Аннали Ньюиц - The Future of Another Timeline

Anita cut me off. “Wait, why were you in 1992? Your period is the nineteenth century.”

I was confused. “Berenice told me to go. She had evidence that anti-travel activists were hanging around the indie rock scene. Grape Ape caused a huge controversy around this time—the Vice Fighters kept going on TV calling them obscene feminazis, so they became punk heroes. This concert would have been catnip for Comstockers trying to target young women with one last reversion.”

I remembered the conversation clearly, at our last meeting. Berenice wanted to go herself, but she’d burned out of most of the 1990s. One of the hazards of studying a specific period was that the Machine would not open its wormhole for people tapping back to a time they’d visited before. We called those times “burned”; it was annoying, but it also prevented people from returning to the same moment over and over, destructively reliving or reediting a targeted stretch.

“Berenice?” C.L. was playing nervously with their phone. “Who’s that? Does she study the 1990s?”

“What do you mean? Berenice! Our friend? She published a huge book about the origins of trans activism in the 1990s. UC Press made it one of their featured titles in the fall catalogue.”

“No… I don’t know her…” Shweta, one of the most tough-minded scientists I knew, was at a loss for words.

“Does anyone remember Berenice?” Fear was crawling along my spine.

Everyone was shaking their heads. C.L. poked their phone again. “What was Berenice’s last name?”

“Ciccione. She was… shit… she’s been coming to these meetings for years.” I spluttered to a stop as the reality sank in. Berenice had been edited. And then I looked at Enid and realized something horrifying. “Enid, you and Berenice were partners… you were about to move in together…”

Enid drew in a sharp breath. “What? That can’t be. I can’t have lost…” She trailed off, her eyes searching our faces. But there was nothing we could do. How do you help someone mourn a lover they don’t remember?

Shweta spoke gently. “Tess. You said she was researching trans activism?”

“Yes.”

She held out her phone, its screen illuminated by a 1992 AP article dredged from the Nexis database. It was about a person police described as “a man in a dress,” murdered outside a gay bar in Raleigh. There was a grainy picture of Berenice, unmistakable mop of curls forming a crazy halo around her much younger face. My throat constricted. “They’ve misgendered and deadnamed her, but that’s definitely Berenice.”

Nothing like this had ever happened before. At least, not that we knew of. I looked around the room. Was it possible that more of us had been edited out of the timeline, and we didn’t remember? I spoke without thinking. “We have to go back there and revert that edit.”

Enid shook her head slowly, eyes reddening. “We need to do a lot more than that.”

Foreboding settled over the room.

“Who would make edits like this? By literally killing travelers?” This time, C.L.’s question didn’t seem naïve. We were all wondering the same thing.

“Do you think this has anything to do with the man from the concert, the Comstocker?” Anita mused. “Berenice sent you to look for him, right?”

“Yeah. It’s possible these guys saw Berenice as a threat to their cause. Especially if they knew she was onto them. So they murdered her younger self.”

C.L. blinked in shock, and accidentally popped a rhinestone off their thumbnail. For once, they had no questions.

Anita coped with the stress by going into analysis mode. “So let’s assume there’s a group of travelers working with Comstock, who are reverting some of our edits. And some of us.” Her voice cracked. “If this is part of a larger plan to lock us into a timeline that can’t be changed, what is their goal with these edits? Is it something about Comstock?”

“I don’t think it’s Comstock himself.” I fought to stay focused, despite my rising panic. Who else had those men erased from our memories? “Their zine was all about why women shouldn’t go to college. And the guy who talked to me—he sounded like some mashup of a Comstock speech and the Celibate4Life forums we see today. They could be infiltrating different movements over centuries. Comstock’s Society for the Suppression of Vice successfully eliminated abortion and access to birth control, so it would appeal to anyone who wanted a timeline where women’s rights are restricted. I think they must be coordinating a much bigger edit across several time periods.”

“What else do we know?” Anita was typing on her tablet.

Enid cleared her throat. “If you’re wondering why they were in 1992, there was a huge backlash against feminism at that time. It probably started with obscenity law reforms—specifically, reforms of the Comstock Laws.”

“So could they be C4L types from our present, going back to key periods for women’s rights?” C.L. asked.

I had a more urgent question. “What if they’re from the future?”

Anita gave me a sharp look. “What difference would that make?”

“It could mean that they know something we don’t. They might be responding to a future feminist revolution.”

“Future feminist revolution. Give me a break.” Shweta snorted. “That’s not how history works. Every so-called revolution is simply a long, drawn-out series of profound compromises and co-optations.”

“There are revolutions. Maybe they take time, but there are huge changes.” I felt my cheeks getting hot. “Sometimes we don’t compromise. Sometimes we do things like abolish slavery and declare universal suffrage.”

“And then spend the next century and a half trying to make brown people into slaves again.”

“We’re derailing here.” Anita was always the voice of reason. “The fact is that we don’t have enough data to know when these dudes are from, and we can’t go to the future. Still, we know they’re out there now. It’s possible that they’re working directly against the Daughters of Harriet, or maybe against women’s rights more generally. Either way, it’s probably related to why our memories are so divided on reproductive rights.”

“So what should we do about it?” Shweta folded her arms.

“I’m going to 1992 to stop those fuckers from murdering Berenice.” Enid was shaking with a determination that wavered between sadness and fury.

Shweta was nodding. “You’re pretty familiar with the time period from traveling to the eighties, so that’s not a bad plan.” Then she touched Enid’s arm, and spoke without any of her usual impatience. “But be careful.”

As I pondered Enid jumping from the eighties to the nineties, I suddenly had an idea. “I’ve been researching Comstock in the 1880s, but maybe I should skip forward. He scored a major political victory for his cause in 1893, at the World’s Fair in Chicago. My guess is our Comstockers had something to do with it. I think if I could edit that moment it might turn the tide.” I didn’t mention that there was another advantage to being in the nineteenth century. Record-keeping at the Flin Flon Machine was terrible until the 1920s. It would be easy to sneak from 1893 up to 1992 again, where I had already left a paper trail proving I was observing the music of temporal locals. With a little subterfuge, I still had a chance to prevent the next murder. Or maybe the next after that.

Anita nodded and made a note. “Our current grant will cover several more trips back to the late nineteenth, so that’s a good idea. Anyone else?”

“I’m researching Ordovician ocean sediments and the origin of the Machine at Raqmu,” C.L. piped up. “Can this grant cover my expenses in Jordan? Raqmu is right by the airport there.”