John Moralee - Future Imperfect - A Collection of Science Fiction Stories

“Where is she now?”

“I’ve kept that version of me here, safe, waiting for the right time to let her go back to her family. She’s in stasis. Let me show you.”

The woman claiming to my sister showed me into a room with a coffin-shaped chamber containing my little sister. Marila looked asleep inside the stasis generator.

I believed her story then. “You’ve kept my sister frozen. Why?”

“I couldn’t take her home.”

“Why not?”

“I only exist if you continued on the same path, not knowing what happened. I became your mentor to train you. I was going to tell you the truth when you were fully trained. You were–are–supposed to attempt to save your sister’s life using the Key Stone. I didn’t know you’d find out the truth yourself before you are ready. This complicates everything. But it can still be fixed.”

“How?”

“All you have to do is wait until the time is right to save your sister again. Once you do that, I can wake the other version of me and return her to your parents, alive and well. The paradox will no longer exist then. There will be two versions of me in the same time stream, but nobody else will know.”

“I have a huge problem with that. My parents have been grieving for five years. You really want them to wait longer? How much longer? A month? A year? A decade?”

“I don’t know,” Gileanor said. “I can’t predict the future. All I know is that the paradox must be resolved. I don’t possess the natural skill to make a temporal adjustment, but you were born with that skill. Once the Guild reinstates you, we can continue your training. In a few years, you may be ready to manipulate time, resolving the paradox.”

“No,” I said. “It has to be sooner. The longer we leave things like this, the more my parents suffer and the harder it will be for my sister to come back. She’s already lost five years. You know what I have to do. We need to do it now.”

“You’d have to get back into the Guild. You can’t do that when you’re suspended.”

“Yesterday I caused a ripple in space-time. The Guild might never reinstate me because of that. They could discover the paradox–unless we close the loop. Today.”

“I suppose you could get in if I’m with you. I can open the doors and get us both inside, but the guards won’t let two people in at once.”

Paulo had been listening to everything. “Veya, I can help with the guards. I know where they eat breakfast. I have a plung left over. I can slip it to them in a drink.”

Gileanor frowned. “Are you listening to someone?”

“Yes, my cousin. He’s going to drug the guards.”

An hour later, Gileanor and I climbed the steps of the Guildhall after the changing of the guards. Both men were drugged when we arrived, barely aware of our existence. Gileanor opened the door. I followed her inside. We reached the Gate Room without encountering a soul. It was deserted because the Key Stone was inactive.

“As soon as you connect, security will come to check because nobody is supposed to be here. You’ll have under a minute to open the gateway. Are you confident you can do it?”

In truth, I was terrified of failing. But the risk was worth it. I attached the skullcap and lay on the couch. “Let’s do it.”

Slipping into the dreamlike state, I interfaced with the Key Stone. I was the only mind linked locally, which made it easier to focus on creating a single small gateway, if I could locate my sister on the bridge five years ago.

I targeted her physical location, then adjusted the temporal parameters, picturing my sister until I could feel her unique mass and energy signature in hyperspace. She appeared in my mind on the bridge. There she was, falling over the rail. Death was waiting below, but not if I acted. I reached out and opened a gateway under her and compensated for her acceleration. She passed through it into hyperspace.

At that moment I could have made the gateway exit anywhere in the universe. I could have transported her home on the same day as she disappeared, but if I did that Gileanor and her family would cease to exist in the altered future. Though it pained me, I had to repeat my error by opening the exit on Rashoo, condemning the original Marila to become Gileanor.

After I had done that, I closed the gateway and shut down my link.

I opened my eyes not knowing if I had done the right thing.

Gileanor was still there. I could hear a sentinel stomping down the hall. “You’ve done it?”

“Yes.”

We hurried out of the Gate Room before anyone caught us.

The next day my sister was found wandering in the lower city. She had no memory of where she had been, but she was healthy and unharmed. My parents were overjoyed to have her home again.

Naturally, the police investigated her abduction, but they didn’t find any clues. I had already destroyed the airwalker recordings as a precaution, so there was no evidence.

The Guild reinstated me after a six month hiatus, concluding my mistake would never be repeated. They were more right than they would ever know.

Six months later, my apprenticeship ended with the Guild making me a full member. I’m a navigator now.

When I’m not working, I spend a lot of time with Marila, making up for the lost years with as much love as I can give her. I often take her into the market to show her the wonderful alien things, accompanied by Paulo and Min. (I no longer hate Market Days, now I know I have nothing to fear.)

It’s strange knowing two versions of my sister, but I like it better than none. Nobody knows Gileanor is Marila from an alternative time-stream. Together, we decided it’s best that way. I visit her regularly, now she’s retired and moved to live on Oceania Prime, where she has many relatives. I’m looking forward to visiting her next summer. I hear it’s much cooler there.

Some day I will pay back Paulo for all of his help finding Marila, but that’s in the unwritten future.

Just like everything is now.

Something moved beyond the bunker in the crimson haze released by a drone attack. Anson linked his mind into the surveillance system, calling up multiple images and angles, seeing a weak heat signature coming from the north. A figure was on the ground, moving at 8.5 metres per second. Anson ran software to clean up the electronic fuzziness caused by the nanoparticle chaff dropped by a Rippler. The target was humanoid, 1.9 metres tall, with no visible weaponry and no active shielding. The figure was running towards the bunker’s entrance in the hard rock a quarter of a mile above Anson’s head. A survivor of the invasion? Out here?

“Weapons on,” he said. “Active scan.”

The bunker had eight drone launchers that swivelled into position on the surface. They each fired a combat drone into the red fog surrounding the bunker. Anson jumped into his command chair, taking simultaneous control over all of them. He released a spray of sixty thousand mini stealth drones. They swarmed over the bunker and flew over the intruder. They had no combat features themselves – but they improved the sensors. It was still hard to lock on to the intruder’s exact location in the electronic chaos inside the crimson haze – but Anson had a natural feel for target acquisition. Despite the haze cutting visibility down to fifty metres, he found a trace of his target sprinting over the blackened rocks and scrubland. The figure was wearing a heavy combat suit – but he could see a face through the helmet’s visor.

It was Sergeant Dawkins.

He had never expected to see her again.

One of his drones sent an audio stream on a securely-encrypted channel. “Dawkins! What the hell are you doing here?”