Аннали Ньюиц - The Future of Another Timeline

Two weeks later, Hamid and I were cuddling in my bunk while Rosa studied in the lounge. We’d been spending a lot of time together, and I was starting to think that maybe he was my boyfriend. Were we supposed to have “the conversation” right around now? I looked at him and wondered how I would ask about our status without sounding like a cliché.

“Beth, I want to ask you something kind of intense, okay?”

Maybe I wasn’t going to have to figure out how to have “the conversation” after all. I kissed his chin and nodded. “Sure—what’s up?”

“Remember how you said you were going through some shit and that’s why you stopped talking to me last year?”

My shoulders tensed. “Yeah.”

“What happened to you? I know you and Heather stopped being friends too. You don’t have to tell me if it’s super personal, but… I really want to know about you. It affects me, too.”

I took a breath and started to say something ironic about my friends being serial killers. Then I started to say something dismissive about how parents are the worst. Finally, I found myself telling a story I’d only ever narrated inside my head.

“I was feeling, I guess, anti-social? Mostly because my dad was… well, he’s really strict. Both my parents are. Like we have a lot of rules in my house about how to act. Certain things I can’t say, and—I dunno, weird stuff like how I clean my room or where I set my cup down on the counter. And if I broke a rule, they would ground me for a really long time. Usually a couple of months. I mean, I could go out for school, but other than that I had to stay in my room.

“Actually, I guess they made those rules because of something that happened a long time ago, when I was in sixth grade. I got kind of rebellious, you know? My mom was in the hospital for a few days because she had this condition—and anyway, my dad got mad because I didn’t wash the dishes enough before putting them in the dishwasher. He said I was grounded for the next month. Because it was part of a pattern of me being disobedient or something. And I—I got really mad. I told him he was being unfair and crazy and I don’t know what. I remember I was screaming, and he—he grabbed my face really hard. Then he pulled my pants off and started spanking me with his belt, and—it was really bad. Like I was bleeding.

“And then he freaked out and started crying and saying he was sorry and he made me get in the shower with him to clean up. It was really fucked up and scary… I mean we were in the shower naked and he was rubbing me with soap which really stung and he kept putting his fingers inside… inside me… and saying he loved me more than he loved my mother…”

Hamid was hugging me really hard and I realized my voice was shaking.

“I know it doesn’t sound like that big of a deal. Parents are weird, right? It was a long time ago, and he never did that again. But he always acted like he was right about to do it, and he was definitely acting like that a lot last year. So I just couldn’t deal with anything. He kept making these threats…”

Hamid nodded, his expression unreadable. Suddenly I needed desperately to know something.

“Does that seem normal to you? I mean, kids get spanked all the time, and he only did it once… and lots of parents are strict…”

“No.” He whispered it into my hair, wrapping me tightly in his arms. My cheeks were wet. “It’s not normal, Beth. That is not normal. I am so sorry that was happening to you and I didn’t know.”

I mashed my face into his shirt, flooded with relief that someone did know. Someone knew all along. And she saved my life.

I visited the campus lawyer the next day.

She smiled when I sat down in the wooden chair across from her. “I’m glad to see you again. How’s it going?”

“I’ve thought about it and I want to get a dependency override. My father has been abusing me for a long time, and I need to get away from him.”

“You’re going to have to make a sworn statement to that effect. Are you ready for that?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes. I’m ready.”

Raqmu, Ottoman-occupied territory (1894 C.E.)… Western Gondwana Coast (447.1 mya)

I was relieved to be back in Raqmu after a month at sea and on trains. There were more established commercial routes to Raqmu than there were to Flin Flon, but nineteenth-century travel was always exhausting. Morehshin and I settled into the rooms Anita had kept in the scholars’ quarter during our absence, and I made some muddy, rich coffee for Anita and me while Morehshin rained a small lunch out of her multi-tool. Suddenly, C.L. burst through the door. “I’m glad you’re back because I’ve done another analysis, and we are in deep shit.”

C.L. had dyed their hair bright green, to match their nails. They looked older.

Anita was surprised. “How long have you been working on this?”

They scratched behind an ear. “I got an extension on my field season work, so I guess about a year in travel time, give or take. Mostly in the past. But I am about a month ahead of you in the present. I had to go back once in a while to use the computer cluster in the geology lab. Sorry about that.”

That wasn’t too bad; it meant we had to avoid them for our first month back, to prevent merging conflicts.

“What did you find?” Morehshin asked.

“They are very close to wrecking the mechanism that keeps the wormholes open on both ends. I have the data right here.” C.L. patted their chest.

“You memorized it?”

“No, of course not. That’s insane. I uploaded it to my shirt.”

Now Morehshin was excited. “You figured out an interface hack!”

C.L. beamed. “That’s right. There’s no way to bring tools or computers through the time machine, right? The interface only permits clothing and implants. That’s how Morehshin brought the multi-tool—she can absorb it into her body. At least, that’s my hypothesis.”

“You’re right.” Morehshin opened her hand and the multi-tool emerged from it, growing like a bubble in tar before taking on solid form. I had no idea she could do that.

C.L. continued their infodump. “So I have a friend who got me this prototype of a smart shirt that Alphabet is making—basically there are wires woven into the fabric, connecting the CPU and sensors and memory, so it’s part of my clothing. All I have to do is output to a mobile device, which is why I got this implant.” C.L. tapped their eyebrow. “I can save all my data and read it locally using ultra-wideband. The cool part is that it’s great for fieldwork anywhere, not just during time travel, right? I’m going to use it for this project I’m doing with carbon dioxide in Antarctic meltwater because my shirt runs Fuchsia OS, and one of my labmates wrote a great API for gas chromatographs. Hey, did you guys know I finally got a National Science Foundation grant for that? It’s going to be—”

Anita waved her hands. “Okay, okay, C.L.—we can talk about your funding later. Get to the point.”

“Right. I’ve been taking photonic matter levels on the Machine at several critical points in the timeline. Each change is registered instantly on the other Machines, as far as I’ve been able to determine. So that hypothesis about how Raqmu affects the other Machines—my data suggests it’s correct. There’s a very real possibility that destroying the machine at Raqmu will destroy time travel completely.”

“Oh shit.”

“Also I figured out what the Comstockers are trying to do. I traveled closer to the divergence and found a campsite with a stone forge. They’re making steel blades to re-create a part of the old interface controls, from when the Machines had a console with buttons. That’s why they’re randomly cutting into it—to activate a trigger. Basically, there’s a setting that decouples the interface from the wormhole. Probably for maintenance or something. Anyway, the result is you’ve got a wormhole and an interface, but they don’t connect.”