Аннали Ньюиц - The Future of Another Timeline

“Where are we?” I muttered it into the skin of Morehshin’s neck, and tightened my grip.

C.L. looked around wildly, their hair brushing my cheek. “Holy shit. I think we’re… in the Ordovician.” They started to pull away from our cluster, pointing at something huge and armored that swam through the waters below.

“Don’t let go!” Morehshin was pounding a travel pattern into the ground with her feet and trying to torque something in the canopy overhead.

Abruptly a hot rain gushed from the crust beneath us and the air became void. We emerged on the floor of a smoky cave lit by torches. All of us were covered in a thick layer of dust that made me cough uncontrollably. Eight slaves sat in a semicircle around us, flanked by baskets of bones and lithics. These people, some with the dark complexions of Africans and others with varying shades of Mediterranean tan, were the tappers of classical antiquity. Property of the Raqmu Machine’s priesthood, they pounded out rhythms that programmed the interface. A bored-looking man with oiled brown skin and gold bangles on his upper arms sat on a stone bench beside us, its contours softened by several layers of furs and rugs. He nodded, his clubbed beard protruding stiffly from his chin, and made a quick notation on a damp slab of clay.

“Welcome, travelers.” He spoke Nabataean. As my eyes adjusted, I realized we had arrived at our destination. Barely.

“That was… not good.” C.L. was shaken. “I haven’t seen anything like that before.”

Anita whirled on Morehshin. “What did you do to get us back?”

“Reset to last destination.”

“There’s a reset button?” C.L. perked up.

“It’s complicated.”

“Get out of the circle. You are blocking travel.” The bureaucrat was irritated. “And show me your marks.”

Soph addressed him in halting Nabataean. “We apologize. Thank you for your hospitality.” Then she followed us awkwardly out of a thick red circle painted onto the floor. It marked the boundaries of the wormhole opening the same way the ring once had.

“So many of you,” he marveled. “I did not know that was possible.” He made another notation on the tablet, then checked our marks. When Soph shook her head, he frowned. “You cannot travel without a mark.”

“She’s my student, so she travels on my mark.” Anita was brusque, as if this were done all the time.

“I’ll need to inform the Order.” He referred to the priesthood that controlled access to the Machine during this period. “Travelers without a mark are in violation of the law.”

“Well, you’ve never seen five people come through, have you? We’re part of a new experimental group in 2022 C.E.,” I said. My grad school Nabataean was rusty, but he seemed to get the gist.

The bureaucrat frowned and stood up, blocking our exit. “You need to come back tomorrow and speak to the Order.”

“I will.” Anita drew herself up to full height, towering over him. People in the ancient world were usually at least a foot shorter than modern humans, and Anita was imposing even in our present. He bowed his head and stepped aside.

“See that you do.”

“Let’s go before he starts asking more questions,” Anita whispered in English as she led us out of the travel chamber into the temple proper, an atrium with high, curved ceilings and red walls. Light spilled in through the doorway and windows, illuminating scholars studying tablets and scrolls at a wooden table. Incense curled into the air beside a few shrines. People came and went from various side rooms on traveler business, barely noticing us. They were used to people in anachronistic clothing wandering out of the Machine chamber in a daze.

“Are they going to send me back to my time?” Soph raced to keep up with Anita’s pace.

“They would if we brought you back tomorrow, but we won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because if all goes well,” I said, “we’re going to sacrifice you to the goddess al-Lat.”

Los Angeles, Alta California (1993 C.E.)

After not speaking to Lizzy for so long, sitting in her car felt like returning to a childhood playground. It was familiar, but also somehow smaller and less colorful than I remembered. She drove up the I-5 while I pored over the LA Weekly listings, pausing to read a story about how geoscientists were reporting strange activity at the Machines. Unfortunately the bit about Ordovician algae was only two sentences long, lost in a boring discussion of whether the Chronology Academy was corrupt. I crumpled the paper under my seat and sighed.

It was too late to scrounge up an invite to a backyard party, and besides it was Tuesday. The legit venues were probably pretty dead too. We decided on an all-ages show at Starless, a café in Echo Park that was a regular hangout for some of the girls we’d met at backyard parties.

Sure enough, Flaca and Mitch were there when we arrived, sitting at one of the tiny circular tables that wobbled so much nobody used it to hold drinks. Tonight it served mostly as an ashtray pedestal.

“Hey, girlies!” Mitch waved us over excitedly, her heavy wallet chain clanging against a chair. A couple of other kids we didn’t know were there, and Flaca introduced them in a blur of names. All the girls from East L.A. had perfect eyebrows. They were in the middle of dissecting the latest details about some bullshit where Tower Records wouldn’t carry Fuck Your Diet albums.

“It’s racism!” Flaca folded her arms.

“They said it’s because they have fuck in their name.” Mitch shrugged.

“But everybody says fuck in their band names now. They can put little stars over it or something.” I scowled, but I was also relieved to be upset about something that wasn’t murder or my dad.

“Oh shit, it’s that dude from last week,” Flaca hissed and pointed at a guy who had arrived with a couple of friends. He looked like a Billy Idol impersonator, with spiky bleached hair and a pasted-on snarl.

“That poseur? What did he do?” Lizzy checked him out in an extremely non-covert way.

Mitch lit a cigarette and picked up the story. “He came here last week and started hitting on a bunch of girls, telling them he likes Chicanas because they know their place and understand that men are men. Usual white boy line—sorry, Marcus.” She nodded an apology to a ginger in the group and he shrugged. “But it got really fucking insane. What was that thing he said to you, Flaca?”

“He went off on how he’d treat me like a queen or some shit? He said he had a special room where I could have babies and never worry again. It was creepy as fuck. Like serial killer talk. The boy is crazy.”

Flaca’s mention of serial killers got everybody debating who was scarier—John Wayne Gacy or the Night Stalker? What about Jack the Ripper, who traveled through time to eat Victorian hookers? But Lizzy kept her eyes on the guy after the show started. In the mosh pit, she kept racing up to him then pulling back from a body slam with a little smile. He ate it up. Pretty soon he was chasing after her in the pit, delivering soft little swipes to her ass.

We were panting at the counter between acts when the serial killer decided to make his move. He leaned right up into our space and pulled the cigarette out of Lizzy’s hand.

“You’re a lot prettier when you’re not smoking and trying to push men around in the mosh pit.”

Ugh. Of course he was one of those guys who flirted with pseudo-insults.

Lizzy emitted a fake giggle and grabbed the cigarette back. “You think so? I bet that’s what you tell all the girls.”

His face became serious for a minute, and I realized his pale skin was impossibly smooth. Literally no pock marks or scabs anywhere, as if he were made of plastic. “I don’t talk to girls. I talk to queens. You could be my queen.” When he smiled, his teeth exhibited the same uncanny perfection.