down my forehead with a towel.
"I could never talk to Trudie like this," I said.
Jason looked at me, tried to read my expression. No doubt all he got was waves of pent-up angst. "You going to break up with her? Start seeing a real girl?"
I sighed in response. "I don't want to hurt her." I didn't. She wasn't giving me what I wanted, but then, neither was she holding me back.
"That's your template talking. You tweakers always stick together—and I bet your dick would never forgive you if you ever went to sleep without resting it between those perfect ass cheeks of hers. And that's the problem, right? I mean…she's just the kind of girl you get with temporarily. You know that, don't you? Come, I've seen you two together. There's no chemistry. Only the coincidence that you both happen to get horny during the same time of day."
"Is it that obvious?" I muttered. Stupid question. Of course it was.
"I've known you since we were both little runts. Well, your dick's always been the size of a fucking jumbo Bratwurst, but we can talk about how you've ruined the curve for all other men later. Bottom line is, you've finally outgrown the relationship. Trudie helped you get past all that shit your parents put you through, but now that you're all grown up, out on your own, it's time to face facts."
"I don't know. When I saw Jennie in the data vault—"
"You wanted her, didn't you?"
"No, I wanted to be her."
"You mean, like, a sex change kind of thing?"
I swatted at Jason. "Fuck no. I mean the chaser part. For one brief moment I had this…feeling, like I should've been born someone else. Maybe to other parents. Another life where Jennie knew that other me. It was in her eyes, an afterimage of…of wherever it was she'd gone on her last time trip. It reminded me how sometimes I wish it was really possible to visit the future."
"What, you want to see yourself all old and decrepit?"
"I'm serious." I paused, looked away as I started picking absently at my shoes (my own little defense mechanism—Jason was listening to what I had to say, but he was being really, shall we say, manly about it). "I'm lost. Trapped. When I think about it I get all worked up, I get this tight feeling in my chest and I feel like I'm going over the edge. I never do, but sometimes I wonder what would happen if I did. And now, after today…I'm wondering if maybe that's how Jennie and all those like her got started. They wonder when they're young, how things will turn out in their future."
Jason scowled. "Time chasers start off nuts, Storm. Something's wrong with their heads from the day they're born. Or maybe they're that small percentage of the population whose genetic makeup just doesn't gel nicely with the effects of time travel. One trip into the past and it fucks ‘em up, you know? Makes ‘em believe in things that aren't there, things that aren't true. Like the future. It just doesn't exist. Science has, if nothing else, proved that we as physical beings can only interact physically with other physical objects. Or in this case energy. We can re-visit the past because there's the imprint of motion, the afterimages that everything in the universe leaves behind. Streaming equipment can detect and amplify this stuff—but the future, it hasn't happened yet. There's no energy to harness. It'd be like trying to take a photograph inside a pitch black room."
"What about psychics?" I asked. "How is it possible for them to predict the future. At least, the good ones…"
"Coincidence. Probability. Greed. Any psychic will improvise your future for the right price. It's no more a prediction than it is a proper investment of your time and money, but if you believe in that kind of mumbo-jumbo, your brain subconsciously makes it come true." For a moment Jason watched me. I knew he was trying to come up with the right words to settle me down, but when nothing came to him, he smiled and got to his feet. "You know what I think?" he asked, offering his hand.
"What?" I stood as well.
"I think you need to go home and veg for the entire weekend. Take a pill, turn off your phone and go comatose for a while. No nookie, either."
I said, "You just want me to shut my yapper."
"Exactly."
The taxi shuttle dropped me off in front of my apartment building at a quarter to three. Somehow, despite having been awake for nearly nineteen hours, I dreaded having to attempt sleep just yet. There was an incompleteness about things, as if the day didn't want to end. Maybe I didn't want it to end.
I ran my hands through my hair, still wet from the shower at the gym. The scent of shampoo caught my senses, sparking a memory: Two weeks ago. A late-night visit to the beach with Trudie, Jason, and (Jason's girlfriend at the time) Naomi. A pleasant memory. There'd been swimming, beach ball, and afterward the showers which had left everyone's hair with that familiar smell. Later in the early morning, a bonfire, wine coolers, an endless supply of cuddling, holding Trudie in my arms, feeling her, smelling her, listening to her voice. No heavy thinking needed, only the subtle communication of the senses—and the occasional sly remark between friends to keep things light. It was the perfect memory to re-live at the moment, really.
I dug my hands into my pockets and headed down the near-empty street.
To East Cedar.
East Cedar was probably San Francisco's largest 24-hour time mall, back in the day. Four levels of streaming booths aligned within a central hall that housed tastelessly retro cafes and overpriced coffee shops. I paid the entrance fee and made my way through the crowds of people, most of them human insomniacs or alien revelers looking for a good time.
I found a vacant booth, settled myself in the helm as it auto-adjusted a pair of hefty safety straps over my chest and legs.
"Thank you for choosing East Cedar—provider of quality streams for more than twenty years," said the over-zealous computer once I'd selected my desired stream.
A soft hum filled the booth.
Now, you and I both know that's never a good sign. For a split second I assumed an air-conditioning motor had switched on somewhere, but then I smelled burning plastic—
—and that's when everything went to hell.
The booth went out of focus. A sudden nausea filled my gut; I felt like I'd been jumped by a chain gang and left for dead. I remember feeling like I was falling forward, over and over, tumbling down a never-ending slope. I used to be an acrobat, so I had a head for every manner of back flip, front flip, flyaway, somersault you ever heard of, but this was the worst case of vertigo I'd ever experienced—and all within the space of a few seconds. Hell, a few milliseconds!
It only lasted a moment. Suddenly I slammed hard into the floor. I felt like I was on fire, every part of me prickling. Then it was over and I was left alone to realize that most of the pain I was feeling was not from bodily injury but from the shock of having all my senses turned up full-blast. With my breath coming in ragged gasps and my heart going wild in my chest, I lifted my head from the ground to see that I was lying in semi-darkness. There was light emanating from…street lights. I blinked, squinting, crawling onto my hands and knees.
I was on some random street corner.
Not to make fun or anything, but I was much like you were, Demis, after your recent trip across the solar system. Except I had no one to offer a guiding hand.
My gut muscles clenched and I gagged uncontrollably. Nothing came out, but I nevertheless spent the next few minutes on all fours, trying to let it pass. I'm alive, I thought, considering the fact that I should have been sitting in a time booth and not crawling around the streets of San Fran in the middle of the night.
"Holy shit, man."
A middle-aged vagrant had come to stand beside me. The smell, rather than the possibility of a weapon being hidden inside the man's filthy clothes, got me to my feet. My clothes were gone; I was also scratched and bruised considerably, but otherwise none the worse for wear. Extremely fortunate, actually, that I wasn't dead, considering some of the theoretical errors that could occur during a time stream. I tried to think back to when I'd first entered the booth at East Cedar…had I entered the wrong stream number? No…no, even if I had, there are security systems set up to make sure no fatal mistakes are made. Otherwise, you can end up decades, centuries, away from your time and a million miles across the galaxy. The worst that could have happened was that I spent some time in the wrong stream, waiting for my session to expire.
So what had gone wrong? An equipment failure? Computer virus? Power fluctuation? To this day, I've never figured it out. All I knew at the time was that I was standing naked on a street corner in the middle of the night. No money, no ID.
"How'd you do that?" asked the vagrant.
I looked at my street side companion and, for the first time, saw the fear and amazement in his weathered face. "Er, do what, exactly?"
The vagrant slowly nodded towards a nearby alleyway. "I was sitting over there minding my own business, and suddenly out of nowhere I see this blurry spot right over the street here—then you come slamming down onto the sidewalk screaming bloody murder." He paused, looked me up and down. "God damn it, boy. You came out of nowhere!"
A chill ran up my spine, though not necessarily because of my nudity. With each passing second, more of the reality of it all was sinking in.
Momentarily, a personal shuttle full of young people turned the corner—just slowly enough so that the women inside were able to stick their heads out and whistle at me. "Looks like an escaped tiger," said one of them, blowing my cock a kiss.
Covering my crotch with my hands, I left the corner, left the vagrant standing there with a dumbfounded look on his face and headed uncertainly up the street (I paused only momentarily to pick up a discarded cardboard box, which I unfolded and fitted around my waist). Thankfully, the streets were mostly empty. Those who were out and about (or who passed by in shuttles) probably thought of me as nothing more than an adamant proponent of nudism, or else the loser in a game of strip poker.
By some wondrous stroke of good luck, I was only a twenty minute jog from my apartment building. The majority of the windows were darkened when I arrived. I crept up the stairs and entered as quietly as I could. Upon reaching the door, I instinctively reached for my wallet, but of course since I wasn't wearing any pants, there were no pockets to reach into.
I swore softly, readjusting my makeshift garments. I made a futile attempt at jiggling the doorknob before cursing Trudie and myself for not having a thumb print scanner installed. On most occasions, if I misplaced my ID card (which was programmed with my home key, mailbox number, and the like) it was merely a nuisance to have to knock on a friend's door and ask to make a call to the nearest locksmith. Now, though…how ridiculous would it be to show up in my unclad state on someone else's doorstep—and at such an ungodly hour?
There was nothing else to do but find out.
I wasn't the type to really get to know (or care about) my neighbors. Preferring my privacy, I'd never paid attention to anyone but an elderly woman named Carla who lived a couple doors down from me (and then only because she made a point of striking up smalltalk every time we passed each other in the hallway). On weekends I helped with her grocery shopping or errands, and she in turn listened to whatever sad-sack story I'd been cultivating throughout the week.
I walked quickly to her door, rang the buzzer, and waited. Every second was an eternity, but eventually I got an answer via the intercom.
"Yes?"
"Carla? It's me. It's Storm. I'm sorry to bother you, but I've, uh, had a little accident—"
"Who?"
"Storm. You know, Storm Anderson from C-12?"
A moment's pause, and then Carla's door opened slightly. She stood cautiously in the threshold, her arms tucked into her shawl where (I knew from my various conversations with her) she gripped a small palm mace. "Oh my lord," she said. She'd forgotten to put on her glasses, and so squinted at me, making the wrinkles in her face look deeper than they should have been. "Is this some kind of prank? I'm warning you, I got no patience for this sort of thing."
"It's no prank," I insisted, suddenly getting a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. "I just…I need to use your phone. I got locked out of my apartment on accident."
"What apartment did you say you live in?"
"C-12…don't you remember—"
"You a friend of Shawn's?" Carla lifted her head somewhat defiantly.
"Who–?"
"‘Cause I've known him for almost three years and he never mentioned any Storm."
I was about to say something else, but then it hit me: Carla wasn't just disconcerted from sleep—she really didn't know me. It was as if we'd never met…as if I'd never even existed. "You don't know me," I murmured, looking over my shoulder in the direction of my apartment door.
"Sorry, son. I can't say that I do."
"Carla, it's me!" I exclaimed, suddenly losing any composure I might have been mustering at the moment. "I live in apartment C-12, right down the hall. I work at Timewise, you know? And…and the mall down on Harrison—on weekends I take you grocery shopping! What the hell is going on here?"
In response to my outburst, Carla slammed her door shut. As she locked it: "I don't want any trouble! Now, you get yourself back home before someone calls the police!"
This was nuts. I left Carla's place, ran back up the hallway to my apartment door and started ringing the buzzer repeatedly. No matter that I was ignoring the obvious; I was too infuriated to care—I wanted answers. I wanted to know why someone named Shawn was living in my apartment.
The door opened, and I found myself facing a bearded man of comparative height (minus my athletic build). His hair was mussed and his eyes swollen from suddenly being wrought awake by the raucous. I went immediately for Shawn's neck, shoving him up against the wall before he could say a word.
"All right," I growled. "What's going on?"
"Ack!" Shawn gasped, grappling inefficiently with his arms. "What the…hell are you doing—let me go!"
"What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?"
"I live here! Get the fuck off me! Trudie! Call the police!"
I responded with another rough shove. There was a moment between us during which I bore my gaze full at Shawn as I wondered what to say next. What the hell am I doing? I thought. Am I really going to beat this guy up because—oh my God.
I let Shawn go.
He took a deep, hoarse breath and slid off into the hallway. "I'm calling the cops, you fuckin' asshole!"
I hardly heard him as I stood (cardboard box now laying forgotten on the floor by my feet) in the middle of what should have been my home, had not everything been entirely rearranged. It looked as if Shawn had been living there for years. Not a trace of familiarity about the place. And worse yet, there was Trudie, sitting in bed, the sheets pulled up to her chin as she looked at me like I was an utter stranger, some psycho-stalker come to beat up her boyfriend and have my way with her.
"Please, don't hurt me," she mumbled. "Please, oh, God, don't hurt me." Over and over, tears streaking her face.
"Oh, shit," I murmured, holding my head. "Oh, shit…" It was too incredible to believe, but my feeble little brain was putting the pieces together. The accident at East Cedar, being redeposited impossibly back into reality—only in this stream it seemed nobody had ever heard of Storm Anderson. Something had gone wrong. My life should have ended in that chair at the time mall, my atoms spread across the galaxy…but here I was: alive. Misplaced, but alive.
Crossed streams, you see. Jumping from one flow of time to another. It's what time chasers preach as cosmic nirvana.
I had to think this through, but I couldn't do it there, what with Trudie sobbing uncontrollably and Shawn about to return with the cops. Shawn's shirt and pants were draped over a chair; I grabbed them, along with his shoes, and left the apartment. I took the emergency stairs—dressing as I went—down to the ground floor of the apartment complex. As I exited the building, I was faced with the decision of where to go next. My most obvious choice was Jason's, but considering the present state of things, it was unlikely he would know me any better than Carla or Trudie had.
So, I started walking. Where? I hadn't a clue.
"You've got more connections than a diplomatic official, you know that?"
Chronos sits across from me and chuckles politely at my remark. The two of us are now more or less fully dressed (Chronos seems to have an aversion to shirts that completely conceal his chiseled, heaving pecs) and having breakfast out on the patio of a small corner cafe called Rozetta's. Just before dawn, one of Chronos' "friends" provided us with clothes, money, and a lift into the city (seems the kid has dozens of contacts scattered about the various streams—just in case he needs a helping hand).
"Chasers look out for one another," he says. "And those you make friends with who aren't chasers, they have loyalty. They appreciate the value in sticking it to the man."
Chronos is smiling again. Like a big child playing hooky from school. I rub my temples and wonder briefly if there's a pharmacy nearby. "Okay, you've got friends, you've got free travel—what does a chaser do? What do you do, besides serving as an anti-establishment icon?"
"Well," says Chronos, "when you get right down to it, when you take away all the cities and cars and jobs and pop culture propaganda…we're really just biological entities, aren't we? Eating, shitting, fucking, sleeping animals."
"That's beautiful."
"What I mean is, existence itself is mediocre. A process. But it's the thought that counts—the billions of thoughts. All of it is illusion; we're still just primates struggling to survive from day to day, but you read a book and suddenly it's something wonderful. You hear a piece of music, and you're sure God is real. You see a movie and people aren't just people, they're characters, intricate, layered. These are all icons. Without them, you just have, well, eating, shitting, fucking, and sleeping, don't you?"
"And monster truck rallies." I'm chuckling, a believer, a skeptic…someone who's had too little sleep.
Chronos sighs. "I've already described it as best as I can, but for the sake of the interview…" He pauses, looks off towards the street where an attractive woman skinned in spandex is out having her morning jog. Once she's passed, he turns back to face me and says, "I guess you could describe it like this: You wake up in the early morning, and you're frozen, right? Sleep paralysis they call it. Most everyone gets it occasionally throughout their life, and to some it's harder to deal with than others. It's just like that, though. You wake up and you can see and hear what's going on around you, but you can't move a muscle. You feel like you can, you concentrate on lifting your arm up and you can feel it moving, but you're still lying right where you were ten seconds ago. You're stuck, almost like your soul is floating just a couple inches above your body, trying to find its way back inside so it can wake you up. If you try hard enough, if you concentrate on your body, you can make it happen. You wake up. If you don't, you sort of let go and stay stuck, or else you fall back asleep again."
"I get it," I reply, though I really don't. "If you think it, you can do it?"
A snicker from Chronos. "Well, if you put it that way. We've got a lot of ground to cover."
"Sorry. Force of habit, to condense complex events into an easy-to-read hook."
"My point is that everything's a thought, in the beginning." He leans forward now and tips over the pepper shaker with his hand. "Like that. A thought, put into motion causes the shaker to fall over. The consequence: We've got a little mess to clean up. That's what streaming is. Thoughts, motions, consequences. I work when there's work, I travel when there's not, but as long as the public is aware of people like me, there'll be thought, action, consequence."
"Delusions of grandeur?" I ask.
"If that's what you want to call it."
"Okay. Let's get back to your first experiences out of your birth stream. How do you go from lost little lad to Time Patrol Enemy Number One?"
"Well," Chronos says, "The really wild stuff came when I met Morgan…"
I'd been living on the streets for several days when she found me, sitting on a park bench and scarfing down stolen leftovers.
"Storm Anderson," she said.
I looked up, caught off-guard, embarrassed. "You know me?"
"Let's get you cleaned up," she said, holding up her hand. "Then we'll talk."
She didn't look like anyone I knew. At least, not since I'd last dealt with a modeling agency. Tall and elegant, tight-assed and full-breasted, she was dressed plainly in street clothes—though she looked as if she should have been wearing a sequined gown and heels.
"Do I get a name?" I asked.
"Morgan."
I followed her to her apartment, two blocks down the street.
Inside, she said, "Give me your clothes. I'll wash them while you shower."
I laughed uncomfortably. "Do I smell that bad?"
Morgan smiled, waited with her hands held out. "We're going to a dance club. You get extra points for hygiene."
"And if this is some kind of trick?"
"You have no identification, no money, and no place to go. You've been sleeping on park benches for the better part of a week—do yourself a favor and take advantage of a helpful situation."
I might have protested further, but there was an air about Morgan, something…familiar. I studied her, trying to figure out what it was as I slipped out of Shawn's shoes, Shawn's pants, Shawn's shirt.
"There's a clean towel on the rack," Morgan said, taking the clothes. "Help yourself."
The apartment was small, designed for the typical one-room efficiency you'd find at any San Fran high-rise, with one wall dedicated to a kitchen counter and cooler, another sporting shower pad, sink, mirror, and laundry facilities. Bed and desk were at the windowed end.
I stepped onto the shower pad, activated the high-steam mode. There was, of course, no modesty.
"Tell me, Storm, is it your tweak job?" asked Morgan, putting my clothes into the sanitizer and then waiting, arms folded, her gaze wandering noticeably up and down my body. "Or are all the men in your family as, er, well-endowed?"
I turned my backside to her and tried not to blush. "You seem to know a lot about me."
"Chasers know each other. They know their facts. We stick together."
I felt myself sober; modesty forgotten, I faced her full. "But I'm not a chaser—"
"Oh, yes you are. Whether or not it was your intention, for better or for worse, you're one of us now."
Something caused my gut to tighten. It was the same feeling I'd gotten when I'd met Jennie. "Are you going to tell me what this is about?"
"Not just yet—but I'm sure you feel the connection between us. You've felt it before, during the Timewise holdup."
"You've been watching me," I said. I finished up, shut off the spray. Morgan handed me a towel.
"The Patrol has things under such strict control," Morgan said, "it's only too obvious when someone jumps streams. For example, if you have a room full of laughing, chattering people, you're not going to hear that random someone talking in the corner—but if everyone's made to keep quiet, you're sure as hell going to notice the slightest whisper. Whenever possible, we make it a point to get to newcomers before the Patrol does."
Dried off, I stepped from the shower pad and wrapped the towel around my waist. "Recruitment?"
Morgan shrugged. "Call it a pilot program. We always look out for like-minded people to help, to help us. I prefer those who genuinely want to be chasers rather than those merely looking for the psychotropic highs."
"So, then, you think I'm the genuine deal," I said, thinking of those long nights laying awake beside Trudie—
"I think you're the genuine deal." Morgan went over to the sanitizer and removed my clothes. Then, handing them to me, she said, "Get dressed, honey buns."
"Where are we going, exactly?"
"A chaser rave."
The dance club: a converted warehouse saturated with pounding rhythms, fancy lighting effects, and dozens of bodies dancing, swaying, somehow altering the Earth's gravity with their frenzied motions.
I stood on the fringes, Morgan beside me. "What am I supposed to do?" I asked. "Dance?"
"Dance," Morgan acknowledged. "Mingle. Blend in. I'll see you on the other side."
Other side? I turned to face Morgan, but she was already gone, weaving her way through the masses.
I danced, swapping partners, smiles, knowing looks. I was a stranger, and yet everyone here seemed to know me—and there were other things, too. Subtle things. I never saw the same face twice. Sometimes I would blink and literally find myself holding someone else. I'd mentioned gravity before; the feeling was physical now, as if the dancers really were creating their own tidal force.
The feeling got to me before I was ready for it; it was a familiar, sickening lurch, as if I were tumbling forward, over and over, through the crowd, through sound and sight, smell and touch and taste, through the fabric of space and time itself—
—and into another world entirely.
As was my style at the time, I slammed unceremoniously into the ground, face-down, ass-up. My scalp tingled, my teeth hurt; I was sure my pubic hair was on fire.
Morgan, naked (as was I), crouched beside me. "Give it a moment. It's just your senses recovering." She smoothed her hand across my back.
"Should've…left our clothes at the…apartment," I rasped, though not without appreciation of Morgan's unclad form. Ample curves, flat tummy, well-tended athletic build, full, shapely breasts that bobbed slightly as she moved; she offered me her hand, and I took it, stood, wobbling on my feet.
We were standing near the edge of a large and elaborately decorated balcony, overlooking a serene ocean that stretched as far as the eye could see. The water reflected the deep reds and violets of the evening sky in which a trio of moons glowed, the satellites of the gods watching over the mortal realm.
"A convenient way to jump streams," Morgan said, walking over to a small table and removing a pair of robes from one of the chairs, "is to do so where it's difficult for Big Brother to keep watch." She handed me a robe. "Public places, crowded, busy—the congestion provides cover."
I smiled, thinking of the dancers, swapping partners not only on the dance floor, but across the galaxy as well. One moment you held person A, the next it was person B. "Where are we now?"
"My chateau. You won't find it on any of the stellar charts." Morgan donned her robe, cinched it at the waist, and sat at the table. "Please, relax."
Following suit, I sat with her at the table. There was a pitcher of water, dainty appetizers—appropriate fare for my recovering intestines. "So, besides being bold and beautiful, you're the big shit, then? The head chaser or something?"
"I am an Elite, one of many. I was a countess in my original birthstream, but the powers that be didn't like it when my family reached a certain level of political influence. Various human governments conspired to have my family line erased—but I'd been involved with the chasers for some time before that, and managed to escape with my life. Most people aren't as fortunate. And you, of course…"
"I fell right through the cracks," I said.
Morgan nodded. "The Elites have been asking about you. They want to know how it's possible that you've jumped streams completely by accident."
"Elites?"
"The keepers of time. Some human, others not. They were once chasers themselves, but now…I suppose you could call them the ‘big shit.'"
I bit my lip. "And I should be grateful my blunder got caught by them and not the Patrol?"
Morgan poured herself some water, took a long, luxurious sip. Then, "You know the odds as well as I. You've crossed over into a place that's…well, let's put it this way: Streaming without mechanical tools is, for most humans, impossible. Such a feat takes immense reserves of concentration and skill that we simply do not comprehend without years of practice. Not only have you defied the odds, but you've jumped into my stream. On your first try."
"I don't know how I did it," I said. "This is all new to me, I assure you. An error with the streaming booth."
"On a physical level, maybe. But mentally, spiritually…well, do you believe in the spirit?"
I shrugged. "You mean the soul?"
"No. The soul and the mind together govern the brain, which directly controls the body, but the puppeteer, the spirit is what rules all. It's the higher part of you that allows you to play on the material plane while you are awake, and it's the part that reels you back into the universal ether while you sleep. Your higher self, your guardian angel, you could call it."
"I would have to say I don't have enough experience in that area to give a fair answer."
"You will," said Morgan, smiling. "In time. Experience comes with time. For now, know this: The Elites are a combination of the physical and the spiritual, balanced out so that both are coherent, and so that both can communicate with each other effectively. Think of it as being able to be in many places at once, while retaining complete coherence in every instance. That is the level of self-discipline one must achieve in order to become an Elite and to subsequently be able to switch time streams without mechanical intervention. Therefore, if you have been allowed to exist outside your birth stream, if you've survived such an ‘accident,' it can only mean your spirit has ordained a more direct connection to your body in order to achieve a goal of some sort."
The possibility of a higher-me somehow having delivered me into another time, another dimension, another stream, was hard to swallow—not too hard, though. Not considering what the past few days had shown me.
I said, "It would've been nice if my spirit had called ahead."
"The spirit works in mysterious ways." Morgan stood, still smiling, and undid her robe, let it fall away from her body.
My eyes wandered across her form—I wasn't normally all that promiscuous per se, but here, now, I felt no shame when my masculine reaction tented the front of my robe.
"You'll train under me," Morgan said. "Come." She waited for me to stand, then undid my robe, let it drop to the floor. She grasped my cock, led me inside, to bed, where she lay back, legs spread, spine arched, her impressive breasts thrust provocatively forward. "Let's work on your stamina."
I climbed into bed with her. I didn't know why it was so easy for me. I was giddy, probably still distraught by my most recent jump—but I performed, I put my exaggerated template to good use.
"Can you feel it?" Morgan gasped during the climax.
I didn't know about it, but I could feel her insides milking me for all I was worth. "Fuck yeah," I gasped.
"No…me," she growled, and buried her nose in my armpit.
We lay together, a tangle of arms and legs, dampened bedsheets, sweat glistening on our skin. Our balcony conversation had been all about the spirit, the cosmos; a moment away and we were animals acting out our primal programming, looking for comfort in the arms of strangers. And yet I was beginning to understand that Morgan wasn't entirely unknown to me…
She sat up slightly. "Do you know who I am?" She was still breathing somewhat heavily from our powerful lovemaking.
Of course, I thought. You're the most familiar person in the world. "Who?"
"You were supposed to pop naked out of a cake."
"Trudie?" My heart skipped a beat.
"Morgan." She smoothed her hand down my chest. "Trudie there, Morgan here—but your spirit knows. Your spirit guided you here to me. Subconsciously, you knew to be sitting on that particular park bench at that particular time."
I sat up, gathered Morgan in my arms. She'd been another lover in another stream, and here…here she was the body on the outside, and the spirit on the inside, whereas the previous Trudie had been body only.
I held her.
Crying, I said, "Nice to meet you, Morgan."
Back at our table, Chronos sits back and looks off down the street. He's pouting, wistful—I'm pissed because his penchant for storytelling has given me a raging hard-on.
"Forgive my nitpicking," I say, waving my hand in front of Chronos' face to get his attention, "but has this whole plot line been a covert lead up to you banging some hot chick?"
Chronos looks at me. "That was the start of my training."
"Okay, ‘training.' Tell me about that."
"It's something like this."
Chronos rises from his seat, grabs my hand—and it feels like he tosses me out into the street without the slightest trouble. Except there's no street. There are no buildings—there's no goddamned city. I've been whipped back into the nothingness we'd first traversed during our journey from XTC.
Chronos! I yell without yelling.
I'm here, Demis, he replies.
You know I don't do well without my fat ass backing me up!
I just wanted to elaborate a bit on the process.
Well, then, I think fiercely, fucking elaborate and let's get back into our skins!
I feel Chronos close to me. This is what my first time was like, too. Except Morgan kept me out here almost indefinitely. Made me work my way out. Sometimes I never got back into the flesh until I absolutely couldn't hold my concentration any longer—but I always ate it up. I can see how some folks become addicted to the rush. Shit's better than any photo shoot or gym meet.
You'll have to excuse my lack of enthusiasm—
Just try, Chronos tells me. Feel for the closest pit in the astral plane, see where it takes you.
I try—at least, I think that's what I'm doing. Chronos' request insinuates something subtle, sly, sleek; I can only picture myself tripping, falling, stumbling about like a drunkard in a stupor.
All right, Chronos says, steadying me. So maybe you aren't ready yet. How about we pay a visit to the place Morgan took me my first time…
Matter coalesces around me. I have this wide-angle, impossibly humongous view of the night sky stretching out in all directions. I'm planetside, looking upward, and the celestial canvas is painted with stars, galaxies, nebulae. Everything's so bright. So young.
Chronos is young, too. No more than twelve, he's standing beside me; the two of us are in a cramped prison cell and stargazing through a dusty grate in the ceiling. There are other people there with us, chained together. All of us are dressed in rags, layers of dirt and grit caking our skin. And the smell…my God, humans can really stink up a place if given the opportunity.
"Cheerful destination," I grumble, glancing around the cell.
"The birth of humanity," Chronos whispers. "At least, in this galaxy. Whether we were designed and deployed here or shipped in from elsewhere is up for debate, but this is where the first of us decided to become more than merely organic machinery for the mines."
"Christ almighty, man! Just how old are you?"
"No older than you or the next person," Chronos replies. "We've all lived an innumerable number of lives. We only forget because the flesh leaves us so frequently. But if, at any given moment, you can recall your entire existence, back to the beginning, you can evolve. You can beat the reincarnation debacle. The Patrol doesn't want this, our governments don't want this—what incentive is there to work, to pay taxes, to go to church on Sundays when you have such utter freedom, the power to do as you please at any given moment? It would be total anarchy in the eyes of our world leaders."
I pay my cell mates another cursory glance, wonder if they can see me…if they care. "Well, wouldn't it?"
"We have that problem now."
"Except now it's only fighting over continents and moons. In your world it would be each of us hurling solar systems and galaxies at each other."
Chronos shifts beside me, his chains rattling. "We're always in danger of destroying ourselves. Spiritual evolution is a gradual process that will take many more millions of years. The little steps are important. I'm telling you this because a thousand years from now, you will have lived a thousand lives, you will have forgotten this entire conversation—but your article will still be in the archives. The lore will be out there. One by one, people will discover the truth. One by one they will accept it, when they're ready. We will evolve."
I nod. "I think I'm beginning to understand you, Chronos."
"Really?" His question has a double effect because, in this instance, he's twelve; his innocence is easily reflected in his starlit eyes.
"Sure," I say. "This whole time chaser business, it's just one more way to leave your mark, isn't it?"
"I suppose so."
I snort. "Helluva way to leave your mark. You could've written a novel, painted a mural, had some kids…this outshines it all, doesn't it?"
Chronos nods, smiles. "I'm not looking to be a star. I did all that as a kid. This"—he waves his hand towards the grate—"is it. This is what I wanted from you. When you go to write your story, you'll know the difference between all the epiphanies of the nonconformists and the simple pleasure of just being—being's what this is about. One at a time, humans learning to be."
Someone beside me coughs; I wrinkle my nose at the smell. "That's good—now get me out of here before I wretch."
A nod from Chronos, a wave of his hand -
—and I wake up.
My hotel room is dark and musty. Of course, at first, I have no idea where I am, why I'm smelling like cheap booze, why there's this horrendous racket going off in my head.
I roll into a sitting position—Jesus fucking Christ, I'm wearing a plastic overcoat, nothing underneath. Why the hell am I dressed like this—
XTC. The interview with Chronos. I'm back on the space station.
Or perhaps I'd never left.
I find the note resting on the bedside table. There's not much to it, just a simple goodbye, a "by the time you read this I will have ejected myself from one of the station's airlocks" that sets my pulse on high.
Oh, God.
I only allow myself a moment to grasp what's happened before I stumble out of my costume, into some decent clothes.
Then I leave for Elena's, stumbling along the corridors, eventually making it to her door. I knock; she answers, looking like I woke her up, but lets me in anyway.
"Jesus, Elena," I weep. "The kid fucking killed himself."
He'd drugged me. A hallucinogen, some downers, and something else—quite possibly a batch of good old fashioned hypnosis—that had made me highly susceptible to suggestion. Otherwise, my doctor assured me I was fine. Well, first he launched into his usual speech about the evils of excessive alcohol consumption, then he assured me I was fine.
And now here I am, sober, clean-shaven, three days back on good, solid Earth, sitting in my office and wondering what to make of a chance meeting gone bad. In the cold light of day, there was no magic, no meaning to my meeting with Chronos. He'd just been a troubled young man, chaser or not, looking for attention.
I'm thinking this is what happened: Storm Anderson was born into a life he didn't much care for. Glamorous, yes, but not for him. His parents pushed too hard in one direction, and so he rebelled, partying, doing drugs, floating his liver, fucking every pretty ass that crossed his path. He was in his early twenties when he decided that maybe he wanted to go straight, and so stuck with Trudie a while—but his old habits caught up with him. He slept with someone behind Trudie's back. Morgan, perhaps (though I'm fairly certain she's not an Elite, nor was she ever a countess). Rather than come clean about it, Chronos decided to construct an elaborate tale involving time chasers and the meaning of life and a whole bunch of other bullshit.
I don't feel much like writing, but deadlines being what they are, I have to do something akin to what writers do.
I go online, decide to do some background research before delving into the actual story. A preliminary search brings up several hundred thousand web sites regarding the Chronos mythos. Many of the webmasters behind said sites claim to be Chronos, Chronos' reincarnate, or Chronos' fuck buddy. It's a mess, but I keep at it, connecting whatever dots I find—this eventually brings me to a Timewise record, with a name and an address for Storm.
I jot it down, and browse on, coming across a little something called Streaming Audb—the Streaming Audible Database. I can ask an animated physicist with big boobs questions about time streaming and she will answer them to the best of her ability.
I try to think of questions that will make her jiggle the most:
"What happens to a person when they stream? How does the process work?"
The animation looks thoughtful for a moment before giving her answer. "Commercial streaming requires special equipment capable of following the quantum mechanical theory of ambient energy amplification. A stable field is created around the client inceptor, or ‘helm', in which an overlay is produced, effectively aligning an individual's molecules with those of the desired time period's residual energy…"
She could go on forever (besides, it's mostly gibberish anyway), so I tap the "Stop" button before asking, "Can a person stream without the aid of specialized equipment?"
"There have been no documented occurrences of a human being successfully streaming without the use of specialized equipment."
"If there's an accident, if the, er, protective field is ruptured during a stream, what happens to the person inside?"
"The overlay is terminated, and the individual ceases to receive feedback from the stream."
"So in other words, he's fine, no physical or mental abnormalities?"
"That is correct."
A sigh escapes my lips. I do a little more digging until I come across a message board that hosts a rather intense (and lengthy) discussion on who or what Chronos is. The messages range in demeanor from casual interest to insistent knowledge to frantic statements about the truth in what must be the most out-of-control urban legend in the galaxy. The general consensus: Chronos is real, he is alive and well, but only if you are a time chaser will you have the chance of meeting him. Possibly. If he wants to meet you. And afterwards, unless you're an Elite, there's no guarantee you'll remember your meeting with him. More likely, it was seem like an elaborate dream.
I almost feel honored—or betrayed. I can't decide which.
Taking an extended lunch break, I go to Chronos' apartment. The landlord is nice, frazzled, but cooperative enough as I ask about Storm.
"C-12," he says. "You mean the modeling guy?"
I nod. "Yeah. You know him?"
"Sure do. Sure did." The landlord shakes his head. "Such a shame. Beautiful kid. Both of them, him and his girlfriend, Trudie. Such a match made in heaven. The wee lass has been done up in tears ever since she heard the news. She's in the process of moving back in with her parents. If you're lucky, you might catch her."
The elevator is out of order. I take the stairs, two at a time, huffing and puffing my way to the tenth floor. At the door, I wipe the sweat from my brow and ring the buzzer. A minute or passes, and I'm about ready to leave when the door clicks open. A young woman—Trudie, I'm presuming—steps forward, arms folded, face somber (even in mourning, she is as gorgeous as Chronos was handsome).
I introduce myself: "My name's Demis Matheson. I'm a reporter from SkyOne. I…I spoke with Chro—Storm shortly before his, er, passing."
"So, you're the reporter dude," Trudie says. "He told me he was looking for the media."
"I only wish we'd met under better circumstances." I clear my throat. "Has he always been…out there?"
Trudie shrugs. "I can't tell you why he did half the things he did. Maybe you should talk to his parents."
"Would you happen to have their address?"
She nods, steps back inside for a moment, then returns with the address scribbled on a piece of paper. I take it, thanking her.
"Are you going to write a story about him?" she asks.
"Probably."
"Then I guess it wasn't a total waste."
I thank her for her time.
"You're welcome," she says, and closes the door.
I'm sitting in the Andersons' parlor, sipping tea and nibbling at a handful of complimentary croissants, when Mr. and Mrs. Anderson walk into the room. Both are tall, straight-backed, he handsome, she elegant. Middle-aged models, athletes, barely touched at all by the passage of time.
They sit across from me.
"Hello," Mrs. Anderson says.
I wipe my hands on my jacket, pull out my multi-unit to take notes; I launch into a condensed version of what Storm told me back at XTC, then wait for illumination.
"We only wanted the best for him," says Mrs. Anderson. "He could have been anything. A model."
"A sports star," Mr. Anderson adds.
I look from Mister to Missus. There's a tension between the two—it's obvious they had opposing plans for Storm's template from day one. Daddy wanted his son to follow in his footsteps; mommy wanted her son to follow in her footsteps. One beautiful, perfect child being torn in half by bickering parents.
Addressing Mrs. Anderson, I ask, "He was a model, then?"
She nods.
Facing Mr. Anderson: "A gymnast?"
He nods.
"How did he take it?"
"He was a good, hard worker," Mr. Anderson replies. "He could focus when he wanted to."
"And," Mrs. Anderson says, "it wasn't as if he was lacking in the looks department. Without half an effort he could've gotten steady work."
Mr. Anderson nods, holds his wife. "He wanted what he wanted, though. Stubborn…so damned stubborn sometimes."
The question's sneaking between my lips before I can even think it: "Did you ever wonder if maybe you were pushing him too hard?"
Mrs. Anderson looks uncomfortable.
"Sorry," I say. "Just trying to grasp all the angles—"
"No, no, that's quite all right." She wipes a rogue tear from her cheek. "It's a competitive world. In that sense, yes, I suppose you could say we pushed him to give his best—but we never beat him, never denied him food or clothes or a home."
"Still, he found it necessary to rebel."
"It's funny…he indulged quite heavily, but only in his certain specific cliques. The sex clubs, the women, occasional drinking, and, of course, the constant streaming—but he never smoked, never ate red meat, never did drugs."
Mr. Anderson frowns. "I suppose we should have seen it coming. They say excessive streaming can mess up the brain, but we never thought it would happen to us, much less to our son. We always assumed it was…just a phase. The rebellion, the wild parties, with his friends. He acted like he was immortal, but…alas…he wasn't."
Mrs. Anderson breaks down, unable to continue any further as the truth dawns on all of us: Storm Anderson had been nothing more than a turbulent youth, a streaming junkie, spending every dollar he made on the club scene, and every minute he had in a time booth. He must have sensed his demise early on and come to me to make that one last impression on the world before kissing it goodbye.
"Near the end," Mrs. Anderson sniffs, blinking at me, "he kept talking about changing the world. Make a difference."
Mr. Anderson looks at his wife. "‘If I've reached just one person, I will have done things right,' he always used to say."
"Maybe," says Mrs. Anderson, a tear welling in her eye, "this story you're doing…maybe it will touch someone."
I nod. "It has, Mrs. Anderson. It has."
I leave shortly thereafter, stepping outside the Andersons' front gate and sighing as I tuck away my multi-unit. Chronos is still an urban myth, parents still seem utterly oblivious as to the wants and needs of their children, and truth remains an ever-elusive dark smudge on the human tapestry—I'm only slightly jaded, though.
After all, the rest of the afternoon awaits, and I have a story to write.
[ END ]